[Fic] Intransigence

[quadrantal]

Title: Intransigence
Fandom: Naruto
Characters: Konan, Hidan, mentions of Pein (both Nagato and Yahiko), Hidan/Konan, Pein/Konan
Word Count: 9400 thereabouts
Rating: R
Warning/s: Sex, Excessive Parentheses
Summary: Wherein things that are buried do not remain buried and there are stories with simply no endings. Konan, Hidan and a stray cat.
Disclaimer: Naruto is owned by Masashi Kishimoto. All the copyrights associated with Naruto belong to him. Only the ideas contained within this story are the property of the author. No profit is being earned by the writer of this story.
Notes: This fic has been with me for almost three years. I wrote it as a Christmas gift but never got around to editing it until now. In accordance to this, please take note that during this time, Pein's real abilities haven't been expounded on yet. (Gosh, it makes it sound so antique!) I also took liberties with the characters (this being the first and only Hidan/Konan fic that I've ever written). I had a hard time working on Madara's voice, hence I kept switching it on and off with "Tobi's". Same goes for Hidan. Oh, and I don't know if there's really Christmas in there but again, I took some liberties. I'm getting ahead of myself. On with the story!



(It begins.)

She was faintly aware of her bruises but everything was a dim notion at the back of her mind as she staggered deeper into the comforting darkness of the forest. There was the lingering thought at the back of her mind but she tried not to think about anything because there was no time in her haste to escape from the reality she was tied to. It was a constricting feeling deep within her chest, as if something was struggling to escape from within her and it was going up, up, up her throat until she couldn't hold it any longer and it burst into a fury of gasps that were so excruciatingly loud in the stillness of her world.

(Because she was in the limbo between moving forward and receding back with the nothingness overwhelming the clear path she had made for herself even before all this was done--

--and now all was gone.)

She stumbled into a clearing, the rocks blown apart by some unnamable force that had torn the trees from their roots. (Konan imagined Deidara, and remembered he was gone too.)

It would not be long before she was found, and it would not be long until their judgment was brought down on her. As they had done to Itachi who was merely obeying orders. (The she remembered he was dead too.)

It was a few miles from where Kakuzu was defeated, gone like Sasori and Zetsu and Kisame and--

And then Konan felt it.

It was a small surge, perhaps caused by the delirious hope she pitifully insisted on cling on to that there was something worth hoping for, that she wasn't simply walking around in her barren idealism, that she wasn't--

--alone.

She had barely any chakra left. The amount was sufficient only to keep her alive but as she struggled and heaved and dug deeper, deeper into the ground that wasn't giving in even until her hands were raw and tender, it wasn't quite chakra that was keeping her standing up.

She was merely accomplishing nothing and this was the most foolish, foolish thing she had done since she had put paper in Yahiko and Nagato's food and they weren't here not quite no--

The piece of rock gave way under the last of her paper weapons and she could glimpse a pale, white arm.

It was Hidan.

After a day and a half of non-rest that plagued her with unfading images even as she opened her eyes, she finally uncovered his head. It didn't help that in his state of eternal slumber, there was a mad smirk on his face that tugged at the vestiges of Konan's memory and brought back to life remnants of one of the Akatsuki's meetings and subsequently her dismal failure. But she had composed herself. (No more lapses of sanity and glimpses of madness and that tortuous desire to retaliate because she was Konan and she is still Konan.)

Carefully, she took off her sandals and placed it against the tree, the air cool and soothing against her blistered feet. Her hands went up to the buttons keeping her cloak together, undoing the fastenings before slipping out of it and folding it neatly by her discarded sandals. It felt different to remove all her piercings (two: one below her lip and one on her navel) but she had no need for them where she was going - there was enough reminder. Konan tilted her head up and gazed at the sunlight filtering in through the spaces between the leaves. The cranes had been burned and the flowers had been destroyed.

It was a new day.

And she pushed back the world and crafted her paper wings and flew from life and reality where she held no place.

As a child, Konan was soft-spoken and gentle and deep in her young heart, she knew that she disliked conflict as much as she hated it when Yahiko snored. But there was no way around it in the world of the shinobi and she resolved to herself that she would push aside her thoughts and process all that had happened later on, when she was away from the heat of the battle and there were no distractions abound. So she fought and wounded and bled and destroyed, all her actions belying the same motivation: for Him. Because that was the easiest way to go about it, and that reasoning did not need deep thinking - no consideration, even. It was the natural course.

As a woman, it wasn't so different. It was all that she could do to preserve her sanity - Pein had no need for lunatics (or perhaps he did, hence the organization).

But when even her single purpose for acting had been taken away from her, there became a void in place of meaning and she never tried to justify herself to anyone because then, all was wrong.

Far away from beginnings and endings, there existed a remote village.

Sayuri sniffed at the piece of bread on the plate, decided it wasn't worth eating now that it smelled moldy. There was someone outside the gates; she always knew when this happened and she wanted to see it. It was a heck of a lot more interesting than eating with the other orphans anyway. She brushed the front of her clothes, her hands coming away dirty, before running giddily towards the village square. The leader was there, conversing with some of the adults and Sayuri barged in their congregation, tugging on his sleeve and pointing animatedly at the front gates.

