I do not own Naruto or the song Go Ahead by Rilo Kiley.
Go Ahead
sidestory to Little Sisterand Daddy
dedicated to Fantastical Queen Ebony Black.
If you wanna find yourself by traveling out west, or if you wanna find somebody else that's better, go ahead. Go ahead. If you wanna buy a brand new fancy automobile, or if you wanna build a place up in Water Canyon, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead; wish you would go ahead.
"You missed the funeral, Neji." I'm sitting at the café where Temari works at, like I do a lot, I realize. This time, my cousin is visiting. He works closely with my father, and had to watch The Company while my father came to town for the funeral. He finally found the time to come visit Hanabi's corpse, I suppose.
They weren't ever close, I don't think.
"Yeah, yeah." He quietly pushes back a bit of hair. There's always some falling into his eyes, and sometimes I wonder why he doesn't just cut it. I would.
"Ah, so . . . how are things? Are you . . . well?" I'm being cordial, which is all I think to be at the moment. Neji and I haven't always been the best of friends. When his father died, he came to stay with us. Although Hanabi was my father's favorite daughter, Neji was always more befitting the role of his favorite offspring. Unfortunately, Neji was not his son, and was his twin's bastard son.
I guess Uncle had a thing going on with some woman. It all happened when I was very young, and I never asked my father or Neji for the details. In any case, my father never saw Neji as 'pure' Hyuga.
He repented eventually, in any case, and now him and Neji work side by side. Saves me the trouble of having to own a company, really. This way, I can do what I really want.
Which is something I'm not completely sure of yet.
"Things? They're pretty good, I suppose. The Company's going—" Temari's sharp voice cuts him off as she slams herself down in the seat between us.
"Bah, Hina-chan means what's up with you? It's been a while, Neji-san." Temari only met Neji, once actually, when my father sent him to relay some sort of message. I think it was the anniversary of my mother's death, and he wanted me to come.
I didn't. I always thought that my tie with my own mother came from my heart, not from the empty shell that had once held her spirit. Also, I just didn't want to see my father, which I think my mother would have understood.
"Me?" Neji seems taken aback, and has to pause and think about it. "I . . . there's nothing new. Really. I'm still with The Company, and that's what I concentrate on." While I'm quite used to these kinds of answers from Neji, Temari isn't, and she gazes at him intently, as if trying to look inside him and figure him out.
"That's your life? Some job? C'mon, how lame." She raspberries and takes a bite out of her bagel.
If Neji were to show any kind of emotion in the least, he would look hurt. But Neji isn't the kind of guy to be an open book. Instead he settles for looking broody. Which is a mistake on his part, because Temari likes her men broody (re: Shikamaru).
Fluttering her hand on his wrist lightly, she continues brightly. "Tonight, I'm treating my two favorite Hyugas for a night out on the town! How about it?"
Neji looks at me, obviously expecting me to answer for the both of us. He probably anticipates my polite refusal, but I silently agree with Temari. Neji has always concentrated on making a name for himself despite his parentage. Sometime I wish he would just take a break from it all and get wasted. "Sure, Temari. I bet my father can relieve Neji of duty for one day, right, nii-sama?"
I send my cousin a stiff smile, and his body tenses. I realize it's not so much from my attitude or anything, but because Temari has slipped her hand from his wrist to his thigh. I suppress a giggle at Neji's wide-eyed reaction to Temari's gropes, and stand up. I don't want Temari to molest my cousin, either.
"Nine, okay, Temari?" Neji stands too, almost too quickly, and manages to catch his chair before it falls backwards onto the floor. A blush has spread through his face, making him look rather cute.
She nods, and gives Neji a little wave as I drag him off.
If you wanna hold your own hand going up that cliff, or if you wanna just hold back 'cause you ain't up to it, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead, be my guest, go ahead. If you wanna hold on to the first girl that you meet, or if you wanna settle down and plant roses at my feet, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead, I wish you would go ahead.
The lights are bright at this time of night. Maybe it's so people don't notice they're dying. You think about it more when it's nighttime, y'know? Or maybe that's just me.
Neji's bleak attitude towards life is very contagious. After talking a bit with him over dinner I feel very pessimistic about everything in general. Neji does that to people, I guess.
Temari, on the other hand . . .
She's trying her hardest to make my cousin lighten the hell up, but it's definitely a challenge. She keeps touching him, and Neji is more unused to that kind of stuff than I am. I can tell she's planning on getting laid tonight, and I just hope Neji won't put up a fight. She'll seduce him prettily or get him completely plastered, so that he has no idea what the hell he's doing anyway.
