A/N: Hello all! Make sure you check up with your dentist after you read this fanfic; you might have cavities from the sugary sweetness.
Disclaimers: I do not own Naruto. Neji, his issues, and other cannon things belong to Kishimoto Masashi. If I did own Naruto, there would be lots more angst and running around and violence. Yep yep. However, I DO own those thousand paper cranes, because they're cute. They came to me, my preciousssss... Okay, bad sugar, bad! Oh, and Keisuke belongs to me too, even though he's just a name...so far. BWAHAHAha...ha...
Oh, and (number) means notes, because doesn't like my asterisks.
Random note: Like my eye divider thingies?!! ...Yeah, I'm sad, I know.
GlitterNinja
O O O O O O O O O O O O
One Thousand
"He's got a major concussion. He may well be unconscious for several days..."
"Three broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, a broken leg..."
"He's lucky it was just a lung bruise. An inch to the left and it would've been his heart..."
Neji heard the doctors' voices drifting in and out of his dreams, but he didn't need to listen to any of it. He could feel it. Every inch of his body was full of hidden delights of pain, ranging from intense to dull to shooting to aching and back to intense again. Damn S-Class rogue nin.
He slowly opened his eyes, preparing himself for a burst of bright hospital light. His caution proved unnecessary. The moonlight was dim and forgiving, casting its pale glow across his hospital room. Nighttime. He sighed, ignoring the small hitch in his breath. Might as well be nighttime.
An experimental shifting of his head sent great waves of nausea crashing around inside his skull. So... movement was not an option. Yay. So Neji shifted only his eyes, taking in his surroundings; he hadn't survived this long for being careless, after all. His eyes took in empty chairs by the door, a water pitcher and cup on a stand... On the table beside the bed, his Anbu hawk mask stared back at him calmly. Well, at least his mask hadn't been destroyed in the fight. Something else on the table caught his eye. It was barely in his peripheral vision; he strained his eyes just a little more.
A single paper crane, as white as his mask. Strange.
O O O
When Neji opened his eyes again, it was mid-afternoon.
The shadows shifted across the pale wall of his room as a cool autumn wind blew through the trees. There was the soft scuffling noise of paper sliding across a smooth surface. The paper crane, his brain supplied. Neji scanned the top of the table. His eyes widened just a fraction. Four paper cranes...which meant that three had appeared while he was asleep. And Neji hadn't noticed. He sighed. I must be getting soft.
"Neji-kun!" Lee burst in with all the famed exuberance of his youth. Ten Ten followed more reservedly. It amused Neji to no end that he looked like an exact copy of the Gai-sensei of nearly fourteen years ago. Except the eyes. "You're awake!"
"Obviously," Neji replied coolly.
Ten Ten pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down. "Yeah, Lee, tell us something we don't know."
Lee straddled his own plastic chair, folding his arms over the backrest. "Well, that concussion should have knocked him out for more than five days." Lee flashed Neji a blinding grin. "But it seems that Neji-kun's zest for life has brought him back sooner!"
Neji arced a brow. What zest for life? Neji and Ten Ten silently agreed on the falseness on that statement. Deciding that a change in topic was in order, Neji asked Ten Ten mildly, "How are the two idiots? Maimed? Traumatized? Otherwise scarred for life?"
"Sasuke-kun's only in slightly better shape than you. Naruto-kun, on the other hand, has pretty much healed except for his broken leg." Ten Ten laughed. "It's absolutely hilarious. Naruto-kun'll only stop complaining when Sakura threatens to knock him out."
"Sakura-san said they'd be visiting after the doctors finally set Naruto- kun loose," Lee supplied with a smile. "Well, that and Naruto-kun wants to have time to make fun of Sasuke-kun while Sasuke-kun can't kick his ass." He leaned his chin on his arm as he ticked people off on his fingers. "Let's see who else is coming... Shino-kun and Kiba-kun are still on that diplomatic mission to Hidden Sand... Ino-san's having mood swings left and right, and Shikamaru-kun's scrambling to get her ice cream and pickles and tomatoes... And Chouji-kun's stuck in Water Country with his genin team..." Lee paused. "Who am I missing?"
"Hinata-san, dummy." Ten Ten thwacked Lee on the head. She looked back at Neji. "She told me she couldn't come, though. She's been really busy lately, trying to balance clan affairs with the funeral arrangements..."
That was unexpected. "Funeral?" Neji echoed.
Ten Ten made a little "Oh!" of surprise. "...Keisuke-san passed away before you returned from your mission. I'm sorry."
