This is planned to be a character study of sorts: the first is Neji, but I plan to concentrate on all the so called 'genii' of Naruto. Still I have not much experience with writing, and this seems to have something missing. Updates will be sporadic but I would really appreciate constructive criticism.

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto.

It is two months after Neji makes chuunin, when he refuses to fight Hinata- not spar, not when the Hyuuga council wants her so totally destroyed (and he cannot break his cousin like that, not again, not when she is the last spark of warmth within his clan.)

Five minutes- that's how long that they use it for. It isn't that his seal hasn't been activated before. But previously? Only for a few seconds. Five minutes is stretching it- a lot. Use of the caged bird seal for long periods of time has been known to cause nerve damage to those with weak bodies. Neji may be a genius, but he is only fourteen (and he seems all the younger as he curls up and shakes, thin wooden walls doing nothing to muffle his raw screams)

Maito Gai finds him at his team's training grounds when he comes in the early morning. It is three hours later and Neji's lips are blue- it is a cold morning, and he is still in shock. He rocks back and forth, but Gai holds him still and tries to rub colour back into his unresponsive limbs as his student sobs brokenly about how the elder stood over him with his cold eyes, how it hurt so much and it didn't stop and he thinks it must have broken Hinata too, because he heard her screaming join his, and he wanted to die because he didn't think it would end, not ever. And there is a silent agreement that they will never mention this because if Neji doesn't have his control, then what does he have?

It is a few more months after that, when Neji is called before the council of Elders (Hyuuga Hiashi is not present) when he is offered the keys to his cage. If he only would consent- the current heir could be sealed, and he would take their place. It would be a sacrifice on their head's part, of course, but he has failed to conceive a son, it is only to be expected.

And like last time, Neji's eyes flash as he tells the Council that Hinata is the last hope that the Hyuuga have left, and they had better damn well start to accept that, even if they somehow want to undermine Hiashi-sama, he won't be the puppet head they need, and neither will Hanabi, and Hinata will never bow to them. At least, he means to say all this, but they activate the cursed seal again and he can only gasp out a few words of defiance through the pain.

This time, it lasts for far longer (six minutes and thirty-eight seconds-he stays sane by counting.) One of the Elders aims a malicious, though not particularly painful, kick at his ribs as they exit and the humiliation crawls over him like thousands of black leeches, sapping his strength until it takes him an hour to pull himself back to his room on his hands and knees.

He will not break again, will not lose his control, and so he tells nobody. The next day his team are doing nothing more threatening than a simple escort mission, so it does not matter that his fingers are still twitching so badly that he does not trust his jyuuken.

What Neji does not know is that when the mission ends, Gai-sensei goes to the Hokage and begs her to save his precious student from his family, because they are killing him. But there is nothing that Tsunade-sama can do, not when her position is still relatively tentative (and even the Sandaime was wary about interfering with the Hyuuga traditions.) And if Gai is always taking him on overnight training trips and long missions and he is unable to spend nearly as much time in the Hyuuga clan compound, it definitely isn't because he is trying to protect Neji.

Three weeks before Hinata's fifteenth birthday (and despite his position as her protector, there are only ten months between them), Neji snaps. The Elder with the ice cold eyes is tearing Hinata apart with the Gentle Fist, breaking her body and self confidence in his bitterness because she will be the next clan head. Neji pushes her away and takes the rest of the man's One Hundred and Sixty Eight Trigrams attack, fighting the instinct to spin into his Kaiten because it will only make the inevitable punishment worse.

This time the Elder deactivates the seal after three and a half minutes, and Neji breathes again, only for him to order Hinata back to her rooms (where she will cry, and then maybe gain a bit more inner strength, a bit more willpower which will enable her to complete her goals.) He turns back to him with that look in his eyes and a cruel smirk on his lips and the torture continues.

Neji hears the screams beginning after five minutes and forty one seconds. At eight minutes and seventeen seconds, he realises that they are his. He loses count thirty six seconds after that- mercifully, he also loses consciousness.

It is not his own bed that Neji wakes up in the next morning. Nor is he in Gai-sensei's house, where he went after that night -the first time. The ceiling is beige and it is too quiet, he is in an unfamiliar location and he can't breathe. He begins to hyperventilate under the pressure of the fear and the shame which fill his lungs instead of air (Neji tries not to lose his control but he lost it a long time ago to the clan- and that might be the thing that has broken him).

There is a voice murmuring somewhere in the distance, but they know better than to touch him. Still he feels himself breathing almost against his will, mimicking the other person's deep breaths. When he has regained some coherence, Nara releases the Kagemane and steps back. (Why is he at Nara's home, of all places? Why did Hinata bring him here-and he knows it was her, because who else would care?-instead of to her team mates' clans? (Although he supposes they still hold a grudge from that Exam, two years ago, and he can't deny that he deserves it. And that disastrous, scarring, first operation which left him in the Intensive Care Unit means that Shikamaru Nara will be unlikely to ever deny him sanctuary.)

It is at this point that he tries to sit up, and his entire body refuses him, painfully. For the first time he is aware of his own self, and it feels as though he has been just shocked with a raiton technique. His nerve endings are aflame and he cannot move. Hysterical laughter wracks his body, tearing at his raw throat. (He realises that he has nothing left to give. The clan have stolen his mobility, his pride- what more has he got? His life? They took that when they placed the caged bird seal on his forehead, when he was four years old.)

Nara's indifferent stare is becoming a little concerned. This is what jolts Neji out of his hysteria more than anything because Nara? Concern? For one of that clan to concern themselves with anything means that the situation is more than a little out of the ordinary. Neji thinks that the world must be ending- not that it should matter to him, his world ended six hours ago on the white tatami floor.

He cannot rush to the window to check for fire and brimstone, not in his condition, so he simply listens in disbelief as the Nara stares at him intently (What?) and tells him that he has a week's leave and if he needs anything, at all, then it would be too troublesome to judge him.

Neji spends most of the next year sleeping on Lee's couch- it isn't as comfortable as his own rooms (how can he say that? They belong to the Hyuuga clan, as does everything else he has ever owned), but it is safe. He doesn't brave the clan compound again until Hinata's sixteenth birthday.

He almost shuts his eyes when Hanabi is forced to fight her older sister for the position as clan heir. He doesn't want to watch, but he cannot look away, because if he does it will be the images of his uncle and father projected onto his closed eyelids. The battle is just as painful as he thought it would be- Hinata has barely channelled chakra to her palms in her first attack when her sister shakes her head in some sort of wild defiance and forfeits the fight.

Then the fight turns on the audience as Hinata stands with a snarl over the collapsed and sobbing body of her sister, daring anybody to try sealing her. Neji runs to cover Hinata's blind spot, and it doesn't matter what punishment he may receive later, not when his cousins have just begun to defeat the cruel blood of his clan.