There was a loud creak of wood, and the leader was vaguely reminded of how long it had been since the gates were moved before the brunt of his attentions were diverted to this strange person carrying a large sack by his - no, her - back. Her face was set indifferently as she walked in soft strides towards him, her bare feet making no sound against the ground. She had a strange air about her had that arrested him completely, whether it was from her peculiar baggage or the look in her eyes that spoke of something more than he had ever seen in his eighty years of life. A momentary apprehension gripped him, but he shook his head firmly.

And so he asked her what she needed and throughout the exchange, he could see her shoulders sag a little and could glimpse those telltale dark marks beneath her eyes. He asked his men to take the weight from her, to which she recoiled, the sudden animosity flaring between them, and he took a step back at the abrupt change in her calm and passive demeanor.

Sayuri was already tugging on the woman's sleeve before he could stop her and pointing to the winding path that led towards the outer edge of the village. He could recall a small shack standing isolated from the rest. The woman spared him a look, those blue eyes sending tingle of dread into awareness, before following the little girl who was already skipping ahead.

It took him a few minutes to break from his trance and to realize that he should have sent someone with Sayuri.

There was a rocking chair with one arm missing moving back and forth on the front porch. The elaborate carving on its back could still be glimpsed even with the deep and jagged marks on the wooden surface. The door was almost unhooked from its hinges and the welcome mat that sat in front was matted with something dark that obscured the 'e' from its message. (But there was a strange lull to it, a certain sense of mystique at remaining in its fullness even abandonment and isolation.)

The woman turned and handed Sayuri a bag of coins before disappearing in the darkness of her new abode.

Sayuri giggled and dropped the coins inside the flowerpot by the front door before skipping off.

The scent of must and decay immediately assaulted her nose as she entered the lodging but it was merely a small inconvenience to live through, and it was nothing to feel remorse over. She had all her basic necessities and nothing proved as a distraction in her self-imposed isolation. Konan placed Hidan on the couch that no one else would have dared touch before setting about the house and pulling down the shutters, or those which remained. In the bedroom was a broken window casting a pool of light by the pillows and she briefly debated whether she should cover it with the blanket but decided against it.

Konan retrieved the sack, placed it on the kitchen table and went about her work.

The rain had stopped. Amegakure was filled with light. The Angel could fly. She spread her wings and soared. Searching. On top of the highest building. Beneath rocks and inside crevices. Searching. A room. A table. A paper flower. Nothingness.

Konan opened her eyes and lifted her head. It felt heavy and leaden. Her mouth was dry and her lips were cracked and caked with dried blood. She had not eaten for more than two days.

Her wounds were not healed, nor healing, nor would they ever be. She bit back the dull reminder hammering against the back of her head that she was pushing herself far too much for someone who had just survived from battle, albeit not unscathed, and laced a needle with thread. There was blood seeping into the wood of the dining table and onto her hands. It was a consoling thought that there was still enough humanity in Hidan for him to bleed. She wasn't alone. Not quite.

The pangs of hunger were distant now as she immersed herself in the methodical piercing and pulling, letting the string run its length across his skin before piercing and pulling again to stitch the gap shut. Push the needle into his flesh, pull, and let the wire run through. Putting him back together at the seams. She reached the end of the thread and twisted it into a small knot by the end of his elbow, severing it with a sharp flick of her fingers.

Her hand was marred with marks and scars that ran around her wrists and up her palm and wounds on her fingers that could never really heal, as she cut more thread and repeated the process over and over again.

Sometimes, Sayuri would watch. The first time, she had knocked on the door and after three hours of standing outside decided to come in by herself. It was curiosity that overrode the child's natural instinct to fear the darkness and the unknown but by the time Sayuri had reached the kitchen and seen the strange woman sewing up pieces of something by a tall candle, the fear was completely replaced by the fascination of watching her graceful fingers loop and loop and loop the string over and under and over the thing's skin. It became almost a habit everyday to trudge inside, uninvited, and watch with silence as it came closer and closer to completion.

Once, Sayuri knocked over a chair and she stood still, waiting for the reprimand that never came. The woman's concentration was so absolute that her eyes never even strayed away from her work and to the source of the noise. Sayuri stayed for hours partly because she never knew the time with the perpetual shadows inside the house and partly because of the unexplainable allure this woman held over her with her nimble hands and bright eyes.

Her resolve was almost infectious. Sayuri felt bad that she couldn't do anything, or even utter a word.

When a stray lock of hair had fallen from the clip the woman had put it in, Sayuri leaned forward from the opposite side of the narrow table and tucked it behind her ear. The woman stopped in her work, her chest heaving up and down almost violently, her eyes wide with an unnamable emotion. Sayuri was scared she had done something wrong, but then the breathing went back to placidity and the woman went back to work and all was back to normal.

(At the very least.)

The first day of the second week was when Konan first let the candle burn out.

The fading of the light was gradual, and at first she attributed it to fatigue - her eyes were falling into weariness faster and faster. But when it went out altogether, there was that brief flicker of surprise (had she been working that long?) before she brushed it off and occupied herself with placing back his left knee rather than fetching another candlestick. She didn't need the light to work her way around his body. She knew where his head was, where his hands lay, where his right feet was propped against.

And then it was bright. There were noises. Catcalls. Jeers. Raucous laughter. Unrestrained profanities. A room. A table. A rosary.

