Unpredictability is the theme of this year's A-level papers I suppose. ARGH. The definitions and whatever else crammed into my mind wasn't even required.

Am I in a mood? Yes, I am in a mood. But anyway, rantings aside, this is going to be a little dark. And creepy -maybe, I don't know, but I'm just giving fair warning. Cause I'm in a flippin' mood, and my muse decided that she have a taste for something different. Oh, procrastination is still on the menu though, unfortunately.

(This is a somewhat prequel to my other dark-fic: 'What's Your Name?' But it's fine alone anyway.)

Disclaimer: Naruto. Not mine.

She cast her eyes around, but everything was the same everywhere she looked. Black. Black. And more black. It was a sea of nothingness. But as she stood there in the eerie darkness, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled uneasily. And Anko swore that there were a pair of eyes on her. Haunting golden irises -strange, but she felt it deep in her bones, the very feeling invading her marrows.

And they were watching her.

Something whispered in the air, a chilly breeze that made goosebumps rise on her flesh, sending a trickle of cold down her spine.

Don't look behind you.

Slowly, inexplicably, Anko felt her head turn...

It started as it had always started -in pitch-blackness. No sound, except for her harsh breathing, and the pressure closing in from all sides around her.

Eyes on the back of her neck.

Watching. Waiting.

Yet there was something different. In a distance was a hunched figure she couldn't quite make out in the dark. But Anko did not approach it. There was something in the way her senses were spiked and on edge, a warning that she would not like what she will find.

Her heart pounded loudly in her chest, as she was able to discern the outline of the figure. A person, seated on a throne. A broken throne. Her hands clenched, nails digging into her soft sweaty palms. But Anko didn't notice.

A veil of flowing, long, black hair. Pale, pale, pale skin. And blood, so much blood, a pool of opaque crimson all around him.

It was dark, oh so very dark. She wouldn't know. She shouldn't know.

Yet she did. But what made her breath catch, made her blood run cold, were more than those.

It was the golden eyes that stared straight at her.

"He is my sensei. For so many years, I've studied under him. How can you be sure I would not walk down a path like his?"

"He is your ex-sensei. And you wouldn't." Kurenai said smiling at Anko before smacking her friend on her arm. "Don't forget, you chose to leave him. You won't be like him."

Kurenai's voice was firm. And Anko envied the belief her friend had in her when even she herself was in doubt.

People vehemently deny that which they think they are not, keeping those thoughts first and foremost in their mind, working hard away from it. Until one day, they'll stand surrounded by their deepest, darkest fears, realizing what they hated have become so much a part of them, it's too late to climb back up the rabbit hole. But by then, they wouldn't even want to.

And Anko was afraid. Because that was the kind of thing that just happens. No one would know, until it's too late.

A mocking laugh sounded, and Anko flinched, hazel eyes darting to her left. Mai stood there, in her usual skimpy outfit, more scrapes of cloth than clothes, a slash of a smile twisted on her face, decidedly unpleasant glint in her eyes.

"Oh, don't kid her, Kurenai. You know she'll go off the same end as that snake. Hell, everybody is just waiting for it to happen."

Beside Anko, Kurenai glared at their fellow Jounin, standing from her chair and hooking her arms around Anko's, dragging the kunoichi to the door. "Come on, Anko. Let's go someplace else. Something is stinking up the air in here."

Mai waved as they went through the door, her jovial attitude not matching the acid in her words and venom in her eyes. "Tell me when that happens! I want front row seats~" She said, ending in a sing-song voice.

Anko's fists clenched, and her nails drew blood from her palms.

She isn't like him. She's nothing like him.

She isn't him.

He wasn't there.

Anko looked around but like before, there was nothing, nothing other than the deafening silence. She took a tentative step forward, and something soft squelched beneath her foot, a wetness dampening her toes as they seeped into her open-toed sandals.

It was with morbid fascination that Anko looked at the sea of bodies, some freshly bruised and battered, blood still leaking from their purple puckering wounds, while others were long dead, glassy eyes seeing nothing as maggots feasted on the greenish-gray decayed flesh. Yet they were whispering to each other urgently, mangled lips forming words that Anko could not make out.

She looked up. And there he was again. In the murky blackness. On the bloody throne. Golden eyes never leaving her.

Her eyes darted to the sea of corpse. Run, they were telling her now. Run far, far away and never look back!

Blood pounding in her ears, Anko glanced at the broken throne, and her breath caught. His hand -drenched in so much red- was outstretched. Reaching for her.

And, maybe it was just her, but with each dream, Anko felt as if he was drawing closer and closer...

Anko's dull hazel eyes took in the prone body of Mai as she slept. If it wasn't for the soft breaths and minute rise and fall of her chest, it'd be so easy to think her dead. Just a quick, clean slice of a kunai from ear to ear, severing her trachea and arteries, and that would be more than true.

A quiet affair. She wouldn't even know.

Anko palmed a kunai, the cold of the steel weighting heavily on her. The thin edge of the blade inched closer to the sleeping Jounin.

She shouldn't be doing this. But someone was urging her, a familiar velvety voice from long ago.

Just a slice.

Simple.

Efficient.

...and somewhere along the way, Anko must have done exactly just that. Because her hands were stained red, the warm blood trailing down her arm, cooling quickly in the night's air. It was that same dark crimson.

Anko should be panicking, she should be very afraid. But she wasn't. Calmly, she made her way out of Mai's apartment, into the darkness of the moonless night. She would head home, have a nice bath, an early sleep and rise early the next morning.

Something in the wind whispered.

Don't look behind you.

And this time, Anko didn't bother. Because, she already did.

She was face to face with the throne, and the figure smiled at her.

"Hello, Anko dear. Welcome back."