Hinata was already sleeping when Neji stuck his head in to check on her, but he was grateful so she wouldn't have to see the massive bruises forming around his neck. Though they probably would be an even worse color by the next morning, so it was only a temporary procrastination.
Careful not to wake his cousin, Neji stole softly into the room by the light of the moon through the open window. It must have been hot when she went to bed because all the covers had been thrown to the side, but with the draft through the open window, the room was now quite cold, and Hinata was curled up under only her sheet, shivering a little. Taking pity on her, Neji crossed quietly to the bed, setting the cup of hot tea Sakura had made him before sending him off to bed on the bedside table, and tugged the quilt over her small frame. Immediately, her shivering stopped and she relaxed from her curled position into a more sprawling one.
She really was small and delicate, Neji thought as he stood back up to his full height and regarded her in the faint moonlight. It was no wonder that her father, one of the most influential members of the Hyuuga family, had asked Neji, one of its most promising young men, to look after her. At least, that was the formal answer.
On a whim, Neji leaned down, tucking his hair behind his ear so it wouldn't brush against Hinata's cheek, and pressed his lips against her pale forehead. He really did love Hinata; she was like his sister and very dear to him. And yet, he knew there were other plans for their futures.
Neji stood back up and grabbed his cup of tea before turning back to the door. He had almost made it across the room when there was a stirring behind him as Hinata came halfway out of unconsciousness.
"Neji? Is that you? Is something the matter?"
"No," Neji replied, and was glad that his voice, though hoarse, was getting back to normal. "I… just came in to check on you."
"Oh, alright. 'Night, Neji." Hinata turned back over and made as if to slip back into whatever dreamland from whence she had come, but a sudden urge made Neji call out to her again.
"Hinata?"
"Yes, Neji?" She answered diligently, if sleepily, her face almost buried in her pillow.
"We… we'll be leaving tomorrow morning," he said with a strange lump in his throat. "It might be fairly early. I trust you still have your bags packed?"
"Of course." Hinata rolled back over so her face was completely in the pillow, the soft down muffling the sound of her voice. "Goodnight, Neji."
The dismissal was clear. With a small smile, Neji whispered, "goodnight, Hinata," then backed out the door and closed it behind him.
Back to reality, Neji thought dismally as he leaned against Hinata's door and took a large gulp of tea. The liquid was still quite hot, and Neji made a face at the unpleasant burning sensation in his throat and took a more reasonable sip. It had been about a week since Neji had gotten gotten that frantic phone call from someone he barely remembered meeting in his early teenage years, begging him to come be his second pair of eyes. And he'd come, even dragging Hinata with him, to escape, even for a little while, the quiet power struggles and family politics of the Hyuuga.
A pleasant ting came from Neji's phone in his pocket, signaling that he had just received a text message. Careful not to spill his tea, Neji fished the phone from his pocket and unlocked it with one hand. The text was part of an ongoing conversation that had started earlier that evening, and it read: So, can you make it back?
Just barely, he typed back with one thumb. I'm trying to book a flight back, but it will be tight. The time change should work on my favor, though, but I still won't have time to grab my stuff. Can you do it for me?
Sure thing, came the speedy reply. You need me to pick up your clothes too?
Yes, please.
Alrighty. Just the shirt and pants, or do you need shoes as well?
Just the shirt and pants. I have shoes. Oh, but could you grab me a tie too?
Can do.
Thanks.
Well, I know it's later there than here, so I'll let you go. Night, Neji.
Goodnight. See you tomorrow evening.
You'd better.
Their conversation over, Neji slipped the phone into his pocket with a sigh. This is what came of his double life; he ended up stretching himself too thin.
Neji reached for the handle of the door to his room, but froze just before his fingers brushed it. There was a presence sitting in a familiar position behind the door, one he knew quite well - far too well, the deep recesses of his mind whispered at him - and one he had been hoping to avoid.
