Anko, with her emotions more on her sleeve than ever, only begins to see more snakes and other signs once she makes the rather rash decision to ignore the guidance of Kakashi's ninken and go back into the treeline. It's nothing she can explain with any real clarity, rather just a feeling that'd gnawed at her insides up until the moment she relented. She knows they'd never find the cave otherwise, and wherever the dogs have led their try-hard pursuers, it's far enough away for them to have lost the trail completely. As she trudges through the snow crunching underfoot, her thoughts are a grumbling mass of gratefulness for Kakashi, annoyed to be even further indebted to him than she already was, but unable to be outright angry about it.
Beneath his shirt that clings to her body like an embrace, his chakra is as warm as ever upon her shoulder, mingling effortlessly with the flow of her own.
She blinks hard twice, three times, drawing herself back to reality. She'd stopped paying such close attention to where, exactly, they were going, and as a result has them deep into the dense, snow-covered forest by late afternoon, all by design. It was Orochimaru who'd once told her, We must be lost to find places that cannot be found, though he'd meant it in some cryptic way about tapping into inner strength when one found themselves at their wit's end. All she'd needed to do now was follow the smallest of signs to their destination, and she clings to that hope as hard as she can.
She and Sasuke are alone in the dense wood when they stumble upon a small—and rather suspicious—clearing. The snow on the ground had vanished, but not in the sense that it'd been there and melted; it seems it'd never fallen there in the first place, the air humid and warm. And it takes only a second of careful watch to see how this place is different in many more ways than that, for there are numerous snakes slithering past or bathing on bare rocks above the moss that even Sasuke spies them before they have time to hide themselves away.
She allows herself a brief moment of selfish pride. It'd been some time since she followed her instincts and had them lead somewhere meaningful.
The boy makes a small sound of surprise just as they come to an abrupt stop. The ground before them is split open, a miniature crater cutting through the woods like a wound that refused to be stitched together and heal. It widens just at their right before suddenly and severely closing in again, winding through the brush until it is out of sight, overtaken again by trees and wildflowers and, eventually, covered by that blanket of snow.
They approach the opening slowly, peeking over its edge. There is a power emanating from it like a warm breath, something that makes her cursed mark pulse once beneath the protective presence of Kakashi's seal. She winces, catching the way Sasuke brings his hand to press at his shoulder and scowls.
"Well," she says, "this is definitely the place."
The well of power from which her old master had drawn, changing Anko's life forever and marring Sasuke's in the years afterwards. It's not the place she'd seen in the heavy, inked paintings upon those ancient scrolls; it's not even similar to what Orochimaru had described on the night he returned from his first visit to the Great Snake Sage. There is no abandoned castle etched into a cliffside hidden away in a forest, and there is no grand mouth of a cave at the edges of a riverbank. But the snakes' burrows run deep and wide beneath the earth, and Anko looks at Sasuke, a mixture of anxiety and excitement churning in her belly as she holds out her hand.
"Ready?"
He takes it without a word, without a second thought, following her lead as she tugs and he leaps upon her back. The descent, they both know, is not something he should try in his condition—which the long days of travel have certainly not helped. Anko kneels and plops down to swing both of her legs over the mossy ledge, then pushes off and catches onto the other side, her palms coated with a fine layer of chakra for support. When she finds solid enough footing, she sends more chakra to her soles and heels, then turns, hanging onto the cliff with one hand as she searches the other rocky wall for a spot with decent enough purchase. She leaps and catches herself on the opposite wall.
It takes more time than it would if she'd come alone; to recalculate her center of gravity, thrown off by Sasuke's added weight, is a challenge that makes her want to grind her teeth in annoyance. One wrong move, one errant slip, and they both fall to their deaths. It only gets darker as they move deeper, the air growing humid and cloying in her throat and nostrils in a way that seems like a warning. But far below is a river, she can hear it: slowly-flowing water, perhaps maybe even stagnant, but it is enough for her to merely sigh out her frustrations and keep going, making her zigzag pattern down the crevice as it widens.
