Written for Day 1 of NejiHina Week: Afterlife
Neji stirred, flinching as pain shot through his head. It was just as quickly gone, but he took a moment to simply breathe before opening his eyes and leaning up to survey his surroundings.
A hand clasped his own, offering help to rise, and as Neji regained his feet he came face to face with-
". . .Dad?" Shaken, Neji abruptly tightened his grip on the hand clasping his own. It was no bigger than his, though a little broader, with the same long fingers.
"Neji. I am so pleased to see you, I-" Hizashi broke off and simply swept Neji into his arms. He tensed, catching his impulsive response, then forced himself to react more calmly, tentatively raising his arms to return the embrace. If not with quite so much fervour.
Hizashi stepped back, his hands on Neji's shoulders, and just . . . looked at him for a long moment. Neji remained still, returning the gaze. He remembered his father - vividly - but it was somehow still . . . quite different, seeing him now. Perhaps not solely because he was now of a height - and nearly of an age - with the man before him.
"You aren't as old as I would have hoped before I saw you again," Hizashi said softly, one hand rubbing his shoulder and the other falling away, "but you have grown up so well, my son."
Neji swallowed, thinking of some of the . . . rough spots along that path. "Thank you." he said thickly, dipping his head for a moment. "I-" he faltered. "I missed you."
"Oh. . . I am so sorry." Hizashi said, reaching up and cupping Neji's cheek, brushing his long hair aside. "How," he paused, looking sad, "how came you to be here?"
Neji's mind flashed abruptly to the battle he remembered and then, a trifle more desperately, of his children, who had been there. "An ambush," he said softly, "travelling as a family, through what should have been safe territory," not that they hadn't been alert even so, but they had not been prepared for the scale of the attack that had come down on them seemingly out of nowhere, "and an overwhelming force."
"A family trip?" Hizashi repeated softly. "The Clan or. . ."
Neji snorted. Both, really, but it had been more than simply his family. "The Clan Head's own and several lesser families as accompaniment, travelling for a diplomatic meeting." One that had clearly- Well. It might not have been a trap, Neji supposed darkly - it might have been shoddy security on the plans at some stage. "Hinata is Head now." he added. And he hoped she shredded whoever had been responsible for confirming the security of their travelling plans.
Whether treachery or stupidity, the results were the same.
"Two of the younger members of one of the other families - teenagers, only genin - were taken out but I think no one else." Neji said almost absently, frowning.
"No one else but you." his father said, and Neji met his eyes and nodded. "H- How?" he asked softly.
"I intercepted an attack that would have killed Hinata and. . ." Neji's throat tightened painfully, too much to force speech through, as the image rose in his mind, the memory all too clear. Hinata on her knees, one hand dripping blood around a blade she had caught before it could reach the youngest of the three children. She had been focused on them, offering comfort and shooing them insistently into a more defensible position.
She hadn't seen the pair of nin working on a combined jutsu that would have arrowed straight for the children . . . and her own back. She might have seen it in enough time to react but not quickly enough to do anything but flee - and not quickly enough to bring the children with her. She never would have left them.
Neji couldn't have watched that, and had chosen. . . "I interposed myself, though I suspected I would not be strong enough to deflect the entirety of the jutsu. I managed to cut enough of its force that it only took me." he added, jaw set.
Hizashi smiled slightly, though his eyes were sad. "You chose, as I did, to die to protect the Main House and the Clan Head." he said, not really a question.
"No." Neji all but snapped in return, narrowing his eyes. "I chose to die to-" He stopped, the bitterness of his father's choice like poison on his tongue. Closed his eyes and took a breath. Tried to release it. "I chose to interpose myself," he said more softly, "because Hinata was there but she would not have been able to move fast enough to shield the children. Not even if it killed her. I had a better position and saw it coming. I could. All four of them."
"The children?" Hizashi said, looking surprised and a little hesitant. "The new heir and. . ." he paused.
"My children." Neji said fiercely, though a tiny smile tugged at his lips as his heart ached with fondness. He met his father's eyes again. ". . .our children."
"Your. . ." Hizashi repeated, looking somewhat bewildered.
