On a desolate battle field a young man lay cradled in the arms of a friend. Face to face with his cousin, a girl that he had once despised, he couldn't help but to shed tears. He was dying. Without a shadow of a doubt, he knew his life was ending. He'd been exhausted long before the final blow, pushing through only by sheer stubborn will power to protect his friends. He'd stood side by side with his uncle and cousin, protecting the only person that could give hope to this desperate struggle. When the ten tails started launching wooden spikes into the gathered shinobi forces he'd used rotation as long as he could, but he was no jinchuriki. He had neither a tailed beast as a power battery nor the seemingly endless reserves of the Uzumaki and Senju.
So, when he saw the focused strike launched toward Naruto, with his hopelessly kind cousin posed to take the blow, he did the only thing he had energy left to do. He threw himself in the path of the projectile. "After all," he thought as Naruto desperately called for a medic, "Is it not my duty as a member of the branch family?"
The thought made him smile. "No, this has nothing to do with family politics," he mused "For Hinata. For my Imouto. If not to fly, let this caged bird use his wings to protect. One last time."
"No..." He interrupted Naruto's panicked cries, "I think... I'm done"
"Neji..." The teary eyed blonde looked back down to his dying friend.
"Naruto, Hinata is willing to die for you. So remember, you hold more than one life in your hands." He managed to get out between ragged breaths. The spikes impaling him making each syllable a herculean effort. Looking to Hinata he saw her devastated face, tears mingling with the dust on her face. "Neji..." She whispered hoarsely.
He'd been so foolish back then. Blaming her for his father's death, spending those years belittling her and adding to her guilt of the kidnapping indecent. Though he had been right, in a way. She wasn't cut out to be a Ninja. But he now knew that this was no weakness. No, Hinata was one of the strongest people he'd known. He saw that now. In this world so soaked in blood, surrounded by death and the darkest parts of human nature, she still had the strength to be kind. He gave her the best smile he could, if these were to be his last moments he wanted her to know how much he loved her, and how sorry he was for all those years of hatred.
"But why... why did you... you can't die here! You were gonna change the Hyuga!" Naruto pleaded with him.
"Stubborn boy..." Neji thought with a sense of affection for his friend. "Even on this hellish battlefield he cant stand the thought of losing even a singleperson." "long ago those words of yours freed me from the shackles of fate"
"Why would you go so far for me? Even give up your life?"
"Because you called me a genius" He replied, voice growing ever weaker. His mind going back briefly to that fateful day of the chunin exams.
Hiashi stood only a few feet away, a tear shimmering in the corner of his byakugan. "Hizashi... please.. forgive me. I couldn't save him" He watched as that accursed seal on his nephew's head pulsed with a faint light, signaling it's activation, and beginning to dissolve.
"father..." Neji began in his mind, darkness rapidly closing into the edges of his vision. The sounds of combat and the cries of his friends and family slipping further away with each passing moment. "I finally understand the freedom you felt choosing to die in order toprotect yourcomrades"
It was with this final thought that his eyes lost focus. With a gentle smile on his face he let out his final breath, content.
High above the battlefield, in the realm of the spiritual, a storm raged. The gathered energy of shinobi alliance combined with the colossal power rolling off of the ten tails. Unknown to all, even the sage of six paths himself, an immense pressure began pushing at the very borders of reality. As Kaguya Otsutsuki resurrected and began opening portals to different dimensions a small, barely noticeable tear formed in the spiritual realm. Just enough for the soul of a now uncaged bird to fly through, slipping free of it's home reality, and into the vast unknown that awaited it.