This was a scene originally written for Pretense quite a while back, although I've added some to it since to make it more coherent; I had been picturing this sequence for a long time and finally decided to get it on paper before I lost my inspiration, even though I was nowhere near this part in the story (and now I never will be, since Pretense has been discontinued). However, it's not really necessary to know anything about the progression of that plot to appreciate this, so I hope you'll enjoy it even if you haven't read Pretense. Just consider it as taking place sometime more or less immediately after the end of the civil war in Rain. It's kind of a weird scene, but it was very vivid to me and it still is.

Disclaimer: Naruto? Who wants Naruto? I'd trade five thousand Narutos for one Pein and one Konan. But unfortunately, I don't own Naruto or anything belonging to it, including Pein and Konan.

Afterstorm

by LutraShinobi

At the end, there was silence. After all the noise, all the cries and explosions, it was sudden, a shock to the system. Getting used to it was, if possible, even more painful than the bloodshed had been. Even the rain was quiet as it littered itself steadily over nature. Dead.

She sat on the grass, away from the river. She had never been afraid of water until now; but she was. She was afraid of stepping in only up to her ankles and then turning and running away, and she was afraid of going in so deep that she drowned. So she sat alone, watching the horizon, Pein swimming soundlessly in front of her. There was no one else she could have been with at a time like this; and even if it was him, she couldn't join him just now. He was so calm, so undisturbed, so undisturbing of other things; even the ripples his body created in the water were tiny, hardly noticeable, blending immediately into the current. It was only natural that it should be so, for him; he didn't have to fear being carried away. She couldn't trust herself to have the control, or the will, not to just allow herself to be borne off to some distant waterfall and crash onto the rocks waiting beneath.

His feet, pale and nearly bluish from a combination of cold and the evening light, appeared on the dark ground before her, and she stared at the blades of grass popping up between his bare toes. When she finally made the effort to look up, he was crouching before her. His auburn hair was sodden and dark brown, water streaming down his face and bare chest and hitting the earth with a heavier sound than normal raindrops. His blue eyes, however, were fiercely dry, burning with some kind of flame. He reached out and grasped her upper arms firmly in his hands, raising her to her feet in one fluid movement. She was shocked; he accepted the occasional tap or touch from her, but he never initiated the contact himself. Yet now he was right in front of her, soaking, gripping her with a strength that didn't seem to befit his wiry build.

"Come into the water, Konan." His voice was quiet, but there could be no doubt that it was a command.

She looked down. "Pein, I - " The words stuck in her mouth, and she bit the rest back. He was her leader, her judge and mentor. It was his right to hold authority over her, and her responsibility to defer to him. She would not, could not, break that code. Mutely, she reached up and fumbled to undo the clasp around her neck, and her cloak fell to the ground in a dead pile. She slipped her feet out of their sandals and tossed the white rose from her hair.

Now knowing that she would follow, he turned and walked back into the water, Konan in tow. It was so cold around her ankles that she couldn't breathe for a moment, but she never faltered, taking long, even strides into the depths. Finally the sandy bottom dropped off into nothingness, and she allowed herself to be submerged.

She kept her eyes squeezed shut, seeing and feeling nothing but icy darkness as she drifted with the feeble current for a moment. She was number than before; that was good, but she was also heavier, her clothes weighing her down. She surged up out of the water, tearing off her black top and leaving just the mesh breastplate underneath. She dove under once again.

This time, she opened her eyes. Her limbs appeared white and ghostly, blurring when she flailed them, and she felt as if she were inside a murky, peaceful void. Nothing around her but this numbness; no feelings, except for the kind that were easy to block out. But her body would not allow that.

Finally she grew tired of fighting her own natural buoyancy, and she let herself shoot up towards the surface. Her head broke out of the water, and she took a deep breath. There were goose bumps on her arms.

Pein was watching her from the shallows. He stood half-in, half-out, rivulets trailing watery paths down his sinewy chest. She was strangely attracted to him in that moment, in an entirely and solely physical sense, and she swam willingly towards him.

She was still numb, but her powers of observation were returning. As she splashed in his direction, she saw that his chest was not simply pure, pale skin. It was scarred - all over. There were not more than a few inches of untouched expanse anywhere. Raw streaks and thin red lines, almost like veins, crisscrossed everywhere.

