4. Breathe - NarutoxHinata, NejixHinata

This man was beautiful. Sunset danced upon his gentle features, coaxing him to rise one final time. It was a confused child, uncertain as to why he was no longer breathing. This man was lovely, and she had loved him. She had trusted him and made love to him and sacrificed everything for him.

Yet still he laid there, peacefully surrendered to this unhappy fate. He had left her with such a brilliant smile, sending a weak hand over her cheek almost cheerily, smiling and smiling and smiling like the world was not going to end. Like she would not be left in the darkness, apart from him.

And she tried to curse the world for taking him, even though he was not hers to be taken away, even though she had just owned that one small piece of him that they could not know. The man behind the status, the responsibility. Even the man behind the beast. She had always believed he was perfect.

Yet he wasn't. He could not escape that hated disease, that enemy he could not see. You cannot fight an enemy that you cannot see.

They would not let her near him again, gently pushing her aside and shutting the casket with a light thump. Locking him away forever, apart from her. She shrouded herself, hiding her sorrow beneath a cloud of ebony despair.

She had never thought she would be able to live her life with him, but they had granted them each other. No, he had declared them wed, and all had obeyed. She had never thought he would die. Someone so vibrantly alive was not allowed to die. It was almost shameful, the way he had fallen. Disease is not supposed to take the mighty.

Sickness does not know how to cope with unrealistic happiness. The only thing it could find to do, it seemed, was take him from her faster.

Dead. She had held his still burning face against her chest, murmuring pet names into his deaf ears.

She returned to the house of her father, returned to the place she never wanted to return to, empty-handed. Husbandless. Childless. She had thought they would have had more time. A lot more time.

She breathed in. She breathed out. She breathed in. She breathed out. Pain rattled her chest at each reluctant gasp for air. Thoughts of his presence haunted her, crawling from the burning, aching pieces of her heart into her conscious mind. His smiling features seemed impossible to forget. He was too precious to throw away.

Sometimes she would burst out sobbing, clutching her hair and moaning deeply. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Neji was ever so patient with this newcomer to his meditative art. Her cousin's breath was calm and even, ever so light, ever so soft. He was used to pushing lost loved ones from him mind, forcing them to flee into a part of him he no longer acknowledged was there.

Replacing them with the flowing water, the sound of the forest, the song of the birds. And now, the sound of another human being, breathing and living beside him.

She had now lost like he had lost.

Nobody had ever been with him in this cove of blooming trees. He did not know if he liked her presence or not.

She was getting better, day by day. She relaxed, her body unwound.

He eventually accepted this wounded woman into his world, and even came to anticipate her delicate presence beside him. Soon they breathed in unison, in and out, in and out, caught up in each other. They did not speak, because it was not necessary. They did not touch, because it was forbidden. They did not dream, because their dreams could not come true.

She breathed in. He breathed in. She breathed out. He breathed out. A strange companionship, knit together without words, yet somehow absolute and unbreakable.

This man, she thought, is beautiful too.

5. Cage - Hinata and Neji

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird. -Joseph Conrad

I cradled a tiny carcass in my cupped palms, an aching feeling clogging my chest. I could feel my breath; I could feel my heart beating; I could feel my legs ache underneath my huddled body. But this prone insect could no longer feel any of these things. I whispered unsteady apologies to this sentient being, my carelessness its downfall. It had seemed so fascinating to me at the time, its legs moving fast and furious down the great expanse of my arm.

I had diligently created a home for my fascinating guest, filling his encasement with sturdy twigs and carefully placing him inside. I had kept my gaze on him for awhile as he explored, eyes wide, engrossed in his movements.

However, children are quickly distracted, and I had left him, on a journey through my own wild imagination.

When I had remembered, I had eagerly returned to my companion, but he had already gone. The guilt had flowed rapidly through my body, and I had opened the jar tentatively, desperately, as if that might have revived him.

It hadn't. His limp body had lain belly up at the bottom of the jar, miserable and rejected.

"You should have taken it out sooner!" My father had growled fiercely, glaring at my quivering form before stomping back into the house.

"I'm sorry…" I had whispered, not to him, but to the insect. I hadn't known that if you keep something in a cage too long, it withers. I hadn't known that if something can't fly free, it loses its will to live.

The moist dirt clung inside my fingernails as I created a small dent in the dirt. An unmarked grave for this tiny piece of the universe, made important for just a single moment.

I vowed never to hurt anything again. I vowed I would never cage anything ever again.

Neji leans awkwardly on the doorframe, face gaunt and haunted. I wordlessly lead his daughter to him, her body now violated by an ancient curse. He stares at me. I cannot look at him.

