Little Things
"I think the dog likes you, Neji," giggled the team's only female, Tenten. The boy she addressed, Neji, glared at her. "Oh, come on, don't be like that."
The dog in question, the one currently anchored to Neji's shadow, was a medium sized mutt with beautiful, long hair that ranged from white to brown. Mostly brown though, in fact, the same shade of brown that Neji's hair was.
The dog barked suddenly, wagging her tail slightly as she stared pointedly at the other side of the training field. The dog had noticed another ninja, one that was chunin level at best, approaching them. The other ninja was a girl, slightly older than Tenten and Neji were, with artificially blue hair and a pronounced limp.
"Your sensei told me there was a dog in need of obedience training," the girl said in lieu of an actual greeting. She turned to the dog. "I assume that you are Suzume."
"Who are you?" Neji spoke at last, his voice cool.
"My name is Aki," the girl answered, bowing stiffly. "I've recently become known as the Trainer, simply because I work with dogs. Suzume here needs training, so your sensei called me in. You are Neji and Tenten, correct?"
The two in question nodded. "Lee is off training with Gai-sensei," Tenten filled in, noting Aki's rather futile search for the third member of Team Gai. "So, uh, why do you work with dogs now? I've heard some things about you, how you used to be the top rookie of your year. You could be doing some really high ranking missions right now, right?"
Aki shrugged, the simple motion apparently causing her pain. "People can always be counted on to not be accountable. Dogs are always dependable. I guess I have my preferences." It was obvious that the answer was only the smaller half of the real reason, but Aki didn't appear to want to finish answering just yet. Instead, she pulled a handful of dog treats out of the pouch most shinobi would be keeping shuriken in, holding one in a closed fist close to her chest. "Sit," she commanded. As if by magic, Suzume sat, and Aki gave her the treat. The exercise was repeated several times, with Aki slowly adding a special hand signal with the verbal command.
"Wow, that was fast," Tenten remarked. She and Neji were watching Aki work with Suzume.
"If a dog sees you holding food, the first thing they'll do is sit, assuming that that's what you want them to do before you give the food to them," Aki explained. "The hand signal should eventually replace the verbal command. My question now is just what else you want me to teach her." The blue-haired kunoichi looked to Neji. "She's your dog, what do you want her to learn?"
"She's not…" Neji started, but then he looked down. Suzume was sitting right next to him, staring up at him with pure admiration. Suzume was definitely Neji's dog, whether he wanted her or not. He sighed gustily, exasperation etched into his posture even if his facial expression was studiously neutral. "No stupid tricks," he replied at last. "Rolling over and playing dead aren't important. Bite and release, maybe. And the usual stuff, like staying and laying down."
"Well, if you want bite and release, you're going to have to come up with a volunteer to get bit on command," Aki told him flatly. "There will be a protective sleeve, of course, but it'll still hurt like hell. I'd offer, but I'm doing the training. Someone else has to be the arm."
"I'll do it," Tenten volunteered.
"That's great," Aki replied, "but we're not doing that just yet. The 'lie down' command comes first, then 'stay' and 'come'. If you two would help with that, both Suzume and I would greatly appreciate it."
The rest of the afternoon was spent training Suzume, who was an exceptionally smart dog. Possibly even smarter than the Inuzuka hounds, which Aki mentioned, drawing a smirk from Neji. She learned all of her commands unusually quick, verbal and silent signal alike. Aki handed the reigns over to Neji, who took it up another step, accompanying the hand signals with a series of special whistles, a different pattern for each command.
"You're overcomplicating," Aki deadpanned.
Neji smirked again. "She's my dog." Meaning no one else actually knew the whistles, and Suzume would only listen to Neji, and possibly Tenten and Aki.
By that time the sun looked almost ready to set. Tenten, sporting deep bruises on both arms shaped like Suzume's mouth, waved as she started leaving. "See you two later. I'll be in the target range for a while if you need me."
Aki sat slowly with her back against a tree. She grimaced at her show of weakness, and sighed. "I never did answer Tenten's question, why I'm not an active ninja anymore."
"Why aren't you?" Neji asked, sitting next to her. Suzume flopped down in between them so that they could both reach to pet her easily.
