Anko + Hanabi - "Henge Medley"
Finally done! It's your turn mattador. Anyway, this was supposed to have a drunken not-really-but-kind-of slashy moment, but it turned out mostly gen again.
I've put the Anko+Hanabi ficlets in order, but I'm about to run to class, so I'll post that later. Anyway, this comes before the last one I wrote and after the first one. 5,600-ish words, and I'll title it later. Edit: titled.
They finished up with training a little early. It’d been one of those days that Anko realized how pathetic a teacher she’d been that weekend-hungover, bleary-eyed, scolding them for showing up (what the hell was wrong with them?). It occurred to her that teachers like that ended up with dead teams. Her kids were good. Tough. Intelligent.
And yet they also managed to be dumb as a sack of bricks sometimes.
She didn’t get it either.
So she ran them ragged. Farthest training ground from their meeting place, for no real reason but that it was prettiest of all the fields. It had been left little-used; when Konoha rebuilt after Orochimaru, the southeastern wall had been a mess of rubble, and some dipshit had misread the measurements. The new wall cut through training ground twelve, a pale stone sheet that jutted abruptly from the grass.
So it had been let go. The grass ran wild, knee-high, and so did wild flowers; brush had begun to overtake it. Missteps were easy here. It was good practice for real life, where someone hadn’t neatly mowed your battlefield.
Fortunately, none of her team had allergies. Especially since she’d still have taken ’em here.
The day ended. It wasn’t that Anko didn’t have more tasks for them. It was that the kids couldn’t complete them anymore.
Tobi of course made as if he was worn to the death a good hour before he actually was; the other two refused to admit it after they were.
So she shook her head and pushed them on until Hanabi fumbled up a drill and sliced her thumb open.
Anko inspected the wound: a sideways cut into the meat of her pale thumb, red welling up and spilling over. She brushed the delicate red beads away with her thumb. She decided, “Well, it isn’t gonna kill you.”
She also decided they’d worked enough for the day.
“If I’d known I just had to wound myself,” Tobi sighed.
She ruffled his hair fondly. “There’s a lot to be said for pride. Hanabi, you have it in spades. Hayabusa, you aren’t nearly as dignified, so we’ll call yours pigheadedness. Lot to be said for that, too. There’s also something to be said for a certain amount of cautious self-interest. It just all needs a bit of tempering, is all.
So, Tobi. Tomorrow, you call when we stop practicing.”
His head lifted; his hair, never neat, was a disaster-sweaty from exertion and jumbled from her ruffling it. A grin stretched itself across his face.
“Thing is, you have to outlast Hanabi and Hayabusa first. The two of you get to learn from Tobi’s example-when your bodies demand rest, give them it.”
“They’re going to kill me,” Tobi said mournfully.
“Well, that’s the other test. Bad form to kill your teammates and all. So let’s see how good of teammates they make when their pride is on the line.”
Hayabusa shrugged, grinning a little.
Hanabi just shifted impatiently. “That’s a stupid exercise,” she said.
Anko just ruffled her hair in turn. Hanabi’s hair, though of a texture and length much less conducive to it than the boys’, was her favorite to tousle. It was the way her shoulders hunched, the way her mouth bunched up sourly, as if she’d just died a little inside.
“Oh,” she said. “One more thing. You’ll like this one,” she said with a nod at Hanabi. “You guys are getting pretty good at Henge. So starting tomorrow, let’s see if you can catch me off guard.”
Hayabusa grinned. She knew why too, of course. She’d just pretty much given him free reign to do whatever adult stuff he pleased-without supervision-and call it training. Anyone with a cigarette between their lips, double fisting on the booze, is gonna be Hayabusa, she thought, amused.
“Oh. Don’t use your usual. I’ll probably catch on if Hanabi disguises herself as me, so this will make it fair. Besides, there’s tells. I know Asuma and Kakashi too well, and I know Hayabusa-as-Asuma and Tobi-as-Kakashi too well. Pick one of the younger jounin. Maybe a chuunin. Someone I might bump into at a bar and share a few drinks and a casual conversation with, but whose life story I don’t give a shit about.”
With that, she went about collecting the equipment she’d brought to the ground herself; the kids gathered up their weapons and left, Tobi and Hayabusa in the middle of a conversation that sometimes slipped into a squabble for a sentence or two. Never longer; Hayabusa was always up for an argument, but Tobi rarely was; their fights sputtered and died in the womb. Hanabi walked a little ways apart.
Anko watched the skinny line of her back. Wonder who you’ll be, when and where, she thought.
She grinned. It was all anticipation.
---------
After they left the foot path in favor of Konoha’s cobbled streets, Hayabusa left without so much as a wave. Aching down to her bones, Hanabi watched him run off. She’d thought him as exhausted as she was. His legs, though, flashed effortlessly beneath him.
“He’s in love with some girl,” Tobi said, though she hadn’t asked. “One of those creepy Aburame.”
Hanabi, uninterested, kicked a pebble into his path.
Tobi toed it back at her. “Of course, it won’t work. She’s fifteen.” The weight he gave this last word said it all, said sophisticated and out of reach and really really cool.
Hanabi shrugged. “The Aburame don’t usually marry down,” she said.
“Snob,” said Tobi. “Who says we’re talking about marrying?”
“Well, there is that,” she said with a sniff.
“That. I never know what you mean by that.”
She looked at him.
“I mean, sure. Sex. Like Hayabusa is going to get that. Ever.”
Hanabi had to make an amused sound at that.
“But is kissing gross, too? ’Cause that’s immature. Like back in academy, when girls would chase boys to kiss them and we’d run away-but I guess you never chased boys to kiss them.”
“No, never.” She thought about it a minute. “Kissing wouldn’t be so bad, I suppose. I haven’t really thought about it.”
Tobi laughed. “Of course not. You don’t think about anything but jutsu and training and Hyuuga. And Anko-sensei.”
“I don’t think about Anko-sensei that much,” Hanabi said uncomfortably. Because maybe she did-but that was just that Anko linked to all of the rest somehow or another. The rest of Tobi’s list was pretty accurate. There wasn’t anything wrong with any of it, but Tobi seemed to think she ought to think things beside. I do, she thought. I think about- And then she realized she felt embarrassed, somehow, for what Tobi thought.
The boys were under her skin. It made her angry when she noticed. She had felt them there for awhile, but didn’t care to be reminded of it.
It was okay to feel protective of them, another entirely to care for what they thought of her.
They walked awhile in silence. She had expected to leave him somewhere along the business section of her cross-Konoha route, most likely in the middle of the food stands and restaurants. He usually succumbed to the stand that fried anything and everything. Instead he trailed her steps until they were to the walls of Hyuuga. By there, she was quite annoyed with him.
He stood there, looking up with his hands in his pockets. “Who’re you going to be to fool Anko-sensei?”
Her gaze followed his up. She liked the way Hyuuga left people in awe, even when it was only the architecture. “Kurenai,” she said.
“You hate her.”
“I don’t hate her,” Hanabi said. “That would be a waste of energy.” Besides, she only hated Neji. Hinata sometimes. Sometimes, too, she hated her father. But that was so secret a hate that she didn’t even know it most of the time. It ducked beneath other thoughts, a silver fish in the sun-bright ocean, before she could fully make sense of it.
