Written as an extremely last minute entry for the Childhood Contest over at the LJ Nejiten Community. Will probably improve upon it after judging. Theme was..."childhood." (Surprise, surprise).
(1) A verrrry old Chinese cure for "any disease whatsoever" (according to tradition/legend/etc) is for the child of the patient to actually cut out a bit of their own flesh to make into soup for their dying parent. Don't worry, this ficlet won't be that gory.
(2) I promise I WILL stop ranting on and on about chrysanthemums one day. Soon.
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Second Hand Angels
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- X -
Mama didn't like her buying yellow chrysanthemums. They were funeral flowers: their more cheerful implications were obscured in the remembrance of those long gone, those dissipated into smoke and the blunted corners of faded photographs. (What's wrong with roses? she had asked. Red was easy, red was happy and promising). It was autumn and luck was down; little girls needed all the luck they could get and bringing inauspicious blooms back home wasn't going to help.
And yet she bought them anyway, fourteen stalks from the graying woman at the marketplace. They were wrapped in clear plastic but looked prettier without, so she took them out and into the crisp cold air, their petals the only smudges of colour against the bleak landscape as she trudged back home. Everything was stark, bare; the naked trees thrust their exposed bones high into a slate gray sky, clawing up up up for the light, but the only sun that bloomed that day rested in her hands, fragile and cold.
"Tenten-chan."
She looked up. The man was by the gate leading to her door. "Hyuuga-sama?" Staring up at him, wide eyed: "Are you here for your appointment?"
He looked different, she noted, clutching the flowers closer to her chest. Hyuuga Hizashi smiled kindly down at the little girl fidgeting shyly before him, reaching down to pat her lightly on the head. "I'm afraid I've changed my mind. Tell your aunt that I will not be seeing her today, will you?" A pause. "Or in the future."
Tenten nodded mutely, mouth forming a small yes. Different, she thought. Happier.
"Good girl." His hand fell, lingering by the cluster of yellow petals. "What beautiful flowers. Did you buy these for your aunt?" But he was looking at the door, not her, and Tenten was not too young to recognize the indecisiveness that marred his usual elegance. The hair at his temples had become threaded with silver since the last time he visited, making him, Tenten thought privately, even more handsome and refined looking. "Well, I'll be going now. Thank you, Tenten-chan."
"Bye-bye," she breathed quietly, and when she shut the gate behind her he was already gone.
When she announced that Hyuuga-sama would not be needing her help again in the future her aunt looked surprised for a moment, glancing out the kitchen window curiously with her hand against her cheek. "Is that so?"
"That's what he told me," Tenten affirmed with childish gravity, washing her hands industriously in the sink. Mama liked her hands clean around the house.
"Hmmm. I see. I suppose I can pack these away for the day, then." Her aunt gathered her stack of tarot cards from the table absently, flipping one between her fingers with a thoughtful expression on her face. "Tell Kiba's mother that she still has to pay me for last week's session next time you see her around the market, will you?"
"She's scary." Tenten pouted slightly. "Do I ree-eee-eeally have to, obasan?"
But her aunt was already half way out the door, turning around only to glance at the kitchen table. "Bought all those flowers again, Tenten?" She sighed. "Do you like them that much?"
"They're for Mama."
Another sigh. "Right. How morbid. I'm going to take a nap, don't disturb me unless it's important, okay? There's some food on the stove."
"Okay." She gathered up the stalks into her arms and when her aunt was safely out of hearing Tenten bowed her head and peered carefully at the blossoms. "I lied," she confided to them solemnly, whispering against the petals. "You're for me."
She put the chrysanthemums in her bedroom, crowns of pale buttery silk curling out in soft fragments like faded feathers stained by sunlight. They were her second hand suns, her second hand angels (but buy roses next time, Mama said. Little girls looked good with red).
- X -
Two years later Hyuuga Hizashi was dead. He had died barely half a month after she last saw him by her house, and there had been no public funeral. Tenten knew all this because his son, Neji, was in her class at the Academy, and all the other girls were in love with him and so all the other girls gossiped about him everyday in the playground. And out of.
"Did you see the way he walked through the door this morning? The way he just strode forwards, like – oh, he's so beautiful." Her partner for the current drill leaned against her in a dramatic faint, sighing deeply. Tenten thought she had a point.
"Mmhmm." She smiled, a quick, girlish lifting of the lips; then she shrugged her shoulders, pushing the other girl gently away from her. "My turn. Think I can get four bulls eye in a row this time?" She flipped the kunai between her fingers like one of her aunt's tarot cards.
