They had dinner, they talked, they laughed. It was a date. A good one.

Anko felt normal.

I'm not normal.

"Hey," she mumbled as they walked home together, hand in hand with the cloak of darkness keeping them from watchful eyes.

"Hey," he returned, voice nonchalant.

"How did two stubborn people like us even get together, let alone married?" Anko asked, amazed.

"You happen to be more stubborn than I am," Kakashi informed her, and in squeezing her hand tighter, he added, "You decided you liked me and not long after that, I was a goner. There was no escaping you."

Funny to hear that from him. An extraordinary shinobi—one of the strongest shinobi alive and somehow saying that to her.

Anko grinned all the same and wonderingly asked, "Am I your perfect match? Your one true love? Someone you'll never give up on, no matter what?"

She watched him from the corner of her eye and half-expected something humorous to put off answering something so obviously embarrassing. The other half of her simply feared he would say no.

Smoothly, to the point that she didn't even register it happening, he slid an arm around her waist and pulled her in. His hand rested at her hip, making her feel so warm that even if he said nothing at all, she'd still be happy.

"Our relationship didn't start off very good," he told her and though she couldn't see where he was going with it, she listened and let herself be led by him. "At first, all we did was hurt each other. After the first mission we went on, there were others. They went smoothly as far as the mission went, but when it came to us, we constantly fought. Called each other names. Physically beat each other. Petty childish pranks. All because, at first, we hated each other."

Anko nodded sagely. "I can see you being petty."

Kakashi slapped her ass. "You know it."

She laughed at that. An honest one. Not a smug one, or skeevy one, or a mocking one. An honest one—and it felt amazing.

"What changed it?" she asked, placing her cheek against his arm as the two of them walked.

"It was...after you saved Minato-sensei," he told her, and there was a hesitance to his voice that she hadn't been expecting.

"Ah," she breathed, as if she could recall completely what he was talking about. Anko paused and Kakashi followed suit. "Was my amnesia caused by the seal or was it something else?"

It was Kakashi's turn to look surprised. "I thought you knew. Did nobody tell you?"

That would be a negative but it was probably more her fault than anyone else's. Anko wasn't really the type to talk to people about her condition in her everyday life. She was the 'avoid troublesome things at all costs' kind of girl. It just made her already confusing and hectic life easier to stomach.

"If anyone did, it flew in one ear and right out the other," she informed him in a curt tone.

"Ahh," he breathed and then shifted his hold on her so that he could meet her gaze. Kakashi swallowed but nevertheless persisted as he told her with pain streaking across his otherwise warm expression, "It's not because of the seal. It's because you nearly died on a mission. No," he sucked in a breath and blew it out, "you did die."

Flashes of something rose up beneath her closed eyes and if there was ever a time that she'd felt the ghost of pain due to a long-since healed wound, it was then.

Anko touched the back of her head self-consciously and blinked at Kakashi in raw befuddlement.

"Is this all a dream?" she whispered, horrified at the thought.

"No," he murmured, bringing his hands to her face and drawing her closer. His glimmered with the help of the streetlight, as if there were a fire in the depths of the dark pools his eyes normally were. Anko saw something she'd been afraid to notice for a long time. Something she had been denying herself out of fear; out of hesitance to accept.

Her salvation.

"We are both very real," he told her.

With his words, the echo of them ricocheting amongst her thoughts, she found conviction.

a/n: if anyone is confused by the timeline, i am also lol (i may need to edit past chapters to make it all make sense. consider this the drawbacks to never planning a damn thing and letting the tides wash up where they may.) i will just say now that there's a blank period between chapter eleven and chapter twelve. is this me retconning? hell yeah it is. bitches make mistakes, ride or die we fix 'em up.

Also; join my discord server if you wanna know more about me, my writing process, quicker update notices, to be friends, etc. Link is on my profile!