A/N: First chapter. Whoop whoop. This story isn't chronological, so… yeah. That's why it's in (bits). It's good to get yer brain juices flowing like that, I reckon. Fairly angsty psychobabbly story, but what the hey. I'm just random like that. I started this as a one-shot then realised I could use it to hammer out a random storyline that plays in my head, and thus, Vanishing Act became the multi-chapter wonder you see before you. Okay. I'm done blowing my own horn now lol.
Disclaimer: I don't own the rights. Nor will I ever. Fanfiction is for fun not cash.
Vanishing Act
Chapter I
Gare de Lyon
(Requiem)
They had been here before, but not like this. The stone stands there, ghastly in the reflected light, and she is so sharp and jagged that he is in danger of being cut by her; but there is nothing else he can do.
The world is ending.
(Airborn)
It's winter, and the winds are tearing through Konoha. Autumnal leaf litter swirls through the streets, clogging gutters and drains in mouldering piles, and she watches him from the corners of her eyes.
His hair is long and windtossed, blowing over his fair skin like snow and bare branches, and he's unquestionably the most beautiful boy she's ever seen. Hyuga Neji. With his sinuous, predatory grace, and his unmarred icy skin and the smiles that flicker briefly at the corners of his mouth, if she pays enough attention.
With his eyes so clear and deep that, sometimes, (on bad days)
She considers drowning herself in them.
Once the clouds pass though, she just feels foolish, for thinking anything so stupid and dangerous and melodramatic, and the only way Tenten knows how to deal with her unwanted feelings is to train until her body is on fire and fatigue blocks out whatever else she's experiencing, but when she turns fifteen, the grey days outnumber the clear ones.
Everyone is ridiculously impressed by how much she improves at that time, and Godaime herself commends her, and Neji tells her that if she'd gotten her act together earlier, she would have beaten Temari in the chunin exams, and when he tells her that, she screws up her nose, and tells him that she knows. Instead of trying to explain she was happy then.
She can't pinpoint the how or the why of it, the way the world inexplicably dissolved out from under her; so she doesn't try to.
Besides, she is treading water again, has stopped sinking, mostly, even if the golden place she was (not even a year ago) is still far away. When she dreams about drowning though, her heart beats too fast and she sometimes forgets to breathe, and the fact that he has such a devastating effect on her is terrifying and unfathomable. So (almost) imperceptibly, she stops meeting his eyes. Begins to nurture a separation between them, not yet realising the brutal power that corrosion can have. Add to that.
He hurts. She can feel it radiating from him sometimes, but she's a shinobi, and self-preservation is part of the deal, and she needs to…preserve, and so will he. Persevere.
(Akinetics )
I once read somewhere that the stars we see at night are sometimes already dead. This is what I want to tell her.
She's on watch, and she's looking out at the sky, and it should be dark, but it isn't, not yet. We're close to the town, and the light pollution, coupled with the clouds, has sealed us into a strange half-lit limbo, neither day or night, and she's volunteered herself for watch, because of this undarkness.
Tenten doesn't, or can't sleep, unless it's properly dark, and too black for any of us but me to see anything; and we've been a team long enough now to not even bother asking her anymore. So she sits beyond our bivouac with a blanket wrapped across her back and could almost pass for a stone. And though I have the daybreak watch, and will, if we fight, have to spend tomorrow covering her more than usual, I'm still awake too.
I want to tell her that I read somewhere that, in certain places, the light pollution has disrupted the patterns of migratory birds, which is sad, and horrifying; that we could impact upon the most ancient patterns of the world so heavily. They fly distressed into buildings, instead of making their way to the colder regions of the world; fall out of the sky. Bees are disappearing too, in some places, and they're so integral to the systems we take for granted that some people believe the world is going to end, and soon.
Sometimes she forgets that we're here at all.
It's dangerous, especially when we're fighting. When she gets sidetracked into thinking she's alone, and needs to take on all our opponents by herself. It saps away her very lifeforce, and she crumples to the ground afterwards, and has to be carried back to the village, or to safety.
That isn't a particularly strenuous job on our part though. The reason Tenten flies so high in her jutsu is because she can, so easily. She's lighter, by far, than the weights Gai-sensei makes us train with; light enough that sometimes, and though I'd never say as much to her, I think she's on the verge of dissolving out of my very arms.
She's done that, now, forgotten us; dramatically removed from our shelter, with a blanket across her back, looking ridiculously vulnerable. In battle, it's good that she's so underestimated, but out of it, and especially when she's stopped speaking, she seems so delicate and fragile and small… as though to touch her, she'd shatter.
I want to touch her now, to reassure myself that she is still here, and made of skin and blood and bone, but the space between us is measureless, and if I reach out, I don't know how far I'll fall, if I can't reach her. And the cynic in me wonders what's new?