“It’s pretty smart,” Tobi admitted grudgingly. “She probably thinks you won’t be Kurenai. And you’ve seen her be Kurenai. So you know how she thinks Kurenai is.”
“Yes, of course,” said Hanabi, after a moment. The thought pounded in her: she hadn’t thought of the last. It was clever. It was something she should have thought. She wanted to say it was a good thought, but that would mean admitting she hadn’t had it, after all, and so an embarrassed admiration ran from nape to belly and that was its course in full. It never went to her lips.
“You don’t ever invite me or Hayabusa over,” Tobi said, neck still craned, long nose pointed up.
“No,” she said.
“I walked you home. You could. It’d be polite and stuff.”
She gave it a half-second’s thought. “No,” she said. It felt all wrong. Her team and Hyuuga both belonged to her. When she thought hers, she felt it in her gut. But the her to which each belonged was not quite the same.
That’s silly, was the thought that came on the heels of that one. But all the same-
It would just be wrong.
Tobi shrugged. “I didn’t want to, anyway. I would have said no thanks. See ya,” and he turned to go.
She watched his back. She didn’t want him to ever see inside Hyuuga. Hayabusa either. Especially never Anko, she thought with a shudder. She didn’t want them to look down on it all. The seals and tradition and right. And she didn’t want them to see the way Neji trained with her father, these days, the way Hinata smiled and submissively served branch members tea. It would subtly change what had happened behind these walls. Anko would like it. The boys, too, if they caught the meaning behind what they saw. Tobi might. He was pretty clever.
After, she would forget. But for the moment, there would be shame hot in her belly.
For the moment, she would think, Maybe.
---------
Her father was in the front courtyard, as was Neji. Elegantly they circled one another. The Gentle Fist always seemed more a deadly dance than the clumsy, hard way that people like Anko had to fight.
They are beautiful, she thought. Their bodies both matched. Her father’s had begun to show its age, but only the subtle signs that Byakugan could unravel. View them without, and they were bookends. From here it couldn’t be seen that Neji was a flawed mirror image. Here you could only see pale skin pulled taut over lean musculature. Neji’s hair was tugged back and secured with a length of cord, but her father’s fell down his back. It had clearly been sometime that they had been sparring: sweat had run into his hair, and it shone like black diamonds in the sun.
Hyuuga even sweat prettily, you see.
She suddenly felt ashamed. She could feel the ache in her muscles that said they’d been pushed past their limits. She felt the dirt beneath her nails. The sweat-salt dried to her skin. She closed her hand quickly to hide the blood where she’d nicked herself.
Of course there was no shame in sweat and dirt and blood. They were all signs of hard work. Both of the men in front of her had been all of them. But they bled and sweated like men. She did both like a little girl. Hayabusa or Tobi hadn’t even cut her; she’d done it to herself.
The shame passed in a moment, of course. It was only Neji. She wasn’t his equal yet, but she was only thirteen. She had time.
She scowled. Only Neji-her-branch-house-cousin, but the way Hiashi treated him, he might’ve been her brother.
Neji-niisan, she thought. Her hand that she’d turned over on itself turned to a fist. One of her nails dug into her cut. It hurt. She didn’t unclench her hand for the pain, because that was the moment a movement to the side caught her eye. It was Hinata. She was standing on the porch, shade hiding her from the sun, sheltered there like a lady from the softer villages. Hinata should have been born there. Then she could be nothing but pretty.
And she had to admit that Hinata was. It seemed all wrong. Hinata was soft and fat and useless. Even her face was round. There should have been no beauty to find in a body like that, especially when you looked quickly from Hiashi and Neji to her. She took after the sturdier strain Hyuuga had to offer, the sort that tended to things like hips and breasts.
(Hanabi kept a wary eye on her own body these days, looking for the first signs of betrayal.)
She went to her, carefully skirting around her cousin and father. “Serving tea?” she scoffed, on the first step.
Hinata shook her head. “No,” she said. Her thoughts seemed a space apart; her eyes never once left the two men for Hanabi.
Hanabi didn’t like it. It didn’t matter where Hinata looked. It was only Hinata. Still. “Too bad. You’re good at it,” she said, on the second step.
Hinata looked at her then. She smiled cautiously.
I meant that to imply it’s the only thing you’re good at. Stupid cow. But she was suddenly tired, and it seemed like too much effort to clarify for her sister. So she took the last step and pushed by her. She felt less worn immediately, once she was inside and could no longer see Hyuuga crashing down around them.
---------
“First order of business,” said Anko. “Hayabusa. Here’s the evaluation of last night.” She leered at him. You couldn’t say a line like that and not leer.
Hayabusa grinned. Around him, his teammates exchanged a curious glance.
“Five points for making your move before the window officially started. You had surprise on your side. Five points for your use of what’s-her-name. TenTen. I don’t know anything about her other than that she’s on a team with another one of you Hyuuga.” (Anko watched Hanabi try not to scowl. She nearly had the cool disdain thing down, but then sometimes it would slip. Gotta love how riled you get when I lump your Branch House and Main House together, kid.) “Another point just for having breasts and managing not to feel yourself up in front of me.”
“Wow,” said Tobi.
“You said it didn’t start until today,” Hanabi said.
“It doesn’t. Reason he gets points for going yesterday.”
Hanabi frowned. Anko grinned at her. “If you can sort out the life lesson there, Hyuuga, I’ll buy you dinner.
“Now for subtraction. Yesterday, I thought to myself, anyone pouring smoke from their mouth and double-fisting booze is gonna be Hayabusa. And I was right. Let’s say, take three points for that. It canceled out your choice of disguise, but I’ll be generous and leave you two points.”
Hayabusa scowled. “You don’t know TenTen! She just really likes cigarettes and sake.”
“Yeah, or else the drunk kunoichi hitting on both me and Kurenai is you.”
“So she really likes cigarettes, sake, and pretty women.”
Hanabi turned her bone-white stare on Hayabusa. “You’re shameless,” she said.
“Yup,” said Anko. “It’s cute.”
“I should get points for it, then,” said Hayabusa smugly.
“Not that cute. Besides, towards the end your Henge was wavering. Minus, say, just two on that one. You did hold it steady awhile, never actually lost it, and you were wasted by the end of the night. Six points in all. You can try again, if you like. Now-”
“Out of how many?” asked Hanabi.
“Huh? Six points is six points.”
“Six of how many points possible,” said Hanabi impatiently.
“Oh.” Anko grinned at her. “Six of infinity. Satisfied?”
“Yes, sensei,” said Hanabi, through her teeth.
“So, today’s assignment: Hanabi and Hayabusa, take a rest anytime you want. Tobi, you call the end of training whenever you like so long as both of ’em are lazing about.”
She dropped into the folding chair she’d brought with her. “Run laps until Hayabusa or Hanabi quit. Then we’ll start in.”
Her kids took off nice and slow. Reaching into an inner pocket, she found the napkin full of dango she’d slipped in there earlier; now she tugged it out and popped the tip of the first skewer in her mouth. The question for the day was whether or not they’d get past running laps. Hayabusa might just take this as a challenge. Wasn’t really supposed to be. It was supposed to be the antithesis of one, even. But he was hit-or-miss when it came to catching the small print.
At least he caught it some of the time. Hanabi, on the other hand-
They’d rounded the first lap, and now Hanabi drew ahead of Hayabusa. Her legs, wrapped to guard against the coarse grass, moved beneath her and looked twice their usual size. Still scrawny though, Anko thought, scratching her nose.
