Well. I'm back. Miss me:D
This is one of the giftfics I've promised my darling Khazia. Go to her deviantart account right now! I'm not saying that because she did a fanart of my other fic, Once Upon Tomorrow, but because I'd give her money but I'm poor, so I try to send her people instead.
gah. Ok, this earns the T-rating big time (at least, I think so), and I am completely ignoring the whole Anko Arc of the Naruto anime filler episodes and generally playing with timelines. So no flames. Spoilers, but only if you have the barest knowledge of the series.
Dedicated to Khazia: a true friend, a wonderful artist, and one of those people we all wish the world had more of. May you always be surrounded by the love and happiness you so richly deserve. Rock on, girl, rock on.
P.S.-- Hebi Iroka: literally, snake charm. Or charm of the snake. Either one works.
Hebi Iroka
It wasn't supposed to end this way.
Then again, nothing in life had ever gone according to Mitarashi Anko's grandiose plans, so she idly surmised that she wasn't really surprised after all.
The day her teams were assigned she had not had very high hopes at all. After all, she was the loud, mouthy, downright bitchy classmate that her peers ignored and her teachers lamented over. She was always the one making mischief, pulling off pranks of a simply unbelievable nature, and generally making people's hair fall out.
So when she had passed the genin exam by the skin of her teeth, she figured they'd stick her with the kid who ate glue and the girl who snarled at people for a living and punt them off the Hokage Memorial when they could get away with it, aka when no one was looking.
Just because all three of them were orphans did not mean they had a common link—in fact, it just seemed to drive them further and further apart. For a girl who was determined to become such an assassin that she made Mist-nin pale at her name, this was not the most stellar of starts.
Of course, considering that she had not had very high hopes for survival after securing her classmates' and teachers' undying hatred and figured she'd just conveniently "disappear" in the first decent mission she finally got...
Anko was not, by definition, a pessimistic sort of person. Sadistic, yes. Psychotic, yes. Gloomy, no. Balancing a kunai on her nose (a very, very dangerous thing to do that she knew drove her instructors absolutely batty), she observed sagely that life was a big, stinking pile of horse--
"Attention! Attention, class!" the kunoichi instructor clapped her hands.
The class, too excited to obey as the usually (grudgingly) did, paid her no attention and Anko rolled her eyes. Really, why was such a kind, soft-hearted, quiet lady (because, really, not even Anko could call the somewhat shy woman anything else) doing in a business like training shinobi?
It boggled the mind.
The teacher, looking slightly frazzled and more than a little exasperated, turned to murmur an embarrassed apology to the man standing beside her. Having slouched down in her seat and generally not giving a damn, she was the most jolted when she heard his voice.
"Class."
The way he said the word, in the voice that he said it in, chilled all the kids to the bone. Anko was so startled she fell out of her seat with a loud clatter that echoed in the silence.
"MITARASHI ANKO!" the kunoichi half shrieked, half groaned, into her hands.
Completely ignoring her sensei (who wished the floor would open up to swallow her) she stared up in awe at the god of man before her.
Golden, glowing eyes that seemed to analyze her stark, naked soul were hidden behind long, silky black bangs. With the elegant, elongated face that was almost feminine, there was still no mistaking that it was undeniably a man who stood with such noble poise in the Academy classroom.
"SUGOI!" she shouted, eyes bright with curiosity analyzing him back.
After all, she didn't recognize him—meaning that he wasn't one of the tons of boring "guest-speakers" who constantly bored them (her) to tears with their boring stories. No, this was a Real Shinobi—the thought alone of how many men he must've killed had her shivering with excitement.
"Only you, Anko, would shriek that at Orochimaru-sama," her sensei moaned.
Orochimaru's glittering, cool eyes regarded her with a sort of liquid disdain that instantly had her hackles raised. Hissing, she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up (it always did that—it had, in her babyhood, earned her the somewhat embarrassing nickname of Kitten) and she nearly lunged for him.
Except that his stance (and only she could see it correctly) and his eyes (again, only she could see past his curtain of black silk) indicated that if she tried that, he'd snap her neck in an instant for the insubordination.
Suddenly loosening up her tight form, she grinned widely up at him with a gap-toothed smile.
Here was a sensei she could deal with.
"Your form is off," he spoke with cool disapproval.
Gritting her teeth, she growled an expletive back and threw herself against him again, changing her form in the nick of time that she was near enough to almost touch his shirt.
"Better," he replied, amused.
"Not good enough," she panted, bending over with her hands on her knees.
"Don't push yourself too hard, Anko," Orochimaru replied dryly.
Glaring up at him, she stood up with a huff and stalked off to down a large drink of water. Shaking his head, he wondered why in the seven hells of insanity that he told them he would take her as his protege. Sarutobi-sensei had damn near fallen off his chair from laughing so hard. Even Jiraiya had the audacity to snicker. Tsunade had, admirably, kept a completely straight face... a battle she'd nearly lost.
