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Death comes quickly, like pages in a book turning back of their own accord. Life takes longer to arrive. It’s not like waking from a deep sleep. Konan is painfully aware of every drawn-out moment that takes her from oblivion to clarity.

Madara had escaped her trap through some unknown, irritating trick. He had killed her – the agony of the stab wound had hurt far less than the knowledge that she had failed, that Nagato and Yahiko’s resting place was to be desecrated by this liar – and swore that he would use her team’s legacy to further his own goals. He’d called her a little girl who knew nothing at all.

What are the odds that the man had some kind of trick up his sleeve that would send the user back in time, even if it was only for an hour or so? Would such a technique catch another person in its net, even if it were only a corpse, and reverse their death in the process?

Konan blinks, paper shedding from her vision in tiny fragments. She had been cocooned without even realising it. When she takes a quick glance around herself, she spots a loose sheet of paper fluttering by. She snags it before it can become tangled in some branches or brambles. The paper feels thin, a little too smooth, but clearly hers. In fact, she does have some vague recollection of losing a piece like this to a sudden gust of wind when she was young. But that had been years ago – almost twenty years ago, if she is correct – and the piece would never have survived so long.

No, the most likely explanation is that she is currently trapped within Madara’s illusion. A wry smile crosses her face. He sought to amuse her with a place like this?

It was just green as far as the eye could see, trees and bushes covering the landscape, the ground hard, sheltered from any rainfall by the dense treetops overhead.

She tenses. Could this be Konoha?

But then she catches a glimpse of white rising on the horizon, and in a flash, she scales a tree to get a better look.

She stops breathing.

She’s in the middle of Mountain’s Graveyard.

Ancient bones gleam in the sunlight, vast, long-dead creatures having fallen before written records began. An unfamiliar skull almost eclipses her view of the sun, the hollows of its eyeless sockets a dark, gaping mass of shadow.

She has no reason to dream of this place. Madara has no reason to show it to her. There are no personal torments or tragedies that may be used against her, nor comforts or pleasures to distract her. So why?

An answer comes in the form of the slightest flicker of chakra from the east, beyond the gargantuan skull.

Konan always receives particular sensory impressions from chakra, and had been surprised to learn this was not the case for most sensor types. Uzumaki Naruto’s chakra had felt like maelstrom, almost enough to steal her breath just from the impact of sensing it.

This chakra feels like damp moss cast in shadow – unpleasant, pungent, abandoned. Familiar.

Zetsu.

Konan regards the horizon grimly.

Madara would not create an illusion such as this. She does not doubt he could recreate reality down to its most tiny, infinite details, showing her an illusory Mountain’s Graveyard as it actually was in life, nor even how it would feel to come across a remnant of her past, back when she was weak and small. Just a scrap of thin paper. Useless and discarded.

It was the nature of the illusion she questioned – the unfamiliar, impersonal choice of location, the memory trigger being mundane, not traumatising, and most importantly: the feel of Zetsu’s chakra growing ever closer.

Zetsu was never Nagato’s creature. He came with their mysterious benefactor turned would-be leader, Madara himself. Konan held no fondness nor interest in the man, knowing him only to be useful and dangerous. She had been unconcerned with his level of scrutiny over Akatsuki, having fully believed Madara was championing their cause, and had no reason to spy on them. But now, knowing what she knows, it is certain he could never be trusted.

And so he would never be featured an illusion created by Madara, designed for Konan.

Konan stands on the branch overlooking the graveyard of colossal bones, realisation taking a long time to set in.

This is real.

She is alive, seemingly unharmed despite her brush with death, and the world around her is reality.

Which means the chakra she senses is that of an enemy, and it is time she do something about it.

She slips through the trees in the form of a sheet of paper, billowing across the sky on a gentle breeze summoned by the tiniest flicker of chakra, not enough to stand out amongst the mass of enormous trees and plant life, all teeming with their own natural energy. It was interesting how a place like this could be filled with so much life. It gives her hope that one day Ame, the scene of so much bloodshed and devastation, can foster life, not death.

