He remembers a girl who called herself Taki, like the village that made their mutual home. If she had a different name, and she must have – it was a patriotic affectation – he never bothered to learn it. The moniker suited her. She was loyal as hell and she fought like a tidal wave, like a waterfall. All fluid muscle and focused disaster.
They met in the field. He paid limited attention to his fellow Takigakure shinobi and hadn't spoken to her before, though he recognized her. It was wartime, springtime, and everyone was starving. There was hardly anything to eat anywhere. The deer were rare like unicorns and as selective as to whom they showed themselves. Kakuzu ate badgers and foxes, stuffed cress in his mouth, stole nut stockpiles from squirrels, and he killed a whole fuckton of people, which according to the village was the more important of his two assignments (the first being: stay alive to serve the village).
Kakuzu was a lone worker for the most part. But Taki was attractive, a good partner and an owl summoner. Besides that, she had a decent amount of meat on her bones. He wasn't so close to human and if he had to he'd slaughter and eat her before she tried the same on him.
But in the meantime they were a team, a good team. They were both fluid and the owls were a great asset. Taki could conjure them from nothing, enormous coin-eyed birds popping their beaks with the sound of knuckles cracking, winging silently through spring dusk and spring squalls. More than one enemy died with the talons of Taki's owls forced through their eyes and driving into their brains, or with necks broken on account of the hammer-blow of a crooked wing.
Many others died from Taki's fingers, curved into talons of their own, and from Kakuzu, of course.
Between the two of them and their birds they tore quite a swath through enemy forces, and they ate well.
And Taki, he knew, was attracted to him. The prospect was not unappealing. Taki was attractive. Pale shoulders, long fingers, scarred hands. A full, smug little mouth and brown hair rucked up into little spikes like owl down. She was as ferocious and single-minded in pursuit of him as she was in everything else.
It was not in large part due to his good looks or stunning personality. KAkuzu knew that. IT was more because he was deadly, because in spite of the fact that Taki was skilled, he'd probably come out the victor of whatever battle might eventually take place between them. Not to slight Taki. He wouldn't have traveled with her if he thought she'd be the winner.
The thought of fucking Taki wasn't exactly a displeasing one, either. Kakuzu wasn't interested in wasting time on idiots, or weaklings, but in spite of her limited range of vision Taki was neither. And it wasn't as if Kakuzu was exactly in a drought of people wanting to fuck him (disregarding his long solitary time in the battlefield); plenty of shinobi and kunoichi were attracted to power and control, qualities which Kakuzu had cultivated for himself.
She was one of the more powerful kunoichi who'd pursued him, if one chose to call the persistent stares and her brushing touches, her closeness, pursuit. She was one of his admirers who sparked a mutual attraction.
Sex on the battlefield was frowned upon. It took a lot of energy, distracted even the wariest shinobi. It cultivated attachments sometimes. Taki wanted sex with him; it was her one significant deviation from being the picture of a perfect Falls-nin.
For this, also, Kakuzu found the thought of fucking Taki intriguing.
Taki had been pressing gentle, inconsistent, incongruously coquettish advances on him for over two months before Kakuzu responded to her. It was a good day for it, one of the warmest they'd had yet, nearing summer; it was afternoon, shadows getting longer, the sky delectably blue, good enough to eat (Kakuzu thought of tuna). There were only a few clouds riding high with pale bellies.
There was no bed or futon to tryst in. Kakuzu piled up old leaves and spread out his coat. Taki summoned an owl to keep watch while they were more or less absorbed in each other. That was how they had each other, under the cedar branches scribbling patterns on their skin, under soft dark-barred wings and round golden eyes and wicked talons.
"Was it good for you?" Taki asked, when they were finished, and then before he answered: "Let's find some fucker and loot his shit. You hungry?"
One day near the war's end they loped together through the underbrush. That day they were ambushed by a squad of Leaf-nin swarming from every direction. Taki and Kakuzu separated, quick and silent; Kakuzu saw several smaller owls flare into presence, wings unfurling at once. It was just a glimpse really and then a Hyuuga kunoichi with bland pearl-button eyes was in front of him flowing gracefully into the Gentle Fist stance, and Kakuzu focused on her.
The fight was quick and ugly. Kakuzu killed the kunoichi and two more nin before the woods were quiet and he remained wary afterward. Silence didn't mean absence, after all.
But one of the small brown owls came for him and took him back on velvet wings to where the fight had started.
One of the great trees had ruptured from some lightning jutsu. The outer trunk was pitch black, the innards wet. Hardwood like that would take a long time rotting. Taki was there too. Fire had splashed her face and her one bare arm; it only took a look to know that wound would scar. She was crouched, sluicing the contents of her canteen over the injuries. An owl hooted reassurance from above.
