Eleutherophobia

:fear of freedom

There were rumors. Rumors under the other rumors that whispered across Konoha, the Leaf, the Fire Nation and its neighbors, murmurs that leaked through from the worried grapevines in the other countries and bled into theirs. The other rumors, obviously, got more attention. Akatsuki stole the spotlight. There wasn't time to think of anything else, of course, but there were still rumors. It anyone bothered to pay attention someone might have noticed that the Hyuuga and the Hokage kept arranging for private meetings. And while that in itself wasn't odd, inviting Hatake Kakashi to attend those meetings really was. Damned if anyone could guess why. Kakashi always came out of the board room looking pissed off and hateful (which is too say he looked exactly the same as usual, except he didn't read his porn and was on time for his missions: Fulfilling the compulsive need to kill something.)

Hatake may have known something, but he was suddenly far too busy with missions to talk about it.

There were rumors inside the rumors of Akatsuki, gossip within the gossip of war and worry. If ANBU Intel had been looking for a pattern, they might have noticed a similarity in some of their reports. An assassination in the Rain was foiled when their troop found themselves inexplicably unable to perform any jutsu and as a result the targeted daimyo completed a trade agreement with a Sound representative. A week later, a jounin scout in the Lightening Country was intercepted by a Sound-nin who stopped him from attacking a Konoha chuunin team. The Soundie, apparently, stopped the jounin with his eyes. There was a thief who stole records from the Sand Village archives by paralyzing all the sentries on duty. There was a series of assassinations, same MO. Clean. Lethal. Anonymous.

From a collection of over twenty eight reports all over the nations only two facts held true.

"He uses his eyes to stop you."

And:

"Don't let him touch you."

- - -

Neji woke up with blood in his mouth and static in his skull.

The shift from sleeping to waking involved such sudden, sickening redefinitions of his world that every waking brought with it nausea and pain so terrible it reached down inside him and tore him inside out each time. He fell asleep and fell through color and macabre night terrors so intense he came to bleeding where he'd bitten through his tongue. He ground the inside of his cheek to raw hamburger, spitting salt and sugar fluid and vomiting up water, vomiting up air, vomiting up fire and the acid Molotov cocktail of psychotropics and painkillers that Kabuto forced down his throat.

Hyuuga Neji, in fleeting moments rare as blue diamonds, was aware that he'd gone mad. This he knew; one nugget of certainty in the raging sea of watercolor chaos that was his mind, solid and sure for the span of a second before melting like a sugar crystal and he was lost in the maze of his madness once again. Distantly, he knew that his thoughts should not shatter at the mere suggestion of being analyzed. He knew there should not have been bands of light and butterfly wings in his eyes. There should not be a caricature of Uchiha Itachi standing in the corner of his peripheral every time he came back thrashing to consciousness.

He knew, somehow, somewhere, in his head, something was not aligned.

All had become non sequitur.

The world splintered under his fingertips then crawled inside his skull in Technicolor and raped every crevasse of his brain until there wasn't anything left inside him untouched by everything that was supposed to be outside him. He couldn't stop seeing everything. Kabuto came into his room several times an hour and told him so. Takon came into his room several times a day and told him so. Itachi came into his head several times a minute and told him so. Obviously, this concerned him a lot more than any Sound-nin and Neji dreaded every half-waking moment. He dreaded the new terrible truths pouring into him from hidden recesses of his head that he'd not known were there until his seal shattered.

You are seeing too much, they told him, and you can't shut it off because your clan's precious Cage Seal, their prized fucking piece of pretentious self-insurance, has gone nuclear and flipped some super stereophonic visual system in your brain to permanent 'ON'.

"Your eyes are evolving," Itachi told him, standing on the ceiling, dressed in jeans and Rock Lee's favorite T-shirt, hands in his pockets, face the same terrifying glassy-eyed mask of crafted madness. "The Cage Seal is designed for binding the Byakugan. It's a specific design. Your eyes were a close match when you were a child, but now they want to change and the shift is causing intermittent seal release as it dislodges the chakra anchors."

