A Series of Balancing Acts

Fanfiction
Title:	A Series of Balancing Acts
Author(s):	nthcoincident
Date(s):	Published 4-23-10 Deleted in 2014.
Length:	9094
Genre:	het
Fandom:	Naruto
External Links:	here
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A Series of Balancing Acts by nthcoincident is a Kimimaro x Anko Naruto fanfic told from Mitarashi Anko's POV that begins in her childhood and follows her relationship with Kaguya Kimimaro up through the events of canon. It was deleted when nthcoicident removed her work from the internet, but has since been redistributed via email and google docs.

Author's summary:

I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours.

At the end of the fic, there's an author's note that reads:

ETA: I must disclaim that this fic would not exist if not for the wonderful sinemoras09, who, to my knowledge, is the first person ever to ship Kimimaro/Anko. Her coattails, I ride on them.

This is almost certainly referring to Witness, which can be found here.

Synopsis

A Series of Balancing Acts takes place in an alternate universe where brings Kaguya Kimimaro to live in Konoha and be a test subject there, where he interacts with Anko and her two genin teammates, who in this verse are Yamato and Kotetsu. Taking into consideration the publishing date of the fic, it's possible that this was intended to be canon compliant and has since been jossed. Anko and her peers live through the Third Shinobi War and then get caught up in the scandal and mess of Orochimaru's illegal experimentation. Kimimaro choses to leave the village with Orochimaru, leaving Anko to pick up the pieces.

Although the fic largely focuses on Anko's romantic relationship with Kimimaro, Anko also struggles with her feelings of debt towards Orochimaru and fundamentally the fic is about her character arc, which completes with Kimimaro's canonical death.

Excerpts

They're given permission to take Kimimaro to a summer festival, after much wheedling (by which is meant two extra hours extracting brain fluid from swine before they can leave). The much-extolled social bonding of the festival turns out to be so much hyperbole: Orochimaru escorts them to the gates and then vanishes, Yamato mysteriously falls behind somewhere around one of the ramen stands, and Kotetsu abruptly saunters off, his self-congratulatory anecdote gaining several decibels of volume at first sight of a harried-looking Izumo.

This leaves her standing there alone with Kimimaro, who is absently palming his brachial bones, apparently under the delusion that some sort of intense training is about to commence. She rolls her eyes and forces him to stick them back into his arms, relishing the way several passerby turn slightly green as they pass.

"We're not going to train?" he asks in some confusion.

"No, you moron," she says, rolling her eyes. "It's a festival. Come on, I'll buy you some mitarashi dango."

She buys him some mitarashi dango. He doesn't like it. She doesn't know what the hell kind of person doesn't like mitarashi dango, but he doesn't, so she eats the rest of it. It's only a little weird.

Kimimaro cups her shoulder in his hand. She brushes with her fingers the small black mark on his skin, the red clan symbol on his forehead. Time moves, the world spins.

"We will build a better world," he says. "It will never happen again."

She thinks she knows what we means, so she's surprised when the next thing he says is "Orochimaru-sama will make sure of it."