Chapter Text

Because every word I carry is another stone to put into place in the foundation that I'm building

Because the days can erase something that I never saw

What all of us wanted and what none of us got

What we all had and have and what we all forgot

— “Here I Am” by Anis Mojgani

In Wave, Haku asks: “Do you have someone important to you?”

He has recently seen this blond haired boy and his two teammates defended by their sensei. Even more notably, the jōnin had been protected by his students, and they had done it against overwhelming odds, against all logic, against orders. Maybe they were simply motivated by the promise of dire consequences if they were to return to the village with their sensei dead and their mission failed — Haku doesn’t know much about how Leaf works — but he suspects (hopes?) that their motivation was... something else.

Haku doesn’t think the vague fear of future consequences could really overpower the immediate terror of facing an enemy like Momochi Zabuza.

The whole Leaf team had struck him as strange. Zabuza-sama hadn’t seemed to think so, but the jōnin-sensei, Hatake, had ordered his genin to stay out of the fight even when he himself was incapacitated. Had ordered the girl to take the other two and run, but the genin had attacked instead.

Fairly early in Haku’s training, before he’d been skilled enough to accompany Zabuza on missions, a group of Mist hunter-nin found Zabuza just as he returned from a mission. Haku had been hiding, heart in his throat, staying out of a fight he had no place in, watching his shishō enter the fight exhausted and proceed towards its inevitable conclusion with the single-minded intent to kill as many hunter-nin as possible and die rather than be captured.

(“You never want to to go to Kiri T&I,” Zabuza had told Haku. “They like to take people apart and rearrange them.” It had taken Haku awhile to understand that his teacher didn’t mean physically .)

When one of the hunter-nin had caught Zabuza in a jutsu, Zabuza had said, “Do it!” and the hunter-nin had probably thought that Zabuza meant Kill me now, finish the job. But Haku had understood his shishō clearly — really, Zabuza-sama had meant, Haku, earn your keep! Enter the fight!

It would have been easy to run away. It had been terrifying to start his jutsu. But at the same time, in that moment, Haku had felt that he could do anything it took to save Zabuza’s life. Including attacking, including dying, including killing a man for the first time.

Had the Leaf genin felt that for their sensei, when facing Zabuza? Had their sensei felt that way for them? Is it possible that other shinobi feel what Haku feels, or is his soft heart and sentimental motivation a singular, anomalous occurrence?

“What?” asks the Leaf genin. Naruto, his name is Naruto.

Haku hasn’t done a very good job leading the conversation. Maybe the cultural gap is too much, or maybe Haku is just grasping at straws. But right now Haku is a civilian to Naruto, not a fellow ninja, so there’s no harm in outright stating what he believes, surely. Playing a civilian has always allowed Haku a certain measure of truth to his actions and words.

“When a person has something truly important to protect... That’s when they can truly become strong,” Haku says.

This appears to hit Naruto like an A-rank jutsu.

“Oh,” says Naruto. And then he’s beaming at Haku. A better smile than before, like the sun coming out. “Yeah! Sensei says... you can’t put yourself above your teammates. You gotta care more about getting the whole team through the mission than you care about getting just you through the mission. And the Hokage’s gotta be like that, too, except for the whole village. And once I’m the strongest, that’s what I’ll do!”

Haku smiles back, he can’t help it, but then he has to stand and turn to leave. Unbidden, the urge tell Naruto to take his team and leave Wave has risen in Haku, lurks at the back of his throat bitter and acidic, like vomit. Zabuza is going to kill Hatake Kakashi. Zabuza is going to want to use Haku as his tool to kill Hatake Kakashi’s students. And Haku can’t trust that the genin will run away, save themselves, spare him having to kill them — no, they’ll go down with their sensei, either trying to save him or trying to avenge him.

Exactly the way Haku would for Zabuza-sama.

“You will become strong,” Haku tells Naruto. “Let’s meet again somewhere.”

