Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto
A/N: Here's another chapter, and I hope no one is put off by the turn of events! Any mistakes, please let me know because I am far from perfect. Thanks so much to the following people for reviewing the last few chapters:
BloodRedShadows; Makoto-Koto; Chryseis Wyvernsen; LostsoulofRegret; Alucards-Vampire-BITCH; Animes-Tribute and Teberz
Thanks guys, they really make me smile and I appreciate every single one :) Enjoy reading!
PS: more Kakashi in the next chapter ;)
.c.c.c..c.c.c
Chapter 11
Whole
.c.c.c..c.c.c.
Sure enough, after her encounter with Orochimaru Anko's sleep was plagued with disturbing and erotic dreams. It wasn't unusual for her to dream about her old sensei, but the content definitely did not arise from vague memories of when she had been a child. No, in the some of the dreams she was much more than a child ...
Some elements remained the same, of course. Anko could never escape from the blood, or the snake. The serpent wound around the very fabric of her dreams, turning many into nightmares of death and destruction. It brought back moments in her life she wasn't sure even happened, and many moments she didn't want to remember.
...o..o.o..o...
The young girl opened her eyes, instantly alert like she had been taught. She looked around, expecting to see her sensei within eyesight, or at least evidence that he was nearby. But the fire was cold, and his packs were gone. She was alone in the dark, with nightmare creatures stalking her every step. Only the note made her believe he had ever existed:
Find me in three days time, and not before.
Survive alone or you will fail.
The tigers almost caught her when she reacted with panic. It was a lesson about the life of a ninja, that they could not allow emotion to distract them from the mission. And her mission was survival. Even though the darkness made her short of breath, and every sound froze her heart, she had to kill to survive.
By the end she was covered in surface wounds and blood that mostly wasn't hers.
She was all of ten years old.
He had her against the bark of the tree, and she tasted his blood in her mouth as he kissed her. He ran his one hand along the side of her thigh, while the other held her throat so that she couldn't escape. But even if she could have, she wouldn't. Her one arm held his shoulder tightly while her other hand ran through his ebony silk hair, holding him close and taking in everything.
She lifted her one leg to wrap around his waist, and he lifted her up so that both were wrapped around him. He was a drug, an addiction, and she couldn't get enough.
They were alone, and weren't about to stop.
This time, the ANBU didn't come.
...o..o.o..o...
Anko woke feeling angry and frustrated again, and decidedly bad-tempered. When she stamped into the eating area, and grabbed a piece of fruit and a few (many) sticks of dango (which she hadn't taken long to introduce into the Sound menu ... for breakfast, lunch and supper ... after having a long 'chat' to the cook), she growled and kicked her way to a table. She ate quickly, glowering at all the unlucky shinobi around her who were up early as well. After she'd finished eating the dango, however, her mood changed rapidly. The Sound nin felt uneasy as soon as she started grinning at everyone, because they feared her feral good humour more than they did her grumpy bad temper. The one involved a lot more sadistic torture than the other.
Kabuto entered the room, and moved purposefully towards Anko. He sat down at the table, and a number of the shinobi shifted away from them both. Anko smiled at the medic, eyes half-closed in an edgy pleasant mood.
Kabuto half-smiled back at her, adjusting his glasses as he glanced at the uneasy state of the other shinobi in the room. Most were bolting their food, to get out of there as soon as possible, and these were men who served Orochimaru for god's sake.
"So, Anko-san," he smirked, "Still terrorising the soldiers?"
"Not really," Anko smiled back, "I could do a lot worse." Her hand flicked out, a barely noticeable blur that flung a shuriken to lodge in the doorway a bare inch in front of a shinobi who had been leaving, and whose quick instincts to duck back had been the only thing to save his nose. In the beginning when she had done things like that, the man would have challenged her to a spar to get revenge, but they had soon stopped doing that. Although the shinobi were good, it was only Anko's past that had stopped her from joining the ANBU and she had, of course, been trained personally by Orochimaru when she was just a child. The lessons learned young were the ones that stuck best, especially with such an uncompromising and strict sensei.
"I'm sure," he humoured her, noticing the dilation of her pupils, and the dark note in her voice. The medication is wearing off quicker again. The spirit is either becoming stronger, or Anko's emotions are more intense. Kabuto was observant, and he pretty much knew everything that happened in Sound except for what Orochimaru actively kept from him. He knew something had happened between his master and the kunoichi, and he had his suspicions. So from that ... I would guess it is the latter. My, my, Orochimaru-sama ... what could you have done to rattle Anko so?
He watched Anko follow the movements of a number of the shinobi in the room, like a snake watches mice before striking for one. I wonder ... Kabuto cleared his throat, and said quietly, "Well I wish I could offer you other entertainment than tormenting Sound shinobi ..." He made his tone smooth and suggestive, but not overly so.
