Author's Note: Stupid and silly, but I've been working on this for a long time off and on. It's not very good, but I wanted to finish it up and open up some space on my fanfiction documents. xD Anyway, thanks for reading this weird little idea of mine.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Walking through the dense forests, he ignores the local wildlife. He doesn't care for the bird's chirping or the frogs evading predators by jumping into the small nearby lake and swimming to safety. He doesn't care for the two rabbits, fleeing at the sight of the tall, green eyed man or his obnoxious white haired companion. He doesn't give the doe, watching him from a nearby clearing, seeing if he'll make any sort of threatening step toward it, a second glance as he makes his way past it and out of its sight.
He didn't even pay attention to the never ending ramblings of his partner at his flank going on and on about one topic or another until it's exhausted and he has nothing more to say on it before moving on. The white haired man didn't care what he was talking about or even if his partner was listening. The silence was what he couldn't stand and so he sought to fill it with his voice. Occasionally he would slip into a topic that his partner would add his two-cents into but never much else. His partner hardly gave up two cents. It was like gold to him.
No, the first man was ignoring all else around, merely allowing himself to focus on one thing: the foliage working hard at retaking the road beneath his feet. Whenever he was in the forest, the man was often left thinking about his greatest battle, and mistake, of his life. It seemed like so long ago now. He was a young man at the time when he came across, perhaps by accident or perhaps by some horrible, taunting twist of fate, the man the world had come to know him as the First Hokage.
Hashirama Senju.
The frolicking tree hugger, as Madara Uchiha had called the man in question on multiple occasions and somehow that name had also become synonyms with the dark haired man before him, was alone. As it seemed like he rarely got such time to himself now that he was known around the world. He was sitting around in the forest, meditating far from the Hidden Leaf but not from the lands the Senju once occupied before the village's founding. He didn't seem to notice Kakuzu right away, or if he did, he didn't react.
Kakuzu had made a choice that day. One that he often fluctuates between being his worst choice ever or his best. His battle with the legendary man didn't last too long, and Kakuzu walked away with his own fair share of scars and pains that never went away, regardless of time, but so did the supposedly greatest shinobi alive. And the fact that Kakuzu had survived that battle and people later claimed that it was what helped claim the mighty Senju's life was a source of great pride for a man such as he.
Even if, at the end of the day, he should never take pride in that day. In the betrayal of his village. How they used him. How they threw him under the stampede to save themselves. How he should have been seen as impeccable, or amazing, for even being able to go toe to toe with the legendary Senju clan leader of the time, he was thrown to the side and left for dead when faced with the might of Tobirama Senju, going to Taki to ake them pay for their attack on the First Hokage. With, or without the brown haired man's permission, Tobirama's message was heard loud and clear.
For the years that followed, prior to the First's death, Kakuzu found a bit of happiness. He had left his home in Taki, them not wanting the stigma that followed him and his family name, and sought adventures on the road. Found a passion for gambling his money away, which in hindsight is almost laughably ironic. Both because his knowledge of his greatest challenges, lust for the dice brings his future miser-like habits bring an unpleasant frown to his face whenever he thinks about it.
In fact, in a way, that was the second step down the road to losing everything. And it wasn't the gambling that brought him to where he was today, traveling closer to the village he had forsaken decades prior, it was a woman he had met at his lowest. When he was down and out, so to speak. She lifted him back up and set him straight. She was blissfully wonderful and as a young man who was so close to the dirt, she was everything that he could have wanted.
Years later, they had a child together, but he carried her name because his was a black mark all around the Land of Fire and the country of his own home village. The village he was born in. It was his home no longer. He never saw that village as his own again once he was betrayed and outcast. It was just the place that helped build him. Call him a monster, call him a liar, call him a traitor. He didn't become this way out of choice. His village, in all the things that he has grown to despise about it, made him the man he is now. Undoing all of his love's good work.
Oh, how they will forever be his reckoning.
It was around the time that his son was three or four years old when news hit.
The First Hokage was dead. According to reports that Kakuzu had heard, people blamed him. Injuries that he had given the First during their battle years prior had shortened his life and made him die prematurely. And for a moment, after hearing that news; Kakuzu was on Cloud Nine. He was the best in the world, the most mighty. Not even Madar Uchiha was a flicker to the inferno that was Kakuzu. It was not believed that the Uchiha's battles with the Senju had shortened his life prematurely.
