I blame this on Sadistic Dreamkiller, and her story "Scorpio: Blood Saga". Its sheer awesomeness has inspired me to try some Konan-Itachi experiments of my own.

This is, well... this isn't an AU, to be exact. But all the characters are very much alive, even Sasori (who was the first Akatsuki member to perish). I can't specify the timeline, exactly. It just is.

Fair warning: This story will not follow the plot of Naruto. It is my, ah, creative divergence from canon.

Have fun!

Chapter 1 : Unfolding

"Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

She is not alone.

She stumbles, falls, fades. There is no strength left in her body, all of it seeped out, sapped out by the energy that she had expanded in the past few days. She is all blood and bone, her heart having stilled, her mind having become lethargic. Her body collapses on itself, slowly pumping blood from the gaping hole in her abdomen, the sprays of red sluggishly spewing into the air with every gasp of breath. She is close to death.

She is not alone.

There is someone else in this abandoned house with her. She had managed to stumble back to hideout, borne by a wish to see Nagato – Pain, she must call him Pain – than anything else. She has resigned herself to death, and refuses to contemplate it. She only wished to see him one last time, to tell him that she was sorry that she had broken her promise, that she would be unable to be by her side because she would be dead.

And hopefully buried. She doesn't want her body to be manipulated, twisted and turned, nails driven into the soft recesses, inhabited by a consciousness that is not hers. It is unnatural. It should be buried, she should – finally, finally – be at peace.

She is not alone.

She collapses on the wooden floor, breathing shallowly, well aware of the blood that seeps into the ground every time she exhales. There is nothing else to do but wait. Pain is not here, Nagato is not here, Yahiko is gone. Deva – for that's who they are now – must be locked away in another coffin, blank eyes staring at the wood, waiting to be revived and reused. She is without them, without her family, without her wings. An angel no more; there is no one with her.

She is not alone.

Dimly, she registers the sound of footsteps dragging over the rough wood, scraping across the poor floor with a harsh grate. She closes her eyes, then opens them again. The world is bleary, blurring. She is bleeding too much, she realizes. She will die soon, without having accomplished what she set out to do. She has failed.

She is not alone.

There is someone above her now, she can just barely see a dark shape hovering nearby. Something reaches out to her… a hand? She is unsure, unclear, undecided. She wonders if she is hallucinating, if her mind has given out on her, given her a last respite in this strange world, made her believe that help is nearby when in reality she is the only living being for miles. She breathes in; she breathes out. She will not trust in her eyes, those faithless things.

The person above her breathes. "Konan-sama."

Immediately, she knows who it is. The instant recognition is probably because she has spent most of the last decade working with him, even though they have never come close. You begin to remember a person's voice after that. Especially if it is distinctive, as his is. She opens her mouth to be polite, to politely acknowledge him the way he has her, to follow the age-old customs that have been passed down from father to son, from mother to daughter. She is nothing if not polite.

She opens her mouth, and spews out blood, doubling over herself in the convulsions, violently hacking out the bright red liquid that had collected in a pool in her organs. Her lungs are punctured, she realizes. There really is no hope now, even if there ever was any. She lets go of any attempt to control her violent coughs, and focuses on the simple action of breathing.

A hand on her forehead. Immediately, she retreats into herself. She is not misanthropic, but she doesn't like being touched without express permission. This familiarity is unwarranted, denied. He is taking advantage of her being indisposed to approach her in a way which she would deem unacceptable on any other occasion. After having spent so much time together, she supposes that it might be considered natural to behave in such a manner, but she still feels uncomfortable, as though she has been violated in a way which is more psychological than physical, deeper, somehow.

She does not trust him.

She hears a sigh, and then he bends over her, almost pressing his lips into her ear, so close, in fact, that she can feel his breath fan out against her skin when he speaks. "Konan-sama," he enunciates clearly. "You are gravely wounded. I can heal this, but it will take some time. I would like to request that you stay up through the procedure, to tell me if everything seems alright."

She nods, and promptly faints.

When she comes to, she does not know where she is.

Briefly, she panics, heavy limbs thrashing about in the covers draped over her. The heat is almost oppressive, a coal brazier lighting up the small room in which she is lodged. Thick blankets – several of them – suffocate her, and she feels trapped under them.

