Warning: Swearing!

The Coldest Night

("I'll love you forever, y'know."

"Promise?"

"I promise, my little bunny!")

. . .

Our mother dragged us back into the house, not caring for the clothes. Haku's tears threatened to spill from his eyes as our mother rushed us down the hallway, holding onto our wrists. Once in her bedroom, she crouched to our level, cupping our faces with her suddenly cold hands. Her own tears stained her cheeks.

"Listen, my loves." She smiled weakly, tears still running, "You can't use your abilities, not even in front of your father, not ever. Please, promise me you wont."

"W-why?" My brother asked, hiccuping.

"Our ancestors were killed for it. I can do it too, but I don't. If people find out, they will kill you. They will kill all of us. Please, promise me. Promise me, Haku!" Her voice began to grow desperate.

My brother opened his mouth, but before he could speak, my mother shrilled: "YOU CAN'T USE IT!"

This wasn't real.

It couldn't be real.

. . .

The rest of the day was spent in an uncomfortable silence. Haku and I both spent most of it locked in our rooms, and my mother spoke not a word about it since making us both swear we wouldn't use our ability—our ice release. Our bloodlime limit.

I could hear Haku's light sobs, though no tears spilled from my own eyes. I wasn't sure how much time was passing at all. I simply laid on my bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying the scene, attempting to find some sort of trick. Some sort of ulterior explanation, though nothing came to mind. I couldn't sleep that night.

I could only curl further into my sheets and squeeze my eyes further shut, as though attempting to disappear from the world entirely—as though attempting to block it out entirely. My attempt proved futile. There was only so much I could hide from, only so much I could pretend. No matter how much I wished I'd imagined, the memory replayed in my head like a tape stuck on repeat. The scene of me and Haku doing something so completely impossible, repeating like an endless loop.

I felt like I was going insane.

It couldn't have been real.

Looking out at the moonlit sky, I grimaced, and shut my eyes again. It mocked me; it was so real. How dare it mimic reality to such a degree? It shouldn't have been more than a sketch. It was fiction. This world was nothing more than animated drawings. It was fiction! It was a figment of somebody's imagination. It was a fictional universe consisting of fictional, impossible things. It wasn't real!

It was an anime. A manga.

I didn't even know if I was real.

I felt so empty. What goddamn deity was screwing with me? What divine being decided I deserved this—to be thrown into this world of all places? What deity thought this would be fun to throw me into a fake universe with me none the fucking wiser? What had I done to deserve it?

Why—why was I born into a character that didn't even originally exist?

I didn't feel real.

But my previous life was real. This life had to be real. Everything felt so incredibly real. My mother—her love, her words, her body, her warmth—it had to be real. My brother—even if he was a fictional character—had to be real. He couldn't not be. He couldn't be fake. This couldn't be fake.

I hated to pity myself, I truly did, but I couldn't help it. This universe was a cruel one. I didn't know what to do, or if I could even do anything. I knew what happened to Haku. To his—my mother. I knew what would happen to me. My father—

My father.

I nearly threw up. If this was the world I thought it was, then he was going to try to kill us. He was going to try and kill me. He wasn't at home, but he was due back any day now, and if the anime or my memory was any indication, then he'd seen. Somebody had seen. And he was going to try and kill us.

My tousan was going to try to kill me.

The thought made me dizzy, and my exhaustion begged for sleep. But my desire to change my impending fate drove me from my bed.

We needed to run, and we needed to run now.

Adrenaline and exhaustion weren't a good mix. Dizzily, I dressed myself and packed a bag to bring with me. It was light, with a few changes of clothes and toiletries, including the comb my mother had given me as an heirloom. It was the only sentimental thing I'd allow myself to bring.

("It belonged to our ancestors." My mother told me. She combed through my hair with it, as she always did before I went to sleep. "My mother died young, but she gave this to me before she did."

The comb was heavy and old, but durable and its condition practically unblemished. It was a mint green sort of colour, made out of Jade stone. Among the handle at the top the comb was engraved in a detailed sort of way with flowers and cherry blossoms.

"Men typically inherit things in the family, but this—" she finished combing my hair, and leant into my ear, whispering, as though she were telling me a secret, "—this is for the women!" Her breath tickled my ear and made me giggle.