Neji tried to tell him that was ridiculous. He'd been tested all his life. The clans had run him through the scientific wringer and he was negative for the Sharingan gene. Negative. It would not manifest. They'd told him this over and over. He was Hyuuga. He was theirs. Neji tried to articulate this, but all that got out was a low, despairing moan, like a wounded animal and Itachi stepped out from a patch of shadow to his left and leaned over him. Pale and disinterested, rake thin and terrible, terrible, terrible with eyes that spun sickeningly like spiral tops, like a bloody whirlpools. Neji tried to recoil, held down by leather and metal and stone straps so tight he couldn't even turn his head. He couldn't close his eyes. Itachi filled his visual cortex until he wanted to scream.

"The Byakugan is a dominant gene allele." Itachi's voice in his head drives splinters into him, pierces and poisons him. "It would suppress the phenotypic traits of the copy-wheel, but you're still a carrier. The Sharingan probably would have manifested if not for that seal clamping down on every optical chakra coil in your brain. It's a terrible thing. The head family must have done it on purpose, fearing what you might become. That's why your eyes do things they shouldn't. That's why seal activation makes you so sick. That's why you can't scream."

"Get away from me! Get away! You don't know what you're talking about!"

"He's been like this," said Kabuto, who was leaning over him where Itachi had been standing, "all morning I'm afraid. The pain is more than any of my anesthesia can sooth without side effects. As you can see…the results are somewhat grotesque."

"And your suppose this has something to do with the genjutsu damage?" asked Hinata in Mai's voice, low and smoky.

"Most certainly, Mai-san. I've been closely monitoring his condition on a nightly basis. There's enough synaptic damage to kill just about any A-class jounin, given the damage was meant to kill. No, someone opened our Hyuuga's head and played merry hell, I think. Then they patched the damage with a thin mental block. I've found it – genius workmanship, by the by, Mai-san. The best I've seen for genjutsu suppressants, I'll show you sometime. The block is centered in the amygdala, boosts the affect, forces down some hormone production, boosts others. Keeps him docile as it were. Forces him to forget the events whenever conscious."

"A cognitive memory block," breathed Mai. "That's unheard of. Are you saying…?"

"Yes. Every night. Just to keep him suspicious."

"That's…simply amazing. I've love to meet the motherfucker that did this. It's exquisitely clever."

"Yes. And apparently triggered to self detonate. Ever since the seal break he's been hallucinating. I suspect whatever mental block that's been suppressing his night terrors is splintering as we speak. Most likely, once the seal is gone, he'll remember everything."

Itachi leaned over the doctor's shoulder, red eyes whirling as he looked down at the Hyuuga. "Are you ready to remember? The last lesson?"

"I'm not you," he rasped, tasting blood and salt in equal measure. "I'm not you…"

"I never said you were. You did."

"Ignore it. He's probably not even aware we're in the room."

"He's looking at us."

Kabuto grinned. "Don't be so vain. Of course he's looking at us. I imagine he couldn't stop looking at us, the ceiling, the walls, the floor, even if he wanted to."

"You're eating this up," Mai laughed. "This is probably you're wet dream, doctor. A hybrid doujutsu and all to yourself." She clucked her tongue reproachfully. "Don't get too attached. Orochimaru-sama might consider him for –"

"Impossible. Neji is far too unstable a vessel at this point to say nothing of possible side effects from the hybridization. Besides, Sasuke is still the stronger option when it comes down to sheer power. Neji, however, is a creature of particular…" Kabuto fished for a word. "…subtlety. Grace, I'd say. He's been a great asset these last months and I'm not ready to give up on his usefulness yet. Certainly not while the Sound is in such a precarious position."

Hinata (No, not Hinata. It wasn't, couldn't be her.) smiled a crooked bitter smile, thoughtful in its nastiness. "So I suppose you'd hold it against me if I did something mean to your new plaything."

Kabuto sighed, guiding her off. "Mai-san. I know how you feel about the Hyuuga, but you must remember yours is not the only clan they've slaughtered…just the most recent. Takon's clan was wiped out nearly to the man by Hyuuga Hawks, after all, and they did that without any prompting from village Hokages. You can't begrudge Neji-kun his heritage. Besides," Kabuto chuckled as the two Sound-nin exited the room, "its looking like he may cast his lot with the Uchiha by the end of all this anyway. Did you see how they spin…?"

