[Log] Chicken Soup for the Sadist's Soul [Part 2 of 2] [Backdated like whoa]

[dango_diva]

Characters: Anko and Gaara
Date: May 21st, immediately following this log
Location: Anko's Apartment
Rating: R
Warnings/Notes: Blood, Violence, Language. Oh, and did we mention blood?
Summary: After a pretty bad trip, Anko just wants to get some sleep and Gaara just wants some attention. Too bad they both get what they're looking for.

It was with complete and utter disbelief that Anko watched the vials be plucked from her fingers, having only just made it to the window sill when the sickening sound of shattering glass tinkled its way to her ears. For a few silent moments she hung out over the ledge, the cool night air wisping at her hair.

Her last chance for peace of mind, tossed out like the trash.

Almost immediately the voices that had been quieted with the promise of unconscious bliss came back full force, nearly making her knees buckle from the sudden cacophony she had so been trying to avoid. But at least for a split second, everything focused in onto one common thread - the cocky son of a bitch standing silently beside her. Before her mind could even finish processing this latest travesty, her body was acting of it's own accord, a quick twist of her heel and she was moving, hurling the interloper into the nearest wall with her hand tightening threateningly around his throat.

"I should kill you now...you had no right to touch those. You wouldn't help me, and now...you don't even care what you've done you stupid little sonuvabitch..."

Her reaction was violent and unexpected, and so Gaara had no time to react before he was thrown into a wall, Anko's fingers gripping his throat, blocking the air from reaching his lungs. Instincts told him to struggle, to bite back, to swing his leg in a way as to make her loose her balance and force their positions to change. Common sense told him otherwise.

Anko was in a feral mood. The look in her eyes... he'd seen it mirrored in his own plenty of times before. She'd never directed such a gaze towards him before, so he didn't know if something like this was normal for her - on her jobs, and the like. What the red-head did know was that there were certain... procedures... when dealing with something as threatening as an unhinged human being.

Still, the thought of facing Anko in this state - in this sort of hazy, desperate mindlessness -, intrigued him more than threatened him.

"Let go, Anko." His voice was a rasp - she was still squeezing the breath out of him -, but still held the ability to be cold and calm.

The cool collected demeanor only incited Anko's wrath further, something she didn't bother hiding as she applied even more pressure against Gaara's throat. Her lips drew back from her teeth as something akin to a snarl bubbled forth at the order she was given. Running completely on instinct, Anko's free hand moved down to brush against her thigh, reaching for the knife that was not there, her fingers instead meeting the worn linen and not the cold metal she was seeking. She had denied herself the death of her old comrade, and now that she had been denied something else the bloodlust came rushing forth once more. The identity of the person didn't matter, she needed to destroy, needed to prolong this ounce of control that she could manipulate to her liking, something she hadn't had in some time now, and already someone else was trying to take that control away? To throw it away like the last grasp of sanity he had so carelessly hurled out the window?

Anko was not having it.

Torn fingernails raked against the wall before digging into pale skin as she drew close, glaring Gaara down without the benefit of coherent words to relay what she thought of his request. She didn't need a knife, nor a gun or anything else really. Her hands had shed plenty of blood all by themselves without the benefit of a weapon, had before and would surely again. Dull fingers could easily tear through skin, rip out arteries and paint the walls with blood in a matter of seconds. And somehow so much more satisfying when you do something all on your own. Just as long as he suffered, she couldn't let him die so easily of course, for bringing her to this state for...whatever it was that he had done. He had crossed some line and now it was time to pay the piper, but the technique! How to do it properly, different scenarios and choice organs to destroy first stalled her from immediate action. Without a knife to wrap her fingers around, her hand instead moved up to lightly brush fingertips over areas of interest. Kidneys would be a good place to begin -painful but not exactly deadly- giving her time to maybe start extracting his intestines slowly next, the possibilities and the morbid fascination with this living autopsy causing her snarl to lower into a contented purr, the biting coppery smell of spilled blood burning her nose even before it was shed.

