[LOG] A Little Too Late
Characters: Kankuro and Anko
Date: June 17
Location: Anko's Apartment in Celo
Warnings/Notes: Language, Mild-Violence, a dash of Fluff
Summary: Kankurou finally has the answer to all their problems, but Anko thinks otherwise. Maybe it's already too late.
He actually thought that this time, alcohol would be a good boy and help him kill time.
But with two shots of vodka and a beer bottle empty, the lines on the clock only mocked him and moved a couple of centimeters, totaling to an amount of five minutes. Looking down at the bottle and the empty shot glass, Kankurou heaved another heavy sigh and cursed himself for not being more conscious about the time. It was only an hour earlier that he had finally finished what he started a couple of months ago, a good chunk of his lifetime. And once he stepped out of his room, ready to breathe in fresh air again, there was no one to share this moment of relief with him.
The apartment was empty and he had no choice but to stay put and wonder where his brother and his girlfriend was. Maybe they were both long gone and he just didn't notice while he was trying to "save the world". Or maybe they gave up with the wait. This made Kankurou remember that night when he woke up alone, only to find Anko killing time by killing people.
"Where th' fuck is everyone?" he asked himself for the twentieth time, reaching for the vodka bottle again. If there was no sound of footsteps at the door by the time he was finished the little amount in the bottle, he was going to go hunting himself.
He'd just hope that Gaara didn't get any funny ideas about converting Anko to his own blood addiction cult.
Anko sighed tiredly as she made her way upstairs, the florescent lighting flickering as the bulbs slowly burned themselves out. How long had it been since she found her way home the last time? A week? Perhaps it had been two, she lost count after the first few days, sunrise bleeding into sunset seamlessly. She had seen quite a few of them without break, sleep eluding her even more now without being home to get a dose of Kankurou's sleepy-time drug. Maybe if she had made the trip sooner she wouldn't have been sporting that nasty gash on her forehead, but hindsight was always 20/20 and how in the hell could she have honestly known that she would have passed out like some pussy?
Her head still ached from the indignity of it all. Or perhaps it was just from the impact from edge of that counter top she had clipped on her way to the floor, it was really hard to tell.
This latest little adventure across the border had hardly been noteworthy by any stretch. It had been all too easy to studiously avoid a run-in with Naruto, she'd seen a few cases of Gaara's handiwork but never the brat himself nor the red-eyed ghost of her past that still haunted her every time she neared that particular alleyway. For all the troops she had 'bumped' into, none of them were her, raising Anko's hopes a little that Kurenai had actually listened and returned back to Ceno.
She doubted it, but it didn't hurt to hope, right?
Mechanically she dug in a pocket for her key, not even wincing when scuffed knuckles rubbed against the rough texture of her jeans. The apartment was silent and dark, meaning Gaara was still out roaming somewhere. She didn't even glance off to the side to check the door to Kankurou's workshop, knowing he was still likely hunched over his petri dishes unless he was out doing whatever it was he did on the rare venture when he left the glorified closet, either way all she wanted was a shower and then her bed.
That intent locked in mind, the sudden sound of a bottle hitting the counter top had her jolting out of her inner musings to see the white street light glinting amber off an empty beer bottle and onto the familiar form sitting hunched over it. Instinctively she bristled, her fingers discretely tugging the long sleeves of her shirt down further to ensure her hands were covered by the fabric - as if the excess clothing wasn't enough out of place with the lengthening days and warmer weather.
"Hey."
There was only a drop left in the bottle when the sound of footsteps finally broke his strange drinking cycle. A moment of hesitation passed through him as to whether or not he should greet Anko or wait until she was knocked out on the bed and administer the shot. Knowing her, she was still impartial to needles, but the fear had toned down some since he had met her, which counted for something. Even so, Kankurou found himself looking down the clear empty glass before he heard her voice behind him.
Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was the poor lighting, but when Kankurou turned around to face her, whoever was standing there didn't seem like Anko at all. This revelation made Kankurou blink rapidly and curse his own method of killing time.
"Hey," he blearily greeted back, using his palm to rub away anything clouding his sight at the moment. "I need you to take this tonight." A thin needle was shown as Kankurou unclenched his right hand, which had been balled into a fist ever since he left his workroom.
