Through Thick and Thin

Neji is drowning. He opens his eyes to pouring rain and remembers the feeling of getting impaled. There is a deep ache in the back of his neck and his entire side is numb. He knows he’s laying on his back because he can feel the hard cold ground under him. Neji blinks and tries to tilt his head to prevent the waves of water from entering his nostrils and further drowning him, but everything is painful and he finds his body unresponding. Neji spends a few minutes just painfully breathing in and out.

The ache in his neck flares as he sits up but he ignores it. Neji is a soldier. He is a soldier and a proud member of the Hyuga clan. He was fighting on the battlefield and now he is here, and he cannot allow himself to stay in such a pitiful, vulnerable position when his comrades are still fighting against an impossible foe.

Neji runs his hand down his stomach. There are holes in his blood-stained uniform, but the skin beneath is smooth and there is no wound there. He is so confused that he spends a few seconds just staring down at himself; He remembers getting impaled. Could it have been an illusion? He disrupts his chakra with a thought, but his situation doesn’t change. This isn’t an illusion, then.

No matter, Neji thinks as he hauls himself to his feet, noting that the ground is concrete. They’d been fighting on green land. His confusion turns to great concern. Madara– no, Tobi, had the ability to disrupt space. Was he teleported away from the battlefield?

Neji pushes chakra into his eyes and hisses when his eyes burn and sting but the clarity of the byakugan is nowhere to be found. He has chakra exhaustion, he realizes with a snarl. The teen checks his pouches and is only slightly relieved to find that his knives are still there. Neji slowly blinks the pain in his eyes away and looks around. He is not surprised to find that he is in an alleyway. The ground where he’d been laying is coated with his own blood, turned pink by the rushing rain.

He might have a concussion. Neji doesn’t think much about it and slowly makes his way to the end of the alleyway, keeping to the shadows and heavily supporting himself on the wall. Phantom pain racks his whole body every step he takes, but Neji is a shinobi in an unknown environment and the last thing he wants is to stay still in one place. And wherever he is, it is very loud, he thinks with a grimace. The sky is gray and it’s hard to estimate the hour, but it had been late afternoon by the time they’d been facing the two Madaras– the false one, Tobi, and the actual, Madara Uchiha. He knows he probably can’t trust his memories. Against two sharingan wielders, maybe that had been an illusion, too. Neji doesn’t know, and that makes his anxiety spike in ways he’d never admit.

His vision swims a little by the time he makes it to an open street. People are there, too. A middle-aged man, who looks to be a civilian, stops dead in his tracks when they meet eyes. His eyes go wide as saucers as he takes in the form of Neji, and Neji stoically stares back with his best resting Hyuga face. The moment stretches and Neji actually wonders if he’d been wrong. Looks can be deceiving, that was one of the first shinobi lessons, but could this man actually be a civilian?

Neji nearly startles as the man’s scream of bloody murder rockets into the streets. People turn to them, and a few drop their umbrella at the sight of him. Neji quickly switches from unknown environment mode to definitely hostile environment mode. He doesn’t need his byakugan to see the woman pulling something from her pocket in the corner of his vision, nor does he need actual chakra to nail a precise strike to her wrist. The woman screams and the black device falls to the ground with an audible crack.

Neji contemplates putting her out of commission right then and there, but she’s fallen on her behind and staring at him in horror, and people around them are screaming and scrambling away from him. He is uncertain. Neji makes the quick decision to flee the scene and whirls around, the vengeance of his concussion nearly knocking him off his feet.

“Villain!” someone screams behind him. Neji doesn’t have time to think about it and darts in a narrow alleyway. Everything is too loud. Stupid, stupid, he berates himself as sirens sound out. He’s made a terribly dumb decision, and Gai would probably lose his shit if he ever caught wind of it. Neji knows he is definitely losing his shit.

Neji stops by a wall to throw up when the pain in his body is too much to bear. His concussion feels like Tenten is repeatedly smashing his head with a hammer, and the tremors in his body make him sway so much he’s incapable of taking another step.

He doesn’t hear the footsteps behind him, but he certainly feels it when someone slams him into the ground and forces his hands behind his back.

Neji is embarrassed. He thinks the only instance he’s ever felt so embarrassed before was that one time during the chunin exams he’d been dragged kicking and screaming out of the arena after beating his cousin to a bloody pulp. Humiliation, distress, shame (though the shame only came a bit later), those are all feelings he is closely acquainted with as he sits in an uncomfortable chair with his wrists cuffed together.

