Just another day, just another routine mission, and just another briefing from the new Hokage.
It had already been six months since she'd taken the position, her face halfway carved into the mountain, and Neji, by now, felt only the vaguest twinge of surprise when he would see that pet pig of hers sleeping peacefully at her desk, paws covering her snout, emitting little oinks, while sky-high towers of books and paperwork filled the office. Such a far cry from how the old Hokage used to handle things. The lottery ticket on her desk was yet another departure from sanity.
Tsunade-sama was...bonkers, to say the least. He tried to (gently) suggest this to Tenten once, but a snarl and a poisoned senbon later, and he had learned not to voice such thoughts in her presence.
Six months since she'd become Hokage. Three months since all of...those events, and Neji had to say, he was adjusting quite well, all things considered. Between his unstable teammates and sensei, his inscrutable relatives, and his many, many new...acquaintances –
We're your friends, you idiot! said a voice in his head. A voice that sounded way too much like Naruto, even though he had left with Jiraiya-sama three months ago.
Shut up, he ordered. No one asked you.
The point was, Neji had learned to adjust to the new normal. Notwithstanding the annoying voices of certain acquaintances.
And then, apparently, Tsunade-sama had decided that this wasn't acceptable, and threw him a brand-new curveball.
"And the mission is set to last a few days, a week at maximum, so be sure to pack accordingly," Tsunade-sama said, handing Neji a rolled-up mission scroll. "Even though you're still a genin, I've decided that this B-rank mission is more than well-suited for your talents, Neji. Your files are quite impressive."
He bowed low, ready to accept the mission, secretly more than a little pleased that the Godaime thought so highly of him. Even though she was bonkers.
"By the way," Tsunade-sama said nonchalantly, "to improve cohesiveness among the genin teams, I've decided to mix and match up everyone. You won't be with Lee and Tenten for this mission."
"Of course, Tsunade-sama," he said, ever the gentleman, concealing the deflating in his chest with a mask of neutrality.
He worked well with his team. To be honest, he preferred them by far over his new acquaintances.
FRIENDS! Naruto's voice yelled.
Lee may have been far, far too obsessed with youth and prone to inflicting damage on Neji's eyes with his awful green jumpsuits. But he was...engaging to be around.
You mean he's fun! Bushy Brows is fun to be around!
Neji ignored this.
And Tenten was smart and competent, a massive breath of fresh air amidst the lunacy that was Team Guy. She was also engaging to be around.
Gah. Stop using your big, fancy words all the time. You like spending time with your friends, don't you?
And besides, Kiba smelled like wet dog and Shino's bugs were disturbing. Neji respected Shikamaru's intellect, but he knew that if it wasn't do or die, he would probably be complete dead weight on the mission. Ino was too loud.
You are so uptight, ya know –
Chouji ate too much.
Maybe you think too much.
Sakura was training with Tsunade-sama, so at least he wouldn't be paired with her.
What's that supposed to mean? You got something against Sakura-chan?
"As I was saying..." Tsunade-sama's voice cut in, mercifully drowning out Naruto's obnoxious commentary. Did he really zone out that badly?
"To improve your teamwork, on this mission, you'll be with your cousin, Hyuuga Hinata."
Neji froze.
A flash of blood appeared in front of his eyes and his stomach fell somewhere to the region of his knees.
"The one who's suffering between the Main and Branch...is you, Neji nii-san."
His blind spot ached.
Beads of sweat poured down his face and his clothes were uncomfortably itchy in the late summer mugginess.
"Neji nii-san, are you all right? You look tired."
Neji willed himself not to flinch at the kindness in his cousin's voice.
To be honest, he didn't know why he was so nervous now, of all times, about talking to her. Being around her. He'd spent time with her after the Chuunin Exams. He'd bowed low to her, in a deep, deep dogeza while she was stuck in the hospital, coughing up blood in the aftermath of Orochimaru's invasion.
She'd asked him why he was bowing like that, that he didn't need to, that he was her brother.
Why, Neji nii-san?
Things had gone back to normal after that (he thought, he hoped). He'd asked her if she was going to see off Naruto as he departed the village.
He'd smiled at her and she had smiled at him.
But he was here and she was here, all by themselves, and the vastness of the blue sky and the expanse of greenery weren't at all comparable to the hectic, crowded crush of the hospital, or the serenity of the Hyuuga compound, where they were always surrounded by someone or other.
He forced himself to look into the calmness of her face.
The milkiness of her eyes was greatly accentuated by her billowing, shoulder-length dark hair. Blue-black, like the sky at midnight. Hinata-sama had let her hair grow out over the past few months, and she'd swapped the plain beige bulky coat she used to wear with more comfortable lavender mission gear. His blind spot itched as a fragment of his memories nudged at the corners of his mind.
