AN: Another request, this time for Naruto/Neji. Well, I did my best.
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Neji has a tendency to think of things in terms of numbers. It makes life easier to deal with when you have eyes that see everything (everything, even things you'd rather live without knowing).
One Clan, two Clans, falling ever farther apart. One curse seal dividing them. Two girl-cousins, as alike as night and day. Two teammates, one teacher. One team. Eight birds and a first failure. One victory, two victories, three victories. Five children. Four genin and a chuunin. Six enemies vanquished. One comrade lost, one mission failed. Two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four…. Sixty-six strikes, one kill.
One goal. One life.
He counts his kills as he makes them, not as an expression of pride or bravado, but simply on reflex. He counts the kunai that Tenten throws, the number of times Lee refers to "the springtime of YOUTH!" in a single conversation, the steps up Hokage's tower to her office.
Most things are easy like that. They can be weighed and measured and marked and put away in neat little boxes to gather dust at the corners of Neji's mind. Some things aren't.
Like Naruto. There will be one of him. Then twelve. Then four. Back to one again, and then seventy. Which seems oddly appropriate, as Naruto has never fit conventional measurements in the first place. There's no number Neji can attach to the sudden billow of red chakra in that last fight of the chuunin exams.
Naruto has become something he can't dismiss, can't write off. No matter how much he would like to, because things were so much simpler before Naruto barged in. Not even black and white, just black and black. No options.
Now there's sunlight and an open door and a strange new world where people can choose their fate and he's still not sure what he's supposed to do with all that. So he trains himself, takes missions, works hard, as he's always worked.
But now he helps Hinata, too. Once, he believed she had her destiny as the runt of her House, doomed to be Sealed, demoted to his own level as her sister took her rightful place in the House of the strong.
Naruto believed in Hinata. It's the least Neji can do, to believe in her himself.
He counts their sparring matches, counts the strikes she almost lands. But there's no number he can find for her slowly increasing confidence, until another chuunin exam comes around.
By then, he's training himself for the test to jounin level, melding air and fire into new techniques.
Am I ready, she asks him.
She shouldn't have to ask, he thinks. But then, Hinata has always been her own worst judge.
He watches from the stands as she receives her vest.
You have better eyes than I do, he'd told Naruto, once, and it was true. Naruto had seen the potential in Hinata where Neji could not. Naruto had seen freedom where Neji had only seen bars.
And Naruto saw a way to rescue Sasuke where Neji only saw darkness. Still sees only darkness, for all his efforts to the contrary.
But Naruto has better eyes than Neji, so Neji will wait and train, and next time…next time he will do better.
He will be back, Neji thinks, and counts the days.
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Endnotes: Not much to say about this one. I mourn the loss of my horizontal rule thingies.
