To Last
Author's Note. In response to the LJ NejiTen FOIL Challenge. These are one-shots and can stand alone, but they almost sorta kinda make sense if you read them in order. Thanks go out to my wonderful and surprisingly speedy beta V-chan2k6, without whom my writing would be plagued with adverbs to an even greater extent.
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First
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Maybe it was just that he was a Hyuuga and naturally stood out from – above – the rest, or maybe it was that he was the branch family genius and was feared even within the Hyuuga, but Neji had never wasted time or energy making friends. At any rate, by the time he became a genin, he was too focused on his clan affairs to notice anyone else. The typical Hyuuga cultivation of disinterest didn't help much, either. The first thing that he noticed about his kunoichi teammate – and, given that his only other teammates were Gai and Lee, his default training partner – was that unlike the girls he'd been around before at the Academy, she didn't seem to care that he was an iceberg.
Bitterness and resentment about his branch family status meant that he had no love for the Hyuuga compound. The more time he spent training, the less he'd have to be there. She seemed to be of equal mind. He didn't wonder about it. Why she didn't want to go home was none of his business. In time he decided that he was lucky – at least he had been stuck with a kunoichi who could pick up on his moods, who didn't talk with him that much or ask personal questions, and who gave him the distance that he craved. Everything with her was at arm's length. He found it interesting that she gravitated toward weapons. His own family jutsu was much more intimate, a palm strike aiming for vulnerable junctures of the chakra system. She was cold and distant even when fighting, the agent of movement at the opposite end of a metal spike. She threw her weapons more often than not. She didn't like close combat. She didn't like to be close to anyone, period.
They had something in common, there.
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When he saw the woman, his first thought was that she was a human being on her way out. She was a thin, pale, drawn, sickly person whose dark hair and eyes only made her face look more colorless. They'd made her wait at the gate because she was a stranger and hadn't even offered her a seat even though she could clearly use one. That was to be expected: the Hyuuga had little tolerance for weakness. "She left early this morning and said she'd be out training, but she hasn't been back all day. I thought your team might have had a mission?" the woman asked him.
"No, we have not been assigned any missions today," Neji said. "This was to be a day off."
"That's what I thought," the woman said, clearly disappointed. "Well, she might have… I know she gets carried away when she's training. She swore she was going to be home for dinner. Maybe she just lost track of the time?"
Neji had been distracted by the woman's illness, but now he saw that she was clearly worried. He realized he had a role to take up. "I'll find her. You should go home and and rest," he said. He wasn't worried in the least – you didn't have to worry about Tenten overtraining the way you had to worry about Lee – but he couldn't help but pity the woman.
It was well past nightfall by the time he found her. She'd put a splint on her broken ankle and was making the slow and tedious journey home from the most distant practice area she could have chosen. He could tell she was in pain from the way she was sweating and the way she flinched at every step, but she didn't look like she'd been crying at all. That was typical Tenten. She didn't like to let her guard down even when she was alone. The break was awful and must have hurt viciously, but you wouldn't know it unless you were a Hyuuga seeing the tightness of her tendons and the beads of sweat on her neck that anyone else would have missed in the darkness. "Hi Neji," she said, clearly embarrassed.
She'd been trying something new with the Soushoryu – foolishly, she'd done so alone, without a spotter. She should have known better. She'd spent the last two hours scrounging for straight sticks to secure the break and then limping slowly home. If he hadn't found her, she wouldn't have made it back to the village until midnight.
She was further humiliated when he ordered her to sit down so that he could tie the splint on properly. "How did you know to come looking for me?" she asked. "I mean, it's our day off – we weren't supposed to train together, were we?"
He shook his head. "Your mother came to the Hyuuga compound looking for you. She thought you might be there or with the team."
He saw the sudden shift in her posture from the corner of his eyes, but because they were Hyuuga eyes, the change drew his attention immediately. "Oh," she said.
He could have gone on wrapping the leg in silence. It wasn't like him to take an interest in anything outside of his own world. He didn't know what it was that made him want to speak, but he couldn't stop himself: "Your mother is sick?"
