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The cold wind hit Zabuza’s eyes as they peeked over a hill. It stung with the ice of nostalgia.
“Zabuza… where are we going?” Haku murmured from behind him. Zabuza was carrying him on his back; Haku was delirious and feverish and not faring well. His skin was warm and sticky, and his hand slipped from Zabuza’s arm. He caught Haku and pushed him back up.
“Hold on. Don’t let go,” Zabuza said, for the fifth time in an hour. “We’re almost there.”
“Where?” Haku asked again.
“I’m taking you to get well,” was the only response that Haku got. He wouldn’t say where they were going. Haku had a feeling in his gut that it wasn’t somewhere they’d be particularly welcome, but then, nowhere was really like that.
After some time creeping through the trees, the mist in the air thickened. The boreal forest thinned out and ice covered the grass. The grass turned to dirt. The dirt gave way to stone. The mist was too thick to see through, but Zabuza knew where he was going.
No matter where they were in the world, Zabuza knew how to get back home.
“It’s cold,” Haku groaned. His voice was small and weak, not like his usual confident demeanor. It was filled with pain. His body shook more the further they moved through the mist. His teeth clicked against each other with a chattering noise.
“I’m so cold,” he repeated, “I can’t breathe, …Zabuza. Zabuza. I can’t breathe.”
Zabuza stopped. He took Haku down off his back. Haku was already wearing two sweaters under his dress, and Zabuza didn’t have anything else to cover him with.
“Breathe,” Zabuza told him. “All the way in and out.”
Haku nodded. He breathed deeply, following Zabuza’s directions and guiding breaths. He looked like a sick animal, clutching his stomach with his shaking hand.
“We’re almost there. Can you hold onto me?” Zabuza asked.
Haku shook his head. His eyes were shut as he slumped on the ground. He opened his mouth to speak, but released a pained grunt. Bright red blood dripped from his lips.
“Haku!” Zabuza looked behind himself.
He thought he had lost focus on getting there unseen and they had been spotted. The entire journey had been for nothing. Haku was going to die here.
But, no, there were no Kiri shinobi moving in. Haku had not been hit by something external. His body was clean of kunai, shuriken, and senbon. There was no wound. He had vomited the blood from inside.
Zabuza took Haku up over his shoulders. He braced his body against the blunt edge of the sword. He was weak, and they both knew whatever sickness had him was close to winning.
“I’m cold,” he said again.
“Stay quiet. I don’t want to be found out,” Zabuza said. “You can do it.”
In a flash, Zabuza was over the barrier to the village. With Haku’s weak form on his shoulder and the large blade on his back, he was thankful to get through to the central palace unnoticed. The thick mist provided enough cover that he didn’t have to create any more. He could reserve his chakra for the most important thing.
Haku didn’t make a sound during all the time they spent getting to the Mizukage’s office, and Zabuza feared he’d died behind him, slumped over, carried on his back. What an awful way to part. He wasn’t supposed to go like this.
The redheaded woman looked up from her post at the window when she sensed his entrance to the office. Without turning around, she spoke.
“I have been waiting for you to come and challenge me, Zabuza. What took so long?”
“Terumi-senpai,” Zabuza whispered. His voice held a submissive kindness that she hadn’t been expecting. Mei turned away from the window and looked at him, shocked and curious. He stood in her office with a hand up in surrender. He threw the sword on the ground, out of his reach.
“I don’t want any trouble with you,” Zabuza began to explain, as her eyes locked onto the body over his shoulder, where his other hand stayed.
“I just need your healing water jutsu.”
Mei walked closer, a bit cautious, but mostly filled with curiosity. She stuck out a finger. The body moved against her. It was alive. Barely, but breathing.
“Who’s this?” Mei asked.
“Haku. He’s very sick. Please, Terumi-senpai. Heal him, and I will cause no trouble here.”
Mei cocked her head to the side. She had never seen him act this way. Zabuza was always hard, strong, angry, and cruel.
