Written for a contest at naruto100 (a livejournal community made for Naruto Drabbles), in which the guidelines stated to base the drabble aroudn the concept of "it shouldn't have been like this".
Title: Misguidance of Fate
Bones crack, and blood spills, but that's nothing but a minor setback when it comes to being Rock Lee.
And you don't spend as long getting better as you should, because you don't think of anything but getting better at everything but taking care of yourself.
So when you finally break down; really break down, and you can't move or cry or hardly breathe, and Neji drags you back from the training field that you'd been stranded in for the entire night, thinking of nothing but how you were wasting perfectly good training time by lying and bleeding all over the pretty green grass, Fate stood up at heaven's gate and blew a raspberry at you.
Because all of this hard work, all of this punching and kicking, and brilliantly fulfilling PAIN is supposed to make you All Better, make you what you've always promised to become, but not this. It isn't supposed to be like this.
And sometimes you wonder why you keep going, because it's been two and a half years since you've been able to stand up, and you STILL can't stop thinking about how hard you're going to have to train when you get better, and you know you WON'T.
And you hate it when people look at you the way they do, with pity; sometimes smug pity. You're the poster boy. You've taken away their hope. You were supposed to triumph; supposed to be their Knight in Tacky Green Armor. But you're not, and the geniuses keep going, but you - the flunky - you're here, in this wheelchair, in this hospital (once a week for checkups; you have to go or Gai-sensei will beat himself up inside) and you will be for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. And now they know that Hard Work will never beat Genius, and GO YOU, because it's all your fault
It wasn't supposed to have been like this.
Fin.