There were a few times that Konan put down the thread and needle, and those were to supplement the bare necessities of survival. Engagement lulled her in itself, deep and deeper still, until her mind was fully wrapped around her task and there was no need to be concerned about anything else. This was her art, the extension of her paper-folding creations into making something else entirely out of reclaimable material. It gave her a vague sense of contentment, and she decided to finish sewing back his fingers before forfeiting her chair and fulfilling her own physical needs.

Konan cut the thread and placed the needle amongst the diminishing pile of string. (Tonight, she would get more.)

She had never found her open door inconvenient. The villagers never found reason to stray inside her home. They knew well enough when to respect other people's privacy. Even the children did, save for the one with a missing front tooth who would come by most days to watch her work. There had been the slight discomfort of discovery, but having developed a jutsu that could use her own body as a weapon, she was not worried.

The small containers of food that had been left out of her house were bright splotches of color against the dim background of her disorderly backyard. Sometimes, she was too tired to be anxious of poisoning. These were the only times she ate. Boiling water from the faucet until it was properly distilled was sufficient. Water from the rusted shower overhead, with its lingering metallic scent, she could do with. Remaining in the bathroom longer than necessary preempted unwelcome thoughts of piercings and circles.

After all this, she would go back and resume her work.

Two days before the third week, the ritual was the same. But there was a slight difference.

When she re-entered the kitchen, the change was apparent but that didn't keep her from staring at the disappearing marks on his skin, the thread slowly melting into his flesh, and the heart that pumped once, twice before surging back to life. For the first time in weeks, she could recall the unwelcome sentience of fear.

(What was she to exist for when the last wire had been severed?)

At the end of the fourth week and the start of her second month, Sayuri would have been absent for more than eight days. She had fallen into place and slipped back almost unnoticed, that Konan would not have taken note if the clip that held her hair up did not snap, her hair falling past her shoulders in a cascade of blue. Later, she would hear of the little girl's death, apparently attacked by wild animals as she picked flowers in the meadow outside the village's gates. Konan would look at the wilted flowers hastily tucked in a broken vase by the sink and feel a surge of irritated warmness for the foolish girl.

At the same time, something would appear, unprecedented, on top of Hidan's newly reformed stomach.

It was a kitten and the only reason Konan decided it could stay was that most of the food the villagers unfailingly gave her would simply go to waste, and she had learned, as an orphan, that it was one of the most deadly mistakes one could commit.

She never named it, and it was always content to sit on Hidan and watch her work. This continued for a month and a half.

Her fingers felt leaden but she was sure it was not from overwork. Her head felt light but she was certain it was not due to hunger. There was a dull ache in her chest and her hands were shaking and the kitten was looking up at her with its sharp, green eyes and mewling softly but she couldn't hear anything aside from the loud reverberations in her head that drowned out everything else.

Hidan was whole, his pale skin unblemished in the flickering light of the candle.

(She could not tie the final knot.)

There were no leaves to witness fall.

(Over and under and inside and out.

-- It had finally been concluded.)

It was as it had been.

(She felt--)

The dreaded anticipation of the shuriken to come at her (pierce her), the endless seconds that separated her from the certainty of death (oblivion), the desperate panic as she found her chakra fluctuating when she tried to burst into a flurry of paper butterflies to tell him, to tell Nagato that it was alright and he should just mind his own safety and he didn't need to do the protecting because she was doing it this time--

(--and she could almost hear--)

--the resonating thud of his body as it hit the ground.

There was the soft drip, drip of rain starting outside, slowly escalating into a downpour.

(And the deluge that had been held back was suddenly overflowing.)

She was laughing - mirthless sounds bouncing off the walls and returning to her in strange frequencies that was her but was not. Her hands grasped the edge of the table, her nails digging into the wood as she tried to keep her knees from giving way beneath her but in the end, they did and she collapsed on the cold, cold floor with a small sound escaping from her lips and it was not until she could feel her eyes stinging and her face getting moist that she finally felt herself give in to what she had been carefully withholding.

That was the time Hidan chose to wake up.

(It turned out to be no conclusion, after all.)

"What the fuck?"

The first thing that came to mind was the pain. He hurt like shit just fucked his whole body twice over. And it wasn't even an overstatement because every damn part was aching like hell and he didn't know the last time it had hurt this bad. Even the miser couldn't put him in this much agony.

The next thing he noticed was the weight on his abdomen. "...The hell?" He poked at the cat (a fucking kitten, seriously), which was staring somewhere far off, its ears pricked up attentively. When it didn't move, he shoved it off him and it arched its back, hissing at him. He honestly couldn't give enough of a damn as he groaned and pushed himself up, leaning on his elbows. It was raining and he was cold. Who the fuck had the brilliant idea of hanging out his balls in the open and putting him on top of a table, which if he might add was fucking uncomfortable?

The kitten mewed pointedly at him and he sneered at it. If he had his weapon, he was going to skin it alive--

Where was his weapon anyway?

The rain was loud as it pelted the windows, and there was an ominous rumbling of thunder which muffled Hidan's long string of profanities.

The table careened to one side as he shifted his weight, biting back another curse as he swung his feet over the edge. And where the hell was he?

Something wet nudged the side of his arm and he turned around irritably, noting the faint outlines of stitch marks on his skin (and thinking at the back of his mind, did that mean the Bastard was alive?), before glaring at the kitten who mewled innocently at him. It trudged to the other side and pointedly looked below, and then looked at him again expectantly.

