~ one heavy february ~
Zabuza x Haku . T. 3,457
AN: Written for ShadedRogue, fellow author and great friend. Sorry for how long I made you wait, ladybug!
The house, once occupied by a happy family and loved, has taken its abandonment personally. Broken stones line the pathway to its crooked picket fence, where a hand-made mailbox proclaims the family surname with blobby flowers surrounding it. (The bright colours that once belonged to the pedals have long ago dulled into muted hues because in this constant downpour nothing lasts, as if the world has no respect for the wife who stood out here in sundress on some rare sunny afternoon and slaved over her creation, a touch of love in every stoke of red, purple, yellow paint.)
Even from several feet away, standing in the constant mist, Zabuza knows the place is abandoned. Poverty is common here, but still no one dares to enter another man's house after the owner has been dragged into the streets by the militia and beaten into a red pulp that will surely wash away in the rain and slip down the street into the nearest sewage drain. Bad luck, you know, to live in house whose owners have died terrible deaths.
For the dead man, at least.
For Zabuza, the old house comes at just the right time, a welcome relief for his aching feet and searing side, where Kakashi has pulled open his flesh with a kuni.
He jerks his head in the direction of the house, and watches as Haku scuttles off to check it out, as graceful as any cat as he leaps over the gate and runs along the porch rail. Such boundless energy, despite the wounds that the two genin have inflicted upon him.
(You would wonder what keeps him going, only you already know exactly what he would say. You asked him once, and the way he looks at you every day—doe eyed and willing to do your every bidding—leads you to believe that his answer has not changed. You are what keeps him going. You are the lakes and the sun of his world—all the beautiful things that shine in his eyes when he takes off that suffocating mask and, for a moment, smiles at you.)
For a moment, Zabuza's eye lids flag, and Haku's form erases from his vision as easily as blood wipes away in the rain. It is nice here, standing (you are leaning against the fence for support actually, because your legs are trembling underneath all your weight like they haven't done in years—not since you won your right to be called "ninja" and stood on a battlefield littered with the paling corpses of childhood foes and friends with a sword in your hand and felt as if your heart was trying to claw its way out of your chest to leave an empty cavity that wouldn't hurt as much—but you will not allow yourself to admit to this weakness because you've hollowed out your chest long ago. Or so you would like to believe. The leap that your heart executes at the sight of Haku leaning over you says otherwise.)in the humming rain with the sound of his thoughts drowned out completely. Zabuza has always liked that about the rain. He has honed the ability to listen to every drop thunder on the ground and let his mind go numb.
"Zabuza!" A slap to the face, and a relieved look that tries to mascaraed as chagrin as the elder nin pries his eyes open look at Haku, a feeble annoyance swimming in their depths. "You've got to stay awake," Haku cautions, sliding his fingers through the short stands of Zabuza's hair. "At least until we get inside."
A mumble which might be of consent, and then his arm is sliding over Haku's shoulder, sluggish and numb, as lifeless as a fish sold in the market place, all that grace and muscle worthless. ("Worthlessness is the worst weakness of all," says Zabuza to a young Haku. Deep furrows have been gouged into the child's arms, and thin crimson trails run down his flesh. Nearby, a rabbit is crashing through the bush, high on freedom. With a practiced ease, Zabuza pulls a kuni and tosses it into the bush. A tell-tale squeal. Then silence. Zabuza turns away from Haku's wide, wondering eyes. "Go collect dinner," he shoots over his shoulder, already walking away. He will not wait for this waif.)
The memory jerks him from his stupor, and he pushes away from Haku half-heartedly. The world wobbles. Tilts. Stills. Haku is holding out one pale, slender hand in silent offer of aid that he knows Zabuza will not allow himself to accept no matter how badly he needs it.
The gate is stuck. Glued shut by rust and grime, and Haku protests more than his side does when he heaves himself over it with one arm, the other still clamped to his side, holding his insides in. Was the damn house always so far away? His vision tunnels down to the door, and he makes it his mission in life to get there if it's the last thing he ever does (and it very while might be, although you don't quite believe that with Haku at your side). The muscles in his legs strain and release with each step, making him feel like an abused puppet.