Oh. Right. Keisuke-sama had been ill before Neji had left with the Anbu squad... But why should Neji be sorry? He barely knew the man, even though he had lived in the Hyuuga compound for six years. He was a good man and an old friend of his father, Neji knew, but beyond that... Then again, Keisuke-sama's marriage to Hinata-sama had indeed been hurried, even for an arranged one (1). Hanabi-sama had suddenly abdicated her position as head of the clan after a mere two weeks of leading it. Naturally, Hinata-sama would then lead, but tradition demanded that she be married upon succession. When she could not produce a candidate, the Hyuuga elders chose one for her. It seemed that the elders had a knack for demanding life-changing decisions.
"Ah," Neji said noncommittally.
Ten Ten went on, "She seems to be taking it okay, though. She hasn't done anything drastic." She rolled a lock of hair between her fingers. "It's been really hard on Hiro-chan, losing a father that young..."
Silently, Neji agreed. He knew exactly how the boy felt.
Lee, uncomfortable with this turn of conversation, decided to change the topic. "Hey, Neji-kun. Who gave you that?" He nodded at the white paper crane, perching quietly on the bedside table.
"I don't know." Dryly, Neji added, "I've only been unconscious for five days." Lee just gave a little shrug, so Neji asked, "So how long do the doctors say I'll be here?"
Ten Ten answered. "About four months. Just to keep you from getting in a fight with Naruto-kun or something equally Neji-esque."
Neji would have laughed if it didn't hurt so much.
"Anyway," Ten Ten said, standing and taking Lee's hand in hers. "Lee and I have a date, and you need to rest some more. We'll come to visit you again sometime."
They gave him a smile and a wave and were gone.
O O O
"Neji!!!"
Only one idiot's voice grated on one's nerves like that. "Naruto, you bastard," Neji greeted amiably.
"Nyaah!" Naruto maturely stuck his tongue out. "You're just jealous of my greatness." He hobbled in, half-supported by his crutch, half-supported by his wife. His Anbu fox mask dangled from her fingers.
"Neji-san," Sakura greeted.
"Sakura-san." She was still nervous around him, even now. Well, Neji could understand why. The only reason she had moved to calling him by name was because Naruto was his teammate now.
Naruto sank ungracefully into a chair. "Sasuke's practically squirming to come and kill me." He laughed. "I'd like to see him try!"
Neji arced a brow. "I'd like to hear you say that after Sasuke turns you into an orange stain on the sidewalk."
"Heh! Him and what army?"
"Me," Neji volunteered. "I'd be absolutely thrilled to help."
"...Damn you." Naruto folded his arms, ignoring Sakura's giggles. "With friends like you, who needs enemies?"
Neji shrugged minimally. It had been about a week since he had awakened; his collarbone had already knitted back together. The rest of his body, though...
"Well, anyway," Naruto continued, "Get well so you guys can try to kick my ass." He grinned his signature grin.
Neji laughed, more breathy than usual with his ribs still broken. "...Whatever."
They gave him a smile and a wave and were gone.
O O O
The weeks slowly came and went. Slowly, Neji became accustomed to the monotony of it all. Lee would come to discuss his new training methods or techniques. Ten Ten would bring a book or a scroll for him to read. Gai- sensei would come to talk about his new genin team. Even some others of the Rookie Nine would come to exchange a few words. Hospital life had become predictable, clicking into the series of routines he had developed over the years.
Neji's body was healing well, beginning with his collarbone, and then his ribs. Only his leg was an issue now. He was grateful for the freedom to move.
A certain mystery, though, was much more irritating.
Each day since he found the first crane, more appeared each morning without fail, at least in groups of five. At first, they filled the table. The pile eventually flowed onto the floor, carefully pushed aside so that the hospital staff could come and go. There were easily two hundred by now.
The first crane was still perched beside his mask on the table, though. In the lulls between visitors and hospital affairs, Neji would turn this one over in his hands. The paper was snowy white, with intricate designs shimmering across its surface. The creases were imprecise, though, and a stray wrinkle or here marred the paper's surface. But the crane was still there, on his bedside table in the place of honor beside his mask. After all, he didn't receive gifts often.
As time went on, Neji noticed, the technique in folding improved. The lines became crisp and clean and the shape perfect. Also, more began to appear each day. Sometimes, as many as two dozen would have been added to the pile on the floor.
And Neji still had not an inkling about who had made them. He could only guess, but the list of people who would spend this much time on him was slim indeed. But when one spends most of one's youth as a dickhead, one can only be so shocked.
O O O
Two months into his recovery, Neji woke to find Ten Ten seated on a hospital chair in his room. He wasn't all that surprised that he hadn't woken the moment his subconscious noticed her presence. Ten Ten had never registered in his mind as a possible threat, even when they were young. It simply wasn't in her personality to betray.
He did find it rather strange, however, when he saw that his pile of five hundred or so cranes had been relocated to pool around her chair. Her fingers were deft as they carefully pierced a needle through the body of each crane. She slid the crane down until its belly touched the back of another. Ten Ten was stringing them together.
