Chapter Text
- Case 06-HYUUGA-001 -
“You want me to testify?”
Naruto nodded, shifting uncomfortably as he leaned against his desk.
“Yes… Nothing about this is going to be secret anymore. No more closed doors, no more… secrecy...”
Naruto was a good friend to have. His bright, sea-blue eyes were swimming with all the emotions he never learned to conceal. He was impassioned, and saddened, and determined, and it hurt him to ask such a thing of Neji knowing what it meant.
Neji nodded yes, duty and the weight of every past generation compelling him to do so. He had to do it, no matter what that meant for him.
[the shinobi noble courts, act i]
He was too calm, and not in the way a small stream is, but in the fashion of a fish on bait, waiting for the moment the bite turns into barbs. He was too calm, and he knew it would give away to...
Something.
When asked about how he felt about testifying, or how he was going to feel, Neji assumed it would be with calmness that he would carry himself, but he still anticipated to feel uneasy or uncertain. He anticipated feeling antsy in the days leading up, on the day of. He anticipated a dull discomfort, however that may present itself.
But the morning arrived, and he dressed, and he ate with Shikamaru on his porch, and he felt bereft of… anything. As if in concentration, or deep meditation, but so much more empty of anything beside presence, and mindfulness to acknowledge the task at hand. There was a duty to fulfill, a goodness to the world that might help others in the way he'd never been helped, and that was something worth doing.
Maybe he felt pride? Maybe he felt detached, because, after all, this was so many years in the past, and he'd long since stopped dwelling on it. Life as it was was better than that, better than the memories he mostly ignores.
Yes, he felt removed from the entire thing -- that was the reason behind the emptiness, the stillness that made Shikamaru eye him a little oddly.
"Are you... okay?" He asked, finishing up the rice and veggies in his bowl that he supported in his crossed legs. Neji looked to him, to his non-work clothes that were thin for the growing heat under the sun, the way his eyes spoke louder than the three words he mouthed around a swallow of food...
"Yes, I'm okay."
He was. Shikamaru didn't press, but he didn't need to use his byakugan to know he didn't fully believe him. The normally more talk-filled morning was quickly reduced to silence, Shikamaru drinking a coffee in order to keep awake at 6 in the morning, and Neji resigned to contemplation over how still he truly was.
Yoshino kissed him goodbye on the cheek, and he wondered if her good wishes were even necessary. His heart was still, his mind was still, and he was still -- no pebble or stone could stir placid waters like his, but not a part of him could really hate it. It was a blessing -- an odd, unfamiliar blessing to grace his odd, unfamiliar day of testifying against the Hyuuga hierarchy.
He wanted that feeling of placidity back so badly at this moment, now that he’d just taken his seat beside the judge in his formal robes and piles of paper reports. His eyes snapped into focus, leaving behind it the calm detachment like it had never been there. He could hear his breath like the reverb of breathing hot against glass, and for a split second worried that everyone else could hear it, too.
The audience was small and he knew they couldn’t hear him that intimately.
It’s impossible.
He stilled himself again, a solid hand on each knee beneath the table, and ignored the irrationality that tried to take root in his mind. Ignored the vast feeling of being watched. He had a job to do, it was duty.
It was overdue justice, and he had the honor dealing it -- why was his breath uneven? He'd been in war with less unnerved thoughts before, how was this possible?
This is for myself, this is for Hinata, this is for father.
The lights above weren’t turned on, instead opting for the natural light of the row of windows to the left, and he knew why, though it was not necessary for him -- it was intended to, theoretically, put one at ease with the warm glow of the natural world. It was supposed to be a comfort before the past was gutted in front of a familial audience -- gutted for the written word to be forever filed away into government memory.
The court was a repurposed office from the Hokage’s wing, lit with natural light and arranged with seats lined in rows of three, pushed to the back of the room near the only door and separated by two tables set for the defense and for the accused.
Neji didn’t look at anyone in the room when he made his way to sit beside the judge, but he knew who was there. Shikamaru was in the closest row, and he was acutely aware of his presence, as so much of his life was made of it. He could identify that chakra in a heart beat. Beside him, Gai and Kakashi and Naruto and Sasuke. They were there, quiet, almost like at a funeral. That was the prevailing tone of the small room: no one felt comfortable talking or sighing or making noise, the audience as much as Neji.
