Lotus

Summary: "Even if I now saw you only once, I would long for you through worlds, worlds." Because one life is not enough for love, and the past forever bleeds into the future. AU NejiTen, implied SasuSaku.

Even if I now saw you

only once,

I would long for you

through worlds,

worlds.

~ Izumi Shikibu

It starts with red silk rippling over ankles, the clacking of boots on hardwood floors, and a glinting metal sculpture looming over him in the gallery.

The campus is still a ghost town, the dust of slumber still crusting many eyes shut even in the city that never sleeps. Here, they are alone. This comforts him, for reasons he cannot name.

She is there, the lady in her form-fitting cheongsam, nursing coffee in one hand and twirling steel needles in the other. He runs the thought over and over, turning it upside down and inside out. A lady, dressed in scarlet when it should be something lighter, or darker even— pastels perhaps, like what they show in some pretty in pink ad, or some shade of deepest maroon. A lady, mature and seasoned and fighting battles men would never know. A lady, and somehow the description doesn't feel right.

Chestnut-brown hair gleams in the light filtering in through frosted windowpanes. It strikes him odd, the sight of her with her hair down, the loose waves cascading down her shoulders. It frames her oval face well, but a nagging feeling worms into his mind. He thinks that it should be different. That he knows those same tresses in another form; that if he could run calloused fingers through it, secrets and memories and the incurable past would unthread and slip through the cracks of his hands.

She is the artist, or so he presumes. Small, gloved hands fiddle with the many metals sticking out at odd angles, protruding like the rays of a burning sun; her tinkering is tainted with a sense of entitlement, of ownership and mastery honed through the ages.

Years, he amends, chafing against such distracted and desultory thoughts. He is nothing if not known for his focus, for his precision. Not ages.

Her coffee cup stands at the base of her artwork, the needles balanced precariously on its lip. Twisting her hair into a knot, she ties it up and out of the way in two buns. It's almost jarring, the juxtaposition of childish mannerism and elegant dress, and yet not.

Discontent ebbs from his corded muscles, and he finds himself relaxing. This suits her better, he opines, but frowns as he does. He ponders why he scrutinises her with an intimacy as natural as breathing, with a knowing and understanding ripened through constant presence. The lady in red is a stranger, but when she flashes him a smile, he cannot help but think he knew her as a girl.

'Oh,' she says softly, as if she hadn't noticed him there. As if she hadn't let them simmer in this peace on purpose, knowing that it could be so easily broken. As if she were not trying to capture moments already gone. 'Good morning.'

The warmth in her voice feels familiar. It is the touch of grass heavy with dew relenting beneath bodies pressed close, the hollow spaces of absence dispelled, or staring at the ever-blue sky with someone cherished after a long day.

Dizziness assaults him. He cannot place these vignettes anywhere. These are not from his childhood, not mementoes from this life. These snippets swirl and twirl and spiral around in his mind. Spinning. Everything is spinning and nothing hurts.

(And if he closes his eyes, memory will show him a girl who always perched on the bough of lofty trees, her legs dangling as she spun kunai in her hands and welcomed him to something that wasn't quite yet home but was the only place he belonged. In the fault-lines of his soul, the tiny crevices where nothing else thrums, there is a whisper of good morning and are you ready to train; the clash of chakra and metal playing in a broken loop that rings in his ears and echoes in his core.)

He nods once. He'd try to smile, but he was never one for grinning anyway.

'You're early,' she says, brokering for some conversation. Intuition tells her not to expect a reply.

He surprises her. Shrugging, his briefcase thumps against his side, swallowing the crinkling of his tie. 'I wish to avoid crowds.'

She takes in the sight of his tailored suit and pressed-to-perfection shirt, the shining oxfords and how he hasn't a hair out of place. She assumes he works here, within the university: a professor, perhaps. Certainly, he carries himself well. Before her, he stands dignified, posture straight but not rigid, commanding respect. Unwavering, like bamboo shoots in the face of rough winds. He speaks like one bred for academe too, or she believes. His diction is careful, his pronunciation impeccable, and she wonders whether he has always lead a life of privilege.

