Rainbow, a naruto fanfic

So I just realized I've forgotten any disclaimers for my last few stories. Thus;

Disclaimer: I am an innocent Naruto fan who would never in a million years dream of owning Naruto. Also, the lyrics are from Everything I Do by Bryan Adams. I love that song, and thought it was about time I did a fic centered on those lyrics.

Written for Nebulasan, beta-ed by the great and might Sahara Storm. May NejiTen rule the world.

- Rainbow -

- By Ariel32 -

Look into my eyes. You will see…what you mean to me.

He likes to watch her when she wears pink.

She is always beautiful, but when she wears pink, she is a wild rose, a butterfly with orchid wings, a flower with cherry petals blooming. She is always Tenten, but when she wears pink, he remembers that she is Tenten, the one that has been with him since the very beginning. The girl who was not a girl but who wore pink hair ribbons and a pink clasped shirt and raced boys during her years at the Academy. The girl who threw truer and tried harder than any student, seeking her own dreams of wings and sunlight.

When she wears pink, he sees both who she is and who she has been. When she wears pink, his heart speeds gently and his gaze does not leave her. There is something warm in his chest, something that settles inside him and weighs him down but sets him free.

Pink isn't just her color. It's theirs.

Search your heart, search your soul. When you find me there, you'll search no more.

He asks her why she no longer wears pink one day, when she is fourteen. She has just made her switch in outfits, now favoring white and red over her previous pink. He suspects it has something to do with her dragons, red and white and dust and smoke, black calligraphy dancing over parchment, but she surprises him.

"This way I can fill it," she tells him. "You know. Like paper. I can…" She struggles a moment. "…think about all the colors I still don't have yet," she says at last.

White reminds her of all the things she does not have yet, of an entire rainbow still left to discover. It is the sky she has yet to fly in, the clouds she has yet to touch, wings she has yet to use. It is her way of turning towards the future, the way pink is his way of remembering the past. Something turns in his chest. He looks at her carefully.

"I know," he says. She smiles.

She doesn't look as good in white as she does in pink. But she is still beautiful.

Look into your heart. You will find…there's nothing left to hide.

Lee gives her a turquoise scarf one year, during the fall. Neji remembers it because the leaves are falling, in a glory of red and orange that drifts in the wind and scatters over the stiff green of the grass. The sky is clear and sharp and the air smells like the forest. It is the season of color.

She wears it most days as the weather grows colder, the trees barer, the reds and golds fading slowing into dull copper. It doesn't match her outfit but she doesn't mind, and neither does Lee.

Neji doesn't mind either, but he can't help watching her as she throws it over her shoulder, tucking it around her face. Words gather at the hollow of his throat, tucked in the corner of his mouth, until he can't help speaking.

"What's your favorite color?" he asks.

"Turquoise," she says.

He feels her answer sink into the air, wonders how he didn't know this when Lee did. He stares at the scarf, turquoise and new against the bright pink of her cheeks. Tenten looks at him, amber eyes bright and softening.

"Oh Neji," she says, because by now she can read him as well as he can read her. "It doesn't matter. It's LeeYou know him."

Neji shrugs. He knows Lee, but it doesn't quite take away the sting.

It isn't until later, when he sees Lee saluting cheerfully to an old woman he has just helped cross the street, that Neji realizes she is right. He and Tenten train together, have trained together, since they were children seeking their dreams. But two only makes a pair, and three to makes a team. Sometimes Neji is blind and Tenten is grounded, and sometimes Lee is the one who reminds them that you don't have to see the sky to be free, and you don't have to fly to have wings.

So he waits until Lee sees him and bounds towards him with enough youthful enthusiasm to light up the entire village with his beaming smile and his cry of "Neji!"

"Lee," he says, and tilts his head.

They start down the street together, one smooth and silent and white, one bouncy and loud and green.

Their silence – when Lee pauses for breath – is comfortable.

You know it's true. Everything I do…I do it for you.

She falls when she is sixteen.

It isn't her first time, and it isn't the first time he's been there to see it, but it's the worst. The kunai is driven into her side, all the way up to the handle. She gasps, a sharp intake of breath, and stumbles. The moonlit point of her katana wavers and falls.

The ninja gives a nasty chuckle and makes to wrench the kunai back out. By the time his hand closes on the weapon, Neji is there. A flash of blue, a quick blast of chakra. The ninja drops like a stone, but not before Tenten raises her katana and stabs him through the chest.

"I just wanted – to have – the final blow," she pants as she goes to her knees. "He – was going on – about – kunoichi –"

Neji has to fight to keep from closing his hand around her arm with an iron grip. "Tenten," he says.

She looks up at him. Her hair is coming out, strands settling over her face so that he cannot see her properly. Blood runs down her side in a rivulet of red. He can feel her shaking gently, barely, the small tremors that rack her shoulders.

"Neji. I –"

"Don't talk," he says tightly. His face – he hopes – is stone. She doesn't know the fear that shoots through him, sinks like a rock in his stomach, numbing him and sending his heart racing. His eyes strain silver as he reaches for her.

Her hand closes around his. It's warm.

He pulls her against him and runs.

She has never worn red. She never will.

There's nowhere, unless you're there…All the time, all the way.

The scar is still there.

He sees it one day when they are training together, Tenten twisting in midair, the pale scarlet-lined parchment unfurling in a spiral around her. He glimpses it between the columns of calligraphy as her shirt flaps in the wind, a short mark of white against her skin that disappears in the next second.

When they are finished, they rest in the shade of the trees. She lays on her back, staring up at the sky, a blue plain that curves overhead, turquoise like the scarf Lee has given her.

"You know," she says, as if it is just dawning on her, "you never wear any colors. Lee wears green, at least. You just wear white."

He thinks about the colors she has gone through. The memories that will last forever.

"I don't need to wear colors," he says.

She raises herself to look at him, propping one elbow against the ground and resting her chin in hand. A breeze filters languidly through the trees, rustling leaves, lifting dark strands of hair. "Oh?"

He looks at her, silver eyes searching amber ones. "No."

He doesn't say more. He doesn't need to.

Her colors are enough.