"Namaki! Namaki, I know you're there!"

The words echoed through the clear early afternoon air around the Space Needle, for once sunny with no chance of rain. Shikamaru stood up on the very tip of the point with his arms crossed over his chest and a petulant expression on his face. He knew he looked like a child in the middle of a tantrum, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He had just lost a major game, right after he thought he'd clinched his win forever. That was something that had to be rectified immediately, but to do that, he needed information.

"Namaki!" He shouted again, glaring at the few fluffy clouds overhead. "So help me God, if you keep ignoring me, I'll draw so much attention to myself that the live members of your family will march right over here faster than you can say-!"
"All right, all right, I get it," a voice spoke irritatedly behind him. "I thought I'd gotten rid of you for good. You said you wouldn't be coming back any longer."

"The situation has changed." Shikamaru knew that Namaki's ghost was waiting for him to turn his head to see her, but he wasn't about to give her any more sway over him, not when he'd already put himself in the disadvantaged position by coming to her for help.

Apparently she understood what he was trying to do, because she sighed and floated into Shikamaru's direct line of vision. "What do you want from me this time, shadow-brat?"

"Information. I want to make a deal."

"Ha!" She gave a disparaging laugh. "As if you could possibly have anything that I would want."

"How about a life?"

"A life?" The words were obviously meant to come out scathing, but Shikamaru could sense an undercurrent of interest in them. "I'm long since dead; what use could a life possibly have for me? God know you don't have the power to give me back the life I had before."

"No, I don't have that kind of power." Shikamaru stepped closer to her, fixing her with a focused gaze. "But together, we can stop what happened to you from happening to another member of your family. You can save the life of your progenity."

The Hyuuga ghost's head jerked up as if the words had burned her, a furious glare scalding him. "I thought I warned you to be careful! I told you not to get caught! You foolish boy, what have you done?!"

"Nothing! We didn't get caught," Shikamaru quickly assured her. "No one has seen me-" except that little brat of a cousin of his, and she's not going to tell anyone of her precious big brother - "and no one will. He's not in any danger right now."

"Then why come to me to barter for his life?"

"Because I've deduced that he's going to be, and I want to help him." Finally leaving his high ground, Shikamaru slowly circled Namaki, forcing her to turn her head to follow him. "Unless I'm mistaken, it was not your actions that earned you your sentence, but your opinions, your ideas. Even without knowing your situation or much of your family's laws, I can tell that he's headed down the same path."

"And why should I care?" The Hyuuga ghost spat, turning away from Shikamaru with her arms crossed over her chest.

Shikamaru snuck up behind her and laid a hand of her shoulder, causing her to jump. "You can't tell me you feel nothing for his plight," he whispered into her ear. "A young man still in the prime of his youth, making the same mistakes you made, only decades later. Don't you want to prevent this from happening? Don't you want your life to have stood for something, instead of your death slipping unknown into the ether of the past, the lessons of your tale lost forever?"

He knew he had got her when she asked quietly, "What kind of mistakes?"

Shikamaru's fingers bit into the spectral flesh of her shoulders on instinct, though he quickly forced his grip to loosen. "Disobedience, both civil and not. He's fighting a decision handed to him by the Elders, and at the same time he's keeping secrets from them."

"Secrets like you?"

The words were meant to wound, but Shikamaru just brushed them off with a chuckle despite the sting they left behind. "Yes, like me, though I can't claim to solely hold that honor. He's keeping someone else's secret for them, though knowing this particular secret and not telling is just as bad - if not worse - than if it was his own secret."

"What decision is he fighting? If you even know," she added as a venomous afterthought as if it would mask the curiosity in her earlier tone.
"Of course I know." Shikamaru allowed a note of offense to creep into his voice as he abandoned his post behind the Hyuuga ghost to retreat back up to the tip of the Space Needle. Her eyes Followed him as he went. "He's fighting an arranged marriage."

"An arranged marriage?! Ha!"

The sudden laugh, followed by the abrupt change of the Hyuuga ghost's disposition from curiously affronted to smug, made Shikamaru frown. What had he miscalculated? "What's so funny?"

