Like Moths To A Flame

Intro: "I'd die for you" isn't something one should say unless they mean it. In Kakuzu's position, he'd actually really appreciate it if his mother stopped dying over and over again. Life's a pain that way. SI/OC

AN: This is another one of those fics I started a million years ago, but never felt like continuing. I'm posting it now because I'm fond of the bit of writing I did, and if enough people are like, interested I'd more than likely be happy to pick it up again. For now though, it'd be a shame to let it sit here collecting dust. Tell me if you think I should keep going in the comments or something ? It starts off a little slow, but mostly because Kakuzu is like, a weird character to really pin down ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Rated M for violent content. No romance, like at all, unless you count the wistful pining of a lesbian(?) [citation needed] staring at the moon and one (1) asexual money loving serial killer and his worldly possessions

Disclaimer: this story belongs to me but otherwise the characters of naruto do not.

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Chapter One - Meeting By Moonlight

- - X - -

Kakuzu met her for the first time when he was seven, bleeding from a gash on his forehead.

It was late—normally orphans of Takigakure had enough sense not to stick around after lights out, and Kakuzu was one of the smarter kids by far, but he had made the mistake of pickpocketing a shinobi. According to the guy's friends, Kakuzu got what he deserved after they left him bloody and bruised on the sidewalk.

Another time, he would've sworn that the guy had been concealing his chakra and had waited until Kakuzu had his wallet in his pocket before doing something about it, but arguing fate only really got you anywhere if you were someone important. Street rats and thieves barely got shown any human decency in the scummy districts of Taki, and that was why he wasn't surprised—when he finally pulled himself upright—that the people passing by didn't even give him a second glance.

Sure, here was a too-thin, impoverished kid with no parents in sight and enough blood running down his face to make a doctor blush, but if you turned the next corner, you'd find just about as many kids in the same situation as Kakuzu on the next street. The only difference between him and the rest of them was that they were actually smart and hadn't gotten caught stealing from bloody ninja.

"Stupid."

He spat a bit of blood onto the gravel in front of him. His grass sandals didn't do shit protecting his feet from the moisture on the ground. In fact, kakuzu would bet that whatever was swimming in the puddles in front of him was already making a nice home in his skin. Downtown waterfall was nasty like that. If he didn't have typhoid already, he probably would, after being forced to swallow a whole mouthful of puddle piss. The kind that had weird floating chunk stuff and just eguhgghghhh—disgusting, awful, abhorrent. Words that he didn't even know and thought with a vehement passion.

(He didn't even know what typhoid was, since education was something only the noblest kids with rich families had, while Kakuzu was, and always would be, the bastard son of a prostitute. He just knew that dirty water killed you and that stupid people who drank it were so desperate they take the risk they'd gamble their lives away just for a couple quick sips. Or, that they deserved the horrible suffering and pain because they were dumbass stupid idiots like himself.)

Anyway, downtown Taki in the poorer districts was a shithole and Kakuzu didn't have enough time to worry about dirty water since nightfall meant danger, and he was eight blocks away from his home base. With a profusely bleeding forehead and a limp.

He was pretty much asking for someone to abduct him—he'd seen it dozens of times before to younger and older kids like him. That was just how things were. Adults would prowl the streets, looking for easy targets and him and the rest of the idiot kids would have to fend for themselves. You either dealt with it the best you could, or you shut up about it, because that's how things just were. If the universe was fair, he wouldn't have been born a street rat and forced to fend for himself. His mother had made a simple choice when kicking him out—warring states plus a kid minus a husband meant starvation. It was simple math. Probably the only math Kakuzu was actually capable of, because like, only rich assholes got to do the whole school thing. Personally, it seemed like a giant waste of time unless you were going to be the next Daimyō, and even enlightened assholes like the one Takigakure had seemed to prefer his silken robes and opium pipes to mathematics and academia.

Not that he would know really since he only knew about twelve streets and the four sunken corners of a monastery that housed people like him. Eight blocks away. Uphill.

Ugh.

Once the sun set the streets were bare, save for the women standing on street corners in packs and men drinking their troubles away, their laughter bouncing off the walls, harsh yapping sounds that sounded far more threatening than it did joyous. Lights still shone from open windows, and the sound of people talking, laughing, shouting could be heard up and down the street. Every door was locked and even the most generous stranger wouldn't let in someone like Kakuzu in, when they ran the chance of also having someone jamming their foot in the door attempting to rob them of all their worldly possessions.

