Fragile

Summary: I fell in love with the girl caged in the room, forever trapped…I'm the only one who can save her. AU NejiSaku

I fell in love with words. I fell in love with the smell of ink and the sound of pen scratching on paper. I fell in love with phrases and sentences and paragraphs, of entire stories and poems.

I fell in love when was six.

When I told my uncle this, he hastened me into a shed a few ways away from the compound. It only had a writing desk with a stack of blank papers and pens. He handed me a key and told me I could use this room to write without being disturbed. I could come every day, he said, and I could write whatever I wanted.

I was happy.

I wrote poems and stories and plays. I filled paper after paper with combinations of words that sounded good on the tip of my tongue. At times I found myself falling asleep with my cheek pressed on ink, and I would wake up with tattoos on my face of words that I wrote.

For two years, the shed was mine.

And then, of course, something changed. I started to feel a soft breeze whenever I wrote, touching my arm lightly, guiding me with my words. I would hear faint whispering of phrases, gone before I could fathom them into sentences.

I thought I was going mad.

But then I saw her. One night, just before I drifted off to sleep, I saw a flash of pink, a silhouette of someone blowing out the flickering lamp.

"Who are you?" I asked in the darkness, fully awake.

But I was alone.

I didn't know why but after my lessons, I went back to the shed. Everything was still the same, but something had changed now. Something was different. I could feel someone watching me, even though no one was there.

"Show yourself," I said into the empty room. I felt the air grow thick and suddenly there she was, a pink-haired girl with the greenest eyes I ever saw. She looked the same age as me and wore a simple white dress. She stared at me with wide eyes.

"You weren't supposed to see me last night," she whispered, angry at herself.

"It doesn't matter," I said. But that was a lie. Of course it mattered. There was someone, and it didn't matter who or what it was, that had been in my shed. I was angry. Did she see all my words, my poems, my stories? Those weren't meant for her eyes. They were mine. "Why are you here?"

"I am here because…" she drifted off, before her face softened into a smile and she stared right into my eyes. "I am here because I love words, too." She sat down in front of me and closed her eyes. As I watched her, I thought I was going mad, really going mad. I thought I had imagined her in my isolation…that I had conjured up this creature to help me cope with my lack of friends.

But then a poem started to fall off her lips, words that were both soft and sharp, that was of loneliness and fear, and I found tears running down my cheeks, unbidden. Her voice was quiet and the words she said did not need anything else- no decorations, no affectations. They stood by themselves, conveying more meaning than I ever would have thought possible.

There was no way I could have imagined a poem that beautiful.

She opened her eyes and watched me weep silently. She did not laugh, and for that, I was thankful.

She talked to me, about anything and everything. She told me what she was, and why she was here.

"I am a genius," she said, sitting down on the floor and running her finger across the wooden floorboards. "I help the artists with their work, to provide inspiration."

"But you can't leave this room," I said. She nodded sadly. "How can you create such masterpieces trapped in a room like this for years and years?" At this, she smiled.

"When you are absorbed in your work, it's as if you are unconsciously opening your mind to me. I can see all the words you want to use, all the pictures you are trying to describe. And then, the more absorbed you are, the more your mind widens. Suddenly, I am seeing all the things you have seen, but more than that, I start to feel all the things that you have ever felt."

"Can you help me, then?" I asked shyly. She smiled.

"Of course," she said.

"But does that mean that my words will not be my own anymore?" I asked. She stared at me, her wide green eyes always cautious, tentative.

"Your words have always been your own, Neji-sama," she said, lowering her eyes. "I would never think of tainting your work with my own words."

"Your words are beautiful," I said, forgetting my work entirely and fully turning to face her. "I have never heard a poem as beautiful as yours."

"Thank you," she said. She sounded sincere. "A poem should reflect the poet. I heard that from one of your ancestors." I pondered at her words, even when she disappeared into the air.

I looked out the window. I wondered how it must have felt like, to only see the world like this. To watch the seasons change and have no part in it. It seemed too painful.

I closed my eyes, and I wondered what would happen if she was free.

"Do you know of fragile words?"

I looked up from a poem I was writing.

"Fragile words?" I asked. She nodded as she played with a thread on her simple grey dress.

"There are some words I never dare to speak," she said, looking up at me. Our gazes met and she smiled. "I never speak them because they sound fragile. Have you ever met a word like that?"