They were there for support, but now it just felt… embarrassing. He didn’t tell them no, and now he regretted it, sitting there with hands pressed on knees, stuffy shoes too tight that begged him to tap the discomfort away, suddenly aware of all that it was he would have to say. Things he didn't tell Shikamaru, didn't tell anyone -- didn't, until recently, remember happening and once he did, felt like some hellish dream.
Calm. Stay focused.
At the table closest to him was Hinata, seated next to her advisor Yui. Hinata wore her heart so appallingly on her sleeve, it was clear how hard this was on her. Her eyes were a deep well of regret, of pain, of guilt for ever having to ask Neji to do this. But where there was pain, there was also determination and strength.
Then came the rest of his family, and he’d ignored it till that moment. Eventually, however, he had to turn an eye to his grandfather Hiroto seated off to the side. He was at the defenses table, and looked at no one, not even Neji. Not the boy he especially hated, the boy he’d never even tried to hide his disgust over.
His eyes were so decidedly focused on the table in front of him, nodding in agreement to whatever it was his white-haired advisor was telling him, and not looking in even the direction Neji was seated.
You lose your nerve when the seals are gone, don’t you?
Everything about a branch member was disgusting to that man, but everything about Neji was like a cattle prod to his deep-seated generational animosity. He’d fucking hated him, from day one, and Neji would never fully understand the depths of the why .
He’d once rubbed the sole of his boot into Neji’s forehead, fingers poised in the family seal, in the aftermath of the chunin exams. Sharing family business and not making rank was a whole new level of unacceptable for him, and he made sure Neji knew it down to the marrow. Neji had to wait a week before the bruises left him before he could even consider going back into training with Gai, being seen by them and narrowly avoiding questions yet again.
Yet, here we are. Look at you now. You’re a coward. You can’t even face me.
He hadn’t seen Hiroto since the spring, and then a year before that. It wasn’t surprising that he sat there alone, with his advisor Shinzo. The elders were not there, awaiting the ruling in their elderly age somewhere else while Hiroto was there on their behalf. They were still on trial, present or not.
Pathetic.
He didn’t hear himself being sworn in, but he felt his head movements, remembered the shape of his lips when he agreed to whatever it was the judge had said. It was static in memory, alive for just the moment, before fading to the background -- his eyes fixated on Hiroto in a way he wasn’t able to stop, eyes drying against the warm air and stubbornly, heatedly refusing to give, even with the judge calling the court into session.
“And here we take testimonials from several branch-family Hyuuga members, for the record, in the process to define the misuse of power outlined in the allegations of the plaintiff Hyuuga Hinata. These testimonials will serve to credit or discredit the evidence and accounts already in custody, and will soon be followed by a ruling. Hyuuga Neji, you are the first to speak as first-hand testimony to the main Hyuuga branch family and the alleged misuse of power and authority. Is your testimony of your own freewill?”
“It is.”
The judge nodded. “Very well. On record we have use of a curse seal by means of coercion and punishment, physical punishment, withholding of necessities as punishment, and excessive training beyond what is deemed acceptable for young shinobi. Proceed as you seem fit and address the family member by name, at the guidance of the court advocates, Yui and Shinzo”
Oh. I’d forgotten some of those.
Looking at the old man, with his heavy wrinkles and lines, an axe hacked away at the meat of a tree -- with his diminished form, and his dry brittle hair, Neji almost thought it redundant that they were here, that it was pointless. The elders were no better off, with partners that were dead, with lost eyesight befitting a holder of the Byakugan, with maybe a few years left on this earth before being put to a grave no one would visit.
Why is this necessary? Our clan is dying as it is, the main branch dwindling away, why must I --
“Neji?” Yui said, standing off to the side of his vision. She’d stood up, had walked up to him, and he’d been aware of it, but only in passing.
