A/N: Not actually an April Fool's joke! But today seemed like a good day to come out of hiding with a goofy little flufflet. You don't need to have read Necromancer to understand it, if you're willing to suspend your disbelief about Tenten and Sasuke hanging out. :)

These days I'm posting mainly on Archive of Our Own under two names: V-chan2k6, and likethedirection. It's where I have my fic in the Glee and Supernatural fandoms as well. You're welcome to go check it out!

I actually have quite a few partially-written oneshots that take place in the Necroverse, but just never ended up posting them due to being eaten by other fandoms, other projects, and/or real life. But this one I did finish, and as it seems Necromancer is still being discovered and read (seriously, guys, I have no words for the response it has gotten over time, miles and miles beyond what I'd expected when I posted that first chapter in 2006), I'm inspired to try and finish some of these oneshots that have been hanging in limbo and post them in a collection here. It will NOT be chronological, and some entries might be in parallel universes from each other - I'm just messing around in the Necroverse because it's fun. :) Enjoy, and happy April Fic Day!

Crowning Glory

.

It wasn't that Sasuke ever forgot that Tenten was a girl. That would be ridiculous. She was different from the girls who had followed him around at the Academy - different from a lot of the people around him, really, in a way that he couldn't put his finger on - but she was still, ultimately, a girl. That said, by the time he was newly fourteen and she was halfway to fifteen, he'd lulled himself into assuming that she would never actually remind him of that.

She hadn't seemed distracted until after they had finished training and taken their usual spots in the clearing, cleaning their collected blades and putting them away. She was quicker at it than he was, her movements as efficient and mechanical as they had to be to maintain the arsenal she did, and so she finished before he did, clasping her hands under her knees and frowning at the ground.

He didn't ask - he got preoccupied inside his own head often enough to not be bothered by anyone else doing it - but he didn't expect her to lift her head and pose the question.

"Should I get a haircut?"

Sasuke glanced at her sidelong, wary. "How should I know?"

She sighed. "Help me out, Sasuke. I need advice on this, and all my friends are guys."

"I'm a guy."

She rolled her eyes. "I know you're a guy. But I'm not talking about this with either of my teammates."

Sasuke grunted, thrown off. "Hyuuga would know more about hair problems."

"Ha, ha. Give me five minutes and an honest opinion and it'll be all over with, promise." He opened his mouth, but she went on, "It's just, I've been wearing it like this ever since I grew it out, because when I was a kid it was really short and the other kids made fun of me for looking like a boy. So once it was long enough, I started doing it like this. You know, girl-hair." She squeezed her hair-buns with an unsatisfied twist of her mouth, then got to work undoing first one, then the other. "Of course, then I got made fun of for looking like a mouse or a dumpling-head, but at least they knew I was a girl. But I haven't changed it in ages, you know?"

"My hair has been the same since I was five."

She clicked her tongue and pitched an acorn at him, which he batted out of the air, unconcerned. She huffed and finished undoing her hair, taking off her forehead protector and finger-combing through the loosened waves while she talked. It was longer than it looked, falling past her shoulders to the middle of her back. (Climbing up to the bed to watch Mother at the mirror, mystified at how pulling out that one little stick can send her hair tumbling down, down, down, long and dark and beautiful.)

"-so then I thought to myself, why not just shave it all off and tattoo the Leaf symbol in the middle of my forehead to save time?"

Sasuke blinked rapidly. "What?"

This time, the acorn bounced right off his head while she chuckled at him. "I was wondering when you'd snap out of it. Where did you go?"

Sasuke pulled himself back to the moment and shook his head. "Nowhere."

She let out her breath. "Look, I know it's boring, okay? I'm boring myself by talking about it. Can you try to last just two more minutes? I don't have anyone to talk about this with and I need to get it out in the air so I'll have room to think."

Resigned, Sasuke turned to face her directly, resting his elbows on his knees. "Don't shave your head."

The expression she shot him was wholly unimpressed, and he lifted an eyebrow. "You wanted advice."