In Wave, Gatō orders: “Kill the bridge workers, too.”

Zabuza doesn’t think twice about it. If the man wants to add a couple more civilians to the list, fine. It won’t even be hard and they need his shipping company’s cooperation.

But Haku — Zabuza has been soft with Haku. Has allowed Haku to be soft.

“I don’t want to kill the bridge workers,” he tells Zabuza from behind the Kiri hunter-nin mask he’d gotten from his first human kill. “It isn’t necessary.”

“It’s the mission,” Zabuza says. “That makes it necessary.”

They travel in silence for several minutes. Zabuza thinks the conversation over — that’s usually where it ends, with Haku’s token protest. He’s been much the same in the past about theft, about intimidation, about all kinds of things.

Then the bridge comes into view. Men call out morning greetings to each other. He and Haku perch up on one of the cranes to watch and wait as the men arrive. No use taking them out until everyone’s arrived.

“The blond genin,” Haku says. “I met him in the woods. Gathering herbs. He helped me.”

“Great,” Zabuza says. “Take a minute to say thanks before you stab him, then. Or just keep your mask on, I don’t care.”

“His name is Naruto,” Haku continues, like Zabuza hasn’t just shut the conversation down

“Oh, did you exchange addresses? Are you going to be penpals? That’ll be hard since he’ll be dead.”

Haku takes the mask off, and looks at Zabuza. Which Zabuza hates. He’s got such a stupidly expressive face, because he’s never had to hide his emotions from comrades. It’s much harder to order Haku around when Haku is looking at him.

“Zabuza-sama, we’ll lose against the Leaf nin.” He pauses, looks down in the way he does when he’s remembering something. “They have conviction, and we have... orders. From that disgusting man.”

That just pisses Zabuza off. He knows that Haku’s heart doesn’t lie with Kiri the way his own does, but Haku has professed a desire to settle there, when the rebellion wins, and not be a missing-nin anymore.

“Don’t talk to me about conviction,” Zabuza tells him. “Mei needs us to do this shit.”

“But does she need us to do it in this way, shishō? They’re children.” Haku’s lips purse. “You told me the rebellion was about changing things. Protecting—”

“—We don’t fucking have time for this, Haku,” Zabuza says. “Get to work.”

Haku puts his mask on and gets to work. Zabuza won’t realize until later that he only knocks the men out. That he won’t kill the Leaf genin. That Haku has as much as told him that he’ll be throwing the fight.

In Wave, Shikako says: “Shadow Paralysis complete.”

Haku finds that he can’t move. Nara Shikako closes the distance between them fast; her sensei aims for Zabuza. When Shikako hits him, she pins him with her knees as well as her jutsu. She holds the kunai she’s so recently picked back up to his throat. He admires how steady it is, how she’s calmed herself from the emotional upheaval of seeing her teammate go down and settled into combat.

He’d thought for sure that Naruto would be the one to kill him, but he can see that Shikako has conviction, too

"Sasuke isn't dead, is he?” Shikako asks him. “You used the same needle trick you used on Zabuza on him, didn't you?" She speaks low and fast and urgently and her voice is not as steady as her hand or her jutsu.

Of course Sasuke isn’t dead. Killing one of Hatake’s students would only doom Zabuza-sama. Leaving them alive... Zabuza will have a chance at retreat. The possibility that Hatake might let him get away.

Like Zabuza said, Haku is too soft. He’s useless, really, for Zabuza’s purposes.

"If I say no, will you kill me?" Haku asks.

The certainty of death now would be preferable to the uncertainty of what will happen if he and Zabuza manage to escape — and either would be better than whatever Leaf T&I can do.

“No,” Shikako says after a pause where she looks at him like he’s told her his entire life story with just one question. “But I’ll probably cry.”

Haku wonders what Leaf is like, that she can admit that so openly, where her sensei will certainly hear. And he continues to wonder, even as their employer betrays them. Even as Shikako says, "Well, in that case,” and puts her kunai away and lets Haku go.