Meanwhile, Hayabusa’s legs were bare; he’d have scratches to mark each day he trained here until they finally trampled the brush flat.
She counted laps with dango, one apiece. Five laps ought to warm ’em up; sure enough, they went six, then seven. On eight she ran out of dango. Sighing, she licked her fingers clean.
On nine, Tobi put on a burst of speed, caught Hayabusa, and exchanged a word. By eleven, he seemed to have gotten him to come around. Hayabusa drew up in front of her, hands on his hips. “Wasn’t fair,” he said. “The scoring you did.”
Anko grinned and gave Tobi, who was very good with reading fine print unless he made up stuff that didn’t exist, his due for that. Much easier to distract Hayabusa than to convince him to ease up when he was in the middle of a stubborn fit.
She stretched her arms above her head. Looking past him, she called out to Hanabi and Tobi, “Next!”
She ran them against each other in steady rotation, until Tobi tugged Hayabusa aside as they switched off against Hanabi. Hayabusa flopped on his belly in front of her then. Hanabi took a seat next to him like she’d been asked to slit her own throat.
“Good job. Dismissed,” she said. She’d been hoping to call an early day.
---------
“Of course I saw the point of the exercise,” Hanabi said irritably. She’d just wanted to outlast Hayabusa; that was all.
“Why’d ya run eleven stinking laps then?” asked Tobi.
“Because they’re are nothing at all,” she said.
“Snob.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” she said harshly. It…it worried her, when Tobi slacked off.
“We all will. Ever looked at the longevity stats on career ninja?” Tobi said, far too cheerfully. “I’m planning on outliving you two though. That’s what cowards and sneaks do.”
Hayabusa punched his shoulder. “Dumbass. Hanabi’s not gonna be a career nin. She’s gonna be Hyuuga-sama someday. Then she’ll get other people to die for her.”
“I won’t!” she said hotly.
“Chill out, Hanabi. He was kidding.”
“Not really.” He grinned at her. It was a white ugly smile stretched across his ugly face.
“No it’s not! And anyway,” she said, temper in check again, “They won’t let me be Hyuuga-sama anyway. They’ll give it to my sister.”
“She has nice tits,” said Hayabusa, who had yet to recover from his discovery of the opposite sex nearly six months before.
Unsure what to say-tell him not to speak crudely of Hinata or say she certainly didn’t?-Hanabi settled for walking faster.
“Bye, guys,” Hayabusa said. “I didn’t really mean it, Hanabi,” he added contritely. She ignored him. With a shrug, he was gone.
Tobi jogged to catch up with her. “He’s hanging out with that Akimichi girl he knows from the academy. She has nice tits, he says.” A thoughtful pause. “On the bright side, maybe your sister is really an Akimichi. Then you could be Hyuuga-sama.”
She shook her head. “You know something, Tobi?”
“What?”
“Calling my sister a bastard won’t make me feel better,” she said dryly.
“Damn.” He smiled at her.
She would have smiled back, if it were only that simple.
---------
When Anko played Kurenai, she was reserved. Quiet. Not solemn; no, Anko-as-Kurenai laughed, or at least chuckled, at most things meant as funny. She especially laughed for Asuma-flirting, Hanabi supposed.
Anko-as-Kurenai crossed her legs delicately. She smiled sweetly and often. She never drank to excess.
She would arch her brows at Kakashi; she would sometimes catch Hanabi-as-Anko’s eyes over the table and shake her head in exasperation. It was with a sisterly camaraderie. These boys are ridiculous, it said. Hanabi supposed with the real Anko, the real Kurenai would probably expand that look to include her. Anko would probably make all kinds of those disgusting remarks Hanabi wasn’t good at.
Anko’s Kurenai seemed to match the real one. She’d come to Hyuuga sometimes with Hinata. That Kurenai was affectionate with her sister, always touching her shoulder and so forth.
It was a good thing Hinata wasn’t much for the bars where Hanabi knew she could find her teacher. She couldn’t pin down precisely the last time she had touched her sister. She wasn’t sure if she had ever touched her affectionately.
She meant to go out and find Anko that first night. She left without pretending to secrecy. In fact, she marched quite boldly out the front. No one saw fit to stop her.
A dozen blocks away she exchanged her face for Kurenai’s and looked in a shop window to check. Glossy-dark, it tossed streetlight and her reflection back at her. Her face was heart-shaped now, wider too; still pale, but richer, more cream than ghost. She tucked rich black waves behind her ears. Immediately they sprang free again.
On hers, Kurenai’s skin felt nothing less than uncomfortable. As for her dress-well. It certainly wasn’t decent.
Not that any of Anko’s clothes were, either. But at least being Anko, she’d had that trench coat to wrap herself in (“ ’S cold,” she’d grumbled as she did, the way Anko might. Really it was to keep Hayabusa from leering at the breasts that were both hers and Anko-sensei’s.)
She walked a few paces with Kurenai’s long pretty legs. They were hard and soft at once: fat that tugged smoothly over muscle with this motion, softened and bunched with this one. Hanabi ran her knuckles over her thigh. Their hand was clenched tight. Kurenai’s skin was prettysoft. She wondered if her skin was that soft. She didn’t think it was, but she couldn’t remember.
With a few more strides, her Henge training kicked in. Kurenai’s long legs felt half hers, at least. So, in sum, I have a leg, she thought. Strangely, she found herself wishing that Tobi were there; he’d laugh if she said it to him.
So there’s this Hyuuga, and she walks into a bar…
Yes, that was Hayabusa’s voice in her head. How…pleasant.
…’Cause she ran out of chakra! Get it?
Hanabi stifled a sigh. That joke had been the product of an hour’s worth of drinks; Tobi had snorted sake out his nose.
It was a lot easier doing this when they were here, she thought.
Mind, that was the product of a very fleeting moment of weakness.
It wasn’t really a Hyuuga who walked into the bar, anyway; it was Yuuhi Kurenai. She walked in like she didn’t even know. Certainly not the sort of walk that got you places quickly.
Her hips swayed and her legs took away ground leisurely beneath her. Her hair refused to stay in place with any kind of motion at all.
She found Anko back in the corner, tucked into a booth with a bottle and a cup. She was alone for the moment, but there was another cup across from her; she traced pooled sake with her fingertips as Hanabi snuck glances her way.
Hanabi didn’t go to her at first. She looked at a few people Kurenai might know and said hello. A man she didn’t recognize leered at her and called her baby: how’s it going, baby? he said. He touched her lightly on her shoulder.
Sick, Hanabi thought, her stomach knotting with distaste. But Kurenai just sighed and shook her head in exasperation, and moved further into the bar.
“Hey, Anko,” she said when she was as far in as she could be.
Anko grinned at her. “You made it out. Good; you’re turning into such a damn homebody.”
Hanabi shrugged at that. She-Kurenai-slid into the booth without asking if she was taking someone else’s seat. It seemed like the sort of thing old friends like them didn’t bother with. “Who’re you with?”
“Nobody at the moment. Cup’s yours if you want. Kakashi was here earlier, and then one of my kids stopped by.”
Hanabi froze inside Kurenai’s skin. She knew already; how did she know? Maybe Kurenai didn’t take the homebody insult with as much disregard as she took the jibes Anko-Hanabi occasionally threw in. Maybe- “Okay, I want a new cup though,” she said, throat tight. But Kurenai’s voice somehow came out with light humor.
