Anko had done a lot of things in her life. She'd seen her family slip apart, and she'd seen the village slip apart. All her life, Anko had watched people fall apart, because that's what ninja did. Ninja couldn't deal with things the way civilians did. Ninja acted first, thought later. They were taken, as children, and trained and tried and tested, until finally, they snapped, like a wire twisted too tight.

Anko had seen a lot of things fall apart.

She'd seen Iruka fall apart.

Anko and Iruka had gone to school together, for a while. Sometimes, there would be joint classes, with the older kids teaching the younger kids, and sometimes Anko would pick Iruka, and she'd help him with jutsu and weapons and theory. Iruka was a smart kid, was always a smart kid. He wasn't the strongest, or fastest, and when he was little, he didn't have much chakra, but he was smart, and he didn't pester her with inane questions, like the other younger kids did. Then, Anko graduated from Academy, and Iruka still had classes, and Anko didn't worry about it too much.

She didn't see him for months, because she had Sensei, and Sensei was strict, if brilliant. He didn't like her wasting her time with frivolous things, and she didn't like to disappoint him, and so Anko kinda forgot about things, like Mama and Daddy and Aya and Iruka. And months became years, and then there was the kyuubi attack, and Daddy died, and Mama was in the hospital, and Aya was no where to be found. And when Anko was searched through the streets, through the puddles of vomit and piss and blood, through the garbage that was piling up and up and up, all the way to the sky, because people didn't care anymore, she saw Iruka. She didn't remember his name, called him "hey kid," and he didn't look at her face, because he was too busy picking at fresh scabs on his knees and hands and elbows.

"Hey, kid," she said, and he became Kid to her. "Where's your parents?" And if she sounded condescending, she didn't mean to, but Aya was still missing, and the doctors said Mama could go at any moment, and all Mama wanted was to know that Aya was safe, because Aya was Aya, such a precious, important baby, and Aya-

"Dead." And the heel of Kid's left hand was oozing blood, sluggish down his thin wrist. "Yours?"

"Dead." 'Cause Daddy was gone, and Mama was good as, and where was Aya?

And that was that. Kid nodded silently, broken fingernails pulling at ragged scabs on his legs, and Anko left, because she had to find Aya.

She never did.

Mama survived, somehow, and there was still Sensei, but sometimes, when Anko was wandering home from the mission room, or the training grounds, or the gates, she'd see Kid, slinking through the streets. Kid was stupid now, in a way he'd never been. She heard about it, from all the gossip in the streets and yards and stores. Iruka ('cause that was what they called Kid) was a troublemaker, Iruka was a menace. Iruka didn't go to class, and when he did, he slept, or threw paper shuriken, or climbed to the roof and dangled from the edge. Iruka, the wives and mothers would say, isn't going to live very long.

Anko assumed, as she slammed her locker shut, that she'd outlast Iruka-Kid. She assumed that she'd outlast everyone, really, because she was better than them. She had to be, because Mama needed her, and Sensei loved her. Right?

A few months later, Sensei told Anko things, things that thrilled and terrified her, made her sick with delight and wonder and disgust. He told her fantastic stories of never growing old, never growing up, and it sounded like a fairy tale.

"Do you want to live forever?" he asked, and oh god, how she did! She didn't want to die, like Daddy, or disappear, like Aya. And Mama needed her, and the village needed her, and Sensei trusted her, he said so, and so she said yes, yes, oh god, yes.

The curse-seal hurt. There wasn't a word to say how it hurt. Nothing worked, nothing fit. It hurt, all through her body, like liquid metal lancing up her bones and through her blood, burning and twisting and pulling her inside out, but it felt good, too. It felt like Mama's pride and Daddy's assurance and Aya's love, because now Anko was strong, stronger than anyone else. Sensei said so.

A few 'experiments' later she slunk into Hokage's office, and she hid beneath his desk while he went to kill Sensei. Hokage said it was best, that she'd done good, but she didn't believe him. She loved Sensei, and Sensei had said he was proud of her, because she didn't cry. But it hurt, everywhere, inside and outside, and she was scared.

