Title: Birds of
Silk.
Author: icefalcon
Rating:
PG
Pairing: Light Hiashi/Hizashi, Neji/Hinata.
Warnings:
Hyugacest. Warnings Pairings. Very short.
Spoilers: Only
if you're about halfway through the series and somehow unaware of the
source of Neji's angst.
Disclaimer: Kishimoto's la.
A/N:
Prompted via a re-read of David Zindell's Requiem for Homo Sapiens,
and the riddle of the Song of Life.
---
How do you capture a beautiful bird without breaking its spirit?
Hyuga Hizashi had never tried to remove the cursed seal branded deep into his own skin.
In this, as in most things, Hyuga Neji more than made up for the lack. For he was as much of an opposite to his father as Hyuga Hiashi was, and could not and would not take things silently.
Had his father been alive, perhaps he could have explained to his son why he himself did not struggle – as sooner or later all marked Hyuga did in vain – against the bounds of what Neji saw as a cage.
Oh, Hizashi had struggled for Neji and for Neji's future - for Neji, like Hiashi, had a proud visible power that did not know that it was possible, and not always weak, to accommodate another. He had struggled for Neji, yet he had never tried to break his own cage.
But Hizashi was not alive.
Neji was.
And Neji had been raised alone, festering full of burnt pride, out of the sight of a cold uncle who saw only the echo of his brother.
Alone, lashing out at the insidiously silken cage slowly tightening around him, erasing memories of an uncle who smiled, of a little girl sitting on his father's lap and their matching soft laughter, effortless love in their eyes.
Later it became easier for Hiashi to condescend to Neji with biting explanations he had never given to Hizashi, in words he had carefully crafted in response to questions and demands his brother never made.
Hizashi had only ever smiled at him and remained quiet, curling a hand through his hair.
That gentle motion was the only thing that could ever silence Hiashi, and the first and only time that Neji reached out with the same hands towards his uncle was the first time Neji experienced the pain of the curse seal.
The pain of being pushed aside by an image of his father hurt more than the ravaging of any bodily pain through him.
Neji never noticed that Hiashi too, bound by a similar pain pushed aside his own child - a child who had inherited the fullness of Hizashi's wordless compassion and gentleness, a strength of understanding that had nothing to do with bitter words.
All he could feel was silk, tightening against his skin.
And when it all began unravelling away at the edges he did not notice, for the determined unraveller was an extension only of her unsmiling father and a further symbol of the seal he carried.
And when that final veil of silk was torn from him in a startled recognition of strength that so painfully familiar but so unlike his own, a pale hand tangled in his hair awaited him as he woke.
In the hesitant blush and a shyly resolute lifting of her eyes to meet his, eyes that somehow, somehow once more held that undemanding love, Neji unexpectedly found it in himself to smile back, stretching muscles that had not been used in far too long.
Become the sky.