The voices faded. Neji shut his eyes. It didn't matter though. Itachi was inside his eyelids, superimposed within the dark sanctum of his skull where Neji supposed he must have always been. Since the night in the Hyuuga gardens where those kalidescope eyes caught him up, pinned him, and wove an illusion so fine he'd not realized the extent of his deception until just now. The illusion that he'd ever had any control. The illusion that all Itachi had done that night was teach him a forbidden assassin jutsu so destructive it masked the real horror.

"What did you do to me?"

"I just woke you up."

"No."

"I set you free, Neji." Those dark raging insane red eyes looked down on him, and in them Neji could see his own gaze reflected back, a mirror image of madness and mania. Itachi bent over him. Hinata bent over him. The world was shivering and shaking and gone and Neji was too tired to scream, too tired to resist. He couldn't close his eyes. "I'm going to show you a world without boundaries."

- - -

"Stop."

The command hung in the air like a lonely cloud, a tiny, insubstantial breath of sound floating there in front of him and he absently reached out to touch it. The bubble of his words popped with a disgruntled burble and whizzed off like a pricked party balloon to hurl into the heavens and away. He didn't bother to watch for its progress because he'd just noticed his second cousin Hyumi standing at the end of the hall. She was dressed only in a thin under kimono and it occurred to him that a: this was no way for a member of the Hyuuga House to behave (branch or not) and c: (wait. He felt as though he'd forgotten something) it was very cold out and shouldn't she be wearing her jacket?

This having occurred to him, he took her jacket from the hook on the wall beside him and set off to give her the pink frilly thing that must be her coat because it simply must be, it was the only one in the hall and he was warm enough in his sweatshirt. Never mind, he didn't remember ever owning a sweatshirt. Details. Where the hell did Hyumi think she was going? Like some kind of shy ghost she'd stepped off down the adjacent hall to her left and padded away, the soft slap of her bare feet reminding him that it was freezing and he'd forgotten his own shoes in his haste to give her jacket to her.

Mildly annoyed, Neji set off after her at a brisk pace.

"Hyumi, you need your jacket," he called after her. "Get back here."

"There's something I have to do first," she told him from halfway down the hall. She boosted herself through a window, the long pale skin of her bare calves looking the color of skim milk and eggshell. Smooth muscle flexed beneath as she stood up on the sill and inspected the outside. A cold wind flung threads of her dark hair around her throat, fanning out in coils behind her head. "I'll be back. Hold my coat, Neji-kun?"

"I can't. I have a mission," he reminded her, moving to the window and standing behind her.

"That's too bad," she said. "My brother wanted you to teach him some Juuken."

"I can teach Hayate later. Take your coat."

"I don't need it," she reminded curtly. "Thank you."

Then she flung herself out the window and plunged into the snow outside. Despite the pressing need to report in for his mission, Neji felt compelled to do something when his family reconciled themselves to do stupid things, so against his better judgment he tucked her coat under his arm and followed her out. Hyumi was forever doing things like this to irk him; her and her brother both because they grew up together in the south house. Now that she was fifteen she was forever trying to insist she was grown up because she'd gotten pretty and she knew it. Stupid girl. She still needed her coat.

Once through the window, however, Neji found he was mistaken, there was no snow, only tall silk screens with winter watercolor painted onto them. Hyumi had, of course, worked her way through the maze of screens already and because he didn't have time to waste before his mission he pulled a kunai from his hip holster and began slicing through the screens with quick whispering swipes of razor edge through fabric. The screens went on and on forever, one faceless snowy scene after another. Damn. Why did head family forever insist on adorning their rooms with an excess of furniture and bamboo screens? As through the Byakugan didn't make them pointless.

"Hyumi," he called, slapping the kunai against his thigh at last in exasperation. "I'm not playing."

"Neji-kun…" Her voice sounded strange. "You try so hard to keep us safe. You're always so nice to us."

"No, I'm not," he groused, frowning. "What's wrong with you?"

He pushed the last screen over at last and realized why Hyumi didn't really need her jacket. It would have certainly been in the way for the man crouched between her knees just then, one hand vanished in the dip of her thighs his other working a rough circle around the curve of her left breast. He gripped too eagerly so the soft flesh swelled between his elegant fingers. Beneath him, Hyumi glanced at Neji with a curious expression of mild sisterly irritation and affection, and lifted her hips to more readily provide herself to her partner. As she was pulled at last against the man above her, her lily-white knees jerking instinctively, her soap-scum eyes rolling briefly up around, she smiled very coldly at him.

