Written for Christmas, for EloquenceLost.

The first time Ibiki met Mitarashi Anko, the girl was just that, a girl. She was fourteen, and angry at the world. Of course, Ibiki was only seventeen, but he didn't feel quite as angry as Anko seemed to feel. Instead, Ibiki was tired with the world. There was an interrogation, jounin yelling and screaming about traitors, and Anko was in the center of it, snarling about Konoha and family and fuck them all, they didn't understand.

Ibiki thought that he did.

The second time Ibiki met Anko, Anko was lying in a hospital bed, staring out the window. There was an inquiry into a mission gone wrong, and something about someone being a traitor, still. Anko told Ibiki and the other jounin to fuck themselves, because she had a home, and she just wanted to go back home, and none of them understood.

Ibiki still thought he did.

The third and fourth and fifth, all the way up to the thirty-second time Ibiki met Anko, Anko was laughing and snarling and biting and scratching and killing to survive. She was bitter, angry, and too happy for her own good. She cried as she laughed, screamed as she sang, did things no one understood. Except for Ibiki.

Because Ibiki? He understood.

The thirty-second time, though? The thirty-second time there was a traitor, and Anko was wiping her sword on her sleeve, blood smearing across the fabric. A blade sheathed, and some footsteps forward, then Ibiki felt Anko move his head, her fingers soft on his chin.

"Had to," she said, and she didn't sound so angry anymore. She sounded tired, bone-weary. "I need to go home."

"I understand," Ibiki said in a whisper of a sigh, and he did.

He understood.

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