Disclaimer: The only things that belong to me are the plot, the original characters, and this particular representation of the Hyuuga and their politics.
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to Kilerkki, for being my wonderful beta (she's very good at catching some seriously embarrassing mistakes). I must also thank Asuka Kureru, who challenged me to write a line a day of this (and is thus instrumental in how quickly this came out); link no miko and iamzuul for their enthusiasm; and all of you who have reviewed—your input is crucial when it comes to my motivation.
Oracle
Chapter Six: Regression
. . . and oil and sweat and fur and dirt and grassbloodpaintearscottonperfumesteel floods his nostrils, an agony of scent that he is slowly controlling and still trying to make sense of. A desperate attempt to help him not be slaughtered in a fight . . .
. . . and Hiashi speaks the condemning words a second time: "There are no blind Hyuuga." His hand, rough and worn by age and the jyuuken, picks up Neji's own limp hand. Hiashi will end this quickly, and Neji thinks he should thank his uncle for that mercy . . .
. . . and he steps out carefully, bare feet feeling the smooth river stones that mark his path. They are cool, but it wasn't cold enough for dew to form during the night. Neji knows that summer is coming to Fire Country, but he ignores the voice that says he will not be there to enjoy it . . .
. . . and Tenten calls out, telling him to try again. Neji fights away the doubt and fear and focuses his chakra again. He needs to expand, go further out, find the right density, enough to give him the form of the world but not enough to slow him down . . .
. . . and the Elders argue, their voices slowly gaining pitch and intensity with every word. They will determine his fate, and these expired relics hold no love for him and no sense of the future. Neji breathes in slowly . . .
. . . and then he reaches up, frantic, pressing his fingers to where his eyes should be. It sends pain flashing through the seal, but with it comes relief—his eyes are still there, still his, she didn't pull them from their sockets and leave him blind in a vibrant world . . .
He recognizes the pain first, sinuous and irregular, swirling through his mind and snaking around his spine. It is his only companion for an eternity, and he feels its tides, rising until it's almost sharp enough to pierce through what is left of him, falling until he's almost certain it will bury him beyond any reach.
He rises and falls and rises and falls and dreams his dreams in sound and touch and smell and darkness.
When he wakes this time, Neji doesn't open his eyes. The pain is still there—why does it ache so much?—and if he opens his eyes, the slightest current of air will shred his very nerves. It wasn't like this the last time he woke, and the part of him that is just beginning to think clearly past the haze in his mind knows that this agony is unnatural.
Last time, Neji's eyes were nearly torn from their sockets and the curse seal had thought him dead. Yet when he woke, the only pain came from the injury to his leg and when he put pressure on his eyes. Simply . . . existing should not do this.
His neck feels stiff. Neji shifts a little—perhaps the too-soft pillow is causing the problem—but he barely has time to register the papery sound the sheets make when someone speaks.
"Neji."
The voice is deep and familiar and the closest thing he has had to a father in many years.
"Gai-sensei." His own voice is raspy from screaming, he hopes, not from disuse—how long, how many days does he have left? How many days were robbed?
There is a faint sound of metal on tile, and Neji feels his sensei's presence draw closer. He has been in the hospital long enough that someone brought a chair or a stool. Fear starts squirming in his chest, and Neji tells himself to breathe.
He turns his head left, toward Gai—for a dangerous moment he can feel the seal flicker—ignoring his stiff and painful neck. Gai insisted on eye-contact from him before Neji made chuunin. Even now, Neji can't help but face his sensei.
He tries to open his eyes, but can't.
Before Neji can frantically reach up to his face, Gai stops him with the ease of veteran jounin, grasping Neji's wrist before his fingers can reach his face. "Hokage-sama bandaged your eyes," he says quietly. His sensei's hand is large—so large it easily encircles his wrist. Neji fights his panic and quells the urge to jerk his hand away. He concentrates instead on Gai's hand, how strong and rough it is, how warm it feels, how . . . safe.
"She told me not to let you take them off," Gai continues, and his voice sounds apologetic. "She told me she would do it when you woke up."
