Sway

Archive: Just ask.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. That honor belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.
Note: Slight spoilers for the current run of the manga. [Shippuden spoilers.]

Neji stared at the doorknob.

It wasn’t that he lacked the composure to handle the situation; it had more to do with the range of emotions surging in his chest. He’d ensured that Naruto would remain in the bedroom, but the sacrifice was having to carry out an interrogation with one of the blonde’s henged kage bushin.

The brunette wasn’t positive the blonde wouldn’t interfere. And that worried him.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


“What happened?” he had asked, putting on his shirt.

Naruto sighed. “I don’t think the sharingan and the byakugan were supposed to meet directly like that. Ever.”

Neji had a moment to consider this rather insightful observation, before tugging his trousers closed. “So, we were both rendered unconscious?”

He nodded. After a pause, he gave a small grin. “And it wasn’t a picnic dragging both of your asses back home, without being seen. Although, I could have taken better advantage of it, I suppose.”

Neji saw the mischievous flash in his lover’s eyes and felt lust grab him firmly by the nether region.

Clearing his throat, he continued. “Did you disable him?”

Naruto snorted.

Still, he needed confirmation.

The blonde gave him a rather pointed look. “Of course!” he replied, throwing up his arms. It brought Neji’s attention, inappropriately, to his pregnant belly. “This is Sasuke we’re talking about.”

Ignoring the fact that Naruto knew Sasuke better than anyone and had probably taken more precautions than Neji could think of, he sat on the bed and tugged on his boots. Arms slipped about his shoulders, and breasts pressed into his back.

“No,” he said firmly, before the blonde could even voice his thoughts.

“Why not?”

“Because,” he replied, slipping a kunai into one. “You’re in no condition to-”

Naruto growled warningly, and he left it at that.

“I’m not an invalid.”

Neji sighed internally. As he stood, he felt the arms retreat. And a heavy glare bore into his back. His shinobi reflexes fluttered anxiously in response.

“Naruto, he can’t see you like this.”

Naruto folded his arms over his chest. “Why not?” he replied, through sharply clenched teeth.

Grabbing their only windmill shuriken, he tucked it low on his back and walked out.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


He hadn’t answered him.

There were reasons he didn’t want his lover anywhere near the Uchiha. However, the order of those reasons hardly ranged in levels of danger, so much as pain.

If the Uchiha saw him…

Well, there was the obvious possibility, that he would see Naruto’s weakness and attack. Neji wasn’t stupid enough to believe he was anywhere near an even match with the dark traitor. The only one with a fighting chance was Naruto. And even then, that was barring the blonde was at full strength and in complete health.

The baby would be a liability the Uchiha could extort.

Neji would not allow his baby to become a weakness.

There was also the possibility, the Uchiha didn’t know it was Naruto. In which case, allowing them close enough would negate that fact entirely. They were so intimately – he hated using that word in reference to them – familiar with the feel of one another’s chakra, that Sasuke would know right away.

Which would again mean putting the baby at risk.

Beyond that, there was the fact that once they were close enough to one another, Naruto would fall into his obsession. It would begin with insults, that would lead to blows, and finally, his lover abandoning everything they’d worked so hard for and chasing the Uchiha once more.

Then what would happen to their baby?

Finally, and what Neji was honestly the most afraid of, was the possibility that the Uchiha felt as strongly for Naruto as the blonde felt for him. And if that was even a third of what Neji felt for his lover, it would be strong enough to sway him.

He would never see his baby.

What was even more disturbing, was the thought that if the Uchiha found out Naruto could concieve, he’d claim him as his own. Take the blonde away, and use his devotion to restore his clan with a bloodline that had proven the only match for his own. Which, if he thought about it, was probably something Uchiha Itachi had noticed months ago.

Would their baby even mean anything after that?


Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself, turned the knob, and automatically froze.

“You could have the decency to face me,” the Uchiha was saying.

“Why?” was the reply, in his lover’s deep timbre.

The Uchiha snorted.

“Hasn’t it been long enough, Naruto?”

Neji didn’t like the way he’d said it. It felt more like a caress, than a question.

“I wasn’t the one who left.”

“I refuse to have this conversation through your clone.”

The clone shrugged elegantly.

“Too bad.”

“Naruto, I know you’re nearby,” the Uchiha said loudly, face turned up toward the ceiling.

After a while, in which he was ignored, he shifted.

“Che.”

Neji was almost startled, when he added, “Are you going to stand in the doorway all night, Hyuuga?”

Almost.

