WARBORN & WARTORN.

❛   He would also be dead.   ❜

his voice is carefully neutral, a manifestation of the delicate peace he has struck with the last uchiha on behalf of their mutual loved ones. it is not the first time a stranger has divulged such sentiments to him upon discovering his old line of work, the ties to his old village; nor is it the first time haku’s thought such a thing himself after the war. 

how many people had the ambitions of uchiha sasuke directly & indirectly killed ? how different would their world be if the Leaf had not lost its grip on him, if he’d never slipped through their fingers into the maw of the Snake ? would there even still be a world if sasuke had not left & caused his teammates to become the strongest shinobi the world has ever seen ? could they have bested kaguya without the godlike powers of team seven & their compatriots ?

it’s a difficult line of questioning, because despite his initial misgivings haku still found more in common with sasuke than sasuke himself cared to acknowledge. he knew the pain of having the world stripped away from you, the voracious, all-consuming nature of a dream clutched to one’s breast, as necessary for survival as one’s own heart.

he knows what people say about sasuke. that he lacked something human & was only anger & hate & rage. but haku knows the division between hatred & love is hair-thin. crossing over is easy. crossing back is hard. he suspects there is more love in that dark boy than he knows how to deal with, & the unwieldiness of a heart that feels too deeply, too maddeningly pushed him in the other direction, re-structuring his heart to deny itself & feel nothing. 

was that not the case for zabuza ? for every great man haku’s ever known ?

he thinks these things as he holds steely eye contact with stranger slouched across the stool beside him, but keeps them to himself. it is not his place to discuss such things with anyone, let alone a stranger. though the question of sasuke continues to weigh heavily on his heart these days.

     DARK PLACES: AN OTOGAKURE AU PLAYLIST FOR           SASUKE & HAKU

                                                                                      created for @netsurai

AU FICLET:

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.”

the uchiha has that look in his eyes again, that pastiche of apathy and disdain and arrogance that he wears like armor through these dark halls. he smells like soot and burning, but his flame is anything but holy. what a waste of a funeral pyre.

kimimaro stares flatly into the boy’s shallow darkness, the taste of blood in his mouth thickening. it would not take much, to ruin him. a finger bone in each socket, puncturing his precious eyes and reducing them to jelly. he could scoop them out delicately and lay them in lord orochimaru’s palm with a kiss to their wrist, twin rubies given up in worship. now wouldn’t that save his god the trouble of dealing with this messy child, this insolent boy? he will pray about it tonight.

sasuke moves to shove past him, but kimimaro is stronger, faster. the better dancer. and warfare is nothing but an elaborate set.

the moves are graceful the way a hawk snatching a salmon from the water is graceful — a steady hand cradles the back of sasuke’s neck as his knuckles kiss bruises into sasuke’s kidneys: one peck, two, and a love bite to remember him by. he holds sasuke to his chest like he once cradled his straw baby-doll: almost sweetly, nearly gentle.

sasuke may be lord orochimaru’s new favorite, but to think that makes him untouchable is a very foolish thought indeed.

YUKI TSUKIMONO : THE MOTHER OF MONSTERS .

besides her ability to devour yin energy, divine the future & manipulate the threads of fate, tsukimono’s most terrifying skill is her ability to release monsters & demons from the planar nexus.

unlike the uzumaki who sealed demons & death gods, the yuki run alongside their inner demons. tsukimono could tear a frozen rift in the sky & unleash an unholy horde upon unsuspecting enemies. she delights in the monstrous & views such creatures as her children  – – –  the only children she feels she can truly give birth to.  

accessing the planar nexus from a frightfully young age has left many lasting effects on tsukimono, the most notable being changes to her physical form. for one, tsukimono has six skeletal arms emerging from her back which she uses to open portals & alter the nexus. her teeth grow long & needle-like when displeased, & her fingernails & sclera burn black when enraged. for the sensory-prone, her chakra appears surprisingly normal & placid, cold & clean smelling like most hyōton users’, but there is an underlying scent like rot & crushed roses just beneath the surface. pray that ice never breaks.

tsukimono has access to a monstrous form, pictured above. consider it her ‘third boss mode transformation’ like in a video game. she becomes progressively less human & more decrepit & monstrous, losing more of her barely-there humanity in pursuit of your destruction. she has never needed to use these forms before on the mortal plane. 