"I have never met a word like that," I said after a long pause. She laid herself down on the floor, her hair fanning out like pink flames. The sunlight filtered through the window and hit her hand, making it glow. She closed her eyes.

"I've met words like that," she murmured softly. "I never want to say them out loud, because they might break." I stopped working and stared at her. Her hand where the sunlight was, her fist clenched as if trying to contain the piece of sunlight in her hands. The rest of her was covered in shadows. There was something of an old beauty in her. I couldn't describe it, but I drank the sight of her in, my mind whirring with adjectives and adverbs. Nothing seemed to suffice.

"I've always wondered," she said, opening her eyes slowly and staring at the ceiling. "What would happen if I wrote a poem with all of those fragile words?"

"You would never be able to read it out loud," I said, smiling down at her. Her eyes darted towards mine and she laughed. I couldn't describe her laugh, either. "The words would break as soon as they fall off your lips." She nodded and closed her eyes again. I turned back to my work.

"But I do not know enough fragile words," she said, so quietly that I wasn't sure if she said it at all.

-x

"I am breaking all rules talking to you."

She sat herself on the floor, looking up at me, always looking up at me. I stopped trying to fit two jagged words together and turned to look down at her.

"I didn't know you have rules," I said evenly. She gave me a half-smile.

"I didn't know either," she said. "But I think they are the kind of rules that you do not know exist until you have already broken them."

"That's a stupid sort of rule," I said. She nodded.

"Nevertheless…" she drifted off. I did not dare ask her what the consequences were for breaking the rules. I did not want to know. I was scared of finding out. Would she disappear entirely? Would she not become a genius anymore? And then, my thoughts drift traitorously to the future. What if I freed her? Could she walk the earth then?

At that moment, I knew I wanted her free. I wanted her free from this…isolation. I wanted her to see the outside world; I wanted her to smile because she was happy, truly happy.

"How can I free you?" I asked suddenly. She stared up at me, surprised.

"I- You-" she spluttered. "I am the genius of the Hyuuga Clan. I am not allowed to leave-"

"You've been our genius for centuries," I said. "You deserve to see the outside world. Don't you want to visit all the places you've seen in my ancestors' minds?" She shook her head and I could see that I have saddened her. "Don't you want to be free?"

"My duty is to your clan," she said, clenching her fist. I remembered that moment of her trying to capture sunlight and I became angry.

"Since when? Don't you ever look outside that window and, and want to experience the rain, or the snow, or run your hands through the grass or-"

"I am not a human!" she yelled. She looked angry at me, at everything. Tears made her eyes glassy and she stood up. I stood up as well. "I am not a human like you. I am not supposed to want, I am only supposed to help. I am not supposed to feel, I am only supposed to-" she stopped and I could see that tears were running down her cheeks. I realised too late how fragile she really was.

"But what if you're free?" I asked desperately. "What if I freed you and you became like me?" I took a step towards her and she took a step back. "Why don't you want to be free?"

"Because I don't know what happens next," she whispered. "What if I don't become like you? It's too much to hope for."

"Hope is better than nothing." She looked down at her hands and looked up at me. I waited.

"Where do you think I could go?" she asked quietly.

"Somewhere. Anywhere. The world is a big place."

"The world is a big place," she echoed as she looked out the window. She turned back to me. "I thought I knew all the words in the world." She smiled. "But then I met you and I realised how wrong I was." She started to cry again, and my hands found hers and held them tight. I waited.

"I realised how wrong I was because…because every time you started to write, I tried to think of words to offer you, and I realised I don't have enough." Her hands squeezed mine.

"Say my name, Neji," she whispered hoarsely, after her sobs died down. "That's how I'll be free." Her eyes locked on mine. "You've known it, haven't you? You've known it for a while." I sat there frozen. In the very back of my mind, her name sat so quietly, but now, it seemed to unfurl its wings, and it sat at the tip of my tongue, waiting to break.

At that moment, I realised that if I said her name, she could really be gone. She could just turn back into nothing, and I would be left with nothing. But I couldn't see her like this, with her sad smiles. Since when did her gift become a curse? If freeing her could make her happy, even if I couldn't see her, I would risk it. The realisation was painful, but it was enough. I took a deep breath.

I whispered her name, the only fragile word I knew.

"Sakura."

Notes. In Ancient Rome, they believed that you were not born talented, but rather, your creativity came from another being, called a 'genius'. I kind of ran off with this idea, as you can see.

Prompt: different types of genius