Bolded = Speech. Italics = Emphasis.
Recovery.
He stumbled out the door outside. The frosty bite of the cold Autumn air hitting his face a second later. High above, the moon was still high in the night sky.
Anko nearly collided with a trash can as he tried to make his way onto the dimly lit street. He spun and twisted, struggling against his alcohol inhibited senses, and succeeded in avoiding the collision, and also in waking the inhabitant of the house he just left. His success was not silent, not by any respectable shinobi's standards, but to an untrained civilian girl, an asleep one at that, he might as well have been an ANBU patrol, flitting through the night sky of Konoha.
He made it ten paces down the street before a sudden urge to lean against a lamppost and rest his head against something cold appeared.
He regretted wearing only his trench coat and a mesh shirt when he and Genma dragged Tokara out his house to the bar for, as Genma eloquently put, "booze and girls". He enjoyed dragging out their more sensible friend, and sometimes Kozue too, that bookworm, to accompany them in their rambunctiousness. Their loud protestations helped Anko forget what happened, as did the sake and the occasional warm body with him in bed. Anything to stop what happened that day from plaguing his thoughts and dreams. To stop the phantom pain that caused his muscles to twitch in his shoulder.
It happened as it always did. Drinking a bottle of sake each, before Genma ran off to chase whatever was in a skirt, while Kozue would continue drinking and Tokara bored some poor girl to death with his generic conversation whilst throwing at her awkward attempts at flirting.
Anko occasionally took pity on his less socially adept friends and took it upon himself to separate the girls to let his friends talk with who they wanted, but more often than not, he pursued his own quarry like Genma. This night was no different, some civilian girl who worked in the shop across from the other side of Konoha, a pretty civilian brunette, whose name he already forgotten.
Anko slid his face down the cold steel of the street light, until he was sitting down on the floor, and took out a cigarette, a hobby introduced to him, courtesy of Asuma, much to Kurenai's and Kozue's chagrin. The former out of concern for their health, the latter just hating the smell. He fumbled around his trench coat pockets for his lighter, but it was as elusive as a dog-hating Inuzuka. It must have dropped out when he was in a rush to get undressed, when he flung his coat across the room, and then the girl onto her own sofa in the same motion.
He let the unlit cigarette drop from his mouth, too busy fighting the everchanging slant in his vision. Judging from the position of the moon, he still had an hour before the bars closed. If he was lucky, the chakra in his system could burn off the alcohol quickly enough for the bartenders to serve him again.
Anko looked up, into the night sky. Where was he, he wondered. Did he ever think about his ex-student, the one he left behind? Did he look on the same moon as he did right now? Most probably not. The snake was likely burrowed underground, in a lab, busy with the sick carnival of horrors he called his experiments. Anko could never forget what he saw when the Hokage allowed him to see Orochimaru's secret labs, labs that even Anko was unaware of.
His hand instinctively leapt to his trench coat's inside pocket, where he stored a kunai.
3 chakra signatures rapidly approached him. Shinobi. Far too fast in their approach and large in their reserves to be civilian. He staggered to his feet, ready to launch the metal knife at whoever was unlucky enough to land first.
He caught sight of his three would-be assailants and let out a laugh, before slumping back into the cold embrace of the metal pole behind him. In front of him, two women and a man landed. He looked at each of them in turn.
"Anko-san." The woman had a mess of wild, unbound hair with eyes as red as the Uchiha's over cherished bloodline. She looked disappointed.
"What's up Kurenai-chan? Looking for dear old me at this time of night? My, what would Asuma say?" He gave her a stupid grin from below. The woman ignored his clumsy insinuation and looked at the kunoichi standing in the middle of the trio.
"Kozue called us when you disappeared from the bar after downing 3 bottles of sake in 30 minutes. You have to stop this Anko." The guilty party stood slightly behind the other two, silent, with worry written all over his face.
"Stop what? Having a good time? It's all fineeeeee. Don't worry about me Ito-chan. Kozue worries too much. I say he hasn't drunk enough." He stuck his tongue out at her in an attempt to defuse that deadly glare. He wasn't successful.