It was Kakuzu's.
But then the worst possible thing could have happened: Konoha's Second Hokage, younger brother of the First, put a bounty out on Kakuzu's head. Anyone who was physically able began to seek his life. After too many close attempts at his life, Kakuzu sent his wife and young child away. Told them to hide somewhere no one would think to look for them. So they did and for the few years that followed, Kakuzu led bounty hunters around the lands, taunting the Second. Not his brightest move, and perhaps worse than facing off against the First Hokage.
He was the reason the First Hokage was dead and Hashirama was the better of the two. What did Tobirama think he could do?
Something unthinkable, that's what.
Even to this day, no one would admit to the Second's involvement, but Kakuzu knew with every fiber of his being that one way or another, he went too far and the Second did something unforgivable. He secretly went to his "friends" in the Hidden Leaf and ordered an assassination of his entire family. All of the family that Kakuzu left behind in Taki were subsequently slaughtered in their beds. Men, women, children. Some Kakuzu hadn't thought of in years, some he wished he hadn't left behind, but it didn't matter. In one night, they were all dead and not a trace was found as to who was responsible.
And if officials in Taki knew anything, they never said. The Second Hokage was feared in Taki. He went against the kind hearted Hashirama's orders and attacked them for their attack on the First Hokage. He made them regret the choice, thoroughly. It became very clear, very quickly when the fighting in Taki only came to an end when the First showed up and ordered that Tobirama stand down and that the ravenous dogs of the Uchiha and Senju returned to the village, that Tobirama's rage would only be stayed by the firm hand of his older brother.
But now that Hashirama was gone, nothing would be able to stop him from getting at anyone who got in his way.
But Kakuzu knew. The only people skilled enough in the Leaf that could do it had to be the Uchiha. The personal lap-dogs of the Hokage. In the name of their lost First Hokage the Uchiha sought vengeance. But they weren't the enemy, and ultimately, the Second wasn't the enemy. It was because of Kakuzu that his family was gone, killed because of his mistake. But there was a diamond in the rough; Kakuzu could now quietly seek out his wife and child. No one knew he married or bore a child with another. They were safe. He could go to them.
Mourn, he just may, for the death of the family he left behind, but he wouldn't miss them much so long as his wife and child remained.
But the wrath of the gods for Hashirama's death was ever prevalent. Kakuzu learned, by chance, that his wife had indeed sought safety in the place that people would never think to look. Konoha. In hindsight, Kakuzu probably should have explained why she had to leave and hide with a little more information on who exactly she should be hiding from. But she was safe there for a few years and Kakuzu stayed away, discreetly keeping tabs on his wife and now eight year old son. When somebody noticed something interesting about Kakuzu's boy; he had the same eyes as his father.
The theory was brought to the Second and then a week later, so was Kakuzu's wife.
She wasn't a shinobi. She didn't know how to not tell them what they wanted. But even though she accidentally gave up the truth, she begged the Hokage to leave them alone. Her son didn't remember his father and she hadn't actually heard from Kakuzu in years. But the Second couldn't take the risk that she was feeding information to Kakuzu so he had her killed and sent the boy to the Kage in Takigakure no Sato. War was brewing and Tobirama trusted his allies in Taki to be able to monitor the boy.
Then Kakuzu lost touch with his son. He had no contacts in Taki, no one that would want to face the wrath of the Hokage and big brother Konoha. Over the next few decades, Kakuzu has been quietly amassing a fortune for his son, becoming a renown bounty hunter. It was ironic. After years of bounty hunters dying by his hand, he decided that it would probably be good money to catch and kill shinobi with sizable bounties. It would make an easy living. His luck with the dice was iffy at best, but Lady Luck latched on to him in terms of bounties.
He became known and elusive as he was good at what he did. But so long as he was being hunted by the Second, he had to be careful about how deep into the Land of Fire territories and those owned by Konoha's allies he traversed. They simply couldn't catch him unawares. The life of his son depended on it. If someone thought he was getting too close to his son - seeing as he's been running off of the assumption that they believe he either doesn't know about his son or doesn't care - they might have the boy killed.
Just for Kakuzu being his father.
Then he was approached by the Akatsuki and he was promised more fortunes. With Pein's help, he was finally able to get ears back into Taki. That's when he learned that his son was adopted and was raised completely oblivious to who he really was or who his family was. But near the end of the Third great shinobi war, Kakuzu's son died in battle fighting alongside the people who killed his mother.
