That Night

𝒮𝓅𝑒𝒸𝒾𝒶𝓁: one more chance.

"And I was crying on the staircase, begging you: please don't go"

She knew it all along. There was no way for her to deny that the feelings that, blossomed inside her for Neji, were real and had appeared years ago. She could even remember the odd tension inside her that she came to feel from touching him, and much more, during her teenage years in those lucid moments where her hormones were in a mess. She also remembered that particular training evening for the annual festival offered by Konoha where her family participated. Ever since they were children, Neji volunteered to help her with the training, and because of how heavy it was, she even lost once her eyesight for a few days; but despite that incident, every year on, he continued to support her with the training, except for the two years where the war happened and, of course, the recovery of her cousin after the wounds that almost took his life. At fifteen years old, in a training for this holiday, the focus and intensity of the movements had caused Hinata to fall on her back, and the reaction of her nii-san was to catch her in his arms just before she reached the ground; in a sudden shock, however, they both fell, causing Hinata to end up underneath him. Perhaps, it was from there that she knew that someone could be attracted to a person in a different way than romantically.

At the academy, they had been explaining how adolescence came and the physical changes would begin to show, it was even mentioned how attraction to other people would begin, but she hadn't understood what they meant until she could allow herself to be skin to skin with Neji Hyuga in a context other than training, on a mission or in some casual interaction as a family. Seeing him so close to her and feeling him on top of her body made her anything but uncomfortable. He had secretly given her a memory that would last forever and give her plenty to imagine at night.

Years passed by, and from that moment on, Neji's physical contact towards her became more constant. Without having said a single word, they became closer in many ways as now they did not hide to hug each other, touch each other's shoulder in mid-conversation, caress each other's hair, even stare at each other out of nowhere. And of course, feelings began to emerge, but they couldn't do anything about it. It was a feeling, until then, considered inconceivable and it was more than obvious that the family and the clan's history would never allow a romantic bonding between the two branches to take place.

That was why she had it well etched in her mind that what she felt for her nii-san was not at all recent. Maybe she didn't have the exact word in mind. Maybe it didn't even exist. But she was sure she had always had feelings for him.

That whole bundle of feelings reached its peak, to the point of making her burst with pride. And that was because, on a certain day, Neji Hyuga was proclaimed as the clan member who would lead the family in the fourth ninja war. It had been an historic moment that would not only mark the history of the clan, but would define the new fate that he had so painstakingly created for himself.

During the war they fought in the second division of the alliance and, although they talked a few times, there was no time enough for deeper conversations about how they were handling the war. And everything took a turn for the worse from one moment to the next. When she saw him step forward to save her. All after that it seemed as if time stood still and she could not reach him.

By the time she had him in front of her, there was little or nothing she could do. She waited for her best friend, Sakura, to try to unify her chakra control and postpone the inevitable, but the war continued and thousands of shinobis needed her power just as much.

She didn't want to leave Neji's side, he was trying to talk or at least breathe, until she forced him to stop, he was snatched from her arms and she only remembered afterwards, watching her nii-san being carried away on a stretcher by other of the division's comrades.