WARNINGS: Mild crazy, implied nekkidness and nookie, as well as waterfights, blood, and kissing. Also, 's a threesome (Izumo/Anko/Kotetsu).
EDITed and re-uploaded, like, two seconds after posting for glaringly obvious typo. Augh.
Everyone knows Anko's a little messed-up in the head.
No one blames her for it. After all, she had Orochimaru for a jounin-sensei, all through her most impressionable youth, and still managed to escape his influence in the end and tell the Third what his beloved protégé was doing in his labs under the village.
Everyone also knows that Anko's one of the better ninjas the village has.
Which isn't really a huge deal, given that most of Konoha's best are crazy in some way or another. It seems to be almost an unofficial requirement that anyone over chuunin rank has some deep, scarring secret or tragic past.
Anko knows she's not all there. Things are a little funny in her head, so she laughs sometimes, and not everyone gets the joke. But it's all right. She has her own kind of balance.
Her boys are chuunin rank, which means they're fine with being about as sane and as well-adjusted as ninjas get. They smile a lot and Izumo cracks bad jokes and Kotetsu is addicted to coffee and they're so damn normal it makes Anko want to scream sometimes.
They're her balance.
They're there when she comes back from a mission and huddles in a corner, staring at her hands. They have the drill down—Kotetsu will come in through the window, because the door's always locked and Izumo is hopeless at wall-climbing, and he'll open the door for Izumo, who will cook something quietly in the kitchen while Kotetsu coaxes her out of her hiding spot.
Then Izumo will wash the blood off her hands and neck and shoulders and Kotetsu will find her a soft, clean robe for when she finally stops shaking and manages to discard the bloodstained black-and-white ANBU uniform. They always make sure to get some food into her, and talk of simple, normal things while she eats, before tucking her into bed, curled between them, a mess of toomany arms and legs, warm and comforting and familiar.
They're her balance, and she knows it's strange and the normal people look at them oddly and don't get it, but it's all she has. All she needs.
They don't pity her. They don't understand her, either, but they don't pretend to and that makes it some sort of all right. She's not sure if they love her, or if she loves them, because she's not sure if she's ever loved anyone before or how it would feel if she did.
But she does know that when they follow her to ANBU headquarters after the third time in a week they've had to repeat the routine and demand to be her team, her backup, she does know that she has to swallow something back, tears or a scream. She doesn't want them to see what she has to do on missions, doesn't want them to understand because they're normal, they're her balance, and if they go crazy like her, she doesn't know what she's going to do.
So when Izumo takes the ferret-mask, and Kotetsu, that of a snarling badger, she screams at them and breaks down weeping for the first time in years.
It's one of the worst nights they've had in a while, but they stay and let her work out her anger and fear on them, quiet and solemn. They explain to her that this is something they've been thinking about for a while. Something they're doing for her, and for themselves, because they don't like being helpless.
And she knows this is one argument she's not going to win, because Izumo has that look on his face and Kotetsu has his arms folded and talks like it's already been decided.
In a way, it already has been decided. ANBU never has enough people, and it's always extremely reluctant to let go of those who've taken the mask. Her boys won't win free from it—this is one thing they've made it impossible for her to protect them from.
She's terrified.
They're sent on their first mission as a team not a week later. It's standard fare for Mongoose—maybe even a little easy in deference to her new backup. She's never been so frightened in her life.
They're not as strong as she is. They're stronger, in a lot of ways, but they're still just chuunin. Their chakra reserves aren't anywhere near hers, and their overall strength is below ANBU standards.
Her hands are shaking as they set out. Her hands never shake. But Ferret grabs her right, takes it between both of his, and Badger squeezes her left comfortingly. They can't make any promises out loud—the things they need to tell her are too fragile for words, but in a way, she understands what they're saying, just the same.
She realizes she's underestimated them.
She suspects a lot of people underestimate them—desk-chuunin, people call them, lazy and out of practice—but she's ashamed to have been one of those people.
Ferret's chakra control may be sloppy, but his taijutsu is beyond reproach, blending flawlessly with her own wild ninjutsu-enhanced attacks, with Badger's genjutsu and oversized kunai backing them both up. Mongoose feels a surge of feral glee—she's never meshed with a team this perfectly before, even if they are chuunin.
She will never say "just" chuunin again.
They clean up together in a river a few miles away. Anko's afraid that they'll be changed by this new responsibility, this new level of danger, but she needn't have worried. Izumo immediately starts a waterfight and the whole thing goes downhill from there. They're all sopping wet by the end, even the uniforms they've left on the banks, and Anko revels in feeling clean for once.
She kisses them, first one, then the other, and feels Kotetsu smile against her lips and Izumo laugh breathlessly into her mouth, and they all know it's all right.
They are her balance, and that is something that she knows now will never change.
Endnotes: This will eventually wind up as a semi-sidefic to Godzilla, if/when it gets posted. For now, enjoy the shiny oneshot. And eeee, I didn't kill anyone off! Also, chuunin-as-ANBU? No, I don't think so either. Maybe they made an exception in the face of Anko's crazee and the boys' stubborn. Shh. Enjoy the pretty story.