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Obito sobs the second he breathes in fresh air.

Konan hurriedly takes off the eyepatch, watching his red eye gleam in wonder even as his pupil shrinks in the sunlight.

He falls to his knees, burying his face in the grass.

Konan lowers herself to the ground, meaning to encourage him to stand again, but instead sits back, allowing him to clutch her and wail like an abandoned infant. She holds his good shoulder and rocks it a little, uncertain of what to do in this situation. She hasn’t seen someone so openly and unashamedly emotional since witnessing Uzumaki Naruto’s self-righteous rage.

Naruto.

If Obito truly is correct, then Naruto has not been born yet. It would be a worthy choice to dedicate herself to building a world fit to bear his vision of peace.

“How long has it been?” Konan asks, her voice coming out softer than she had intended, less interrogative and more sympathetic.

“I… I don’t know,” Obito says, wretched, “It was June when the mission started. I don’t know if it’s been months or years.”

Konan needs it to have been months.

Minato was alive when Obito last saw him. That means it must be at the very least seventeen years in the past, because Namikaze Minato dies the same year Naruto is born on the tenth of October. Which could potentially be this October. It doesn’t feel cold enough to be October yet, but Konan isn’t overly familiar with this region’s climate. Obito said the Third Shinobi War was still going. Konan is aware it ended before Minato became Hokage, so it makes sense that he would have been active as a jounin sensei at that point. If the war is still going, there is every chance Yahiko is still alive. He died the year before Naruto was born. The war ended in September, the celebrations of peacetime salt in the wounds of their grief. The great nations shared toasts to peace while Ame licked its wounds, a kicked dog finally allowed to limp to the shadows for some respite.

Konan takes a deep breath, forcing the icy prickles of panic to abate, then squeezes Obito’s shoulder to get his attention. He looks up at her, mangled and used for ill, but still somehow capable of trusting her, a complete stranger. It is strangely painful to bear.

“There are people who need my help,” Konan says, hoping she can word this in such a way that Obito will find persuasive rather than cruel, “I need to leave.”

To her surprise, Obito’s eye lights up, “Someone needs help? I’m coming!”

Konan can only stare at him. He has been held captive for months at minimum by a madman who mangled his body and planned to use him for his own gain, and his first instinct upon his rescuer abandoning him is to demand that he help? Can it be possible for this boy to have the same will of fire that drove Yahiko, then Nagato, and finally Naruto?

“It’s not safe. You’re still very weak. I wouldn’t leave you if I wasn’t absolutely certain that it was a matter of life or death,” Konan says firmly.

Obito frowns, “Are you okay? You’re shaking.”

Konan very deliberately tucks her hands in her sleeves. She tosses her hair out of her face and marks the position of the sun with a quick look. It’s noon. She still has plenty of daylight.

“I’m fine, Obito-kun,” she says, the suffix forming naturally without much thought, “but I can’t stay. I’m not going to leave you here, but I’m uncomfortable taking you to a safe place where you may feel as though I have abandoned you.”

Obito considers her words, then shakes his head aggressively, “I’ll be fine!! You’ve got to go, so don’t worry about me! I don’t even need to eat or drink anymore, thanks to… whatever this is.” He says, gesturing at the white expanse of flesh across his left side.

He knows what it is. Konan allows herself a small smile, proud of his attempts at deception.

“You will have plenty to eat and drink. We’re near Takigakure, and I have a good hideout there that is fully-stocked at all times, and perfectly safe. If you promise to stay inside and take care of yourself, I will be back without delay,” Konan says firmly, conveying her refusal to bend on this issue.

Obito makes a restless, abortive movement, almost like he was reaching for something to hide his face. His healthy cheek reddens before he asks, “Will this hideout have any books? I just… I’ve been so bored!”

Konan almost lets out an amused noise, but instead pushes herself to her feet, guiding Obito to join her, and says, “It should have everything you need, Obito-kun. Now, hold on as tight as you can.”

Obito snatches his hands away, the flush on his face darkening, “What?!”

Konan retrieves his hands and places his arms around her neck, then –

“Whoa!!” Obito yells, a delighted laugh shocked out of him as they soar upwards, Konan’s paper wings unfolding as they go.

Konan has her arms looped firmly around the boy’s back, unwilling to trust his grip in his emaciated state.

“You can fly?!” Obito shrieks.

The world stretches out before them. Miles below, Madara and Zetsu lie twisted and broken, the rotten core of the Mountain’s Graveyard, but up here, the air is pure and everything is light, and soon not even the clouds can darken the view after they burst through the vapour, protected from getting soaked only by Konan’s small fuuton jutsu.

