Lee
When Guy came to see Lee in the hospital, he was so deeply worried about whether he was okay or not, if he was seriously injured, that he almost forgot about the laws surrounding what would happen to him now that his mother is gone.
If it were not for seeing a nurse on the way there, he would have burst into his room, ready to ask every question racing through his mind and on the tip of his tongue.
“Hey, can you tell me how Rock Lee is doing?”
He got lucky with her answer, “I have just left his room. Are you his sensei?”
“Yes, I am.” he admits with a grin, “Can you tell me if he’s hurt or sick with anything? What happened to him when he was gone?”
“According to him, he was simply locked up in this wooden case the whole time. He’s strained his muscles when trying to run from and fight this alpha his mother sold him to, but other than this, he’s not sick with anything—as far as we know, anyway. We’re still keeping an eye on him and Naruto to be sure what was used on them won’t make them sick or kill them.” she did confirm when he appeared to be scared still, “He’s not hurt and so far he doesn’t appear to be sick with anything. Physically speaking, he’s fine.”
To this, Guy allows himself some room to breathe and try to calm his racing heart down, “Good.”
“I’m sure you know of the laws surrounding what will happen to him now that his mother has passed.”
This hits him like a bucket of cold water crashing over him.
How could he have forgotten this? He always knew death wouldn’t be the way for him to get custody of Lee, not with the way the laws in this village are!
Of course he’d be forced to follow through on whatever his mother could come up with under the guise of tradition! What else would a boy like Lee be trapped with otherwise.
He supposes he must have done something to give this away because now she’s telling him, “I’m sure it will be a bit odd to have your students mating each other in such a circumstance…I’m so sorry, Guy. I would never wish this situation on anyone.”
He knows she means it more from him than Lee and somehow, this makes it worse, “Don’t be sorry for me; be sorry for the kid who never got a chance to have any say in his life. Now, where’s his room at?”
“It’s down the hall, third door on the left; room number 404.” she does tell him, “We are having only three people per visits with each patient from this mission. Please be respectful of this rule and wait your turn to speak to him if the limit is already passed with your presence.”
“I will.”
His heart has never felt so heavy in his chest as it did when he got closer to the room where his student is staying.
After their agreement to mate each other, Gaara left Lee’s room to check on his sister since she had wanted to come to see this Shikamaru person (who Lee insisted to him was an incredibly kind person despite his laziness).
Of course, this meant he finally got to see Sakura and Ino—who appeared too heartbroken somehow over something, “Ino, Sakura! You both came!”
“Lee, are you alright?” Ino immediately asked, though her heartbroken appearance was too powerful to be hidden by concern, “They didn’t do anything bad to you, did they?”
“No, all I did was sleep in a wooden box and wake up when they were starting to get close to the border.” he does add, “I did fight the alpha my mother got me arranged to me, but thanks to Gaara, I’m not mated to him!”
At the mention of mating she seemed to grow more distraught, “I heard your mom wanted you to mate Neji if you failed to mate that guy…is it that true? Are you really going to give up everything to be with him to avoid prison?”
“I am not doing that.” he does his best to ease her worries while she’s here, “There was a loophole I used to get out of mating Neji—all I have to do is have Lady Tsunade approve of Gaara being my mate instead and I will be mated to him.”
Ino tries her best to put on a smile, though she does wonder, “You really want to mate him, huh?”
He nods, smiling when declaring, “More than anyone else, actually.”
“Even if it means in the eyes of the law you’d no longer be able to be a ninja of our village?”
“Yes, I am more than okay with that. As long as I get to have some say in this, then I’m fine with leaving everything to be with Gaara.”
When Ino and Sakura had come over to see Lee, Tenten was already gone and one of the nurses overseeing Lee and Naruto’s care had told them all the truth when they were together.
For Ino, this was all a cruel reminder of everything Deidara told her about his departure from the village and it only served to make everything he said so much more real than hearing it from him did the first time around. She fully understands why Deidara hates this village so much to the point where he believes it cannot be changed—the legal failures to keep omegas like Lee safe from a lifetime of abuse, neglect, and general misery were a glaring stain on a village too bigoted to change its ways.
Now Lee is going to lose everything in order to avoid either going to prison or being mated to someone he doesn’t like.
