I don't often attempt to write multi-chapter fic with actual cohesive plots. Feedback appreciated.
Notes: I keep in Japanese honorifics, items (like weapons and forehead protectors) and I use the English and Japanese names of the villages interchangeably; otherwise I try to keep everything in English. Usagi ringo, or bunny apples, are apple slices with the peel cut so that it looks like bunny ears. Very cute.
Borderlines
It wasn't supposed to be anywhere near this complicated.
The days after the giant debacle that was Sasuke's defection and the subsequent disastrous rescue attempt are spent idling - Tsunade-sama refuses to discharge him from the hospital until she's sure that he's fully recovered, which is almost a month after he feels completely ready to leave. The forced inactivity wears on him - he's never been fond of hospitals, and while Hinata thoughtfully leaves him several books and makes time to visit him, in between her own training and missions, there's only so far that reading and meditation can take him.
His team drops by whenever they can, too, of course, although some of their more boisterous visits make him wish that they wouldn't. He doesn't mind Tenten, who's usually content with sitting by his bed and peeling /usagi/ apples for him, cutting bunny ears into the apple peel expertly with a kunai (he vaguely wants to protest, but he decides not to insult Tenten by implying that she keeps her weapons anything less than perfectly clean), but he sometimes feels as though /he's/ the teacher who should be reminding Lee and his sensei to speak in indoor voices. He's not actually certain that they /have/ indoor voices.
Then, there are the others - Shikamaru, who's there when he wakes up, guilt and relief on that normally inexpressive face; Kiba, cradling his injured puppy in careful arms; Naruto, who comes in through the window at a time which has very little resemblance to visiting hours, and is chased away by a nurse after he babbles something much too fast for Neji to catch. (It's Shikamaru who later tells him that Naruto has left the village, and his hospitalisation only chafes the worse after that.)
Hiashi-sama refuses to allow him on any missions for three weeks after his actual release from the hospital, and while knows better than to protest the command and that his uncle is genuinely concerned, it does very little to improve his mood. He's stopped thinking of the Hyuuga compound as a cage, but despite its size, he feels almost claustrophobic, trapped with little but boredom for company. (He can't even spar with Hinata or his team - Hiashi-sama also refuses to let him participate in anything strenuous, but he can admit to himself that it's mostly Hinata's worry, an almost tangible thing, which keeps him quiescent to his uncle's wishes.)
So it is that even though the first mission he's offered after his forced hiatus is almost insulting, a B-ranked messenger errand which was only bumped that high due to the distances involved, he accepts without protest. Anything to get him moving - he thinks that if he stays in the family complex any longer, he might snap and end up re-enacting the Uchiha massacre, or something similarly dramatic. (It's probably crass to mock the Uchiha tragedy, but Neji thinks that if Sasuke really was concerned about the honour of his family name, he picked an odd way to show it.
He makes good time, travelling at night so the oppressive heat that is Fire Country in the middle of summer won't slow him down; it isn't as though the darkness poses any hindrance to him.
He reaches the rendezvous point - Iseto, a small trade village that's almost on the border, closer to the Hidden Mist and Hidden Sand than it is to the Leaf - a full day before schedule, allowing him to check the streets for signs of anything out of place. It's peaceful, despite its potentially volatile position as a border town; he decides against purchasing a particularly fine pair of daggers (Grass Country-make) that Tenten would appreciate - he'd feel a little obligated to pick something up for Lee, as well, and while Tenten would just thank him and perhaps offer to help him sharpen his weapons sometime, Lee might cry.
Instead, he opts to check into the closest thing that the town has to an inn, which isn't anything impressive, but is, at the very least, clean.
He doesn't sleep deeply, because he's a ninja and he rather likes being alive, but he does sleep fairly well. Nothing trips his rudimentary alarms during the night (his ability to lay more complicated traps limited due to the fact that civilian areas tend not to appreciate loud explosions or extensive property damage) - he's well rested when he meets his contact at a small field just outside town, the grass yellowing and dried-out, crunching under his feet (he allows it to, for politeness' sake) and scratching at his shins uncomfortably.
She's a slim girl, just a little shorter than he is, with a Sand hitai-ate tied carelessly around her neck. They exchange codewords and pleasantries, then she attempts to stab him in the eye.
He dodges the first strike, and disarms her on the second, with a tap to the forearm that seals the chakra points and numbs her grip. She curses, fumbles gracelessly at her weapon pouch, coming up with another kunai that she holds in an awkward overhand grip (he had been under the impression that Sand ninja were trained better than this). He ignores a clumsy block (it doesn't feel as though she's unused to carrying weapons, just unused to carrying /these/ weapons), feints to the right, and drives a chakra-laden palm into her heart.
Neji learned early (when he was four years old) that there's nothing clean or neat about death, but the Hyuuga clan's style comes close. The Sand ninja staggers back several steps, eyes wide, collapses onto suddenly-weak legs, and coughs. One hand goes to her chest, the other still hanging limply by her side, and she keeps coughing as she sinks to hands and knees, and finally to the ground.
He eyes her warily for any signs of breathing - playing dead was one of the most basic ambush tactics taught at the academy - but over a minute goes by without the slightest hint of movement, and to his byakugan, her chakra is a weak, fading thing. He rolls her over with a foot (while he doesn't lack respect for the dead, she /did/ just try to kill him). There's no message scroll in her weapon pouch - there are barely any weapons in there, a sorry collection of several shuriken and a last kunai. Her forehead protector is unmistakably marked with the symbol of the Sand, but he has doubts that she's even a ninja at all, much less one of the proud Suna.
Nothing left on her body explains this sudden, bizarre turn of events. He considers, briefly, the idea that the original messenger had been intercepted and killed, but her fighting hardly matched what he would expect of any organisation skillful enough to torture the codewords out of a ninja. So... the mission itself had been a set-up? Another attempt to steal the secrets of the Hyuuga clan? There was no way the client could have guaranteed that a Hyuuga took this particular mission, however, and -
And from the way his new opponents are attempting to approach him from behind, they don't even know that they're facing a member of the Hyuuga clan right now. He makes a brief count - six men, Sand hitai-ate displayed just as prominently, their aggression clear but void of killing intent; hardly a threat, if the girl is any indication. If they don't want to kill him, and they don't want his eyes, then... while he doesn't like to admit it, he has absolutely no idea what is going on.
The easiest thing to do now would be to kill them all and let Tsunade-sama sort them out, but something in him balks at that idea. Maybe he's been around Naruto and Rock Lee for too long, but he has a premonition that he's about to get into something messy - /troublesome/, even - and leaving it to someone else to solve feels like giving up, and people like them don't know the meaning of that phrase.
It really wasn't supposed to this complicated.