disclaimer: still do not own anything

beta: none :c I am looking.

author's notes: forgot my password to this account. I would like to say that I have writing all this time but I have not. Then I realized I had switched this account to a different email :/ fun stuff. Anyway here's wonderwall - jk

soundtrack: Bastille's new album Wild World, especially "Two Evils"

HEARTLINES

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6

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Two Evils

If I'm a lesser of two evils

Who's this man, who's this act I hide behind?

The casualty rate had just been compiled into a report. In fact, she had just finished reading the report when a new wave of Zetsu clones swamped the medical post.

She barked out orders to young, freshly-promoted chūnin who wanted to rush forward to instead retreat and pull the patients to safety. Though she herself was young, her title as the Elixir Queen's apprentice required at least some respect to skills that she could most definitely prove against other medic-nin twice her age. And because she was trained by the greatest medical ninja in the world, she could break the rules set down by said ninja - the most important: combat.

Normally, a medic-nin would never join the battlefield, but she could. And she would not allow any of her patients here to be added to the casualty report, the data springing up in her mind while her fist crushed a Zetsu clone; they were not even bothering with disguises anymore.

Fear was stuck in the pit of her stomach ever since the War began. Not for her, but for her family and friends far ahead of her. Every day, she reviewed patients' medical charts, even if she was not assigned to that section, frightened to see a name that she would recognize. So far, she had only seen Hyūga Neji - forced in by Kiba - but his treatment was minimal, and he was sent back out to the front lines before she could say more than a lame and hasty, "Don't die." He had returned as much, a little surprised as he left - probably because she was not as familiar with him as Rookie 9.

She struck an abdomen, her fist going clean through.

Her heart would leap in her throat whenever she would see 'Yamanaka' or 'Inuzuka' or 'Akimichi', afraid to turn and see one of her friends bleeding out. But it was not like Ino or Kiba or Choji were the only shinobi to carry those names.

She crippled a knee joint and caved in a chest.

So far, according to the compiled data, no one she knew had died. Yet. She conceded the possibility of those who had yet to be identified, but that did not make her breathe any easier.

She broke a neck with a swift uppercut.

Shinobi were dying at an alarming rate - all around her. Tears of frustration almost clouded her vision, but she could not afford the obscurity. One fell every three seconds - comrades who had protected and assisted when they could at the medical outpost. The Zetsu clones were not even supposed to be here. There was a reason why the medical outpost was in this location, so far away from the frontlines and recorded points of confrontations. This was a place of healing placed out of the long-armed reach of the brutality of war.

She counted.

One...two...

A spray of blood.

She was too slow.

One..two...

A scream cut short.

Damn the math.

One...tw -

"Konohamaru - !"

She yanked the boy out of the reach of a swipe that would have knocked his head clean off his young shoulders. He seemed to be mostly uninjured, but his knees knocked together, and his eyes would not close. Blood stains - suspiciously shaped like hands - were smeared on his new, green vest and were draped along his wrists.

"Konohamaru - !" She shook him none too gently.

"S... S'kura-nēchan?"

And suddenly, Sakura is reminded that she is too young to do this - and if she is too young, then Konohamaru is damn well too young. Hell, the boy should not even be here. He should still be a genin. Genin were not allowed to leave the village in times of war. But chūnin were. And the oldest genin found themselves wearing green flak vest, war-appointed and war-appropriate.

She hopped back, dragging a limp Konohamaru with her.

One...two...

A crunch of bones.

She had to fight.

"Konohamaru, Konohamaru. I need you to fight. I need you to fight right now."

"Nēchan... What's the point? Why fight? My comrades are dead - "

One...two...

An empty stare.

She slapped him.

"Fight," she snapped out, her fists and tongue rending flesh literally and figuratively, "Fight to survive. If you survive, you will carry your comrades' Will of Fire with you and their deaths will not have been wasted on this sniveling, bratty scum that you have become!"

One...

She screamed.

She directed her clenched fist to the soaking ground and unleashed her anger and grief in a wild punch. The surface shattered, and blood flew up in spurting streams from the cracks as if the earth itself was wounded. Arteries and veins like giant, thick snakes flailed from the gashes of the broken ground, flinging waves of blood in arcs, and it was up to her knees, to her hips, to her chest. And she floundered in a sea of blood; her weapons were weighing her down. She kicked her feet, trying to find the ground but she was buoyed up and down without purchase. A tingling rushed through her body, and she looked up to see a wave of electricity move along a ceiling of red organ tissue. She felt her world jump, and she was swept away in a swirling, forced bloody tide from one pumping chamber to the next.

Lub-dub.

She had more than enough knowledge to recognize the sound of a heartbeat.

She screamed.

