Naruto: badwater
FOR DANICA (rondaview)! MAY YOU LIVE IN NARUTO-INFAMY FOREVER.
notes: I have read chapter 235, though I started writing this long before then, as evidenced by the ridiculous word count. So beware, there are minor but more implied spoilers in the last two sections, especially section 5. This is not really the "five things that haven't happened to..." challenge, because it is sort of like. well. some of the situations are entirely impossible, and some of the situations are just things that haven't happened yet so we don't know. Also, when you hit section 5, I think there is supposed to be a v. significant wound on Neji's stomach, but apparently it is not mentioned in 235?? so one does not know. in any case. enjoy. I hope.
badwater
1.
His hands smelled like metal and, briefly, the salt of his sweat. That was all right, though, now; he knew that he wouldn't be killed, at least not knowingly. He was a child and small and quick on his feet. When he dashed he dodged and attacked together. His hands were fast.
But the man in front of him was faster, always, and bigger. He didn't seem to move at all, but was in one place after another. He knew. He read. Neji could see him moving away from his attacks even before they came. The man was going easy on him. He was still a child with small feet and small hands and a tendency to cry when he got hit, getting his sleeves all wet and sticky, like a girl.
This time he went in for the kill because he didn't have enough energy to stay up any longer. He would get beaten. He never won. But the man in front of him looked so much like him. They were all family, the same face and the same body that weaved in through the air. It was all so familiar, so it was like he was losing to himself. He swung his kunai blindly and tried to see without looking like he was supposed to. For a minute he caught it, achingly clear and so close, but the man caught his arm and held it high, crushing his hand, and he dropped his kunai.
He thought, maybe my footwork improved.
And then the pain struck him, immobilized him, so that all he could hope for was that the man would release his hand before he slid to the ground. It would go away soon; he couldn't make it go away if he thought about it. All he could do was wait it out. He hadn't fought correctly after all, or maybe he did and thought too much about it. He had such a long way to go, and he was supposed to be a bright child. Maybe he wasn't working hard enough. Maybe he hadn't wanted it enough, but no. He thought of his father, about murder, and the pain worsened.
Oh, god, he breathed to himself. He was still crouched on the ground with his head to the floor, his hands over his ears like he thought he could hear the pain. He was starting to cry, which he actually couldn't feel, only that he couldn't breathe through his nose properly. The tears leaked into his mouth from his wrenching gasps.
"Make it stop," he pleaded, just once, in a small voice, so that maybe the man wouldn't hear.
A pause. The pain lifted. Neji could see again, through the haze of his wet eyelashes. The wood grain on the floor shone against the dark polish. The house must have been very old. There were mazes of scratches on the surface. He ran his hand lightly against the ground.
"Get up," the man said. "And try it again. No son of mine would lie prostrate on the floor for so long."
I'm not your son, Neji thought. I'm your nephew and you killed my father and now you've adopted me. I'm no son of yours; I hate you. I should kill you. Except he couldn't, and wasn't sure now if he wanted to anymore. He was so tired. It was all that pain, all that horrible horrible pain. When he did want to kill that man his head would still double itself over in pain.
He thought of that blond-haired boy at school who poked at the cloth around his forehead and said, 'That, what's that?' Neji had slammed him into the ground and there had been a fistfight, a rough and loud one where nothing really hurt but there was a lot of dirt. One of the parents had found them and forced them apart, yelling at the other boy even though it had been mostly Neji's fault. That boy had said, 'you're not being fair. Why don't you lecture him too? You're always picking on me.'
'Stop whining,' Neji had told him. 'Life's not fair like that.'
This mark. Nothing could get rid of it.
"Up," the man said, beckoning, his sleeves flickering gently.
Neji said, "Yes, Father." Uncle, the next swing of his kunai said. Uncle--blood--father--terror--young--death--he closed his eyes and then he could see--everything--was light--when he swung again, the blade ripped into the loose, billowing fabric of the man's robe. Neji stumbled forward, shocked; nothing behind that robe, of course, too light a cut, all air, but that impact, that sound, and the man smiled through his teeth and quietly--quietly--hit a blow to Neji's head that knocked him out.
2.
After he trickled in the hot water, he let Itachi pour the tea this time, watching the Anbu tattoo, made of soot and ashes and age-old ink, flex on Itachi's bare arm.
"You once wanted to be on the Anbu squad," Itachi commented, not a question or a suggestion but a statement, like he could read straight through Neji. The tea sent up small waves of heat in front of Itachi's face as he took a sip, a small mask. Neji felt for his own face to make sure it was still there and still his.
"Not really. Anything was fine with me as long as I was moving faster and higher."
"You're ambitious."
Neji thought of earlier, of Kabuto and Orochimaru, of loyalty and Konoha and his father. Who was dead, he remembered, but sometimes it was harder to think of that and just easier to think of Itachi attacking, Itachi's red eyes, power. Ambition. Not him as a little child and bandages around his forehead. He could smell the early morning woods he walked in with Itachi in front of him, both of them silent, their feet soaking in the cold dew on the leaves and the sunlight streaking in hard enough to kill.
"Not really."
Neji poured Itachi more tea and felt with his other hand the handle of his kunai. He hesitated, watching the surface tension of the water cling to the cup. “Your brother--"
"Yes?"
Too fast. No shock, no emotion at all. Just a flash, a blink, black eyes that were red if he wanted them to be, that would sometimes woke Neji up in the middle of the night screaming, and then Itachi would get up and stand over him, looking, bordered by fledgling moonlight and sky, and maybe a little bored and anxious at the same time. Neji wondered if both their eyes glowed in the dark. Like cats or Anbu masks and maybe even burned-out stars.
"You don't really want to kill him, do you?"
"Your uncle. You don't really want to kill him either, do you?"
Itachi played dirty and unfair and didn't care that Neji was younger and had an explosive, redundant temper. But that was okay, most of the time, because Itachi understood in that way only he could and kept both of them under control. Neji thought of the two of them, both of them essentially orphans with nothing left for them but skeleton families.
One of them, Neji occasionally forget, was a murderer.
"I don't know."
Itachi looked at him long and hard through the haze of the tea. "You'll never get anywhere with that attitude of yours." Itachi's hands were very broad, though sometimes Neji wondered if he had ever hurt someone directly with those hands. Itachi was never brutal. Neji was usually only mildly frightened and submissive because he wanted to be, soft and mild because Itachi never got angry. It was as if there was nothing about Neji worth getting angry about.
I am not an Uchiha, Neji thought. I am not your brother. His hand went to his lap where he clenched the cloth over his thighs over and over again, wrinkling it ridiculously. He looked at Itachi's cup and refilled it mechanically, automatic and a broken wind-up toy.
He heard Itachi sigh around his tea. "Come here," Itachi said, putting his teacup down on the table. Neji shuffled his feet around so that he was facing Itachi. "No. Come here. Here--" and put his weapons beside him in reach, opening his robe and letting it fall a molten black wave of red flowers behind him.
Later Neji was crying into the crook of Itachi's naked neck, and Itachi placed a heavy, gentle hand on Neji's chest, telling him softly to shut up. It was not a direct hit, no, and it did not hurt--at least, Itachi did not hurt him more than he usually did. But something about it was very painful and very cruel, and Neji wondered whether or not Itachi was thinking about Sasuke again.