Mm. Gaara shuddered, his hands clenching and un-clenching at his sides as the force of Anko's murderous intent fell directly onto him. He didn't have enough air in his lungs to speak, and slowly that frantic part of his being began to emerge. Survival. That was the game here, and the key to winning was to be the cruelest beast in the room. Right now Anko had the upper hand, and all Gaara needed to do was switch their positions.

A slow shudder burned down his spine, colliding with the adrenaline racing upwards. Heat spread through his fingertips, even as ice flowed through his veins and froze his spine. How euphoric... this challenge. This threat against his life. It both angered him, and intrigued him.

Gaara smirked, leveling his cold jade eyes onto Anko's crazed violet ones. It was like looking into a mirror, really. What he saw there was so achingly familiar...

He chuckled, using what little breath he had left to state two simple words.

"I know."

And he did. He completely understood what she was feeling at the moment. Righteous anger towards a completely unrighteous situation. Suffocating hate - enough rage to make you lose control of what others might deem common sense.

He paused, waiting for her reaction before making a move of his own. That feral need to survive bubbled just beneath the surface of his skin. He refused to die right now. Not by her hands. He had lived through too much to be the victim of such intense irony.

For a brief moment, Anko was trapped with those two words and the intense eyes that wouldn't let her look away, the understanding and familiarity that lingered there.

Neither of which she wanted at the moment.

Her grip on his throat tightened momentarily in warning before loosening again, it wouldn't do for him to be unconscious. It would take away a great deal of the fun, defeating the purpose completely.

With her superiority reassured, Anko leaned in close, trying to taste any trace of fear lingering on the man -not that there was any to be found, she just wanted to be sure there to catch it in the instance it was there. Her free hand snaked underneath the brat's shirt, jagged nails easily tearing across pale flesh until fingers were gliding slickly along the firm plane of his stomach. Once to break through the thin upper layer of skin, twice to gouge just slightly deeper, a few more times to drag out the pain and make him bleed.

Fuck. There were no words he could use to describe the mix of pain and debilitating hate radiating from his very being at that moment. He winced mightily, but no outward sound was made. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction - Gaara knew more than anyone how much pleasure could be gleaned from a violent, agonized cry.

Still. This needed to end. Now.

Grabbing hold of the wrist still firmly holding his head in place, the insomniac dug his blunt nails into the skin, in an attempt to make her let up just enough for him to breathe.

To breathe, yes, but also to go on the offensive, as well.

When her hold loosened slightly, Gaara did the same thing he had done to the Bastard way back, before Temari had grown attached to the idiot. Growling, the red-head pulled his lips back in a sneer, then lunged forward and bit viciously into Anko's hand, tearing at the flesh between her thumb and forefinger.

A sharp hiss whistled through her teeth at the feral action, the bittersweet pain rushing to her head and momentarily stunning her. It didn't last for very long though, the agony only increasing when she ripped her hand away, not caring for the torn flesh nor the tinge of blood staining Gaara's mouth. As quickly as she had snatched her hand away, that hand was returning swiftly to crack loudly as it connected with the side of his face full force, her hold on his side being the only thing that kept her from tipping over with the effort put into the swing.

At least she had been the one to draw first blood, that being the only coherent thought her mind's slippery clutches could grasp.

Violet eyes watched in sick fascination as Gaara's head snapped to the side, exposing a long line of pale skin that was too much of a temptation to pass up. Just as savagely as he had just seconds ago, Anko dove forward, teeth latching onto the thin skin that just barely protected arteries and sinew, doing her best to tear past the barrier for maximum damage.

They were literally acting like animals, the snarls and growls echoing loudly in the room (Never loud enough to alert the other occupant in that household to just what, exactly, they were doing.). Kankurou was used to their little violent romps by now, but had he heard the extent of insanity drowning their senses at that very moment, no doubt he would have tried to pry them from each other.

