Title: Ghosts
Author: vendettadays
Pairing: Neji/Tenten
Rating: T
Length: 602
Spoilers: Manga Chp. 614
Summary: It was easy for the dead to be dead, but hard for the living to live.
Tenten stared impassively at the granite memorial in front of her. She was alone – a solitary ghost standing in the village memorial grounds. Her eyes travelled down the long list of names engraved on the smooth stone, where her gaze stopped and finally rested on one.
Hyuuga Neji.
Her breaths were even as she ran the name through her head over and over again, until it felt strange and unfamiliar. She did this everyday. It was ingrained into her daily routine, just as the ability to hold a kunai was ingrained into her. She would wake up at six in the morning, arrive by seven, and spend the next two hours staring at those two words.
And she would repeat his name again and again and again.
For the first month, Lee had accompanied her and they found solace in their joined silence. But it was the fourth month and she was alone and solace was not what she wanted. She did not know what she wanted.
Hyuuga Neji… Hyuuga Neji… Hyuuga Neji… Hyuuga Neji…
Her lips moved soundlessly, as she repeated his name like a mantra to ward of evil. She never said it out loud. She did not think she could say it out loud. If she did, she was sure that it would disturb the phantom feelings she felt inside her, beside her, around her.
She felt it when she had visited their old training grounds just after the war. She felt the way the air had brushed against her and whispered incomprehensibly in her ears. It chilled her when she noticed a wisp of a white sleeve in her periphery. When she had turned to face it, there was nothing there and she was left with the feeling of senbons piercing the skin at the back of her neck. She had not stepped foot there since.
But it did not matter that she had not returned to their old training ground, because she felt it everywhere she went. The feeling followed her constantly, like an unseen companion by her side and always only a fleeting glimpse from the corner of her eyes.
It followed her when she walked through the rebuilt village. It was there when she was at home. It sat next to her on her living-room sofa. At night it laid next to her in her bed.
It was next to her now.
She was becoming a textbook case for medic-nins and she knew it. It meant nothing that she knew it, because she did not know how to stop it. It was easy for the dead to be dead, but hard for the living to live.
Hyuuganejihyuuganejihyuugane jihyuuganejihyuuganejihyuuga nejihyuuganeji.
The name blurred into one and became unrecognisable, but the paranoia persisted and the incomprehensible mumblings in her ears grew louder and louder and louder. The prickling on the back of her head intensified, until it felt like the skin of her scalp was on fire and all she could hear was the scratching and scrapping of the inside of her skull, as his name clawed around inside her mind, searching and searching.
She shut her eyes tight and her hands covered her ears.
It stopped.
The scratching stopped and the mumblings receded into silence. She opened her eyes and her breathing was ragged, as she released her hair from her tightly clenched fists. Her trousers were grass-stained and ruined, but she did not remember falling to her knees.
Tenten stood up slowly and carefully to her feet.
Two hours.
She gave one more glance at his name and turned her back and walked away.
Footsteps followed.