She groaned, flopping back against the stump and sullenly twisting her hair over one shoulder. "It doesn't matter that much what it looks like, as long as it's out of the way." Untwisting it, she let it fall back down and took some of it between her fingers like scissors, looking at them with a calculating eye. She moved her finger-scissors down, then up higher, to her chin. "I guess we're not in the academy anymore. Maybe I should just chop it off again-"

"No," Sasuke was blurting before his brain could catch up.

She blinked at him. "No?"

Mentally kicking himself, Sasuke backpedaled, "...You can do what you want." He shrugged. "But it's...good." Another mental kick, and he was pretty sure he was making his own hair stand on end. He looked moodily away. "It's good long."

Tenten was staring at him - he could feel it - and he wished she'd stop so his face could cool down.

"Huh," she said, finally. "The rumors really were true."

Sasuke frowned and glanced back. "Rumors?"

She had a teasing smile for him when he looked, even if she was looking a little pink herself. "Back in the academy. There was a whole year when almost all the girls in the next year down - well, your year - they all started growing their hair really long. When I asked one of them why, she said it was because 'Sasuke-kun likes long hair.'"

She pitched her voice high and girly and horrifying, dramatically tossing her hair over one shoulder, and whatever face he made was enough to make her burst out laughing. "Sorry," she said, smiling big and bright and sounding like herself again. "Bad experiences, right?"

"...Don't ever do that again."

He was very serious about this request. It just made her laugh more.

"I'm just teasing you," she said once she'd caught her breath. She pulled her hair to the nape of her neck and started doing something there. "That really was the rumor, though."

Sasuke sighed, dropping his face into his hand. "That wasn't…" He shook his head

Tenten's hands paused. "What?"

He dropped his hand to his side again, frowning at the ground. Too quietly, he said, "That wasn't it."

She watched him a bit longer before resuming her...braiding, that's what she was doing. "What was it?"

(After, Mother doesn't go to the mirror anymore. She doesn't let down her hair. He doesn't watch it tumble down or wave behind her when she walks or twist between her fingers while she talks. She can't, and he can't, because Mother is gone.)

Sasuke shook his head again. "It doesn't matter."

She didn't look like she believed him, but didn't ask anything more. She tied off her braid and fastened her forehead protector back under her bangs, then got to her feet, pulling out a kunai.

"The thing about long hair," she said as she went through a quick kata, the braid whipping behind her, "is that it isn't all that practical." She stopped, reset, and started another one, seeming to be testing something. She followed the kata in a quick turn to the opposite side, and the braid bounced off her neck before settling over her shoulder. She frowned with a disapproving hum. "If you're not smart about it, long hair can kill you."

Sasuke couldn't suppress a snort, and she clicked her tongue again, pitching the kunai into the target over his head. "I'm serious! We learned about it in the academy! While all you boys got to go out and practice sparring and taijutsu and all the fun stuff, we got a whole day devoted to how not to get strangled with your hair."

Sasuke bent his head and fought the laugh very, very hard. He succeeded, sort of.

Tenten heaved a put-upon sigh. "Laugh it up, smart guy. Just for that, you're helping me test this. Up!"

"Test what?" he asked, not bothering to help much as she tugged him to his feet.

"This," she said, picking up the end of her braid and waving it at him. "I think it could work, but it could also be a liability in battle. So you're helping me test it." She pulled her kunai out of the target and took position. "Your mission is to try and use this thing against me to win a match," she said, holding up the braid again before dropping it down her back, "and my mission is not to let you."

He stared flatly at her. "You want me to try and strangle you with your hair."

"Yep!" she said brightly. "Or trap, or distract. No chopping it off, though, or you're the one getting throttled with it." She threw him a winning smile. "Got it?"

Sasuke hesitated to get in position. Yes, being a shinobi meant noticing and taking advantage of every option, but beating someone by grabbing their hair just felt...cheap. "I'm not going to chop it off."

Studying him, she added, "Will you help me if I throw in a free ice cream?"