"What? You want me to look there too? Tough luck, I got more important shit to think about--"

Hidan heard the soft whimpering before thunder drowned it out and he decided to humor the annoying, little kitty before finding a knife and stabbing it to offer to Jashin.

He flattened himself against the surface of the table and peered downwards.

His line of vision was immediately met with a head of blue, before he decided he had really gone to hell.

"Where's the bathroom? I need to go, seriously."

(That was probably not the best thing to say to a crying woman.)

It was his lucky day. Or night, whatever. She didn't scream at him like a banshee like he always expected she would when they were having those meetings and he was calling the Leader an asshole, but there was just that blank look in her eyes as she stared at him without really comprehending what he was saying. He would've left her, seriously, if he didn't catch sight of her fingers and the marks on her skin. Hidan knew jack shit about her, but he wasn't oblivious enough to not know when something was dead wrong. And something was definitely wrong when he woke up all whole when he could remember being blown up down to his manly bits at the back of his mind.

Hidan propped himself on the floor, testing his reflexes and seeing they were in perfect shape, before padding over to the opposite end of the table and standing in front of her in his full glory, completely unmindful of his nudity.

"Oi."

She didn't move. He decided to push his luck.

"I asked you a question."

He nudged her with his big toe which, he was pleased to see, was sewn right side up.

"You took I don't know how fucking long to stitch me back and then you're just gonna ignore me?"

She opened her mouth, wet her lips and attempted to talk. Her voice started to break in mid-sentence.

"It is..."

She cleared her throat and tried again. "It is unexpected." Hoarse, not remotely sounding like her. But it was fine to get the message across.

Hidan scowled at her. She looked like shit. Sounded like it too. What had happened anyway?

Before he could open his mouth to ask, she had already stood up and started walking out of the kitchen. He gritted his teeth, yelled at her and yelled some more before deciding that it was best to follow her because he didn't know shit about where the fuck they were and he still wasn't convinced he hadn't gone to hell.

Her name was Konan.

Hidan yanked one of the curtains in the hallway and half-assedly tied it around his waist. The storm didn't look like it was going to let up soon and he was shivering - what the hell kind of person was she to not even start a fucking fire with the freezing-ass weather? He continued down the hallway, peering curiously inside the open rooms and wondering how he had landed a shack with the Leader's girlfriend. And a damn kitten that mewed reproachfully when he stopped walking and its soft (highly sacrificeable) body bumped into his heel. He leered at it and had half the mind to pick it up and do exactly as he had been thinking when the door slammed open a few paces away and a harried Konan emerged.

Admittedly, he had never seen her like this (shittier than shit). She was always quiet and calm and never got in between fights unless she absolutely had to. It surprised him enough to drop the kitty, and he stood directly in her way with a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face.

She almost bumped into him but stopped abruptly when she was less than an arm's length away.

"...What the fuck happened?" He didn't really expect an answer and she didn't give him one as she brushed past him.

There was an agitated air about her; she was so fucking disturbed even he could notice it. How long had it been since he was blown up anyway? Not more than enough, or he'd be as dead as a doorknob. Fuck, he wanted his answers and he wanted them now.

She was sitting on a chair in the kitchen, looking blankly at the dark stain on the table like it was the single most important thing. A candle was perched precariously by the corner and it was even smaller than his pinky but she didn't seem to mind or notice.

Hidan looked downright ridiculous with his makeshift clothing but he was able to pull off an aura of menace excellently. "I'm not here for shits and giggles, am I?"

For the moment, she didn't seem like she was going to reply and Hidan actually counted the seconds it took for either her to do something or him to just lose it. In the end, she shook her head slowly. It took two minutes and fifty-fucking-four seconds. Then it was back to that stupid catatonia and he swore to himself if he had his weapon, he would cut her head off. Shame, if Kakuzu had been here, he would've been able to sell her pretty, dead head for some cash.

"What the fuck happened?" He drew out his words slowly, threateningly.

And that was when the proverbial shit hit the fan.

(He remembered why he hated all the feminine mopey shit.)

It was like being trapped in the lower portion of an hourglass that was slowly filling up with sand as time passed. She didn't know the level was rising and rising and it was almost up to her neck but now that there was nothing to distract herself with, the awareness suddenly hit her full-force and she didn't know whether she should laugh or cry or just sit there until the world finally had enough mercy to kill her. The noises were merely dim distractions in the horizon, and she sought to push these away because these weren't the sounds she wanted to hear.

Her fingers were still bleeding, and they presented a dull ache compared to the one within. The continual motions of her hands had never given her rest, as it seemed. There had always been the vague consciousness at the back of her mind that she had strived to patch up and ease with strings and needles but she had never quite really gotten there because the days flew by and she was done before the wounds were fully healed.

Now, there was nothing left to do but to wait for God's will to get her from this wretchedness.

She was crying again, softly, and the light of the candle was enough to show her all weak and vulnerable.

And then it hit him.

Something must've happened to the Leader.

Well, Jashin be praised. One less heathen to the world, another one gone straight to hell. The giddy excitement was enough for him to bypass all her mourning and ask, "Who else is dead?"

There was a voice, but that wasn't the one she wanted to hear.

"The Miser?"

Slowly, she nodded.

"Fishface?"

Nod.

"Girly bastard?"

Another nod.

"Plant--"

"They're all dead."

