Tropophobia

: fear of change

There were nightmares first; Kabuto had been right about that.

But there were other things too, thankfully, that managed to float high enough in his subconscious not to be repressed the moment they formed. In sleep, the mind seeks equilibrium and a chance to even out the gross imbalances of the day. Deep in a REM cycle, Hyuuga Neji's mind fought to repair itself in whatever way it could.

- - -

Neji ran into Hanabi in the hallway as he was leaving.

"Neji." Her voice was deadened; an echo of the contemptuous head family heiress addressing her inferior family member and for an instant a thread of hot dangerous fire snaked through his belly and down his arms. 'Wait…' Neji shook off the initial vicious bias of his reaction and recognized her tone as the demand for attention, nothing more. She was a child trying to gain his notice. It was… it was just Hanabi. Hanabi. He turned to face her.

"What is it?"

She held out her hand. "I found these in the branch gardens." Her eyes were hard. "They're not yours."

Nesting in her palm: the alien kunai he'd left behind. There was no room for argument in Hanabi's expression, no chinks of hesitation or doubt, that annoying absolute confidence inherent in the brilliant and the utterly incorrigible. The fact she knows Neji prefers long Sunakagure style kunai to the tell-tale standard-issue shorts in her hand is both endearing and irritating. The older Hyuuga knelt down in front of the girl, looking at her for a moment. It seemed so strange that she hadn't changed a fraction since the last time he'd seen her only some six or seven hours ago, still a ten-year-old girl with pale lavender eyes and soft black hair.

He took the kunai from her and used one to cut a piece of paper from one of his spare jutsu scrolls. "Do you know how to fold a paper crane?" he asked her, his eyes downcast, slicing the paper into a reasonable square on the floor.

"Yeah." She watched him suspiciously. "Hinata showed me once."

Neji showed her the paper, holding it out like a flashcard he expected her to memorize. She stared at it, then at him, eyes wavering between the desire to understand the lesson here and the suspicion her cousin was taking her for a ride. The paper quivered. Then it bowed toward the younger Hyuuga like a tiny white dancer and began to crease in on itself, like a video on fast forward, folding and pleating in rapid-fire movements until Neji had to drop it into his open palm so it could finish its self-perpetuating transformation. After a moment it quivered to a stop and tipped upright.

He handed her the pristine origami crane.

"Use your chakra and only your chakra to fold it. It's an old trick." He closed his eyes, tucking his bangs behind his ear. "It's how I trained for the Sixty-Four Hands." He looked at her. "I'm going to be gone a while. Make as many as you can every day. If you can make one thousand perfect paper cranes by the time I get back, I'll train you."

"Really?" she blurted eagerly. He looked at her and she blushed. "I mean…I accept your terms, Neji-kun."

"Hanabi…" he began, forgetting the formal title.

But after he'd said it, he realized quite absurdly he'd opened his mouth without intending to say anything else. Having planned nothing more, he just stood there with his heart kicking around somewhere behind his tongue, inconveniently tangling his heartstrings among his vocal cords. His cousin was looking expectantly up at him, waiting for the rejoinder that he couldn't give because it was just so inconceivably much to say. Too intangible, too massive, too internal to get past the knot in his throat and he stood there choked silent by it, staring down at this tiny girl who looked like him. It suddenly hurt how much she looked like him and how much no one ever mentioned it.

She frowned. "Yes?"

"…"

"What?"

"I need to go, Hanabi-sama. I'm sorry."

He turned away and set off down the hall, moving quickly because he'd become painfully aware of the tightness in his windpipe, like a physical thing clawing inside him. He needed to get away. Now. Before he said something and shattered a decade of carefully kept clan law and ruined him, her, and everything…

"Wait! Nii-san!"

He stopped.

Her hand closed on his sleeve. "You have to promise to come back," she told him grouchily. "I'm not making all those cranes for nothing,"

Neji turned and knelt down in front of her. Her expression remained petulantly curious even as he placed his hands on her shoulders and studied her frowning face. When she'd started using him as her unofficial measuring post he wasn't sure. When he'd started seeing her as something more than his cousin he didn't know. But he did know this much –

It must have startled her when he tipped his forehead, clothed only in a single black band, against hers and stood there in the hall with her, the closest he'd ever let her be. She smoldered like embers, not earth and solidarity as most Hyuuga did. Her energy felt of the bursting firecracker potential of her namesake. Like gunpowder and fire and he felt her open her chakra a little to him, reaching out and around him with it and they stood together like that. They hoped no one was watching, because this small token of intimacy crossed lines that Neji, in all of his years of defiance and spite, had never crossed.