"Wait," Sasuke says, and then there is a red glow spreading across the rocks in front of her. It lights the surrounding cavern wall in a wide arc until his Sharingan eyes are facing the one across. The light from his eyes is a welcome guide, one she uses gladly as the stones become more slippery the further they go.
Eventually they make it to the point where she lets go, falling a far enough distance that makes her stomach flip, the chakra pooled at her feet absorbing the shock of the landing. Sasuke climbs form her back, glancing up at the way they'd come as the glow in his eyes fades back to nothingness. She can hear a faint hiss of pain from between his lips, and he brings up his arms to rub the heels of his hands against his eyes in search of relief.
Anko can feel gazes upon her, ones she hadn't felt before. Beneath Kakashi's protective seal, her original brand still feels uncomfortably tight as she takes a few steps to the rocky shore. Under the still water are hundreds of thousands of little stones and pebbles, and even though she knows it is not this easy, could never be this easy, she finds herself stooping to place her hand in the water.
Could it truly set her free?
It's cool against her palm, but the moment she does it she can feel something deep inside of her. Or is it a noise from deeper into the cave, rattling her through to the bone? She shoots back up, producing a kunai from the pouch hidden beneath her long jacket as she makes her way back to Sasuke. He's looking, too, had felt what she did, and even though it's warmer down here than they've been since they left the Leaf, he pulls his coat tighter around him.
As much as she'd love to walk side by side, prove that she trusts him in some manner of a skirmish, she can't. Another instinct, one that'd taken root in her since she'd decided to go on this stupid quest in the first place, has laced itself through her to an almost dangerous extent. She will keep him safe, no matter the cost. She leads as he follows, her knife in hand, slinking their way around each corner and both keeping watch, on-edge and excited in equal parts.
"You think they'll attack?" he asks, voice low, barely a murmur.
She spares him a glance. "Not necessarily, but..." She purses her lips, not fond of her answer. "I was taught not to trust anyone, anything. Especially not something you're going to ask for favors." One must always be prepared to turn a request into a threat, after all, her old sensei had said.
What he thinks of that, he makes no indication. The next bend in the river brings a dull, golden glow in the distance, one that makes them both freeze. She squints against the dark and makes out the flame of a candle held within a stout lantern made of snow, wrapped on one side with damp moss and dotted with lichens on the other. It sits in the middle of a wide pool of water, either the end or, somehow, the source of the winding underground river.
As they approach the wide, golden chamber, she readies her kunai, holding out her other arm as if Sasuke is in any danger at all of running up ahead. He's young, but so far hasn't been a total idiot—though, she supposes, coming along with her still hasn't proven to've been the safest option he had. She just hopes, as she rounds the massive pool with slow, calculated steps, that there's some manner of power to be found here, something the boy can take back once they're free of her old master's curse.
Around the wide-set feet of the stone lantern is gushing water, bubbling as it spills up and into the pool, feeding the sluggish river. Some spring, then, deeper in the earth than even they stand now. Those who touch the waters of this cave can be set free. She swallows, fighting a shiver to remember the words she'd read so many years ago.
Without warning, the candle snuffs itself out.
Anko's fist is balling around Sasuke's jacket faster than she can even believe. She tugs him close, feels him tense for battle just as she brings the blade in her hand up, angling it defensively. Shutting her eyes, she lets her ears do the bulk of the work—and there it is, the small, faint sounds of rustling robes, something that makes her picture a procession of Fire Monks she'd seen at the temple as a girl, shuffling single-file and stopping at intervals she couldn't make sense of to kowtow and hold out their hands.
None of the bodies approaching now, though, seem to have chakra signatures. She strains the muscles in her ear, the passageways too finite for the upper limits of her chakra control to bolster; her mind cannot make sense of it, the number of people and their proximity despite their apparent powerlessness.
