Fever Nightmares
A/N- Beta'd by UberChimerism.
Haruhi Hyūga walked down the halls of Konoha Hospital, her pace quick but composed, as was expected of her profession as a nurse, as she made her way to Room 117. One of her kinsmen, Neji of the Branch Hyūga, had returned from a dangerous mission with very grave injuries.
She had read the report, and could only imagine how painful it had to be. A slash on his shoulder from a bladed weapon, a cut on his cheek, and multiple puncture wounds on his back from kunai. But that was not what got her; what was worst were the wounds to his right shoulder and lower torso, inflicted by arrows fired at high speed. It was a good thing that the medical ninja, led by Iroha Hyūga, had arrived only moments after the fight ended.
Shizune and a few other medics had already healed him of said injuries, but Neji would still need some help regaining his strength. That was where Haruhi would come in; who better to help a Hyūga regain their strength than another Hyūga?
"No! NO!" Neji muttered as he struggled to open his eyes. "Begone, you fiend…!"
"Neji. Neji! Wake up!" a distant voice called, laden with worry.
Neji's eyes shot open and he went to attack, only to be restrained in a firm grip. Realizing who his visitor was, Neji tried to steady his breathing. "Haruhi?"
The Hyūga woman smiled and nodded reassuringly, worry still in her pearly eyes. She removed her hand from Neji's wrist and gently pushed him back into a lying position before pulling up a chair, placing what looked like a notepad on her lap. "It sounded like you were having a fever dream. Could you tell me what it was about? You were under attack, it sounds like."
Neji covered his face with his hands. "I was. That Sound-nin I fought…he'd come back as this winged abomination…some Cupid thing… And the things he said…that my destiny was to die just so… No, no… It's too awful to repeat." He was not going to tell Haruhi about how that spider freak told him that his foretold death was just so Naruto could "do his pretty little cousin". He had too much respect for Hinata to even repeat such crude talk about her, however hypothetical.
Seeing that the branded Hyūga was too distressed to continue, Haruhi decided to end her note-taking and leave Neji to get some more sleep, promising to have her assistant Tetsumi bring him some books.
As she walked down the hallway, Haruhi furrowed her brow. Those nightmares of Neji's… She would have to inform Lord Hiashi about his nephew's state, and she would definitely have to ask Lady Tsunade about the possibility of Neji having been poisoned…
"Have you had any more strange dreams?" Haruhi asked, notebook at the ready. Lady Tsunade had told her to keep taking notes for the time being, and Lord Hiashi hadn't returned from his mission yet.
Neji seemed to sink into his bed a little more. "There was this huge monster, some one-eyed, ten-tailed abomination. I died from being impaled by one of its wooden stakes. As if I couldn't have just used Rotation…!" He clenched his hands on the white blanket. "It was insulting!
"And then…oh, Sun above! Obito Uchiha, who turned out to still be alive, became the host of the monster, got it ripped out of him, then was forced to revive this other Uchiha guy, Madara." Neji paused to think. "Madara somehow ripped some sort of Beasts out of Naruto and some Cloud-nin like it was nothing. Naruto was dying, the Cloud-nin somehow escaped dying, and then Madara stabbed Sasuke before leaving him to die." His voice grew husky as he continued. "Guy-sensei…he opened the Eighth Gate…and was crumbling to ash…"
Neji tried to sit up but was too exhausted, so he laid back down and let go of the blanket.
"Naruto was somehow given the power of this man known as the God of Shinobi, even though the man had been dead for many centuries… And then, it turned out that Naruto and Sasuke were the reincarnations of the man's sons, whose descendants had been in conflict for centuries—gods from machines were par for the course at this point…" Neji thought deeper, his face bearing a slightly confused moue. "Naruto came back, and so did Sasuke due to that Kabuto character. Naruto saved Guy-sensei, though Sensei couldn't fight anymore. Then Naruto and Sasuke fought Madara." Neji shook his head. "And then, some other strange creature who called himself Black Zetsu appeared… He was apparently the will of this God's mother, Kaguya…and things got much, much worse…"
The Hyūga boy made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan before closing his eyes again. "It was revealed that this Black Zetsu had been meddling with our history for centuries. And at one point…" Neji placed a palm back over his face. "It's…I just…have no explanation. Somehow, Obito gave Kakashi a Mangekyō Sharingan from beyond the grave. It just made no sense…
"Eventually, Team Seven sealed away this Kaguya character, only for Sasuke to put everyone but his team under some genjutsu of his (I swear! His incessant need for drama!)… Anyway, he and Naruto fought, called a truce—after blowing each other's arms off, of course—then went their separate ways."
Neji had removed his hand from his face, though it had failed to wipe away his shell-shock. "Two years after that, some clansman of the God—Toneri, I think his name was—he planned to destroy the Earth by crashing the Moon into it. But before that…as if the Hyūga hadn't been insulted enough…Uncle Hiashi and his bodyguards fell much too easily to this Toneri's minions—which somehow went unnoticed for an entire day!—and Hanabi and Hinata were reduced to damsels in distress, disgraces to our bloodline!