'Yes well, hopefully, the turnout will be good.' She chews her bottom lip. 'First days are a mess, and I've heard college folks are a tough crowd.'

'It depends.' His mouth quirks into what may have been a smirk. 'With the right technique, they can be putty in your hands.'

The quiet confidence in his voice allays her concerns. She laughs. 'Well then, perhaps you can share some insight with me, Dr…?'

'Akira. And you?'

'Dr Akira,' she repeats, but it doesn't sit right on her tongue and the name turns to ashes when it flees her lips. 'Nice to meet you, Dr Akira. I'm Diana. Diana He, as this humongous plaque so cheerily proclaims.'

He blinks, as though processing it. 'Likewise, Ms He.'

'Diana's fine,' she assures, meeting his gaze. His eyes are a blue pale as the zenith, and laced in her heartbeats are whimsical musings on whether he can fly.

(It's silly, of course. No one can fly. And yet, she remembers craters burrowed into the damp earth, a dome of spiralling stars above her head, and a promise of staying by someone's side for life. But the boy in her snapshots is always grounded, feet anchored by chains of fate, and she was left to traverse the skies alone as a caged bird played a requiem that sounded too much like goodbye.)

'I have to go,' he says at last, inclining his head towards her.

Startled out of her reverie, she can only nod. 'It was nice seeing you.' Picking up her cold coffee, she takes a swig to bury the again burgeoning in the hollow of her throat. 'I'd ask you to wish me luck, but somehow I don't think you believe in fortune.'

He stops in his tracks, glancing over his shoulder. 'I don't,' he agrees nonchalantly, 'but I think you'll soar today.'

'Thank you.' Almost bashfully, she looks up at him from under her lashes. 'Bye, Dr Akira.'

He's at the door when he turns around again. Secrets are not meant for the world, but the words hurtle out of his mouth with happy volition. 'My name.' A pause. If she squints at just the right angle, she can almost see a sprinkle of pink tingeing the tips of his ears. 'My father was enamoured of Greek mythology. He named me Charon, though the moniker never did get much use.'

Her head tilts to the right, wisps of hair falling into her eyes. 'After the boatman who ferries souls into the underworld.'

His grip on the briefcase tightens, as though waiting for the inevitable ridicule coming his way.

'It's an unusual name,' she says. A smile graces her face. 'I like it. You're different. Special.'

His tone turns wry. 'Too outstanding, perhaps.'

She stares into blue, blue eyes that could almost be ice but are not pale enough; gaze flitting over black, black hair cut too short for her liking. Stroking the golden frog buttons on her collar, she tells him, 'I minored in the classics while in university. It was a few years ago, but I don't think I'm that rusty. Your name possibly means fierce brightness. I don't believe in fate,' she says, 'but I think you were born to outshine the sun.'

Akira does not smile, but he presents her with a full smirk. One just for her, and Diana thinks that it's his version of a lopsided grin. It's enough kindness for a meeting between strangers, the groundwork for something more laid before their futures, though they are certain they will never quite stumble upon each other again.

She wonders why it hurts so much then, to watch him walk out of her life.

After a day of socialising and wining and dining, she all but collapses at her front door in relief. A quick shower and several boxes of takeout later, she pads over to her bedroom.

Tucked in the crook of her arm, a battered copy of Japanese military history presses against her side. Her specialty is alloys and metals, but she has a soft spot for weapons: she melts and melds scraps of steel and ingots of iron and whatever else she can het her hands on, reproducing it into art. But she is no blacksmith: her creations are merely silhouettes of the grace and power set in inches of folded steel, an aesthetic farce that cannot be cradled in her palms like a lover in the night.

(Once upon a time, she believes her hands moulded to leather straps crisscrossing pommels, her fingers wedded to the splintery handles of wooden poles; her ears accustomed to explosions that would decimate forests if she needed. But these are just fairytales she tailors to her own life, the colourful tapestries of imagination that have no place in reality, and so she dismisses it with a flick of her wrist.)

