"Are you ready?"
"Hai, sensei."
"Are you sure?"
She says nothing to him, her determined gaze speaking for itself. He smiles at her, one hand reaching out to caress her cheek, hook around her neck to draw her close. In her eyes, he can see fear, but also trust. She trusts him, and will until he gives her a reason not to. He is about to. He can feel the hot power waiting to subjugate her too, as the power had tried with all the others. He sighs, wetting his lips, and leans forward.
1;
And pauses.
Her little body is trembling in his grasp, her pulse fluttering in her throat beneath the pale skin. So pale and perfect; he is suddenly loath to mar it. He would also be loath to lose her fiery personality, as the seal sucked out her very soul.
"Sensei?"
So instead, he kisses the place he would have marked, and pulls back. Anko is flushed, and Orochimaru runs a finger over her cheek, watching her shiver. "It is below you," he says. "You are powerful without it. A worthy student."
This is what may have been.
2;
Jiraiya was not a calm man, in the way Orochimaru was a calm man. He jigged his foot, something Orochimaru found maddening; he had the habit of pulling loose threads, or drumming his nails, or generally fidgeting, and all of it made Orochimaru want to find a puppy and kick it.
"Squirming won't make it go faster," he muttered at last. "The exam will take exactly ninety minutes regardless."
"You aren't worried about your student?" Jiraiya asked, looking over at him. "She's young for this."
"Anko will pass." A smirk spread across Orochimaru's face. "Do not underestimate her. Now, sit still." Inwardly, though, he was counting the minutes remaining."
At one minute past the hour, Minato walked out of the exam room. He was smiling, which could only mean he'd passed. Another entrant, then another, then a crowd—and a blur streaked through them all and hit Orochimaru squarely on the chest. It was making screeching noises, and Orochimaru contemplated the idea he'd been attacked until he realized what—or rather who—had hit him.
"Sensei!" Anko looked up at him, a smile lighting her face up. It was a rare expression, now, after their mission in Rock when they had both almost been killed. "I passed." She handed him the score paper. He glanced at it; first or second ranks in all areas.
"I knew it would be so," he replied. "I know talent when I see it, after all." Tilting his head at her, Orochimaru said, "We are no longer sensei and student."
Anko grinned. "I'm going to make you proud," she said, and went off with the rest of the new jounin to have her rank officially recorded.
"I already am." His voice was lost in the crowd.
3;
He raced through the trees, the medic-nins at his back shouting at him to slow down. One arm was in a splint and his left ankle sent pain up his leg every time it connected with a branch, but he had to go back. She was—
Damnit.
The attack had come from behind, as they were streaking back toward the border. They had fled across it and then the others had turned to fight. He'd kept on going, they'd shouted for him to do so as if he wouldn't have already. But it would have definitely looked bad to abandon a team and he had an image to uphold, a façade to keep up, and so he returned.
In a moment, they had reached the site of the battle and the medics had dispersed. Orochimaru paid them no mind, golden eyes flicking over the kunai- and shuriken-littered battleground in the trees, searching, looking—
There she was, sitting against a tree. There was a kunai sticking out of her abdomen, buried almost to the hilt. All around it was stained and glistening with blood. He'd told her to close the damn vest, that it was made to protect her but it couldn't if it was open. Orochimaru was suddenly very intensely mad at her.
"I told you that you needed to close the flak jacket up," he muttered, examining her other wounds, always drawn back to the kunai moving slightly with each pained breath Anko took. To his surprise, he heard a little cough, and she shifted.
"Got… an image, Sensei," she countered, eyes opening just the tiniest bit. Rust-colored iris was barely visible through her lashes. Orochimaru snorted, moving aside as the medic-nins got to her finally. Try as he might, he could not free her hand from where it had come up and caught his own.
4;
"He is half a criminal, Anko."
"Sensei…" Anko rolled her eyes, moving past him.
"I do not approve at all."
"You never do." She shrugged, stripping off the tan coat and taking the clip out of her hair. It fell, an unruly mass, down to mid-back. "You're like this with every man I date. Nobody is good enough for your standards, but you're not my fucking father. I know what makes me happy."
"What use is being happy if he is adulterous and rapes you—"
"Now you're being ridiculous." She leaned back, glaring at him through the bathroom door. "He wouldn't."
"Wouldn't he?"
"Look." Anko pulled her shirt over her head, hiding the mesh armor she wore. The skirt stayed. "If you're trying to protect me, I can take care of myself. You taught me more than enough to do that."
Her sensei made a noise and after that was silent, watching her finish getting ready. He followed her out and split without a word, leaping up the side of his own apartment building and climbing in his window.
Jiraiya was waiting for him on the couch, a cup of tea ready.
"So when are you going to tell her?" he asked. Orochimaru glared at him and slunk past into the bedroom. Jiraiya smiled and stood. "You'd better soon. She might not wait for you much longer."
A grunt. Jiraiya ran this through his lexicon of Orochimaru's Monosyllables and converted it into normal speech, and sighed. "I'll be late if I don't get moving," he said. "You think about what it is you want."
As chance would have it, Orochimaru did not have long to think.
Soft knocking on the window woke him around midnight, in the pattern they had used since the first day they had met, a teacher and his genin. And as ever, he rose and pushed the window open to admit a very quiet Anko.
"How did it go?" he asked, more than a bit sardonic. She shook her head.
"It was great," she replied. But she sat on the edge of the bed, knees curled to her chin, hugging herself.
"And?" he pressed.
"But," she corrected, "He wasn't what I was looking for."
"I see." In the moonlight, he could see her face turn toward him, and knew her mind. Shifting, he pulled the blankets back, making space for another. Anko grinned and stripped down, sliding in beside him.
5;
The group's progress through the former rich quarter of Old Iwagakure was slow; they had nowhere in particular to be, although they had a destination in mind.
"How far is it?" Orochimaru asked. Tsunade checked her map, and turned down another street.
"Are we almost there?" Anko asked, sounding a little petulant. "I'm hot." She was seven months pregnant, and always hot. Orochimaru rubbed her hip absently.
"It's here," Tsunade said. They'd stopped in front of a small house set back by overgrown flower gardens and a long winding path.
"They lived here until the Ame civil war engulfed Iwa, too," Tsunade said. "They were forced to emigrate to Fire Country and settle in Konoha." She handed the folded letter back to Orochimaru. "It looks like the house is still in pretty good shape. Want to go in?"
"No, I think this is quite enough." Orochimaru's eyes roved over the grounds. "I've seen it."
"The letter said your mother was pregnant when she had to evacuate." Tsunade looked at Anko, who had wandered off to look at the profusion of flowers, overgrown their carefully laid plots. One hand was under her belly, supporting it. The other held a flower, twirling it slowly in her fingers. Noticing them looking, she made a face.
"She's a handful," Tsunade said.
"That she is." Orochimaru made a little gesture. "It's of no consequence."
"Used to it, huh?" Tsunade grinned and punched him on the arm—lightly. He stilled rubbed it with a scowl.
"One could say that."
Anko had made her way back over by this point, looking bored. "Can we go back to the inn now?"
"Of course. We're done here."
They walked back to the city center, close together.