title: give lilies with full hands
summary: And all the king's horses and all the king's men can't hope to make me whole again. — Hinata-centric, post-war vignette.
notes: holy shit it's been ages I am so sorry so here take this angst
notes2: I have an AO3 account! so this will also be cross-uploaded there and on my tumblr, too.

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Inside the Infinite Tsukuyomi, Hinata dreams.

The illusion shows her her old desire – Naruto, clumsy and awkward and kind Naruto, tentatively picking the courage to respond to her unanswered confession. What a sweet dream! how warm, his hands, calloused fingers tangling with hers, his tanned skin a strip of summer against the winter of her bones.

His lips brush against hers, hesitant, and for a moment time has stopped its' mad spinning. This is everything she's ever wanted and more, and her heart throbs, swells with the feeling, overflowing with an ache so deep she feels it all the way down to the tips of her toes –

This isn't right, a part of her says. Not anymore.

Red flashes across her vision, and in a moment of startling clarity, she remembers – the war, the apocalypse, the desperation quivering at the back of her knees, Neji's blood still warm on her hands.

All at once, the illusion is cracking, the kiss and the happiness of that now distant dream ghosts lost to the wind.

All at once, the placating dream shatters and falls around her, the sound of its' breaking deafeningly loud.

All at once, she is filled with memories, his face reflected again and again throughout the painful mosaic that is rapidly spreading across the expanse of her mind.

She'd never known a smile could hurt you this much, before, and yet here they are.

If there is one thing Hyūga Hinata knows too well, then that thing is heartbreak, and she has a somber feeling this one will haunt her forever.

Deep inside the cocoon holding her prisoner, she weeps against her will.

The pain washes over her in waves, and she allows herself to let it hurt, even if only because she knows that once the war is all over, she won't be able to mourn. Not in the compound, a house full of eyes wide open, prying, always prying; not in public, where there are expectations she must meet. Not in the company of her small circle of friends, because they, too, have loses of their own to mourn and she has never been one to lay her misery atop that of others.

Floating in the darkness of a dream gone, Hinata weeps, forcing her mind's eyes to close so she doesn't have to see his smile anymore and seeing it nonetheless.

"How're you holding up?" Kiba asks, pressing a mug of something warm into her hands. His face is tired, thinly veiled concern woven into the deep lines of it, voice uncharacteristically quiet.

Small wonder, that, she thinks wryly.

She'd spent the better part of the day before digging for corpses after she'd recovered Neji's and made sure to embalm him herself, and then Shino had to carry her into their tent when her body finally gave in to exhaustion. They had never seen her so frazzled before.

Hinata smiles, taking a sip of the tea he brought. It's surprisingly good, none of the subpar, bitter stuff included among their rations, and she wonders who he mooched it off of before deciding she's better off not knowing (but he totally charmed someone from the medical units, she just knows).

"I'm fine. A little tired, but fine. You?"

"I'm good," he says, plopping down on the bed next to her. "Could use some sleep, but other than that, nothin' broken."

"And Shino?"

Kiba actually snorts. "He's healthy as a horse, according to Tsunade. Healthier than one, actually. As for where he is – God only knows, 'cause I haven't seen him all day."

"I see."

A comfortable silence falls around them, and once she's done with her tea, Hinata lays down next to him, her head pillowed comfortably on his proffered arm.

They talk, for a while; about the war, about the many – far too many – casualties of it. About home, and Kurenai, and Kurenai's unborn child. About their futures, the distant parts of them; and then she's thinking about Neji, and how he and so many others no longer have one, and the smile that had been timidly growing on her lips wilts before it even had a chance to bloom.

"Hinata?"

"Mm?"

He dabs at her tears with his thumb, and she realizes she's crying.

"You okay?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. I just –"

Kiba pulls her to him, nudging her closer until she's pressed flush against him. "Yeah, I know," he murmurs into her hair, beginning to rub circles into the small of her back. "'s okay to cry it out, y'know. No shame in it."

"Okay," she says, voice muffled by his chest. "Okay."

In her dreams, she is chasing him through a long corridor of darkness.

"Brother! Brother, wait!" she shouts, again and again; but Neji is deaf to her voice, and he presses forward, nearly floating down the invisible road they are walking upon. There is blinding light at the end of it, and for a second the shine coming from within that doorway outlines him clearly: she sees wings spreading from between his shoulder blades, arching as if he is taking flight – and then he's gone, having walked straight into the burning sun at the end of the lane.

She follows.

There is a moment of searing pain, and every fiber of her being burns; and then there is nothing, just an all-encompassing sense of serenity.

Hinata opens her eyes and finds herself standing on water, the surface of it unnaturally smooth, eerily mirror-like. The red sky above reflects in it, and she feels suddenly light-headed.

On the horizon, Neji stands, his silhouette a dark smear on the sky. Wings are hanging from his back, and the sight of him like that makes something deep in her guts tremble.

"Brother!" she calls, and this time he does hear.

He turns to her, that same dead-man's smile in full blossom across his lips.

"Ah, Hinata –"

She only has a moment to note the absence of the cursed seal from his forehead before the world turns pitch black.

He's finally free, she thinks.

Trapped still in that world of dreams, she can feel relieved tears spill down her cheeks and into Kiba's shirt.

Oh, god. He's finally free.

The long journey homeward passes in a blur. Hinata doesn't really recall much of it, except for the startling lack of vitality among team Gai, the stench of death, and the shadows of her teammates never parting with her own, a distinct feeling of brotherhood hovering between them, thick like cream.

Once upon a bye, she had been a romantic – and she'd quit believing in soulmates around the age of twelve, true, but she had never stopped believing in strings as red as blood. These were sacred things, she thought; something no vein could hold and thicker than the waters of the womb, something that bound one tighter than any born-fraternity ever could. Because friends were people you chose. People who chose you.