(You've survived much worse than this, but Kakashi and his brats are the best you've met in a long time and this battle has had more to do with mentality than physicality, the former something which you always failed in. You could never deal with all the pain mentally, so instead you decided to numb yourself off, hacking of your inner limbs one at a time, a slow process of internal cauterization.)
The porch has all but rotted away. The old boards groan threateningly under his weight, and the cracks in the windows whistle forebodingly as the wind slips through them. Cobwebs decorate the windowpanes, and beneath his feet the welcome mat has been reduced to a spongy green rag, the letters long warn away with only hardened glue marks as evidence that once the mat barred a happy, cheerful greeting to all. The wooden door is warped in the middle like a crooked spine, with a wreeth of dried roses nailed to it. (You've had worse and you've had better too, but there is a theme between Haku and yourself, one that has to do with abandonment and loss of love, and this house fits right in. Or maybe the two of you will fit right into the house, two broken, weary souls to go with the rickety wicker chairs and crumbling fireplace A motif. )
Haku doesn't bother dragging Zabuza up the stairs (thank god). Instead, he goes into one the backrooms and comes out with a pile of musty, faintly chewed on sheets. There will be a lot of blood once Zabuza lets go of that wound, and neither of them will want to sleep in it.
"Are you able to tell me what he hit?"
A slight, barely visible, shake of his head. In another time, when the life wasn't draining out of him in drops and if his head didn't feel so fuzy, yes. Then Zabuza could have told Haku where his every nerve was. Not now.
Haku nods curtly (or, at least, in what he thinks is a curt manner. Those pink lips and perfect cheeks with their framing locks never looked anything but soft to Zabuza or anyone else looking at the boy) and sets to work. Zabuza does not let go of the wound easily. His fingers are numb; his mind his dulled. Haku pries his hand away and peels off the shirt to expose the pink-edged wound. Painful but, like the house, Zabuza has had worse. A cloth, antibiotic, stiches and bed rest will curse this easily enough.
Two of these things Haku has the materials for. The other two will be much harder to obtain. (Nobody enjoys looking for medicine here in the Wave country. Children die in perfectly accommodating rooms here, and parents haggle in the streets for their children's lives. The common cold kills often in the Wave, because the cold and the wet never fail to turn it into something worse than common.) Haku stifles a sigh, wondering how long he can confine Zabuza to a makeshift bed on the floor before he gets up to train, to find dinner, to take another mission.
The needle and thread slip through his skin easily. (They always do, but it surprises you every time, that people's outsides can be put back together so easily while the inside remains a crumbled ruin. You are not fixable, and one day Haku will realize this and move on.)Haku's fingers are nimble and slide and pull (that is not an acceptable description of this boys talent. The way the needle balances between his fingers is beautiful, and the arch of his arm in the air is profound, the bend of his elbow something to move you as your flesh reconnects with blue thread that reminds you of veins) the thread through the other man without hesitation.
Hesitation mars masterpieces, and Haku will not allow that.
For now, Haku's eyes do not dance. They do not rove over Zabuza's naturally brownish skin, or skip to his face to hang on his every word. They focus on that one part on Zabuza's side, the long line of parted flesh, and concentrate on weaving it back together.
Zabuza clucks his tongue, a habitual gesture that takes too much effort. His mouth his dry, and his lips won't seem to move. Haku spares him an admonishing scowl, and nerves dance around Zabuza's lips, spreading them into an impulsive smile he cannot control but doesn't mind giving anyway. His teeth are flashing, and he doesn't care.
Finally, he manages to move his lips: "You're hurt."
"Mmmmm."
Not much of an answer for Haku, who usually gives Zabuza his every ounce of attention, but then Zabuza supposes threading someone together and talking to them at the same time might be a tad difficult. Still, hight not be imaging the tightness of Haku's jaw, the hard set of his usually soft, wide eyes.