Anko snapped back to look at him, her surprise showing clearly before her expression settled into something more devious. "Really?" she purred, "Well I could think of a few things ..." Her entire attitude changed, with her movements becoming more smooth and sinuous, more seductive and suggestive, and Kabuto had to remind himself who this now tempting kunoichi really was. The images that sprang to his mind were far from appropriate.
Kabuto shook the thoughts off, and chuckled lightly. "You must have been good at undercover work as such a ... talented kunoichi."
Anko grinned, back to her usual self, and shrugged modestly but with an underlining bitterness, "I never really had much opportunity for undercover work."
"Ah," said the spy quietly, understanding. Konoha had never trusted her enough for such work, like they'd never trusted her enough to be an ANBU, or even a full jonin.
Anko stood suddenly, and strolled past the spy. She paused as she passed him, running her fingers lightly along his arm and murmured: "Wouldn't you like to know how talented I really am ..."
She carried on walking to the doorway and stopped again shortly only when Kabuto called after her: "Orochimaru-sama wants to see you." And then she left.
The medic sat at the table for a moment longer, cursing being male and thus so easily influenced by feminine wiles. But he couldn't help laughing quietly because truly he would like to see how talented the kunoichi, the regular partner of the famous Copy Nin, really was ...
.c.c.c..c.c.c.
The encounter with Kabuto had cheered Anko up immensely. It reminded her of her verbal sparing with Genma, and Anko enjoyed the slight release of tension in the relatively harmless teasing. She shook her head as she thought about it. She never would have believed that she could ever enjoy the company of a person like Kabuto. But then again, she'd been raised in Orochimaru's charge, hadn't she? That accounts for a measure of bad taste, she thought mockingly.
The good mood helped her make it to the door of Orochimaru's chambers, and even through them. It restored her spirit enough to allow her to make a mocking salute to her sensei while trying to block any memory of her dreams from showing on her face. The man sat in his chair in semi-darkness, as he seemed to prefer. Sasuke wasn't present, which left the two of them alone.
"You called for me, Orochimaru?" she smiled at the Sannin, and if it was a bit wary and tense she gave no other sign of her emotions.
The whites of his teeth were visible in the dark as he smiled back at her. "Yes, Anko. I think it's time I taught you some measure of control." Orochimaru stood, and stepped towards her and out of the shadows.
Anko suppressed a shudder as he came close, but how could she hide her tension from the man who had taught her most of what she knew? His knowing smirk annoyed the hell out of her. "How do you plan to do that?" she asked him before he got uncomfortably close. Though this was Orochimaru; if he was a couple kilometres away it was uncomfortably close.
"You made a mistake in your dealings with the serpent when you sealed it." he replied, "And that needs to be rectified."
"What do you mean?" Anko frowned, not understanding, "I followed the instructions of the jutsu. All the seals were drawn correctly."
"Part of your deal was that you would always be in control, is that correct?"
"Yes, but it didn't uphold that. There are things that I ... that I can't remember." The kunoichi looked away, unable to look in his cold eyes and see some hint of what she didn't want to remember.
"Ah, but there you are wrong, Anko," Orochimaru said softly, amused. "Some part of you was always in control. It just may not have been a part that you consciously acknowledge."
"But I wouldn't have done ... things ... I wouldn't have just run away like that!"
The snake's smile twisted cruelly. "Why do you think I took you on as a student, Anko?"
Anko shrugged, glaring at him. "Because you wanted someone to test the seal on? Because you're evil and a traitor and you wanted more power or another vessel? How the hell should I know?"
Orochimaru narrowed his eyes, and she had to look away again. "Parts of those reasons, I suppose. But no, the main reason was that I saw pieces of myself in you."
She froze, stunned. "I'm not like you." she denied, hearing Kakashi echo the words in her mind. You're not like him. It was a mantra that she'd clung to in the darkest times, when she thought her soul was dying, twisted beyond help. It was something she'd actually believed for a while after remembering her rejection of him on Kikaijima, and something that he'd made her doubt when she'd seen him again and he told her that she'd been an active part of his experiments, helping him.
He sneered at her, mocking and knowing. "Really? Then why did you kill the spy we caught, all those years ago? Why did you kill two Konoha ANBU in cold blood, Anko?"
"I didn't." she shook her head, shuddering. "I didn't! You're lying!"
"Come now, Anko," he sighed, as if he was weary of her denials. "You killed them, like you killed the spy, only a few days ago. Their blood soaked the forest floor. Don't you remember? Then other ANBU and that jonin, Yuuhi Kurenai as I recall, appeared and I helped you escape."
"It wasn't me!" She refused the memories, tried to fight them away, but they returned too easily.
...o..o.o..o...