She could not find the words or the will to ask him about them as she rose up out of the water in front of him. She could not look away from them. All the scars; obviously not recent, obviously never healed by a medic-nin. She felt only fascination; the numbness blanketed every other emotion.

There was one particular tiny cut over his prominent ribs. She reached out a finger to gently brush it, not hesitatingly, just slowly. He didn't move at all under her tentative touch; she glanced up at his face to see him staring past her, emotionless and rigid. Not as if he were in pain or denial; more like a very, very harsh acceptance. She kept her finger on the same spot, but flattened the rest of her fingers down along with it, so that she was pressing her palm against his ribcage. His abdomen puffed out and retracted in the steady rhythm of his breaths.

His skin was icy cold from the river water, and the rain was pattering onto it, running down over her hand. In careful wonderment she placed her other hand next to the one already there, sliding both palms down his chest, feeling the sudden roughness whenever she passed over a scar. He was so still, except for his breathing.

She suddenly disliked the numbness - it was shutting out part of her world. With that single thought it crumbled, and she felt a deep, cutting pain in the very centre of her being. She spread her hands out, exploring every millimetre of his skin, and found a scar inside herself to match each visible one of his. The pain intensified with every example, with every memory of every wound, but it seemed to be irradiated from her; she was feeling it, but it was not impairing her in any way.

This was not intimacy. This was understanding. For all at once, she understood him. She was seeing and feeling from his point of view. Pain was what he stood for, what he fought against. She understood pain. She understood Pein.

No; it was intimacy. The understanding simply made it more intimate.

She leaned into him, positioning her head under his chin, her cheek against a jagged, wide scar, her ear against his heart. His heartbeat thudded in her head, disturbing her own pulse. She took deep breaths until her heart was beating in time with his. He was so motionless. It was like they were both statues, and this river was an impenetrable stronghold, and her touch on him was a time and place that would never pass. The pain fluttered inside her, always there; but here, she could live with it. Forever.

She didn't realize she'd begun to cry until she caught sight of a small, silvery tear snaking its way down his stomach before dropping into the water, creating no ripple. Another followed, moving slowly in the minute space between her cheek and his chest.

His whole body shuddered, and he let out a soft, elongated moan. It was the first vocal admission of pain he'd ever given in her presence. His muscles stretched taut beneath her, and his hands closed gently over her wrists, drawing her away from him. She was raised back onto her own two feet, and he held her hands in his as they stood face-to-face. Between them there was, perhaps, just enough space for another slim body to slip itself in. But no one and nothing intruded.

"I'm sorry," she breathed. She said it with realization; she finally knew what she was apologizing to him for. To herself, as well. All those scars. She could guess where they were from; but no estimate could equate knowing the exact background of every single blemish. There was no substitute for feeling and remembering each sting. That was how she understood; for once, she did not need to imagine how it was with him. She knew - it was the same with her, with all those slashes on her heart.

He was looking right at her now; no more staring past and through. "You have healer's hands." He had never had a healer attend to him before; he had not known, until now, that such a touch existed. She was no healer, but she had the cure.

She was crying in all her power now, acknowledging the tears freely and without shame. "Pein..." she whispered, just loud enough to be heard over the rain. "It hurts so much, but it feels..." She couldn't explain, couldn't describe it enough or at all.

He had dropped her hands, but now it was like he was holding her heart. "I am sorry, too," he said. The question was not of forgiveness; neither of them was asking for anything, anyway. They were just admitting that it did hurt, and that they were regretful of that fact.

She pulled away then, propelling herself into the water again. She cried underwater, where her tears could wash away quickly with the current. She could dimly hear Pein sloshing somewhere behind her, stirring up his own whirlpools. She knew he wasn't crying, would never be crying; but that was all right. She would heal herself with tears. He would heal himself with something else, and that something else was present right now, in this river, in this moonlight, in this rain.

They were wide awake and drenched that entire night, experiencing all the transitions of darkness. They sat in the rain and Konan listened as Pein told her the many, many stories of his scars.

end

A/N: Ah, angst. What better bonding mechanism is there?

Thanks for reading, and I hope this little oneshot will help make up for Pretense 's lack of completion, in some small way. Reviews are most welcome - it feels like ages since I last wrote something and put it up for feedback.