He'd always known that he liked her more than any of his other so-called teammates. Too bad she lay him out flat with that monstrous strength of hers.
He sighed. What a wonderful woman, completely gone to waste. Such a shame...
"OI! OROCHIMARU-SENSEI! HELLOOO? TRAINING?" Anko shouted, waving her hands in front of his face agitatedly. Without really breaking his chain of thought, his tongue snapped out and sent her flying against a tree. Eyes wide and spitting out blood, she looked at it wonderingly in her hand. Narrowing her eyes, she quickly performed a kawarimi (just in case, you know) and snuck up behind.
A half-hour later, he still was ignoring her and she was collapsed on the ground, panting with exhaustion. Tsunade, with her apprentice Shizune in tow, delicately raised an eyebrow at the scene.
"You really shouldn't be so hard on her, Orochimaru-kun," she sighed. Shizune, with a nod from her beloved Tsunade-sama, walked over and started healing the scratches and bruises.
"Keep your hands to yourself!" she snarled, snatching her arm away from Shizune's healing hands. Shizune, to her credit, looked shocked for a moment before grimly rolling up her sleeves and getting such a look in her eye that Anko started to back away slowly.
"Lemme alone, alright?" Anko started darting her eyes around for a good escape route as panic started to set in.
Orochimaru joined Tsunade on the log as the two looked on with bored amusement.
"Dango?" she offered, not taking her eyes off the spectacle.
"Oh, lovely. Dinner and entertainment," he murmured.
After settling down, all of her wounds so healed they wouldn't even scar decently—like they were supposed to—Anko turned expectantly to look at her sensei with open adoration.
"Ne, Orochimaru-sensei... why are medic-nin so important anyways?" she scowled down at her nice, smooth arms.
Giving her a serious look out of the corner of his eye, she cringed. Of all the people in the entire world, she only loved him, only was afraid of what he'd say—think—and the thought of disappointing him was devastating.
"Medic-nin are vitally important on the battlefield. Tsunade, as you know, is the foremost Legendary Healer of the Sannin. As such, she is invaluable—even more so than I, at times. Most shinobi are only fluent in destruction—we have no knowledge of how to heal besides the rudimentary basics of bandages, pressure, and prayer, if you believe in such a thing. You must have healers as well as assassins on the battlefield, or battles will degenerate into mindless slaughter. That is something no sane shinobi yearns for—to see comrades falling by the tens when they could have been saved if only you had had the knowledge."
He turned to her, eyes glittering and suddenly she knew that she loved him—would love him forever, even if it shattered her inside.
"I wish to have that knowledge. I will never be as good as Tsunade at healing, I know. I have far too much ANBU in me for that, I suppose. But the knowledge... if I had the knowledge, I could teach one who had the skill... the instinct..." he murmured, lapsing off into silence.
Anko stared at him. Could he hope that she...? Could she dare to dream...?
"Orochimaru-sensei... do you want to train me...?" she trailed off, unable to finish her sentence. She felt curiously squeamish and afraid.
He gave a soft laugh and shook his head slowly.
"No, Anko, I don't think a medic-nin would suit you. You have far too much of me in you for that."
She hardly doubted he was ever a preteen adolescent girl and voiced it mutinously.
He laughed again, and she felt her heart soar in her small, still-flat chest.
"I meant, Anko, that you have ambition..." he turned to her, eyes curiously chilling, "... and that... is everything."
Blinking, she stared down at her feet, feeling curiously proud and very small all at once.
He sighed; why did he have to have such a soft spot for kids? "The Legendary Babysitter," his teammates had teased him once.
"Dango?" he offered, ruffling her hair.
She peered up at him.
"What's that?"
Oh boy.
She never touched on the subject of medical jutsu, but she threw herself into his training and blossomed. He nearly killed her numerous times during training, but she was grateful. It showed her how much farther she still had to go. She found that she was very proficient at controlling seals, throwing random patterns that managed to somehow layer on each other—with her, it was definitely quantity over quality. Still, it got to where that she even was showing medic-nin how to use sealing in their jutsus, and it improved them dramatically.
Lately, she had sensed a shadow fall over her beloved sensei. As a proud member of ANBU, with the rarely-granted and much coveted Snake Mask (that Orochimaru himself had founded) earned, her childhood dream was finally fulfilled. Mist-nin had even fled when they merely heard the name Mitarashi Anko—as an assassin, she was in every Bingo Book of the Great Five Shinobi Nations.
Like hell anybody'd mess with her now.
"You should really loosen up, Anko," her friend and ANBU teammate, Hyuuga Hizashi, joked. It was a well-known fact that Anko clubbed, partied, and generally did everything harder than her peers, and could drink any man under the table.