She looked up, sensing his eyes on her. "I got tired of seeing that mess in the corner," she explained simply. Ten Ten picked another crane from the floor and added it to the string. "Besides, someone asked me to do this."
"Really." Flat reply aside, Neji's curiosity was piqued. Perhaps she knew who...
"And no," Ten Ten gave him a look, "I don't know who made them. I just got a note on my front door."
"Hm."
Without looking up from her delicate work, Ten Ten remarked, "You should be sleeping, you know. The doctor said the new painkiller would make you drowsy."
"I've been sleeping the entire day..." Neji began, but it was too late, and he was already slipping into the darkness.
O O O
The third month passed quickly. String after string of pallid cranes hung in a cluster in the corner of his hospital room, while a few stray ones were grouped on the floor below it. Ten Ten had probably taken care to place exactly seventy-five cranes on each string. Neji had counted as many on each of the eleven strings in that corner. Well, as best as he could, since the doctors had barely stopped short of strapping him completely down to the bed. They were probably still paranoid about Compulsive Training Syndrome, a disorder created especially for Lee.
Neji sighed. The only part of him that hadn't healed was his leg. It didn't seem absolutely necessary to have random slings and pulleys and cushions used for other parts of his body. Perhaps, Neji mused, the nurses had become...overzealous. Or they were avoiding the less passive Sasuke with a vengeance. Sometimes, he could hear Sasuke howling curses at Naruto from his room down the hall, while a certain blonde man came streaking by, cackling gleefully. Nurses followed quickly behind, scattering in the face of Sasuke's wrath. Hell hath no fury like an Uchiha out for a certain fox's blood.
How any sane person would allow those two to become Anbu at the same time, Neji did not know. And on the same team, no less.
The strings of cranes whispered quietly as an icy wind blew in from the window. Neji shivered as it passed over him. It was winter already...
"It would be ironic indeed if you survived that S-Class and then caught your death of cold, Neji-san." The voice was cool, honed by years of rigid upbringing in the Hyuuga Main House. It had become meeker after she had resigned from her position as head, however.
"Hanabi-sama," Neji greeted, slightly taken aback by her unexpected appearance.
"Hinata sent me to check on our best shinobi." She peered at him. "The doctors tell me to expect you out in a month." Hanabi-sama moved to the window, quietly sliding it shut. The latch clicked as she locked the window in place. "Is it only your leg now?"
"Yes."
She was gazing at the cluster of cranes now, reaching out to touch a delicate wing. "Beautiful." Without turning back to Neji, the eighteen- year-old asked, "How many are there?"
"About eight-hundred and thirty."
Hanabi-sama tilted her head until she could see Neji from the corner of her eye. "My father told me a story once. If you make a thousand paper cranes for someone, that person will get well, no matter what."
Neji watched her carefully. She was acting strangely... "Yes, I have heard that story."
Hanabi-sama continued, "Did you know? There's another part to it, that few know about (2). If you write inside each crane one wish, that wish might come true." She knelt to take a stray paper crane in her fingers. She straightened, holding out a crane to him. "Open this crane. Read it. And then fold it back again." Neji slowly took it from her. "This is a secret between you and me, Neji-san. I don't want the one who wrote that wish to know I gave away theirs." Hanabi-sama gave him a small bow, which he returned, before she moved toward the door. "I think, Neji-san, that my debt is repaid."
She gave him a small smile, no more than a tilt of her lips, and was gone.
Neji looked down at the crane in his palm. Meticulously slowly, he eased open exact creases, first the head and tail, then the wings. It came apart in his hands, eventually forming a square piece of paper with geometric folds lining its surface. He turned it over to examine the blank side.
Sweeping brushstrokes in pale gray ink so as not to mar the designed side of the paper, forming the one kanji Neji had never expected.
'Love.'
O O O
Neji swiped a cloth across the desk in his bedroom, not quite surprised when the cloth came a way clean. It seemed that Hinata-sama had had a servant keep his room tidy while he was away. He placed the scrolls Ten Ten had given him onto the desk, stacking them carefully.
In the corner of his room, exactly nine-hundred ninety-nine stringed paper cranes rustled as winter puffed its frigid breath through a crack in his bedroom door. Neji had wanted to stay one more night in that hospital, just to wait for the last crane, but asking for such a thing was absurd.
'Love.'
What an odd thing to ask for, especially from him.
Somehow, the writing had been eerily familiar. This supple curve or that graceful bend reminded him of someone... Neji felt as if he knew them very well. But exactly who it reminded him of was an utter mystery. He had been turning this very thought over and over in his mind for the past month, and found nothing. He sighed. He'd have to worry about it later. Hinata-sama should be waiting for his report by now.
Neji stood, carefully straightening the dark cloth of his kimono. Either in a nod to tradition or in a show of age, he had taken to wearing kimono in the Hyuuga compound. Whatever the reason, he took care to look presentable, at least. Hinata-sama was the head of the Hyuuga clan now.
