She had her why, he had his reason, but neither of them understood.

The walls shook furiously at the force of the picture frame, shards of glass scattering around the floor. This was all his fault.. she just has to get this anger out.

Or she'd do something really stupid..

Why did he have to come back? Now, of all times?

Was this spite? If so—she could say with utmost confidence that Kakashi had won.

She had always been good at those games in the past. And she swore she understood such emotions... the whole barrel and more. Hatred, pain, suffering, angst, but the hate.. That was always the strongest feeling.

Forgiveness was never her go-to and she couldn't just turn a blind eye.

How could someone like Orochimaru make Kakashi willing to betray her so easily? Wasn't he supposed to be the smart one? She made her feelings clear long before they were involved, and to make things worse.. She cared for him. She actually fucking cared for him..

For the first time, Anko actually regretted letting Kakashi Hatake become close to her. She wished she had never given him a chance.

It wasn't as if she hadn't fallen victim to the expert of manipulation himself.. but Kakashi had made it obvious to her on multiple occasions that he thought unlike anyone else. So then.. why? She wasn't interested in explanations. She never had the patience for them.

She never did, even as a child. For her, there were no good explanations.

Explanations always turned out to be scarring and traumatizing excuses.

It became impossible to sleep and nights were never so drug out.

Bouts of insomnia recurred from her past—at the most random hours.

'This is wrong. I'm not the one who should be sorry.'

Maybe she had been a little too harsh on him..

She refused to accept the fact that things wouldn't go back to how they were before.

What a fucking mess.

Keeping herself awake is a chore in itself, but anything is preferable compared to the nightmares that continue to ruthlessly rack her dreams.

Anko never wanted to have another dream like that one.

It had been too surreal.

Suffer, kill, fall, torture.. snapshots of dead, reanimated eyes lurching forward to land a devastating blow. Nothing had horrified her like that in a while...

She can still remember the icy feel of the bodies. Dismembered organs and a blanket tarped over the face where she was permitted to work.

The corpses never scared her, especially after she closed their eyes. Plus, they were simply donors of science. At least, that was what she was told.

She didn't question their identities ever. She always obeyed her superiors.. But she wished she had done things differently, looking back.. and it's like all those people were counting on her to bring justice in some sense.

"Oh, but you're such a bitter girl, Anko. When are you going to forgive yourself?"

She couldn't.

"He stole you from me, that's why."

She would never grasp the possible meaning of that, even deep within her subconscious. He could never see things that way. Impossible.

Anko couldn't tell if it was the exhaustion, sleep deprivation, or a combination of both.

And when she least expected it, memories flood back and piece together more of the past she had been forced to forget.

Reliving experience after experience, each grueling training session, each hidden lie he said that always had underlying meaning.

"Well done," He praised her improvement on summoning techniques, "you're coming along better than I thought."

"Oh, c'mon!" She panted, limbs shaking from overexertion. She was trying so hard to be acknowledged back then. Does he even care about how hard she's pushing herself? As his number one student, she wanted to impress him more than anything. "Just better? I want to be the best! Teach me new stuff!"

"What makes you so eager, Anko? You're already surpassing your teammates in ability alone."

"I wanna be like you, Sensei!"

"And why is that?"

"Because you're so cool," Anko said insistently, "you're one of the Legendary Sannin. You know everything about being a powerful shinobi."

"I mean, you're strong enough to be Hokage one day. Wouldn't that be amazing?"

"You think highly of the Hokage," Orochimaru pocketed both hands in his flak jacket. "isn't that right?"

"Well, duh!" She circled him hyperactively, "he's only the strongest ninja out there. Plus, he has to protect the whole village! What's more important than that?!"

"Knowledge."

"Huh?"

"Coupled with power, of course," He added solemnly, "and control. You'll learn this lesson soon enough. The position of Hokage is all about being in control."

"Then why.."

"I regret ever considering that overrated title. In fact, my time here has ran its course long ago."

"What do you mean by that?"

"So many questions," Orochimaru never promised to answer them. "I won't leave you behind, Anko. Not only are you my most promising student, but you are vital to completing the multiple experiments I'm conducting. You want to be useful, don't you?"

"Um, sure, I guess."

They smile at each other, and for a moment, she forgot about it all.

She wondered why he always seemed to be hateful toward the Hokage, toward his teammates, toward his colleagues.. How had she ignored such an aura?

Anko then wondered if he truly felt remorse for his actions. If he smiled at her because she was a tool to be used at his disposal, or if he ever genuinely cared about her well-being as his student. If he had ever been sorry for treating her like that..

"Why wouldn't I look after my best student?"

Orochimaru had refused to kill her back then, so that was the only clue she had to go off of.

It was the tortured memory of never knowing. He was fucking sick in the head. And he hated that she had the will to say no. To ever be someone who would question loyalty to their teacher.. yes, that had to be the reason.

She wished he would have went through with it, sometimes.

Anko awoke with a jolt, sending herself into a near whiplash.

