[Log] Hidden Leaves [Anko, Kurenai]
Who: Anko & Kurenai
What: SECRETS ARE REVEALED :O
When: A couple days after Kurenai gets back from China
Warnings/Notes: Uhhh I don't think there's any? MAYBE for Anko's language? IDEFK.
So, on the one hand, Anko was fairly sure she was being stupid. She was most likely just grasping at straws that were kind of see-through to begin with and she had long since braced herself for how it was going to feel to get those straws yanked out of her fingers and tossed a countertop somewhere for someone else’s kids to use with their chocolate milk or whatever. She blamed Naruto, for being so stupidly selfless with his relations and offering them up to her, free of charge or expectation and making her feel happier than she was willing to admit out loud and simultaneously filled with a muted sort of longing for the real thing. She blamed Kakashi, too, for being all idyllic and reliable-adult-male-authority-figure-y and Obito for having an inaccurate misnomer for a nickname and…uh, The Man. Why not. She was (apparently) just filled to brimming with defensiveness about the subject of genetics today and if they had to have devil horns drawn over their mental pictures, so fucking what.
Of course, on the other hand…well, on the other hand, she had a thin stack of scuffed photos shoved in her back pocket that, hours worth of careful consideration later, she found rather convincing.
Well. Sort of convincing.
Convincing-ish.
The point, she reminded herself, was nothing ventured, nothing gained and fortune favors the bold and as ye sow so shall ye knock on the door already, Mitarashi. Mentally shaking herself like a dog spattering water, she cracked her neck loudly, lithely steeling herself and working back into her standard “just don’t care” mold. No big deal.
She wrapped her callused knuckles against Kurenai’s door and assumed a careful slouch. Let it not be said Teach never taught her nothin’.
Kurenai wasn't entirely sure why she'd come back from China alone. She'd had ample opportunity to complete her little quest, but at the last minute she'd balked, panicking, and decided that maybe she'd wait just a little longer. But the trip hadn't been entirely wasted; she'd spent many happy hours teaching underprivileged children in orphanages dotted around the province, and had a whole swag of photographs of herself surrounded by cheerful, if slightly dirty, little faces. Perhaps that'd be enough to tide her through for another stretch; perhaps it would give her the impetus and strength to try again.
Which brings us to the present; sitting on the floor of her living room, surrounded by photo albums, Kurenai very carefully pasted her newest additions into the latest one and labelled them. Soo Yin Orphanage, Guangxi, Spring Break 1988. The knock on her door was startling; Akamaru leapt up from his watchful place nearby and beat her to the entry hall, tail wagging ecstatically. Kurenai unlocked and peered through the spyhole. Anko...? The door was opened curiously, completely unaware of certain events which were shortly to take place and the upheaval they would cause.
The dog rushed forward to greet their visitor, and Kurenai's somewhat puzzled frown smoothed into a smile of welcome. "Come in, dear. What brings you here?" She looked a little...well. Not jumpy, but perhaps something along a similar vein. Uncertain. Anko hid it well, but it flickered around the edges and whispered through the air around her form. Kurenai's curiousity inevitably transmuted to worry. "Is everything all right?"
Even though she’d set her teeth for it, the door suddenly opening like that made her jump, just a little. A sort of knee-jerk, fingers-clenched sort of twitch that she couldn’t quite stifle in time. The concern with being so unnaturally unbalanced and unsure and very possibly unstable left her too distracted to being able to immediately process the older woman’s seemingly rapid-fire questions, and she spent a moment just blinking her dark eyes owlishly.
“Uh.” Great start. “Oh. Yeah. Everything’s cool. Totally. Chill. All the world’s a Klondike bar.” To give her anxious fingers something to do, she reached up and tugged roughly on the elastic that pulled her hair up into a slightly neater version of her usual pony tail. The fact that it showed off her features better was merely coincidental, of course, she lied to herself shamelessly. She just wanted it off her neck.
“So, I was just in the neighborhood, and I…” You what, Mitarashi, you pathetic freak? “Wanted to check on the furball,” she finished lamely, reaching down to scratch at Akamaru’s shaggy ears that had just bounded into wag-tailed view. “He got into some marshmallows over the break, just wanted to make sure he was as tough as he was acting.” Glancing inside covertly she gave another mini-jump at the sight of yet another of Kurenai’s seemingly endless collection of pictures spread across the floor. “Oh hey, photo albums!”
Nice, Anko, real sly.
One perfectly-waxed eyebrow arched ironically. Kurenai retracted her previous statement: definitely jumpy. "Did he?" she asked lightly, turning both to wag a reproving finger at Akamaru and to allow Anko to get through the doorway. "Tsk. Kiba didn't tell me that - or does he not know?" Smiling faintly, she kicked off one of her well-worn slippers, removing a stray fragment of dried modelling clay from the sole of her foot. She strolled through into the kitchen, assuming Anko would follow and/or make herself at home; Kurenai liked to think of her house as a sort of student haven these days. Most of her favourites knew where the spare key was hidden and were free to let themselves in and out any time they needed somewhere to escape to. Akamaru faithfully guarded the 'off-limits' areas, so she had no qualms about this arrangement whatsoever.
"Would you like a drink, dear?" The fridge door popped open and Kurenai brought out a freshly-opened bottle of lemonade, leaning back slightly to glance questioningly in Anko's direction as she opened the glasses cupboard. "I'm in the middle of arranging all the pictures I took over break; there's a lot more than I'd originally thought..." she trailed off ruefully. Perhaps ten full films was a tad excessive for a week's stay, but no doubt she'd treasure them all. Kurenai reflected wryly to herself that she always did.
Anko let out a silent sigh of relief when Kurenai seemed to buy her story, or at least, accepted it as a justifiable reason for stopping unannounced to visit a teacher whose classes she didn’t actually take. She rubbed Akamaru gratefully for not blowing her cover. Although, she supposed, he might just be appreciative that she hadn’t spilled to his lady about how he’d actually eaten the plastic wrapping and then the entirety of the bag of marshmallows. Kiba assured her that Akamaru had the stomach of a hyena and as he’d spent the rest of the evening begging for more scraps, she didn’t see any reason not to keep the incident between them.
She slunk inside warily as Kurenai disappeared inside, apparently assuming that she would follow. Despite the fact that she and Temari had spent several lazy days sprawled all around its interior, it felt like enemy soil now, with a battlefield’s worth of mines spread out just under the surface. One wrong step and it would blow up in her face.
“Uh,” she repeated, looking up from the spread of pictures, and thinking about how yeah, she’d really like a drink right about now, but lemonade wasn’t gonna cut it, “I’m good, actually. Thanks.” She fidgeted with the tangle of tied bracelets on her left wrist while the huge dog rubbed against her legs enthusiastically. That fucking photo album was staring at her.
“Yeah, you’ve got, like, an archive,” she replied, “Tem and I may have investigated while we were admiring your art film collection.” She tossed a devious smirk and a cocked eyebrow Kurenai’s way before going over to examine the photos displayed on the largest wall. (Not the ones turned face down, though. Not those.) “This is a nice one,” she said in a would-be casual voice. “Of you and your folks?”
Kurenai had long since grown accustomed to ignoring those photos that showed themselves only to the wall, unless she had reason or lament to turn them over. She almost forgot their presence - almost. She wandered to Anko's side, glass of lemonade in hand, and smiled. "Oh gosh, you didn't find any of the embarassing ones, did you?" The ones of her posing ridiculously as a child, or - worst!! - the ones when she was in her own personal 'awkward phase', with the wild hair, skinned knees and braces. She kept them purely for posterity's sake, and to remind herself that, on occasion, she was silly and deserved to be laughed at. Perspective, and all that bullshit.
