Title: Doll

Author: shadowstar-gzan [me]

Rating: PG/K+

Word Count: 515

Character(s)/Pairing: Konan, mentions of Yahiko and Negato

Spoilers for: Everything for the Invasion of Pein arc. (420-current)

Summery: ONESHOT She feels like a paper doll, whose tabs have been ripped off and who is barely being held together by thin, unstable string. Konan character study.

Disclaimer: I do not own any recognizable characters. Konan and others belong to Kishimoto.

Notes: Something random I wrote this morning. Doesn't feel quite finished, but it is. UNBETAED!

Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

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She doesn't feel any different. She doesn't see things any differently than what they were. But there is a large part of her, the part that stares back at her from the mirror, that can see that things have changed. She has changed.

Her face is still it's pale perfection, not a single mark marring her skin. The paper rose, perched in her hair, hasn't changed in color or size since she first put it there. Even her clothing has not changed; a mesh long sleeved undershirt, a high-necked sleeveless shirt, leggings, her knee-high kunoichi sandals and the long, turtlenecked red cloud coat that signaled to all her former membership in Akatsuki.

But there is a distinct change in her. Where she was once cool, collected, logical, she could now feel the pain, the sorrow, the agony of losing the last of her family. Like paper petals falling from a paper rose, she could feel her insides soften, break off, lose themselves in her chest, her abdomen, her head.

In so many ways, she feels like a paper doll whose clothing no longer fit, whose tabs have been torn off and who is barely being held together by thin, unstable string.

Having created and played with so many paper dolls of her own, she knows she should get those tabs fixed, glued back on with strips of paper that will hopefully make her stronger in the end. But there is no glue, and her paper is thin and tears easily. What good would it do to reattach the tabs with paper that will tear even easier than the paper that the doll is made of?

In that way, she feels slightly broken. More like a porcelain doll who's fallen off her shelf, whose shattered face has created sharp jagged pieces that have torn her apart on the inside.

Negato once told her, shortly after Yahiko's death, that things would be better some day. That pain would force everyone to realize Yahiko's dream. Thus, he had created Deva Pein from Yahiko's remains, creating him and piercing him through with pieces of metal and Chakra and making Konan feel the kind of pain that now permeated her insides, but still seemed to leave her numb and unaware to the changes.

But Negato is gone now, too. And both of the boys she'd watched grow into men, who had watched her grow into a woman, are wrapped in her paper offerings, placed beneath so much dirt and mounds of paper cranes and twisted, black paper roses.

She feels like a paper doll, whose tabs have been ripped off and who is barely being held together by thin, unstable string. Her clothing feels two sizes too big and too small at the same time, constricting where it makes contact. She knows she should reattach her severed tabs, reinforce them with strips of paper. But her paper is too thin, and she is stretched too far, and her insides have peeled away, making her even more brittle and fragile.

It's a wonder that she doesn't just tear right in half.