Neji didn't think that he would ever desire such simple things after the war ended.
They were the little things that he found himself craving more and more. Things he would have otherwise not taken seriously before they suddenly took on a sharp, clear meaning and focus for him. They say that you never realize how much you want something until it's gone.
Neji was fortunate that he still had the things that were important. He was fortunate enough to realize that those things were important.
It was a bright, clear day, and Team Guy was busy with their training, as was usual. As Guy-sensei liked to say, practicing the basics was important. Their daily sparring matches, therefore, were pure, good old-fashioned taijutsu.
It was just that Guy-sensei was wheelchair-bound now and couldn't participate in these spars as much as he would have liked, and Neji had taken quite the beating in the war too. Neji, unlike Guy-sensei, was still able to walk, although in a slow, faltering way, not the brisk strolls and sweeping runs that had defined his life before the war. Sakura had told him that perhaps he could use a leg brace, but he took one look at the contraption, rapidly blanched, and refused.
Slow, faltering gait it was. And sparring was confined more and more often to only Lee and Tenten. Guy-sensei and Neji would just watch and walk around the field.
You couldn't survive getting pierced in the torso by an attack from the Juubi itself without some level of damage to your chakra pathway system, and sometimes Neji found that he needed the wheelchair's support just as much as Guy-sensei did. The danger of tripping and falling over was too great during these times.
Guy-sensei, for all his loudness and tactlessness, understood this well without the need for words, and his wheelchair was never too far away from Neji's grasp. Neither of them said anything about it, but whenever he incorrectly assumed that Guy-sensei wasn't looking, Neji would smile.
He couldn't spar as well as he used to and couldn't walk as well as he used to.
But as he pushed Guy-sensei's wheelchair along the grassy field and counted the birds, he thought maybe a slow, faltering gait was perfect for these moments. These moments when he could just breathe in the clear air and absorb the blue sky and watch the free, free birds.
His damaged chakra pathway system had also, to his dismay, affected his Byakugan. After all, the Hyuuga doujutsu required intricate and delicate chakra control, with the eyes taking up a sizeable amount of the chakra available in the body. You had to be careful all the time. Too little chakra to the eyes and you couldn't see much of anything, not even the cracks in a mountain five feet away. Too much chakra and your occipital lobe would be overstimulated, with your eyes absorbing the minutest flapping of a butterfly's wings a hundred miles away, and then your brain would shut down and you would collapse.
Neji, genius that he was, understood this keenly. After the war, he took great, painstaking care to use just the right amount of chakra, neither too much nor too little, allowing him to see the fine points of a forest but not straining himself to see every chip and scrape on the bark of a faraway tree.
It also meant that Hinata-sama surpassed him by far in jyuuken. He didn't know who was more surprised by this, the other members of the clan, or Hinata-sama herself.
Neji wasn't surprised at all. Hinata-sama had surpassed him a long, long time ago. It was just that the effects had been hidden from view until now.
He found that Hinata-sama surpassing him did not feel him with despair, rage, or resignation as it might have years and years ago. He found himself, instead, blinking back tears of joy as her Sixty-Four Palms were executed perfectly, and when her Juuho Soushiken combined with the Sixty-Four Palms incapacitated even a proud and pleased Hiashi-sama during their weekly sparring matches, and when she saw far, far beyond Neji's own maximum range of vision.
She'd always had better eyes than him. It was just that the effects had been hidden from view until now.
The two cousins would spend long, peaceful silences together at the Hyuuga clan's dojo, in the placid gardens of the village, in empty shops, simply sitting together and smiling.
Hinata-sama, as his keen eyes had noted many, many years ago, was "cute." But now, he could only say that the word "cute" was woefully inadequate in description. Hinata-sama was as beautiful as the morning sun, with the kindest smile and the calmest eyes and the longest, darkest hair, now reaching far beyond her shoulders and down to her waist.
This also meant (he scowled) she was becoming quite popular with certain sections of the population, although she herself only had eyes for a certain idiot (he scowled) who seemed oblivious (he scowled again) to Hinata-sama's beauty.
But never mind that.
Even though his Byakugan had gone beyond its prime after the war, he was thankful that he had enough sight to witness Hinata-sama reach the zenith of the sky.
There were some things that never changed, before or after the war.
Tenten being the only other sane member of Team Guy was one of them. Before the war, this meant that they would more often than not be hanging out together as Guy-sensei and Lee were off being insane. They would frequently train, their fighting styles complementing each other perfectly, Tenten swooping around in the sky with her weapons, Neji on solid ground, steady with his Palms Revolving Heaven.
After the war, they did train. Of course they did, even if, due to Neji's injuries, they didn't train as much as before. And just like with Guy-sensei and Hinata-sama, Neji was finding that he was doing a lot of sitting and walking and doing not much of anything with Tenten lately.
He realized that he didn't mind this at all. They would replicate in the afternoons and early evenings what Neji did with Hinata-sama each morning. Just sitting in half-empty shops and drinking tea and watching the sunset.
Watching Tenten.
The brown of her hair buns would turn gold in the last fading rays of the sun and her skin looked warm and tan. Her eyes changed color and shifted in the light like a kaleidoscope, as though she were a wielder of the Mangekyo Sharingan, but when he watched closely enough, they were the same kind grey that they usually were. When she caught him looking, she would grin so widely that her dimples would show.
Another new thing after the war was the strange butterfly fluttering in his stomach when she grinned like that.
He didn't understand it, that strange fluttering in his stomach.
A little thing that he found himself craving more and more. He didn't understand it, but he knew that it was important.
A/N: Written for Day 26: Desire. Uh, I switched today's and yesterday's chapters by mistake...sorry. But hope you all enjoy this! :)