Note: As always, thanks to everyone who reviewed. This is another Great Big Awesome Chapter, what with it being Thanksgiving and all. XD
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twenty-five: the subconscious, bury
Hyuuga Neji is in a state of extreme displeasure.
Somebody has told him that he has to take a vacation.
Now, if any other member of ANBU had received this ultimatum by none other than the stern-looking Godaime (with her head tactician standing at her back, nodding sternly—curse you, Shikamaru), they would have been ecstatic. Running-around-Konoha-squealing-in-glee ecstatic.
Of course, Neji is not just any other member of ANBU. As he walks out of headquarters for the last time in two weeks, he feels as if he can cry. Life without work is barely life at all.
In the old days, he would have simply trained his days away with Lee or his uncle. But that was before he had gotten to know Sakura.
In other words, before Sakura had forcibly made him get a life. Besides, now that they were married, she would enforce his life.
Yes, Neji has no luck at all.
So Neji makes his way home, head down and looking more than a little glum. He runs into Lee and Tenten on the way, who both make bad jokes about his "perceptive aura of gloom."
Neji merely sighs, tosses his hair, informs Lee that he has used the word "perceptive" wrongly, and continues to trudge slowly down the street, leaving a large amount of blue gloom in his wake. Birds cease singing and little girls skipping home with flowers for parents watch in dismay, as their flowers seem to wilt before their very eyes. A cloud passes over the sky.
And Neji keeps walking, wrapped up completely and utterly in his bad luck.
He realizes, halfway home, that his newfound break will mean that Sakura has an excuse to organizer another dinner party. This realization is enough to stop the ANBU Captain in his tracks.
His wife is an exceedingly popular shinobi, and so is he. Between them, they have amassed a lot of friends. There are the Rookie Nine and their families, all of their old jounin-sensei, Lee and Tenten, ANBU friends, medic-nin, shinobi they had worked with at some point or another, Tsunade (who always demanded an invite), genin teams…
And to top it all off, the Sand Siblings were visiting. Oh, joy.
To be fair, Neji likes them all. He really does, honestly. But gathering that number of shinobi in one place over dinner and wine…
It had been an interesting experience. He had learned the hard way that fire jutsu, alcohol, weaponry, sand, and a pet pig did not mix. It had taken a week to fix all the damages.
Everybody had had a wonderful time, though, and departed from the Hyuuga compound at around midnight, smiling and waving. Neji had fled upstairs, abandoned the idea of another shower, and cowered under the covers until morning.
The very memory is enough to make him twitch.
So Neji is convinced not to let Sakura guilt him into another dinner party. He will have to make his argument subtly, of course. He loves Sakura dearly, but the woman is dangerous when she needed to be, and Neji doesn't want to be on the receiving end of one of her punches.
It is early evening and the Hyuuga compound is deserted. Hinata is out, Hanabi is training with Konohamaru and Moegi, his uncle is with Hinata and Naruto, and Neji seems to have the house to himself. Most likely Sakura is still at work as well.
Well, not completely to himself. As soon as Neji opens the door to the compound, he is attacked by a small golden furball who immediately begins licking him energetically.
Neji lifts the puppy; wincing slightly at the feeling of the warm, wet doggy saliva. No matter how much Sakura tells him the licks were because of the dog's "love" for him, he still wishes that the canine Yuki could find some other way to express her love, rather than drooling all over him.
"Good girl," Neji tells Yuki awkwardly. In the past months, he has become quite skilled at holding the puppy. Yuki pants happily, her pink tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. One golden ear flops over her eye, but she leans forward nevertheless, almost gently taking two of Neji's fingers in her mouth, before proceeding to chew on them.
Neji groans aloud, holding the dog an arm's length away. "Sakura bought you chew toys," he tells Yuki grumpily. "And yet you insist on teething on my fingers."
Upon hearing Sakura's name, Yuki's ears perk up, and she abandons her chewing of Neji's fingers, instead opting to wriggle out of his hands.