Anko's tone was still worrying her, although Kurenai had to admit that she didn't really know Sasuke's 'wild girl' friend all that well. Sometimes they got along, and sometimes they butted heads, but she didn't really know Anko. Still, she was very carefully trying not to radiate signals of unease, and that was putting Kurenai on edge herself. She cocked her head, her free and paint-stained hand combing through her undone 'do. "Mmhmm. Mother Dearest," who REALLY needed to stop trying to set her up on blind dates, thankyouverymuch, especially since the last attempt had somehow ended in her shaggi-- no, no, we weren't ever going to think about that again, now, were we?! "And Dad. And myself, of course," she added as an afterthought, wrinkling her nose up at the pre-teen version of herself sitting resignedly between her parents. She'd been an active child, so there were a grand total of about three of these 'family portait' photos for the first fifteen years of her life.
In the ones before this one, she was usually dashing about with a naughty grin and possibly no clothes on. More embarassing photos...Temari and Anko hadn't found those, had they?!
Anko’s smirk deepened, even as her shoulders tensed exponentially with each step the older woman took towards her. “Not telling,” she chirped impishly.
They looked happy on film, Kurenai and her parents, and just a little blurred around their edges, like they’d been paused mid-action and were fighting the pull of gravity. Her large eyes scrutinized Kurenai’s young face with particular attention, drinking in the straight nose, full lips pursed into an irritated pout, dark eyes, the hint of a cleft in the chin, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth unconsciously.
Her gaze strayed almost unwilling to the father figure archetype on the tiny version of Kurenai’s side. She saw the same features mirrored there, the same busy movement. She bit down harder on her lip. Her eyes moved guiltily to the last face in the frame, wanting to apologize to Mother Dearest for her own need to know, the same itch that had led her through hundreds of books a kid and probably even more illegal substances as teenager, and had finally brought her to this spot, staring at a family portrait like she was starved for the sight.
“You an only child?” she asked, glancing over sideways and trying to work out the knots forming all across her shoulders.
The older woman nodded, giving Anko a sidelong look of her own. It was so very, very tempting to reach over and stop her from gnawing on her lip like that; much harder and she'd be drawing blood. Instead she just nodded again, wishing that Anko would spit out whatever it was that was bothering her. Kurenai could completely understand that perhaps it was unrelated to her being here, that perhaps she didn't want to talk about it, but it was clearly bothering and all those repressed, withering maternal instincts clamoured for Kurenai to fix it, to take the poor thing in her arms and cuddle it all better.
Maybe that was because Anko reminded her of herself at times - or, more precisely, made Kurenai think about the way she could have been had she not found her ultimate direction in life at such an early stage. Headstrong, willful, seemingly uncaring of anything the world thought about her because damnit, she was damned well going to do whatever the hell she wanted, and do it exceptionally.
It all made her head hurt, really. Kurenai sighed briefly, absently rubbing a foot against her leg in response to a sudden inexplicable itch. "Yourself?" Certainly Anko had never mentioned any siblings, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. After all, witness how much of her own past Kurenai ignored/put away/hid from on a daily basis.
The corner of Anko’s mouth twitched up in what was possibly a half-formed smile of irony or possible some sort of facial spasm at her inability to catch a break today. “Yep,” she hummed, “Just me and my mom. Least as far as I know, anyway.” The ‘Guess Who Provided The Other Half Of My DNA Game’ had been a favorite of hers during her younger years. Now it was just something that she occasionally thought about when asked whether she had a history of heart disease in her family, or something else that involved uncomfortable personal observation and/or cold tables. It made her itchy.
She saw her own face reflected back at her in the glass covering the picture, highlighting their faces but keeping her on the outside. That was probably for their own good. But still. Looking at the Yuuhis, with each parent forming a layer of protection around their daughter, she couldn’t help but wonder what it was like to be Kurenai. Two apparently loving and at least moderately well-adjusted parents, a settled life in one place, a job she apparently enjoyed. Stability, she supposed was what intrigued her so. When she was a kid, she hadn’t had any interest in it, mostly because was barely aware of its existence. One of the fish born in pollution situations. If you were born in the eye of a hurricane, you never learned to miss still water. But now that she’d spent nearly a year at Tsunade’s, stationary and cared-for…Well, she wasn’t sure that she liked it. But she thought that maybe she might want to.
“You look like your dad,” she didn’t so much muse as blurt out, followed by a slight wince and another tug at her pony tail. It was true.
Kurenai turned slightly, regarding her steadily. "All right, Anko, spit it out," she commanded, tone coloured with some hint of...not steel, no, it wasn't that harsh. Some slightly gentler alloy, perhaps. At any rate, it was tone she used on unruly students and most of the male population when they were trying to avoid answering such tricky questions as 'Where is your homework?' or 'Why is there something that looks remarkably like a thumbtack on my chair?' or even 'Why didn't you call me?' She was good at it. Possibly a trait garnered from her mother, which was a little depressing, actually.
(She really needed to stop being so hard on the woman. It wasn't Mom's fault she'd gotten plastered and molested a coworker, after all. Except in the most minor of ways.)
This was no time to be having flighty thoughts, however. Something was Up, and Kurenai intended to find out what it was. She crossed her arms, the fingers of one hand tapping the elbow of its opposite arm, lips pursed and eyes stern as she awaited Anko's answer. And felt a small shiver of foreboding caressed the back of her neck, uncoiling down her spine.
Why did she feel like this wasn't going to end well?
Anko actually jumped that time, a full-body twitch like when you touched a cat that hadn’t noticed you were there yet. If she had fur, it would have been on end, and if she had a tail (as Sasuke kept insinuating), it would have been flicking back and forth fast enough to cause whiplash. She wrenched her neck around so fast she probably pulled something, but that fear seemed comparatively small next to the Look Kurenai was giving her. Under normal circumstances, if she weren’t already so wired with nervous energy she was practically giving off sparks, she had pretty good resistance to the theater teachers Penetrating Stares of Death, probably because they weren’t directed at her. But right now, being bored into by those disconcertingly crimson eyes, she buckled. She’d been looking for a reason to since she’d walked in the door.
Wrenching her gaze away, she reached into her jeans’ pocket and tugged out an abused snapshot of a young woman with thick black hair, barely in her twenties and grinning deviously into the camera while balancing a dark-haired infant on one skinny hip. “This is a picture of my mother,” she stated bluntly, and shoved it at the other woman, finally looking back up to meet that stare with one of her own.
Frowning, Kurenai gently took the photograph from Anko's slightly shaky hand, wondering what she was getting at here. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, figuring that it should wait until she'd at least glanced at the picture. When she did, her eyes widened and her face immediately paled.
This could have been her twin. In fact, had it not been for the child that obviously belonged with her and Anko's own assertion that this was her mother, Kurenai would have sworn it was really, truly, actually herself. Oh, there were a few obvious differences - the shape of their lips, a slightly more pronounced tilt to Mitarashi Senior's nose, and Kurenai's slightly smaller shoulders - but she found that the one hurting the most was that she could now picture, beyond any doubt, what her own life would have been like had she ever successfully carried a child to term.
