Someone has been freeing the caged birds in the Hyuuga compound.
Neji finds this both baffling and comforting; comforting because for the first two weeks after the failed mission to retrieve Sasuke, he was virtually blind. The world dissolved into a blurry haze two feet from his face, and into a sea of gray three feet from that. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hiashi had come to see him -- Neji dimly remembers barking out a hoarse order for him to leave, and then he maybe went a little postal. He would have made a full recovery if it hadn't been for the curse seal on his forehead, which apparently thought he was dying and began to erase the byakugan from his mind and body. He fought it off, but the damage was done.
Hinata came to visit after her father, and Neji threw her out too, but she returned with the Hokage. She volunteered to help Neji re-learn byakugan, and to let Tsunade inspect her eyes in order to repair Neji's. Hiashi was furious -- letting anyone so close to the secrets of byakugan was considered a betrayal of the clan -- but Hinata has a way of being stubborn when you least expect it, getting up and getting up and getting up again and again. Neji knows.
Neji can no longer see even a little. His retinas have been completely changed, both by the curse seal and by Tsunade -- now he sees with chakara. He no longer uses the sun or electricity for illumination; other people light his world with their energy, with sky-blue light. The chakara of even a single person is bright enough that he can see for a hundred feet.
No one's ever done anything like this, and Neji doesn't even know if it's permanent, but it's better than nothing. Since chakara, like blood, fills every ounce of a person's body, he can even see people's expressions quite easily. And thankfully, clothing diffuses chakara enough so that he can't see the exact outlines of their bodies -- the only thing worse than blindness would be a world full of glowing, blue, naked people.
He makes the mistake of saying this to Lee, who thinks it is the funniest thing ever and will never let him live it down. Lee visits him daily in the hospital, even when Neji snaps at him. Neji may no longer be a cripple, but neither is Lee, and those long visits feel like pity. Lee says it's not pity. Neji thinks it must be kindness, which is just as bad.
Neji thought Lee was the one releasing the Hyuuga-clan's caged birds, but Lee said he only did it once, after Naruto did.
It took a week for Naruto to learn of Neji's injury. He didn't visit him in the hospital -- just stormed around the village in a snit and then broke into the Hyuuga compound and freed the birds. Tenten mentioned the break-in casually the next day; Lee saw the flicker of emotions cross Neji's face, and then he opened the cages, too. The third time was Gaara. The fourth time, Neji knows, was Hinata, when she was leaving to camp at the hospital and help with his recovery, but he doesn't know who's doing it now. Who's doing it every day.
There is only one thing that Neji really misses, and that's the birds. He can still see them, traced by chakara, and they don't really look very different in pale blue light than they did in sunlight. Except that he no longer uses the sun for illumination, and when they fly -- he used to love to watch them fly, that was the best part -- when they fly, they are out of his range, and they are invisible to him. The only birds that he can see now are those in cages and those that chose to join him on the ground. Cages, he thinks, and kindness. Kindness and cages. They are all he has left.
Naruto is still awkward around Neji, like he blames himself for Neji's injury. Neji would tell him to stop being an idiot but he's recently become aware of how breakable Naruto is without Sasuke around.
During Neji's first month in the hospital, Lee was constant company. Lee mentioned once what Gaara said, about important people and defeating loneliness, and Neji's had a lot of time to think about it lately. Sometimes he compares friendship to a web -- he thinks about webs a lot, even when he'd rather not -- and he can almost see the sticky, sky-blue ties that bind Naruto and Sasuke despite their distance. Naruto, Neji thinks, needs Sasuke, needs his focus, his drive, his determination -- without it, Naruto is aimless, dispirited. Neji has been helping him train, lately, supposedly so he can get back some of his own strength, but really so that Naruto doesn't drift away, tugged along by a thread of connection that he can't even see.
Neji has also been training with Hinata, to get back his byakugan, and to teach her kaiten since Hiashi refuses to talk to her. Hinata needs Naruto the way that Naruto needs Sasuke, but Sasuke needs Naruto and Naruto doesn't need Hinata. It's a lopsided equation that's going to break Hinata if she doesn't learn how to be strong on her own, and so Neji is teaching her.
Gaara and his team are still in Konoha, and sometimes he'll come and watch Neji train with whoever's available, standing some distance away, usually in a tree. Neji is sort of pleased when Gaara is around, not because Gaara is strong and it's an unspoken admission that Neji has done something to earn his respect, but because Gaara has a very big, very powerful demon inside of him that has a lot of chakara. When Gaara is around, Neji can see for miles.
