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He’s lost within himself, vulnerable and easily manipulated when Orochimaru first finds him. He knows distantly, even in the moment, that his instability is the exact reason he has been sought out. Orochimaru can shape him as he grows, both create and control him.
Kabuto walks headfirst and aware into the cage he’s offered. It’s not like he has anywhere else to turn to.
Orochimaru is sort of charismatically off-putting, presence overwhelming in a way that is simultaneously good and bad. It should make Kabuto nervous, afraid for his life and wellbeing, but it doesn’t. Orochimaru could kill him easily if he wanted to. But he hasn’t, and if Kabuto wants to become an actual person, he can’t be living in constant fear.
So he lets his guard down. Against good judgment, and against survival instinct, he lets himself be shaped by Orochimaru’s ideas willingly.
Orochimaru never seems to be certain if he should trust him. He simultaneously trusts him more than anyone else, and doesn’t trust him at all. Which is fair, because some part of Kabuto’s mind keeps an ever-changing escape plan.
He could leave, and by the time his absence would be noticed, he’d be far gone. He could easily flip on Orochimaru, selling them out to any hidden village or organization, and Orochimaru would be powerless to stop him until it was far too late.
But he’ll never leave of his own accord. He’s aware of the cage he’s been put in, not immune to it. Orochimaru saved him, made him a person. He has no desire to leave his side.
i.
He’s not always Orochimaru’s favorite, but he’s entrusted with things none of his other subordinates are. He likes to think it’s because he’s different. He’s an exception. He’s not like the rest. He’s Orochimaru’s right hand man, and it has to mean something.
He’s not an experiment of his, at least not in a traditional sense, and he’s decided to take this as a distinction, rather than a sign of shortcoming.
On good days, it’s almost like they’re partners. Certainly not equals, but equal partners in their scientific research. They work side by side in the lab for hours, completely in sync.
When he’s in a good mood, Orochimaru will ask him questions about himself. He doesn’t seem to mind that Kabuto doesn’t know any of the answers. He likes the fact that Kabuto is still creating himself as a person, while Orochimaru watches.
From a scientific standpoint, he understands. Watching a subject create oneself must be fascinating.
It makes him uncomfortable, slightly, knowing that in some way, he’s just another one of Orochimaru’s experiments. But another part of his attention-starved teenaged brain revels in the sharp, focused observation.
He feels seen by Orochimaru’s curious gaze, as if laid bare and flayed open on their dissection table. It’s strange, invasive, and the most attention he’s ever felt in his life.
He wants to peel his skin off at the sensation. He wants to curl in on himself until there’s nothing left to stare at. He wants to feel this way for the rest of his life. He wants to hold this attention forever.
It’s a messy, contradictory feeling. It’s strange. He never used to feel this strongly. Then again, maybe he’d just never met anyone interesting enough to invoke such strong feelings in the first place.
They’re standing side by side, over the cranial cavity of a middle aged cadaver, and Kabuto’s poking around his brain with a scalpel and gloved hands.
“Do I scare you?” Orochimaru asks, and when Kabuto looks up at him, he’s staring right back at him, eyes curious and maybe a little bit intimidating.
“I acknowledge your power, Orochimaru-sama,” Kabuto says, because he doesn’t want to risk saying the wrong thing. “And also the power you hold over me. But I am not irrationally terrified over you for some arbitrary assumption of who you might be based on the way you present yourself. That would be a disrespect to you. And to myself.”
It’s an honest answer. Kabuto is aware of Orochimaru’s strength, and is nervous over what he may do to him if he ever wrongs him, but it is only because he knows him. Knows exactly what happens to people Orochimaru does not like. He’s scared of the person he knows Orochimaru is. But it’s not some reactionary fright over his exterior.
Orochimaru smiles at him, sharp and predatory. “You’re foolish, Kabuto. And brave. I like that.”
Kabuto suppresses a shiver at that. It’s not quite fear that makes his skin crawl and causes the headrush, but it’s not not fear. He doesn’t know what it is. Or he does, and doesn’t want to put a name to it. He’s not sure.
“Is there a difference?” He jokes, responding mostly only to get himself out of his own confusing mind.
“Yes. And you possess both qualities.” He twirls the end of Kabuto’s hair around his finger. “They suit you.”
Kabuto is a person. He has positive and negative personality traits. Traits that Orochimaru sees, and approves of. He’s a person. He feels so terribly relieved.
ii.
He’s not unaware of the increasingly severe hold that Orochimaru has over him, he has simply chosen to accept it. He submits to him of his own volition. He’s aware of the ways that Orochimaru makes him rely on him.
