The Fallen

THE FALLEN ch.2



Konan squeezes the excess water from the rag and presses to Nagato’s swollen face in an attempt to soothe his pain, then dips another rag in the river and carefully starts washing away the blood from his thighs, working her way up to his bottom. Ever since they were released, her partner hasn’t said a word.



After the ordeal in the square was over, Tsunade appeared. Unlike the old man, she didn’t make any melodramatic speeches, she simply announced that she’d be placing two jutsus on them. One, to permanently block access to their chakra, and two, a compulsion to prevent them from taking their own lives.



Konan closes her jade eyes and forces herself to repress the memory of the laughing crowd. She has to take care of Nagato now. When it was all over, they were given two dirty and far too big and wide shirts to wear and then they were released. Konan was very sore and probably more than a little torn, but Nagato, being male and his body far less ready to accommodate such intrusion, was barely able to walk. So with much effort, she managed to drag him away from the mob and into parts of Konoha that were less populated. Currently, they were hidden under a bridge that ran over a river in one of the many parks of the village. The place was away from the residential areas, almost by the great wall that encompassed Konohagakure.



Looking down at her partner, she sighs and then goes to the fast running water to clean the rags and goes back to him, pressing the cool cloth to his nose and ear. The bastard that violated her lover had reached and torn out several of his piercings, both on his ear and his nose and now the young man looks like hell. He lost consciousness and collapsed when they reached the bridge and the blue-haired woman is almost grateful for it, despite her worry that he might have lost too much blood. She knows that he is strong physically, that he will pull through, despite the horrible tearing and the blood-loss, but she can feel her stomach curl upon itself with anxiety over his emotional state once he wakes up.



What was done to them was terrible, an act that Pein would have never, EVER condoned in Amegakure, regardless of what he had done with Hanzou and his associates. He was ruthless and efficient towards his enemies, but Konan was sure that it has never even passed his mind to humiliate them, especially in that way.



When that man had forced himself on her, it had been a profoundly traumatizing event, and yet it wasn’t that act that caused her the greater agony. It was Pein’s expression while he suffered the same fate. She had been forced to look into his eyes the whole time, and him into hers, and she had seen something within him snap and break and wither away. And then he had started crying. He had been completely silent the entire time, regardless of how he suffered physically, but those tears slowly slid down his porcelain cheeks, the light in his eyes fading into agony and anguish the likes of which she had seen only when Yahiko died.



Konan reaches to the matted ginger hair and gently pets the messy locks. Their fate is uncertain now and whatever the future holds for them it won’t be good.





The first thing Jiraiya feels when he wakes up is unpleasant and persistent itching on his nose. It crawls up and down on his flesh like the tiny little feet of several ants bent on dancing a jig.



So he scrunches up his face and sneezes. Unfortunately, this proves to be a bad decision, because the sudden movement sends a spike of pain through his half-healed ribs. He winces and slowly opens his bleary eyes, making an effort to focus them. For a moment, all he sees is white until his vision clears out and he realizes he’s looking up at a cracked bleached ceiling. Turning his head to the side, the Sannin surveys his surroundings – he’s in a small, clean room, lying on a non-descript bed. The floor is covered with beige tiles and the walls are painted pale green. Oh. He’s in the Konoha hospital. There is a machine he’s hooked up to, and if it had a head, it’d be beeping it off with all the noise it produces. Suddenly, a nurse bursts in his room, takes one look at him and screeches “Tsunade-samaaaa! HE’S AWAKE!”



Jiraiya winces at the ringing in his ears and regrets that he’s such a gentleman, because otherwise he’d have stuffed a sock in her mouth by now to make her be quiet.



In less than a minute, Tsunade enters his room and approaches the bed cautiously.



“Jiraiya?” she asks, watching him watching her.



“Well, hello, there, babe.” His eyes fall onto her ample bust. “You have no idea the kind of view I have from here” he says and exaggerates a leer.



Tsunade sighs with relief. “You’re awake, alright” she states a small, but pleased smile. “Now you can go to the bathroom on your own and we can pull the catheter out!”



The white-haired man’s smile immediate fizzles out of existence. “You didn’t!”



She grins wider. “Oh, of course I did.” Then she turns serious and leans to check on his vital organs. “And you’re healing fine. You gave us quite the scare, you know? You were badly injured, had a big internal bleeding. For some time I thought you wouldn’t make it”



Jiraiya’s expression has turned somber as well. “I am alive, Tsunade. It’s okay now.”



She finds his hand and squeezes it. “Just rest”



He nods, but then his gaze falls onto the window looking to the small inner yard the hospital has. There is a cherry tree right before his room, and its leaves were red and brown and yellow, rainwater dripping from them. Apparently, it’s late autumn. As far as Jiraiya can remember, he fought Pein in the last days of Winter.