Neji focuses on the hand and the voice, and the more he regains control of himself, the more he can focus on what his body is telling him. He can smell the odors of a hospital room: bleach-scrubbed cleanliness, newly laundered sheets. (If he uses chakra, could he smell the far away blood and terror and death?) There might be a hint of something floral beneath those scents, but he can't be sure. He can feel Gai gently gripping his left hand. Flexing his right hand, Neji can feel the sharp pressure of a needle beneath the skin and the almost-there presence of a small tube taped in place on top of his wrist.
There is a blanket over him. He shifts and focuses this time on the feeling of his cheap hospital gown. The sheets rustle, the unique sound of cloth-and-paper. He can't hear anything else, but he can feel a—a constriction, a tightening around his upper arm. He frowns and is surprised at the faint pulling at his temples. "I won't remove the bandages," Neji says, his voice sounding scratchy, and he swallows, trying to get rid of the prickling at the back of his throat.
Gai releases Neji's hand. There is a soft beep, and Gai's voice murmurs to someone that Neji has woken up; a static-filled voice on the other end of the intercom acknowledges the words. Whoever Gai is reporting to doesn't matter, not at this moment.
Neji moves carefully, his left hand just skirting over his forehead, causing just the slightest increase in pressure and pain. There are bandages there, and he is grateful for them. He glides his fingertips down his face and is not surprised to feel the bandages extend across his eyes and nose, down to the top of his cheekbones. What he is surprised at is the uneven rippling—there is something beneath the bandages starting at the edge of his eye sockets, but his Byakugan isn't engaged, it doesn't feel like his chakra veins usually do, and he can't feel his fingers like he felt them on his forehead.
Although this exploration would be easier with both hands, Neji keeps the one with the IV still. He traces the distortion from his eye socket toward his left temple—but this time there is a very distinct, very symmetrical bump. He can't find its texture, only its shape, a small mound with a thin wire trailing away from the center. A quick feel of his right temple finds the same: sensors for some sort of machine. If he focuses, he can hear the faint humming of a fan. Perhaps the not-veins are part of the machine?
His fingers examine the band that is squeezing the upper part of his right arm. It is about as wide as his hand is, a handful of millimeters thick, too stiff to be cotton or linen, too slick to be canvas. There are no bumps in this one, but there is a wide wire or tube trailing away. He follows it until it crosses over the smooth metal bar that is designed to keep him from rolling out of bed. How anyone thinks he has enough energy to do that is beyond him.
When Neji is done exploring what he can of his surroundings, he swallows, wanting to make his voice sound normal again. "How long have I been here?"
"Two days," Gai says, and before Neji can ask, "It's just before dawn."
He struggles against the pain behind his eyes and counts. He met with the Elders on his twenty-first night, and Hinata woke him late that night or in the first hours of the next morning. If he was here for two days, and it's nearly dawn . . .
This is the morning of his eighteenth day.
Time is slipping away from him uncontrollably, taking hours, minutes, seconds that he cannot afford to spend. His life is trickling through his fingers and dribbling away without his consent.
Neji breathes slowly. The tightness in his chest and the twisting in his gut will not reverse the flow of time. "How much do you know?"
He didn't think he would ever hear his sensei's voice sound so . . . Neji is unsure what to name it, but it is somewhere in the realm between gentle and grieved. "Lee and Tenten told me what happened, and I read the reports," Gai says, and Neji finds that not needing to explain that again lifts one of his burdens. But only momentarily. "Hinata-san brought the flowers and a change of clothes, and she told me the rest."
Even though Neji feels his sensei lean closer, the man's voice becomes quieter. "When were you planning on telling them?"
Neji's left hand fists in his sheets. At least Gai asked when, not if—his sensei still has faith in him, the person that he is now. Neji will never tell him that on those nights he was alone with his fears and his past that his answer was dangerously close to never. "The next morning." His voice still sounds scratchy and he swallows again, trying to restore normalcy. "After I knew for certain what to say."
He knows his teammates won't take the truth well, though the selfish part of him wants them to forgive him for the deception.
Gai does not speak, and for once the silence unnerves Neji. He cannot see his sensei's reaction to his words, and at this moment there is little that is more important than what the man thinks. Neji listens hard, filtering out the white noise and his pain to try to gain some clue, something that will let him know what to do or say. He strains to hear Gai's breathing but cannot find it over the fan.