Tenten isn't from Konoha. We've all known this forever, because there are only so many secrets one village can take, and the child that a chunin brought back with him on the way back from a mission isn't one of them. So when her sometimes strangeness emerges from the depths, when her wildness or her silence or her emptiness takes her away from everything, it's written off (always) as 'a forest thing'. God alone knows what she is or was, those first four years of her life; but the man (he's dead now. One of our old instructors) who found her, found her in the wilderness of the deep forest, unquestionably alone, and this means she's allowed such idiosynchracies. So when she slips away, exists somewhere beyond what we know, it's unspoken between Lee and Gai-sensei and I to just let her be. Hope she comes back to us when it passes.
No one is talking to her now, not even me. I read information that says we're flying straight into the apocalypse, and I want to talk to her about it because her instinct is always to run, and she's gotten us out of more than one situation by trusting her gut, and I want to see what she says we should do, and so I tell myself that it's so easy to reach out and tap her on the shoulder and ask her, but part of me is afraid. What if she does dissolve? Disappear? Float away like a skeleton leaf? Can I take that chance?
Of all the stars in the sky, only one doesn't move. The North Star. It shines and shows us the way, an omnipresent guide. There are of course other ways to find your way if you're lost; by calculations that divide the zenith of the night sky into slivers and ribbons of statistics, but the North Star is what you look for, first.
Some stars are already dead, I want to say. Has anyone figured out if the North Star might one day flicker out? What will happen to us then? Our hub, the way we've been not lost on so many missions… and when Gai-sensei leaves us in the wilderness and my chakra is used up and we have to make it back to Konoha? And when she runs away and I find her asleep in the starlight? What then?
People say the world is going to end and (I'm losing everything, and) the stars could be dead, and the birds are dying and the bees are disappearing and (so is she. And) I watch her watch the unlit sky, and all I want to do is touch her, and ask her.
Tenten, what will we do?
(Manifest)
Some days, Tenten stops talking, steps out of reality, curls up inside of herself, and watches life as if from far away…
People notice, just not long enough to wonder, and mostly she can pretend to be a ghost, and her solitude is a relief. Like diving underwater, with her eyes wide open.
Eventually she breaks the spell; answers her sensei, or says thank you, when someone holds a door open for her, but in that secret place, wrapped in her silence, just to see how much she impacts upon the world, she draws some fitting conclusions.
It fits, for instance, that she leaves barely an impression upon the skeleton leaves, because she isn't properly from Konoha anyway.
She'll fight for Godaime of course, and she'll most likely die for this village, but if not for the fact that she's become too good to go down so quick, she epitomises 'cannon fodder'. When she dies, unlike her comrades, or her enemies, there will be no compensation paid to grieving relatives, and probably not much of a funeral; not if she dies in a mission, and is burned with the secrets of the village-that-isn't-hers in some lonely corner of the world that has long since forgotten its name (if it had one at all). Hers will be carved into the memorial stone, along with something inconsequential about her age and rank and then she will be forgotten in perfect turn.
And this is fine. She has no birthday to celebrate, so why should she have a death to mourn? And this is why, when she rocks up tight, and no words tremble unspoken on her lips, it's almost like practice.
(in)
When Tenten breaks, she explodes (and it's almost a relief).
She is standing there, and he hasn't met her eyes in the longest time but he recognises that he has to, that this is the brink, the breaking point, and that if he doesn't he is going to lose her too; and that he is going to hurt, he reminds himself, is inevitable anyway.
When he meets her eyes though, the detonation nearly drowns him, and while he forces his body to function, forces himself to keep breathing, he can't help but be pulled under by her, down into her inverted forest.
Everything is a struggle there, everything is a threat. Everything is all or nothing, and the absolution is terrifying, and he forces his way through it, through the shapeless nameless horrors that are plaguing her, have been eating her ever since she stopped meeting his eyes, ever since he stopped looking at her, ever since the mission went so horribly horribly wrong, and holds her in his arms, fearfully and tenderly, and tries to beat that darkness back.
He feels her heart beating wildly beneath her skin, and knows she is afraid, but she doesn't fight him when he holds her, even if she doesn't hold him back.
(forgetting)
She is older now, and sometimes she thinks she might almost be okay, sometimes even has the audacity to hope that she might be rising through the water, but then life throws a calamity at her, one that makes her slip again. Like the day she forgets her name.
Not the one she was given, before she started speaking to them, when she was four.
The other one, inside, that she's always had and never told. The one that is a random sound, more than anything else, which used to ebb and flow through her, like the tide.
It happens in a rush. One moment she is training, sparring with Neji, bombarding him with weapons and about to break through his guard and her victory is so close she can almost taste it – and then he unleashes a new trick, whirling all her arsenal back at her and sending her flying backwards across the training ground to slam into a tree.
Oh snap. Get up – she thinks and then freezes.
Her name. What's her name?
And she is taking too long because Neji is coming over to her and is frowning and his feet, if she chanced to look, are all she can see of him from here, if she weren't looking elsewhere right now, desperately.