"I thought this was going to be something important, with the way you were carrying on! But an arranged marriage?" She laughed again, throwing her head back to the sky to show her disregard for the ghost before her. "Everyone in the entire Hyuuga clan is subjected to those! He's not going to be silenced for resisting- so long as he aquessess in the end, and they all do. You want to know why I was silenced? I proposed an Amendment to our Constitution that would make illegal certain ghost-hunting practices enjoyed for sport that I saw as barbaric. Compared to that, an arranged marriage? Forget it, shadow-brat. Get out of my sight. You're not worth my time."

She started to drift downwards in disinterest, but a quiet word from Shikamaru drew her to a pause for a moment.

"He's fighting the decision because he's in love with a man."

Slowly, the Hyuuga ghost turned back, fixing a suddenly more interested expression as he swallowed and continued.

"He's in love with a man… a man who's been dead for fifty years."

Now she turned back fully. "And am I to assume that this 'man' is you?"

Shikamaru inclined his head, but gave no other response. He hadn't wanted to come this close to begging, and the next time he opened his mouth, he was afraid that that was what would come out. He hated to beg, but for Neji's sake, he felt like his body would supersede his mind and do it before he could stop himself.

"And he's told you this? Point-blank, to your face, that he in no uncertain terms loves you?"

"He doesn't need to."

The answer gave little away, and Shikamaru saw frustration starting to build in the Hyuuga ghost's face. Seeking to turn that frustration into a more productive outlet, Shikamaru reached for her with a blank expression.

"Please help me, Namaki. This is a young man who wants to push past the destiny written for him to one he writes for himself. He doesn't deserve to go through what you and I have suffered. How can I help him fight?"

A conflicted expression appeared briefly on the Hyuuga ghost's face before morphing into one of determination. "No. I'm sorry, shadow-brat, but my answer is no, and will be no matter how many time you ask."

Shikamaru felt like an icy hand had punched straight through his gut, grabbed ahold of his organs, and then ripped them back out again in a messy mix of blood and intestinal matter. He was cold, though no clouds had ridden across the sky to block out the sky. "But… why?"

Again, a conflicted expression appeared on her face, but lasted longer this time before she sighed in defeat instead of stubborn determination. "All right. Come here."

She suddenly dipped in height and shot around the spire of the Space Needle, forcing Shikamaru to turn his head to keep track of her movements. His upper lip twitched as he realized that she had just used the move he had pulled on her at the start of the conversation. Gritting his teeth in irritation, Shikamaru followed her down from the top of the tower and found her sitting cross legged on the handrail, and with a scowl, he joined her.

"Why won't you tell me anything at all?"

"It appears that you are under some misconceptions about our family," the Hyuuga ghost said with a cutting stare, steeping her hands like a teacher about to impart a lesson to an unruly student. "I assume you only came to me for help because your Hyuuga friend - or lover, as the case may be - already refused to give you the information that you desire. Am I correct?"

Shikamaru didn't say anything, but he knew she guessed what what his answer would be by the way he averted his eyes from her knowing gaze.

"I see. In that case, this is not about you finding the magic words to persuade me to tell you what you want to know, where you failed before; and don't think I don't know that was what you were trying to do. This is about the oath we, you Hyuuga friend and I, both swore to never reveal our family's secrets, and nothing you can say or do can change my mind to the contrary."

Shikamaru swallowed heavily. "Not even if I told you that he was running himself down a path that will most likely end with his death?"

"I'm sorry, but not even then. Every one of us has - or had - the obligation to protect our own life. We weren't the type to rely on the benevolence of others." Her gaze fluttered down to rest on her hand in her lap. "Anyone who bears the name of Hyuuga is under the strict and absolute power of the Hyuuga family. Ab Ordine Libertas… from order comes freedom. Our covenant is the price we pay for being born with the powers we wield."

Shikamaru bowed his head. He couldn't say that he hadn't, somewhere in the back of his mind, expected this kind of outcome. After all, if he couldn't persuade Neji to let him help, how could he hope to convince this ghost who he barely know to offer information she'd already refused him once? If he was being completely honest with himself, he'd only come to the Space Needle hoping that the Hyuuga ghost would give something useful away by mistake during her attempts to explain why she couldn't tell him what he wanted to hear-

Oh.

He figured it out.

Standing abruptly, Shikamaru inclined his head to his still-sitting companion. "Thank you, Namaki. I believe I have everything I need. I should take my leave now, and this time hopefully I won't have to return."