That's when Pein revealed who the host of the seven tails - Kakuzu's target - was. Fuu of Taki. Fuu, the daughter of his wayward son, who died in battle years prior without ever having said goodbye to his lost father and baby daughter. Fuu grew up locked away in the giant tree in the center of her home village hated by her own people. And for their ignorance, they knew not the real reason. Fuu may have been the Jinchuriki of the Seven Tails, but that should have made her a martyr, it was the fact that she was the heiress to a very special lineage - Kakuzu's - that she should have been hated. But Fuu didn't mind. Her ignorance matched their own. She had so much fun just doing whatever she wanted, even if she was always alone. She spent a great portion of her time playing around and talking with Chomei.
She didn't need a lot of friends, the horrible demon within her offered enough friendship. Chomei, the seven tails, was a strange but not unwelcomed company. It was Chomei that taught Fuu how to fight and take care of herself and even gave her wings. Her cousin, the leader of the village gave her a headband of Taki that made her happy, but only temporarily. But it didn't matter, it was just a way to connect with her family roots, even if it wasn't the village itself.
And Fuu absolutely loved flying and even adapted her fighting style with the wings bequeathed to her by Chomei. It didn't matter that she had a slight friend within her cousin in the leader of village. Taki didn't have a kage, but it was considered to be a ninja village. Of sorts.
Fuu didn't hate the people of her village. No, maybe she did, but she couldn't bring herself to really hate them. She didn't like how they treated her, nor did she like the way that people treated the rest of those like her, the other Jichuriki. She heard the stories from the other villages, none of those like her were treated good. All of them were treated like scourges on the earth. Fuu didn't ask to have Chomei put inside of her, but she can't say she much regrets it.
Chomei was the only real constant in her life. The only one to always be there. The only one that would always look out for her. She found a weird, but not the unwelcoming kind of friend in the demon that resided within her.
Fuu hadn't heard of the Akatsuki, but she did often hear from her grandfather. He told her, in the many letters he sent to her, that he was considered a missing nin from Taki and couldn't go to see her but once. He told her all about her father before he was taken away, even about her grandmother. Fuu found great tranquility in learning that there was someone out there that loved her. Her grandfather made a solemn promise to her at the end of each of her letters.
"One day, this will all come to an end. I will set you free of this world and all of the terrible people within it."
And Fuu clung to that. She wasn't naïve. When she met her grandfather, Kakuzu of Taki, clad in a black cloak and with red clouds and his partner, the loud albino with the foul mouth, she knew that this was to be the fated encounter that he had always promised her. He appeared as he promised. To take her away, as he promised. And Fuu knew she loved him then and there. The first time meeting him in person and he was the only person to really keep their word and live up to expectation. Fuu was grateful.
But she wasn't stupid. She could see it in his eyes. He wasn't just going to free her from the village, but of the land of living as well. And Fuu wasn't mad or betrayed. In a way, she sort of saw it coming. Her grandfather viewed himself as cursed and their family as well. Fuu and Kakuzu were both testaments to that. Two sides of the same coin. Kakuzu was kicked out of his village for his failure and Fuu was hated by her people because of Chomei. Neither was their choice, yet both being their burden to bear.
Fuu sensed them coming and slipped away from the large tree in the center of Taki to head out to greet them. The first time Fuu met her grandfather was as he approached her, miles from Taki, wearing a black cloak with red clouds. And a partner, a shorter man, wearing identical garbs, with only a long red scythe on his back and a cocky smirk on his face.
"So this is the seven tails?" the partner asks, as the two stop just four feet in front of the girl.
"I guess so..." Kakuzu says, his large, pupil-less green eyes taking in all the aspects of the girl before him. Committing all of it to memory. She looks back at him curiously, studying his features as well. She leans heavily on one hip, tilting her head to the side before a kind smile crosses her face, so vibrant and full of life. She holds her hands outstretched at her sides and spreads her fingers wide.
"You must be the Akatsuki," Fuu says. She wiggles her fingers and grins. "I've been waiting for you, I guess. So, should we fight?"
"Cocky bitch," the partner says, tilting his head to the side. He reaches behind his back and pulls off the red, three bladed scythe and spins it around with deft hands, grinning arrogantly.
"Hidan," Kakuzu growls, not liking the names his partner was calling his granddaughter. "Shut up."