Sasuke gives her arm a small push. "Look."
She recalls, as she opens her eyes, that the power of the Sages and their ilk is not chakra. The lantern in the center of the pool glows now a green light, ghoulish yet ethereal, and she pieces together that what she and the boy had felt during their descent, what'd stirred inside of her as she placed her hand upon the water—had been the shizen energy of the Great White Snake, that font of power beyond human understanding, pure and untainted by Orochimaru's chakra the way she'd always known it.
At the edges of the cool light of the lantern, vague shapes come into view from the shadows. There are snakes—some far longer than she is tall—that slither in and out from its glow. There are people, or what pass for people, in long white robes of fabric that shimmers like scales at the right angle. She squints, barely able to make out their hands and faces for how ghastly pale their skin is, like they haven't seen the sun in an age and a half. But despite their growing number and how they've slowly surrounded she and Sasuke, Anko merely sucks in a breath and takes a few steps forward into the light.
"We're here to see Hakuja-sennin." She'd never been one for formalities, and if this is the greeting these creatures were willing to give, surely she owed them just as little. How many times had she burst into Lord Third's office and demanded one thing or another?
Whispers rise up from the shadows, some of the shapes turning towards another and leaning in to murmur their thoughts to each other. She catches a few titters, small but beautiful sounds like gently, easy music, sees the lifting of an arm to coyly cover a mouth with the long, dangling sleeve.
Here for the trials? one wonders aloud. Another, in a voice like silk, says, A meal for Her Majesty, more like. Yet another says through what sounds like a sneer, They stink of rotting leaves, while another still replies, Born of the valley of the dead and the wicked, no doubt.
Slowly Anko's eyes adjust to the strange light. One of the cave-dwellers, dressed like a princess from a bygone era, is still laughing quietly into her sleeve as two others in similar clothes saunter towards Anko and Sasuke. As the rest of the crowd remains just out of full sight, these snakes disguised as women walk in a slow circle, their eyes sharp and inhuman, jewels set in gold dangling from their headdresses as their priceless robes swish and sway this way and that.
"You're requesting an audience with Mother?" the older one asks.
It strikes Anko that they are speaking in a language she can only just comprehend. She says, "That's right."
Laughter ripples again through the tunnels, the snakes and those in their human visages all stopped to watch. Their eyes catch in the lowlight, and Anko thinks that there are even hundreds more lurking where she cannot see.
The youngest of the three girls dressed like royalty, the one who still watches from a safe distance, is next to speak. "Mother's temper gets more and more disagreeable with age, unfortunately."
"Yes," says the middle girl, voice brimming with false sweetness. She holds out her hands as if she aims to cup Anko's chin in her curved fingers. "If you've come here to ask her for favors, you've—"
"Get your fucking hands off me." Anko bats away the outstretched arm of the strange princess, angling her body away from the other at her back. "I'm not here to beg your mother for power—I'm here to tell her to take it back."
A hush falls over the caverns, the whole of them going to silent that the incessant, rhythmic dripping of water from some corner is painfully audible for five seconds, ten. And then there is a different sort of current running through the creatures, a collective hiss that is not hostile yet not entirely welcoming, either. They are curious, perhaps; Anko will not let herself entertain the notion that they may even be impressed.
She has never been anything particularly impressive. Othered, to be sure, and that must be what they're all murmuring about in that language she can barely decipher. The girls in the luxurious clothes seem offended, their already-sharp gazes turning dagger-like to glare at Anko openly.
"Well," says the youngest with a scoff, "that is certainly unorthodox."
"Quite." The middle glances at the eldest, who lifts her head and juts her chin and spits,
"We'll take you to her, if only to watch as she personally swallows you whole."
"I'd like to see her try."
All of their gazes, even Anko's, fall upon Sasuke. He stands there proudly at her side, challenge written all over his face. Any other day she would've barked a laugh at that, the open brazenness of this kid—but she softens as she watches him. He's been through enough in twelve years to last a lifetime. It's not difficult to understand why he's ready to stare down anything else that comes his way.
