Characters: Konan, Naruto
Summary
: "What's it like to be loved like that?"
Pairings
: NagaKon
Author's Note
: Coleridge reference alert.
Disclaimer
: I don't own Naruto.


Finally, we can have a real funeral. Konan knows that it's by far not the sort of thing she ought to be thinking as she wraps up two corpses in chakra-laced paper, but it's the only thought that reaches her exhausted mind and it seems, in an intensely ghoulish way, appropriate. Nagato founds death in life long ago, and Yahiko stopped living of his own accord since around the same time.

Konan's only very recently felt air herself, and she knows with the certainty of one nearly dead that Yahiko and Nagato need to be buried now. No less can she do…

No less can she do for those who have been as the wind and the storm of her life.

Feeling the wind shift favorably towards Amegakure, Konan prepares to leave.

"Wait." Naruto is calling her back, his feet sending little vibrating epicenters on the earth. When Konan turns round, pale eyes trained on him again, she sees the same thing as ever: that childish, scarred face and those burning eyes. Something in there moved Nagato, though Konan is not entirely sure what.

"What was he like?" Naruto motions towards the paper-wrapped corpse that will tell of little spots of decay and piercing upon piercing.

"Naruto-san, Nagato already—"

The Leaf shinobi grimaces slightly. "I just wanna hear it from you."

Konan manages a sad vestige of a smile, the lines long ruined by rain. "He had the bluest eyes, like yours." And maybe that was what moved Nagato. "And no matter how dire the situation, he always had another plan in the wings. He could always see the sun, no matter how dark it was."

Fair hair catches the light as Naruto nods; Konan can tell that his brow furrows beneath the hitai-ate.

Just as she thinks that he's done and Konan is again prepared to leave, Naruto's rough, slightly guttural tones sound again.

Now, he's slapping the air with his hand pointing towards the wrapped body that tells of hair like blood turned to white and a body ruined by years of abject neglect. "He loved you," Naruto says bluntly.

What's left of her smile dies now, fizzling and shriveling with one last pathetic pop. How Naruto has fathomed this, Konan neither knows nor wishes to know. There is no use in denial. "Yes." Konan swallows, hard. "A great deal."

Again, Naruto nods as though this is the answer to a thousand questions. He is silent for the longest time. Then, he asks abruptly, "What's it like to be loved like that?"

There's a yearning gleam in his eye and a plaintive note in his voice, and Konan blinks at him, startled.

Then, she understands.

Nagato said that no one of Naruto's generation knew war. Konan can tell differently. Naruto has known war; she can see it in his eyes. He has never seen war in the sense of blood and gore and death all-consuming, but he has known the war of rejection, of turned backs and ostracism at its worst. He has known the silent war, and as a result knows little of love other than that he wants it more deeply and desperately than anything else on the earth.

Konan's smile is more bitterly twisted than anything else she has ever managed before. She knows how Naruto must see her: a shadow, a pale, beautiful shadow but still a shadow. Nothing more and nothing less. It doesn't matter, not really. "The greatest joy and the worst pain you shall ever experience."

Wings spread far like some great bird and she flies away, capping the clouds. She takes those two dear corpses with her and leaves Naruto behind to sniff paper roses and wonder.