Sure, he may want to mate Gaara and he does seem happy at the talk of it, but it does nothing to stop her from thinking of everything Deidara said to her when they last saw each other.
“…If you are, then I can be for you too.” she musters, though in all reality all she wants to do is cry for her friend.
Sakura takes her hand and gives it a small squeeze, changing the subject to lighten the mood, “Well…on a better note, Naruto and Sasuke are doing good.”
“Oh, right! I wanted to know what happened with Naruto!” he exclaims then, “Why was he taken? He wasn’t hurt or forcibly mated was he?”
“No, he wasn’t; he did get some injuries during his battle, but he had Sasuke there to help him.” Sakura tells him in Ino’s place, not trusting her voice to not crack at any moment and a sob to be released from her throat, “He said he was taken when he went over to visit your place; they took him to try to use him to lure Sasuke out to Orochimaru’s place. According to him, they were as much there in our village for you as they were for him. Sasuke joined up with Chouji, Kiba, Neji, and Shikamaru to get you guys back safely.”
Lee now feels incredible guilt to know that his clan’s traditions endangered more lives than he had originally thought, “No one died, right?”
Sakura shook her head, “A few Chunin did when trying to stop him on their way back from a mission. From what Sasuke and Naruto said, they were very powerful ninjas who had the same curse mark from Orochimaru does. They tried to use their power and Naruto’s presence to goad Sasuke into joining them, but all it did was make him angrier at them for thinking he’d be so foolish as to join someone who would weaponize his future mate against him.”
“What about Chouji, Neji, Kiba, and Shikamaru? Are they okay?”
“Chouji, Neji, and Kiba are in the ICU right now. Shikamaru is fine, but they are currently getting all the medical help they need.”
His mother and his clan’s traditions got people killed and seriously injured.
All of this is mostly to blame on her and his clan’s traditions. If she hadn’t sold him off to someone from Orochimaru’s village, then none of this would have happened!
Okay, maybe they would have still gone for Naruto, but there wouldn’t have been as much carnage or urgency if that Kimimaro guy hadn’t shown up to attack Kiba and try to take him back by force.
“Lee, everything will be alright.” Sakura tries to soothe his racing mind yet it doesn’t do much good, “Lady Tsunade knows what she is doing, I promise. I know she can heal them and when they are healed, you’ll be able to speak to her and mate Gaara like you want to.”
“Yeah…” he pauses to glance at his omega friend who seems to be closer yet to crying than she was when she first entered his room, causing him to be distressed at the very sight of her, “Ino, are you sure you’re okay? You aren’t mad at me for wanting to mate Gaara, are you?”
“N-No, not at all!” she’s crying now and he never thought he’d have to see the day where she’d cry over him, “I just—I’m going to miss you so much when you’re gone and it’s…all of this…everything that’s making you do this…it’s upsetting to me because it feels like things will never change here for the better for omegas.”
Sakura is hugging her now and Lee is immensely grateful to her for it, yet he does tell her, “There’s no need to be so upset over me. I’ll do all that I can to visit you as much as possible and write you every day—I’ll even have you come out to Suna to do missions where we’ll be together! Though…if it really does upset you, I could mate Neji and remain here.”
“I wouldn’t want you to do that!” she says while breaking out of Sakura’s hug, “Mate Gaara and be happy—that’s what I want for you, is for you to be happy, and if mating him will do that for you then I’m fine with it. Just promise to do all those things, okay?”
Knowing his happiness matters so much to his dear friend to where she would be willing to let him go to be with Gaara has him realizing then that while he may have meant nothing to his family, he did mean something to others in his life who will always be more of his family than anyone else, “I promise I will! Don’t worry—you’ll get sick of me soon enough.”
“I bet I won’t.” she gives a choked chuckle to this, allowing him to feel a bit better about all this.
He is the one to change the subject, wondering, “How have things gone for you guys lately? Anything new going on in your lives or no?”
His friend made him feel much better after learning of her desire to see him happy no matter what. The least he can do is try to lift her spirits.
While Lee did have a pleasant conversation with them—learning that they are dating is something he did not ever expect, given how Ino was for the longest time, but he’s happy they worked out their differences enough to come that point—he was still confused as to why Iruka sensei was there when he woke up.
Unfortunately, after the girls left, Tenten didn’t return and Gaara’s still gone (though he’s positive he will return at some point or another) which left him alone with his thoughts.