The rustle of Kankurou's clothes echoed in the silent apartment, his turning towards her cleared up her line of sight to display the empty vodka bottle sitting next to the beer bottle, giving her pause to wonder how long he had been sitting there. He was obviously feeling no pain at the moment, looking as if he had a pleasant enough buzz worked up. Perhaps if she didn't feel as though the slime of Cena clung to her skin and perhaps if she didn't think she were likely to fall asleep where she stood, the opportunity for cuddles and some molesting would be likely but with his words and the appearance of yet another syringe had her lips twisting into a sneer instead.
"Unless it's something to knock my ass out, I'm going to pass. I want a shower, one of your sleepy-time cocktails and that's it. We're not playing mad scientist and pin cushion tonight."
The look on Kankurou's face immediately soured at Anko's words and tone. Whether it was the alcohol making him react as quickly or not, a narrowed eyed look was given to the unhappy woman before him. The look on her face was unsettling enough, making the deeply etched scowl on his face crease downwards even further.
"When th' hell have I ever fucked aroun' with you on this?" he asked sharply, his hold on the needle dangerously increasing with his own temper.
"You've been wasting your time in there for months now, and one of the first times you've come out without me having to drag you or for you to disappear right away after, you're wanting to jab at me as soon as I walk in the door? Thanks, but no thanks." Her bitterly clipped words didn't raise in tone to meet his spike of temper, an aloof coolness doing the job just as well as any screaming and throwing things ever did but with this tactic she didn't have to worry about the cold sweats and near paralyzing pain that radiated through her chest whenever her blood pressure spiked. It had been a hard enough lesson to learn but one she'd gotten quite used to over the past few months.
"There should be another bottle of vodka up in the cabinet, have at it. You know where the couch is unless you want to go lock yourself back up again."
"Wasting my time?" This time the question came out in a low snarl, heavily laced with disbelief and hurt that could only translate to a form of anger that Kankurou knew best to portray. Now the guilt that had plagued his mind was pushed back so far that it was barely recognizable to Kankurou, who was only pissed that Anko could see this whole past few months as a waste.
Half of him wanted her to understand just how hard it was to pass each night without her and to be sent to restless sleep without any ounce of hope. Another half of him made him a liar, told him that he slept easy enough and that the old nostalgic ways of working was just what he needed to take his mind off the fact that Anko was going to die. Either way, there was a matter to be corrected at the moment, and no matter what he thought, he definitely wasn't wasting his time.
"I en't wastin' my time so much as you're fuckin' up whatever time you thought you had left. So how many fuckers did you take out tonigh'? Think tha' much is gonna help you live through whatever th' fuck you have?" Now a heavy ounce of hurt was radiating through every word, hand in hand with harsh retaliation against her own words.
Flat violet eyes cut over dangerously to where Kankurou stood stiff-spined, her lips curling back up at his intuitiveness.
“Tonight? My hands are clean tonight. The border wasn’t so well guarded when I came back across and the mood just wasn’t there.” Even as the words left her lips, the smallest little tendril of thought floated into her mind unchecked - ‘That can easily be remedied…’, - and had her stepping further away from Kankurou to keep a safe distance between them. It was the same little voice that had urged her to eliminate the whole Kurenai issue rather than worrying if the Arceos would be kicking her door down in the middle of the night, the same one that urged her to add significantly to the ever increasing body count over these past few weeks.
She shouldn’t have come back. Had she had known Kankurou would have sitting up waiting for her to come back, she wouldn’t have. It was selfish, she knew, to have wanted to come back to where it felt safe, to know he was nearby but she should have known better. It was too much to hope that the time spent together in their happy little bubble when she surprised him for his birthday would have been the picture perfect sort of ‘good-bye’ that would have been ideal.
It sort of fit though, they came into this kicking and screaming, it only made sense that it would end on the same note.
She just hadn't planned on doing this right here, right now but perhaps it was for the best before he wasted any more time locked away and stressing unnecessarily on her behalf.
Or before she did something she would never forgive herself for.
“However I choose to spend my time is my own business, it doesn’t matter anymore so no need to get yourself all twisted up in knots over it. Sorry you’ve wasted the better part of the past year dealing with me and all, but you’re going to end up compensated fairly decently for all your inconveniences so you shouldn’t have too much room for complaint."
There was that feeling again, the same one he had when he came back to Cena, with only a bottle of vodka to help him along. Except this time, he had a gut feeling that it wouldn't end with kisses and mumbled apologies against the countertop. Inwardly, he told himself that he wasn't surprised to see this happen; for her to lose that simple faith he told her to invest in and those lies he told himself to be motivated on this case. But in the end, even when actually broke through his own mirage, she broke. One of them had to.