"I told you, I don't need my jacket," she told him. "You're too late. Now go the fuck away."

Hiashi didn't even look up from Hyumi's throat. "You have a mission remember? Best run along."

"This isn't real," Neji said calmly. "I stopped this. It didn't happen. You're twisting it."

Like a ripple ruining a reflection Hiashi's face blurred, his image melting into another clean browed, pale-eyed, dark-haired man; then into another; then another. Interchangeable sneering faces. They were terrible faces because in them Neji could see the absolute certainty he'd actually seen the night of Hyumi's assault – all-consuming superiority and unashamed lust, the unchallenged certainty that this, this was and always had been his right as members of the head family Hyuuga. That this was something he'd been waiting for, been promised as his inheritance for having been born on the right branch of the family tree.

Neji pressed a hand to his eyes. "Not everyone in the head family is like that."

"Not all of them, but enough of them."

"I won't follow your solution. Just because I'm free now, doesn't mean I'm like you. Murderer. I'm not a murderer." (Not anymore, someone whispered.)

"What about for me, nii-san?"

Neji turned around and found Hanabi standing the open door, the sunlight all around her like a nimbus clinging to her skin, burning off her hair. She was so beautiful he wanted to hold her and close her off from all the truths and all the things she and even he could never understand or want to understand about the horrors of the Hyuuga house around them. He wanted to be her big brother. He wanted to tell her so.

"Then why don't you?" she asked. "Can the Hyuuga stop you now? Now that their hold is broken, why not? What are their secrets now? You know everything."

"It's not enough," Neji murmured/Itachi murmured, "for me to be free."

The image flaked before him, the people peeling like shells of enamel and crumbling to leave Hinata, smiling down at him, her expression one of unfathomable satiation. Her hand was on his face, a thumb tracing the hooks and flourishes of his Cage Seal and she bent down to kiss the juin gently.

"I don't believe this. It's not real."

"Of course it's not. It's just a metaphor."

"What?"

"I'm not doing this. You are." Hinata leaned down, her little-girl's face, the one he'd tried to slaughter when he was fourteen, bending down near enough to speak the shape of her message against his forehead. "Wake up, nii-san"

- - -

He woke up a month later

He woke up in battle.

He was standing a field of long grass. His hair was bound back. In his left hand he gripped a trio of fresh senbon, a kunai in his right. It was twilight and the shadows on the meadow shifted as the concussion of exploding tags beat the grass flat. Dark figures leapt in blurred zigzags, crazy spinning falls and secret flitting flashes through the prairie land, illuminated by the ignition of bombs and the brush fire. Boom! Tachi was throwing himself at an opponent. Flash! Nishi was in the air, wires trailing like fine silk strings. Bang! Minami was putting her fist into a man's belly.

He felt that he shouldn't be there, that all this was wrong.

"Sensei!" Minami was screaming, her skinny arms gashed in rivets of blood. "Sensei! Get your lazy ass out here and heeelp!"

The girl bounded from the grass toward him, face a mask of panic framed in bubblegum curls. She darted for him and safety he represented, her little girl legs pumping wildly, wobbling and sending her tumbling head over heels, shrieking and swearing in a manner not exactly in line with her age and hair color. Seconds later, he saw why. From the tall grass burst a massive white beast of a nin-dog, growling and shaking the ground with the slam of his forepaws. Spotting its prey it yapped joyously, tail wagging as it pounced on her, jaws spreading open in a gaping red maw of fangs and tongue.

Neji darted between his charge and the dog, Byakugan blazing on, he hurled his senbon.

An exceptionally well-trained mutt, it recognized the danger and ducked the needles intended for its eyes and he caught the animal in it's the meaty muscle of it flank. Fire ignited the battle field. The giant dog spun around, black lips curling off glistening ivory fangs and charged him. Neji twisted and slammed a chakra poisoned hand into its flank, fire and heat diffusing into fur and flesh.

