Series: Naruto
Disclaimer: Naruto and its characters do not belong to me.
Notes: Written as a contest entry for a Tenten LiveJournal community. Third fanfic ever.
They'd practiced this scenario a thousand times over.
- - -
"Blindfold me," she'd said, fists full of small kunai crafted especially for throwing. "I wanna feel my target. If there's smoke or heavy rain, I might not be able to see." The weapons twitched as she tightened her grip, cracking her knuckles.
Neji complied, as he always did when there was nothing glaringly foolish to be pointed out in her rhetoric. "Your hitai-ate. Just pull it down over your eyes." As soon as he'd said it though, he remembered her fingers full of sharp metal and stepped behind her. It was a moment's work to adjust the firm black square knot and slide the tough material into place.
Before he saw it, he could feel his teammate smirking as the kunai flipped easily from her practiced hands and thudded into the targets. Neji watched the wood split into miniscule splinters, tiny paint flakes spattering in the grass. Dead center: three head shots and four others sinking into vital areas on the painted logs.
"Perfect," Tenten said, twirling a kunai blindly. Her empty hand dove into the holster just above her knee to retrieve three of the larger, standard size kunai.
"How can you be so sure?" Neji asked, knowing that she hadn't raised the blindfold to confirm the hit. She was right, there was no question, but he wasn't sure he appreciated the hint of arrogance filtering through her tone of voice. If she was so confident in her abilities, then why bother with the training? he'd thought, before mentally adding: hypocrite.
"Can you imagine it any other way?" she'd returned, teeth barely showing through a tightlipped smile. Already her fingers had divided the remaining kunai amongst themselves, clutching the gauze bound handles almost delicately.
"You realize," he'd started dryly, moving toward the pitted targets, "that you're throwing at a set of wooden objects that don't retaliate, correct? Targets that you've already seen?" The familiar whistle of metal snicking through air answered him, razor edge of a kunai glancing off a few strands of his dark hair.
"Oh, Neji," she'd laughed, turned halfway in the wrong direction, "this is the fun part."
- - -
But he still hadn't expected it to turn out quite like this.
"I'll take care of it," she said, a grim clarity sinking into her voice as Tenten paused beside him. Neji sucked in a mouthful of air, about to protest when a grimy hand fell on his shoulder. "You're low on chakra. I felt the burns on your hands earlier." Felt, not saw. The last dregs of chakra that he'd pulled through his circulatory system seared the pathways, cut off his ability to—at the very least—turn off tenketsu. He supposed, though, that activating his byakugan was not completely out of the question. "Don't even think about it," she warned. "Push your chakra any further and even your limitless Hyuuga pride won't save you."
Just beyond the copse came the telltale slithering of bodies moving through brush, the almost-crack of twigs and stone drawing closer. They'd beat a steady retreat thus far, bodies of their teammates strewn like bloodied confetti behind them. A disaster—someone had clearly been feeding Konoha misinformation about Hidden Rock's intentions, just to lead them to this particular flashpoint.
Neji caught her arm, deliberately turning his gaze from her ruined face. "No. This mission is a failure already." With an easy flick of her wrist, the point of a tanto pressed against the hollow of his throat, eliciting a thin weal of bright blood. Her response had been instantaneous and precise.
"We'll never make it back together if we run. You're faster, and someone's gotta let the Hokage know what's going on," she finished, hissing between her teeth. The pressure against his neck diminished momentarily. What he heard: we didn't see this coming, didn't plan, and you're useless to me now.
"You're no better."
"Blindfold me." A demand, not a request. She was already sorting scrolls, pads of her fingertips carefully running the cylinders, testing the texture of the parchments, and reading the notches.
Her hitai-ate had long since been lost, likely severed in the same sweeping stroke that left one of her eyes a swollen mess of coagulating blood and dirt. The other eye...he had a hard time looking at. He'd barely been able to throw off a Rock nin that seemed particularly intent on cutting out the brown doe-eye he was all too familiar with. As he reached up, wordlessly untying his own forehead protector—now hearing the close ring of steel sliding free from sheath—he wondered if she'd ever see again. As if on cue, the sudden rush of fresh air against the manji on his forehead prickled hairs.
The notion that sight was a commodity able to be lost, terrified him.
"Neji," she said, an edge of impatience sliding into her voice. He was moving too slowly. Almost startled, he draped the tough fabric over what was left of her eyes and tied the black, tapered ends in a firm square knot.
"Tenten," he began, speaking quietly near her ear, trying to ignore the shaking tree limbs at the very edges of his field of vision. "Let me be your eyes."
"It's that bad, huh?" she laughed, a short bark of almost-humor. "You better get moving." And this too, he understood: If you stay here, I can and will kill you myself. Hasn't there been enough dying?
For another full minute he stood and stared, posture still perfectly aristocratic despite the weariness settling into his bones. With a sick, hopeless fascination he watched a Rock nin burst from the shadow of an oak, watched his arms straighten and palms flatten, watched them fail to deal a killing blow that should have had the enemy aspirating all over his flak jacket. Miraculously, a long handled kunai sprouted from his trachea. "Neji!" a voice called over his shoulder. "Go!" Another kunai zinged past his ear, nicking cartilage before it buried itself in the shoulder of another shinobi.
And then he was running from the woman fighting with a blind fervor, forcing spent legs to churn against the ground without the aid of chakra. Not fast enough. He could still hear the familiar drop of bodies to the ground, see the spiraling smoke dragons of Soushoryu. A low hanging branch caught at his clothes, tearing a long red line across his cheek. Too weak, too stupid to not have seen this coming—Neji cursed himself, cursed his body for giving up on him before the fight had been finished.
When it hit him, it was almost paralyzing. He'd left her. He'd sacrificed her for the sake of the mission—she couldn't have been any better than himself, despite having enough chakra left to work with, and she was diverting the flow of enemy shinobi to give him time. Neji turned, steadying himself with one hand on a tree trunk. "Byakugan!" Nothing. He choked with the effort, teeth clenched, and felt a blood vessel pop in one eye. "Byakugan!" Veins pulsed briefly before he hit the ground.
- - -
A day passed before she managed to drag a mostly broken body in a direction that seemed at least partways familiar. Near sixty percent of her efforts were concentrated in narrowly avoiding rocky outcroppings, low tree limbs and overgrown roots. She wasn't entirely surprised, then, when she staggered into another obstacle and fell on an already bent wrist. Her tongue, like sandpaper, ran along chapped lips, trying to coax sensation into something as she gamely attempted to stand. And caught a fistful of hair.
It was another body. With what might have been a sneer at one point, Tenten struggled to push herself off the barely warm lump, her one almost-good hand trying to find purchase. Maybe she'd gone the wrong way and—wait. Long hair. Something cracked painfully. Delicately, as though the only way she could still manipulate her own appendages, she traced lines down the sprawled figure, hesitating at the cold hands.
"You stupid fuck," she croaked. All along the tips of each finger, she read the familiar burn patterns like braille. "Someone was supposed to go back. Someone has to go back." Automatically, she found his face, touched the smooth eyelids and wondered if the Hyuuga juin jutsu had given up on him and burned out his optic nerves. Two blind idiots.
Maybe, if she started now and drew closer to Konoha, the ANBU would find her. If nothing else, his body was a beacon, an arrow pointing the way home if she could manage to walk in a straight line. Biting her torn lip to keep from crying out, Tenten slumped to her feet and tugged her body forward, seasick with the darkness.
She couldn't look back.