"Yuki women are strong, you know! We've always been strong. Strong and beautiful. Like this comb. Like you, my little bunny."

Yuki was her maiden name.)

I ran into Haku's room. He was blissfully asleep, despite earlier events of the day. I shook his body with perhaps too much vigour, but the adrenaline and anxiety were making my heart race and my head pound. We were running out of time.

He awoke with a grown. "Byakuya, what are you doing?"

"Shh!" I panicked. He was being so loud, too loud! "Get dressed. Don't say anything, just get dressed."

I grabbed his usual outfit threw it onto his bed and took the liberty of getting his bag ready myself. His mouth opened to respond, but quickly snapped shut again. I was thankful he didn't question it further—his tiredness likely working in my favour.

I was halfway through packing his things when a crash came from the kitchen. And then, a scream.

An ear-piercing, heart wrenching scream. And, though I had never heard this scream, I recognised the voice to whom it belonged.

(And in came the storm.)

I slung Haku's bag round my shoulders and ran down the hallway, panicked, like any child would. I should've run in the other direction, gone out of the window, because I knew what had happened. I should've left with Haku. But that didn't stop my small feet from sprinting as if my life depended on it. It didn't stop me sprinting as if I had a chance to save her.

If I had been a little quicker, left a little earlier, I could've.

There was blood painted across each wall, the floor, the face of my father—all painted in my mother's blood. He looked at me with red, puffy eyes, and tears that didn't refrain from falling, yet...

My gaze left his, falling onto the corpse on the floor. The body of my mother – my beautiful, beautiful, disfigured mother—murdered by the man (my father!) who continued to tower over me. I screamed, crumbling to the floor. My mother!

My scream became strangled, turning to mere gasps begging for air as he gripped my neck and hoisted me off the floor. Pinned against a wall, the villagers cheered. My father (the word left a venom on my tongue, it was an incomprehensible thought, that this man was him—my tousan!) wore an emotionless face. His eyes, devoid of life, continued to stare into mine as I struggled in vain to release his grasp from my only supply of air. My legs were too short to kick him and my arms too small scratch him, no matter how much I tried.

I tried to scream his name, but the sound came out strained. It seemed to insult him, such a word, as he slammed my body against the wall again. My head began to spin.

"You are cursed devils. Cursed devils. Cursed devils!" I was hit against the wall again.

The realisation I was going to die came more excruciatingly in this life than it had the last. In each life, I had accomplished nothing, and, in each life, I had a pitiful end. Never did I imagine I would be reborn into the universe of Naruto, nor did I imagine I would possess such a hated bloodline limit, but fate seemed to love toying with me.

(I pleaded to the God I didn't believe in again.)

The cheering came to a halt, replaced by a chorus of gasps. My father's mouth dropped, and he coughed. Blood rolled down his chin, and onto my cheek, and I fell from his grasp, desperately inhaling for air as I crashed onto the floor. I was too overwhelmed to care for the pain which coursed through my body, nor the imprint of my father's fingerprints on my neck. Blood covered my hands.

Ice. Ice had impaled him, my father, who fell to my side. His dead eyes hung open, frozen in time, and stared into mine as though they were alive. As though they didn't belong to a dead man. The other villagers fell quiet, and I turned to the eight-year-old who stood at the bottom of the hall.

Haku had saved my life.

I ran to him, still shaking, like he. Physically, he looked so weak. Tears stained both his cheeks, and in such a small, frail body, his entire frame shook.

His bangs fell from his eyes. Eyes which held pure rage in them revealed themselves, and the villagers fell silent. Grabbing my hand, he whispered to me.

"I'm sorry." His words were, before then a fury of pillars erupted from the floor. They impaled every villager, every ceiling, every wall. Only we were unaffected by the onslaught. Aside from the possessions in my bag and the clothes on my back, everything was gone. Our home began tumbling.

My entire childhood crushed and killed before me. In a moment.

Haku dragged me despite my heaving, running from the now destroyed house. The snow was unforgiving against my bare skin, but the frost could incarcerate me for all I cared.

A far enough distance from the house, his pace slowed, before his knees fell to the floor. In an entanglement of limbs, we held onto each other. It was a needed reminder that we were alive, even if it felt half my heart had died just then. It was an instictive need for comfort, for heat. It seemed he was my, and I was his, only heat on the coldest of nights. It was the coldest night.