Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters and I don't want any profit from this.
.
A/N : This will be a series of one-shots featuring different characters of Naruto.
1
Konan
.
.
She finds the child hidden in the rubble of a half-demolished house, curled up on top of a dead woman. Tear tracks mark the tiny, dirt-streaked face, and even though she is asleep, her body convulses in dry sobs.
It is the only living presence Konan can sense in this rubble of a town, deserted in the aftermath of war. But the child is not her problem. Akatsuki's purpose here has been served, and there is nothing more for her to do except report back to Nagato, and perhaps collect their reward.
Konana turns on her heel and starts to walk down the street. Behind her, she hears the child sniffle again. This time, the sound is accompanied by a softy uttered "mama" and more sounds of scuffling. She is almost at the end of the street when the child starts to wail in earnest, voice hoarse but still loud in the silence of the ruins.
"MAAAAMAAAA… MAAAAAMAAAA."
Against her better judgement, Konan finds herself turning back and retracing her steps until she is once again standing in front of the child who is now sitting up, clawing at the dead woman with her two small hands.
"Mamaaaaaaa," she cries again. Her voice sounds betrayed, broken – and something clenches in Konan's heart. She crouches down and reaches for the child, who finally looks at her with wide, terrified eyes and throws herself back onto her mother's body, anchoring herself to the dead body with both hands and feet.
"MAAAAAAAMAAAAA. NO NO NOOOO. MAAAAMAAAAaaa," the child cries, thrashing her arms and legs wildly in an attempt to fight off Konan, her little body putting up as much of a fight as it can to stay with the person she loves. Konan pulls back, and studies the child. She could not have been more than two.
This isn't her business. A crying infant is not her responsibility. She should never have turned back, should never have given in to the sound of the child's cry. She should have killed the child when she first found it, asleep amongst the rubble.
She should kill it now; end its pain once and for all.
But in the end, she cannot bring herself to kill it—kill her. In the end, Konan knocks the child out and bundles her into her arms.
She doesn't go back to the base that night. Instead, she heads in the opposite direction. She passes by two villages before the village she intends to stop at comes to view. She has been here before on reckon missions, and this is a big, cheerful village, important enough to be guarded well, but not valuable enough for someone to want to invade it. It lies well out of the range of conflict, at least for the time being.
She stops at a small stream a few miles away from the village and cleans up the child the best she can, but there is not much she can do about her battered clothes.
Under the blood and grime, the little girl has rosy cheeks and rich black hair that curls around her tiny face. It is, perhaps, a child Konan might have hoped to have when she was but a child with a head full of foolish dreams and hopes. But she no longer held the same ideals as the stupid girl she had been as a child.
She bundles up the child in her plain black cloak and puts a henge over herself before she covers the final few miles to the village.
It is a lively village, especially with festivities going on and people merry making on the streets, and no one pays attention to a poor woman with her infant daughter, so Konan manages to weave in through the crowd unnoticed until she reaches her destination.
The inn is a small one, only two stories high, and unimpressive to look at. The couple who runs it are well into their fifties and they are kind, unassuming sort of people. These people would do.
She leaves the child on the front porch, an origami swan nestled on the bundle with the words 'keep her safe.'
She had spared the child, just as a man had spared her life years ago. As she walks away, Konan hopes that she does not regret her decision, unlike the man, who surely would, if he saw how far she had come from the girl he had rescued.