It was hard to believe. They were the fucking best and there was no way a bunch of Konoha brats could've defeated them. But that didn't matter if Jashin got their souls and they were all sent to hell where all the heathens belonged. One of these days, he was going to find a way to sacrifice her. It was the least he could offer her for getting him from the infernal hole. He was saving her soul, seriously.

The next morning was bright and sunlight streamed in through the cracks in the shutters. Hidan tore them all off. The door to her bedroom was still closed. He wondered when she would get up off her ass and drag the kitty away from him because he was seriously itching for something to--

She emerged out of the hallway and Hidan wouldn't have noticed if the couch didn't have a direct view of it. Her hair was still down and messy, and there wasn't the familiar paper flower on it. She didn't look like the second-in-command now.

"Where the hell are we?" Because Hidan, even if he was virtually at her mercy, always demanded for things.

"Far away."

"Are we near some village?"

"We are in a village."

Fuck yes. "Where's my--"

"There are knives in the kitchen counter."

Women and their mood swings. Eh, he wasn't complaining if he got his fix.

The tempest has ended. For the moment.

Hidan returned as the sun was about to set, and he found her standing exactly where he had left her that morning. He came home dripping blood on the floor.

(It was a comforting familiarity.)

"Don't track blood inside."

"Too late for that shit."

She was stranded in that moment between accepting reality or living with her thoughts of romanticism. There was nothing more to serve as small distractions from what was right there. In retrospect, she had done something that she should have thought through, for there was still a fact to be accounted for and that was the imminent reawakening of someone who should have been left underground if not for her hasty dismissal of reality and that desire to hide from the truth with pretty engagements and recreations of art. To herself, Hidan was nothing, but then there was the responsibility of having him walking around in her curtains after she had been through with him, and if she merely ignored this, that was a sin to her God because He did not give her circumstances only for her to back out of them.

Konan shook her head. Was this how everything was written out to be? She would lie in abject disdain and scorn for herself, walk in the halls of the living, barely even alive herself, and then give back the existence of someone formerly thought to be dead simply to walk away from it? No, it did not work that way.

She would see this through and maybe find a new reason for continual subsistence.

Her feet were never encased in the warm comfort of her sandals - but this was penitence in its own right. She would continue to live, because she knew that she would ultimately desist in the end. Her hands, wounded and bruised with injuries that never will heal, took up the weight of her responsibility and she started cleaning out the dirt from the walls and the windows for life was obliged to be habitable.

The night received Hidan who came inside with a satiated smile on his face, even to Konan's warning of not tracking in blood on her recently cleaned area. He leered at her, took extra effort to squeeze out the blood from his temporary clothing and lather the floor in bright red, and nearly stepped on kitty's tail on his way to the bathroom.

He didn't get dinner but Jashin was pleased with him tonight so it didn't really matter.

The next night, he did get dinner and it was in one of those brightly colored containers that made him want to puke out the food instead of eating it. But he discovered that how much satisfaction sacrificial rituals gave him was directly proportional to how easily hungry he became after doing said sacrificial rituals so he didn't complain as much as he was accustomed to. She never minded him anyway, just sat there and stared at him while he ate.

Hidan looked up and glared at her, his words muffled with the food crammed in his mouth. "Th' f'ck's wrong wit' 'oo?"

She almost never talked too. Weird bitch.

He gulped down his food and reached for his glass of water. It was empty. He reached for hers, making the mistake of looking at her as he did so. She had that sad, pathetic look in her eyes like when that kitten-cat of hers did when it wanted something but it was gone as soon as he recognized it. He pushed away his food and glared.

"I lost my fucking appetite."

They stared at each other from opposite ends of the table. Hidan was about to stand up and storm away when she started to speak.

"Jashin is...?"

His eyes snapped towards her and he immediately lit up with flustered excitement at the mere mention of his religion. So she wasn't that bad, not really. "It's Jashin, and it's good for you, seriously. It'll save your heathen soul from burning in hell and that's probably where that asshole leader went,"

He pretended he didn't notice that slight change in her carefully tailored expression and continued on.

"...and the world is full of fucktards that don't recognize the power of faith in Jashin, and he's going to get us, I mean, those who fucking believe in him..."

Konan placed her hands carefully on her lap and listened, letting his words flow into her as she let the calming sense of comfort overwhelm her with the knowledge that she wasn't the only one who believed in the pretty falsities of redemption.

"What do you believe in?"

He was scrutinizing her, and she felt something tug at the corner of her lips.

"I believe in duty."

Hidan scoffed. "That's bullshit. Anyway, Jashin would smite all the fucking disbelievers..."

She was doing that weird blank thing again, stopping her sweeping or mopping or whatever and staring outside the windows. From his position on the couch throwing the cat up in the air until it almost hit the ceiling and letting it fall on its own (it was a hell of a lot amusing - once, it almost landed on its back if it didn't roll over the last second), he could see what she was staring at. There were two butterflies and they were going on their merry-fucking-way until one of them got caught in some spider web and well, what the hell was she doing paying attention to that? The spider wasn't there to eat the fucking insect.

The cat mewed and jumped up on the couch arm to avoid Hidan's kick. He stubbed his toe instead and caught a wayward splinter.

"Fuck."

She was still staring.

"Your hair looks like shit. Tie it up or something."

"I know."

There was a small fragment of glass lodged at the bottom of her feet, and Konan picked at the raw skin to remove it. When it finally gave way, there was a healthy flow of blood that stained her bed sheets red. Dark spots on the pristine surface that would be hard to wash off. It would be taken into consideration later. Konan leaned against the headboard and closed her eyes.

