They call her Dove.
She fits into ANBU as if she were born for it. She is quiet, and silent and is rarely ever seen. She kills with a clinical detachment and all her corpses are perfect and cold in death.
(ANBU's Dove of Peace.)
She fits in with any team, quick to like and easy to work with. Never screams, even when she has a tanto buried in her gut and her blood soaks her flak jacket to bright vermillion. Not when people are dying around her. She is like an angel, killing people with a touch, melting their nerves and paralysing their hearts. She is quick and professional, and she seals the bodies when she's done.
(Perfect, they call her. The perfect soldier.)
The rookies look up to her. Want to be her. (The veterans don't. They know.) She is an idol, her squadron's true leader even when she isn't the official one. None of her original squadron have died. A miracle worker, one person whispers.
She hears it, she smiles, and the world is no wiser.
(She can't smile properly anymore)
When she switches squadrons people die. Nobody points this out. Dove is too perfect. She wouldn't kill her own, would she?
(She wouldn't. She just doesn't care enough about them to nearly kill herself.)
(They are collateral damage)
The worst missions are always given to her. Families fall at her hands. Her fingers drip with blood and poison.
(Because, the village argues, she can handle it.)
Dove slaughters a fishing village within the space of a few hours. Three hundred people.
(She comes back from that one with blank eyes)
(There were seventy two children)
She stops going to funerals after the third Cat dies in a month. No one blames her.
(They're too scared)
.
.
.
She makes it out of ANBU, in the end. Disappears for months.
Her best friend comes back in a body bag after a year.
(Dove comes home after that. But she isn't Dove anymore)
.
.
.
Dove is no longer ANBU.
(There is no such thing as ex-ANBU)
.
.
.
Her mask is never taken up again.