Hidan rolls purple eyes. Not knowing the full story as to why they were there. At least, he didn't know Kakuzu's personal stake in all of this. The illusive older man was just a money grubbing miser to the young Jashinist, nothing more. In some ways, the secrets between them were what ultimately let them work so well together. Neither really cared for the reasons that the other did things that they did, or how they did it. Sure, they'd listen if the other offered information, but never really pried. It's worked for them.
So, Hidan just shakes his head at the green eyed man before turning his attention to the Seven Tails Jinchuriki.
There is a strange pause, where Fuu tilts her head to the side, large, pupil-less orange eyes still honed on Kakuzu. "I've waited a long time to meet you," she says, smiling easily.
Kakuzu's posture doesn't shift at all, but the space around him filled with remorse and unhappiness. "I have been waiting to meet you as well, Fuu of Taki."
Her smile remains, she doesn't feel the remorse and pain as he does. "Well then," she says loftily, grinning coyly, "I suppose we should get this show on the road, then, shall we?" She puts her hands on slim hips, thumbs resting on jutted out hip bones. Wings sprout from her back, lifting her easily from the ground, bringing her higher and higher until she's floating above them.
Kakuzu's head tips downward slightly but Hidan doesn't appear to have noticed the other man's solemnness, for he charges toward the mint haired girl bringing his scythe down low to swing it upward at her. Fuu easily avoids the swipe, still grinning broadly. And so the dance begins.
Hidan was slow. Slower than Fuu. He was wild and unpredictable, but Fuu learned quickly to not get too cocky. He was dangerous. Very, very dangerous. There was anger and darkness in him that she didn't need Chomei to point out to her. She could see it looking at his handsome face and into his beautiful purple eyes. His soul was black and vile.
He wasn't just going to kill her. He was going to do his absolute worst. And Fuu isn't so sure she cares to know exactly what that is. She doesn't care for this guy. He wasn't why she was there. He was just an obstacle for her to overcome. She wanted to lock eyes with her grandfather and ask him to call off the dog, and let them have their battle, but he seemed frozen in place. Almost like if she wanted to fight him, she first needed to finish off his partner.
So she did. She fought hard, avoiding swipes and knocking him back again and again. She won't claim it was easy, and in fact, if anything, it was very time-consuming. No move seemed right, or capable of keeping him down for long. While she had limitless energy, the more pissed off and annoyed he was, the faster he got up and charged at her. Normally, Fuu wouldn't sweat a hit or two, Chomei would heal up anything quick enough but she didn't have a good feeling about that scythe.
Chomei warning her to avoid it at all costs was just fuel to bolster her resolve. She wasn't going to let him hit her with that. Something tells her something really bad would happen if she did. Something aside from it just slicing her open.
Perhaps something in their battle had pulled her grandfather from his reverie or maybe he felt that their fight was going on long enough, but he finally stepped in and ordered, "Hidan, that's enough. I shall take it from here."
Heavy breathing and annoyed to no end, Hidan glared over at his partner, plastering sweaty silver hair back. His shoulders are rising and falling with every breath that he takes, trying to get a sufficient air supply into his lungs. He was really running out of energy now, which Fuu is thankful for. He wasn't the one she wanted to fight, and he was really wearing her out too. He may not have been fast, but he was tenacious and just kept coming after her.
"What the fuck, you fucking miser? You sure are taking your sweet time helping me out!" Hidan snarls through deep breaths.
Kakuzu glares at the Jashinist before turning his attention toward his granddaughter, remorse and sadness once more settling over his shoulders before he steels himself. This isn't what he wanted. This isn't the fate he wished upon his only grandchild. But maybe it's only right that his legacy dies with him. He's never brought anyone anything but pain and sadness.
There was so much he wished he could change. So much he wished could have been different. If he had a choice, he never would have gone wandering through that forest. He would never have done battle with Hashirama - and if he had, he wished the gentle hearted Senju God would have been able to bring himself to simply kill Kakuzu in his failed attempt at the brown haired man's life.
Kakuzu would give anything to have been killed by Hashirama Senju. Then he wouldn't have learned about the cruelties of the shinobi world and the atrocities that he would one day commit to himself, the people of this world, and his own family. He had done so much more wrong in his life than he would ever be able to do good. All of the terrible things that happened to him and his family was all his fault.