The words threw her off balance as she looked up at him in confusion. "I'm sorry- what? What did I…? Did you…?"

"Nothing you need to worry about," he said, including his head to her in a gesture of politeness. "Goodbye, Namaki."

With that, Shikamaru turned on his heel and descended from the tower, a plan already starting to form in his mind.

When Hinata finally made it out of the building, she wanted to scream aloud at the sky. It wasn't fair! Here she'd finally been happy with her lot in life, and Neji had to go and ruin it! It was all his fault! She hated him!

Hinata ran down the street without caring where she was going, tears blurring her vision until she no longer could ever read the street signs. Occasionally, someone would bump into her on her headlong dash, and they always shouted angrily she passed them, but she never stopped until her lungs burned and her legs couldn't carry her another step forward without collapsing. Her watery eyes identified a bus station in front of her with difficulty, and she turned her feet towards it, collapsing on the bench with a hiccup.

There was someone already sitting on the other end of the bench, and they looked over with alarm when Hinata tried to wipe her eyes dry and only succeeded in sobbing harder.

"Miss? Miss, are you alright?"

Hinata turned at the sound of the voice, but she wasn't able to make out a face through her tears. What kind of stupid question was that? Obviously she was not alright, as the person had asked. She was balling her eyes out in public! What other answer could she possibly give?

But her private heartache was none of this person's personal business, despite the fact that Hinata had chosen to have her meltdown in public, so she dried her eyes as best she could and gave the person - who she now saw was a middle aged woman holding a bag full of groceries - a weak smile.

"I'll b-be fine. I just l-lost som-mething imp-portant to me, is all-l."

It was only after she said it that Hinata realized how true the statement was. She had lost something important to her: she had lost the idealized version of her big brother, and now she was so scared she didn't know what to do.

"Oh, I'm sorry about that, dear." The woman's expression softened, and she extended a hand to pat Hinata on the shoulder. She flinched away at the first touch, and the woman patted a few more times before pulling away. "We all get times like that every so often, and everybody could use a good cry once in awhile. But if you keep your chin up, you'll feel better eventually."

Hinata could scarcely summon up the energy not to glare at the woman. How could she know anything of what Hinata was feeling right now?

As if sensing the direction of Hinata's thoughts, the woman looked down at her hands folded in her lap with a slightly sad expression. "I myself lost a son a few years ago. Some days, I felt like I couldn't stand to live anymore. But the sun kept rising in the sky every morning, and eventually life moved on, and I moved on with it."

Oh. Hinata looked down in her lap as well, pink touching her cheeks as her anger faded away into shame for thinking mean things about the woman. "I- I'm s-sorry. Do you still m-miss him?"

"Every day, dear. Every day."

A bus pulled into the stop and the woman stood up. "This is me, dear. Are you getting on?"

Hinata looked at the bus. She didn't even recognize the line. "Ah, n-no. I j-just… I'll w-walk. Th-thank you f-for talking to m-me, though."

"You're very welcome, dear. Goodbye."

After the woman had gotten on the bus, the doors closed behind her and the behemoth vehicle belched exhaust and pulled away from the curb. Significantly calmed now after talking to the woman, Hinata stood up and looked around her, trying to figure out where she might have run to in her tear-blinded haze.

Nothing looked familiar. A new kind of panic started to bloom in Hinata's chest; what if she was lost? She couldn't call Neji to come get her, not with the way she'd just acted to him- not that she wanted to rely on him anymore anyway. Calling her father would be equally, if not more, shameful. What options did she have left, then? Other than getting herself out of this mess, not much.

Even though she was starting to feel like she wanted to vomit, Hinata squared her shoulders and started marching down the sidewalk in the direction she thought she'd come from. If she kept walking the way she'd came, eventually she would come across something that she recognized and be able to work her way from there. A tiny surge of pride went through her chest; just a few weeks ago, she would have been frozen here, unable to make any decisions, but now she was up and walking.

See! she wanted to yell at Neji. You don't have to lie to me anymore! I can take care of myself! I am stronger than you think I am!

Hinata had gone maybe a minute, maybe two, when she suddenly felt the presence of a familiar ghost brush up against the edges of her perception. She froze mid-step, and the person walking along behind her almost bumped into her, than walked around her still frozen form with an irritated curse aimed at her, but she couldn't hear it. Her body started to shake.

