Edited: 07.02.2019

Haze

Chapter Song: Lindsey Stirling – Crystallize

"Kids like you won't be needed by anyone and will die beggars."

A deep voice woke me, but I kept my eyes shut.

I felt my brother shift, and, after a slight pause, he spoke.

"You have the same eyes as us, Mister."

Alarm bells went off in my mind, and one name rang through it.

Zabuza.

I opened my eyes.

And there it came. That near inexplicable feeling of nerves, anger, and fear—the near physical, and utterly gut wrenching, feeling of dread.

I can only really explain it as an almost nausea invoking bubbling that forms in the pit of your stomach. But it never quite makes you vomit—it only ever teeters, teasing. Eventually, it spreads to your chest, and suddenly you struggle to breathe, and then your throat, constricting your airways. But you can still breathe. There's only the illusion that you're suffocating. And I very much felt like I was about to choke on the near palpable, insufferable dread that seemed to have manifested itself in my jugular.

This world was driving me insane.

Zabuza's very image was daunting to me. He stood over us, his height reaching about 6ft, which to my tiny self it seemed as though a skyscraper had just been placed in front of me. I looked up, my eyes noticing the hitai-ate that he donned on his forehead. Despite the fact it was marred with dents and scratches and was threading at the seams, it was in good enough condition to reflect the moonlight perfectly so that the engravings on it were particularly emphasised. The emblem of Kirigakure. A thing which I could never recall in my mind yet seemed so starkly familiar to me when I saw it. I could no longer pretend I was anywhere else but the Narutoverse.

The nausea washed over me.

In that moment, I was truly reminded of where I was.

I was reminded of how real this was.

I was reminded of how completely and utterly mortal and weak I was.

The intense anxiety I felt evoked from my realisation of exactly how alone I really was in this reality. Of how trapped I was in my own mind. Of how no one would understand the pain or suffering I had experienced. No one would ever understand. I suppose my brother understood seeing your father kill your mother and attempt to kill you, but…he hadn't been ripped from one world and put in another. He understood living homeless and hungry, but he hadn't died only to reborn with every single memory still intact. He didn't know the pain of not knowing what was and wasn't actual and existent and real.

He wasn't thrown into a goddamned anime.

They were just drawings. They were just drawings!

I had told myself I had accepted that this was my reality, but it wasn't that easy. My brother wasn't a ninja yet, but Zabuza was. Zabuza is.

This man was but a fictional character to me before now. I really hadn't fully processed the fact that he was real. He was a real person. This man, who had killed so many. This man who was affiliated with a ninja village who raised children to become merciless killers. A village that was once known as the "Village of the Bloody Mist". The village that caused my clan to go into hiding. The village that caused my brother and me to be so hated. The village that indirectly caused my mother's murder and for me to become an orphan.

I could barely contain my disdain. Zabuza, I mentally spat. Momochi Zabuza. A fictional antagonist. A murderer. An assassin. A "shinobi."

The word escaped my mouth before I even had a moment to stop myself. I truly despised being a child and the uncontrollable impulses that came with it. Oh, the perks of having a mind that didn't align with your physical age.

His eyes moved ever so slightly to the right so that his gaze was no longer on Haku, but rather on me. He wasn't hesitant to make eye contact.

I, on the other hand, was. But it seemed I wasn't able to look anywhere else. I felt so small in his presence. But, Haku was right. He did have the same eyes as us. He had the kind of eyes that held pain. That had seen more than a human should. The kind that lacked hope, but still held...tenacity.

Despite the array of particular emotions circulating my system, it wasn't a look of fear which I gave him, nor was it one of panic or weakness.

No, again, without my control, my body acted partially on its own. My bottom jaw clenched itself and my eyes narrowed. The bubbling feeling in my stomach and throat made itself even more apparent. Fear was not the overwhelming emotion I was feeling, as much as I was overwhelmed by it. No, the most prominent was anger. Confusion. Hate.

I was so full of hate for this world. He was confirmation of the fact that I was indeed an inhabitant to a world that I hated; he was confirmation of the fact I was trapped in a world of hate.

I was trapped in a world of death, of war, of corruption, and of hate.

