TITLE: Into the void
This is a continuation of my story Shoot 'em Up, but it takes on a more serious tone of the consequences of the events of that story. This story can stand on it's own.
To her, he was a beacon of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel. He was the strength she strived to achieve, the courage she wished to possess.
He was the sun, while she the tree that grows by his light. Be he's too damn far to reach.
She always leaves after. Not that Tenzo cares much about it, but lately it had been bothering him. The two of them had reached an unspoken agreement after the night Anko invaded him in the confines of his silent sanctuary, his apartment room. They were satisfied.
That was what they wanted to think. At least they had each other to fill their needs.
He silently watched her in the shadows of his bedroom as she slowly went to sit on her bed. His eyes trailed at her bare back, though he had seen this multiple times now. He followed the course of her spine until his sight rested on her neck, on that familiar mark that she once told him was a curse. He tried to ask more, but she didn't answer his queries. She was obviously pained just by the mention of it.
So he never asked of it again.
During the previous nights, he wouldn't really mind or bother to notice the brand on her neck. But how could he not notice it now when she rubbed her fingers against it, nails digging in, as if trying to force the mark from her skin. It was both a hating and loving gesture, Tenzo observed.
Anko started to turn toward him, and Tenzo instinctively closed his eyes. It was a private moment for her that he did not wish to intrude, or would not want to be caught spying. He did not know if Anko knew he was awake, like he always was when she wakes up in the middle of the night, or if she really thought he slept that soundly. He doesn't really care. They got what they wanted, so they take what they can. They cannot afford to be picky. No, not in this kind of life.
He felt Anko release a sigh of breath and felt the mattress shift, as it was unburdened by her weight. Tenzo slowly peered to see her putting on her clothes, his lips tugged slightly upwards as he watched. She had a nice body, many shinobi would say, and he could testify. But despite her vulgar attitude, there was not so many who could tell the tale that they had slept with her. It was either she scared them to death not to tell, or she doesn't just jump to any man's bed. Tenzo likes to think it was the latter, since she never threatened him even once.
She walked towards the window and peered out, probably looking if the coast is clear, not that it was much of a secret. It was more of a habit that has grown on a shinobi or for Anko, a kunoichi's skin. She left it open when she came, like she always does. His explanation was that so she would not need to open it in the aftermath and cause some noise to awaken him, not that Anko cannot open a window soundlessly. She was perfectly able to do that, and much more. She probably just wouldn't want to be bothered by the effort.
Tenzo had been asked several times by his comrades, why keep such a 'relationship'? He would immediately think of convenience. Besides, ninjas were encouraged not to have their emotions overwhelm them, or not to get attached at all. In a sense, they were only living up to the shinobi standards. It was discouraged, but not forbidden, to have romantic involvement with comrades, especially being an Anbu. But they never considered it a relationship, they don't even think of each other as friends, or he thinks that is how Anko feels. He is not particularly inclined to go that road either, lest they dig up skeletons they hid in their closet. And there is one significant skeleton they have in common; a part of their past neither would want to dig out, nor let go.
Needless to say, they were at an impasse that neither would want to cross. It also served them both for the best.
Anko was now silently climbing on the window sill, but she suddenly stops. Her back was to him that he cannot see her face. She was staring blankly at the distant horizon. It seemed that there was something in her mind. She again started to turn toward him but stopped midway, and he saw her slump. He observed as her hands grip tightly on the wooden panelling of his window. He couldn't read what her actions meant, but this was not the first time this happened.
After a few moments, she regained her bearings and jumped out of the window.
Tenzo sat up from his bed, and ran a hand through his hair. He felt something, nothing he can describe, but it was surely not pleasant as he looked around his dark empty room. Was it disappointment? No it wasn't, but be wasn't yet ready to admit yet what he really felt. He was accustomed to it, being alone almost all of the time. Their life was defined by it.
But there was one thing that did bother him as he went back to lay on hi bed; Did she just hesitate by his window?
God, he was getting tired of this charade.
-o-
Kakashi tore his eyes away albeit forcefully from the very entertaining Icha Icha Tactics he was reading, to the look at the source of the sound of the swirling liquid and the metal scraping bowl. He wouldn't have minded this if he was only hearing it a few times, but it has been going on for a good ten minutes now. He let the obscene book rest on the counter as he looked at Tenzo sitting next to him, stirring at his bowl, virtually not touching his meal. He had a far off expression on his face.