Then her thoughts raced, breaking away from the sluggish pattern they'd fallen into as Anko had handed her the photo. She 'hmmed' non-committally and paced over to her discarded albums, settling slowly and heavily to the floor. Delicate fingers flicked open various covers until Kurenai found what she was looking for: photos from her nineteenth birthday. She leafed through the pages, the ricepaper between the leaves crackling, before stopping and placing Anko's photo next to one of her own, taken after a couple of champagne bottles had been broached and Kurenai was grinning widely. "Mmm. Well. Isn't this curious?"
No wonder the poor girl had been jumpy. Kurenai's own nerves were starting to unravel as all sorts of possibilities whispered in her ear. "How old did you say your mother was?"
Anko could’ve screamed. ’Hmm’? ’HMM’?! She offered up the possibility of unknown bastard relations and all she got was a fucking ’hmm’? She suddenly felt significantly more at ease in her skin as she fought back an all too familiar urge to simply crack her fist into something. Kurenai, for example. She was seconds away from snatching back her picture and storming out of the damn house to go get shitfaced and sulk in a corner somewhere. Not home (no, not her dorm room, she corrected herself - it was that stupid, fucked-up sense of familiarity that had gotten her into this nightmare to begin with), she could not deal with having to explain this mess to anyone yet. Maybe Kakashi’s place. He never asked questions when he occasionally came home to find her sprawled on his couch, and he never minded sharing his fridge or his book collection. Yeah, she’d go to Kakashi’s and - wait, what?
Her furious train of thought was cut off abruptly when Kurenai turned around and started digging through her seemingly endless collection of photo albums, her mood doing a dizzying 360 from anxious to pissed-off and back again. She hung back warily, arms crossed over her chest, as the older woman searched intently before apparently finding something intriguing nestled inside the endless pages of glossy snapshots. How old was her mother? Good question.
She shoved her bangs out of her eyes while she did the math. Her mom had gotten knocked up at the tender age of eighteen, and Anko was twenty-three, so…
“Forty-one,” she answered guardedly, although she looked younger, much like how given the right lighting Anko herself had gotten her fair share of Gentleman Friends into trouble for attempting to pick up a minor. Although it wasn’t like she hadn’t done the same thing when she was a minor, so she figured it was kind of a moot point. Slowly, she made her way over to where Kurenai was set up on the floor. Reaching into her back pocket again, she took out a handful of other pictures she’d painstakingly retrieved from in between the pages of books she’d shoved into the duffel bag of possessions she’d brought with her to Tsunade’s, chosen for the way they showed her young mother’s features in detail from various angles. Portrait, profile, three-quarter turn, all showing the same mess of hair, large eyes, high cheekbones, and stubborn chin that she’d passed on to her daughter, standing nervously behind the stationary theater teacher.
She dropped the photos next to Kurenai’s knee and tried to swallow down the urge to run out of the room at top speed and never look back.
An eight year difference, then. Kurenai mulled over this in her head, flipping through the rest of Anko's contribution, outward composure regained but still fragile. Coincidence? Possibly. She looked at the undeniable similarities between the two sets of photos and sighed heavily. Possible, but not likely. Hell, she and Anko's mother - "What's her name?" - even pursed their lips the same way. It was uncanny.
She shook her head slightly, partially in disbelief, partially because she was suddenly so tired, and turned a few pages over in yet another album. There: photos from when her parents were first married. Kurenai peered between her father's younger face and the unfamilar - supposedly - face of Anko's mother, brows furrowing again. There was no doubt, really. There had to be some relation here. A first child her parents had never told her about? - no, they hadn't even met forty-one years ago. Which meant, most likely, that Daddy dearest had done some romping around before Mother's time.
Well. Somehow she wasn't really surprised.
However, there was still the possibility that she and Anko were jumping to conclusions. Turning slightly to look up at the bassist, Kurenai felt her heart wrench slightly sideways at the expression on Anko's face. The poor girl looked terrified. She got to her feet and, after a moment's hesitation, snugged her arms around Anko's shoulders, giving one a brief squeeze. "You look like you're about to jump out of your skin, dear," she observed gently. "Have a seat. I think...I think I have a phonecall to make." God, it all seemed so surreal. What would her father say? Would he try and talk his way out of it? Did he even know?
If all of this wasn't some kind dual hallucination...what were they going to tell her mother?
To say that Anko was a physical person would be an understatement. Under normal circumstances, there were few things she found more comforting than the sensation of another body pressed against hers, the contact of skin on skin, even for moment, felt like a whisper of reassurance in her ear. Some people found that want that bordered on compulsion disconcerting, the need to touch and be touched, to feel. But maybe it was that same urge that made her lock up under Kurenai’s touch. The older woman’s need to comfort was almost as obvious as her own need to be comforted, and it was more proof than anything she’d seen so far, family portraits included, that there had to be something to this theory, because just for a second Anko had seen herself in someone else’s face and felt a fraction of what it must have been like to be on the receiving end of her own impulsive hugs and she froze, locked up, with the key thrown far away. She was so intent on stifling the tremors threatening to break out all along her body that it didn’t even occur to her that maybe she wanted her affection, to give in to the touch even if it was too soon to offer up her own arms until after Kurenai had already let go and flitted away in a flurry of movement. Anko half expected her to leave a trail of swirling leaves in her wake.
“Ana,” she answered finally as she didn’t so much sit down as aim herself at the couch when her knees buckled, “Ana Mitarashi.” She stared down at her hands numbly, mind gone oddly blank, as Akamaru settled on his haunches in front of her and licked at her fingers, whining when she failed to acknowledge him.
Kurenai stared at the kitchen phone for a moment, trying to control herself, trying to keep calm. For a panicked moment she flailed mentally to remember her parents' phone number. Trembling fingers ran over cool, well-worn white keys; she took a deep breath and dialled. Her mind ignored the monotous ringtone, eyes unfocused as she gazed into subspace beyond the window. There was a gentle click! as someone answered the other end of the line, and she felt suddenly cold.
"Hi. It's me." She paused, trying to sound normal. "Is Dad about? Mmm. Thanks." Of course it had to be her mother that answered; William Yuuhi never picked up the damn phone unless he was forced to. Kurenai tried to keep from pacing on the tiled floor, a nervous habit she'd never been fond of. It seemed like seventeen years passed before her father finally got to the phone; she got right to the point. "Does the surname 'Mitarashi' ring any bells?" Silence. "Uhuh. Yes, I rather thought it might. How did I- because I have your granddaughter on my couch looking as if she wants to crawl under a rock and hide, that's how I know!" Anger was starting to replace everything else now: anger that she'd had a sister and never known about her, anger that her father's inattention to his past dalliances had kept Ana and Anko from knowing the rest of their family. Of her family.
Anger that they'd had to find out like this. "You've got some explaining to do, I think. No- not now. I'll call again later." Another pause. Kurenai sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose and feeling an impending headache. "Oh, stop blubbering at me, you old fool. No- For God's sake, don't pull that on me!! Dad. I'll call later. You need to figure out what you're going to tell Mother, because there is no way I am leaving this buried."
And with that, she hung up the phone, burying her face in her hands to hide away from the world for some precious thinking time. In less than half an hour, her world had been turned upside down and rattled around a bit, as if the Universe was trying to see what fell out. It was all too much, really. All Kurenai wanted to do right now was knock back a bottle of wine and go to bed, but Anko was still on her couch and they needed to sort this all out. Sighing heavily, Kurenai walked a tad numbly back into the living room, sitting carefully next to her niece.
"Well. We weren't wrong."