What joy it would be for Ame to match the likes of Konoha, not in martial strength or power, but in numbers, crowds of civilians wearing bright colours, silence staved off by an endless tide of conversations, the smell of food cooking in stalls and restaurants, safety, security, a sense of belonging and purpose.

If she is correct, and this is all actually happening, then she will ensure that bright future comes for Amegakure.

The first step begins with sliding down through the earth and meeting that unsettling, dark chakra.

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Konan hadn’t been sure it would work.

Burning Zetsu was the only possible method of killing it, she’d deduced long ago – she had made a habit of noting each member of Akatsuki’s strengths and weaknesses, and whatever means could be used to bring them down in the event of betrayal – but her strength lay with wind, earth, and water, not fire.

Spies affiliated with ROOT had once brought back whispers of a jutsu that could manipulate ink, which had naturally caught Konan’s attention, considering the possible application such a technique could have in conjunction with her own jutsu. They hadn’t managed to uncover the secret behind it, but just the notion had been enough to inspire Konan.

Ink was a liquid, and Konan’s strongest element was water, after all.

Since she was uncertain of the time she had been returned to, she couldn’t be certain that her usual stockpile of explosive tags still existed for her to summon.

So instead, after descending from the tree, she created as many sheets of paper she deemed necessary, and employed the technique she had been slowly refining before Madara’s arrival. Ink flowed across the white surface, seeping into the paper’s grain in recognisable shapes, all swirling around the kanji for explode, repeated several thousand times. In an instant, she was armed with an arsenal of destruction, all aimed at one individual.

She had sensed the chakra heading her way after she’d moulded her own, seeking out its exact location, and it was almost upon her now.

She waits, content to allow the creature to come to her, rather than chase it down in unfamiliar territory.

But when it arrives, it does not reveal itself, instead lingering in the undergrowth, watching her in total silence. Zetsu is as silent and patient as the grave when it needs to be.

Konan’s hands form seals to carve a trench between them, doton cracking the ground in a definitive split.

Zetsu does not flee. It must be curious.

Konan shakes her head.

She almost killed its master with a plan she had actually had time to consider and carry out. She has no doubt Madara’s servant can survive even an improvised trap of her design.

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As she had predicted, Zetsu immediately attempted to escape the hole of exploding tags by melting through the rock underground, where it met the thousands of other tags Konan had already placed, welded within the rock by a simple application of a doton jutsu.

It takes a lot longer for Zetsu to die than she had anticipated.

So long, in fact, that sweat trickles down her back, the sour taste of failure in her mouth.

But eventually the ground stops smoking long enough to reveal the devastation she has unleashed.

What remains of Zetsu is pitiful, less a corpse, more a twisted lab experiment gone wrong. Konan sends it further underground, deep, where it can be buried in whatever kind of peace it can find.

As she lowers it, she feels something unexpected.

A vast cave system is close by, deep underground. It’s not empty.

Konan narrows her eyes.

She sends a paper butterfly fluttering down through the massive cavern her explosions had carved.

“Hey, you guys?” A voice calls out, far below Konan’s feet, the vibrations carrying from the butterfly to Konan’s ears. Whoever the voice belongs to, they are young, and frightened. “Are you gonna come back? There were explosions! The old guy’s hurt! Hey! Help!”

Konan sighs.

It’s the work of a moment to follow Zetsu down into the depths. She finds herself within a cavern that is clearly manmade, a slow, painstaking task, with various twists and turns reaching deep into the earth. She travels down the only path that isn’t closed off, feeling two chakra signatures burning in the distance.

One is weak, merely a trembling flame, a single candle in the dark. The other is not weak, but diminished, atrophied from lack of use and disease. The candle’s flame moves, the shape of a child curled up on its side.

Konan’s pace quickens.

She finds her butterfly pressed against a large boulder, clearly not there by accident, but design. Whoever made these tunnels did not expect to be found, or care if they were, since they made no attempts to disguise the obvious entrance. Konan considers Zetsu’s timely appearance, and grimaces at the implications. A guard dog, perhaps. But for whom?