He’s been caught like a rookie. Of course, he was already injured by the time the men in blue came, but he is supposed to be a genius, the rising star of the honorable Hyuuga clan. He feels warmth creep up his cheeks at his own failure. His long hair is wet and dirty and strands of it stick to his face. The weight of it on his neck is an unpleasant distraction, but one he will take if it means not losing face in front of his persecutors. The room he is in is white and barren, and Neji is very conscious of the one-way glass window on his left. He feels watched.

The hairs on his arms stand on end just before the door opens and a man walks in. He is an older man with short dark hair and a thin beard. He is dressed formally in a dark-colored suit that Neji eyes curiously for a moment. It gives Neji a bit of a pause– he doesn’t think he’s seen anyone dress like that before. The man takes the seat opposite to him.

“We’ll try to keep this short. The name’s Eizo Tanuma.” the man says and slouches in his chair. “We haven’t been able to find anything about you in the system, so why don’t you start by telling me your name?”

Neji fixes him with his best deadpan expression, aware that his eyes can be unnerving to some. He thinks that might be one of the reasons that one guy freaked out as much as he did back in the streets (coupled with the fact that he looks like he’s just been through hell and back.) The older man gives him a searching look, his gaze focusing on Neji’s eyes.

“I see you don’t plan on making this easy for either of us.” Neji knows how it goes. He’s interned with Ibiki Morino for a few weeks before Akatsuki began to move and everything went to shit. He knows what’s waiting for him.

“What will it be?” Neji asks the man coldly, making him pause.

“What will what be?” Neji very nearly stops the scoff that wants to escape from his lips. He raises one elegant eyebrow, the picture of cynicism. “Drugs? Waterboarding?” The man falls silent, incomprehension written all over his face. “Or maybe you’ll want to go back to the old ways and just punch me and take some of my fingers.” Neij continues, stone-faced. “Though I’ve heard disembowelment has become a trend in the south.”

“Kid.” Tanuma interrupts, just as Neji is about to open his mouth to say more. “What the hell.”

The older man is now sitting straight and looking at Neji like he’s seen a ghost. Though he might not be that far from the truth, as far as Neji is concerned. Hyuuga typically have a pale complexion, white eyes, dark hair and Neji also very vividly remembers dying with spikes sticking out of his chest. He’s just not quite sure if the dying part was an illusion or not, but the point stands.

“I…” The man, Tanuma, seems to choose his words carefully. “Were you mistreated by the police force in the past?” Neji wills every muscle in his face to stay the picture of indifference. The police? They haven’t been around since the Uchiha massacre, and Konoha was the only village that has ever had a police force as far as he knows. This doesn’t make sense.

As Neji’s tense silence stretches, the policeman (?) clears his voice. “We’ll investigate any names you give us, and I swear that you will not be harmed while in our custody.” He folds his hands on the table between them, probably to show him that he is not armed, and Neji’s eyes track the movement. “I just want you to know that we can’t help you if you don’t cooperate.”

“...You already know who I am.”

“I don’t.” The man shakes his head, and Neji thinks his confusion looks genuine, but he could also very well be an excellent actor. It is also highly unfathomable that he wouldn’t at the very least recognise his Hyuuga eyes, especially as Neji also has a profile in the bingo book of every country with a fair price on his head.

Neji gives him a blank look, and decides to test his reaction. “Neji Hyuuga.”

The man writes it down in the small notebook he has on the table along with the beige thin folder, which Neji assumes is his. There is no sign of recognition, and Neji can’t help the frown that twists his features. Who were these people? Everyone knew his clan, at least by name. They were named the wicked-eyes monsters, people told their children about them at night as scary bedtime stories. Their prowess in reconnaissance and close-range fighting was both admired and feared among the shinobi population. How?

Tanuma must have read Neji’s skepticism as he gives him a strange look, but doesn’t comment on it . “You injured one passerby early this afternoon. Mind telling us about that?”

“I was startled.” Neji says after a bout of silence. If he times it right, he might be able to get away from here. The way Tanuma’s eyes softened as he reassured him that he wouldn’t harm him is not lost on him.

“You were startled.” Tanuma repeats slowly, unimpressed. “So you, what, just punched a lady and put her in the hospital?”