Resigning himself to the confrontation that was coming, Neji took a deep breath and another sip of his tea, then pushed open the door. Sitting on the floor, behind the black side of an unfinished game of chess, was Shikamaru. His brow was furrowed as he regarded the chessboard, not even looking up as Neji clicked the door closed behind him. With a deliberate movement, Shikamaru picked up a knight and moved it, placing it down with a sharp clack. The breath caught in Neji's throat; he'd never seen the phantom like this before. What had he done to make him this pissed off?
Neji sat down opposite Shikamaru and delicately slid a pawn forward. "What's got you in such a bad mood?" He asked, continuing their habit of conversing with chess moves.
The sharp click of another piece being slammed down against the chessboard was the only answer Neji got. He raised his eyebrows at the behavior; this was extremely unlike the well-disciplined phantom. Shikamaru's finger still rested on the top of his piece as if he was unwilling to make the move. With a soft sigh, he let his finger side off the chess piece and answered Neji's question with one of his own.
"That tea Sakura gave you… it's doing well for your voice, isn't it?"
A little confused, Neji answered on his next move. "Yeah, it's great. I can almost speak normally again."
"That's good…"
Shikamaru's words trailed off. His gaze still hasn't risen to meet Neji's yet, and his hands were folded in his lap and showing no indication that they would soon move to the chessboard.
With a sudden start as if shaking himself from a daydream, Shikamaru jerked his head up so his gaze bored deep into Neji's, then made another harsh move. "You're leaving?" He asked almost contemptuously, but there was something resembling fear in his eyes.
Unable to hold the ironclad gaze for long, Neji looked down at the board and made his next move. Both of them, he noticed idly, were playing haphazardly, without much thought to strategy. Right now, the game was simply a vehicle to the conversation.
"I have… a prior engagement back home tomorrow evening that I was reminded of just recently, and it's not something I'd like to miss. So, yes, I'm leaving."
"What could be so important that you'd make the decision to run back within the past hour?"
The question was asked with more than a little disdain, and Neji hesitated, not really wanting to answer. Well, he figured, Shikamaru had done the same thing earlier, and two could play at that game.
"Why does it matter to you?" He snapped, surprising even himself with the hostility in his tone.
If Shikamaru was perturbed by the tone of his voice, he hid it very well, looking back down at the chessboard. "It doesn't."
Ouch. Neji didn't know why, but that hurt more than he expected it to. Thrown off his game, he fumbled for a move and a comeback.
"Well… It's… It's… It's not like I came here for vacation anyway. It's been strictly business. But Hinata and I are used to moving around a lot last minute for business," he hedged, pushing his rook forward a large number of spaces, which was unusual for him; he tended to make smaller, more cautious moves.
This inexplicably sparked both Shikamaru's attention and anger like nothing Neji had said before. With a jolt, his head snapped up with sparks of rage in his eyes, and there was something in his face that was hard to identify. Was is more anger? Hatred? Loneliness?
He seemed to realize the expression on his face and hid it well within a few seconds, but Neji knew this time that he hadn't imagined it. Still avoiding looking him in the eye, Shikamaru twitched a finger and sent a piece skittering forward in almost a mirror of Neji's move, spitting out at the same time, "What's that girl to you?"
"Hinata?" Neji was taken completely aback, then deeply offended. "Hinata," he said with a stress on her name, picking up a chess piece and banging it down at the same time, "is my cousin."
"I know that," Shikamaru said through gritted teeth, but this time, he didn't even glance down at the chessboard. "I don't sit around here all day with mud in my ears. That's not what I asked."
Oh. So that's what he was asking. When he realized the true nature of the question, something hot and angry exploded inside of Neji, and he jumped to his feet with trembling fists.
"Excuse me? Excuse me?" Neji asked in a voice trembling with rage, the same anger coursing throughout his body. "What right do you have to ask that question? What audacity do you posses that lets you even think you have that right?"
