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If he had been asked about the most beautiful woman in the world, he would have answered without hesitation - Konan. Frankly, she was the only woman he'd seen in the past twenty-five years. He had met her at ten, hadn't he? Nagato had little recollection of how old he was then. Some things he had forgotten of his own free will. And, unfortunately for him, there were too many. And others refused to leave their hiding place at all. His mother's appearance flashed torn scraps of images, filled with tenderness soaked in pain. She had beautiful wine-red hair and gray eyes-that he remembered for sure. And he also knew that he had gone into her. In many ways.
If he had been asked the same question now-he would have thought. Uzumaki Karin was ridiculous in that eerie celebration of bright red, but also - and eerily appealing. Nagato couldn't explain the feeling. And neither could Karin. She seemed to come to them from a completely different world-albeit a flighty, bright one. Not so dark and cruel.
Lies.
Uzumaki Karin had many hideous scars on her body - the effects of her gift, and in her memory, only Orochimaru's experiments and the life of a child forced to grow up too soon. She hid her pain behind revealing clothes and defiant behavior, but as soon as Suigetsu crossed the line, she erupted. Nagato didn't like messes. And he didn't like those who made it. But Karin didn't want to cause any harm. He was lenient toward her. And he was willing to forgive her petty blunders and essentially childish antics.
Nagato had once hidden the same scars that had become almost invisible in the darkness of his hideout, but still reeked of a painful, coming-of-age realization: humans were cruel. He had no gift for Karin. But in war and beyond, there had to be a way to survive.
In her pale red eyes, in her disheveled scarlet hair, he saw that imprint, that mark of pain. Perhaps that was what bound them together.
When she had first crossed the border of Amegakure, he had felt an inexplicable sense of kinship. At first he was surprised. As he had been when he had first learned as a child that there was no war out there somewhere. And so was she: she paused, staring puzzled at his rain-soaked clothes. She looked back, now at Madara, now at the other members of the team. Madara didn't clarify. But this time it was for the best.
As she stepped up the stairs leading to the top floors of his tower, she ran her fingertips along the walls, as if everything in this village was alive with the endless bitterness of loss. Amegakure was alive, and, Uzumaki was sure, the steel thing had a heart. Hypertrophied, weak, beating with the last of its strength, but - alive. And its throbbing sounded like the lulling cradle of a caring mother. It made me want to cry on the spot. Sobbing. To let everything out.
Maybe scream.
But she couldn't - Sasuke was watching. Suigetsu, after all. And Madara.
The stairs were floating before her eyes, and Karin could see, no, she could feel it in her gut: the whole city was saturated with someone else's powerful chakra. It was in the water, in the concrete and steel, and even in the people it glowed. Somewhere more, somewhere less, but it was like a dome enveloping Ame, an unbreakable wall protecting her from other people's grasping paws. And suddenly for herself Karin felt relieved - for she was welcome here for some reason. Surprised, but welcome. She felt that, too. She wanted to, damn it, she wanted to run to meet her mother like she had when she was a child, to hug her, to look into the old but sturdy bags of groceries. Sasuke seemed insignificant, flawlessly petty and unimportant. All of a sudden it didn't bother her.
It got easier.