The bedroom door whispered closed as Neji stepped onto the wooden deck which wound its way around the buildings. He was suddenly glad that the kimono was padded. A fine layer of snow covered the rocks in the rock garden outside his doorstep. The swirls of raked gravel were lost beneath the snowfall. Arms wrapped around himself, Neji made his way toward the main building in the compound.
The residence of the Main House members was incredibly austere, strictly traditional. Not one flower arrangement, not one wall hanging deviated from this theme. He supposed this reflected the ideal of the Main House: to keep pure their bloodline and approach this principle with a frightening single-mindedness. Now, so many years after that first Chuunin Exam, Neji had to wonder exactly which house it was that sacrificed the most in the name of the Hyuuga.
The smooth wooden steps were cool under Neji's feet as he climbed up to Hinata-sama's office. The tatami mats were both rough and smooth as he knelt outside the door, about to announce himself. But the door was ajar, and he couldn't help but look inside. The scene was mesmerizing.
Hinata-sama had grown her hair long since their days in the academy. Neji imagined that it would easily reach past her back if her customary bun were ever undone. Her skin had remained as pale as it always had been. And, also since their days at the academy...she had grown beautiful.
Hinata-sama was sitting on the tatami, in her immaculate white kimono with delicate designs shimmering across its surface. Her tiny son Hiro-sama was sniffling quietly, burying his head in her lap. She ran her long fingers slowly through his short hair, murmuring something quietly. Her face was incredibly sad and incredibly gentle and incredibly loving, all at once. Neji realized he had never seen such an expression on her. For a moment, he thought he felt a spark of jealousy.
"Hinata-sama." His voice was quiet, but it was enough to break the spell.
Her silvered eyes flickered up at him before returning to her son. "Hiro," she prodded gently. "Hiro, I must work now." The boy nodded, his face still pressed into her kimono. He sat up, wiping away his tears on his sleeve. Hiro-sama nodded silently to Neji as he passed the kneeling man, holding his head high despite the red puffiness of his eyes. Neji bowed deeply.
"Neji-san. I'm glad that you have recovered well." Hinata-sama had stopped calling him 'Neji-niisan' almost immediately after she had married. No—after she had become the head of the clan. In fact, even her speech was different. Stronger, more confident, more formal. Gone was that shy, anxious, teenaged girl. Sometimes, though, Neji thought he saw a little of her in the woman that sat before him.
He entered the room as she beckoned him in. He slid the door shut behind himself. "Thank you, Hinata-sama." A beat, then, "I offer my condolences. For your husband... He was a good man."
"...Yes. Thank you." She looked down at her hands. "I loved him very much." A sigh. The look in her eyes was well-known to Neji by now. It was quiet acceptance. "It seems, however, that the elders intend to select another match for me. A single heir is not suitable, especially for the Hyuuga." Her forefingers began to tap together, a relic of that teenager of old. "Well, I will agree with them that it is necessary. Hiro needs a father, after all." Hinata-sama blinked, looking up at him and smiling sheepishly. Her hands stilled. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't bore you with my personal problems." And there she was, the twelve-year-old Hinata-sama. Neji would never have believed he would miss her this much.
A small breeze drifted into the room from an open window. A tiny, fluttering flash of white caught his eye. There, in the window, was suspended a white paper crane, companion to his own nine-hundred-ninety- nine, down to the subtle design in the paper. The thousandth crane. "Hinata-sama..." Neji said slowly. She gave him a small smile as he returned his eyes to her; somewhere in that smile, he could detect a sly edge. "It was you?"
A faint flush colored her pale cheeks. "Forgive me for my weakness, Neji- san, but I can only bear losing one man in my life at a time."
Briefly, he wondered who she would have become if he had accepted her marriage proposal, all those years ago.
Perhaps it was time to find out.
"Hinata," Neji said, careful to leave out the honorary suffix. For once, Neji was at a loss for words. Slowly, he began, "The wish carried inside your thousand cranes...wasn't necessary." Hinata listened quietly, her face the cool mask of the Hyuuga head, a technique passed down through the generations. "You see, Hinata..." Neji swallowed nervously. "...That wish came true about five years ago."
Hinata smiled. And this time, Neji smiled back.
O O O O O O O O O O O O
Sidenotes:
1 – Yep, I made Hinata married a guy old enough to be her father... I might write a fanfic about that later.
2 – Actually, I just made that up. But it sounds so cute, doesn't it?
A/N: Ah, smile at the fluffy sweetness (or choke, like my sister. Meanie!). This is, by far, the mushiest thing I have written, even with that Neji aloofness. I suck at romance, but oh well.
Hate it? Love it? Wish you could burn those stupid paper cranes (and the author) in a great ball of fire? Please review! Any and all comments welcome!