"I-" Shikamaru started, his face an unreadable mask, but Neji cut him off.
"No! You don't get to talk right now! What kind of twisted, sick mind do you have that would even think that? Jesus! Hinata and I were raised as close as siblings; she's like a sister to me!"
Something like relief flashed across Shikamaru's face, and a sense of dawning horror came over Neji.
"Oh, no. You weren't angry that I was leaving… you were jealous."
Shikamaru didn't answer, but his silence was as good as any affirmation.
"Oh, no. Oh, no." Neji started to tremble again, but for an entirely different reason. "You… you can't… you aren't allowed to be jealous! This… you… but…!"
Neji was rapidly losing his ability to talk from shock and an outward fear of- something. His breathing was escalating rapidly, but not as rapidly as his heartbeat, which thundered in his ears like the echo of the strange, multicolored firecrackers of confused emotion that were going off inside his head.
Suddenly, something with the approximate size and weight of a shoe slammed into the wall that separated Sasuke's room from his, accompanied with an annoyed voice.
"Hey, bastard, I'm trying to sleep! Either calm down or take your lovers' quarrel somewhere else so I get some shuteye, no?"
There was no response, so Sasuke grumbled something else for good measure and then fell silent, but Neji wasn't paying enough attention to him to even react to the "lovers' quarrel" statement. His gaze had fallen to the chessboard and the configuration of pieces upon it, and his body stopped all function as his brain processed what he saw. Shikamaru, too, glanced down at the board and froze when he saw what it held. Neji's knees buckled, sending him back down to his original sitting position opposite the phantom over the chessboard. The board, untouched since Neji's last angry move, lay quietly on the ground, unassuming despite the momentous weight it carried.
"Say it," Shikamaru said quietly, almost resignedly, his gaze fixed on the chessboard.
Neji tried to force his frozen lips to move, but they were sluggish and unresponsive. On his second try, he managed it, the word almost disconnected from his mind by a physical barrier.
"Check."
A small, humorless laugh escaped Shikamaru. "Look again."
Neji did, and his eyes widened even further. His gaze swinging up to confront the suddenly dark gaze of Shikamaru, he said, "Checkmate."
The enormity of it was almost overpowering, and Neji dropped his gaze to the chessboard again, as if to confirm what he already knew to be true but couldn't quite believe. The tension of their fight was completely lost in the face of this strange new concept, but even as it was bleeding away, a new tension was taking its place, one much thicker and darker and with more than a hint of heat.
There was a conspicuous absence of sound from Shikamaru's side of the chessboard, and Neji looked up again with a slight frown causing a crease between his eyebrows, only to find himself much closer to the phantom then he remembered being. Unconsciously, he had leaned over the chessboard as if he had been drawn by a magnet, and Shikamaru had done the same, mirroring him in his forward movement until they were only a few inches apart. The breath that escaped Neji's mouth in a surprised gasp blew over the phantom's face, but left no visible change in its wake.
"Wh-" Neji started to say, but Shikamaru reached up and pressed a gentle hand against his cheek, his thumb covering Neji's parted lips and stopping whatever he was going to say.
"Shhh," he murmured, his eyelids lowering down almost to half mast. "Now isn't the time for talking…"
Why, Neji almost asked, but before he could, Shikamaru closed the remaining distance between them and silenced him with something far more efficient than his thumb.
Something in Neji's brain short circuited when Shikamaru kissed him; that was the only explanation why he wasn't resisting, wasn't pushing him away, wasn't demanding an explanation for the ghost's behavior, was… kissing him back? The new tension wound around him like the heady, perfumed smoke of a drug, and now Neji recognized it for what it was: desire.