“Tsunade” he starts slowly “How long was I out?”



The woman’s smile fades. “Almost five months”



He gapes at her, then makes an effort to get up from the bed, but she quickly presses him back onto the pillow.



“You must rest.”



“But the Akatsuki!” he exclaims.



Tsunade makes a long, strange pause and a cloud flashes over her fase before all emotion drains from her expression.



“They were dealt with and are no longer a threat. Just rest, okay?”



And before he can ask what the hell that “dealt with” means, she leaves the room.



***************************************************************************



After the sun sets that same day when his former Sensei wakes up, Pein and Konan get out from under the bridge and start their nightly scavenging for food.

The whole village knows who they are, having witnessed the humiliation on the city square. The two of them had made a several early attempts to find a respectable job, but they had been literally thrown out or kicked out. Stealing had been out of the question, if they were caught the retribution would have been brutal. And even if that wasn’t the case, this was still a ninja village, thieving was virtually impossible.

So now, their only source of any sort of food is the trash cans. They go through them during the night when the streets almost empty. This way, there is less chance that someone would harass them or hit them or do worse than that.



While the two of them slink down a dirty side alley, Konan looks at her partner. It has been almost four months since that horrible day in the city square. Logically, she knows that the experience damaged her almost beyond repair, giving her terrible nightmares and even worse waking dreams but her true worry is Nagato, as he wished to be called now. Again. Ever since that happened, he has been almost silent. He has never been a very talkative person, but now he has withdrawn into himself, barely acknowledging the world around them, unless there was something he could do for her. He never ignored her needs, if anything, he has become even more attentive than before. Even so, his eyes almost never meet hers, being almost permanently glued to the ground. Pein, leader of the Akatsuki, is apparently dead. All pride and power have been taken away from him, all his plans have gone down the drain. It hurts her to see this shell of a man in the place of her once almost god-like partner. She has never truly believed in his divinity but she has chosen to follow him because she loves him, and because she believed in his vision for the future. But now, that person has been replaced with this timid and shy creature and it makes her want to scream and grab him and shake him, yet she refrains from such an act because she knows she would only hurt him more should she do so.



And here he is, looking into the trash can, shuffling its contents and looking for something edible.



Konan suppresses a sigh. What a wretched existence they lead. Had it not be the compulsion jutsu, she would have killed them both long time ago, but now all she can do is strive for physical survival. Cold wind gusts through the narrow street and they both shiver. Winter would be coming soon.



When Konan isn’t looking at him Nagato watches her. Sometimes. She looks like she did back then, dirty and in ragged clothes, too thin for her own good. There is a bruise on her jaw from the man who caught them going through his trash two days ago. He quickly averts his eyes back to the garbage and finally notices a half-eaten soggy piece of bread. Other than being wet, it actually seems pretty fresh.

They haven’t had almost anything to eat ever since the day they got caught going through the traash. Picking the food out he cleans it as best as he can and passes it to Konan, who gives him a look. “We’ll split it” she says firmly. “I already ate” he lies even as he feels his stomach trying to chomp onto itself from hunger. Konan presses her lips together distrustfully, but she doesn’t argue. She cannot afford to do so and attract someone’s attention to them. So she obediently eats it, but her eyes, sad and accusing, never leave him. He can see she has difficulty chewing with that bruised jaw, despite her effort to hide it. This is all his fault. He got her into this mess. Nagato swallows past the lump in his throat and looks down again. Another gust of cold wind chills him to the bone and he sniffs to stop his nose from running. It’s getting colder and colder, and from what he knows about Konoha, their winters up here can be pretty nasty, considering the mountainous region where the village is situated. Him and Konan will have to find warmer clothing if they are to survive the coming cold season.





Three weeks after his waking up in the hospital, Jiraiya is slowly recuperating. He has been in coma for nearly five months and despite the nurses’ best efforts to exercise his unresponsive body, he has lost weight and muscle-mass, not to mention mobility. Everything is stiff and sore, but he is training every day, slowly returning to his previous state. He knows he’s far from reaching his peak, but he’s on his way and that is a small consolation.



A day after he could walk again on his own he discharged himself from the hospital, despite the prospect of being coddled by many pretty nurses. He may be an incorrigible flirt and a womanizer, but he has no desire for any woman to see him that weak and incapacitated, least of all Tsunade. Not that she doesn’t know, but still, it’s one thing to know and completely another to be a witness. She called him a “mule-headed and pea-brained bastard” for doing so, but he still left and went to his own house. Unlike what some might have expected of him, being a wanderer and a recluse, he did own a nice house in a reputable part of the village.