Neji blinked, breathed, and pulled his eyes from his grandfather. He stared forward, toward one of the empty wooden seats in the front row. The female stenographer sat in the seat beside it, and her hands were still over her typewriter as she awaited something to be said.
He refused to clear his throat, or to succumb to the lead sinking his lungs.
There’s a task at hand. Do it.
“My apologies…”
The air broke . He was too loud for it.
Focus.
His stomach tightened silently.
Just... focus.
An ocean rolled around in him at depths he didn’t know existed, picking up speed as soon as his words started to come to him. “I speak only on my own behalf, and not to what I’ve seen happen to other members of the branch families, nor will I speak on my father's behalf. I will address only what has happened to myself.”
“I’m looking to hear about you, so that’s perfect.” Yui says, and it sounds like an apology. She’s walking around the room, a paper in hand, while Hinata watches with weary eyes. “I’ll have you start at the first allegation if you wouldn’t mind. You’d once had the Hyuuga curse seal on your forehead, correct?”
His stomach sank, he could feel his food from earlier. “I did. It was broken in April by Lady -- by Hinata.”
It had hurt as much as it did when he was branded. Hinata was close to tears when she had done it, but he’d reassured her that everything was more than okay.
"I’m getting what I longed for, do not cry for me," he assured her, curled in on himself on Shikamaru's family couch.
“When did you get it?”
Rice, pork, green tea -- he tastes it all at once. “I was three when I received it from the elders, as is Hyuuga custom.”
“And it is rendered at the discretion of the main branch, correct? How often was it used?”
“Yes. When I was a child, it was used often… Through my genin years, it was used almost daily. ”
“Why was it used so often?”
Every reason under the sun. Because, sometimes, there didn’t need to be a reason.
“It was used for many reasons… mostly it was to fix behavioral issues, or as motivation to not fail in endeavors like school or training. So if I spoke negatively about my uncle or cousins, or got into trouble at the academy, that would be adequate.”
“Even as a child?”
“Especially as a child, as that was when we were taught the clan ways… we’d learned of the social order very early. They wanted it instilled in us, almost from birth. It’s easy to recall the first time, I believe I was four. My uncle had the honor to be the first, as I hadn’t been training hard enough at the time… I was a very disappointing child. it made me ill, and I’d fixed myself quite quickly.”
Neji closed his eyes -- it lasted only a second and he couldn’t afford more than that -- but he remembered in his muscles how it felt to be hunched over in the garden, stomach tumbling out and tears hot on his cheeks.
It hurt too bad to eat.
He peeled his eyes open again like onions, and wanted to tell Yui and her apologetic looks that it was okay . He'd volunteered, he agreed to speak of this.
He wanted to tell Hinata and the silent tears on her own cheeks that it was okay. He's doing this for her, as much as for himself.
“And as a chunin and jonin?”
“It’s fair to say it was used most of my life, up until I was 17. As a chunin I made many mistakes and spoke in a way unfitting of the clan and our image, so after missions or training with my team, I’d have to answer for the poor image I painted of my clan. I’d shredded what little good will my family had for me after the chunin exams, both in what personal clan business I decided to share that day, as well as for losing the way I did."
He paused, because he remembered what home felt like between turbulent missions and the start of the war. The nausea, the training, the aches and the way he hid the evidence of home through bandages and excessive training... "As chunin, I was reminded often how I would have to protect the main family, and if it came to sacrifices, they were willing to make it. If I appeared to have forgotten this, I was reminded."
"Sacrifices?"
"I... was a sacrifice from birth. Whatever it takes to protect the main family, it was my price to pay. Like I said, it was custom to learn this young."
As is with my father, as is with me.
"And you were also reminded of this... through use of the seal?"
"Indeed. And being jonin did not spare me or lend me preferential treatment, as age never defined the necessity of being reminded of who we are.”
“Don’t you mean who you were?”
It was her form of a life line.
Neji tasted the bile again, like the past’s hands reached out to claim his body, his spirit, there in the courtroom. He looked at her directly, for the first time he notes apologetically, and smiles as he takes the rope. “My mistake.”
Though he felt sick to his core, he couldn’t stave away the satisfaction of seeing his grandfather so helpless.