Cleanly, Neatly

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and
the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

It goes without saying that once when you were very little, a tiny green shoot struggling up between the weeds, someone sat you proudly on their knee and told you that you could be anything you wanted to be.

They lied.

To you. They lied straight through their tongues, through their teeth, through their flesh, through their bones. A lie is a silver tipped bullet, you see. It zips straight through rock or meat, through anything. That's why you're inclined to believe it. You have to.

Neji, who has a field of pockmarked scars on his chest, left over from all of the lies he's been shot through with, knows this more than anyone. This however, this remarkably is one lie he has never been told.

From the day he was remote, gripping his mother's thighs to pull himself out of the womb until now, this day, he has always been told that he was born to serve a purpose. This predestined cubby hole, carved in time for him to hunch over in should take precedence over all of the other pieces of his life.

This path had been etched into his forehead, an oblong trail made of fine green strokes, and bitten into his back, roadways and tunnels dug with the heavy wooden kendo sticks that hung from the papier-mâché walls in his uncle's dojo.

He has always known that he was born to do this. He has always had to endure the invisible leash clenched around his neck. He has always known, that he could walk as far as he wanted to until this day, then the chain would catch and he'd be pulled perilously back. He has always known, that he is powerless to stop it.

And just as well. There's nothing to ignorance anyway. Its bliss as they say, but only for a short while. Only until you get old enough to curiously unclench your fist, and realize that you have been empty handed all along, when you thought your hands were closed around bits of gold.

Anyone who has ever believed in this groundless notion of being whatever you wanted deserves to have the ground shaken out from under them. You could go and fling yourself from the tallest building in Konoha, arms outstretched if you wanted to. But you will never become a bird, you will never be able to fly.

Neji has rationalized all of this, cold hard facts freezer burning the insides of the weaker parts of his brain, time and time again. But they are always tug of war-ing with his desires. With the one, fragile wish that once upon a time someone had pulled him into their lap and offered him that silver plated lie, sweetly through their bared teeth. That someone, anyone had cared enough to give him "you can be whatever you want to be".

It all ceases to matter now, however.

Now they're testing him. The final few procedures that need to be taken care of. Thumbing the wax seal down on the envelope.

Neji tries to lie perfectly still, his arms relaxed, his breathing even. This is what he has been living for. After all of those years he knows now just what he has been slated to do.

The man hovering over him shines the slender penlight into his eyes, instructs him to roll them this way and that. Neji does so without complaining, settling his mouth into a tight, inviolable line, an impermeable fist to hold his struggling tongue. He earns a pat on the cheek and a "Good, healthy boy. "for this.

Neji thinks that if they would just slip a bit into his mouth and, patting his flank, offer him a handful of oats, everything would be better. If only they would just stop pretending. Masquerading around all of the jagged edges of this entire operation, as if they do not notice, the blood running from their hands.

He tells himself that he cannot feel pain. His excitement should not be mistaken for nerves. His joy at finally getting to fulfill his destiny, should not be held abreast to fear. Even if they look to be the same shade. He lies perfectly still. Trying not to choke, trying to get around the anxiety someone has jabbed down his throat, to suck all of the moisture from his mouth like a vacuum. They told him right before that it will be clean and quick. He wonders what clean and quick feels like.

The man with the slender light moves off, and another edges in sticking his sterile hands, cold like frigid hospital air under Neji's paper gown. He palpates his stomach, then moves the crinkly fabric aside. Neji keeps his eyes straight ahead, staring at the bubbles of hallogen lights bulging from the ceiling. He doesn't give the man the pleasure of seeing his embarrassment. He doesn't give him the pale sense of retribution of looking assuredly into his face. He won't give them anything. Well anything more, than they're already going to take.

The man with the icy hands, fingers the forest of pockmarks like tiny blobs of crusted over ink on Neji's chest. His distinguished eyebrows shoot up towards his distinguished hairline, and Neji wishes that he didn't see so much of himself in the man's milky, lavender eyes.

"Cigarette burns?" the man asks, but the question mark falls off and it becomes just a cool eyed statement, hanging in the air between them.

"I've been lied to." says Neji calmly, evenly.

"You did this to yourself?"

"Lies leave their marks."

The man steps back as if electrocuted suddenly by the bare skin, he and the other one exchange a cryptic glance. He will not meet their eyes.

There's a glass partition cut into the room, just nestled in a junction between the other three walls. Through it, Neji can see TenTen standing in a garden of floral patterned chairs and a coffee table, where a mug of something untouched sits next to a pack of Marlboro Lites. Presumably the room is made for waiting, but TenTen stands at the glass, her hands pressed to it, her milk chocolate eyes full of the light they used to drink on softer nights, when there were no clouds in the sky to hide that it was overflowing with stars. Full to bursting.

She flattens her velveteen lips to the glass, parted as if lost in thought. And he remembers smushing them against his, the crinkle of his chapped lips as he kissed her, awkwardly the first time. And a little less so all of the times after that. The taste of her used to hang around on his tongue for days after a single kiss, the sensation of crushed velvet buzzing around his mouth.

