Blood.
Neji.
Neji coughing up blood.
Neji.
Neji's torso gutted clean.
A wooden spike protruding from his stomach.
"Because you called me a genius."
His eyelids closing halfway, the life fading from those once-sparkling white eyes.
His breath and heartbeat stopping before those eyelids could close all the way.
Frozen, blank eyes.
"Because you called me a genius."
"Because you called me a genius."
"Because you called me a genius."
She woke with a start, heart pounding, breathing shallow. Instinctively, she reached out and grabbed the photograph of Team Guy on her bedside table.
Her younger self beamed up at her, eyes scrunched up, mouth parted in a laugh, fists raised in the air. Guy-sensei's strong, firm hands grasping Lee's shoulders, preventing the hyper boy from running helter-skelter around the training grounds. She started a little as she realized that Lee hadn't yet started wearing those awful green tights, but was still in that white kimono-shirt that he'd ditched because it wasn't "breathable." She smiled nostalgically as she took note of Guy-sensei's million-watt beam. Somehow it didn't look too traumatizing when captured on celluloid.
Tenten's gaze then landed on to the one on her left, onto blank, empty eyes and a stiff face.
Neji, back before he knew that smiling was a real facial expression that he could make.
Frozen, blank eyes.
Neji, dying with a smile on his face.
Coughing up blood.
"Because you called me a genius."
Tenten took a sleeping pill that night, but in her dreams, frozen, blank eyes still stared up at her.
Unlike Tenten, Lee's nightmares didn't end with him gazing into blank white eyes. Or rather, they did, but the route they took to get there was different. Where she was a visually and auditorily oriented person, he was kinesthetic.
Lee's nightmares ended up with him cradling Neji's corpse in his arms. The body was there, but the thing that made Neji Neji was gone.
Neji was gone.
But his body was still warm. Lee would later say that he could feel it clearly under Neji's jounin vest, the warmth of Neji's body before rigor mortis set in.
Dark red blood still trickled from his mouth and the faintest smile was on his face.
Then Lee closed Neji's half-lidded, frozen, blank eyes for the last time.
"Because you called me a genius."
That was another thing that their dreams had in common.
Unlike Tenten, Lee did not take sleeping pills. He decided, instead, with his jittery legs, that if he couldn't go running helter-skelter in the training grounds, that he would go to where Neji was now, to the pristine white grave where his ashes lay, and do two thousand push-ups, because Neji was his eternal rival, and eternal meant forever and always.
But just like Tenten, he would inevitably collapse next to the white stone, and in his dreams, he was cradling Neji's warm body before rigor mortis set in.
Over time, the nightmares faded away to more pleasant dreams. Ten years after Neji's death, and Tenten actually looked forward to them.
"Dance training? You want dance training?" she said in one of those dreams, before throwing a tessen at him and catching him in the chest.
"Hey, Guy-sensei, Lee!" she had yelled in another one, running over to a novelty restaurant serving secret special recipes. "Let's go eat over there! Neji loves spicy food!"
"On this team, six minutes is a lifetime."
"Neji, this is your problem to deal with now! Bye!" she yelled as his neutral face gave way to abject horror. A far cry from frozen. Neji looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.
It was beautiful.
"Bye!" she yelled again as the dream faded to the corners of her mind.
"Bye!"
"Bye!"
There were brief, fleeting moments when she wondered if maybe Madara and Obito had a point with the Infinite Tsukuyomi, only to banish the thought from her mind with a scowl. Neji had given his life for them all. He had saved the world. He was a hero. That was far better than a dream.
Even if his eyes weren't blank and frozen in the dream.
Lee was much the same. Fifteen years after Neji's death, and Lee would fall asleep to aching muscles and soothing dreams, applied to his mind just like Neji's Hyuuga clan ointment.
Apparently, he talked in his sleep about his youthful teammate. He talked very loudly, according to Metal.
"Papa," his precious son asked, still in the springtime of his youth. "You kept saying something about your 'eternal rival'? Did you mean Neji oji-san, the one you always talk about?"
Lee beamed so widely that his facial muscles ached slightly. That wouldn't do. He would have to practice smiling more and more and more until it could reflect sunlight, just like Guy-sensei. He was sure that Neji would have sighed and shaken his head at this, though. Somehow, the thought of his rival's resigned, "someone please kill me now" expression brought his heart a small twinge.
He was finding it easier and easier to imagine Neji's reaction to things, and that was enough to make him feel at the peak of youth.
"I'm glad you asked, Metal!" he found himself saying. "Yes, I was dreaming about Neji oji-san, my eternal rival. You know what eternal means, don't you?"
"Forever and always?"
"That's right. Forever and always. I'll take you to visit him today!"
These days, whenever he visited the grave where Neji's ashes lay, he would feel a gentle breeze lulling him to sleep and Neji's resigned, "someone please kill me now" expression drifted serenely across the currents of his mind.
Because eternal meant forever and always.
A/N: Written for Day 20: Nightmares. I keep writing a lot about Neji dying and his teammates coming to terms with it, don't I? To make up for all that sadness and bittersweetness, I'm also writing a Neji lives one-shot for one of the upcoming prompts. Stay tuned and please review! :)