Title: Renaissance
Fandom: Naruto
Characters: Pein, with brief appearances from Deidara, Hidan and Itachi
Word Count: 233
Rating: G
Warning/s: Nada
Summary: He is the last man standing.
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: For narutocontest
The sky is crying blood and the scent of death lingers in the air.
Pein ducks under the dust and rubble that is once the Hokage monument and tries to breathe.
Smoke filters through the cracks in the rock, which makes his eyes water. (And so he blinks but the stinging feeling does not subside.) The darkness is almost as comforting as the roar of the rain - it blocks out their cries of assured victory, he is the last man standing after all - and he longs for than the familiarity that once persisted in the security of his sanctuary. But it is nothing more than mere bits of rubble.
He closes his eyes and for a moment, he can almost hear Hidan's whining and Deidara's gloating, feel the smooth silk of his chair under his fingers, see–
Another bomb explodes, shaking the rocks that separate him from the certainty of death, and Itachi's voice does not quite sound as it used to. Pein opens his eyes - sees darkness in the false refuge of a grand irony (in which the criminal mastermind finds security under the rocks he had planned to destroy a long time ago) - and makes up his mind.
When he walks into the rain, no one is there to see the smirk on his face.
The ring on his thumb has never felt so light.