Tomorrow Itachi would want to leave early in the morning. Maybe Kabuto would be looking after them, maybe Orochimaru's other minions, wanting them like a jealous lover; maybe the ghost of the Konoha they left behind was catching up to them. Whatever it was, Itachi would want to leave, and Neji would want to escape again, effortlessly, from everything else, even though it would get them one of these days, Itachi's dead family and Neji's destiny.
But that was okay. They could run together. Itachi was a murderer, but if he asked, Neji would be willing, too; whether for Itachi or for himself, it didn't matter.
3.
In his opinion, Hinata's team was a group of freaks and animals. Not Hinata herself, of course, because she couldn't be brutish or cruel or barbaric even if she wanted to, but Shino, for example, could scare Neji with just a touch of his hand, because Neji could see all those bugs crawling around under that skin, spots of chakra. And Kiba was loud and noisy and carried that dog around like an extra appendage or a permanent fixture to his head. Neji didn't like dogs. They made Neji nervous, and Neji didn't like being nervous.
And he didn't like Kurenai, because she looked wild and freakish and partially a quick, poisonous animal with them, a mother wolf with good intentions. It had to be the lipstick--actually Neji didn't know, but he knew he didn't like her. He didn't like women at all, except for the compliant, silent ones like Hinata. You could pretend those didn't exist and then you would be alone.
Neji didn't trust himself, but he didn't hate himself either.
"You can't send me in after her during the Chuunin exams," he said to her, and she nodded.
"Hinata will be doing it completely on her own," Kurenai agreed. "Without your protection. I just wanted to make sure--"
"I understand," Neji interrupted, almost polite, the way he lived his life now.
Kurenai demurred, "Of course," like a proper woman, and Neji grimaced. It looked so wrong. He could see her weapons. He could see her power in the outlines of her muscles. He had seen her fight once, and it was not pretty or safe.
"I'm leaving then, if you have no more use for me," Neji said, getting up quickly. Next door he could hear Hinata practicing her routines, her father overseeing her, a block of darkness against the rice paper screen that Neji felt but did not see. He had spent so long guarding her that he knew without even having to look. The expression on her face, or her stance, or the way she screwed up her eyebrows above those familiar white eyes, he knew these instinctively. He winced for her as he thought through her movements without seeing her. She hadn't improved much since last time. Neji could feel his uncle's disapproving expression emanating, a solid masking gloom. He knew what was coming: seething displeasure, a lecture about Hanabi and how Hinata was such a letdown, Hinata not crying, and a whole night of silent whimpering nightmares which would wake Neji up, disgruntled and just a little bit compassionate.
It was not that Hinata was incompetent, because she wasn't. Nor was she any stupider or slower than Hanabi or, indeed, Neji himself. Once in a while Neji would take her to where Kurenai trained them and, Neji with his shirt off and Hinata with her sleeves and pant legs rolled up, would spar with her, lightly so she would only get insignificant wounds. It was like playing teaching Go. He yelled at her a lot then, not unkindly. It was the only time he didn’t feel like a servant or like the bodyguard he was supposed to be and, more often than not, was.
And Hinata was always kind, always needy, and always grateful. She was not slow or stupid or really as weak as she seemed. Neji wondered when his hatred of her had dissipated until something that couldn’t even be counted as dislike. Ten-Ten had said as much when Neji had last spoke to her. “You’ve mellowed,” she said, touching his cheek the way he didn’t like being touched. “You’re so much softer now, and nicer.”
“I still want to get out of here,” he had said. “I thought that was what I would get when I turned into a Chuunin. I’d be free of them, the whole lot of them.”
Ten-Ten stared, and then laughed. “Extended families are a pain,” she said, sympathizing, but abruptly turned serious, boring identical holes as she looked at Neji’s face. “You know why they’re afraid, right? They haven’t had a child advance as fast as you since Itachi. They’re worried.”
Neji had scowled furiously as he answered, “I’m not going to kill off my entire family.”
“No one thought Itachi would either.”
Neji asked, “How’s Lee?” which meant, ‘let’s not talk about this’.
“Good. We’re planning on submitting ourselves to the exam again this year. They added another one to our team. We work well together. Not as well as with you,” she added quickly, “but we have a decent chance of passing this year.”
Life, Neji knew and Ten-Ten had just reminded him, had gone on without him, and he had simply remained standing in the same place he had always been, stuck with the Hyuuga clan. Protection was still his destiny, even though he thought he had escaped all that. He would wake up when Hinata did, and sometimes even earlier, and follow her to training where he would watch from afar, Kurenai’s strength and Hinata’s failure to reciprocate. Once, in the very beginning, he remembered being sent off on a real mission, with a real leader, with a real purpose. That shortest escape had only thrown the dreariness of his life into deeper contrast, and he didn’t know if he resented that.
Konoha, to him, was the Hyuugas and Hinata and suffocation, but Konoha was all he knew.
In the evening, as Hinata got ready for bed, Neji listened from his side of their partitioned and screened room. She was folding away her clothes and spreading out her blankets. Tomorrow, he thought. He knew she wouldn’t get far enough, wouldn’t end up a Chuunin, but tomorrow, tomorrow. Maybe something would happen or some miracle that had been kept in store for him would burst out from its dam.
“You’ll do fine tomorrow,” he said to her, listening for her breathing, scanning habitually for other chakras, intruders, a hiccup in their daily routine.
“Thank you, Neji nii-san,” she said, polite and demure and still using that childish name for him. And then her light went out too, so that there was only the faintest hint of moonlight pushing feebly through the rice paper. Hinata’s breathing was distant because of the space between them, but Neji could feel her close, could feel her there, not yet asleep, and he wondered again when it was exactly that he had stopped hating her.
He sat up that night waiting for unpredicted rain, as if he were a parched plant on cracked dry earth and rain would bring salvation or death.
4.
He doesn’t believe in his father who killed himself to free himself, or his uncle who killed his father to free his father, or the generations of Hyuuga branch family members who found no escape except to die. He doesn’t believe in destiny anymore, or winners or losers, because if there is one there must be the other, and everything balances out like justice. He doesn’t believe in forever, or never, or almost. He doesn’t think he can die, but he is dying now, and so he must believe in that.
The blood is leaking out of his slumped body like rice from a broken bag. When it slows down, he’ll be too tired and too drained to stay awake, and when he falls asleep he knows it will be over. He doesn’t listen for the sound of his enemy’s breathing, because to hear it is to panic and to not hear it is to point at a body and say, “This is the first person I have ever killed.”
He doesn’t believe in good or evil. He doesn’t believe in his side more than their side, or that there are even sides anymore-it has always been about survival. He understands betrayal and doesn’t believe in loyalty as much as he would like to. He has seen too much isolation and hurt in too many ways to believe in the absolute, the unwavering, the people who say “I promise”.
He doesn’t believe in Sasuke, but he realizes that’s because Sasuke hits a little too close to home for him.
He doesn’t believe in Sasuke, but, even though he doesn’t want to, he does believe that Naruto will save them all.
He doesn’t believe in Sasuke, but he knows Naruto does.
He is most likely dying. His chakra crawls up and down his body slowly, lethargic, ready to give up. “Things that can fly,” he whispers, his lips dry and his words more air than sound, whistling past his teeth and withering his tongue. He thinks, these may be the last words I ever say. “One. Butterflies. And two.” He contemplates very hard, about wings, about the sky, and then starts laughing, a deep, low, racketing laugh that hurts his broken stomach, so he stops. He squints up at the sunlight. They are still in Konoha and the sky is so blue. He’s going blind, he knows it, but he thinks he can trace out shapes in the clouds, the triangulation of flight, the only kind of immortality he believes in.