And blood slapped her in the face, cold, filling her mouth and nose and eyes, leaving her to claw and spit and gasp blindly. She felt hands on her shoulders and arms, restraining her. She thrashed and she screamed.

"Sakura!"

She lashed out, her fist leading the way. Still blinking, she scrambled backwards, almost crab-walking away from the resulting grunt. Her back hit a wall and her chest heaved, her own heart drumming a rapid taboo.

Liquid dripped down her face, and she froze. She lifted a hand slowly and touched a trail. When removed, her hand was clear and free of the slip of thick blood. Just water ... water ... only water.

Sakura exhaled a shaky breath and swallowed thickly. Her hands - racked with tremors - wove through her hair while her fingers dug into her scalp.

"... Sakura."

Her name was said slowly, like one might to placate an animal. But she jerked anyway, the back of her head smacking hard against the wall she had rammed herself to. Instinctually, she tried to scuttle back away, but she had nowhere to go.

"Sakura."

She blinked the water from her eyes, droplets flying from her lashes. Neji was crouched on the other side of the room, one hand covering one half of his face. From what she could see, the visible half of his mouth was turned down in a grimace.

"Neji ... Neji...?" Her voice came out surprisingly as a hoarse whisper, as though she recently had been quite vocal. She cleared her throat. "H-how did you find me?"

"Someone who is not can be more obvious than someone who is," Neji replied, not moving from his position - and for that, Sakura felt a wave of gratitude wash over her, and some anxiety drained from her.

She scrabbled forward, her back and neck immediately twinging in protest from her attempt to suffuse herself through the wall. "So that - that was the flaw?" she murmured, referring to his earlier comment. "You never really told me how you found me, Neji."

"This is hardly a fair exchange," remarked the man after a moment's hesitation, "I am giving out more information than I am receiving."

Her hands were planted on the floor in front of her bent knees; her elbows locked and her fingers curled. "Think of it as a mirror," she began, one fringe of her hair spilling off her shoulder as she tipped her head thoughtfully. "An elaborate set of mirrors arranged around my chakra source and coils. Those mirrors reflect the residual energy of my surroundings around me and hide my existence." Sakura focused on inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth, but the knot between her shoulder blades refused to loosen. Explaining, calculating, and spouting all sorts of knowledge was usually a relaxing thing to do for her. It was something that she had been inherently good at, assisting her in the Academy especially.

But, lately, thinking had been difficult for her - difficult and very dangerous.

"A cheap magician's trick of the light to take advantage of the audience's angle of sight," Neji added.

"But," Sakura countered as she slowly got to her feet, "There are no other angles in this trick. If you move, you'll still see the same thing..."

"Nothing," Neji said as he, too, stood with his hand still covering half of his face.

Hyūga Neji was not necessarily known for his sunny disposition, regardless of what his family name meant, but Sakura began to think that he looked especially irate. Or maybe it was because there was only one eye visible that he was able to intensify his glare.

"Heal me," came the demand.

Sakura became bewildered. "What? What are you talking about?"

Neji withdrew his hand. "This," he said, revealing the entirety of his face.

His left eye was shut, and the area was already swollen. From what she could see in the faint light, the skin was fairly red, indicating the injury happened very recently. Sakura shuffled a little closer, glad for the distraction, but Neji twisted to keep her in the line of vision of his good eye.

Irritated, she clicked her tongue and crossed her arms over her chest. If he did not want her to inspect the injury site then she would just stay put. "Lee clip you?" she asked pithily, not in the mood.

"You."

Her mouth quirked in rising anger. "Me, what?" It took a moment for her to process what he said and realize what she had unwittingly done. She glanced down and flexed her hand, giving her rough knuckles a vaguely impressed look. The thought to kiss it appreciatively in toast to the fact she had managed to land a hit on the genius of the Hyūga Clan popped up in her mind but she decided against it. After all, he did look extremely pissed and her punches were not anything to brush off lightly unless that person had a demon with healing abilities.

"Huh," she harrumphed. Way to go, me.

His glare became more concentrated as he narrowed his good eye. "This may be amusing for you, but my eyes are everything - "

"Yeah, yeah, Byakugan," interrupted Sakura as she leaned to one side to wring out the water in her hair, "I am kinda sorry about that but in my professional opinion: put some ice on it."

Speaking of ice, the look he gave her was cold enough to freeze her still dripping hair. "'Ice'," he bit out, "What if you damaged my Byakugan? You are the best medic-nin ever and all you can prescribe me is 'ice'?"

Hyūga Neji just complimented her. By now she was feeling better despite the chilly anger radiating off her former squad captain. It was not often that Neji gave out compliments; he was known to be hard on everyone and even harder on himself, especially after his rise to commander in the ranks of ANBU.