Gaara and Lee are almost friends, but Gaara and Neji will never get along. Tanuki eat birds.
Gaara was the third person to free the birds in the Hyuuga compound. He saw Lee do it and decided to try it for himself. He told Naruto who told Neji that it was 'satisfying'. Neji supposes that if he thinks about caged things he must inevitably think of Gaara, who exists in so many cages simultaneously that it hurts to imagine, but he doesn't think of Gaara as a caged thing, he thinks of Gaara as a predator.
Except that sometimes he sees Gaara and Naruto talking to each other, tanuki and fox, demon boy and demon boy, and he realizes that Gaara has no idea of what to do. Kankuro still hates him and Temari tries, but Temari is busy. Everyone knows that a love triangle of massive, doom-ridden proportions has sprung up between Temari, Shikamaru, and Ino. Neji told Shikamaru dryly that he should become a missing-nin just to escape, and when Shikamaru was done trying to throw things at him, he added that either way, Shikamaru's children were doomed to lives full of ponytails. Shikamaru still isn't talking to him.
Gaara always watches Neji train with Naruto, and he even overheard a conversation between the two of them. "Do you hate Sasuke?" Naruto asked.
Neji scoffed. "Don't be stupid."
"Everyone else hates him."
"I'm not everyone else," Neji said coolly. "My eyes are better than theirs." And just because it was the truth, he added, "Yours are, too. You don't hate him."
Naruto said, "Yeah."
The truth is, Sasuke is a kid, like Naruto, but somehow even younger, and he's being stupid and selfish and when Neji sees him he's going to kick his ass, but Neji can't quite hate him. He tried to at first, but then he remembered the nauseating, terrifying instant that the curse seal on his forehead activiated, when he realized that, despite his talent, his precociousness, his sheer overwhelming skill, he was still too young to die -- he remembered and he remembers and he can't hate Sasuke. He can't hate much of anyone anymore.
Hinata is like the kind birds that seem to follow Neji whever he goes, hopping and fluttering from tree to tree, gracing him with a glimpse of their freedom. Kindness is weakness, though, because you inevitably give more than you get, and Neji is trying to break her of that habit. Even if it means that he breaks her of him. And he thinks that maybe Sasuke is Naruto's important person and Naruto is Hinata's, and that maybe, maybe, maybe, Hinata is his.
Hinata is stubborn the way everyone else is alive, and he remembers how she refused to admit defeat during their fight, and he sees how she refuses to admit defeat during their training, and she has such a bright chakara, such a bright outlook, such a brightness and he wouldn't be able to see at all if it wasn't for her. She asks nothing in return.
Hinata and Neji are training and Neji can hear the night bugs chirping and the village winding down, so he knows that it must be getting dark. It makes no difference to him -- whether they're awake or asleep, people give off the same amount of chakara. Hinata is still mastering the advanced levels of kaiten that will actually make it useful, and she's sitting on the ground, her hands on her knees as she catches her breath.
Neji is maybe a little wiser and a lot more tired than he used to be, so he doesn't order her to her feet, just stands and listens to the silence, and he thinks again of the caged birds in the Hyuuga compound. They are released every morning, and Neji can just glimpse them as they fly free. It's become his habit to to turn his face to the west when he knows it's time, just to glimpse the small, bright shapes arrowing for the sky before they pass out of view. He thinks of cages and kindess and something his father said, that happiness is one freedom you can never fight your way into. He put his large hand on Neji's head and told him, you set me free, and then added, worried, but what about you? Happiness has to be given, it has to be granted, someone on the outside has to flip the latch and open the door.
Gaara saw him watching once, and asked, "What are you looking at?"
"The birds," Neji said, turning and moving to walk away.
"I thought you were looking at the sun."
"I thought it was night," Neji retorted. "I can't see the sun, remember?"
"It's dawn," Gaara told him.
Someone has been freeing the caged birds in the Hyuuga compound, day after day after day, despite the difficulty, despite the lack of success. The Hyuuga's always get more, have increased the security to absurd levels, but every morning, the birds fly free. As Neji stands aside, watches Hinata catch her breath, he knows.
"You should stop freeing the birds," he says calmly. Hinata goes very still. "You'll get in trouble. More trouble than you're already in, that is."
Hinata is silent for such a long time, until she finally says, "I won't stop." Her voice is careful and shaky and calm, and she adds, looking up at him, "I want them to be free."