She was also one of the most damn attractive women Hizashi had ever had the genuine pleasure of working with. She might be loud, obnoxious as hell, and irritating like a wet cat, but she was cunning, just like the Snake Mask she'd earned.
"Why? Wanna play with me, Hyuuga?" she asked coyly, twirling a lock of his long, soft hair around her calloused finger.
He stared down at her with smoldering white eyes.
"It's not play with me, Anko," he replied softly, seriously.
She opened her mouth to retort but the door opened and she turned away to look.
"Come, Anko. We're training."
Eyes lighting up at a now-rare chance to train with Orochimaru, she followed him without looking back. Hizashi sighed, adjusted his hitai-ate and felt the slight stinging of the metal against his curse seal.
It was time, he decided, to give up hope.
"You have become quite adept with seals, Anko. Tell me—what are their nature?"
He demanded this of her as he slowly, elegantly, paced in the clearing far from any listening ears. Konoha was just a speck in the distance, and she was glad for it. She understood Orochimaru's ways... knew when it was best to leave him alone, when to get in his face, when he'd tolerate such an impertinence, when he'd kill her for it.
It was like, she mused, dancing with a viper who would strike at any moment. The trick was simply predicting it and making it part of the beauty of the pattern.
Maybe that was why she liked seals so much.
"Well, to compress, to seal, obviously—that's the main purpose, anyways."
"And what," he whispered, "is their possibility?"
She thought for a moment, a sinking feeling settling in the pit of her stomach.
"To... focus. To guide, to set boundaries, to... channel."
"To channel," he repeated in a delighted whisper.
She felt her stomach lurch curiously, nearly gagging at the acrid stench permeating the clearing.
"I'm sorry, Anko, but even here is too close to home for me. We must go a little farther yet."
Crying from the stinging agony in her eyes, she reached out a hand in desperation.
"O—Orochi—maru—sens..."
Darkness swallowed her, and she opened her arms and wept.
Blearily opening her eyes, feeling as if the energy that characterized her had been drained away. Her limbs felt weighted down with lead, and when she reached for her chakra it seemed very small and far away.
She'd never felt so helpless.
"I had to leak a little of your chakra, Anko. You'll feel better in a few days."
Turning her head to look at her sensei was one of the hardest physical things she'd ever done. It seemed to take a lifetime, and she nearly cried in relief when she saw his face.
"Do you love me, Anko?"
She felt her body freeze. So... he'd come to tell her that he was... what? Too good, too far above her to even think of loving? To demand her immediate ceasing of all affection? What the hell did he want from her?
"Yes," she said frankly.
He smiled.
"Good. Then this will be easier."
She felt her eyebrow raise slowly, and struggled into a sitting position. He hadn't just borrowed a little of her chakra—he'd bled her dry.
"I will need a host one day. Anko, would you lend me your body?"
A thousand different answers flew through her head at the speed of light and she felt her heart stop beating. Just... stop. When it started again, it was pounding so loud in her chest that she felt like she could die like this.
"A... vessel?" she whispered hoarsely, mouth dry and her throat parched.
Carefully giving her a drink, he smiled down at her, his face looking sallow in the light of the flickering candles.
"I crave knowledge over all things, Anko. If killing you would gain me more, I would not hesitate to slay you. But, my dear Anko..." he ran his fingers lightly over his face, the breathiest, most sensuous of touches that made her shiver inside, "... you are worth so much more to me alive."
He placed a chaste kiss on her forehead with cool, dry lips and to her feverish was body it was like a thunderbolt. Letting out a gasp of surprise, his smile ghosted higher at the reaction.
"Anko... my dear girl... will you let me place a seal on you? The Seal of all Seals? Will you pledge yourself to me, body and soul?"
She was damned. She was damned to the deepest, darkest hell because all she could say when she opened her mouth was "yes."
It took months to get used to the agony. She hid it with buying a high-collared coat that hid her neck and shoulders and showed off everything else. No one ever even paid attention to how she would sometimes, absently, rub around the burning seal.
He said that he had tried nine others before her. That probably only one in ten would ever survive, and that he was so pleased she had been strong enough not to fail, because she meant something for his future.
The others had been throwaways, their lives discarded like trash.
"What's wrong with you?" Hizashi demanded, appearing in the locker room.
Scowling, she put her hands on her hips and glared at him.
"What the hell do you mean, what's wrong with—"
"You're not sleeping, Anko. You've become almost dangerously thin, wasted even, and I want to know why," he growled, deep and warning.
She matched him look for look, growl for growl. Both could be downright feral when they wanted to be, and the electricity sparking between the two kept everyone out of the room.
Probably the building, too, come to think of it.
"There's nothing between you and me, Hizashi--"
"Bullshit. There's everything between us, but I gave up on 'us' a long time ago. I still believe in 'you and me.' Now, tell me what's going on."
