Strange
Guess I was in deeper than I thought I was, if I have enough love for the both of us...
The wild land outside Kirigakure were a place where civilians feared to tread: it was the land of the wolf, the snow leopard and lynx, the white hare, the black bear, and the deer., the land of pine trees and a carpet of snow that came almost up to your knees in the winter. Even only the hardiest of shinobi could survive camping out there.
Haku shivered as he piled up twigs for the fire. It was not from the cold; having been born in these wilds himself, he was accustomed to it, and he had wrapped up well. It was the presence of Zabuza in the tent. Haku had volunteered to keep watch while his master slept, and he did not want to wake Zabuza with a commotion. Zabuza was never the most tolerant of people, and he was even more volatile when he hadn't had enough sleep. Even hardened swordsmen needed their down time.
Haku's eyes had become used to the darkness, and he lit a couple of matches and dropped them onto the woodpile. Small flames began to dance amid the twigs, illuminating his face and casting a dim orange light over the endless snow.
Inside the tent, Zabuza grunted and turned over in his sleep.
Haku sat, hugging his knees and watching the fire. If any wild animal or rogue shinobi came, he could easily dispatch them with a well-placed ice needle or two. He didn't like killing animals, but accepted it was a necessary evil. When he'd hesitated at killing rabbits and deer the first time Zabuza had taken him hunting, the older shinobi had shouted, "Vat the fuck do you think you're going to eat in this veather, idiot? Berries? Vat sort of hunter-nin are you going to be if you can't even kill a godsdamned rabbit?" Haku had winced, but gritted his teeth and shot a deer down with ice needles. Zabuza had grunted his approval and the two of them had eaten well that night, but Haku had still felt guilty.
How different he and Zabuza were. And yet...Zabuza couldn't have been all bad. After all, he hadn't left Haku to starve to death in the snow.
Haku suddenly longed to be in the tent with Zabuza.
"Don't be stupid, Haku," he whispered to himself. "You're a tool. You're only his veapon and nothing more. He doesn't think of you any other vay."
And yet.
He fanned the fire and thought of how, before he had met Zabuza, he had rummaged in bins, shoplifted – without much success, although the occasional kind shopkeeper took pity on the small thin creature and gave him a cup of tea or a piece of bread – stolen food from animals. He had been drifting, weightless, loved and wanted by no-one, with only the occasional kindly or sorrowful glance thrown his way, and then Zabuza had come along and given him a reason to live and a purpose in life. He had taught Haku how to hunt, how to spy on people, how to kill silently, how to use weapons, how to play the part of a girl to play on women's sympathies and men's lust, although the encounters with strange older men never went too far, for Zabuza found the idea of pimping his little accomplice out disgusting and had preferred to use him merely as a decoy. He had acted as a human weapon, a living, breathing counterpart to the immense sword Zabuza carried on his back, the Kubikiribocho.
He might as well have been dead until Zabuza came into his life. Zabuza had been like a father or an older brother to him. Although what he felt for Zabuza right now, he realised with a start, was not what one should normally feel for a father or brother.
Love?
Weapons do not love, Haku thought. Weapons do not feel. The Kubikiribocho does not love. It only kills. But it is made of steel...and I am not. I am a creature of flesh and blood and ice.
He remembered the time they had run into a beautiful boy with long white hair and red-rimmed eyes and dots on his head, the markings of the notorious Kaguya clan, said to be even more savage than the Akimichi of Konoha or the Takano of Sunagakure, although neither of these clans meant anything to Haku. However, he knew enough about the Kaguya to know that the boy, like him, had a freakish bloodline that made people hate and fear him. Had the boy had a Zabuza of his own? Was he a weapon too? Haku had never found out. He and Zabuza were constantly on the move after the Mizukage incident, and they had been in the wild land for days.
He looked up at the sky. It was starless, just miles of inky black as far as the eye could see.
Without thinking, Haku lit another match, tossed it on the fire, and crawled into the tent. Lying on his side, he inched himself along the ground until he could feel the heat radiating from Zabuza's body. He snuggled into Zabuza's back, burying his face between the older man's shoulders, and warmed himself.
Fire was no substitute for this, Haku thought.
With a start, Zabuza woke up. He jerked his head round and growled, "Vat are you doing?"
"I'm sorry, master," said Haku in a sad little voice, his big black eyes filling with tears as the moment was spoiled, and he scuttled out of the tent. Zabuza muttered something, and then went back to sleep. Haku sat by the fire, tears freezing on his face.
He was going to catch it tomorrow.
However, the next day, Zabuza said nothing about the previous night's incident. They came across a herd of deer, and Haku cheered up when he bagged three deer, aiming to compensate for waking his master up, and Zabuza complimented him on his aim. Any kind words from Zabuza were as gold dust.
The sky was the colour of a battered tin can. Haku shielded his eyes and read the sky, as Zabuza had taught him, noticed by the flight of birds overhead and the looming clouds that another snowstorm was imminent, and said as much. He looked at Zabuza and thought that he had read a change in his eyes.
Does he feel the same way as I do about him?
"Ve must be leaving now," said Zabuza, and Haku pushed all thoughts to the back of his mind and threw snow on the fire to extinguish it.
"I am a veapon," he mumbled. "I am a veapon."
"Did you say something?" asked Zabuza. But Haku just smiled a sad, shy little smile and said nothing.