NejiTen Oneshots And Drabbles

Getting Gone

"How does it feel to be without a home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?" – Bob Dylan

June 3, 1968 – The United States of America

Indiana sped by on either side of him in a flurry of yellows, greens, and blues bright enough to hurt his eyes. Beneath him the motorcycle growled and bit, new tires leaving dark tracks every few hundred feet. Cool air stirred his entirely too-expensive clothes and ebony hair; it felt like a thirst being satisfied.

Neji Hyuuga had hardly heard of this boot-shaped state before he'd taken off. Now he was simply in it and didn't get what people back home had laughed at. No, Indiana didn't have the skyscrapers and speedball excitement he had known in the city, but – if his brochure wasn't lying – it was thanks to this Midwest land that the East Coast had the steel for those skyscrapers at all.

He was sick and tired of Eastern snobbery. New York hadn't had any of this picturesque countryside to boast about, only miles of pavement and sunshine filtered through a haze of gases. When his dad had wanted a break from the urban rush, they had gone to Jersey, but only so far that the city's lights still blocked any view of the stars.

He had been told of California from a man on Fifth Avenue. He had been highly out of place, sandals and fringe clashing with the pressed business suits, the guitar in his hand with the briefcases. The only resemblance he bore to Neji was his shoulder-length hair. And his yet-undiscovered values; in San Francisco, he was informed, people were taking care of themselves and their "brothers and sisters. Fighting the Man and finding God. Where are you going, man?" Neji sometimes wondered if the hippie's question would have had such an effect on him if he hadn't been paying such close attention to Vietnam and the Tet offensive…how many troops were being sent out, only to be killed.

Despite exposure to full-fledged hatred for the twenty years he had so far lived, Neji had never been openly racist like his dad. But neither had he done much to help in African Americans' cause (nor the cause of any other Americans). But he, like any other decent human being, had felt a twinge of feeling on the fourth day of April, when a bullet had exploded into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's right cheek. He had witnessed the mourning five days later, and something had begun to grow, like a fire getting hotter and hotter. Neji hadn't understood it then.

When he had turned sixteen, the grant kept for him by his mother's former lawyer was passed into his own bank account. Twenty thousand dollars seemed to appear out of thin air (but not free) and it was his. That same year, he made the decision to stop getting his hair cut. The ensuing shouting match with his dad had been tempestuous, but Hiashi had not so resented him for that he did not help fund Neji when he was accepted into Columbia University. Despite the obligation he was under, Neji never felt that rising heat go away.

Then somebody threw a bottle in Louisville, Kentucky, the result being an eruption of madness, of passion, of everything Neji had been raised to fear, and the fire had exploded, burning him up. Cashing in all of his savings, he had purchased a brand-new Honda Scrambler, filled a backpack with clothes and a map. He had the argument of a lifetime with his dad, nearly coming to blows, while his sisters watched, sobbing in the doorway.

Neji had felt bad about that, despite all his efforts to stiffen his heart while he walked out. Those girls he had grown up with had known both parents and little unpleasantness besides the changing fashions. While he had been studying, they had been keeping their hair short. Beyond what seemed a years-long bitterness for their carefree lives, he had allowed Hinata to cautiously hug him just before he had thrown himself out the door and onto his bike, moving West as fast as possible.