HOWEVER, in our canon re-write of the fourth shinobi war where kaguya’s bullshit storyline is wiped off the map, tsukimono teams up with distant-relative uchiha madara @flamesbuilt  to reanimate the dead & lead a demon crusade against the shinobi villages & the elemental nations. she aches to return the world to darkness, to mash the planes together into one reality, to pierce time like a needle & sew the fabric of reality anew. let our inner demons become outer. let us return to the better days where man strode alongside monsters, where we were all beasts. she wants to save the world, to mother it, but to heal a poorly set arm it must be broken before it can be healed. 

did you ever see a robin weep / when leaves begin to die?

Kakashi would never tell his cute little genin this, but he usually checks in on them at the arranged meeting times, just to make sure they're all there, on time, before he moves on to doing something else. Sometimes that's staring at the memorial stone, zoning out. Sometimes it's clearing detritus from the rotating cast of grave stones of his father, of Obito, or Shisui, or Kushina, or... Rin, he visits, but her mother keeps her grave immaculate and even laying down flowers feels intrusive. Sometimes he just goes grocery shopping, if he didn't feel like doing it after training the day before.

When they are late, he likes to make them pull extra training, though he never tells them why.

Sasuke isn't there on his second check-in, which makes him over an hour late. Sakura's mouth is pulled into a worried little frown, and even Naruto has a little wrinkle between his brows when he stomps his feet and waves his arms around and rants about how 'the bastard' (a moniker that earns him a slap to the back of his head from their little kunoichi, though it hardly slows him down) is picking up Kakashi's bad habits.

That simply won't do. No student of Kakashi's is going to get in the habit of being this late to morning training. Everyone would think he's slacking, and that simply won't do.

He knows where all his students live; Sakura with her adorable, saintly parents, and Sasuke and Naruto in the genin barracks, with all the rundown decor and creaky stairs and mysterious water stains. On account of the mysterious water stains and the creaky stairs, Kakashi likes to enter the boys' apartments through the windows, whose crumbling sills present an interesting challenge when trying to stick to them with chakra. There are no signs of life within the apartment, other than the cracked window to air out the faint stench of sickness, and Sasuke's static little ball of chakra, crackling erratically from somewhere in the dark living room.

He slides the window open further, steps inside, and sighs softly when the boy doesn't so much as twitch. He closes the window-- there's a dusting of frost on the grass, or at least there was before the sun started to come up, and the way Sasuke's breathing sounds in the sudden quiet of the apartment makes Kakashi think maybe the cold wasn't so good for his breathing-- and steps closer, bending down to peer at Sasuke's barely exposed cheek and part of his forehead. He can feel the warmth radiating off of him from here, and it makes him sigh softly.

He weighs nothing, it's easy enough to arrange his limbs and pick him up once he gives up on sleepily shoving Kakashi's cold hands away. His adorable little genin (singular) is dropped back into his bed, and then manhandled until he's back under the blankets. The back of his hand against Sasuke's forehead suggests he might have an infamous Uchiha Fever. A sigh, as if Kakashi is terribly burdened, and then he leaves him with a cool, damp rag laid over his throat.

Kakashi decides he'll get some grocery shopping done, then, once he peruses all of the kid's cabinets and discovers Sasuke doesn't have any fever reducers or soup stock. Miso, some bone broth, little bite-sized bits of wood ear mushroom and some tea with licorice and marshmallow root and ginger. He's sure it will taste like shit, but he'll be shocked if Sasuke is even awake enough to protest when he tries to pour it down his throat later.

He returns with the bags of groceries, now an hour and a half late for training with Sakura and Naruto. Sasuke hasn't moved from the bed except to kick the blankets off his legs and roll onto his side, bunching them up around his torso. He's snoring a little, in the way sick kids sometimes do. Kakashi tosses the ingredients together for the soup, boils water for the tea, and then absently picks around in his head for a jutsu, something to make the air a little more humid in the apartment.

He fusses over Sasuke, swapping out the drying cloth for a new one, and freezes when the boy mutters a quiet, "Mom, I'm okay, I promise." Kakashi doesn't reply, he ducks back into the kitchen.

When he leaves, he has succeeded in making Sasuke suck down a mug of foul-tasting tea, a bowl of soup, and an anti-inflammatory. There's a note on his nightstand next to a glass of water and a couple more pills. It reads, in Kakashi's distinctly cramped handwriting:

Last dose: 0915. Next dose: 1215 Soup in refrigerator, stay hydrated. Don't come to training until Monday. I will check in on you soon.