It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough and he knew it because there were ten years stolen from them and no time now. But he'd needed something – anything – to remind him that his world was not a Mangekyou blur of loathing and hatred. That he had something to protect even now. He held the memory of her face, the tiny slope of her shoulders like a good-luck charm in his fingers.

"I'll be back soon," he promised. "That's all. See you then, nee-chan."

- - -

"Hanabi." Neji woke with her name on his lips and for a moment he wasn't broken. He was still okay.

Then memory caught up to him and he wasn't okay at all.

Thickly he rubbed his hand over his face a couple times and the pain hit him instantaneously and suddenly his head was a mess of fragmented memory, running rampant in his skull. The world reeled and dizzily and everything hit him at once; a slurry of broken, tangled thoughts: Orochimaru, Hinata, him, Itachi, everything… He was drowning in it, pressing the heel of his hand into his forehead and corralling the need to ram his fist through a tree or drop to his knees and scream or something. 'It's just temporary,' he reminded himself uselessly. 'It'll pass. Just ride it out. Just don't…'

Sound voices roared like howling sirens, penetrating the silence of his mind and filling it with a smog of treacherous noise, insidious suggestions, guilty, ugly what-ifs that had the potential to obliterate him and everything he was. It felt like he was coming apart. That he was suffocating, that he was going insane… And all at once he slammed back against the rough bark of the pine behind him, gasping because something was crawling up his fucking arm! Slathering, hissing, sucking against his skin, clawing toward his face –

But there was nothing there.

Staring at his blank arm, Neji felt that his mornings had the distinct possibility of always being like this. Somehow, the yawning emptiness of the realization numbed him so deeply he couldn't even move under the weight of it. He just closed his aching eyes and swallowed down the liquid toxic terror of it. Nothing could fix this. Nothing could fix this ever. This kaleidoscope reality was his now. This was his world. He was covered in chakra ink and bandages, people's branded claims on every inch of him until he was anything and everything but belonging to himself. He wondered thickly how much of his life he'd spent trying to convince himself otherwise. It was so easy.

"Neji-sensei?"

Nishi's eyes were big and sparkled frightened animal green in that darkness, staring out at him from the folds of her travel blanket. Neji could not say for sure how long she'd been watching him so he functioned on the assumption she hadn't seen him wake up panicking.

"You should try to sleep, Nishi."

"I'm an insomniac. Always have been."

"Nevertheless, you should try."

"I did. I heard you…" She blushed in the dark.

"It was nothing, Nishi. You don't need to worry," he assured her convincingly as he could (which wasn't very) and nodded toward the fire. "Just try to relax before dawn. We'll make the last leg back to the Sound today."

There was a hesitant pause.

Neji sighed. "Unless you'd like to keep watch with me, Nishi. You may do that too."

She sat up eagerly in her blanket, the green cloth wrapped around her so only her pale face glowed in the thin rays of moonlight, making her face a patch work of dark and light spots. It was hard to tell if she was expecting him to answer. She wriggled a little closer and hunkered down next to him, a little ball of ten-year-old warmth against his hip. She was looking very, very little…and pink. God, she was so pink. It was absurd that this little girl had put three kunai in a Stone chuunin's face earlier today, but there she was, his fake Sound student scooting close enough to touch and peering intently up at him through her Hanuro Sakura hair. Some sleeping monstrosity stirred in his midriff and he bit it down with a physical effort.

Another strange twist of his day: that it seemed he'd come under the regular employ, beck, and call of Konohagakure's number one philosophical enemy village to go forth and kill said enemy Stone-nin in the first place. Yeah, fine, it wasn't like they of the Leaf were overly fond of the Stone and it wasn't like these particular Stone shinobi hadn't so nobly tried to A: gut his genin team unprovoked. B: threaten his kunoichi with unspeakable war crimes that resulted in the aforementioned kunai to the face. But that was beside the point. The Point – what was his point? Fuck, he'd had one, what was…? – the Point was he was a Leaf ninja, a Hyuuga of Konoha and he was doing as Orochimaru – Lord of the Fucking Criminally Insane – commanded. Therein laid the problem.