“Oh come on,” said Anko. “You’ve split drinks with Kakashi before.”
”Kure and Kakashi split girly drinks sometimes. ’Cause then Kakashi can drink around his mask with the straw, and because Kurenai-well, she just likes the things,” Anko’d said to them, before their first bar outing as a team.
“It’s not Kakashi I’m worried about,” Kurenai said. She took the cup with a sigh. “Alcohol kills germs, at least. Which kid? You shouldn’t encourage them to drink,” she added, because it seemed like something Kurenai would say.
“Of course I should. This way they learn how to drink so they don’t end up puking over the toilet too many times.” Anko poured sake for her.
She rolled Kurenai’s eyes. “I understand that, but who’s to say they’d start this young? It isn’t good for their livers. Anyway, which kid?” Hanabi wanted to know. She was practically quivering in her skin.
“Oh. Hayabusa again.”
“Who was he this time?” Kurenai asked. Fear-excitement in her belly coiled tight; this could give it all away. She thought, would Kurenai know so much about us?
“Ebisu. Good choice. Lil’ bastard ruined it because he’s a whole lot less shameless than Ebisu.”
“He’s going to kill his liver,” Kurenai said disapprovingly. Inside the tight coil in her belly tightened another notch and changed more to sheer hot thrill than fear. Strange how much more she wound up for a training exercise like this than any mission.
“…Yeah.” Surprisingly, Anko looked a bit guilty. “I guess I could tell him he’s hit his quota for the month.” Anko tossed back her cup and wiped her mouth clean with her sleeve. She fixed Kurenai with grin. “Whoa. I might be drunk. You starting cold?”
“Yes,” said Hanabi uncertainly.
“Well, then. Sake’s not going to drink itself. Get to work.”
Hanabi put the cup to her lips and took a delicate sip.
“Ya call that drinking,” Anko said with a sigh. She spilled sake into her cup and tossed it back. “That’s drinking.”
“Er. I don’t know.” Would Kurenai feel challenged-would she feel like joining in just for fun-would she sigh and shake her head- And besides, Hanabi didn’t care to get drunk, thank you very much. She’d be able to hold the Henge of course; she wasn’t Hayabusa. But she didn’t know if she’d be able to keep up the act of Kurenai.
“Kurenai, Kurenai. I drink more with my kids these days than with you.”
“How drunk are you?” Kurenai said, making as if to bend and give.
“Pretty.”
“Too drunk to drink more with me?” Hanabi said, leadingly. She didn’t particularly care if Anko drank herself to puking-the drunker Anko was, the less it mattered if she slipped up a bit with Kurenai-but she thought Kurenai would.
“Oh. Never. How do you want to drink?”
“How?”
“How-”
Anko reached into her pockets and produced a lone die; with a curse, she went back to rummaging through them; “Nope, just that one,” she said at length.
And that was how Hanabi found herself roped into a drinking game. It was noisy. Every time Anko slammed her cup down on the table with a clatter that threatened a shatter, Hanabi’s teeth went on edge. It was messy too, and soon there was sake scattered in pools and tributaries across the table-on Hanabi, too, and especially on Anko.
At the least, the basic premise of the game-throw the die, smack the table the number it dictated, loser drinks for the count they lost on, worthless in any way that would require physical or mental capability-meant that a little extra sake spilled here or there was nothing at all. And so Anko got fantastically drunk (her words) while Hanabi got tipsy-well, no, that was a lie. But she was-was relatively undrunk. Not drunk, she meant. Whatever.
“You’re a strange teacher,” Hanabi said. After she said it, she thought that maybe it wasn’t very Kurenai-like. She didn’t care, though. Curious. Oh, right, such was the effect of alcohol. Alcohol is a vice. It makes you lose control. It’s the refuge of the socially inept-though Anko isn’t that-and the bored. Maybe Anko is that. Tobi-in-her-head called her a snob. I know, she told him. “I mean you get-your kids all drunk, and give them ridiculous training exercises, and-”
“Life’s not very by the book.”
“That’s not a good excuse at all,” said Hanabi. “It’s almost cliché.”
“Well, the other side is that they need it. Hayabusa’s the sort that would find a way to do whatever the hell he wants even if you tried to keep it from him. Especially if you did. Booze’ll probably lose its allure for him in six months. A year, tops. And then there’s Hanabi. I mean, you know the Hyuuga. They were all born with a good sized stick up the ass.”
Hanabi scowled. You’re disgusting, Anko-sensei. And I was not. “Hinata wasn’t,” she said furiously. It was the only way she could yell at Anko for it as Kurenai, and she wanted a few more points.
Let’s see: five points minimum for disguise-
“Instead she was born with no spine,” Anko said matter-of-factly. “Hyuuga either get an extra support or none at all.”
She’ll give me at least a point for holding my alcohol and my Henge at the same time. But I maybe only tie with Hayabusa, Hanabi reasoned through the anger.
“Hinata has a spine, now,” Hanabi said. It was frustrating, only getting to use Kurenai’s stupid, biased words to yell at Anko. “She-she,” she cast around for more. “She’s had one since she stood up against Neji in their first chuunin exam.” When she said it, she supposed it wasn’t actually a lie.
Anko leaned back in her seat. “I guess.” She poured herself more sake and sipped it. Hanabi fumed inside Kurenai’s skin. “Hanabi’s not so bad anymore either.”
“Really?” said Hanabi. And then she felt her skin, Kurenai’s skin, flush bright with shame. And anyway she didn’t care what Anko thought, she didn’t, especially since anything Anko considered “getting better” couldn’t be good. Unless she just meant training. She stood up unsteadily, not sure if she were still on Kurenai’s legs. She hoped she was. Otherwise they’d throw her out of the bar and that was too much of a Hayabusa thing to have happen. She’d never live it down when Anko told the boys.
“Yeah, she really is,” said Anko. “Surprised me.” Though she said she, there was that edge of something in her voice.
“No, I’m not!” Hanabi said. She turned (good, still Kurenai’s legs), and left the bar in what she hoped was a dignified huff.
---------
Hanabi showed up to training the next day. Her white eyes were shot with red, and she scowled every time anyone spoke to her, but she didn’t run. Anko could respect that.
Deep down, all of them were good kids.
“Hanabi. Training exercise evaluation.”
Hanabi’s scowl deepened.
“Ten points for the Henge choice.”
“No way!” Hayabusa cried out.
She brought her finger to her mouth. “Hush, your turn in a minute. Wasn’t expecting Kurenai. Decent act, too. Another point. You held the Henge through a lot of sake. I saw you spilling it out every so often-a point for that, but minus a point for me catching you-but you probably drank as much you did that one night you puked.”
Hanabi flushed a dark, angry red. She really didn’t like being reminded that she had ever puked. She probably wasn’t too happy about last night, either.
“I caught you of course. It was the little things at first that clued me in. Stuff you can’t really help, unless you knew Kurenai the way I know her. So only a point off for that. The disguise fell completely apart at the end, though, when you ran out. You kept the Henge, though, so I’ll only take away, hhmm. Two. Eight in all. You’re leading by two points.”
Hanabi just scowled.
“Now, Hayabusa. Oh, and Hanabi, looking back, it was cute when you defended your sister. Hayabusa: five-”
Hanabi’s shoulders tightened up. “It was part of the act.”