Shikamaru pressed harder against Neji, and he let the ghost push him back, chess pieces scattering as he came over the board. Neji's hand, almost independent of his will, snuck up Shikamaru's shoulder to his cheek and then to his hair, tearing it free from the elastic that held it back from his face. As soon as it lost contact with the strands of hair it had been containing, it disintegrated in Neji's fingers, leaving him to grip the back of Shikamaru's head like it was a lifeline. In retaliation, Shikamaru also pulled Neji's hair from its elastic, sifting his hands through the soft strands as he shifted the kiss from a soft, close-mouthed kiss to an open-mouthed one.
Almost separate from his body, Neji felt himself clutch at the back of Shikamaru's neck as he melted into the kiss, the ghost's hands like streaks of fire against his skull. Suddenly, Neji felt himself falling backwards, but he couldn't bring himself to care. The hand not at the back of Shikamaru's neck jerked back reflexively to keep him from slamming into the ground, and he ended up propping himself up on his elbow. The move had thrown Shikamaru off balance slightly as well, and he fell forward onto Neji, their bodies lying flush together on the ground.
With a small gasp, Shikamaru pulled back and broke the kiss, but didn't break the eye contact Neji hadn't realized he'd been holding since before the kiss had started. They both were panting, Shikamaru strong enough that his ghostly breath was able to stir the strands of hair drifting over Neji's face.
Neji could see the reflection of his face in Shikamaru's eyes, his gaze unfocused and confused in the clarity of the pools of mirror-like darkness. His whole mind felt foggy, like he was intoxicated, drugged by the feeling and scent of Shikamaru near to him. Breath resounded between them, tasting of shadows and the sweetness of the honey in Neji's tea. It was a precious moment, a magical moment, caught and frozen in the arch between life and death, something that shouldn't exist, and yet did.
And then Neji's mind woke up, and it woke up with a vengeance.
"What the fuck are you doing?" He cried, disentangling himself from Shikamaru all at once and flinging the phantom from him.
Shikamaru slid backwards several feet from the force of the push and landed in the middle of the chessboard, scattering the last few remnants of their game. The look of shock on his face, Neji got the feeling, had more to do with the expletive he had dropped than the physical rejection.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Shikamaru asked almost icily, recovering quickly from his shock. "You're a smart cookie; you tell me."
"I shouldn't have to!" Neji exploded. "You shouldn't be doing these bloody… confusing… maddening things without any warning!"
"Without any warning?" Shikamaru jumped up, anger starting to race across his features. "I have literally been hitting on you for the past week! I don't think I could have been any more obvious! What the hell did you think I was doing? What else could I have been doing?"
"I don't know, I don't know!" Neji cried, tears of angry confusion starting to form in his eyes. "I just… I.. I…"
"You've just had your head shoved up your ass the entire week, is that it?"
The words were meant to wound, aiming big directly at Neji's deepest worries from from past week, and he flinched at them. Sighing a little, Shikamaru passed a hand over his eyes, and when he drew it away, every trace of anger had faded from his countenance, leaving only an annoyed tiredness.
"I'm sorry," he started, then frowned a little and sighed again. "Actually, I won't lie to you: I'm not sorry. For any of it."
"Why?" Neji managed, looking up at the phantom from where he still lay on the floor.
Shikamaru seemed, to Neji, like some kind of deity of legend floating above him, his eyes fierce and gentle at the same time. "Because," he said, "because I got to see the real you, even for just a few minutes."
"What… what do you mean?" Neji gasped out, his breathing becoming ragged.
All of a sudden, Shikamaru ducked down to Neji's level, his face alarmingly close. "This," he said clearly, "is the lie. But this…" He trailed off, his hand reaching forward to rest against Neji's cheek, whose breathing ratcheted up a notch. "This is the truth. I got you to pull back the lie and let me see the truth, and that means I won."
The words were washing over Neji like a soothing ocean wave, the sound gentle and seductive, turning his mind to mush and his self-control to jelly. Then the meaning of the words kicked in, and a fury like he'd never felt before scalded through Neji's system.
