The look of hate in his eyes is beautiful as night entwined with the vixen. She can feel it throbbing in his veins (the ones around his frenzied eyes) into stony white and chipped ice. The shards are flying straight for her, but this time she isn't going to dodge.
The impact is sweet.
Quickly, the heat spreads; she feels the millions of passage-ways closing inside of her—each tenuous vein—sealing away past regrets and future promises. All they have now is the present, and she wonders if that's enough to keep the scale from tipping—
The blood is spreading up the wall of her body, out of her mouth. It spills hotly onto the ground, thick and mushy (like oatmeal, she thinks).
His hand is still hard, piercing, against her chest; right now that is all she can register, this poisonous core. He hasn't drawn away. His hate is still pushing him to her, and this attraction is so strong it could be love. Neither is quite sure what is what. The sky has turned to dust and time is falling into their cursed eyes.
She coughs, and he pulls his hand away, quick as a viper (she felt that last shiver!). She recoils into herself and scrunches her eyes shut, feeling unbearably sick. Staggering back, the pain stretches inside of her and all over the room. It never quite reaches him, though.
She opens her eyes to take in the stolid angles of his figure. He regards her calmly, his hands folded next to his sides like sharp-beaked crane envelopes, ready to strike. They will not hesitate to kill her. They hate her.
She coughs again, (the pain in her chest exhilarating, expanding) and she wishes she could send her whispered-night thoughts to him in those velveteen coughs. She wishes he would understand. She knows it is hopeless, though. He will never listen to her.
The rolling sickness in her stomach spurs her into a reckless charge. But it is not a charge to attack; it is a charge of surrender. She leaves so many spaces open she can see through them, like holes in a piece of crochet. And of course, he finds the perfect one.
He swipes her with his gentle, gentle fist.
They are close to each other now. They are very close. (closer than a branch to a tree, closer—closer than family; so much closer!) She feels his cool, steady breath in her ear and tries to soften her own rasp, swallowing the stinging bee lump in her throat.
She wants to curl up against his shoulder and cry right now, but knows he'd only laugh at her with that charming, dry laugh of his (when did it come to be so—elegant?).
"Ne—" she gasps, struggling to remember the time when he had pulled her out of the stream after she had nearly drowned, the time when he had given her a willow wand and told her it was magical (and she'd believed him!), the time when he—
He stiffens and pushes away from her. She slumps to the ground, shuddering. Her eyes are burning cold and waterless; lavender stars.
He stands over her, his shadow cast in obsidian points. She looks up and is caught in the net of his slicing gaze.
He steps closer, and looking up at him, suddenly—
Suddenly she isn't afraid of him.
Suddenly she understands that the ties they share are not family. The term "family" is too tender, too euphemistic to be their category. They are tougher than that, more elastic, more—
"Neji," she says, and her voice rings surprisingly clear. (is that her voice?)
He looks to her sharply, and the shadows cutting his face are sharp as guillotines. For a moment she forgets the pounding and the pain, the scalding of tea pots balanced on her wrinkled fingertips.
"Neji," she says again, ignoring the volcano building up inside of her, because these words spinning out of her mouth are miraculous. "It—it doesn't have to—have to be this way."
His jaw tightens and he gets that beautiful, stony look that hardens the slopes of his face. He wants to kill her, she knows it. The desire to cry is still there, and the tears are welling up deep inside, collecting in duct-shaped buckets. She's afraid that they will explode into geysers at any minute, and that the look on his face will rot away to disgust.
"I—never meant for it—" she trembles, wishing she could be him in this moment. "I—didn't want—"
"Lady Hinata." His voice so smooth and cold and practiced, running over her name—and that title! Lady! She cracks the slightest smile, lips wobbling precariously.
And the tears have sprung through. She is crying and she cannot stop it.
His shoulders slacken and his crane-hands have retired from their ferocious flight. The transformation is awkward. He looks away (he is sighing in his own method, she knows); the veins around his eyes softening, dwindling.
He steps over to her and wipes the blood and the snot from her lips, running down her cheeks. His hands are cold but the bloodlust has drained out (for now).
They are close. They are very close.
Just reread the part in the manga with the chuuin exams. The old parts were so the best.