This was not supposed to happen.

He wasn't supposed to be…to be…this. What the fuck was he? How long had he been like this? He didn't know for sure; he'd spent so many days locked in the dark, of a dungeon, of his mind, or both that Time had been stripped away to a meaningless word. A one syllable word he couldn't get his head around anymore, like the way he used to wholly understand the concept behind A-class chakra gate implosion but could only remember the theory now – in the same way he could only remember Time as a theory. But that was because he'd just woken up. He was always more fucked up in the mornings. Now why was that?

"Neji-sensei," Nishi stared determinedly up at him, "can I ask you something?"

He considered her face a moment then nodded.

"Are you a member of… of the Hyuuga's branch family?"

By the fire, Minami and Tachi were dozing mightily, Tachi snoring through his nose, Minami making small swiping motions with her hands – slaying dream enemies in flight. Nishi fingered the stitching on the edge of her blanket like she was trying to find some worrisome thing in the cloth, the same worrisome thing that must have prompted her to ask this question tonight. He wondered again, uselessly, how much of his subconscious found its way onto his tongue while sleeping.

"What makes you ask that, Nishi?"

His evasive counter question triggered a blush that would have been lost in the dark to anyone but a Hyuuga. She bought time by tugging her blanket up about her ears – perhaps conscious of her coloring cheeks despite the dark – and fiddled with it a little bit.

"Kabuto-kun…Kabuto-sempai told me that in Konoha, the Hokage lets…bad things happen to the branch family." She hesitated momentarily (hopefully) to see if he'd add something. When he didn't she went on. "H-he said that the head family uses curse seals, bad curse seals. The kind that hurt you if you disobey." Her voice lowered fearfully. "He said they use them on children."

There was a time he wouldn't have hesitated to reply it was so.

There was a more recent time he would have hesitated to say it was so.

And then there was now, full circle, and he didn't hesitate to say, "They do." (He didn't bother to point out Orochimaru used even worse ones. No point. Kabuto's brainwashing was a thorough thing and he didn't have the patience to argue the point tonight.) "They use juin seal techniques on the branch."

Nishi gazed up at him with that paradoxical awe that ninja children could so easily grasp. He could see it in her face, in her pale skin, in the posture of her bones inside the trembling wrathful wrap of her muscles that she was appalled by this truth and it made Neji want to laugh. Not five hours ago, this little girl had utilized a cruelly brutal combination of genjutsu and choke-wire to take a man's head off his shoulders at close range and yet, here she was, sitting with her sensei and righteously horrified. Against the enemy, all horrors and all manner of martial force were necessary and morally unquestionable, but crimes against her own – unspeakable. Neji knew her type of ninja and it sickened him (thrilled him) on a baser level that she'd come to regard him as one of her protected people.

Neji regarded her coolly as ever. "But what makes you think I'm branch family?"

Nishi looked surprised. "I – I don't…" She looked off, gathered herself. "Why would a head family member run? A branch member has the best reasons to defect."

"Nishi, in the history of Konoha there has never been a renegade Hyuuga from the branch." Neji found his hand had inadvertently formed the simple hand position that released the seal. He showed it to her. "One seal. That's all it takes Nishi. One." He lowered his hand. "Branch family doesn't escape, even to other countries."

"S-so you're a member of the head family?"

"Of course not. I'm a branch family member."

Despite her tolerant shyness, that particular runaround managed to get the girl's dander briefly up and she glowered at him. Four weeks ago ('Four? Really? Or is it more like two? God it's so hard to tell…') she would have been far too demure with him to dare anything like question him about his past, much less glare at him. Unfortunately, fighting together, training, sleeping, eating, killing together had the affect of dispelling the initial glamour of a jounin sensei, no matter how exotically fucked up he might be. She'd started hedging him with questions the way new teammates inevitably did. Though, with far more grace than her sister or Tachi, whose primary method of interrogation was: 'So, sensei, is it true that the Hyuuga are inbred scary sons of bitches or is that just hype?'

But here she was, questioning him, all curious concerned eyes in the dark and he slid a senbon needle from a wrist holster so he had something to fiddle with while he spoke. ('Oh, look at all my fine Hyuuga-bred grace now. Fidgeting, for fuck's sake…') He waited for her next question.

