Fireworks
Yugao
Summary: It was because of the dragon and the phoenix that Neji decided he would always be there to protect her no matter what.
Author's Note: Neji and Tenten again! I know it's kind of late for New Year's Eve but let's just say all the pretty lights inspired this. Plus, I wanted to do a story background one-shot for Tenten. It's lots of fun to do. Yes, still focusing on Neji's point of view because… because! Yeah. I like him. (Okay, I'll stop babbling now and you can go on to the fic.)
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Every New Year's Eve Hyuuga Neji sat out on the ground in the Hyuuga compound, in a place that got full view of the vast expanse of the night sky. Even at such a grand occasion no one had any time to indulge in pretty ornamental luxuries like fireworks; they did not see a need to set off any in order to ring in the New Year. And so he sat there in the middle of the Hyuuga training area watching the sky.
Often the stars were concealed, thanks to the smog from all the firecrackers and sparklers. The night was numbly cold, though the air was still. And his placid eyes were always turned to the east of the compound, his features frozen and expressionless.
Their neighbor was of Chinese descent. Though the man of the house was no ninja, he was masterful in crafting several things and was one of Konoha's most esteemed merchants. That first year they arrived, Neji was only five years old. They had built a small house for their family of three beside the Hyuuga complex.
At that time, Neji was curious about them. They had no other neighbors, and the young Hyuuga often chanced spying on them from little cracks in the concrete wall the elders hadn't noticed. The first time he tried was one week after they moved in, and he peered through one crack and saw all three of them in their backyard, dressed in plain cotton clothes in the traditional Chinese style.
The father – a tall man with dark hair – carried a little girl on his shoulders. The mother, whose dark brown hair was put up in a single bun, was gently coercing her husband to put their daughter down. The little girl laughed, and Neji froze. She was probably no older than he was, with dark brown hair pulled up into twin buns on either side of her head. Her warm brown eyes were on her father admiringly.
The next time he spied on them was two weeks later, around noon. He spotted the little girl playing with a porcelain doll. Her eyes were downcast and sad, and he wondered exactly what had happened. Before he could think, her eyes met his and she broke out into a friendly smile, and waved at him. He ran away from the spot and, for a while, didn't return.
About a month later, he decided she had forgotten all about the encounter and went to look into the backyard again. She was waiting for him.
"Why'd you go?" she asked, wide-eyed and innocent. "Don't leave. Let's be friends!"
He obeyed, but knew not why. He stayed there and looked at her for the longest time. They had the first of many staring contests: he gazed at her vacantly; she peered at him through smiling eyes. Finally, she said through the crack, "My name's Ai Tian Tian." It was she who offered her friendship, and it was she who first wondered if it would be returned.
"Ten… ten?" he echoed unfamiliarly. The nuance in the hidden second syllable escaped him, and the letter "a" faded into obscurity soon afterwards.
She giggled. "No, not Tenten – Tian Tian," she corrected him. He huffed, and turned to leave to hide his childishly bruised ego. She called him back with, "But you can call me Tenten if you want to."
And so she was Tenten, not only to him, but also to everyone else since then.
"Tomorrow," she told him, "Is New Year's."
He nodded placidly. "I know that."
"Watch the sky tonight!" she said excitedly before her mother called after her, and she disappeared from view.
Neji had never been much of a stargazer, in truth. But that night, he looked up at the sky in the middle of the training area, puzzled beyond puzzlement. It wasn't until around midnight that a ray of orange light burst forth into the sky, exploding into a hundred different-colored raindrops. Having never seen such a sight before, he rushed to the crack where he and his new friend had met.
"What was that?" he demanded.
She giggled, answering, "They're fireworks, silly. Papa makes them all the time, every New Year's. Oh, look…"
And they talked and watched the fireworks the rest of the night.
By the time he was old enough to enter the Academy he had forgotten all about Tenten, passing her off as one of those ridiculous childhood memories one kept fondly but never dared to rekindle. He was a ninja-in-training, now; he had no need for conversations behind a cracked wall or prettily colored lights. He was a Hyuuga, and he had to live up to his name.
Imagine his surprise when the first person he met when he entered the Academy was a fun, slightly brash young girl with her dark hair up in buns and vibrant brown eyes. "Tian Tian?" he asked without thinking, using her given name and not the one he had called her.
Her brow furrowed. "I… I'm sorry. Do I know you?" she asked him, taken aback at the name. No one had called her that since she was five, and three years later, her true name resurfaced. Who was this?
"No," he lied, "I must've mistaken you for someone else."
She let out a small chuckle. "You're that boy, aren't you? The one past the crack in the wall," she guessed with a light laugh, "Why didn't you tell me in the first place?"
Coldly, he disregarded her comment. "I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about."
And it was the first time in many that he would leave her standing there alone.
He dedicated his time to studying, to training, and he preoccupied himself more than ever. He convinced himself he wanted nothing to do with that girl, that Ai Tian Tian. Yet, that New Year's Eve, he sat out on the training grounds and watched the fireworks spiral into a ball of light before fading.
He wondered, really, if he wanted to forget all about her as much as he said he did.
She often surprised him in class; sometimes answering questions even he didn't know the answer to. She bested him in the tests on accuracy and dexterity. They sat together, but they never spoke a single word to each other. If they did, it was one word, plus a curt nod, and nothing else. He took the consequences of the choice he had made the first day of school, and felt like he lost the only friend he ever had.
The year he turned twelve was the last year he had seen the fireworks light up the sky. They were the most magnificent yet, forming unique and intricate shapes in the vast starless void. One ray of fire shot up, and became a majestic winged creature in red orbs. Another ray of fire, and in blue a dragon appeared, slightly overlapping with the phoenix's wings and creating an amethyst light between them before fading into darkness.
He stood. The phoenix and the dragon, he realized, were him and Tenten.
Fate had brought them together; was he going to let his pride get in the way?
A few months later, he heard that Tenten's parents had passed away, and that she was going to move out from the house beside them to somewhere else. He stood by the crack in the wall, too tall to peer through it and using his Byakugan instead. "Tenten," he said, knowing she was on the other side.
"Neji?" she said, surprised.
"I'm sorry."
And it was the first time in many that he would see her cry.
A few months later they graduated together and were placed in the same genin cell. They grew closer – or at least as close as Neji would allow himself to get to a person. Every time he was with her, he remembered the outspread wings of the phoenix, close to the dragon enough for them to change each other.
And fate had let it happen – they had changed each other somehow.
So even though no one lived in the little house to their right, Hyuuga Neji returned to the middle of the training grounds every New Year's Eve and raised his pallid eyes to the sky. Every year, he reminisced the phoenix and the dragon, and his silent promise to her parents to always protect her no matter what.
Author's Note: Yes, it's done! Hahaha. That was so fun. I have no idea how I should categorize this though. Oh yeah! In case you didn't know, "Ai" is also Chinese for "Love" whereas "Tian" is the actual pronunciation of the Chinese word that means "Heaven." In China, names are sometimes repeated as a form of endearment. Yays. Happy New Year everyone!