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Request by OneWhoReadsTooMuch: Neji's punishment for his actions during the Chunin Exams.

Neji felt himself floating, the ground long gone beneath him. Nothing anchored him here. Only his thoughts and the knowledge that the restlessness of this moment would pass. The pervading warmth that was his punishment was soft at first. It bled quietly into his veins. A steady trickle of comfort.

Then, all at once, it became unbearable. The forgiving stream turned into an all-out gush of heat. It erupted from his forehead, then downwards to tear at every inch of his body. Every heartbeat throbbed from head to toe.

I deserve this, he told himself. It was only right after what he'd done to the Hyuga heiress. Ignorance was no excuse for his actions. But even so, this pain… it was almost too much to bear.

You will not break, he mentally shouted at himself.

He'd been punished and stitched back together again enough times to know how all of this worked. How chakra dripped into his skin with the same meticulous precision an expert tailor displayed with his needle. This pain was versatile. An almost sentient being that prodded first to find the weakest spots before exploding underneath his flesh.

Neji felt that happening now.

It was a flood of pure hurt. It forced its way inside of him. Intense. Demanding. Tendrils of agony dug around his insides, threaded in his limbs, and pierced its way between the soft, pink tissue of his organs. It flanked every layer of muscle, trying to tear him apart at the seams.

And then he was screaming.

The ground tipped up to meet him. He was on his knees now, dipped unwillingly forward in the dojo his father had trained him in. It felt like warmth, but smelt like fear. Neji didn't know when exactly his forehead fell low in an unexpected bow, but there was no time to worry about such banal concerns.

Above him, stood the man with his father's face. A whip to snap him back to reality. He didn't enjoy torturing him like this, he knew, but better him than another, more violent member of the Main House. Better him than someone whose daughter he didn't try to kill.

This was only right.

But that still didn't stop the string of dry laughter that bubbled from Neji's chest. It was so unfair how the man inflicting this abysmal pain upon him looked just like the one he longed to see. Hiashi's eyes and lips were framed by premature wrinkles. There was no enjoyment in his gaze, but there was no warmth either—not like he expected any. Hiashi treated everyone with the same coldness; kept them all at the same uncomfortable distance. Though his children often got it ten times worse.

This is penance for what I put Hinata through, he thought, even as he tried to control the immense outpouring of hatred in his stomach that still hadn't been fully tempered by regret. For attempting to kill the heiress of the clan.

As soon as the thought was born, feelings too dense for him to pick apart rolled out. Hate, confidence, skepticism, faith. It was a mash of emotion that made him want to vomit. It cut through him, through flesh and bone and trained muscle, sharper and more deadly than any blade. They tangled and knotted themselves until only one large mass of animosity was left. It boiled in his belly. Seethed, then grew until it pulsed in his veins like water frozen too quickly.

Neji felt the ugly emotions rush as swiftly as the tide across sand. He knew this feeling well. It was fury. Pent-up rage. The blackened intent to do nothing but hurt and kill and cause harm in ways that he fully knew himself capable of.

No, he struggled with his mind, while his body pounded. He didn't need to beat himself on top of the physical punishment he was receiving.

If anything, he should've counted himself fortunate. Because if he was anyone else, he'd be dead.

Despite his pride, Neji instinctively tried to move away from the explosive pain that Hiashi caused, but something hard stopped him. Suddenly, he was kicked back to the ground by another. Neji couldn't see who did it—a jealous member of the Main House, perhaps—but through the hazy blurs of hurt, he did hear Hiashi promise wrath to the offender when he was through with him.

Neji's hands dug into the priceless floorboards. He swore that the sheer intensity of what was coursing through him had broken flesh somewhere because he could smell the rusty scent of iron. He felt it around his shoulders, too. It dripped down his arms and made it hard for him to keep his torso from falling flat onto the ground.

Again, he tried to get away. It was instinct. The will to live and be free of this torment overpowered everything in his mind. His movements were jerky and graceless, fueled by the same kind of life-threatening desperation he'd felt so many times before. Only this time, there was no escape.

Neji wailed when a final burst of energy poured into him, high enough to split his own ears with the sound. The world was just a perpetual surge of pain at this point. Chakra burned his flesh, pinching the nerves hidden beneath the surface. It turned his complexion soft and pink from the inside, making it too raw for anything more than a feather's touch. He was tearing apart at the seams. Anymore and he would break.

Chakra didn't simply gush through him. It spun in the empty spaces left behind, rolling needles against his insides. Neji wanted little else than to screech profanities at the top of his lungs, to shout at him to stop, but he bit his tongue hard enough to bleed and—took it.

This was his punishment. He would not grumble or complain.

Despite his actions, he took pride in his status as a member of the esteemed Hyuga clan. He wouldn't disappoint himself by claiming that this was too much for him to bear because it wasn't. This was nothing in the face of what he'd done. As much of a disappointment as Hinata might've been to the Hyuga Main House, she was still heiress. She was still the eldest daughter of the clan head and would continue to be so until someone took that title from her. Neji hadn't hurt a simple girl. He hadn't hurt his cousin or some recently graduated genin. Neji hurt his clan's heiress. He would've killed her and liked it. What he felt right now could hardly compare to the years of joy he would've stolen had he been allowed to continue.

And then, without warning, the pain stopped.

Neji collapsed fully to the floor at its absence. It had disappeared so abruptly that his soul seemed to ache even more, almost missing that horrid sensation. His entire body was laden with exhaustion at this point. The mark on his forehead throbbed endlessly along with his heart. It burned to the touch, and somehow, he just knew steam rose from the edges. It would bubble up if it didn't get healed soon. But Neji couldn't even think about going to find a medic now. He could barely extend his arm without a spike of pain shooting up the limb and making the rest of his body tremble in protest.

Those that had stayed to watch him get punished left once they realized he wouldn't be moving anytime soon. Distantly, he registered Hiashi order a member of the Branch House to call for someone to heal him. He could only pray that he wasn't told to stand up before the clan and apologize to their faces afterwards. Neji didn't think he could take it. Especially in the fragile state he was in now.

Neji watched, listless, as the surroundings slipped through his fingers. Unreal. Unable to be trusted.

Hinata, he thought, both as her guardian and her tormentor. Though even he was no longer sure of the former. He doubted Hinata wanted him. But still, he had to wonder... Will this cleanse me? Will it make me worthy of once again standing by your side?

He hoped so.

That was his final, conscious thought, before being enveloped in a world of black. Neji didn't dream.

A/N: I used a lot of snippets from different parts of my books to construct this chapter because I felt that the way I described pain in those specific sections would work astoundingly well for this request in particular. I do hope you all enjoyed it. Please do consider supporting me through my work as an author. As always, if you're interested in my writing beyond fanfic, then my fantasy series can be purchased in stores and online. The URL to my author blog is on my profile.

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