Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Fighting against destiny was an arduous task.

That was something Neji had learned early on in life. The lesson itself came quicker than most. A feat, considering what a swift learner he was—still is. As a child, he watched his father build high walls made of gleaming white stone, rock-hard marble, and mortar thick enough that even he would struggle to carry it twenty years down the line. His father was nothing, if not a steady moor, which he could grasp onto with shaking fingers and a battered, aching forehead whenever he was down and uncertain if he could stand again.

Neji loved him for it; looked up to him with all of the wonder a child could have towards his proud, unwavering father.

Hizashi's dock was a grand one with walls high enough to touch they sky. It was so broad that Neji couldn't see its end. The winds of fate were still present, blowing here and there during particularly stormy times, but the tides had disappeared completely. So much so that Neji didn't even realize they existed until his fourth birthday when he'd met his charge and thrust upon the path of servitude. Hizashi was steady before the grand sea. A constant protector that he was allowed to live and thrive in the shadow of. None of the walls he built or wooden boards he hammered back into place could ever fail.

Then, Neji learned of his death.

There was no relentless tempest of water and wind, no salty sting digging into the wounds he suffered from training that day, no outcry of grief as sudden and stark as the ones in the stories he read about ninjas whose comrades died on the battlefield, only a gentle breeze. As if nothing was wrong. It called out to him, made his head turn for a moment, before he carried on with his tasks again.

When he came home, he found an open sea and winds that buffeted every corner of the once proud dock his father had spent decades constructing. Each rise of water was enough to throttle him; every gust of air made his eyes burn with tears. His father—master of this place—was gone. He was fully expected to take his place. To ensure that this empty space before him wouldn't be gone entirely.

I can do this. I will do this, he thought as he stood upon that lonely shore and took a remnant of Hizashi's pride. Father taught me how to build.

And so he does.

Hizashi fortified his walls in Neji's presence, so that he could learn for himself how to create his own defense against the waves. He had stepped aside whenever Neji drew near, piling and hammering just a little bit slower for him, so that he could follow. What Neji hadn't realized was that Hizashi had been raising heavy blocks around him, too, so that he wouldn't be swept away once his walls eventually withered and disappeared completely. Hizashi had known that he wouldn't be around to guide and protect him from destiny's call, and that, perhaps, was what hurt the most.

The stones and wooden floors around Neji were still new. Untested. They hadn't weathered much. Neji didn't complain. There was a brief instant of grief and more than two dozen pitying glances thrown his way by people whose faces he didn't care to register. He ignored it all in favor of getting on his knees and building. He took what he could from his father's stockades, unearthed his own, and eventually, he made something of a life behind the weak, unstable thing that kept failing apart at the edges when his flaring hate got the better of him.

Destiny stole from him a life that he never offered. It was a cage disguised as a path with no warmth. Neji hated the cold, but he couldn't light a fire. His fingers already shook so badly from it that whatever he built could never seem to look anything like the pristine, water-resistant walls his father had done. It was never enough. Nothing ever would be.

It was later, as he aged and the walls around him started to grow higher, but not wider, he looked off to the side where there was new growth on the ends of his dock, near the entrance where the water swirled and boiled. He hadn't built those brocades himself; he wouldn't even know where to begin for one. They were so much different from his poor mimic of his father's. Rather than meticulously sealed square cinders, they were startling spires that couldn't do much to protect against anything. But they were there, and the little girl building them seemed to find no problem with them.

Their eyes met across the shore.

He knew those eyes. They were oh, so familiar once. From another lifetime, back when he didn't have to continuously fight against the tide. When every defense he had didn't crumble the moment he had his back turned.

Then, he saw her push her own battered excuse of a defense against his to get them to mash together. How she did it so easily, he could never know. But it didn't change the fact that the pieces they'd made didn't fit. The blocks they used were too different. There was no connecting slope to hold them together. But she smiled like she was so proud of her idea, and as he looked up at the towering spire with a point impossible to judge because of the grey, whorled clouds, he was reminded of his father.

This was what Neji been searching for—points to guide his ramparts. A center to hold up his walls, so they'd stop tipping over before he could run to hold them upright.

Neji looked over at her. A woman now. Pale skin. A gentle voice with even gentler hands. Long, midnight-purple hair that framed eyes that shone silver and beautiful even without the sun. The noisy world around him suddenly grew quiet. The winds still howled and the waves still thrashed against his stronghold, but that didn't matter. He wasn't alone on this shore.

In this endless dark blue, there was finally a light for him to follow. Warmth in a world brimming with cold pushes that forced him on a track he didn't want to head down. But with her here now—a real and physical guide to give him purpose, he would have a say. He could elect to follow her of his own free will. Perhaps even point them both in a direction of his choosing.

Realization dawned on him then. He knew this person.

"Hinata," he called.

Neji reached out.

A/N: Inspired by a DA fic by LoquaciousQuark.

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