Loko: And the third, in which, shockingly, a glimmer of a plot may be found. (Again: 30kisses!)
Disclaimer: Alas.
Summary: Neji thinks he might never see Sasuke again. Sasuke's predictable – in that he's not. SasuNeji, NaruNeji, implied NaruSasu
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Silent Fall
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Neji thinks he might never see Sasuke again after that misty predawn warning: they are even, more or less, a kiss for a kiss and a warning for a warning.
He forgets about the resourcefulness of the Uchiha clan and Sasuke's silent desperation.
He forgets, too, about the fact that he is an elite ninja, and thus entitled to the dubious honour of dealing with the best of the bad.
With all the forgetting he's been doing of late, he shouldn't have been surprised that he forgot to smile at Naruto for good luck before leaving, or that almost immediately after reaching their location the entire team was separated because they'd forgotten that they were under new configurations and hadn't standardised their signals yet, and he really shouldn't have forgotten that the entire reason they were pulling recon was because of the now-dusty trail of which he'd warned Sasuke.
And he really shouldn't have been surprised to come suddenly eye-to-eye with slowly swirling red eyes, a spinning wheel like Fate. Three distinct spokes of black, round and round and round: and there is a reason the Sharingan is the "Mirror-Wheel Eye."
On Sasuke's part, he sees only white.
They stare at each other for a moment, and then Sasuke says, "Hyuuga Neji."
Neji refuses to return the favour, refuses to take the other end of the long, long string of distance and back away. When he melts into his careful dancing stance, Sasuke copies him, and even Hyuuga Neji recognises the sliver of fear at the flawless mirroring trick and even Hyuuga Neji understands why Sharingan strikes such fear into the hearts of ninja.
He doesn't like the Sharingan, he realises, reaching into his soul and analysing his feelings. It's too much like thievery, the already unfair advantage of kekkei genkai moving further to steal secrets learned through years of hard work.
Then again, he remembers, the Sharingan itself takes years of hard work to master.
With a conscious decision, he straightens himself, and Sasuke imitates him, confusion darkening the crimson of his pupils.
"Sasuke," He says, and then stops, unsure of how to phrase things. If he were kinder, gentler, or maybe Hinata-sama, he might know what to say at this point – the buttons to press, the strings to pull to make Sasuke dance like a pretty rag doll and skip his way home.
Neji likes Sasuke wild and unbound, red and black and white like a painting made in ink and blood, and he spares a moment to wonder if it would make him happy (if it would make Sasuke happy) to put Sasuke back into Konoha, sweet candied cage that it is.
And then the moment is gone.
Ninja are not made to think.
Perhaps, Neji considers with a detached sort of amusement, that is why Naruto makes such an excellent ninja. (And then again, that is not fair – Naruto's instinct consistently proves itself stronger than many a wise man's intellect, Demon Fox and all.)
"Are you looking for me?" Sasuke asks, one blink and then snapping black where unreadable crimson was.
"No," Neji says honestly, because he really had forgotten.
"Why are you here?"
"Recon," Neji says, and watches Sasuke's face tighten: one debt. "One team, five of us, old trail. Mostly useless."
"Aren't you a little too elite for a useless mission?" Sasuke asks, perhaps snide and perhaps bitter. If he'd stayed, he'd have made the ranks of the elite along with Neji, and they both know it. As it is … As it is, Neji realises, he has no idea.
"I'm beginning to think it's a punishment for supporting Naruto," Neji says, shrugging eloquently. "That, or some bizarre way for Tsunade-sama to get back at the lot of us for decorating her office in pink crepe and whipped cream when Jiraiya-sama came to visit."
A brief, startled, almost-smile flickers across Sasuke's face as quickly as the brightness left by lightning.
"Indeed?" He asks, voice lifting just barely at the end, mouth twisting into a smirk rather than the smile promised moments ago. A faint light filters greenly through the canopy of the trees and catches his face, just barely, making it impossibly light against dark hair and clothes and forest.
And just like that Neji realises with a startled jolt that this, this is Sasuke: creature of night and light and bitterness and sharp angles at the corners of a mouth that should have been soft by virtue of age, virtue of shape, virtue of colour, and is instead some sort of line with a harsh bracket at the corner shadowed darkly against his skin; this is Uchiha Sasuke of broken childhood and broken family and broken heart, and this is the boy that Naruto loves, all fury and wrath and revenge and such deep, deep black eyes, like a crevasse with no bottom. This is he; this is the one who stole Naruto before Neji even had a chance.
This, Neji realizes, the comprehension shafting as thinly through his mind as the light through the leaves, is a child whom Neji is beginning to understand. No, Neji thinks, searching a little deeper still, Neji understands Uchiha Sasuke, although maybe Uchiha Sasuke might never understand Neji. Sasuke is in fact quite easy to understand. He is simple and transparent. And perhaps that is why Naruto does not understand Uchiha Sasuke – at least not on an intellectual level.