"Neji . . ." This time he can name the emotions in Gai's voice, and anguish is the one that overpowers the others. "I should have—"
"Stop," he says, and he makes his voice as firm as he can. It shouldn't surprise him that Gai does stop speaking, but it is a relief. "I need your help, sensei, not this."
Metal scratches over tile again as the older jounin shifts his seat. "What do you need?"
"Training," Neji answers, grateful for Gai's automatic shift in topic. "Hinata-sama told you what I have to do."
There is a sudden knock at the door, but before Neji can speak, he hears the soft click of a knob turning and the tapping of high-heeled shoes.
Gai's chair scrapes again. "Godaime-sama."
Neji echoes the greeting, but the sudden increase in the pain behind his seal forces him to realize he's tensed already, bracing himself for worse news. He allows himself to relax as the Hokage's shoes come closer.
"How are you feeling, Neji?" Her voice is a little muffled and coming from an odd angle—she is probably investigating whatever equipment has the fan in it, he thinks.
He tells the truth because he knows doing anything less could cost him more than just these two days. "The seal and my eyes hurt." His voice is returning to some semblance of normalcy. "So does my neck." The pain goes down into his shoulders and back, but his neck is the worst.
Tsunade's voice swings toward him. "I'm going to help you sit up so I can check on your eyes." There are suddenly fingertips on his left arm, and though she gave him a warning, his muscles still jump.
Neji sits up with his Hokage's assistance, and though he doesn't admit it, he is grateful for her help. The sudden change in position leaves his head spinning and the seal writhing above and behind his eyes. He clenches his jaw, breathes slowly in and out of his nose, and refuses to get sick.
Her fingers are gentle when she starts to unwind the bandages. "The seal destabilized again." Her voice is methodical, and Neji hangs onto her words to keep from freefalling. The pain lessens as she works the bandages off. "We kept it from causing brain-damage, but it attacked the chakra pathways around your eyes."
The bandages are off, along with the wire and what it is attached to. Neji reaches up with his left hand and, when the Hokage makes no move to stop him, slowly runs his fingers along his left temple. Instead of a smooth expanse of skin, Neji's fingers find thick, numb waxy cords, jumbled and knotted, spreading from the outer edge of his eye socket and disappearing into his hairline. It is almost like when he has the Byakugan in use, but these parodies are too misshapen to be his normal chakra pathways.
The damage is not as great on his right side, though the same distortion is there. His mind conjures the memory of a jounin with a half-melted face and he banishes the image almost before it can form.
"I've done what I can," Tsunade says, and Neji can tell from her voice that she wishes it weren't true. "But it is fighting what I've done to contain it."
Little surprise, considering the centuries the family has had to perfect this seal.
"If it's activated again," Tsunade continues, "there's little chance you can be brought to the hospital in time for anything to be done. As it is, you'll likely experience unprovoked flare-ups."
Neji almost doesn't hear himself murmur an acknowledgement. There is nothing he can do about a member of the Main House activating the seal—there never has been. The best that he can do, he thinks as his stomach clenches, is to stay away from the compound as much as possible.
"I'm going to touch your face," she says. He nods to give her permission and then her fingertips are roaming over his forehead. A muscle in his cheek twitches and pulls at the lifeless scars. She turns his head this way and that, tilting his head up and down, pulling his hair back out of the way, skimming her fingers over his skin.
Her fingers are at the corner of his jaw. He gets a split-second warning before her chakra bleeds out of her hands and into him.
"Relax." It is a mild rebuke, but Neji can't help but feel resentful while he obeys the order. This chakra is warm and smooth, far removed from the cold fire of the jyuuken. "Your muscles spent most of yesterday seized up from the seal. This should help."
True to her word, Neji feels his body soak in her chakra and flood out the tension and the pain in his jaw and neck. The Hokage is careful and thorough; her chakra sinks through his shoulders but doesn't rise above his cheekbones, staying well away from the seal on his forehead.
She pulls her hands away and her chakra fades from his system. "Better?"
He is slow in answering. The seal is still fitful and its small spikes are painful, but his body is no longer screaming at him. "Yes. Thank you." His words are sincere—in the past Neji was discharged from the hospital with more pain than he was in just moments ago and with worse injuries than strained muscles. He knows the Hokage doesn't need to attend him personally.