He allows himself to look at her hands. The life lines and straits of love there, he marked with his lips, mapped with his eyelashes, his face cupped tenderly in the curve of her tiny palm. He could still see the twists and turns of those gentle brown lines now, even if he closed his eyes. He has memorized every inch of her body, like his own. As if she were an extension of himself. God forbid.

If he were a different a man, he would wish that they were not where they are now. That the only thing separating their hearts could be little more than bare flesh and bare skin, and not a glass wall, and several blinking bodies of medical equipment, and two men with blood stained hands, with eyes like his own. But he is not, so he won't.

Neji has never drank more than a sip of liquor, all of his life. He exercised heartily, never made love too hard. He ate dark chocolate by the pound, square by rich square disappearing into his pink mouth. He never accepted her offer of smokes. He was always going to the doctor. He was always pushing her away. He was always making her reserve her love, put it into a safe deposit box to spend someday all at once, to spend on someone else. TenTen never knew the reason behind all of these things, then. But she does today.

He says he doesn't lie. But he says he has to do this. And she can feel the sharp silver ripping into her chest. The wounds leaking out, blood pooling in their festering pockets. Sponge-ing up inside her, swelling her with their gravitas. She will drown. She feels the droplets of water on the tip of her nose before it registers with her that she's crying. She always dreamed that she would share her life with Neji. That they would grow into old bones together interlocking always. But how can you share a life that is not your own? The tears are sticking to her cheeks. She stubbornly refuses to lift her hand and wipe them away.

Neji pries his eyes away from the glass. The door to the room opens up and a gaggle of nurses flocks in, wings outstretched around the tiny body, spooned like an egg in a thicket of leaves and sticks on the gurney.

Hinata does not look like herself at all, now. She looks sunken and hard and distant. All of her hair sheared away, most of the skin on her face gone too. But this is nothing that a few heady bolts of chakra could not fix. The real problem is the crater in her chest, a huge, pink, gaping mouth. Where the sternum had been blow away by some unthinkable force, bits of the heart are visible. Veins cut loose from their sockets hang out over the edges of the abyss like grasping hands, desperate for rescue.

He was born to do this.

It's miraculous really that they have managed to keep her alive like this for so long. That even as her heart dies, slowly folding in on itself, her lungs continue to pump, her brain continues to blink on and on in chakra-herded waves of activity.

You could smell the death on her. Under the taut sterile stench of white bandages, and the bacteria-less frocks of the nursing aides was a smell you could not describe, even if you dug down deep and came up with handfuls of all of the apropos words in the human language. The stench of rubber burning under the wheels of Death's black wagon, the redolence of the air being pushed from the graying nostrils of his jet black steeds. It attacked him, forcing its way into Neji's nose as they wheeled her next to him.

They said it will be clean and quick.

Tubes flit like butterflies at her throat, at her wrists. He watches the miniscule rise and fall of her chest, her lungs fighting to funnel air into a bag with a hole ripped through the bottom. Something catches in Neji's throat, clasping into a dark, tightly clenched fist. He shakes it loose, he swallows hard. This. This is the reason for his existence.

Hiyashi, Neji's uncle enters the room, swept in by a cold breeze. He leans his narrow shoulder on the doorframe, his arms folded, his eyes talking. He looks at Neji. Neji forces himself not to tense. Wills his eyes not to close. He stares back into his uncle's face, saying nothing. Betraying even less.

He is taken back momentarily to the infantile hours of the day, when he was shaken awake by his uncle saying "Today is the day." When he knew instantly just what was meant by that, without having to be told. He turned in his hitai-ate and kissed TenTen warmly. He lied fondly to himself, he chanted that he was ready.

Hiyashi stands between their beds. He looks down on Hinata, studying the shell of her, the open hole there breathing, breathing, breathing.

"There's not much time." says the man with the icy hands.

Hiyashi looks at Neji. "She's main branch. You understand that right?" he asks listlessly, as if he doesn't care one way or the other. Justifiably, it doesn't matter if Neji understands or not. But he nods anyway, once, tautly. He says "Yes, sir." stiffly, loud enough for them all to hear.

The nurses circle him then. And he doesn't resist when one of them takes his wrist. He can see the syringe floating pointedly down over the vulnerable, slippery vein there. A silver bead of liquid dangling quietly from the tip.

Neji steals a glance over at Hinata as if she might move. Sit up and declare them both saved, do anything other than lay there, machines living for her. She doesn't.

TenTen crumbles. Bent over at the waist, she cries into her hand. Water marking all of the lines there. All of the inches of her he took into himself. All of her. Neji always dreamed he'd share his life with TenTen.

The needle attacks him. Sharply, like a snakebite, then the corners melt and a sugary high envelopes him. Dark and richly warm like molasses. They are all very far away now. Just featureless faces, they're distinguishing landmarks scratched out by blackness. Etched away.. He can feel his body lifting from the gurney, lifting over them. He can see TenTen's tears reflected a thousand times behind his eyelids as they drop slowly shut, a crystalline kaleidoscope.

Somehow despite the distance between them, his uncle's voice reaches him, just between the ears.

"My little girl will be very grateful. She will take good care of your heart."

It is effortless. And painlessly quick.