a/n: Hello, readers! Call me Celestine's Moon, Moon, Tine, Cel, Lestine, Oon, really I don't care (although I prefer Cel haha). This is my very first fanfic, NejiTen of course! This is a bit of a mystery, angsty kind of story but definitely romance. Starts off a bit slow but I hope you like it! :)

disclaimer: My birth certificate does not say Masashi Kishimoto. Nor am I a man. Therefore, I do not own Naruto. XD

~Cel:3

BUTTERFLY WINGS
CHAPTER 1
~Help~

One glance and somehow I knew that he would be the one to save me from the darkness.

My mother always warned me not to touch the fragile, delicate wings of a butterfly because then terrible things would happen. Thin and papery, translucent when light hit it at just the right angle; they looked like living breathing pieces of stained glass, feather-thin sugar-spun creations. She said if I happened to even graze the wing, it would hurt the frail creature, unable to ever fly again.

I would heed her warning and stay far away from fluttering butterflies but I was never content with watching from a distance. Each and every butterfly that danced by would somehow repel the telepathic pleas I sent it, wanting it to come closer so I could have a better look.

Their wings were a rainbow of colors and hues, shades and tinges, covering the span of the whole color spectrum. Glistening and glittering like tiny gems attached to their insect bodies, I longed to have one just for my own. A butterfly wing I could keep by my bedside table, the last thing I saw before I fell asleep, the first thing I saw after I awakened.

I would plead to my mother – because in my young mind, it was only she who could grant me the permission to touch such a rare beauty – asking her if I could just stroke it just once. A quick stroke, less than a millisecond, I would plead.

But she remained firm. "If you touch it, a horrible thing will happen: the butterfly shall never fly again. It will be stuck on the ground forever, never again to roam the skies freely. In a way, it will be trapped, hindered by its own fragility. Do you want to be the cause of that, Tenten?"

Wide-eyed, I'd shake my head 'no, I would never do such a thing' and be satisfied for a few days. However, my longing would swell until I felt myself shaking every time that beautiful insect was within eyesight. My fingers twitched with want and desire.

And so one day, when my mother was in the house preparing my supper, I snuck out and waited by the flowers that bordered the pathway into our backyard forest, breathing in the sweet smell of springtime nectar. Before long, a butterfly floated to me, its wings the color of pure sapphires and blue-green waters.

In my hand, I offered it the largest, most vibrant flower I could find and after flitting around for a moment, the butterfly landed softly on a fuchsia petal. I held my breath as it explored the blossom, finding the best spot to drink the nectar and I could barely contain my excitement. Opting that the flower was tilted on such an unfortunate angle, the butterfly inched its way onto my thumb where it perched and began drinking the nectar.

I gave a gleeful shout and dropped the flower suddenly. The butterfly was still, perhaps finally realizing that it had been tricked into wandering onto a predator's hand. Slowly, painstakingly, I reached out a forefinger and touched the wing. The butterfly moved slightly but remained immobile.

"How wonderful," I breathed. "Mother was wrong. The butterfly's wing won't be broken!"

In a stroke of boldness, I pinched the wing between my thumb and forefinger and picked the poor thing up.

It flailed and thrashed around so much that I dropped it in fright. It lay on the floor for what seemed like the longest time before it began gingerly opening and closing its wings, the one I had grasped clearly broken beyond repair. Vainly it tried to take flight, to escape from my presence – I couldn't blame it – but gravity dragged it down.

"I told you, didn't I, Tenten?"

I looked up and then away in shame, unable to look my mother in the eye, unable to admit that she was right and I was once again wrong.

"The wing is broken now, darling. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to put the thing out of its misery."

"You mean, kill it?"

"It would be better than to watch it suffer."

I shook my head vigorously and my mother sighed, taking my hand and lifting me up off the ground. She hummed as she dusted off my clothes, giving me a wide smile. "Then come inside. Your father should be home soon. He's been gone a long time but kept his promise that he'd be home for your birthday. Why don't you run upstairs to freshen up before he returns?"

Nodding, I raced up the stairs and locked myself in the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror. I, a mere girl of six, had killed a butterfly. Being as young as I was, I didn't realize how ridiculous it was for me to stand in front of my reflection and insist many times over that I was a butterfly murderer.

Downstairs, I heard a slight ruckus but thought nothing of it. My mother was never the most graceful of people, a walking accident zone she would call herself.

When I was tired of self-accusations, I splashed water on my face and stripped off my dirty clothes, replacing them with a change of clean clothes. I ran down the steps two at a time, preparing myself to greet my father as soon as he returned.