With rage as his sole motivation, Neji fumbled for the closest thing to his hand - which turned out to be his half-empty tea mug - and hurled it against the phantom with all his might. At the last second, Shikamaru noticed it coming, and it passed harmlessly through his incorporeal body to shatter against the wall, splashing a stream of hot liquid as it went.
"Get the fuck away from me!" Neji shrieked as quietly as he could, mindful of Sasuke next door. "I'm not just some fucking game you can play, Shikamaru! You can just 'win' my existence! My life is more than a toy for you enjoyment!"
"I know that," Shikamaru started, reaching for Neji's angry fist, but he shook the ghost off and stood, anger still coursing through his system.
"No," he said, the fire in his eyes hot enough to melt steel. "No, I don't think you do."
Something in Shikamaru's face closed off at that, but Neji had the feeling it had less to do with anger and more to do with the hurt the words had caused.
Good, Neji suddenly thought with a viciousness he barely recognized as his own. Hurt, cry, bleed inside; you'll finally realize what it's like to have your mind torn apart and analyzed by someone else!
His face still closed off, Shikamaru stood up, leveling his gaze to bore directly into Neji's.
"Then leave," he said quietly. Too quietly. "Leave here tomorrow, or hell, you could even leave tonight! Leave and never come back, and never think about me again. That's what you want, right?"
"That's not..." Neji started hotly, then trailed off as he realized that it was what he wanted. Or, rather, what he should want.
"But it is. Or what it should be," Shikamaru said in a hollow voice, as if echoing the thoughts in Neji's mind. "People like me exist to pull apart people like you, Neji, and people like you exist to resist people like me. If you don't want to lose that shell you've built around yourself, I suggest you turn around and walk away right now, because in this particular battle, I can guarantee that I will win. But neither of us will escape the war unscathed."
The chill caused by Shikamaru's words cooled the fire of Neji's anger, replacing it with a frozen numbness. "I… I…"
"Just turn your back," Shikamaru continued in that same hollow tone. "That's all you have to do. Just turn your back right now, and I'll be gone."
"I… I ca-"
Neji was interrupted by the pleasant ting of his cell phone's text alert from behind him on the floor. He didn't remember putting it there, so it must have fallen from his pocket when he'd jumped up. Reflexively, Neji turned his head to read the text scrawling across the phone's surface. It read:
Sorry, I know I said I'd quit bugging you, but what color tie should I bring you? We're going for a rainbow theme, and blue, red, and green are already taken. Any preference?
The screen darkened to black just as Neji finished skimming the message. Dismissing it as unimportant to the moment, he turned back around to face Shikamaru.
Only to find… nothing. No hollow eyes, no smug smile, no shadows, just… nothing.
"Shit!"
Neji spun in a circle, trying to locate any vanishing trace of the phantom. This wasn't right, his gut was trying to tell him, to convince him that Shikamaru wouldn't just leave in the middle of an argument, but his mind could only remember the last sentence the phantom had uttered: Just turn your back right now, and I'll be gone.
"Dammit, Shikamaru! I'm not done with you! Where the hell'd you go?"
There was no sign of Shikamaru's presence, even a disappearing one, which should have been impossible. Nothing could exist one moment and then simply disappear; it was physically impossible.
Unless you could teleport.
For the first time in his life, Neji let out a stream of curse words that impressed even himself, including several he pulled out of the recesses of his mind that he didn't even know he knew. In a fit of blind rage, he reached down and grabbed the first thing his hand touched and hurled it at the wall. It was only when it hit the wooden paneling that he recognized it as the black king, the weakest and yet most important chess piece to the black set. As if in slow motion, the king broke against wall, the crown separating from the rest of the piece from the force of the impact, and landed in two pieces in the slowly spreading pool of tea cooling on the floor.
The tea! Springing into action with another impressive string of swears, Neji grabbed the closest thing he could find, which happened to be a box of tissues, and tried to sop up the spreading mess, but the flimsy paper practically disintegrated as soon as it touched the pool of tea, so Neji had to scoop the pulpy, wet mess up and throw it away before it made things worse.