And Gaara was fairly certain that, were he not to try and kill his own brother for the effort, Anko would do the job.

The red-head had never seen her in such a state. It was almost frightening, in a way, if Gaara had the mind to actually be frightened. Instead, it gave him a rush of adrenaline unlike any other. Fighting with muggers was one thing. Fighting with the Arma was another.

Fighting with an assassin as mentally deranged as he was, was as close to 'fun' as Gaara could imagine getting.

He shuddered as his head snapped to the side, realizing too late that Anko would do exactly what he would have done had their rolls been reversed. Honestly, it was like fighting himself...

Blunt teeth tore harshly at the skin of his neck, making the red-head snarl in unchecked anger. Instead of jerking away, he wrapped his hands in Anko's unguarded hair, twisting her locks painfully around his fingers, and tugged harshly to the side in an attempt to force her to break away, and also to try and snap her neck in the process.

The thought of mercy never even crossed his mind.

Nor did it hers as teeth clamped down even harder and her fingers dug painfully into the torn skin at his side. A particularly painful jerk to her hair twisted her neck just so, forcing her body to follow if she didn't want to die. Bloodstained lips pulled back from her teeth as she snarled in irritation for being pried away but the hold on her hair didn't stop her from twisting around so that she could drive an elbow into his gut with devastating force. There was no finesse to her movements, only whatever it took to get the opposition down and baring his throat to her.

Nothing else mattered.

Especially not if he were alive to do it properly.

She could feel the body behind her react like she wanted, doubling over to catch his breath after all the air had been forcibly removed and leaving himself unguarded for the leg that hooked around his to try and bring him to the floor.

He had no time to recover after suffering a jab to the stomach. One long, gasping intake of air was all he had time to accomplish before he felt his legs being swept out from underneath him. Gravity took its toll, and pulled him towards the floor, but not before Gaara could use his grip on Anko's hair to his advantage. He shifted slightly, not enough to reverse their positions, but enough to drag the violet-eyed woman down with him. As he pulled down on her head, his body was pulled upwards. He tugged with all his force, guiding the madwoman's head towards the ground, and slamming it against the floor with as much force as he could manage.

Gaara spared no time to celebrate this small victory. He scrambled away from the body beside him, flipping over so he was on top of her, one knee pressed painfully in the small of her back, and both his hands occupied with keeping her arms immobile.

He scowled as he realized that he was panting heavily - Anko was actually making him put some level of effort into not getting killed.

Her world clouded even further with the impact to the floor, the hardwood doing absolutely nothing but pissing her off even more once the black splotches dissipated from her vision. Those jagged fingernails did their job in tearing at the fingers and hands that held her immobile.

"I'll kill you..."

They were the first words rasped out after a long silence that had only been filled with sounds of annoyance and violence, and she fully meant it. Her head slid against the floor, blood from where her temple impacted the floor slicking the way as she tried to twist back to see the bastard that held her down.

She wanted to feel his organs between her fingers, she wanted that sweet tang of his blood on her tongue again, but more importantly, she wanted nothing more then to hear that last wisp of breath leaving his very dead body.

There was really no rhyme or reason to her train of thought, really no valid reason for it beside the fact that she wanted it and it would be fun.

But that didn't immediately solve the problem of removing him from her back.

Gaara might have laughed at her words, had he not been so scathingly angry at the moment. Her violence only seemed to stoke his own, creating a snowball effect that suddenly had two furious psychopaths brawling in a room not two doors down from a man who might or might not have been killed were he to hear their angry fight, and try to intervene.

It was a good thing Kankurou was oblivious at the moment.

The red-head barely had a mind to think about such mundane things anymore, though. Why had he been fighting Anko in the first place? To protect himself? Now, all he wanted to do was hurt her - kill her - and the murderous intent seeping from her very being did little to soothe his own tainted desires.