"Y'know wha'? Fuck your pity. I don't need it." Alcohol or not, that was definitely a significant increase in Kankurou's voice, along with a large step forward and an accusing finger pointed right at Anko's chest. "I don't need any fuckin' compensations for my time, 'cause y'know, it worked out in the end. I believed in somethin' an' it finally came through, but it en't 'nough for you, righ'? You gotta fuck things up in the end an' cling on to whatever th' fuck you think is best for you. Which is killin' some poor son of a bitch out there an' taken down as many as you can 'fore you fuckin' croak!"
The room echoed loudly with the sound of the displaced chair that Kankurou had kicked towards the kitchen sink, making it bang loudly against the cabinet doors. The needle in his hand was carelessly tossed back onto the table that he had been sitting at for the past couple of hours, skittering across the plastic top before coming to a rest in the center. The man himself had turned around, his back towards Anko, as he tried to compose himself, burying his face in the depths of his palms.
But even there, Kankurou couldn't find any answers. Even with the final solution lying only a couple of inches away from his own hands, he found himself again, dealing with intervention that couldn't be prevented.
“Even now, you still have no clue how blind you really are, do you? You think that this is for me? The only selfish part that I can lay claim to is not wanting to wake up the next morning to your cold body next to me and not knowing why in the fuck my hands are covered in your blood…did you even stop to think about that?” For the first time since she stepped back into their apartment, she stood and faced his back head on, trying to keep her own temper stomped down to a safe level and to keep her mind clear as she tried to get him to see.
Regardless of whatever promise she might have made before, her hand had pulled one of her knives out of hiding before setting it to flight, the precisely sharpened blade skimming by Kankurou’s head with only centimeters to spare.
“Fucking look at me Kankurou. If this were about me I would have killed myself months ago to save me the trouble of having to look in the mirror and see this fucking shell of myself that’s left. You’ve lost months of your life trying to save a monster. I can’t control what goes through my head anymore, not even the simple concept of putting one fucking foot in front of the other at times. Some of this I haven’t wanted you to see because I wanted you to see me and not the monster or the shell, just me… but if that’s what it fucking takes then so fucking be it.” Haunted violet eyes glared out from underneath the curtain of unkempt hair, her hands clenched tightly into fists in her restraint to not reach out to grab him by the shirt to throttle him.
“You’ve been blissfully locked away from reality while slaving away over your blood samples and test tubes, I’ve not had that luxury, having to face this every single fucking day. I almost gutted the one person who I could once actually call my best friend, why in the fuck should you be any different?” Quickly she closed the few paces between them, one of her clenched fists swinging with an agility she shouldn’t possess in that state, stopping just as her knuckles brushed the thin skin at the crook of his neck.
“Had I another knife in my hand you’d be dead now, don't you see? You’ve never once stopped me when I’ve come at you, and I don’t expect you to start now. It’s never been about my not believing in you, you son of a bitch, it’s about not being able to trust me.”
At the sound of dull thud of the knife embedding itself a couple of feet away from Kankurou's spot, Kankurou could not help but look at it in disbelief for a couple of silent moments, his ears still open to Anko's scathing words, but his pupils dilating at a rapid rate because of the knife. He knew what Anko was capable of, and he never doubted it. Even from the first couple of weeks following their "hook-up" on that miserable rainy afternoon, Kankurou was still wary of Anko's skills and profession. It was her job. And he soon understood it was a part of her. Even so, he still held his belief to the promise she made to him that he would never have to worry about his own safety around her.
It was that single solitary sign of aggression that made Kankurou almost give up right then and there. It was Anko, it was her. But it was a broken promise.
When she called his name again, he wearily turned around and looked at her with a foreign face for a moment, as if she was someone different altogether. He didn't even flinch when she suddenly came within his personal space and threatened to almost lop his head off with her bare hands. This wasn't new, it happened to him before. It might as well happen again.
"You made a promise. I made a promise." His voice was scratchy and filled with a thick tone that sounded tired and defeated in his own internal ears. Maybe a week ago he would've cared on how pathetic it sounded, but when you're a guy with no more options, it was the knees that went first. Pride and self-integrity fell behind. "I en't afraid of death an' I know dyin' by your hand migh' be a small mercy compared t'gettin' sticked by a freak on th' streets. I never stopped you 'cause I trusted you. I don't care if you don't fuckin' trust yourself, but you en't gone all th' way, Anko."