Neji blinks, setting the puppy down. Normally she victimizes him for no less than fifteen minutes after he returns home.
Yuki, now on the floor, runs around her human master excitedly, finally coming to a stop in front of him. She wags her tail at the bemused Neji. "What is it?"
In response, Yuki runs around him one more time and then skitters to the corner of the stairs, where she lifts one paw and gazes at him questioningly.
"I am too old to be playing guessing games with dogs," Neji mutters to himself. "What is it, Yuki?"
Yuki responds by bounding up the stairs with a little difficulty, Neji following behind her, careful not to trod on her tail. She leads him further down the hallway, all the while barking happily.
Neji is more than a little perplexed to find that the dog has led him to his own bedroom. He sighs aloud, leaning down to ruffle her fur. "I appreciate your guidance, but in future, I think I'll be able to find my own way to my bedroom."
Yuki barks.
Shaking his head, Neji enters the bedroom, and is immediately slammed with a sense of foreboding. Something feels terribly, horribly wrong. He activates his Byakugan and scans the room, hand instinctively going to his weapons pouch. Nothing.
With his hands still in a firm defensive stance, Neji edges further into the room. No traps so far. Of course, this could all be an elaborate genjutsu…after all, Uchiha Itachi is blind, but still at large…
"Oh, for goodness sakes," an exasperated voice sounds from somewhere to his left. "Neji, you're so paranoid."
Instinct takes over, and Neji promptly Jyuukens the closest object to him, which happens to be the solid wood dresser. For a moment, nothing happens. Then the dresser splinters into a thousand little pieces.
"Neji! That was your uncle's!"
Neji spins around to see, not a deadly missing-nin, but…Sakura, wearing not her medic-nin clothes, but pajama bottoms and a mesh shirt. Her normally carefully styled hair hangs in disarray around her face, and she draws one pale and slightly shaking hand across her green eyes. She manages a half-smile for him, nevertheless.
Neji crosses over to her in two quick strides, carefully wrapping an arm around her. "Sakura? Are you all right?" In all their married life, he has never seen her come home from work early.
Sakura's left eye twitches a little. "I don't know. I think I've got the flu or something. This is the second day I've thrown up. And I'm really hungry all the time, but nothing stays down."
Neji raises an eyebrow. "Have you seen Tsunade-sama?"
Sakura snorts at him. "No. All I want…is…"
"Is?" Neji prompts. He is used to taking care of sick females, since Gai-sensei had practically forced them to tend to Tenten whenever she had fallen ill, and as Hinata's cousin, it was his duty to protect her when she was feeling unwell.
"Is some spicy chicken-filled dumplings," Sakura sighs. "And I don't even like spicy food. What are you doing home, anyway? You don't look as dead as I do."
"I've been forced to take a vacation," Neji mutters under his breath. "But it's probably for the best, seeing as you're ill and whatnot."
Sakura gives him another tired smile. "How sweet of you. But I'm just going to go and sleep some, now." Without waiting for a response, she staggers over to the bed and collapses on top of it in an exhausted heap.
Neji looks at her, feeling slightly worried. He sets his katana and mask down on the non-decimated dresser, and, stepping over the remains of the old one, heads downstairs, to see if those spicy chicken-filled dumplings can be arranged.
--
In the next two days, Sakura's condition doesn't improve itself. She is throwing up more instead of less, and the need for dumplings has increased. Despite his insisting, Sakura firmly refuses to see a medic about this. Neji secretly thinks it's a pride issue.
Which is how he finds himself at Tsunade's office on Saturday afternoon, standing in front of the Godaime as she fixes him with a stern glare. "What are you doing here, Hyuuga? Do I have to order you barred from the doors?"
"No, Hokage-sama, this isn't another plea to resume my duties," Neji says hastily. Last thing he needs is to have Izumo, Kotetsu, and Shikamaru having an excuse to harass him every time he passes Hokage Tower. They do that enough already. "It's concerning Sakura."
