Caged Key
A/N: This is my first one-shot ever and it was inspired by my best friend Omni. She basically wrote the same thing, and I interpreted it as I see (and she let me) fit. It's really just something to get over writer's block, but reviews would be appreciated. :) She also beta-ed it.
oOo
He ached. Not only were his muscles burning, but his mind was exhausted as well, drained from trying to wrap itself around one thing: He'd lost.
Taking a breath that seared his lungs, Neji struggled to understand. He could always turn to fate and accept that it was predestined that he would be beaten to someone who'd been the underdog since day one, because fate was simply something you couldn't go against. Life would be much easier if people would just accept that there were things that they could not do. A bird could fly as high as it wanted, but it could never surpass the sun.
He forced his legs to fold into a meditative position and tried to mellow out his breathing. Now the sun that had blazed over the battle arena was sinking beneath the horizon. The breeze was cool, and a stray strand of his hair fluttered limply against his cheek.
Inhale…
Yes, it would be easy to believe that fate had caused him to lose. Fate had put him in the branch family; fate had graced him with skills the likes of which his clan had never seen, and fate had placed him into the mold of a sacrifice, a mold that he would never fit, but one he could never break, either.
Exhale…
And it had been fate that had caused him to meet the most optimistic, hyperactive brat he'd ever known.
How could he have won? Clearly, it had been Naruto's fate to be a failure, and continue to be a failure until the day he took his last breath. Neji knew it, and the whole village knew it. And he'd watched as Naruto had tried to prove them wrong. But Neji had known that he would fail: If he himself couldn't defy fate, then Naruto didn't stand a chance.
Of course, Naruto wasn't supposed to have stood a chance today, and not only had he put up a fight, but he'd won.
As much as Neji wanted to believe that fate had made it that way, he just… couldn't.
Fate had made Naruto a person destined to fail, it couldn't just flip the script and have him win a match that he was bound to lose. And you couldn't have two preordained paths. So that left the question that Neji didn't have an answer to.
How had Naruto done it?
If he was a caged bird, then Naruto was a fly caught in a spider's web, but yet, Naruto was the one who had flown away. Despite the odds, somehow, Naruto had pulled through and managed not only to beat Neji, but to beat fate.
If Naruto could do it, then why couldn't he?
The list of answers went on and on, but none of them offered Neji a solution. He felt as though he were taking a test, and all the answers made sense in a way, but only one was the best answer. He had a nagging suspicion of what his best answer was, but he just couldn't pick it. It went against everything he'd ever thought, said, done, and believed in. His entire life would be an elaborately fabricated lie, and more than anything he'd like to believe that what he'd been told was true because if it wasn't, not only would his life be a lie, but it would have been wasted on a lie.
"Damn it!" he cursed at no one, and at everyone. Here he was on the edge of a cliff. Stay and remain safe, or jump, hope to avoid the rocks and dive effortlessly into the waters below? Had Naruto thought the same thing? Or had it never been a question with him, because he had nowhere safe to stay?
"Oi, Neji!"
With his hands locked behind his head and an effortless smile plastered across his face, Naruto strolled into the training area. He looked as ragged and fatigued as Neji did, and yet, it didn't show. Yet another thing that he pulled off that Neji couldn't. He could try to look unaffected, but he knew it'd show in the lines of his brow, or the tension in his jaw. If you couldn't do something perfectly, then it wasn't worth doing at all.
"Hey, I didn't come here to rag on you. I just wanted to check n' see if you were alright," he said, stumbling awkwardly over his words. "Lee's been lookin' for you for hours."
Neji looked away. "I wanted to be alone."
He could practically hear Naruto's face collapse into a frown. "Look, I didn't volunteer for this job. But everyone else was too wrapped up in Sasuke to notice that you left."
"If they cared, they would have come."
"What the hell, man? Is this you being a sore loser, or are you usually this much of an ass?" he asked gruffly, running his hand agitatedly through his hair. Neji seethed.
"I shouldn't have lost!" he hissed, his fingers curling into fists. "It wasn't your fight to win!"
"Well it was your fight to lose! So stop bitchin' about it and move on!"
"Maybe it was!" Neji bellowed, jumping down from the tree branch he'd been perched in. "But that doesn't explain how you won! It was your fate to lose, but you were the one to fly free and I was left in a cage!"
Even as his lips had formed the words, Neji knew he had said too much. His words were useless. Naruto would never understand. Grinding his teeth together, Neji leapt back up into the tree and turned his back on Naruto. He didn't need his pity. "Go home, Naruto. Just… go home," he sighed.
Leaves rustled, a bird flew from its nest to hunt, and a deer crushed a twig looking for roots, and Naruto was still there. Neji could sense his chakra.
"I don't know what the hell you're talkin' about, or what the hell I'm supposed to say to somethin' like that," he started, "but I do know that I don't have a "fate". I do whatever I want and deal with the backlash when it comes. You spend so much time analyzin' things, putting this fate to that person and that person to this fate… man, how do you even live your life?" he asked through a laugh that wasn't humorous.
"I do not have to explain myself to you."
"No," he mused, "you don't. But maybe I just want to be the first one to get an inside look of your fucked up mentality."
"My mentality isn't 'fucked up'. And you do have a fate, everybody has a fate. The way you deny yours is just pathetic," Neji said.
"No, what's pathetic is the way you put so much faith in something you can't see or hear or touch!" Naruto shot back. "You're just like one of those pious elders, believing in a god that you can't prove exists, and goin' al—"
"It exists, Naruto. No matter what you call it- destiny or consequence, it's still the same."
Naruto would never believe in fate, Neji knew that. But he argued anyway, and Neji knew it was because he was trying to convince himself that fate existed, because he wanted to stay safely on land. He wasn't ready to take that leap; he wasn't ready to leave his cage.
"No, Neji. As much as you'd like to think you're right, you aren't," he called, his voice getting softer and softer as he began to walk away. "Fate is what you call it when you don't know the name of the person screwin' you over. Until you wake up and take your life into you own goddamned hands—"
Compulsively, Neji looked over his shoulder. Naruto was staring at him, with his hands locked behind his head and a smile on his face. His eyes weren't angry, or upset, or anything Neji thought they would be. More than anything, they understood.
"Don't cut off in the middle of a sentence."
He chuckled. "You said something about bein' in a cage," he said. "Well, you have the key. Now you need to decide what the fuck you wanna do with it."