Chapter 3

Orochimaru and Suna invaded Konoha soon thereafter, and the available genin of Teams Kurenai and Gai immediately went to safeguard the patients and staff of the hospital, including and especially their teammates Lee and Hinata. Neji fought his way to Hinata's room only to find her standing over the corpse of a dead shinobi and clutching her chest in pain. "Neji?" she gasped at the sight of him, her body reflexively shifting into an attack stance for a brief moment.

"Are you alright, Hinata-sama!?" Neji asked without thinking, quickly striking a second fatal blow to her attacker for good measure and scooping her into his arms in one smooth motion. Without waiting for an answer, he turned to the hallway. "Tenten! Kiba! How is it out there?"

"Clear!" Tenten said back. "I saw a Suna nin falling out the window from the floors above us. We might have backup." She poked her head in and offered Hinata a brief smile. "You alright?"

"I will be," Hinata responded with an accompanying tightening of her grip on Neji's collar.

"I'm going up with Kiba to get Lee, then."

Neji nodded and carried Hinata down to the first floor where all the other survivors were congregated along with a sizable Hyuuga force led by none other than Hiashi himself. He took only a cursory glance at the two of them to ascertain their well-being before continuing his organization of the retreat to Konoha Rock. Tenten and Kiba returned with Lee and other survivors in tow. With them were Gai-sensei and Kurenai-sensei, who had fought the enemies from the rooftop down. Neji and Hinata parted ways, the former heading out with Tenten and their jounin sensei to guide more civilians to safety and the latter helping the medics along the retreat.

The invasion ended in disaster for both Konoha and Suna: both Kages had perished and the two villages had lost a sizable portion of their militaries because of Orochimaru's machinations. Neji and Hinata reunited once again amidst the fallout, at the funeral of Sarutobi Hiruzen. Neji thought that he might rekindle his hatred now that other, more immediately urgent matters were behind them, but he found he could no longer look at Hinata and see such a weak, frail thing. Or, rather, he could no longer see her weakness and frailty as personal failings, at least not hers. She hadn't stopped her own heart.

Hinata found, to her relief and delight, that the sight of him no longer panicked her like it had the month before. She had always known he suffered much as she did and more under the pressures of being a Hyuuga, but when their eyes found each other out amongst the crowd of black-attired funeral goers, she no longer saw that suffering focused into blinding rage at her and her family.

They managed to break away from the party celebrating the Third Hokage's life and walked each other to the stadium, where they had fought so bitterly and where the destruction of Konoha had begun. Neji was not partial to simplistic metaphors, but as a piece of rubble crumbled in his hand, he thought perhaps this moment had something to teach him. The collateral damage of hatred, or something similar. He looked to Hinata, saw the way she still favored her left side even now, the side where her heart and most severely injured lung resided, and his image of her blurred wetly.

He raised one hand just above her chest, and Hinata guided it to her heart. It skipped every hundredth beat or so and would likely do so for the rest of her life. She watched his Byakugan, swirling with unshed tears, with intense fascination as his hands moved to a spot just below her left shoulder, then up and down both arms, and ended on her hips, his right thumb resting over a point on her navel. "I did this to you," he said quietly. She nodded. "I was wrong to do this."

"You were hurting so much."

"But I shouldn't have done... this."

Hinata gulped, fighting her natural inclination to try and assuage his guilt, and nodded.

Neji then surprised her by dropping to his knees and bowing until his head touched the stadium floor. "I'm sorry, Hinata-sama," he said, his voice quivering ever so slightly as he spoke. Hinata had always thought she might cry at moments like this, but she found herself strangely composed instead as she knelt down and hugged his head to her body.

"I don't want to marry you, Neji-niisan, and I don't think you want to marry me, either. Do you?" she whispered to him.

He shook his head as best he could, which tickled her and made her laugh. "I don't want to think about being your husband or you being my wife."

They parted and held onto each other at arm's length. "For now, can we just be friends?" Hinata asked. "We have four years to undo our elders' mistake, but neither of us will be able to do so without the other." Neji nodded, and they made their way back home without anyone being so much the wiser.

Friends again, at last.