Get up.
"Can you keep on?"
It isn't really a question, and there's a scream building in her throat and her history is slipping like water through her hands and if she speaks then she'll never find her way home again.
"Tenten?"
A little lighter, a little more…
He kneels down and he looks into her eyes and she freezes.
A little less
"I'm fine." She gets up, and the lie makes her dizzy, and she stumbles, and he grabs her, one arm snagging her waist to keep her from hitting the ground again and
"Did I hurt you? Why are you – are you crying?" says Neji and she brings a hand to her cheek and feels jagged water coursing over her skin and he goes to touch her tears (and they are all she has left) and she slaps his hands away and, startled, he releases her.
She sways on her feet, her chakra has nearly gone, and she summons what she has left to spit out her next words, the only ammo she has left. "Don't. Touch. Me." And the way his eyes widen makes her sink a little.
Moorless, she does the one thing she can.
(Pacis)
There is nothing he can say to stop this, so he stops trying. Just holds her, feels the bones of her shoulder blades pressing against his arms like wings, the feel of her heart through her back through his hand, the heady relief that she can't dissolve when he's holding her. He presses his forehead to hers and he inhales the rosemary fragrance of her and she flinches.
"Goddamnit Neji." She whispers, and her brow is hard and her voice is soft and he holds her close, breathing her in. "I just want to stop hurting is all…"
"We all – " he tries, gently.
"I know. I know that everyone hurts, but I…" her eyes are wide and cast down, looking into some darkness his clan eyes will never be able to comprehend. "I made the world stop turning, Neji."
And he is afraid, because he only sort of understands, and that she is standing on the precipice of despair makes him touch her cheek, and her honey coloured eyes flicker up to his and they scare him. "And do you know what happens to you when the world stops turning Neji? Would you believe?"
So he says "Don't do this Tenten…" and she isn't listening and it makes him so afraid. "Please don't go again Tenten." As if begging something so simple will be enough to stop her from disappearing into the forest, deeper than he will ever be able to find her.
"I'm sorry Neji…" as if she is already gone, as if she is already going. "Forgive me, Neji. I – I made the world stop, Neji and I – and I k – " and because he can't bear the words pouring from her mouth he tries to stop them forming, tries to press his hand to her lips to keep it all bottled in, but it's too little, and so he tries, instead, to kiss it better, and the taste of her wildness and her despair makes him ache with it too.
"Forgive me," she begs, voice cracking with a sob, clinging onto him as though she's drowning.
"Forgive me or else I'll disappear."
There's nothing to forgive,
The lie makes him dizzy and when she holds him it's all he can do to stay standing, arms wrapped around her shoulders like a shield, begging her not to cry, that everything will be fine, that she is safe, isn't going anywhere because he is here and he won't let her, and a million other promises he would die to keep. The girl he thought he knew shattered in front of him, and the fact that she is so terribly afraid underneath is more than enough to keep her holding onto him, in the way he has always held her.
"There's blood on my hands…" she whispers, and, god, how he knows it.
Forgiveness is for another day.
(flying)
They get a mission on one of the beautiful days. One of the days that Tenten wakes up and is actually glad to be alive, and the whole world, by the time training (which is so smooth she could sing) is over, is still bathed in the warm golden veils of light that soak golden feelings right into her soul, so that when Gai-sensei finishes explaining the mission (B-Rank, which will give her enough cash to have her weapons painstakingly polished and sharpened and wrapped, complimentarily, in blue silk) and settles back in his stool, asking them "What's new?"
She says "I'm 17 next week," and sips at her tea like she hasn't dropped a bombshell, instead of saying Nothing, the way she usually does.
"But…Tenten," says Neji, and (when he isn't looking) he is frowning gently when she looks at him. "You weren't…"
"Found til I was four, I know. But that was then, and medical technology has caught up, and Godaime is 90 percent certain my birthday is in April. The tenth in fact, or possibly the eleventh. But I think the tenth is going to be nicer weather."
"I'm glad Tenten!" says Lee, immediately starting a list of who to invite and what to cook and how to cook it and where to have it, and Gai, misty eyed, murmurs something about it being so beautiful, having his students moving into the springtime of their lives, able to finally revel in their youth, and she has to agree.
There is heartache ahead, and life and love and loss; but that will be later. Tenten and Neji slip from the tea house, leaving Gai and Lee behind, and she calls after him, when they split ways, headed for home.
"You'll come, won't you?"
Neji looks at her for a long time, and she looks back, and there is something in his gaze that makes a bolt of recognition flash through her. She has forgotten how to read his silver eyes, but she sees, still, the moment when he decides to answer her. "Even if the weather's bad." And it's enough for now.
She smiles.
Walking through Konoha, it feels as though she is anchored there, rocked by the same force that keeps the world turning, the Nakano flowing out to sea, and the leaves falling from the trees.
Things are going to change thinks Tenten and belongs.
/End Chapter... Cheers for reading