After a quick glance around the room revealed that there was nothing else that could be useful in cleaning up the spill, Neji wrenched open the door and strode across the hall to the bathroom. Once inside the bathroom, he opened up every cabinet and searched through the contents until he found a pile of fluffy white towels. Grabbing the top one, he strode out of the bathroom and promptly bumped into a sleepy Hinata.
"Neji?" She asked sleepily, rubbing tiredness from her eyes. "What-" yawn "-are you doing?"
"I- just cleaning up a spill," Neji answered after a little hesitation. "Why are you up?"
"I got coughing and needed a drink," Hinata explained with a delicate cough as punctuative proof. "I heard shouting. Were you fighting with someone?"
Neji hesitated much longer this time before answering. How much of the truth should he tell her? "Yes, but it's nothing you need to worry about. Just go back to bed and get some rest; tomorrow will be a long day."
"Yes, Neji," Hinata said dutifully, then darted up on her tiptoes to place a quick kiss on his cheek before slipping around him into the bathroom.
A small smile touched the corner of Neji's mouth at the gesture, and he continued on to his room in a slightly happier mood. When he pushed the door open, however, both his smile and good mood evaporated as reality set back in. A more bitter expression twisting his mouth, Neji moved to the spill and started mopping it up with the towel.
The sweet smell of honey clogged the air with its cloying scent, reminding Neji unwillingly of honey-scented breath gasped out by lungs desperate for fresh air. With a grimace to brush away the memory, Neji picked up the shattered remains of the mug and, deeming it irreparable, threw it into the trash can sitting next to the dresser. After getting as much of the tea as he could up with the towel, grateful that he had managed to drink most of it before pitching it so unceremoniously against the wall, he brought the towel back to the bathroom - which, he was glad to see, no longer contained Hinata, who had obviously taken his advice and gone back to bed - and lobbed it into the dirty laundry bin, feeling more than slightly guilty about the stain the towel would now more than likely sport. Making a mental note to warn either Sakura or that other girl - the blond one; what was her name again? - about both the potential stain and the sticky residue that would likely marr the floor by the following morning before he left the Hokage for good, Neji headed back to his room.
As soon as he stepped back inside the room, however, Neji was confronted with the chessboard in disarray in the center of the floor. A feeling of unidentifiable uneasiness swamped Neji's stomach, and he walked over to the wall and picked up the two pieces of the black king, which he had avoided in his earlier bout of cleaning. They were sticky from the honey residue, but the broken edges were sharp, and Neji almost drew blood when he accidentally ran his finger along the break.
Grabbing a tissue from the box - at least those stupid scraps of paper were useful for something - Neji wiped the liquid and drying sugary stickiness away from the black plastic. He didn't know why he did it, but it begged to be done and his hands moved without permission from his mind. When it was clean, he threw the tissue away and sat down on the edge of the bed to examine the broken king.
The two halves of the chess piece had a dull weight in his hand, more than the mass a single plastic toy should have. Something else was contained in the chess piece, something intangible and yet impossibly massive. But what was it? Memories? Guilt? Shadows? The reflection of unreadable eyes?
The weight of the broken chess piece dragged down on Neji's hand, pulling it into his lap and causing his fingers to curl around it. It was such a meaningless, simple little thing, a chess piece, and useless now that it was broken, and yet, Neji couldn't bring himself to have it follow the broken mug and sodden tissues into the trash can.
Leave and never come back, and never think about me again. That's what you want, right?
The words passed unbidden through Neji's mind, and he closed his fist over the broken chess piece.
"Yes… and no," he whispered out loud. "I have to leave. I don't necessarily want to."
I have literally been hitting on you for the past week! I don't think I could have been any more obvious!
Neji's eyes closed; his hands trembled, and he laid his forehead on them to lessen the shaking.