She presses her hands against the boulder. She could shatter it quite easily but doing so risked killing the occupants of the room she sought to enter. Instead, she concentrates, digging her fingers into the rock. Sasori had been tight-lipped regarding his village’s jutsu, not out of loyalty but pragmatism, but Deidara had gleefully shared everything he knew, including the contents of the forbidden scrolls he had stolen. Konan knows exactly how Iwa nin deal with matters such as this.

The boulder explodes into a fine powder, then blows harmlessly past Konan’s feet, heading for the surface in a concentrated stream of pulverised rock.

She steps into the newly revealed room, blinking slowly as her eyes adjust to the change in lighting. This room is gloomy, but she can clearly see its contents.

A single bed.

A carved throne.

And one, enormous tree.

The bed is occupied by the child she had sensed. He’s covering his face, coughing from the remnants of dust left behind. He is small, bandaged, the left side of his torso unnaturally white, seemingly stapled to the healthier, flesh-toned side.

A hulking man sits upon the throne, his form obscured by several large rocks that must have fallen from the ceiling. Konan’s work, no doubt. Despite the immense damage he must have suffered, there is no blood.

The tree does not feel natural. After standing in the middle of a forest brimming with life and natural energy, it feels especially wrong by comparison.

“H-Hey!” The child shouts, his eye filling with tears. “Can you help? The old man – he’s hurt! R-Rocks fell… I couldn’t do anything. I tried to move, but…”

The boy visibly struggles to lift his head. He has long hair, similar to the figure on the throne, and half his face is heavily scarred.

He has a Sharingan.

It is not Uchiha Sasuke. Konan knows his face from the Bingo Book, and although there is a strong family resemblance, it is very clearly a different Uchiha. Had Itachi missed a member of his clan?

“Who are you?” Konan asks.

“I-I’m Uchiha Obito,” The boy says, his reluctance clear. And admirable. Konan assumes he cannot deactivate his Sharingan, and that is the only reason she knows he is an Uchiha at all. Were it not for that, no doubt he would’ve attempted to hide his lineage. She appreciates his caution.

“Hm,” is all Konan offers in reply, and then she heads to inspect the throne.

The man is very old by shinobi standards, at least seventy, and he is alive. Barely.

Konan lifts the rocks away, one by one, strong enough not to waste chakra on such a menial task, and watches the man’s face for movement as she works. There is not a single twitch. He is deeply unconscious.

He is also connected to the tree through what appear to be thick wires, which strongly suggests the tree itself is some kind of power source that he is feeding from. Or the inverse, which seems less likely.

“Is he okay?” Obito calls.

“Who is he?” Konan replies.

There is a beat of silence, awkward and heavy.

Konan turns back to glance at the boy.

He is fidgeting, staring at his own feet.

Konan turns back to the old man, lifting one eyelid, then the other. One eye is missing, but the other is clearly a Sharingan. It does not bode well that it remains active, despite his lack of consciousness.

She can do the maths. Obito has one Sharingan, the old man has the other. Zetsu was guarding this place. Of that, there can be no doubt. Its body seemed similar to half of the boy’s.

“He said his name was Uchiha Madara,” Obito finally admits quietly, “but that can’t be true! Right? Uchiha Madara died years ago! Killed by the Shodaime in battle!”

Konan imagines the teachers of Konoha take great care to emphasise that part of history for all their Uchiha students.

Madara.

Konan’s hands almost begin to shake. She presses them against her chest, urging herself to remain calm. Tranquil, like still waters.

This cannot be the same Madara that killed her and then brought her back. That Madara’s chakra had felt like a barely-contained wildfire, roaring with power. This Madara’s chakra is nothing but a wisp in comparison. A bit of smoke without a spark.

But still, just the thought of him being the same man makes her itch for a kunai to hold, solid weight to ground her.

“It is not impossible,” Konan says, “what is this tree?”