(When they also had the chance of the little orphan Taki boy robbing them of their worldly possessions… if only he hadn't lost his blade back when those shinobi tossed him into the street)

Carefully, he took the sleeve of his shirt and gently wiped the blood out of his eyes, not daring to wipe the actual wound itself. He feigning confidence as he walked down the street alone, ignoring the ache in his ribs as they rubbed up against each other—he could feel them grind and gnash under his skin through his teeth, ugly and awful, a ringing in his ears. His foot was already too swollen for him to properly wiggle his toes, ballooned up into an ugly swollen mass.

Freaking shinobi. It was just his luck this happened to him—really, he deserved this. Maybe he did something in his past life to merit such an awful existence.

Showing weakness on the street was a clear sign for people to swoop in and take advantage, and he didn't want to lose his place back at the monastery thanks to some child snatching pervert. He broke another kids arm to get that spot in the monastery. It gave Kakuzu full view of the other kids in case they tried to steal his things, he didn't have to worry about someone stabbing him in the back. Breaking an arm wasn't even the worst thing he'd do for a bit of security. He'd done far worse already.

Oh god oh god why did his chest hurt so bad? He must've landed on a rock or something in his fall, or else he would have been fine. He tried to make it look more like he was just cold, shivering because he was soken went and not because of the shock setting in, but nobody would probably buy it. It helped that the blood dripping down the side of his face could be disguised somewhat if he bent his head forward and let his hair cover it, but his hair hardly ever did what he wanted it to do and resembled thick long matts as opposed to the silky hair most people wore if you had water, or soap, or even the time to think about washing your hair.

Regardless, it didn't take more than a couple seconds for Kakuzu to figure out that the men tailing him weren't form the area once he saw how fresh they looked. Well, fresh was an overstatement, since the three men all looked like they had still lived some years on the street and had only met a bar of soap recently, but—

"Hey, slow down, I think you might've dropped something boy," one of the men called out, only making Kakuzu hobble away faster.

Honestly, if they were trying to trick him into thinking he left something behind, they should've been prepared to realize he didn't even have anything worth forgetting.

"You hear me? Hey! Slow down, I'm trying to help you out!"

Yeah sure, help him find himself an owner or a master, or—really, Kakuzu didn't honestly want to think about it. He kept hobbling, faster this time, not even looking back.

The second he heard their footsteps get faster, he swore, quit the hobbling and made a break for it down the road and past a brothel, hoping he lost the men past the inebriated visitors and women hanging around the entrance.

"Stop him! Get that kid!"

He swiped at the blood filling his vision again, tripping over an abandoned cart and landing awkwardly on his bad foot just before one of the older men barreled into him, knocking him into the dirt and grabbing a fistful of his shirt and hair.

"Ha—! y-you think—" the man panted, right into Kakuzus face. His breath was strikingly more musky than Kakuzu anticipated, hot and warm on honeyed wine and food that had long since gone sour. "Y-you think you can just run away like that, kid? I tell ya, me and my boys aren't quite happy that you made us run so late at night. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Bite me," Kakuzu said, spitting in the man's face, shrugging his shirt free and dropping out of the man's grasp.

The man staggered, holding the empty shirt in one hand as he revolted in disgust, splittle clinging to his unkept beard. "Fuck—you brat!"

His friends caught up to them as Kakuzu struggled to get back on his feet and get away. "Man, did you actually let the kid slip free? You must be losing your touch."

"Shut up and grab him, we don't have time for this," he seethed, wiping the spit from his face with the ragged clothes in his hand before tossing it to the ground.

A twinge something boiled in Kakuzu's chest before he turned away and started running again. If he had been a decade older, with a knife, he would've gutted all three of them for treating his only shirt like trash.

"No, no, no, no, no—" Kakuzu wheezed and leered off sideways as his leg gave out from under him. He swore it was just the blood from his forehead seeping into his eyes that made them water so much, but the fact that he was pushing himself so damn hard after getting beaten in an alley just to get away made the whole part of getting caught again all the more humiliating.

He was so weak and stupid and defenceless he didn't even have strength to fight back when two men seized his arms and drove him right into the side of a wall. His breath was ripped out of his lungs, he saw stars for a moment, and he was absolutely doomed the moment he went limp and stopped struggling when the third man started bunding his hands behind his back. Like Kakuzu's night could get less awful, at the very moment.

"Sorry, I think you might've snagged my nephew by mistake. I'll need you to unhand him please."

And then she stepped in.

"What?" One of the men turned to face her—a tiny old woman, with greying black hair and a shawl over her shoulders. "Lady, you wanna take a hike? We're doing business here."

