For the next few weeks, he does not touch her. He trains her with words, fixes her stance and posture with gestures made in the air. They talk little. Hinata never overexerts herself anymore. They do not walk home together.
Once he is satisfied with her chakra control, he teaches her how to concentrate chakra into the pupils in order to see chakra points. She is not a quick learner, but she is diligent and masters everything he teaches her given enough time.
"I think I can see them," she says one day.
Neji is sitting under a tree, watching the clouds pass overhead while Hinata worked on concentrating chakra. He turns his eyes to her. "Show me."
"How?" She asks timidly, looking baffled and a bit frightened. She looks at him like that often, as if always afraid that he'll come up with some bizarre new punishment to torture her with. She is always tense with him, even more than she was before.
"Here," he says as he pulls up his sleeve and extends his arm to her. "Show me."
"I don't want to hurt you," she says. Her eyes are compassionate. Forgiving even.
He hates her. "You'll meet me again tonight."
She flinches at that. She looks at his bare arm again, her eyes hard and glassy. While he gathers chakra, she makes her move, hitting the chakra points on his arms with her fingers. The pain is sharp but bearable. When he sees the red welts showing up on his pale skin, he tries to tell himself that the pressure welling up in him is hatred, not pride.
"You missed three times."
"I am sorry, Neji nii-san. My control is not perfect yet." She pauses, then adds: "The chakra flow becomes unstable if I get emotional."
"Learn to control your emotions then."
The look she gives him is unreadable. "I will try."
He cuts their training off early that day. He feels a headache welling up to unbearable proportions behind his left eye, and he no longer wants to see her face. He watches her back and she leaves and feels an inexplicable pressure welling up in his chest. He swallows the lump in his throat and leaves their training ground.
*-*-*
He was stunned into silence the first time Hiashi approached him. He'd gotten used to being an invisible boy in the Main House, an obstacle to be sidestepped and looked straight through. But on that day, when the battle had lulled, Hiashi approached him and looked straight at him, not through him.
"Will you come with me?" Hiashi asked, as if Neji had the option of saying no.
Silently he followed Hiashi to a quiet spot apart from the others.
"May I ask what you desire of me?" He said boldly. Neji was disappointed to see that no anger flashed in Hiashi's eyes.
"Perhaps only one of us will survive this war, Neji," Hiashi said. "Whoever does should know all the Hyuuga techniques."
The Hyuuga family crypt was freshly adorned with flowers today, as it is every other day. Neji stops outside the crypt door and sits on the steps. The noonday sun casts his long, stretched shadow across the crypt door. It is a warm, sunny day but he feels cold. His skin is damp and clammy, and he cannot keep his hands from shaking.
"When will you stop haunting me, Hiashi?" he whispers bitterly. "Your daughter--look what she has driven me to. Haven't I given your family enough?"
He is reckless and foolhardy. He knows this and loves it and it makes him the deadliest force in Konoha's army. While the vanguard is inching forward, he is slicing straight into the enemy lines. Men fall dead by the hundreds under his hands while deadly blasts miss him by mere millimeters. Ice shards splinter into his face and he feels no pain, no fear. He feels his blood running down his face and arms and has only one wish: closer. I'm right here. Just end it.
He sees the ice missile long before he reaches it, long before anyone else without the Byakugan could possibly see it, and he flies towards it like a bird yearning for blue sky. Please. Enough.
The crypt door cracks beneath his fist. Slowly the cracks grow outwards, as if woven by some invisible spider. The first stone tumbles loose as he turns to leave.
"When will it be enough, Hiashi-sama?"
A black shadow flits across his blue sky and the world grows colder. He slams into the snow face first, a heavy weight on his back. His vision is black but pain flares across his face in bright, stark colors. His back floods with warmth. He hears his name and lifts his head, pushing the weight off of him.
Hiashi's body falls off him, broken and motionless. The snow absorbs his blood eagerly, blooming red-pink like some carnivorous flower. His brain has ceased to work. He is unable to form words and can only stare blankly at Hiashi's guts steaming in the snow. This is wrong, he thinks. This is not dignified at all. Not a proper way for the Hyuuga Clan leader to die.
Hiashi reaches for him and Neji instinctively draws closer. The man touches his cheek with his blood stained fingers.
"The techniques cannot be forgotten," Hiashi said. So cold and business-like, even in death. "You must live, Neji. For Hyuuga. For Hinata."
And so Neji survived the war. For that was their bargain.
*-*-*
He is awake, pretending to be asleep when she comes. He knows that she knows he is pretending, but both of them feign ignorance, for that is the Hyuuga way. She slips soundlessly into his room and craws under the thin blanket with him, her warm, thin body trembling against his back. Sometime during the night he falls into a genuine slumber, but not before hearing her whisper, "Thank you, Neji nii-san."
He sleeps a dreamless sleep that night. When he wakes, it is still dark out, but Hinata is gone.