SD: I cannot write fluff or romance. Really. And this fic went on longer then I thought it would've. My third Naruto one-shot—criticism greatly appreciated.

Edit: 11-21-2007: Yes, I edited it. It's hardly changed, though--I just removed some repeats/boring summaries and fixed grammar mistakes. It was painful, believe me. Still kind of is, actually, because I know there are still many mistakes. Please point them out. Thanks!

Disclaimer: Nope. Nada. Nothing is mine.

Infatuation

It had started with an innocent infatuation.

There was a long and infamous tradition in the Shinobi Academy. A young boy would be the top of each class, whom girls would call 'cute' and boys would call 'strong'. Before long, almost all the kunoichis would start crushing on the one boy, and become distracted from learning the ways of a ninja. They would be like civilians, focusing more on make-up, clothes, and hair, rather then weapons, jutsus, and shinobi rules. Slowly, the girls would slowly drop out, leaving only a few to become genin, chuunin, jounin.

But Tenten was different. When she entered the Academy, she didn't immediately fall head-over-heels 'in love' withthe boy. Instead, she observed and slowly became interested. Tenten noticed how Hyuuga Neji was annoyed by weakness and how he respected those who were strong and focused on training. So, she did not try to find out what the latest style and most flattering hair 'do' was. Tenten studied sharpened steel and scrolls. Instead of trying to impress the Hyuuga with her beauty, the girl aimed to show him her strength.

She worked hard every day, before dawn and after the sun set, hitting target after target, getting cuts, calluses, bruises. She visited the library to gain knowledge on different weapons and constantly stayed after school to study with the sensei in charge of taijutsu and armory. Tenten learned how to bend steel to her will—how to forge weapons, to make them a part of her. When Tenten learned how to summon these weapons, she created the first form of her Sōshōryū. With scrolls bought from a local ninja supplier and dozens of books, she managed to make her own summoning scrolls and seals. Now, instead of trying to find places to secure hundreds of kunais, shurikens, and senbons, Tenten had something she could get an infinite number of sharpened steel from. No kunoichi had been able to do that in the Academy since the war. Metal became her life.

Gradually, Tenten began to love weapons for what they were, not why. They were even more important as her attraction to the head of the class. No one knew more about ninja steel then she did. Not even Neji. The knowledge of this fact fueled Tenten's need to prove herself, and she got better and better, her confidence and skill slowly building.

It was with this confidence that, years later, the weapons' user graduated as top kunoichi of the year. Tenten's joy grew when she was placed on Hyuuga Neji's team. Even seeing her other teammate, Rock Lee, and their sensei, Maito Gai didn't dampen her spirits. When all three of the genins passed the survival test, she was proud, and looked at Neji hopefully, only to find that he had left. Briefly saddened, Tenten sighed and trained harder, hoping to be recognized as somebody.

This happened again and again—Neji ignoring her desperate affection and Tenten favoring him. She told Lee he wasn't strong enough, that Neji would always win. She complimented the Hyuuga prodigy every time he did something new, hoping for some sort of praise. Two months in, reality struck.

Tenten had become what she hated. She believed in only Neji and looked down on everyone else, not bothering to learn their good points. She had failed the one person that mattered—herself.

She started to look around. She realized Gai-sensei, despite his green spandex and gigantic eyebrows, was one of the best jounins in Konoha. He was not normal. He was a teacher, content with just knowing he helped. And Le was not just another Gai and taijutsu freak. He was one-of-a-kind—he was Rock Lee, the next Taijutsu master of Konoha.

Slowly—so slowly that Tenten didn't even notice—she started treating Lee and Gai with respect. And, finally, one day, as Lee was sparring with Neji, she didn't run to Neji and ask if he was hurt.

She shook Lee and started yelling at him for being stupid.

The boy just stood up and smiled. "Thank you, Tenten-chan."

And she stepped back, surprised. Why had she done that? When had she started, somehow, caring for Lee and seeing he was not an annoyance? Tenten didn't know, but for some reason it felt right.

Starting from that day, her true training with Gai-sensei began. Soon, she finally gathered enough courage to ask the green-clad jounin about chakra strings.

One month later, on a C-rank mission, she showed the completed Sōshōryū. It still managed only to wound the bandits around her.

