Beta: rainyrhapsody
Her smiles are just a bit broken, her eyes just a tad bit glazed and her voice a notch rougher. Tenten is a good kunoichi and as a ninja she hides her true feelings well. (Just well enough to direct any 'are you okay?'s headed her way anyways.)
There is a running joke in the shinobi circle, and it's bitter and twisted, but fun too, in a way that would make anyone else horrified.
The dead pool.
As the name suggests, it's a betting pool on shinobi, their teams and their estimated deaths. Under Maito Gai's team, almost all bets went on Tenten. She was a girl, clan-less and not a genius like her teammates had been. It's funny how fate works, sometimes, and Tenten outlives them all, winning the whole sum.
She takes the bag filled with money and donates it to the orphanage. It's the right thing to do and Tenten can faintly hear how her action was youthful of her and how proud he was of her.
She ignores the shouting, as she does with the occasional hallucination.
Lee is beautifully broken, lying on the dirt and it's the first time Tenten's seen Lee so still.
For once, all the green is covered in red.
Her hands shake as she brushes the black bangs off glazed beady eyes. Tenten chokes as her throat closes and tears slowly roll down her cheeks to disappear in the bloodied bowl cut.
Tenten can't stand the color green anymore; it brings back to many painful memories of both her sensei and her best friend.
Tenten never knew Neji had a diary. The little book only shows her how much she didn't know about the boy she claimed to lo-
No.
These are dangerous thoughts bound to another sleepless night, running nose, crushing loneliness, and endless tears.
So Tenten locks the diary and her heart deep where she can't reach them both.
Three years, is how long she resists.
Eventually, though, her fingers trace the faint lines. The calligraphy is elegant and the words written are extremely private. The little book is a piece of Neji's soul; it contains his deep thoughts, the emotions he rarely showed, and it's nothing more than a trip down memory lane for Tenten. It hurts to remember Neji through a few pieces of paper. And the brunette wants to hear Neji again and the text in her twitching hands is not enough.
She can't read more than six pages.
Every week she retries and her record for now is twenty-three. Tenten isn't even a quarter through it.
Tenten reads Neji's regret: about his cruelties towards Lee, his harsh remarks, and cold indifference. Knowing that he regrets his stick in the mud behavior, reading that Neji cared for them as a team, is too much to bear.
Tenten reads Neji's admiration; no matter how weird he found his sensei, for Neji, Maito Gai had been a strong individual and his passion and fire reminded him his own father. She smiles when she sees a few of Gai's words of youthful wisdom. Tenten's lip tremble and her eyes sting as she feels the hidden affection Neji had for them as a team.
Tenten reads herself written by Neji's eyes; they are analytical at first, short shallow sentences but slowly they gain meaning, a depth they didn't possess before. She reads how her fights sound like elaborate dances, she learns how her nose scrunches in her sleep, how her fingers furiously scrub before gently caressing her weapons depending on her mood. Tenten didn't know her eyes would narrow a fraction before hitting every target bulls eye. All the little things she didn't know about herself, are elegantly written in this little journal.
Tenten has to bow her head and close her eyes when she comes to the part where Neji speaks of her warm smile, beautiful eyes, and silk hair and how he might have a tiny bit crush on his teammate.
A whimper escapes her thinned lips and Tenten has to bite her lips until she tastes blood to stop any other noise.
She wants her team back and whole so much that Tenten longingly stares at her kunai for a few disturbing seconds.
The diary and the kunai are both locked in a chest inside a cabinet in the attic.
Tenten never reads the diary again.
Tenten is standing in a pretty kimono next to Hinata. The other girl is blinding with the aura she emits, and Tenten can't help but feel bitter jealousy.
Next in line are the Ino-Shika-Cho, and Tenten is the pretty bridesmaid again. Her smile is forced and her expression carefully closes gradually with each wedding. The brunette thanks the heavens that the kimono sleeves are long enough to hide her trembling fingers.
When Kiba is getting married, Tenten only shows up at the end, apologizes, and excuses herself with the preparations for a mission that doesn't exist.
