She awoke to the sound of rain.
It dripped from the window and tapped with clear beckoning fingers, white-beaded necklaces thrown down. The sky was muddy and the road was a tired face, all wrecked with age lines from the ruts of passing horse-carts. She looked out the window and thought of her favorite things.
One crow circled in the sky as the rain fell, shuddering.
She arose from bed in silent grace (the wrinkles of her dress invisible) and shuffled over to her nightstand. Today was the day, she reminded herself. She reached for her hitaite and slipped it into her palm, remembering the cold.
The metal smiled in her hand.
She stood before the mirror and looked square into her own eye. Slowly, she brought the hitaite up to her bared forehead and tenderly, she tied it about her head, listening to the rustle of the folds. The feel of the headband left a sensation on her fingertips of fairytale times. She inhaled the disintegrating dust, hoping it would linger.
For a moment, she stared into the mirror and did not speak.
Quietly, she slipped out the door.
-
She stepped through to the clearing and already knew he was there.
He stood with his back faced to her and would not acknowledge her presence. She smiled, understanding.
She stood looking at his back, and he stood, not looking at her. She was at ease and he was a rubber band pulled tight, struggling not to snap. (But of course the rubber band cannot determine its own elasticity, she reasoned.)
She waited for the appropriate time, and when the wind smelled right, she spoke.
"Don't," she called, softly. He nearly jumped but restrained himself, the years of discipline at practice. She saw his fingers tighten, the bone-marrow harden.
He turned interminably slow; the lines of his body unforgivably straight. (But trembling at the edges, she noted.) He turned and looked at her, the hardest white of eyes. She thought of ostrich eggs, they were so hard and white.
He did not speak, but she saw the words burning in his throat, smothered and swelling.
"Hyuuga Neji," she said lightly, wind-banter.
He did not reply.
"It's a nice day, isn't it?" she asked him.
He nodded, the veins in his neck stretched so taut—she felt they would explode at any moment and the blood they would bleed out onto the ground would smell of white and nothing, mixed with the glossy hue of distilled hatred.
"The clouds are nice," she said, looking at the cumulus colored like dirty sheep.
He nodded again without looking up.
"The snow is coming," she observed. "You can feel it."
He stood his ground.
"You like snow?"
Involuntarily, he thought of snow and of his pale snow-drop cousin, of clipped white falcon wings, frosted trees, and frozen coy ponds.
"Yes," he said, barely above a whisper. And then, a little too hoarsely to be the Neji, the dear prodigy of a Hyuuga, Neji:
"What do you want?"
She paused and considered his question, cocking her head conversationally.
"What do I want?" she repeated, softly. The wind played with the words from her lips, twisted them into something—something he could not tell and did not like because of it.
She didn't answer right away, just to play him, pluck his strings; half-careless, half-tenderly. "I want a lot of things," she said.
She thought for a while, listing them aloud. "Blueberries. Milk. Summer vacation. My bedroom walls painted. To learn how to weave underwater. For the roses in my backyard to bloom, and for the aphids to stop eating them. A birthday party."
His throat tightened with every irrelevant word and she felt the anger curdling. She played a dangerous game, but she knew how to play it. She threw the fancies in his face and loved to watch him squirm beneath the tickle, because she knew she would always win.
Suddenly Neji had grasped her by the arms and pushed her roughly against the nearest tree. The bark scratched her back, but if felt almost good (she deserved it, didn't she?). He looked at her with his fiercely beautiful ostrich-egg eyes and clamped his hands tight, tighter around her wrists. She felt her pulse throbbing peacefully. He squeezed as if he could squeeze out his anger into her and let her feel its insane grip.
"What do you want?" he whispered jaggedly. His words and breath tore hot against her face, but maybe only because the air was cold. There was a tinge of rosy smile on her cheeks as she regarded him, coolly.
"I already told you, Neji-kun," she spoke, and she wove her words like honey.
"Don't play with me, Haruno," he snapped, low and dangerous. His eyes were white, so white, and his grip was hard. She felt the heat from his body wafting towards her, warming her faintly.
She let her head roll to one side and allowed the crease of a dimple.
"I want you to be happy, Neji-kun," she said, calm and sounding dangerously sincere.
Neji tightened his hold around her wrists, crushing. She nearly winced with the pain, but bore it. He noticed this and cursing, abruptly let go, flinging her hands away. His own hands fell limp to his sides.
He turned away to the trees and they shriveled, iced, beneath his gaze. A furious tingle danced on her wrists where his fingerprints remained, white and livid.
"Neji," she called, feeling her wrists come faintly to.
"Leave," he said, closing his eyes.
"Neji," she said.
"Get away from me," he repeated, growling.
"Neji," she said, "stop running away."
"Shut up," he said.
"Neji," she continued, "it's killed you, and you keep pretending you're alive. You're a corpse, Neji, and you smell. Can't you smell your own rot?"
"Shut up," he said, raising his voice.
"Neji," she pushed on, "what you're doing is not only unreasonable, it is cowardly and everything I would expect from a man who knows nothing about being a man. If you keep pushing it away it'll only stick harder. I'm after you, Neji, and I won't let go. I'm not going to let you run away and become like—"
"Shut up!" he shouted.
"Like Sasuke," she countered calmly. There was a pause, and then Neji spoke.
"I am not Sasuke," Neji said, measured, trembling steel. His hands quivered. "I am not Sasuke, nor am I Naruto, nor am I Kakashi. I am not Lee. I am not a man you can come and shape as you please, 'save' out of pity, or simply because you have nothing better to do with your time. I do not need saving, and I do not want saving. I don't need you."
Sakura stepped over to Neji and touched him lightly on the back, and the touch turned his back immediately cold.
"Neji," she whispered dangerously, in his ear. "I love you. You can't escape love."
Neji felt a shiver running up his spine and hated himself for it. "Didn't you love Sasuke?" he spat.
She let out a little laugh that rolled up and up in odd cadences. It caressed his ear, strange and frightening, but undeniably beautiful. He controlled the shiver again. He felt sick in his stomach. "No," she said slowly, as if daring him to savor each word. "I didn't love him."
"Then what was he to you?" he said, harshly. "The tears you spilled for him were legendary, Haruno." He let a smirk creep into his words, the hard-chock sarcasm that was his best weapon.
She laughed the chilling laugh again, tilting her head back. The laugh echoed and dissipated into mist.
"Neji-kun, you're awfully funny," she said, smiling. He hated her disarming calm, her guileless charm, and could not remember when Haruno Sakura had become this.
She twirled a strand of hair around her finger.
"But you know, Neji-kun," she said, still smiling sweetly, "you're also very wrong."
Neji's lips thinned into silence. "Am I?" he said, each word hard and crystalline.
"Yes, Neji," she said. "You know nothing of love. You know nothing of power. You know nothing of yourself, of your fate, of who you are. You say you are a caged bird, but what do you know? You know nothing."
She said this not in a spiteful way, but in a matter-of-fact way that could not be disputed, and therefore was all the worse.
"You don't know me," she said, and she was right.
She kissed him on the lips, then, frostily.
His breath was hot and cold with shock as her lips left his and she watched his expression, almost gleefully. He stared and could not keep the confusion from muddying his eyes. She saw him so clearly, and it scared him, angered him.
"What—why did you do that?" he bit out, stonily, the lines of his face etched hard. He did not look into her eyes but rather past them. (he was afraid!)
She giggled. "I told you, Neji-kun. I love you."
-
The things I write these days make no sense. Come to me, plot! Sakura's a bit creepy in this one. Working on dialogue.