“I can do whatever I like, Uchiha,” he replied, stepping into the room, and closing the door.

Uchiha Sasuke sat in the middle of the room, tied up over an elaborate seal Naruto had drawn over the floor in blood. Neji didn’t want to know where he’d learned something like that. As he didn’t want to know how the Uchiha had learned to get out of it, which he knew to be the case.

It seemed the Uchiha was more amused by the challenge, than frustrated at being captured. The arrogant way his dark eyes focussed on the brunette, enough to make Neji’s blood boil.

Composing himself – it wouldn’t do to let the Uchiha see weakness – Neji straightened, folding his hands behind him, ready to hurl the windmill shuriken if necessary. “Uchiha Sasuke, as a missing nin of Konohagakure, it is my duty to interrogate you.”

Sasuke stared back at him with a blank – and if he had to guess, somewhat bored - expression. Neji was certain the Uchiha expected torture. And while he was good at it, the Hyuuga wasn’t about to risk an imbalance with his lover over a necessary procedure.

In the contemptuous way the Uchiha cocked his head, he had an eerie feeling the darker shinobi knew that. Or perhaps, he was counting on the fact that Naruto appalled torture, and would insert himself protectively before even the most notorious criminals in the face of it. His lover was too kind, and that was why Naruto would never rank ANBU. Neji, an accomplished ANBU captain, however, had no such qualms.

And yet, it made his stomach turn. Knowing that while Naruto retained a distinct distaste for torture, he was one hundred times more likely to step between Neji and Sasuke, than he would be willing to step between Ibiki and Orochimaru.

The feeling caused a frown to mar his brow deeply, and the Uchiha blinked once at him. Neji took a moment to wonder idly, if Sasuke was trying to figure him out, or if he simply didn’t care. Was Neji not considered a threat to the younger shinobi? Perhaps not. Uchiha Sasuke, he was sure, was at a level that may even cause the Hokage to sweat in battle. Neji was good. Neji was excellent. Neji was a renowned genius.

If he fought fairly against Uchiha Sasuke, stretching his abilities to their very limits, he may be able to wound him. But it would cost him his life. Knowing he was so ineffectively useless against such focussed power, left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Although he no longer excelled at mental self-mutilation, Neji was not as subject to free thinking as he would hope.

Was that how Naruto made it through so many trials? Unrelenting spirit and blind faith?

It was certainly a possibility.

Naruto never went into a fight thinking about the consequences. He hardly took into account all the factors on a mission, and very rarely planned. It was quite difficult to get him to comply to any sort of prefabricated forward motion, and in the off chance that he went along, there was frankly no guarantee he’d remember anything discussed upon the first movement of aggressive action. Toward his person or no.

The blonde Hokage hopeful had a rather distinctly unique way of entering a fight. For a shinobi, it was all wrong. Too loud, too brusque, too unfocussed. His motions were quick and sharp, with no sense of fluidity. There was plenty of grace, though it was exclusive only unto his fighting style.

He tended to move with a sense of urgency. A mission could be allotted any number of weeks for completion. Given that Naruto was an addition to the team, generally meant the mission would be concluded in an eighth of the time at least, at twice the expense.

And yet…whenever Neji felt his back to the wall…In those moments he could feel death’s clammy fingers outstretch and tickle upon the skin at the base of his skull, when the tiny hairs would stand out as if flush with electricity, he would lose all sense of the proper, exclusively aristocratic stoic shinobi pride, and through his mind would flash his encounters with the blonde. Whether comrades or foes, the battles would flash with lightening quick accuracy, and from them, he would pull his hope. In those tiny moments, where your life should be flashing through your mind, Neji saw Naruto. And he found a way out.

Glancing sideways at the Uchiha, he wondered if he experienced something similar.

Sasuke had a vast reservoir from which to draw. As Naruto’s teammate, Sasuke had spent an estimated ninety percent of his life during that time, in the blonde’s company. From lengthy missions, to short brawls, from sensei sanctioned training, to competitive showboating, Sasuke and Naruto knew every single move the other knew until nearly the age of thirteen.

They’d worked together, trained together, fought one another. Because they were also rivals, they knew well, the boundaries of one another’s strength. They knew when a punch was pulled, and when a jutsu was off. They had locked into memory the distinct feel of the varying blows each was capable of. As well as the unique meaning of every flare of chakra.

Neji knew this, because he had Lee.

Regardless of the fact that Lee’s chakra signature was weak and often flailing, Neji was quite certain he could pick it out in a chaotic battlefield for at least a half dozen miles. He knew that if blinded, he could tell which fighter his former teammate was by the force of wind generated by the green clad shinobi’s limbs.

