*brain splooge*
Dec. 4th, 2005 07:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lykomancerTitle: Casting Lots
Pairing: Neji/Naruto
Words: ~2,000
Genre: Introspective drama, vaguely shounen-ai (? Hell if I know.)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: From 60+ of the anime, around chapter 100+ or so of the manga.
Warnings: None.
Other notes: The hexagram used as framework is number eight, which is that of gathering together or unity. Random Taoism symbolism spilled all over.
It occurs to me suddenly that this song is strangely appropriate.
I'm not sure if the ending is any kind of conclusion whatsoever; it seems to be lacking but I can't figure out what to do with it.
Surprise, surprise; I've never written any Naruto before; feel free to concrit my characterization.
X-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
nejinaru 'cause I'm an attention-whore.
Six at the beginning means:
Hold to him in truth and loyalty;
This is without blame.
Truth, like a full earthen bowl:
Thus in the end
Good fortune comes from without.
Forty-nine dried stalks of yarrow, dark with age and from repeated use, were laid out on the cleared ground in small, neat bundles, counted and recounted by the hand that had laid them out to remove any possibility of error. It wasn’t that he’d needed to actively measure their worth—he was familiar enough with the simple ritual that he could tell in a glance what patterns revealed themselves in the rhythm of his fingers as he’d divided the stalks up—but it was familiar, intimate, to touch the smooth woody yarrow, repeating the numbers in each section quietly to himself. There’d been too many unexpected changes in the last few weeks; this was comforting for his troubled mind.
It wasn’t that he was resentful of the changes; on the contrary, the truth that had come out at last during the final fight of the chuunin exam was sweet honey balm on festering wounds long endured, beginning to heal the grief that had never really ended but had merely curdled into something sickening and sour; his father’s last words and uncle’s apology were a cool antidote to the carefully controlled seething hatred that was poison running hot in his veins. Neji felt nothing but relief as his pain finally began to die down and his energy moved toward more productive outlets, and gratitude that he was able once more, at last, to see the world with eyes unclouded by futile rage.
Six in the second place means:
Hold to him inwardly.
Perseverance brings good fortune.
This wasn’t an appeal to immutable fate or destiny, this divination of patterns made and read in bundles of yarrow stalks or in casts of coins; it was an ancient art, beautiful in both simplicity of method and complexity of interpretation, handed down from the past and learned by all family members as part of their heritage and tradition. Neji had never believed in the principles behind the superstitious practice even as he’d studied how to perform the ritual and how to read the accompanying poetic verses preserved in the ancient scroll, not even as he’d done the casts again and again, dividing the stalks out into piles of six to nine. This prophetic oracle carried connotations of one’s own adaptability and ability to change, something he’d ceased believing in before his hands had ever worked the stalks or the accompanying obscure text.
A philosophy he’d had to reevaluate in the wake of his fight with Uzumaki Naruto, a battle that had been more emotionally punishing than physically so, and the blond’s words had been no less stunning than the last blow which had knocked him flat on his back.
You were fighting against your own fate, weren’t you?
It would be the greatest tragedy of all if the bird had never been caged at all except in its own mind, refusing to fly for fear of realizing that it had been wrong all this time—if he’d been the one who’d chained himself down and who had loved his self-wrought shackles more than he’d loved the idea of freedom, blinding and deafening himself to anything he didn’t want to see and hear.
Six in the third place means:
One is able to remain persevering.
If by chance you are in the service of a king,
Seek not works, but bring to completion.
He could still see the wild gleam in those feral blue eyes, the reflection of the passion that burned within him, fox-fire that spread over everything that he touched and burned away any and all impurities it touched. He could still remember the heat of the other’s hands on him as they’d fought, the strength and firm reality of the blond’s sturdy, muscular young body, his brash confidence, his seeming lack of any subtlety. The utter determination that never wavered; even when he was bruised and battered, he was never beaten.
I won’t lose to a coward who won’t quit blaming everything on fate!