“I see nothing wrong with self-defense.” Neji placates scarcely. He understands that harming civilians is unacceptable, as shinobi are servants of the people, but shouldn’t they be more concerned about a foreign shinobi being in their country in the first place?

Tanuma crosses his arms, and Neji spies a silver watch peeking out of his sleeve when the tissue slips down. It is five in the afternoon, which he supposes lines up with the time before he’d been transported here. “Self-defense?” The man parrots.

“She was reaching out for a weapon.”

“No, kid.” Neji barely manages to stop his eyebrows from rising at the nickname. “She was pulling her phone outta her bag, because a mysterious young man covered in blood and carrying multiple unlicensed weapons showed up.”

Neji stays silent. He can’t quite wrap his head around what is happening. Unlicensed weapons? Hardly. He is a ninja, for God’s sake, of course he’d be carrying at least a little weaponry! Or have they not figured out he is a ninja yet? Such incompetence is almost enough to make him snicker (or snarl and call them out on their uselessness to their face, he’s not sure.)

“So, Neji.” The policeman starts again, and Neji bristles at the careless use of his first name. “I can’t just let you off the hook like that. You injured someone today, and no matter your intentions, there will have to be a punishment. Now, as far as I’m concerned, you’ll probably just get a few months of juvenile, but then again that’s for the judge to decide. Do you know your rights?”

Neji nods, even if he doesn’t. Tanuma goes ahead and lists his rights anyway. He’s tempted to just punch the man in the face right then and there. Why ask if he’s going to do it anyway?

After a moment, the policeman exits the room with the beige folder. Neji feels his skin prickle with the feeling of being watched, and he turns to stare at the one-way glass window. After a moment, he turns away again and instead decides to scowl at the wall. The pain of his seemingly invisible injuries is nothing but a reminder of his dire situation.

Neji turns to the door just before it opens. In comes Tanuma again, with the same beige folder, and a skeptic look on his face.

He sits back in the chair and looks at him with a severe expression. “Actually, it might not be that easy.” He starts and lets a bout of silence settle between them. For what, dramatic effect? Neji’s deadpan must be telling, because Tanuma sighs for what feels like the hundredth time and rubs the bridge of his nose.

“Listen, I really can’t help you if you don’t tell me the truth. As it stands, there is no ‘Neji Hyuuga’ in any of our records. So now, it’s either you tell me the truth right now and let me help you, or we can let the court settle the matter.” Tanuma threatens.

Neji does his best to be the picture of resignation despite the bubbling shame in his stomach. He releases the tension in his shoulders and bobs his head in defeat. “Okay, okay, fine.”

He pictures twelve year old Hinata in his head, how she’d walk around with hunched shoulders and nervous eyes, and his hands lock together on their own to fiddle and pick at each other. The motion makes his cuffs click and scatter, which gives him the perfect reason to ask the following:

“Would you at least get the cuffs away? It hurts.” He’d said this with a timid, unassuming voice (Neji wants to throw up in his mouth at his own display, which also conveniently helps with his little show as his face twists in a constipated expression.)

Tanuma stares at him for a long time, seemingly torn, before heaving out a mighty sigh. “No can do, kiddo. The rules are the rules.” Neji makes a show of hanging his head. “...But I guess I can loosen them a little if they hurt.”

The older man gets up, rounds the table and approaches Neji. Neji is almost tempted to smile when he actually reaches out for the cuffs and pushes a small metallic key in the lock. “Don’t try anything.” Tanuma warns, but Neji isn’t paying attention as he suddenly feels the familiar prickle of chakra in his limbs, energy that had been put to sleep for the past few hours. Curious, as Neji hadn’t been able to see any chakra-suppressant seals on the cuffs, but not something he takes the time to ponder on as he delivers a quick strike to the policeman’s thigh, which has the man crumbling to the ground in an instant.

Due to the awkward angle, Neji hadn’t been able to aim for anything higher and potentially lethal, but it would have to do. He shoots up, ignoring the series of curses from the man he’s put to the ground, and quickly poofs out of the station after a rapid series of hand signs.

All of his wounds flare as he stumbles into another alleyway. The sky is pitch black above his head, and Neji awkwardly walks (limps) to an intersection. The cuffs dangle from one of his wrists, the other free, but marked with angry red lines where Neji had been stubbornly pulling at his restraints. It wasn’t ideal, but at least he was free.