"I felt like being useful." There is a subtle bitterness in her voice, which Neji recognizes all too well.
Haruno's voice, overheard months ago, filters through his mind: "Not even Shizune-senpai can wake shishou before nine, and . . ." For her to be here, at this time, undoubtedly the one that asked Gai to notify her when Neji woke . . .
"Would you like the bandages back on?" Tsunade asks.
The offer is tempting, to conceal the newly acquired deformities; the mere thought of being out in public, attracting stares from people he can't see, is enough to make his stomach wrench. But just as he opens his mouth, he changes his mind. "No." His voice is firm and sounds as it should. "I'm not going to hide what has happened."
He hid too much of what he did until now, he realizes, and the realization brings a deeper shame than he thought possible. He justified his actions, but that didn't change their nature: cowardly. He kept the truth from his teammates and Kiba and Shino, practiced in secluded training areas to minimize the number of people that saw him fumble and fail, isolated himself within the compound, refused to tell Hinata the gamble he was making. For all his fighting against the despair of his former self, Neji knows he gave in more often than he let himself think.
No more.
"Good." The approval is plain in the Hokage's voice. "The front desk is open at eight; you can check yourself out then." It takes just a handful of moments for her to detach the IV from Neji's hand, remove the cuff from his arm, pull the electrodes from his temples, and shut off whatever machines were using them. Without the machines' fans, the room is much quieter, so the Hokage's shoes sound even louder when Neji bows his head and murmurs his thanks and goodbye along with Gai.
Neji hears the door shut and speaks before his sensei can. "I will be gone before the official visiting hours."
"Do you want me to go with you?"
Neji is grateful Gai didn't say take, or escort, or help. "No." He will do it by himself if he needs to, but he doubts he will. "I need you to find Tenten, Lee, Inuzuka Kiba, and Aburame Shino."
It is odd, giving orders to his sensei, when they no longer have any official ties, but Neji lost more time than he can afford already. He hears the creak of the chair when Gai stands—were the fans so loud they obscured that sound before? "Where do you want us to meet you?"
Gai leaves a little before Neji can check himself out, telling him what floor they are on. Neji gets out of the hospital bed and locates the small table with its flower vase and neatly folded clothes. There is an arrangement of flowers this time, though he can identify only the roses by their scent.
It takes but a few moments for him to change into the clothing Hinata brought. She even included a small roll of wrappings to cover the seal. He turns it over in his hands, sliding it between his palms, feeling the faintly stringy fabric.
Neji leaves the roll on the table.
The sandals are on the floor next to the bed; he slips them on his feet. He heard the direction the Hokage and his sensei left, and he strides toward it, right hand outstretched and arm loose, so that when he makes contact with the hard object there is very little sound. He finds the seam between door and wall and lingers there a moment before sliding open the door and stepping out into the hall.
Neji breathes in slowly and on his exhale he lets his chakra seep out of his tenketsu. It ruffles his clothes, almost like a faint breeze, expanding until the chakra forms a misting, whirling bubble a little more than a meter around his body. His seal stirs, but it falls still.
He feels the floor pushing upward against the chakra and the soles of his feet, feels the way the door behind him resists the intrusion of the finest grains of energy he can manage, feels his chakra nudge a heavy cart outside his room, feels it flicker through his hair.
One meter on every side. Not nearly a large enough range for a fight. But enough to get him out of this hospital. He could expand his range, but it is more difficult to control, and right now his concern is to get out of this hospital without leaving any craters in the floor.
He can feel the floor, can feel it and the wall and any immediate obstacles—he has no need to trail his hands along walls, no need to count his steps, no need to grope tentatively in the dark, no need to ask for and receive assistance.
There is nothing wrong with his body and nothing wrong with his mind. Neji strides forward, back and shoulders straight, and refuses to dread what he cannot see.
He has to let his chakra go in order to sign himself out—an awkward affair where the medic-nin has to guide his hand so he can sign his name in all the correct spots—so the papers don't fly everywhere. He is holding the pen out to the medic-nin to take back when he recognizes a fading chakra signature approach.
Neji lets go of the pen, turns to his left, and gives a slight bow that makes his head throb. "Hiroki-sama." He needs to remember to not tense up when that happens, or he will quickly be as he was before the Hokage's help.