Time twisted her head after that. She wasn't quite sure what happened, not anymore. There was the chuunin exam, and they put her on a team with two other boys, both older than her. She never remembered their names, but that didn't matter, because one boy died during the last trial, and the other boy died a few months later on a mission, but maybe the mission was years later, and maybe it was before the exam. Mama went to bed one night, and the next morning, or maybe it was the next week, she didn't wake up. Anko forgot, or maybe she was on a mission, because Hokage found her, in the locker room, and he told her Mama was gone. Anko kicked at the bench, because she didn't know what to make for dinner, and what would Mama want? But Mama wasn't there anymore, and where was Aya?

One day, or night, someone told her happy birthday, and she sat down on the ground, and cried, because she hadn't known it was her birthday. The someone touched her arm, and another someone ruffled her hair, and they said happy birthday, happy birthday, aren't you happy?

She was sixteen.

Anko woke up that night, and she wondered where four years of her life had gone. People were born, and people were older, and people were dead, and she'd missed it all, somewhere in the middle of a waking dream, like a fairy tale of a princess who slept for years.

"Remember when-" people would ask, and Anko could never remember much more than faded shapes in blurry motion. Daddy and Mama and Aya, Sensei and Hokage and Kid. They had all slipped away, and when she finally woke up, not with a kiss but a song, they were all gone. All gone, all gone.

When Anko was seventeen, she saw Iruka-Kid again. She was helping with the chuunin exam, and when Iruka wandered in, he looked the same-different. He picked at his scabs before the third trial, and he didn't look at her eyes. Anko wondered how fucked up Iruka was, how fractured he was, behind eyes that never looked anyone in the face.

He killed a boy during the exam, because the children were stubborn, to sure of their own immortality. Iruka shoved his hands, stained with blood beneath the fingernails, into his pockets, and left the arena, not looking at anyone. Anko heard the elders arguing about who would make chuunin, and she heard them fight over whether Iruka was a weakness, a vulnerability of instability. Hokage said yes, and the old man said no, and Anko cried when the old woman said yes, because now Iruka was just like her, and Anko didn't want to hate him like she hated herself.

Sometimes, she wished she'd never been born.

Anko inserted herself into Iruka's life in little ways, slow ways. She walked with him through the hallways at the mission office, and she traded lockers until hers was next to his. Sometimes, she bribed her way until they were sharing a mission. Once in a while, they'd eat together at a cheap restaurant, and they'd leave, pockets lighter, and more than a little drunk, some time after midnight. One night they stumbled down the street toward the jounin apartments where Anko lived, and they stopped in the middle of the street, for a reason Anko could never explain. There was a streetlight towering over them, casting yellow light over their faces, and Iruka kissed Anko, and Anko ran away, because she was throwing herself into something too big for her.

A half a year after the chuunin exams, Iruka became an academy teacher. He told Anko over a pile of dirty clothes he was pulling from his locker. He was a teacher now, didn't have to go on missions anymore. He'd miss her, he said, but he might see her around, 'cause he'd probably take some shifts on the mission desk. And wasn't this good? he asked, because now he could help kids. Now, he was going to fix kids.

He didn't look at her when he left, didn't look at her eyes. She decided, as she stared into her locker, that she was going to fix Iruka.

Anko and Iruka got married one day, in the early afternoon. Iruka wanted a family, and Anko wanted Iruka, and wasn't that enough? They didn't love each other, but they kinda liked each other, and Iruka would kiss her, and she would kiss him back. It was like playing house, kids playing to be adults. Iruka paid the bills, and Anko bought the food, and they fucked in a bed that felt too big. Anko was playing a game that she was stuck in, and sometimes, when Iruka was shaving and she was sitting on the counter, watching him, she wondered if she would break him more than he'd already been broken.

When she was nineteen, she skipped a period. Then another. And another. And she told Iruka, and Iruka kissed her, gentle and cool, and said that he loved her. Anko didn't go on missions anymore, and Iruka took extra shifts in the mission room, but he still found money to buy her strawberries and presents, silly, pretty things that made Anko laugh and Iruka smile. They were happy, and it was perfect, and Anko never wanted things to change, because now, maybe she'd fixed Iruka. He laughed, and he touched her stomach, where it was curving out, and sometimes, he'd look at her eyes. It was perfect.