"Yeah, yeah." Her partner rolled her eyes, grinning and nudging her playfully by the elbow. The kunai slipped –
"Oh!" She stared at the blood smeared against her pale skin, a dark red line slicing between the new calluses on her palm: her first blade wound since she started at the Academy two weeks ago. (Mama was right; little girls did look good with red).
"Tenten! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"No, it's fine, I'll just get it cleaned up. Wait for me, 'kay?"
"Yeah..….."
She had stowed her belongings behind the nearby trees, on the low wall that locked in the training grounds. When she emerged through the foliage Hyuuga Neji was sitting on the ground, rolling up a coil of bandages and taking a drink of water. Tenten stilled for a moment. The boy looked up.
"Hello……..." She smiled sweetly, tilting her head to the side. Neji didn't reply, merely nodding his head stiffly. A faint blush spread across her cheeks (because sure, she might already be the most kick ass kunoichi in the year, but he really was very beautiful and even that slightest of moves looked suave enough to make her little nine year old heart beat a little too fast.) "I – I just came to wash a cut on my hand."
"Hn."
She picked up her own bottle as he drank deeply from his, fumbling a little as she poured the liquid over the gash in her palm. Think of something to say, she told herself, so she thought of something to say. "Your pa used to come to my aunt to get his cards read," she blurted out awkwardly.
Silence. Tenten winced.
"Cards?" he asked carefully, glancing at her out the corner of his eye.
"Yeah. Tarot cards? You know, the ones you use to predict your future?" She leaned awkwardly against the wall, wrapping her cut in gauze. "He was one of her most regular customers, coming uh…once a month, I think."
"…Hn." The boy was looking at her oddly. Tenten swallowed, ducking her head.
"I'm sorry, perhaps I shouldn't have –"
"No, it's alright." He waved her off regally, turning his attention back to his bottle. After a while he spoke again. "I…..am not surprised."
"Oh?" She blinked at him.
"No. That's the twenty-second layer you've wrapped around your wound, by the way."
"Really?" She looked down, blush darkening at the realization that she had been nervous enough to mechanically cocoon her hand in something more worthy of a bone fracture than a mere cut. "Ah…."
"Perhaps your aunt could give me a reading sometime," he suddenly said, his request sounding more like a command.
Her head shot up. "What?"
"I understand why my father went to see her," he told her matter-of-factly, standing up and beginning to make his way back to the other students. "It is probably better to know what you are destined to suffer through. That way…..you can prepare yourself for the difficulties ahead, at least."
Many years later an older Tenten would have rolled her eyes and teased him for being ridiculously gloomy and melodramatic, but nine year olds are prone to being highly impressed by Tragic Heroes and so she could only look at his retreating back with wide eyes, bandages forgotten in her hand, lips parting softly in the beginnings of adoration.
"Wait! Neji – I….I read tarot cards too."
A pause. Neji stilled, hand resting on a pockmarked branch. "Do you." He glanced back, appraising her coolly.
"Yeah….Mama taught me ages ago."
"Well, I suppose you can do the reading instead, then," he told her generously, turning away again.
"Alright." She grinned. "My name's Tenten, by the way."
When he replied his voice was muffled through the leaves. "I know."
- X -
She knew despite the silence that Neji was on the other side of the door. She closed her eyes, breathing in deeply, cradling her forehead against the base of her palms. Her scrolls were splayed out on the bedroom floor beside her; thin trickles of blood coursed down her arm to fall from her elbow, droplets exploding like viscous red ink onto the pale parchment.
When she finally looked up her gaze was set on the porcelain vase by the bed, bursting with chrysanthemum flowers. The draft from the window had stripped away a few petals and they lay strewn across her sheets like liquid drops of gold. Her room was small, walls blissfully blank. Silence pervaded every corner, every little nook and cranny, and if she stayed very, very still she could almost hear the angels breathing. The shadows they cast were like gentle ghosts.
"What do you want, Neji?" Tenten leaned her head tiredly against the door. She heard him shift slightly outside.
"You're not alright." He hadn't even bothered asking; after so many years of partnership he knew instinctively what she felt, and in any case Neji had never been one to meander around the point.
"I'm fine." She settled her head on her knees.
"Tenten." A sigh. "You performed badly on this last mission. You know that. Let me in." It hadn't even been a particularly difficult one, either, a mere two day patrol of the east border to look for illicit traders. Tenten had been unfocused and shaky the second day, withdrawn to the point of aloofness in stark contrast to her usual sweet disposition. She was being stubborn, she knew. Little girls were not meant to be so stubborn.
Little girls also bled for Mama. Once upon a time children cut out their own flesh to feed a dying parent; the wonder drug that tradition and lore taught would cure any sickness was filial piety made from skin, bone, muscle and blood. Tenten glanced down at the deep lacerations puncturing her skin, each heartbeat sending another warm pulse of blood running thickly down her arm. And she thought: this is blood for you, Mama. This is blood for you.
