Sasuke Had His Slacker Moments Too?

The Hokage's office window was half-open. The sun had nearly set, and only a little of the fading light outside filtered in.

Hiruzen Sarutobi sat behind his desk, holding his pipe. Wisps of smoke curled upward between his fingers.

A stack of documents awaiting approval sat on the desk. The one on top was an abnormal chakra fluctuation report submitted by the Barrier Team, dated the very day Orochimaru had infiltrated the village.

Anko stood before the desk with her hands at her sides. She had just finished giving a brief account of everything she had seen at the training grounds.

She didn't mention that the Cursed Seal on her own neck had also been treated. She only said that Sasuke had a summoning beast with some kind of healing ability, which could effectively ease the erosion caused by the Cursed Seal Orochimaru had left behind.

Hiruzen didn't speak right away.

He put the pipe back in his mouth and drew deeply. The tobacco smoldered with a faint crackle in the bowl.

Smoke drifted slowly from his nostrils, hiding his expression.

"I'll consider sending someone to investigate the principle behind this ability." Hiruzen took the pipe from his mouth and tapped it twice against the edge of the ashtray, knocking off the ash that had built up over the afternoon.

"But for now, protecting Sasuke has to remain our priority."

Anko furrowed her brows. "Lord Hokage, should we have Anbu step up their surveillance? If Orochimaru managed to infiltrate once, he can do it again. Right now, Sasuke only has himself and those few summoning beasts around him."

Hiruzen shook his head.

He set his pipe down on the desk, folded his hands beneath his chin, and gazed through the window toward Kage Rock in the distance.

"That child Sasuke is too sensitive to hostility." Hiruzen's voice lowered.

"If we send more people, he'll sense them immediately. Then he'll think the village sees him as a dangerous object to be watched over, rather than one of Konoha's own."

Hiruzen turned back to Anko, his gaze settling on her again.

"Our strategy should be to give him space. Let him slowly come to see Konoha as home, not a cage he has to stay in. If we pressure him too much, we'll only push him away ourselves."

Anko snorted.

She shoved her hands into her coat pockets, her lips pressed into a thin line.

"Before he sees Konoha as home, Orochimaru might eat him first."

Hiruzen tapped his pipe against the desk twice more.

He said nothing.

The sun sank a little farther, and the office grew a shade darker.

A crow flew past outside, its shadow darting across the floor.

Anko waited by the desk for a while. Once she was sure Hiruzen had no further orders, she turned and walked toward the door.

Her hand had just closed around the doorknob.

"Anko."

Anko stopped and glanced over her shoulder.

"You seem a lot more relaxed than usual today." Hiruzen put his pipe back in his mouth, the corner of his lips lifting slightly.

"Did you eat too much dango, or is it something else?"

Anko pushed the door open and walked out without looking back.

Her footsteps echoed down the hall, growing fainter as she went.

Hiruzen leaned back in his chair and smoked the last of the tobacco in his pipe.

Anko pushed open the main doors of the Hokage Building and lowered her head to touch her neck.

The warmth left by Round Deer's blue light had long since faded, but with that pressure around her neck gone, she did feel much lighter.

She started down the steps.

As the sole of her shoe touched the bottom step, her gaze swept over the figure standing beside the stone pillar to the right of the entrance.

Sasuke leaned against the pillar, holding a paper bag.

The evening breeze lifted the hair from his forehead, revealing the expressionless eyes beneath.

Anko stopped.

"What are you doing here?" Anko raised the paper bag and peeked inside.

More than a dozen skewers of Three-Color Dango were packed together, their syrup not yet fully set.

"I saw someone selling Three-Color Dango, so I bought some for Naruto. Maybe he'll eat fewer instant noodles." Sasuke shoved the paper bag into Anko's hands.

"I figured I'd bring you some while I was at it."

"I was going to have Escaping Rabbit deliver them to you." Sasuke put his hands back in his pockets and turned to leave. "I was worried it would steal some on the way."

"Stop."

Sasuke halted.

Anko stepped in front of him, cradling the bag in one arm as she pulled out a skewer with the other and took a bite.

She chewed a couple of times, pulled the skewer from her mouth, and pointed it at Sasuke's nose.