No more sleeping that night.

He's convinced that over the past few days that feel like stretching and endless months, he's seen more of files and beige nothingness than the outdoors or absolutely anything else. 'You never get to leave office, do you? Well, what did I expect?'

Stacked up to the eyeballs with paperwork, mission reports, politics, meetings, secret codes..

Kakashi had never welcomed numbness with such open arms. Unbelievably fucking tiring.. How could anyone survive this job? Was he just getting old? Was everything really crashing down on him so suddenly? Well, on much more conscious thought, he had brought it on himself knowingly...

'Really? You think I actually went?'

Her words rush back to him in random spurts, knocking him out of his stupor.

She stayed on his mind through it all, somehow. Since that night, he couldn't forget that coldness in her tone. Resentment, hatred, mistrust.. everything he was working to get rid of. Everything he had been against for so long..

As if his nerves weren't already on maximum overload.

So he buried himself into a deeper spiral of fatigue and stress. Back and forth, back and forth.

His office now was forever dark, and he couldn't tell for anything whether it was day or night. The curtains were a nice touch.

Every once in a while, he heard voices around him. And footsteps.. heavy, light, staggered paces. Other times, he allowed the desk to act as his prop. His eyes would close, but..

"Kakashi?"

It must have been daylight out. No, night.. maybe dawn? He must have lost track of the clock again..

"I guess I was wrong about you all these years."

Something so simple as an opinion had never bothered him so much. But Anko wasn't one to sugarcoat things. She had hit him hard with venom-filled words. Intentions like hers were never foreign to him but nevertheless—it was painful to retaliate, and he almost wishes he hadn't. He wanted to hate her for the things she said to him. She was wrong. She was the one who misunderstood. He had not been thinking of himself. He wished he could have convinced her to listen.

If only he knew if she meant what she said. Should he even risk his pride long enough to know? Would he want to know?

"How could you do this to me?!"

Kakashi had ignorantly expected less of a reaction.

But if she could let an unresolved past interfere in their relationship so strongly, if she could toss him to the side after all these years.. then he was truly the one who lucked out.

"You're already making every wrong decision, Kakashi."

Was he already doing that bad? Would he let everyone down eventually? Was it in his head.. or was she right?

It hurts him to think that.. she might actually be right.

"Kakashi."

His head shot up from the edge of the desk, vision going gray for half a second. Unaware of how faded in and out of consciousness he was, the question drowned him out of his mind mercilessly.

'Then I have been sleeping..'

So why did it still feel like he hadn't in days?

Wait..

That voice sounded like—was it her?

Anko?

"I came through to check on you," The former Hokage held the weighty door with three fingers, letting it fall closed. "tell me, how's it going?"

"Lady Tsunade," He was fine with any distraction, wondering why he believed anyone else would enter without asking. He would give her the job back in a heartbeat if she had asked seriously enough. Not that she would. Retirement suddenly sounded like a heaven he was banned from.

"You don't look so well."

"I'm fine," Kakashi said dully, no longer having the energy to stare at fine print or differentiate between what was handwriting, print, or scribble.

"Don't overdo it," She scolded, one hand on each hip. "you don't seem very responsive. Why are you making such a chore out of it?"

His gaze fell downward, onto the documents and papers he would probably never get around to arranging.

"You need some sleep."

Not the first one to tell him that.

"If you go on this way, the village won't have a Hokage," The blonde assaulted him with a cool hand to the forehead, "you're going to wear that new eye of yours out."

"I'm fine."

"You do feel a little feverish," She sighed, pulling her hand back and relenting a bit. "Look, the stress can be overwhelming sometimes. If you let that happen too often, you'll end up hating it. So go home. Get some rest. The village is in good hands with you at the helm. Don't try so hard. We all have faith in you."

Or did some just have more than others, he wondered?

Aspirin and the strangeness of being in his apartment after so long was enough to sap the remaining energy from his bones.

He still didn't know what time it was.

The outline of a wrinkled trench coat sitting jumbled in the corner agitated his fuddled brain. She was quite good at leaving stuff trashed about his place.

Kakashi retrieved the article of clothing hesitantly, grimacing when he caught a whiff of the half-gone liquor bottles it had been hiding.

Damn this woman.

He cursed her only to himself, swirling its contents before raising the brim to masked lips. He held it at eye-level. It was opened, weeks old, and possibly spiked poison if Anko had been drinking it.

He had never considered himself an eager drinker. Socially, he could understand. He found that it could take the edge off of some situations, and usually, he doesn't mind company when it's involved. But he was practical enough to say no when applicable. Regardless, she was his best drinking partner.

She knew that, too.

Even if she won because he never tried.

"I win, I win!" She cheered, leaning over him drunkenly. The bitter taste of alcohol lingered on her breath, and she didn't care. She also knew of no thing called personal space. Her lips puckered against his cheek aggressively. "now 'gimme a kiss."

"Anko, please, we're in public."