"You're still speakin', breathin', yellin', an' kickin'. You're still fuckin' alive. You never struck me as someone tha' would give up this fuckin' easy to somethin' tha' you can't even goddamn see inside of you. Jus' seein' you die everyday by your own hands is sickening." Green eyes reflected the harsh look of disgust and pity through clear irises, only to disappear behind bruised eyelids.
"Now I'm standin' 'ere with my promise in my hand. You take it or leave it. Or kill me. Whatever fuckin' use tha's gonna be."
"It's because I can't see it that I don't know how to fight it," she whispered, wincing at the harsh words that fell from Kankurou's lips and even harsher gaze she felt focused on her. "Things in front of me I can cut, they can be destroyed. I'm not trained to know how to deal with this." Slowly Kankurou's words seeped into her mind and the threatening hand at his throat slid down limply to rest on his shoulder.
Her head fucking hurt and her breathing was ragged as she fought to process all this information into her very, very tired brain. But even in this disconnected state she knew that tightness in her chest wasn't just from that microscopic thing wrecking havoc inside her veins.
She threw a knife at him. And had he moved, it would have killed him.
"I don't want to hurt you. I never did, but I don't know what to do..." Lax fingers twisted into the neckline of his shirt as a border of grey tinged her vision and green eyes blurred into everything else in a sickening replay of what she could remember before waking up sprawled out on her kitchen floor. Only this time she didn't fight it when that wave of lightheadedness came, she let his shirt slide from her fingers even as her knees buckled before impacting the floor before him. "You deserve so much better than this shit but I can't bring myself to give you up."
"Help me. Please."
All it took was the shake in her voice and her limp hold and the stony look on Kankurou's face immediately evaporated, leaving behind a look that he had been carrying around for more than a month tops because of what had been going on. But it was nothing compared to what he saw in her face, which sobered him up and regretted his words. He would even convince her to kill him if that was what it took to make her stop looking this weak. And her request for him to help her get over him was worse than any knife wound he would ever feel.
As soon as he felt the ground shudder from her impact, Kankurou was immediately on his knees with her, his arms around her fragile body, holding her together as if she would shatter at any moment.
"I en't gonna leave you, Anko. S'tough shit, but I'm 'ere t'stay. I en't givin' you up for anythin'." Fingers roughly smoothed out her unkempt hair, attempting to straighten it and brush it away from her eyes. They tangled with purple strands as Kankurou kissed Anko hard on the lips before placing a similar one on her forehead.
"I'm gonna help you, Anko, I will. But y'gotta let me do this shot for you. I love you, I en't leavin' an' it's gonna take a lot more than diseases an' knives t'kick me out. Jus' trus' me for a minute. Let me do wha' I'm gonna do an' then we'll talk later, alrigh'?"
It was so hard to not reach out and latch onto Kankurou, the warmth from his body crept into her own chilled skin even as she tried to make sense of his words. Her eyes remained downcast with her nodded assent to whatever it was he wanted, trusting in him to choose what was best as her attempts to fix things had only turned out disastrously time and time again. There was nothing left to hide behind and if it took being the broken doll left to the puppeteer's capable hands, she was fine with that.
She was just so fucking tired.
Kankurou wasn't sure whether or not Anko had become unconscious completely or if she had just given up all her motor functions, since the next thing he felt was her entire body slacking in its rigidity. He immediately took this opportunity to act before Anko's nasty alter-ego came back to try and put a couple through his head again. Arms gently positioned Anko so that her back would be against one of his arms while his other would be hooked under her legs. The needle was gingerly placed between his teeth as he got up with Anko in his arms, moving her to the bedroom.
Once there, he made out a place for her on the bed, keeping her head elevated and her arms unbent. Quick movements after, Kankurou had brought a saline IV stand into the room from his work station, with plasma dripping from it through a thin line running into her left arm. the needle he had with him was soon administrated after the IV line went in.
Throughout his movements, Kankurou tried hard not to look at Anko's face and take in the guilt of having letting her physically deteriorate to this point. But even without looking, the feel of her slow pulse within her thing arms and the sound of her shallow breath were already apparent signs of how far she had gone in the illness.
After everything was set to the best of his abilities, Kankurou stood over Anko for what seemed like hours on end, his fingers gripped tightly over her wrist every once in a while before he realized that he was slowing down her blood flow. A cigarette was lit a couple minutes after the "recovery system", and all Kankurou could do was to lean against the radiator near the window and watch the rise and fall of her chest and count how many breaths she took in each minute.
If he was a religious man, he would've been praying. But since he didn't know who would be listening all he could do was hope that his luck was as good as that day when he walked into an assassin's apartment and got out without being killed.
