Chapter Text
There is time and then there is Time.
Neji is stuck in the second one.
He remembers pain, gut wrenching and twisting pain, as wooden shrapnel pierced his body when he jumped in front of his younger cousin. He doesn’t even remember consciously moving—it just happened. One moment they are fighting in the war and the next he is dying for Uzumaki Naruto and Hinata. Even as the blood filled his lungs from the wounds and his vision floated in and out—his heart felt a lightness it had never felt before. He was reminded of a conversation he had had with his uncle about his father's last words.
At that moment, he thought he understood. Death was freedom. There is nothing more freeing than death.
That is what he thought at the time.
But with Time it is endless, infinite, a never-ending abyss. There is pain and no pain. Sense and no sense. He is both there and here and never anywhere. There is a complete eradication of his thoughts, heart, mind and soul—he is stained glass painting a picturesque scene of untold beauty. And then the glass is shattered, scooped into a bowl and crushed into a paste. It is remelted and refolded and re-everything and suddenly the picture is no longer the same. The colors aren’t the same anymore and yet they are. The scene is backwards, upwards, downwards and inverted all at the same time.
Is he still Hyuuga Neji even if his soul’s painting is demolished and restored into something anew?
He wonders if this is the Pure Lands. Is his soul reconstructed from its human form into something that will pass through the barrier to the other side? Is this unbearable pain what his father felt all those years ago?
He doesn’t know.
.
He drifts for a time. Or a Time. There is so much that happens and yet there is nothing.
Did it happen if there is nothing to show for it?
There is fire so hot it’s cold and a coldness that burns.
There is a moment when the all-consuming darkness shifts and suddenly there is pain and warmth, darkness and light in equal measures.
He wonders if he has finally passed onto the Pure Lands. If he can sit with his father and speak with him again. He is excited—he is anxious. There are so many stories that need to be told, so many moments where he hopes to seek his father's wisdom. He…wants to hear what happened on that day from his father himself.
He opens his eyes to warmth, expecting to see his father and his mother waiting for him now that he’s passed the barrier. He opens his eyes to the light to sit with past family and friends and to support his team and comrades who are still fighting against Madara. He believes in that knuckle headed orange monstrosity that beat him all those years ago. (He wants to watch over his friends and cousin from beyond the veil and see them flourish and stand together.)
He doesn’t get to.
Because Hyuuga Neji opens his eyes to light and warmth and sees not his father and mother waiting for him, not even his grandparents or a long dead cousin. No, he opens his eyes to a near blinding white light and giants that coo over him.
He is born to another clan.
Vaguely, Neji wonders where it all went wrong. Shinobi all believed in something different—some mythical beings or religions that helped them cope with their lives as ninja. Fewer still believed in nothing at all. But if there was one thing that they could unanimously agree on—it was the Pure Lands. The place their souls and chakra went to after death.
Some believed the Pure Lands were in the belly of the Shinigami. Others perhaps trusted in the idea that everyone’s souls came to a neutral resting ground. There were some who preached that after a while, their chakra and souls would float out to the natural world, to be consumed and used as food for nature chakra. That those who could breathe fire would be part of the raging summer wildfires and the warmth of the sun's light. Those that could make lightning dance across their fingertips would find themselves in the sky, corralling thunder and lightning.
Those that could spit water became seafoam and waves that crashed against beaches and shorelines. They were the calm of the sea, settling down after sinking ships and drowning the men aboard them. Shinobi who could turn the very air into a weapon became the wind currents themselves. Picking up leaves and blossoms and scattering them through the air. they became the cold draft felt between mountain ridges, and the biting chill that turned cheeks red. Those who could erect walls of earth found themselves in the very element itself. Being used as clay for pottery, being shaped into bricks for houses. They protected families from the wrath of the other elements but make no mistake - they would just as easily push boulders and rock down hills, sending them careening into people below.
Neji had been privy to many such conversations and yet…no one spoke of being pushed through (or out of) the Pure Lands and into another body entirely. Reincarnation.
(Because many shinobi thought of it as an inane civilian thought. After all, what would rebirth want with killers and murderers? Death for a shinobi is the greatest possible freedom. What would they have to gain from repeating it all again, and maybe as an enemy of their country in the next life?)
Reincarnation.
Hyūga Neji he is not. No.
He is now Gojo Neji.