“He said it was keeping him alive. He’s got plans for me, since he can’t do anything himself anymore. I promised I’d help, because he saved me.”

Konan quietly withdraws her previous appreciation for the boy’s caution. She asked one question, he answered three.

She finally leaves the old man to join the boy at his bedside, narrowing her eyes at his thin, wasted muscles, the lines of his ribs just barely visible. The first stages of starvation in a previously healthy, muscled young body.

Konan casts a dire glance at the tree. Is Obito the source of its energy? Was the old man harvesting his body to restore his own vitality? It seemed fanciful, but nothing about this place was simple or ordinary so far.

“My team and I, we were on a mission… the war… the Kannabi bridge… Rin, Kakashi, Minato-sensei, we were all – ”

But the boy’s words fade into nothing.

Konan almost sways, light-headed.

Kakashi, Minato.

Hatake Kakashi. A grown man barely a decade younger than Konan, far beyond a genin team.

Namikaze Minato. The Yondaime Hokage who perished sealing the Kyuubi into Naruto.

Several options occur to Konan at once:

1) Obito is lying. Unlikely, but not impossible.

2) Obito has been made to believe he is currently on the same genin team as a jounin and a dead kage. Even more unlikely, but given the state of Obito’s body, his mind may be in an even worse state.

3) Obito is on the team he believes himself to be, but he has been kept in this cave for years, frozen in time, powering some kind of jutsu or device for the old man. The least likely option so far, but unfortunately, somehow… not impossible.

4) Obito is telling the truth, and Madara’s jutsu sent Konan almost twenty years back in time. Zetsu had appeared exactly as he always had, but Akatsuki has had several ‘immortal’ members, most of whom had spent their entire lives chasing eternal youth. And that sheet of paper had borne the imprint of Konan’s own chakra, so much weaker than it should have been, along with the memory of losing it back when she was a teenager.

Before Yahiko sacrificed himself.

Konan forces her thoughts into order. There will be time to dwell on all of this later – perhaps there will always be time, depending on what exactly Madara had done to her – but for now, she must gather as much information as she possibly can.

“What was the last Shinobi World War?” She asks, her voice perfectly measured and even.

Obito gives her a deeply confused look, cutting off what he’d been saying while she had lost focus. “The Second, I guess? With the Sannin and stuff.”

Konan closes her eyes, shifting her feet to firm her stance after her legs suddenly trembled.

That would make the war Obito mentioned the Third Shinobi World War.

If true, it is before everything. Akatsuki exists, but only as it was originally meant to be, a resistance against a tyrannical force. Yahiko is alive, Nagato is whole. Madara has not yet tainted their cause.

I was the one who convinced Yahiko to start the revolution, Madara whispers in the back of her mind, I gave Nagato the Rinnegan in the first place.

The first is easy to debunk – Konan had been present the moment Yahiko had decided enough was enough, and no mental suggestion would have been so delayed, but the second claim… the Rinnegan was supposed to be a miracle. A gift for Ame, a precious power born within their walls, destined to protect them. Nagato became Pain to give the entire village the hope to go on, to not crumble beneath the collective weight of the Great Shinobi Countries.

“I was testing your memory.” She says smoothly. He visibly relaxes, taking her word for it. “Now – are you here by choice, Obito?”

He stiffens, darting a glance at the old man’s crumpled form, then the wide open doorway of the cave.

Konan kneels down, resting her hands on the edge of the mattress. The bedframe is made from gnarled branches – literally. It’s not carved wood, nor branches arranged to form a shape. The branches have grown this way.

Mokuton?

“…No,” he says, very quietly, and big, fat tears plop down onto the white sheets, “I really, really want to go home. I can’t be ungrateful to him, since I should be dead and all, but… I… I’d give anything to see them again.”

“Them?” Konan asks.

She is not unmoved by his suffering. She tries not to let herself feel others’ pain too deeply, as doing so will only lead down one of two paths, despair or apathy. But she feels his desperation in every flicker of his candle’s flame chakra.