The Elder's greeting is a beat long in coming. "Neji-kun. I hope you weren't planning on giving me a stroke."
Straightening from his bow, Neji murmurs, "Not you." There is no need for a question about why Neji's seal is bared for the public, but this round-about comment is irritating. The man's humor is still grating, but there is a thread of truth and unease running through it. "Would you like me to escort you back to the compound when you have finished your business here?" There is a challenge behind his words, though his tone is as humble-sounding as when he went before the Elders two nights ago.
The last time they were in this hospital, Hiroki insulted him and made a mockery of his blindness, and though Neji knows now their interaction was a test, it does not mean that he will give the Elder the opportunity to do so again.
"I would appreciate that," Hiroki says as he walks past Neji. "If you wouldn't mind waiting by the main doors?"
Neji hides his surprise—the man has genuine business here?—but he does as instructed, using his misting chakra to weave through empty waiting-room chairs. The hospital is just beginning to come to life in preparation for the visiting hours, and though he cannot see he knows he is attracting more than his fair share of stares from the staff and the people that come in. He pretends as if it is the most natural thing in the world for him to stand near the doors, forehead bare, a cloud of chakra engulfing him.
He guesses as many as twenty minutes go past before the Elder returns. His normally tightly coiled chakra is fitful, and Hiroki sweeps past Neji without a word.
Neji plunges out into the streets after him.
It isn't difficult to keep his chakra at the right level and keep track of Hiroki's chakra signature at the same time, but the bustle of the street is distracting. He can hear conversation slow and pick up as he walks by; he doesn't need to weave around people as most, if not clearing the way for Hiroki, take an extra step or three out of the range of his chakra. None of those oddities compare to the utter silence of the Hyuuga Elder and how quickly he picks his way toward the compound.
Neji gathers in his chakra, reducing the field enough that he can move in closer to Hiroki without brushing his chakra against him. There are limits to how personally insulting he is willing to be, and this display is not meant to offend an individual so much as it is a group. Hiroki makes a sharp turn, moving them off the main street, before Neji ventures to speak. "Hiroki-sama—"
The amusement is there in his voice as if it never left. "They don't think you can do it," Hiroki says, though his pace never slows down. Neji doesn't need an explanation for who they is and easily matches Hiroki's strides, though he is careful to keep his chakra just a hairsbreadth behind. "Oh, someone certainly tried to curry favor by the stunt with your seal—but they all soundly denounced that, and Hiashi-sama believed them."
Neji frowns, but before he can voice his objection—anyone can lie and assuredly would under these circumstances—Hiroki continues. "Not one of the other Elders thought to ask how you would die if you won your fight, Neji-kun, and so none of them were truly entertaining the thought that you could succeed. What would be the point in risking the wrath of Hiashi-sama if there was nothing to gain from it?" He makes another turn, cutting across Neji's path, brushing his sleeve against Neji's gently swirling chakra.
"We were counting on that being why they would accept the terms," Neji says, pulling back still more, and he is surprised how quiet his voice is, a sharp contrast to the bitterness he feels and quickly shoves aside. The protests the Elders gave were aimed more at Hiroki's own maneuvering than possible outcomes of Neji's fight. There is something deeply wrong with Hiroki's behavior, and for all their scheming, Neji knows that an insult to his own character would not affect Hiroki in the slightest.
The Elder stops suddenly, and despite his quick reflexes, Neji can't help his chakra brushing against Hiroki for an instant before Neji can pull it in closer. They have covered a great deal of ground in this time and taken enough turns that he cannot sense anyone near enough to overhear them. He stays quiet, for he knows that for all the Elder's bizarre ways, the man does very little without purpose.
"The terms will mean little if there is no prize to win," Hiroki says, all trace of amusement gone now. "Hotaru's team was supposed to be in four days ago."
Hotaru. Hiroki's granddaughter. It is changing her lineage that Neji is bargaining on, so that she could take his place. The beast winds its way through his stomach.
"One of her teammates was brought into the hospital this morning. I talked to her—" Neji realizes then that Hiroki was not sent to get him this morning "—and she says their sensei was killed, and she has no idea what happened to the rest of her team."
To Be Continued
in
Chapter Seven: Interlude