Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
They understood each other. There was no other way to say it, except that they did.
Anko and Shizune first laid eyes on each other in a bar, tired and weary, worn out by a long day of work and preoccupied by the state of affairs Konoha was falling into.
"Konoha's going to hell in a hand basket," Anko muttered gloomily, propping her elbow on the bar.
"No kidding," Shizune agreed.
Anko frowned suddenly, and looked over at the younger woman. "What do you normally get when you come here?"
"Sake. And you?"
Anko smirked. "Whiskey. Is the sake here any good?"
That was the start of a strong but very strange friendship. It took two more visits to the bar for them to figure out who the other was, and even after that, not much changed, except that suddenly Anko and Shizune were finding a bit more to talk about.
It wasn't easy being associated with people who cast such long shadows as Tsunade and Orochimaru.
Shizune would forever be trying to live up to her mistress' reputation. She was tired of never being good enough, tired of only being a pale shadow of her mistress, and wanted nothing more than to be able to worthy of the designation of the medical ninja's apprentice.
Anko, on the other hand, had the exact opposite problem. Anko would probably be spending the rest of her life living down her former sensei's reputation. She would spend the rest of her life being associated with Orochimaru no matter how much she didn't want to be. It didn't help, Shizune commented one night while not particularly sober, that Anko still used snake summons so much. That comment led to their first and only slug match. Neither won.
A bizarre camaraderie was formed. Only people who knew the two women very well (Tsunade and Kakashi on Shizune's side; Kurenai and Ibiki on Anko's) would have guessed that they were anything more than casual acquaintances; they both knew how, in the shinobi world, anyone could die at any time, so the unspoken agreement to leave emotions off of the table was made and kept.
They, for the most part, got along very well. The only thing about Shizune that ever got Anko mad was her poor self esteem; the only thing about Anko that irritated Shizune was her sleeping habits, or rather, lack of.
The two were, however, very dysfunctional. Shizune knew that Anko wasn't going to let herself sleep unless her body was pushed to the point that it simply collapsed, and rather than let her friend go digging through the slums looking for stimulants, she simply wrote the prescription for them herself; everyone knew why Shizune was doing it and who she was doing it for, and no one ever tried to stop her. And Anko, after a while, stopped trying to drag Shizune to social gatherings; the girl was determined to be a lifelong wallflower, and Anko came to grips with the fact that nothing she did would ever change that.
Things would change over the years. They would have their periods of drifting apart and growing closer, but one thing would never change.
They understood each other.
"Well, you look like you've spent the day being dragged through hell," Anko greeted Shizune, who could barely keep her eyes open. "Rough shift at the hospital?" she asked more sympathetically.
Shizune rolled her eyes. "Tell me about it…"