I lag behind the two of them, walking from place to place, and lingering in none of them. Sometimes I sit with Neji at a table while Temari goes off for a bit, to do who knows what. I'm not brave enough to ask.
"So, what do you think of her?" I ask him, on one of these occasions.
"Who? Temari-san?" I nod fervently. "She's . . . very lively." Not the best of compliments, but on the Neji-scale, it ranks rather high.
"That she is," I respond simply, and the silence settles once more. Damn it, Temari doesn't seem to be heading back any time soon, either. I debate whether or not to try and start a conversation with my most reserved of cousins when Neji turns to me, his eyes wide and serious.
"Hinata, do you think it's our fault Hanabi's dead?" I'm taken aback by this sudden question. What? There's someone else who's blaming themselves for Hanabi's death? There should be a club for this.
Neji has the queer habit of referring to both my father and himself, or sometimes he means The Company. There are times I can't even tell who the hell his pronoun is.
"Neji, Hanabi . . ." I sigh, and run a hand through my short hair. It's getting troublesome, explaining this to everyone and their mother who decides to feel guilty now, after she's dead and after she made a good portion of my life hell. Yeah, how thoughtful of them. "Hanabi killed herself. She was a junkie not because she didn't have enough attention paid to her, or because she had too much, but because that is the solution she found to her life."
Now this is making angry. It may be the drinks I chugged down at the last place, or just the fact that everyone cares about poor, little Hanabi now. I don't know. All of a sudden, I don't rightly care.
"And anyway, Neji, what the hell do you care? You barely spent a second of your life thinking on the former Hyuga Hanabi. Why do you care so much now?" I expect him to get angry at me, like he used to when he was a teenager and all full self-righteous anger and blinded vengeance. He doesn't. Instead he begins to heavily scrutinize the floor, like his script is written down there in code, and he'll be able to read it if he can just manage to decode it in time.
Times up, big cousin.
"Tell Temari when she comes back that I was tired and went home, okay?" I stand up, and start for the door when Neji's cracking voice interrupts my course, and I stop to glance back, a puzzled expression on my face.
"I never got to tell her," he murmurs, his eyes locked onto mine. Any other person, I feel, would be crying at this moment. Or at least that's what they do in the movies, right? The male sobs that he never got to tell his loved one that he treasured her above all others. He cries spill out of his lips loudly, and people glance over sympathetically. That's a hit Hollywood film, right?
Neji doesn't cry, of course. And I'm too drunk and pissed off to act sympathetic. "And if you had told her that you loved her, do you think she would have gotten clean for you?"
It doesn't even faze him. He's probably thought of it himself. "Probably not. But at least she would have known, and I wouldn't have the weight of it on my shoulders." I take a deep breath, and shoot him a halfhearted smile.
"This is all my mother's fault, you know?" He cocks an eyebrow in response, but allows me to continue. "I mean, if she hadn't given birth to Hanabi in the first place, she would have died, right? That's the reasoning everyone's using to make Hanabi's tragedy their own. It's stupid and pointless and could go on forever. You could blame the person who sold her those drugs, or . . . or anyone. The only person to blame is Hanabi. So shut the fuck up, Neji. Tonight, you'll sleep with Temari out of need and leave early in the morning. You'll probably never see her again, because that's the way it works, and you'll go back to working in The Company, blaming yourself all the while.
"You're just being selfish, you stupid idiot!" I don't realize the volume in my voice is getting high and high this whole time, and a lot of people are looking over. I glance around, my cheek coloring brightly as I do so. I quickly zipper my coat and send a parting glare in the direction of cousin before I rush out of there like hell on wings.
My cousin calls me a few months after that. We talk a bit about little nothings before Neji gets to the point.
"Tell me about the Hanabi you knew, Hinata. Give me the bad things and the good things."
I hesitate. In truth, I don't really think he wants to hear who Hanabi was, even if he tells me to explain to him Hanabi's bad side.
"Come on, Hinata, I'm serious. Be my guest, go ahead."
So I do.
If you wanna have your cake and eat it too, and if you wanna have other people watch you while you eat it, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead, be my guest, go ahead. If you want better things, I want you to have them. If you want better things, then I want you to have them. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. I wish you would go ahead.
Yeah, I know, I know, the ending sucked. I've had this fic lingering for a while now, and I just wanted it done, so there you go. Neji happened to be missing from the past few fics so here is one dedicated (partially) to him!