Anko knew her life as she knew it was over. Forget making jounin...she would be lucky to ever get any decent missions ever again after what that man did.

She still felt like shit thanks to the strange seal on her neck.

On automatic, she headed to the one store that held a guy she partially liked, despite being civilian. He always seemed to listen and didn't cringe at the stories of her killing some bandit or another, which was rare for non-shinobi.

The fact he had the prettiest green eyes and was a divine cook that made the best dango had little to do with it. She would stab anyone who said otherwise.

The odd man known only as "Hiei" took one look at her condition, and rather than say anything took her to a side room out of view of the main restaurant.

It stung, and for a short time she honestly believed he knew about Orochimaru and hated her for it like everyone else.

Instead he put a plate of his best dango (not poisoned, her mind noted with some surprise) and waited for her to have something on her stomach.

"Anko-chan, are you alright? I come back from my business trip to Suna and suddenly the shinobi are being more secretive and hush-hush than normal. And no one is willing to tell me anything, so I know it has to be big."

She stared at him.

"You haven't heard?" she said baffled. How did he not hear about Orochimaru's defection and the massive fight between the Third and the traitor? Surely SOMEONE would have said something on the way back to Suna!

"I just got back, and the way everyone was looking at you doesn't sit right."

She was in such disbelief that she spilled everything. How Orochimaru's private labs had been discovered and there had been clan kids who had been presumed dead on missions found inside. How the council had raised an uproar over it and the Third had been forced to chase him out.

How she was now being regarded with such suspicion because she had been his apprentice, and had been marked by one of his custom seals, despite not being aware of any of this.

By the end of her explanation she was crying. Her, a big tough kunoichi!

Hiei said nothing, and there was an empty expression on his face.

"Anko-chan, you can stay here as long as you need. I don't care if you crash in the room, so long as you rest for a bit."

Anko was caught off guard by the offer of discreet sanctuary. A place to rest and eat without having to deal with the looks was a Kami-send.

Hiei left her alone once she fell asleep upon finishing the pot of tea he had made.

Armed with this new information, he discreetly made inquiries and found out things were worse for her than he originally thought.

It left him disgusted, but there was slight understanding as well. Unlike his situation, this time the problem wasn't caused by unsubstantiated rumors and an enclosed environment, but by well justified paranoia in a village full of already paranoid bastards.

He kept an eye on Anko for the next week, before he made his own move to deal with this nonsense. Anko didn't deserve half the crap being thrown at her for a mess caused by someone she had every reason to trust.

Anko was still in shock over what had happened. She never thought in a million years the guy she had a crush on would offer to let her stay in his spare bedroom after she came home and found her security seals wrecked and her place more or less trashed.

Hiei was an unusual civilian who was never afraid of shinobi and had access to seals that drove the researchers bonkers trying to figure them out. It had the side effect of making his store very popular among shinobi and civilians alike, and he even did to-go orders and "mission-approved" bentos for longer trips.

Those were mostly pre-dried foods that could be used to make quick road meals, but they were still tastier than anything offered by the ninja stores so they were a monumental hit with shinobi who had long missions and had to store extra rations.

The deluxe models had to be ordered in advance, but they were totally worth it. And each bento had an idiot's "How-To" guide in regards to knowing how to make quick and easy meals even a baby genin on his first away mission could follow.

And yet he, upon hearing her bitch for an hour and a half about what happened to her place, had offered her a bed and a spare key to his apartment. One so heavily secured that not even the ANBU had any luck breaking in, and she knew they had tried because she had heard that idiot Kakashi 'whine' (for him) about Kushina more or less blackmailing his team into attempting to get past it to prove a point.

The resulting prank war between the civilian and the jounin was the stuff of hilarious rumors. Word had it that the Fourth himself had to talk his wife down and send some expensive alcohol to call it off.

And now she had free access to it, and was told to do whatever she wanted with the spare bedroom so long as he wasn't required to clean up after her.

As if that wasn't surreal enough, she even got free bentos for lunch every day personally made by Hiei.

She was bewildered at the treatment, because Hiei was literally the ONLY person in the village who honestly didn't try to act as though her previous mentor's crimes were her own by extension. He actually listened to her and treated her like she was her own person, not Orochimaru's apprentice.

More to the point he never looked at her with pity, condescension or anything that she had been getting from the rest of the village. He only ever looked at her with empathy and a strange sort of understanding...like he had been in a similar situation and had survived, though he still bore the scars with pride.

Which...she had to know. Why was he treating her like this and why did he never bring up Orochimaru?

"Why?" she asked.

"Why what?"

"Why are you so nice to me? Why do you treat me completely differently from everyone? Even the Hokage still holds his actions against me, though he never declared me traitor."

Hiei looked her in the eye, then sighed. Almost like this was an explanation a long time coming.

The fact he brought out the good sake said a lot, and Anko wisely sat down.

The story he told her was almost fantastical, but she could tell he was speaking the honest truth. At least, to some extent.

"When I was twelve I found out that I had a rare kekkei genkai that only a certain bloodline had. The last known users were people who were as bad as that man and had a similar obsession for snakes. Because everyone assumed that the old stories of the oldest user meant that he hated those who couldn't use chakra, they all immediately suspected me of setting the monster only he could control on the school without any evidence to prove it...despite the fact my mother came from a completely civilian family and was the only one with chakra, and my dad came from a long established clan."

"That's stupid."