Yahiko was instantly familiar with his bright hair and loud voice. Nagato took much scrutinizing beneath the shade of the tree. The sight struck a painful chord of familiarity in her heart that it took her a few seconds to gain her composure before she started walking towards them but they beckoned at her to stop and she did, abruptly. Was something the matter?

"Stay there!" Yahiko yelled. Konan looked at Nagato. He was nodding in agreement.

"You're not allowed here, okay? So you gotta stay there." She frowned and opened her mouth to protest but decided against it and crossed her arms, looking glumly at them.

"Why not?"

Nagato smiled (and it was breathtaking). His lips started moving and he was saying something but his voice faded away and she couldn't hear him and they were growing faint and what--

Winter had begun.

"It's too fucking early for this," Hidan groaned as he tried to drown out the noise of someone banging his fist on the door. It was fucking open, why didn't they just barge in so he could give Jashin an early morning present? He turned on his side and faced the back of the couch. Konan was going to get it and it would stop and he could go back to sleep. He just wished she'd take fucking faster.

"Good morning, miss," Sickening, irritating motherfucker.

He could imagine Konan nodding in acknowledgment. Or at least she did something because the bastard started speaking again in that weird-ass shitty voice of his. "Please be careful. There's been a series of deaths in the village." Hidan made a satisfied sound at the back of his throat. Served them right anyway. They should be scared. He eased himself off the couch and crept closer so he could see the reaction on this slimy git's face. He wanted to see fear.

But it wasn't fear he saw but grave determination. "We're finding the murderer and disposing of him quickly. It's not safe for you to stay here alone."

The fucker was so engrossed with ogling Konan and acting all high and mighty and shit that he wasn't even noticed. This was one of the people who deserved to go to hell whether they came to Jashin or not. He was fucking annoying with his pathetic girly face and that fucking stupid clip and he was even more gay than Deidara could've been and fuck!

Konan could feel the spike in chakra behind her signal the end of this early morning meeting. "I will remain." There was a finality in her tone that immediately dissuaded further attempts at convincing her otherwise. The man was forced to leave, bowing low in respect before heading out. The diamond clip on his head glinted under the sun and Konan touched her unbound hair briefly.

Hidan stomped his feet on the welcome home mat extra hard to bring the feeling back to his limbs. And to scare away the cat coming towards him which how matter how much he terrorized always came after him. And maybe to tell Konan that she needed to get the fire starting or he'd freeze his ass off.

She didn't.

He didn't really expect her to. She was a bitch anyway.

Hidan slammed the door shut behind him and it creaked on its hinges before finally falling off. He shrugged (not his problem) and sprawled himself on top of the couch, slinging an arm over his eyes while Konan stood from the doorway and watched him. He propped up his feet and threw something at her that would've gone straight through her forehead if she didn't move her head aside.

"Nearly slipped on that shit so you better burn it on the fireplace once you get up off your ass and start a fucking fire." It wasn't fair. She got the nice, dark, comfy clothes while he got remnants of excess cloth in the house. Bitch.

There was silence. The uncomfortable kind. Hidan wanted to throw his hands up and yell at the world.

His hair wasn't brushed back like it was normally and it fell to his eyes when he sat up and leaned his elbows against his knees. He decided he didn't like the way things were going and resolved to get the hell out of the place but not before giving her a piece of his fucking irritated mind. He was going to tell her he was tired of her fucking face every single damn day. Right. He was leaving. This was over. The cat was going to hell. Whatever the shit. He'd wing it.

Hidan lifted his head--

--and she was right in front of him with that weird look on her face that wasn't really one of her blank ones and she had her hair pinned up with that clip he had thrown at her which was good because he was tired of seeing it all messy and shit--

She raised her hand is if to touch him and her fingertips were so close he could almost feel them against his face but she dropped it back to her side and turned around. And walked away.

Bitch.

When he finally found his voice, he said, "I'm going to fucking kill everyone in this village."

"All of them," she echoed, and he wasn't really sure if he was just imagining the trace of remorse in there.

Hidan was in a bad mood. In fact, he was just about ready to use a fucking chainsaw to gut out all the fucking heathens who fucking dared to celebrate the fucking occasion. Everyone was dying. How the hell could they find time to celebrate? Even she had hung some red whatever on her room's doorknob. He impaled his knife on the couch cushion and glared at the cat looking up at him reproachfully from its place by his feet.

"It's freezing ass cold and no one should fucking do this. What the hell is wrong with everyone?"

The cat didn't answer. Instead, it stood up, squatted over his feet and started pissing on him.

"What the f--"

"Hidan." The knife was in his hand and just one motion could do the world a favor and rid it of this fucking animal's existence. But no. Aside from the fact that this day was absolute shit, Konan had to add even more shit and he buried his face in his hands in suppressed agitation.

Somewhere ahead, a door clicked shut. He glared at the cat in the spaces between his fingers. "If you weren't her fucking kitty, I'd skin you alive and sacrifice you. Jashin won't mind. But then she'd skin me alive so it's not worth it, seriously."

It mewed at him and lifted a paw to scratch the back of its ear.