However, downstairs, my mother was taking a nap on the floor, her normally neat hair tussled in all directions. The marinara sauce must have also spilled under her, oozing out from underneath her limp body.

As I walked around her, I was shocked to see her eyes, glassy, empty, devoid of any emotion, feeling, thoughts…life.

Death was a foreign idea for me and therefore, took a while to register in my brain that my own mother had succumbed to it.

The pounding in my ears was deafening, beating along with my rapid heartbeat. Staggering, I took a step back and raced to the front door, prepared to shout for help, but a piece of paper caught my eyes. Bending down, I picked it up and read the four words written in a familiar scrawl.

I'm not coming back.

Balling up the paper furiously, I ran blindly out the back door and into our yard, pausing by the flowers where the butterfly had died. The wings were still beautiful, even in the light of this tragedy.

"This is all your fault," I sobbed, stooping over it and ripping off the wing.

Without a backwards glance, I ran into forest, leaving my life behind.

My mother had been right.

If I touched a butterfly wing, terrible things would happen.

She crept through the shrubbery, barefoot, the soles of her feet unfeeling to the jagged edges of the rocks she trod upon. It was the dead of night, so deep into the country side that city-lights were nonexistent, allowing the pinprick stars to shine as bright as they possibly could. The air around her was silent and still, as if the whole world was holding its breath, silently cheering her on or wishing her downfall.

Whatever the Fates were planning, she was sure of one thing: the large summer villa that was settled in the valley far below her was sure to have food, food that would help her to survive.

She made her way to the lowest window and peered in. It was desolately empty, save for a few empty bookshelves. The next window was just as disappointing; a bedroom that was covered with numerous layers of dust. Each peek into the villa was less and less promising, until the girl had to admit defeat.

Slumped against the wall, she sat in the dirt, pondering what to do next. She had been so sure that she had seen people arriving the day before. She had discovered this building not too long ago and had been keeping an eye on it. Rich people often dined on finer food than the middleclass or the poor. Of course, being a homeless child, there wasn't much room for complaint.

But no, she was no longer a child. If her memory served her well, and it did, she would be sixteen in a matter of days. In a few days, exactly a decade would have passed since that fateful night.

Ten years had worn down the edges of her memory and, along with shock and fright, the finer details were fuzzy. She had also been young, naïve, unaware of the tragedy that had befallen her. Only when she had settled herself against the roots of an ancient tree did she realize what a nasty predicament she was in.

No home.

No food.

No family.

She really was going to die.

However, the next morning she had woken up to find the sapphire butterfly wings to be crumbling and falling apart and that gave her courage. The source of her misfortune was dying and soon her luck would return. And so, with renewed vigor, she had slurped the dew drops from the leaves and set out into unknown territory.

For the next ten years, she found herself doing odd jobs for a few pieces of bread, even earning a dollar here and there when her employers were especially kind. She didn't stay anywhere long; she quickly learned that not many people wanted a young girl around, that the world wasn't a kind place in general, especially for six-year-old orphans.

Pretty soon, she had learned to steal and not to depend on others as a sort of middleman for nourishment. No, if she was going to survive, she would have to get everything she could and get it fast, before others did.

During the nights, it was lonely, only her, her dreams, and mismatched memories that more often than not, left her terribly confused. What really went on that night? Were her memories befuddled simply because of her youth, a sheer fright? Every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was her mother bleeding on the floor and her father's cursed note.

I'm not coming back.

The only thing she was able to remember was her name, Tenten, and that she was supposed to live. Things were not supposed to turn out this way. She was supposed to live.

Not die, but live.

Everything was a mistake, a tragic mistake that would never be undone.

It was a mystery to her, a taunt from the forces of the universe, a challenge even.

Find out what happened.

She needed to delve deeper into the mysteries, deeper than she had been going for the past decade. A fiery passion inside of her was convinced that the time was not yet right for the secret to be revealed. She had to keep holding on in order to find the truth.

And as she sat there, reminiscing in her past, she saw a monarch butterfly soar past and her heart began to pound. What was such an atrocity doing here?

Ever since then, her love of butterflies had mutated into an ethereal hate for them, fueled mostly by fear. What did this mean? Would she be caught? Or would something even worse happen?

"I have to get out of here," Tenten muttered to herself, pulling herself into a crouching position.

Just as she did that, the front door of the villa opened to reveal a handsome young man. His skin was pale, flawless, and contrasted beautifully with his dark, dark hair that swung around him like a curtain of black silk. Celestial was the only word to describe his eyes, white and glowing like the moon that hung above him. High cheekbones, defined jaw line, and a refined nose completed his picturesque façade.

Tenten cursed in her mind and began heading towards the tree-line when the sound of his voice made her stop. "I know you're there."

