@sandsharrk sent: ❝ i wasn’t crying! there was dust in my eyes. ❞ (Zabuza & Kisato)
The mist in Kiragakure never truly lifted. It only grew heavier, thicker with metallic notes of blood wafting in the air and the salt of the sea. Momochi Zabuza stood like a ghost against the coastline, his standard-issue ANBU porcelain mask pushed to the side of his head. His gaze was fixed on the horizon, but his senses were locked on the small, trembling figure beside him.
Perhaps Kisato was a strange sight even by Kiri’s standards—a boy caught between two worlds, his skin the rough, cool, bluish-grey of a predator, his features more shark than man. He was a Hoshigaki by blood, a clan built for the slaughter, yet here he was, leaking salt water from his eyes like any fragile human child.
At the boy’s defensive outburst, the Demon of the Hidden Mist didn't turn. He didn’t offer a hand or a soft word. In the Blood Mist, such things were considered a death sentence.
“I wasn’t crying! There was dust in my eyes.”
Zabuza’s chest heaved in a slow, ragged breath through the bandages covering the lower half of his face. “Dust,” he repeated, voice low, gravelly. “There’s no dust in this village, brat. Only damp earth and carnage. If you’re going to lie, learn to make it believable. Otherwise, the academy instructors will carve the truth out of you before you can even blink.”
He finally looked down, his dark, piercing eyes tracking the path of a tear down Kisato’s cheek. For a fleeting second, Zabuza didn’t see a Hoshigaki hybrid. He was peering into a mirror. He remembered the feeling of his own throat tightening decades ago, the suffocating pressure of a village that demanded he murder his classmates to earn the right to breathe.
Gods, this land truly is a living hell...
“Wipe them,” Zabuza commanded, his tone harsh, yet seeming to lack the true venom of an executioner. “The mist is cold enough to freeze those tracks onto your face, and once the others see you’ve broken, they’ll never stop biting. You’re a shark, aren’t you? Sharks don’t have the luxury of grief. They move, or they die.”
He turned back to the churning grey waves, his hand resting heavily on the hilt of the blade strapped to his back.
“But...if you must leak,” he added, a near-whisper that was almost lost to the wind, “do it here. The ocean is the only thing in this land vast enough to hide a weakness like that. Just don’t expect me to look twice.”