"It was filled with teenagers and teachers who didn't bother to correct them or do their damn jobs properly," deadpanned Hiei. "As it was they only believed that I wasn't the culprit when my oath sister was attacked because she came from a completely civilian clan and her parents worked as dentists. In the end I was the one to deal with the monster who turned out to be a rare and ancient form of snake that you'd probably enjoy having as a pet."

"So what did they do?"

"Nothing. Almost no one actually apologized for saying that I was the man's heir or that they thought so low that I would attack innocent children for an ideology that I never promoted or even believed in," said Hiei annoyed. "So if anyone understands what you're going through now, it's me. I know what it's like to have people turn against you because of rumors alone."

Anko let this sink in while properly savoring the sake he had given her. It was the really good stuff that would cost at least a C-rank just to afford a single bottle.

Anko hissed for a split second as the curse seal on her neck acted up again. It was still really annoying, but she was learning to live with the pain. The twinges were pissing her off though.

Hiei's eyes narrowed, not on her but on the seal.

"What...is that?" he asked quietly.

"It's a curse seal. It was his parting gift before he was chased out. I woke up in the infirmary two weeks later, with a full ANBU guard and another week in T and I once they found out I was awake. It took them a month to declare I wasn't a traitor like him, and Jiraiya-sama has been unable to deal with it."

He also said that it was like nothing he had ever seen, and that there were parts that made him really leery of messing with it. He refused to say what it was though.

Under normal circumstances she wouldn't have said even that much, but Hiei had only one actual rule for allowing her to live in the spare bedroom.

She was never allowed to lie to him. If she couldn't say anything due to village secrecy or because politics meant the less people knew the better, then she was to state so outright and he would let it drop. Otherwise he wanted her to answer him as honestly as she could and he would do the same.

He understood that there were some secrets that people weren't allowed to share with others and respected that.

For the next week, they continued their daily routine as always. Anko found it downright relaxing, and was a bit unhappy when Hiei declared he needed to go to Suna for supplies.

So you could imagine her disbelief when he personally asked for her to act as one of his usual escorts, with a knowing wink from Kushina who heard the entire thing.

She had become pranking buddies with the odd civilian and had threatened to make him godfather once her sprog came out. The Fourth was leaning towards Jiraiya-sama, but it was a genuine toss-up whether Kushina would have her way.

She could do without the subtle hints about Hiei having a thing for her. She had already figured out she was falling for him hard, but the guy had to be the most dense person on the freaking PLANET.

Seriously, how dense was this guy if he could watch her walk around freaking naked after a shower in his apartment and not bother to bat an eye or do more than blink?!

(Kurenai and a few other women had a hefty bet that he had to be gay. She was determined to prove otherwise, but was unsure how to go about it.)

Anko was rather surprised she was the only person assigned as his bodyguard, but happy that she got him to herself. Hiei even rented a single room with double beds, saying it was 'cheaper' than getting two. Besides, he needed Anko to protect him and she could hardly do that from another room.

It took Anko two full days before she caved and asked.

"So why are we really going to Suna?"

"So that I don't have to deal with any awkward questions from the old monkey about why your curse scar is gone."

Anko stopped dead in her tracks.

"What."

"Seriously, what is it with an obsession with snakes going hand in hand with trying to achieve immortality by splitting their soul into fragments to awaken at a later date?" complained Hiei, pretending not to notice her shock. "It was bad enough the first time, but this is starting to feel like a damn cliché that the poor snakes don't deserve!"

"What."

Anko was stunned into disbelief, as Hiei apparently took notice of her shock.

"I know why that seal won't come off. Orochimaru must have been experimenting with immorality and shoved some of his soul into the seal, likely as a fail-safe in case he fucked up and needed to get a new body.

"WHAT?!" said Anko, absolutely horrified.

In a heartbeat, Anko was on him...and not in a good way. She wanted explanations, NOW.

Hiei looked far too blasé about the fact he had a hot girl roughly his own age on top of him. It certainly made it harder for Anko to tell if he was gay or not.

"I recognized the feel of a phylactery on your neck when it flared up around me. I would have done something sooner, but I didn't realize what it was and I have zero idea about seals."

"What's a..."

"Soul fragment, usually contained via some form of energy in inanimate objects, though it can be contained by living ones. Just think of it like a psuedo Jinchuriki, without the furry rage monster of unimaginable power," said Hiei helpfully.

He knew Kushina was one, and to her surprise he found the fox to be a surprisingly conversationalist with a love of riddles and the game where you gave a word that started with the last letter (or kanji) of the word before it.

(The fox was irritable that Hiei kept winning that particular game because he often used words from outside the Elemental Countries or their variants in Japanese form.)

Anko clearly wanted more.

"I know how to get rid of it, but I'm not interested in being a shinobi or dealing with the morons in the council harassing me for an explanation on how I got rid of it...especially since the Hyuuga would almost certainly figure out that I know how to remove that thrice damned cursed seal of theirs to keep the 'lesser' family members in line. I can't remove the seal itself, but I can deal with the infestation inside of it which should hopefully make it easier to get rid of without the thing inside interfering."

"...Why Suna?"

"Because I'm technically part owner and the Kazekage knows it's easier to look the other way regarding my oddities since I've been supplying most of the real funding for their medical and research divisions as well as helping their supplies for basic weaponry," said Hiei casually, as if that were normal.

Anko stared.

"How rich are you?" she asked in disbelief.

"I honestly have no idea," admitted Hiei. "My restaurant is more of a hobby to keep me busy."

If Anko was in shock now, it was nothing compared to the exasperated expressions she got from the shinobi of Suna when they found out why Hiei had come back for a visit. He wasn't joking about the Kazekage being on personal terms with him.