Date: June 17
Location: Anko's Apartment in Celo
Warnings/Notes: Language, Mild-Violence, a dash of Fluff
Summary: Kankurou finally has the answer to all their problems, but Anko thinks otherwise. Maybe it's already too late.
He actually thought that this time, alcohol would be a good boy and help him kill time.
But with two shots of vodka and a beer bottle empty, the lines on the clock only mocked him and moved a couple of centimeters, totaling to an amount of five minutes. Looking down at the bottle and the empty shot glass, Kankurou heaved another heavy sigh and cursed himself for not being more conscious about the time. It was only an hour earlier that he had finally finished what he started a couple of months ago, a good chunk of his lifetime. And once he stepped out of his room, ready to breathe in fresh air again, there was no one to share this moment of relief with him.
The apartment was empty and he had no choice but to stay put and wonder where his brother and his girlfriend was. Maybe they were both long gone and he just didn't notice while he was trying to "save the world". Or maybe they gave up with the wait. This made Kankurou remember that night when he woke up alone, only to find Anko killing time by killing people.
"Where th' fuck is everyone?" he asked himself for the twentieth time, reaching for the vodka bottle again. If there was no sound of footsteps at the door by the time he was finished the little amount in the bottle, he was going to go hunting himself.
He'd just hope that Gaara didn't get any funny ideas about converting Anko to his own blood addiction cult.
Anko sighed tiredly as she made her way upstairs, the florescent lighting flickering as the bulbs slowly burned themselves out. How long had it been since she found her way home the last time? A week? Perhaps it had been two, she lost count after the first few days, sunrise bleeding into sunset seamlessly. She had seen quite a few of them without break, sleep eluding her even more now without being home to get a dose of Kankurou's sleepy-time drug. Maybe if she had made the trip sooner she wouldn't have been sporting that nasty gash on her forehead, but hindsight was always 20/20 and how in the hell could she have honestly known that she would have passed out like some pussy?
Her head still ached from the indignity of it all. Or perhaps it was just from the impact from edge of that counter top she had clipped on her way to the floor, it was really hard to tell.
This latest little adventure across the border had hardly been noteworthy by any stretch. It had been all too easy to studiously avoid a run-in with Naruto, she'd seen a few cases of Gaara's handiwork but never the brat himself nor the red-eyed ghost of her past that still haunted her every time she neared that particular alleyway. For all the troops she had 'bumped' into, none of them were her, raising Anko's hopes a little that Kurenai had actually listened and returned back to Ceno.
She doubted it, but it didn't hurt to hope, right?
Mechanically she dug in a pocket for her key, not even wincing when scuffed knuckles rubbed against the rough texture of her jeans. The apartment was silent and dark, meaning Gaara was still out roaming somewhere. She didn't even glance off to the side to check the door to Kankurou's workshop, knowing he was still likely hunched over his petri dishes unless he was out doing whatever it was he did on the rare venture when he left the glorified closet, either way all she wanted was a shower and then her bed.
That intent locked in mind, the sudden sound of a bottle hitting the counter top had her jolting out of her inner musings to see the white street light glinting amber off an empty beer bottle and onto the familiar form sitting hunched over it. Instinctively she bristled, her fingers discretely tugging the long sleeves of her shirt down further to ensure her hands were covered by the fabric - as if the excess clothing wasn't enough out of place with the lengthening days and warmer weather.
"Hey."
There was only a drop left in the bottle when the sound of footsteps finally broke his strange drinking cycle. A moment of hesitation passed through him as to whether or not he should greet Anko or wait until she was knocked out on the bed and administer the shot. Knowing her, she was still impartial to needles, but the fear had toned down some since he had met her, which counted for something. Even so, Kankurou found himself looking down the clear empty glass before he heard her voice behind him.
Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was the poor lighting, but when Kankurou turned around to face her, whoever was standing there didn't seem like Anko at all. This revelation made Kankurou blink rapidly and curse his own method of killing time.
"Hey," he blearily greeted back, using his palm to rub away anything clouding his sight at the moment. "I need you to take this tonight." A thin needle was shown as Kankurou unclenched his right hand, which had been balled into a fist ever since he left his workroom.
The rustle of Kankurou's clothes echoed in the silent apartment, his turning towards her cleared up her line of sight to display the empty vodka bottle sitting next to the beer bottle, giving her pause to wonder how long he had been sitting there. He was obviously feeling no pain at the moment, looking as if he had a pleasant enough buzz worked up. Perhaps if she didn't feel as though the slime of Cena clung to her skin and perhaps if she didn't think she were likely to fall asleep where she stood, the opportunity for cuddles and some molesting would be likely but with his words and the appearance of yet another syringe had her lips twisting into a sneer instead.
