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A week later, two of them return, bandaged and broken, holding each other up just barely as they stumble into Fire country. A third hitae-ate is clutched in bandaged fingers.
When he's finished, Shizune sees to him as well, holding back a flinch at the livid scar that runs across his face, under his own bandages. It's a clean, straight cut, almost ear to ear, deflected slightly off the bridge of his nose and gouging deep into the corner of his left eye.
He should be dead. Or blind, at the least. But he watches her with pale, pale eyes that aren't his own, helpless to keep his body from shaking. The reaction's only just setting in, Shizune notes detachedly. He'll be a wreck within the hour, she predicts, and rubs salve gently into the angry, half-healed slash.
The first one was easy. Sakura had deflected his first attack, and Neji had pinpointed the missing-nin's position, allowing Shikamaru's shadows to slip silently around his neck and twist, just a little…
The second one had been much more difficult. Fast, faster than Rock Lee, but without the sheer strength to back it up, her kunai had almost crippled Sakura and left Shikamaru blind and helpless.
One of Sakura's heavy blows (delivered with the uninjured arm, of course) hit the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time, and brought half the mountain down on all their heads.
Neji should have been able to save himself. One kaiten would have kept him safe from the falling rock, carving his own hollow into the sudden avalanche, safe and ready for a counterattack. But Neji saves his teammates, at the cost of his own life.
The rocks crush his chest, snapped ribs puncturing lungs, lungs filling slowly with blood, arms and legs useless. He spits up bloody froth, dredges up a smile—the first genuine smile Sakura's ever seen on his cold face—and asks, jokingly, haltingly, what good a blind shadow-binder is.
Shortly after, shadow-hands heave the rocks aside. Hyuuga eyes spot the missing-nin immediately, taunting the daimyo they were escorting, moving in for the kill. Nara shadows bind her tightly, Nara chakra far too depleted to manage yet another strangulation.
A Haruno fist shatters the missing-nin's skull.
They finish the mission, because they're shinobi, and that's what shinobi do. Shikamaru binds his eyes silently and Sakura doesn't complain that she can't heal her torn shoulder for lack of chakra. The daimyo is mercifully silent.
Then they bring Neji's hitae-ate home.
They aren't sure what to make of him. The main-branch Hyuugas watch him warily—not only is he unSealed, but he's not even of Hyuuga blood—and the cadet Hyuugas can't help but envy him. Hinata can't stand to be in his presence long, and she flees the ceremony before it's finished. No one blames her, least of all Shikamaru.
Hatake Kakashi watches from the back, and when it's over, he goes home and drinks himself to sleep.
No one would blame him either, if they knew.
The next day, the Godaime calls him into her office and asks a great favor of him. He's been expecting it, of course, and knows he can only agree. If only in the hope that things will go differently this time.
After all, the Nara prodigy is a good deal smarter than a certain Hatake brat, twenty-some years earlier. Maybe this time there's hope.
That morning, he arrives on time to a meeting for the first time in ages.
