DARK PLACES: AN OTOGAKURE AU PLAYLIST FOR SASUKE & HAKU
Of all the ghosts and wraiths Yuki Haku has encountered in his fifteen years of life, none were half as haunting as Uchiha Sasuke.
Standing at the threshold of Haku’s chamber, Sasuke is a shadow of a shadow haloed by torchlight, halogenic sharingan whirling to life with a glow Haku could only call chemical. Dancing shadows skitter along cold stone walls and metal fastenings, jumping and juddering madly across half of the boy’s face, the pale bloody skin of Haku’s knuckles and knees. His lips curl in a sneer, clinging to his lips like paper.
“You followed me.” Sasuke’s voice is so cold, the question is stripped from its bones.
Haku is bloody, beaten, broken. He is missing bone marrow courteously harvested by Kabuto. He is several thousand miles from the place he once called home, the man he once called home, and the black, bitter animal inside his head he’d thought he’d tamed long ago bristles to snarling, snapping life. He wants to laugh in Sasuke’s face, if only to keep himself from crying, screaming, tearing himself apart. Haku exhales silently, one, two, three, four, it’s a pendulum. Calm settles over him, cool and solid as his abandoned hunter-nin mask. If there has ever been a time when he needs to be in control of himself it’s here in Otogakure: in the lair of the Snake Sannin.
Amber eyes narrow slightly, the pleasant smile never dropping from his lips. “No. My business is my own. Sasuke-kun. I’m here to learn.”
“Learn.” Sasuke all but snarls, tomoes whirling with vicious disbelief. “You sold yourself to Orochimaru to —”
“Learn, same as you.” Haku interrupts coolly, biting back a hiss as he forces his broken body to its feet, willing his legs not to falter. As far as he’s come on his own two feet, the miles he’s crawled, dragging himself on hands and feet for this, relinquishing himself into the hands of monsters who could help him reach down into Hell and drag Momochi Zabuza out by the roots of his hair. Whatever it took to free him he would do. “I am Kabuto’s new apprentice.” Sasuke twitches, almost a flinch, crossing his arms as a strange expression Haku cannot place clouds his face. “I suppose we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, Sasuke-kun.”
“People like you don’t survive more than a month,” Sasuke turns away, inflection burned from his voice, leaving only something cold and hard behind him as he walks away. “You’re going to die here.”
That’s my intention, Haku thinks quietly, watching the shadows of Otogakure stretch out and cling to Sasuke, eager to drag him back into their depths, Living long enough to bargain my soul.
“Hold on, Zabuza-san,” Haku whispers to the darkness that waits. “I’m coming back for you.”
LISTEN TO THE PLAYLIST HERE.