Disclaimer- Still don't own Naruto, much to my disappointment.

In the Hidden Village in the Mist, I remember wondering, after a particularly rough session where the villagers had found and beaten me once again, if, in warmer climates, the people were nicer, as if their hearts were as cold blooded as a lizard's.

When I was eight, I found out how wrong I was, when Zabuza-sama took me and fled to a small, non-ninja village. At first, I believed my theory correct, that the only thing that made the Mist any different from the other Hidden Villages was the coldness.

After all, children ran in the streets, laughed and played in the shining sun, with mother's sweeping and cooking and cleaning, father's ruffling their hair as they went about their work. The crisp smells of warm life, like a heartbeat.

One boy tossed me a ball, his smile like the first defiance of summer, hair like warm, sun soaked wood. Zabuza-sama had left me to do as I wished, expressing only the desire that we lay low for the time being.

And so, in the interest of keeping up the charade as a normal boy, I tossed the ball back as gently as I could, hoping my training would not shine through.

The boy laughed and called me a friend. His name was Ichiro, I remember. I don't know if I thought him a friend, but he laughed and followed me around as though I were some new toy. His mother was warm and always smelled of sharply fresh laundry, with a smile like ripened sweetness. His father was absent from his life, but Ichiro was always smiling anyway.

A week passed with Ichiro consistently finding me and forcing me to join in his games, his mother insisting I share the sweets she would make. Zabuza-sama refused to let me decline, stating that it would be strange for him to be seen with a young boy all day long.

At the end of the week, Ichiro stopped showing up. I didn't mind, but somehow, I felt the silence was deafening.

Listless and somehow lacking any direction, I found myself inexplicably drawn to his house.

When I got there, a crowd had formed, the sort of crowd you only find at a tragedy. The air was thick with the smell of fresh, apple-red blood and I pushed through, and found the shards of glass and shredded laundry scattered about Ichiro's porch.

A robber, they said. Just a random incident.

So sad, too bad, end of story for Ichiro and his mother.

After that day, I insisted I would follow Zabuza-sama, even discretely, at a distance, in disguise, as long as I remained close by.

I understood then that nowhere was warm and that the only way you could go on in this world was in the cold, and it would always be cold, no matter what happened. A break in the storm at times, but always, always the cold would return.

Zabuza-sama understands that cold. He becomes part of the cold, becomes a Devil that breathes and lives because of that frozen climate, surrounding himself in Mist that the warmth and light cannot break.

So I would be Ice, I would be Cold. I would learn to douse my emotions in a blizzard and let the frostbite destroy them. I would do what others would not.

I would learn from the blizzards and avalanches of the Mist. I would be merciless and unrelenting, unbending, sweeping away all that stands in the way of Zabuza-sama. My enemies would feel the weight of the cold, bury themselves in white death and die, die so that Zabuza-sama's dreams would be realized.

My heart would become ice, to match the cutting, biting cold of the world I exist in.

Naruto though, lives in a world that I cannot touch, that I fear to touch. He lives in a world where the cold is burned away by golden bright warmth and the ice of the heart is nothing more than a minor inconvenience to his unstoppable smile.

I... I am afraid of him. I fear his warmth more than anything, because Zabuza-sama's coldness if familiar, but this fire, this warmth that he carries in his soul is unlike anything.

He is a wavering, weak Sun in a world where there is only cold and shadows. He tried to burn, burn against that cold but he could be blown out like a candle in the fierce wind.

I am sorry Naruto. But I must be that Wind, I must be the Cold that you will sputter and falter and burn out against because this is something I must do. You are too dangerous, too powerful to let live. Your sun resonating, the reflection of your light on the ice is too powerful to ignore.

"Haku? You're nervous." Zaubza-sama's voice is smooth and cold as a frozen lake, holding his sword that doesn't reflect light and his eyes that are empty and hollow as the deep.

I won't reply or deny, because that might be a lie. "Be careful of Sharingan Kakashi this time. Leave the Genin to me." I reply quietly. Ice. I am the Ice.

Zabuza-sama continues to look at me, piercing through the blizzard of the soul with a brittle light. "You're thinking about that blonde brat, aren't you?"

"He's dangerous." I do not know if Zabuza-sama will understand. He has never truly spoken with Naruto as I have. He hasn't seen the Light that threatens to break the Mist that the Devil surrounds himself with.

"Is he?" Zabuza-sama looks at me and I hope, I pray he understands what I have come to know. "Maybe he is. But Haku, you are dangerous as well."

I am. I am the Cold. I can break Naruto's brittle warmth, make it shatter like shining glass and see that his light too, can be broken and destroyed, brought down by the cold.

"Your heart must be as cold as ice, Haku." Zabuza-sama's voice is so far away, like he's some sort of divine messenger that is telling me a great revelation, but one that, for me, is already known. "The heart of a shinobi."

Yes. The heart of a shinobi. Of a tool, of a weapon that can kill and let shining, crimson-apple blood spill out in the streets, break glass and tear down anything that stands between.

Zabuza-sama has that heart. That heart of ice that is solid and unbreakable, that will not break but maybe, maybe can melt against the Sun.

That cannot be allowed.

I will do what others will not, Naruto. For Zabuza-sama, because the world is Ice and not Light and Warm, and the only way my precious person will survive that Cold is if I allow myself to challenge the Sun and tear it down.

To destroy you.

Author's Notes

I said it would be Inari, but well, I lied. Haku's revelations come before Inari anyway. I wanted this to be longer, but any more and I felt it would start to deviate from the original intent.

Inari'll be next. I promise. After that, I close the book on the Wave Arc and move onto the fun stuff... Chuunin exam!