And this man was meant the one who took the one thing that I loved away from me. The only person that I held love for that was alive. He was meant to be the reason Haku died, and he wouldn't even have cared were it not for the words of Naruto.

Naruto…The 'Narutoverse'. Uzumaki Naruto. The one who this entire universe was based around back in my old life. The hero. The 'ray of sunshine' who would make all the problems go away. The one who would cause an era of world peace. The fucking prophecy child.

How ridiculous it all sounded.

I suppose he is the one who'll end up uniting the shinobi nations, but since when did peace ever last? And who was meant to sort out the world of the civilians—the daimyo? The corrupt bastards who only care for money and power and use shinobi as their little puppets?

True peace can never be achieved.

I wasn't used to the amount of cynicism or pessimism which currently filled my mind, but optimistic thoughts and positive feelings seemed to have left my system a long time ago. Everything was becoming dark.

Ice and snow only kill. The cold only hurts life. The clouds that carry the rain and snow block out the sun. They block out the light. Snow, seemingly, is beautiful, but no one ever considers the fact that everything underneath it is dead. Were it not for the sun that comes and melts it away, life wouldn't ever grow again. A tree wouldn't bud. A flower would never blossom.

Ignoring the urge to continue my inner musings, I focused my attention back on Zabuza.

"If hunger doesn't get to you first, the cold will. Huh, I'm surprised it hasn't already." He joked. His sardonic comment only further causing my blood to boil.

But that was the thing. The cold didn't hurt us. I was alive with even all the snow and ice. It was a part of me. I was a part of it. I could grow without the light and warmth, but what a desolate existence that is. Only ever feeling the cold, but never truly.

As much as it was extremely ironic to want to find sanctuary in the person whom you considered the embodiment of all the askew 'morals' of this world, he was our only option if we wanted to become strong. And, well, to not die.

"The cold doesn't affect us, Mister." I announced feebly. The shakiness in my voice wasn't from the nervousness I was feeling. My fear wasn't making itself particularly apparent at the moment. The shakiness was from how weak I was. I was physically and mentally drained. I just wanted refuge.

His head perked up ever so slightly more. What I had said seemed to get his attention.

Silence ensued. I simply waited for a response. My brother seemed to just stare, wonder filling his eyes at Zabuza, who was unknown to him. Maybe he viewed him as a beacon of hope, or, as he said, he was simply able to see that his eyes had the same lack as ours. Lack of zest; lack of sparkle; lack of life.

Even though I did not like this man, I did hold the slightest inkling of sympathy towards Zabuza. The slightest inkling of gratitude. In this world—in the version where I did not exist—he was the reason my brother didn't die. He was also simply victim of the cruel systems of this world. A perfect puppet that would eventually rebel. He was what these hidden villages wanted to create, only they wanted control over them. There was also an inkling of respect, because he did try and fight back. Only, he deceived my brother and would most likely try to deceive me also in order to reach that goal.

"Do you two want to be needed by someone?"

He was referring to his earlier statement. "Kids like you won't be needed by anyone."

Really, the question would've made more sense as 'Do you want to be indoctrinated so I can make you believe that you're just my tools and that your purpose in life is to serve me to give you a false sense of being of being needed?'

But we were just naïve young children to him. He had no idea of my extensive knowledge of him and his goals. Of his future. And, if I were to answer question he actually asked, then the answer would be yes. But that wasn't the question that we needed to answer. 'Do we need him?' was the real question. And, again, the answer was yes. A million times yes.

He really didn't need us. We were but merely things he wanted to use as pawns. But he knew we needed him were we to have any chance of survival. We were quite literally clinging to life, and we weren't going to be able to last much longer.

Haku stood, grabbing my hand as he did. I followed. As I did, I felt the fatigue of being awoken prematurely wash over me, but I continued on. It wasn't as if I had regular sleep patterns to adhere to anyway. I just needed sleep, but my body was beginning to grow used to running off such little of it.

Once within Zabuza's reach, he looped his arm around us, and we began to walk.

That was our answer. This was it. The 'embarking of a new adventure'. The training to become a ninja. The abandonment of normal civilian society. The road to recovery, maybe.

This was where it really began.

My tears are always frozen.