He wasn’t alone with them for long; Guy sensei was already bursting through his door with a kick of it, his smile bright and shining as ever before, “Lee, you’re okay!”
“Sensei!” he cheered, every bit of his tired body screaming at him to lay down so severely to where he couldn’t get out of his bed, “I am so happy to see you, how have you been? Where’s Iruka sensei, is he still around? How about Tenten?”
His sensei is blunt with him, which he prefers in a situation such as his, “I actually ran into him when he was leaving Naruto and Sasuke’s room. He said that he was here to fill you in on the situation regarding your mother’s final orders for you when you woke up. Tenten was supposed to be there for moral support, but it seemed she left at some point after Gaara showed some interest in being your mate and hasn’t come back since.”
“Oh…” he instantly deflates to this, his eyes now glued to the sheet covering his body, “I must have made her very upset then…”
“No, I’m positive that wasn’t it!” Guy sensei assures him with his hand raised in the air, “I will talk to her about it tomorrow when we train together. I’m positive she’s not mad at you; she’s not the type to be mad over something like this.”
While it does make Lee feel better to know his sensei will speak to her tomorrow about this, he is met with him giving him all of his sadness at the news, “You’re going to mate Gaara, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
It breaks Guy’s heart to know it has to come to this. If the laws were not so stacked against omegas in this village, Lee’s clan’s traditions would have never superseded his right to have any say or autonomy over his life. He could have been taken into his home, where he would have been the father he should have had all his life instead of what he got in the end.
He cannot blame Lee for making the decision he is: after what happened between him and Neji, he’d be very hesitant about allowing him to mate the young alpha no matter how much Lee has insisted he’s changed to him and Tenten.
“Do you actually want to mate him or is this to get out of mating Neji?”
“No, sensei, I do want to mate Gaara!” Lee eyes snap back up to meet his own, his conviction shining through as he speaks, “I have always, always known that if I had to chance to choose who my mate would be, it’d always be Gaara. I didn’t want to trap him into a mating with me out of pity or convenience so I talked him about it and he made it clear he’d want to mate me for genuine reasons.”
Lee is not the type to lie to him on such topics and Guy knows better than to doubt him when he’s like this. Hearing what he did next only had him realizing how much of a good person his student really is, “I agreed to the mating because it’s something we both want with each other; if Gaara had said he never wanted to be mated, I wouldn’t have ever asked him to be my mate. I would have mated Neji to avoid forcing him into a life he didn’t want for himself.”
He knows what he means with this: he didn’t want to treat Gaara like his clan treated him. He wanted Gaara to choose to be with him on his volition, not out of pity, convenience, or manipulation.
It’s moments like these where he remembers why he has much greater respect for Lee than he does most Jounin: the young omega is a good person who tries to do better despite the life he’s been given, “You really are something special, you know that?”
When all he does is chuckle, Guy takes a seat next to him in the room and says, “You know you’re leaving everything behind…are you fine with that?”
“I am, if it means I get to be with someone of my choosing.”
That’s all Guy needs to hear to know Lee is making the right choice for himself.
Though it doesn’t stop the sadness at losing his favorite student ever from erupting out of him, “…Then that’s how you know you made the right choice in life…” he stops himself before he can cry, instead choosing to make this lighter for him, “You know that mating someone from another village won’t be an excuse to not write me or keep up with your training, right?”
“Yes, I do!”
“Good, then be prepared because I will see you every month and I will write you every day and I will want to know how you’re doing on your training because you’ll always be my student no matter who you’ve mated or where you live!”
Lee smiles in response, tears slipping from his eyes, “I would not have it any other way, sensei!”
He hugs him tightly, holding his favorite student for a moment as it starts to dawn on him that soon, Lee will be leaving with his mate to live in another village and he won’t be in his squad anymore…
“Well,” he clears his throat when ending the hug, “let’s go over some training exercises you can do when in Suna!”
“Awesome, I cannot wait to see what you have in store for me!”
“Trust me, it will blow your mind!”
Now is not the time for crying. Now is the time to keep things light and happy for Lee as he faces a whole new chapter of his life that many his age don’t have to think about until they are far older.
A few days later, Naruto, Kiba, Sasuke, and Lee are released from the hospital. Chouji and Neji remained there to further recover from their extremely severe injuries.