His female teammate held a certain quiet ruthlessness, the kind that allowed her to flourish in both Torture and Interrogation as well as search and exterminate missions regarding rogue shinobi. It made him wonder why Orochimaru had so easily allowed her to transfer instead of sinking his claws into her. She was more alike the snake than Anko ever felt he was. When he looked her in her oak brown orbs, it almost seemed like it was the pale Snake's golden own. Perhaps snakes despised their own kind. Or he was just looking for similarities that weren't there.
Why couldn't she have been the one the snake took an interest in making his apprentice instead of him. He felt a pang of guilt shoot through him at the thought.
"We're worried about you. You can't keep trying to kill yourself."
"Me? Kill myself? Ito-chan, you must know by now I'm invincible!" Anko clumsily pounded his chest with his one free hand as he said that. He tried to avoid the topic with the usual bravado he used when people asked him about the snake.
"You reek of alcohol. You're lucky we're not at war right now. Even a Genin infiltrator could end you before the ANBU could come."
"Awww… Ito-chan is worried about me?" Does she careeeee about me? Maybe in that way? You just have to ask if you want to –" He only tried to stop provoking his female teammate when he felt the three bottles of sake wrought their vengeance and he had to fight the throw-up reflex.
"We know how it feels like, to be that man's student, you have to…"
Anko let out a dry bark of a laugh at the woman.
"Do you? Do you?" He stared at the shadows they cast, on the drab concrete ground.
"You ran off quickly enough, and after Kozue was injured it was just me and the bastard for more than a year. A year." He hissed at her, coiled like a snake readying to fight. To her credit, Ito didn't shrink one bit, while their bespectacled teammate shrank back just half an inch and Kurenai looked awkwardly.
"As far as the 'good' people of Konoha is concerned, Orochimaru never had a team, only an apprentice. The snake's experiment. The one that helped him the bastard with his experiments." The bitterness tinged his mocking words. He backed up against the wall with both hands pushing himself up.
"If the snake's experiment met an unfortunate end, not one person in these accursed walls would shed a tear, and neither would anyone outside the walls. Fuck the world. It can all burn for all I care. I should've never tried. It always just comes back to bite me in the end."
Ito's hand came like a lightning bolt. Or perhaps it was his own inhibited senses that made him completely unaware of the slap before he felt the stinging sensation of pain on his left cheek. He wouldn't doubt that she would be able to catch him off guard even when he was sober, he had seen the kunoichi dart effortlessly, almost as quick as the Yellow Flash himself without his Flying Thunder God Jutsu on the battlefield, even in that bulky half-suit of shinobi battle armour.
She grabbed his collar with both hands, pulling him forward, then slamming him onto the wall behind him. He was glad the dullening effects of the alcohol hadn't worn off yet.
"Ito, aren't you being too rough? We're trying to help him, not kill him!" Their third teammate spoke out, moving forward in an attempt to separate the two before Ito's glare paused him in his tracks before he could.
"Stop. Feeling. Sorry. For. Yourself." Ito growled out at him, facing Anko directly, her grip on his coat tightening. "You're a Tokubetsu Jonin of Konoha. Act like one."
"Kurenai-san. Do it." Ito said, hands still on the collar of his coat.
"Are you sure? The Jutsu is best used on people with full control of their stimuli. Anko-san being drunk may not be the best…"
"Do it. He isn't going to let us do this sober."
"Ito." Anko could make out the wariness in their teammate's voice even drunk out of his mind.
Kurenai quickly formed the signs needed, pausing only at the last. "Sorry Anko-san, this is for the best."
Ito still held him firmly, in case he decided to try to break out of her hold. She hadn't need too. Anko had given up fighting any of it long ago.
The Genjutsu master furrowed her brow in concentration and closed her eyes with the last sign.
Anko felt something seize up within him. The foreign chakra flooded him. The overwhelming sensation compounded with the dullened headache he already had from the sake. He felt like he was being possessed. He tried to scream, but nothing came out. Or maybe it did and he just couldn't hear it with the roaring in his ears.