She didn't answer, which made him look up after a few moments – and immediately look away. There were tears pouring out of her eyes all of a sudden. She had a bone that was nearly poking through her skin, but this was what made her cry. She didn't sob out loud, but after a minute she was sniffing very obviously and franctically wiping at her cheeks with the back of her hands. The more she wiped away, it seemed, the more tears there were.
"Tenten?"
"I'm sorry," she said, breathing heavily. "I… I just…."
He looked down and finished binding her leg as gently as he could. He didn't know what to do with a crying girl. He'd never had any kind of experience with this situation and, because he was a Hyuuga, had absolutely no example to draw on.
After a while, though, when her leg was secured and she still didn't stop hiccuping her silent sobs, he moved on instinct. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her the way his mother had when he was very young. It was an alien feeling – no one had held him and he hadn't held anyone else ever since he'd called himself a child, and that had been a long, long time ago. She hesitated at first, but then collapsed her defenses, and when he felt her burying her head in his shoulder it occurred to him that this may not be entirely appropriate. Even so he held on. He didn't know what else to do. He waited until the voiceless sobs died down and her muscles lost their stiffness, and then he let her go slowly.
Clearly ashamed of her show of emotion, she wouldn't meet his gaze. "Can you walk?" he asked, and she nodded. After a deep breath she was on her feet with her arm slung across his shoulder, leaning on him at every step.
She spent a few minutes catching her breath before she said, "I don't want to be weak. I don't. It's just… she's dying, and there's nothing I can do, and I love her so much. I can't stand to watch it happen." She sounded absolutely wretched when she said, "I never meant to let go like that…"
She was so clearly embarrassed about it that, to make her feel better, he told her about how his father had died and how much he hated his clan. He'd never spoken about it to anyone before, but there was a first time for everything.
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Outer
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It wasn't a secret: Neji hated enclosed spaces. He hated anything that brought to mind the walls of the Hyuuga complex or made him feel trapped. And in a way, the whole of Konoha was just another set of walls. Even the training grounds were still within the guarded border of the hidden village. Neji was never really at peace until he was outside of it.
It wasn't just the place, though – it was the people: the Hyuuga caging him in, Hiashi doling out judgement, the Hokage issuing orders. It was all right now, though, because his latest mission was over, the orders of the Hokage completed, and he was several days from the village, and the only other person there was Tenten.
He could meditate for hours on end and still be nowhere near as calm and centered as he was now, three days' journey from Konoha and without so much as a building in sight. Of course, chances were if they stayed on this road, even though it was a fairly rural one, they would hit an inn sooner or later, and they could definitely afford a couple rooms. Tenten would certainly appreciate it. She didn't share his love of sleeping outdoors.
"We should walk," he said. "To conserve our energy."
"Of course," she replied.
It was the most logical choice, because travelling at ninja speeds left you susceptible to ambush, and they had no need to hurry. It wasn't that he wanted to draw out the journey, not at all.
"We're sticking to the road, then?" Tenten said.
"Why wouldn't we?" he asked.
She shrugged ambiguously and they went on walking in silence for a few minutes. "Or," she said, "we could cut through the forest."
"There is no reason to travel under cover," he said. "Our mission is complete. The road is the better option."
"Mm," she said, nodding her head pensively. "That's true, but as ninja outside of our country, we always run a risk by traveling in public. Basic shinobi protocol maintains that you should always try to avoid detection, even in ordinary situations. Isn't that right?" The tiniest smile was starting to grow on her face.
"If we cut through the forest, it would probably take us an extra day of travel," he said.
"That's what I was thinking, too," Tenten said mysteriously. "You can tell the Hokage it was my idea," she goaded.
"Hn."
She stopped suddenly, and he paused and looked back at her. Instead of arguing her point any further, she simply turned and slipped off the road and into the forest. He watched, transfixed, as leaves of low-growing trees streaked her clothes with dew.
He would never compromise a mission for his own petty preferences like this, but since she was the one who suggested it... almost-but-not-quite-reluctantly, he stepped off the road and after her. She looked back at him with a smile now obvious once she saw that he was following her.
Something about it bothered him, however. Tenten normally hated camping and would never pass up the chance for a night under a roof. Why would she…
She smiled at him again when he caught up to her. And he could have sworn she was walking closer to him than usual.