Caught in this cage of repetition, walking blindly through this cycle of pain and imprisonment. My father had told me I should have opened the jar sooner. We all should take our prisoners out and set them free, refusing to follow this dry but consecrated foolishness any longer.

Yet still I follow it. I follow it like my father, the man I had believed I would never imitate. I see the destruction he wrought with his unyielding ways, yet still I follow him, stepping in footsteps centuries old. I know how much he has broken me, yet still I walk. I do not know how to make a new path.

I hadn't believed Neji about fate, because I had believed in the future. Now I want to believe him, because it takes off my responsibility, makes my path unalterable. Makes all my sins unavoidable, made me subject to destiny. It means I cannot hold myself accountable; it means I can cower and hide from this unfathomable guilt.

But I can't. I can see this cycle and see that it can be ended. Yet still I walk in the shadows of my father. What drives us to repeat our sins? What drives us to make the same mistakes, over and over and over? What drives us farther and farther into oblivion?

I lie in bed at night, awake, awake. Never sleeping.

The little girl gazes at me innocently, not suspecting my upcoming cruelty. I push my face into my pillow, trying to drown in my own tears.

She screams and fails wildly in agony, sobbing for her father. They hold her back harshly: they have done this before. We have all experienced this before. I see Neji inside her eyes.

I am afraid.

Neji stands in the shadows, his silent form my unyielding protection. I am well aware that he will not fail me, and I am not afraid of my enemies.

I'm afraid of myself, of the monster I've become.

Neji is failing on me, withering, slowly fading away. He cannot fly free; he is bound to me.

He has been caged, yet now I am the one with the key.

A young girl presses her hands down upon sodden dirt, enclosing her departed companion in his final tomb.

6. Father - Neji, Hinata, Hanabi and Hiashi

He is my father, a perfect man with a solemn face, guiding my actions and praising my success. He is your father and my father and your deceased wraith, deceiving you with that face that is and is not. He is cruel to me and to you, because I feel you and thus we feel each other. I see why he saves that smile of contentment for you, only for you, even while he cuts a dull knife straight down my chest with this smile, this expression of approval I can never hope to see.

He is my enemy, a copy of someone I used to call my father, a creature who feeds upon my heart and rots it. I developed this burning in my chest for him, a clashing of emotions that should never be, that should be forbidden to meet. I love the man he resembles, and despise him for it.

I know this disgusted feeling dwells in him, for I know it too. It scuttles around in the deepest of places until you cannot ignore it anymore, and try to cover it up and trap it beneath a thin layer of gauze. Yet it still scuttles, and you can glimpse it through the veil. The veil is too thin, but you can't find anything stronger. What if it escapes?

I don't know what will happen to me if it escapes. I can already feel the burning sensation probing my forehead with anticipation, sending small shivers of fear throughout my nerves.

My cousin is at the edge of breaking, yet the only thing he can do in this family is hold in his frustrations, anguishing over them only when the darkness blankets him with a safe covering. I wonder if the covering will be enough for us, and how much longer it will take before I explode.

He is my father and your father and his father, yet he is split, a stained glass window that has been shattered, its pleasant story cracked into three incomplete shards. A trinity of identities, caught into one body, one association of father.

Father, who are you, and what do you want? This fatherly figure, an assurance of strength, this angry teacher, intent on my failures and drained by my incompetence, and this hated replacement for someone who should not have been taken from me.

We hate him and we love him and we despise his very soul. You both are different from me, because you cannot see his gentle side. Not because you don't try to see, but because he never shows it to you. Yet because of you, I know that he is not good. I know that he doesn't treat anyone else like he does me.

Because of you, I can see he is not a bad person, because he cares about you. Though I am the rejected daughter, through you I can see that awkward affection he tries to show with gruff gestures and awkward words. I can see that there is a crack in this stony encasement that he does not allow me to see. I can see a gentle light shining through, yet it never strikes me.

He is my father and your father and his father, a complicated puzzle that refuses to fit together. Whenever you think you have him, he breaks yet again, and you must start over from the beginning. Through my cage I can only see pieces of him, the bars cutting his silhouette straight like a knife. Through my pain I can see him, but blinded by tears he is blurred and distorted. Through my youth I can see him, yet youth is blinded by idealistic pictures that crumble with age.

He is my father and your father and his father, a man incomplete and broken by our damaged sight. I watch you, you caged bird, you wide-eyed child, you rejected princess, and wonder what you see. Can you see all of him; can you fix the puzzle? Am I lost and are you found? Or are we all lost together?

----- Really hope you liked them! On a side note, the first part of #5 really happened to me. XD