Tired as she is, she knows she won't progress in her readings. But as she stumbles into the warm embrace of her bed, she figures she'll try regardless. Leaning against the headboard, she props the tome against her thighs. Yellowed pages flutter open to an old map of Japan. Eyelids shuttering closed, the last thing she sees is a picture of Obi castle nestled in Hyuuga province. Slumber ushers her into its realm, and as she whispers Hyuuga into the emptiness of her house, she remembers a shard of home.

(Tonight, she dreams of a village hidden in the leaves, steaming bowls of ramen waiting after missions, green spandex suits, and a sprawling clan compound she frequently sneaks into on lonely nights. There is a towering dome the colour of flames, white robes billowing in whirlwinds, and a habit with fire and shadow scrawled in thread. Her home burns to the ground in a flight of paper cranes, crushed into dust that scatters with the breeze.

Rage steels her soul. Death and glory call their names, filing them into ranks of despair under a crimson moon. She is panting on a plain both levelled and overturned. Rocks jut out from the trembling earth. Cracks run through the ground like the veins of leaves gone rotten. Grime and sweat and the blood of others mingling with hers envelopes her whole.

Her eyes rake through the battlefield as she clutches her scrolls tight. She doesn't know what it is she seeks, but she keeps looking and searching and hoping until she sees his pale form in the horizon. Relief takes her hostage. She is about to turn away when she realises that he isn't moving.

Strength drains out of her heart. Regret floods her lungs. Something within her breaks.)

She wakes up screaming.

It is raining when they meet again.

Under an awning of grey storm clouds, her boots slosh through puddles of sleet. While waiting for the lights to turn, she stares at her reflection on the ground as she blows into her palms for warmth. She has never been one for winter, but when she glances up and takes a gander at him, she cannot help but think he suits it.

He is dressed in a military coat, black as darkness. Loose, white robes peek out from underneath— a contrast against the suit she last saw him in, but this one seems to fall better on his frame. He has yet to notice her, waiting on the opposite side of the road. Distance unravels between them, though they stand still. It feels as though the cars and concrete are a yawning gulf, a chasm dividing worlds upon worlds— and oh, what she would give, whispers a small voice, to wade across the crevasse of stars separating them above.

Green replaces red. Loud beeps herd her across, and she throws that train of thought away over the racing of her pulse. She strides forwards with her gaze riveted ahead. Emotions are confusing, she reminds herself. They hold no place in her world, especially when directed at someone she has known for less than five minutes.

(Rule 25, a confident voice recites: A shinobi must never show emotion. A silent gasp erupts from her throat. This maxim is familiar, but logic tells her that she has never heard of this before, even though it is inked onto her bones, written into her skin. When an ache of longing flares in her chest as he walks past, casting the fringes of her vision in shadow, she chants to herself that the man in white means nothing, that her mind plays tricks on her. That some things are best left forgotten, even if the past forever bleeds into the future.)

Intent on avoiding him, (because this hurt and sorrow and yearning is unnatural, and she is not one to draw her life in the designs of grief) she tries to sidle past quickly, merging into the crowds. At the dining table this morning, her horoscope informed her that it's her lucky day.

It lies.

The woman in front of her stutters to a stop, attention glued to her phone, and Diana bumps unceremoniously into a lavender backpack decorated with weasels. Momentum sends them both onto the cold, wet ground. Her bag spills open in the middle of the road over the woman's ranting.

Dazed, she accepts his hand, horoscopes and fate be damned. Anything's better than wallowing in sleet and the remnants of stray snowflakes. Thankfully, the blonde she angered has disappeared, and she presents him a smile in gratitude.

'Thank you,' she says, shovelling her stuff back inside her tote. 'I don't know what's wrong with me lately. I'm usually not that clumsy.'

He nods once, acquiescing. 'You're distracted.'

As he adjusts the duffle bag slung on his shoulder, a curious expression speckles his gaze. He bars her way, and they stand there in the grid of a busy intersection. For a moment, it is as if they are alone, the blaring of horns and screeching of tires fading into the background. The world around them disappears, shoved into the aether, relegated into the spaces between stars in a meeting of sun and moon.