"Why fix me," Zabuza rasps breathily, "if you're so angry at me?"
The next arch of Haku's arm truly is a yank, the flesh pinching together rather than mending. "I am not angry at you," Haku finally says. Finishing his ministrations, the slicing of the thread serves and an anger outlet for him. The jerky, slicing movement is what tips Zabuza off. "I'm hurt."
(Can you even differentiate between the two anymore? Pain causes anger. They aren't unconnected for you, as Haku seems to imply with simple words and innocence that he really should have lost by now. When an enemy stabs you, the fire in your gut spreads to your brain and clouds your mind. Without this defense mechanism, you would have died long ago. Hate is your fuel. Pain and hurt are your fire.)
"I must have hurt you very much for you to be this...reserved."
"Is it empty for you as well?"
(You are not a very intellectual man, but you aren't stupid by any stretch of the word either. So why does Haku constantly baffle you? You can read and opponent within seconds. Yet your one constant companion is someone who always leaves you guessing at what he will do next. Only in battle do you understand Haku. Even then, it is a shallow understanding. He fights for you. This you understand. You just don't understand the why. Why he wants to be at your side, your tool. You are a decent shinobi, but Haku doesn't seem to care about fighting apart from pleasing you, and you aren't that decent a man.)
For a brief moment, Zabuza actually thinks Haku is asking about the room, about the draft and the lack of furniture. A bit odd from a boy who didn't raise a fuss when he had to sleep in backalleys to follow around his idle, but still Zabuza is about to reply when he actually gets it.
Does it feel empty to you?
He wants to say yes, of course it does. He wants to tell Haku that he has been an empty shell for years, ever since he first killed an enemy who wasn't his enemy at all. Every day since that day has just been a step lower on a staircase which Zabuza is sure is leading him to hell(of the fiery kind or of the abyss, you aren't sure, and nor are you eager to find out. It is one of the few things that scares you). Zabuza wants to tell Haku that the only time the emptiness isn't there is when they are sitting here like this, or when Haku is looking at him with big, doe eyes that no one his age should be able to get away with wearing after living as a shinobi.
More than anything, he wants to ask Haku how he managed to stay whole, though perhaps Haku's question suggests that he hasn't remained as whole as Zabuza presumes.
"I live because…I have something precious," Haku whispers, gazing into the pale green wall as if it might be listening to him more than Zabuza. What little sliver of eye that Zabuza can see from his position on the floor gleams with an emotion that he can't quite put his finger on. (You might have known what it was long ago, but by now you have all but forgotten it, except for when those beseeching eyes look at you, stirring what's left of the tattered shreds of your humanity.) "Do you," Haku is looking at him intensely now, "have something," his head lowers, so that soft strands of hair glide down and tickle Zabuza's cheeks and forehead, "precious to live for?"
(Breath across your lips, and his face so close that you can see every crack in his chapped lips. You can't remember if you've ever done this before, and if you have it wasn't anything with emotion to it. How does this boy always manage to do this to you? How do those eyes revive what little there is of Zabuza left out of the Devil?)
"Something precious?"
His chest is heaving, and Haku's robe scratches enticingly against his bare flesh with every inhale. (Is it the wound or something else which makes you so dizzy now, Devil Zabuza?) The proximity is intoxicating, and the air between them heats.(Do you understand now why two bodies make a night warmer? It's not something as dull as ninjitsu or science, because it has no logic. Chemistry sets the air between two people on fire, and the people whom chemistry ignites has no pattern.) Does he have something precious?
("I am your tool," says a Haku who lives deep inside of your memories, "and tools are useless if they aren't on hand when you need them."
He says this with such a soft, sincere look that you do not question his innocence at the time, but looking back at you can hear the suggestion growing in the sentence. He was always tall, but as a child he was somewhat gangly and unsure. That winter, he began his transformation into an embodiment of grace and elegance. He started to throw without fumbling, becoming accustomed to his slender fingers and tiny hands. Fourteen and wanting to grow up faster than he already was.)