Obito can only look around them at the vast expanse of clouds, glittering gold in the sunlight, his head swivelling about to catch every angle of the gorgeous view.

“I will take you to a safe place,” Konan tells him, “I will not be long. And I will come back for you.”

Obito falters, his hands slipping a little against her wings.

He takes a good long look at her face, then says, with great feeling, “…you promise?”

“I swear upon all I hold dear,” Konan says, her voice grave.

He smiles, a beautiful, unbroken thing, and buries his face in her neck once more.

She can see Takigakure in the distance. The safehouse she mentioned was in use during the Second Shinobi War, but had long since been forgotten, although Akatsuki had taken to using it whenever necessary.

She will take Obito there, secure in the knowledge that the boy was safe, and then she will go to Ame and finally find out if she is too late – or right on time.

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She isn’t sure when she made the conscious decision to take Obito with her. Tracking Zetsu down had been the obvious choice. He was Madara’s ally, Madara was her enemy, thus he needed to be taken out. And then, the discovery of the manmade cave system, the frightened child’s voice, the strange old man on his broken throne, it had all been too important to simply discard and move on from. She had to investigate.

And then Obito was so small and pale. So utterly helpless. Held captive by Madara of all people, who had looked at her like a stranger. The whole situation had felt wrong. The only way to put it right was to save the boy and kill the man. That was the conclusion she had drawn.

She does not know what conclusion will come from her trip to Amegakure.

She hopes she will arrive to find three orphans, safe and sound, so foolishly hopeful for a better future that they believed anything would be worth seeing their dream come true. Still somehow unprepared for the sacrifice it would take.

She is terrified she will arrive after, when Nagato is injured and hurting deep inside, and Yahiko is nothing but a chasm in their hearts, Akatsuki’s red clouds no longer signified the bloodshed of war that had fallen like gruesome rain upon Ame, but the blood of their fallen hero and founding member, Yahiko.

Some days it had been easy to forget he was gone, staring at his face giving orders to their team, carrying out his work, changing the world, bit by bit. Always building towards that bright future. But mostly, Pain’s blank, stoic face was alien and wrong, nothing at all like Yahiko’s fire or enthusiasm for life.

Konan isn’t sure she can survive losing that fire a second time.

It’s a relief when she arrives to a village in lockdown, the military rule plain to see, Hanzo’s followers lining the streets at all hours, Ame’s civilians walking with their heads down. Desperate not to make trouble. Akatsuki had been the only ones who had dared to defy Hanzo, the man so powerful he had defeated not just their sensei, but his teammates.

Konan has to take a long moment, lying down in a ramshackle house she’d found abandoned on the outskirts of the village. She presses her face into the dusty, long-untouched cushions on the sofa, and cries, long and hard. Tears are not a luxury she allows herself often. Even as a child, though she was often quick to tear up, she’d force herself to regain her composure, never wanting to appear weak. Not after Yahiko and Nagato became her world. She had to be one of the three pillars holding up Akatsuki, so that Akatsuki may hold up Amegakure. There was no alternative. Over the years, her face had set in an expressionless mask, emotion buried deep, felt but not shared. Nagato knew what she felt with only a glance, of course, but to the rest of the world Konan may well have been made of the same paper she wielded: blank, bone-white, and fragile only in appearance. As beautiful as a painting, but one without a maker or meaning to tether it to the rest of the world.

Since waking in the past she has been working on instinct, never allowing herself to slow down long enough to fully register the reality she is now existing in. It took ten years for Yahiko’s death to become a normal part of life. Until that point, the world had retained this unrelenting surreal feeling, as though Konan’s life had shifted off-course, and every day took her another mile away from her destined path. She’d longed to wake up and find herself on the old familiar road, but instead she had been forced to keep travelling the wrong way, the reality in which life was Konan, Yahiko, and Nagato, falling ever further into the past.

She’d had to accept the new truth eventually. Time marches on, regardless of its passengers’ will. Truth became Konan and Nagato, their mission, and Akatsuki’s new focus. She could endure the awful reality as long as she knew they were working towards building a new world. Losing Nagato, their mission, focus, and even the possibility of seeing that new world, had been more than she could bear. If Madara hadn’t come to dig the knife in one last time, Konan isn’t certain she would have survived much longer anyway. She’d been pulled by the current, unresisting regardless of its direction, uncaring of her destination.

She would no longer simply endure reality rather than live, or trudge down paths carved by someone else’s will. No, now she would exist on her own terms, charting her own course, and time would have to catch up to her pace, shaped by her will.