He meant what he said to Fuu in all of their letters, their family was cursed, and because he was the one that made it so, he's the only one who will be able to set his granddaughter free. It's his fault that she is cursed, not with the Seven Tails, but as his granddaughter.
This isn't what he wanted. This isn't how it was supposed to go. He was supposed to make his mistakes young and when he married his wife and had his son, he was supposed to be the man of the house. He was supposed to be a good father with a wonderful wife. He was supposed to be happy and good. But he couldn't. He made a huge mistake and was too ignorant to see it for what it was at the time.
Kakuzu failed everyone. He failed his village, his people, his family he left behind and those that he lost before he was ready. The world was cruel and Kakuzu made so many, unforgivable mistakes that looking back on now, were all so small he didn't seem them as the mistakes that they were. He would never be a good husband, or father. He failed both his wife and his son. One died for her ignorance in the situation, killed by the Second Hokage. One died for his ignorance in the situation, killed fighting alongside the village that killed his mother and condoned his father and would condone his daughter.
But Kakuzu would do one final, good thing. He would set his granddaughter free. He would stop the horrors of this world from getting to her ever again. He would protect her, even if this is what it meant.
Fuu was ready to fight. Kakuzu was ready to fight. When they charged at one another, eyes blazing not with hate, but sadness and love, it was too late. Each strike was filled with regret and pin pricks on the heart for each moment. This wasn't how it was supposed to be, but it was how it ended up. The fates were truly so cruel.
Perhaps, in the back of his mind, Kakuzu wished that this would have been different than how he knew the outcome would be. He knew that he was going to win, but even when he did, he'd lose. In no scenario, does Kakuzu win. And there is no way that he'll be able to simply take his granddaughter and run away. They shouldn't be here, on opposite sides, but they belong there.
What Kakuzu wouldn't give to live in a parallel universe where he would be standing between Fuu and anyone in the world who would try to hurt her. Well, in some sort of strange, sick, twisted way. He was.
He didn't kill Fuu, even though he wanted to. He did what he was meant to. He took her alive and brought her to Pein. He wouldn't allow Hidan to touch her as he carried her body all the way back to Ame. He wouldn't separate from her for a moment. He just stared down at her worn, unconscious face, lined with worry and stress, committing it to memory. With him, she will always stay. She will continue to exist in his heart, beside his son and wife, for however long he continues to roam this world.
His atonement will come in the form of walking this earth, carrying the weight of his sins and lost ones for however long he remains. And then he will pray that he will have served his time here in the living world, so that he may be with his wife and son and granddaughter in the next life.
Watching the Seven Tails being sucked out of Fuu was like the final nail on the coffin. He thought that he could do this, thought that he could push onward and live with the guilt and the sin, but as he did all those years ago. He wandered through the forest, searching for the god in the trees. Perhaps Hashirama's spirit would permeate the land as his chakra had and he would be there waiting for Kakuzu.
When the last of the Seven Tails chakra sucked out of his granddaughter and the energy pulled back into the statue, her body fell a good fifteen feet and onto the ground before the altar, a loud, deathly thunk that dropped into silence. Everyone was exhausted from days of intense concentration, but Kakuzu's eyes were transfixed on his granddaughter. The dull thud of her body hitting the ground echoed in his heart. All five of them. Surely, he died there in that moment alongside her.
But he carried her body out to the forest, not carrying that he was being watched by his fellow Akatsuki, or that Hidan followed mutely behind him, unaware as to what it was that made this girl different from all the others.
Fuu's body was buried in that forest on Land of Fire lands. He carried her body for hours and buried her there. Perhaps it is poetic in a way. He buried the body of his own granddaughter where his life began its downward spiral. He could only sit there, staring down at the mound of dirt that was the final resting place for his granddaughter. Maybe the graces that the people of Konoha seem to get from the veil of protection will fall around Fuu too. Maybe he will be able to protect Fuu better than Kakuzu ever would have been able to.
Had the fates been kinder, everything would have been different. They would have been happy. Or they at least could have been. Had the fates been kinder.
As he buries the last member of his family, an air falls around Kakuzu. He would live for as long as he could, and he would fight for his life, but when the time came for him to go, he hoped that he would be able to be with his family in the afterlife. Until then, he would be trudging through this world, wondering where to go from there. He will do his job and live whatever meager remains are of his life until his time comes.
May the reaper be swift and for once, may the fates be kind.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.