I admit I was a little bit discouraged by the lack of reviews on this story, but in a fandom as HUGE as Naruto, that tends to happen. I suppose that's the reason I hiatus'd it for such a long time, but the fans that it does have were very adamant that I continue! SO... here is your reward for being so insistent! :) I've written a couple of chapters in addition to this, and plan to write a couple more over the holiday break, so updates should be regular for awhile - and hopefully from now on. ;) Thanks again for your support - enjoy!


"Boo," Anko said, leaning her head through the zippered doorway of the tent. Kakashi looked up from his pillow, hardly even appearing surprised – mostly because he wasn't. He had long since removed his hitai-ite and mask, but Anko was one of the few that had seen him without those anyway.

And he knew it would be her, showing up at his tent in the middle of the night. Who else would it be?

"Hey," he said. "C'mon in, it's cold out there."

"Though you'd never ask. So what was the big idea sticking me with that quiet girl? I scare the shit out of her, and she's not very good company anyway."

"Anko," Kakashi said, laughing a little. "This isn't a slumber party. It's an A-ranked mission."

"Still. You could have put me here to begin with."

"That would not have looked good to do in front of innocent chuunins. You know exactly what would have happened: Kiba would have awoken Hinata in the middle of the night and forced her to use her byakugan to spy on us, and Sakura – who can't keep a secret to save her life – would have told the whole village."

"Eh, there wouldn't have been much interesting to tell, anyway," Anko yawned. "I'm far too tired to rock your world tonight. I just wanted a little bit of company."

With this, Anko crawled under Kakashi's blanket. He was lying on his side with one elbow supporting his head, so she snuggled up beside him and lay on her back. After they were both settled, she grinned up at him.

"See? No questionable motives at all."

Kakashi inwardly groaned. Tell that to his elevated heart rate. Anko was one of those people that always inspired a man to think naughty things whether she was trying to do that or not. At least… it seemed like there were times when she wasn't trying. She was pretty good at operating on the down-low. But it wouldn't get to him. He would just have to keep his mind on other things.

"There aren't any stars out tonight," Anko grumbled. "The cloud cover from the storm is still blocking them."

"That is a pity," Kakashi agreed. "Usually out in the middle of the woods you can see more."

"That's my favorite thing about missions."

The two sat in silence for a minute or two after that. Anko closed her eyes, and Kakashi wondered briefly – and not without a certain amount of surprise – if she had fallen asleep. Her chest rose and fell gently under the borrowed t-shirt, and her breathing seemed to even out.

But a moment or two later, her eyes popped open again.

Anko rolled over and looked up at Kakashi with a somehow sincere expression.

"Have you ever wanted to remember something really, really badly, but at the same time, wondered if it would be in your best interests just to keep it forgotten?"

Kakashi nodded. It hadn't taken him any time at all to think of a situation in his own life that mirrored perfectly what he was saying: the moments with his own genin team met her criteria precisely. He wanted to go back and hang onto every memory of Rin and Obito, making sure not to lose a single one. However, remembering made it hurt more, and he always opted to just keep going with his present life and leave the memories in the back of his mind where they hurt less – and were hopefully safe.

"Yeah," Kakashi said. "I know exactly what you're talking about."

"Then you know what I'm feeling about the last two weeks."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow, leaving behind his own melancholy thoughts as her words sunk in.

"Then you really don't remember anything about the last fourteen days?"

"Nope. I remember leaving Konoha with the documents from Lady Tsunade, and then I remember sitting in the rain in the woods."

"How long were you in the woods?"

"Couldn't tell you if I had to. Time wasn't making too much sense yet, then. It felt like sort of a long time, but I can't account for what happened while I waited. No singular events stand out. I mean, it wasn't days or anything, or I would have been in a lot worse shape than I was when your chuunin found me. But I feel like it was more than a couple of hours."

Kakashi nodded and bit his lip.

"Sorry if this sounds stupid, but I have to rule out all the possibilities I've managed to come up with… do you have any bumps or bad bruises on your head?"

"Nope," Anko replied. "Sakura checked for that, too. Physically, there's nothing to suggest that I would be experiencing any abnormal memory loss."

"Then it was a jutsu of some kind."