Naruto was…oddly accepting of his decision to mate Gaara, to say the least. In general, Lee was expecting him he could do better, but what he got was so extremely opposite of what he had been predicting mentally it actually left him speechless.
“I heard you have to mate Neji, go to prison if you don’t mate him, or have granny Tsunade approve of a new mate for you if you don’t want to mate Neji. Is that true?”
“Yeah, it is…” Lee then decided to go through with it now instead of putting it off any longer, “I am going to ask Lady Tsunade for the approval of Gaara to be my mate.”
Instead of getting angry or ranting, all Naruto did was blink and say, “Oh, well, if you want to mate him that badly then go for it.”
This left Lee unable to respond at all. Given Naruto’s own dislike of Gaara, he had thought there’d be much more drama than there actually was, but all he got was, “Anyone is better than Neji if you ask me and you seem to really like him, so why not mate him? If you want, I’ll tell granny about your huge crush on him to get her to agree to the idea easier.”
Nope, he couldn’t respond even to this, “Well, I’ll see you around then! Be sure to stop by my place when you’re done talking to her about it, okay? I wanna have a sleepover, just us omegas!”
All he could manage after that was a nod as his friend left with Sasuke to go somewhere together (he thinks it was a date, but he couldn’t really focus on their conversation when he was steeped too deeply in his own extreme shock at Naruto’s acceptance of his decision to mate Gaara).
Now that he is free to do this and Tsunade is available, he is currently waiting outside her office to speak to her about mating Gaara.
Though, he wound up not waiting for long when Shizune opened the door and out came the alpha he was going to ask about mating instead of Neji, “Gaara, what are you doing here?”
“I was here to speak to your hokage about mating you. What else would I be here for?”
He does have a point there…
Shizune’s attention is now on Lee, with her first question being, “Are you here to ask about mating Gaara instead of Neji?”
He nodded and she sighed, “Well, Lady Tsunade does have only one question to ask you about that… Come on in, she’ll see you now.”
He does enter her office and from what he can tell, it looks as though Gaara will be there when he’s done with this.
“You’re here to ask about mating Gaara, right?”
He faces the woman who has sent down her pen and is staring at him from her desk, her gaze having an air of scrutiny to it, “I am, ma’am.”
She hums and asks the question Shizune had told him of, “Tell me…if you came from a clan like the Yamanaka or Nara, who would you want to mate?”
“Gaara. My answer will always be Gaara no matter what scenario you give me. He’s the only alpha I will ever like enough to want to mate and be with for as long as I live. Anyone else would simply not do; I could never be happy with anyone but Gaara.”
Her eyes rake him over, as if trying to detect any lie or uncertainty in his words, and ultimately she comes back with, “So you really are telling the truth then.”
He nods and she gains a glow of regret to her features as she informs him of something important, “Unfortunately, I am not the one who can call off the mating according to your clan tradition. All I can do is enforce prison time or approve of a backup mate should you have one. If you want to mate Gaara, then Neji has to be the one to end the mating.”
…Lee figured there’d be one more hoop for him to jump through and now, he knows what he has to do.
“Thank you for telling me this. I’ll go talk to Neji and see if he wants to mate me or not.”
“Good luck on that one, kid.”
He exits her office and is met with Gaara waiting for him, his gaze stuck on the wall across from him, “Let me guess, she told you about Neji having the final say in this.”
“She did, but I know Neji has changed. I know if I talk to him, he will listen to me and he will let me mate you.”
“…You’re too confident in the worst people.”
“I’m confident in myself, so you’re not wrong there!” Lee laughs it off as he makes his way to the exit with Gaara in tow, who comebacks with, “You’re not part of that category, you know.”
“Maybe not in your eyes, but I am in mine and that’s something I can’t really get rid of no matter what I do.”
Gaara makes it his own personal mission to get him to understand what he does after they’re mated. It may take time, but he’s patient when he really wants something.
Though, he’s not sure if he can be patient on the issue of their mating when it’s all in Neji’s hands.
Neji, on the other hand, never expected to have Lee show up in his hospital room after everything that happened between them in the past.
He would have fully understood if Lee didn’t feel much empathy for him after what he did to him, but he won’t lie to himself and say he doesn’t feel the slightest bit overjoyed at seeing Lee here in his room, “Lee, what are you doing here?”