Obito takes in a deep, shuddering breath, “My team. R-Rin. Minato-sensei. Kakashi. My friends. My family.”

“The Uchiha?”

His face screws up and he wipes his eye roughly, “No! Not them. My team are my family. They’re my whole world.”

Konan grips the bed, ever so slightly.

Yahiko and Nagato’s faces swim before her. Even Jiraiya’s big grin. To her horror, she realises tears have formed, already ready to spill down her cheeks, and there’s no sign she’ll regain her composure before the boy notices.

“They don’t know you’re here,” she says, knowing it’s true before he even responds.

“They think I’m dead. We were on a mission against Iwa and they kidnapped Rin! Kakashi and I saved her, but they brought the cave down while we were still in it… I pushed Kakashi out of the way… and…”

Konan can imagine it all too well. She had been in the girl’s place, once upon a time. Yahiko had killed himself to spare Nagato the agony of doing it himself.

Obito’s mouth wobbles, every inch the child he appears to be. He is overcome for a long, painful moment, his eye squeezed shut.

When he opens it, it’s to the sight of Konan holding out an origami peony.

He can’t hide the surprised joy that flits across his face. He really is just a boy. Konan feels the confirmation sink in her gut.

He takes the paper peony with unexpectedly gentle hands, very carefully turning it all the way around to inspect every single petal. He’s smiling despite the tears glinting on his cheeks.

“You did a brave thing,” Konan says, and means it with every inch of her soul.

His chin trembles, tears threatening once more.

He throws his arms around her neck, so sudden and unexpected that it’s only the lack of malice in his chakra that keeps Konan from automatically defending herself.

“Thank you,” he murmurs into her hair, “can I go home? Is it okay?”

Konan allows the embrace for as long as she can bear it, then draws back, making sure to keep the boy steady on the bed as she moves away.

“Can ‘Madara’ survive being removed from the tree?” Konan asks, quirking a brow at the guilt that crosses the boy’s face at the mention of the old man.

“I… I don’t think so. If he could, I don’t think he would’ve needed me. But he was very clear. I had to stay. Did you see two guys, by the way? They’re white and black, and kinda weird-looking and goofy, but they’ve helped me out a lot while I was here. I think I might have gone crazy without them,” He admits, scrubbing the back of his head with a sheepish grin.

“I didn’t see anyone like that,” Konan says, perfectly honest. She only saw Zetsu when it had formed one body, not split in two. She gets the feeling Obito will be upset to hear what she’d done to it. It was fortunate she had left its remains buried beneath rock.

Obito slumps, “Oh… I feel bad about leaving the old guy on his own.”

“If he truly is Uchiha Madara, being alone was very much his preference, historically speaking,” Konan points out.

She could delay no longer. The old man could wake any minute, and that would make it infinitely harder to persuade Obito to leave.

She opens her hand, paper forming in the centre of her palm. Obito stares, awe-struck. The paper tucks itself into the shape of a small, burning fire, with two firm straps on the back.

She places the paper over the boy’s good eye carefully, allowing the straps to curl around his ear, forming an eyepatch. The boy allows it, sitting patiently, far too trusting for his own good.

“What’s this for?” He asks. “I can’t see anything now.”

Konan forms hand seals, then catches the boy when he drops like a rock. She lowers him gently, laying his head on the pillow. She’d placed a light genjutsu to convince him to fall asleep for a little while. He won’t lose time when he wakes, he’ll just assume it’s the same moment she placed the paper eyepatch on him.

Konan approaches the so-called Madara, contempt curling her lips.

Her hand cracks against his face.

There’s no visible change, but his chakra flickers ever so slightly.

Very well, she thinks, her eyes falling on her next target, time to see what you’re made of.

She cuts the closest wire with a slash of razor-sharp paper, stepping back sharply when it hisses violently in response, a disgusting white liquid sluggishly oozing out of it.

A pained moan draws her attention back to the old man.