"Tenten. Open the door."
"No."
"Tenten." Between one second and the next her door had been Gentle Fisted to obliteration and she suddenly found herself falling into the arms of one Hyuuga Neji, that abominable man then having the audacity (as usual) to drag her brusquely against his chest and to her feet. "What is wrong with you?"
"What's wrong with you? Why can't you just leave me alone for a while?" She spun around to face him, almost snarling in her exasperation. Vaguely she registered his hands on her shoulders, heavy, comforting.
"You were crying." He sounded surprised.
"Whatever." She turned her face away but he took her by the chin and forced her to look him in the eyes.
"Is this about your mother?"
"And what if it is?"
"Tenten……." His expression softened. They were so close she could feel his breath fan out softly against her forehead. "You're still bleeding."
"I need to." Her voice was dull.
"Don't be foolish. I'll help you clean it up."
"No, Neji." She bit her lip. "Mama needs –"
"Your mother is dead, Tenten. Has been dead for a long time." He was shaking her by the shoulders now.
"Shut up!" She glared at him, angry and frightened and aching. Because filial piety had become another form of hurt, and blood was precious. Second hand angels did not bleed for you and soon she was going to be sucked dry, would crumble into nothing but dried petals on the ground. She yanked herself out of his grasp, hand coming up to grip the open wounds on her arm. Ten years – it had been exactly ten years since Mama had …..since Mama had left her, and all she wanted was to howl at the world (where has the sun gone? Second hand suns just don't shine enough).
A faint whisper behind them; when she turned around she saw that the wind had blown one of her tarot cards from her dressing table to the floor. Neji pushed past her gently and bent down to pick it up, examining it briefly before looking back at her across the room. Tenten flinched at his expression.
"I don't understand," he said, and for once Neji sounded almost……lost. "You told me you had stopped using these things."
"I…."
"You promised me you would stop." He stepped forwards, holding the card out before him. Tenten reached out and grabbed it, clutching it to her side. "Tenten….you said-"
"I know what I said." She gave him an imploring look. "But….you know how I am with them….Mama taught me how to use them and –" He was right in front of her now, looking at her with something unbearably close to disappointment in his eyes. "-And you asked me to read them for you, too, remember?"
"I stopped," he said. "I stopped after –"
"Naruto. I know." She grasped for words in her head, arguments that would allow her to keep this one thing Mama had left for her. "What about your father? He used to come to my aunt for readings all the time, Neji…." She trailed off lamely, thinking back to the last time she had seen Hyuuga Hizashi. He let it go in the end, a small voice was saying in her head. He let it go so that he could choose his own death.
Neji was silent for a moment. "It doesn't matter," he said finally. "He may have relied on fortune telling for a long time, but in the end – I don't know how, but I am certain that the choice to sacrifice himself for Hiashi-sama was his own. My father did not feel that it was his destiny to do so, Tenten." He stepped closer again, stretching out a hand to trace his fingers lightly down her uninjured arm. "You….." A pause. "You do not believe in me."
A question. Her eyes widened. His expression was more guarded now but his fingers lingering on her skin was more than enough proof of his worry. "Neji, that's not true. I……." She knew he had grown to depend on her; that her own continued reliance on Mama's precious tarot cards was in defiance of, or at least undermined, his need to be able to believe in his freedom.
"Tenten." He slid his palm down to her elbow, circled his fingers around her arm to pull her closer. "Your mother may be dead, but I'm here."
I'm here. She'd hurt him, Tenten realized suddenly, the air abruptly leaving her lungs. It wasn't even merely a case of contradicting beliefs. She herself had never actually put much stock into fortune telling; she loved tarot because she loved Mama. But she had hurt Neji. She, with her inability to let go of Mama, to cease mourning – wasn't that, after all, what her tarot and her chrysanthemums were all about? – had managed to make this arrogant, insufferable, audacious ice cube of a man worry about her, feel abandoned by her, hurt, that she would choose someone over him.
So she let go.
"I know," she told him, leaning forwards and burying her forehead against the nape of his neck. "I know." Thank you. Forgive me.
Neji was too precious to lose, to hurt, and no amount of blood could ever save Mama now. It was difficult – ridiculously, painfully difficult – but in the end it was also very simple. Neji had given her a choice, and she would choose to love the living more than she loved the dead. (For him, she could.)
She let the card drop from her hand.
"Tenten?" For the second time he sounded uncertain. Tenten decided she hated it. She swallowed, took a deep breath, kissed him lightly on a collar bone.
"I'm getting blood all on your clothes, Neji. Come on, you can help me clean up."
I'm here.