disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, and I make no profit from fanficcin'.

thanks for the reviews! I appreciate them. :)

drabble #5 - rating: (K+) for some adult content

i'd fly away [without your gravity]

Konan leaves the tower more frequently, goes on missions, and communicates with the people.

She is safe in the knowledge that God is watching over her.

One such mission gives Pein his Asura form; it is simple information gathering, performing surveys hidden beneath a rice hat, when she looks up and sees --

An ambush. Someone is invading Amegakure; again.

Explosions, people fleeing through the streets, and Konan sees the enemy nin – realizes, somehow, that it isn't human. She manages the hand signs; her jutsu transforms her to paper such that the missile passes straight through her. Burns a few scraps. She can create others.

She brings parts of her body together again, preparing a lance against her opponent, but before she can strike, the body explodes. Crumbles, more precisely, as if its weight caused it to implode.

She looks to the sky, to the top reaches of the tower which she cannot properly see, and smirks, ever so faintly.

--

Preparing the bodies leaves her hands covered with gore, usually, but not this one. For this one, it's oil. The location of each piercing is plotted specifically; she figures out where each should go with graph paper and a blunted pencil. Chews hard and breaks it, and actually hears Pein, behind her, say, "That's bad for you."

She looks back, but he's just standing there, with his usual blankness-that-is-not-blankness.

There are days when Pein initiates physical contact. Other times (when things with Akatsuki do not go well), his arms are crossed and his body language is closed off, and Konan likes to stand behind him and stroke her cheek over his shoulders – to feel him relax, gradually.

She has an especial fondness for his hair.

It has become his hair, too: no one else's.

She runs her fingers through it, gently scrapes her nails beneath the hairline. It's softer than it looks.

Some days, when she feels playful and more like she felt long years before, she comes over him – a swarm of butterflies. And there's an irony there: the God who will destroy the world and shake its foundations; the world's most powerful shinobi, standing in a cloud of white butterflies, and seeming content to do so.

She loves being the one to make him relax.

The truth is, there are still bits of what they were before in the both of them, but only she can touch this in him, and only he can touch this in her.

The people worship him. They don't know if he really exists, but they worship him. Konan hears all about it.

"They were being troublesome again, today," she whispers, when he pulls her to him. "Weren't they?"

"You saw," he says.

"I did. But it's over now."

An Akatsuki gathering: those can be hell. Pein does not like to play that role – Madara's role. He does, though. For them. So they can maintain their way of life.

"He isn't making it any easier," Pein says.

Konan sighs.

Right. "Tobi". Deidara. Hidan. Hidan, especially. Troublemakers. She has little use for them.

"I killed all the invaders," he says. "Crushed them."

Literally: gravity.

"Someday, the invasions will end."

But someday soon, the both of them will have to go out into the world – into its far reaches, to enact the change they seek. They've been up in the sanctuary of this tower for a long time. The God is restless. The angel watches him.

"The final stand."

She loves looking into his eyes, forever re-acquainting herself with them. She leans up on her toes – thinks, for a moment, about the shinobi she killed today and the spray of warm red blood over her origami, dismisses the thought – and kisses at the side of his mouth; does not stop when his lips refuse to part and when he stands there, mouth a perfect line. Kisses until he kisses back.

Kisses until he pushes her down on the large, formless sofa-chair.

She will never stop marveling at how such a reserved person can be so intense, as he wrestles the flower from her hair and the cloak from her shoulders, never breaks eye contact, and makes love to her for what feels like a small eternity, pouring all his pent up energy into her, until the discontentment and the concerns bleed away for the time being.

So it is, she thinks. If only it could remain this way, always. But life is change.

And soon, time will see them at the ultimate conclusion, one by the other's side, to decide the fate of the world.