The alleyway leads to an open street, where there are a few people. He can’t exactly use his byakugan without risking damaging his eyes, but Neji’s certain that there are no ninja in his close surroundings. Small mercies, he murmurs to himself as he hurries to find a passable spot for hiding. Neji knows he won’t be able to get far with his injuries, and he curses his lack of knowledge in the medical field. If Tenten were here, she’d probably yell at him for his severe lack of insight. And Lee would probably tell him to suck it up and push through the pain, or offer to give him a piggy ride as his most youthful training. Neji doesn’t know which he’d prefer, but thinking of his teammates comforts him.

He drags himself to a blind spot near a garbage can with half its contents littered on the concrete and painfully sits down while trying to ignore the foul smell. If anything, it will deter people from searching this specific area. Neji closes his eyes and secludes himself into the familiar bubble of meditation.

-
“Oh dear.” A distant voice sounds out. “Oh dear, oh dear, are you okay?” Neij’s eyes snap open, every muscle in his body tensing.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” An old lady is leaning above him, a plastic bag hanging from her hand and the other covering her mouth. She is wearing a thick scarf and her frail stature is wrapped into a large green coat which she almost seems to be swimming in.

Neji’s first instinct is to suppress a big sigh of relief at realizing she’s only a harmless civilian. It seems he’s fallen asleep sometime during his meditation, and while his chakra reserves feel a little more replenished, he is still far too weak for his liking.

“Do you need help? I could call the heroes if you’d want me to...” She reaches for him, and Neji makes to avoid her hand, which makes the pain in his side come back with a vengeance. He flinches so hard that he knocks the back of his head against the wall, and the stranger makes a choked, surprised noise before stepping back as if burned.

“Oh my.” The lady panics, her hands hovering hesitantly. “Let me call someone. The police–”

“No.” Neji blurts out. “Not the police.”

She pauses, her face rapidly twitching in emotions Neji cannot decipher. “No?”

“No.” He shakes his head. It is sad to say, but if this woman does not cooperate then he’ll have to take care of her himself. And even if he doesn’t aim for a killing blow, the consequences of the gentle fist on a fragile, old body are…undesirable.

A sort of dawning understanding seems to fall upon her, and her face hardens. “And the hospital?” Neji shakes his head, glaring though he doubts she can see it in the ambient darkness. He stands up while supporting himself on the wall, keeping a close eye on the woman’s movements.

Neji is about to say something else to deter her from sticking her nose in his business (most likely a timely threat) when she suddenly sucks in a harsh breath and rounds on him. “You are just a boy!” She screams in his ears upon seeing him fully in the light. “What sort of business have you gotten yourself into to get so roughed up!”

“Mind your–” Neji starts to hiss.

“Oh no you don’t! Do you think your life is so unimportant that you have to throw it all away like that?! I don’t care if you have problems, you don’t– you don’t just–” She cuts herself, red in the face and breathless. “Oh, god. How long have you been sitting here, you unconscious child? I won’t be surprised if those wounds of yours are infected now!”

Neji is at a loss of words at the outburst, blinking stupidly down at her. Does she not recognize the uniform? The headband? His eyes? A foreign civilian woman is scolding him, Hyuga Neji of the Leaf, elite ninja and renowned user of the gentle fist.

“You are coming with me, young man.” She decides then. “I have medical equipment at home. You need to get those taken care of as soon as possible.”

“What.” Neji says dumbly, indignant and maybe a little delirious.

“You are coming with me or else I am calling the authorities.” He freezes. Neji may be a good soldier, but he is not in any way capable of taking on an entire squad of elite ninja in his state, nevermind considering his pitiful lack of information. And if this doesn’t work out and the lady is as shady as he thinks she might be, he’ll just have to discreetly strike her down after following her home and manage to do a quick patch work with her supplies. That would work. Hopefully.
(Neji tries not to think too hard about the absolute nonsense of a situation he’s been thrown into, less he wants to lose his mind. Damn Uchiha, and damn never-ending clusterfuck pain in the butt the sharingan powers proved to be.)

The pair makes their way in town in silence. After the initial adrenaline has died down, Neji finds himself holding back winces and whimpers as pain racks his body every step he takes. Sweat gathers on his forehead at the task, and suddenly he is acutely aware of the state of dirtiness he is in. He probably looks like a beggar, and that makes a tiny part of Neji’s brain feel self-conscious. He’s always taken great care of himself, whether that be his training, diet, hygiene, or overall appearance, so this was a great blow to his pride.

