Her morning alarm was the next door kid's scream for not wanting to go to the pre academy in the morning. And no matter how cruel it sounds she wanted to send a snake over to choke the brat with it's tail. Her snakes had done it before. They will do it again if she wanted.

The disater of a woman dragged herself out of the bed stood in the hallway with her medusa hair and glared at the mother dragging out the child. The brat needed a good spanking. Everyone needed one. She didn't get one and look at how she turned out to be. One Mitarashi Anko is enough for the world as Ibiki says. But despite everything, she felt a pang of this strange feeling as the mother carried the flailing child so preciously in her arms. She must have had a mother once, she doesn't remember. Must have been long time ago.

Pushing her hair in the customery messy bun she shoved a tooth brush in her mouth and started to chew on the bristles . As sleepy eyes fell on the mirror all of a sudden she held her own gaze. She looked away rather fast, couldn't bare to look at her own self. Too many question of why she does the things she does, too many regrets that she never acknowledges. What was worse was that she wasn't the only one. There were one too many people like her. Ibiki has gone insane with a straight face just like Itachi had, Kakashi hides it all behind a mask and their hokage chose sake, passing everything non befitting of a hoage as an excuse of being drunk and no one questions.

They knows why.

There was no salvation, no place to breath because the air itself was poisonous.

She can't go to a friend for comfort, they needed it more then she did. Anko remembers going to Kakashi and Kakashi coming to her, there was silence, and there was words. She clang to him like a lifeline and he had beard it all. Kakashi was the best. He said nothing. It was hard to look at him when that single lazy eye took that understanding shape.

It felt like he could see right trough her soul when ever he looked at her, even without the ever spinning red eye. And that scared her. She ended up talking more then she should, showing more then she ever did. They weren't the only one though. In the shinobi realm love was like fairy tail, they were friends with benifits.

Hard to get something because when you have something, you get the fear of losing that something. But in is silence, he had secured a place in her heart before she could realize it. And boy did she try to get over it.

After that they grew aprt, her comfort was rowdy jounin clubs with lots of dango and ibiki tormenting the poor barman. She laughed and laughed and lughed and when she returned home she always was drained but she still couldn't sleep.

Boredom was the worst enemy, she couldn't bear it at all. That's when she found herself a civilian. It was nice really. He was innocent in many sense. She hasn't been innocent since she was four years old. He wasan't all that breathtaking or beautiful like the Hatake was behind that mask of his but he had a bright smile, a sparkling pair of brown eyes that made her melt.

She wanted to protect him.

So she left the third week. Hers was a life of pain, anythign that comes near gets the curse of it. And she couldn't be cruel enough to do that to him. But she doubted that she wouldn't go back. She was very selfish after all.

When she returned kakashi was there, on the place they met for tea in lazy evenings, his shoulders slumped as he slouched over that book of his. She felt grateful and guilty at the same time. But then he ooked up from that book.

"Maa... did you get lost in the path of life this time?" that lazy voice drawled out and she could hear something shatter inside her. She wanted to run to him, throw herself in his arms and let him comfort her like a scared child who was lost. He had that affect on her.

Instead she walked to him slowly before plopping down beside him.

"I wouldn't dare. That path is your property" and he gave her that squinty eyed smile before going back to his book. He speaks most with his silence, she understands it more then she understands words. So it all works out.

But in the end they were all shattered fractions of their sanity, falling down piece by pieces yet getting stuck together by some force only to break again. It was cruel but life was meant to be like that. They all have their ways of dealing. Some with masks, some with addiction and some with insanity.

But it all works out.

Right...?