"Damn close, wouldn't you say?" she said, glancing up at him with her mouth open in that just-a-little-cracked smile he was intimately familiar with. "Got the fuckers, didn't you? Poor dumb bastards."
He nodded, and crouched down next to her to help with the wounds.
Taki was a long time ago. She gave him a lot of sex and her (secondary) loyalty, as long as he was loyal to Waterfall too, and his name on an owl-summoning scroll. He does remember her fondly.
Years later, and he's so many years older, and Waterfall is just a distant memory but it's spring again like spring will always come around. He isn't any fonder of the season, the months of muck and rain and wind and rut. Taki is long ago and long dead and Kakuzu has rooms at an out-of-the-way inn, rooms far superior to any he and Taki ever cohabitated in. He is waiting for his erstwhile employer and his next assignment.
He wishes Madara would hurry up. He is not looking forward to the latest job. His temper brews, like tea. Rain taps nervous staccato on the roof.
Madara is late. He could arrive in ten minutes or three hours, flinging himself into the seat opposite with a devilish grin. Kakuzu could leave, theoretically, but their contract stands, so he waits instead. Madara enjoys pulling the leash like this now and again. Both of them know what it is.
He's waited worst places for the man before. Madara has wasted a lot of his time in extreme cold or heat, in places full of reeking corpses, battlefields, charnel-houses, brothels, slave trade-points, full of fleas and desperation and stench. In places where there are simply too many people – shinobi in general are uneasy in crowds, and Kakuzu isn't overly fond of his half-race.
The inn is not crowded. In fact it's picturesque. The workers are quiet; they leave him alone, for the most part, except to provide him with fresh leaves and more hot water. The rain carries on, soft as a shroud. Madara must have warned the innkeepers not to let the more raucous of their clientele (or employees) anywhere near Kakuzu.
Kakuzu allows his mind to wander. He thinks of the bleary keen attention of the owls, their water-soft feathers, the startled gleam of their eyes. He thinks about water, the chill under the deep waves, the living darkness. The upward slant of the shore. The first gasp of air. The head cresting water, for the first time.
Half an hour later a letter comes folded, along with a new teapot tastefully patterned with cranes, and fresh leaves. Kakuzu sets a cup to steep before he breaks the seal.
The servant kneels silently in the door instead of leaving. Kakuzu glances at him for a long and weighted moment. He can guess the news is not something he'll like, and that the man is brave, if he hasn't left right away.
Kakuzu reads the letter. It's brief; it takes but a minute. He reads it again. The servant perspires, with good reason.
Thick, expensive paper crumples under Kakuzu's fingers. Patient, temper senescing, he reads the dark, cramped script over again.
The servant falls on his face and is mercifully ignored as Kakuzu strides by him and then over him in one step. He goes around the inn-building. There's a porch; there's three children sitting with their legs dangling over the edge of the deck, three heads low: one blue-haired, one lank black, one ginger.
They bounce and skip in three different directions when his first attack plows through the wood, splinters shooting in every direction in a painful rain. Kakuzu hardens his skin and ignores it, goes for the boy with spiky orange hair, slamming down blows, aiming for the child's head and neck. The boy is quick, light on his feet, and in no way a match for Kakuzu's strength. Pathetic. The boy's friends are clamoring, screaming like gulls, coming at him. Kakuzu casually
backhands ginger into a tree and turns to them.
They're all quick. The girl flips out of his way and then tries to circle and attack his flank; the lank-haired boy falters under the same hammer blows that broke his friend's defense. Ginger attacks again, back for more, admirable in spirit if not in technique; a boot to the gut sends the girl flying. The boys take to the trees. Lank-hair skirts close trying to draw him. Protecting their third. Kakuzu swarms into the trees, letting himself be drawn, hard on their heels while the girl coughs and vomits behind.
They do a little better in the forest. There's more cover; they can go to ground, try to surprise him. Now and again they even succeed at winning a minute or two of gasping, adrenaline-thundering reprieve before he decides it's enough, and storms down on them again.
He preferred the fight out in the open, personally. More cathartic, excising his temper beating them back and forth across muddy ground. But slowly the fire drains out of his blood. He stalks them, the frightened, crying brats he's meant to train, amongst the dripping black branches clotted with mouth and the low brush.
He concusses Pein, leaves Konan clutching her wrist which flops broken and useless, dislocates both Nagato's shoulders. That done, he collects the three of them at last. They clutch each other, shaking with near-silent sobs, their tear-smeared faces completely attentive and pointed towards him.
Kakuzu watches them back with his inhuman eyes. Made for the deep sea, he is; there's no nurture there, but all teeth and the wait. The way they cling together, noses dripping, bloody, shaking, crouching, cowed. What did Madara tell them?
