Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Masashi Kishimoto and its licensers.
Author's Notes: Slight spoilers for the recent manga chapters.
Counting the Birds
By CalicoKitten
A weak enemy is destined to be defeated quickly.
He could still only spot seven birds out of eight.
It frustrated him like nothing else did. After that battle, Neji had tried numerous times to fix the trouble with his byakugan, and according to the rules of problem solving, he had naturally assumed that it wouldn't take long to correct.
The sun shone in glittering rays through the damp patches of leaves of the forest walls. Dew sparkled in the early morning like the first snowfall in winter, and he grasped strands of grass between his fingers, the wet, tingling sensation of cool water against skin doing nothing to dissuade his temperament.
"Shit," he mumbled, and absently rubbed the mark on his forehead that his protector usually covered.
He concealed his shock when a voice called out behind him, "Shit is right. I've been here forever, and you still haven't seen me."
An enemy?! No, the voice sounds familiar…
Neji frowned. "Shikamaru," he said, and threw a dagger to where he thought the other boy might be – in his blind spot.
A momentary pause, and Shikamaru shifted into full view from the shadows in front of him. The dagger, which had been thrown easily and without an intention of harm, was gripped in one hand. Shikamaru yawned, arms extended, and Neji silently followed the stretch of muscles through Shikamaru's mesh shirt without any subtle movements from his eyes.
"Why are you spying on me?"
Shikamaru's eyes flickered toward him with the glazed look that came from yawning. "I'm not. Well, not intentionally. Parents told me to train and all, so that's why I'm here."
"Cloudwatching?" Neji deadpanned, catching the weapon Shikamaru returned his way.
"Yeah. But cloudwatching was distracting with you in the way."
He glanced briefly and curiously at Neji's forehead. Neji temporarily felt the urge to cover his mark with his forehead protector, but he reminded himself that it wasn't something he needed to hide, especially from one who'd already seen it. Who'd already seen much worse.
"Problems with your 360 degree vision?"
Neji glared at him. Damn that Shikamaru and his astuteness. There was nothing that passed unnoticed through that boy's senses. He'd probably – actually, Neji was pretty sure he had – realized before he himself did about the weak point in the byakugan's defense. No doubt it made him appear more of a fool than he already did.
Damn it.
Shikamaru continued, more quietly, "Problems with your shoulder?"
Neji looked up. The young chuunin's profile hid in the dense flowering of shadows that engulfed the outer edges of the clearing, and he could barely make out the outline that was Shikamaru.
I don't need his damn concern.
Pushing that thought out of his head, Neji stood there. He didn't remember Shikamaru having the ability to blend into the shadows, but the evidence was before him. His father once told him that shadow jutsu users once possessed extremely subtle and strong abilities, the Nara clan being foremost. But times changed, the power dwindled, and today, they were almost the same as any special clan. He'd also said that, like in Neji himself, the talent would lay idle until staking claim to an exceptional child and giving them tremendous power unmatched by anyone before them.
Neji clutched at his shoulder in an automatic response when the shadows moved aside and left Shikamaru staring at him.
He's not…who I remember…none of us are.
His body felt strange when he looked at Shikamaru.
"…It does, doesn't it?" Shikamaru answered, refusing to meet his eyes.
Traces of guilt clouded his statement. All of the sudden, he recalled his stay in the hospital after the Sasuke incident, with the bright lights, immaculate walls, and too-cheerful personnel. Pain rose to the surface of his memories, the first being the recollection of the horrific sight of two large, blood encrusted holes where his side and shoulder should have been. But deeper than that, he remembered the flashes of consciousness through the hurt, the constant shadow in the corner of the room that no one took any notice of, and the gentle touches assessing the extent of his injuries.
Don't look him in the eyes. It's not worth it.
He lied, flexing his arm slightly to make up for his earlier action, "Not really."
Shikamaru gave him a look, but didn't press further.
"You…" he frowned and rubbed his forehead. "…I don't get you sometimes."
Same here, and not my problem.
He shrugged. "So?"
The younger boy let out a half-sigh, half-groan, leaning against the tree. It was probably too bothersome to stand there and talk to him like a normal person, out from the protective shade of the trees.
But he's a chuunin already. He's not normal.
"Neji," Shikamaru said suddenly. He had, in the blink of an eye, resorted to lying against the tree instead of simply standing and resting against it. "There's a blind spot in your seeing jutsu, right?"
Neji didn't deign to answer. Instead, he went to the tree beside Shikamaru's own and traced the lines in the rough bark with the fingers of his hands, scraping the wood against calloused tips that resisted the bite of splinters.
"I don't think you can fix it."
A sharp glare turned the chuunin's way like lightning, but Shikamaru ignored it completely, his eyes closed.
"Instinct is one way that helps overcome it. The attention you have to it also does. But I don't think you're aware of what else can help you."
Unexpectedly, Shikamaru sat up, forming a seal with his hands and whispering the words of a shadow jutsu. The dark within the forest flared up for just a second before returning to their rightful places, but Neji heard the shrieks of a flock of birds scared witless by the sudden changes in light.
He found himself over the other boy in an instant.