He didn't mention it, however, deciding instead to let her reveal her motives in her own time. He wasn't sure yet what they were, but he did have an extra day outside the walls to figure it out.
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Inner
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It was a popular stereotype in Konoha and, actually, all the shinobi nations that used coed three-man teams: the kunoichi hopelessly in love with her teammate. It was the subject of many literary artifacts, from underground graphic novels to popular love songs. It was so well embedded in the popular imagination that it was taken for granted that a kunoichi assigned to genin team with two boys was going to fall in love with one of them if the cell worked together for any amount of time. Ninja spent most of their lives with their teams for the first few years if they met with success. It was only natural – so it was assumed, based on the evidence. It was bound to happen.
Tenten was fighting it all the way.
But she woke up one morning too disoriented to save herself through denial. It was during a mission, and she came to consciousness with his white eyes looking down at her, utterly passionless as usual, and she knew before she could stop herself from feeling it that there was never going to be anyone else, ever, as long as she lived, about whom she would care half as much.
"How do you feel?" he asked her.
In the split second before she realized what she was saying, she answered, "All right."
Because it was. It was all right to love someone. And there. She admitted it. She loved him. Hopelessly and wholeheartedly, she loved him.
"You've sweated out most of the poison, but you should rest for the next few hours," he stated. "Lee's gone ahead."
She nodded dumbly. There were two separate conversations going on, which he didn't seem to realize, and which her fuzzy brain was having a hard time sorting out. Her clothes and hair felt sticky and disgusting and her mind was all whorls and eddies of emotion, memory, and fantasy. All at once she was remembering the first time they met, zooming forward to the present and feeling his gaze on her sweat-soaked form, then jumping ahead to the impossible future where they could be together and he could smile at her and she could reach out to him when she wanted to. …
She had a feeling that not all of that was natural and it probably had something to do with the aftereffects of the poison.
She closed her eyes tightly, trying to rein in her emotions and get herself under control. Then she felt something soft land on her shoulders and she opened her eyes again, gasping when she saw how close he was. "You were shivering," he said after he'd thrown the blanket over her shoulder.
She closed her eyes again and tried to pretend he wasn't standing so close. She practically flinched away when she felt the back of his hand on her forehead, testing her temperature.
This was Neji, she reminded herself. So expressing her feelings in any way was completely out of the question.
You wouldn't have to say anything, she thought to herself briefly. You could just reach up and kiss him – now, for instance – and he would know.
She quietly told that little inner voice to shut up, because if it got any louder it was going to ruin everything. She'd rather stay near him like this forever without saying a word than let it all out and scare him away.
And she was not going to be one of those stupid kunoichi with no spines who just threw themselves at their teammates and sighed and cried and got into stupid love triangles and…
"Tenten?"
She realized she'd been staring at him and quickly looked away, blushing. "Sorry. I guess I'm still a little out of it," she said weakly.
"It's still in your system, then," he said. "Don't worry. We can stay the night here."
She nodded numbly and swallowed her dread. A night alone with Neji. A whole night of fighting her emotions and the weird chemicals in her bloodstream that seemed to be making her dangerously close to losing an important little bit of inhibition. Oh, this was going to be wonderful.
When they caught up with Lee the next day, their green beast of a teammate happily commented that Tenten was back to her usual bright and youthful self, in his mind silently adding that Neji was his usual dark and unyouthful self. Lee wondered, as he often did, when on earth either one would open their mouth about everything that was silently happening between the two of them. He kept hoping that if he left them alone together for long enough it would do the trick, but apparently not just yet.
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Last
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There was rushing air as the ground came up to meet her, but a quick spring and she had dodged upward again, reversing her trajectory so fast that Neji's hand swiped empty space, and then she flipped and gripped her feet to a limb of the tree above her with chakra, whipping out her last three shuriken as her legs folded into a crouched position. She had barely secured herself there before she was leaping out of the way of a blast of Neji's chakra, cursing the fact that she hadn't even had time to release her weapons before she had to dodge. She clenched them for now until she could get a better angle.
Their sparring went through phases. Lately it had been rather fast-paced. It might have had to do with the fact that she had just made chunin, and in the tournament at the end of the last chunin exam she'd used speed terrifically to her advantage. Apparently he wanted to see how fast she could go. Tenten didn't mind – she loved anything that could make her heart pound like this.