“I’m here to tell you something pretty important.” oh…right, who was he to ever expect that Lee would see him for any other reason outside of something important to talk about? He can’t bring himself to be hurt or shocked when he remembers his previous actions towards him, no matter how much he’s changed since then, “What is it?”
“Even though my mom has passed, I still have to abide by clan tradition in the case should they all pass.” of course he does; how can he be shocked by that at a time like this?
“The tradition states that should I fail to mate the alpha or beta who was originally meant to me before my clan’s passing, then I have to either mate you, go to prison for not mating you, or mate someone with Lady Tsunade’s approval to avoid the other options. The thing is, I can only mate someone else with her approval if you choose to not mate me.”
To the news he’s hearing, Neji has to ask because the weight in his heart is too great at the very first thought popping in his head, “You’re here to talk to me about mating someone else then.”
Lee tenses yet he nods regardless. The pain of knowing Lee would find him so repulsive that he’d want to mate anyone else but him is enough to hurt no matter what the reasoning he will give him may be, “Is being mated to me such an awful idea to you that you would rather mate a stranger than be with me? Am I truly that irredeemable in your eyes? What more do I have to do to prove that I’ve changed?”
“No, you’re not irredeemable Neji!” he tries to convince him yet it does nothing to ease the pain within him, “I’ve already forgiven you for everything—don’t you know me well enough to know I don’t hold grudges by now? I am not one to hold someone’s past against them, you know that about me—”
“Then why mate a stranger instead of me? Why act as though mating me is the worst case scenario for you?”
It’s what he said next that caught him off guard completely, “Because I don’t want to be forced to mate anyone.”
He allows Lee to speak, hoping this will led into some satisfactory answer that could give his ailing heart a bit of reprieve from what he’s hearing, “Growing up in a clan like mine, I’ve always been trapped in a cage made by traditions. I was never allowed to be myself, to accept who I am, or be happy with how I look. I always had to fit the mold of a perfect omega in every single area of my life, from my looks, to my mannerisms, my etiquette, and how I talk. I wasn’t ever good enough and I was always mistreated for it.”
Neji never knew of this; he only knew Lee’s clan was poor and incredibly conservative. He didn’t know he was being mistreated far longer than the mere slap he saw his mother give him at his place—he wrote that off as her being mad at him for violating tradition, not a case where he was being mistreated at home all the time.
“Surely it wasn’t in your clan’s traditions to mistreat you if you didn’t fit the mold exactly as you were mandated to.”
“It actually is in their traditions to do just that. The traditions of my clan are to give the alphas and betas the best treatment around while omegas are nothing more than birthing machines and slaves to their mates.” he then tells him, “I don’t think you really get it—I never had a say in who my mate was going to be, who I wanted to court, or who I could be interested in. Everything was always decided by my clan…I never had freedom like an alpha or beta does. I was always an object for them to abuse as they pleased before selling me off to some rich alpha or beta for personal gain.”
He had no idea…he didn’t believe it was ever that awful…
“The laws in this village allowed them to get away with it without any consequences for their actions because tradition matters more than my freedom to choose a future I want for myself. All I want is to have at least one moment in my life where I get to decide what I want for myself. Is that really too much to ask of you, Neji?”
Neji pauses in this, asking him then, “Do you think you could have wanted to mate me if I had been nicer to you when you first told me you were an omega, if I had asked to court you, if I had courted you—would you have wanted to mate me then?”
Lee is honest and it hurts him to hear it, “No, I wouldn’t have. I don’t have those feelings for you.”
“Ah…I see…so mating me would be no different from trapping you in a cage set up by your clan.”
“Yes, it would be.”
He’s not mincing his words here and while it does hurt, he’d rather have the honesty than Lee sugarcoating things to spare his feelings.
Had this been said during the Chunin exams, he wouldn’t have considered his own hypocrisy in pursuing Lee in the manner he did when he made it clear he was not interested in him as a mate. He should have seen it when he approached him after his battle with Naruto, yet he chose to ignore reality to focus on trying to find the perfect moment to court him and win him over.
Lee was never meant to be his mate. The only way it could have happened then and now was if he was forced into it by his clan.
Like how his branch of the clan was forced into servitude to the main branch…oh.
