Ashes of the Past

"You sure you don't want to go to the healer's tent?"

"I'm fine," grunted Neji, feeling the cool earth beneath his head. "Just need to rest for a bit."

"I can handle things here, you don't need to…"

"Oh SHUT UP, Kiba!" Neji shouted at the whitish blur beside him.

"That's Akamaru, you idiot!" Kiba's angry voice came from just a little further down, a much darker blob nearly indistinct against the sky. "You're so blind you can't tell the difference between a dog and a person!"

"Sounds like someone's outdone themselves for the day," came a new voice from Neji's feet.

Half-sitting up, Neji beheld a reddish blur coming out of the darkness, lit by a small glowing lantern. A white blur appeared in Karui's dark face as she smiled, saying, "Listen, Dog-boy, you're supposed to be watching the line, not him."

"So?" Kiba practically growled.

"So get back to doing it." There was a slight jingle as the girl shifted a red-and-white something in her hand. "I just came from the medic camp, I'll patch him up."

Kiba hesitated. Obviously he'd seen the confrontation with them yesterday. "I don't…"

"It'll be fine, Kiba." Neji interrupted him, annoyed. "Keep watch, I'll be with you as soon as I'm all rested."

There was a moment of silence, and then: "If you're sure." The white blur vanished into the darkness, along with (presumably) its owner.

The floating red blur sat beside him, eyes curiously clear in the indistinct blur of her face. "Geez, you Hyuuga are more careless than I thought. Telling your friend to leave you while you're out like this? I could shiv you right in the heart and no one would be the wiser."

Neji grunted, slumping back on the earth. "If you were going to do that, you would have done it in battle this morning."

"Fine." The girl sighed. "But I still might be an infiltrator. Someone under a genjutsu, you know."

"Your particular brand of annoying is hard to imitate." Neji allowed himself to smile.

A snort broke loose from the blur. "Fair enough." Suddenly a hand was cupping his head, gently lifting him upright. "So. Now that we've got that out of the way…" A bottle shoved itself into visibility, "…drink up."

Neji lifted an eyebrow but obligingly gulped down the bitter liquid. Coughing, he allowed himself to be lowered down to the earth. "It has just occurred –hck— to me…" He managed, "..that you are still –hagh- fully capable of using my situation –huck—to humiliate me."

Teeth flashed white again in a toothy smile. "Not a bad idea, but not the case here. Battle's started, all bets are off. We need your eyes back."

"Mmm." Neji closed his eyes for a moment. The throbbing did seem to be lessening.

There was a short silence.

"Thanks for saving my life back there in the battle," said the girl. Her voice was curiously quiet.

Neji shrugged, eyes still closed. "If it comes to that, thank you for saving mine. It is a battle. One protects one's comrades."

"Like with your cousin?" Stiffening, Neji opened his eyes open to see a (much clearer) Karui shake her head, a bemused smile on her lips. "Relax. I'm honestly not gunning for her anymore. Even talked to her some on my way around the lines here. She seems to be a good kid."

"She is." Neji replied, leaning back, but still not closing his eyes.

"I guess I just…" Karui looked away for a moment, "…I saw the two of you backing each other up back there."

"At any point, were you paying attention to the BATTLE?" grunted Neji.

"I'm trying to be friendly here." The girl snapped. "Maybe you could make it a little easier?" Sighing, she brushed her hair back. "It just… I guess I realized that you weren't joking. You know. With what you said about your cousin."

"I'm not generally known for making jokes." Neji observed, and was rewarded with a small smile from the girl. "Especially about my family."

The smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "Well… yeah." Karui coughed. "I guess I can understand that."

Something about the way she said it made Neji take a closer look at her. (Unobtrusively, of course. Staring at her directly would have creeped her out, and Neji felt they were on the verge of understanding here.) Karui was apparently staring very hard at the ground, her brilliant amber eyes half-lidded, a sliver of white gleaming as she bit her lip contemplatively. One dark arm was hugging the other close to her side. Actually, mused Neji as things continued to grow clearer, she looked surprisingly…

…vulnerable.

He hesitated to cut the silence, but finally cleared his throat. "Before the attack." He said, nodding at the sudden start she gave. "You started to say something about your father?"

"Oh…" Karui looked at him for a long second, started to say something, bit her lip, and looked away again. "It's not important. Forget it."