A feeling welled up inside her – a feeling of absolute dread and despair. She turned her head, and saw something ... two somethings lying on the ground a short way away from her. She shied away from what she was seeing, from the red she could see on her hands and the copper tang in her mouth.
Anko didn't register the arrival of Kurenai or a number of other ANBU. She didn't notice how her friend stared in shock from her red-stained hands to the somethings on the floor because she refused to see them. She refused to see their expressions when Orochimaru swept her up into his arms and how he smirked at them when she turned her head into his shoulder without resistance before he leapt away. She refused to hear Kurenai call her name, because she could not be taken back there where something had happened that her mind shied away from.
...o..o.o..o...
"No, it wasn't me ..." she whispered, broken.
"It was you, Anko," he contradicted, taking time to burn the truth into her mind. "You killed them because you allowed your subconscious mind to get out of control using the spirit's power. You allowed your darker side to take over after suppressing it for so long, and those deaths were the result."
Anko fell to her knees at his feet, swaying with her head bowed and tears stinging her eyes and threatening to fall. Her heart was beating so fast, under the crushing weight of the realisation of what she had done. She hadn't only burned her bridges back to Konoha, but she had spread their ashes to the winds. They will never let me go back ... They will never take me back even if I kill the whole of Akatsuki and Orochimaru! They will never forgive me for killing two ANBU! Kakashi ... Her thoughts were dark and despairing and hopeless.
"Please ..." she said softly, not looking up at him, "Please help me ..."
Orochimaru smiled benevolently, and reached down with his hand to smooth her hair and lift her chin so she was looking at him. "Of course, Anko. I will help you regain control by assimilating both sides of yourself into one whole."
Gone was the defiant and enraged Anko who had sworn death to her sensei and the enemies of Konoha. Gone was her spirit and sharp edginess. For the moment, all that was left was the young child who looked up at her sensei, offering her life through her eyes to the only one who was there to help her.
Orochimaru looked down, taking all she offered and more with a triumphant edge to his smile that she refused to see. Her broken soul was taking a downward spiral into the comforting darkness he offered, and she couldn't escape.
He ran his thumb across her cheek below her eye, wiping away invisible tears. "When you rejected my offer, and I was forced to erase parts of your memory," he began quietly, "You cut off a part of your consciousness, and suppressed it. That is the part that is taking control when your emotions are heightened, and the only way to regain that control is for you to accept the darker part of yourself."
"But it's not really me ..." she murmured, her voice weary and defeated but with denial still holding strong. "I'm not ... I can't accept what I did."
The Sannin shrugged, expressionless. "If you cannot accept who you are, Anko, then you are lost." She had to look away from his penetrating gaze again, feeling like he could see right through her. "When you are ready, we will use Sasuke-kun's Sharingan to help you find yourself. Until then, you're useless to me."
He was so talented at striking her when she was the most vulnerable. Useless? What was she now but useless for anything and everything? She couldn't even control herself! He bared her weakness and flaws so easily, and manipulated her until she had no choice but to follow his lead and accept his help. She knew what she had done ... the horrors of it, the betrayal of her home. But worse maybe, the way a part of her had enjoyed killing those ANBU so much. She'd enjoyed watching them die, and she'd enjoyed tasting their lifeblood. It made her feel more alive, more powerful.
Oh, she'd always been slightly twisted, she'd enjoyed missions that involved danger and death, but those were missions. Every shinobi and kunoichi had to be able to kill, many even took some enjoyment in it because it affirmed their own skill. But killing just for the sake of it? Killing for no reason but the rush? Only sick criminals, missing-nin, did that. Warlords with no conscience, shinobi like Orochimaru ... and now her.
"I can't live like this." she said quietly. She could feel the hunger, the clamouring for more, and it was too much for her to handle.
"Then don't." His eyes were hard, ruthless. "If you don't believe you have the strength to do what needs to be done, then you can go back to Konoha, go back to Kakashi," he spat the name like it was poison, "and see what you have left there. But I can tell you now, Anko, that there is nothing."
"Nothing?" she replied, voice rising in volume as her ire rose in response to his taunting. "Nothing?!" Anko stood, pulling herself to her feet, gathering together the fragments of her soul, so that she could stare him in the eye and he could see how she felt about him and his words. "Nothing is what you left me! Because of you, how you betrayed me, the rest of my life burned away into nothing but the desire for revenge and death! Because of you my life is screwed up, and any good thing I might have had ..." Kakashi "I couldn't keep because I knew that anything that gets too close just ... just hits this void that you left, where my heart should be!"
Anko's fists were shaking at her sides, because she wanted to lash out at him so much that it hurt. And he ... he didn't say a word, didn't move. "You fucking bastard," she snarled while he remained expressionless, "I hate you so much that every time I see you all I can remember is what you've done, the innocent people you killed for your experiments so that you can live longer! Who the fuck do you think you are? A god?" She laughed bitterly, and waved her hands expansively about the bare stone room. "Well I think you're falling a bit short if that's what you're aiming for ..."