"You can try," he ground out tauntingly, the words more of a growl than anything else. They were guttural, deep, and held the edge of someone gritting their teeth while speaking them.

He wanted to kill her.

He so desperately wanted to feel her blood seep between his fingers, to bathe in the warmth of her dying body, and hear those gasps - those screams of pain - fall from her lips as he performed unspeakable tortures upon her wholly deserving form.

Madness matched madness.

Gaara lunged forward, his lips pulled back to bare his canines, and buried his teeth in the side of Anko's neck; biting and tearing in much the same manner she had bitten him earlier.

An incoherent snarl erupted from the pinned woman and she redoubled her struggles against his hold. She didn't care about making the tear in her throat any worse, whatever it took to get away and strike back.

Fortunately for her, when Gaara had shifted to be able to get in for his strike, it only brought his torso closer to her only viable weapons at the moment. Once again those jagged fingernails tore into pliable flesh, digging in and twisting to cause as much pain as she could manage with her limited mobility. Apparently it worked to some extent, hearing the growl rumbling through the body above her and feeling the hands gripping her wrists release to try and move back a bit away from her hands but still not releasing the teeth on her neck. Twisting her newly freed arms about, she swung one arm up to loop over Gaara's shoulder so that her fingers could dig into the side of his neck, fingers moving slickly against the torn skin to scrape and tear the wound further. The other she used to try and brace herself up off the floor a little bit, a difficult task with the heavier body pinning her down, but with enough thrashing and clawing she managed to at least gain enough leverage to roll them over, using her weight to try and slam Gaara's head into the floor hard enough to make him release his hold on her throat.

His head did hit the floor, hard, and a wave of nausea threatened to make him loose sense of where he was and what he was doing. But Gaara was adamant when vicious, and her attempts to pry him off only served to make him dig his teeth into her even further, grinding his jaw in an effort to cause more pain.

He growled - a low, guttural sound -, and truly sounded like some kind of beast in that moment. But his life was being threatened - he could feel consciousness slipping from him with every gush of blood that left his body to stain the floor and her fingers - and in situations such as these, the only thing keeping him alive was pure animal instinct. Never mind the excruciating pain her too-sharp nails was causing, or the way her thrashing body beat against his in just as much fury as he beat against her.

With his hands no longer grasping her scratching nails, the red-head wrapped his fingers around the area of her neck he wasn't currently ripping into with his teeth, trying to force her to submit by getting her into a stranglehold.

Fingers once again dug into flesh as Anko clawed at the arm that was cutting off her air. Perhaps if she were thinking clearly, all of the obvious openings would have made it easy for her to escape, but instinct and now the fear of being incapacitated for lack of air had her madly attack the source of her current problem. She squirmed and thrashed, feet kicking aimlessly at Gaara's knees and ankles before pulling together enough sense to use the freedom of her hands and arms, driving an elbow hard into his gut.

He gasped, the air knocked from him, and relented his hold to pull back suddenly. The hazy look in his eyes was entirely ridden with a very primal, basic urge. He wanted to kill. He wanted to kill her.

Gaara wanted to kill Anko.

The thought should have shocked him, but it really didn't. When he was in such a frenzy, it didn't matter to whom his anger was directed at, only that it was directed at someone. The redhead felt tight, and sick, and he knew the only way to ease this ill foreboding was to break someone, and watch them bleed.

It really didn't matter who, at this point.

She made full use of Gaara's foolish release to twist around and sit up, keeping her weight centered on his chest to make it difficult for him to regain the air knocked from her earlier blow. Blood smeared the floor just as it did their skin, the very scent of it hanging heavy in the air and making her light headed.

But it was ok, better then ok really because now who was on top? A sick grin of satisfaction twisted Anko's lips as it registered in her mind that the battle was over.

