Disclaimer: Dun own, dun sue.
A/N: Thanks for all your reviews! You guys really make my day! This one's dedicated to Ennariel, Kodoku6 and naash for always being awesome. :3
Oh yeah, and as for how fast you can expect updates…well, let's put it this way: When I post one drabble, the next one is probably already half-planned/done. So check back every other day! However, for now I'm going to until I have 35 reviews before updating again.
Here's
my first drabble in Neji's perspective. :O That little line in
parenthesis there is from 'Keep Tryin' by Utada Hikaru
(surprise!), since I just got her latest album. :3 Enjoy!
Fastest Falling Star is Numb
Candle embers burned the skin of his fingertips as he stared out the flashing window. An ink-breaking storm was raging. The power had gone out as he had sat in the darkened room for days and watched waves of rain crash and shatter in a million drops of glass against the bushes. Pure remnants of resurrected water fell and broke onto the ground, wind-splashed and failed at living. Blue-black shadows overcast the walls and the space between them, crowding his lungs and the air with silence.
The darkness lined the shapes of his face, sharp dead edges. He was a pale entity, separate and yet a part of the reflectionless walls that caged a dimension where the sky could not breathe and the tornado of colliding black notes were motionless. The window was an empty white frame and the thrashing fall of rain blurred out any clear images, sending them spiraling to the ground. The mysteries of what the glass could have held if it was dry and lighted drowned out in his mind.
His senses were disappearing, vanishing from his cells just a little at a time, painfully slow hints that fate would make him completely numb. It was just a matter of time, and in his mind he was already motionless in the cages of the ground. Yesterday the feeling in his legs had evaporated; slowly rising off his skin like someone was peeling puzzle pieces off of him into the air. He cursed the loss of the breakneck movement that had once crushed skulls and spun away barrages of metal to the ground, feeling powerless as it floated away. He should be used to the inevitable by now, shouldn't he?
(Every morning I want to destroy this mirror which reflects my weak natural face)
Today his skin had lost itself completely. He couldn't feel his own flesh against the chair or the weight that were usually held up by his forcibly straight shoulders. He could only guess that he was there and not a ghost permanently trapped in mid-existence.
The only thing that told him he was alive was the suffocating weight in his chest, the mist-cold space aching from waiting so long for the absence to be filled. A bruised shell. A withered cage.
He was the fastest falling star, and yet he didn't feel anything at all.
His eyes hardened, losing wisps of their color to gray as his fingers grasped nothing. He couldn't connect with the burning flames that were so obviously there, stark pillars of heat contrasting against the dark even as he touched them-or rather, tried to force his fingers to move like he used to do so skillfully as he smirked at the enemy, already knowing their impending doom. It seemed ironic now.
A chill had enveloped the bones of his fingers, freezing any warmth that might have seeped through his pores. It had always been there, trapping his veins as frost spread icicles spanning the map of blue inside him, even under the blazing rays that scorched red on the skin of every Sand inhabitant. He was always pale and had wondered at the blood that had been pierced out of his skin that one time she had been able to hit him. So he did have blood flowing through him and not wires.
The muscles that formed a barrier between his skeleton and his skin used to feel so hard he sometimes wondered if there was anything but stone and gray inside of him. The occasional bitter pulse that shocked his core was the only one he knew.
She came in through the door, stepping silently. She always walked like a kunoichi, swift and noiselessly, and that was especially helpful now that he couldn't hear. But as she closed the door he knew there should've been a creaking noise from the swinging hinges. And it irritated him.
She looked up at him with strong eyes, but chips of bronze had shattered off and in their places were jagged edges of black he knew would have been there even in full sunlight. He wanted to smile and turn them gold again but he couldn't feel his lips.
So he settled for watching her with an unwavering gaze as she came closer to him, wordlessly because she knew he could no longer hear her voice. But her lips shifted to one side, bunching up at the end in attempt to lighten something in his own eyes and he knew she was trying. Her eyes were sunless and her face didn't burn with that extra spark like it always did when she saw him, but her cheeks still curved up in its familiar-tolerable-(Hyuuga Neji did NOT use the word 'cute') way and in itself it was enough.
She walked up behind him, resting her hands on the sides of his neck as she leaned her face close to his. He jolted as he felt her breath against his cheek, little puffs of heat that started at her throat and escaped from her lips. It was the first time he had felt anything for hours and instantly it cracked the ice beneath the skin she touched and he felt-felt-the puzzle pieces fly back to him, melding together under her warmth. She placed her fingers carefully on his face, hesitant as she touched him and he wanted to tell her he craved the feel and that she had awakened the sun, but he could not stir his voice from the grave.
Heat seeped from her fingertips in little beams into his cheek and it was suddenly alright that he hadn't been able to feel the candle flames. Her eyes connected with his, burning with charcoal again and they pleaded a message into him like he had flowed chakra into her so many times.
Come back to me.
Her lips dropped to his neck, soft and firm at the same time he noted in surprise again. Her eyes never left his, never stopped pleading as she kissed his pulse desperately. Her forehead leaned underneath his chin, a familiar warm support that he had almost forgotten. The smallest sob escaped onto his neck, eyes closed for just a second, barely audible to his suddenly awoken hearing. Her face rearranged and mended as she looked up again and her lips massaged over his, slowly moving up and down like a begging puppy.
He was a dying man from an incurable poison and numb as a rock, but he thought he could feel her calling him against his lips in a hot, long-drawn breath that steamed the surface.
I
need you.
A/N2: Wow, I didn't know I could write Neji angst. O.O Well, actually, maybe I can't. I don't know. What do you think? Do you want to see more of him? Tell me your thoughts and requests through that little button at the left!