Frustration impedes his judgment. He laments on why he looks but cannot see her.

'We shouldn't be obstructing traffic,' he says. Placing a hand on her arm, he gently guides her to the sidewalk once more. There's a grim affection lurking in the corners of his smile, fatalistic in the way warriors of yore assured cherished ones of glory but not return. A knife twists in her heart: it feels as though he is telling her that they will never see each other again but in dreams. 'Focus, Diana. I won't be here to help you next time.'

Her name sounds a tangle of syllables on his tongue, grating on her senses like nails on a chalkboard. That's not my name, she wants to tell him, but he is already gone, vanishing like the mists.

'Sorry I'm late,' exclaims Thalia. Her friend dumps her handbag on hers, before sliding onto the opposite tatami. Cheeks stained pink from the flaying gusts, she swipes her obsidian-dyed hair out of her face. When Thalia removes her askew hat, tossing it onto the chair, the first showings of pink roots greet her friend. She stares at the dark circles lining Diana's eyes, the way her cheeks seem drawn. 'You look terrible.'

'Hello to you too, Legolas.'

'I take it Aragorn won't be giving me a hug?' Mischief laces her words, and she all but tackles her friend in an embrace over the low table. Green eyes glance at the menu, debating on the right combination of cake and tea. 'Insomnia?'

'Something like that,' Diana replies, and doesn't mean it. How can she even begin to explain the way she keeps bolting awake at night, covered in cold sweat, tears echoing down her face, her body forever shivering from everything but the cold? The way she has ransacked her apartment a dozen times, unfurling scrolls and splitting book spines open to get some semblance of answers?

A waitress comes to serve them, and they place their orders: a slice of apple pie with a dollop of ice cream and some ocha for Thalia, and some New York cheesecake and chrysanthemum tea for herself.

'So are you going to tell me what's bothering you?' asks Thalia, jade eyes fierce in the lantern light.

The arrival of food stalls her friend for a moment, but soon all attention is back on her. Diana rubs at her hand, the scar running down her palm itching like mad. 'What do you mean?'

'I can't diagnose you if you don't tell me anything, you know.' The pink-haired woman sips daintily at her steaming cup of tea. Waving a fork around, she says, 'I've been a doctor for years now. I know when a patient's keeping something from me.'

Sighing, she steals a bite of pie. 'I don't want to talk about it.'

'Is it about a man?'

She accidentally bites her tongue. Grimaces when gargling blood in her mouth.

Thalia raises a delicate eyebrow. 'So it is a man. Look, if someone's bothering you at work, tell me and I'll sic Niko on him. And if that doesn't work, I'll take care of him myself.' She grins. 'You know how persuasive my knuckles can be.'

Diana rolls her eyes. 'No one's harassing me at work, Thalia.'

(She almost winces at the name rolling off her tongue. This name doesn't belong to her friend either, she thinks. She knows it.)

'Offer's still on the table,' she says casually. 'You know, a lot of people would be grateful to have the services of the city's inspector general at their disposal.'

'You mean a lot of people would be grateful to have a friend who has the city's inspector general wrapped around their finger.'

Thalia's smile is as sweet as her pie. 'Poe-ta-to, poh-ta-to. But really,' she says, mood sobering, 'you can tell me anything. I hope you know that.'

'I know, I know, but…' Diana blows into her tea though it's already beginning to get cold. 'It all sounds so ridiculous in my head, so it's going to sound even sillier out loud.'

She stabs at the crumbs littering her plate. 'What do you mean? If it's a crisis of existentialism, it's hardly stupid.'

The brunette sits a little straighter in her seat. 'How did you know?'

'There's a lot of it going around,' she says, but the airiness of her lilt is forced.

She leans in closer, moving her plate aside. 'Do you ever get the feeling that we aren't made for this life? As if there were other worlds before this? I just…' She takes a deep breath to calm herself down. 'I keep having these dreams, and there's so much war and blood and death, but even as this land of fire and whatever else comes crashing down around me, it still feels like I belong there. There, not here. With people I can't remember, but even so I know they're family. And the thing is, I could have sworn I saw you too,' she whispers. 'I keep getting glimpses of a place I used to call home, but I know it can't be because it just doesn't exist. It just doesn't exist.'