“Good job playing the part,” said Anko cheerfully.
I've put the Anko+Hanabi ficlets in order, but I'm about to run to class, so I'll post that later. Anyway, this comes before the last one I wrote and after the first one. 5,600-ish words, and I'll title it later. Edit: titled.
They finished up with training a little early. It’d been one of those days that Anko realized how pathetic a teacher she’d been that weekend-hungover, bleary-eyed, scolding them for showing up (what the hell was wrong with them?). It occurred to her that teachers like that ended up with dead teams. Her kids were good. Tough. Intelligent.
And yet they also managed to be dumb as a sack of bricks sometimes.
She didn’t get it either.
So she ran them ragged. Farthest training ground from their meeting place, for no real reason but that it was prettiest of all the fields. It had been left little-used; when Konoha rebuilt after Orochimaru, the southeastern wall had been a mess of rubble, and some dipshit had misread the measurements. The new wall cut through training ground twelve, a pale stone sheet that jutted abruptly from the grass.
So it had been let go. The grass ran wild, knee-high, and so did wild flowers; brush had begun to overtake it. Missteps were easy here. It was good practice for real life, where someone hadn’t neatly mowed your battlefield.
Fortunately, none of her team had allergies. Especially since she’d still have taken ’em here.
The day ended. It wasn’t that Anko didn’t have more tasks for them. It was that the kids couldn’t complete them anymore.
Tobi of course made as if he was worn to the death a good hour before he actually was; the other two refused to admit it after they were.
So she shook her head and pushed them on until Hanabi fumbled up a drill and sliced her thumb open.
Anko inspected the wound: a sideways cut into the meat of her pale thumb, red welling up and spilling over. She brushed the delicate red beads away with her thumb. She decided, “Well, it isn’t gonna kill you.”
She also decided they’d worked enough for the day.
“If I’d known I just had to wound myself,” Tobi sighed.
She ruffled his hair fondly. “There’s a lot to be said for pride. Hanabi, you have it in spades. Hayabusa, you aren’t nearly as dignified, so we’ll call yours pigheadedness. Lot to be said for that, too. There’s also something to be said for a certain amount of cautious self-interest. It just all needs a bit of tempering, is all.
So, Tobi. Tomorrow, you call when we stop practicing.”
His head lifted; his hair, never neat, was a disaster-sweaty from exertion and jumbled from her ruffling it. A grin stretched itself across his face.
“Thing is, you have to outlast Hanabi and Hayabusa first. The two of you get to learn from Tobi’s example-when your bodies demand rest, give them it.”
“They’re going to kill me,” Tobi said mournfully.
“Well, that’s the other test. Bad form to kill your teammates and all. So let’s see how good of teammates they make when their pride is on the line.”
Hayabusa shrugged, grinning a little.
Hanabi just shifted impatiently. “That’s a stupid exercise,” she said.
Anko just ruffled her hair in turn. Hanabi’s hair, though of a texture and length much less conducive to it than the boys’, was her favorite to tousle. It was the way her shoulders hunched, the way her mouth bunched up sourly, as if she’d just died a little inside.
“Oh,” she said. “One more thing. You’ll like this one,” she said with a nod at Hanabi. “You guys are getting pretty good at Henge. So starting tomorrow, let’s see if you can catch me off guard.”
Hayabusa grinned. She knew why too, of course. She’d just pretty much given him free reign to do whatever adult stuff he pleased-without supervision-and call it training. Anyone with a cigarette between their lips, double fisting on the booze, is gonna be Hayabusa, she thought, amused.
“Oh. Don’t use your usual. I’ll probably catch on if Hanabi disguises herself as me, so this will make it fair. Besides, there’s tells. I know Asuma and Kakashi too well, and I know Hayabusa-as-Asuma and Tobi-as-Kakashi too well. Pick one of the younger jounin. Maybe a chuunin. Someone I might bump into at a bar and share a few drinks and a casual conversation with, but whose life story I don’t give a shit about.”
With that, she went about collecting the equipment she’d brought to the ground herself; the kids gathered up their weapons and left, Tobi and Hayabusa in the middle of a conversation that sometimes slipped into a squabble for a sentence or two. Never longer; Hayabusa was always up for an argument, but Tobi rarely was; their fights sputtered and died in the womb. Hanabi walked a little ways apart.
Anko watched the skinny line of her back. Wonder who you’ll be, when and where, she thought.
She grinned. It was all anticipation.
---------
After they left the foot path in favor of Konoha’s cobbled streets, Hayabusa left without so much as a wave. Aching down to her bones, Hanabi watched him run off. She’d thought him as exhausted as she was. His legs, though, flashed effortlessly beneath him.
“He’s in love with some girl,” Tobi said, though she hadn’t asked. “One of those creepy Aburame.”
Hanabi, uninterested, kicked a pebble into his path.
Tobi toed it back at her. “Of course, it won’t work. She’s fifteen.” The weight he gave this last word said it all, said sophisticated and out of reach and really really cool.
Hanabi shrugged. “The Aburame don’t usually marry down,” she said.
“Snob,” said Tobi. “Who says we’re talking about marrying?”
“Well, there is that,” she said with a sniff.
“That. I never know what you mean by that.”
She looked at him.
“I mean, sure. Sex. Like Hayabusa is going to get that. Ever.”
Hanabi had to make an amused sound at that.
“But is kissing gross, too? ’Cause that’s immature. Like back in academy, when girls would chase boys to kiss them and we’d run away-but I guess you never chased boys to kiss them.”
“No, never.” She thought about it a minute. “Kissing wouldn’t be so bad, I suppose. I haven’t really thought about it.”
Tobi laughed. “Of course not. You don’t think about anything but jutsu and training and Hyuuga. And Anko-sensei.”
“I don’t think about Anko-sensei that much,” Hanabi said uncomfortably. Because maybe she did-but that was just that Anko linked to all of the rest somehow or another. The rest of Tobi’s list was pretty accurate. There wasn’t anything wrong with any of it, but Tobi seemed to think she ought to think things beside. I do, she thought. I think about- And then she realized she felt embarrassed, somehow, for what Tobi thought.
The boys were under her skin. It made her angry when she noticed. She had felt them there for awhile, but didn’t care to be reminded of it.
It was okay to feel protective of them, another entirely to care for what they thought of her.
They walked awhile in silence. She had expected to leave him somewhere along the business section of her cross-Konoha route, most likely in the middle of the food stands and restaurants. He usually succumbed to the stand that fried anything and everything. Instead he trailed her steps until they were to the walls of Hyuuga. By there, she was quite annoyed with him.
He stood there, looking up with his hands in his pockets. “Who’re you going to be to fool Anko-sensei?”
Her gaze followed his up. She liked the way Hyuuga left people in awe, even when it was only the architecture. “Kurenai,” she said.
“You hate her.”
“I don’t hate her,” Hanabi said. “That would be a waste of energy.” Besides, she only hated Neji. Hinata sometimes. Sometimes, too, she hated her father. But that was so secret a hate that she didn’t even know it most of the time. It ducked beneath other thoughts, a silver fish in the sun-bright ocean, before she could fully make sense of it.
“It’s pretty smart,” Tobi admitted grudgingly. “She probably thinks you won’t be Kurenai. And you’ve seen her be Kurenai. So you know how she thinks Kurenai is.”