A deep purr rumbled from her chest as she leaned down low, sliding a hand over his throat in manner that clearly said 'Game Over'. She was feeling expansive in her victory, nosing his cheek as she waited for the initial rush to subside, wanting nothing to deviate from her kill. Absently flickering her tongue out to catch a smear of blood left behind from his hold on her neck, she let her thumb begin to dig into his wind pipe before dipping her head to nuzzle at his ear.

"You lose..."

And, frantically, his mind registered that indeed he had. Logically there was no way out of this situation. It boiled Gaara's blood to think that he would lose to her - die by the hands of this woman - when he had been so confident before that, should the time come, he would be the one to kill her. Stupid, stupid mistakes. She was a clever opponent, sharp-witted and brutal, and had been a sickeningly sweet challenge...

The challenge had turned into a threat.

The threat had turned into a death sentence.

"Kill me." In the end, he would die by a command. Her mock-tenderness made his heart beat heavily in his chest, and he knew that he had done the same to countless victims before. Only now he was on the receiving end of such sick satisfaction. He enjoyed it. He hated touch, and her proximity made his entire body shudder with the intense need to get away, and yet he could at least appreciate the murderous intent radiating off of the woman above him.

He leaned up a bit, baring his teeth in a vicious growl, and sank his canines into the already tender flesh of her neck. The action was harsh, meant to cause pain, and yet the filthy scent of her blood mixed with his own was like some kind of euphoric drug. Gaara knew he would die, but he would at least go down fighting.

Biting into her had left his own tender neck open for assault, but he gladly welcomed the pain to come.

Dying was better than losing, after all.

At least, in these last moments, he didn't hear that dark voice.

The command embittered her victory more then last attempt at retaliation did. They weren't supposed to boss her around, there was supposed to be begging! Even the more boring 'quiet resignation', but not an order. She bit down sharply on his earlobe in her displeasure before reaching up with her free hand to grip Gaara's jaw tightly, her thumb digging in and closing off his airway further.

Some combination of seemed to work as it gave her enough leverage to pull back again, glaring down at her kill with an air of superiority that was only heightened by the blood staining her lips from before. She released his jaw so that both hands easily wrapped around the redhead's neck, violet eyes intent on soaking in every moment of this nuisance's death.

Her hands tightened their grip slowly, relishing in how each breath was a little shallower then the last.

And then as if someone flipped a switch, the heavy lidded gaze snapped open into a look of shock and confusion, the blood was too bright and everywhere. Her hands didn't seem as though they were her own, acting of their own accord as they tightened just a little bit more before she forcibly snatched them away, the sheer force toppling her back off of Gaara's chest before she managed to get herself upright and pressed back tightly against the wall.

Here it was. Dark oblivion. Hell rose up before him - his lungs were positively aching! - and he could only wait to see if he would feel the fiery tendrils of that mythical destination, or nothing at all. He did feel something... but it was far from what he expected.

Her warmth was off of him in a moment, and Gaara suddenly felt cold all over. The second her hands released him, he took in one long, staggering breath. The need for air was too intense, his actions too quick, and he began to cough and hack at the excess of sweet oxygen that filled his lungs.

But he wasn't going to die.

The thought struck him fast and hard, making him bolt upright to stare at the woman who was now huddled along the far wall. Instinct told him to surge forward and attack her, while he still had a chance, but curiosity stayed his movements.

Blood was everywhere.

It was gorgeous.

And yet, Anko's eyes were staring at it as if she had no clue what had just happened, or why so very much of it was staining her bedroom. Gaara lifted up, fighting the urge to do it quickly, and instead making his movements slow and measured, so as to not startle the violet-eyed woman across the room. She looked like a frantic animal, near ready to start frothing at the mouth.

"Anko..." His voice was low, gruff, and it stung to talk because of the various wounds scattered along his neck - the pain was pleasant. He didn't move, though. Just stood there, and watched her with cold, piercing eyes.

It was everywhere.

The room reeked of it, her skin and clothes were damp with it, she could even taste it on her tongue.

And she hurt.