At the mention of her former apprentice, Tsunade sits up a little straighter. "Sakura?"
"As I'm sure you're aware, Sakura has been indisposed for the past four or so days," Neji closes his eyes for a moment.
"Ah, yes. I remember filling in for her earlier this week, when she had to leave. She said it was just a bug." Tsunade fixes Neji with a fish-eyed look. "Do you have reason to believe otherwise?"
"It just doesn't seem like a mere bug."
"Mm. What are her symptoms?"
Neji thinks for a moment. "Vomiting in the mornings and usually after meals. Fatigue. Foot pain…and a constant need for spicy chicken-filled dumplings. These symptoms have not changed, and have not ceased or showed any sign of relenting."
To the Hyuuga prodigy's intense indignation, Tsunade actually smiles slightly. Smiles. It is all Neji can do to stop himself from pulling a Naruto—namely, running around the Hokage's desk squealing that Sakura-chan is sick and this most certainly not a matter of amusement, baa-chan!
Outwardly, Neji preserves his shell of calm composure, and simply narrows his white eyes a little.
Tsunade scoffs. "Don't look at me like that, Hyuuga. I'm not a little genin to go running around panicking that the big scary white-eyed man gave me the evil eye."
Neji winces. He hates to be reminded of that brief stint as an Academy instructor. "About Sakura?" he asks, a little impatiently.
Tsunade waves her hand at him, with that infuriating smile on her face again. "Sakura has misdiagnosed herself slightly, it seems," she says sweetly. "Now, why don't you run along and visit your friends? I need to pay a quick visit to the Hyuuga compound."
Before Neji can do more than blink twice and look stunned, Tsunade has disappeared from behind her desk in a swirl of green leaves.
Neji sighs despairingly. Women.
--
After an hour of wandering aimlessly around Konoha and terrifying no less than three weapons' shop owners and two dumpling sellers, Neji determines that it is probably safe to return home. After forming a quick succession of hand seals, he vanishes from the crowded street corner, in the process scaring three young children.
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"Why don't you sit down, Neji?"
Neji gives Sakura an odd look. "I'm already sitting."
Sakura laughs nervously. "Oh yes. I appear to have overlooked that fact." She fidgets slightly, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear.
Neji is unimpressed. "Tsunade-sama visited, it seems, judging from the empty sake bottles."
"Yeah," nods Sakura. She sounds slightly distracted. "Well…I'm going to cut to the chase—"
"—That would be nice," Neji interjects dryly.
The pink-haired kunoichi gives him the evil eye. "As Tsunade-sama said, I seem to have…misdiagnosed my symptoms."
"Misdiagnosed?" Neji looks at her warily. "Misdiagnosed how drastically?"
Sakura smiles. "Fairly drastically. Neji…I'm pregnant."
There was complete, utter silence in the sitting room of the Hyuuga compound for a few moments, broken only by the loud, solid thud of Neji's unconscious body slipping off the sofa and hitting the floor.
--
"How did he react when you told him?" Temari of the Sand inquires, over her glass of wine.
Sakura smirks, resting a hand on her stomach. From his place carrying a heap of baby shower presents, Neji winces.
"Well, with a big strong shinobi like Neji," drawls Shiranui Genma from the other side of the room, "you'd expect him to take it like a man."
"Oh, he did," Sakura assures. She turns her head to the side, catching sight of Neji and the tower of brightly wrapped boxes. "He fainted."
In response to the howls of laughter from everybody inside the dining room, Neji blushes a shade of very un-Hyuuga like red.
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This month has been so busy. Our whole freshman class went to California to see Six Flags Magic Mountain and Knott's Berry Farm last weekend, and it was so much fun, although really tiring.
And, guess what? I passed my black belt test in Tae Kwon Do on Tuesday evening! Hee. I am so happy. Lots to give thanks for, this Thanksgiving. :)
Reviews appreciated!