She was...
She was...
Back then, when he first saw her, he'd said something. Something important. The milkiness of her eyes and the darkness of her hair and the kindness of her smile...
He'd said something about it, then. He closed his eyes, and the old, half-forgotten memory flooded his mind again.
"She's really cute, isn't she, Father?" he had burst out spontaneously, watching his little cousin shyly hide her face behind an unfamiliar man's sleeve.
His father had given him a funny look, nonplussed at his outburst, before moving on to business. "Neji, protecting her is your destiny."
He had to protect her. That was his job. Not because she was from the Main Family and he from the Branch Family.
Because he was her big brother.
Back then, he'd willingly accepted that role.
He was her older cousin, her big brother. Of course he would protect her. That was what big brothers did.
Back then...
Back then...
Hey, Neji, Hinata asked you a question! Don't keep her waiting, ya know! Naruto's voice yelled. Again. What was it with Naruto and capslock? Worse than Guy-sensei and Lee.
"...Neji nii-san?" she asked again. Her slender eyebrows were scrunched up in confusion.
Because she was worried about him. He resisted the sudden urge to smooth them out.
C'mon, Neji, you're keeping her waiting!
Right. For once, the moron in his head was right.
"You're really cute, Hinata-sama," he found himself blurting out, the words somehow bypassing his brain to mouth filter and hanging deeply in the faltering breeze.
There was perfect silence in the muggy, stifling air.
Hinata-sama stared at him blankly for a few moments, and then her face erupted with a volcanic shade of lava.
Neji fought the urge to cover his face in his hands.
You idiot! She asked if you were okay, and you said she was cute?
You distracted me! Neji fired back.
You distracted yourself!
Why's your voice even in my head, anyway? You're with Jiraiya-sama right now. So shoo.
Say sorry to Hinata! Naruto's voice snapped, before thankfully fading from Neji's mind.
He gazed around the clearing, his eyes finally finding Hinata-sama. After twelve hours of trekking, they had finally decided to set up camp and eat for the first time. Despite her reputation for fragility within the clan, Hinata-sama had proven herself to be quite resilient, not faltering at all during the long journey.
Neji supposed he should have seen that coming.
The smoke from the campfire, the darkness of night, and her curtain of hair all obscured her face completely. Probably a good thing, because Neji couldn't bear seeing her presumably crestfallen expression.
The suffocating silence of their journey had entered his lungs and his stomach was as heavy as lead. His blind spot burned badly and his arms and legs were unbearably itchy.
Because he had to go and make things awkward and weird.
She probably thought he was being condescending to her. Like, "Oh, you poor stupid Hinata-sama, asking silly questions. How cute."
That wasn't what he meant. It was never what he meant.
His eyes burned.
He was supposed to protect her. It was always him.
"The one who's suffering between the Main and Branch...is you, Neji nii-san."
"Neji nii-san, are you all right?"
He...he had to say sorry.
That was right. Even broken clocks and morons could be right. Sometimes.
He approached the campfire, slowly, haltingly. He stepped on a stray twig and winced at the cracking noise it made.
The sudden sound made Hinata look up from dinner.
"Neji nii-san!" she called out, and Neji was astonished to see the large smile radiating across her face. Not at all like the small, shy ones he was accustomed to seeing from her.
"I've been waiting for you. I wondered if you were hungry," she said, and as Neji sat down next to her, he was once again astonished to see the contents of her meal.
Ramen. Salty, savory instant ramen. There was a whole bunch of them at her side. Miso, shio, tonkotsu, all of them.
Hinata's got good taste, Naruto's voice said.
"Hinata-sama...um. Good evening."
It was midnight.
Hinata-sama blinked at him and he felt his face grow volcano-hot too.
"May...may I join you?" he asked.
What kind of question is that? You never say no to ramen, Neji.
The constant commentary. Why did Naruto talk so much?
"Of course, Neji nii-san." Hinata-sama's smile didn't falter, and he reached out to grab a miso.
The emptiness of the quiet made his blind spot twinge.
Tell her how great the ramen is and then say sorry, Naruto ordered as though he was the Hokage already.
Right. Naruto was a moron. But he was right.
He had to apologize.
"When Naruto becomes Hokage, he'll ban foods that aren't ramen," Neji found himself blurting out. Again.
The silence following this statement made Neji's ears hurt. He cursed himself.
Weren't you supposed to say sorry?
He didn't know who was speaking at that moment, Naruto's voice or his own.
And then Hinata-sama laughed so hard that she choked on her ramen, and then Neji found himself frantically thumping on her back and apologizing profusely.
Naruto's voice gloated at him all night and Neji couldn't close his eyes at all, not even to blink.
Naruto's voice just wouldn't go away. Neji had become resigned to it by the morning.