“Yes, of course,” said Hanabi, after a moment. The thought pounded in her: she hadn’t thought of the last. It was clever. It was something she should have thought. She wanted to say it was a good thought, but that would mean admitting she hadn’t had it, after all, and so an embarrassed admiration ran from nape to belly and that was its course in full. It never went to her lips.
“You don’t ever invite me or Hayabusa over,” Tobi said, neck still craned, long nose pointed up.
“No,” she said.
“I walked you home. You could. It’d be polite and stuff.”
She gave it a half-second’s thought. “No,” she said. It felt all wrong. Her team and Hyuuga both belonged to her. When she thought hers, she felt it in her gut. But the her to which each belonged was not quite the same.
That’s silly, was the thought that came on the heels of that one. But all the same-
It would just be wrong.
Tobi shrugged. “I didn’t want to, anyway. I would have said no thanks. See ya,” and he turned to go.
She watched his back. She didn’t want him to ever see inside Hyuuga. Hayabusa either. Especially never Anko, she thought with a shudder. She didn’t want them to look down on it all. The seals and tradition and right. And she didn’t want them to see the way Neji trained with her father, these days, the way Hinata smiled and submissively served branch members tea. It would subtly change what had happened behind these walls. Anko would like it. The boys, too, if they caught the meaning behind what they saw. Tobi might. He was pretty clever.
After, she would forget. But for the moment, there would be shame hot in her belly.
For the moment, she would think, Maybe.
---------
Her father was in the front courtyard, as was Neji. Elegantly they circled one another. The Gentle Fist always seemed more a deadly dance than the clumsy, hard way that people like Anko had to fight.
They are beautiful, she thought. Their bodies both matched. Her father’s had begun to show its age, but only the subtle signs that Byakugan could unravel. View them without, and they were bookends. From here it couldn’t be seen that Neji was a flawed mirror image. Here you could only see pale skin pulled taut over lean musculature. Neji’s hair was tugged back and secured with a length of cord, but her father’s fell down his back. It had clearly been sometime that they had been sparring: sweat had run into his hair, and it shone like black diamonds in the sun.
Hyuuga even sweat prettily, you see.
She suddenly felt ashamed. She could feel the ache in her muscles that said they’d been pushed past their limits. She felt the dirt beneath her nails. The sweat-salt dried to her skin. She closed her hand quickly to hide the blood where she’d nicked herself.
Of course there was no shame in sweat and dirt and blood. They were all signs of hard work. Both of the men in front of her had been all of them. But they bled and sweated like men. She did both like a little girl. Hayabusa or Tobi hadn’t even cut her; she’d done it to herself.
The shame passed in a moment, of course. It was only Neji. She wasn’t his equal yet, but she was only thirteen. She had time.
She scowled. Only Neji-her-branch-house-cousin, but the way Hiashi treated him, he might’ve been her brother.
Neji-niisan, she thought. Her hand that she’d turned over on itself turned to a fist. One of her nails dug into her cut. It hurt. She didn’t unclench her hand for the pain, because that was the moment a movement to the side caught her eye. It was Hinata. She was standing on the porch, shade hiding her from the sun, sheltered there like a lady from the softer villages. Hinata should have been born there. Then she could be nothing but pretty.
And she had to admit that Hinata was. It seemed all wrong. Hinata was soft and fat and useless. Even her face was round. There should have been no beauty to find in a body like that, especially when you looked quickly from Hiashi and Neji to her. She took after the sturdier strain Hyuuga had to offer, the sort that tended to things like hips and breasts.
(Hanabi kept a wary eye on her own body these days, looking for the first signs of betrayal.)
She went to her, carefully skirting around her cousin and father. “Serving tea?” she scoffed, on the first step.
Hinata shook her head. “No,” she said. Her thoughts seemed a space apart; her eyes never once left the two men for Hanabi.
Hanabi didn’t like it. It didn’t matter where Hinata looked. It was only Hinata. Still. “Too bad. You’re good at it,” she said, on the second step.
Hinata looked at her then. She smiled cautiously.
I meant that to imply it’s the only thing you’re good at. Stupid cow. But she was suddenly tired, and it seemed like too much effort to clarify for her sister. So she took the last step and pushed by her. She felt less worn immediately, once she was inside and could no longer see Hyuuga crashing down around them.
---------
“First order of business,” said Anko. “Hayabusa. Here’s the evaluation of last night.” She leered at him. You couldn’t say a line like that and not leer.
Hayabusa grinned. Around him, his teammates exchanged a curious glance.
“Five points for making your move before the window officially started. You had surprise on your side. Five points for your use of what’s-her-name. TenTen. I don’t know anything about her other than that she’s on a team with another one of you Hyuuga.” (Anko watched Hanabi try not to scowl. She nearly had the cool disdain thing down, but then sometimes it would slip. Gotta love how riled you get when I lump your Branch House and Main House together, kid.) “Another point just for having breasts and managing not to feel yourself up in front of me.”
“Wow,” said Tobi.
“You said it didn’t start until today,” Hanabi said.
“It doesn’t. Reason he gets points for going yesterday.”
Hanabi frowned. Anko grinned at her. “If you can sort out the life lesson there, Hyuuga, I’ll buy you dinner.
“Now for subtraction. Yesterday, I thought to myself, anyone pouring smoke from their mouth and double-fisting booze is gonna be Hayabusa. And I was right. Let’s say, take three points for that. It canceled out your choice of disguise, but I’ll be generous and leave you two points.”
Hayabusa scowled. “You don’t know TenTen! She just really likes cigarettes and sake.”
“Yeah, or else the drunk kunoichi hitting on both me and Kurenai is you.”
“So she really likes cigarettes, sake, and pretty women.”
Hanabi turned her bone-white stare on Hayabusa. “You’re shameless,” she said.
“Yup,” said Anko. “It’s cute.”
“I should get points for it, then,” said Hayabusa smugly.
“Not that cute. Besides, towards the end your Henge was wavering. Minus, say, just two on that one. You did hold it steady awhile, never actually lost it, and you were wasted by the end of the night. Six points in all. You can try again, if you like. Now-”
“Out of how many?” asked Hanabi.
“Huh? Six points is six points.”
“Six of how many points possible,” said Hanabi impatiently.
“Oh.” Anko grinned at her. “Six of infinity. Satisfied?”
“Yes, sensei,” said Hanabi, through her teeth.
“So, today’s assignment: Hanabi and Hayabusa, take a rest anytime you want. Tobi, you call the end of training whenever you like so long as both of ’em are lazing about.”
She dropped into the folding chair she’d brought with her. “Run laps until Hayabusa or Hanabi quit. Then we’ll start in.”
Her kids took off nice and slow. Reaching into an inner pocket, she found the napkin full of dango she’d slipped in there earlier; now she tugged it out and popped the tip of the first skewer in her mouth. The question for the day was whether or not they’d get past running laps. Hayabusa might just take this as a challenge. Wasn’t really supposed to be. It was supposed to be the antithesis of one, even. But he was hit-or-miss when it came to catching the small print.
At least he caught it some of the time. Hanabi, on the other hand-
They’d rounded the first lap, and now Hanabi drew ahead of Hayabusa. Her legs, wrapped to guard against the coarse grass, moved beneath her and looked twice their usual size. Still scrawny though, Anko thought, scratching her nose.