The door opened slowly, both wincing at the prolonged squeaking.
"Am I interrupting something?" Orochimaru purred, walking over to stand protectively by Anko's side, the stance undeniably possessive.
Hizashi's face became blank, smooth without expression, and he straightened.
"Ah. I was merely wondering how Anko's last mission had gone, seeing as it had been prolonged to over a month. Forgive me if I... overstepped my bounds," he bowed slightly, walking out.
"You overstepped your bounds when you got so close to her, Branch Member," he muttered, just loud enough for Hizashi to hear. To his credit, the Hyuuga's gait didn't even break and as the door closed, he got the last word.
"Thank-you for reminding me of my place, Orochimaru-sama. Being closer to the ground enables me to see the snakes much more clearly. Good day."
A quivering kunai embedded in the door was the only outward trace of Orochimaru's anger.
"That man..." he hissed.
"... means nothing," Anko finished firmly.
Giving her a wry smile, he ran his fingers through her hair and brought her chin up. So far, despite the smoldering chemistry between the two, it had never gone more than accidentally brushing arms or his carefully light caresses of her face. Only once had he kissed her, that day when she'd declared herself to be his vessel, but never since then.
So when he held her from eagerly kissing him with all the passion her body had, she let out soft growl of infinite frustration.
"Not here, my dear," he chuckled breathlessly.
"Where?" she angled her neck as he nipped at it.
He stiffened, standing back a pace, and she pulled her coat over her neck in one smooth motion. Ignoring how she felt pleasantly lightheaded and how her knees felt close to collapse, she managed to continue the lively discussion of which species of snake was best for a summon.
"---but pythons, now, there's a constrictor for ya--"
"---of course, vipers have that lovely poison that drives a man mad, I believe it's the species--"
"Stop it with the shop-talk, will ya? Makes me sick to my stomach," Jiraiya complained, eying the filling-out Anko unashamedly. Grinning wickedly at him, she tapped the wart on his face lightly.
"That's not the only snake I like to play with, either," she cooed. Gulping, he turned panicked eyes to a laughing Orochimaru for help.
"There's cobras, too," Anko finished smugly.
Hearing a distinctive hiss, Jiraiya grew very, very still.
"She likes Ero-Sennin, I think. I dunno, she swallowed the last one too fast for me to tell. Oh well. Ja!" she called cheerily as she walked out with her sensei.
"G-guys?" Jiraiya called back, trying not to breathe too much.
Silence answered him.
"Anybody?"
Days passed into a few short weeks, and she felt herself falling into a snake pit she never wanted to rise from. Something constantly pricked in the back of her mind, though, and she tried to ignore it. Feeling it grow stronger and her will weaker, she gave in one day.
She knew the laboratories where Orochimaru disappeared into for days at a time. Using every single trick he'd taught her, she almost screamed when the looked into the glowing, liquid-filled cylinders, the glass turning what was captured inside an eerie, inhuman green.
Humans.
Infants, children, teenagers, and shinobi after shinobi that she had been told had disappeared or died in missions. All of them still as death, some even beginning to rot in decay, but all of them still horribly, terribly alive.
She sank to her knees, wide eyes refusing to cry even now, and she wasn't startled when he laid his hand on her shoulder.
"I wanted to spare you from this, Anko, until you were ready. I should have known that your curiosity—that lovely, delightful inquisitiveness—would eventually lead you here to me."
His voice was soft, comforting, and stripped away any lie she might have clung to that he was as unaware of the horrors of this room as she had been.
It was like a nightmare telling her everything was ok.
"Why?" she whispered, watching an arm fall off a baby that looked no more than a few days old.
"Why not?" he countered, his whisper growing warm and hard.
She turned to him, wide brown eyes blank with shock.
He scooped her up and she fell into his arms, gratefully and hating herself for it, and welcomed the darkness that followed.
He had left her for several days, doing more of God-knows-what in that dark hellhole, and she had wrestled and wrestled with what to do until she was as exhausted mentally as she was physically.
"Hokage-sama, I have something to tell you."
In a private audience late at night in the Hokage Tower, someone shut the door to his chambers and she continued.
When they met at that fateful chuunin exam years later, she felt her heart constrict and the seal burn as badly as it had when he had first left. His taunts stung, but did no more than that. The implication of his... layered... interests in the boy Uchiha—the self-styled avenger—had made her slightly melancholic and nauseous. He would have no more of an easy time leaving the snake than she had had—it would be harder, because he went even knowing what the Sannin would require.
She wondered, when the curse seal burned into her conscious, if it hurt as much for Sasuke or if Orochimaru had refined it any since her induction.
She smiled bittersweetly at the ceiling and found that she didn't care.
She hadn't been abandoned. She had chose.
And that made all the difference.
---owari---