But that was enough.

However, it wasn't until three months after that when Tenten realized that the team training sessions had turned into fights between Gai and Lee and fights between her and Neji. That she realized that she was the one who was always Neji's partner. She was the one who Neji wanted to fight every day.

And she was satisfied. Now she was someone to fight, someone to respect. That was one step higher, one step closer.

When the first chuunin exams came around, five months after their graduation, they skipped it. Or, more precisely, Gai-sensei told them that they weren't ready. Tenten saw the brief tightening of Neji's eyes as he heard this, and the slight slump of shoulders Lee had. She knew, without looking, that her fists would be clenched.

"You aren't ready, yet. Wait another few months for the next test, and learn something in that time." The teacher looked serious, until he grinned brightly. "The power of youth is still blooming! It is tender, but it will prevail and become a flower!"

Tenten didn't understand, but she accepted it. The three practiced harder then ever, eventually melding into one. Neji still obliquely insulted Lee, Tenten still harbored a crush on Neji, and Lee still smiled and sprouted poetry. But they had unconsciously united.

Gai looked on and smiled.

The chuunin exams were not difficult, at first. Neji easily obtained the test's answers with his Byakugan, and with her chakra strings Tenten was able to help both her and Lee. They entered the Forest of Death without fuss or trouble. Somewhere in the middle, though, when the three split, Lee disappeared.

When Tenten realized, she stood, ready to sprint off, before Neji put a hand on her shoulder. Veins appeared around his eyes. "Hatake-san's team, directly west of here. They seem to have encountered a difficulty with the shinobi from Sound. Uchiha and Uzumaki are both unconscious."

This time, without waiting for Neji, Tenten disappeared. She raced to the fight to find her teammate. By the time she had gotten there, though, the fight was over. Tenten was almost relieved, until she saw Lee's body. Terrified, she hid her worry in the only way she could—she shook him again and again, yelling. He woke up and begged her to stop, but she could not. And he stopped protesting, because he knew that this was her way to show worry.

With this obstacle passed, Tenten was sure the rest of the exam would be simple, that they would be able to pass with not problems.

She was wrong. For this first time in years, another kunoichi was able to defeat her. Helpless against the wind, Tenten could only wait for her defeat. Unable to watch Neji's battle, Tenten never found out it happened until after the chuunin exams—after she had trained with him.

When she did find out what Neji did to Hinata and saw the pearl-eyed girl coughing as if dying, Tenten's eyes filled with tears. When the battle was over, she entered Neji's room and yelled until her voice was hoarse. There was a horrible feeling residing in her stomach, one that she had trouble recognizing. She had hardly known the shy Hyuuga heiress, so it was not anger. No, it was something else entirely, something she had never associated with her cold, detached partner.

It was disappointment. This was the first time she had seen the other, cruel side of Neji. And Tenten ran, because of she couldn't accept that—she couldn't accept the fact that she really didn't know Hyuuga Neji, the prodigy. Instead, she focused on rebuilding Konoha, forcing herself to forget everything. But she couldn't. The first day she started reconstructing outside, she saw a hawk whirling in the air and thought of Neji.

That day, she found out that he was gone.

The first time Tenten met Tsunade—her idol—it was before Lee went to surgery. The second time was by Neji's bedside. In both times, the thrill she would have felt was not present. By Lee, all that Tenten felt sadness and apprehension. With Neji, what she felt was fear and regret. The third time Tenten met Tsunade was when Neji woke up. This time, she hardly paid attention to the new Godaime, because she started yelling the moment Neji opened his eyes. Her reprimand was her apology and his acceptance was his.

Half a year later, an older and more hardened Team Gai became chuunins. The bond that held them together was too strong to be broken, and even though most genin teams split after becoming chuunins, they didn't. Neji started training with his uncle, Gai and Lee practiced even more taijutsu, and Tenten conquered her weaknesses and asked for help. But the team would still meet every day. Tenten would yell at Lee—except, this time Gai was included—and train with Neji, Lee would challenge Neji, and Neji would refuse. Now, though, Neji no longer remained cold. He took pleasure in thoroughly defeated Lee, but when the spar was over, he simply held out a hand and pulled the taijutsu user up. Tenten saw this and smiled.

