Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters.
Warning: Spoilers up through Chapter 510.
Companionship in Paper
Konan paused outside the door to the kitchen in Akatsuki's headquarters, listening to the unnatural silence of the place. She was used to their base echoing with the sounds of Deidara's explosions, Hidan and Kakuzu's arguments, and the mechanical whirring of the tools Sasori used to refine his puppets. With them gone, the hideout was too quiet.
Konan sighed and pushed the door open. As usual, there was a plate of sweets in the center of the table with a note saying "Baked by Tobi! Please eat!" next to it. As usual, they were completely untouched. Everyone in Akatsuki avoided Tobi's cooking like the plague. Pain and Konan avoided it because they wouldn't put it past Madara to poison anything he served them, and the others avoided it because they assumed anything that Tobi had cooked would be accidentally poisonous.
Itachi was sitting at the kitchen table, and he was...folding a piece of paper?
Konan watched him for a few seconds, and then her eyes narrowed. "What are you doing?" she asked in an icy tone. There was a flare of chakra, and Itachi quickly dropped the paper before the edges could cut his hands.
"If it bothered you so much, you could have just said so." Itachi didn't sound angry, or even mildly annoyed. His voice was the same calm, bland monotone that Konan had always found slightly disturbing.
"That is my paper," she told him. "I've been working to suppress the chakra in it. Apparently, I did too good a job if even your Sharingan couldn't detect it." Inwardly, Konan was pleased. If her plan to take out Madara was to work, she had to conceal the chakra in her paper well enough that he wouldn't know it was there. She had, in fact, intentionally left the paper where Itachi would find it to test the technique.
"On the contrary," Itachi said, "for a shinobi, there is no such thing as doing too good a job." He methodically unfolded the paper, smoothed out the creases, and handed it to Konan. "My apologies."
Konan accepted the paper and placed it flat against her stomach, where it melded seamlessly into her Akatsuki cloak. "Out of curiousity, were you making origami?"
Itachi nodded, and Konan blinked. Origami somehow didn't seem like a fitting hobby for an S-rank criminal. Then again, that was exactly what every other member of Akatsuki had said the first time they saw her folding paper. "What were you making?"
Itachi seemed surprised that she was interested, but he answered immediately. "A crane."
"Why?"
"It is said that if you can fold a thousand paper cranes, you will be granted a wish."
Konan raised one blue eyebrow. "And what did you intend to wish for?"
Itachi was silent for a few moments, as if considering whether to answer. Finally, he replied, "Peace."
That took Konan by surprise. Her eyes narrowed again. "You slaughtered nearly your entire family. What do you care for peace?" Konan remembered the heart-wrenching anguish she had felt when her family was killed. She had never been able to muster up anything but contempt for someone who would voluntarily throw away what she had lost as a child and longed for ever since. As second-in-command of Akatsuki, she of course recognized that Itachi's talents were useful, but that didn't mean that she had to like or respect him.
"More than you might think," he said quietly. "You should not presume to know what I care about simply based on what you have heard of me. After all, you have done some distasteful things in the name of peace yourself, have you not?"
There was no edge to Itachi's voice, but Konan found that the question made her uncomfortable anyway. Although she had aided Pain in the final battle against Hanzou, she hadn't taken part in the aftermath, in which Pain had mercilessly destroyed anyone and anything connected to Rain's former leader. But he had asked her beforehand whether he should go through with it, and she had said yes. She had known that as long as Hanzou's supporters still lived, they would try to destabilize the new regime. The only way for Rain to have lasting peace was to wipe the slate clean and start over. And what did that make her? An accomplice to the mass murder of civilians and surrendered combatants. What right did she have to look down on Itachi?
To hide her discomfort, she said briskly, "Pain-sama has instructed me to tell you that he will be sending you and Kisame-san on a mission soon."
"Very well." Itachi seemed perfectly willing to drop their previous topic of conversation, and his voice remained completely level. Does anything ever make an emotional impact on that man? She withdrew the piece of paper Itachi had been folding and ran her hand over it. Although he had tried to smooth it out before giving it back to her, she could still feel the creases. He had clearly spent some time sitting there, folding and unfolding the paper over and over. How many successive cranes had he made with it? And what did it mean, that this man who, by all accounts, had killed the people closest to him without a second thought wished so deeply for the same thing that she did?
Itachi pushed his chair back from the table and stood up, turning to leave the kitchen. "Itachi-san."
Itachi looked back over his shoulder at her, waiting politely for her to say something more. The truth was, Konan had no idea what she was intending to say until the words actually passed her lips: "The mission that Pain-sama will be sending you on. You have no intention of returning from it, do you?"
If asked, she wouldn't have been able to say how she knew this. But as soon as she asked the question, she knew the answer.
Itachi gave her a very small, very sad smile and turned to leave once more.
"The cranes. Did you make a thousand?"
"No."
"Then I will finish them for you."
Itachi paused in the doorway, his back to Konan. "...Thank you."
Then he was gone.
After his death, and Pain's, Konan stood on the roof of the Akatsuki base, surveying the massive piles of exploding notes in front of her. She raised her arms, and as one, the stacks of notes lifted into the air and folded themselves.
Six hundred million sets of one thousand cranes each soared over the village and dived into the sea that surrounded it. Sinking to the bottom, they unfolded once more and lay flat. Although they no longer looked like cranes, the folds and creases still criss-crossed the surface of each note, as they lay waiting to fulfill a wish.
A/N: I got the idea for this while I was writing "Senbazuru." I seem to be writing a lot about Konan lately...
I wonder if either Konan or Itachi knew that the other knew about Tobi being Madara? Madara said that the Amaterasu Itachi implanted in Sasuke would have killed him if Itachi had known his secret (presumably meaning the limitation on his intangibility), and now we find out that Konan had figured it out...if only the two of them could have teamed up against Madara...