Aware of his Sharingan, Konan fixes her gaze to the side of his head. She often did the same with Itachi, out of habit. She assumes he didn’t take offence. She never did whenever a member balked at the appearance of paper they hadn’t bought themselves.

“Who are you?” The man rasps, his voice tight with pain and anger.

“No one in particular. Who are you?”

“I am Uchiha Madara.” The man proclaims, a withered hand reaching out to gesture up at her. “You should not be here.”

“Neither should the child you abducted,” Konan replies.

The man coughs out a laugh, breath rattling in his chest, heavy with fluid, “The boy is family. I have a right.”

Already quite finished with this conversation, Konan decides to end it with a test.

“Do you have a dream?” She asks.

The man pauses, then seems to dismiss her altogether, mumbling to himself. She has to lean closer just to catch the words.

“…will build a world of my own, where pain and lies do not exist, and there is only the beauty of truth…”

“Build it for yourself in hell,” Konan says, her voice glacial, “where the only truth you will have to comfort yourself is the certainty of your own failure.”

The old man merely laughs once more, tipping his head back as if accepting his fate.

She makes it quick out of necessity rather than mercy.

She carries Obito out of the room to ensure he won’t catch even a glimpse of the dead man, then returns to finish her work. She dislikes killing. Permanence is always hard to accept. The unclean aspects of shinobi life are necessary to build the path to peace, but she takes no pleasure in it.

She does not enjoy removing the man’s Sharingan and placing it within a paper box, but she does so knowing it may be Obito’s, and that she certainly cannot leave it for the vultures of enemy nin to pluck out for their own gain, regardless of to whom it belongs. She liberally employs her newly-inked explosive tags all over the tree and the wires, just in case.

By the time Obito wakes, she has destroyed the remnants of the man who would remake the world in his own vision, and the satisfaction of avenging herself and her loved ones carries them all the way to the safety of the surface.

Madara had told them his dream when they came to him, still young and raw from Yahiko’s death.

“I will make the world a place where reality is truth, and there is no need for pain.”

***

Hello, friends!

So I didn’t plan to write this, it just happened. I stopped reading the manga before Konan really showed up (Pain was only ever in shadow and called Leader-sama, Itachi was unambiguously evil, Tobi was a fun lil goof, etc.), so all of my knowledge of her comes from reading a few chapters and a lot of wiki pages. I can’t really say what inspired this besides the fact that I adore writing time travel fix-it fics, and I’d never read one with Konan before. It was also upon realising just how much would change if Obito was rescued that made me bring her back to this specific point. I also liked the idea of Obito murdering her, and then the very first thing she does upon waking up alive is save Obito.

Apparently Konan is an INFJ, just like me, so I hope that means I’ll be able to write her well! <3

I’ve decided to make her very strong because literally every member of Akatsuki is a powerhouse, and we didn’t really get to see Konan fight that much, so I’m gonna err on the side of badass rather than assume she’s weak (especially considering how damn close she came to killing Obito).

I’m really not going alien rabbit goddess territory, hence why Zetsu was so easily killed, because I just. Cannot. Write. That. I’m going off early characterisation and fanon, back when everyone knew Tobi was Obito and was super mad when he revealed himself to be Madara only to later turn out to not actually be Madara. And yes, as far as I can tell, Konan died believing Obito was Madara, so if that’s not true… it’s not a plot hole, it’s an artistic choice. Hehe. Trust me?

This is Tsunade/Konan because I thought about who Konan would probably hate the most out of all the traditionally ‘good’ characters, and Tsunade came to mind. They didn’t have the best first meeting, after all. Also this is a weird point in the timeline in which everyone I would normally ship Konan with is either too young or not born yet lol.

I’ve already written the next chapter, so this will be updated pretty quickly!

Thank you to my bunny beta who was extremely helpful in the brainstorming process <3

Ngl I’m open to writing poly, and I love reading comments about what you guys ship, so please let me know!

Quick poll for fun: Who do you ship Konan with? If you don’t have a ship, who would you like to see her with?