A year later, when Neji became a jounin, Tenten was scared. As children, as chuunins, they had equal rank. But Neji was no longer a chuunin or a child. There was nothing to stop him from leaving.

So, when, a week after the jounin exams, Team Gai was sent on a mission, Tenten expected to be alone with the green beasts of Konoha. Then she saw Neji at the gates.

And she knew that some things would never change.

Team Gai remained Team Gai, working together perfectly. Though their team consisted of two chuunins, they were sent on multiple A-rank missions. Even so, nothing matched up to the first time they faced the Akatsuki.

Tenten remembered what had happened when Kisame attacked. She felt acute pain in the fact that she was once again useless, unable to help herself or her team. Then, there was the stark rage on Neji's face as the Akatsuki member left them in a bubble of water, and freedom. After the battle, Tenten worried about the rage, worried about Neji wanting revenge. But when Gai-sensei gave a piggy-back to Kakashi-sensei, and Lee offered to do the same, Neji shook his head and grimaced—his eyes as clear as ever.

After that battle, Tenten had the courage to take the Jounin Exams. Yes, she she was not a kunoichi capable of life-changing deeds (Sakura), or one of nobility and a bloodline as old as Konoha (Hinata), or even someone so skilled with the art of seduction that she could kill with a kiss (Ino). Tenten was just a normal weapon's mistress who wanted to be something.

See, she knew she was not just a normal weapon's mistress—she was Konoha's Weapon's Mistress. And at seventeen, Tenten, with years of hard work and countless hours of training, became a jounin.

She had collapsed shortly after the exam, exhausted and injured. Neji sat by her in the hospital, and he was what she saw when her eyes first opened. Tenten wasn't surprised—whenever she was injured, one of her three teammates would always be there when she woke up. Neji's hands, though, were clenched and white on the bed. Tenten laughed. "You care about me after all, Neji!" she said jokingly, bumping against him lightly—wincing slightly at the jolt of pain.

He said nothing, but gently pushed her back down, his eyes telling her to rest. Slowly, a feeling of hope, a feeling Tenten had repressed for so long, rose in her heart.

Nearly two years later, long after Uchiha Sasuke had been finally brought back to Konoha, the Akatsuki started to attack. The Rookie Nine and Team Gai—now the Konoha Twelve—set out to meet them. Tenten would always remember the raw fear she had felt, the terror, when all the Akatsuki had banded together. Yet, after that, she remembered nothing else but the sight of a wakizashi that appeared to be spinning slowly through the air toward his blind spot. Then, an explosion of fireworks and pain before blackness took her.

In later years, Tenten was told that she had managed to take down an Akatsuki fighter, and then another two members with Gai and Lee. She heard about how Hinata had managed defeat, by herself, a group of A and S-rank missing nins when protecting her sister. It was said that this battle was the one that had caused Tsunade to officially name Sakura the head of the shinobi medical branch. The story of how Naruto had challenged the leader while Sasuke, at his side, fought Itachi, was recanted time after time. Forever, the Twelve of Konoha would be told in legends just as the sannins had been.

Tenten, though, thought of something else when thinking of that battle. She looked back not at the fight itself, not at the yells and weapons, but at the aftermath. She remembered waking to the sound of birds in the morning, opening her eyes and seeing a curtain of black hair against her bed. She remembered how almost immediately his head had raised, eyes fearful that she wasn't her anymore. Then, that look of relief when she grinned—painfully, but happily—and started scolding him about sitting in a chair when he should have been resting in another hospital bed. Neji, ever calm, listened patiently, and Tenten just knew that, somehow, everything was right again.

It was why, even when she heard about the life-threatening missions Neji accepted, she knew that he'd be back. And she'd be right there, sitting at his hospital bed, when he woke. When he was declared head of the Hyuuga house, it was why she still went the next morning to their usual sparring spot, knowing he would be there.

And he was.

She started watching again, like she had once watched when they were both students. Like she had watched when they were genins and then chuunins. Now, though, she watched knowing that he did, too. Knowing that, even as a hero, ANBU captain, Hyuuga head, he was going to always be there, by her side. Yet, a part of her, the part that had been there since the beginning, wanted to know why. So she asked.

He glanced at her, his silver eyes gleaming. "Because you had seen me when no one else had."

It ended with love.

End