"I live to be your tool," Haku echoes in the here and now. His eyes are wild; his ragged breath belies the implication of his porcelain cheeks: that he is not a thing to be touched. "Zabuza…"
(It didn't scare you at the time that he put your life before his own. Now you wonder when affection in your heart was born. In a moment of fancy—or perhaps just insanity—you imagine that Haku purposefully put it there somehow, sewing love into your flesh as easily as thread.)
Fires only burn for so long if they aren't flamed. The moment distils. It goes sour, like milk left too long on a countertop in the mid-day heat.
"I see," says Haku, a slap of February air in his voice. He recoils, and rises, and leaves Zabuza lying on the floor, bemused.
The thump of the old wooden door in its ill-fitting frame lets Zabuza know that Haku is gone, into the cold, bitter rain (where hearts like the two of yours feel more welcome). There's an odd sort of pain in his chest. Zabuza doesn't recognize it. (Never had a broken heart, have you, Devil Zabuza? No, not you. Because before this boy…who did you have?)
It should be a simple thing to get to his feet, but his side screams in protest and for a moment he wonders if Haku would go as far as to deliberately hurt him. He certainly has the knowledge to do so. (You have hidden nothing from this boy in all your years of wandering. The trust between you to was implicit, and even now you do not truly suspect the boy and wouldn't begrudge him a small slight. You may just deserve this and a bit more for what you've wrought.)
Zabuza shuffles to the door hurriedly, and pulls the door open without really looking to see where he's going.
He doesn't expect to see Haku there, on the steps, sitting in the drizzle, face in hands. (This is simpler, albeit less dramatic, which is a bit of a letdown, but at least you don't have to rush through the rain like some love-struck idiot in pursuit of his lady fair only to die of phenomena a week later because you didn't have time to grab a coat or shoes.)
"Haku?" (You can't remember ever saying his name like this: with a tinge of concern in your voice. How many times has he been pummelled on the battle field without you batting an eyelash? Not a lot, because Haku can take care of himself, but enough times where you should have cared.) Zabuza's knees crack in protest as he crouches down next to Haku. He doesn't know what to say, so he settles for resting a hand on Haku's shoulder and stares at the darkening sky.
"Do you have something precious?"
(Yes, you do. You do have something precious, and it is curled up in front of you, unresponsive, because you don't know how to act like a man. Devil. Demon. These are titles which people have assigned you not for their scare factor but because you can be the embodiment of them. What does the Devil hold precious to his heart? Can a demon feel love?)
"It's going to snow soon," Zabuza says finally, because this is true and he can think of nothing else to say. "You'll catch your death if you stay rolled up on the porch all night."
Haku looks up then. "What do you care?" (His voice is as brittle as springtime ice. A whisper, as if he doesn't want you to hear him, but needs to speak his mind all the same.)
"I care." (And you won't look at him when you say this. You stare, head turned, at the landscape of wet streets and damp trees and freezing sky, but you cannot meet his gaze. You need to look anywhere but at Haku suddenly because there is something roaring inside your heart and he could so easily regret it, rip it up as easily as paper notes and throw it to the breeze.) "I…" (need you, love you, am sorry, have something precious, can't finish this sentence).
The sentence swings awkwardly between them.
In the end, it's Haku (it's always Haku who rescues you from all the unbearable things) who saves him by leaning forwards and pressing his lips to Zabuza's. Light, but firm. Warm. Chapped. It's sweet and over in an instant, so that Zabuza only realizes what's happened(where have your shinobi reflexes and senses gone?) after the moment ends.
(You squint into the distance, pretending to examine the horizon, and then turn back with a smile. It is more a smear of sharp teeth and thin lips than a real grin, but you hope Haku can see through it to the meaning underneath.) "Let's go inside."
(And because Haku loves you, because he knows you better than you know yourself at times, he gets up and follows you through the door, not pushing, but only encouraging you with the return of a slight smile. He understands what you really mean, which is that people don't leave precious things out in the rain.)
first draft: 01-07-12
revisions: 6-26-12