“Two. Birds, probably.”
5.
Neji isn’t supposed to be walking anymore than Naruto is supposed to be on his feet, but Shikamaru far off is having what passes as a slight mental breakdown, so Neji thinks maybe it is only appropriate to help. This would be the third time in two days that Naruto’s disappeared without telling anyone. The first time they had caught him just outside the hospital; the second time, he had ended up at Ichiraku Ramen and was leaving it to go to Iruka-sensei’s house. Neji wonders if Naruto remembers waking up for the first time after they put him under to stabilize his condition. Iruka had been by his bed, his forehead leaning against his folded hands, and Naruto had woken up mumbling something like, “Sensei?”
Iruka had started to cry then, great pools of tears that fell over and over again without stopping. He was holding onto Naruto’s hand, patting it as he said repeatedly, “You’re going to be all right, Naruto,” in his grown-up shamelessly weeping voice. In the end the nurses led Iruka out and had him call Kakashi, and in the hallway while the nurses in the room examined Naruto, Kakashi stooped impassively with one hand on Iruka’s shoulder and the other in his pocket, waiting for Iruka to stop crying.
Neji had been in the hallway with them then, pushed out from his chair beside Naruto’s window by the nurses. The bandages around his stomach were so thick they didn’t force him to wear a shirt, his skin cold in the hospital air. He had leaned against the wall, his palms flat against its surface, and watched Kakashi help Iruka calm down with all his soothing silences and self-deprecating smiles.
Neji won’t remind Naruto about the first time he woke up to see Neji’s face in front of him. Neji was sitting by his bed, reading a book, and when he heard Naruto’s breathing changed he had leaned over to make sure he was okay. Naruto had reached up childlike hands to touch the hair that Neji had forgotten to tie back.
Fists full of slender black strands, Naruto had said so softly, so tenderly, “Sasuke, you grew your hair out so long.”
My eyes are white, Neji had thought to himself, but answered in a whisper, “Go back to sleep, Naruto.”
“I’m sorry,” Naruto had said, barely lucid but truthful. “You were too fast, you know, and I wasn’t strong enough.” His eyes were wide and blue and Neji could see that he had been drugged and probably couldn’t think straight, so Neji told him to go back to bed on more time, brushing the wrinkles off of Naruto’s blanket.
That had been a week ago, at least, and Neji hasn’t spoke of it since to anyone. Certainly he hadn’t told Naruto, because nobody has talked to Naruto about Sasuke yet, opting to let Naruto bring that up himself. Neji had been kept busy getting over a hole in his shoulder and entertaining Naruto between wakings and trying to explain to Sakura why it wasn’t a good idea to talk to Naruto. None of them had forgotten the promise Naruto had made to her before they left Konoha on that day when everything was fine and there was no hurt. There’s something in her slightly hysterical manner what Neji perceives to be callous single-minded obsession with Sasuke that irritates Neji; he had been rude to her more than once or twice. “She sends her love,” is all he would tell Naruto, when Naruto asked.
Now Neji thinks of all the possible places Naruto could be: in the woods, at home, at Sakura’s house, at Kakashi’s place, in Iruka’s office in the Academy. The ramen shop would have returned Naruto back at once, and, Neji thinks, so would Kakashi. “If I were Naruto, where would I be?” Neji asks himself whimsically, not really expecting an answer. He wonders, for the first time, if Naruto knows where Sasuke once lived.
But that would be morbid and bordering on masochistic, so Neji figures Naruto wouldn’t be there even if he did know. Here, the thing that drives them until they are dragged kicking and screaming into the dirt of their graves is still self-preservation. The hurt that Sasuke has caused, that irreparable scar, is still too new, too open, and too raw to return to this soon.
Kakashi had asked Neji a little while ago, “Aren’t you too young to hurt this much?”
“Which? To cause it, or to feel it?” Neji had answered. Naruto was asleep on the bed and they were talking over his oblivious figure as softly as if their words were footsteps.
“To do either. At your age, you should be-“ Kakashi shook his head mournfully and sighed so that he made a sound like “ahhh.”
Neji had asked in his head, then how much does your eye hurt? Does it hurt like a joint or an old scar when it’s humid and rainy outside? Is it obvious to your body sometimes that it isn’t your eye? Does it ache then? Instead he placidly set his lips in a thin line and folded his book together. “That’s why you chose their team, though, right? Because it was their destiny to hurt each other that much, and it pained you to see that. You knew what could happen, and knew that it would, yet you never told them.”
Kakashi’s face was expressionless. “That’s a good guess,” he said finally, bidding goodbye to Naruto even though he knew Naruto couldn’t hear. He had been calm when he entered and just as calm when he left. Suddenly Neji knew why Gai would sometimes be overwhelmed with distaste for Kakashi.
Neji had been harsh to Kakashi then and hadn’t meant it, really. He doesn’t think it’s Kakashi’s fault, for one; after all, how many of them had thought Sasuke would leave?
None of them.
Zero.
Which is about the same amount of people who can guess right now where to find Naruto. Maybe even less, because Itachi knew that Sasuke would leave, even when no one else knew. These are the dark little secrets buried in Konoha like bugs deep in the woods of the trees. Dusk now, these bugs chew through the wood into the open, awake and tragic, little stories about betrayal and families and pain.
Trees. Neji thinks of trees and remembers suddenly the memorial where Kakashi’s team would always meet. The pain of Sasuke’s betrayal is still too recent, that’s true; Naruto would never invade Sasuke’s apartment to stand, empty-handed, amidst Sasuke’s meager and orphaned possessions, looking for hope. But there are those other memories as well, of a time when everything was okay and Sasuke was a friend. Neji can pretend he understands Team Seven like Naruto or Sakura or Sasuke does, can pretends he can conjure up a lasting memory of their camaraderie, their friendly ease with each other, their own predictability.
If he were Naruto, he thinks, where would he be?
Actually, here, Naruto is very far away from the hurt, surrounded only by silence, the rustling summer wind, and birds. Neji spots him under a tree, pulling leaves off the lower branches-Naruto is suddenly so very short in Neji’s eyes-and tearing them into little pieces as he walks. The wind comes from behind him, so it’s as if the leaves are marking the places where Naruto will go instead of the places he has already been. This is destiny to Neji. Konoha has been Neji’s entire life; the Hyuuga clan’s little rivalries with each other and other clans have been Neji’s only wars; his destiny has always been a destiny that involved Konoha and the people of Konoha. He can’t imagine being Sasuke and running maverick somewhere else that wasn’t Konoha. But he can’t imagine having a brother who murdered his family either. In this world, there are things Neji can’t understand. Given time to think about it, Sasuke is one of them.
Neji waits for Naruto to acknowledge him first. This way they are never surprised by each other, a familiarity in this brief interlude from their personal hells and crises. Neji smothers some leaves under his sandals as he walks over to Naruto. They are solitary figures standing together; Naruto grins, by way of greeting, and says, “You have leaves all over your hair.”
“I’ll live,” Neji says, appreciating the appropriateness of the response, relishing in all that pent up irony.
“You better. None of you are allowed to die until I beat the crap out of Orochimaru.”
That vibrant spirit, Neji whispers to himself. That refusal to accept the truth. That optimistic, living, breathing denial. This is what keeps Naruto human. Instead he says, “Dumbass,” wetting his lips self-consciously, and Naruto grins again, showing wolf’s teeth.