Naruto’d thrown off his own chains, set released himself from his own prison…and yet, that fierce set of his brow clearly said that he himself was not yet free as long as others still lived in bondage, and that it would be an offense, a crime worse than murder, for him to turn and walk away without struggling to help his opponent see that there was no cage more limiting than his own resigned bitterness…even facing an opponent who’d ridiculed and mocked him, insulted and degraded him, who’d even gone so far as to say that he would kill him for no other transgression than pure stubbornness and conviction.
Neji hadn’t liked hearing those words drip like blood from Naruto’s cut lip, had detested hearing the frivolous, lucky upstart so arrogantly accuse him of cowardice, of not taking responsibility for his own actions, of using his own philosophy of helplessness to justify taking out his anger on others, running his mouth as though he though he could preach from his moral high ground…but it’d hurt, too, hurt as only the truth could.
It was only later, on a grey and rainy day nearly a week later, after the fight was over long over and Konoha was trying to repair the damage form the unexpected attack, that Neji suddenly remembered the red-eyed vision he’d seen swirling in the flaming chakra that Naruto had unexpectedly pulled out of the depths of his being that had allowed him to keep fighting even after he should not have even been able to stand, a sight he’d nearly forgotten in the aftermath of the battle, and then realized completely who— or more precisely what— Naruto was…and how arrogant, in fact, he himself had been in accusing his opponent of not being able to understand a cursed existence.
When I become Hokage…I’ll change the Hyuuga!
Six in the fourth place means:
Hold to him outwardly also.
Perseverance brings good fortune.
He’d been surprised how quickly the exuberant blond had healed from the events of that day, the injuries he’d sustained both in his planned fight and in the surprise epic battle with the redheaded Sand shinobi that Neji had heard bare whispers of in snatches of overheard conversations between murmuring jounin, but it was only a few days later that he’d run into Naruto again in the woods surrounding town, though surely he should have still been bedridden from his injuries. Perhaps the younger had come out with the excuse of needing to train, but he looked surprising sober and almost sad-eyed as he moved through a series of exercises, and Neji suspected that his reason for being in the woods had more to do with the death of the Third and the devastation wrecked upon Konoha than with any actual motivation to train; the Hokage’s death had hit everyone in the village hard, and he didn’t doubt that Naruto had felt it, too.
He’d leaned against the damp bark of a tree, half-hidden behind it, to watch the blond for a few long moments as he danced fluidly through his routine, displaying more grace in this private moment than Neji’d ever remembered seeing in him ever before; his gaze was soft and unfocused as though his mind was someplace else, though his brow was furrowed as though his thoughts troubled him. Sweat shimmered over his skin and stained his hair with dark streaks, and his breath came in low pants; there was a raw, animal physicality that gave Naruto a presence that more than compensated for his lack of age and height and lent his open, confident friendliness a mesmerizing, charismatic air.
Naruto was…strangely…rather…beautiful, he realized, and this thought was startling and foreign, but it was not entirely unwelcome.
Nine in the fifth place means:
Manifestation of holding together.
In the hunt the king uses beaters on three sides only
And foregoes game that runs off in front.
The citizens need no warning.
Good fortune.
He’d started paying more attention then to the younger shinobi, tracing his movements about town with a steady, expressionless gaze, learning the pattern of Naruto’s life with the same efficiency as he’d learned the patterns of casts of yarrow stalks or coins, watching the direction of the blond’s energy in external flow as well as internal, and moving through envy of his happy-go-lucky persona to a genuine appreciation for his fire and determination.
Neji’d never expected to see anything admirable in anyone so seemingly careless and carefree, but then, he’d never expected to be beaten in a fair fight by a genin younger than himself and who had barely managed to even graduate from the academy at that, and Naruto hid surprising depth and awareness under layers of light-hearted childishness; no indeed, his greatest virtues, courage and fortitude, sprang from the dark well haunted by the shadow of a murderous monster, and his obvious devotion and compassion that bound him to ally and enemy alike-his ability to empathize so deeply that he was willing to fight and walk the line of death for others-was the end result of his own lonely childhood.
It was true that much of Naruto’s personality rubbed against the grain of what Neji had been taught to value and who he was…but perhaps this scouring was not such a bad thing, though it might be uncomfortable and not always easy to bear. Perhaps it was just what he needed, the final touches to soften his own rough edges and polish him up so that he was capable of capturing and reflecting the warm glow of the light the blond had brought into his life.