Of all the ghosts to run into here, of course it would be him.

Suddenly, though, after Hinata had finally convinced her body to move again, she realized something. The ghost wasn't moving, wasn't following her. That meant that it probably didn't even know she was there, and that she had the advantage.

A few weeks ago, Hinata would have run without a second thought, sprinting away as fast as she could until she was safe, and then alerting someone better equipped to deal with the danger. But now, she took a deep breath and turned in the direction of the ghost, following the thin traces of its aura that she could feel. As soon as her quest took her outside of the busy main thoroughfare and into a mostly abandoned side street, she reached down and pulled the switchblade from her sock that all Hyuuga children were required to carry until the were old enough to be given real weapons. With shaking hands, she opened up the switchblade to reveal a silver blade.

She was close enough that she could tell the ghost's exact location now, right on the other side of a wall in front of her. Her hands shaking so hard that she almost dropped the switchblade, Hinata fished her cell phone out of her pocket and placed a call to the distress hotline for Seattle.

It picked up on the first ring. "What is the nature of your emergency?"

"Th-there's a wr-wraith," Hinata said into the phone, the tightness of her throat constricting her words down to the level of a whisper.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that?"

"I f-found a wraith!" Hinata tried again, and this time the words came out much louder. "I n-need someone to h-help m-me bring him in-n!"

"You found a ghost, you said? We don't usually bring them in unless they pose an immediate threat, so you'll just have to tag their location and a professional will investigate at another time-"

"No, not just a ghost! A wr-wraith!"

There was a pause on the other end of the line before Hinata heard a sigh. "Missy, are you absolutely sure you found a wraith? They don't usually populate Seattle. Why don't you just tag its location and I can send someone out later to look at it, okay?"

"It will be too late by then! I'm telling you, I know it's a wraith!"

After another lengthy pause, the voice sighed and grumbled, "I guess I'll send out an emergency response team to your location, then. Do you know where you are?"

"Uh…" Hinata gulped; she didn't.

"I'll trace the call then. Someone should be there in ten minutes."

"Th-thank you-"

The line went dead before Hinata could finish her thanks. Gripping the switchblade tighter in her hand, Hinata took a step toward a space in the wall that the ghost was on the other side of. Now she only had to make sure it stayed there until the backup arrived.

"Ha- halt! Don't m-move, w-wr-wraith-th-th!"

Huh. Shikamaru hadn't thought that he'd been deep enough in thought to allow someone to sneak up on him, but then again, with Neji currently ignoring him, he hadn't anticipated anyone wanting to find him. Least of all the tiny, stuttering little cousin that Neji devoted all of his time and energy to and who had no idea how lucky she had it, the little shit.

And no, Shikamaru was not jealous of a sixteen year old child. Not in the least. He was better than that.

Just keep telling yourself that.

Shikamaru slowly turned around to stare at the girl, his posture deliberately relaxed and his hands shoved in his pockets. She was shaking, the tip of the silver knife in her grasp moving erratically through the air in a space several square inches large. It was clear that she was meant to be menacing him with it, but she looked more afraid of it herself than he was. Shikamaru could almost feel sorry for her.

Almost.

"P-p-put your h-hands-s where I c-can s-see them-m! In-n the n-name of the H-Hy-Hyuuga f-family, I am t-taking you in so that-t we may help-p-p you f-find p-peace and-d escape this w-world!"

The words sounded robotic, well-practiced yet unsure at the same time, and they inspired little fear in the ghost. "And why should I?" He countered lazily, keeping his hands securely in his pockets.

Suddenly, Shikamaru found himself being confronted by the business end of the silver knife, no longer shaking, a little closer than he was comfortable with. He went briefly cross-eyes trying to focus on the point before he shifted his gaze up to her eyes, and the steel he found there both surprised and slightly humbled him.

She's more like her cousin that I knew.

"Because you took my big brother away from me," she said very clearly, the words unhesitant. "And I'm not going to let you get away with it."

For a brief moment, Shikamaru considered his options. Realistically, the little girl was no match for him. And he'd already started working on his plan… but he was flexible; he could make this work. Actually, it might work even better than before.

"Consider me captured, then!" He said with a cheeky smile, stretching out his wrists for her. "Would you happen to have any handcuffs of you? Silver ones, of course."