Hanzo was alive and his rule was clear. That meant one of two possibilities:

1) This was before Hanzo kidnapped her and forced Yahiko to kill himself

2) This was after the events of that godforsaken day, but before Nagato hunted Hanzo down and killed him.

He’d clung to power for a while after Nagato killed his forces and frightened him off, that day Yahiko died and Nagato’s powers awakened. It took a full decade to finally kill the man himself.

If Konan has missed her chance to save Yahiko again, she will take out her frustrations on Hanzo, and he will wish she’d grant him the mercy of a quick death before a decade passes. She won’t.

It’s far too easy to infiltrate the village. This is her village, she knows every single inch, every crack, every puddle, every secret way and hidden passage. She spent years living in its shadows, occasionally rising to bask in the watery sunlight, to be the angel the people needed.

She walks through the streets, listening hard for information. There are no whispers of Akatsuki. The people are too cowed to risk even speaking of sedition in case they are accused of it. Konan still remembers the day Hanzo had presented the village with a handful of his own shinobi, passing them off as traitors who had colluded with Akatsuki. He had executed them then and there, with only Nagato’s grip keeping Yahiko from barrelling down to die in their defence. They hadn’t worked with them. They’d never seen them before in their lives. Hanzo had simply used them as scapegoats to make the villagers think he could find rebellion in places even they could not.

It is endlessly frustrating, to be so close to the answers she so desperately sought, and yet somehow so far. There were no records of the date in the village, and they certainly didn’t receive news from the outside – they didn’t receive anything from the outside, Hanzo’s isolationist rule demanding they remain utterly in the dark. Konan’s youth had been spent in these bleak, unchanging times, unable to mark the passing of seasons because of the endless rain. Every day was dark, cold, and wet, with nothing but fear and adrenaline to keep them warm.

She gets her answer on the third day.

“Did you hear?” A civilian murmurs to another, barely audible. “Honoka is missing.”

Konan doesn’t allow her pace to slow, carrying on walking with the flow of the crowd. Inside, a mass of emotion is seething, almost beyond control.

She remembers the day Honoka vanished. She was a little girl who had a rudimentary grasp on taijutsu. She’d been known to get into fights defending herself in the streets. There were rumours she had some kind of strange technique. Yahiko had been planning to recruit her, but after today, she was never seen again. Konan now has a good idea why.

Today is the day Hanzo will approach Akatsuki with the offer of a truce. Tomorrow is the day he will destroy everything.

Hanzo had needed Danzo’s help to do it, so he’d sent Konoha’s black ops to bolster his numbers. One of Danzo’s men had probably heard the same rumours about a talented orphan, so he took Honoka back to Konoha for his master to sharpen into a tool.

Konan had got here with less than a week to spare.

Yahiko is alive.

She’s dizzy with the knowledge. She slips into a familiar alley and presses her back against the cold, sodden stone wall. She can barely breathe. Somewhere nearby, Yahiko is walking to his doom.

And now, Konan has a choice to make.

She could approach the trio now and tell them the truth, she is Konan from a dark future, and they will be betrayed tomorrow. Or, she could let Hanzo’s betrayal happen, then swoop in to save them all.

Can she take the risk of failure, however small?

But she knows how her younger self would’ve reacted to being approached by her so-called future self. She would’ve called it a trick and been furious. She wouldn’t have believed it for all the ryo in the land.

And if Konan allows the trio to be betrayed, they will have more reason to leave with her. Because they cannot stay here unprotected. Even if Hanzo fails, Danzo will just keep throwing threats at them until something finally hits hard enough to take them down. And saving them once only to lose them again is unacceptable.

Nagato and Yahiko… and even herself, the poor kid, hopelessly in love but unwilling to let it affect the mission, a fervent believer in their sensei’s teachings, stubbornly clinging to hope that things can be better if they work hard to make it so.

Hanzo’s betrayal had taught them a valuable lesson, but this time, if everything went to plan, Konan could ensure that lesson need not be written in blood.

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Konan’s knees crack against the ground under the force of Hanzo’s shove.

Before she can even take a breath, a kunai appears in front of her face, slick with rain. No scratches or nicks – this is a brand new blade pressed against her throat, the very edge already enough to sting even with only the slight pressure Hanzo is employing.

It would take no effort at all to slit her throat.

How did this happen? She thinks, desolate, how did they go from peace negotiations to dozens of armed men staring Nagato and Yahiko down from above, hopelessly outmatched?

“Your gang is a hindrance to my plans,” Hanzo calls out, his voice calm but strong, projecting enough for the two teens far below to hear clearly, “Yahiko… as the leader, you will die here today. If you don’t, this girl will.”