"So you ran?"

"Yes." He lied.

"Why defect to the Sound?"

"Kabuto made me the offer."

A momentary silence followed.

"How old were you when –?"

"I got mine when I was four."

Nishi stared, her eyes like two giant glow bugs in the dark. "Four?"

"It was a long time ago, Nishi. I don't really remember it." 'Liar. You God-awful fucking liar.' "It didn't hurt."

He'd screamed for hours. The Cage Seal had disagreed with his eyes for some reason, like his stupid four-year-old body had sensed the danger, detected the Cage Seal as the evil, dangerous virus monster that it was. And his little-boy's brain had attacked it with all the fire and vicious panic it could muster. Hiashi himself had run Neji from the head estate down to the branch where his father had stood waiting in the street all day long. Neji remembered his uncle's voice and his father's, screaming at one another with the panic and gut-deep intimate hatred that can only be had between blood. It was, Neji remembered, the first and only time he ever talked back to Hiashi in public and got away with it. Almost killing your twin brother's firstborn – be he branch family or not – suspends things like rank and decorum.

"Can I see it?"

"No."

She blushed.

"Go to sleep, Nishi." He nodded toward the fire. "I'll wake you soon enough."

She moved obediently toward the fire, pausing only ask worriedly, "Will they come after you, sensei?"

Neji shivered a little inside. "They might," he replied and disliked the truth in it. "But that's not something you need worry about. Try to rest for –," He stopped.

Nishi, sensing the peculiarity in this sudden stop turned to look at him. "Neji-sensei?"

"Just…go lie down," he managed, voice a shake too breathy for his liking. He stood to his feet and pivoted away from her, striding toward the woods. "I'll be back, just…stay with the others. I'll be back."

He felt her eyes follow her sensei into the darkness, but she remained where she was, her sister and her teammate arrayed on the ground around her. Neji moved quickly then; ducking out of sight to press his back to the bole of a tree. Cool bark picked threads in his back, scratching his shoulder blades with little claws. His hands shook as he tugged his hitai-ate from his brow and felt of ice when he touched his head. The mark on his forehead burned hot under his palm, a coiled wire of fire in his skin, fused to the outside of his skull. He closed his eyes and realized he could still see the canopy.

- - -

The missions got steadily worse.

Try as he might, Neji found it harder and harder to keep the three Sound genin safe. They began to look worse and worse, the glow of their energy dimming like old flashlights as their scars grew in number and frequency, appearing suddenly and violently and lingering until only taut white skin remained stretched over once unwounded flesh. Neji found himself fighting most of the battles now, because good as they were, these missions had become too much for ten-year-old ninja, no matter how well they used their chakra and their determination. So he reassigned them to back up, to cover-fire, to distraction and defense.

It didn't matter. Soon the missions became so difficult, he couldn't afford to keep them off the frontlines and they joined him in the thick of it. Some days they excelled, some days they nearly died and Neji had to patch them back together like battered dolls. Day after day they fought. His students were wearing out like overused rugs and he couldn't stop it. Kabuto remained merciless. If Neji rejected a mission, they tortured him until he accepted. If he failed a mission, they sent him on a harder one. He designed the pattern so Neji would have to decide: was defiance now worth the physical toll and the cost that would bring him (his team) in the next mission?

Soon Neji was accepting them out of sheer exhaustion.

What did it matter if the conclusion would always remain the same?

He tried to escape several times, nearly succeeded the first time by successfully knocking out and impersonating Ban. He gained access to one of Oto's labs in the secondary sub-levels and speed read through a mess of classified records and lab reports, base locations, jutsu research and came across a file on Hidden Sound curse seals that made his head reel. He was almost out when Takon caught him.

"Reconnaissance, huh? Should have known. Whoops. Sorry. Well, Kabuto can put that back in place later, after you tell me what you took, Neji. Look at me. This is very important. What did you read exactly?"

After that they were always ready for him.