Even now, without him present, Neji’s body could formulate exactly where and how Lee would fit, if he were. The familiar stretch of his body, and the weight of the air. The curve of one hip, and the fold of his arms, as a hard stare would focus on Sasuke from just over Neji’s shoulder.

He could feel Lee at his back. Though he was miles away. It was odd. He had never recognized how emotionally involved he was with the hard working shinobi. How accustomed to his presence he had become. That even with him nowhere in sight, and much too far a distance to suddenly appear, Neji was calmed and comforted by the imagined presence.

Perhaps Naruto hadn’t been the only one to influence him all those years ago.

Taking comfort and support in the perceived embodiment, Neji found the strength to face the Uchiha with enough confidence that he was unaware of the odd emotive flicker in the dark eyes.

“Where is Orochimaru?” he demanded.

“Dead,” replied the Uchiha.

Neji was temporarily thrown by the fact that his question had not only been acknowledged, but addressed. However, imagined Lee gave a burst of energy, ready to spout a stream of questions. Neji - accustomed to cutting him off - continued.

“Did you kill him?”

“Yes.”

He was two for two.

“And Kabuto?”

Neji felt his heart give a sudden jolt, and he turned to see Naruto’s clone frowning.

“He was never a threat,” replied the darker shinobi, meeting the clone’s eyes.

Mimicked blue eyes narrowed, and Neji watched as they held the darker ones in a steady gaze. “So you kill the snake pervert, but not his most loyal follower?”

“Would you have had me kill someone who didn’t attack me?”

Tan hands clenched into fists. “What if he had a back up plan, idiot?”

The irony of Naruto calling Sasuke an idiot was not lost on the shinobi in the room. In fact, accompanied by a strange kilter of the brunette’s stomach, was the Uchiha’s smile. Then he frowned and narrowed his eyes. “Who said I hadn’t taken that into account, dobe?”

Naruto’s clone bristled.

“Teme…” he growled.

It took Neji but a moment to realize that the horrible sinking feeling in his stomach wasn’t a warning. It was an old distaste for the childish antics of the pair. They were fighting. But it wasn’t heated, or aggressive. It was a warm, comfortable fall back into their younger years that had Neji’s mind scrambling for a way to stop them before-

“Usuratonkachi.”

“Oi! Don’t call me that!”

The world felt like it had suddenly tipped on its side. Everything careened about him, as his body stood frozen. He couldn’t seem to get his bearings, drowning in a sudden return to a world that made all the sense in the universe to the pair before him.

He watched, as Naruto flailed both arms, in an attempt to keep himself from pummeling the restrained Uchiha. The Uchiha had settled comfortably, as if this were no more than an exercise. He obviously felt not even remotely threatened.

Wrong.

This was all wrong.

“Enough!”

Naruto blinked large blue eyes at him, and it was then that Neji realized the clone was indeed a clone. However, Naruto had performed an added jutsu – probably after their fight in the bedroom – to transfer his consciousness to it. The clone’s body was but a temporary hold for the younger shinobi, so that he could thwart his partner and be involved anyway.

Neji felt a sudden violent urge toward his lover, that did not seem to surprise him at any level. Which was scarier than having the feeling in the first place.

“Naruto, get out.”

The clone frowned, folding its arms across his chest. “How did you know?” he replied, with a tinge of a whine through the frustration evident in his tone.

“Don’t insult my intelligence,” he replied. “I told you to stay out of this.”

“No. You said I couldn’t physically come down here. You never said I couldn’t be here.”

“Naruto, please.”

He could see the Uchiha’s mind working. Even as his face remained blank, his eyes shinned, as more information was fed to him. He’d planned this!

Angrily, Neji crossed over to them and with a quick motion dispelled the clone. It wasn’t until after that he wondered whether or not that would actually harm his lover. He didn’t have time to feel guilt, remorse, or even worry. The Uchiha had already gotten what he needed apparently.

And in that sudden moment of horrifying realization, Neji saw Sasuke move as if in slow motion. A stray thought rushed to the forefront of his mind.

“I don’t think the sharingan and the byakugan were supposed to meet directly like that. Ever.”

As the fist connected with his stomach, and the blood and bile forced its way up his throat, Neji activated his byakugan and met the Uchiha’s eyes. It was his only hope.

Yet, as darkness closed about him, he was engulfed in a cold feeling of dread.

Sasuke’s sharingan had not been activated.