Disclaimer: I own nothing of Naruto or its characters.
This is a tribute to Neji, one of my favourite characters from Naruto or from any manga, for that matter. I was hoping to continue writing for Portrait of a Hyuga, my Neji/Hinata/Naruto piece, but I guess that won't be possible anymore. Privately, I've always wished that there was more development for Neji and Hinata's relationship as it is probably one of the more complex in the story. Oh well.
Your favourite Silence
As a matter of habit and by force of upbringing, she has never cried the way that Hanabi had been so prone to before hitting four or five- not even as a toddler. At the age when parental indulgence seemed justified, Hanabi used to bawl and throw things and howl- but then she had learnt from an early age that she could get away with almost anything.
Screaming was not for the older girl, even if she was prone to weeping in the deepest moments of the night, unable to stop until morning came. It wasn't by her choice that her tears had always come easily, building up at the slightest provocation in stinging screens before flowing freely, staining wet trails down her cheeks and onto her collar or clenched hands if she had been kneeling. Most had ordered her to wipe those away and get up- to stand up and face whatever that she had been made to cry from. Any remaining shred of dignity always originated from the fortunate silence; it helped that she always knew to bite back her words and any opportunity for the slightest sob to escape.
And so it seems just as congruent that she had no time to mourn for him. He didn't let her; didn't even address her directly even as he leaned- willingly or not, she could only guess much later- into Naruto's dazed embrace. But he had smiled. She didn't even know if it was for Naruto, her or for himself. He'd never really explained himself to satisfy anything, let alone justify the blighting weight of his sacrifice against all that he'd achieved. But he was always a proud one. Had been.
Perhaps that was why she couldn't really grow close to him in the way that others had eased into her existence and conception of the world and the days that she spent. He was too far ahead even after he began to accept her; too much of a reminder that it had taken a little less than her life to accept the silence that he wore as a veil or used as a weapon in place of outward anger. It had taken as long as she had lived to come as close to him as she had, just because the silence that she had broken all those years ago had nearly cost her life. And for all that they'd exchanged in their blows and words, she hadn't even come close to understanding him.
He wasn't a person whose role was always consistent in her life. As a child, he had been her playmate. As a boy, he was a far better student and secured the position of a role model even if he thought nothing of others or her at all. Through his teenage years, he proved even more talented than predicted, a clan member of her father's heart with their shared disdain of her. While she grew, slowly and painfully, he remained blazing, star-like at the front of everything that she knew. He could be gone for weeks at an end, the closure of their separate missions sometimes coinciding in some hallway for her to understand from the corner of her eye that he was becoming something of a man, something of a leader, a brother of sorts- something of a friend. But through it all and from his birth, he had been conferred the duty of protector. The senselessness of that role was so stark even when she had been a child- he was far too advanced; far too faultless to bear the burden of protecting someone worth far less than her. Even when he began to take it upon himself in good faith and with a willingness that surprised the other clan members, they all knew what a waste it was even if they couldn't say it. Naturally, she regretted and despised it on his behalf- even more after he had accepted it.
He wasn't- hadn't been- a talkative person by nature. None of the Hyuga really were. But then he was famously reserved; icy in his distaste and cynical without even intentionally setting out to be. Like her shyness and awkward ways, his wordlessness had been bred into him by circumstance and continuous necessity. There were even times when he had trained genin teams as part of his jounin duties and a highly-annoyed Tenten complained that he was too harsh and too unfriendly to all who cared to sympathise. And there were times when he would visit the main quarters in the estate, ignoring the whispered rumours from the servants and other branch members that he was being initiated into his uncle's council. He would stride past the pillars and ignore the silky taunts from Hanabi; m ove past the suffocating haze of incense during the ceremonies with a quiet determination that she knew to admire from afar. That silence and control had been broken once- she hadn't thought that it would be broken ever again.
At least, she understood that he regrets some things. He had apologised officially, as was required and demanded for his reinstatement into the estate. But she felt as if she'd deserved none and was embarrassed, awkward even, when he began training with her at the Head's request. It got better, of course, because he didn't seem to look at her with eyes that were as hard or as cold as before. But his silence and lack of any response beyond polite acquiescence or a slight nod in acceptance of the tea or balms that she made had the unfortunate effect of unnerving her when they were alone. He didn't mean it, of course. It was just that she admired his strength and his ability to guard his thoughts so badly- more than she thought he'd ever know or care to. But she had wished for those abilities for as long as she had been aware of her own inadequacies, so it made her reserved and afraid around him.