Her mind screams, and she opens her mouth faithfully to obey, but her voice is gone, stolen away by fatigue and thirst. Her throat croaks, rasps, protests against this unfair treatment, and she feels as though the very skin is melting off her bones, leaving her in a pool of pale gore, soaking into the bed. The lighted coals blaze red, careless eyes watching her every move. She feels a great surge of terror.

"Nag –!"

But her body sews up her mouth before her body can progress to that level, clams it shut. Nagato doesn't exist anymore, and neither does his name. Both have faded, disappeared in the convoluted darkness of their combined past – now, only Pain exists, and he has commanded her to silence about who they used to be.

The door opens, and the palest sliver of light shines through. A ghostly hand holding a flickering lamp precedes its owner, and then Uchiha Itachi enters the room.

The Uchiha. She remembers now, sluggish memories dislodging themselves from the sludge of her fevered mind. He found her when she was dead.

No. Not dead. Inconvenienced.

But if she was not taken by death then, would she surrender into its maws now? Her fragile umbrella of trust does not extend over the man who stands in front of her, and she is smart enough to know that even fully healed, she would be hard-pressed to beat him. Faded as she is now, she would probably die before she could even break a finger.

He approaches her almost cautiously, and if she had been completely lucid, she would have noticed his curiously careful behavior. As it is, she hangs on to consciousness by the barest thread of determination, and the only thing that catches her attention are his eyes. The Sharingan blares in the darkness, bright as any red-tipped coal. She averts her eyes, terrified of the realm that she might inadvertently pay a visit to.

"Konan-sama." In sharp contrast to her gravel, his voice is honey, flowing smoothly through the cracks and pouring itself into every crevice. She clutches her hands to discourage any instinctive flailing. Even discomposed as she is, a shred of dignity remains within her, despite all semblance of authority having left her being.

She raises her eyes coolly, almost defiantly, and stares into his Sharingan, her spine tense at the thought of what might happen. Her parched tongue longs to smooth itself over cracked lips, but she controls herself, and attempts to modulate her voice, an endeavour upon which she fails. "Uchiha." The sound of rusted nails upon scratchy wood.

She is overcome by a fit of desperate coughs, and she sullenly succumbs, well aware of the rather pathetic figure that she made in front of a man who was by all rights and reasons her subordinate. Shame spreads over her, hot and humid, at the thought of the spectacle must be, but there are more pressing things on hand. Dimly, she observes that he had extended one large, tanned hand to her. The fingers are long and slender, and one of them sports a colourful ring with a warped symbol engraved upon it. They are wrapped around a glass tumbler filled with a colourless liquid.

Water.

Almost before she knows what she is doing, her hands have reached out desperately, her thoughts turning into thick sludge as the presence of the life-giving liquid registers. She grabs the tumbler – there really isn't any other way to describe it – and practically throws its content into her mouth. Immediately, she chokes, coughing violently and drenching her clothes, streams of liquid pouring out of her nostrils, burning the sensitive tissue.

Her head is tipped back, and a large hand opens her mouth and regulates the stream, holding her chin open. She gratefully accepts this, choosing to ignore for the moment that she is behaving and being treated like a child. Vaguely, her body remembers being similarly pampered when she was still just Konan, just another barefoot girl in the woods, before the world cleaved apart and she transformed into an Angel.

The commoner in her chafes at his patient treatment, and she is almost painfully aware of the fact that the upbringing that he had had would have never allowed him to behave as such, no matter what the situation may be. Her pride – that fierce knowledge of being utterly plebian – disdains the careful treatment that he showers on her, even at it cringes at her apparent and absolute helplessness.

So what, she glowers sullenly, choosing to brutally suppress any gratitude that may have blossomed in her. Plebian and patrician they may be, but both share the same boat. They're floating down a river of uncertainty, choosing to believe in their guide. Only she is aware of the fact that the boatman is actually blind, his eyes closed behind a veil of righteous immorality.

