Boy meets girl: again [Part 1 / Complete]

[callmelegion]

Who: Pain and Konan
Status: Closed
Style: Present tense, paragraph form.
Where/When: Himorogi; approximately an hour or so after Pain has awoken in Kannagara
Warnings: none yet; will edit if necessary

What you are not aware of is that it makes him afraid.

Afraid: unsettled, your word, might be better suited.

Nagato has not dreamt for many years,

Comments

[papercutrose]

"Of course.." she says, unnecessarily. But there is something about his voice that seems...

...to need cover. Protection. She doesn't want to leave it hanging in silence. He looks at her and she's warmed, because it's important that he see her, too. That he knows she's there.

That she's in his reach. He speaks to her from many bodies, from pieces like he's falling apart. And maybe he is?

And changes the subject. His body is becoming sunburned, so she extends her paper wings. She puts that body into the shade. She sees the sore redness on his shoulders and the tip of his nose, the sharp ridge his cheekbones make in his face.

"It looks painful.." she says, almost to herself because Nagato would not want her to fuss over this body. He wouldn't want her to go to it and push his hair back from his scalded forehead, kiss him. No.

And Nagato is right, the body is burning. The city is burning. Action before feelings. So she takes care of it. Wraps that body up in her paper tree. Winds the core of wood layers around him and branches the outside to limbs and leaves. Unfolds it into white leaves with long fingers, a Japanese maple.

Then she faces him. Because the way he stands in this body, and the way he holds the others back to loiter in the shade, announces where he wants her attention to be.

And if not, she thinks, he'll tell her. It doesn't matter. He is here, they are in the same place. She hasn't lost him. She comes to stand before him. Looks up at him. Lays her hands on either side of his chest like a ninja healer and kisses him.

But this feels like business to her. Like a show they put on for Madara. Or for the citizens of Ame.

Or for themselves. She looks down at the petals he spilled from his hands. Looks over at her paper tree and Nagato's burnt body within it. The one she may not even be supposed to touch, not even to look at. She has been avoiding these thoughts, but something about this place is bothering her.

Threatening her. She could do something else.

Something other than what she did before, and the days before that, every day since the world changed. And everything was different, it was the end of irony, the world would never be the same. She ran out of cliches to describe it. The day Yahiko and Nagato died. And she did too. The day the world went away.

And then, on another day, the world came back.

So she lays her head against Nagato's chest, because it is his chest now. The heart and the breathing is his. The plan is too, but she participates, and she co-signs. She planned for the raid on Konoha by his side.

It was their life, she knows. That objective. The Kyuubi, and after that, well...

There was nothing else.

But there are things she needs to know, she needs to be assured that Nagato is safe, she needs to be sure that he still can see her, she is still with him, she has not worn herself away entirely. She hasn't sleepwalked off the edge.

Just played her way through the nightmare enough to feel alive, but not too alive, because it was important to be dead.

It was important to resist death.

It was necessary to make war to install peace, and to turn over peace to create war, and to throw themselves into this cycle to be alive again. Like being alive was just being engaged in struggle.

Any kind of struggle.

Sighs, she doesn't want this either. These thoughts.

"It's been a long day." she says. Centuries since this morning where Madara sat in their living room, put his feet up. Told them they had to move on the Kyuubi.

And there was no time to chat.

She needs to talk to him, yes. But right now she just wants him to put his arms around her. Any arms will do. She steps closer, fastens her own around his back.

Exhales.

Relaxes.