AN: Hey, guys, I haven't posted anything in a while, so I give you a little Haku-centric tribute to everyone's favorite gender-bender ninja. I left his/her actual gender deliberately ambiguous, so if you want to gripe and say that I portrayed Haku as "male when she's actually a girl" or "female when he's actually a boy", knock yourself out. Hopefully, there's something for everyone in here. Slightly poetic, but not too flowery, I hope, and sufficiently creepy for those of you who like a dark story. There's even a cameo appearance at the end by Zabuza, everyone's favorite psycho swordsman. With my babblefest done, go to!
XXX
It is so early in the morning as to still be night, Haku's favorite time of the day when one cannot tell which is which. Day or darkness? Today or yesterday?
Boy or girl?
In the real world, there are no such clean-cut lines, so unlike the uncomplicated walls and floors of this little house they hide out in. it is a modest affair in quiet colors, perfectly built for two shinobi who are almost never home.
A mane of black hair is shaken out and spills down to sweep the floor planks as the ninja sits and picks up a brush, begins the simple domestic task of preparation for the day.
Back before, when Mother used to do this for me, she'd whisper into my ear the secrets of ice and cold and dark, and we'd laugh together. She'd tell me of her childhood, even farther north than the tiny farmhouse we shared with father. Up there, her people lived in caves in the snow that never melts, and they summoned the mighty ice bears and the deadly dapple-pelted seals to help them stay warm and fed and safe.
They never wore layers and layers of furs and leathers and other clothes, like the people from the Summerlands who tried to go there. They could go out in the snow in only yukata and nothing else, anytime they liked, because the ice was bred into their blood and bone.
And Mother was a princess there, so even when she was made to marry a Summerlander, the ice lived on in me just as strong as if she had married into another noble family. None of my father's Summerlander weakness for her baby, her child.
Haku snaps out of reverie to find Zabuza sliding open the door and plunking down on the edge of the gallery to watch the sunrise. It is a ritual of theirs, as Haku slides the beaded cord through the lacing-gaps in the bun covering and ties it tight around a knot of hair, and Zabuza slowly wakes up to another day of blood and death.
They have their own methods.