Title: Still I Rise -- #26: color
Characters/Pairings: Hinata
Rating: K
Notes: Same universe as "murmur", "2 am", "metaphor" and "tragedy" and "door". The morning after.
Neji has always been an early riser, so he is surprised to encounter Hinata nestled on his couch when he ventures out of his room in pursuit of coffee before dawn. She sits huddled in on herself, looking washed out in grays and purples in the colorless predawn light.
Hinata has always been a laughably bad liar: when she says that, of course, she's slept well and the bed was incredibly comfortable and nothing is wrong, she's fine, thank you, it's quite glaringly obvious she's lying through her teeth. Her eyes are sunken in, her cheeks are lacking in their usual color, her smile is listless, and Neji knows quite well that the mattress in the guest bedroom is just as lumpy as his own.
(He makes a quick mental note to buy a new one and switch it with hers when she isn't looking. It would mean holding off on buying a briefcase, but his messenger bag could hold out a while longer if he does something to mend the fraying edges. More importantly, he doesn't want to see those bruises under her eyes anymore; the one on her cheek makes him angry enough.)
"Right," he says, surveying her through cautious eyes. What to say to a girl who's had almost everything she's known to be constant in her life stripped from her in less than a day? Neji casts about his mind, but the only things that surface are You don't need those bastards anyway (and considering that is something that he often hears Tenten bark at her female friends after painful break-ups, it doesn't seem appropriate) and a long monologue extolling the brightness of youthful splendor and how young people burst with it at seams (but Lee hardly makes sense most of the time, so he can't see any good in saying any of that).
Or he could tell her the truth. He could tell her that it was the right thing to do, to shake off the chains of familial duty that would hold her to promises she hadn't wanted to make, but that her birth had made for her. He could sit next to her on the couch and put an arm around her and provide comfort and warmth as he says it.
"Good," he says instead. "I'll make breakfast."
Maybe later, he thinks, and calls himself a million different types of coward.