"I know," he said a little brokenly. "I knew all along. I just… I just was too afraid. I wanted you to make the first move. But I'm… I'm the white player. I move first."
I'm not sorry. For any of it.
"You shouldn't have to be. You were right, after all. People like you and me can't stay in stasis forever; we exist to influence the other."
Just turn your back right now, and I'll be gone.
"But I… I…" Neji looked up, his eyes widening as he realized the simple truth in his own words. "I don't want you to be gone. I don't want to never see you again. You can't leave now; the game… the game is yet unfinished."
Neji stood up so fast that he got a little lightheaded, and he swayed in his feet, reaching out to grab hold of the bedpost. Behind him, on the bed where he had tossed it, Neji's phone gave out another pleasant text tone, but he ignored it.
"The game is yet unfinished," he repeated with more certainty, gripping the broken chess piece tighter. "The game must be completed. Isn't that what you taught me? And the game isn't over until the king is captured."
The king… is captured…. The king…
"Byakugan," Neji gasped out, and his senses immediately expanded far beyond their normal capacity. On the other side of the walls on either side of him, he heard Sasuke's and Hinata's heavy breathing, the sound enough to reassure him that they were both asleep. In Sasuke's room, he felt another dim presence as well, which he assumed to be the passed out Naruto. No other restless spirits roamed the Hokage and all other humans, except for a single worker in the kitchen, had gone to sleep. And as they should; it was well past eleven.
But it wasn't the Hokage he needed to search.
Taking a deep breath, Neji expanded his spectral senses outwards, through Konoha. Ghosts littered the town like droplets of rain on a window, some small and solitary and some drawing together to form pools of spectral energy. Neji knew the chance of Shikamaru having joined one of the groups was low, but he checked them anyway. Gaara was back on his beach, surrounded by several awestruck bystanders. His aura was rolling with more than a little fear and Neji could tell he didn't want the onlookers there, but he was being held back from attacking them by the little phantom who had managed to tame him. On the opposite side of the Hokage from Gaara, Shino and Kiba were trying to shepherd a confused Tsunade back to her resting place, but she kept going in the wrong direction, much to the dismay of the two phantoms. Other groups of confused specters and figures wandered the streets aimlessly, trying unsuccessfully to find their haunting grounds. The solitary ones, Neji realized after a quick glance at each one, were the draugrs of the town, already back at their haunting grounds and their solitary sedentary lives.
So Shikamaru had left the town. How far could his shadow teleportation take him, especially in his exhausted state? How fast could he recover from that? He hadn't passed out like Naruto had, so he must've had some internal reservoir of strength not yet depleted. But the question was, how much strength? Enough to get him out of Konoha, certainly, but was it enough to get him out of the county? The state? Was it enough to get him back to the site of his death, in Europe?
As soon as Neji thought that, he shook his head. Shikamaru wasn't attached to his death site like a draugr; he was a phantom, and the site of his haunting was the Hokage and Konoha. He wouldn't be able to stray far from the town or the inn. But where, then, could he be?
There was only one other place that Neji could think of to look. Closing his eyes to heighten his other senses, he stretched the range of his aura sensing abilities to almost their limit at about a mile away, to the Konoha Nature Trail system and the clearing it hid from prying eyes.
Sure enough, Neji could dimly feel a familiar shadowy presence in the clearing. His eyes popping open, he dismissed his extra senses and looked around the room with his natural vision. After the colorful spectral auras he'd been looking at, the room seemed dull and colorless in comparison. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he sprang into action, shoving the broken chess piece into his pocket and grabbing his suit jacket from where it hung next to the door.
Already out of the door before he had one arm in his sleeve, Neji took the stairs two at a time, racing down them faster then he would normally dare to go. Leaving the jacket unbuttoned after he got his other sleeve on, Neji let it flap in the wind of his passing as he dashed to the front door and pulled it open, only to find his progress abruptly halted by pouring rain.
