Sometimes, I hate the way my brain works, and I need a sounding board as I blunder my way through a fitful bout of mouth-frothing existentialism.
Today, I decided not to make my loved ones suffer. So here you go instead.
Enjoy :)
"I figured it out."
"Whassatnow?" Lee, who had finally almost just gotten to REM sleep, asked in a knee jerk reaction. Tenten just grunted on Neji's other side.
"It's perception. To exist within a society is to be perceived by others, and live in reaction of the perception of being perceived, but that cannot be a primary motivator. To exist is to first perceive oneself and others, and only then to perceive the perception of others and to conform, partially, to that secondary perception while challenging other aspects of it, so as to be a better participant in an ever giving-and-pulling, waxing and waning society," he explained, as drily as though he were describing how, judging from how the moon had set above them, it was now 2:30 in the a.m.
Lee, whose eyes had opened despite his best efforts, noted how it was 2:30 in the a.m.
"Where is this coming from?" he asked.
"My social anxiety, I suppose," Neji replied, quite matter-of-factly. It turned out that Neji wasn't just an antisocial, megalomaniac, homicidal misanthrope. He was also socially anxious (among other things), the preferred mental health issue of so many Hyugas, despite them all living in suffocating proximity to one another.
"I was thinking how, if one were to view the perception of others as a primary motivator and deciding factor for their actions, it wouldn't be any different to being fatalistic."
Lee really wanted a glass of water. And earplugs. Tenten had stopped snoring, which meant she was also up and listening.
"What do you mean?" he sighed. Now that Neji was philosophizing waxy, or waxing philosophical (whatever, he was sleep-deprived and mosquito-bitten), the only way out was to go through.
"It's easy to say that something is determined by fate. It's just as easy to decide that society, this amorphous, vaguely malevolent entity that holds all of us hostage and accomplice, cannot be changed and therefore we must conform to it. Or the inverse, to decide that society is wrong and only we are right. We aren't right. Oftentimes, we are very, deeply wrong. It's also a surrender of autonomy to assign the weight of choosing to such abstract concepts as fate or society. It's easy and it's cowardly."
Neji fell silent.
Lee was almost certain he was done, even if he wasn't going to sleep that night, and allowed his eyes to shut. He made a soft sound, in vague, sleepy agreement.
Neji breathed patiently. Tenten's breathing deepened, on the edge of turning from a mosquito whine to a deep, deep snore.
Lee's sleep pulled taut and snapped when Neji drew in another deep breath, to deliberate aloud some other facet of his fatalistic, non-society conforming ass.
Tenten beat him to it.
"Neji, is the reason you're using us as a soundboard for your newfound sense of agency in an uncaring and uneasily anodyne society because you've decided that the perception of being perceived must be a secondary motivator and therefore you no longer care that we hate you for interrupting our sleep, or are you now so certain of our unconditional love for you that you don't think we have it in you to skewer you where you lay?"
Her voice was cold as ice.
Neji kept breathing. Lee could hear him smiling.
"Third option – you are feeding the wolves within us, one which loves you and one which hates you, as a sort of sick social experiment, to see which one wins. That's it, isn't it."
The sound of Neji's smile deepened. He neither denied nor confirmed the allegations, but Tenten was feral and was not in the business of doling out warning shots before aiming for the head.
Lee rolled over, falling asleep instantly, as Tenten straddled Neji and began to throttle him violently. Neji, holding onto her wrists, laughed as best he could manage with her calloused fingers wrapped round his neck.