On the defensive now almost entirely, dodging his blasts of chakra and the occasional sting of his Kaiten (she still accidentally moved within his range on occasion – an easy mistake to make, seeing how his range was constantly growing), she saw that she was just barely staying ahead of him. One slip and she was done for. Fast as she moved, his white eyes followed her every maneuver. She was used to that feeling after all the years they'd worked together, but even so she sensed there was something different about it today. Yes, there was definitely something – maybe because he was still trying to predict her movements from the play of her muscles and the flow of her chakra. Or so she told herself.
Finally she landed in the right striking position and let loose the first shuriken. The trajectory was to the right of his head. He kept his eyes on her, barely glancing at the weapon that was obviously off course.
But Tenten never missed her target.
As planned, the shuriken that followed it knocked it onto a different course, and then (after bounding seven feet to the right and recalculating the angle) the third shuriken intercepted the first and knocked it straight toward his neck.
It missed, grazing just the back of his collar. Tenten cursed.
The moment it took for the word to fly past her lips was the only opening he needed. Before she could move away he was there in front of her with his palm an inch from her stomach, perfectly positioned to disable her entire chakra system. His mouth quickly quirked into a grin that said, "You're dead."
"Fine, I give," she said, rolling her eyes and letting her shoulders drop. "I'm out of weapons anyway."
She hunched over, resting her hands on her knees and closing her eyes for a few moments. He would want to spar again, inevitably, and she needed some time for her body to restore itself. She didn't question that he would want another go. It was their pattern, their rhythm. It was the only way they interacted with each other, really, when they weren't on missions anyway. It was like their lives were a neverending training session. But at least, she reflected, it was one they went through together.
She noticed all of a sudden that he hadn't moved away. He still stood a few feet in front of her. She straightened up again. "What do you want, a pat on the back? I already told you, you won," she grumbled, her fists on her hips.
Quickly, before she could move away again, and so fast that she didn't realize what was happening, he'd reached out with his left hand and grabbed onto her waist and jerked her closer to him. She barely had time to draw breath before his lips crashed violently into hers.
Her mind blanked. Neji…?
And then her mind blanked again.
She could smell him inches away from her and hear him breathing through his nose, but her brain was not quite at the point where she could process what she was feeling. This was Neji¸ and this was Neji, and this was Neji?!
Before she could comprehend what she was doing, she pulled herself away from him with a quick drop-step and stood, her knees bent and ready to spring away from his next attack. Then she did a backflip, grabbed a kunai when her hands hit the ground, and flung it toward him. He deflected it with a flick of his hand.
And then she caught her breath again. What was she doing??
She hadn't really meant to send any kind of message, it was just that fighting was what they did. All they did. The only way she knew how to react to an advance was, sensibly, a counterattack.
She moved on instinct before she could sort out her feelings. He was taken by surprise. Off his guard from her first move and slow to react, even after he realized that they had started to fight again, he hadn't had time to prepare a proper defense, and she was at his achilles before he was able to start the cycle of the Kaiten.
Another heartbeat of time, and he relaxed slightly and nodded to her, indicating her win. The rhythm of sparring had reasserted itself.
Tenten straightened her back as the impact of her actions caught up with her. What was she thinking? … But what was she supposed to do? What did a normal girl do when someone kissed her? Certainly not attack him, you fool! She was so confused by him, but at the same time she was smacking herself mentally. Attack him when he kisses you? What are you thinking? You want him to kiss you!
She blushed furiously. She'd known this truth for some time, but she still wasn't comfortable admitting it to herself.
Of course she wanted him to kiss her. While she was at it, she thought to herself, she might as well admit that she'd had a crush on him from day one. But still, she'd gotten to know him like no one else had. The crush was justified now. You couldn't rightly call it a crush anymore.
And the minute her affections are returned, she attacks him! Naturally!
Idiot!