Naruto and Sasuke understand each other in some deeper shade of meaning, some universe where there exists only the two of them and only they know exactly what it is like. Neji has glimpsed that world, once or twice, in the glances he's seen those two share and in the way Naruto's blue eyes spark fury near the old Uchiha homes. And, he thinks, looking at Sasuke's frown, everything about Sasuke. Everything.
It is not a world Neji wants to share.
But he loves Naruto, in some bizarre sort of way – as much as Neji ever loves, as fiercely as Neji ever feels – and he supposes that he loves Sasuke, in an even more twisted manner. Something about kisses tasting not quite personal and the fact that they always meet amidst green trees, of forest or of the carefully tended Konohagakure land. Something they share, he supposes.
"Hyuuga," Sasuke says. "Is there something you were looking for? I can guarantee you won't find it. We've been long gone from this location. And," He adds, sounding more like a sulky child reciting Academy lessons than a deadly ninja with a creed, "Your search is unjustified. We of Sound wish merely to establish our own nation. No harm is meant to Konohagakure or any of the other Hidden Villages, unless harm is offered to us first."
"Neji," Neji says.
"If you wish to retaliate, however – what?" Sasuke says, halting in the middle of yet another practiced speech, voice shifting from bored to surprised. Sasuke is so transparent he could be hung in a frame and used as a window. And he is insubstantial enough, malnourished in appearance and not even so much wiry as starved.
"My name is Neji," Neji clarifies. "You may refer to the head of the Clan as Hyuuga, if you so wish. I am called Neji."
Sasuke's Sound – not Orochimaru's, Neji thinks in surprise, but Sasuke's; has that always been how he's thought of them? – has been evading everyone from the Konoha nin to the Akatsuki. It makes for little surprise that their members be a little mistreated. It shouldn't matter to Neji. Yet Sasuke is so thin.
"Neji," Sasuke says as carefully as if the name will break if he utters it, and yet something breaks, though neither knows what it is, precisely.
"Your goal," Neji says. "Do you have a plan?"
Sasuke's face hardens. "Of course."
Wrong buttons, wrong switches.
"Konohagakure keeps close tabs on Akatsuki activity."
Sasuke's eyes narrow. "So I have heard."
Wrong words, wrong phrases.
"I am not doing this for your sake."
Sasuke stares.
"I am doing this for Naruto. And, I am beginning to think, myself."
Sasuke stares.
"Do you understand?"
Sasuke looks away, down and to the right and then back up. Neji no longer attempts to read meaning into these tiny motions – that rigmarole was half a charlatan's performance to begin with, anyway. "No. I don't understand you, Hyuuga Neji." Both names: a compromise, maybe.
"I don't require that you do," Neji says, because no-one really understands him in the end. Because no-one really understands the first thing about themselves in the end, let alone someone else. Sasuke is easy to forgive, he thinks a little wistfully, perhaps too easy to forgive. Beneath the pale, pale scowl and the black, black eyes it is perhaps too easy to see a child that once could have smiled and gotten away with the world and then some.
Neji hopes that others have more trouble reading Sasuke. It is too difficult to separate what Byakugan tells him and what his eyes see. (They do see, pupilless and all.)
A few minutes later, Neji hopes that the rest of the Konoha nin have an easier time predicting Sasuke's actions. It is too easy to forget that they are enemies under this watery emerald light, and the last thing he had expected was Sasuke moving forward, closer.
Sasuke's lips are chapped, dry, and his hair is unkempt and probably harbours countless leaves and twigs somewhere in its mass. His breath is hot and not entirely steady and his hands are as calloused and strong as ever, and Neji gives thanks to someone (anyone) for the small things that never change.
"I don't understand your motives, Hyuuga Neji," He breathes, cold words searing across Neji's mouth, almost into it. "Nor do I care. But you should."
There is that, there are Neji's nerves clamouring restlessly in his body, there are leaves rustling like an ocean of paper above their heads, there is Sasuke as predictably unpredictable as the path of a hurricane, there is this moment when Neji almost thinks Sasuke will kiss him again –
And then there is nothing, just trees and trees and trees and trees and Neji.
Oh, the tables have turned, Hyuuga Neji, he indulges his tendency toward melodrama later, they have turned indeed.
He does, however, mention to Tsunade-sama that the Otonin are scattered and confused, and perhaps unworthy of pursuit until they can at least put up a decent fight. She threatens to ground him from S-classes for three months and even waves requests for cat-sitters and toilet-scrubbers in his face, but eventually capitulates to the truth of cold, hard evidence. (The rest of the team, he is amused to learn, had managed to successfully avoid contacting any Otonin at all – though whether that is a testament to the skills of Konoha or Oto is unclear.)
Turning up the heat on the Akatsuki, Neji figures, should give Sasuke a month to recuperate and another to wax furious over Konoha's treading on his turf.
And, this way, he can worry about just Naruto for a while.
Funny, though, how he still can't relax.
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1857 words
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Loko