Hi guys. You might recognize that awful pun in the title from my previous fic, "Caged Bird Freed". It's terrible but I love it, so I'm using it again. Sorry! Enjoy and thanks for reading. NejiTen 4 lyf.

He Had That Faraway Look in His Eyes

Tenten is not a dreamer. She is pragmatic and she is independent and she… she is brave. That is why she lets everybody else ahead of her. That is why she refuses to fall apart.

She doesn't get to have a last word or feel the warmth fade from Neji's body. As happens so often, she gets nothing. So she does all she can do. She puts her hand on Lee's shoulder and tries not to melt into that strange liquid rolling down his cheeks.

She recalls that Neji often spoke in the language of metals: iron in anger, silver in regret, soft, soft gold whispered for her ears alone. His lack of words now is a steel blade through her chest.

"Lee…" she hears herself say. "Stop crying. We have a war to win."

~xx~

Once, when they were genin, the team got sent on a babysitting mission escorting some wealthy family's children and nanny to their summer home in the countryside. Tenten had gotten so annoyed with the little brats that on their way back to Konoha she declared that she never wanted to have children. Ever.

"You shouldn't dismiss the possibility entirely," Neji said. "I think you would be a good mother someday."

"I can't even think that far ahead," Tenten replied, stretching her shoulders. "That's like more than ten years from now. Besides, what makes you think I'd be a good mom?"

He paused for a moment, planning out each word. "You are intelligent and hardworking. You know when to be tender and you know when to be tough. You are deeply devoted to the people you love. That is why."

"Well, you're all of those things too. So you'd be a great dad, right?"

He almost laughed, snorting derisively instead. "I am excluded by birth from ever being a great father."

Tenten turned her to face him. He looked a bit more solemn than usual, but as usual his eyes were placid, giving nothing away. "What do you mean by that?"

Neji took a breath in and scouted ahead of them to see how far Gai and Lee had gotten. When he was sure that there was a sufficient distance, he reached for the tie of his hitai-ate and began, "Tell me, Tenten, have you ever wondered how the Hyuuga have endured the passing of time while resisting change so well?"

That day Tenten saw the curse mark on Neji's forehead for the first time; for the first time, saw Neji as anything less than whole. And she wanted so badly then to save him, to erase the mark from his brow, to wash away the impure thing that ate at him. But Tenten had never been heroic or domestic. Saving Neji was beyond her strength and would probably always be beyond her strength. Still, after that mission, even Gai and Lee marveled at how hard she trained.

~xx~

His forehead is clear now, pallid and cold and covered in dirt and blood, but it looks perfect to Tenten. These are things that even she can clean. She brushes Neji's hair aside and lays her lips down where the curse mark no longer is. It is a brief kiss, and as quickly as she had kneeled down she is standing again. Tears form in the corners of her eyes and are consumed by the chakra of the Nine-Tails.

"Tenten, will you be okay?"

"I'm fine, Lee. Let's do this."

As she leaps, a dragon roars in her chest, fuming with vengeance.

~xx~

It was years after that fateful round of chuunin exams, where Naruto had worked whatever magic that Tenten hadn't been capable of.

During a mission, Tenten had been caught off guard by a rogue ninja. Pinned to the ground with some man forcefully holding her by the chin and his other hand caressing her ear, Tenten remembered watching Sasuke dislocate the shoulders of the Sound boy who had hurt Sakura in the Forest of Death. At the time, she had thought it kind of romantic even if she had never wanted to be the damsel in need of rescue. Still, when she had needed it, her own prodigy had come to her, eyes flaring, hair rising, stormy anger manifesting in the air around him.

"Won't you kill me?" the rogue ninja asked, limbs bound, coughing on his own blood in between words. "I violated your woman."

"Trash is not worth killing," Neji said. "And she is no one's woman."

The ninja snickered, wriggling in the dirt. "That's mighty chivalrous of you." And then Tenten was surrounded by Neji's Kaiten. The exploding tags on the rogue ninja's chest had gone off, and Neji had saved her again.

Neji turned and offered his hand to help Tenten up but she was already getting to her feet. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine. Let's catch up with Lee." She wanted to say more but didn't know how. "Sorry. It was foolish of me to get caught like that."

"You would have overcome him even without my intervention. I am sorry for interfering with your pride."

"Don't be." And Tenten wondered why it was they could only speak in apologies.

~xx~

Now she knew why. He had divined the future with those accursed eyes, and he knew the way that things would be. He was apologizing years in advance for leaving her behind. And she too was sorry because she had never wanted to make him regret a thing.

"I guess the world was more important to you than I was," she says to an empty training ground. "That's the way it should have been. But it's kind of sad, don't you think? If it were me… well, there isn't much of a world without you in it."

~xx~

Neji said that one time his father let a small amount of hatred slip out of him. Hiashi Hyuuga had sensed and acted upon it instantly. Neji had learned after that incident to keep his body devoid of emotion, because in the Hyuuga household, everything could be seen. They were stoic people by nature, but Neji took it further. Every eye movement and every twitch of his finger had purpose. It was his own silent rebellion. If he could control what the others saw, then he was, in a small way, free.

Tenten, on the other hand, wore her emotions all over herself, and Neji could read her body language like a diary. He could see her heartbeat, the flush beneath her skin, the slight dilation of her pupils. He saw how over the years camaraderie had turned into friendship had turned into wholehearted surrender, and absolute trust. He knew. He must have known. Probably he knew before even she did.

She loved him.

Around Tenten, Neji was more expressive. But Tenten did not have Neji's eyes, so she couldn't have known, would never know now, if he had loved her too.

~xx~

Tenten was not a dreamer. Not until Neji died.

In fact, while he was alive, she didn't dare imagine a future with him. She somehow always knew it couldn't happen. A life with her would have been too easy. Too simple. And Neji never deserved to be simple. Strangely, now that he is gone, all she sees behind her eyelids are pale eyed children, walks in the forest, and if he were here to witness it, him seeing right through her show of bravado.

"Tenten, how are you feeling?"

"I'm fine, Gai-sensei."

"On your way to the service?"

"Of course."

There are a lot of tears at Neji's funeral, none of which are Tenten's. Instead, she watches the smoke from the incense twist and rise and she pretends with her whole heart that she isn't burning too.

~XX~