"I'm close to retiring, actually," Aki replied with the air of someone about to try to summarize a long story into something short. Neji made himself comfortable. He had no problem listening. It was how he learned, how he gauged people, a reason why he almost never actually spoke. Aki entwined her fingers into Suzume's silky fur, staring absently into the distance. "When I was in academy, I was always the smartest, the fastest, the most agile, the best aim. I had even more of a reputation than you, and I assume I was even more arrogant. Nobody, even cadets eight or nine years my senior, was better than me, and I knew it. I was cold, aloof, distant, and cruel to everyone around me. It's why I have no friends now, no one but the dogs, because the dogs don't judge you for who you were. They judge you for who you are, and even if you're not a great person, they'll love you anyway."
Neji snorted, but Aki appeared to be right. Discounting Lee and Tenten, who were his teammates, and Hinata, who was family, there was really no one who thought him important enough as a human being to give him the time of day. Sure, there were the people who loved him because he was a prodigy, the fangirls who drooled because he had good features, but there wasn't really anyone who could say, "I love Neji, I think he's a great person." No one, currently, except Suzume.
"I was probably more skilled even than you back then too," Aki continued. "But all that, it came with a price. I noticed my vision was the first to start going bad." She pulled a pair of glasses from the breast pocket of her chunin vest, where most shinobi stored scrolls. She handed them to Neji, who then duly noted that the prescription was for someone severely myopic. He handed the glasses back, and Aki put them on. "Because of my myopia, I can't see things far away, but the glasses take care of that. Because of my glaucoma, I only see things in two dimensions, and my peripheral vision is totally shot. But that's not what changed me. I'm dying, Neji, and I'm going to die a cold, lonely little girl with no friends and no one to remember me. The doctors, they told me I've got a disease, an illness that's eating away at me from the inside out. You see how hard it is for me to just move now, in a few months, I won't be able to walk. Soon after that, I won't be able to see at all, and then I'll be confined to my bed because my arms won't move. Then I'm going to drown in my own agony as my organ systems shut down, one at a time. I like to think this realization has made me a better person, because I'm not the arrogant bitch I used to be, and I try to treat people with respect instead of cruelty. But I'm not allowed to judge me. That's for the dogs to do."
Neji startled. Aki's tone of voice…she could have been mentioning that a coming rain shower was about to drown the crops in Grass Country! She wasn't complaining to anyone who would listen to her. She was simply repeating what doctors had told her. Her voice was more tired and drawn than it was bitter or resentful.
"How…what…isn't there something the medics can do about it?" Neji asked, which was fairly out of character. Or it would have been before Naruto made him question all his beliefs in that which was predetermined. "Surely they can…"
"It's not like cancer, Neji, or a common cold. It can't be removed and it won't pass on its own. I'm going to live out my last walking months training dogs for minimal recognition, a remnant of what I used to be, but better than who I was. Then all I'll have left are my regrets. I apologized to everyone I'd ever wronged, but in the end, no one ever forgave me. Neji, you're not dying, not yet anyway, and you have the reasonable expectation of a long life span, even by shinobi counting. But don't let that keep you from living. I've heard about you. Neji the Cold, Neji the Heartless, Neji the Arrogant Bastard, I could go on repeating what I've heard, but it gets a little profane after that, and most people would find themselves hurt."
Suzume rolled over, her head in Neji's lap, and he stroked her ears absently. Oddly enough, just a ghost of pain rippled across his soul, a whisper of a shadow, but it was there. He cared what people thought, and for the first time in his life, it fucking hurt.
"Hn," he grunted, turning his head to stare at the summer grass. Orange light bathed the whole clearing as the sun eased its creaky bones below the horizon. "They're entitled to their opinions."
"Yes, and you're entitled to a life, maybe even a little happiness," Aki snapped, reaching over to smack him on the back of his head. The blow was weak, and even then, it hurt Aki more than it fazed Neji. "That girl, Tenten, I noticed the way she looks at you. She loves you, dense idiot that you are. Let her, see where it leads. Your cousin, Hinata, I met her at the ramen stand the other day. She told me more about you. She loves you too. Like a sister loves her brother and wishes he would just smile for once. She doesn't forgive you for kicking her ass at the first chunin exams you both attended."
Neji winced involuntarily, and Aki smacked him again, harder this time. He told himself he wouldn't put up with it if Aki weren't a cripple in the making already, but a treacherous little voice in his head told him he deserved it.
"She's not bitter, you fool. She doesn't think there's any wrong to be forgiven. Give her a hug one of these days will you? It would make you both feel better. You really don't want to get old, or find yourself dying, and look back on your life just to be forced to wonder what the hell you did with your life and where the hell your life went all those years ago. Trust me, it's an ugly, ugly world and you don't want to be where I am now."