Even if she wasn't quite wary of him as she had been in the past, she had always seemed to tiptoe around something- she never mentioned the unfortunate incident in their childhood, the fast erosion of any bond they'd once shared, the hazy memories of his then chubby-fingers wandering over her cheeks to dry every tributary as she sobbed, the strangeness of the years in between as they grew and certainly not the evenings when he followed her while she accompanied Shino without Kiba and Akamaru. But he had seen and probably disapproved of how she daydreamed on some days, her hands slow to work and her feet slow to walk when she leaned into random gusts of dancing winds or sometimes mulled over cornflower blue cloths despite the clear instructions to fetch black. Then again, he was kind enough and never said anything when Naruto left and returned after those two years and she was caught staring, wide-eyed and open-mouthed at a mere boy after all that time. His silence made it easier for her to pretend that he did not know and had one less reason to mock her.
On a festival night, he appeared in an alley that she had tried to take a shortcut through but left when she'd spotted him. Three steps forward had soon revealed a drunkard that she might have probably pushed aside quite easily, save for another's prior intervention to save her any trouble. In the days after, it was obvious that they would never speak of the incident or for that matter, anything beyond the usual polite utterances. Because his stoic nature and perennial silence had quelled any inquiry of why he had been around on that festival night, she never asked and never knew why he had coincidentally separated from Lee and Tenten's company around the same time that she had bid her teammates goodnight. Because she didn't dare ask, she had interpreted the wordless gaze that he had cast momentarily at her and at most to be the end of things.
She hadn't really understood that perhaps he'd been tiptoeing too.
The evening before the actual fighting began, she'd found enough reason and courage to ask him if she could put her arms around him. Sitting on a porch that had faced their usual training grounds, the moon bright over his hair and face, he seemed far younger than she had ever thought and somehow lost in thought. He looked like her father in so many ways- proud in bearing and even sterner in principle and practice; regal to a fault and silent in contemplation. For all the assurances that he was her protector and his ostensible pride in that capacity over the years, she wondered if he was just as afraid as she was. Thoughts awash in a sudden ache of familiarity and the queerest feeling of motherliness, she had stammered her question to him and watched his eyes widen, stripped of their steadiness for just a moment.
He'd leaned over to her and taken her in his arms before she had.
Contact before had only meant sparring or the necessity for him to lift her to her feet when she was too tired to continue training. She had wanted to show him something else- to tell him that everything would come through for the Alliance. Without knowing how to define what she wanted to express, she had meant for the contact to comfort him and to assure him that everything would be fine. She had wanted to assure him that his guilt over the past conflicts and old wounds or that occasional hacking cough that seized her in the winters were nothing in the face of their bonds; to ask for his forgiveness for being so lacking. But in that moment, when he had moved to her first, she found that she had enough woman in her to sense his suffering; to know that he meant to tell her the same. In that touch, he was a boy trapped by the abilities and will of a grown man, still unable to vocalise his guilt or his taciturn acceptance of the authority that her father had conferred on him even as other had pointed and gossiped. She had thought that she understood; that he didn't have to utter words and wouldn't have to. It was enough, she had thought, to stay close for those minutes, to close her eyes as he did and to breathe those tiny cotton clouds in place of the words that far less familiar people would have had to settle for.
And that was probably why he'd saved his words for Naruto and never directed any to her. He thought that she'd understood and didn't need his words directed to her; she had thought that she understood too. He thought that someone like Naruto wouldn't have understood, that someone like Naruto needed people like him to clarify things. Neji didn't know that some people needed words more than he did; he didn't know that there were people like her who belonged with Naruto in their miscomprehension and blindness. There were people like her, who didn't even know how to articulate their anguish in the face of a person's suffering even when they were finally allowed to.
"It seemed that my life was yours too."
His eyes had grown vacant, far faster than she'd been told that they would. It occurred then that his struggle had been real from the day his forehead had been marked, but only birds held in cages would have taken to the skies so gladly than others. In any case, she had always known that their real farewell had been exchanged when he'd held her and retreated into the silence that they'd come to accept under that plain, narrow space. Over Naruto's trembling body, she had received and become the executor of their protector's will, even when she had no real right to for turning her back on him and failing to see how equally he had lacked in hesitation when he'd shielded her and them all. Had she truly known, she might not have been so blind.
Over his whispered answers to Naruto's desperate questions, his final silence to her provided the explanations that he must have thought she'd long obtained- why he hadn't ordered her to be as silent as he was during their training or even when he had found her curled up under some trees for no good reason, hair at her shoulders from the months of going untrimmed and her hands bloody from punching logs. Unlike the others, he was always silent- he would let her cry, waiting patiently for her to tire herself out, waiting for her to still so that he could ask her to get up. He hadn't known that his silence had been misleading to her; she had only just understood that her crying upset him to the point of wordlessness, and so it was only fair now that her grief would not translate to more than soundless sobs, trapped by her hands and throat.
It was only fair, she tells herself, that he spent his words on Naruto and gave his explanation to her with his silence.
Before, she didn't understand that even if he had wanted her to stop crying, he wouldn't have had enough left in him to ask that of her. Not then, not all those times in the past, and not when he broke the silence and smiled as if Naruto was the only one who needed to hear his words.
But now she understands, more than ever.