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It is small, and odd, and misshapen, so of course Haku loves it.The strange purple flower pokes through the frost patch by the burial mounds that spring. They brush a pale finger over its bell shaped-cup, the five purple petals forming its plush mouth. So soft, so colorful against the bone-white mountain snow, that it looks like a dream.The village elders scowl at it and make warding signs against it with their gnarled wooden fingers.“It is an ill omen,” the old ones hiss. “Crush it and dig up its roots.”Haku nods, fingers already scratching at hard, unbroken earth, but once the elders disappear down the dirt path, Haku tucks the flower into their hakama, roots and all, and runs deeper into the woods. They untangle its roots gently, the way mother combs fingers through their hair each night, and plant it in the secret spot they hide all their precious things: mushrooms and bird bones, fern bulbs and spirit spores. It is their first treasure, and they tend to it jealously.One month later, the flower inexplicably withers and dies. Haku cries until their mother calls them home for farmwork, and then the flower is forgotten.
Its bulb rots in the earth, dark. Alone.
“Zabuza-san. That boy is hurt.”
Small fingers tug the hem of Zabuza’s jonin vest. He shoves the hand away and keeps marching down the path, ignoring the way the air sharpens with cold.He’s only delaying the inevitable. He knows what’s going to happen next.
“Zabuza-san.”
Sometimes he forgets just how strong Haku is, already. Ice needles stab up through the earth, deliberately jabbing dangerously close to his ankles, trapping him in place.
The look he pins Haku with over his shoulder would make most men keel over dead. Yet Haku just frowns back with those big brown rabbit eyes, and Zabuza knows he’s beat.But the kid doesn’t need to know that.“You’ve got nerve,” He grumbles, following the child’s gaze as it flickers toward the roadside, onto a hunched figure limping through the trees, too close to the main road to avoid detection yet clearly hunting something, and poorly.
He can smell the blood from here.
A year ago, Zabuza would have cuffed Haku’s ears and told them to move it along.
We don’t help anyone but ourselves. Now, he runs his tongue behind the razor’s edge of his teeth, unimpressed steely eyes meeting Haku’s determined gaze. The kid doesn’t flinch, because the kid never flinches.
Zabuza scowls darkly, then gives a terse jut of the chin before breaking through the ice with a twist of his ankle. Water puddles beneath his sandals.“I’m not waiting for you,” is all he says before he turns and continues walking. Even with his back turned, he knows Haku is smiling.
Kisame was right. He is getting soft.Fuck.
“Let me see your shoulder, Kimimaro-kun,” Haku says a day later, crouching beside their toolkit and travel pack. “I should have asked earlier. Your brand must be hurting you.”“My what?”They have grown accustomed to Kimimaro’s confusion. Even for a Kaguya he is especially out of touch, with a naivety that seems incongruous with his family name. Privately, Kimimaro’s milky, wide-eyed stares remind Haku of a newborn kitten’s: seeing without discerning.
Zabuza calls him a liability. Haku thinks he’s cute.
“Your brands. From your master. Take that off. Let me see.” Haku removes the salve from their pack and plops down beside him. Kimimaro shrugs the fabric from his left shoulder, and—Haku falters. There are a few fading scars, but there is no mark.Kimimaro has a kekkei genkai, yet he has never been owned.Haku’s throat tightens.
“Haku-san? Did you find what you were looking for?”Their fingers itch. Pulling Kimimaro’s shirt back on, Haku numbly brushes a thumb across Kimimaro’s tattooed eyebrows, and swallows back the bitter bile of jealousy burning their throat.“...There is a small white pot in my bag. Bring it to me. I will need to cover these.”
“Flowers are beautiful. I am ugly.” Kimimaro turns his arm, impassively watching the spire of bone slowly spin and sink back into his elbow. “That is why people are afraid of me.”Haku hums, noncommittal.
Haku knows they are monsters.
“I do not think we were made for beauty Kimimaro-kun,” Haku nods, gathering herbs and blooms and setting them in their shared wicker basket, bumping their shoulder against his. “That does not mean we cannot appreciate it. Wait here.”They disappear into the bushes. A few moments later they reappear, a cluster of camellias flowering from their closed fist. They tuck them into Kimimaro’s braids. “Maybe we are not pretty, Kimimaro-kun, but that doesn’t mean the world is not.”Kimimaro blinks, slate-green eyes gone wide and dumb like a calf’s. Red mottles his too-pale cheeks like a crushed rose, or a broken blood vessel. “I think you are pretty, Haku-san.”Haku laughs and peppers more petals in his hair. I think you are beautiful too, Haku wants to say. Instead they take his hand and show him what herbs to collect, and their purposes. In return, Kimimaro shows Haku how to press flowers between stones wrapped in cord.
They are silent for the rest of the outing, the only sound in the clearing the spring rain pattering against the canopy, the occasional mourning cry of a warbler.
Kimimaro smells like blood and looks like a ghost in the moonlight, all white hair and white skin and red violence.
He kills without thinking, without mercy, more blade than boy, and as much as Haku detests violence, they crave understanding, and in Kimimaro they find something close to it.
Zabuza is away on business, so together they kill the hunter-nin in silence, Haku’s needles incapacitating the flesh before Kimimaro’s bones tear through.From the back, he could almost be Suigetsu, darting through the darkness like a wraith, cleaving down every obstacle. Then they think, no, because there is no hunger in Kimimaro’s violence, no burgeoning bloodlust or ambition; Kimimaro does not kill because he enjoys it.
He kills because it is efficient and practical. He kills because it is all he knows.
Less like Suigetsu, then, and more like Mangetsu. And yet Kimimaro still evokes a mix of both of them, the first two boys to leave their marks on Haku’s heart.
Their chest aches. Whether it is with grief or relief, they do not know.After, they wash the blood from each other in the river. The grief does not come away clean.
There is no goodbye. There is only an ambush.
The hunter-nin’s reinforcements are delayed by a week, but what they lack in punctuality is made up for in numbers.Kimimaro is separated in the crush of violence, and they scatter into the trees.By the time Haku reaches the rendezvous point several miles back, it’s already been an hour. By the second, Zabuza looks at them and shakes his head, decision made. They can’t afford to wait.Haku says nothing. Just nods and follows Zabuza into the trees, not daring to leave behind so much as a pressed flower.
Years later, Haku will hardly think of their time together. But that night, they press their mouth into their sleeping roll to muffle the sounds of their silent heaves, pale fingers wrapped around a cluster of pressed white camellias crumpling to dust in their hands.