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Name: Reality
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: Itachi/Anko
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst
Summary: While the rest of the Village had stood in a stupor, Anko had remembered the dark-eyed boy she’d dragged around Konoha, the person who hadn’t been suspicious of approaching her after Orochimaru, the soldier who would have done anything for his Village and the brother who would have done more. And she had known.

Anko stares at her reflection in the bar mirror and snorts. “So you’re twenty-one today, huh?” she asks the presence next to her, picking up her sake. “All grown up.”

The bottle is gently wrested from her hand, one finger at a time. “You’re drunk,” he says tonelessly.

“Not nearly enough, if you’re still here.” She makes a grabby gesture with her hand, smirking as he acquiesces. Even as she remembers him, he understands the need to forget.

“I brought dango,” he tells her, and Anko remembers hot summer days hauling a stoic pre-teen around Konoha’s sweet shops.

Definitely not drunk enough.

“You didn’t,” she scoffs, and she’s right but the fact that he would remember makes her feel stupidly happy. Or perhaps just stupid. Forgoing the sake dish the bartender had set down in front of her, she sculls straight from the bottle in a manner that would make Tsunade proud, enjoying the burn. “Want some?” she offers.

Dark eyes, beautiful, blink once back at her and she laughs. It’s a bitter bark, but she’s proud of herself for finding some form of humour in the situation. “Of course you don’t,” she mumbles around the bottle. “You’re a hero now, right?”

That’s not it, though. Other than the obvious reasons, she knows that he doesn’t want to forget.
Maybe she’s weak, then, but if it means forgetting Anko thinks that she can handle being weak. Just this once.

“How’s that going for you?” she asks, staring at her reflection again. Her face is washed white, eyes rimmed red and dull. A self-deprecating smirk toys about her lips as she notes her hair, lack-lustre and falling messily around her face. She lost the tie hours ago and doesn’t remember how.

“About as well as it ever did.” His voice is soft and gentle and mocks her without meaning to. “How’s my brother?”

Anko rolls her eyes, tipping the bottle back. “Sasuke, Sasuke, it’s always about Sasuke.” She peers into the bottleneck and blinks. None left, and she’s not sure how it happened. “You never change, do you?”

“Would you like me to?”

She snorts indelicately. Not that she was ever delicate, and not that he would care. “Bit late for that now. As for your brother, he’s as messed up as ever. Fantastic jounin, though.” The screwed up ones always are. “Better than you.”

It’s an out and out lie, because like most jounin, there are still things Sasuke won’t do for the Village. This man, on the other hand, has never had that problem. They have that in common, at least, although Anko is too wild, too undisciplined and too unskilled to ever be on his level.

The perfect soldier.

Asshole.

“Your clan’s going to die out, you know.” She says it, and it’s just another part of this one-sided conversation. She doesn’t expect an answer.

“This family has caused enough grief for Konoha. It is best if we simply fade into history.”

Anko chokes on another laugh, throwing the bottle at him. There’s a distinct crash as it hits the ground and shatters. “Why couldn’t you have had a little more of an ego?” she asks plaintively. “Things might have turned out a little more differently if you hadn’t waited until after you died to be a hero.”

She stares at her hands, and this time the memory is clear cut and bitter.

She had known. While the rest of the Village had stood in a stupor, Anko had remembered the dark-eyed boy she’d dragged around Konoha, the person who hadn’t been suspicious of approaching her after Orochimaru, the soldier who would have done anything for his Village and the brother who would have done more. And she had known.

“That would have defeated the purpose of murdering my family in the first place.” He never believed in pulling punches, especially not when it came to himself. Anko is pleased that she remembers that much. She feels his presence next to her and looks back at the mirror to be met with a humourless smirk and nothing else. She can lie to herself as much as she wants to, but the real world isn’t anywhere near so kind.

“I wish you’d leave me alone,” she whispers. “I don’t want to miss you anymore.”

Soft lips ghost across the back of her neck, and Anko wonders how she got to this point. He was twelve years old when he left, and she was just some half-grown, half-broken idiot who clung to anything resembling affection.

It’s his twenty-first birthday today, but some things never change.

“I’m not the one who won’t let go.”

Too-wise words coming from a too-dead apparition. He sounds so real that for a moment she’s taken in, turning on the stool to look him full in the face.

“Itachi—”

And he’s gone. Turns out that not even Anko’s delusions can hold up against reality for too long.

The sound of a bottle being slammed down on the bench makes her jump for a kunai, whipping it round and letting it fly. The bartender deflects it easily with the look of one long suffering, and Anko has to be shitfaced if her aim is that bad.

She stares uncomprehendingly as he nods at the bottle of sake on the bench. “On the house,” the man clarifies.

The blank stare twists back into a sneer that feels tight an uncomfortable on her face. “I don’t need your pity,” she spits.

“No,” he replies easily, drying a glass with an old rag. “But you do need my booze. The sooner you’re unconscious, the sooner I can breathe easy about my bar not being destroyed.”

Anko peers at him for a moment, and then warily takes the sake. He has an ulterior motive, and she’s far more comfortable with that thought than any of the others sifting through her clouded mind.

Grasping the bottle, she sets grimly to the task of drinking herself into oblivion. If she’s lucky, maybe she’ll forget this time.

Anko’s been a lot of things in her life, but lucky hasn’t ever been one of them.