"Don't patronize me," he hissed, and his hand reached out for the chuunin in a threatening manner. It only surprised Neji a bit when he grasped Shikamaru's chin instead of punching him soundly. Shikamaru didn't even seem to notice.
He's not normal.
"Count the birds, Neji," Shikamaru spoke, commanding, and Neji found himself following the other boy's order for a second time.
One.
Two.
It was hard finding the birds when he still held Shikamaru's chin in his hand, and when Shikamaru's eyes were now wide open and staring directly into Neji's own pupil-less orbs.
I'm not normal either.
He didn't need to sever the connection between them. Byakugan worked without the need of eye contact or even motion; however, by looking straight at an object like most normal people, it, for some reason, aided in concentrating his attention there. There was no true reason why, but perhaps it was because of society. People usually spoke to each other face to face; he'd grown up around the fact and had blended with it.
Three.
Four.
Five.
A touch of skin to skin contact, and he flinched. Shikamaru, without any unnecessary movements, clasped Neji's wrist delicately and pulled it away.
Six.
Seven…
"Are you ready, Neji?" Shikamaru asked softly, in a way Neji usually would have found condescending and insulting but did not now. "There's one more. We both know that."
With his byakugen, he saw Shikamaru's hands come together and form a quick seal.
"You can't see it, but you know where it's coming from. You can even feel it. But you need something more."
Look underneath what's underneath…
Shikamaru didn't know what he was talking about. He couldn't see it, couldn't feel it at all. All he knew were the glassy eyes of the other boy in the shadows of the forest.
Shadows…
Wait.
The wind blew into his face. There crawled something on the ground far behind him, traveling with every second. A thin, wispy shade of black color, something Neji would never have spotted if it weren't darker than it should have been, twisted and brushed tentacles over the grass in a tantalizing, deliberate manner. It was at an angle lower than his blind spot. He could see it.
Eight.
"Eight," he said, and turned his head to verify his observation yet kept the irises of his eyes trained on Shikamaru.
Almost amusedly, the other boy replied, "Yes. Eight," and broke the connection between them by gazing up at the sky. He removed his hands from the seal, and the deviant shadow turned natural, yet Neji could still see it.
He's not normal.
Neji slowly moved off of Shikamaru, rolling to the side and sharing the tree as he remained on the ground. He didn't say anything as they watched the last bird turn into a distant speck in the blue sky, then vanish completely.
No rustle of clothes, simply a shift of eyes alerted him to the chuunin's next words.
"Neji."
For some reason, he felt obliged to answer.
"What?"
"…Why did you – " Shikamaru broke off briefly, as if unsure what to say. "On our mission, you didn't challenge my leadership."
Neji paused to collect his words. "No. I didn't."
"…Why not?"
A spoken question with several unspoken implications. Shikamaru was probably thinking of that incident during the Second Exam, when his team had run across Neji scouting, and Neji had told them, straightforwardly, that they were weak, and he didn't pick on weak people. During that, he hadn't really known Asuma's team all that well and had only thought of Shikamaru as lazy and a waste of his time.
However, Shikamaru was also the only genin given the rank of chuunin and had, in a main sense, won both of his final matches with an integrity that spoke volumes of his 200-plus IQ. But Neji had only watched the first battle.
"Because you're different."
You're not normal.
Even if his byakugan malfunctioned right then, he didn't need it to see Shikamaru's shoulders slump ever so slightly, and his head rise to the sky.
"Am I?" he whispered.
He's thinking about what happened. You should tell him it's not his fault.
Instead, Neji replied, "You are."
Swirling visions clouded his head yet again. Sharply pointed needles obstructed his view, but hospitals always contained needles. Chakra from the medics pushed against the inside of his body where there was supposed to be flesh, and he screamed. Woke up later with the unnatural feeling that something was wrong with his body, and he was right – flesh replaced the gaping holes, and he didn't know how or why, until he gazed at himself in the mirror.
Waited…for me?
He remembered the unusual darkness gathered in his hospital room. Unusual, because sunlight flowed through his room often, as the medics liked to keep the blinds up to brighten the atmosphere in the room, but it remained a constant fixture. It stayed in the corner most of the time, but sometimes it left, receding slowly in regular intervals until he heard, through a haze of dizziness, that Chouji had awakened. It spent more time in his room after that.
I thought it was him…
His hand fell to the ground below from where it lay on his lap. It landed on something else before it hit the smooth petals of drying grass, and he curled his fingers around it, surprised at his uncharacteristic display of emotion.
He remembered this in the hospital room, too.
"It was…I mean I…look forward to going on another mission with you."
Can't you say 'you were a good team leader'?
He couldn't even begin to guess at what ran through Shikamaru's mind at the memory of his first mission leading a team of genins into an high-class mission and having two of them come away near-death, others with substantial injuries, and Shikamaru with only a few.
At his words, the boy in front of him crinkled his eyes like he was deep in thought.
He didn't pull his hand away at the contact.
"I think I might, too," Shikamaru said, and touched Neji's shoulder on the spot where he let no one but qualified medics touch him.
The hand under Neji's own turned, palm upward, and clasped his own in return.