Of course it raining. Of course it was fucking raining.
His breath misting in the cool draft of the outside air, Neji hesitated at the open door. He hadn't really been thinking when he'd started his mad dash to find Shikamaru, but now that he'd been stopped by the rain, his mind took the opportunity to catch up to his body.
Stop this, it roared at him as droplets of water hit his face, pushed there by the cold wind. You're not some pathetic, lovestruck character in a Nicholas Sparks novel, dashing off into the pouring rain at the slightest provocation! You're a Hyuuga, dammit, and you'd better start acting like one!
Neji's hand tightened on the doorknob, but he didn't close it. Behind him, he heard whoever it was working in the kitchen come out into the entrance hall, but he didn't turn around to look at them.
"Hey, don't just stand there with the door wide- oh, Neji, it's you. Whatcha doing up at this hour?"
Neji turned around at the sound of Kakashi's voice to see the owner of the inn coming toward him, wiping his hands on a towel. Halfway up his left forearm, the bandage that had been wrapped around his wound was starkly white against his tanned skin, and Neji felt a twinge of guilt go through him. Though he knew it wasn't his fault the injury had happened, he knew that Kakashi had been injured because the shield Shikamaru had conjured up had been centered on himself.
Neji suddenly realized that Kakashi was standing there with his one visible eyebrow raised, obviously waiting for an answer to a question Neji couldn't quite remember hearing.
"It's raining," Neji said after the silence stretched on for a few awkward seconds too long, and Kakashi's face broke into a kind, indulgent smile.
"That it is, my young friend, that it is," Kakashi said, coming up behind him to close the door. Neji let go of the doorknob reluctantly, and Kakashi gave a little chuckle at the boy's behavior.
"So it's that kind of thing, is it?"
With a slight frown, Neji asked, "Pardon?"
"I've seen that look before," Kakashi clarified. "I used to wear it myself, many years ago. You're looking for someone, but you're not sure if you want to find them."
"I… I…" Neji stuttered, shocked at how easily Kakashi had guessed what was going through his head and a little miffed that now two people in the span of a single hour had managed to make him speechless.
"It's alright," Kakashi laughed, turning to rummage through a nearby closet. "Everyone has to have one of these moments sometime in their life, or else, what's the point of being human?"
What was the point of being human? Neji suddenly wondered. To live? If so, he had that covered; he was alive, and the meaning of life was simply 'not death', according to every common dictionary. But, he suddenly wondered for the first time in his life, shouldn't there be more to life than simply not being dead?
"Ah, here we are!" Kakashi said with his head still stuck in the closet, breaking Neji away from his thoughts. Extricating himself from the multitude of mops and brooms in the storage unit, he held up, as if for Neji's approval, an old fashioned black umbrella. "This should be of some use to you. How about it?"
Neji stared at the proffered umbrella for a second, then reached out a hand to take it. His hand molded to the grip on the handle like it would to the hilt of a sword, and for a second, he felt like he'd been bestowed with the fairytale prince's enchanted blade, shining with truth and power, to go slay the dragon and rescue the princess.
With his next blink, the feeling was gone, and the umbrella returned to its humble black shape. Neji started to open it up, but Kakashi laid a hand on his, stopping the movement.
At Neji's questioning look, he shrugged. "Don't open it indoors. It causes bad luck."
A frown tugged at the corners of Neji's mouth as he to figure out if Kakashi really believed what he was saying, or if he was pulling his leg. With a dismissive shake of his head, Neji decided it didn't matter and turned to open up the door and step out.
Just before he exited and was lost to the rain, Neji remembered something and turned back to Kakashi.
"Thank you," he said, then turned back to the door, popped open the umbrella, and jumped out into the night.
With a small smile and a gentle shake of his head, Kakashi watched him go. "Go get 'em, tiger," he whispered, but Neji was already lost to the rainy darkness.