"You bought dango for Naruto so he'd eat less junk food?" Anko repeated his answer, a mischievous curve tugging at her lips.

"Did you forget you just told me you were only passing by?"

"I was passing by."

"From your house to the Dango Shop and then to the Hokage Building? You call that passing by?" Anko put the skewer back in her mouth.

"That's obviously a special trip. Come on, why'd you think to bring your teacher something like this?"

Sasuke looked at her face, which had drawn close to his, and stayed silent for a moment.

"Black said your fingers were shaking when you left the training grounds."

Anko froze with the skewer between her teeth. She pulled it from her mouth and looked down at her right hand.

Her fingers weren't shaking now. They held the skewer, still threaded with half a dango, perfectly steady.

But at Sasuke's words, the memory of that uncontrollable trembling rose again from deep inside her.

Anko leaned against the stone pillar, her shoulders slumping.

She held the bag against her chest and spun the skewer around between two fingers.

"Orochimaru was my teacher."

Her voice suddenly grew quiet.

"It was a long time ago. I was still at the Ninja Academy. He took an interest in me, made me his student, taught me ninjutsu, and took me out for dango."

"He was the one who first took me to this shop for Three-Color Dango."

Anko raised her head and looked toward the Dango Shop in the distance. The smile she managed was barely a smile at all.

"Later, he planted the Cursed Seal on my neck, left me behind, and defected on his own. Before he left, he even erased some of my memories."

She tapped a finger against her temple.

"I remember the ninjutsu he taught me. I remember that dango tasted good. I remember what he looked like when he smiled. But there are some things I just can't remember, no matter how hard I try."

"Like why he did all those things to Konoha, why he chose me as his student, or what he said when he left me behind."

Anko stuffed the dango into her mouth and bit down until the skewer creaked.

"That's all there is to it. A student her teacher threw away like trash, now a Special Jonin of Konoha."

Sasuke seemed to understand. He leaned against the other side of the pillar, hands in his pockets, and didn't rush to speak.

"So what is Teacher Mitarashi struggling with now?" Anko had expected cold, ruthless Sasuke to ask something accusatory. Instead, he asked her that.

Anko slowed down as she chewed.

"Struggling with what?" she repeated indistinctly.

"You just said he left you behind, erased your memories, and threw you away." Sasuke turned his head to look at her.

"You've been saying those things to yourself for years, haven't you?"

Anko didn't answer, but her fingers tightened around the skewer.

"If you really thought you were trash he'd thrown away, you wouldn't have come to ask me about Orochimaru."

"You wouldn't have laughed so loudly when you saw the Cursed Seal on Black Dog's neck at the training grounds."

"You're struggling because you don't hate him. It's because you think he made the choice for you."

Anko took the empty skewer from her mouth.

"You feel like you were abandoned for no reason. You were his student, but you never even got the chance to decide for yourself whether to go with him." Sasuke watched her. "Right?"

Anko rolled the empty skewer between her fingers.

"You really aren't cute at all when you talk, kid."

She flicked the skewer toward the trash can. It struck the rim, bounced, and fell inside.

"Right." Anko leaned against the pillar and crossed her arms. "I want to find him. Nothing more than that. I just want to ask him a few questions face-to-face. Why he chose me, why he left me, what his reason was for leaving back then."

She tilted her head back and gazed at the orange-red sky as it gradually darkened.

"But I'm a Konoha ninja. I can't betray Konoha to go ask an S-Rank Missing-nin such stupid questions. So all I can do is stand here, curse him out a little, and carry on as a Special Jonin."

"Then do you want to become a Missing-nin?" Sasuke's voice suddenly cut in.

Anko whipped around, her gaze stabbing into Sasuke like a knife.

"I don't—"

"Do you want to find Orochimaru?" Sasuke interrupted her.

"Of course I don't want to become a Missing-nin!" Anko's voice rose a notch. The hem of her coat swung as she turned, and the paper bag shifted in the crook of her arm.

"I just want to find Orochimaru and ask him—"

Anko froze.

Sasuke watched her, mouth open but no words coming out. His expression didn't change.

"Yeah. Teacher finally figured it out?"

