I found this within the depths of my poor overused laptop. Where it came from, I'll never know.

You can look at this fic as romantic or platonic. Aren't I talented. ;)

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She was young; not in body but in mind, and whether she was either "immature" or simply "naive" was a question that rumbled so unpeacefully in Neji's mind when he was out on missions. It was strange how he could be pulling a kunai out of an assassin-nin's face and be so perplexed and focused on his cousin at the same moment.

It's not like she was raised in a strong manner, he argued to himself. Ever since the day of her birth as a chubby-faced little being, her pedigree and her bloodline and her future as the master and ruler of the Hyuuga Main House, infamous and frightening and just bursting with pride and legacy, had loomed so heavily over her, and she never had a chance.

Before she could even walk, she was taught and trained. Her first word, to her sensei's delight, had been "chakra". Even he, the seventeen year old ANBU wonder who had become jounin three years prior, could not imagine being born with such expectations of him; such a level to achieve without even the slightest idea of what it was.

With a soft sigh, he raised one calloused, scared hand, and brushed it through his long, long deep brown hair, tossing it over his shoulder and looking up at the silvery, hanging ornament of a moon held up so precariously above the roof. It's such a cold night, so cold that he can see his breath, but years of training and experience and the heavy layer of muscle over his previously lanky teenage frame keep him warm.

Tall, attractively powerful, and so horribly beat up and bruised and scared and just tired of it, of work and life and everything he exists for, Neji can only sigh again and watch his breath curl in the air like smoke against the cold air.

He wonders if it's bad. If it's bad or awful or sad that he can't feel the biting cold air or the damp, wooden roof against his back, or the soft drippings of rain from the sky.

Hinata had been fourteen when she was kicked out of the house, he remembers. It was morning, and he had been awoken by the furious screaming and yelling and crashing of furniture in the house as Hiashi overturned desks in his rage.

Caught, he roared at the helpless little teenager cowering so pitifully in the corner of the spacious, overly pleasant and too clean living room of the Hyuuga manson/caught/ with some boy from the village, on the very same day that her fiance was coming to see her.

Ungrateful, stupid, ugly. The names and the insults poured from him, and she only shrank, when finally, his rage seemed to soothe, and he looked down at his daughter, so similar to his wife and his sister and all of the women of his clan, and calmly told her that she was a disgrace to their epic name; and that she was no longer his firstborn.

Disowned and without anything except the backpack in her arms and the small bundle of clothes in it, she was set onto the street and locked out of her only home. Luckily for her, the Godaime's apprentice, the youth Sakura, took Hinata into her home for awhile.

Such beautiful eyes shouldn't be so sad. Shouldn't be so weak and helpless and pouring so endlessly with tears. How could such a delicate girl, so short and so finely built, with such pale skin like milk and eyes like wilting lavender blooms, be so ill-treated and abused?

"We aren't put in this world to care for ourselves. We are put here to care for everyone else." he murmured softly, almost blindly, eyes unfocused, and yet eveything was so clear.

It didn't matter that they had grown up on separate planets, in the same home but a different family, or that he tried to kill her so many years ago. She was his cousin. And if no one else would stand up for her or speak for her, or push her to speak for herself, he would.

He would protect his Hinata-sama.