scenes from the after party

It all begins, simply, with love, and ends gradually exactly because of it.

my heart is full of love

If there is anything to regret, writes Neji in the third year of their separation, it is that I may not have given him what she deserved. If, perhaps, I had loved myself less and set aside my bitterness, then I might have been able to save my heart; instead, I am left to pick up the pieces and wait for a miracle, perhaps her return, if she should ever be able to do so.

I am not afraid of sacrifices I must make. It is precisely the fear that I will lose her completely that keeps me at bay.

and longing

When there is nowhere else to go, he returns to the main house.

It is approximately thirteen blocks away from his own apartment, conveniently situated enough for him to avoid it for as long as a month, but not convenient enough for him to refrain from visiting. Hanabi used to complain, sometimes, that it there were less people to train with. Granted that training, for her, means fighting until someone loses a limb or dies, Neji isn’t too keen on giving in to her hints.

The head of the household is his uncle, and, twice, it was not him. Every time Neji is left alone with the man, he cannot help but remember that there was a time that he looked more unreachable, less softer, as men who grow old and experience loss tend to appear. It is when tea is served that Neji begins to feel the danger of being in his presence: they cannot converse anymore without thinking of someone frozen in the past.

He does not notice how perilous it really is until it is late and he is left alone in the darkened bedroom, trying to pretend it doesn’t hurt at all every time he sleeps on his side facing an empty space on the mattress.

Everything, he thinks, is a mess.

sometimes, it seems as if it would burst

And then one day Hinata does not come home to the main house. Instead, all that comes is a knock on the door and an Anbu who has had her fair share of deaths encountered in the field, saying, I’m sorry… but…

Neji’s blood turns into ice.

The first few weeks after Hinata’s death (an unfortunate accident, perhaps, or an intentional suicide, the other family members whisper, she was always a scared, quiet little mouse, after all), Neji is left with a piercing sense of unfocused rage and denial. Hanabi, for once, says nothing disparaging. Shino says, as consolingly as he could with his distance, that they are in the stages of grief. If anything, Hanabi is playing the blind game of self-blame, and Neji resents every person, everything he comes across, because it reminds him of a girl he loved and the shadow of the past. He becomes more irritable, more irrational, until even Kiba begins to look concerned. Neji is filled with an urgent need to claw out his eyes.

Neji begins to hate Hinata for this; he hates and hates until it all bleeds into something else, and he begins to hate all over again because he does not know how else to cope.

i tried to purge your memory from my mind

So Neji begins to believe that he needs to forget, even for just a while.

He goes to a party of a work acquaintance and is plied with more drinks than he’s had in a long time, from people who are of the belief that he should loosen up, once in a while. All this, of course, is not new to him. Sometimes, he writes it off as social etiquette, whenever he is too tired to think of how much Hinata disapproves. He drinks and smokes and laughs through half-lidded eyes, smiling whenever they turn to him with barely suppressed looks of desire. You want me, don’t you, he mouths against the ear of a younger woman with dark hair and an infectious, confident smile in the dim light of the corner of the living room, but he never gets his answer because the girl kisses him and makes him remember instead.

He pushes her away with a hasty apology and pushes past the throng of people to find the nearest way out.

i think i have succeeded

Tenten receives a call at two a m, and answers it without looking at the caller’s name.

“Hey,” comes the slightly drunken voice, “it’s Neji.”

 “I know,” she says as quietly as she could, “where have you been?”

Neji makes a small, breathless noise in the background, as if he just stopped running for his life. “Out,” he slurs from the other line, sounding distracted, “there was a party at someone’s place, a high maintenance one. I couldn’t sleep so I figured, why the hell not. It’s not like I have anything to lose, right?”

She doesn’t say anything. She just presses her fingers to her temple and tries her best to understand her friend. They’ve always been the only ones who could understand each other without needing to say anything, but it makes it difficult to do so when the sun hasn’t even risen and she can’t see Neji’s face. Shee makes a sound in assent, urging Neji to continue. He does.

“Well, I was with this kid,” Neji murmurs, “She was young, but she seemed older, you know? I thought, for a while, that I could sleep with her. If I wanted to.” Neji laughs a little, as if he doesn’t believe it himself.  Tenten doesn’t, either.

“Did you?”

The voice on the other line falters a little. “No,” says Neji, and even through the phone line Tenten can tell his throat is dry, “no, I couldn’t.”

Right now, Neji sounds defeated and powerless. She wishes she could offer more, but she knows whatever she has to give will never be enough to compensate for Neji’s loss.

& yet

On the seventh month, Neji decides to burn Hinata’s possessions. It seems like the first real decision he’s had in months that would actually help him pull through this ‘phase’, whatever it is. It fills him with a surge of confidence. He finally thinks that there is a way to banish his personal demons, for once.

When he gathers all the belongings and begins setting a fire on a memo Hinata wrote (Going to Ino’s, I’ll pick up dinner, okay? – H), he is barely able to finish. The lighter in his hands falls to the tiled floor with a clunk, and he has to cover his face with his hands to keep his sobs from being heard.

It is then that he realizes he hates himself and not Hinata, because he loves too much to let go of her.

It is the first time he allows himself to grieve properly, after many, many months.

& yet

Life does not change, in some ways. He still has Konoha to focus on, and it becomes easier to say to others that it’s his life. He distracts himself with work just so he can pretend home is what it used to be, and that someone important to him is waiting for him to come home.

Perhaps it is simply out of pity when Hanabi drags him to a vacation outside of Konoha. Neji tries hard not to remember Hinata in her face. Both of them share the only thing they can never be with now.

“I don’t understand,” he says, at first, and has to look away from Hanabi when she smiles a broad, knowing grin he’s never seen on Hinata’s face before, and yet the glow in her eyes is all too familiar for him to not recognize.

“You’re not supposed to,” says Hanabi, then adds, as an afterthought, “stupid.”

They go to the land of Waves and take long walks on the shore every day, the two of them. On the last day, when they watch three children fling each other with sand, Hanabi holds his hand and looks at him as if she wishes he were someone else, maybe her mother, or her sister.

“We’re here for the same reason,” she says seriously, eyes meeting his, “do you understand its importance now?”

Neji nods.

She smiles, crookedly. “I’m glad.”

(Later, when they’ve had their fill of the ocean, Hanabi lets her fingers linger in his hair a little longer than necessary, and says, in a tight, choked voice, “I thought I was imagining it, but it’s true. You really do remind me of her.”)

& yet

He goes home and doesn’t turn on the lights. He drops his bag on the corner of the bedroom and lies on the bed, curling up against Hinata’s pillow.

He tries to breathe in her scent but finds that he can’t. It has been too long for it to be possible, but he imagines, anyway. He thinks he succeeds because a piece of his heart crumbles, and he presses his face into the pillow as he begins to cry without a sound.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I love you so much it hurts.”

He does not say “please come back” because it is foolish. But when has love ever been otherwise? It is so strange that he can still map out the lines of Hinata’s face, the curve of her jaw, and the shape of her mouth in his mind, exactly as he remembers it. In his memory, Hinata remains young and eternal, his, only his.

What does it mean for you, he remembers his uncle asking, and he replies, with all the fervor in his mind, everything.

It is in this way that he learns to move on without completely letting go.

i am waiting forever for you.