I don't know that anyone's ever done something quite like this, and even if it stinks I want to be the first.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
I watch as they break away from the main group and go stand on an area of the roof the others don't frequent staring at the sunset.
I have been watching these two for some time now. Sometimes I smile, sometimes I weep, and sometimes I just sit back and pray.
They are an odd couple. Well, not odd, apparently, because every single one of their friends have been expecting them to get together for years now. They have divergent personalities. My son is for the most part a cool young man whose coldness in battle could set the blood of enemies to ice. The girl is just the opposite. A firebrand, friendly and outgoing, loyal and sometimes hard.
As they stand in silence, I can pick up an undercurrent of darkness, just as there has always been. No, maybe darkness isn't quite the right word. Their relationship wasn't one born out of happiness, but rather out of a need. A need…for companionship, for a light in the darkness. So no, darkness isn't the right word to use for it. But I can find no other word that sufficiently describes their relationship, so darkness is the word I use.
They are tense and silent; I have watched them, and I know that they rarely need to speak when around each other. They speak to humor their exuberant teammate, but alone they are silent.
Again, I think that there is little that seems to bind them.
When they first met, they hated each other. In fact, my son had the misfortune of getting into a fistfight with a girl who during her tenure in the Academy got into more fistfights than most of the boys in her year, and certainly more than all of the other kunoichi-hopefuls combined. That certainly didn't go over well.
My boy was quite arrogant when they met. That always bothered me; he sounded a little too much like my brother for quite a while. She helped beat some of the arrogance out of him; another cut it out entirely later. I owe those two a great deal.
In that respect, she's good for him. She keeps that ego of his from becoming inflamed. With her tongue…and her sword.
The red evening light spills on her face. Her slightly dull drown hair seems auburn in the light. She's not much of a beauty. But maybe that's a good thing. The really beautiful ones always drive a man wild (their teammate seems to be having just that trouble, even though I don't think that girl is particularly lovely either), and he's having enough of that as it is. God knows his mother… Well, that's a story I'd rather not go into. It did not end well; let's just leave it at that.
I'm not sure exactly at what point they slipped past the battle lines of friendship and dived straight into a relationship. I just know that one day they were friends (though I'm not sure what sort of "friends" pass such smoldering looks when the other isn't looking), and the next they're…together.
He's my son. Naturally, I would have to hold any girl he dates to high standards, especially since his mother gave up the right to care when she basically thrust him into my arms when he was a newborn and refused to speak to me again.
I don't know how they got to this point. Yes, I can understand how they would be friends, close friends even, but lovers? I don't see it. They're just so different.
But then I think, I think of everything that has ever happened to them, and I know what binds them together.
They are perfect for each other, for they have no past, trapped as they are by pain and bloodshed. And just as surely as they have no past, they have no future, bound as he is by the intangible bonds of servitude and caught as she is by the tortures of the past, the past that will continue to relive itself no matter how hard she tries to break the cycle. It seems more like they are ghosting the edges of existence, standing with yet apart from their comrades, trying to make their way alone and together, watching as the world falls.
I have watched my son from just beyond the sphere of senses for many, many years. Since I passed beyond the veil, I have existed in the area between worlds. Everything is veiled. I am seen by none, heard by none. I can watch for as long as I want, undisturbed except by only the occasional fellow traveler. We talk, commune, show each other our children and loved ones, and then separate.
It has been so long since I have felt human warmth. It's been so long since I have last held my son close and had the chance to tell him I love him or simply be with him. I have watched him grow from a happy, cheerful boy to a lonely, withdrawn man. I have shed more tears than I have smiles as I have watched, but I don't think I could tear my eyes from him if my life depended upon it.
I never got the chance to say goodbye. Maybe if I had, things might have been different. But that is a path we never tread, and it is closed to them forever, so there is no use dwelling upon unsung paths. Needless to say, I think I can be proud of him now, despite or perhaps because of all his flaws.
He smiles now, because of her, even if the smiles are halfhearted and short-lived (What of it? So are hers.). And for that, she has my wholehearted approval, my respect, my blessing, and my love.
Who am I? I am little but a spirit without shape or form, existing only where the deepest of shadows fall.
But who was I? Well, that is not a question I have had to answer in a long time. I have been so long since I met someone who knew me in life that my name sounds rough and clumsy upon my lips.
Who was I? I was Hyuuga Hizashi. Neji is my son.
I can't imagine that was a huge surprise. I was building up to it all the time.