"I can see that," she said, a thin line of sarcasm in her voice. She made eye contact with Kakuzu for a split second, and the fear in his dazed eyes only seemed to tighten something in hers. She glanced at all three men and squared her shoulders. "You're going to have to let him go I'm afraid."

"You're out of you're goddamn mind," one of the men muttered. He took a threatening step towards her. "If you want me to spell it out for you, beat it. We want the kid. No amount of charity or please and thank you'd will do you any good, ma'am." The way he said the last word was dripping with irony and disrespect.

"I wasn't asking a question," the woman took a step forward as well, matching his stance. She stood a good two feet under him, but showed no sign of fear or trembling. "Leave the kid alone. He belongs to me now, not whoever's is paying you to abduct him."

The man cocked his head to the side, somewhat impressed with her directness. "You wanna take him from us? Unless you got the cash to talk business, anything under fifty thousand Ryō ain't gunna cut it."

"F-fifty thousand?" Kakuzu muttered out loud. The man holding him elbowed him in the kidney to shut up.

So, no jokes then. He was actually going to end up as somebody's private slave. The expensive, invasive kind.

"I don't carry that kind of money on me I'm afraid," the woman said, sealing Kakuzu's fate with him with her awkward shrug.

"Then we're done here." The man sneered, turning back to his meal ticket. Kakuzu wheezed as they brought him forward, held up by the two vice-like holds in his bare arms. "Come on, get him standing. We don't have time to drag him to the docks when we have three more drops to do before dawn."

"So you plan on taking more kids tonight?" The woman murmured, her eyes glazing over with a particularly strange expression on her face, the light of the moon hanging overhead. She took a step forward, her hand curling over the man's shoulder and catching him off guard. "I'm sorry, but I can't let you do that."

The man stiffened. "You wanna let me the fuck go? I told you, we're done. Get lost before I have to break your hip."

She took in a breath, glancing one more time at Kakuzu, who was watching her because she looked like she was about to do something. It was touching, really, that at least one person had the decency to try to stop his abduction, but there was no god or saving grace for a piece of trash like—

Snap-!

The man's body hit the ground a second later, his head facing the opposite direction and a disgustingly shocked expression on his face. He made a putrid gurgling sound, his fingers till twitching.

The old lady sighed and turned to the other two men, staring wide-eyed at the body of their friend. Kakuzu was going to throw up. "I'm sorry about that."

"Sorry-?! You fucking killed him!" The man to Kakuzu's left said while the snapping sound of the first one's neck played over and over again in Kakuzu's head. Snap. Just like that. Danger gone.

"She's a fucking shinobi-! she couldn't have moved to fast otherwise—" the man to Kakuzu's right hissed, letting go of his arm and taking a step back, a moment before he got punched in the throat and went down.

"You fucking bitch—!" The third man exclaimed, swinging at the old woman who had just basically become Kakuzu's knight in shining armour. She ducked under the man's arms and pulled a shiny silver object from under her her wool shawl, burying it into the soft flesh of the man's side. A wet choking sprung from his lips as he tried to say something, but he fell to his knees and from her grasp too soon to tell.

"Well," the old lady said, panting ever so slightly as she blew the loose strands of grey-black hair out of her face. The front of her was covered in bright crimson, glittering under the light of the full moon. "That was messier than I expected."

Both Kakuzu and the lady's heads turned as the second man—only remaining one alive—scrambled to get away, leaving the two of his friends bodies behind.

"Tell your buyer I said hello!" The old lady yelled after him, suppressing a smile to herself when the man stumbled and desperately kept running she turned to the only other living thing in the area. "Are you okay?"

"Uh." Kakuzu stared openly at her, wooden shawl and old-lady haircut and all. She looked like somebody's freaking grandmother—not midnight vigilante.

Then again, Kakuzu really wasn't in the position to discriminate.

"Here, let me untie you." Her hands were warm against his skin, and he was surprised to find her rather strong as she pulled him into a standing position. "Are you okay? They didn't throw you around too much did they?"

"A bit…?" Kakuzu struggled to stand right and flinched when she tried to help him. "I can stand on my own."

"Okay…" she gave him a once-over, noting his swollen ankle and bloody forehead. Her fingers twitched at her sides. "Did they do that to you?"

"Yes," he lied. It was better than telling the truth and lose sympathy from her by telling her he was a pickpocketing thief. He glanced down at the bodies by their feet. "Are you really a shinobi?"

"Not in this lifetime," she said wryly, shaking her head with a strange expression on her face. She shot him a serious look then, bending a little bit so they were on the same eye level. (Which was so strange to him, since nobody ever made the effort to speak with him like they were equals.) "I have a place a couple blocks from here with medicine and bandages and food though, if you feel comfortable enough to come with me."

