A/N: Ever since reading Leechdog's Sasuke-centric works, I've wanted to try my hand at writing him. Can hardly say this has never been explored before, but I really dig the similarities between Sasuke's and Anko's stories. I really wish they'd interacted in canon. I think she would have annoyed him but left an impression all the same.
Takes place shortly after the Konoha Crush arc.
The first time Anko gets the drop on him, he's dripping wet in a bath-towel in his own home. Looming over him, she presses the knife to his throat for emphasis before releasing her grip on his hair and pushing him away. She tells him to get dressed.
"We need to talk."
When he asks her what she thinks she's doing in his house, she nods at the entrance to his bedroom. "Window's wide open. That can be dangerous."
She's in-and-out of his life, a ghost passing through. She never waits for an invitation; they both know he'd never offer one anyway. Sakura had been onto something when she'd compared her to Naruto. They both know how to get under his skin, but at least Naruto has the common decency to leave him alone when he's at home.
"Have any bad dreams lately?"
He doesn't answer her; he's learned he doesn't need to when she's making a point.
"I still have them, to this day. Nasty ones too. They've gotten worse ever since he reared his ugly head again. Sometimes, I wake up in a cold sweat, screaming like everything is still fresh."
He stays the course, knowing eventually she'll drop the crazy-woman facade and speak to him candidly. Sasuke doesn't know why she even bothers keeping up the act around him.
"Look, kid. I'm not spending all this time around you because I'm bored and have nothing better to do, but if you think my little visits are annoying, just wait until he comes back around for you."
"I don't care what he wants."
"You say that, but he's a persistent guy. He knows how to get in your head. He already has, hasn't he?"
He feels her eyes on the back of his head, niggling and invasive. He reaches for his apartment door. Behind him, she shuffles her weight as she leaves her place at his open window.
"This isn't just about you. It never was. When he comes for you -and he will- it won't be a peaceful bargain. A lot of people are willing to stand in his way to protect you, because it means protecting this Village in the grander scheme of things. Keep that in mind, okay kid?"
Paused at the threshold, Sasuke becomes suddenly aware of the weight of his value in his eyes.
Mitarashi Anko will never know what it's like to be alone in this world, he surmises, to be alone and know that it's all your fault. She'll never know how much it hurts to know that things could have been different, could have been better, had he only been strong enough. . .
"How would you know anything about how I feel?"
Sasuke's heart is in his ears. His fingers grip the side of the refrigerator; it's the only thing keeping him grounded. "Do you have any idea what it's like to be betrayed by someone you trusted and looked up to!? You weren't there! You didn't see how I had to beg for my life from my own brother!"
In the eye-of-the-storm, Sasuke finds himself pleased by how caught off-guard Anko is by his outburst. People always are. It's all the same; it's always the same. They're all alike, ignorant and apathetic. They think he can just wipe his memory clean, like it isn't stained by the blood of his family.
He watches through heavy-breaths as she shrugs down her tense shoulders with a pregnant sigh, eyes fixing on the sink as she fishes for a reply. Her lips twist upwards in a bitter smile that she eventually turns on him.
"I might know . . .something of it."
She stares into him, fingers clasping her shoulder as she moves towards him.
He glares back, jaw clenched.
"Orochimaru . . .the man who ransacked this place and killed Lord Third. . .he was my teacher. Branded me with that same seal and left me for dead on an island a long way from here." Before him, Anko bows low enough for him to see the seal hidden beneath her long-collared jacket.
They observe each other, and for a brief moment, the boy feels convinced that if anyone is bearing the self-same weight that he is then it must be this woman. In that transient flicker of time, he muses that if there is but one person that truly understands the maelstrom of agony and helplessness brewing in his stomach, it's the one who has spent a lifetime fleeing from the looming shadow of her treacherous teacher.
He relaxes his arm, ignoring the way his fingers and wrist ache, and finds the pattern of his kitchen flooring far more sympathetic than Anko's face.
Sasuke doesn't like it; he has never liked feeling exposed. He refuses to acknowledge their similarity, because the moment that he admits that the malignant growth he nurses is anything like Anko's then he has to admit that there is another possible route for him to take besides complete and total amputation.
"There is no one on this earth more deserving of death than Uchiha Itachi. No one."
He expects her to rebuttal, but instead when Anko shrugs, excuses herself, and leaves him to himself for the night, he's surprised by how heavy the air of silence she leaves in her wake is.
Uchiha Itachi graduated from the Academy at age seven. He was promoted to Chuunin at age ten. By the time he was thirteen-years-old, he was running top-rank missions as an ANBU Black OPs. He was the jewel of the Uchiha clan, his father's pride-and-joy. . .and his murderer.
Sasuke recites this like a liturgy in the training field, letting it be his focus as he channels chakra through his arm. Electrical heat sparks from his palms, dancing along the tips of his fingers. Power colors the bark of the surrounding trees a blinding blue. He charges forward, feels all his pinpoint rage tear through age-old wood, breath tight in his chest until he releases it with a crescendoing roar. He doesn't stop until he hears wood cracking above him and the tree begins to bend forward.
Sasuke yanks his hand out of the bark and leaps away, inhaling the smell of burning wood. Above him, branches jostle, leaves hissing in the friction. Sasuke hears her whistle before he feels her chakra burst to life.
"That's a neat little trick. Did Kakashi teach you that?"
Sasuke doesn't have to glean long to find her lounging in the boughs some feet above him.
"Bet something like that drains you dry fast, doesn't it? How many times can you do that?"
He studies her briefly, watches the way she leans forward to observe the damage from the safety of her perch, thumb in her mouth as she thinks.
"Does he know you've been stalking me?"
Anko pouts, eyes still scanning the cavity in the devastated tree. "Maybe," she sings. " . . Why? You gonna tell on me?" She faces him then, mouth cracked to show friendly teeth. Sasuke feels his breath coil in his chest at the challenge.
"No. I can handle you myself."
To this, Anko throws her head back and crows so loudly that it puts Naruto's obnoxious laughter to shame.
Later, long after she'd caught her breath and insisted on helping him dress his burn wound, she chides him for trying such a taxing technique without supervision.
"You can't carry-on alone forever, kiddo. That was Itachi's mistake. . ."
Some memories are more painful than others. Somehow, the memory of riding Itachi's back all the way to the dango stand and sharing dumplings is one of the most painful of all. He wonders, often times, how much of it all was an act. . .
Only once does she ever offer him a stick of dango. When he frowns at the treat, she shrugs. "More for me then." Sasuke feels his lips pull back in a grimace as she shoves the whole stick in her mouth and draws it out clean of everything but sticky residue.
It's the happiest he's ever seen her.
"Do you want to kill him?"
"Orochimaru?" She chews around the name and then swallows. " . . .Yeah. . .Probably about as bad as you want Itachi."
"Then stay out of my way."
Anko takes a sip from her sweet-bean soup and then clears her throat. "I'm not in your way, Sasuke. I'm in his."
He scowls at the notion that he needs protecting, that he's too much of a child to know that this thing that burns through his body when he has a nightmare has strings attached. How stupid does she think he is?
"Tch! What does he want, anyway?"
Three, gluttonous gulps, and she's drained her drink, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. She doesn't look at him as she crushes the can flat with her fingers.
"To live forever. . ."
Kakashi finds out some time afterwards.
Sasuke suspects that he always knew.
He never says anything to Sasuke about it, but Anko's visits stop, and the next time he sees her on the open-streets, she ignores him.
That night, Sasuke closes his window and locks it for good measure.
He doesn't feel safe.