They were the same in that way. Both were products of their village at the time.
When they were children, Mei threw him down a well and pelted him with stones and senbon from above. A week later, the young boy slammed her to the ground and kicked her in the ribs and stomach until she bled from her mouth and ears. She thought she was going to die that day.
Mei was a few years his senior, and she thought half the time that he’d been trying to impress her by slaughtering an academy class he wasn’t even enrolled in. Maybe he was getting revenge on her, or the village in general. It was a difficult life, a hard place to grow up in. A place that was cold and wet and stunk like fish, where children were generally on their own by the age of six. Maybe Zabuza resented where he was born, and found both a target and an equal in Mei.
This was not who they were to each other.
“Is he yours?” Mei asked.
“Stop wasting time and heal him.”
“And if I do not heal him?” Mei pried. She really just wanted to know the relationship here.
“If you are responsible for Haku’s death, I will single-handedly raze this village to the ground and hunt its people to extinction. There will not be a single survivor from this cursed place. Not even myself at the end.” Zabuza said quietly, but she knew he meant business. He was not one for empty threats and he more than had the means to do it.
Mei cracked a small smile. She didn't say anything, because she didn't need to. A quiet groan came from Haku, and another bright spurt of bloodied vomit fell from his mouth.
“Haku,” Zabuza said. He set him down in the Mizukage’s chair. He knelt in front of him and took his hands. “Keep your eyes open. You can do it.”
Mei didn’t even think about it. She knew, of course, that Zabuza had been a rogue ninja for years. He was wanted in every nation. He had nothing but this kid-servant beside him for years, who had evidently grown into a young man. He looked about… Seventeen? Twenty? Mei couldn’t figure it out, because his mouth was dripping blood and his face was swollen around the eyes.
Despite the warnings of the elders, despite the crimes Zabuza had committed both for and against Kirigakure and Mei herself, despite the execute-on-sight orders given to the masked hunters, Zabuza stood in front of her. He surrendered. He said he didn’t want to harm her and her -- their? -- village, and she believed him. She believed his threat to destroy the place even more.
“Move over,” Mei exhaled, and knelt in front of the sick body. He was thin, his body shook, and his skin was going blue. “How long has he been like this?”
“Two days. It was sudden. He wasn’t sick before. Not at all.”
“He’s strong,” Mei commented, touching Haku’s face and neck. His pulse was barely there. “He should be dead by now.”
“What is it?” Zabuza asked.
“It’s ethylene glycol poisoning. He must have ingested it somehow.”
“Ethylene…?”
“It’s a synthetic poison. It stops ice from forming, but it’s toxic to ingest.”
Zabuza stopped as he remembered the liquid an opponent splashed him with. He’d thrown a water-bomb at Haku’s face, and Haku wasn’t able to freeze it before it hit him. It wouldn’t turn to ice. The liquid soaked him; the majority got in his mouth, and it was doubtless he’d swallowed some of the blast.
Luckily for that opponent, he was already dead. His death was much quicker than he deserved. If Zabuza had known the extent of the damage at the time…
“Can you save him?” Zabuza whispered.
Mei nodded. She gently palpated Haku’s face, squishing his cheeks around with her fingertips, then moved on to his neck. Zabuza knew what was happening, and exhaled a sigh of relief. Mei was using her pointed water jutsu to create small needle-sized punctures all over him. It was acupuncture.
After that, she removed his clothing. He was so thin and pale. He had never appeared weak to Zabuza before. He’d always been small, but he had strength in him. The body in front of him was extremely sick. Blue veins showed through his skin, which was pallid and translucent. He didn’t have many scratches or scars. Nobody could touch him.
Mei continued with the treatment. She brought the needles to his chest, then his arms. Zabuza looked on, hoping. When she touched his stomach, Haku’s legs twitched reflexively, and blood came from his mouth.