"Hinata and I were married seven years ago." Neji said, his throat tightening as he remembered the scene of his death. Both Hinata and their children had been all too close, would have seen him fall. His heart ached with that regret almost as much as that he had been forced to make the choice he had, to leave them at all. "The twins are five, their younger brother only two." They had been quietly trying for another child recently, had discussed it months before the currently political quagmire had worsened, eventually requiring a delegation including several of the Hyuuga families to travel for a meeting in hopes of resolution.
"Oh, Neji, I-" Hizashi wrapped a comforting arm around his shoulders. "Well, you . . . you always did adore Hinata when you were young. I am," he paused, "somewhat surprised my brother allowed. . ."
"Hinata did not precisely give him much of a choice in the matter." Neji said dryly, rather pleased with that memory of his wife. Hinata was coolly cordial with her father, but Neji could never . . . quite forget not only his own father's death, but the pain and humiliation of the caged bird seal both Hizashi and Neji himself had suffered under his hands. There was a special pleasure to the moments when Hinata - so quashed and dismissed by him for years - put her father in his place.
"Hinata? Tiny, shy Hinata?" Hizashi asked, sounding slightly dubious and perhaps a bit more amused.
Neji shrugged. "Hinata has . . . grown up. I believe she is honestly stronger than I. She may always have been." he admitted with ease that had come over many years of watching her stand gently, quietly immovable when she believed in something. He paused, flushing with shame at the memory of how he had once viewed her - what he had once done when faced with the opportunity to hurt her. And how she had refused to back down there, then after, refused to turn away from him, no matter how bitter or sharp he grew with her. "When she has made up her mind nothing will move her."
"You have been happy together?" his father asked, hand resting on his shoulder.
Neji smiled slightly. "Very happy, father." he promised, then straightened, shoulders pulling back. "Our Clan has grown much under Hinata's Headship." he added. "Many things have changed under her hands."
"Only hers, however." Hizashi said, with a touch of familiar bitterness.
Neji's own on this matter was largely gone - though the hurts he had suffered, and those of many others of his family, could not be erased and he, at least, could not forget, they would now never be repeated - but he remembered it well. Hinata had fought hard for that, had brought it up perhaps unwisely soon after taking her place as Clan Head but refused to back down.
Neji was well aware it was in large part because of him, and though his heart ached with it, he could not but love her a little more for that.
"Hinata tried to have me step forward to stand as her equal above the Clan." Neji corrected softly, then snorted quietly through his nose, reaching up and tilting his head to let his hair slide over his shoulder, running his fingers lightly through it. "My seal was gone long before my death." he said, eyes flicking up to his father's unmarred brow before meeting his eyes.
Hizashi's eyes widened, his lips parting on a tiny gasp.
"I refused the place myself. Hinata is a truly brilliant leader for our Clan," Neji said fondly, more than sure of his words, "and I am aware that my own talents are . . . not quite right for taking up such a role. I have been her support and her shadow, not because it is my place as one beneath her, but because I love her and it is how we best combine our strengths for the good of our family. Our Clan."
Even now Neji could not quite bring those two things to be the same in his mind, though he knew Hinata wished that one day it would be so, for all the many families of the Clan.
"You- You truly have accomplished much." Hizashi said, sounding somewhat shaken.
Neji reached out to him with some concern. "Dad?" he said hesitantly, and Hizashi smiled at him.
"I am only . . . surprised. More than, perhaps." Hizashi said with a wry twist of his mouth. "I am very pleased to hear that your life has been happy, and- and to hear of the changes in our Clan." he added, voice cracking. "Will. . . Will you tell me more? Of both? And about my- Your-" he broke off, looking at Neji warily.
"All you wish to hear." Neji agreed, bowing his head, his thoughts straying to his abandoned family, surely what his father wished to ask him about. "But. . . Later." he added, half a question.
His father embraced him once more and Neji's breath caught. Hizashi rubbed his back comfortingly. "I am delighted to see you once more, my son, but I . . . am filled with regret at what brings you to me, and what you have lost." he said softly.
Neji drew a shaky breath and squeezed his eyes closed. I am sorry to have left you, Hinata, my dear ones. . . he thought, trembling in his father's arms as his eyes burned with tears and wishing he could still be with them, but he could have done naught else when faced with the danger that would instead have taken them from him.