“Take me back, then. That’s why you came, right?” Naruto offers his wrists for Neji to make a bond of some sort, like a prisoner. Neji grabs hold of Naruto’s hands, clenching fiercely, a pair of makeshift manacles. For a moment the trees are rustling around them as the only sound and movement. Naruto makes no move to escape, though Neji knows that he could if he tried hard enough.
“Aren’t I good enough?” he says softly, drawing Naruto’s hands closer to his chest. “Don’t you think of anything other than Sasuke?” You saved me, Neji thinks. You saved all of us. That’s enough, right? You don’t have to save him too.
But he knows Naruto doesn’t have an answer. Neji is the one who broke the first unspoken rule between them, to not talk about Sasuke, and so Neji is already letting go when Naruto says simply, “Neji, my wrists are starting to hurt.” That would be the second rule that Neji’s broken too: don’t touch. Naruto breaks the last rule: always give straight answers.
Lying bonelessly on his own bed afterwards, Neji turns on his good side, the side with without the shoulder wound, and says to himself, Oh, Sasuke. When-not if-Neji ever gets his hands on him, the first thing he’ll do is probably punch him so hard in the stomach that Sasuke will be doubled over coughing, and then Neji will just keep kicking, even when Sasuke’s down. Then he’ll think about the less violent ways of winning. Neji will make it so that if Sasuke ever meets Naruto again, Naruto will have no way of telling that that mass of bruises and blood is Sasuke, and Sasuke will have no way of hurting Naruto.
The pain that Sasuke inflicts, just like the unintentional pain that Naruto gives Neji, is of course not a physical kind of pain but the kind that can never be seen, healed, or truly forgotten. Yet wanting to hurt Sasuke that way is the only thing Neji can think of to do in retaliation. Though they are too young for pain, any kind of pain and any one of them, just like Kakashi said, it doesn’t mean they can’t feel it. It just means that when they have to deal with it, the solutions are never easy or right.
6.
The tattoo on Gaara’s forehead is blood clotted beneath the skin that’s aided by the sand to last forever; it is the first and one of the only injuries until Sasuke and Naruto that Gaara has ever gotten in his life. Ironically, the tattoo is love, in both literal senses. The tattoo is of love, and it was also created by love in the strictest, most horrible, saddest sense.
One of the most obvious things that differ in Gaara after they funnel Shuukaku out of him is that his tattoo begins to heal by itself. Gaara wakes Neji up in the middle of the night with needles and a bottle of red ink that he’d apparently begged off Kiba and demands Neji tattoo the character back on. Neji stands with Gaara incomprehensively in his doorway for a good five minutes before he lets him in, making sure that no one else has woken up in the house.
Outside it is just beginning to get chilly, but because it is Konoha, the leaves are always green.
Neji can see the vague outlines of the original still on Gaara’s pale as new skin. He’s never done this before, but he can take a good guess as to how it works. Gaara sits in silence, unflinching; Neji’s hands do not shake, thankfully. He thinks of asking Gaara a couple of times whether or not it hurts, then remembers how the sand used to envelop Gaara like the way birds would cocoon themselves in their feathers. This is one of Gaara’s first time getting hurt and getting injured without the sand anywhere near him. This is love for the first time, again.
Almost done, Neji asks Gaara, “Shouldn’t you ask Naruto to do this for you instead?”
Gaara stares at Neji with his eyes that are pale, too, all of Gaara a sharp contrast with the edges of his eyes, the shock of his hair, and now his newly administered tattoo. He says coldly, “He wouldn’t be willing.”
“You haven’t asked.”
“Shut the fuck up. I know already.”
“Don’t move,” Neji hisses, poised with a needle that Gaara, in his anger, had almost banged his forehead against. “I don’t want to mess up and hurt you.”
Gaara loves and owes Naruto even more than Neji loves and owes Naruto, and the truth is that Naruto understands and needs Gaara more than he understands or needs Neji. While Neji cares and Neji wants, Gaara needs and Gaara craves, and Gaara is a sort of dark, festering sickness, a brooding guilt on Naruto. Gaara is what Naruto could have been, had Konoha been as unfeeling as Sand. It is like they hunger for the comparison so much that they’re attracted to each other. They hurt each other and that is love; they heal each other and that is pain just as much as it’s love; they’re willing to do things that are illogical for one another. Naruto had let them use him as a temporary container for Shuukaku as they exorcized Gaara. Gaara had stayed in Konoha, even though both his siblings went back to Sand.
Neji has a feeling that both of them think they don't deserve happiness.
It’s worse for Gaara to bear Sasuke than it is for Neji to understand why Naruto devotes himself to Sasuke. There had been some confusion upon Sasuke’s return as to exactly what happened. Neji’s heard at least three different versions, one of them involving Kabuto, one of them involving Itachi, and yet another involving simple physical trauma to the head. It doesn’t matter though, because it doesn’t change the fact that every morning Naruto treats Sasuke as if Sasuke remembers him, and every morning Sasuke asks, “Who are you?”
Neji knows heartbreak, but he has never known continual heartbreak like Naruto does now. Naruto cares for Sasuke like any moment now Sasuke will start laughing and tell Naruto that it’s all a joke. Naruto’s hope is scrawled on his face plainer than words could ever make it, and it’s easy for Neji to understand. For Naruto, sometimes, Sasuke becomes everything, becomes Naruto’s whole world. Naruto needs acceptance and needs Sasuke’s acceptance, needs it more than he needs Neji or Gaara. Naruto needs it, sometimes, more than salvation, just like Gaara, sometimes, needs Naruto more than he needs to breathe.
So when Neji’s done with Gaara’s tattoo and Gaara leans it to kiss Neji, rough like beach sand and seawater tides, Neji doesn’t protest. Gaara isn’t seeing Neji when he’s undressing Neji, just like Neji, peeling Gaara’s clothes away to reveal that smooth, unmarked skin, isn’t actually seeing Gaara either. They won’t talk about it anyone. There’s nothing to say. Neji has learned long ago that pain comes in different forms. It comes like a sudden shock or like a disease that slowly eats away at you or comes like this, in Gaara’s clumsy touches and Neji’s suffocatingly quiet gasps, in how tender they are to each other despite that once they would have been willing to kill each other if it meant winning.
Naruto changed all that. Now they are passengers and sailors on the same boat, unfurling torn and broken down sails to the wind. They are together in their misery, the two of them, Neji in his sudden unfounded empathy and Gaara in his denial, and far off Naruto with his thing for saving people who don’t realize they need to be saved, and Sasuke who is Sasuke. In between love and fighting and death and memory loss, they’ve founded for themselves this tiny oasis of hurt, so familiar that they don’t even notice it anymore. In this world they want what they shouldn’t have and never get what they need, but it’s okay for them because they’re young. They have all the time in the world to keep trying.
(When Gaara wakes up, Neji thinks, he'll help him put a bandage over his forehead to keep the tattoo from getting infected and warn Gaara not to be in direct sunlight. Neji will have to get vitamins too, C, A, and D. He thinks those are the ones that help faciliate healing. And then Neji will go ask Sakura for some hand lotion, something without a fragrance. Gaara can't heal like he used to, now. Neji will have to help.
He doesn't want love to be scabbed over.)