He could leave. If he really needed to. He’s not as psychologically far gone as many of Orochimaru’s experiments tend to be. His devotion is not conditional, but it is informed.
Orochimaru knows that he knows. And chooses to give him some amount of trust, anyway. Chooses to favor him anyway. Chooses him, time and time again, against his experiments.
It’s a logical choice, certainly not one made out of any emotionalism, but Kabuto still feels wonderfully significant.
So, it’s fine.
Orochimaru’s favoritism toward him persists, even outside of a professional setting. Which makes sense, because they’re awfully isolated in their day-to-day lives, and even though Kabuto’s almost certain that Orochimaru feels a very small range of genuine emotion, he’s still very much prone to boredom caused by lack of mental stimulation.
So they spend time together. And Orochimaru’s curiosity and socialization needs are met. It’s only logical, therefore, to go to Kabuto for other human impulses.
Although, Kabuto despises thinking that it’s just because he’s conveniently nearby. There must be something about him, something worth being interested in.
There must be. Even if it’s just his naivete or curiosity or his wiry, developing frame. There must be something about him that’s memorable enough to be appealing.
Orochimaru has always been a tactile man, and some amount of physical contact cannot be avoided in a lab setting.
But it’s early on when something changes. It’s slow at first, hard to pinpoint. It’s lingering hands and Orochimaru’s constant curious gaze.
He eases Kabuto into it all gently, but never offers him the chance to say no. Any effort to resist would be futile, Kabuto knows, because Orochimaru has never listened to “no” in his life.
So he lets Orochimaru push his boundaries, aware and halfway with dread, halfway with anticipation, because it’s clear where this will end up.
It’s not as terrible as Kabuto had feared. Or maybe hoped.
The first time, Orochimaru lays him out across the dissection table and ruins him. He’s shaky and crying the entire time, silent tears, and Orochimaru leans over him, licking the tear tracks, no doubt reveling in the power.
His long, silky hair cascades around them, lightly brushing against Kabuto’s bare collar bone. He’s not gentle, but he’s not unnecessarily aggressive or cruel, either.
He doesn’t understand what Orochimaru gets out of it all, and doesn’t ever try to ask. Maybe it’s about power. Maybe he needs a willing body. Maybe it’s about trapping Kabuto ever so slightly more. Maybe he’s just curious about how much he can get away with before causing Kabuto to flee.
Kabuto tries his best to not react too much, either positively or negatively at all. He’s confused. He doesn’t know what he wants. It’s overwhelming, it’s violating, it strips him of any autonomy. But it shows that he’s wanted, he’s needed, it’s something they share, a service he can provide.
And it makes his head spin and skin tingle on the precipice of ecstasy and repulsion. Ecstasy usually wins out, so it’s not so bad, and he’s started to see repulsion as a curiously interesting sensation anyway.
And eventually they get to a point where it’s almost entirely a positive, casual aspect of their relationship. But Orochimaru seems to like the whole scared, crying teenager thing, so Kabuto plays it up sometimes in hopes he won’t get bored of him anytime soon.
Kabuto tries to refuse, once, out of curiosity, several months after it all starts. Orochimaru just laughs, and he probably knows that Kabuto didn’t mean it.
Still, he holds Kabuto’s wrists tight enough that they bruise, anyway.
He doesn’t try to refuse again after that, but he does sometimes struggle enough to warrant similar treatment. He sort of likes the bruises. They’re tangible proof of something, maybe the fact that he exists, maybe the fact that he is, in some way, of use to someone.
iii.
Orochimaru needs him. Over time, he’s become more reliant on Kabuto anyway, but after losing use of his arms, he needs Kabuto around always. That fucking jutsu is the best thing to have ever happened to them. Orochimaru needs him, probably more than he even needs Orochimaru.
He feels powerful.
Orochimaru still has the upperhand between the two of them, of course. And probably always will. It changes almost nothing at all, because Kabuto is content to serve and stay with Orochimaru forever, or for as long as he will have him. And he is too valuable of an asset to be discarded on a whim of Orochimaru’s, on a particularly bad day.
But it does give him even more leverage over Orochimaru. Leverage that he will never use, but that they are both aware of.
It changes nothing, but it could change something if he needed it to. He has power, he has some amount of twisted control here, and it’s an exhilarating sensation.
He dotes on Orochimaru, administering his medications and caring for him everyday. Sometimes, he fears that he is growing tired of Kabuto. He’s grown a lot in the time he’s been with Orochimaru— created himself as a person. He takes care of them both, and it’s a testament to how much he’s matured.