The animal howled and tumbled, but Neji was already on his feet again, moving toward the sound of Tachi's panicked yells, the detonation of Minami's exploding tags, the deafening silence that might have been Nishi alive or dead. He felt chakra – powerful, not unbeatable – burning at the edges of his awareness like incinerating comets shooting through the universe of his perception. They moved slowly because they hadn't seen him yet, thought they were fighting mere genin and in accordance to that, they were holding back. He could take them. It would be easier one-on-one, if his students could keep one occupied –

"Akamaru! Fuck, shit, goddamn it!"

And Inuzuka Kiba was suddenly kneeling in front of him.

For a split second he didn't see Neji, because his eyes were on his dog. Fear set the chuunin's face back a few years as he touched the hound's neck ruff in concern, his head bowed down to speak softly, comfortingly. ('I could kill him right now. He'd never see it…') Then Kiba twisted toward him, nose flaring – he'd caught the scent of a fourth attacker. His face was a contortion of hatred and vengeance, all fangs and blood red tribal stripes, matted dark hair and hot adrenaline instinct… Then recognition struck him and the animal became human, wide-eyed and shocked.

"Neji?" the Inuzuka croaked. "What the...hell?"

"Sensei!" Nishi shouted, running out in front of him suddenly, grabbing his arm. "There's still two more! We need help!"

Kiba's eyes flickered, instantaneous connection, a snapshot of terrible understanding. "Sensei?"

Before Kiba could move, Neji was on him. There was an instant, just before the first of twenty-four strikes hit, that he was face to face with Hinata's teammate, dark eyes flown wide, mouth open, stuck on some protest, a profanity, (never a plea. Never Kiba.) Neji struck Kiba down; riddled his body with bullet-strike blows; knifing the last strike into his neck and slamming him out of awareness so hard he probably never felt the impact. The Inuzuka hit the ground unconscious. Immediately he was seen to by Akamaru, who leapt protectively over his master and snarled at the young Hyuuga.

"Good dog," Neji said thickly. He put a thumb and forefinger in his mouth and whistled for his team to break off contact. Instantly they Body Flickered to his side and assembled in a defensive position.

"The dog is still moving," Nishi pointed out. "Should I kill it?"

"No. Leave them." Neji felt as though something were lodged in his throat. "Focus on the Aburame."

Sure enough, the grasses began to bend and bow, shivering as the black writhing swarm of Kikai bugs roiled over the ground. In the half-light, their shells glistened green black, a mobile cloud of clicking oil dark specks from which a heavily hooded boy rose out, standing on the mass of insects like it were a platform. Neji couldn't see his eyes through the pair of sunglasses, but the long silence in which he regarded the other Leaf-nin spoke reams to Neji. He still hadn't shifted a muscle when the third member of their group leapt from the long grass, sending a burst of terror and nausea through the Hyuuga before he fully recognized…

Hinata did not have pink hair.

"Oh my God, Neji?" Haruno Sakura stared. "Hyuuga Neji? What are you doing here?"

Shino answered her quietly. "He's choosing sides."

Sakura's eyes found Kiba then.

In that instant Time again defied what he previously knew about it, that it was linear and ever moving. Instead, for that moment it seemed that time froze, locked and suspended all of them in a state of inertia and held them still while a cocktail of panic, urgency, adrenaline, and longing filled the crevasses and cracks of his mind to the brim. He didn't know what to do. There was never a plan for this or he'd thought…he'd been so sure he'd know what to do if he…He'd never realized he might not know what to say or how to explain himself to fellow Leaf-nin. He realized with horror – he didn't want to see them.

Then Time shot forward.

"Minami! Nishi! Tachi! Focus on the bugs, fire and water!" he barked. "Do not engage! Contain!"

They scattered instantly, reverting all their focus on element based jutsu and defense. 'Contain' always meant the opponent was of superior caliber to their skill, it meant hold their own until Neji freed himself up to provide their back up. It also meant he needed to neutralize Sakura. Now. He threw himself at her – watched her green eyes go wide – and began the meticulous, lightening fast process of destroying himself and everything he'd been until this second when he chose. Sakura evaded his first attack, a straight out barrage of Juuken that put her inside his hakke, but too close for a Sixty-Four Strike. He pressed her, hands burning chakra.

"Neji! Stop! What are you doing!?"