When he adds this into the mix, he fully sees how shitty of a person he has been to Lee. Because really, how he treated Lee was not any better than how the main branch of his clan treated him and his family. Like what his clan had done to him, he was going to strip away Lee’s rights and freedoms from him—all because he was an omega and Neji couldn’t let go of the sexist views he had about them.
Now that he has grown more as a person, he sees that Lee is an equal human being to him: a bird trapped in a cage by clan tradition, with Lee’s only being made more severe due to his gender and how it affects him legally, societally, and at home.
They are the same side of the same coin. He only wishes he would have realized this sooner before doing what he did because now, all he has are regrets for the way he treated Lee as well as a healthy dose of disgust at himself for stooping as low as those in the main branch did to him.
He will redeem himself in at least one way, “I will end the mating then.”
“You mean it?” when he nods, Lee is rightfully curious, “But why?”
“Because I don’t want to become the cage that traps a bird in it.”
He’s only lucky Lee understood so well. Hell, he’s happy that the young omega gave him a hug with a kiss on the cheek, “Thank you, Neji…you will never know how much this really means to me.”
He may not know Lee’s mate, but he’d rather have him mate a stranger than have him trapped with him in a loveless mating, “Don’t thank me for it, Lee.” he does have to ask, “All I want to know is if there’s any way we could have gotten mated out of this requirement.”
“The only way that would have happened is if Gaara didn’t agree to mate me.”
…Of course…
“I would never want to strip Gaara’s freedom from him like my clan did to me. If he never wanted to be mated, I wouldn’t have asked him, and I would be your mate by now.”
…it’s Gaara. It was never a stranger; it was always going to be Gaara no matter what.
Lee was never his and he would never be even if they were mated. He would always be Gaara’s to the very end.
He doesn’t say anything to this, but he does tell him to, “Get me a pen and some paper. I need to give you the evidence to give Lady Tsunade of my forfeiting you as a mate.”
“Oh, right, I’ll be sure to do that right now!” Lee said this with too much enthusiasm as he headed out the door to ask anyone working in the hospital for those items.
He wouldn’t deny it: seeing Lee so happy that he hugged Gaara on the spot hurt, but knowing that he wouldn’t ever be a cage to someone as special as him made it lessen.
When Lady Tsunade got the paper written by Neji renouncing Lee as his mate, she was a bit surprised to see it happen so soon. Here she had thought he would put up a fight or make it incredibly difficult…or, worst case scenario, force Lee to mate him by refusing to let him go.
No, he gave him up after only one talk they had. It was enough to make her wonder, “What did he say when he gave you this?”
“He said to find the freedom a bird freed from a cage would with my new life.” Lee recalls with a smile on his lips whereas Gaara remained stoic.
“Looks like he grew up then,” she muses when addressing the two, Gaara specifically in this instance, “You have only two days to mark him as your mate. If you do not, then I will have to find him another mate.”
“Fine.” the redhead responded a bit too nonchalantly given what he had been told to do.
Now, she had thought he’d try to be a bit romantic about this like any other person would be in this situation.
Nope.
Gaara—standing close enough to Lee to do this without any struggle—rolled down the collar of his jumpsuit and bit his scent gland there, officially marking him as his own.
She was flabbergasted to say the least, “…Didn’t you want to do that somewhere special? Like, the beach or something?”
“It doesn’t need to be special.”
Well…that’s one way of looking at it…
Then again, Lee did appear to be giddy nonetheless, “It’s not the area that makes it special; it’s who I’m with that does.”
…They deserve each other. That’s all she can say about this.
“Get out of my office, please.”
“Will do, ma’am!” Lee cheered, his excitement overflowing from him as he began to talk about dates, ask questions about Suna, and what to look forward to from here on out while they were exiting her office.
Little did she know that Lee meant every word of what he said.
For him, it really was not the location that made his marking special.
It was having the person he wanted to mate marking him that did.
For the first time in his life, Lee got to have a say over something he never thought he would—he got to mate somebody he likes and who likes him back. Someone who never tried to buy him or impress his clan…someone who liked and respected him enough to mate him because of it.
So what if it happened in an office? All that matters is he got what he wanted for himself in his life. Everything can only get better from here on out now that he’s finally, at long last, freed from the cage of his clan’s traditions.