Kakashi didn't say those last words like it was some kind of hypothesis. As far as he was concerned, there were no other viable options. Someone wanted Anko not to recall what took place during her ill-fated mission, and they had done a fairly good job of ensuring that that took place.

That had already happened to Anko once, and the perpetrator of the first incident remained vivid in Kakashi's memory.

"I know what you're thinking," Anko interrupted. "And I'd thought of it too. But there are several reasons it doesn't add up."

"Okay," Kakashi replied. "I'm all ears."

"For one, my curse mark didn't ache out there in the woods. It would have, if he was anywhere nearby. Also, I feel like if he had had anything to do with it, the memory-erasing job would be messier. I still have flashbacks from those first years. Wouldn't there be bits and pieces I managed to hold on to from this go too?"

"Hm. Could be."

In truth, Kakashi was hardly convinced at all. Both of Anko's theories were quite poorly devised, and he was certain that she knew that just as well as he did. For one, by the time she awoke in the woods, Orochimaru could have been long gone. The only reason her curse mark was still aching when ANBU found her on the beach as a child was because it had just been given to her. And as far as Orochimaru's memory-loss jutsu, that could easily have improved by leaps and bounds over the decade or so since he had last tried it. In fact, it more than likely had.

Anko just didn't want to admit to what she knew was the only possible truth. And why would she? Kakashi got chills at the idea of Anko's former sensei coming back into her life.

"I just want this to make sense," Anko whispered, interrupting his thoughts. "I need to know what happened to me, don't you understand?"

"Of course I do," Kakashi replied. "But you have plenty of time to figure all of that out. It's very late – why don't you get some sleep? You know you need it."

"I'll try," Anko mumbled. Kakashi put his free arm over her hips and pulled her closer.

"Oh!" Anko exclaimed, wincing.

Kakashi drew back in alarm.

"No, no," she corrected. "You just… touched a bruised place. But don't let go."

Anko took Kakashi's arm and guided it so it rested over her ribs. She and Kakashi still rested in an embrace, but her tender hip was out of harm's way.

With a purr of contentment, Anko rested her head on the pillow again. Moments later, the hand she had left outstretched over the pillow fell limp and Kakashi felt her relax in his embrace. That hadn't taken nearly as long as he had counted on when he realized he would be the one convincing her to go to sleep– she must have been truly exhausted not to even try to put up a fight.

As Kakashi watched her, he prayed silently that what he suspected hadn't been what actually transpired.

But with the evidence he had, his hopes were admittedly dim.

Kiba, in the tent beside Kakashi's, had been shamelessly eavesdropping. Though he admittedly wished for a moment that Anko was snuggled up beside him instead – after all, he had found her – but he knew he wouldn't have been much help to her.

At the same time, the fact that Kiba had been counted out of the inner circle despite his helpfulness to the mission didn't keep him from using all of his special abilities to learn as much about the situation as he could. His hearing was acute enough that he managed to get most of the conversation.

Apparently Anko had positively no memory of what happened for the two weeks she had been missing.

That was scary for anybody, but with Anko's past, it had deadly potential. Everyone in Konoha knew that she had been Orochimaru's pet for all of her years of training. She had been his student, of course, but rumors existed that more had gone on between the two. Either way, it certainly changed her standing in the shinobi world.

Even if it wasn't the snake sannin himself who had abducted her this time around, his influence had given her a new level of value to an opposing nation.

Kiba wondered if that's why Kakashi sounded so concerned. After all, his own mind reeled with possibilities – Anko could have been used as some kind of weapon because of the power her curse mark gave her. She could have divulged any number of secrets from Konoha. She could have contracted some horrible disease, and she'd never know how it had happened. She could have been experimented on by medics from an enemy nation.

Each idea of what could have happened was scarier than the one before it.

Stroking Akamaru's head absently, Kiba allowed his thoughts to remain deep. As he saw it, he was involved. He had been the one to find Anko, after all, and he had put up with her just like the rest of them. Whatever they found out the following evening, back in Konoha, he wouldn't step out of the picture and allow whatever happened to happen. He would stand by the girl with the fighting spirit and tough exterior and make sure that she was respected for the struggle she had sustained.

But it was just doing his duty as a dedicated shinobi.

It wasn't because he was in any way attracted to Anko.

Certainly not.