But Orochimaru doesn’t like mature. Orochimaru likes scared, and vulnerable, and easily malleable. Kabuto is losing more of these qualities every day, along with his maturing face and body and voice.
The thought of being replaced sickens him. He considers, fleetingly, stopping eating, stunting his body, if only temporarily, from growing into someone unrecognizable.
But that’s far too melodramatic, and he needs his strength now, more than ever. And that level of dysfunction is absolutely pathetic, so Kabuto dismisses the idea almost immediately.
But at the end of the day, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter if Orochimaru tires of him. It doesn’t matter if he wants more than him, because he needs Kabuto. It doesn’t matter what he wants.
No one else could do for him what Kabuto does. No one else is smart enough, or skilled enough in medical ninjutsu while also being willing to work with his lack of a moral code.
Orochimaru can never toss him aside. He does a job no one else can ever do, and if anyone ever tries, Kabuto will kill them. Orochimaru can never replace him. Kabuto won’t ever let him.
iv.
Kabuto is no stranger to pitying himself. Because self-pity is, in some way, a form of self-obsession, and Kabuto has always been self-obsessed in some strange and twisted way.
But pity from others is almost completely foreign, and it is skin-crawling and disgusting. He doesn’t mind hatred. He doesn’t mind the fact that most people can’t understand him, can’t wrap their head around why he’s so indifferent about hurting others. But when people treat him with pity, like he’s some victim of circumstance rather than a person with agency, he thinks he might be sick.
That kid, Naruto, treats him like he’s lost, but it’s not pity. It’s hope that he could better himself, and it's idiotic and naive, and he kind of likes the kid for it. He doesn’t try to understand him, or claim that he is the way he is because he was hurt. Just treats him like he could become a good person again, and the boy treats everyone with this naive forgiveness. He respects him, in some odd way, for sticking to his convictions and knowing what he is and what he stands for.
He’s still exceptionally annoying though, and Kabuto finds himself fantasizing about stabbing the kid through the eyes almost every time he opens his mouth.
The medic, the nasty woman with a temper, the leaf village’s apparent future Hokage who has a history with Orochimaru, looks at him like she can’t figure him out.
He hates when people do that; Try to figure him out, try to understand what went wrong with him, try to find some goodness underlying the sickness in his mind, just because he is young. They reason that someone this young should not feel this amount of vitriol at the world, this amount of twisted pleasure at destruction of others. Which is laughable with the state of society these days. By Kabuto’s age, most shinobi have experienced more than enough unspeakable tragedy and horror to be ruined forever.
They try to find a reason. But there is no reason that would satisfy their world view. There has always been something intrinsically cruel and callous within him, it is his nature. He has just accepted what he is, rather than trying to run from it. He has just made himself a person rather than trying to shy away from all that he could be.
She watches the devotion in Kabuto as they fight, and something like horror slowly dawns on her face.
Kabuto grins at her, sharp and predatory, hoping to dispel the incorrect assumption that he could be anything remotely resembling the opposite.
It doesn’t work, and Tsunade’s frown hardens, eyes flickering between him and Orochimaru. Kabuto wants to laugh in her face. “Orochimaru.” she says, fury and disgust evident in her tone. “What have you done?”
She looks betrayed, almost, and it’s kind of funny. As if she thinks she still knows Orochimaru, as if he’s still the man she once knew, as if she thinks she understands where his moral boundaries might land. As if she thinks Orochimaru still abides by some semblance of morality.
“How old is he?” Tsunade demands, gesturing at Kabuto, “what is wrong with you?”
“What,” Kabuto sneers. “Jealous?”
Why is this the line that’s drawn? He’s nineteen now anyway, but he hasn’t been a child for a long time. This twisted society stripped him of any semblance of who he was, isolated him and forced him into espionage when he was terribly young, and no one once stopped to question it.
But here, where Kabuto has finally found purpose, direction alongside Orochimaru, is where he is deemed too young and labeled a victim.
He may not have much agency alongside Orochimaru, nor the ability to deny the man, but he could leave any time and they both know it. He stays because he wants to.
What is so wrong about his devotion?
He has chosen something, chosen to stay beside Orochimaru for better or for worse, and for the first time in his life it feels like his own choice, rather than something forced upon him.
If he’s a victim, he’s a willing one.
It’s ridiculous to pity him when he’s exactly where he wants to be.
v.
He despises Sasuke Uchiha. He tries not to let it show, does his best to stay professional, as he should with any of their test subjects. However.