He eyed her suspiciously. "What do you want in return?"

"R-return?" She blinked at him and shook her head, silver hair swaying around her. "You're a child, you shouldn't even be out here in the first place. The least I can do is give you some help."

She started shrugging off her shawl, but Kakuzu stopped her. "What are you doing?"

"It's only going to get colder out here, right? I mean, unless you'd prefer freezing without a shirt on…"

He awkwardly took the wooden shawl from her hands and wrapped it around himself. Fabric like this… he had no idea wool could be so warm.

"My name is Setsuna, by the way, but you can call me grannie. A lot of people do now. " Yeah, he totally wasn't going to call her that. The old lady grimaced slightly a second after, and said, "I wish I could say it's nice to meet you, but…." she gestured to the bodies in front of them.

"I've seen lots before," Kakuzu said, eyes roving over both corpses.

They didn't look like they had anything valuable on them… the old lady would probably get disturbed if he went and patted them down, right? Then again, she was the one who killed them…. Nah, he wouldn't chance it. Not how things turned out the first time.

She shot him a bittersweet smile and bent down to pull a silvery knife out of one of the corpses. A kunai. "That's a not a good thing, dear."

He watched her wipe the throwing knife on the fabric of her skirt. "Are you sure you're not a shinobi?"

"Not enough chakra," she said, twirling the blade in her hands. Kakuzu still wasn't convinced. She caught him staring at the blade, and tucked it into a pouch on her hip. "If you want to come with me, we'll have to get going. If not, I can walk you back to wherever you sleep and you can keep the shawl. I have more at home."

More shawls? Kakuzu pulled the woman's—his shawl, closer. Did he even really need a shirt anymore? When he could go some place where there were food and medicine?

Kakuzu looked up at her, greying hair lit by the crescent light of the moon. Despite her height, her age, her gender—god, everything—she just seemed so… strong. Resolute. Things which he so desperately hungered for, never quite enough to embody by himself. He looked at her, and he saw more than just the dirty streets of Taki. She had survived in such a place, unmarred by time and unbroken by the people who lived within it.

He wanted that—so desperately—he starved for it. "Can you show me what you did before? When you took the first man down?"

"Um, I could try…?" She said, half uneasy and half amused at his intense interest.

"Good. Which way is your house?"

Setsuna pointed the way—the opposite direction of the monastery he slept in, but he didn't really care. "You sure you can walk on your own?"

"Yes," he said, taking a couple determined steps forward. Medicine. Food. More clothes. "I'm Kakuzu," he said as an afterthought, glancing up at her.

"Kakuzu." Another odd expression crossed her face, but she smiled at him and nodded her head. "The name sounds oddly familiar. I glad our paths crossed this night."

Kakuzu buried his face in the warm wool shawl and breathed in the scent of soap and honey, lost in its warmth. "Hn."

With a laugh at his non-response, Setsuna led the way to her home.

- - X - -

"This isn't too tight, is it?"

Kakuzu wiggled his toes and tested the wrappings around his ankle. Twisted, but not broken thankfully. "It's fine," he said.

"Good!" the old lad said, leaning back in her chair. She closed the old first aid box on her lap and got up to walk somewhere off into her house. Kakuzu could hear the echo of her footsteps throughout the tiny building, and noted that there were no other noises in the house. They were alone.

It wasn't surprising, the house Setsuna apparently lived in was in an abandoned part of Takigakure. The little building she led him into barely looked livable from the outside, but was warmer than it looked and smelled faintly of cinnamon when they got inside. She took off her slippers and placed them neatly by the door and Kakuzu lead by example, despite the fact that his grass sandals looked awful by comparison.

Potted plants and various herbed grew amongst the walls of her house and as she lead him over to a wardrobe where she kept her medical equipment, Kakuzu openly stared at the books and scrolls strewn amongst the room. He hadn't exactly expected the little old lady, who killed two men under the light of the full moon to be a herbalist and also a scholar, but apparently the night was full of surprises. The fact that she also knew how to properly dress a wound only cemented the idea that Kakuzu should probably not do anything to turn the old lady against him. She knew way too much stuff, and he still had no idea why she wanted to help him.

Still, better to go with than against her? She was old—maybe past her sixties, which was old as dirt considering how most people Kakuzu saw only lived until their thirties. There were battles between warring clans almost monthly, and giant roaring death matches between enemy shinobi that decimated farmland and countrysides taking any living thing with it. The fact that such an old woman could live so long, in such a decrepit place like this while roaming the dark back streets was more than a mystery to Kakuzu.