Meanwhile, Hayabusa’s legs were bare; he’d have scratches to mark each day he trained here until they finally trampled the brush flat.
She counted laps with dango, one apiece. Five laps ought to warm ’em up; sure enough, they went six, then seven. On eight she ran out of dango. Sighing, she licked her fingers clean.
On nine, Tobi put on a burst of speed, caught Hayabusa, and exchanged a word. By eleven, he seemed to have gotten him to come around. Hayabusa drew up in front of her, hands on his hips. “Wasn’t fair,” he said. “The scoring you did.”
Anko grinned and gave Tobi, who was very good with reading fine print unless he made up stuff that didn’t exist, his due for that. Much easier to distract Hayabusa than to convince him to ease up when he was in the middle of a stubborn fit.
She stretched her arms above her head. Looking past him, she called out to Hanabi and Tobi, “Next!”
She ran them against each other in steady rotation, until Tobi tugged Hayabusa aside as they switched off against Hanabi. Hayabusa flopped on his belly in front of her then. Hanabi took a seat next to him like she’d been asked to slit her own throat.
“Good job. Dismissed,” she said. She’d been hoping to call an early day.
---------
“Of course I saw the point of the exercise,” Hanabi said irritably. She’d just wanted to outlast Hayabusa; that was all.
“Why’d ya run eleven stinking laps then?” asked Tobi.
“Because they’re are nothing at all,” she said.
“Snob.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” she said harshly. It…it worried her, when Tobi slacked off.
“We all will. Ever looked at the longevity stats on career ninja?” Tobi said, far too cheerfully. “I’m planning on outliving you two though. That’s what cowards and sneaks do.”
Hayabusa punched his shoulder. “Dumbass. Hanabi’s not gonna be a career nin. She’s gonna be Hyuuga-sama someday. Then she’ll get other people to die for her.”
“I won’t!” she said hotly.
“Chill out, Hanabi. He was kidding.”
“Not really.” He grinned at her. It was a white ugly smile stretched across his ugly face.
“No it’s not! And anyway,” she said, temper in check again, “They won’t let me be Hyuuga-sama anyway. They’ll give it to my sister.”
“She has nice tits,” said Hayabusa, who had yet to recover from his discovery of the opposite sex nearly six months before.
Unsure what to say-tell him not to speak crudely of Hinata or say she certainly didn’t?-Hanabi settled for walking faster.
“Bye, guys,” Hayabusa said. “I didn’t really mean it, Hanabi,” he added contritely. She ignored him. With a shrug, he was gone.
Tobi jogged to catch up with her. “He’s hanging out with that Akimichi girl he knows from the academy. She has nice tits, he says.” A thoughtful pause. “On the bright side, maybe your sister is really an Akimichi. Then you could be Hyuuga-sama.”
She shook her head. “You know something, Tobi?”
“What?”
“Calling my sister a bastard won’t make me feel better,” she said dryly.
“Damn.” He smiled at her.
She would have smiled back, if it were only that simple.
---------
When Anko played Kurenai, she was reserved. Quiet. Not solemn; no, Anko-as-Kurenai laughed, or at least chuckled, at most things meant as funny. She especially laughed for Asuma-flirting, Hanabi supposed.
Anko-as-Kurenai crossed her legs delicately. She smiled sweetly and often. She never drank to excess.
She would arch her brows at Kakashi; she would sometimes catch Hanabi-as-Anko’s eyes over the table and shake her head in exasperation. It was with a sisterly camaraderie. These boys are ridiculous, it said. Hanabi supposed with the real Anko, the real Kurenai would probably expand that look to include her. Anko would probably make all kinds of those disgusting remarks Hanabi wasn’t good at.
Anko’s Kurenai seemed to match the real one. She’d come to Hyuuga sometimes with Hinata. That Kurenai was affectionate with her sister, always touching her shoulder and so forth.
It was a good thing Hinata wasn’t much for the bars where Hanabi knew she could find her teacher. She couldn’t pin down precisely the last time she had touched her sister. She wasn’t sure if she had ever touched her affectionately.
She meant to go out and find Anko that first night. She left without pretending to secrecy. In fact, she marched quite boldly out the front. No one saw fit to stop her.
A dozen blocks away she exchanged her face for Kurenai’s and looked in a shop window to check. Glossy-dark, it tossed streetlight and her reflection back at her. Her face was heart-shaped now, wider too; still pale, but richer, more cream than ghost. She tucked rich black waves behind her ears. Immediately they sprang free again.
On hers, Kurenai’s skin felt nothing less than uncomfortable. As for her dress-well. It certainly wasn’t decent.
Not that any of Anko’s clothes were, either. But at least being Anko, she’d had that trench coat to wrap herself in (“ ’S cold,” she’d grumbled as she did, the way Anko might. Really it was to keep Hayabusa from leering at the breasts that were both hers and Anko-sensei’s.)
She walked a few paces with Kurenai’s long pretty legs. They were hard and soft at once: fat that tugged smoothly over muscle with this motion, softened and bunched with this one. Hanabi ran her knuckles over her thigh. Their hand was clenched tight. Kurenai’s skin was prettysoft. She wondered if her skin was that soft. She didn’t think it was, but she couldn’t remember.
With a few more strides, her Henge training kicked in. Kurenai’s long legs felt half hers, at least. So, in sum, I have a leg, she thought. Strangely, she found herself wishing that Tobi were there; he’d laugh if she said it to him.
So there’s this Hyuuga, and she walks into a bar…
Yes, that was Hayabusa’s voice in her head. How…pleasant.
…’Cause she ran out of chakra! Get it?
Hanabi stifled a sigh. That joke had been the product of an hour’s worth of drinks; Tobi had snorted sake out his nose.
It was a lot easier doing this when they were here, she thought.
Mind, that was the product of a very fleeting moment of weakness.
It wasn’t really a Hyuuga who walked into the bar, anyway; it was Yuuhi Kurenai. She walked in like she didn’t even know. Certainly not the sort of walk that got you places quickly.
Her hips swayed and her legs took away ground leisurely beneath her. Her hair refused to stay in place with any kind of motion at all.
She found Anko back in the corner, tucked into a booth with a bottle and a cup. She was alone for the moment, but there was another cup across from her; she traced pooled sake with her fingertips as Hanabi snuck glances her way.
Hanabi didn’t go to her at first. She looked at a few people Kurenai might know and said hello. A man she didn’t recognize leered at her and called her baby: how’s it going, baby? he said. He touched her lightly on her shoulder.
Sick, Hanabi thought, her stomach knotting with distaste. But Kurenai just sighed and shook her head in exasperation, and moved further into the bar.
“Hey, Anko,” she said when she was as far in as she could be.
Anko grinned at her. “You made it out. Good; you’re turning into such a damn homebody.”
Hanabi shrugged at that. She-Kurenai-slid into the booth without asking if she was taking someone else’s seat. It seemed like the sort of thing old friends like them didn’t bother with. “Who’re you with?”
“Nobody at the moment. Cup’s yours if you want. Kakashi was here earlier, and then one of my kids stopped by.”
Hanabi froze inside Kurenai’s skin. She knew already; how did she know? Maybe Kurenai didn’t take the homebody insult with as much disregard as she took the jibes Anko-Hanabi occasionally threw in. Maybe- “Okay, I want a new cup though,” she said, throat tight. But Kurenai’s voice somehow came out with light humor.
