Written for fanofthisfiction's Show Me The 'Flower' Love Challenge.
Papercuts
i.
Konan is six when she loses everything.
Below the unsteady, wood-splintered shelters she stands, twirling an origami flower in her hand. Waiting and watching. Waiting and watching.
The explosion shakes the earth to its core, and yet the screams still play out in a melody of echoes, forever etched into her mind. Then there is a flash of silver, the sword arcs high above her head-
The blade sings. Konan closes her eyes.
And in a final, life-shattering shriek, everything crashes down.
The white petals flutter out into the wind, blemished with blood.
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ii.
She creeps away in moon-shaded darkness, tiptoeing across lands when red doesn't soil the ground. Where blood doesn't trickle down, dyeing the earth into the colour of death.
Behind her is a trail of petals, their flowers small and crudely made. To find her way back. Quite conspicuous, Konan knows, but then she doesn't care either. She'd rather be relieved of the misery which follows her than suffer as her strangled screams willow into the sky.
And then she meets Yahiko. The nightmares stop. The flowers don't. Nagato comes next, bleeding dry into the tainted soil.
Helping.
Is that what they want to do? Is that what she wants to do? Konan doesn't know.
They steal. They fight. They lie. But they are a family.
Konan smiles for the first time.
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iii.
The next flower is made of a crumpled silver wrapper, folded wth intricacy in every crease. Almost lifelike. But not quite.
Rain pierces through her skin, pins of ice next to her raw flesh. She doesn't care - the hunger is worse, biting into her thin, paper-like wounds.
She offers it to them. "It's origami," she says - a gift in the form of an expression. A flower, which represents all her hopes and needs.
"Please, teach us ninjutsu," Yahiko pleads. We've been following them for so long.
"Ssshould we kill these children?" Konan blanches as the Sannin decide, but her face is unwavering, always smiling with the innocence of a child.
And then - "It's alright," one says - her heart catches in her throat, fuelled by the promise of hope and protection. "I'll stay behind and look after them for a while. It's the least I can do."
His name is Jiraiya. Grey-haired and undoubtedly headed in the wrong direction, his heart is purely white.
This is fate, though Konan does not believe in it. She's never believed in anything, simply because there's nothing to believe in, though now there is.
A kindred spirit. Someone who understands their pain.
Konan trains, and she does not stop until the knife cuts bleed down her palms.
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iv.
"I hate the rain," Yahiko says, and Konan understands. "This country's always crying."
She is too, Konan thinks. Timid, gentle, and kind, she has no place in this cruel world except with her friends. Her guardians. But she must learn to protect herself, to bring peace to the world one move at a time - like a pawn in a chessboard. She doesn't mind that Yahiko and Nagato are kings, for she will rise to be a queen like no other. Perhaps the most important piece, it could be said.
Her happiness doesn't last long. It never does - embalmed in fraility, breaking at a single touch...
And now he's going. Their mentor, their pillar of strength. Konan winds each stem with care, twisting the thin, sallow paper into an entirely different creation. After some careful consideration, she hands him a bouquet, smudged with the weathered tea yellows of years away.
"Goodbye," Jiraiya says. "I hope you grow up to be very beautiful, Konan." She knows he doesn't mean it physically, however like-minded he is. He knows there's a day when she'll survive on her own, when she can protect her friends with her own powers.
Everyone always leaves her. But she won't look back.
Akatsuki forms, and peace sweeps the land in a dawn of red.
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v.
When she's kidnapped, Konan doesn't cry. Stolen away in the middle of the night, where muffled sounds cannot be heard beneath the flow of trickling water and the howl of cherry blossoms drifting away. It's a full moon tonight.
By now, she is paper. Her thin flesh is melded into flimsy white with no less damage than a thousand papercuts. But that's not enough. She lays another trail, cleverly camouflaged, the hurriedly strewn petals invisible to a single glance.
"Kill Yahiko," Hanzō orders Nagato. Konan screams wildly, flailing for something, anything. The cloth around her mouth bites into her, but by now, she is ready for what will come.
This is the end. She will never see him again. And she remembers when there was something between them, and she cries.
That night, Yahiko sacrifices himself as the tears drip down Konan's helpless face, as she watches the blood run down in red rivulets through his flesh.
It's a bloodbath - and red petals shower down on the scene of the dead, swirling in a fit of Konan's grief.
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vi.
Peace is no longer their objective. Punishment is. Although Nagato denies it, she knows there's something more. They kill Hanzō, viciously slaughtering him in kind, then wrecking Amegakure with a civil war. It's no different to what she's experienced before, so why does Konan feel so guilty?
Nagato turns into Pain, and she fears she'll never see him again. Her flowers crumple, wither and die, wither and die, under the promise of a blood moon. Their innocence fades.
She is his Angel. An abstract, unrealistic version of one, though that's not to say that Konan's always been pragmatic. She's hiding the truth from herself; this pretentious peace they've created is nothing more than a figment of her imagination.
Akatsuki broadens their horizons.
And then it goes too far. Pain - for he is not Nagato anymore - kills Jiraiya, their enemy now, she reminds herself. She watches as his body sinks deeper into the water - then gone forever - just like Yahiko.
This time, her tears are quiet, and her screams do not echo.
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vii.
Nagato begins to falter, avoiding her pleads to stop using his techniques. What is the point, Konan thinks, if everyone she knows is gone? What is the point of peace if she is alone?
Naruto, the Nine-Tails Jinchūriki, discovers their hideout, and convinces Nagato to revive the land. Inside, Konan shrieks. He will die, and she can only watch as the embers cease to flicker.
His version of peace is hers. She will trust Naruto, put her life in those naïve, ghost-ridden hands. Her truce - the white bouquet of ethereal roses are flowers of hope, ones which will never die. Not even after she passes into the dreamworld.
She lays her friends at last to rest in the shrine, creating thousands of flowers to line the edges. They were all pure - and still are - but their idea of peace was too much for the world to comprehend. She's the only one alive now, to pass on that legacy.
Only after does she realise that her hands are layered with dozens of papercuts and the edges of the flowers are specked with her blood.
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viii.
She'll never betray her friends. But she will betray Akatsuki. For peace.
She does not know which of his personas are real - Tobi, or Madara Uchiha. When he comes it is like death - and life at once, swooping in and out of the ashes to finally claim her once more. When it should have, many years ago.
Konan fights, and she fights bravely - her white flowers tear into pieces, scattering everywhere as the white ring shatters against the stone. But it is not enough. Always not enough.
His darkness will wilt her flowers away, flooding the earth with nothing but death and fear. She must protect it. Defend her land. At the cost of her own death, she doesn't mind.
And at the final moment, when she falls back into the sparkling blue skies - an angel plunging through the heavens - the flowers fall with her, red and white, innocent and yet not. A collision of blood and rue, memories flitting in and out of her mind. The one fragment which stayed with her, for all this time.
Konan floats down the river of Amegakure, eyes closed in the epitome of peace.
In her hand is a single, perfect flower.
Notes - 31/07/23: Thanks to fanofthisfiction for allowing me to participate in this challenge!
I wanted to represent a materialistic object - a flower - as Konan's longing for peace at the times when she is alone, based off on the idea that people can die but their dreams will still live on.
lovehearts,
m.b.