A/N: just so you know. "Bizarre Love Triangle" is the official song of this fic. not the song I was listening to during the writing process (that would be the soundtrack to In the Mood For Love) but just the song that I was like, omg subconscious influence.
edit// last part in paranthesis added later, upon retrospection
notes: I have read chapter 235, though I started writing this long before then, as evidenced by the ridiculous word count. So beware, there are minor but more implied spoilers in the last two sections, especially section 5. This is not really the "five things that haven't happened to..." challenge, because it is sort of like. well. some of the situations are entirely impossible, and some of the situations are just things that haven't happened yet so we don't know. Also, when you hit section 5, I think there is supposed to be a v. significant wound on Neji's stomach, but apparently it is not mentioned in 235?? so one does not know. in any case. enjoy. I hope.
badwater
1.
His hands smelled like metal and, briefly, the salt of his sweat. That was all right, though, now; he knew that he wouldn't be killed, at least not knowingly. He was a child and small and quick on his feet. When he dashed he dodged and attacked together. His hands were fast.
But the man in front of him was faster, always, and bigger. He didn't seem to move at all, but was in one place after another. He knew. He read. Neji could see him moving away from his attacks even before they came. The man was going easy on him. He was still a child with small feet and small hands and a tendency to cry when he got hit, getting his sleeves all wet and sticky, like a girl.
This time he went in for the kill because he didn't have enough energy to stay up any longer. He would get beaten. He never won. But the man in front of him looked so much like him. They were all family, the same face and the same body that weaved in through the air. It was all so familiar, so it was like he was losing to himself. He swung his kunai blindly and tried to see without looking like he was supposed to. For a minute he caught it, achingly clear and so close, but the man caught his arm and held it high, crushing his hand, and he dropped his kunai.
He thought, maybe my footwork improved.
And then the pain struck him, immobilized him, so that all he could hope for was that the man would release his hand before he slid to the ground. It would go away soon; he couldn't make it go away if he thought about it. All he could do was wait it out. He hadn't fought correctly after all, or maybe he did and thought too much about it. He had such a long way to go, and he was supposed to be a bright child. Maybe he wasn't working hard enough. Maybe he hadn't wanted it enough, but no. He thought of his father, about murder, and the pain worsened.
Oh, god, he breathed to himself. He was still crouched on the ground with his head to the floor, his hands over his ears like he thought he could hear the pain. He was starting to cry, which he actually couldn't feel, only that he couldn't breathe through his nose properly. The tears leaked into his mouth from his wrenching gasps.
"Make it stop," he pleaded, just once, in a small voice, so that maybe the man wouldn't hear.
A pause. The pain lifted. Neji could see again, through the haze of his wet eyelashes. The wood grain on the floor shone against the dark polish. The house must have been very old. There were mazes of scratches on the surface. He ran his hand lightly against the ground.
"Get up," the man said. "And try it again. No son of mine would lie prostrate on the floor for so long."
I'm not your son, Neji thought. I'm your nephew and you killed my father and now you've adopted me. I'm no son of yours; I hate you. I should kill you. Except he couldn't, and wasn't sure now if he wanted to anymore. He was so tired. It was all that pain, all that horrible horrible pain. When he did want to kill that man his head would still double itself over in pain.
He thought of that blond-haired boy at school who poked at the cloth around his forehead and said, 'That, what's that?' Neji had slammed him into the ground and there had been a fistfight, a rough and loud one where nothing really hurt but there was a lot of dirt. One of the parents had found them and forced them apart, yelling at the other boy even though it had been mostly Neji's fault. That boy had said, 'you're not being fair. Why don't you lecture him too? You're always picking on me.'
'Stop whining,' Neji had told him. 'Life's not fair like that.'
This mark. Nothing could get rid of it.
"Up," the man said, beckoning, his sleeves flickering gently.
Neji said, "Yes, Father." Uncle, the next swing of his kunai said. Uncle--blood--father--terror--young--death--he closed his eyes and then he could see--everything--was light--when he swung again, the blade ripped into the loose, billowing fabric of the man's robe. Neji stumbled forward, shocked; nothing behind that robe, of course, too light a cut, all air, but that impact, that sound, and the man smiled through his teeth and quietly--quietly--hit a blow to Neji's head that knocked him out.
2.
After he trickled in the hot water, he let Itachi pour the tea this time, watching the Anbu tattoo, made of soot and ashes and age-old ink, flex on Itachi's bare arm.
"You once wanted to be on the Anbu squad," Itachi commented, not a question or a suggestion but a statement, like he could read straight through Neji. The tea sent up small waves of heat in front of Itachi's face as he took a sip, a small mask. Neji felt for his own face to make sure it was still there and still his.
"Not really. Anything was fine with me as long as I was moving faster and higher."
"You're ambitious."
Neji thought of earlier, of Kabuto and Orochimaru, of loyalty and Konoha and his father. Who was dead, he remembered, but sometimes it was harder to think of that and just easier to think of Itachi attacking, Itachi's red eyes, power. Ambition. Not him as a little child and bandages around his forehead. He could smell the early morning woods he walked in with Itachi in front of him, both of them silent, their feet soaking in the cold dew on the leaves and the sunlight streaking in hard enough to kill.
"Not really."
Neji poured Itachi more tea and felt with his other hand the handle of his kunai. He hesitated, watching the surface tension of the water cling to the cup. “Your brother--"
"Yes?"
Too fast. No shock, no emotion at all. Just a flash, a blink, black eyes that were red if he wanted them to be, that would sometimes woke Neji up in the middle of the night screaming, and then Itachi would get up and stand over him, looking, bordered by fledgling moonlight and sky, and maybe a little bored and anxious at the same time. Neji wondered if both their eyes glowed in the dark. Like cats or Anbu masks and maybe even burned-out stars.
"You don't really want to kill him, do you?"
"Your uncle. You don't really want to kill him either, do you?"
Itachi played dirty and unfair and didn't care that Neji was younger and had an explosive, redundant temper. But that was okay, most of the time, because Itachi understood in that way only he could and kept both of them under control. Neji thought of the two of them, both of them essentially orphans with nothing left for them but skeleton families.
One of them, Neji occasionally forget, was a murderer.
"I don't know."
Itachi looked at him long and hard through the haze of the tea. "You'll never get anywhere with that attitude of yours." Itachi's hands were very broad, though sometimes Neji wondered if he had ever hurt someone directly with those hands. Itachi was never brutal. Neji was usually only mildly frightened and submissive because he wanted to be, soft and mild because Itachi never got angry. It was as if there was nothing about Neji worth getting angry about.
I am not an Uchiha, Neji thought. I am not your brother. His hand went to his lap where he clenched the cloth over his thighs over and over again, wrinkling it ridiculously. He looked at Itachi's cup and refilled it mechanically, automatic and a broken wind-up toy.
He heard Itachi sigh around his tea. "Come here," Itachi said, putting his teacup down on the table. Neji shuffled his feet around so that he was facing Itachi. "No. Come here. Here--" and put his weapons beside him in reach, opening his robe and letting it fall a molten black wave of red flowers behind him.
Later Neji was crying into the crook of Itachi's naked neck, and Itachi placed a heavy, gentle hand on Neji's chest, telling him softly to shut up. It was not a direct hit, no, and it did not hurt--at least, Itachi did not hurt him more than he usually did. But something about it was very painful and very cruel, and Neji wondered whether or not Itachi was thinking about Sasuke again.
Tomorrow Itachi would want to leave early in the morning. Maybe Kabuto would be looking after them, maybe Orochimaru's other minions, wanting them like a jealous lover; maybe the ghost of the Konoha they left behind was catching up to them. Whatever it was, Itachi would want to leave, and Neji would want to escape again, effortlessly, from everything else, even though it would get them one of these days, Itachi's dead family and Neji's destiny.