"Unless it's something to knock my ass out, I'm going to pass. I want a shower, one of your sleepy-time cocktails and that's it. We're not playing mad scientist and pin cushion tonight."
The look on Kankurou's face immediately soured at Anko's words and tone. Whether it was the alcohol making him react as quickly or not, a narrowed eyed look was given to the unhappy woman before him. The look on her face was unsettling enough, making the deeply etched scowl on his face crease downwards even further.
"When th' hell have I ever fucked aroun' with you on this?" he asked sharply, his hold on the needle dangerously increasing with his own temper.
"You've been wasting your time in there for months now, and one of the first times you've come out without me having to drag you or for you to disappear right away after, you're wanting to jab at me as soon as I walk in the door? Thanks, but no thanks." Her bitterly clipped words didn't raise in tone to meet his spike of temper, an aloof coolness doing the job just as well as any screaming and throwing things ever did but with this tactic she didn't have to worry about the cold sweats and near paralyzing pain that radiated through her chest whenever her blood pressure spiked. It had been a hard enough lesson to learn but one she'd gotten quite used to over the past few months.
"There should be another bottle of vodka up in the cabinet, have at it. You know where the couch is unless you want to go lock yourself back up again."
"Wasting my time?" This time the question came out in a low snarl, heavily laced with disbelief and hurt that could only translate to a form of anger that Kankurou knew best to portray. Now the guilt that had plagued his mind was pushed back so far that it was barely recognizable to Kankurou, who was only pissed that Anko could see this whole past few months as a waste.
Half of him wanted her to understand just how hard it was to pass each night without her and to be sent to restless sleep without any ounce of hope. Another half of him made him a liar, told him that he slept easy enough and that the old nostalgic ways of working was just what he needed to take his mind off the fact that Anko was going to die. Either way, there was a matter to be corrected at the moment, and no matter what he thought, he definitely wasn't wasting his time.
"I en't wastin' my time so much as you're fuckin' up whatever time you thought you had left. So how many fuckers did you take out tonigh'? Think tha' much is gonna help you live through whatever th' fuck you have?" Now a heavy ounce of hurt was radiating through every word, hand in hand with harsh retaliation against her own words.
Flat violet eyes cut over dangerously to where Kankurou stood stiff-spined, her lips curling back up at his intuitiveness.
“Tonight? My hands are clean tonight. The border wasn’t so well guarded when I came back across and the mood just wasn’t there.” Even as the words left her lips, the smallest little tendril of thought floated into her mind unchecked - ‘That can easily be remedied…’, - and had her stepping further away from Kankurou to keep a safe distance between them. It was the same little voice that had urged her to eliminate the whole Kurenai issue rather than worrying if the Arceos would be kicking her door down in the middle of the night, the same one that urged her to add significantly to the ever increasing body count over these past few weeks.
She shouldn’t have come back. Had she had known Kankurou would have sitting up waiting for her to come back, she wouldn’t have. It was selfish, she knew, to have wanted to come back to where it felt safe, to know he was nearby but she should have known better. It was too much to hope that the time spent together in their happy little bubble when she surprised him for his birthday would have been the picture perfect sort of ‘good-bye’ that would have been ideal.
It sort of fit though, they came into this kicking and screaming, it only made sense that it would end on the same note.
She just hadn't planned on doing this right here, right now but perhaps it was for the best before he wasted any more time locked away and stressing unnecessarily on her behalf.
Or before she did something she would never forgive herself for.
“However I choose to spend my time is my own business, it doesn’t matter anymore so no need to get yourself all twisted up in knots over it. Sorry you’ve wasted the better part of the past year dealing with me and all, but you’re going to end up compensated fairly decently for all your inconveniences so you shouldn’t have too much room for complaint."
There was that feeling again, the same one he had when he came back to Cena, with only a bottle of vodka to help him along. Except this time, he had a gut feeling that it wouldn't end with kisses and mumbled apologies against the countertop. Inwardly, he told himself that he wasn't surprised to see this happen; for her to lose that simple faith he told her to invest in and those lies he told himself to be motivated on this case. But in the end, even when actually broke through his own mirage, she broke. One of them had to.