She thinks, as the crowd parts and the three princesses lead them down the tunnel directly across from the lantern, that she's still well enough in her prime to take out a few of these snakes. Enough, maybe, to clear a path and haul ass far enough away to stand some chance at hiding until they grow bored of hunting them. Even her old master had spoken of being humbled before the Great White Snake; she's sure herself and a genin still recovering from intensive surgery stand no chance in an outright battle against such a being.
All she feels, though, is admiration for the kid's guts. Hadn't she been no better, at that age? Fighting and yelling and screaming against even the smallest provocation, real or imagined, getting herself into scraps she knew she couldn't win and—she winces at the thought—sleeping with men she had no business sleeping with. Shame, as piercing as it's always been, stabs through her heart once. Orochimaru's whore, indeed.
She thinks of Kakashi, keeping to himself and rarely causing such a stir, and the way he'd looked at her when he'd said, I beat someone half to death for that, once.
If he'd stuck up for her when he'd hardly even spoken a word to her, isn't it the least she can do for Sasuke? She hopes, for his sake, it will not come to blows with the Sage of the Ryuuchi Cave. It would not do for him to witness more bloodshed, and she knows even now that she would die for him if it's what it takes to keep him whole.
The tunnel—so dark that it is only by the boy's Sharingan eyes that she can navigate in any capacity—widens into a hall so grand it makes her head spin. High along the cavernous walls are lanterns of that same green glow, casting all sorts of dizzying shadows across the expanse of the room. At the back of it, resting her colossal, coiled body on a throne carved in intricate, spiraling patterns directly from the stone behind her, sits the Great White Snake.
Her head is crowned with a headdress much simpler than the three women who'd led them here, and around her mighty neck is a plain necklace that only just catches the light. She shifts on her seat, her body undulating slightly; Anko only then notices that the length of her is wrapped many times around the throne behind her, hanging from high up somewhere too dark for a human's eyes to see. The scales that catch the glow are so sharp they may as well be razors upon her back.
The Sage is altogether monumental, her presence a marvel to behold. She brings the end of her tail to her mouth, placing a long pipe inside to take a long inhale of whatever substance a sage prefers to indulge. Smoke billows out from her nostrils, filling the huge room and lingering there, the tunnel nearly devoid of any natural ventilation. It's a sickening smell, stinking of burnt plants and an overwhelming sweetness that makes Anko's lungs ache.
"Honored mother," says the youngest of the girls. "These humans have insulted us and you, in turn."
"We ask that you place your judgment upon them as you see fit," says the middle of them. "They were quite rude to us as their welcoming party."
The eldest princess further explains, "And as mere guests in your hall, they demanded an audience with you. Something about taking back what you've so graciously given!"
There is total silence as the smoke begins to settle down onto the stony ground, dissipating little by little. Quietly, Anko lets out a breath and feels a relief flood her body to be free of the worst of that terrible, sweet scent. And then a cackle, shrill and so loud it hurts her ears, fills the room. The Great White Snake's head has lifted in laughter, and when she brings it back down she says with a snarl,
"That's it? You three take the slightest act as the gravest offense. Are you so easily riled that you would reduce my legacy to be declared nothing but petty?" She lashes at them, much too quickly for something so large, the sound of her ferocious jaws snapping shut a staggering thing, felt in the bones as much as heard. Frightening and awe-inspiring, nothing less could've been expected of such a legendary being. "Out, all of you! The human wishes to speak with me, and so be it!"
In her heart, Anko feels a spark of admiration. Perhaps her own brash nature won't land her in trouble after all, if this is how the Great White Snake handles her business. The three women give short bows, straightening in a hurry to return back from the way they'd come. The Sage waits for some time, presumably, Anko figures, until they are out of eavesdropping distance. And then the snake finally shifts again to regard them with her massive eyes, her gaze slowly sweeping between Anko and Sasuke in a way that almost seems that she's deciding whether or not to have them for supper.