Three years ago Neji wouldn't have cared. His anger at his family and the world in general had completely numbed his heart and soul to the point where most would say he didn't have either. Fate had played a cruel joke on him, and he still hated the world, but now, it was because the world hated him. Even his fangirls were starting to leave him hate mail instead of love letters. Their opinions didn't matter to him. They were fickle, stupid creatures, most of them anyway. But the way others looked at him, that hurt. Hell, even Kiba hated him, and even Kiba's opinion mattered for some reason. Neji didn't know why, but that shadow of pain was getting more substantial.
And it wasn't just the hate that hurt. The unconditional love and loyalty shown to him by Hinata, Tenten, Lee, and even Gai-sensei made him hate himself. Adding Suzume to that list just made him want to die.
"You know where I'm coming from then. You're already standing on that same, lonely island I am, watching everyone else sail farther and farther away from you. It's cold, isn't it? Crushing, like there's tons of pressure on your chest and you can't breathe because your heart hurts too bad? Every person you've ever mistreated, their voices haunting you at night, keeping you awake, chasing you in your dreams?"
Aki's voice was a hollow echo in his mind now. In his mind he stood on an island in the middle of an endless expanse of black water, every person he'd ever wronged standing on a boat that was sailing off, off, far away, and leaving him behind. He wanted to call out to them, but he found he had no voice. He couldn't breathe, the pressure on his lungs too great to allow him breath.
Suddenly he was back in the field, the rough bark of the tree pressing painfully into his back, Suzume's soft fur under his hand, Aki staring speculatively at him with curious grey eyes veiled behind wire framed glasses. He was sweating and shivering all at once, his breathing ragged as if Gai-sensei had had him running hundreds of laps around the village again.
"You have time to make it all right, Neji, if you choose to. Starting with accepting the love and forgiveness the people close to you offer, and then making yourself worthy of the forgiveness of others. Whether or not you love Tenten like she loves you, give her a definitive answer at least, yes or no. Play catch with Suzume, hug your cousin, and help old ladies across the street. Look at the world, and appreciate the colors. Remember that there's two sides to every coin, and to every story. Little things, Neji, little things, that's all it takes," Aki whispered. She struggled to stand, but her deteriorating joints weren't cooperating right then. After only a few moments consideration, Neji stood up and helped Aki to her feet. "Little things," she repeated, smiling at him.
Neji was not the heartless bastard everyone thought he was. Aki's words had hit him where it hurt the most, and he had listened. Only Tenten and Hinata truly noticed at first. During their next training match, after Neji pounded Tenten into the ground as usual, he helped her up again. When Hinata brought him lunch during a tedious mission as a desk clerk, he gave her the slightest, smallest smile. When Hinata hugged him first, he found proper justification to hug her back. Leaving the desk mission, a little old lady was struggling to cross the street, attempting to handle her cane and her groceries at the same time. He offered to carry the groceries, and Tenten helped the lady stay on her feet. Aki was right. It was the little things that mattered. The colors of the world around him, like the honey-touched brown of Tenten's eyes, the sheer freedom of playing catch with Suzume – even having to touch slimy, saliva coated sticks – and, of course, giving Tenten that definitive answer: yes. Little things though they were, people treated him as though he were human again, and the rest of the numbness in his soul faded away, along with the pain of before. He even found himself worthy of his own forgiveness.
Aki the dog trainer died four months later. Snowflakes drifted delicately from the sky, coming to rest temporarily in the hair of the single, solitary figure attending the funeral. His eyes, as pale as the gliding flakes, closed for a moment of reverence.
'No,' he thought. 'You're not alone. And you are forgiven.'
Hyuga Neji opened his eyes and turned away silently, finally leaving the fallen dog trainer to her eternal sleep.
Title: Little Things
Length: Approx. 4 typed pages
Genre: Spiritual/Angst
Characters: Neji, Tenten, OC: Aki, Suzume
Author's Note: This is an AU of one of Heron's other non-posted fanfics, in which Kamohara Aki survives her illness and goes on to take on her own genin team, one member of which is Neji and Tenten's son. But Heron felt like throwing out a bit of tragedy. So we presume Aki is dead in this one. And if she seems a bit blown out of proportion, well, Heron had to squish all of her into this one-shot. Sorry. The moral of the story goes something like, "Mediocrity is glory, for those who start at the top have only one way to go and that way is down." Quoting Aki. Heron hopes you enjoyed reading her depressing little one-shot. Aki's other stories might be posted later, who knows? Reviews welcome, no private messages please. Heron's email isn't working.