It couldn’t technically be called eavesdropping when Anko was fairly certain that at least half of Kurenai’s immediate neighbors had to have heard the exchange with her. Akamaru whined and tried to hide behind her legs as Kurenai’s voice grew increasingly louder and more accusatory with each staccato sentence. Anko’s face, however, remained completely devoid of expression, her back straight against the couch and her feet still and unmoving except for when the huge dog shoved his large head behind her ankles and whimpered piteously. In fact, the only outward sign of the maelstrom swirling inside her head was her hands, which were lying on top of her thighs and clenched into fists so tight her knuckles had gone white.
She wondered, vaguely, how she had thought this was going to end. She was just going to prance into Kurenai’s life, have her little theory proven correct and prance back out feeling shiny and smart and slightly less of a mutt? She couldn’t understand why it hadn’t occurred to her that this went beyond her and Kurenai, hadn’t occurred to her that there were other people who would be affected by this, potentially lots of other people (how big was the Yuuhis’ family? Were there cousins? Grandparents? Shit.) and that it was extremely likely that they would want nothing to do with it. Not that she could blame them. Half the time she didn’t want to be related to her mother, why should anyone else? As far as surprise secret relatives went, you could do a hell of a lot better than the Mitarashis.
Granddaughter. The word rang through the empty house and echoed around Anko’s head like someone was ringing a bell directly inside her skull and the reverberations were making her brain bounce and tremble. She hadn’t really thought of this in terms of herself, not really. She wasn’t even sure if she had been planning on telling her mother if it was actually true, although now there seemed no avoiding it. But to hear this revelation aimed directly at herself, to have that word pressed against her like a brand, red hot and searing, made her go light-headed, like cold and hot were crashing together inside of her and buffeting her in waves. She couldn’t think. She knew she had grandparents, theoretically. Ana Mitarashi’s theoretical mother was married to Ana Mitarashi’s theoretical step-father and they theoretically lived in Ohio and Anko had theoretically never met them and theoretically had no plans to. She could. Not. Think.
Anko snapped back into reality when she felt the couch sinking down at her side and looked up to stare at Kurenai dumbly, trying to process her words.
There was a moment of aching silence before she said, “I’m sorry. For coming in and fucking all this” she waved her hand around vaguely “up. It wasn’t what I meant to do. I just…” She trailed off, staring at Kurenai’s face and wondering if they really did look alike. “…wanted to know,” She finished lamely. Yeah, that was her, barreling in and taking what she wanted and not expected there to be damages she had to deal with. Like mother, like daughter. Apparently.
Kurenai looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. "Anko...secrets have a way of outing themselves. You are not responsible for the past actions of my somewhat-wayward parent, all right?" Although she did have to admit that this was more than a tad awkward. How was she supposed to react? She had a sister - albeit a half-sister - somewhere out there that she'd never met, never known about. And now said half-sister's daughter - her niece! - was sitting woebegone on her couch, trying to take the blame for something out of her control.
That wasn't right.
She was reaching out before she even really realised it: nearly a decade's worth of thwarted maternal instict clawed its way to the surface, needing to hug and protect and comfort. Kurenai settled for giving Anko's shoulders - so stiff with tension! - a one-armed embrace again, not wanting to overwhelm her. "You don't need to apologise, dearest. I'm certainly not angry with you. He's not angry, either. Though I won't try and pretend that it won't take a little getting used to," she added wryly. Stroking Anko's hair gently, Kurenai tilted her head until she could meet her gaze better, eyes wide with some bastard mix of shock and compassion. "Where do you want to go from here? As far as I'm concerned, you and...Ana," she was going to have to get used to that name, "are part of the family, and that's the end of it. Of course, I completely understand if you don't want to be. The Lord knows my mother will probably try and get you to settle down and pop out a few great-grands." Providing she didn't have a heart attack at the news...they'd deal with that when and if it happened.
This was all so bizarre. Was it even real? Or was she stuck in some twisted dreamscape, fears and fantasties combining to give her this tripped-out sequence of events. Surely it was too much of a coincidence to be truth!
But then she looked at Anko's face, and knew she wasn't dreaming. Certainly, there were key differences but - Hell, she looked more like Anko than she did her own mother. A niece. As a girl she'd daydreamed wistfully of siblings and cousins; Kurenai Yuuhi was a natural family woman. Now, suddenly, those daydreams had been given life, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do with them.
Anko froze up again under Kurenai’s freely given affection, not knowing how to respond or even how she wanted to respond, until the thought struck her that in a strictly literary sense, shrugging off Kurenai’s arm was a metaphor for shrugging off everything she was offering up, free of charge: Family. Acceptance. Empathy. Other things Anko was curious about but largely unfamiliar with, at least with people who weren’t Temari. Or Naruto. Or Teach. And sometimes Kiba. The whole thing made her head hurt. But really, she realized with a start, metaphors were the last thing on Kurenai’s mind. She wanted to comfort her, to reassure her in the best way she was able. All the tension went of her like air released from a balloon with the realization that sometimes a hug was just a hug.
Ragdoll-like, Anko slumped into the older woman’s shoulder, bringing her own thin arms up to wrap around her exhaustedly. For the first time in a long time, Anko just didn’t have the energy to keep fighting. “A bar,” she groaned, turning her face into Kurenai’s neck, words muffled by soft dark hair and the smell of paint, hiding from the huge, penetrating eyes she just wasn’t up to staring down right now, “That is where I’d like to go from here.”
"God, don't talk to me about bars," Kurenai retorted almost automatically. Nononono. She REFUSED to set foot in one ever again, especially if Obito was in the same hemisphere and therefore held the remote chance of walking into said bar and molesting her getting her drunk...er getting her drunker and somehow managing to get her to take him home. Or something. Whatever it was that had happened.
(The point was that she never wanted it to happen again and as such would be staying away from anything remotely resembling a bar. But she certainly wasn't going to tell Anko any of this!!)
It was extremely, shockingly comforting and a little poignant, feeling Anko's suddenly-trusting form all but collapse against her own. Kurenai suppressed a wistful sigh and the inevitable thoughts of what if- and why not- that crept up, the familiar pain of Life's punch to her womb dulled by the passing years to the point where she was able to do something like this without breaking into a thousand tiny pieces. She sat there, absently filing away this moment to be treasured and fondly remembered later, stroking Anko's hair softly. Somewhere to their left, Akamaru huffed a content sigh, curling up on the rug with faint furry-edged noises. Smiling slightly, Kurenai nudged Anko's foot with her own beslippered one. "How about I make you dinner instead? Sound like a fair trade? I'll even throw in some beers, if you like."
Anko grinned into Kurenai’s shoulder. She let her grip on the other woman loosen and then fall away before pulling up her arms into a lazy stretch behind her head that made her spine pop. “Food sounds awesome,” she agreed, “And beer sounds…whatever comes after ‘awesome,’ that’s what beer sounds like.” Pushing herself to her feet, she nudged Akamaru gently with one foot, letting him jaw his jaw against the edge of her shoes rapturously.
Okay, so it was a little weird.
Okay, so it was a lot weird. But…maybe not a bad weird, she was slowly deciding. In fact, it was possibly a very, very good weird that she could get used to, that she could learn to let fit against her like an old sweatshirt or a pair of arms. She could get used to this. The realization took her aback. There is was again, the bizarre sensation of settling, and the expectation for the urge to run from it, and the weird vertigo of realizing she didn’t. Like tripping up the stairs, reaching your foot out for the next hurdle only to find you’d reach horizontal ground. Maybe she could let herself rest there, just for a while.
Looking back at her aunt, her grin deepened wolfishly. “So Auntie K, wanna tell me the story behind the picture of you in that see-through toga?”