She looked up at him. His face was perfectly blank. But that was just like Neji, wasn't it? The more he felt, the more he hid it. Apparently she didn't know him well enough, because she had no idea what was going through that head of his right now. Still, she knew it would be stupid to leave things like this. They couldn't just ignore what had happened, and she couldn't let him walk away without telling him…
He noticed that her furious blush hadn't changed at all. Her cheeks were still stained pink. She walked up to him and he thought this would be it, the part where she smacked him and told him to keep his hands to himself, or maybe stammered out a commitment to stay friends, or something like that.
Instead, she kissed him. It was brief and terribly shy – she only caught the corner of his lips with hers for a split second before she was gone again, nervously looking away and blushing even brighter. She wouldn't meet his gaze. Her embarrassment was almost comic.
Tenten wasn't sure if she wanted to dissolve into the ground or sing out loud. Her heart was beating fiercely. But as soon as he made another move toward her, she was automatically back on her guard, her left hand out for balance and her right hand at her kunai pouch.
And then she was cursing herself again. For godssake girl, this isn't a war! This isn't how you're supposed to act in this situation! What are you doing? Would you just stop being a kunoichi for once?
But Neji didn't seem to be dissuaded. He had the most curious expression on his face. Calculating. Conniving. The hint of a grin forming again.
It was only then that it occurred to her that she had unintentionally started a game.
Tenten gulped.
There was a certain predatory glint in Neji's white eyes that hadn't been there ever before when they were training, and she had an uneasy feeling that she knew what it meant. Uh-oh.
He sprang his attack so suddenly that even though she was prepared for it, she failed to dodge in time. He trapped her in half a second. One of her arms was pinned where he would have struck the most prominent tenketsu of the wrist. But she didn't have time to think about that, because his second kiss was quickly making her brain utter mush.
Sometime later, he came up for air and backed away from her, leaving her swollen-lipped and breathing hard and trying her damnedest to see straight. It took a minute for her to be battle-ready again.
She paused, standing apart from him, and let him see the barest smile on her face before she slipped into an offensive posture.
Then she began to fight in earnest.
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"Neji! Tenten! You are late!" Gai reprimanded as his two remaining students landed in the clearing where he and Lee had been waiting.
Neji remained silent, but Tenten jumped up to explain, "We were… sparring."
Her red face might indeed be a sign of a recent intense workout, Gai thought. "Ah! Your youthful vigor for training astounds even your sensei! But I am concerned that you have taxed yourselves and drained your chakra reserves before a potentially dangerous mission!"
Neji's stony silence meant that he disagreed, Gai guessed.
"No, no, no, sensei!" Tenten countered shakily. "We're fine, really! We just… ah… we were just getting warmed up."
Neji coughed. Tenten's face flared when she realized what she had said.
Gai cleared his throat. "Well then, if you are certain that your energies are not drained, let me brief you on the mission details! Our objective is in a village in a forest near the River Country…"
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It was tempting to Tenten, after a while, to lose on purpose. She rather preferred it when he won. But this went completely against her nature and her every instinct as a shinobi.
Besides, what would be the fun in that?
o
It happened to be a few years later that Sakura and Ino stumbled onto them as the two girls were walking back from their own bout of training on one of the other practice fields. They were walking right next to training area 22, Neji and Tenten's favorite haunt, but although they had noticed the presence of others they hadn't seen yet who it was.
Ino was knee-deep in a monologue on her love life, bemoaning the fact that her guy was comfortable, nice, and always sweet, but the fire was out. Now that she knew they were in it for the long haul, the relationship wasn't quite as exciting, and she found herself starting arguments with him just so they could have angry sex. Sakura commented that this sounded like a psychologically unhealthy way to live. It was at this point that Neji and Tenten came into view – or rather, the two kunoichi recognized the whir of a full-blast Kaiten and the cling of shuriken on shuriken that typically accompanied those two. Neji and Tenten sparring was not exactly an unusual event. Everyone knew that their team kept its perfect form by training literally all the time.
They were taken a little bit by surprise, however, by how vicious this sparring sounded and were driven to take a look. Boy, Neji and Tenten didn't kid around when they fought – they were really going at it, weren't they? No holds barred, it was almost like the were trying to kill each other. They were…
Ino and Sakura, after a juicy eyeful, had the decency to disappear. They didn't speak again until they were sure they were out of earshot. Then Sakura shot a wry grin at her friend. "Well, I guess that's one way to make the drama last."
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