also if you’re cool with pre-established relationships/dynamics where we skip all the awkwardness of starting to roleplay with someone new and jump straight to plotting a little and tagging each other in stuff hmu
Suigetsu can honestly say that this is the first time he’s allowed himself to relax in years. Being back in Kiri – back home, back with people he would have said he knew years ago but could only call strangers now – has had him on edge. From the minute he walked back into her borders, she seemed foreign, like a siren singing a song in a language he didn’t know, all the enchantment and wonder lost in translation.
Kiri just wasn’t what he had remembered. And no, he had never had a romantic memory of his home. There were no rose tinted glasses. But it was still home, somewhere he thought maybe he could go back to and find a piece of himself he had lost. He was wrong.
There was nothing for him in the paths he used to walk. No comfort in familiarity. He thought he’d flourish in his old routine, but that had just been a lie he told himself to maintain enthusiasm when pressed for /why/ he had finally come back. It crumbled immediately when he was by himself. Life was just monotony. Kiri was just stagnant and rotten.
But there had been some good things. A good someone. He hesitates now to even think on it, not because he wants to deny what’s taking place between them, but because that will be the third time he’s thought of it today and that’s almost a sign of obsession.
He doesn’t want to be accused of being obsessed with anything or anyone, but especially not Haku. That would be slipping out of perspective. It would shift Haku from the place he belongs – beside Suigetsu and then under him, warm breath and a pleasant laugh, a lean figure that twists and bends, with toes that curl and thighs that shake and hands that grip tightly on the sheets.
He’s more than some relief, some shape to idolize and then disregard. Suigetsu has never been one for poetry or grand thoughts. He’s never been one for romance either. But there’s something about Haku, with his soft voice but steady pace, that inspires Suigetsu to find the meaning behind words he’s often heard people say but never bothered to try and understand for himself.
“Just like?” And that’s daring, pushing for things he knows he doesn’t understand, introducing a concept that might not work between them. He grins. “I think I’m okay with that, for now.”
PROMPT: “silence.”
SUMMARY: he’s never feared dying. he does it all the time. ( or: five times haku dies, and the one time he lives. )
i.
“up here in the mountains,” haku’s father used to say, “there are no gods, only snow.”
for four long months of every year, ice reigned. hard and brittle when winter swept icy sleet over the mountains and down into the valley; pools of churlish black sludge once the thaw began. finally, after the runoff drained and the water levels fell, then, and only then, did the earth become alive. villagers crept from thatched houses like the dead from a crypt, their threadbare garments hanging too loose and the skin across their ribs stretched too tight. mothers swaddled babes smothered to keep from starving & buried them naked in the fields to nourish the crop. a pragmatic people, even in sorrow.
tears are frozen to his face by the time he begins dragging their bodies down to the vegetable field. five bodies in total, halfway through the shovel handle breaks, it takes hours, his hands too small to accurately maneuver the spade, but he does it. when he finishes, he slides their eyelids shut, then plants three daikon seeds in each of their ears.ii.
he weeps for the first dog. when the eighth slinks toward him, ears molded flat against a bony skull, eyes phlegm yellow with rabies & hunger, haku’s eyes burn with salt but he keeps his hold on the food scraps & bares his teeth right back.
iii.
when the man asks haku to follow him into the wastes, into the mist,
haku’s body betrays him with a shudder..
when the man asks him to be his tool, his body molds itself
into the palm of the man’s hand.
he says yes. yes. yes. the man takes his hand.
three years later, it is a hilt.
iv.
as the shunshin dissipates & the raikiri nestles into his sternum, haku inhales the stink of seared flesh & rotten minerals; thinks, almost idly, this might be the warmest he’s ever felt.
he wonders if there’s a heaven. if there is, no one he knows is there.
v.
a man with a mouth like paper hauls his spirit back by the throat, & when the wooden box spits him from the earth & thrusts him out from the darkness he nearly chokes on the light. zabuza steps out from a gaggle of figures haku’s subconscious distantly informs him are the seven swordsmen past, looking just as stunned as haku is. then he sees the wooden caskets. the sigils carved into the wood & marring the earth beneath them. when haku registers what’s going on, what’s happening, he wants to grab onto his master, to beat his own breast until this facade of a body falls apart around him, to hide his shame in the dirt where he belongs, to scream I loved you, to howl I’m sorry I failed you and your dream.
‘… haku. ’ zabuza stares at him, fist tightening around kubikiribocho’s hilt, watching him like – like something he needs to keep an eye on. a pit opens in haku’s belly. like a thing.
‘ zabuza-san, ’ he starts to say something, anything, but when he forces himself to look up into his teacher’s eyes the angry heat in zabuza’s gaze sears the back of his throat shut. this is it, then. proof his failure has bred hate –zabuza tears the executioner blade from the earth, balancing it deftly over one shoulder, then, lightning quick, grounds himself & swings the blade straight at haku. the boy doesn’t move, eyes fluttering close, tells himself this is what he deserves, that he is unworthy even of the swordsman’s anger –
‘ god damn it, ’ amber eyes snap open; zabuza is wrenching the blade from the remnants of their wooden caskets, wood chips falling in a brief & unpleasant drizzle. the other swordsmen fall silent, observing. one has his eyebrow raised. zabuza turns toward haku again, & for a split-second haku sees something in zabuza’s eyes seize, feels his aura’s edge sharpen & serrate.
‘ zabuza-san,’ haku tries again, ‘ I – I am so, so sorry –’
‘ if you’re here, then that means there really is no heaven,’ zabuza grumbles, sniffing as kubikiribocho returns to his shoulder. a particularly skinny swordsmen in a mask loudly clears his throat.
before haku’s brain can wrap around, let alone respond, to the statement, some unknown force inside them swipes their feet out from under their bodies & drives them deep into the treetops in search of enemies unseen.
vi.
“He didn’t see you just as a tool.”
he is on fire.
he is burning from the inside out as edo tensei continues burning away the soul clinging desperately to his body. he is burning from the inside out & every second that passes the world grows a little darker, a little more narrow, until he is at the bottom of a deep well & the world outside is but a pinprick of light hundreds of miles away. in the distance birds chirp, the air bristles with ozone. seems the copy nin plans on finishing this fight.
good, haku thinks, as he feels the body-that-is-not-his-body move on autopilot & launch itself onto the path between zabuza & the oncoming storm. good, because the difference is palpable this time, even all the way down here; the difference between a body operating as a tool & a boy choosing love over life again & again & again.
good, as the demon blade cleaves straight him. the final vestiges of him float up through the darkness, pale as dust motes & impermanent as thought: now he sees me.
there is no heaven waiting for him, never was. this has always been enough.
like for an ask! even if we haven’t interacted before, so long as we’re mutuals!!
last call!