What: SECRETS ARE REVEALED :O
When: A couple days after Kurenai gets back from China
Warnings/Notes: Uhhh I don't think there's any? MAYBE for Anko's language? IDEFK.
So, on the one hand, Anko was fairly sure she was being stupid. She was most likely just grasping at straws that were kind of see-through to begin with and she had long since braced herself for how it was going to feel to get those straws yanked out of her fingers and tossed a countertop somewhere for someone else’s kids to use with their chocolate milk or whatever. She blamed Naruto, for being so stupidly selfless with his relations and offering them up to her, free of charge or expectation and making her feel happier than she was willing to admit out loud and simultaneously filled with a muted sort of longing for the real thing. She blamed Kakashi, too, for being all idyllic and reliable-adult-male-authority-figure-y and Obito for having an inaccurate misnomer for a nickname and…uh, The Man. Why not. She was (apparently) just filled to brimming with defensiveness about the subject of genetics today and if they had to have devil horns drawn over their mental pictures, so fucking what.
Of course, on the other hand…well, on the other hand, she had a thin stack of scuffed photos shoved in her back pocket that, hours worth of careful consideration later, she found rather convincing.
Well. Sort of convincing.
Convincing-ish.
The point, she reminded herself, was nothing ventured, nothing gained and fortune favors the bold and as ye sow so shall ye knock on the door already, Mitarashi. Mentally shaking herself like a dog spattering water, she cracked her neck loudly, lithely steeling herself and working back into her standard “just don’t care” mold. No big deal.
She wrapped her callused knuckles against Kurenai’s door and assumed a careful slouch. Let it not be said Teach never taught her nothin’.
Kurenai wasn't entirely sure why she'd come back from China alone. She'd had ample opportunity to complete her little quest, but at the last minute she'd balked, panicking, and decided that maybe she'd wait just a little longer. But the trip hadn't been entirely wasted; she'd spent many happy hours teaching underprivileged children in orphanages dotted around the province, and had a whole swag of photographs of herself surrounded by cheerful, if slightly dirty, little faces. Perhaps that'd be enough to tide her through for another stretch; perhaps it would give her the impetus and strength to try again.
Which brings us to the present; sitting on the floor of her living room, surrounded by photo albums, Kurenai very carefully pasted her newest additions into the latest one and labelled them. Soo Yin Orphanage, Guangxi, Spring Break 1988. The knock on her door was startling; Akamaru leapt up from his watchful place nearby and beat her to the entry hall, tail wagging ecstatically. Kurenai unlocked and peered through the spyhole. Anko...? The door was opened curiously, completely unaware of certain events which were shortly to take place and the upheaval they would cause.
The dog rushed forward to greet their visitor, and Kurenai's somewhat puzzled frown smoothed into a smile of welcome. "Come in, dear. What brings you here?" She looked a little...well. Not jumpy, but perhaps something along a similar vein. Uncertain. Anko hid it well, but it flickered around the edges and whispered through the air around her form. Kurenai's curiousity inevitably transmuted to worry. "Is everything all right?"
Even though she’d set her teeth for it, the door suddenly opening like that made her jump, just a little. A sort of knee-jerk, fingers-clenched sort of twitch that she couldn’t quite stifle in time. The concern with being so unnaturally unbalanced and unsure and very possibly unstable left her too distracted to being able to immediately process the older woman’s seemingly rapid-fire questions, and she spent a moment just blinking her dark eyes owlishly.
“Uh.” Great start. “Oh. Yeah. Everything’s cool. Totally. Chill. All the world’s a Klondike bar.” To give her anxious fingers something to do, she reached up and tugged roughly on the elastic that pulled her hair up into a slightly neater version of her usual pony tail. The fact that it showed off her features better was merely coincidental, of course, she lied to herself shamelessly. She just wanted it off her neck.
“So, I was just in the neighborhood, and I…” You what, Mitarashi, you pathetic freak? “Wanted to check on the furball,” she finished lamely, reaching down to scratch at Akamaru’s shaggy ears that had just bounded into wag-tailed view. “He got into some marshmallows over the break, just wanted to make sure he was as tough as he was acting.” Glancing inside covertly she gave another mini-jump at the sight of yet another of Kurenai’s seemingly endless collection of pictures spread across the floor. “Oh hey, photo albums!”
Nice, Anko, real sly.
One perfectly-waxed eyebrow arched ironically. Kurenai retracted her previous statement: definitely jumpy. "Did he?" she asked lightly, turning both to wag a reproving finger at Akamaru and to allow Anko to get through the doorway. "Tsk. Kiba didn't tell me that - or does he not know?" Smiling faintly, she kicked off one of her well-worn slippers, removing a stray fragment of dried modelling clay from the sole of her foot. She strolled through into the kitchen, assuming Anko would follow and/or make herself at home; Kurenai liked to think of her house as a sort of student haven these days. Most of her favourites knew where the spare key was hidden and were free to let themselves in and out any time they needed somewhere to escape to. Akamaru faithfully guarded the 'off-limits' areas, so she had no qualms about this arrangement whatsoever.
"Would you like a drink, dear?" The fridge door popped open and Kurenai brought out a freshly-opened bottle of lemonade, leaning back slightly to glance questioningly in Anko's direction as she opened the glasses cupboard. "I'm in the middle of arranging all the pictures I took over break; there's a lot more than I'd originally thought..." she trailed off ruefully. Perhaps ten full films was a tad excessive for a week's stay, but no doubt she'd treasure them all. Kurenai reflected wryly to herself that she always did.
Anko let out a silent sigh of relief when Kurenai seemed to buy her story, or at least, accepted it as a justifiable reason for stopping unannounced to visit a teacher whose classes she didn’t actually take. She rubbed Akamaru gratefully for not blowing her cover. Although, she supposed, he might just be appreciative that she hadn’t spilled to his lady about how he’d actually eaten the plastic wrapping and then the entirety of the bag of marshmallows. Kiba assured her that Akamaru had the stomach of a hyena and as he’d spent the rest of the evening begging for more scraps, she didn’t see any reason not to keep the incident between them.
She slunk inside warily as Kurenai disappeared inside, apparently assuming that she would follow. Despite the fact that she and Temari had spent several lazy days sprawled all around its interior, it felt like enemy soil now, with a battlefield’s worth of mines spread out just under the surface. One wrong step and it would blow up in her face.
“Uh,” she repeated, looking up from the spread of pictures, and thinking about how yeah, she’d really like a drink right about now, but lemonade wasn’t gonna cut it, “I’m good, actually. Thanks.” She fidgeted with the tangle of tied bracelets on her left wrist while the huge dog rubbed against her legs enthusiastically. That fucking photo album was staring at her.
“Yeah, you’ve got, like, an archive,” she replied, “Tem and I may have investigated while we were admiring your art film collection.” She tossed a devious smirk and a cocked eyebrow Kurenai’s way before going over to examine the photos displayed on the largest wall. (Not the ones turned face down, though. Not those.) “This is a nice one,” she said in a would-be casual voice. “Of you and your folks?”
Kurenai had long since grown accustomed to ignoring those photos that showed themselves only to the wall, unless she had reason or lament to turn them over. She almost forgot their presence - almost. She wandered to Anko's side, glass of lemonade in hand, and smiled. "Oh gosh, you didn't find any of the embarassing ones, did you?" The ones of her posing ridiculously as a child, or - worst!! - the ones when she was in her own personal 'awkward phase', with the wild hair, skinned knees and braces. She kept them purely for posterity's sake, and to remind herself that, on occasion, she was silly and deserved to be laughed at. Perspective, and all that bullshit.