He finally closed his eyes, but in despair. Despair at the thought that Naruto would constantly torture his mind with not-so-fascinating insights forever, until his dying day.
He shuddered.
"Neji nii-san, are you all right?" Hinata-sama repeated, after seeing his grimace. "You seem...spacey."
He smoothened his features and forced his body to stop shivering.
"I'm fine, Hinata-sama."
I'm sorry, Hinata-sama.
She laughed. "Are you still sorry that I choked yesterday? You already apologized so many times for that. Don't worry about it, Neji nii-san."
Neji started, wondering if he'd spoken out loud, but he glanced at Hinata-sama from the corner of his eye, and he realized that he hadn't.
Neji closed his eyes again, this time in frustration.
I should say sorry.
Yeah, you really should, Naruto agreed.
Finding a good time to apologize to Hinata-sama was hard, much harder than he'd thought.
Tsunade-sama was right that Neji was skilled enough to complete it, but a B-rank was still a B-rank, and a genin was still a genin. The mission itself was simple enough – deliver the scroll that Tsunade-sama had given him to the outpost in Suna (three days from Konoha) and come on back. But when you took into account the fact that they had to trek through a desert for the next two days, the mission difficulty level suddenly became quite understandable.
This meant that most of his and Hinata-sama's energies were expended in completing the mission, not talking. And because he had no idea what to talk about. Other than saying sorry.
And these long silences forced Neji to come to the conclusion that he...did not know his cousin – his little sister – very well. Okay, maybe he knew that she was shy and kind and bashful and not very good at jyuuken, and for this reason, she had been seen as superfluous to the clan for a long, long time (he thought, perhaps, this was changing, slowly and steadily). He knew that she poked her fingers together when she got nervous, that she covered her mouth when she laughed, that her eyes would flicker to the left and right when remembering agonizing experiences, and that she would agree to things just to avoid conflict.
He knew those things well enough that he could tell her to forfeit during their match.
He didn't know that she was trying to change.
He didn't know that she liked ramen too.
His eyes burned again.
He watched her long, dark hair fanning out behind her back, and the desert wind carried a whiff of aloe vera to his nose.
Aloe vera. They used the same kind of shampoo.
His blind spot prickled.
Unfortunately, since he had no idea what to talk to Hinata-sama about, the annoying moron in his head ever so helpfully kept flooding his brain with tips and suggestions on small talk.
Tell her that her hair is really shiny!
Tell her that you love sweet things!
Ask her how much ramen she's carrying.
Challenge her to a ramen eating contest!
Go away, he finally snapped at that last suggestion.
All throughout, his blind spot kept twinging uncomfortably.
I need to say sorry.
But whenever he opened his mouth, his tongue tied itself into knots.
In his mind's eye, he would see blood dripping from her mouth. Her heartbeat becoming erratic because he'd blocked her tenketsu. She still kept standing.
How...was "sorry" enough? After everything?
It isn't, Naruto said solemnly. You need to challenge her to a ramen eating contest too.
Hinata-sama didn't seem to mind the silences. She kept smiling a quiet smile and humming a happy tune that, with a jolt, he remembered his own father liked singing.
He didn't know how she knew that tune. His blind spot twinged again.
So go ask her, you idiot!
For once, Neji decided to heed Naruto's advice.
The desert sun was a perfect round, blazing reddish-orange, so unlike the hazy cheerful yellow it was in Konoha. Minutes after the sunset, cold breezes as bitter as the late autumn Konoha winds swept through the empty sand dunes, and they decided to set up camp early instead of at midnight like they had done before. The desert was strange.
Neji decided that this was as good a time as any to deliver his apology, no matter how faint and feeble it would be.
"Hinata-sama?" he asked, joining her at the campfire.
She looked up, another instant ramen in hand. "Yes, Neji nii-san?"
The cold wind carried the tantalizing smell of tonkotsu ramen to his nose, and his stomach rumbled when he caught sight of a bright pink whirlpool fishcake swirling along on top of the instant broth. His tongue finally unraveled itself to spout gibberish at the command of the annoying idiot stuck in his head.
"Shall we...have a ramen eating contest?"
Their eyes met, white connecting with white, and Neji felt his tongue tying itself into knots again. That was fine, though. A Hyuuga's greatest gift was their eyes, and as Neji realized this, his blind spot stopped aching.
I'm sorry, Hinata-sama, he said wordlessly.
Hinata-sama smiled as brightly as the sun, and Neji was thankful that there was an idiot like Naruto in the world.
A/N: I've wondered how Neji and Hinata made up, hence this was born...
In other news, it's been just about a year since I started writing fanfics. :)
I feel pretty happy about this, so anyone who's reading this, tell me if you think I've improved in one year (wow...) in the reviews. :)