The most important lessons were never easy to learn.
Six at the top means:
Pushing upward in darkness.
It furthers one
To be unremittingly persevering.
Neji knew that Naruto might never realize the full impact of his words and actions on his one-time opponent, and he knew that it was unlikely that the blond would seek him out for any reason—he seemed comfortable with his own company most of the time, and he was closer friends with his own peer-group: Kiba, Shikamaru, and his own teammates—and perhaps that was for the best. Perhaps no extraneous words were needed between them, just a mutual understanding and new-found respect.
“Stop talking like that. You’re no dropout like me.
No, even if he’d lost the fight, he was not a failure, not even in the eyes of the one who’d triumphed over him. He wasn’t a loser, but he was not all that he could be either—what was the point of striving to better one’s self when one was bound by unchanging destiny? Fate was not only a scapegoat for the responsibilities he did not wish to claim, but his belief in it was a hindrance to his own growth, and freedom meant not just freedom from the curse that marked his existence but freedom to change himself, as well.
Freedom to mature.
The moon waxed from empty blackness to full radiance, catching and tempering the light of the great golden sun, the long, cold night of his soul no longer shrouded him and confounded his eyes; Neji found himself pulled out of the darkness, and the world looked so different that he almost didn’t recognize it, so full of potential and electric with possibility.
When those bright blue eyes—impossibly blue, wild-blue-yonder high-summer-sky blue eyes—landed on him again, weeks later, at the inauguration and formal announcement of Tsunade to the position of Hokage, they regarded him with warm pleasure and approval, and the blond had broken out into a wide sunshine grin…and Neji found dull heat rising to his face, feeling absurdly flattered.
Whether it was his fate or his choice, it didn’t matter in the least, and the end result was precisely the same: his life was irrevocably bound up with Uzumaki Naruto’s life and dream and destiny, and in his embrace of that binding was true liberty.
Pairing: Neji/Naruto
Words: ~2,000
Genre: Introspective drama, vaguely shounen-ai (? Hell if I know.)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: From 60+ of the anime, around chapter 100+ or so of the manga.
Warnings: None.
Other notes: The hexagram used as framework is number eight, which is that of gathering together or unity. Random Taoism symbolism spilled all over.
It occurs to me suddenly that this song is strangely appropriate.
I'm not sure if the ending is any kind of conclusion whatsoever; it seems to be lacking but I can't figure out what to do with it.
Surprise, surprise; I've never written any Naruto before; feel free to concrit my characterization.
X-posted to
nejinaru Six at the beginning means:
Hold to him in truth and loyalty;
This is without blame.
Truth, like a full earthen bowl:
Thus in the end
Good fortune comes from without.
Forty-nine dried stalks of yarrow, dark with age and from repeated use, were laid out on the cleared ground in small, neat bundles, counted and recounted by the hand that had laid them out to remove any possibility of error. It wasn’t that he’d needed to actively measure their worth—he was familiar enough with the simple ritual that he could tell in a glance what patterns revealed themselves in the rhythm of his fingers as he’d divided the stalks up—but it was familiar, intimate, to touch the smooth woody yarrow, repeating the numbers in each section quietly to himself. There’d been too many unexpected changes in the last few weeks; this was comforting for his troubled mind.
It wasn’t that he was resentful of the changes; on the contrary, the truth that had come out at last during the final fight of the chuunin exam was sweet honey balm on festering wounds long endured, beginning to heal the grief that had never really ended but had merely curdled into something sickening and sour; his father’s last words and uncle’s apology were a cool antidote to the carefully controlled seething hatred that was poison running hot in his veins. Neji felt nothing but relief as his pain finally began to die down and his energy moved toward more productive outlets, and gratitude that he was able once more, at last, to see the world with eyes unclouded by futile rage.
Six in the second place means:
Hold to him inwardly.
Perseverance brings good fortune.