Anko's tone was still worrying her, although Kurenai had to admit that she didn't really know Sasuke's 'wild girl' friend all that well. Sometimes they got along, and sometimes they butted heads, but she didn't really know Anko. Still, she was very carefully trying not to radiate signals of unease, and that was putting Kurenai on edge herself. She cocked her head, her free and paint-stained hand combing through her undone 'do. "Mmhmm. Mother Dearest," who REALLY needed to stop trying to set her up on blind dates, thankyouverymuch, especially since the last attempt had somehow ended in her shaggi-- no, no, we weren't ever going to think about that again, now, were we?! "And Dad. And myself, of course," she added as an afterthought, wrinkling her nose up at the pre-teen version of herself sitting resignedly between her parents. She'd been an active child, so there were a grand total of about three of these 'family portait' photos for the first fifteen years of her life.
In the ones before this one, she was usually dashing about with a naughty grin and possibly no clothes on. More embarassing photos...Temari and Anko hadn't found those, had they?!
Anko’s smirk deepened, even as her shoulders tensed exponentially with each step the older woman took towards her. “Not telling,” she chirped impishly.
They looked happy on film, Kurenai and her parents, and just a little blurred around their edges, like they’d been paused mid-action and were fighting the pull of gravity. Her large eyes scrutinized Kurenai’s young face with particular attention, drinking in the straight nose, full lips pursed into an irritated pout, dark eyes, the hint of a cleft in the chin, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth unconsciously.
Her gaze strayed almost unwilling to the father figure archetype on the tiny version of Kurenai’s side. She saw the same features mirrored there, the same busy movement. She bit down harder on her lip. Her eyes moved guiltily to the last face in the frame, wanting to apologize to Mother Dearest for her own need to know, the same itch that had led her through hundreds of books a kid and probably even more illegal substances as teenager, and had finally brought her to this spot, staring at a family portrait like she was starved for the sight.
“You an only child?” she asked, glancing over sideways and trying to work out the knots forming all across her shoulders.
The older woman nodded, giving Anko a sidelong look of her own. It was so very, very tempting to reach over and stop her from gnawing on her lip like that; much harder and she'd be drawing blood. Instead she just nodded again, wishing that Anko would spit out whatever it was that was bothering her. Kurenai could completely understand that perhaps it was unrelated to her being here, that perhaps she didn't want to talk about it, but it was clearly bothering and all those repressed, withering maternal instincts clamoured for Kurenai to fix it, to take the poor thing in her arms and cuddle it all better.
Maybe that was because Anko reminded her of herself at times - or, more precisely, made Kurenai think about the way she could have been had she not found her ultimate direction in life at such an early stage. Headstrong, willful, seemingly uncaring of anything the world thought about her because damnit, she was damned well going to do whatever the hell she wanted, and do it exceptionally.
It all made her head hurt, really. Kurenai sighed briefly, absently rubbing a foot against her leg in response to a sudden inexplicable itch. "Yourself?" Certainly Anko had never mentioned any siblings, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. After all, witness how much of her own past Kurenai ignored/put away/hid from on a daily basis.
The corner of Anko’s mouth twitched up in what was possibly a half-formed smile of irony or possible some sort of facial spasm at her inability to catch a break today. “Yep,” she hummed, “Just me and my mom. Least as far as I know, anyway.” The ‘Guess Who Provided The Other Half Of My DNA Game’ had been a favorite of hers during her younger years. Now it was just something that she occasionally thought about when asked whether she had a history of heart disease in her family, or something else that involved uncomfortable personal observation and/or cold tables. It made her itchy.
She saw her own face reflected back at her in the glass covering the picture, highlighting their faces but keeping her on the outside. That was probably for their own good. But still. Looking at the Yuuhis, with each parent forming a layer of protection around their daughter, she couldn’t help but wonder what it was like to be Kurenai. Two apparently loving and at least moderately well-adjusted parents, a settled life in one place, a job she apparently enjoyed. Stability, she supposed was what intrigued her so. When she was a kid, she hadn’t had any interest in it, mostly because was barely aware of its existence. One of the fish born in pollution situations. If you were born in the eye of a hurricane, you never learned to miss still water. But now that she’d spent nearly a year at Tsunade’s, stationary and cared-for…Well, she wasn’t sure that she liked it. But she thought that maybe she might want to.
“You look like your dad,” she didn’t so much muse as blurt out, followed by a slight wince and another tug at her pony tail. It was true.
Kurenai turned slightly, regarding her steadily. "All right, Anko, spit it out," she commanded, tone coloured with some hint of...not steel, no, it wasn't that harsh. Some slightly gentler alloy, perhaps. At any rate, it was tone she used on unruly students and most of the male population when they were trying to avoid answering such tricky questions as 'Where is your homework?' or 'Why is there something that looks remarkably like a thumbtack on my chair?' or even 'Why didn't you call me?' She was good at it. Possibly a trait garnered from her mother, which was a little depressing, actually.
(She really needed to stop being so hard on the woman. It wasn't Mom's fault she'd gotten plastered and molested a coworker, after all. Except in the most minor of ways.)
This was no time to be having flighty thoughts, however. Something was Up, and Kurenai intended to find out what it was. She crossed her arms, the fingers of one hand tapping the elbow of its opposite arm, lips pursed and eyes stern as she awaited Anko's answer. And felt a small shiver of foreboding caressed the back of her neck, uncoiling down her spine.
Why did she feel like this wasn't going to end well?
Anko actually jumped that time, a full-body twitch like when you touched a cat that hadn’t noticed you were there yet. If she had fur, it would have been on end, and if she had a tail (as Sasuke kept insinuating), it would have been flicking back and forth fast enough to cause whiplash. She wrenched her neck around so fast she probably pulled something, but that fear seemed comparatively small next to the Look Kurenai was giving her. Under normal circumstances, if she weren’t already so wired with nervous energy she was practically giving off sparks, she had pretty good resistance to the theater teachers Penetrating Stares of Death, probably because they weren’t directed at her. But right now, being bored into by those disconcertingly crimson eyes, she buckled. She’d been looking for a reason to since she’d walked in the door.
Wrenching her gaze away, she reached into her jeans’ pocket and tugged out an abused snapshot of a young woman with thick black hair, barely in her twenties and grinning deviously into the camera while balancing a dark-haired infant on one skinny hip. “This is a picture of my mother,” she stated bluntly, and shoved it at the other woman, finally looking back up to meet that stare with one of her own.
Frowning, Kurenai gently took the photograph from Anko's slightly shaky hand, wondering what she was getting at here. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, figuring that it should wait until she'd at least glanced at the picture. When she did, her eyes widened and her face immediately paled.
This could have been her twin. In fact, had it not been for the child that obviously belonged with her and Anko's own assertion that this was her mother, Kurenai would have sworn it was really, truly, actually herself. Oh, there were a few obvious differences - the shape of their lips, a slightly more pronounced tilt to Mitarashi Senior's nose, and Kurenai's slightly smaller shoulders - but she found that the one hurting the most was that she could now picture, beyond any doubt, what her own life would have been like had she ever successfully carried a child to term.