"Well?" she says, replacing the pipe into her mouth. "You've demanded an audience, and now you've received it. Speak, girl."
Anko summons all of the audacity she'd always shown to Sarutobi; there was little use now, anyway, of pretending to be someone she's not. A thanks or even her own brief bow would mean nothing, and so she doesn't even bother. "The kid and I, we have something of yours—"
"Yes," the Snake confirms easily, tilting her massive head. "It is a bastardization, to be sure, but I would never fail to recognize my own power even in shreds."
"I want it gone," Anko says, staring her in the face. "The both of us do."
The Great Sage seems to weigh this with severity. "Though my daughters are too easily offended, now truly you risk disrespecting me in no small manner, child. To receive my power is, under normal circumstances, no easy task. You and this boy have both skirted my usual trials to obtain it, and you would ask me to strip it from you as if it were meaningless?"
It is Sasuke who speaks next. "We didn't ask for it. It was forced upon us by a man called Orochimaru."
She hums, low and deep in the throat. "Ah, the scientist. Yes, yes, I might've guessed."
"He's reverse-engineered your shizen energy," Anko offers, nervous at the nonchalant tone evident in the Snake's words. "He's using it on unwilling children. Is this not an offense, in your eyes?"
"My power is bestowed upon those who have proven to endure it. If one earns it, then they have earned it."
She's spoken it as if they'd been discussing the weather, how if the sky clouds, then rain will fall. Anko's heart feels as though it's being emptied of all substance, leaving her cold and pained in the wake of it. And suddenly she's unsure why she'd ever thought any differently: the Great White Snake is the patron sage of the worst man she can think of. It is no doubt that he would be drawn towards a being as cold and calculating as he himself.
Even so, she cannot stop herself from asking, "Do you...you really don't care what he's used your power to do?"
A slow shiver racks its way down her frame, giving the impression of someone shrugging their too-big shoulders. "Dozens of men over thousands of years have been granted my power. The wicked, the just; it makes no difference. Each of them—dragons all, make no mistake—use it to bring harm in one way or another. It matters not to me, not after all this time."
Anko stills. She stares up at the Great Snake and regards her, really takes her in this time. Ancient as the world, dressed modestly despite the grandiose splendor that is her body, holed up deep beneath the earth. The amount of mortals she'd seen and spoken to in the last hundred years are likely able to be counted on one human hand. She thinks of the pale skin of her daughters and the other snakes that Anko had managed to glimpse as they stood around the light of that ghosting green lantern.
Not after all this time. She thinks that, once, the Great White Snake had cared. That once she'd wanted to do good and give away her power to those who would do good, but after being burned one too many times had convinced herself that it no longer mattered, that men would do as they were wont to do: to smother and strangle and cut and rape and murder. Why else, then, would she have established a trial, a barrier to the entry of her enormous power, if not for damage control?
Those cold eyes do not seem so inhuman anymore.
"Regardless," she's pressing on, "shizen energy, once bestowed, cannot be taken back. It is a part of nature, one that tangles with your chakra in a way that cannot be unraveled. And what's more..." She pushes her head forth and tilts her head again, swaths of deep orange cloth pooling on the ground from where it's pinned beneath her headdress. She gives an appraising hum, satisfied with something she's gleaned. "The seals suppressing these marks of yours are impeccably done. Fine work, something only achievable through a mix of both great skill and greater compassion." Here she scoffs, withdrawing her head to take another long drag from her pipe and says simply, "A rarity."
Anko bites at the inside of her cheek, her hands balling into fists painfully tight. The urge to curse and scream all sorts of obscenities is as tough to keep contained as it's ever been. It's beyond her, that something so ancient and powerful is somehow powerless to undo what had been done to her, powerless to make everything right again.