And that, Hinata knew, took a whole deal more than birth to forge.

The fact that they'd voluntarily stand with her, come hell or high water, will probably never cease to amaze her.

Kurenai is the first person they see when they come in through the gates. Her belly is still swollen, bigger than it was when they left, and she can barely stand from the weight of it pressing hard on her knees, yet she is fiercely steadfast in her insistence to wait for her children to come home.

It is a tearful homecoming all around.

After that, two weeks of bureaucratic mayhem follow; of those, Hinata remembers even less, save for the meetings she attends in her father's lieu and the ever growing feeling of her patience stretching dangerously thin. She is distantly aware of something in her slowly morphing, slowly changing.

What a funny feeling, she finds herself thinking. It's like it's all happening to someone else.

On the day of the wake, she is the picture of poise. She can feel everyone's eyes prickling and poking at the back of her skull; some concerned, some watchful. The Elders are probably observing it as part of some fucked-up test to determine her worth as a Hyūga and as a successor to her father.

Under the pressure of their insistent attention, her spine does not straighten and her hands do not sweat. The girl who faltered is long gone from her bones.

Hiashi's pride is almost tangible.

"You should get some sleep," he says, later, when everyone but them has gone. "I can hold vigil alone."

"I'm fine, Father," she says, smiles a little. "Really."

He is doubtful, but concedes. "If you say so," he says, almost distractedly. The regret etched into every inch of his being makes him look suddenly ten years older under the gentle glow of the lamps.

She reaches for his hand.

"You don't have to blame yourself," she says, softly. "Not for Neji, not for Uncle. Both of them chose. And I doubt either regrets it."

"I should have jumped before he did," he says, squeezing her hand. He doesn't meet her eyes. "I should have protected you both. I promised I would. I..."

She shuffles closer, puts her arms around him. Hiashi tucks himself into the crook of her neck, allows himself to be vulnerable; Just for tonight, he promises himself.

Just for tonight.

"I know. It's alright, Father," she says, wounds her hold a little tighter. "It's alright."

As the funeral begins, the tension that had been building in the atmosphere for days finally loosens.

It rains.

The skies come open with a scream. Thunder reverberates through the clouds like a heartbeat, a loud war drum that shatters the silence. She can feel it sing along the lining of her bones the way vice does, a thousand voices wailing in tongues unknown, and yet the words are all painfully familiar.

She names this feeling "grief".

Naruto comes to stand at her side. He hasn't bothered to see her at all since the war ended, and when she tells herself that it doesn't matter, the truth in it is startling. Gamely avoiding her is part of his guilt, anyway, and that she cannot hold against him. When he takes her hand, she lets him; he needs the comfort more than she does, and when it's all said and done, they are still friends.

The priest begins his chant.

"Hinata –" he begins, uncertain. His lips quiver, and it's not from the words.

"Not now, Naruto-kun," she cuts him off, gentle.

Her voice is soft. Her eyes are not.

In the back of her mind, she knows the transition she was undergoing has now become complete.

There are limits to her good grace. She will not allow him more than small amenities, and she certainly won't allow them here, in this graveyard out of all places.

The eyes and mouths of her ancestors might be silent, but her conscience is not. Nor is her heart, as covered in ashes and bitter as it is right now. Perhaps another day, when the years have washed off the hurt in her, after a thousand storms have taken her pain with them down the river and out into the sea.

She lets go of his hand, eyes fixed on Neji's coffin.

No, not now.

The rain pelts them, a merciless metronome. Her kimono sticks to her skin uncomfortably, but she barely pays any heed to the sensation.

Soon, the lid will come down. They'll nail it shut, and then the sun will never graze upon that beautiful man's face again.

You may have forgiven us, but I will never forgive you, Brother. It should be me laying there, not you.

It should be me.

Loss is suddenly a tangible thing, root-bitter on her tongue, glass shards on the inside of her bones.

It makes her eyes sting.

One by one, the people in the first rows lay their flowers over the ones already in the coffin, crowning him with pure white lilies.

Hinata goes last. Her heart is heavy.

She takes one look at him and feels it sink all the way down to her knees.

Suddenly, she is glad for the rain.

The coffin was placed in an alcove, and so the body is dry; and gods, oh gods, even in death he is so beautiful, somehow more ethereal now that Death has kissed the life away from his lungs. His nails and lips are bruised purple-blue from the blood that went cold inside of him, eyelids dusted pale like a butterfly's wings. No longer do they flutter with dreams – nay, sir, his dreams are gone, dead like the heart hanging in his chest.

All that's left of Neji is a body like a sculpture of a god, alabaster and soulless.

She can't stand to look at him too long. She looks down, instead; looks at her feet, twirls the stem of the marigold she is holding between numb fingers.

It feels like something is dying inside her, too, all over again.

With gentle hands, she places the marigold where his heart once beat, strong and steady. It is the sole spot of color allowed to that picture, and she wants to laugh at the bitter irony of it.

God, it's all so bitter.

She leans over him, a ghost hovering over another.

"This is goodbye, Brother," she says, voice small. The words are lost to all but them, drowned out by the unrelenting storm pouring down like a desperate prayer.

She presses her lips to him; forehead first, and then the eyelids, and then the cheeks. A moment's hesitation, and then she presses her lips to his throat, right where his blood once sung in the carotid.

"This is goodbye," she echoes, pressing a kiss to his lips. She smothers a sob before it can leave her.

She will not allow herself to break. Not here, not now.

Maybe later, when the eyes in their haunted house have gone to sleep; maybe then she'll allow herself to choke on grief one final time. But not now.

Not now.

Hiashi offers her his arm. She takes it.

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fin.