Being a nin as good as he is, he’s very well aware and knowledgeable about what he needs to do to get his body back in shape, so he loses no time in beginning a training and eating schedule.



During that time the weather has been turning worse and worse - cold winds, even colder rains - and there was frost covering everything like a fine crystal blanket every morning. He often sits by his window in those frosty mornings, looking out to the busy street below and drinking warm tea from a jug which handle has long been chipped away. Orochimaru gave him this for his 16th birthday, many years ago. Now it seems like it has never really happened. Jiraiya tries not to dwell on memories much – most of those are really painful, starting with his former partner and ending with Nagato’s betrayal. That particular memory still fills him with coldly bubbling rage inside. He took in those little runts, took care of them, gave them the opportunity to survive and become better people once they grew up, and they twisted and corrupted his gift. Sometimes he wonders whose betrayal is greater, Orochimaru’s or Nagato’s. He has often thought to ask Tsunade what happened with his former student, but he refrained from going to her for the time being, should she decide to knock him out and drag him back to the hospital. Knowing the blond woman, she’s fully capable of doing so.



It is during one of these mornings when the Sannin opens his cupboard and realizes he’s got no more tea left. Frowning, the white-haired man glares into the empty jar as if trying to intimidate it into producing more leaves but it stubbornly resists his stare. Finally, he sighs and puts it back in the cupboard, then goes to find his coat. It’s time to venture out for groceries. It’s very early in the morning, but he’s well aware that some vendors start even before dawn in hopes for more profit. Most of those stores though are set into the poorer part of Konoha, away from Jiraiya’s neighbourhood. A good old-fashioned jump-traveling over the familiar roofs of the village is in order. The man grins at himself. It’d be a good morning exercise. With a burst of chakra focused in his feet he dashes towards his chosen destination.



The store is situated in a usually busy market street, which due to the early hour is nearly empty, save for the sleepy stray cat slinking away into a dark and narrow alley. He absently follows the feline with his eyes until his gaze falls on two dark figures in the shadows. Jiraiya has always been a curious man. So now, he cannot withstand the temptation and he sneaks to the corner overlooking the dirty side-street, carefully peeking in it. What his sees makes him widen his eyes and leer, his inner pervert immediately waking up from his dormancy. The two figures are apparently a prostitute and a client. The prostitute, a male, is kneeling down among the frost and the trash between the man’s braced legs. The client is clutching spiky ginger locks of hair, roughly thrusting in the whore’s mouth. The Sannin is a pervert, he has always labeled himself so, and under any other circumstances the scene before him would have made his loins burn with desire, but something about this particular case makes him feel ill at ease. He notices how very thin the young man seems to be under the flimsy rags he’s wearing – they are falling over one slender shoulder which is, along with his toes and fingers almost blue with cold. He’s trembling, entire body writhing from the way the other man is thrusting harshly in his mouth apparently choking and suffocating him. It all makes Jiraiya frown, it may be a poor prostitute, but he has always disapproved of such rough treatment. Before he can make up his mind about interfering though, the man finishes and holds the ginger head in place, coming inside the other male’s mouth with a moan. The whore chokes and gags and digs his nails into clothed hips but doesn’t bite down in an attempt free himself. Finally, the client pulls him away roughly from him, making him stagger and brace his hands on the dirty ground lest he falls over. The ginger-haired man heaves and coughs but the other only laughs mockingly and derisively and throws several coins on the ground next to him, then walks away in the other direction.



The figure of the red-head prostitute is still for a while, curled on his knees on the ground between the trash and the scurrying rats, shivering and rocking on his place a few times, as if trying to comfort himself, then reaches with blue and trembling fingers for the coins, desperately picking them up and putting them away in a pocket somewhere in his rags. He looks so pitiful that Jiraiya finally decides to interfere and slowly walks inside the alley.



As he approaches the younger male, he’s finally able to make out his facial features and it gives him an even bigger shock. This man looks disturbingly like a grown up Yahiko would have looked like. The resemblance is so deeply unnerving that Jiraiya stops in his tracks, staring at him. He doesn’t seem to notice him at first, seemingly lost in his own world but finally becomes aware of another presence in the alley with him and quickly looks up.



Okay. He knows these eyes. He would never be able to forget them. Nagato’s eyes look at him from Yahiko’s face in shock which quickly gives way to fear and overwhelming shame. The pale face colors crimson and the young man looks back down at the dirty ground, his shoulders sagging.



A thousand questions buzz in Jiraiya’s mind, starting with “What the fuck are you doing here?” and ending with “Why the fuck do you wear Yahiko’s face, you bastard?” but the shock and the confusion of all that he just witnessed is simply too much to comprehend at same time, so with a soft growl he turns on his heel and walks away. He has to have a long, serious talk with Tsunade.