Eyes and Distance
Wielder of the Byakugan:
They say the Byakugan gives you limitless vision, so why does he feel that his vision is myopic, so myopic and constricted that he cannot see past the end of his nose?
Maybe it is the seal.
Neji spends days wondering; why the seal?
He loves his clan, he loves his family, he loves Hinata.
He used to ask his beloved father ... He is gone, he won't be back ... for a while they say.
He planned to ask his uncle, he wanted him to fix him.
His uncle is cold … frigid, and the little boy wonders if his uncle loves him at all …
When he reminisces, when his mind takes the reigns, the now youth wonders if the clan head loved his brother at all.
They tell him he is a genius, a prodigy …
A genius who will surmount to nothing, nothing at all.
He is a slave, a mere slave with a tether and a leash, a slave with his forehead branded with a seal of eternal servitude.
A slave better than both the heir and the spare.
He is left to his own devices, so he locks himself up in a loop of his own doing, a state of mind, a destiny he built out of thin air, a destiny he can't escape … he teeters around reality in his own way, he gives up in his own way.
He thinks his byakugan can see the future and that the future is engraved in a solid dumb stone.
She rips of all of his illusions and uncovers all his desires and insecurities in a one fateful spar.
He is left naked, bare of all his defences, she savagely rips the blindfold off his eyes, tells him his byakugan is surely for nothing, useless, clouded and dysfunctional.
And as Hinata, his once beloved cousin, lies motionless in hospital, he ponders when did he become that numb, that cruel.
The days following the spar, he is taught that maybe just maybe, he could learn to open his eyes a little wider, he could learn to extend his field past his assumptions, past his judgements, past his past.
His eyes weren't blinded after all, they comply, and he sees a whole new world of opportunities stretched beyond the seal, a whole new persona of his late father, his uncle.
He even sees a little bit past Hinata.
He sees Tenten and team guy, he sees friends and joy and crowds of birds leaving their lives behind to new horisons, new lands.
They say the byakugan gives you limitless vision.
It is True, the byakugan gives you limitless vision when it resides not merely within your eyes, but when the byakugan touches your heart as well.
It reaches prophetic heights then.
The Byakugan shows him colours and purpose and realms that extend past Hinata, past his mortal life.
And he is ready to leave behind like the birds he so longly admired, he is now prepared to take a leap, a journey to another realm.
He is ready to unleash his Byakugan to its utmost extend,
The byakugan has become his beating heart.