Sakura clicked her tongue, "Flattery will get you nowhere, Neji." Did she have a death wish? Probably – and poking the bear was how she was going to go out. "I still won't heal you. I am sorry – it was an accident but I won't heal you… I won't… I can't, you see…"

As she trailed off, Neji began putting together the pieces. Every grand, altering technique had a consequence. No doubt that her technique was also in its experimental stage and Sakura had fled the village as soon as it achieved her goal, regardless of its subsequent price. Konoha-nin did not specialize or have much experience in sealing techniques except for a handful of individuals. What Sakura had done required immense research and possibly dangerous experimentation all in order to wipe her presence off the face of the planet. To him, surviving without chakra seemed impossible; it defined his existence.

"You sacrificed your ability to use chakra to disappear?" He was incredulous. It was also suspicious. What could possibly be worth sealing away her chakra? Sure, she could not be found, but this price was too high, too ridiculous. She could not even heal a black eye. How could she defend herself? How could she defend Hinata? How could she do anything? He had made a grave mistake. Sakura was the wrong person. He could not depend on her – he could not depend on anyone but himself. He had thought that it was a near perfect solution to both of their problems but now he realized that she was a more complicated unknown in this severely unbalanced equation. "I have changed my mind."

Sakura surged up to her feet, catching the strap of her already packed bag and swinging it over her shoulder with a light thump. "You can't change your mind, Neji, because I've made up mine. I'm going. It's true that I can't access my chakra but that doesn't mean I can't protect Hinata. If anything, it means I'll be less noticeable. You don't think I've gotten this far for this long – I do have other skills."

His face, usually stoic to the point of blank, pinched and betrayed his deep worry and his ongoing concern for his cousin. Faint lines marred his marble complexion and his stony expression. This was a rare moment that revealed to Sakura that while Neji took his duty seriously, Hinata was more than an obligation that came with being a member of the Branch Clan to protect the main family members and the secret of the Byakugan; the two were far more close as cousins and confidents within the pressures of a noble family.

It was difficult for Sakura to understand the life of nobility, having only witnessed the strict rules and struggles from the outside as Tsunade's apprentice during various clan meetings and while filing paperwork that outlined the complexity that suspiciously got pushed onto her while Shizune was not present. However, Sakura did understand the bonds between people who were pushed together, fates intertwined. Those types of bonds transcended the ties of societal hierarchy and of blood.

"... Fine," Neji exhaled.

Sakura blinked in surprise but a slight smile curved at the corners of her mouth, the first in who knows in how long.

"This means, however, that I will have to activate the seal to the Seireitei for you," continued Neji. He unclenched his hands that he just realized were previously fisted. He was desperate but there would be no perfect solution to this problem and therefore he would have to make this solution fit as well as he could. "I will meet you at the outpost tomorrow."

Sakura readjusted her bag on her shoulder and planted her fist on a cocked hip. "Why tomorrow? I'm ready to go now, Neji."

He grimaced and hesitated for half of a second. "Will you punch me again if I throw more water on you?"

"That depends," she replied, raising an arm to sniff delicately at herself, "Do you happen to have floral green shampoo on you?"

.::|::.

Assembled with the rest of her team for a mission, Tenten was in the middle of triple checking her weapons and equipment outside the gates of Konohagakure when she felt a familiar chakra signature approaching.

Sporting a vivid black eye, he had to have been returning from his own mission. And yet, what worried her the most was the way his mouth was in a solid grim line. She stepped in his path, half-afraid that he would pass by her without acknowledgment.

"Neji!"

He slowed and tipped his head in greeting. "Tenten."

She could feel her face turning down into a frown but consciously forced a welcoming smile. "How was your mission – "

"Fine. Your teammates are leaving without you."

She glanced over but they had merely politely moved aside to give Neji and her privacy. She turned back to tell him so but he was gone and so was her smile. Frustration hit her like a wave but she pushed it back to the ever-deepening sea of feelings that somehow started with Neji and grew wider between the two of them. Tenten strode past her teammates and leapt into the trees, signaling their group departure. She could feel the questioning eyes of her teammates but she was determined to brush it off as though Neji treated her like that all the time - which was not wrong as of recent. No need to cause gossip to spread. It was a common belief that Hyūga Neji had the facade of a cliff and the emotional depth of a pebble.

"Heh, I'd like to shake the hand of the guy who managed to clip Hyūga," she heard Shiranui Genma snicker to the rest of the team.

With each leap from branch to branch, the tightness in her throat loosened. "Or the woman," she managed to add. "It could've been a woman, y'know."

Her frustration and outrage was filed away to be brought up at a later confrontation. Instead, she could use this traveling time to form and practice a logical and sensible speech.

.::|::.

Next time:

Find the Divide

author's notes: what am I doing? idk. idc. But I am finishing this if it kills me.