Orochimaru’s fixation on the boy is enough to make Kabuto want to slice his scalpel into that flesh until he’s mangled and ruined, and no longer a viable candidate for Orochimaru to use. And no longer pretty, so Kabuto doesn’t have to watch Orochimaru’s eyes follow him as he moves, hungrily and predatory.
Kabuto’s not possessive; to be possessive is to imply that he has some hold over Orochimaru, which he is painfully aware he does not. He is jealous. It’s an awful, nauseating feeling.
It reminds him of how fucking worthless he is, how little he matters to anyone. If anything, it only strengthens his resolve to stay by Orochimaru’s side. This is how he can gain power. How he can create himself. And once he’s powerful enough, he won’t need anyone. Not even Orochimaru.
But still. But still, he’d like to stay by his side forever.
It’s fine. It’s only a matter of years until Sasuke Uchiha is gone, and Orochimaru will no longer play favorites for someone who isn’t Kabuto.
“It’s pathetic, you know,” Sasuke tells him once, when he’s just turned fourteen, and he’s learned how to turn his perceptiveness into a weapon. “Your obsessive nature, and your subsequent hatred of me.”
Kabuto glares at him. They’re alone, walking through the hall of one of their current hideouts, and Kabuto imagines slamming the kid’s head into the wall over and over again until he’s a mangled, bloody mess.
“I don’t like you because you annoy me,” Kabuto says. “And you’re not nearly as powerful as you think.”
“You see me as competition,” Sasuke says, mockery clear in his tone. “For the attention of a creepy old man. It’s disgusting.”
“What,” Kabuto laughs. “Are you upset I don’t feel bad for you? Upset I’m not going to try to save you from a fate you walked willingly into? Like one of your little friends?”
Sasuke scoffs. “I don’t regret my choice at all. I’m getting what I want here, and unlike you, I’m not allowing myself to be taken advantage of.”
“You want so badly to be seen as a tragic figure, Sasuke. You’re practically begging to be saved. You’d drag your former comrades to the ends of the earth trying to redeem you because you are selfish, and you are lost, and you take it out on everyone around you. I know exactly what I am, and what I want, yet you call me pathetic. Take a good look at yourself, first.”
Sasuke is quiet for a moment, before stopping to stare Kabuto dead in the eyes. “I wonder,” he says, “what you will do when Orochimaru is gone. One day, you will be on your own. And you will realize that you are not a person.”
“And who will you be,” Kabuto counters, “once you have killed your brother?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sasuke says. “He’ll be dead. But you will spend the rest of your life in the shadow of a man who never truly cared about you.”
Kabuto runs a finger along the edge of his scalpel in his pocket. It would be so easy now, to wield it against the boy, exhausted from training, and he’d be gone, dead, and none of his words would matter.
“I don’t need Orochimaru-sama to care about me,” Kabuto says. “I wouldn’t even care if he hated me.”
I just need him to need me.
vi.
The years Sasuke is with them drag on terribly, but as time passes, Orochimaru’s physical state weakens once again, until he’s partially bedridden.
It’s quite a relief, if Kabuto is entirely honest, because Orochimaru’s physical decline solidifies him, once again, as someone Orochimaru can never dispose of.
Sometimes, he finds himself feeling some indifferent disdain as he stares at Orochimaru, coughing up blood and rambling like a madman over his plans. This is the man, he thinks, that he has chosen to dedicate the rest of his life and himself to.
This, pitiful and disgusting, cruel and bitter, mess of a genius.
It’s revolting, watching his body decay as he lives within it. His conviction toward his research has always been obsession, wretchedly human.
Caring for him sometimes feels like some burdensome duty. He can finally understand Orochimaru as the desperate, flawed man he is.
He thinks this must be what love feels like.
He never, ever wants to leave his side. He wants to be here through it all.
He wants to be the one at Orochimaru’s side as he conquers death, while he’s at his most powerful, and he wants to be the one to run his hands through Orochimaru’s oily hair when he’s too weak to leave bed for days on end. He wants to be the only one to administer his medication, bringing him back from the brink of dying, for the rest of his life.
Orochimaru would never let anyone else close to him like he lets Kabuto. He’s different from the rest, he is. He’s allowed to be here, supporting him through it all.
In sickness and in health.
vii.
It is not long after he comes to this conclusion that Sasuke kills Orochimaru. And it’s like the world has ended, because he has no idea who he is without Orochimaru.
But it's fine, he thinks, as he pulls on his gloves and heads toward the lab. He’s never known who he is, and he’ll just have to work on figuring it out. And some part of Orochimaru will be with him forever now.