He pumped in and out of her defensive counter attacks, darting up and through and inside her guard. She drove him out by slamming a fist into the ground, sending quakes and fissures splintering through the earth. He leapt to evade the concussion, Body Flickered and came at her from the side. She sensed him, spun and drove her skull-shattering fist at his neck, connected! – Only to have the Kage Bunshin explode in a cloud of smoke. She recovered, ducked, pulled her own kawarimi and just barely avoided the brush of death that burst through her clone's belly.

Her eyes were wide, disbelieving.

"Neji, what are you doing?" Sakura whispered.

Neji didn't take his eyes of her (that was physically impossible with his Byakugan active) but he spared some attention for his team. They were playing it safe, keeping far out and using Bunshin and genjutsu, never engaging physically with Shino's insects. Kabuto did his job teaching anyway – they knew the danger.

Sakura capitalized on his distraction by hurling a barrage of exploding tags. He snapped out of range with a chakra burst and Body Flickered at her back, slamming a glancing blow to her shoulder with his Juuken. He heard her spit a curse as she rolled away, coming up with kunai in hand. Her cheek was smudged in dust and ash, like a dirty thumbprint dragged over her face. Absurdly, a fragmented part of him took the opportunity to realize Haruno Sakura was a beautiful girl in battle; all speed and kinetic energy and bright feline green. Eyes that sparked and burned spinning galaxies of emotion. She'd always been easy to read. Sakura's teeth snapped white and angry as she shouted at him.

"Neji, stop this now!" She blocked his volley of shuriken. "You can stop! Neji, we've been looking for you!"

He gritted his teeth and pulled two handfuls of senbon from his thigh and hip holsters, charged them with chakra.

"Neji, please. Hinata is –"

His arms snapped forward, loosing the senbon in a glittering barrage of streaking lights. A kunai flashed from her hip into her hand and darted across her body, deflecting his projectiles with quick flashing swipes – only to scream out when Neji's palm plowed into her hip from her right. Her eyes demanded how the fuck he'd gotta past her guard. Her scream was of as much rage as it was pain. Neji twisted away from her axe kick, somersaulted, sprang back to his feet and hit her with another rain of needles. She snarled at him, juked and spun through the attack and came at him with a sweeping hay maker that could and would take off his head if it connected.

He ducked, grabbed, swung her momentum and threw her and only an acrobat flip saved her landing and launched her at his midriff. The move caught him unguarded and she managed to catch his ribs in a sloppy backhand that hit him like a sledgehammer. Neji hit the ground, a falling rocket crashing through earth and foliage until after an eternity of smashing and shredding and skidding through razor-sharp debris he ground to a halt –

"Dammit, Neji! You idiot!"

Sakura caught him by the arm and wrenched him around, pinning him so hard he felt something crack in the upper region of his arm.

"What do you think you're doing?"

The world blackened, then brightened and she was holding a crushed tree branch in her fist. Neji reappeared at her left, flickered, was on her right, flickered again and again and again and he was everywhere, he was all over and all around. She was one and he was thousands and reality fragmented accordingly. Her eyes darted and flitted wildly. He was too fast for her and she knew it. He knew it. So she started swinging. She struck out as his illusionary image. Her fists like meteorites, devastating the world and sending concussions to the bedrock because one hit, just one blow from her war-goddess hands would end him…

Then Neji drove his hand into her spine.

He felt the breath go out of her, heard the infinitesimal hitch of surprise, of hurt in her voice. Then she toppled forward like a puppet with its strings cut into Neji's arms, folding limply into him. He let her weight carry him to his knees, lowered his mouth to her ear as he laid her down. His lips kissed her hair – incident of proximity – as he whispered:

"Tell them I'm sorry. Tell them…" He didn't know. "Good-bye."

"Neji…no…"

But he'd already darted away to help his genin team with Shino.

"Neji-sensei!" Nishi cried gratefully at the appearance of the jounin. "We don't know how to fight him. He sucks all the chakra out of our regular attacks. And we aren't very good at fire jutsu. What do we do?"

"Bastard's bugs are eating all my jutsu!" Minami howled.

