Drabble, spur of the moment, focused on Zabuza.
‹Days of Our Lives›
by Sinful Serenity
He doesn't have a sense of time anymore. He measures in the death toll. Five, ten, fifteen twenty…fifty, one, two, four hundred. The numbers mount, and still he stumbles through his own hell, never giving the slick blood on his fingers a chance to dry.
It's always being replaced by more.
He kneels by their burned out fire, divining his prey's location from the crumbling ashes. Somewhere in the powdery blackness, the sound of a dropped bell rings, a scrap of cloth, a torn piece of yarn. It reminds him of hollow memories, and the old embittered surge rises again, and he crushes it before it can manifest.
He has sacrificed everything to come this far. Truly pathetic it would be, should Zabuza lose his touch to relentless flashbacks of his tortured youth.
But the unbidden images will always rise; horrific memories that sound so sweet to his tainted ears.
First blood. The pulsing fluid that governed them all.
Graduating exams. Alone, because they're all dead. By his hands, he might add.
Slaughtering each and every other child of his rank, mindlessly enjoying their dying wails. Because they've always had what he's always wanted; the ability to smile and laugh so carefree and innocently and stupidly, and play with each other so stupidly, because they haven't a care and everything would be alright and they had no ambition, and yet still a reason to be. Because he's furious and envious at the same time; because he holds nothing but jealousy and contempt for his fellow would-be Mist nins.
The mist-demon raises cold, calculating eyes to his companion, and the pure boy smiles lingeringly under his thick mask, and they both begin padding softly away.
Childhood was supposed to be some of the most treasured days of our lives.
And in a way, to Zabuza, they are.