Battles became a blur of blood and chakra, strange pointless, disjointed missions that Neji saw no pattern or reason to besides their consistent suicidal nature. He felt himself sliding into the rhythm of it, the merciless state of minimalist murder. He functioned in a state of constant motion but never of excess. He cut just deep enough to sever the artery, hit just enough strikes to stop the heart, moved just fast enough to avoid being wounded, saved his students just in time to preserve their lives. Enemies began to fall faster, became smears of whiplash time fragments where his kunai met brief resistance, sliding through thick wet muscle, where his chakra burned a hole through vital tissue, blew apart delicate internal structures.

He couldn't remember where he was, why he was, who he was.

Still, constantly, when all the panic and nausea and exhaustion had beat away his fear, he would refuse. Kabuto would just smile then, his teeth and the twin circles of light that hid his eyes grinning and glinting in the dark. He would ask, "Are you sure, Neji-kun, that you refuse to take this mission?" He would, like a hundred times before, say "Yes." Then Kabuto would bring Takon and Mai and Juri and Ban and Neji would fight them. A screaming fast-forward segment of chakra burns and Gentle Fist, of pain and refusal. He'd refuse and refuse and refuse until the violations and violence overwhelmed the jounin and shattered him to sixteen years old. Then he'd accept the next mission and try to forgive himself for it.

Neji was a jounin of the Leaf.

He'd never felt so alone.

- - -

The Grass-nin came out of nowhere.

He hadn't seen it coming; he blamed fatigue and incompetence and Kabuto (because fuck it, it was always Kabuto's fault) for sending them out to the middle of no-fucking-where to get ambushed by a chuunin squad in the prairie land.

Neji hurled into the Kaiten so quickly his students squeaked at the sudden twister-cloud of aqua light. Though, their alarm was little compared to their cries of horror when four exploding tags – one for each of them – went off against Neji's shield of motion and chakra. He'd been on enough body-guard missions now that the act of cocooning others in his defense came as easily as the spin itself, but the explosions were massive and the second to last one blew a hole in Neji's defense and the last one slammed him to the ground. For a split second there was a haze of black and blue as his Byakugan battled the head trauma, a screaming E-flat tone whined into the cloud of static silence his head.

He could feel Nishi laying down a mask of genjutsu and Tachi cranking out Bunshin to mask their locations. Minami was hurling kunai like no tomorrow screaming at him – to get his lazy ass up and do something – and because they were his responsibility (like it or not) Neji shook the ringing from his ears and stood up. The first Grass-nin came at him with a katana, slicing a long slit in the sleeve of Neji's robes, then another near his thigh, his ribs, and finally a glancing edge parted the skin across his collarbone in a neat line of blood.

'He's using a time distortion jutsu.'

Neji formed the release seal. "Kai!"

The world leapt forward into real time and the Grass-nin (the jounin captain) leapt back, regaining the safety of distance. He was older, forty-something. Some long ago battle had left the man with a crisscross scars bisecting his left cheek and splitting his upper lip in a cleft. Though ancient for an active ninja, that kind of age – to Neji – only spoke of experience and cunning. It was obvious he recognized Juuken. Grim grey eyes roved up Neji's profile, taking in his stance and posture in a weary kind of way, as though this had not been what he or any of his team could have expected to be fighting.

Neji shot forward, chakra induced speed snapping him into close combat before the man could get word to his subordinates. He knocked the blade aside with a bare hand gloved in chakra, stopped a defensive kunai with counter grab and slammed his forehead into the man's face. The two jounin leapt apart, Neji flipping back and hopping deftly to his Juuken stance again, the Grass-nin stepping away with a hand to his bloodied nose.

"Damn Soundies," he muttered then put two fingers to his mouth and whistled.

Someone entered his Hakke and Neji engaged them with Juuken, instantly disabled her light leg and knocked out the tenketsu points in her right shoulder. With a snarl, his opponent – female chuunin, twenties, good with taijutsu – whipped a scroll from her hip and tore it open with her teeth and suddenly the air was full of kunai. ('Projectile summoning. Like Tenten. Neutralize her.') He spun into a Kaiten, chakra caching up the storm of metal like raindrops and throwing them like toys across the battleground –

Neji Body Flickered and tackled Nishi some ten meters away, looping an arm around her middle and throwing her clear of the massive shadow shuriken she'd failed to see. Flicker! And he was back to the jounin, driving a series of Juuken strikes in and around the man's terrifying sword dance, but never close enough to –

Flicker! He blocked a chuunin's kunai stab as it whistled down for Tachi's throat. Neji rewarded the startled shinobi by slamming a handful of hot chakra into his belly and destroying a knot of his small and large intestines. Tachi shouted, but Neji saw second chuunin and his swinging tanto blade. He ducked it, sideways somersault, slashed out with the kunai he'd extracted from the dying man's fingers. Hot wet spray arced through the air, splattered the grass in blood. The wounded shinobi had the sense to pull a substitution and regroup, but not before Nishi's exploding tag took the back of his head off in a wet burst of bone and –

Minami shrieked.