No one calls on her little lie.
She is invited to the last Uchiha's wedding but Tenten doesn't even bother showing up.
No one holds any grudge on her for it.
Marriage had never been a goal in Tenten's life even when she had meet Neji. She just imagined going grey and wrinkly together with her boys, scolding Lee for training with his fragile back, eating spicy curry of Gai-sensei, and watching the seasons change while drinking high quality tea with Neji.
And these are just that now, imaginations that will never turn real.
Some nights, when Tenten really can't deal with her painful memories between her choking cries and hitching breaths, she summons Ningame. The turtle is in a green shade that it's too familiar that makes Tenten's heart squeeze but it's the familiarity that brings some resemblance of peace to her agony filled head.
Tenten has many friends but a small turtle is the only one that can calm her heart and banish some of the loneliness that chokes her.
She makes curry and eats together with Ningame, who is also silent and somber as the brunette. Tenten can only eat curry when she is with her sensei's summon. The other times the spicy dish never goes down her throat.
Kakashi visits her shop sometimes and Tenten doesn't know what to feel.
They make small, polite talk before the conversations gets stuck awkwardly and this time it isn't any different.
Kakashi is inspecting a silver scabbarded tanto when he says, "I miss him sometimes too." His voice is sympathetic as if he understands what Tenten is feeling. Kakashi might have lived through some pretty shitty loses in his life but this one….
When she replies, Tenten's voice is sharp like the blade Kakashi is holding. "I miss them always."
The copy ninja stiffens but Tenten isn't near done.
"Have you ever even seen him as a friend? Not a fellow shinobi of the leaf but an actual friend?" Tenten asks frostily. She is being rude but in her heart, Tenten knows that he deserves it.
Kakashi always brushed off the over enthusiastic sensei with his cool and hip attitude.
The same Kakashi hadn't been in most birthday parties of Gai-sensei.
Kakashi hadn't been there in the funeral, Kakashi hadn't been there when Gai-sensei's will was read, and Kakashi hadn't been there when Tenten had to clean her sensei's apartment by herself.
Tenten knows that he is now here because he feels guilty, and he is trying to shut his guilt by looking after her, because she'd been his student.
The brunette doesn't need to be looked after, not like there remains anyone who cares in Konoha. All her precious people are already under the soil of the village they loved dearly.
Kakashi gives her side look and leaves the shop in a flurry of leaves.
Perhaps Gai-sensei and Kakashi had been friends in their awkward way but the copy ninja completely failed to at least make it look like he cared, in Tenten's eyes anyway.
I miss my team.
Is Tenten's thought as she steadily bleeds over the giant, sturdy roots she is leaning. Her breaths came out as wheezing pants and her heart is hammering in her chest. Her brown bangs are wet with sweat and blood and they are bothering her eyes but Tenten is too exhausted to move them away.
It's a plain fact, simple and straight to the point.
I miss my team.
Tenten should put pressure on her gaping side which burns like a bitch every time the brunette breaths. She should.
But Tenten doesn't really want to. She doesn't want to wake up in the white room in Konoha hospital, surrounded by flowers and get well cards because the flowers and cards that matter the most to her will never be on her bedside.
She is tired, had been tired for so long and the brunette doesn't see anything wrong with just stop struggling and close her brown eyes. She feels the gentle breeze caress her undone hair and slowly opens her eyelids.
How appropriate, Tenten muses, that green will be the last thing I'll see.
Her vision is so blurry that she can't make out the leaves or branches above her. It doesn't matter though; the color is the only thing Tenten needs to see.
Neji Hyuuga had been eighteen when he died.
More blood coats the green grass under her.
Rock Lee had been twenty five when he died.
Tenten's chest rises one last time.
Maito Gai had been thirty two when he died.
Chocolate brown eyes glaze over, as death claims the brunette's body.
Tenten had been thirty eight when she died.
And finally, the most green, hardworking, energetic and genius team of Konoha reunites.