Konan snarls, only Hanzo’s fierce grip on the back of her neck keeping her from thrashing in protest. No! Yahiko can’t die – not like this! This is all so pointless and unfair! His legacy can’t end here!

Hanzo tosses a kunai down at the boys. It sinks into the ground before them.

“You with the red hair – use this to kill him. If you do, I’ll set the girl free.”

“Don’t, Nagato! Don’t worry about me, you two get out of here!” Konan yells, the words tearing out of her throat.

She can just about see that Nagato is holding something close to his chest. She hopes with all her might it’s not a kunai, but a sick feeling curls in her stomach. Desperation flares, her eyes darting around, searching for anything that might save them, could stop this awful nightmare and restore reality.

She has always had faith, always believed in Jiraiya’s teachings, Yahiko’s vision, Nagato’s future, and her own abilities. Now, stuck on her knees, as useless and helpless as she’d sworn she’d never be again, Jiraiya nowhere to be seen, Yahiko’s life on the line, Nagato’s innocence threatened by this twisted ultimatum, she can’t seem to find her faith.

And then, as if in answer, her faith finds her.

The rain slows down. Clouds part. Watery sunshine filters through, splashing Konan’s face with weak warmth.

She blinks tears out of her eyes and looks up.

There’s an angel in the rain.

A figure in a dark cloak is hovering around twenty feet above them, white wings stretching out behind her, blotting out the sun.

For a moment, everything is silent. A strange peace falls across the mountain.

Then the figure rips apart, thousands of white fragments flying in spirals, and in a moment of awe, Konan realises it’s paper.

Before she can blink, the kunai at her throat is gone, and she is on the ground next to Yahiko and Nagato.

“I – ” She starts, astonished.

Yahiko seizes her, dragging her to her feet and pressing a kunai into her hand.

The figure from the sky stands only a few paces away from them, their back turned, Their hood is up, but it’s very clear they’re wearing a robe meant to evoke Akatsuki’s image, though it’s a lot fancier than anything they’ve made so far. Their wings flap gently even as they stand still, paper rustling like the pages of a hundred books turning at once.

“Hanzo,” The figure says. It’s shocking how much loathing can fit into just two syllables.

When Konan glances at Hanzo and his men, she’s surprised to see them all separated from each other by large sheets of paper, none of which ripple or shift with the wind, unnaturally stiff and strong.

“Who are you?” Hanzo demands. “Another Akatsuki rat, here to die with the rest?”

The figure is as unnaturally still as the sheets of paper they have liberally spread around the enemy nin. Konan realises with a jolt that she is looking at a paper clone.

It’s at that moment of realisation that the massacre begins.

The ground itself that the soldiers stand on suddenly dissipates, paper hissing – no, explosive tags – and they fall as one, screaming as fire tears through the cliffside.

Nagato gasps.

Hanzo has escaped the carnage, flashing directly in front of them with his kusarigama swinging high, aiming for the cloaked figure.

Right as the blade connects, the figure tears apart in a blaze of bright white, and reappears behind Hanzo.

It’s Konan’s turn to gasp.

The clone somehow morphed into an enormous paper shuriken, too close for Hanzo to dodge, right as the cloaked figure arrived at his unprotected back and sliced the straps of his mask off.

The paper shuriken stabs deep into Hanzo’s abdomen. The mask is knocked askew, not quite falling, but clearly ineffective.

“Already dead,” The figure says, their voice icy, “I expected more.”

Hanzo roars, whirling around, the chain of his kusarigama following the movement.

The paper shuriken suddenly spins in reverse, tearing another slice out of the man’s back.

“Are you doing that, Konan?” Yahiko mutters, sounding incredulous.

All she can do is shake her head.

“You want more? I’ll show you what the head of this village is capable of!” Hanzo bellows, nostrils flaring in pure rage, and then –

He stumbles a little, hands reaching up to clutch his throat.

“I already told you. This fight is over.” The cloaked figure says, utterly disinterested in the frenzied choking of the man before them.

Nagato winces at the horrible, desperate sounds Hanzo is making.

Konan checks the cliffside and sees nothing but smoke and crumpled forms of soldiers.

“Here,” The figure says, tossing a kunai at Hanzo’s feet, “take this, and use it to end your miserable life. Your gang is a hindrance to the future of this village.”

Konan holds her breath. They’re mocking him. They’re that confident that they’ve already won?

Hanzo clearly can’t stand it, even in his state, and he seizes the kunai and rushes the cloaked figure.

There’s a hiss, then the world blooms white all around them, even as the loudest bang Konan has ever heard resounds throughout the clearing, echoing against the rock.