"And the moments between Hinata and Naruto…my class was ahead of theirs in the Academy, so I know for a fact that Naruto never seriously noticed her until the Chūnin Exams and therefore, that incident with Hinata's bullies could never have happened! My god, I'd swear that Black Zetsu character was starting shit again…!"
When Haruhi left Neji, her pace was more hurried. Lady Tsunade needed to know about this, and so did Lord Hiashi, mission be damned!
When Haruhi checked on Neji again, it was clear that his fever dreams were more intense. Why did that kotarō have to take so damn long to make?!
"Naruto and Hinata got married; they had a son named Boruto—or was it Bolt? Either way, completely nonsensical—and a daughter named Himawari. Sasuke married Sakura, despite his lack of interest in her, and they had a daughter named Sarada—or Salad, another nonsensical name—and he was absent from her life! He didn't even know who she was, pulling a sword on her at one point! For someone who grew up an orphan…! And then there was this doubt surrounding Sarada's maternity…! I swear, he and his became less and less respectable as time went by…! Anyway, everyone else in the Konoha Twelve married as well, except for Kiba and Shino…
"And everyone else…Guy-sensei was wheelchair-bound; Kakashi became the Sixth Hokage; Anko really let herself go; and those people Sasuke recruited, as well as Orochimaru and Kabuto, were somehow scot-free, despite all the war crimes they all committed…
"One thing made sense, though: Naruto fulfilled his dream, becoming the Seventh Hokage. But at what cost? Neglecting this Boruto-Bolt, saying that that was just how things were…"
Suddenly, Neji's eyes shot open, and he shot up, startling Haruhi. "Naruto! He promised! He promised me that when he became Hokage, he'd change the Hyūga…! but that never came to pass, even after he married Hinata…! Why…how could he forget?!" He was hyperventilating now, and Haruhi quickly rushed to his aid, rubbing his back. "Neji! Neji! Calm down! Breathe!" But so distraught was the branded Hyūga that she had to sedate him. While the sedative took effect, Haruhi gently pushed him back down on the bed. But the frantic look on his tear-stained face remained, and that made her heart clench.
"He said…he'd never break a promise… He said…" another tear rolled down Neji's cheek before Haruhi wiped it away. "It'll be alright, Neji," she whispered soothingly. "It'll be alright." The horror in the boy's eyes eventually gave way to sedation before finally closing.
Leaving the room, Haruhi's pace lost a little more professionalism. Dammit, Lady Tsunade…!
That night, Neji slept dreamlessly, and awoke to the morning sun.
Standing at the window was his uncle, Hiashi Hyūga, clad in the Jōnin uniform of the Hidden Leaf, as he had been out on a mission for the past few days. His Byakugan allowed him to see that his nephew had awoken. "I came back as soon as I could after receiving the messenger bird. Haruhi told me everything."
"Everything, including my death?"
"Yes." Hiashi turned from the window. "And from the notes she gave me and Lady Tsunade, it sounds like you may have been poisoned with saigenzai."
"Saigenzai?"
"A hallucinogenic drug. According to Lady Tsunade, it's normally used as a narcotic, but depending on how it's prepared, it can be used as a slow-acting poison that can be used to lace weapons. If one doesn't remove it quickly, it can drive the victim mad with fever dreams."
Neji thought back to his fight with that Sound-nin. The kunai, those arrows…"That's gotta be it. That Sound-nin's weapons must have been laced with that stuff."
"Maybe. In any case, Tsunade's almost done preparing its medicinal form, kotarō."
Hiashi placed a hand on his nephew's forehead. "Just focus on recovering, Neji. Once they release you, we'll start training. If what you told Haruhi is truly what fate has in store for us, we'll do what we can to circumvent it."
Yes. Maybe he could do for his nephew what he couldn't for his twin…
At last, the Godaime Hokage finally completed the kotarō, and when Neji dreamt no more fever dreams, they finally released him.
High time they did, too, for after his release, Neji wasted no time training with his uncle and cousins. Naruto would be leaving for his own training under Jiraiya of the Legendary Sannin, and the rest of the Konoha Twelve would undergo training as well.
He would not be left behind.
On the night of his first day of training, his memory trailed back to his match against Naruto in the Chūnin Exams. People must live within an unchangeable flow, he had said. No one can change their destiny. But the blonde had surprised him that day, had knocked some sense into him, in every sense of the phrase. As he finally let sleep overcome him, a small smile crossed the branded Hyūga's face at that memory.
Destiny… it sure was a funny thing, wasn't it? Well, funny or not, if anything like those fever dreams was what destiny had in store for him, then he would just have to follow his uncle's advice and do whatever it took to change that destiny. Train harder, work things out with Hinata and the rest of the Main Family, whatever it took.
Butterflies weren't the only ones with wings to flap.