Then her thoughts raced, breaking away from the sluggish pattern they'd fallen into as Anko had handed her the photo. She 'hmmed' non-committally and paced over to her discarded albums, settling slowly and heavily to the floor. Delicate fingers flicked open various covers until Kurenai found what she was looking for: photos from her nineteenth birthday. She leafed through the pages, the ricepaper between the leaves crackling, before stopping and placing Anko's photo next to one of her own, taken after a couple of champagne bottles had been broached and Kurenai was grinning widely. "Mmm. Well. Isn't this curious?"
No wonder the poor girl had been jumpy. Kurenai's own nerves were starting to unravel as all sorts of possibilities whispered in her ear. "How old did you say your mother was?"
Anko could’ve screamed. ’Hmm’? ’HMM’?! She offered up the possibility of unknown bastard relations and all she got was a fucking ’hmm’? She suddenly felt significantly more at ease in her skin as she fought back an all too familiar urge to simply crack her fist into something. Kurenai, for example. She was seconds away from snatching back her picture and storming out of the damn house to go get shitfaced and sulk in a corner somewhere. Not home (no, not her dorm room, she corrected herself - it was that stupid, fucked-up sense of familiarity that had gotten her into this nightmare to begin with), she could not deal with having to explain this mess to anyone yet. Maybe Kakashi’s place. He never asked questions when he occasionally came home to find her sprawled on his couch, and he never minded sharing his fridge or his book collection. Yeah, she’d go to Kakashi’s and - wait, what?
Her furious train of thought was cut off abruptly when Kurenai turned around and started digging through her seemingly endless collection of photo albums, her mood doing a dizzying 360 from anxious to pissed-off and back again. She hung back warily, arms crossed over her chest, as the older woman searched intently before apparently finding something intriguing nestled inside the endless pages of glossy snapshots. How old was her mother? Good question.
She shoved her bangs out of her eyes while she did the math. Her mom had gotten knocked up at the tender age of eighteen, and Anko was twenty-three, so…
“Forty-one,” she answered guardedly, although she looked younger, much like how given the right lighting Anko herself had gotten her fair share of Gentleman Friends into trouble for attempting to pick up a minor. Although it wasn’t like she hadn’t done the same thing when she was a minor, so she figured it was kind of a moot point. Slowly, she made her way over to where Kurenai was set up on the floor. Reaching into her back pocket again, she took out a handful of other pictures she’d painstakingly retrieved from in between the pages of books she’d shoved into the duffel bag of possessions she’d brought with her to Tsunade’s, chosen for the way they showed her young mother’s features in detail from various angles. Portrait, profile, three-quarter turn, all showing the same mess of hair, large eyes, high cheekbones, and stubborn chin that she’d passed on to her daughter, standing nervously behind the stationary theater teacher.
She dropped the photos next to Kurenai’s knee and tried to swallow down the urge to run out of the room at top speed and never look back.
An eight year difference, then. Kurenai mulled over this in her head, flipping through the rest of Anko's contribution, outward composure regained but still fragile. Coincidence? Possibly. She looked at the undeniable similarities between the two sets of photos and sighed heavily. Possible, but not likely. Hell, she and Anko's mother - "What's her name?" - even pursed their lips the same way. It was uncanny.
She shook her head slightly, partially in disbelief, partially because she was suddenly so tired, and turned a few pages over in yet another album. There: photos from when her parents were first married. Kurenai peered between her father's younger face and the unfamilar - supposedly - face of Anko's mother, brows furrowing again. There was no doubt, really. There had to be some relation here. A first child her parents had never told her about? - no, they hadn't even met forty-one years ago. Which meant, most likely, that Daddy dearest had done some romping around before Mother's time.
Well. Somehow she wasn't really surprised.
However, there was still the possibility that she and Anko were jumping to conclusions. Turning slightly to look up at the bassist, Kurenai felt her heart wrench slightly sideways at the expression on Anko's face. The poor girl looked terrified. She got to her feet and, after a moment's hesitation, snugged her arms around Anko's shoulders, giving one a brief squeeze. "You look like you're about to jump out of your skin, dear," she observed gently. "Have a seat. I think...I think I have a phonecall to make." God, it all seemed so surreal. What would her father say? Would he try and talk his way out of it? Did he even know?
If all of this wasn't some kind dual hallucination...what were they going to tell her mother?
To say that Anko was a physical person would be an understatement. Under normal circumstances, there were few things she found more comforting than the sensation of another body pressed against hers, the contact of skin on skin, even for moment, felt like a whisper of reassurance in her ear. Some people found that want that bordered on compulsion disconcerting, the need to touch and be touched, to feel. But maybe it was that same urge that made her lock up under Kurenai’s touch. The older woman’s need to comfort was almost as obvious as her own need to be comforted, and it was more proof than anything she’d seen so far, family portraits included, that there had to be something to this theory, because just for a second Anko had seen herself in someone else’s face and felt a fraction of what it must have been like to be on the receiving end of her own impulsive hugs and she froze, locked up, with the key thrown far away. She was so intent on stifling the tremors threatening to break out all along her body that it didn’t even occur to her that maybe she wanted her affection, to give in to the touch even if it was too soon to offer up her own arms until after Kurenai had already let go and flitted away in a flurry of movement. Anko half expected her to leave a trail of swirling leaves in her wake.
“Ana,” she answered finally as she didn’t so much sit down as aim herself at the couch when her knees buckled, “Ana Mitarashi.” She stared down at her hands numbly, mind gone oddly blank, as Akamaru settled on his haunches in front of her and licked at her fingers, whining when she failed to acknowledge him.
Kurenai stared at the kitchen phone for a moment, trying to control herself, trying to keep calm. For a panicked moment she flailed mentally to remember her parents' phone number. Trembling fingers ran over cool, well-worn white keys; she took a deep breath and dialled. Her mind ignored the monotous ringtone, eyes unfocused as she gazed into subspace beyond the window. There was a gentle click! as someone answered the other end of the line, and she felt suddenly cold.
"Hi. It's me." She paused, trying to sound normal. "Is Dad about? Mmm. Thanks." Of course it had to be her mother that answered; William Yuuhi never picked up the damn phone unless he was forced to. Kurenai tried to keep from pacing on the tiled floor, a nervous habit she'd never been fond of. It seemed like seventeen years passed before her father finally got to the phone; she got right to the point. "Does the surname 'Mitarashi' ring any bells?" Silence. "Uhuh. Yes, I rather thought it might. How did I- because I have your granddaughter on my couch looking as if she wants to crawl under a rock and hide, that's how I know!" Anger was starting to replace everything else now: anger that she'd had a sister and never known about her, anger that her father's inattention to his past dalliances had kept Ana and Anko from knowing the rest of their family. Of her family.
Anger that they'd had to find out like this. "You've got some explaining to do, I think. No- not now. I'll call again later." Another pause. Kurenai sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose and feeling an impending headache. "Oh, stop blubbering at me, you old fool. No- For God's sake, don't pull that on me!! Dad. I'll call later. You need to figure out what you're going to tell Mother, because there is no way I am leaving this buried."
And with that, she hung up the phone, burying her face in her hands to hide away from the world for some precious thinking time. In less than half an hour, her world had been turned upside down and rattled around a bit, as if the Universe was trying to see what fell out. It was all too much, really. All Kurenai wanted to do right now was knock back a bottle of wine and go to bed, but Anko was still on her couch and they needed to sort this all out. Sighing heavily, Kurenai walked a tad numbly back into the living room, sitting carefully next to her niece.
"Well. We weren't wrong."