“That’s it, then,” Mei confirmed. “The poison has cut him up inside. I need…,” she shook her head, “I have to open it… him.”
“What do you mean by open?”
Mei looked at Zabuza. Her old friend, her old enemy.
“I need to perform a surgery,” she said. “And I don’t have much time. You need to follow my instructions exactly.”
Zabuza nodded. He had no choice but to trust her. At Mei’s direction, they moved Haku’s body to the floor and laid him on his back on top of the robe.
“Hold him down. Restrain his arms and give him something to bite,” Mei instructed Zabuza, her voice calm and steady. She had done this before. “It’s going to hurt.”
Zabuza followed her instructions without hesitation. He put the thick leather strap he used to carry his sword into Haku’s mouth. He pinned Haku’s arms above his head. He didn’t put up much of a fight. If he was even conscious, he didn’t have the impulse to push back.
Mei breathed in deeply and incised the skin. Haku shook. His screams were muffled by the leather band that kept him from biting his tongue, and his hands were pinned down sufficiently to avoid him fighting against the surgeon at work. Zabuza didn’t look. Mei noticed the way he averted his eyes from Haku’s pained face and the blood pooling out underneath him.
“It’s okay,” she heard him whisper, “You’re very strong.”
Haku struggled against his hands. The way Zabuza restrained him was with his hands flat on top of Haku’s, keeping them immobile to avoid him trying any hand signs in delirium. Haku was weak in this state, but he still had some strength in his hands. His fingernails dug into Zabuza’s hands and pulled blood from beneath the layer of flesh.
“It’s okay. Hold on, breathe, it's okay,” Zabuza repeated as Mei worked. At least he was still breathing. He was still well enough to struggle. His heart was beating, and his nerves were connected, considering he felt the pain of the cuts. As thoroughly as she could, Mei Minutes went by that felt like years. Mei focused and used her water jutsu to clean the toxins from his intestine.
“There!” Mei exhaled. She stitched the incision with a basic medical jutsu. She got off of him and nodded. Zabuza let go of his hands.
Haku stopped shaking. He lay there on the floor, completely collapsed like crumpled paper.
“Is he going to live?” Zabuza asked. He was already wiping Haku’s face with a cloth. Tears, blood, and saliva had to be cleaned. He used a scrap of cloth to wipe the vomited blood from Haku’s chin and lips, then put the soiled cloth back in his pocket. Mei noticed he didn’t dispose of the rag.
“Yes. I did what I could for you.”
“Not for me,” Zabuza mumbled. He touched Haku’s pink cheek. Some color was coming back to his face. The fever broke into sweat, soaking his hair. Haku stayed quiet, even after the leather band was removed from his mouth, but he breathed normally again. His eyes opened and locked onto Zabuza’s.
“You did a good job,” Zabuza said quietly, only for Haku.
“You need somewhere for him to rest,” Mei said. Neither of them wanted to point out the elephant in the room, the fact that they had nowhere to go. Haku had just had an impromptu surgery on the floor of the Mizukage’s office, with no painkillers, and he was still extremely weak. She hadn’t been able to do a blood transfusion without knowing his type. He needed to sleep and be monitored for crashes.
“You’ll stay in my quarters. No one is ever there, anyway. The rooms are all empty.”
“I will not forget what you did today, Terumi-senpai,” Zabuza said, as he gathered Haku’s sticky hair out of his face. He tied it back gently, the gesture natural and practiced.
She locked eyes with him. His normally cold and angry grey eyes held tears at the corners. He knew as well that she would not forget this day. The infamous Demon of the Hidden Mist, coming to her for help, for her to heal his companion. Someone he cared for and truly loved. He surrendered. He would’ve offered her his head on a spit if it meant Haku could live.
She didn’t know he could love. Maybe he didn’t know, either. People like them did not love. They weren’t taught how to do that. Yet if he could love, couldn’t she do it, too?
“Go,” Mei whispered.
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