Orochimaru moved swiftly closer, smoothly grabbing her one wrist and sliding it behind her waist so that he was holding her close while restraining that arm. Anko swung her other fist at his face, but he caught that too and slid it behind her as well, moving in too close for her to kick at him. Both his arms were around her, restraining her own arms behind her back and arching her body into his.
He smirked into her furious face, noting the uncertainty and panic she hid there as well. And the lust that lingered beneath it all. "There's the fiery Anko that I know, come out at last. Hate me, Anko?" he chuckled, "I don't think you really hate me. I believe you are angry, and lost. I believe you are afraid, but you don't hate me." He leaned in close, and she was intoxicated by him again. She could escape his grip if she tried, but ... He smelled so good, like bitter dark chocolate and something else that made her head spin. His lips brushed her ear, while he breathed softly: "You have nothing left but me."
He pulled back and twirled her around in his grip until she was facing away from him, her back against his chest. He rested his lips against her shoulder so that she could feel them curl in a smirk as her wide eyes caught the swirling black tears against a sea of crimson that was Sasuke's Sharingan. Anko was immobilised as her conscience faded away and she was sucked into Sasuke's world, but she faintly heard the Sannin speak again, just loud enough to understand:
"And you are mine."
.c.c.c..c.c.c.
Anko was standing on a crimson field that stretched to eternity. Everything was red – the clouds above, the ground below. Sasuke stood before her with his usual smile. No, it was slightly different ...
"You will be here until you are whole, Anko."
"Whole?" she asked, confused. "But I am whole."
"No you aren't."
Anko turned around, and saw ... her mind shied away, but here it couldn't escape.
The creature took a step forward, and grinned a feral smile that showed off its gleaming fangs. "You pushed me away, but you can't escape me here."
The creature had arms and lips stained with deep red blood, and the seal of the snake spirit visible through the mesh clothing. It walked right up to her, and she saw the madness and darkness in its eyes.
In her eyes.
She was looking at herself.
.c.c.c..c.c.c.
One moment, she was falling into Sasuke's Sharingan as he smirked cruelly, a copy of Orochimaru's own, and the next she was falling to the floor before the Sannin caught her. Anko felt sick, and strangely full where she'd been hollow. There were no more clamouring voices inside, just peaceful silence. But at the same time, she felt like she'd lost something, some part of herself, though that didn't make sense considering her new feeling of completeness.
Anko held her hand to her mouth, resisting the urge to throw up her breakfast that seemed to have been so long ago. "What ... what happened ..." she managed to force the words out.
Orochimaru looked up from watching her but still holding her steady about the waist, and narrowed his eyes at the smug Uchiha. "Well, Sasuke-kun? Did it work?" His voice was soft but with an underlying steel threat.
Sasuke didn't react to the warning, and continued to smirk. "Of course it worked. It was rather ... interesting. I haven't met many people whose minds are as fucked up as hers."
"Why can't she remember?" the Sannin asked. Anko was still trying to pull herself together, and wondering faintly why she didn't feel revolted at her sensei's touch. Even when she'd been ready to let him do what he wanted with her the previous night, she'd still felt that disgust at herself, but that was gone now.
The Uchiha shrugged, uncaring. "Something to do with the mental trauma of assimilating a subconscious personality. She may remember eventually."
"And the spirit?" Orochimaru added sharply.
"Still there." Sasuke tossed his head arrogantly, "Are you going to train me now? I'm tired of wasting time."
"I wouldn't call it 'wasting time'," the Sannin murmured softly to himself, but he motioned to Kabuto who had been standing in the shadows all that time. "Take her to her room, Kabuto, and check to see if there is any damage."
"There is no damage," Sasuke interrupted, angry at the insinuation that he might have made a mistake.
Orochimaru glanced at his future vessel, and handed the semi-concious Anko over to Kabuto before replying shortly. "Nevertheless, I want it done. Report to me at the training grounds, Kabuto."
"Hai, Orochimaru-sama," the medic bowed. He bent to pick Anko up in his arms, and left with the kunoichi quietly.
"I don't know why you bother with her," Sasuke scowled as he walked with the Sannin to the grounds.
Orochimaru looked at his vessel from the corner of his eyes, recalling what Kabuto had said about the boy's 'friends': Naruto and Sakura. He obviously believed in a shinobi's superiority over kunoichi, and he looked forward to when Anko was recovered and the two could spar. Then the boy will learn. Also ... Sakura ... He smirked, reading the boy's lack of interest or understanding of the opposite sex, or how attraction could be manipulated as a means to an end.
'I don't know why you bother with her,' hmm? How amusingly naïve. "No," he chuckled softly, with a darkness that made Sasuke suppress a shudder, "You wouldn't."