The sound of her name jolted her into some sort of consciousness, wide violet eyes fixated on the battered looking man before her.

Did she do that? She didn't remember doing anything, she remembered...nothing really. Digging in her closet, she remembered. Vials in her hand, she remembered. The cause as to why her neck was hurting as bad as it was, no clue.

"W-what happened?" she rasped out, her hands coming up to cradle her head. Averting her eyes from Gaara's beat up body, she couldn't help but think how much trouble she was in when Kankurou were to see all of this mess. Her head hurt so bad and she was so disoriented, she barely knew up from down at that moment. All she did know was that a disgusted sense of self was building in her stomach and that something bad had happened.

And with Gaara looking as beat up as she felt, she could only assume that she was the cause of it, because even though they'd both had their moments in the past, he'd never looked at her like that.

She didn't remember.

Gaara blinked, his entire body aching to spring forward, though his mind held him back. What fun would killing her be, if she didn't even remember? His eyes studied her for a moment longer, that urge to kill beating through his brain, showing plainly in his gaze, though he forced himself to remain where he was. After a long moment, the redhead finally tore his gaze from the battered, confused woman before him, and took in their surroundings.

Blood literally bathed the floor, the walls, the sheets of her bedroom. It would stain. They wouldn't be able to hide it.

Kankurou would find out.

That last thought jarred the redhead into action. Surging forward, Gaara leveled a cold, even look on Anko, then spoke with a calmness that completely contrasted both their appearances.

"Can we clean up?" He was asking about the room, of course. Gaara liked to kill people, and rarely thought of the repercussions, because, most usually, he was far gone by the time anyone arrived on the scene. Anko would know better than he just how well they could save face in this situation. Could they even try to salvage the room? Was it possible to hide this from the other occupant of the apartment?

Gaara didn't want to be kicked out by a pissed off mother hen.

It took a few moments for the words to process, and even longer for their meaning to truly sink in. Slowly she raised her eyes to meet Gaara's before looking at the carnage around her.

Kankurou was going to skin her ass, both their asses for that matter.

"There's stuff in the kitchen, it doesn't leave that much of a scent. That should do it, I've cleaned up many times without him noticing. The green jug." Her eyes were still slightly glassy but she was slowly coming back to herself. Shooing Gaara off to get that, Anko pulled herself to her feet and stumbled into the bathroom.

The bright florescent overhead light made her look slightly better then death in the mirror before her, her skin pale with dark circles highlighting underneath her eyes - all of it contrasted by the bright red blood that stained her mouth, her neck, her hands, everywhere she could see. She quickly twisted the faucet on and began to scrub furiously at her hands, splashing up to clean off her face and rinse out her mouth. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't get it all off.

Gaara nodded once at her words, then left without a second thought to go seek out the aforementioned jug in the kitchen. He flipped open a few cabinets, and when he found what he was looking for, he nearly rolled his eyes. It was a big jug, sure, above medium-size, and filled about three quarters of the way with some unknown cleaning substance... but it most definitely wouldn't be enough to clean an entire room soaked in blood.

He grabbed it anyways, snatching up a kitchen towel offhandedly, and headed back towards Anko's room quickly, making sure to step lightly when he walked down the hall, so as to not alert his brother to the fact that they were still up. Not that Kankurou would notice in the first place - he had been so out of it, these days.

Pushing through the door, Gaara found that Anko had left the room again, and set to work by himself, pouring a meager amount of the liquid onto the cloth, then rubbing along the wall where Anko had had him pinned earlier. Blood spattered across the off-white surface, reminding him, starkly, of how her fingernails had dug painfully into his skin. Glancing down, the redhead realized he was still injured, still bleeding - he had forgotten for a moment there - and growled softly at the thought of having to clean up himself. As soon as Anko was out of the bathroom, he'd make good use of her shower.

For the moment, though, he was occupied with cleaning up the room.

Violence was all fun and games, until someone had to wipe up the bloody mess.