"My name is Kakuzu," he says. "I will be your teacher."
The most beautiful lilies don't grow in the shade; Konan is his favorite, later. She grows up from the gawky, smiling girl he met first into something fantastically, gracefully dangerous. He almost misses her smile but it's precious now for its rarity. Her eyes have grown so still and so warn, soft around the edges, like sea glass.
Does he love her? He was raised without love, in a loveless land. He wouldn't know the feeling.
A little later and the last. Hidan is another present, from the only person who ever gives him presents – literally wrapped in a sack, of course. Madara has a perturbing sense of humor. Kakuzu feels the shape of the body underneath the burlap and he knows his eyes flash. He has height and bulk on Madara, who in spite of broad shoulders is build trim, lean and mean. "What's this?"
"I feel as though we're far apart lately," Madara says, querulous. "And you did so well with the last children I gave you. I think you missed your calling as a teacher, Kakuzu. I think you'll like this one."
When Kakuzu simply stares, he says: "I'll pay you extra plus his food and clothing allowance, of course."
Which is enough to – give the endeavor a shot.
Hidan is a frustrating child. Full of strange, long silences, erupting rages, stillness. He dissociates, sometimes for hours. Kakuzu loses patience with him sometimes and hurts him and then Hidan takes it like he deserves it. He understands why Madara gave the boy to him: to be rebuilt. To be shown and attuned to the flavor and brightness of life, and through making Kakuzu do the work, interest Kakuzu in the world again.
It's a tiring thought. He dreams often of the deep seas now. The world of men has so much quickness, so many comings and goings, and change, even if the troubles of humans never die but change their shape. There's no change under the waves. The same teeth and the same devouring. A simple life, where he could go to ground and forget about humanity for as long as it took him to not be tired of it.
He takes Hidan towards the coast. Into the lands of Bloody Mist. Madara rules there and Kakuzu travels more openly then he would in any other country, not for lack of fear but for his own peace of mind, knowing he won't have to wade through twenty-hundred assailants.
Hidan does well with traveling in peaceful country. He's growing taller, though his white skin never darkens with the sun. If he burns the skin peels off half an hour later and shows him pale as oyster flesh again.
He never talks about why, and Kakuzu never asks.
The allowance for his meals and clothes comes by hook and by crook and Madara's twisty methods. The man knows where Kakuzu is going, if he hasn't stepped forward to say anything yet. Hidan doesn't seem to mind his sunburns. He plays in the forests and dells of Mist with silent concentration, his garnet eyes fixed and lifeless as the gems they're colored like. Slowly Kakuzu sees life come into them. Something fervent, flashing more violent than is comfortable to see even in a shinobi child. But only at times. He follows Kakuzu like a devotee. Kakuzu is a bad teacher for being amongst humans and he doesn't bother to try to do a good job, but Hidan copies him well enough and gets along. He'll get his own style later.
He could drop him off in Hidden Mist, Kakuzu thinks. Find a jounin or even a chuunin to babysit the boy and fall back into the water, never to return. Inexorably they proceed closer and closer to the coast.
Hidan watches birds and never learns to whistle, if not for lack of trying. Kakuzu gets sick of his attempts eventually, and cuffs him silent.
"Where are we going?" Hidan asks him, one day.
"I like the ocean," Kakuzu tells him. "Have you ever been?"
He isn't surprised when Hidan shakes his head.
He must come to a decision, but he's in no hurry. There's time along the way, and then there will be time in Mist. He needn't leave right away.
Perhaps he should have gone to Rain, but he likes this severe and bloody country. The dry-eyed people and their hard hands. They could all be from his mother's same stock. Or she of theirs, he supposes – the more likely.
The day they come to the sea, it's over a bluff. Hidan wandering at his heels, falling behind, caught up in inspecting this or that, then running to catch up. Kakuzu walks steadily. Hidan is clumsy for a shinobi, and slow, but he's sturdy and he can keep up with Kakuzu's steady walking.
Kakuzu stops at the bluff, at the peak. Hidan catches up and then stares down at the ocean. It's crinkled like linoleum or cloth not quite smoothed.
"We're here," says Kakuzu, after a long moment of Hidan's silence.
It's not Mist yet. There is no decision to be made.
When Hidan sits on the bluff he sits next to the boy and looks at the waters which smooth faraway into the distance. Gulls scream and wheel in the salty air.
There's so much of a view of the world here, the world which is made worse by creatures like Madara and himself and likely Hidan in it.
At the moment, still, it's beautiful, and nigh as empty of people as a washed-up shell. Kakuzu sits and waits. He has all the time he could want to think of the teeth under the waves and the cold comfort of the waters, and then some.