But that was okay. They could run together. Itachi was a murderer, but if he asked, Neji would be willing, too; whether for Itachi or for himself, it didn't matter.
3.
In his opinion, Hinata's team was a group of freaks and animals. Not Hinata herself, of course, because she couldn't be brutish or cruel or barbaric even if she wanted to, but Shino, for example, could scare Neji with just a touch of his hand, because Neji could see all those bugs crawling around under that skin, spots of chakra. And Kiba was loud and noisy and carried that dog around like an extra appendage or a permanent fixture to his head. Neji didn't like dogs. They made Neji nervous, and Neji didn't like being nervous.
And he didn't like Kurenai, because she looked wild and freakish and partially a quick, poisonous animal with them, a mother wolf with good intentions. It had to be the lipstick--actually Neji didn't know, but he knew he didn't like her. He didn't like women at all, except for the compliant, silent ones like Hinata. You could pretend those didn't exist and then you would be alone.
Neji didn't trust himself, but he didn't hate himself either.
"You can't send me in after her during the Chuunin exams," he said to her, and she nodded.
"Hinata will be doing it completely on her own," Kurenai agreed. "Without your protection. I just wanted to make sure--"
"I understand," Neji interrupted, almost polite, the way he lived his life now.
Kurenai demurred, "Of course," like a proper woman, and Neji grimaced. It looked so wrong. He could see her weapons. He could see her power in the outlines of her muscles. He had seen her fight once, and it was not pretty or safe.
"I'm leaving then, if you have no more use for me," Neji said, getting up quickly. Next door he could hear Hinata practicing her routines, her father overseeing her, a block of darkness against the rice paper screen that Neji felt but did not see. He had spent so long guarding her that he knew without even having to look. The expression on her face, or her stance, or the way she screwed up her eyebrows above those familiar white eyes, he knew these instinctively. He winced for her as he thought through her movements without seeing her. She hadn't improved much since last time. Neji could feel his uncle's disapproving expression emanating, a solid masking gloom. He knew what was coming: seething displeasure, a lecture about Hanabi and how Hinata was such a letdown, Hinata not crying, and a whole night of silent whimpering nightmares which would wake Neji up, disgruntled and just a little bit compassionate.
It was not that Hinata was incompetent, because she wasn't. Nor was she any stupider or slower than Hanabi or, indeed, Neji himself. Once in a while Neji would take her to where Kurenai trained them and, Neji with his shirt off and Hinata with her sleeves and pant legs rolled up, would spar with her, lightly so she would only get insignificant wounds. It was like playing teaching Go. He yelled at her a lot then, not unkindly. It was the only time he didn’t feel like a servant or like the bodyguard he was supposed to be and, more often than not, was.
And Hinata was always kind, always needy, and always grateful. She was not slow or stupid or really as weak as she seemed. Neji wondered when his hatred of her had dissipated until something that couldn’t even be counted as dislike. Ten-Ten had said as much when Neji had last spoke to her. “You’ve mellowed,” she said, touching his cheek the way he didn’t like being touched. “You’re so much softer now, and nicer.”
“I still want to get out of here,” he had said. “I thought that was what I would get when I turned into a Chuunin. I’d be free of them, the whole lot of them.”
Ten-Ten stared, and then laughed. “Extended families are a pain,” she said, sympathizing, but abruptly turned serious, boring identical holes as she looked at Neji’s face. “You know why they’re afraid, right? They haven’t had a child advance as fast as you since Itachi. They’re worried.”
Neji had scowled furiously as he answered, “I’m not going to kill off my entire family.”
“No one thought Itachi would either.”
Neji asked, “How’s Lee?” which meant, ‘let’s not talk about this’.
“Good. We’re planning on submitting ourselves to the exam again this year. They added another one to our team. We work well together. Not as well as with you,” she added quickly, “but we have a decent chance of passing this year.”
Life, Neji knew and Ten-Ten had just reminded him, had gone on without him, and he had simply remained standing in the same place he had always been, stuck with the Hyuuga clan. Protection was still his destiny, even though he thought he had escaped all that. He would wake up when Hinata did, and sometimes even earlier, and follow her to training where he would watch from afar, Kurenai’s strength and Hinata’s failure to reciprocate. Once, in the very beginning, he remembered being sent off on a real mission, with a real leader, with a real purpose. That shortest escape had only thrown the dreariness of his life into deeper contrast, and he didn’t know if he resented that.
Konoha, to him, was the Hyuugas and Hinata and suffocation, but Konoha was all he knew.
In the evening, as Hinata got ready for bed, Neji listened from his side of their partitioned and screened room. She was folding away her clothes and spreading out her blankets. Tomorrow, he thought. He knew she wouldn’t get far enough, wouldn’t end up a Chuunin, but tomorrow, tomorrow. Maybe something would happen or some miracle that had been kept in store for him would burst out from its dam.
“You’ll do fine tomorrow,” he said to her, listening for her breathing, scanning habitually for other chakras, intruders, a hiccup in their daily routine.
“Thank you, Neji nii-san,” she said, polite and demure and still using that childish name for him. And then her light went out too, so that there was only the faintest hint of moonlight pushing feebly through the rice paper. Hinata’s breathing was distant because of the space between them, but Neji could feel her close, could feel her there, not yet asleep, and he wondered again when it was exactly that he had stopped hating her.
He sat up that night waiting for unpredicted rain, as if he were a parched plant on cracked dry earth and rain would bring salvation or death.
4.
He doesn’t believe in his father who killed himself to free himself, or his uncle who killed his father to free his father, or the generations of Hyuuga branch family members who found no escape except to die. He doesn’t believe in destiny anymore, or winners or losers, because if there is one there must be the other, and everything balances out like justice. He doesn’t believe in forever, or never, or almost. He doesn’t think he can die, but he is dying now, and so he must believe in that.
The blood is leaking out of his slumped body like rice from a broken bag. When it slows down, he’ll be too tired and too drained to stay awake, and when he falls asleep he knows it will be over. He doesn’t listen for the sound of his enemy’s breathing, because to hear it is to panic and to not hear it is to point at a body and say, “This is the first person I have ever killed.”
He doesn’t believe in good or evil. He doesn’t believe in his side more than their side, or that there are even sides anymore-it has always been about survival. He understands betrayal and doesn’t believe in loyalty as much as he would like to. He has seen too much isolation and hurt in too many ways to believe in the absolute, the unwavering, the people who say “I promise”.
He doesn’t believe in Sasuke, but he realizes that’s because Sasuke hits a little too close to home for him.
He doesn’t believe in Sasuke, but, even though he doesn’t want to, he does believe that Naruto will save them all.
He doesn’t believe in Sasuke, but he knows Naruto does.
He is most likely dying. His chakra crawls up and down his body slowly, lethargic, ready to give up. “Things that can fly,” he whispers, his lips dry and his words more air than sound, whistling past his teeth and withering his tongue. He thinks, these may be the last words I ever say. “One. Butterflies. And two.” He contemplates very hard, about wings, about the sky, and then starts laughing, a deep, low, racketing laugh that hurts his broken stomach, so he stops. He squints up at the sunlight. They are still in Konoha and the sky is so blue. He’s going blind, he knows it, but he thinks he can trace out shapes in the clouds, the triangulation of flight, the only kind of immortality he believes in.