"Hakuja-sennin," Anko tries, her voice small. "I'd read in a scroll older than Fire Country itself...that those who touch the waters of the Ryuuchi Cave can be set free. Are you telling me that was a lie?"
Laughter escapes the snake again, that same horrible smoke filling the chamber. It at least is not a shrill cackle this time, instead far more subdued and not without sympathy.
"Well, that is one way to put it." She pulls the pipe from her mouth and opens wide her mouth, mighty jaw snapping open to reveal a single sharp fang at the center of her mouth's roof. Her voice comes uninhibited from the throat to say, "The waters of the Ryuuchi Cave is quite the poetic euphemism. It refers to my venom, child." She closes her mouth, eyeing the two of them once more. "To be set free is to become one of us. Each of the snakes watching you from the darkness, each of my three daughters, all once were human. Unlike your Orochimaru and those who came to me for power...those who reside in my halls came with failing health, unpaid debts, the promise of death for one reason or another."
Hope hits Anko like a bolt of lightning. "Joining your family," she breathes, "will fix things?"
"As much as immortality can fix," says the Snake. "It will rid you of your chakra—and the impure shizen energy that was forced upon you. But you cannot go back to live amongst humans; that is the price must be paid."
It's enough. It's all Anko needs to hear. A flurry of thoughts come through her mind, to live in these caves and to do the bidding of a Sage, to slither out on a warm day to bask in the sun. To never have to see again any of the men she regretted sharing a bed with, to never feel that too-big rage inside of her to catch someone calling her a whore of a traitor beneath their breath. To live life as a being of the earth, unconcerned with humanity and the things that keep her up every night and—
"We don't need any more borrowed power."
Sasuke's voice is the brightest thing Anko thinks she's ever heard. She's snapped her head to the side to look at him with wide eyes, can't stop herself from clarifying, "We?"
He only glances at her briefly before turning back to the Snake. "Thanks for your time, but if you don't have anything else to offer, then we're going home."
Above them the Great White Snake chuckles, but the sound is hollow and distant in Anko's ears. "An outspoken thing, isn't he? I may like this one."
Well, certainly Anko hadn't meant to make Sasuke think that they should both touch the waters. He still had a whole life a head of him; true that his path had been laid by forces outside of his control, Itachi and Orochimaru alike, but he still has the time and the energy to carve out his own, to set off in a different direction than the one made for him by evil men. In time, and with Kakashi's help, he would be just fine.
But for herself? A woman whose trauma had already seeped down into her bones, staining them forever? The influence of her old master and all that he'd done to her is like a brand across her forehead for how people in the village see her. The damage that'd been done to her is just that: already done. Her chance at recovery passed her by a lifetime ago. Has she anything left?
Sasuke's turned already, walking past her to the rounded tunnel mouth. She stands in silence and stares at one of the thousands upon thousands of stones on the floor of the chamber. At her sides, her hands are trembling and inside the cage of her ribs her heart stings like it's been bitten after all. Her knees have gone weak, her eyes welling with tears against her will. She'd finally worked up the nerve to come here all for him, and now he wants to leave? Had the long journey been all for nothing, just another terrible mistake to add to her litany?
But then, even here, hundreds of miles from the where he sits in his apartment—Kakashi's chakra is a steady warmth around her shoulders. Should she accept the Snake's most precious of gifts, his chakra, too, would break apart and leave her body forever.
"Anko."
Sasuke's said it so plainly, unafraid of the familiarity, but she knows that he can feel it too: that mix of great skill and greater compassion, tethering them to each other, tethering them to someone who has put each of them before himself. She catches his eyes, and his resolve fuels her own. It's all she's ever wanted, for someone to lead her in earnest.
He asks, "Aren't you coming?"
He'd stretched out his hand while she approached, and his fingers slide around hers as easily as if they were family. They say not another word to the Great White Snake, who watches their walk back into the darkness, the glow of Sasuke's Sharingan eyes guiding their every step.