Fortunately, the old lady, who has yet to introduce herself, walks slowly in front of him, and if she notices his labored breath, then she says nothing. They arrive at a small house in the quieter part of town, in a nice neighborhood from what Neji has seen, and the stranger leads the way to the door.

The inside looks like a sort of homely, organized mess: books are littered everywhere, empty cups are placed a little everywhere and the sink is full with dirty plates. It is not dusty but there is hardly any place to walk, and the lights, once the lady flips them on, are warm and cover the space in shadows that make the house look like one of those cliché homes he remembers seeing in the old Christmas movies he used to watch with his cousins. The fond memory, though distant, makes some part of Neji settle.

“Come, come. Sit on the couch and don’t touch anything.” Neji humors her and sits down in the tiny living room while she shuffles to another room. He studies the interior with interest, just to distract himself. He still really does not want to think about the mud in his hair or the stench coming from him.

“Why are you doing this?” He asks once the stranger comes back to him with disinfectant and bandages.

She shakes her head. “I’ll be damned if I let some child die in a dump. Come here.” He follows her to the bathroom and sits on the dishwasher while she tends to his wounds. He gulps down a painkiller and applies an ice pack to his forehead for his concussion (to which the lady tuts and grouches about) after quickly removing the grim from his body and hair with a towel and some water, making sure to not damage the freshly applied bandages.

Neji belatedly realizes that he’s been awake for a little less than forty eight hours, and he feels the magnitude of his fatigue once he’s back on the couch. His head hits the pillow and he’s out like a light.

He wakes up with a killer headache and the smell of freshly cooked eggs oozing from the kitchen. His bandages have been changed and it is just mildly concerning that the old civilian lady was able to get this close to him without him noticing.

“Finally awake are we?” The woman peeks from the kitchen’s doorway. “I almost thought you had kicked the bucket on my couch!”

Neji blinks pearly white eyes at her. “How long was I out?”

“Around twenty hours I’d say.” She smiles at the disbelief written on his face. “Good timing. I was just about to wake you up for lunch.”

After a minute or so, the boy hears a soft beeping noise from the kitchen and the lady (and he realizes he still doesn’t know her name) comes back with a plate of eggs and veggies as well as a large glass of water. His arms reach for the plate as soon as it’s in his range, and he starts gobbling the food down in a display so criminally foul he’d surely get bonked on the head if his uncle ever witnessed it. Sue him, he hadn’t had a proper meal in weeks. War does tend to do that to people, and while soldier pills are, in his opinion, one of the best and most convenient creations of humankind, one is bound to get sick of it after a while.

Neji feels himself live again as he quietly sips on his water. The lady slowly lowers herself into an adjacent armchair with another plate. He can hear her joints creak as she does so, and for a moment there is nothing but silence between them. Neji relaxes back on the couch, content now that his chakra exhaustion and injuries have relented somewhat. He knows what’s coming.

The old woman crosses her ankles and considers him. “What is your name?”

Neji purses his lips, but holds back the smart comment he was about to make. This lady has taken care of him, and hadn’t taken advantage of his vulnerability so far. Neji might be a trained assassin, but he is one with manners, as is any clan member of the Hyuuga. “Neji Hyuuga.”

“I’m Hiromi Tanaka, please just call me Hiromi. Can you tell me how old you are?” At that last bit, her tone softens.

“...I’m seventeen.” Neji doesn’t really see the harm in answering, considering the situation, but he does notice Hiromi’s shoulders slump.

“They get younger and younger.” Hiromi murmurs in a sullen tone. He suspects he wasn’t meant to hear that. Then, louder: “Are you still hungry? I have fruits for dessert.” Pink tints his neck as he registers that his so-called manners he prides himself for weren’t all that present when he’d absolutely demolished this old lady’s dish without ever saying thank you or please.

He clears his voice. “That won’t be necessary. Thank you for the meal.”

Hiromi smiles knowingly. “You’re welcome.”

Neji ends up with a plate of apple slices in his lap, and he munches on them with the pink having migrated to his cheeks. The slices, annoyingly enough, are bunny-shaped, but at least the apples are rather sweet. Small mercies, he thinks, not for the first time.