'The Land of Fire…' says Thalia, testing the words in her mouth, experimenting with it in her thoughts. 'The Land of Fire.'

'Does it mean something to you?'

A tear drops into her ocha. Thalia doesn't know why she's crying, why the white circles on her bag are spinning like tomoe against blood-red eyes, why her long hair suddenly feels heavy and dark on her head.

'Thalia?' she asks, uncertainty quivering in her tone. Her hand hovers over her phone, ready to get Niko on call if need be. 'Thalia, are you okay?'

(In a corner of Thalia's mind, there is a blinding flash of green light, twin bells hanging over charred graves, a little boy screaming, and an abandoned compound razed to the ground.)

'Yeah.' Her breath is shaky, and her heart fares little better. 'Yeah, I'm fine. It's just that I thought of home too,' she says quietly, 'and I don't think it's wise to ever go back.'

Her friend has paled so much, and she offers her some of her chrysanthemum tea. 'Do you need another cup of ocha? I can call the waiter.'

Thalia shakes her head, the pink roots bouncing in denial. 'No need. Is there anything else you remember? A cursed seal, maybe, or odd-coloured eyes?'

She tenses, and Thalia knows she has hit a nerve. Diana rifles through her tote, retrieving a torn notebook. 'Pale eyes?'

'Red.' A sinking feeling makes itself at home in the pit of her stomach. 'What about the seal? Did you see three commas spreading like fire on skin?'

'I only know this,' she answers, flipping through the pages. She shows her a cross resembling a swastika, its edges curled into hooks. 'It's been haunting me for days now, and I don't understand why it feels so important.'

Thalia pokes at her drawing, ink staining her chipped nail. 'I remember this vaguely from theology class. It's a Buddhist marking. I can't tell you why it's significant though.'

'Do you still have the book?'

'Unfortunately not.' She frowns at the dregs in her cup, but looks up at her just as quickly. 'But I have the name. Your exhibition at the university ends tomorrow, right? Maybe you can sneak into the library and trawl the shelves for it. Do some research. Who knows?' She rises to grab her bag. 'Maybe the guy in your dreams will suddenly appear too.'

Curious, she asks, 'Where are you going?'

'Home,' she calls out over her shoulder. Thalia's voice is tight and small as she strokes her wedding ring. 'I have my own mystery to solve.'

The book she seeks squats high above, exactly three shelves above her head. It is only one thing taunting her in the scheme of things, but a bone-deep weariness settles within her and everything seems so hopelessly out of reach. But she is nothing if not determined (something she believes she learned from him, in the past so faraway from here). A ladder lingers rows away, and she contemplates riding it back here when a man robed in white takes it down for her.

'Here,' he says, and his voice stirs a fire within her core. Who is he, she wonders, that she can recognise him by sound alone?

'Charon. Hello,' she greets, slightly breathless from her attempts at grabbing the tome. She clears her throat, cursing that she sounds like some lovesick fool. 'It doesn't seem like you're dressed for work.'

'Training,' he offers by way of explanation. He jerks his head to the left, indicating a man bedecked in green from head to toe. 'Baguazhang. With him.'

'Your friend?'

He pauses, unsure of how best to answer. 'It depends.'

'On what?'

A loud crash reverberates through the otherwise quiet library. Shouts of 'Don't worry, Akira! The power of youth saved me!' ensue.

'That,' he deadpans.

She tries not to laugh, but fails miserably. 'Ah, I see. Well…I'd best leave you two now. I have some business to attend to,' she explains, patting the mottled cover of the book nestled in her arms. He arches an eyebrow, intrigued. She takes that as sign to elaborate, but doesn't quite figure out how. All attempts of articulating I see you in my dreams fall flat. 'I, ah, have been disturbed by some weird visions lately. A friend told me to look here for answers.'

'About?'