They’d been encased in a paper dome, which falls away gently, seemingly unhindered by the downpour.

Hanzo is lying in a puddle of gore, his body rent to bloody pieces, smoke still rising from his remains.

The cloaked figure stands over him. Their head tilts at the Akatsuki members before them, seeming almost concerned.

“You put an explosive tag on the kunai,” Yahiko says slowly.

The figure nods.

“I also poisoned him,” They add, sounding like an afterthought, “the paper shuriken was soaked in a toxin that would slow him down and block his airways.”

“That’s why you cut off his mask!” Yahiko says.

“No. I did that because I wanted to. The poison entered his bloodstream through his wounds, he didn’t need to ingest it.” The person sounds a little exasperated.

“Did you… did you kill all those soldiers?” Nagato asks, hesitant.

The figure takes a long moment to answer. When they do, there’s not a trace of emotion in their voice, “Yes. I covered the cliff with paper camouflaged to look like the rest of the rocky ground, which I had previously carved out and lined with explosive tags.”

“Previously… you knew this was going to happen?” Yahiko says, suspicion entering his voice.

The figure nods, “I heard the members of Akatsuki would be ambushed at the peacekeeping meeting, so I prepared for that eventuality.”

“But… why would you help us?” Nagato asks, heart-breakingly confused. “And why do you have Konan’s technique? I’ve never seen anyone else use paper the way she can.”

The person takes a deep breath, then lowers their hood.

“Wha – ” Yahiko blurts out, glancing between Konan and the stranger’s face.

Konan finds herself clutching his arm for support. She feels light-headed, a cold sweat breaking out on her forehead.

This is…

“Are… are you…” Konan can’t speak, heart beating too fast to focus.

Family?

The woman seems to know exactly what she is thinking, because she shakes her head, then opens her hand. A paper rose forms, exactly the way Konan herself would make it.

“A gift.” The woman says, holding it out to her. “From one Konan to another.”

It’s too much. Konan’s gaze drifts from Hanzo’s mangled body to the corpses littering the cliffside, then back to the stranger’s face – no. Her face.

Her knees buckle, but she doesn’t collapse. Strong hands catch her arms. She lifts her head, and meets her own eyes, older, more world-weary, filled with the heavy knowledge of years Konan herself has yet to see.

“You’re… me?” She says, dazed.

The woman’s face hardens, “If all goes to plan, you will never, ever become me.”

***

Hello, friends!

So when I got the plotbunny to write this fic, I went back to check the timeline and found to my delight that the Kannabi mission and Yahiko’s death happen the same year, vaguely close together, and it was just far too perfect not to write.

I’d considered the idea of Konan lying to baby Konan and pretending to be family, just for the ease of plot, but it just felt out of character. Konan is a logical person, but she’s still driven by emotion, and I couldn’t imagine her deceiving her younger self out of convenience.

(TW: glass, injury - Also just so you guys know, I recently had to go to A&E (the accident and emergency part of hospital) just from WALKING INTO MY OWN ROOM. Bedrooms are dangerous places!! Especially if you accidentally break a perfume bottle, fail to pick up all the shards, then merrily walk straight onto one with your bare foot. PSA, if you get glass (or anything) embedded in your body, NEVER remove it yourself. I’m just saying this because I had to be the one to tell a man in his sixties recently so like. If he didn’t know, some of you might not. Also I was mad because I googled ‘glass in foot’ and literally all the results were ‘how to remove glass from your foot!’ So yeah I texted my sister while sitting in the bath, newly stabbed by glass, and she was like okay lol go to the hospital. So now I have a healing wound that’s shaped like a coin slot. I hope that’s lucky somehow lol)

Yes, Konan kills Hanzo very easily. I know <3

Also can we talk about Kishi calling two villains Danzo and Hanzo and then having them WORK TOGETHER??? Also it really feels like every single bad thing that happened in the series, however implausible, is somehow linked to Danzo. It’s ridiculous.

Apparently Konan is an INFJ (like me!) and Tsunade is an ESTP (though I’ve seen a lot more mixed opinions about her), and that combination is DISASTROUS lmao. Every single article I found was like ‘wow these two are gonna have problems.’ I can’t wait to make those problems a reality.

Konan: goes back in time

Konan: Time to kill my enemies

Konan: finds kidnapped boy in cave

Also Konan: I have a son

She can multitask, okay!

Quick poll for fun: What’s your favourite flavour of ice cream? (if you don’t like ice cream, what do you like?)

I’m a simple spud. I like chocolate on chocolate in chocolate, with chocolate on the side, sprinkled with a light dusting of chocolate.