"Lose your tone, Hatake! You'd better watch who you're mouthing off to. I'm not one of your punk students."

He smiled, a small smile, but he couldn't resist. She was tough on the both of them.

"But it's such a hassle," Kakashi joked, acting as a pillar of some sort when she swayed clumsily. "having to remove this mask every time."

She turned to wild gesticulations when it came to said mask, "Are you kidding me? Well, maybe if you didn't wear it like it was fucking glued on!"

He smiled again, this time more openly. He just knew he was gonna have fun dragging her intoxicated ass home.

Anko would fight him every step of the way voluntarily. Because that's just how she was. He closed the tab, ignoring protests that were clearly unjustified.

It was not his first time playing babysitter to a grown woman. Her moods could be quite the toss-up when she was this way.

She looked less than thrilled to have his company then, smacking away his attempt to get her to put her coat back on. "I don't need help from the likes of you."

"Don't be like that," Kakashi moved one hand down one arm to balance her. "what ever happened to the friendly colleague relationship?"

Anko laughed boisterously, stumbling as they made their way out of the small bar. "Yeah, what ever happened?"

"Watch your step," He cautioned, trying to support her weight even when she denied him the opportunity. "you realize what time we have to be at the tower, right?"

"Oh, let me have some fun. This world is so shitty." She talked like she had no responsibility whatsoever, as if he didn't already know that life could indeed be shitty.

"I'm only worried you won't get up in the morning."

"Oh, please!" Anko flicked her hand dramatically. He almost expected to see a snake fly out of her sleeve. "we're ninjas, for Christ's sake. We rest for maybe six hours a day, if we're lucky!"

Kakashi sighed through his nose audibly. The deflection.

"Hey," The Tokubetsu Jōnin said suddenly, "you'll stay the night, won't you?"

How could he say no when she asked so sweetly? Well, sweet for Anko. He would take it as an invitation anyway.

"Only if you insist."

She laughed at him for pretending to be trapped in thought.

"Don't flatter yourself, Kakashi! I just made you useful. This way, we can make sure I get up in the morning."

"Come with me. At once."

She woke up with a start, forcefully trying to rid drowsiness from her eyes. "Orochimaru—Sensei? Is that you?"

"No questions. Just do what I say, Anko."

She noticed that he seemed oddly less composed than usual, as if someone was chasing him—or maybe it was something..

"What's going on?"

"Just get ready and let's go."

Anko obeyed at will, gathering herself as best as she could. She had no idea about his clash with the Third, his true intentions, or what he seemed to be running from..

Her friends and the life she had in the Leaf were the furthest things from her mind.

'If only I had known better..'

She was struggling to hold her head upright at that morning's meeting, standing in formation on top of the tower. She did everything besides make eye-contact with Kakashi as he filled them in on repercussions and updated the village's progress. But when she finally dared to look at him, she saw that he didn't look much better than she did.

She couldn't help but still be so furious.

"Hey, you alright?"

Anko felt a nudge, looking over to the line beside hers. She sent Genma Shiranui a short eye-roll. "Yeah, just guessing we should get used to this kind of blandness."

"It is Kakashi, after all."

"But damn. This is putting me to sleep."

"You guys, shhh! Be patient. These things aren't supposed to be interesting, 'ya know."

They snickered in response to a younger team's 'scolding'. "Oh, shut up, scrub! Like your missions will be anything impressive. We're lucky you guys weren't around to hold us back a few months ago."

Raidō piped up from behind Genma, "Go easy on them, Anko. Geez."

"Yeah, fair warning. Watch out. She's good at biting heads off."

She glared at his casual senbon flick, turning her back to the other members. "Piss off, you guys. I didn't sleep well last night and I'm sick of listening."

It was only then that she caught the disapproving but vacant look bestowed upon them by the Sixth. They fell into silence.

"I'd appreciate it if you all could save your private matters for after this assembly, please."

What a stiff. There was so much she could no longer say to him without being inappropriate.

'Fuck you, Hatake,' She instantly thought, clamping her teeth down against her tongue. It was no longer her place to speak out.

He had addressed them as a group, and she almost laughed out loud at how rattled the younger teams seemed.

They locked eyes ever so briefly, and she hoped the expression read clear as day.

He moved along, careful not to miss a beat.

Anko could only taste the blood that leaked out of her tongue, the one thing besides common sense that kept her from opening her mouth.

"You requested to see me?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. This shouldn't take too much of your time. You two gentlemen are free to go, by the way."

The guards dismissed hesitantly, taking care to shut the door behind them.

Little pigeons.

"Well, is it too soon to call it a pleasure?"

"Call it what you wish."

"Ah, and congratulations on the smooth transition. I meant to say that to you the other day."

He had to know that he, of all people, knew well in advance as to why he was there. Genuine formalities were certainly new to him, but he could play it off.

They were both masters at holding their own.

"Please, have a seat."

A/N;; So sorry for the hiatus. Only recently got into a better place to update. Still raving hard with this story line. Appreciate the continued support ^^