For a moment Neji considered playing the "you-still-owe-me-an-answer" card, but discarded it. Something in her manner told him this was not a subject to be investigated lightly. "It may not matter much," he replied quietly, "but simply so you know… I have had my own share of experiences with fathers." It wasn't much of a line, he knew, but it was all he had.

Karui grunted noncommittedly as if to say well, duh. But to someone trained to recognize body language, the way her shoulders were trembling spoke volumes.

Neji waited.

Finally Karui heaved a sigh and glanced at him sideways. "You might have wondered why a hothead like me was assigned to Kaibi-sama's security detail."

Neji had not known that she was part of Killer Bee's team, but he nodded anyway.

"Well, to put it simply, a lot of it has to do with my father." Turning to face him more fully, she brushed her hair back and stared at him. "He was a great ninja. One of the best. They called him the Head Ninja of Kumogakure. It's not the Kage, you understand, but it's a… well, it's a hell of an honor."

Again, Neji just nodded.

"Dad wasn't around a whole lot back when I was growing up. And when he did, he was tired and wounded… sorta drunk too. But he always brought something back for me." A blink, and the dreamy expression in the girl's face was replaced by sudden embarrassed annoyance. "Not… that that has anything to do with anything. I don't know why I mentioned it. Anyway." She coughed. "One thing he talked about a lot when he was home was the Hyuuga. How dangerous they were, how they couldn't be taken by surprise, how they could set up ambushes for you miles in advance… he used to say, 'Karui, if Kumo had just one pair of those eyes, there'd be a lot less men dying in surprise attacks. I'd give my life to start a clan of those white-eyed bastards here in Kumo.'"

"The Hyuuga are a respected clan within Konoha." Neji tried to keep smugness from seeping into his voice. "Though most would say that the Uchiha possess a more deadly bloodline."

Karui shrugged. "I don't know about that. Dad was obsessed with you Hyuuga. The intelligence aspect alone just blew his mind. Dad was in ANBU, you know, so surprise and stealth were big things with him. He was all about quiet, subtle surprise attacks, about lying low and keeping quiet…"

"This is your father we're talking about?"

"Ha, ha," answered Karui, glaring at him. There was a small twist to her mouth. "I got my temper from my mother, if you have to know. Comes with the hair."

"I see." Neji nodded, perfectly serious. "Please continue."

Amber eyes rolled in their whites. "Anyway, he respected—and hated—you guys. He made it a point to kill as many of you as he could in the war… told soldiers to pick off the Hyuuga in a cell first, so they could get away and lay a trap if things went bad. He was pretty famous for it."

Neji shrugged. He hadn't been in the war, and there was really only one casualty from it that he cared about.

"Well anyway. That was the war. Ancient history, right?" Karui seemed a little relieved at his non-reaction. "So we fight the war, people die, countries make deals, and before you know it, Dad's on a peace deputation to Konoha to witness the signing of a new treaty." Snorting suddenly, she added, "Dad didn't think much of it, said we'd be at each other's throats again within a year. But hey, he was famous, the country wanted him there, so he went."

Neji said nothing. A sense of dread was slowly growing on him.

Karui said nothing either, for a moment, apparently struggling with something. "I'm gonna… just tell this next part as I saw it at the time." She said at last. "Later I found out there was a whole lot more going on, but… well, at the time… At the time I was just a kid."

"It'd been… a week? Maybe? Since my father had gone off to Konoha. I was at the Academy. We were doing… basic ninja training stuff. Memorizing the different seals, trying to see how fast we could go through them all. And then this chunin teacher comes in and specifically asks for me. Says I need to come with him. Of course the kids all go 'oooh' and giggle and whisper… you know how it is."

"Not really." Neji shook his head.

"Whatever. Anyway, I'm figuring I'm in big trouble, especially when it turns out we're not even going to the principal's office, but the Raikage's. So the whole trip up to his office, I'm absolutely pant-shitting terrified trying to figure out what the heck I did to earn this. And then we go into the office and I see my mom already there, crying. Which at first scares me even more, because holy crap they called my parents, like your ultimate nightmare in Academy, y'know?"

"Not really."

Karui paused to throw him a weird look. "What kind of childhood did you have? No, never mind. Don't answer that. Anyway, my mom just picked me up and hugged me, which was my first clue that I wasn't in trouble. But the Raikage was just standing there like a stormcloud, and all the other ninja hovering around looking awkward and saying, 'I'm sorry, kiddo." Brushing her hair back, the girl snorted and stared off into the darkness. "You'd think ninjas would be less sentimental. It took me a good fifteen minutes to learn that my dad had been killed."