This wasn’t an appeal to immutable fate or destiny, this divination of patterns made and read in bundles of yarrow stalks or in casts of coins; it was an ancient art, beautiful in both simplicity of method and complexity of interpretation, handed down from the past and learned by all family members as part of their heritage and tradition. Neji had never believed in the principles behind the superstitious practice even as he’d studied how to perform the ritual and how to read the accompanying poetic verses preserved in the ancient scroll, not even as he’d done the casts again and again, dividing the stalks out into piles of six to nine. This prophetic oracle carried connotations of one’s own adaptability and ability to change, something he’d ceased believing in before his hands had ever worked the stalks or the accompanying obscure text.
A philosophy he’d had to reevaluate in the wake of his fight with Uzumaki Naruto, a battle that had been more emotionally punishing than physically so, and the blond’s words had been no less stunning than the last blow which had knocked him flat on his back.
You were fighting against your own fate, weren’t you?
It would be the greatest tragedy of all if the bird had never been caged at all except in its own mind, refusing to fly for fear of realizing that it had been wrong all this time—if he’d been the one who’d chained himself down and who had loved his self-wrought shackles more than he’d loved the idea of freedom, blinding and deafening himself to anything he didn’t want to see and hear.
Six in the third place means:
One is able to remain persevering.
If by chance you are in the service of a king,
Seek not works, but bring to completion.
He could still see the wild gleam in those feral blue eyes, the reflection of the passion that burned within him, fox-fire that spread over everything that he touched and burned away any and all impurities it touched. He could still remember the heat of the other’s hands on him as they’d fought, the strength and firm reality of the blond’s sturdy, muscular young body, his brash confidence, his seeming lack of any subtlety. The utter determination that never wavered; even when he was bruised and battered, he was never beaten.
I won’t lose to a coward who won’t quit blaming everything on fate!
Naruto’d thrown off his own chains, set released himself from his own prison…and yet, that fierce set of his brow clearly said that he himself was not yet free as long as others still lived in bondage, and that it would be an offense, a crime worse than murder, for him to turn and walk away without struggling to help his opponent see that there was no cage more limiting than his own resigned bitterness…even facing an opponent who’d ridiculed and mocked him, insulted and degraded him, who’d even gone so far as to say that he would kill him for no other transgression than pure stubbornness and conviction.
Neji hadn’t liked hearing those words drip like blood from Naruto’s cut lip, had detested hearing the frivolous, lucky upstart so arrogantly accuse him of cowardice, of not taking responsibility for his own actions, of using his own philosophy of helplessness to justify taking out his anger on others, running his mouth as though he though he could preach from his moral high ground…but it’d hurt, too, hurt as only the truth could.
It was only later, on a grey and rainy day nearly a week later, after the fight was over long over and Konoha was trying to repair the damage form the unexpected attack, that Neji suddenly remembered the red-eyed vision he’d seen swirling in the flaming chakra that Naruto had unexpectedly pulled out of the depths of his being that had allowed him to keep fighting even after he should not have even been able to stand, a sight he’d nearly forgotten in the aftermath of the battle, and then realized completely who— or more precisely what— Naruto was…and how arrogant, in fact, he himself had been in accusing his opponent of not being able to understand a cursed existence.
When I become Hokage…I’ll change the Hyuuga!
Six in the fourth place means:
Hold to him outwardly also.
Perseverance brings good fortune.
He’d been surprised how quickly the exuberant blond had healed from the events of that day, the injuries he’d sustained both in his planned fight and in the surprise epic battle with the redheaded Sand shinobi that Neji had heard bare whispers of in snatches of overheard conversations between murmuring jounin, but it was only a few days later that he’d run into Naruto again in the woods surrounding town, though surely he should have still been bedridden from his injuries. Perhaps the younger had come out with the excuse of needing to train, but he looked surprising sober and almost sad-eyed as he moved through a series of exercises, and Neji suspected that his reason for being in the woods had more to do with the death of the Third and the devastation wrecked upon Konoha than with any actual motivation to train; the Hokage’s death had hit everyone in the village hard, and he didn’t doubt that Naruto had felt it, too.