Neji spun and put the kunai into the aim of the female chuunin, who had to block and missed her chance to kill Minami.

"Fuck! We have a Hyuuga! How the hell did that happen, goddamn it!?"

"I'll handle him, Himiko." Neji twisted, eyes wide and glowing phosphorous white. "Kill the kids."

The jounin materialized inside Neji's Hakke, too fast to do anything. He blocked with a burst of chakra only to feel the blade slice through it and bite his palm. The man's katana blade crackled now with a sparkling edge of blue. An extra two razor sharp centimeters of chakra blade added to the width, so sharp he'd barely felt it knife his hand open. 'Wind type. Shit, he's using the same style as Sarutobi-sempai.' The Hyuuga fell back, driven into retreat, evading the wicked glitter of silver death, ribbons of killer light that streaked through his Byakugan like after-image. Three Kage Bunshin burst out of the long grass and suddenly Neji was surrounded.

Bleeding now, he flew into a series of Body Flickers, one after the other after the other, trying to trick his way into being lost among the illusion. He was bending and twisting, rolling up and bending over backward and lashing out in all directions. Bamf! Bamf! The clones burst into smoke and dust all around him. Neji used Bunshin, masked his chakra, planted false chakra signals on his clones and they were not falling for any of it –!

Then fire burst through his skull and Neji hit the ground, puking before he even recognized what happened.

"Neji-sensei!?"

"Hyuuga-sempai?"

"I'm fine! Don't stop!" Neji shouted, spitting bile and vomit.

He wiped his mouth and forced himself up, legs prickling with un-readiness, equilibrium all spun out to hell. He was aware that he was crying; eyes burnt full of sodium flavored tears that would not stop running but did not affect his bloodline's ability to see. But fuck his eyes were on fire.

His genin were ganging up on the wounded chuunin, but having a hard time of it. The woman was blasting the field apart with devastating Douton ninjutsu and if Neji didn't get over there now –! The jounin slammed the hilt of his katana into Neji's temple, caught him up in around the middle and threw him the opposite direction. ("No, you fucking don't," he said vengefully. "You deal with me first.") Neji hit the ground hard, wind slammed from his lungs and twisted adroitly up and felt a swath of cold bright pain open the flesh on his ribs. He ducked and flipped back, spun around to face his opponent.

He didn't have the chakra for this.

They'd just come out the Stone Country mission and this guy was as strong as Asuma.

Even as he fought for his life, pulses of heat throbbed through his head; scarring cherry-red fire through the front of his skull. His chakra sputtered through his system in gelatinous pops and bursts. It rushed into his head in uncontrollable surges, pooled hot behind his retinas – 'Fuck! No. Not now!' – building heat like a pressure cooker. Itachi's goddamn jutsu taking him, harder than it ever had before. Minami and Nishi were wrapped in some kind of living plant jutsu, the grass under their feet reaching up to wrap their skinny ankles, holding them down. They couldn't move. He had to –

And that's when his Cage Seal released.

Neji actually screamed this time, dropping to his knees and kneeling there blind to everything but the heat and the darkness. The juin on his forehead glowed white-hot, cauterizing his eyes and his mind and he was clutching his face, just screaming.

"Minami-nee-chan!"

"Sensei!"

The world was burning red and black…

- - -

"Neji-nii-san."

Her slender hands rest on his shoulders; palms low on the back of his neck – too low, intentionally low – and he can't stop the shudder that moves through him, secret and unwilling as an earthquake under water. Fingertips ghost down his arms; her mouth moves down the nape of his neck; she whispers through his shirt against the first thoracic vertebrae and makes him shiver like he doesn't want to. Hinata would never touch him like this. Never in his blind spot: the only vulnerable place on his body. She would never…

"You're not here," he tells the non-entity. "You've never been here."