She offers him her hand and he takes it. Lets her haul him up off the rough deck of the bridge, back to his feet, standing with her like he’s one of her teammates now.

In Wave, Zabuza says: “That Nara girl...”

They’ve just left the Leaf team behind, parting on probably the best terms Zabuza has ever been on with foreign ninja. The air between him and Haku is much more tense — Haku has said nothing to him and he’s said nothing to Haku since before the Nara caught them in her damn clan technique.

But Zabuza had listened. Had heard that conversation, Haku calling himself worthless and the girl highlighting Zabuza’s hypocrisy with just the bare facts. And she didn’t even do it to subvert Haku, either. Just to reassure him.

She’d framed Zabuza’s demands for Haku to do what he himself couldn’t as an attempt to protect Haku, which was horseshit. Zabuza doesn’t deserve that much credit.

“She didn’t know what she was talking about,” Zabuza says.

“I know.” Haku glances at Zabuza from under his lashes, a particular expression Zabuza hasn’t seen from him since their first few months together, when Haku had still been flinching at ever sudden movement. He’s taken the hunter nin mask back out, but Zabuza’s not sure what to make of that, really. Trying to hide? Trying to show he’s ready to move on to the next task? Trying to ask if he’ll still be going with Zabuza, without actually having to ask?

Zabuza is kind of shit at this emotions thing, and if Haku puts that damn mask on he’ll never muddle through the conversation he guesses they actually have to fucking have now.

“I wouldn’t have been able to kill the shinobi who was wearing this mask if it hadn’t been to protect you,” Haku says. “But you were in danger, so I didn’t hesitate to follow your order. Killing him was an easy choice.” He turns the mask over; he’s probably looking at the numbers etched there. Identification for the ninja who’d last worn it. All the hunter-nin masks are identical, so everyone has to mark their ID on their mask.

It’s the closest to a name that Haku would have for the hunter-nin he’d killed, although Zabuza had actually recognized the guy after they’d taken the mask off of him.

“What order?” Zabuza grumbles. “I thought you’d done the smart thing and left already. Saved yourself.”

Haku looks up at him. “What?” he asks — genuine surprise. And then: “Where would I have gone? Where would have been safe?”

Anywhere. Anywhere would probably have been more safe than with Zabuza once they got out of Land of Water. Haku still isn’t in any Bingo Books, and Haku doesn’t want to save Kiri from itself. He could just... leave.

There are a few minutes of agonizing silence. Haku doesn’t break them, doesn’t smooth things over, doesn’t do the work of moving them back into familiar territory with each other by apologizing or even changing the topic. Because things have changed, Zabuza supposes. Like he always knew they would.

“That Nara girl was full of shit because Leaf ninja are always believing the best in each other and hugging it out and whatever.” Zabuza gestures back in the direction of the bridge, to indicate all the weird, friendly camaraderie they’d just left behind. “She gave me too much fucking credit. I taught you what I taught you because that’s what I was taught. How I learned. How things are. But the village was all kinds of fucked up and so am I. Maybe you should just... throw out whatever crap you don’t like. I was always better at stabbing people than philosophy.”

“Zabuza-sama—” Haku starts, but his voice is sounding a little watery and if he starts crying then Zabuza is going to absolutely lose it.

“Yeah, I’m not done,” Zabuza says, waving a hand to shut the kid up. “You think I didn’t hear you asking to die? Un-fucking-acceptable. Knock that shit off. I didn’t want you dying fighting hunter-nin when you were ten and I don’t want you dying against sentimental Leaf ninja now, got it? Save your own skin next time.”

“Ah...” Haku’s face has lost its tension, and now he smiles at Zabuza. “I think that’s the first thing I’m going to throw out, Zabuza-sama. Naruto-kun says the individual isn’t supposed to put himself over his team.”

“Great, their flavor of suicidal idealism has really rubbed off on you. Get over here and help me with whatever the hell Hatake did to my shoulder.”