“Two. Birds, probably.”
5.
Neji isn’t supposed to be walking anymore than Naruto is supposed to be on his feet, but Shikamaru far off is having what passes as a slight mental breakdown, so Neji thinks maybe it is only appropriate to help. This would be the third time in two days that Naruto’s disappeared without telling anyone. The first time they had caught him just outside the hospital; the second time, he had ended up at Ichiraku Ramen and was leaving it to go to Iruka-sensei’s house. Neji wonders if Naruto remembers waking up for the first time after they put him under to stabilize his condition. Iruka had been by his bed, his forehead leaning against his folded hands, and Naruto had woken up mumbling something like, “Sensei?”
Iruka had started to cry then, great pools of tears that fell over and over again without stopping. He was holding onto Naruto’s hand, patting it as he said repeatedly, “You’re going to be all right, Naruto,” in his grown-up shamelessly weeping voice. In the end the nurses led Iruka out and had him call Kakashi, and in the hallway while the nurses in the room examined Naruto, Kakashi stooped impassively with one hand on Iruka’s shoulder and the other in his pocket, waiting for Iruka to stop crying.
Neji had been in the hallway with them then, pushed out from his chair beside Naruto’s window by the nurses. The bandages around his stomach were so thick they didn’t force him to wear a shirt, his skin cold in the hospital air. He had leaned against the wall, his palms flat against its surface, and watched Kakashi help Iruka calm down with all his soothing silences and self-deprecating smiles.
Neji won’t remind Naruto about the first time he woke up to see Neji’s face in front of him. Neji was sitting by his bed, reading a book, and when he heard Naruto’s breathing changed he had leaned over to make sure he was okay. Naruto had reached up childlike hands to touch the hair that Neji had forgotten to tie back.
Fists full of slender black strands, Naruto had said so softly, so tenderly, “Sasuke, you grew your hair out so long.”
My eyes are white, Neji had thought to himself, but answered in a whisper, “Go back to sleep, Naruto.”
“I’m sorry,” Naruto had said, barely lucid but truthful. “You were too fast, you know, and I wasn’t strong enough.” His eyes were wide and blue and Neji could see that he had been drugged and probably couldn’t think straight, so Neji told him to go back to bed on more time, brushing the wrinkles off of Naruto’s blanket.
That had been a week ago, at least, and Neji hasn’t spoke of it since to anyone. Certainly he hadn’t told Naruto, because nobody has talked to Naruto about Sasuke yet, opting to let Naruto bring that up himself. Neji had been kept busy getting over a hole in his shoulder and entertaining Naruto between wakings and trying to explain to Sakura why it wasn’t a good idea to talk to Naruto. None of them had forgotten the promise Naruto had made to her before they left Konoha on that day when everything was fine and there was no hurt. There’s something in her slightly hysterical manner what Neji perceives to be callous single-minded obsession with Sasuke that irritates Neji; he had been rude to her more than once or twice. “She sends her love,” is all he would tell Naruto, when Naruto asked.
Now Neji thinks of all the possible places Naruto could be: in the woods, at home, at Sakura’s house, at Kakashi’s place, in Iruka’s office in the Academy. The ramen shop would have returned Naruto back at once, and, Neji thinks, so would Kakashi. “If I were Naruto, where would I be?” Neji asks himself whimsically, not really expecting an answer. He wonders, for the first time, if Naruto knows where Sasuke once lived.
But that would be morbid and bordering on masochistic, so Neji figures Naruto wouldn’t be there even if he did know. Here, the thing that drives them until they are dragged kicking and screaming into the dirt of their graves is still self-preservation. The hurt that Sasuke has caused, that irreparable scar, is still too new, too open, and too raw to return to this soon.
Kakashi had asked Neji a little while ago, “Aren’t you too young to hurt this much?”
“Which? To cause it, or to feel it?” Neji had answered. Naruto was asleep on the bed and they were talking over his oblivious figure as softly as if their words were footsteps.
“To do either. At your age, you should be-“ Kakashi shook his head mournfully and sighed so that he made a sound like “ahhh.”
Neji had asked in his head, then how much does your eye hurt? Does it hurt like a joint or an old scar when it’s humid and rainy outside? Is it obvious to your body sometimes that it isn’t your eye? Does it ache then? Instead he placidly set his lips in a thin line and folded his book together. “That’s why you chose their team, though, right? Because it was their destiny to hurt each other that much, and it pained you to see that. You knew what could happen, and knew that it would, yet you never told them.”
Kakashi’s face was expressionless. “That’s a good guess,” he said finally, bidding goodbye to Naruto even though he knew Naruto couldn’t hear. He had been calm when he entered and just as calm when he left. Suddenly Neji knew why Gai would sometimes be overwhelmed with distaste for Kakashi.
Neji had been harsh to Kakashi then and hadn’t meant it, really. He doesn’t think it’s Kakashi’s fault, for one; after all, how many of them had thought Sasuke would leave?
None of them.
Zero.
Which is about the same amount of people who can guess right now where to find Naruto. Maybe even less, because Itachi knew that Sasuke would leave, even when no one else knew. These are the dark little secrets buried in Konoha like bugs deep in the woods of the trees. Dusk now, these bugs chew through the wood into the open, awake and tragic, little stories about betrayal and families and pain.
Trees. Neji thinks of trees and remembers suddenly the memorial where Kakashi’s team would always meet. The pain of Sasuke’s betrayal is still too recent, that’s true; Naruto would never invade Sasuke’s apartment to stand, empty-handed, amidst Sasuke’s meager and orphaned possessions, looking for hope. But there are those other memories as well, of a time when everything was okay and Sasuke was a friend. Neji can pretend he understands Team Seven like Naruto or Sakura or Sasuke does, can pretends he can conjure up a lasting memory of their camaraderie, their friendly ease with each other, their own predictability.
If he were Naruto, he thinks, where would he be?
Actually, here, Naruto is very far away from the hurt, surrounded only by silence, the rustling summer wind, and birds. Neji spots him under a tree, pulling leaves off the lower branches-Naruto is suddenly so very short in Neji’s eyes-and tearing them into little pieces as he walks. The wind comes from behind him, so it’s as if the leaves are marking the places where Naruto will go instead of the places he has already been. This is destiny to Neji. Konoha has been Neji’s entire life; the Hyuuga clan’s little rivalries with each other and other clans have been Neji’s only wars; his destiny has always been a destiny that involved Konoha and the people of Konoha. He can’t imagine being Sasuke and running maverick somewhere else that wasn’t Konoha. But he can’t imagine having a brother who murdered his family either. In this world, there are things Neji can’t understand. Given time to think about it, Sasuke is one of them.
Neji waits for Naruto to acknowledge him first. This way they are never surprised by each other, a familiarity in this brief interlude from their personal hells and crises. Neji smothers some leaves under his sandals as he walks over to Naruto. They are solitary figures standing together; Naruto grins, by way of greeting, and says, “You have leaves all over your hair.”
“I’ll live,” Neji says, appreciating the appropriateness of the response, relishing in all that pent up irony.
“You better. None of you are allowed to die until I beat the crap out of Orochimaru.”
That vibrant spirit, Neji whispers to himself. That refusal to accept the truth. That optimistic, living, breathing denial. This is what keeps Naruto human. Instead he says, “Dumbass,” wetting his lips self-consciously, and Naruto grins again, showing wolf’s teeth.