Anko instinctively raised a hand to argue, but her fingers stopped in midair for half a second before slowly falling back down.

"Wasn't it your own will that made you leave Orochimaru?" Sasuke continued.

"Your identity now is Special Jonin of Konoha. You're standing here wearing Konoha's Forehead Protector, eating dango from a Konoha shop, with Konoha comrades by your side. Orochimaru didn't choose any of that for you. You did."

Sasuke met Anko's eyes.

"Is anyone stopping you from finding Orochimaru? Your legs are your own. If you really wanted to go, you could walk out of the village right now. Nobody's got you in chains."

"But you haven't gone. Because deep down, you don't want to go with him at all."

Anko fell silent. Her fingers clenched and loosened around the edge of the paper bag.

The streets were growing quieter. In the distance, the Ninja Academy bell rang, probably signaling the training grounds' caretaker to close up for the day.

"You're right," Anko finally said. Her voice was quieter than before, but it no longer trembled.

"Nobody's got me in chains. I chose Konoha myself."

The corners of her mouth curled as if she wanted to smile, but she held it back. What remained was an exceedingly complicated expression.

"It feels like something inside me has loosened. You're pretty good at counseling, kid."

"I'm not counseling you." Sasuke looked away from her face and toward the street, now darkening ahead.

"I just don't want the teacher who taught me to be an idiot."

Anko was at a loss for words. She shifted the paper bag to her left hand, ready to think of a retort, but Sasuke's next words made her swallow it.

"I used to think I'd lost everything." Sasuke spoke, his gaze falling on the shadow at his feet.

"My family, my teacher, and the everyday life I thought would never change. It was all gone."

Anko's breathing slowed. She let the teasing and joking fall from her face and listened quietly.

"Back then, I thought, since I had nothing left, I might as well just give up and waste away until I died."

Sasuke paused, as though recalling someone's face.

"Then someone told me he'd be lonely without me."

"I hadn't known that person for long. He was simple, didn't always think before he acted, and sometimes liked to say meaningless things."

Sasuke's tone didn't change. It remained so calm that it was almost devoid of emotion.

"But when he said those things, he meant them."

Anko held the paper bag and looked at Sasuke's profile, sharply defined beneath the streetlamp.

If a seven-year-old had said something like that, she would've thought he was putting on airs. But Sasuke was different. Every word he spoke had been forged in a darkness she couldn't imagine.

"So Sasuke-kun means..." Anko realized she had unconsciously added an honorific to Sasuke's name.

"Teacher Mitarashi should already understand, shouldn't she?" Sasuke said unhurriedly.

"No one can return to where they started, because that road collapsed a long time ago. But there are roads that start right at your feet, too."

"You've made it this far by following your own will. You have new bonds and new goals now. So there's no need to dwell on the road that brought you here."

Anko hugged the paper bag close and lowered her head until her forehead nearly touched its rim.

Her shoulders first tensed, then slowly, little by little, relaxed.

The tightness that had been locked at the center of her chest ever since Orochimaru left her behind finally eased completely.

There were no tears, no tearful scene. It was just as though something that had soaked into her for so long was slowly fading away.

Anko raised a hand to rub the bridge of her nose, forcing her messy emotions back behind her eyes.

"You little brat." Anko's voice was noticeably hoarse, but her tone had returned to the teasing one that was so unmistakably Anko's.

"You're a child. Don't say things like that. At the very least, don't talk to your teacher like that."

She walked over, her body moving before her words, and hooked an arm around Sasuke's neck.

Before Sasuke could react, Anko had already pulled him against her.

"Kids shouldn't always act like grown-ups and lecture their teachers! Don't you know anything about seniority? You're the idiot here, you little punk!"

As she spoke, she roughly ruffled Sasuke's hair with her other hand, messing it up until it stuck out like a duck's backside.

Anko let go of Sasuke and brushed down the hem of her coat.

Sasuke, his hair all tousled, expressionlessly straightened his collar. But his lips were pressed together more tightly than usual.

"I'm heading out. Thanks for the dango." Anko turned her back to Sasuke and strode toward the shopping district.

She held up a finger and waved it twice in the air.

"I don't have many missions lately, so I'll make sure to teach you a good lesson!"