It should be a big deal for the Rokudaime Hokage to appear unannounced at her apartment door at nine o' clock in the evening, but of course it isn't. Since Sakura died, they both know Naruto has been looking for a strong girl and a soft heart to cling to, and Tenten doesn't wear knives on every inch of her body for nothing. He's almost twenty-eight and she doesn't think it's completely hit him yet, that he's going to see her because he can no longer go see her, and she thinks the weakest part of him is his inability to accept the unacceptable, which is strange because Naruto deals with change better than anyone she knows.
Maybe she just doesn't know enough people.
There was a time when she thought she did.
She's not too sure anymore.
She opens the door and he smiles and leans forward and kisses her gently right between the eyebrows. She is aware that this is a greeting just for her. Naruto has a different way that he kisses everyone – over the years, it's true that Naruto's melding with the Kyuubi has inspired an invasive over-friendliness in him, but in comparison to his younger years, it's not so bad. The majority of his ANBU and Jounin will take kisses over pranks any day of the week, and everyone is aware that Naruto is a good kisser, anyway, even if they also know not to look into his eyes anymore because of what a desperately sad creature he's become. She heard it that way from Chouji a while ago when they were all in the bar together, her fingers wresting on the edge of her shot glass and all of them staring off at the Hokage Tower and pitying its single year-round inhabitant and his large, crippled heart.
Neji doesn't come to the bar anymore. She supposes that he has better things to do than drink, and she also supposes that she has better things to do than care. It used to bother her significantly more than it bothers her now, and she supposes it would be worse if after his wedding he would've come out drinking and brought her along. But recently she's been pining after him, which almost makes her want to detonate a bomb somewhere near her face every time she realizes that's what she's doing. But it's only been a year since Lee died, and it used to be that he was the one who would keep her distracted. Not always happy, but distracted. Sakura's been dead for longer, but she knows that Naruto hasn't realized it, the way she's realized Lee's dead. She knows that she notices the impact more because all her life it has been the three of them, the nine of them. The Rookie Nine. That was their name.
And now what are they?
It's depressing when the first words that come to mind are "dead" and "breaking."
She lets him in and he sighs softly and wraps himself around her exactly the way she's seen him wrap himself around people (Sai, so often now it's like they've become the same person; Kakashi once; Hinata too many times to count; Ino, Kiba, Shikamaru, Chouji, even Shino once or twice. She doesn't know about Neji. Used to be, he'd do it to Lee all the time. Lee used to like Eskimo!kisses in vast quantities. Used to be, Naruto would laugh and give them like they were breath. But Lee's gone now. Lee's been gone all year, and Tenten's torn between laughing and crying when that little girl voice in the back of her head says, jokingly, "So when's he getting back…?") and ideas for so many years. He smells like poppies and wind and sweat and heat.
"Did you even eat dinner?" he asks teasingly, nuzzling her, mussing her hair. She used to wonder, right after everything happened, how he could keep smiling and acting like himself even when he felt like simply crying until his body gave out. And then she stopped wondering because she realized that it didn't really matter how, so long as he didn't cry around her.
She knew that if he ever cried around her, she would never be able to face him.
She shrugs at the dinner comment. He kisses the top of her head.
"I'll make some. "
"No you won't. You'll make something that vaguely resembles some alien version of half-baked diarrhea and then force me to eat it."
"Exactly."
In the end, the only thing she lets him near is the tea pot, because there's no real way for him to ruin that with his "cooking" (can a person even call it that?) and so he makes them maccha for no particular reason, and she almost gets after him because she hates maccha, and there's no occasion for it, and there always needs to be an occasion to drink maccha or else it isn't worth it. It's too strong, and when he hands it to her, she almost wrinkles her nose. She's sitting, looking out at the city through the window, and he sits behind her, his legs on either side of hers, his tea set aside, his arms clasped around her neck, his head resting against hers.
"You know," he says softly, "even if it would destroy me and everything I love, I want to find a way."
"It'll never work." Her words are gentle truth and he can't hear them. She knows he can't hear them, because even if she was his subconscious, Naruto will never be able to accept what has happened to them. Their friendship may have bloomed on the basis of death—
(—they had met, really met, at Sakura's funeral. Sure, they'd met before, but Tenten had seen a piece of his soul there that day, a strip of it against the hem of his jeans and along the gaps of his fingers. Tenten had stood there alone, and watched him stare unblinkingly at that coffin for nearly six hours.
And then she had taken him by the arm, not really knowing him at all, and led him inside where all the others were waiting him. They had all clustered about him, not really knowing him at all, and he had not looked at a single one of them.
Lee, who still had tear streaks down his face, had reached under the table to hold her hand.
She had said nothing.
After all, she hadn't known Sakura that well, either.
They hadn't even been friends.)
—but she and Naruto perceived death so differently it was startling. Tenten acknowledged it as an end, and Naruto couldn't bring himself to think that there could possibly be an end to anything, ever. Naruto couldn't bring himself to think that there was nothing left that they could do.
"A jutsu," he continued, "that could take me back. I would have to destroy myself and this universe to do it, but—"
"And where would that get us?" Tenten asks, exasperatedly. "What good would that do?"
"The future shouldn't be this horrible," Naruto says, like it's just that simple.
The weight of his heart on her shoulders is almost too much, but after a long four minutes of silence he begins to rock her back and forth. She almost hates him for patronizing her so much. She almost hates him for being so soft, so in love with a woman who died for him, and a man who he screamed away of his own accord. She almost hates him for being so strong in ways that don't matter, and so weak in ways that matter so much.
But the soft, rocking motion is that of a boat in the water, and it makes the weight of her own heart feel lighter.
And so she allows it.
Like always.