"And does that comfort you?" she whispers. "Does it change what you have done?"

"Stop this jutsu."

"Answer my question. Does the fact this isn't real change how you felt when you did it?"

"You forced…" He stops. "I wouldn't do that."

"You did once," she points out. "You tried. Do you not love me now out of penitence for that?"

"That's not why," he cries and his voice is swallowed by the silence all around him, the tomb of soundless air he's created. "That's not true."

"Oh cousin," she says sadly, wrapping her arms around him from behind, holding him so close he can feel her heart beating against his back, her timid, shifting chakra engulfing him. She is coolness and serenity. Of all the Hyuuga, she felt the most like water when she was near. She's always felt like water running through him and she feels like water now, liquid currents sliding through the mesh of his senses like a river through a net. She holds him and kisses the place where his hair meets his skin, just behind his ear. "You killed me once. You've killed me twice. You'll kill me many, many more times before I let you go."

Her mouth breathes sparks and filthy steam against his neck, leaves burns down his shoulder.

"You'll kill me, until you hate me, nii-san."

- - -

And suddenly the juin seal shattered and he was the static center of the world. The circle of his divination arrayed at his feet in all directions like a compass drawn in light and calligraphy but he was the only magnetic pull in existence, standing motionless at the centre while everything else revolved slowly around him. Neji was the focal point of this universe and everything and everyone around him was just caught in his orbit – and he could knock them the fuck out of it.

The chuunin didn't have time to realize she was dead before she was, her own tanto blade rammed through her throat. The Hyuuga suddenly and inconceivably in front of her – no longer on the other side of the field but having suddenly fucking appeared, he twisted the blade from her hand and sheathed it in the warm dark of her trachea. Neji let her drop. It was easy. The Byakugan tore down the walls of opaque and laid the world bare in light and chakra and kinetic motion. Grabbing up Time and pinning it still before him. Stopping her had been easy because he'd already seen her defense, split seconds before she made it.

He was aware of a great pressure inside his head, chakra. It coiled and twisted inside the hollow of his eyes, building and burning inside his head. The jounin captain was attacking him, coming at him from all sides so fast the become little more than blurs, tufts of grass bursting where his feet touched, no other sign of his passing save the whispering hiss of mass moving through air too fast too follow. But Neji didn't have to move. He waited. Hiss! Pivoted left, knocked the man's blade away, grabbing up the chakra in his katana and pushing it away with the flat of his palm. He resumed the Juuken stance and waited. Hiss! Crack! A blow to the knee this time. A curse and he was gone again. Neji waited.

"What the fuck are you?" whispered the jounin.

"You're in my divination," Neji murmured. "I can see you clearly."

The flicker of motion came from his right. He spun. Crack! The heel of Neji's hand slammed into the jounin's jaw, shattering bone and teeth –! And Neji felt something inside his head shift. There was pain, fleeting and hot inside him and through his Byakugan, hotter and hotter, unbearably fucking hot –! Then it was gone. Released as bolt of light twisting through the air like a crazy bottle rocket, it spiraled through his Byakugan. It slammed into the jounin and Neji saw his chakra freeze inside his pathways. His jutsu failed.

Shh-crack! Neji's chakra laden hands grabbed and snapped the now lightless katana blade like plastic. He saw the jounin's deep grey eyes fall on him, wide and awed – Neji spun, struck out. Crunch! A sick wet sound of grinding and impact. Neji's straight kick shattered his nose and drove shards of bone and calcium deep into the man's brain. The glow of chakra blackened to nothing. He was gone and the grass whispered over the body. Neji shuddered. His hands bled blood and chakra. His head was full of chakra, chakra under his clothes and in his mouth. He felt that there was nothing holding him back, nothing in the world… Finally, he could see.

Then the Cage Seal clamped down and blinded him. It burned into the bone across his forehead and he was stripped empty and raw, hollowed so utterly he decided he was dying. He'd killed himself, the seal was killing him and he was just dying. Without anything to hold him up, he fell.

"Neji-sensei!" Nishi's voice chased him into the cold dark.

"Shit," wept Tachi somewhere.

'Hanabi…I'm so sorry.'

"Nishi," Minami's voice echoed, "what's wrong with his eyes?"

Author's Note:

Cliffhanger! Wooo!