He refused to acknowledge that what he was eating was Whatever-Celebration-That-Was dinner. It was even better than the shit he had before and he wanted to eat in peace. Hell, how she got the food was a mystery but he wasn't complaining when it was this good. When he reached for his water again, he couldn't keep from glancing because did anyone know how fucking odd it was to have someone watch you while you were eating? It wasn't really that uncomfortable but with the silence that he was slowly becoming accustomed to, he couldn't help but wonder just when exactly she ate.

And so he asked her.

She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and he wouldn't really have noticed if he wasn't used to her being all enigmatic and shit.

Hidan spat out his food and sputtered. "Are you insane?"

He was shouting at her before he realized and when he did, he raised his volume more. "Are you a fucking whackjob now? Or did you forget that you were a human, dammit, because you were too busy pretending to be some jacked-up angel for this halfwit, asswipe God of yours that, oh I don't know, is fucking dead already--"

She was so quick he didn't know she had moved until he felt the sting on his cheek as his head had snapped to one side.

(The fucking bitch just backhanded him.)

It felt like she had been underwater for some time and now she had finally broken to the surface for air. But then the wind was suffocating too and she wasn't quite sure where she should go.

He made the decision for her and they ended up in her bedroom after he threw aside that ridiculous decoration of hers to commemorate the festivities and threw her on the bed. There was the manic glint in his eye and she supposed she should feel the panic when he kicked back the door and it slammed with a loud bang before he stalked towards her like predatory feline. There was the momentary trepidation, but it was quickly taken over by the slow burn of heat that started from her hip where he roughly dug his fingers to yank her towards him.

(Her heart was hammering against her chest--)

He lowered his head and scraped his teeth up the column of her neck and she threw her head back, strangling the sound at the back of her throat that was threatening to explode from her lips. When he bit on her pulse point, she let out a sharp breath that misted before her and a gasp that he drowned with his mouth as he took away her sobriety little by little and left her drunk in the brink of reality where they were dangerously treading on.

(She could feel--)

His hands slipped beneath her shirt before pulling at the clothing and the buttons gave way one by one until the fabric could be easily slipped from her shoulders. He was hasty, but there was no time for casual trivialities as he kissed a path between the valley of her breasts and her fingers clenched and unclenched as she ran them through his hair. This was the very essence of humanity she had long ago abandoned but was thrust back into when there was no more divinity for the lonely Angel to uphold. But she was no Angel anymore as her paper wings tore off from her shoulders because of strings that were forever twisted and tangled and--

She gasped.

(Nagato--)

"Hidan."

The slow fire had escalated, and it consumed her until her soul disintegrated into a hundred different fragments that would take eternity to piece back together. This was destruction in its ultimate form, corruption in its rawest. The metallic scent of blood filled the air, and this was nothing less than utter devastation as it incinerated and destroyed and--

(It was all a burning inferno.)

Her back fell back against the mattress and he hovered over her (and it hurt it hurthurt) to see his violet eyes shining faintly and his skin luminescent in the pool of moonlight that spilled through the windows because this wasn't the person she wanted to see and it wasn't his low growl she wanted to hear when her nails wracked down his back in painful welts.

He pressed his mouth against her stomach, where one of her piercings had been.

(There was fear and hope and regret and solace and it was there, finally, that she could see the small glimmer of beauty in breakdown.)

Just before dawn broke, Konan woke up and there was a slight dip in the bed where Hidan had been. She closed her eyes and took a breath, before pushing herself up off the bed. The air was cool and the floor beneath her bare feet was cold but there was a sort of warmth that allowed her to forgo clothing for the bed sheet that was more convenient.

Surprisingly, it was silent as she walked down the hallway. Normally, she would have heard the aggravated mewls of the cat due to Hidan's incessant liking to provoking it but there were none save for the crackling of fire that Hidan must have lit.

The couch was pushed back to make way for his ritual and he was turned towards her, a rosary with the same geometric pattern as the one he was kneeling on clutched between his hands.

He was repenting.

Konan almost scoffed. Almost.

Hidan lifted his head up and looked straight at her, his bright eyes brimming with excitement and something unknown. His face was twisted in deep concentration and when she opened her mouth to reprimand him for the stain on her floor, he raised a hand to stop her in mid-sentence. "Hang on. Jashin's telling me something."

She decided to humor him.

He knit his brows together with his head tilted to one side as if he was listening and conveying the message to her. "He says..." His frown deepened particularly like he was trying to hear whatever he was listening to more clearly. "He says... ah, that I could fuck you as long as I fuck your brains out." He was smirking widely.

Konan had nothing to say to that.

Heaven was no longer within her reach. She had sinned a sinner's sin.

(The tempest had begun again.)

Winter was almost over. The population of the village had dwindled to twenty-five and Hidan had been nagging her for the past two days that it was time to go. "No." She told him. And that was that.

It was a reverse sort of gratitude, to allow Hidan to get his sacrificial lambs from the people who had given her a place to stay when she had needed the solitude and isolation. They would be going to a better place, if Hidan was not lying, and Konan thought anywhere was a better place than this hell on earth. But there was no need to move out yet. The place had been kind to her. She would see it until spring came, longer, even if the whole population had been sacrificed or everybody had moved out in fear.

But then Madara stepped on her welcome home mat and everything came crashing downhill.