Neji sheathed his kunai and waved them down with a click and a whistle. His students stared at him in disbelief, weapons wobbling uncertainly in their hands, then slowly dropping to their sides. The Hyuuga nodded and walked toward the mass of bugs, eyes glowing in the dusky light. After a moment Shino's insects began to recede, withdrawing to the strange safety of their host's body. Vanishing into the folds of the other teen's clothes, the small sea of black Kikai dwindled until only a perfunctory cloud of defensive bugs remained. Minami and Nishi were visibly disgusted. ("Oh my God! Where do they go?" Minami choked.) He continued to gaze wordlessly at Neji.

"Have they forced you into this?" Shino asked at last.

"No," Neji said. "Not exactly."

"I didn't think so."

I'm not Uchiha Sasuke. They need to know that."

"Aren't you?" Shino asked and for a split second he was a red-eyed clan-murderer, pale faced and dressed in black and red. Then it was Shino again. Neji closed his eyes.

"No." He glanced toward Sakura. "I'm not like him." He stood up. "Our mission is done. We're going. Follow and I'll have to stop you. We were never here to harm Konoha."

"You work for Orochimaru."

"No I don't."

Shino's brow furrowed. "Who then?

Neji felt his broken eyes spinning in his skull like tops surgically placed there by another. He opened his mouth to reply –

- - -

Naruto was sitting on the wall of the Hyuuga compound. The east wall outside his window, just beside the tree outside his room. The branches were fill of fat little sparrows and Neji was looking out at the blonde boy in orange, still a genin of twelve and thirteen as Neji remembered him best, but watching him with a kind of thoughtful silence that was impossible for the real thing.

"So what now, Neji?"

"What do you mean?"

Naruto shrugged, tossing his shoulders up and grinning sideways. "Oh c'mon now. Your Cage Seal is gone, man. What are you gonna do now? Keep serving Orochimaru-bastard-sama until he goes just bonkers enough to gut you? Or steal your eyes maybe?"

"I can't go back now," Neji pointed out. "They'd have to kill me."

The blonde laughed, a childish guffaw flung up and over the empty head family houses. "Liar!" he shouted, like it were a game. "Bullshit, Neji! Buuuullshit!" He bit of the end of the word with sharp white teeth. "You're not scared what they'll do to you. How could anything, even death, be worse than what Itachi's done? What Orochimaru has done? What Takon has done? What Kabuto has done? No. What scared the fuck out of you, Hyuuga Neji, isn't the head family, man."

And then Naruto was right in front of him and Neji was fourteen again. The blonde trapped him against the wall of his bedroom, hands veined and rippling with boiling black and red chakra, blue eyes burned scarlet and slit up the centre like an animal's. The Beast inside that only Neji had seen that day during the Chuunin Exams, a monster superimposed on an obnoxious orange moron that made him invincible.

"What scares you most… is what you might do."

When Neji opened his eyes a pair of pale white eyes stared back, his own condescending smirk, hair loose, dressed in the white robes of the family that he didn't really belong to. His eyes were obliterated disks of old ivory, splintered in the iris where three ragged black tomoe had tried to develop and ripped up through the old color like oil drops in white water. They spun lazily around the still hidden pupil in the centre that, like the rest of his iris, was splintered and cracked under the clear membranes of the outer eye.

Neji shook his head. "I'm not afraid."

"You're not in control," Neji said.

"I'm in control. I wouldn't do anything like that," Neji hissed.

"You're not in control," Neji insisted.

"Shut up!" Neji shouted.

"Shut up!" the other Neji mimicked. "Like there hasn't been enough silence."

"I don't believe…"

"No one is going to change the Hyuuga."

"Why are you…?"

"Because the past repeats itself, but it doesn't have to mimic it completely. Last lesson, Hyuuga." He watched himself in fascination, lean forward and whisper against his own mouth, placing the word on his own tongue: "Don't make my mistake."

"Make my own," he finished.

Author's Note:

BAAH! Random update of doom! I noticed I had this sitting on my back-up drive half finished and felt inspired by the summer time. Finished it up and thought, hell, might as well post it. Unbetaed, sorry. I'm confident I've managed to shed all my readers, but for anyone out there still listening: Thanks so much for your Neji-love. Also, ignore the one-shot I have posted (Insecticide) it's kinda of an off-shoot of this story. Same tone, but they don't make sense together. Anyway. Lulz See you later.