There was a long silence. "I… see." Neji managed, feeling something was expected of him.

"Wow. Thanks," snapped Karui, glaring at him. "Those words of comfort warm me right up. Guess it's true what they say about how sentimental you Leaf nins are, huh?"

"I'm just…"

"Forget it." Karui waved off the apology. "So yeah. Big surprise, my dad had been killed by a Hyuuga. Word in the village was, it was some kind of revenge killing—last stroke of the Hyuuga's against their greatest enemy. Didn't help that Konoha refused to prosecute the murderer, citing that he'd been involved in a kidnapping. Of course, everyone knew THAT story was absolute crap." She rolled her eyes.

"The account I always heard…" Neji began to say.

But Karui waved him into silence. "I know, I know. Like I said, I learned later there was a lot more going on. But this was then. The Raikage swore up and down there'd been no such kidnapping attempt, and threatened war if the body of the murderer was not delivered to us. I thought that showed how much he cared about our family." A short bark of laughter escaped the girl. "Of course, when Konoha finally caved in and delivered the body to us, ANBU whisked it away before my mother and I could even take a look. We only got the body several weeks later, with obvious signs of surgery on it and the eyes removed." She shook her head. "Even at the time, I thought that was weird."

"Really." Neji didn't think he could manage to say much more right then.

"Yeah." Apparently the girl was in her own little world. "My family fell right out of the news after that. They'd been talking about getting him a memorial, but it never materialized. Kumo eventually conceded that Dad HAD been involved in a kidnapping, of the heiress no less."

"My cousin."

"…right, yeah, your cousin. Kinda weird, to think of my dad trying to snatch her in the night." Again she gave a little snort. "Of course, the Raikage claimed he had nothing to do with the attack, and decried Dad for sending the two nations to the brink of war." Her red hair wagged back and forth as she shook her head. "I'm still not sure what to believe about that. Honestly don't know which is worse. I do know that it was hard to get through school, with that sort of thing attached to your dad's name. Working with Bee-sama is less an honor and more a way of keeping me in the village, you understand. Too worried that I might spark off another war." Her voice took on a more considerate tone. "Though it WAS kinda cool to learn that it was the head of the Hyuuga clan that eventually took him down."

Neji did not trust himself to speak.

"But that's what got me, too." Karui said, frowning suddenly. "Obviously we hadn't gotten HIS body. Didn't take much digging to figure out that the Head had a twin brother in the Branch Family. From there…" she shrugged. "The implications were easy to work out."

There was a long silence.

"That just… wow." Karui glared into the night sky. "I mean, for the most part I've learned to deal with the rest. Ninjas, war, ugly, I get how the life goes. You suck it up, you take the blows. But… just thinking about a guy who'd… order a servant to take the fall for him—his own brother, no less… that just… wow." Glancing down suddenly, she remarked, in a suddenly different tone of voice. "I guess that was my problem with your cousin. I figured she'd be the same as her jerk dad." She gave a little chuckle. "Course, one little talk cleared THAT right up."

Neji finally managed to speak. "The… body…"

"Sorry?" asked the girl, arching an eyebrow.

"What… did you… do…" Neji said, forming each word carefully. "With the… Hyuuga body?"

The girl gave him a strange look, then shrugged. "My mom and I had never really wanted the body for anything." She said. "That'd been more a popular demand thing. There'd been talk about burning it in public…" Neji drew his breath in sharply, "…but that, like everything else, died away. In the end, my mom and I just had it buried alongside my father. Just seemed… fitting."

There was another long silence. Neji knew, KNEW it was up to him to say something, but somehow he couldn't manage it. His mind was churning with altogether too much to think and deal with.

Apparently it showed. Karui looked at him curiously. "Are you all right?"

"I…"

It was around then that Shikamaru came running up and told everyone to form circles.

A/N: Yeah, a lot of people saw this plot twist coming. I did like the Karui/Neji thing just because of how different their temperaments are, but there was also the attraction of having Neji fall in love with someone from Kumo. And THEN it occurred to me how I could make their backstories intersect. It was just too perfect not to do.

I don't plan to be giving another fight scene, so the next chapter should be up before too long.