The copy nin coughed to get his attention.
Tenzo lifted his head, which was resting on his palm, as he looked at Kakashi.
He just eyed the bowl, with his only visible eyes.
"Not hungry." His Kohai informed him.
"I can tell." Kakashi answered.
Tenzo sighed and started to eat the meal he ordered, without any real ardour. He just looks like he's mechanically putting things in his mouth and chewing on it.
Obviously, something was bothering the younger captain, but Kakashi knows better than to ask. If Tenzo wanted to talk about it, he would have done so. If he didn't, there is little he could do to make the wood man talk.
This calls for a private drinking session, he thought. His mind went back to the last time they got Tenzo drunk and thought better of it. There had to be another way.
Kakashi noticed that the younger shinobi had finished eating and was looking at him sharply. He then noticed the bill that was placed between the two of them. He eyed it anxiously then looked to his kohai who was glowering at him expectantly.
Kakashi put the book back to his jacket pocket, then turned to look at Yamato with a spark in his eye. "Did you know that among my underlings you were the best, and I trusted you the most?"
Tenzo lifted a brow up and looked paused as if he was affected by what Kakashi had said, then proceeded on rolling his eye. "That won't work like the last ten times you tried it."
"At least I tried." Kakashi deflated.
He still did not pick up the bill.
Tenzo crossed his arms against his chest defiantly. Kakashi looked towards the ceiling as if something about it was suddenly so interesting, and rested his chin on his palms.
The owner of the restaurant was frowning at both of them and eyeing the bill as well.
After a few minutes Tenzo shook his head in defeat. "You're pathetic, you know that right?"
"Thank you." Kakashi replied as he stopped looking at the ceiling.
They were walking on the crowded streets of Konoha, the silence between them was awkward, or so Kakashi felt. He looked at the depressing man next to him who was walking silently and only looking at his foot.
This has got to stop. Maybe talking is not a bad idea.
"So..." Kakashi started uncomfortably, "what's up?"
Tenzo just shrugged his shoulders, eyes still on the ground. "Nothing much. You?"
"What is this, a chat room?" Kakashi deadpanned. "No, really, what is up with you?"
"Nothing Sempai, I am perfectly fine." Tenzo lied. Even without his sharingan, Kakashi can tell.
Silence stretched between them. The copy nin tried a different tactic.
"You want to go somewhere?"
"Are you asking me out for a date?"
Tenzo was really good at avoiding topics when he wanted to, Kakashi knew too well, but he won't let him win, not this time.
"If it's okay with you? The new motel sounds promising."
"Sorry sempai, you're good looking and all, but I don't swing that way." Tenzo finally lifted his head from his gloomy stance and gave Kakashi a friendly sardonic smile.
The next thing Kakashi notices was that the people around them were looking at him funny, and some of the men, were actually looking hopeful. They were giving him meaningful looks and eyeing him up and down, sizing him and, almost communicating it to him that if he needs action, they were more than willing.
Kakashi crinkled his eye in a nervous smile and scratched his head. They knew he was kidding right?
Tenzo just giggled beside him. Kakashi glanced at him wearily.
His kohai threw his hand up and shook his head. "Don't blame it on me, you set yourself up to it."
Kakashi sighed and straightened from his slumped position. "Fair enough. Why don't we take a walk."
"We are walking."
"You know what I mean."
It was Tenzo's turn to slump. "You are not letting this go, are you?"
"Uhmmm... No."
"You're impossible." Tenzo muttered as they turned the corner.
"Oi, Kakashi!" said a familiar voice. Kakashi looked ahead to see Anko waving at them with odangos held by her other hand.
They walked towards her. Kakashi felt the hesitation in Tenzo's steps. Something clicked in his mind. Did something happen between them? If there was, Anko was very good in hiding it, unlike his gloomy sorry-excuse for a kohai.
But Tenzo never took women too seriously, so this was out of character.
"Oi." Kakashi greeted when they approached her. She happily took a bite of her food.
"Did you hear?" Anko flashed them a toothy grin. "Gai is still doing that duck walk around town on a grass skirt. I swear Kakashi, you are the most sadistic friend a person could have."
"I have to agree with you on that." Tenzo joined in their conversation, finally following Kakashi.