She could feel the burning pressure of his chakra and Hidan, who was sitting on the couch and who had previously been terrorizing the cat, could no doubt feel it too. It was more suffocating than anything, as if someone was attempting to strangle you but you were unaware of the hands around your neck. Konan wanted to run out and breathe in, but Madara was barring the doorway and that alone was enough to keep her rooted where she was standing.

For once, Hidan had no vulgarity to utter.

"Madara," she bit out.

He threw his head back and laughed, the sound dark and ominous. "No need to be so sullen with me, girl. I came here to warn you, after all."

"We don't have need for it." But he had already turned his back and diverted his attentions to Hidan who was sitting there with an obscure look on his face.

"Was she any good?"

Hidan swore at this bastard but otherwise didn't bite the bait. Madara chuckled, "You're lucky someone favors you," and reached out to ruffle his hair. Hidan slapped his hand away with a growl and Madara clicked his tongue against his teeth in disapproval.

"You haven't been teaching him very well, Konan." He shook his head.

"What have you come here for?"

"Ooh, straight to the point, huh? I bet Hidan liked that, did you?"

"Madara."

He sighed and pulled off his gloves, beckoning for Hidan to scoot over so he could drape himself on the couch. Hidan, for all he was worth, gladly did and went to stand a few paces away from Konan, and for once in his life shut up when it wasn't his time to talk.

"Alright, alright. So we know Pein is dead," Konan winced, barely noticeable, but both the men saw it, "and the Akatsuki is moot."

"It serves no purpose."

Madara waved at the cat by Konan's feet and it hissed at him.

"I want it back." He said.

"As if you could just waltz in our house and ask us to rebuild a fucking organization that was doomed to fail from the beginning." Both of them looked at him. As if he fucking cared. "Who the fuck are you to disturb--"

He was cut off in mind-sentence when Madara leaned over his shoulder, and Hidan was never more thankful for his immortality at that moment because the proximity was enough to kill. "I am Uchiha Madara."

Then he was standing by the door, waving at them cheerily like they just had fucking tea-time. "I thought you wouldn't acquiesce." He turned his red eyes on Hidan, and it was even fucking scarier than the other Uchiha’s. Hidan wished the whole lot of them burned in hell. "You're really lucky someone favors you."

And he was gone with the wind.

Konan leaned against the wall, her shoulders shaking.

There was talk among the people of ninja coming to their village.

Without a doubt, they were from Konoha.

It was the same seat she had sat on since she started her masterpiece, who had turned out to be her companion for six months to this day. The purest form of her art, creation from a medium that was as atypical as her form of jutsu. She opened her fist and from her palm, carefully twisting and creasing along the sides until it was whole, came a paper flower. Konan placed it against her hair and closed her eyes. This was it. The culmination of her life came to this point, all her deeds and actions were finally being crafted by fate and destiny and God into this judgment. Yahiko and Nagato were waving at her but they were the verisimilar facets that she had longed for.

(It was finally coming to a conclusion--)

"Konan?"

It was the first time he said her name. She raised her head up in surprise and looked at him. His eyes were almost uncertain as he stared right back at her.

The cat by his feet stalked towards her and leapt onto her lap, curling itself into a small ball.

"There is an exit at the back." She tried to lift the corners of her lips because this was her final peace, but something was not in place. Something was missing. Yahiko and Nagato were fading into the horizon again and they slipped between her fingers as she came to the realization that she had missed something, something. The pieces had all fallen in the puzzle, the motion should have been set ever since she took her seat and came to accept her inevitable fate.

Her eyes strayed to the dark stain on the table. She had never tried to wash it out.

"I'm not fucking leaving."

There was finality in his tone. Konan was almost frightened of what to hear next. (Almost.)

"So you're just staying here and waiting for those Konoha brats to get you." His voice was escalating in volume. "Well tough shit that ain't happening." His feet were moving closer to her, one step at a time. "He died to fucking save you and you're just going to kill yourself?" His hands went up to her shoulders and his touch wasn't like the previous nights' but it was violent all the same. "What the fuck kind of person are you to throw that away?"

(But she was tired--)

Weary. "Why do you insist on keeping me alive?"

"Because you fucking put me back together even if I didn't like it and I'd be damned if you just died in front of me. I told myself that I was going to save your fucking soul, you bitch!"

There were thuds on her front porch. He couldn't pretend not to hear them anymore.

"What is there to save?"

He shook her again and the cat jumped on top of the table, looking at them with its feline eyes bright green and understanding. "Well then I'll fucking deal with it because you can't just go around and pick shit up then put them back together just to leave them behind, seriously."

(But she didn't have any wings anymore.)

Hidan lifted her up and hoisted her over his shoulder. Her paper flower fell to the floor. "Sorry, kitty, but you can't come with us."

The cat mewed.

The scent of must and decay immediately assaulted Kakashi's nose as he entered the house but it was a small inconvenience to abort the mission for. There weren't any traps nor jutsu that had been placed so he ordered his team of ANBU to scout outside and clear the nearby areas to see if she had somehow escaped. But it almost seemed like she wasn't even trying to conceal and protect herself.

Odd.

Kakashi was sure she was there but it was only the silence and emptiness that greeted him as he looked inside the rooms. There were traces of dirt on the floor, located oddly but deliberately as if it had been wiped clean weeks, maybe even a month ago. There was only one place left to look and he entered the kitchen cautiously.

In it was nothing but a cat curled on the lone table and a burnt out candle with a halo of wax beneath it.

(In the end, there was no conclusion.)

Intransigence