'Swastikas.' Her finger travels down the index, before finding the designated page. 'Ever since the name Hyuuga leapt out at me on a page, this—'

Memory tinges his gaze. 'Say that again,' he says, the beginnings of a frown drawing lines on his face, his tone sounding so close to pleading though he is too proud to do so.

'Hyuuga,' she repeats, and a dazzling smile illuminates her countenance, because the look in his eyes reflects hers. This means that she isn't alone, that oblivion has taken them all captive, that he was part of her past and her present and maybe, just maybe, her future too. This isn't the destination she has sought for what seems like an infinity trapped in the kisses of steel and chakra, but it is a start, the beginning of healing for something long broken and damned, a step in the right direction.

'Diana,' he asks slowly, 'what does your name mean?'

(Because his memories are beginning to return to him, in a small trickle at first but then in a deluge, a flood of laughter rushing through him after the passing of bitter times and grieving spaces. They come in a storm of iridescent vignettes, shining as they spin around in another version of the Kaiten she helped him perfect; overlapping as they replace the snapshots of this life, this identity he itches to shed, this eternity he has spent without her.

Her.

She is there, in the centre of his mind, everything else revolving around her lithe frame, her hail of weapons, her dragons flying in the light of a pale winter sun. But her name still eludes him, like the warmth of her form pressed against him under the starlit sky, and he regrets fate so.)

'Heaven,' she says. 'Heaven and sky.'

'Ten.' Everything falls into place, and his hand comes to rest against her pale face. 'Tenten.'

The book clatters to the floor. Her mind is awhirl. She remembers now: knows that life for them wasn't a fairytale, that tragedy links them somewhere in the aether, that once-upon-a-times are everywhere but happily-ever-afters are so hard to find. She remembers home nestled in a forest full of shadows, but she also remembers all the other cycles, how they are constantly reborn only to wither in each other's arms. She remembers Ancient China, courts full of dancing silks and deadly jade, how the dragon empress met her match in an envoy from the land of the rising sun; the backwater village where she hid when bombs rained down from the sky and men in uniforms marched into her nation, how he hid her from the prying eyes of his men.

Life goes on and on and on: it tears them apart and brings them together again in an endless cycle that cannot be followed. But he is here now, here, and destiny must be taken, snatched from the jaws of fate, so she buries her head in the crook of his neck. Holds him close, in her arms and next to her heart, because they have been denied each other for too long, in so many worlds that seem so far away from here.

'Neji,' she whispers, breathing his presence in like oxygen. And he holds her close, because his name on her lips is right, fits snugly in the spaces of his soul as it does in the axis of his mind. There is something in the way she says it. To him, it is the crackling of the hearth, the call of free-flying birds, the soft thrumming of tadaima that resonates in his lungs.

'Hey,' she says, smiling through her tears. Because there are a thousand and one things running through her mind like a broken prayer: his death, and hers, and their rebirth, and stay. In the end, she tells him this: 'Okaeri.'

A battered red door strung in Christmas lights stands before them, and Tenten raises a hand to knock.

('Eight billion people in the world,' he had grumbled to her, under the pale shred of a blossoming dawn, when their limbs were tangled beneath silk sheets, when her hand lay on his chest that wasn't riddled with scars or holes, 'and Uchiha still lives down the block.')

'Ready?' she asks, fingers entwined in his. Death is inevitable, tragedy immortal, but here and now, in the sunlight filtering through the trees, the ring he gave her glimmers as bright as a shard of hope.

Neji smirks. With her— 'Always.'

A/N: Tadaima (I'm home); okaeri (welcome home).

So this came out of nowhere. It wasn't meant to be this long, but my brain, unfortunately, doesn't understand the term 'short'. I tried using names that were phonetically close to the originals, but it simplified things too much. So I played around with Greek mythology in the end; the meanings of the names are close, though. [In no way do I ship Nico/Thalia in PJO; it so happens their names sound most modern and were most befitting.]

Charon: fierce brightness, or keen gaze

Diana: heaven, or sky, or deity

Thalia: to blossom

Niko [Nikomachos]: battle of victory

Unbetaed, so please be gentle. Not sure if this has been done before, but review? :)