Anko turned to him and gave him her cocky grin. "Hello there, No. 1 sexiest Shinobi."
Tenzo kept a straight face but can't keep the blush from creeping up his face.
Anko seemed to raise a slender brow at his cold reaction.
"Anyway," Kakashi started, "you can't blame me for that. It was Gai's idea, his self imposed punishments I mean."
"Yeah, that guy has got to get a clue." Anko stated.
"I can't say that I disagree with that..."Tenzo sighed.
"So any plans for tonight?" Kakashi asked Anko, probing subtly.
"The usual," she drawled as she gave her irresistible look at Tenzo, "unless, someone has something different in mind."
Anko waited for him to answer, but none came. Her seductive leer turned upside down as she saw Tenzo with a look of what could be condescension. Her mouth began to twitch as she kept the snarl from painting her face.
Tenzo's face was still unreadable as he broke the heavy silence that fell between them. "No plans," he said, "we can fall to our comfortable routine, as always." He finished with a hint of mocking and unceremoniously walks away.
Anko's eyes narrowed dangerously. "What's his problem?" She was asking no one in particular.
Still, Kakashi felt the need to reply in his junior's stead. "I was asking him that myself since this morning." He answered her then turned to look at her.
He did not fail t notice how her eyes still trailed the path where Tenzo walked and disappeared. But what bothered him more was that how her face manifested more of her pain than the anger that she was concealing it in.
-O-
Anko finally finds him in his apartment kitchen, standing over his sink, just staring out, shirtless.
"Normal people usually go through a door and knocks before entering." Tenzo says without turning around.
Anko breathed in, trying to calm every livid nerve that courses through her body.
"No one, I mean no one, humiliates me like that and just walks away." Fury was seething in every word.
"I don't see what I have done to humiliate you." The anbu captain turns around. "It's not like Kakashi-sempai doesn't know. Hell, I could say that everyone would have guessed by the with the way you are parading around."
The next second, there was a blur of motion and Anko was right at his neck, clutching a fork, which she picked up from his table. It was jammed uncomfortably at his neck.
"You. Don't. See?" She hissed slowly. "You made me for a self-serving bitch, and fucking in front of Kakashi!"
Despite the utensil threatening to break through to his throat, Tenzo managed to chuckle, but humourlessly. "Kakashi –sempai did warn me of your erratic tendencies."
She put more pressure on her 'weapon'. "Erratic? You want me to show you erratic?"
"Careful..." Tenzo breathed, and Anko felt his warm breath spread over her, "you don't want to lose your temper, or else – " Then he stopped himself, seeming to regret what it was he was thinking.
But Anko caught on well. Her eyes widened at his implication, but it narrowed just as easily, "Or else what?"
The man in front of her just turned away.
Anko felt her hands tremble and she stepped back, distancing herself from him for fear that she won't be able to stop herself from killing him. With a flip of the wrist, the fork came flying through the air only missing Tenzo's face by mere millimetres. She suddenly felt all too disgusted by herself, and also by the man in front of her.
She thought he would be better than that.
"Say it."
"Anko, I..."
"SAY IT GODDAMMIT!"
Tenzo rubbed at his temples, and she just stood there staring angrily at him.
"That if I lose my temper my curse mark will activate? Say that my fucking ties to that snake still disgusts you. Say it that you think I am tainted, that I am an abomination, that every time you look at me you can only see that I am the dumb shit that accepted the curse mark."
"It is nothing like that." Tenzo sighed. "This is why you, and me can never work."
"You and me?" Anko laughed darkly. "There is no you and me. We had this arrangement to avoid you and me. And you are damn right it won't work, not with someone like you."
"Someone like me..." Tenzo muttered to himself, half laughing all the same. "You mean an experiment, a subject like me?"
Anko leaned against the entryway of the kitchen, as if their argument exhausted her. She fought back the tears that were beginning to well in her eyes. "You and I, we have too much in common. I don't know why we are doing this, but we are just mirroring each other, magnifying each one's pain through each other..."
"It was your idea, not mine. I wasn't the one who broke into your apartment to seduce you, and then kept coming back."
"And I wasn't the one who kept on accepting such advances. Admit it. You also wanted it. I don't know about you, but I never thought of myself as a masochist, and yet, here I am." Anko paused then she spoke again, softer this time. "But also in the same way, I find comfort in you. Knowing that I am not alone, that there is also someone who had gone through what I did, or if not, then close to it..."