"Y'know wha'? Fuck your pity. I don't need it." Alcohol or not, that was definitely a significant increase in Kankurou's voice, along with a large step forward and an accusing finger pointed right at Anko's chest. "I don't need any fuckin' compensations for my time, 'cause y'know, it worked out in the end. I believed in somethin' an' it finally came through, but it en't 'nough for you, righ'? You gotta fuck things up in the end an' cling on to whatever th' fuck you think is best for you. Which is killin' some poor son of a bitch out there an' taken down as many as you can 'fore you fuckin' croak!"
The room echoed loudly with the sound of the displaced chair that Kankurou had kicked towards the kitchen sink, making it bang loudly against the cabinet doors. The needle in his hand was carelessly tossed back onto the table that he had been sitting at for the past couple of hours, skittering across the plastic top before coming to a rest in the center. The man himself had turned around, his back towards Anko, as he tried to compose himself, burying his face in the depths of his palms.
But even there, Kankurou couldn't find any answers. Even with the final solution lying only a couple of inches away from his own hands, he found himself again, dealing with intervention that couldn't be prevented.
“Even now, you still have no clue how blind you really are, do you? You think that this is for me? The only selfish part that I can lay claim to is not wanting to wake up the next morning to your cold body next to me and not knowing why in the fuck my hands are covered in your blood…did you even stop to think about that?” For the first time since she stepped back into their apartment, she stood and faced his back head on, trying to keep her own temper stomped down to a safe level and to keep her mind clear as she tried to get him to see.
Regardless of whatever promise she might have made before, her hand had pulled one of her knives out of hiding before setting it to flight, the precisely sharpened blade skimming by Kankurou’s head with only centimeters to spare.
“Fucking look at me Kankurou. If this were about me I would have killed myself months ago to save me the trouble of having to look in the mirror and see this fucking shell of myself that’s left. You’ve lost months of your life trying to save a monster. I can’t control what goes through my head anymore, not even the simple concept of putting one fucking foot in front of the other at times. Some of this I haven’t wanted you to see because I wanted you to see me and not the monster or the shell, just me… but if that’s what it fucking takes then so fucking be it.” Haunted violet eyes glared out from underneath the curtain of unkempt hair, her hands clenched tightly into fists in her restraint to not reach out to grab him by the shirt to throttle him.
“You’ve been blissfully locked away from reality while slaving away over your blood samples and test tubes, I’ve not had that luxury, having to face this every single fucking day. I almost gutted the one person who I could once actually call my best friend, why in the fuck should you be any different?” Quickly she closed the few paces between them, one of her clenched fists swinging with an agility she shouldn’t possess in that state, stopping just as her knuckles brushed the thin skin at the crook of his neck.
“Had I another knife in my hand you’d be dead now, don't you see? You’ve never once stopped me when I’ve come at you, and I don’t expect you to start now. It’s never been about my not believing in you, you son of a bitch, it’s about not being able to trust me.”
At the sound of dull thud of the knife embedding itself a couple of feet away from Kankurou's spot, Kankurou could not help but look at it in disbelief for a couple of silent moments, his ears still open to Anko's scathing words, but his pupils dilating at a rapid rate because of the knife. He knew what Anko was capable of, and he never doubted it. Even from the first couple of weeks following their "hook-up" on that miserable rainy afternoon, Kankurou was still wary of Anko's skills and profession. It was her job. And he soon understood it was a part of her. Even so, he still held his belief to the promise she made to him that he would never have to worry about his own safety around her.
It was that single solitary sign of aggression that made Kankurou almost give up right then and there. It was Anko, it was her. But it was a broken promise.
When she called his name again, he wearily turned around and looked at her with a foreign face for a moment, as if she was someone different altogether. He didn't even flinch when she suddenly came within his personal space and threatened to almost lop his head off with her bare hands. This wasn't new, it happened to him before. It might as well happen again.
"You made a promise. I made a promise." His voice was scratchy and filled with a thick tone that sounded tired and defeated in his own internal ears. Maybe a week ago he would've cared on how pathetic it sounded, but when you're a guy with no more options, it was the knees that went first. Pride and self-integrity fell behind. "I en't afraid of death an' I know dyin' by your hand migh' be a small mercy compared t'gettin' sticked by a freak on th' streets. I never stopped you 'cause I trusted you. I don't care if you don't fuckin' trust yourself, but you en't gone all th' way, Anko."
