Rating: R
Summary: In the end, his thoughts always seem to go back to Hinata. But that's really not his fault. Neji X Hinata, NejiHina. Potentially disturbing.
Disclaimer: Even if I pretended to be Masashi Kishimoto... would anyone believe me? All the usual disclaimers need apply here. And also, since I don't know where else to put this... reviews make me very, very happy and hearing from readers always gives me new ideas for stories. So please review-- it makes me much more productive in the long run! And bring on the constructive crit if you have it-- since I can dish it (boy can I dish it), I can certainly take it as well. ;)
In the end, his thoughts always seem to go back to Hinata
It didn't seem fair, Neji thought, that thoughts of Hinata were still haunting him, even now, even after their first and very probably last battle had ended, even if he had possibly (hopefully) wiped that soft, simpering smile of false pity from her face forever. It didn't seem fair that fate wasn't simply content to kill his father, widow his mother, and doom him to a life of servitude and humility, clipped wings and cautious pity.
Neji had tried to kill his younger cousin this morning. He had subsequently failed in doing this, but that was due more to the biased interruptions provided by some of Konoha's finest than through any fault of his own. Of course, any member of the Branch house of the Hyuuga would be out of luck if they ever found themselves in Hinata's foolish footsteps. But somehow, the heiress of the greatest clan of Konohagakure was miraculously spared from the natural results of her own idiocy.
Fate was unfair, of course, but he almost expected that out of life at this point.
But even that didn't infuriate him as much as the looks the rest of his household had given to him when he had come back from the preliminary matches. As though he had done something terrible after all. As though he had done something fitfully wrong by doing them all a favor and trying to eliminate that disgrace of blood and flesh that might some how, some day find herself ascending to a station she didn't have the skills to maintain.
Merely the luck, of course. And very possibly, the destiny.
Even his own mother had looked at him as though he were a stranger she could not quite reconcile herself with when he had met her within the Branch house's compound. Even she had looked at him with wide, frightened eyes and asked why he had done what he had done to Hinata-sama. She had
asked...
She had asked when even Hinata's father, the purported head of the Hyuuga, refused to sanction him for what he had done. Hiashi had agreed with Neji that if Hinata had been too weak to avoid his blows and too foolish to flee while she had the chance, she deserved whatever consequences she reaped.
So what right, really, did they have to judge him for hurting a girl whose own father had abandoned her?
What right did they have to judge him for hurting a girl who had hurt him first, who had killed any hope he might have held a thousand times over before?
Lying in the sweltering heat of a summer that refused to yield to mere humanity, Neji clenched his fists into the futon beneath him, knowing all too well what happened on any night he thought about this subject for far too long. But of course, whenever he started thinking of Hinata, he couldn't just stop, any more than he could stop the chain of misery that began for him around her third birthday.
It was simply too hot to be thinking of Hinata, which Neji knew could only lead to certain inevitable, and shameful, things occurring. But even as he undid the opening to his pants (only, he told himself, because the night was too hot to be sleeping in material so heavy), he knew what would occur and he bared his teeth to fate for making him feel this way about nothing, nothing.
And just before the inevitable occurred, a memory of his mother, from earlier this evening, drifted though his mind. The lines habitually etched across her forehead had deepened further and further as she contemplated her son and finally asked...
She had asked...
'Are you still thinking about her, Neji? Are you still obsessing?'
Yes, he was. Despite his attempt at exorcising her from his mind earlier, she was still there in the front of him. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see her perfectly. He could see that heavy fringe of lashes set against those wide-set, white eyes. Those slim limbs and that frail body, studded with his touches, growing much too weak to go on for long as their battle progressed. That pale mouth, parting only to speak her futile words and let that thin dribble of blood puddle along her chin.
And that expression on her face, that anguished joy and hope and happiness, that he had never quite seen since her third birthday. That expression that came right after that blond idiot had told her to fight and keep fighting, when even her pathetic eyes should have known it was utterly hopeless for her. That expression that made her look almost...
And once Neji started, he couldn't stop thinking of her. He couldn't dismiss from his mind the sight of her vivid blood, her crippling pain, her clumsy, loathsome, unbearable beauty.
Hinata was still here with him, no matter what he did to be rid of her. And when he thought of her, he knew that he was here as well, in the heat of Konohagakure's summer night, on the same day he had tried to kill her. Here he was, caressing himself as he replayed memories from just this morning from beneath tightly closed eyelids that still can't shut out the afterglow of her image. Here he was, still palming himself below his loosened belt, his fingers sticking against the flesh down below in the sweltering heat. Only now, his eyes were open and his hands were moving faster, faster and harder against himself, even as he imagined his own hands to be ones that belonged to a girl who had earlier refused to shrink from his eyes, refused to back down from his might, refused to submit to her own destiny...
Of course it was all about Hinata. In the end, no matter how he tried to fight fate, all his life seemed to trail back to her.