His vision shook, and he tried to struggle but what little strength he could summon up couldn't even budge Ito's iron grip. All he could see were those eyes. Those brown pupiled, snake's eyes, staring into his soul. He could feel the cursed seal reaching out to him, the inch in his shoulder growing and growing. He felt like clawing the damned thing off with his bare hands, but Ito held firm. He could end this now. Break free. Get away. She looked so much like him. Instead of her, the pale-skinned missing-nin faded in and out from his vision, taking her place before fading away just as quickly. He could use the snake's power for himself. He reached out. Closer. Closer.
Suddenly the chakra flow cut itself off and he felt a new seal burn itself onto where once only the cursed seal was. The snake's temptation was gone. The tantalizing urge to tap into the seal's power was reduced, to but a whispered notion at the back of his mind. Kurenai fell backwards in exhaustion as Kozue caught her. Ito. Just Ito, not the snake, let go of him. He hit his back onto the wall behind, then heaved the contents of his stomach into the half-opened trash can next to him.
"Is it done?"
"Yes. The dreams and trauma should be gone, or at least, less frequent. But the sealing technique will depend on his own will to suppress it. It's useful if the subject wants the power of the cursed seal."
"Well, there's no chance of that happening." Anko interrupted the two kunoichi, and wiped the remains of his own vomit away with his sleeve. "I'd carve out the damn thing with a kunai myself if it would get rid of the snake's taint. That was the Evil Sealing Jutsu right?"
Kurenai nodded. Kozue stepped forward, handing him a food pill and water. Anko thanked him silently with a nodded, preferring to focus on actually being able to breathe. Whatever Kurenai did was a hell of a head clearer. He felt the alcohol gone from his system, and he didn't even feel like he was having a hangover. Still, he'd rather not go through that again.
"Kurenai, Kozue, you can go home now. I can help Anko back to his place."
Kozue seemed like he wanted to protest, but whatever objections he had he kept to himself. He nodded, and the four shinobi split, going their separate ways.
As he hopped roof to roof, his teammate under his left arm helping him keep balance, his mind was still processing what they said. As Kurenai promised, the memories with Orochimaru…just didn't hurt as much. Nor did the memories appear in his mind, haunting him every waking moment. He had to try, really try to even recall them. He still knew those things happened of course, but he felt…detached from them. Not happy by any means, but it seemed like possibly… it was time to move on.
"Ito-chan… thanks. I needed this." Anko said as they approached his apartment.
"Hn. Don't make Kozue call us again. I have to interrogate 3 spies tomorrow morning and Kurenai's leaving for a B rank at noon." He could physically feel the woman rolling her eyes at him. "Stop drinking like your trying to induce a liver failure, and stop your man-whoring."
"…"
"That being said, it's fine. That's what friends do. I meant it when I said all of us were that man's students. We were just lucky we spent less time with him than you did. I saw the labs when the ANBU teams were finished. I threw up when I finished the documentation and left."
She hoisted him up with chakra as they landed and he fumbled for his keys.
"We can't forget what that man did… But what we do now is our own choice."
They made their way through the door frame. She unceremoniously dumped him on his sofa.
"Now sleep. I still need to go over the profiles of the spies. I'll get Kozue to check if you've died from vomiting in the morning."
Ito left to Anko's muffled cursing through his pillow.
Finished the draft a couple days ago, but forgot to post. Doh...
(Kozue is Kabuto's unnamed sensei from canon.)
This PTSD scene was really hard to write, and I felt like I handled it poorly in conveying how much the ostracization and things he saw really affected Anko. But OTOH surely there are techniques dealing with mental health that would help PTSD inflicted sufferers quicker and more than irl techniques? I hope.
While (f)Madara suppressed her PTSD, (m)Anko can try to get over it with booze and women, because of the much more relaxed circumstances he's in compared to her.
Unlike with (f)Madara, not much changes with canon Anko, because she's such a blank slate. The exception being how much more (m)Anko relies on Orochimaru much more than is implied due to him being a source of older male approval, which is important for boys growing up (usually from fathers/uncles, but Anko here is an orphan.) Kishi can create the most interesting designs and background info with female characters, but plot-wise? Arghhhhh
Just 1 chapter of Anko to go.