"I don't need-" He let out his breath and gave up, dropping into his stance. "Just go."

"You're the best!" she said, then sprang forward and cheerfully kicked him in the face.

One of the first things Sasuke had learned about Tenten was that fighting her was different than fighting other people. That in itself wasn't really a surprise; from shinobi to shinobi, every fight felt different. Fighting Naruto was a competition. Fighting Kakashi-sensei was a lesson. Fighting Anko-sensei was an endurance test. All different, but all serious, all focused.

Fighting Tenten was different. Fighting Tenten was fun.

It was fun, he was realizing, because she was having fun. She wasn't fueled by darkness, by trauma or isolation or vengeance - she just fought because she loved it. She was the only girl he'd ever met who would take a roundhouse kick to the jaw and smile, not nastily or ruefully, but just...happily, because she liked that kind of challenge. She tried new things, sometimes weird things, sometimes complete failures of things, and she had fun doing it, and sometimes he couldn't keep his lips from twitching up in return, because it was contagious.

Other times, he would not have that problem, because he was ten minutes into a spar and getting smacked in the face with a braid.

He sputtered, his eyes automatically squeezing shut for a second too long, and the next thing he knew there was a delighted, "Ha!" and his shoulders were hitting the ground under Tenten's weight, knocking the wind out of him. A practice kunai pressed to his throat.

He groaned and cracked an eye open, waiting for her to declare the match, but she didn't. She was laughing too hard.

"I can't believe that worked!" she managed between giggles. In reply, Sasuke darted a hand around and gave her braid a hard yank.

Tenten yelped and snapped back to attention, but Sasuke had already knocked the kunai out of her hand and thrown his weight into her, overshooting a little from the awkward angle and rolling them a half-turn too many. It didn't matter, though; he ended up underneath her again, but by the time they got there, she had a braid tugged around her throat and a kunai pressed under her left shoulder. Much better.

"Match."

Tenten gulped in a half-breath, her head awkwardly angled from the pull on her hair, and spoke through her teeth. "Not one word."

Sasuke smirked. Tenten glared. Then her mouth twitched, and her eyes twinkled, and she finally collapsed back into giggles. "You're such a brat," she said, laugh-staggered and unconvincing.

"You didn't call the match," he pointed out. "Now you're dead."

Tenten dropped her forehead to Sasuke's chest, shoulders still shaking helplessly, and she was starting to be contagious again. Sasuke pressed his lips together. Muffled, Tenten laugh-whimpered, "Hair-asphyxiation. That's the worst cause of death ever."

She broke into hard, near-silent laughter again, and Sasuke finally gave in, exhaling a laugh of his own. He dropped his head back to the ground to wait her out, relaxing his kunai-arm and loosening his grip on her hair, watching the sky.

A second, and he closed his eyes. This, he told himself. If things get bad again, remember this.

Finally Tenten seemed able to pull herself together, turning her head to the side and using him as a pillow for just a second as she caught her breath, and patted his shoulder. "Lemme go."

Sasuke complied, letting go of her braid and lifting his arm from her back so she could roll off and flop down next to him, still beaming with mirth. She shook her head. "That was ridiculous."

"Yeah."

"And this," she held up the end of the braid while he sat up, "is definitely not going to work." She followed suit with a huff, frowning at it before glancing at him. "You have any bright ideas?"

Sasuke lifted an eyebrow at her. She rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine," she said, idly twisting the braid around her hand. "We can be done. Good fight, anyway. Cheater."

"It wasn't cheating."

"You played dead!"

"You hit me with your hair."

A giggle surprised its way out of her, but she seemed to catch herself before she could lose it again. "Never saw it coming, did you?"

He grunted, and she threw him a saccharine grin before lowering her eyes to her braid, wrapped twice around her hand now. She paused, eyeing it, and thoughtfully bit her lip. "Hold on."

Unraveling it from her fingers, she reached behind her head to fuss with the braid again, this time coiling it into a tight, thick bun at the base of her head, tucking the bottom tuft into her hair tie.