"You're still speakin', breathin', yellin', an' kickin'. You're still fuckin' alive. You never struck me as someone tha' would give up this fuckin' easy to somethin' tha' you can't even goddamn see inside of you. Jus' seein' you die everyday by your own hands is sickening." Green eyes reflected the harsh look of disgust and pity through clear irises, only to disappear behind bruised eyelids.
"Now I'm standin' 'ere with my promise in my hand. You take it or leave it. Or kill me. Whatever fuckin' use tha's gonna be."
"It's because I can't see it that I don't know how to fight it," she whispered, wincing at the harsh words that fell from Kankurou's lips and even harsher gaze she felt focused on her. "Things in front of me I can cut, they can be destroyed. I'm not trained to know how to deal with this." Slowly Kankurou's words seeped into her mind and the threatening hand at his throat slid down limply to rest on his shoulder.
Her head fucking hurt and her breathing was ragged as she fought to process all this information into her very, very tired brain. But even in this disconnected state she knew that tightness in her chest wasn't just from that microscopic thing wrecking havoc inside her veins.
She threw a knife at him. And had he moved, it would have killed him.
"I don't want to hurt you. I never did, but I don't know what to do..." Lax fingers twisted into the neckline of his shirt as a border of grey tinged her vision and green eyes blurred into everything else in a sickening replay of what she could remember before waking up sprawled out on her kitchen floor. Only this time she didn't fight it when that wave of lightheadedness came, she let his shirt slide from her fingers even as her knees buckled before impacting the floor before him. "You deserve so much better than this shit but I can't bring myself to give you up."
"Help me. Please."
All it took was the shake in her voice and her limp hold and the stony look on Kankurou's face immediately evaporated, leaving behind a look that he had been carrying around for more than a month tops because of what had been going on. But it was nothing compared to what he saw in her face, which sobered him up and regretted his words. He would even convince her to kill him if that was what it took to make her stop looking this weak. And her request for him to help her get over him was worse than any knife wound he would ever feel.
As soon as he felt the ground shudder from her impact, Kankurou was immediately on his knees with her, his arms around her fragile body, holding her together as if she would shatter at any moment.
"I en't gonna leave you, Anko. S'tough shit, but I'm 'ere t'stay. I en't givin' you up for anythin'." Fingers roughly smoothed out her unkempt hair, attempting to straighten it and brush it away from her eyes. They tangled with purple strands as Kankurou kissed Anko hard on the lips before placing a similar one on her forehead.
"I'm gonna help you, Anko, I will. But y'gotta let me do this shot for you. I love you, I en't leavin' an' it's gonna take a lot more than diseases an' knives t'kick me out. Jus' trus' me for a minute. Let me do wha' I'm gonna do an' then we'll talk later, alrigh'?"
It was so hard to not reach out and latch onto Kankurou, the warmth from his body crept into her own chilled skin even as she tried to make sense of his words. Her eyes remained downcast with her nodded assent to whatever it was he wanted, trusting in him to choose what was best as her attempts to fix things had only turned out disastrously time and time again. There was nothing left to hide behind and if it took being the broken doll left to the puppeteer's capable hands, she was fine with that.
She was just so fucking tired.
Kankurou wasn't sure whether or not Anko had become unconscious completely or if she had just given up all her motor functions, since the next thing he felt was her entire body slacking in its rigidity. He immediately took this opportunity to act before Anko's nasty alter-ego came back to try and put a couple through his head again. Arms gently positioned Anko so that her back would be against one of his arms while his other would be hooked under her legs. The needle was gingerly placed between his teeth as he got up with Anko in his arms, moving her to the bedroom.
Once there, he made out a place for her on the bed, keeping her head elevated and her arms unbent. Quick movements after, Kankurou had brought a saline IV stand into the room from his work station, with plasma dripping from it through a thin line running into her left arm. the needle he had with him was soon administrated after the IV line went in.
Throughout his movements, Kankurou tried hard not to look at Anko's face and take in the guilt of having letting her physically deteriorate to this point. But even without looking, the feel of her slow pulse within her thing arms and the sound of her shallow breath were already apparent signs of how far she had gone in the illness.
After everything was set to the best of his abilities, Kankurou stood over Anko for what seemed like hours on end, his fingers gripped tightly over her wrist every once in a while before he realized that he was slowing down her blood flow. A cigarette was lit a couple minutes after the "recovery system", and all Kankurou could do was to lean against the radiator near the window and watch the rise and fall of her chest and count how many breaths she took in each minute.
If he was a religious man, he would've been praying. But since he didn't know who would be listening all he could do was hope that his luck was as good as that day when he walked into an assassin's apartment and got out without being killed.