Her skin was bright pink from excessive scrubbing, rubbed nearly raw in too many spots that weren't already oozing blood and yet she could still feel it everywhere.

Why couldn't she just curl up in a corner somewhere and wait for it to go away?

Anko fought with the urge to do just that when soft noises of Gaara scrubbing pulled her away from the notion, instead luring her back into the bedroom that was still decorated with entirely too much red. Her chest tightened as the smell of blood choked her once more, something she might have reveled in at one time, merely making bile rise in the back of her throat with the complete and utter confusion and disconnectedness that plagued her. For a moment the noise in her head began to resound like a loud voice in a naked tiled room again. She remembered trying to find a cure for that, but was still clueless as to what in the hell had happened. Gaara's hair bled into the stains on the walls as she stood there and watched him scrub away, knowing that she should help, to try and remove all traces of the unexplained incident before Kankurou had the opportunity to happen in on the two of them. Without even knowing how they got there but for the obvious wounds between the two of them, the sheer thought of her lover doing the unexpected and come out of hiding to find them slaving over her bloodstained walls caused sharp tremors to wrack her frame. At the very least she could only thank whoever claimed to be watching over her that it happened with Gaara and not with Kankurou - who only knew what that outcome would have been.

She was just glad that she didn't have to find out.

The chaos brewing in her head only thrived off the images of Kankurou draped mutilated and artistically blending into the macabre display, causing the tremors to increase and her breath to hitch as she backed away a few paces, her bare feet slipping a little under the bloody and soapy floorboard.

He took note of her presence, body tense at her appearance, remembering the pain she had just recently caused. And the humiliation. To be bested by her was a slight Gaara simply couldn't take. It offended him, almost, to think that some retired assassin would have the upper hand in a fight. It made sense, in a way, but that little fact didn't lessen the redhead's anger. So he eyed her cautiously, a quiet snarl on his lips, watching as she backed up in apparent fear.

She didn't remember.

It almost disappointed the insomniac - he would have preffered she felt every sting and ache his attacks had left on her body, because he sure as hell felt the ones she had left on his - but he realized he could probably use this to his advantage. If Anko didn't remember beating him bloody, then he could pretend it had never happened.

This appealed to his more egotistical nature, and so he nodded once to himself in confirmation, scrubbing almost violently at the wall in front of him. He had already moved onto the floor, getting those stains up as best he could (You could barely notice they were there, with her darker floorboard decieving the eye.) and had moved back to the most pressing one on the wall. With each swipe of the washcloth, the redhead remembered every bite, every claw, every bloody wound, and his anger and fury grew. It had never fully dissipated from before.

So it made sense, then, that when Anko was close enough to him, and completely distracted by the blood and her own fear, that he would take advantage of her weakness and leave that fight with the final blow. A cheap blow, to be sure, but he would still revel in the knowledge that he had had the last laugh, even if she couldn't remember it in the morning. Quickly, as Anko leaned in to better study the wall and his cleaning job, Gaara whirled upwards and grabbed the back of her head. With as much force as he could muster, the redhead lunged forward and slammed the side of her head into the wall he had just been cleaning, focusing all his strength on one thing, and one thing alone.

Anko dropped like a dead weight, crumpling to the floor; unconscious.

Mission accomplished.

Without hesitation, Gaara dipped down and slung one of the violet-eyed woman's arms around his shoulder, leaning her heavy weight onto his form and half-dragging, half-carrying her to the bed. He settled her beneath the bedsheets, positioning her in such a way so that she would have the appearance of having just passed out on the bed for a good night's rest. ... At least half of that was true.

Picking up the cloth again, Gaara began cleaning up the rest of the mess, noticing offhandedly that he had left a dent in the wall where he had incapacitated Anko. Ah, well. Already he was formulating his lies. She had fallen, of course, and hit her head so hard she couldn't remember anything from that night.

Gaara smirked at the thought, finishing up his cleaning before moving into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

His point.