He sits by the side of her bed when he is done feeding her – her temper flares at the mental image the phrase conjures – and calloused fingers pick at a loose thread on the multi-patterned bedspread. She would have retreated from her presence, closeted herself in the bubble which she wore like an armour, if she wasn't afraid of falling off the narrow bed. The façade of politeness which she had cultivated has been swallowed up by the extenuating circumstances surrounding her situation.

He looks up from beneath his eyelashes, chancing a look, and she is struck – not for the first time – by how very pretty he is. Out of the eight of them – nine, if you include Tobi – he is undoubtedly the most attractive, the one most likely to draw attention due to his extreme good looks. The others are more likely to fade into the background, just a few more misfits in this stitched-up world.

Because Konan is a kuniochi and not a girl, she convinces herself that it is better for her to be plain anyway. Kuniochi do not look pretty. They fight to accomplish, and sometimes accomplishment is easier when you're just another person fading into the background. Good looks can be a curse for all the attention that they draw.

He addresses her directly, drawing her sharply back to reality. "Konan-sama, you have several lesions upon your torso." As always, he is direct, seamless voice flowing mellifluously as he clips out his observations. "Many of your internal organs were damaged with highly potent chakra, and the invasive energy that seeped through the wounds seems to have eaten away at some of your organs at an astonishing rate. The attack was also highly centralized, and was aimed at your vital points. It is a highly specialized job for any healer, and I simply do not have the required skills."

She stares at her own clenched fist, vaguely realizing that the very fact that her body is tense would be enough to tip him off about her general discomfort when he is near. Never mind. They are not here to be friendly.

He raises his eyes – those fearsome Uchiha eyes, patterns within patterns, a kaleidoscope of beautiful horror, and says: "I am afraid that some of the work was simply beyond the scope of what I could do."

Until that moment, she had been unaware of the fact that she was fidgeting. She stills as she listens to his words pouring out, and instead of filling her crevices, he seems to create new ones, each new drop causing another chink in her armour. Her hands fist into the lowermost quilt, and her forehead furrows. She senses enough to know that his strange and detached manner does not bode well for her.

She does not speak, but merely waits for him to finish his statement.

He lets out a breath which is really more a sigh. "Your chakra pathways were affected. Your center of chakra – it was almost torn to pieces –"

But before he can finish, her hands are frantically working, sliding down to the flat plane of her stomach, rigid now, with stitches and scars low ridges across the flat terrain. She presses the palm of her hand against her navel – her center of gravity – and presses, hard.

Pain. Excruciating pain, burning through her abdomen. Vaguely, she thinks she can feel something rupture, new stitches give away against her assault, but her concentration is centered on what is not rather than what is.

"Oh," she says limply, because what else is there to say. The white hot burn of chakra is missing from her veins – nothing but blood pounding through the webs interconnecting her body. The only power she can feel are the faint traces of something that doesn't belong to her, something that has been inserted.

"Oh," she says again, and then realizes that she is in shock. Her jaw is clenched, and her fingers are shaking. Her entire body seems to be coming apart, the head detaching from the torso, her toes dropping off one by one. She is overcome by violent tremors.

Immediately, a hand seizes her and shakes her roughly. She can feel the presence of his chakra, the blue ichor which pounds through his veins. It lies under the surface of his skin, tense, prepared to defend, to protect, to attack. It is what marks him as a shinobi, this wild chakra of his.

Her mouth rips itself open, and then she is shrieking, screaming, an unholy sound emanating from a place she didn't even know existed. The wind – and she seems to be made of nothing but wind, the chaotic storm that is her mind – bursts out of her, tearing apart her vocal cords, bleeding into the air, the sound of a wild, crazed animal.

She is thrashing now, fighting against these covers that seal her in, twisted limbs, feverish with exhaustion, pounding against the soft cloth as though to be able to beat them would enable her to awake from this nightmare. The bed groans feebly against her efforts, but continues to hold her within, to cage her. She is frantic.

His hands – those damnable hands – hold her down, press her against the bed. She can sense his restraint, that he is very actively choosing to subdue her through sheer physical power rather than any enhanced by the abilities resting inside him, and the realization that he has what she has lost sets her off again. She screams until she can feel her throat caked with blood, and then her voice stops, and she is gone, lost within herself.