“Take me back, then. That’s why you came, right?” Naruto offers his wrists for Neji to make a bond of some sort, like a prisoner. Neji grabs hold of Naruto’s hands, clenching fiercely, a pair of makeshift manacles. For a moment the trees are rustling around them as the only sound and movement. Naruto makes no move to escape, though Neji knows that he could if he tried hard enough.
“Aren’t I good enough?” he says softly, drawing Naruto’s hands closer to his chest. “Don’t you think of anything other than Sasuke?” You saved me, Neji thinks. You saved all of us. That’s enough, right? You don’t have to save him too.
But he knows Naruto doesn’t have an answer. Neji is the one who broke the first unspoken rule between them, to not talk about Sasuke, and so Neji is already letting go when Naruto says simply, “Neji, my wrists are starting to hurt.” That would be the second rule that Neji’s broken too: don’t touch. Naruto breaks the last rule: always give straight answers.
Lying bonelessly on his own bed afterwards, Neji turns on his good side, the side with without the shoulder wound, and says to himself, Oh, Sasuke. When-not if-Neji ever gets his hands on him, the first thing he’ll do is probably punch him so hard in the stomach that Sasuke will be doubled over coughing, and then Neji will just keep kicking, even when Sasuke’s down. Then he’ll think about the less violent ways of winning. Neji will make it so that if Sasuke ever meets Naruto again, Naruto will have no way of telling that that mass of bruises and blood is Sasuke, and Sasuke will have no way of hurting Naruto.
The pain that Sasuke inflicts, just like the unintentional pain that Naruto gives Neji, is of course not a physical kind of pain but the kind that can never be seen, healed, or truly forgotten. Yet wanting to hurt Sasuke that way is the only thing Neji can think of to do in retaliation. Though they are too young for pain, any kind of pain and any one of them, just like Kakashi said, it doesn’t mean they can’t feel it. It just means that when they have to deal with it, the solutions are never easy or right.
6.
The tattoo on Gaara’s forehead is blood clotted beneath the skin that’s aided by the sand to last forever; it is the first and one of the only injuries until Sasuke and Naruto that Gaara has ever gotten in his life. Ironically, the tattoo is love, in both literal senses. The tattoo is of love, and it was also created by love in the strictest, most horrible, saddest sense.
One of the most obvious things that differ in Gaara after they funnel Shuukaku out of him is that his tattoo begins to heal by itself. Gaara wakes Neji up in the middle of the night with needles and a bottle of red ink that he’d apparently begged off Kiba and demands Neji tattoo the character back on. Neji stands with Gaara incomprehensively in his doorway for a good five minutes before he lets him in, making sure that no one else has woken up in the house.
Outside it is just beginning to get chilly, but because it is Konoha, the leaves are always green.
Neji can see the vague outlines of the original still on Gaara’s pale as new skin. He’s never done this before, but he can take a good guess as to how it works. Gaara sits in silence, unflinching; Neji’s hands do not shake, thankfully. He thinks of asking Gaara a couple of times whether or not it hurts, then remembers how the sand used to envelop Gaara like the way birds would cocoon themselves in their feathers. This is one of Gaara’s first time getting hurt and getting injured without the sand anywhere near him. This is love for the first time, again.
Almost done, Neji asks Gaara, “Shouldn’t you ask Naruto to do this for you instead?”
Gaara stares at Neji with his eyes that are pale, too, all of Gaara a sharp contrast with the edges of his eyes, the shock of his hair, and now his newly administered tattoo. He says coldly, “He wouldn’t be willing.”
“You haven’t asked.”
“Shut the fuck up. I know already.”
“Don’t move,” Neji hisses, poised with a needle that Gaara, in his anger, had almost banged his forehead against. “I don’t want to mess up and hurt you.”
Gaara loves and owes Naruto even more than Neji loves and owes Naruto, and the truth is that Naruto understands and needs Gaara more than he understands or needs Neji. While Neji cares and Neji wants, Gaara needs and Gaara craves, and Gaara is a sort of dark, festering sickness, a brooding guilt on Naruto. Gaara is what Naruto could have been, had Konoha been as unfeeling as Sand. It is like they hunger for the comparison so much that they’re attracted to each other. They hurt each other and that is love; they heal each other and that is pain just as much as it’s love; they’re willing to do things that are illogical for one another. Naruto had let them use him as a temporary container for Shuukaku as they exorcized Gaara. Gaara had stayed in Konoha, even though both his siblings went back to Sand.
Neji has a feeling that both of them think they don't deserve happiness.
It’s worse for Gaara to bear Sasuke than it is for Neji to understand why Naruto devotes himself to Sasuke. There had been some confusion upon Sasuke’s return as to exactly what happened. Neji’s heard at least three different versions, one of them involving Kabuto, one of them involving Itachi, and yet another involving simple physical trauma to the head. It doesn’t matter though, because it doesn’t change the fact that every morning Naruto treats Sasuke as if Sasuke remembers him, and every morning Sasuke asks, “Who are you?”
Neji knows heartbreak, but he has never known continual heartbreak like Naruto does now. Naruto cares for Sasuke like any moment now Sasuke will start laughing and tell Naruto that it’s all a joke. Naruto’s hope is scrawled on his face plainer than words could ever make it, and it’s easy for Neji to understand. For Naruto, sometimes, Sasuke becomes everything, becomes Naruto’s whole world. Naruto needs acceptance and needs Sasuke’s acceptance, needs it more than he needs Neji or Gaara. Naruto needs it, sometimes, more than salvation, just like Gaara, sometimes, needs Naruto more than he needs to breathe.
So when Neji’s done with Gaara’s tattoo and Gaara leans it to kiss Neji, rough like beach sand and seawater tides, Neji doesn’t protest. Gaara isn’t seeing Neji when he’s undressing Neji, just like Neji, peeling Gaara’s clothes away to reveal that smooth, unmarked skin, isn’t actually seeing Gaara either. They won’t talk about it anyone. There’s nothing to say. Neji has learned long ago that pain comes in different forms. It comes like a sudden shock or like a disease that slowly eats away at you or comes like this, in Gaara’s clumsy touches and Neji’s suffocatingly quiet gasps, in how tender they are to each other despite that once they would have been willing to kill each other if it meant winning.
Naruto changed all that. Now they are passengers and sailors on the same boat, unfurling torn and broken down sails to the wind. They are together in their misery, the two of them, Neji in his sudden unfounded empathy and Gaara in his denial, and far off Naruto with his thing for saving people who don’t realize they need to be saved, and Sasuke who is Sasuke. In between love and fighting and death and memory loss, they’ve founded for themselves this tiny oasis of hurt, so familiar that they don’t even notice it anymore. In this world they want what they shouldn’t have and never get what they need, but it’s okay for them because they’re young. They have all the time in the world to keep trying.
(When Gaara wakes up, Neji thinks, he'll help him put a bandage over his forehead to keep the tattoo from getting infected and warn Gaara not to be in direct sunlight. Neji will have to get vitamins too, C, A, and D. He thinks those are the ones that help faciliate healing. And then Neji will go ask Sakura for some hand lotion, something without a fragrance. Gaara can't heal like he used to, now. Neji will have to help.
He doesn't want love to be scabbed over.)
A/N: just so you know. "Bizarre Love Triangle" is the official song of this fic. not the song I was listening to during the writing process (that would be the soundtrack to In the Mood For Love) but just the song that I was like, omg subconscious influence.
edit// last part in paranthesis added later, upon retrospection