His voice, it knocked the wind out of her lungs, made her heart stop. Smooth, silky, alluring; she didn't know how to describe it. It was deep and confident and reminded her of a proud man she had once seen, boasting that he had won some spectacular prize, before she had plucked his wallet.

Shaking her head once, Tenten dropped lower to the ground and began to army crawl her way back into the leafy sanctuary, praying that the shadows would hide her sufficiently.

"Stupid, I can see you."

However, she suddenly felt a great weight on her lower back and thrashed out, trying to fend off her attacker. This young man was dreadfully strong and Tenten knew that she had no chance but still she fought and bit and scratched and kicked until they had rolled out of the shadows and were illuminated by the moonlight.

The young man looked down at the trespasser and was thoroughly surprised to see that she was a girl and not an assassin as he had thought. In fact, even if she was the enemy, there was no way an assassin could pull off that haunted, hunted look that her brown eyes held, no matter how trained or good of an actress she was. No, he had been wrong.

Quickly, he climbed off of her and looked away. "Sorry," he shot out most unapologetically.

Tenten scrambled farther away from him but couldn't quite leave him yet. Even if he had attacked her, she was intrigued by him, perhaps even fascinated.

"Are you lost?" He still wouldn't look at her, finding it easier to examine a blade of grass.

She made no sound, only silently urging him to continue speaking to her so she could hear his voice again.

"I said, are you lost?" he repeated.

Slowly, she nodded and he let out a sigh. At least she wasn't deaf. That would really make it harder on him.

"Do you need any help?"

Tenten's eyes narrowed and she stood up suddenly, her eyes blazing with defiance. "No! I'm not helpless, you know!" After countless years of living alone, existing through her sheer adaptability and unwavering willpower, this boy had some freaking nerve to ask her if she need help. Tenten was probably the most self-sufficient person she knew, not that she was acquainted with many others.

The boy held up his hands and stood up also, surveying her dirty clothes and unwashed hair and concluding that if she really was lost, it must have been quite some time ago. If she had survived this long in the wild – these woods were a nasty place to get lost in – then she most definitely wasn't helpless. Quite the opposite, rather self-sufficient.

"Fine, then I expect you to leave now. This is private property." His tone was authoritative and demanding and Tenten despised it, her previous attraction vanishing like a wisp of smoke. After years of following her own rules, she did not take too kindly to bossiness, especially from someone her own age.

"There are no signs, no proof. I don't believe you. I'm going to stay right here, you know. There's nothing you can do about it." When she was done, Tenten realized that she sounded like a spoiled brat but she didn't care. This boy was far worse than she.

"I offered you help, didn't I?" His face was eerily impassive, his voice calm. "And you rejected it so there's no reason for you to stay. Unless you actually want my help…"

"No, I don't." Tenten began backing away into the forest.

He looked momentarily puzzled, curious even. "Before you go, what's your name?"

Tenten. My name's Tenten.

But no, Tenten was still six years old, playing with flowers and tempting butterflies to join her. This new rough, hard version of Tenten was no longer associable with the child. She had no name, no past, no ambition, just a desire to live.

"I don't have a name," Tenten replied, enjoying how the crease on his forehead deepened slightly. "Do you?"

He hesitated but gave in. "Neji, Neji Hyuuga."

"Oh."

This boy hadn't lost himself yet. This boy was still whole. He had a name, a purpose in life, had a family, and sure as hell had a loving girlfriend.

And what did she have? Nothing but the clothes on her back, a never-ending hunger, and scattered memories that she could not, could never, piece together.

She had to get away from here.

I'm not coming back.

Tenten turned towards the trees and only stopped when Neji called to her. "Wait."

"I thought you wanted me gone," she deadpanned.

He smirked and strode over to her in three steps, reaching out a hand to her shoulder. Tenten instinctively flinched but couldn't move, feeling herself frozen in place. She looked into his eyes, an eternal blanket of white satin and plush pillows that she longed to lose herself in.

And then he flicked his wrist by her shoulder and Tenten watched, shocked, as the monarch butterfly launched itself from her shoulder and disappeared into the night. Neji smirked some more, apparently unaware of her unsettled look. "You're welcome."

With that, he headed back into the villa while Tenten remained alone in the moonlight, imagining all of the terrible things that could happen at the sight of the ill-fated butterfly.

a/n: Wah, a bit boring, no? Haha either way, I hope you all are nice enough to leave me a comment? Even if it says 'I like pie' I don't care. Actually no, I lied. I have no interest in your food preferences but if you choose to share that with me, I really am honored.

Haha anyway, review please! I should get the next chapter up soon!

~Cel:3