He’d leaned against the damp bark of a tree, half-hidden behind it, to watch the blond for a few long moments as he danced fluidly through his routine, displaying more grace in this private moment than Neji’d ever remembered seeing in him ever before; his gaze was soft and unfocused as though his mind was someplace else, though his brow was furrowed as though his thoughts troubled him. Sweat shimmered over his skin and stained his hair with dark streaks, and his breath came in low pants; there was a raw, animal physicality that gave Naruto a presence that more than compensated for his lack of age and height and lent his open, confident friendliness a mesmerizing, charismatic air.
Naruto was…strangely…rather…beautiful, he realized, and this thought was startling and foreign, but it was not entirely unwelcome.
Nine in the fifth place means:
Manifestation of holding together.
In the hunt the king uses beaters on three sides only
And foregoes game that runs off in front.
The citizens need no warning.
Good fortune.
He’d started paying more attention then to the younger shinobi, tracing his movements about town with a steady, expressionless gaze, learning the pattern of Naruto’s life with the same efficiency as he’d learned the patterns of casts of yarrow stalks or coins, watching the direction of the blond’s energy in external flow as well as internal, and moving through envy of his happy-go-lucky persona to a genuine appreciation for his fire and determination.
Neji’d never expected to see anything admirable in anyone so seemingly careless and carefree, but then, he’d never expected to be beaten in a fair fight by a genin younger than himself and who had barely managed to even graduate from the academy at that, and Naruto hid surprising depth and awareness under layers of light-hearted childishness; no indeed, his greatest virtues, courage and fortitude, sprang from the dark well haunted by the shadow of a murderous monster, and his obvious devotion and compassion that bound him to ally and enemy alike-his ability to empathize so deeply that he was willing to fight and walk the line of death for others-was the end result of his own lonely childhood.
It was true that much of Naruto’s personality rubbed against the grain of what Neji had been taught to value and who he was…but perhaps this scouring was not such a bad thing, though it might be uncomfortable and not always easy to bear. Perhaps it was just what he needed, the final touches to soften his own rough edges and polish him up so that he was capable of capturing and reflecting the warm glow of the light the blond had brought into his life.
The most important lessons were never easy to learn.
Six at the top means:
Pushing upward in darkness.
It furthers one
To be unremittingly persevering.
Neji knew that Naruto might never realize the full impact of his words and actions on his one-time opponent, and he knew that it was unlikely that the blond would seek him out for any reason—he seemed comfortable with his own company most of the time, and he was closer friends with his own peer-group: Kiba, Shikamaru, and his own teammates—and perhaps that was for the best. Perhaps no extraneous words were needed between them, just a mutual understanding and new-found respect.
“Stop talking like that. You’re no dropout like me.
No, even if he’d lost the fight, he was not a failure, not even in the eyes of the one who’d triumphed over him. He wasn’t a loser, but he was not all that he could be either—what was the point of striving to better one’s self when one was bound by unchanging destiny? Fate was not only a scapegoat for the responsibilities he did not wish to claim, but his belief in it was a hindrance to his own growth, and freedom meant not just freedom from the curse that marked his existence but freedom to change himself, as well.
Freedom to mature.
The moon waxed from empty blackness to full radiance, catching and tempering the light of the great golden sun, the long, cold night of his soul no longer shrouded him and confounded his eyes; Neji found himself pulled out of the darkness, and the world looked so different that he almost didn’t recognize it, so full of potential and electric with possibility.
When those bright blue eyes—impossibly blue, wild-blue-yonder high-summer-sky blue eyes—landed on him again, weeks later, at the inauguration and formal announcement of Tsunade to the position of Hokage, they regarded him with warm pleasure and approval, and the blond had broken out into a wide sunshine grin…and Neji found dull heat rising to his face, feeling absurdly flattered.
Whether it was his fate or his choice, it didn’t matter in the least, and the end result was precisely the same: his life was irrevocably bound up with Uzumaki Naruto’s life and dream and destiny, and in his embrace of that binding was true liberty.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 05:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 06:02 am (UTC)Thank you very much! I'm always a little nervous when I go something new, so it's nice to get compliments like this. ^__^
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 03:52 pm (UTC)