"Finding comfort in my misery." Tenzo supplied and shook his head. "I am not miserable."
"You can make yourself believe that, but you know the truth, and yes, exactly that. That was what I thought when I first knew how you could use the shodaime's style. It cannot be kept secret after all, not with abilities like that." She paused, and a single tear drop fell. She wiped it with a finger and continued. "And yet we have too many differences as well. Unlike you, I accepted to have this curse mark, actually strived for it, and to have myself experimented on. I loved Orochimaru, like how a student is to a master. I only wanted to be accepted by my master, I wanted him to be proud of me. But after he gave me that mark and left me alone to die, how did you think I feel? I was willing to give everything to this man, and that was how he repaid me. Do you know the feeling of being rejected by the person that matters to you most?"
Anko's voice was breaking, but she stopped herself and steadied her breathing. It was too long ago, but the pain still felt like it was yesterday. She looked to find an answer in Tenzo's face but he only looked to the ground.
Anko laughed bitterly.
"That's what I thought. Why am I even explaining this to you. You couldn't fully grasp what I have been through despite having almost gone through the same ordeal. You who had always been alone, and you who are as successful as distancing yourself from the people around you as you are with your anbu career."
Tenzo opened his mouth to protest, but stopped. He brought a curled hand to his lips, and just gazed on Anko. She continued.
"I know you watch me when I get dressed after we have sex. I feel your gaze linger on the curse mark. You may be asking why I kept it when the Third offered to completely remove it. It's not like I still hold some emotional ties with the monster, although our last encounter proved I still felt something for him. But that is besides the point. The point is I kept the mark to remind me of what I had gone through, so that I won't be fooled again, and let others not go through the same. I thought out of all the people I know, you'd understand."
Silence passed between the two of them, and Anko lifted her head to look at Tenzo who was still intently watching her.
"God I hate that face of yours, I can't read a single thing about it. Are you really this... unfeeling?"
"What do you want me to say?" Tenzo replied.
"You can be a bigger jerk than Kakashi without you trying."
Anko started to turn to leave, then she heard the slapping of hands behind her and the next thing she feels is something hard encircling her wrist. It kept her from moving forward. She looked at her hand and saw wood encircling it and traced it to Tenzo, not that she doesn't know whose it was already.
"Look," Tenzo looked at her in earnest, "I'm sorry. I am not trying to be a jerk."
"Oh, you are just a natural at it."
"Could you please just let me finish?" Tenzo said exasperated.
Anko kept herself silent but she was glaring daggers at the wood style user.
"I didn't mean to make you feel the way you did... As a matter of fact, you are one of the kunoichi that impresses me most. I may not fully grasp what you have been going through, but you are right. Out of all the people you have met, I have the closest idea of what it's like, and I should have understood you more."
Anko's gaze softened a little with his explanation, but it doesn't make up for what he did.
Tenzo continued. "It's admirable, how you could go on as if nothing had happened, be as lively as you are, well, at least when there is someone watching. " He finally releases his hold on her, and the wood came rushing into his palms.
He walked closer to her, and Anko stiffened when he was now only a few inches away from her. She felt the heat radiating from his unclothed torso.
"What I am trying to say is..." He paused and breathed in, as if trying to muster the courage. Anko waited in anticipation, but she felt the bile rise from her stomach as she began to predict what he was going to say.
"What I am saying is," Tenzo repeated, "I don't want you to make yourself like just some sex object, because even I don't want you to be treated like that. Hell, I am a guy and I don't want to be used like that. I don't want us to make a fool out of each other that way, and," he paused to emphasize his next words, "I can't go on like this, and pretend not to care."
Anko felt the blood drain from her face, and before she could stop herself, she performed hand seals faster than the eye could see and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
Tenzo abruptly stepped back and fixated his gaze to where Anko was standing only a second ago. He did not know why she disappeared, but he could certainly vouch for this being rejection.
He clenched his fists and frowned, and stormed to his bedroom, wishing to break everything he passed through.
If only he was able to train his eyes to shed a tear...
A/N: I really think that Yamato and Anko would make a very intersting pair. They do have one very big connection: Orochimaru. That is deeper than many of the characters in the series.
SO what do you think of the story? I woudl really appreaciate some R&R. Second chapter is on the works.