One morning, after Iruka had left for work, Anko woke up, curled in a tight ball. She hurt, her stomach hurt, cramps that made her clench her eyes shut and grind her teeth together. She could smell blood, feel it slick between her legs, and her chakra was leaking out, just like her blood and the baby-

She screamed and a neighbor heard her. Or maybe Iruka came home from work. Or maybe Kurenai stopped by for lunch, and found her. Or maybe she never made it to the hospital, and it was all a dream of a sleeping princess, who still hadn't woken up. But maybe she was at the hospital, and she could hear Iruka out in the hall, saying Anko, Anko, not the baby. Anko first, she's more important. And Anko wanted to scream at him, because didn't he understand? The baby was more important, because the baby was theirs. The baby was his. The baby was Iruka, because Iruka wanted a family, had always wanted a family, and Anko just wanted Iruka.

Anko went home a few days later, and her stomach was flat, just like it'd been before. Iruka didn't touch her much anymore. He kissed her goodnight, kissed her good morning, and sometimes, when Anko was sitting at the table, reading the paper, he'd touch her hair. He never looked at her face. Anko had lost the game, somehow, and Iruka was still broken, still fractured in his head, and Anko wondered, as she opened her locker, getting ready for her first mission in half a year, if she'd made him worse.

A few years later, everything went wrong, all at once. Iruka didn't come home anymore, and Anko didn't go to the mission room anymore. They passed each other on the streets sometimes, but they didn't say hello, and didn't say goodbye. Iruka was fucking someone, was always fucking someone, and Anko slept alone in a bed that was too big for her, because all she wanted was Iruka. The kyuubi-brat was graduating, and there were the chuunin exams, and Anko was standing next to Iruka, for the first time in months, and he was asking her for a favor, to moderate some students of his, and she couldn't tell him no, because she could never tell him no.

"Whatever you want," she said, and he kissed her goodbye, and she slept in their bed alone that night, because Iruka was fucking his way across Konoha, with men and women who didn't care he didn't look them in the eyes.

Sensei came back to Konoha, came and went, and he called someone else perfect, precious, strong. There was a curse-seal on a boy far prettier than she'd ever been, and it hurt, more than she would have ever thought. Sensei killed Hokage, and the village was full of the dead and dying, and nothing was going right. And through it all, Kakashi was standing too close to Iruka.

"You okay?" Iruka asked, and he was looking over her shoulder. Anko shrugged, because there was nothing she could say, nothing that would fix everything.

"Fine." Anko tilted her face up, and Iruka kissed her cheek, and it was over, just like that. Simple, easy, slow. Iruka would touch Kakashi, bump shoulders with the man, and he didn't look anyone in the face, but no one noticed except Anko. Iruka didn't smile much, but no one noticed, and no one asked why Iruka didn't laugh. Anko watched Iruka, watched him as he taught classes and filed reports and left for missions, and at night, when she was sleeping in their bed, she'd dream about him, about people who'd never lived. Sometimes, she felt like she lived in her dreams.

Years past, in hazy seasons that melted together, sliding along in a hurried meander. People were born, and people were older, and people were dead. Sometimes Anko would stare into her locker, at faded pictures of her and Iruka, of Daddy and Mama and Aya, and she'd wonder where the years had gone.

It was late fall when the letter came. Iruka had been gone a mission for a week and a half, four days longer than expected. Anko was sitting at the table, reading the paper, when there was a knock at the door, and the messenger gave her the letter, and he looked painfully earnest in his sympathy. The words were in a clean typeset, sharp black on crisp white, and the words leapt out at her, swam in her eyes.

We regret to inform you of the death of your husband, Umino Iruka. He was killed in action October 19...

She didn't finish reading the letter. She dropped it on the floor as she wandered back to the bedroom, barefeet on the sun-warmed floorboards. She crawled into bed, pulling a blanket over her head, and laid there, in the center of the too-large bed. She'd sleep, forever and ever and ever, just like Mama. Go to sleep, never wake up. Live in her dreams, because in her dreams, Iruka looked her in the eye, kissed her and touched her round stomach, and told her he loved her. In her dreams, everything was perfect. Sensei was proud of her, and Daddy and Mama and Aya were all there, smiling and laughing and telling her happy birthday, happy birthday, aren't you happy? And she was happy, because she had everything she'd ever wanted.

Because really, all she'd ever wanted was Iruka.

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