"As you can see, I can handle myself," Setsuna said, pulling out a glass bottle of liquid and soaking a rag with the mysterious, strong smelling fluid. "Now, I need to get at that forehead. This is going to sting, so brace yourself."

"What is—ah!" He flinched away the second the rag came In contact with his forehead. "What did you do that for?!"

"It helps clean the wound," she explained, shooting him a sympathetic glance. "Before I bandage it up, I have to make sure it's clean so your forehead doesn't get infected."

He gestured for her to give him the rag with one had. "I can do it myself."

"You don't want help?" She asked, giving him a funny look.

Kakuzu stiffened. "I've done everything myself until now. I don't need you babying me because I'm a kid."

She pursed her lips and handed him the rag without argument. "Do you like tea? I have a pot of some somewhere If you want."

"I've never had tea before," was his only answer, before she got up to get him some. Kakuzu winced as he put the rag to his forehead, but stayed put. Under the shawl, his chest rose and fell with new bandages covering the bruises littering his ribcage.

She returned sometime later, two cups in hand and a couple blankets tucked under her arm. "Camomile doesn't magically heal bruised ribs, but it's meant to be soothing."

"Hn."

The cup was too-hot in Kakuzu's hands, and he wrapped the edges of his shawl around it as a coaster. His shawl. His drink. He downed it a second later, enjoying the heat it brought to his body, but wincing in pain as it burnt his throat.

"You okay there?" She gave him a gentle pat on the back when he started coughing, and drew her hand away when he flinched again at the unexpected contact. "You don't like me touching you- I'm sorry. I'll try not to do it often." She smiled at him sheepishly. "I have a couple blankets here if you want to use them—warm, comes with the guarantee that they won't burn you, Kakuzu-San."

He blinked at the sudden honorific. Also, at the fact she was actually using his name to address him. "Um. I can just sleep on the floor."

"And let you freeze? Dear, no." She laughed. "There's a spare bed in another room I made up for you. If you sleep on the floor I'm afraid you'll end up sharing space with the mice and I can't have that. They make awful roommates."

She led him over to his room, though the tiny kitchen with its tiled floors and past another room, too dark to make out anything other than strange, wooden contraptions that looked more like torture devices than anything remotely useful. She caught him staring, and let him try to make sense of what he was looking at before she took a candle and lit up the room within.

"I sew to make a living—nothing fancy, I know. But it puts money in my pocket and food on my table, so I can't complain."

"You make money by sewing?" He said incredulously, taking in the half-finished tapestries and quilts hanging on the walls, thread hanging from patches yet to be fully completed. He looked back at her, struck again by how… unexpected she was. Her, who carried a kunai in her apron, who could kill a man and snap his neck so efficiently, who… gave away shawls and made baby blankets for those who could afford it.

Why was she being so nice to him?

"I could teach you, if you want," She said, as if such an offer was easy to make and didn't tilt Kakuzu's world on its side. "I could teach you lots of things."

"What do you want in return?" Again, the words left his mouth before he had a chance to stop himself. It just came naturally. That was just how things were. So why..?

"I'll make you a deal." She bent down to be on the same level as him again, her eyes crinkling as the glare from the candle gently licked her face. The back of her head shone from the gentle moonlight coming from a nearby window. "Tomorrow, if you're feeling up to it, you can sit in as my assistant while i work on my loom, and i can teach you what I did tonight to those men if you make sure you never end up in a situation like that again. Okay?"

The small bed in the monastery and his few meager earnings seemed dull in comparison to the few short hours he had already spent with her. He felt them growing more insignificant as he nodded, his shawl—his—wrapped around his shoulders, his tea which he had completely drank, now filling him with a warmth he had scarcely felt since the days his mother had left him to fend for himself on the streets.

And now this lady… this grandmother—was offering him so much, just so he could take care of himself?

Could he really afford to overlook her (foolish, naive, because nobody in their right mind in Taki would ever offer such an incredible possibility) generosity?

(Did he really deserve this?)

Regardless, he'd take hold of this opportunity and cling to it for as much as it was worth. He nodded.

"Wonderful!" She clasped both her hands together and pushed him towards a nearby bathroom, a bucket of soapy water waiting for him inside. "Now, just a little thing about your hair…"

"Touch it and you die."

Her smile widened just a tad, her eyes sparkling with a mischievous light. She set her candle aside and rolled up her sleeves. "Challenge accepted then."

Before he could argue, she dunked his head into the soapy water, him spluttering insults and veiled threats, and her, cackling all the same.

- - X - -