It couldn’t technically be called eavesdropping when Anko was fairly certain that at least half of Kurenai’s immediate neighbors had to have heard the exchange with her. Akamaru whined and tried to hide behind her legs as Kurenai’s voice grew increasingly louder and more accusatory with each staccato sentence. Anko’s face, however, remained completely devoid of expression, her back straight against the couch and her feet still and unmoving except for when the huge dog shoved his large head behind her ankles and whimpered piteously. In fact, the only outward sign of the maelstrom swirling inside her head was her hands, which were lying on top of her thighs and clenched into fists so tight her knuckles had gone white.
She wondered, vaguely, how she had thought this was going to end. She was just going to prance into Kurenai’s life, have her little theory proven correct and prance back out feeling shiny and smart and slightly less of a mutt? She couldn’t understand why it hadn’t occurred to her that this went beyond her and Kurenai, hadn’t occurred to her that there were other people who would be affected by this, potentially lots of other people (how big was the Yuuhis’ family? Were there cousins? Grandparents? Shit.) and that it was extremely likely that they would want nothing to do with it. Not that she could blame them. Half the time she didn’t want to be related to her mother, why should anyone else? As far as surprise secret relatives went, you could do a hell of a lot better than the Mitarashis.
Granddaughter. The word rang through the empty house and echoed around Anko’s head like someone was ringing a bell directly inside her skull and the reverberations were making her brain bounce and tremble. She hadn’t really thought of this in terms of herself, not really. She wasn’t even sure if she had been planning on telling her mother if it was actually true, although now there seemed no avoiding it. But to hear this revelation aimed directly at herself, to have that word pressed against her like a brand, red hot and searing, made her go light-headed, like cold and hot were crashing together inside of her and buffeting her in waves. She couldn’t think. She knew she had grandparents, theoretically. Ana Mitarashi’s theoretical mother was married to Ana Mitarashi’s theoretical step-father and they theoretically lived in Ohio and Anko had theoretically never met them and theoretically had no plans to. She could. Not. Think.
Anko snapped back into reality when she felt the couch sinking down at her side and looked up to stare at Kurenai dumbly, trying to process her words.
There was a moment of aching silence before she said, “I’m sorry. For coming in and fucking all this” she waved her hand around vaguely “up. It wasn’t what I meant to do. I just…” She trailed off, staring at Kurenai’s face and wondering if they really did look alike. “…wanted to know,” She finished lamely. Yeah, that was her, barreling in and taking what she wanted and not expected there to be damages she had to deal with. Like mother, like daughter. Apparently.
Kurenai looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. "Anko...secrets have a way of outing themselves. You are not responsible for the past actions of my somewhat-wayward parent, all right?" Although she did have to admit that this was more than a tad awkward. How was she supposed to react? She had a sister - albeit a half-sister - somewhere out there that she'd never met, never known about. And now said half-sister's daughter - her niece! - was sitting woebegone on her couch, trying to take the blame for something out of her control.
That wasn't right.
She was reaching out before she even really realised it: nearly a decade's worth of thwarted maternal instict clawed its way to the surface, needing to hug and protect and comfort. Kurenai settled for giving Anko's shoulders - so stiff with tension! - a one-armed embrace again, not wanting to overwhelm her. "You don't need to apologise, dearest. I'm certainly not angry with you. He's not angry, either. Though I won't try and pretend that it won't take a little getting used to," she added wryly. Stroking Anko's hair gently, Kurenai tilted her head until she could meet her gaze better, eyes wide with some bastard mix of shock and compassion. "Where do you want to go from here? As far as I'm concerned, you and...Ana," she was going to have to get used to that name, "are part of the family, and that's the end of it. Of course, I completely understand if you don't want to be. The Lord knows my mother will probably try and get you to settle down and pop out a few great-grands." Providing she didn't have a heart attack at the news...they'd deal with that when and if it happened.
This was all so bizarre. Was it even real? Or was she stuck in some twisted dreamscape, fears and fantasties combining to give her this tripped-out sequence of events. Surely it was too much of a coincidence to be truth!
But then she looked at Anko's face, and knew she wasn't dreaming. Certainly, there were key differences but - Hell, she looked more like Anko than she did her own mother. A niece. As a girl she'd daydreamed wistfully of siblings and cousins; Kurenai Yuuhi was a natural family woman. Now, suddenly, those daydreams had been given life, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do with them.
Anko froze up again under Kurenai’s freely given affection, not knowing how to respond or even how she wanted to respond, until the thought struck her that in a strictly literary sense, shrugging off Kurenai’s arm was a metaphor for shrugging off everything she was offering up, free of charge: Family. Acceptance. Empathy. Other things Anko was curious about but largely unfamiliar with, at least with people who weren’t Temari. Or Naruto. Or Teach. And sometimes Kiba. The whole thing made her head hurt. But really, she realized with a start, metaphors were the last thing on Kurenai’s mind. She wanted to comfort her, to reassure her in the best way she was able. All the tension went of her like air released from a balloon with the realization that sometimes a hug was just a hug.
Ragdoll-like, Anko slumped into the older woman’s shoulder, bringing her own thin arms up to wrap around her exhaustedly. For the first time in a long time, Anko just didn’t have the energy to keep fighting. “A bar,” she groaned, turning her face into Kurenai’s neck, words muffled by soft dark hair and the smell of paint, hiding from the huge, penetrating eyes she just wasn’t up to staring down right now, “That is where I’d like to go from here.”
"God, don't talk to me about bars," Kurenai retorted almost automatically. Nononono. She REFUSED to set foot in one ever again, especially if Obito was in the same hemisphere and therefore held the remote chance of walking into said bar and molesting her getting her drunk...er getting her drunker and somehow managing to get her to take him home. Or something. Whatever it was that had happened.
(The point was that she never wanted it to happen again and as such would be staying away from anything remotely resembling a bar. But she certainly wasn't going to tell Anko any of this!!)
It was extremely, shockingly comforting and a little poignant, feeling Anko's suddenly-trusting form all but collapse against her own. Kurenai suppressed a wistful sigh and the inevitable thoughts of what if- and why not- that crept up, the familiar pain of Life's punch to her womb dulled by the passing years to the point where she was able to do something like this without breaking into a thousand tiny pieces. She sat there, absently filing away this moment to be treasured and fondly remembered later, stroking Anko's hair softly. Somewhere to their left, Akamaru huffed a content sigh, curling up on the rug with faint furry-edged noises. Smiling slightly, Kurenai nudged Anko's foot with her own beslippered one. "How about I make you dinner instead? Sound like a fair trade? I'll even throw in some beers, if you like."
Anko grinned into Kurenai’s shoulder. She let her grip on the other woman loosen and then fall away before pulling up her arms into a lazy stretch behind her head that made her spine pop. “Food sounds awesome,” she agreed, “And beer sounds…whatever comes after ‘awesome,’ that’s what beer sounds like.” Pushing herself to her feet, she nudged Akamaru gently with one foot, letting him jaw his jaw against the edge of her shoes rapturously.
Okay, so it was a little weird.
Okay, so it was a lot weird. But…maybe not a bad weird, she was slowly deciding. In fact, it was possibly a very, very good weird that she could get used to, that she could learn to let fit against her like an old sweatshirt or a pair of arms. She could get used to this. The realization took her aback. There is was again, the bizarre sensation of settling, and the expectation for the urge to run from it, and the weird vertigo of realizing she didn’t. Like tripping up the stairs, reaching your foot out for the next hurdle only to find you’d reach horizontal ground. Maybe she could let herself rest there, just for a while.
Looking back at her aunt, her grin deepened wolfishly. “So Auntie K, wanna tell me the story behind the picture of you in that see-through toga?”