“Oh come on,” said Anko. “You’ve split drinks with Kakashi before.”
”Kure and Kakashi split girly drinks sometimes. ’Cause then Kakashi can drink around his mask with the straw, and because Kurenai-well, she just likes the things,” Anko’d said to them, before their first bar outing as a team.
“It’s not Kakashi I’m worried about,” Kurenai said. She took the cup with a sigh. “Alcohol kills germs, at least. Which kid? You shouldn’t encourage them to drink,” she added, because it seemed like something Kurenai would say.
“Of course I should. This way they learn how to drink so they don’t end up puking over the toilet too many times.” Anko poured sake for her.
She rolled Kurenai’s eyes. “I understand that, but who’s to say they’d start this young? It isn’t good for their livers. Anyway, which kid?” Hanabi wanted to know. She was practically quivering in her skin.
“Oh. Hayabusa again.”
“Who was he this time?” Kurenai asked. Fear-excitement in her belly coiled tight; this could give it all away. She thought, would Kurenai know so much about us?
“Ebisu. Good choice. Lil’ bastard ruined it because he’s a whole lot less shameless than Ebisu.”
“He’s going to kill his liver,” Kurenai said disapprovingly. Inside the tight coil in her belly tightened another notch and changed more to sheer hot thrill than fear. Strange how much more she wound up for a training exercise like this than any mission.
“…Yeah.” Surprisingly, Anko looked a bit guilty. “I guess I could tell him he’s hit his quota for the month.” Anko tossed back her cup and wiped her mouth clean with her sleeve. She fixed Kurenai with grin. “Whoa. I might be drunk. You starting cold?”
“Yes,” said Hanabi uncertainly.
“Well, then. Sake’s not going to drink itself. Get to work.”
Hanabi put the cup to her lips and took a delicate sip.
“Ya call that drinking,” Anko said with a sigh. She spilled sake into her cup and tossed it back. “That’s drinking.”
“Er. I don’t know.” Would Kurenai feel challenged-would she feel like joining in just for fun-would she sigh and shake her head- And besides, Hanabi didn’t care to get drunk, thank you very much. She’d be able to hold the Henge of course; she wasn’t Hayabusa. But she didn’t know if she’d be able to keep up the act of Kurenai.
“Kurenai, Kurenai. I drink more with my kids these days than with you.”
“How drunk are you?” Kurenai said, making as if to bend and give.
“Pretty.”
“Too drunk to drink more with me?” Hanabi said, leadingly. She didn’t particularly care if Anko drank herself to puking-the drunker Anko was, the less it mattered if she slipped up a bit with Kurenai-but she thought Kurenai would.
“Oh. Never. How do you want to drink?”
“How?”
“How-”
Anko reached into her pockets and produced a lone die; with a curse, she went back to rummaging through them; “Nope, just that one,” she said at length.
And that was how Hanabi found herself roped into a drinking game. It was noisy. Every time Anko slammed her cup down on the table with a clatter that threatened a shatter, Hanabi’s teeth went on edge. It was messy too, and soon there was sake scattered in pools and tributaries across the table-on Hanabi, too, and especially on Anko.
At the least, the basic premise of the game-throw the die, smack the table the number it dictated, loser drinks for the count they lost on, worthless in any way that would require physical or mental capability-meant that a little extra sake spilled here or there was nothing at all. And so Anko got fantastically drunk (her words) while Hanabi got tipsy-well, no, that was a lie. But she was-was relatively undrunk. Not drunk, she meant. Whatever.
“You’re a strange teacher,” Hanabi said. After she said it, she thought that maybe it wasn’t very Kurenai-like. She didn’t care, though. Curious. Oh, right, such was the effect of alcohol. Alcohol is a vice. It makes you lose control. It’s the refuge of the socially inept-though Anko isn’t that-and the bored. Maybe Anko is that. Tobi-in-her-head called her a snob. I know, she told him. “I mean you get-your kids all drunk, and give them ridiculous training exercises, and-”
“Life’s not very by the book.”
“That’s not a good excuse at all,” said Hanabi. “It’s almost cliché.”
“Well, the other side is that they need it. Hayabusa’s the sort that would find a way to do whatever the hell he wants even if you tried to keep it from him. Especially if you did. Booze’ll probably lose its allure for him in six months. A year, tops. And then there’s Hanabi. I mean, you know the Hyuuga. They were all born with a good sized stick up the ass.”
Hanabi scowled. You’re disgusting, Anko-sensei. And I was not. “Hinata wasn’t,” she said furiously. It was the only way she could yell at Anko for it as Kurenai, and she wanted a few more points.
Let’s see: five points minimum for disguise-
“Instead she was born with no spine,” Anko said matter-of-factly. “Hyuuga either get an extra support or none at all.”
She’ll give me at least a point for holding my alcohol and my Henge at the same time. But I maybe only tie with Hayabusa, Hanabi reasoned through the anger.
“Hinata has a spine, now,” Hanabi said. It was frustrating, only getting to use Kurenai’s stupid, biased words to yell at Anko. “She-she,” she cast around for more. “She’s had one since she stood up against Neji in their first chuunin exam.” When she said it, she supposed it wasn’t actually a lie.
Anko leaned back in her seat. “I guess.” She poured herself more sake and sipped it. Hanabi fumed inside Kurenai’s skin. “Hanabi’s not so bad anymore either.”
“Really?” said Hanabi. And then she felt her skin, Kurenai’s skin, flush bright with shame. And anyway she didn’t care what Anko thought, she didn’t, especially since anything Anko considered “getting better” couldn’t be good. Unless she just meant training. She stood up unsteadily, not sure if she were still on Kurenai’s legs. She hoped she was. Otherwise they’d throw her out of the bar and that was too much of a Hayabusa thing to have happen. She’d never live it down when Anko told the boys.
“Yeah, she really is,” said Anko. “Surprised me.” Though she said she, there was that edge of something in her voice.
“No, I’m not!” Hanabi said. She turned (good, still Kurenai’s legs), and left the bar in what she hoped was a dignified huff.
---------
Hanabi showed up to training the next day. Her white eyes were shot with red, and she scowled every time anyone spoke to her, but she didn’t run. Anko could respect that.
Deep down, all of them were good kids.
“Hanabi. Training exercise evaluation.”
Hanabi’s scowl deepened.
“Ten points for the Henge choice.”
“No way!” Hayabusa cried out.
She brought her finger to her mouth. “Hush, your turn in a minute. Wasn’t expecting Kurenai. Decent act, too. Another point. You held the Henge through a lot of sake. I saw you spilling it out every so often-a point for that, but minus a point for me catching you-but you probably drank as much you did that one night you puked.”
Hanabi flushed a dark, angry red. She really didn’t like being reminded that she had ever puked. She probably wasn’t too happy about last night, either.
“I caught you of course. It was the little things at first that clued me in. Stuff you can’t really help, unless you knew Kurenai the way I know her. So only a point off for that. The disguise fell completely apart at the end, though, when you ran out. You kept the Henge, though, so I’ll only take away, hhmm. Two. Eight in all. You’re leading by two points.”
Hanabi just scowled.
“Now, Hayabusa. Oh, and Hanabi, looking back, it was cute when you defended your sister. Hayabusa: five-”
Hanabi’s shoulders tightened up. “It was part of the act.”
“Good job playing the part,” said Anko cheerfully.