Not that Sasuke was staring - he wasn't - but it was sort of fascinating, watching her work, watching how the new shape made her looks change without quite changing. Her old hair-buns had made her seem younger somehow, less threatening, at least until he'd gotten to know her. This was different.

She grabbed her kunai and rolled to her feet, setting herself up for the same kata as before. Running through it, she grinned. "Now we're talking." She turned the smile on him. "What do you think? Wait, no, first question: Are any embarrassing nicknames popping into your head right now?"

Sasuke shook his head, studying her. "You look older."

Her eyes lit up. "Really?" He shrugged, and she made a delighted noise and moved into another experimental kata. This time, the braid-bun came loose and tumbled down her back again when she turned too quickly, and she made a face. "Ah, it's all messed up from sparring. I can figure it out for tomorrow." She held out a hand to pull him to his feet, and he took it while she chuckled. "I wonder if anyone will know it's me. People barely remember who I am now, and I've been Bun-Head Girl for four years." She threw him a mischievous grin. "I bet I can confuse nine out of ten people in the next week. What's your wager?"

Sasuke frowned at her, dusting off his clothes. "People know you."

"Come on, Sasuke. The first time we talked here, it took you a whole conversation to remember my name." He opened his mouth, but she raised her eyebrows expectantly at him, and he reconsidered. She pulled her braid over her shoulder, absently fussing with it again. "It's really okay. Lucky, even. We're shinobi, and we're moving up. Chances are we'll be put on a lot of stealth missions in the future. When you're trying not to get noticed, ordinary is the best thing you can possibly be."

"You're not ordinary."

Her face opened up, just for a second, in something like surprise. He held her gaze, and it was easy to do, because sometimes, truth was easy.

For a long beat, she didn't reply, and then a tiny smile played at her lips and she dropped her gaze. "Don't say that, Sasuke," she said, a little too soft for the joke it was meant to be. She lifted her gaze, and she was grinning and confident again. "For all you know, being stealthy is my long-lost bloodline limit. I could come from a long line of masters of disguise."

She punctuated it by pulling her braid under her nose in a makeshift moustache, and Sasuke couldn't fight a snort, rolling his eyes. Tenten chuckled and threw the braid back over her shoulder, slipping her kunai into its holster. "Come on. You were a brave martyr and put up with my girl-talk, so I owe you an ice cream."

"I said you don't need to-"

"Okay, I'll rephrase," she interrupted, sighing. "I want ice cream, and it's depressing to go for ice cream alone, and also I figured you were going to say no so I stole your money pouch while we were sparring."

Sasuke's mouth dropped open as she produced the pouch with a cheeky, triumphant, not-at-all-guilty grin. "Well, that's settled!" She moved cheerfully past him, pouch in tow, and Sasuke sighed and followed. "I think I'm getting strawberry. Or maybe mint chip. Both? Would that be weird? What kind do you even li-ee!"

She cut herself off with a squeak when he tugged on her conveniently-tuggable braid in passing, throwing her off-balance enough for him to snatch his money pouch back, not missing a step. Coolly and maybe a little smugly, he replied, "Red bean."

Tenten gawked at him and shrilled, "You jerk!" In the next second he was yanked into a headlock, her hand ruffling his hair so thoroughly that he tried (failed) to recoil with a squawk that he would deny until the end of time. She relented when he elbowed her, not hard, but not before swiping the pouch away again with a triumphant, "Ha!"

Sasuke grabbed for it, but she danced out of range. "Nope! Mine now!" She threw him a broad grin and started in the direction of the village at a sprint, calling over her shoulder, "Catch me if you dare, Uchiha!"

Contagious. Even as he dashed after her through the trees, across the training grounds and into the streets, it vaguely occurred to him that he was smiling.

I will remember this.

.

(He would also remember, after the multitude of bewildered stares and the way Tenten burst out laughing into her hand when he caught up, just what happens when you over-ruffle a lightning-user's hair.)