Title: how strange to think we were once lovers
Summary: There were worse things that could happen, Sakura decided, than having your teammate become a traitor, and nights with Tenten were a prime example. /NejiTen/SakuTen friendship/
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto
Notes1: Rest in Peace, Hyuuga Neji, mah nigga.
Notes2: "Bid the tide to climb so high that it ripped our shore up. I can fix it, I swear, if you trust me. I am old and I am rusting but I care."
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It started 2 nights after his death.
Sakura had been up late, studying a new scroll one of the recon teams ransacked from an abandoned camp a few days prior; feeling exhausted but too tired to sleep. Green eyes scanned the contents of the page, but her brain didn't register anything it was reading, and she found herself re-reading the passage three times before she sighed in defeat and put the scroll aside.
That's when Tenten strolled in, bottle of sake in hand, drunkenly swaying from side to side. "Yo, Sak!" She greeted ungracefully, stumbling over the tarp-floor; catching herself on the cloth walls.
Sakura shook her head. She'd been expecting this, yes, but certainly not so soon. She didn't want to admit that it tickled her knowing that she was the first person Tenten chose to see; sheer convenience or not.
Tenten was the first member of Team Gai she'd seen since Neji's death, the last one being Neji himself. She had no idea how the others were handling the tragedy, and keeping that in mind, Sakura smiled.
"Hello Tenten, how are you feeling?"
"I don't feel anything."
Simple, short, and blunt. A very Tenten-like response.
"Alcohol can do that to you." Sakura sighed and stood, ushering the brunette to her chair.
"I mean, I didn't feel anything before, so I drank to maybe feel something…anything." Tenten looked absolutely miserable, and Sakura, being the soft-touch that she was, turned away from the girl, busying herself with checking over a wounded ninja to escape.
She played off her concern with the words of a medic. "And we've learned a valuable lesson, haven't we?"
"Did it feel like this when Sasuke left?"
Sakura paused, still hunched over. The question stunned her only for a moment, and she went back to checking the rest of the sleeping men lining the walls. She turned back to Tenten, or where the brunette should have been, and frowned when she found that, disregarding the injured shinobi, she was alone. When she saw that the flap leading to the second, smaller portion of the tent was still swaying from recent movement, Sakura put two and two together and silently followed.
She wasn't at all surprised to find the female member of Team Gai curled up on her bedroll in the corner of the room, already fast asleep. (Sakura had been dealing with Tsunade long enough to know how much alcohol someone had consumed by their smell alone, and she could deduce the approximately how long it would take for them to pass out. Tenten was short 3 minutes.)
Like she had done many times for her master, Sakura moved to the end of the bed, where Tenten's feet dangled off the side, and quietly and efficiently removed her sandals.
She pulled the blanket that Tenten had thrown herself on top of, out from under her athletic frame and draped it over the sleeping girl.
She wouldn't scold Tenten for her actions, like she would Kakashi or Naruto, she decided.
Losing a teammate and a throbbing hangover would be punishment enough.
She left a painkiller and glass of water on her bed stand.
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When the rosette woke up from where she must have fallen asleep at her desk, it was around 3 in the morning. Shinobi were beginning to stir outside the medic tent, and she could smell the morning's breakfast already wafting into the tent entrance.
After administering another dose of morphine to her sleeping patients, Sakura decided against shoes and quietly exited the tent.
It was only a short distance to the largest tent in Base II (the medical tent coming in second) and Sakura absent-mindedly greeted passing shinobi. One of the newer recruits held the tent entrance open for her, and Sakura made note to treat him extra well, should he need to visit the med-tent anytime soon.
What could she say, she had a thing for manners.
Speaking of manners, her jewel eyes narrowed on a familiar pineapple-shaped head and she frowned. Strolling up to the table where coffee was being served, Sakura let her hand trail the length of the table before grabbing the coffee directly out of the strategists hands.
"Haruno," Shikamaru muttered gruffly, nodding his head once while puffing the cigarette caged between his lips. Sakura shook her head, taking a sip of coffee. "What have I told you about that?"
Shikamaru blinked several times, like he didn't know what she was talking about, before he rolled his eyes and puffed again. "Nothing I haven't heard from Ino." He turned away from her and busied himself with making another cup of coffee. "I heard you had a visitor last night."
"Really? Who did you hear this from?" Sakura asked, even though she had a pretty good idea of who it could have been.
"Kakashi."
Right on the money. While Sakura loved her old sensei dearly, he needed to mind his business. "Sometimes I wonder how he gets his information, but I don't think I want to know."
Shikamaru ignored her. "How did it go?"
Sakura wondered if maybe Shikamaru was asking just so he could tell the others – like Ino – who might have been asking, so she was hesitant in revealing anything too personal. Then again, she couldn't really imagine Nara Shikamaru gossiping like a schoolgirl.
To be safe, Sakura left it at a, "She was completely hammered."
"I'm not surprised."
Neither was Sakura.
The medic in her, however, was completely against any ninja, needing to be in peak physical, fighting condition, indulging in any harmful habits. Sakura glared at Shikamaru and his cigarette. "I don't condone this behavior at all."
"Said the kettle to the pot." Shikamaru took a final drag and dropped the tiny remain of his bad habit, crushing it with his boot. He raised an eyebrow at Sakura's bare feet, and looked up to comment, but quickly shut his mouth at Sakura's crossed-armed, cocked-hip stance.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
Honestly was the best policy, but for safety measures, Shikamaru chose his words carefully. "I seem to recall that every time you lose a patient, you drink yourself into oblivion."
Sakura huffed, dropping her arms and taking another drink. "Yes, but I don't condone it."
"Do as I say, not as I do, huh?" Shikamaru hummed, rolling his eyes again.
Sakura grinned.
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"You know you never answered my question."
It was sometime around 1 in the afternoon, after 2 more teams had arrived at the base, bloodied and bruised all over; when Sakura was beginning to feel just how much healing had taken out of her, that Tenten emerged from the back of the tent; glass of water in hand.
"That's because you passed out before I could." Sakura answered off-handedly, pushing another apple slice into the mouth of a recovering, albeit cheeky looking shinobi.
"Well, I'm awake now." Tenten propped herself against Sakura's desk while Sakura patted the shinobi on the head sharply as she stood, telling him politely to rest up.
She gave her newest patients a brief once-over, before she mustered the energy to sit down in her chair and face Tenten.
"No, I don't think you're feeling what I felt when Sasuke left."
Tenten looked like she was going to say something very, very rude, so Sakura stopped her before she had the chance.
"I'd only been on the same team as Sasuke for less than a year. You've grown up with Neji."
"I…"
"I think that what I felt was nothing compared to what you must be feeling now."
There was a hollow, broken look in Tenten's chocolate eyes that made Sakura's heart ache. While the status of Tenten and Neji's relationship was wildly debated but never confirmed, it was obvious that they were more than just teammates.
What Sakura said had been true and from the heart. She didn't think that what she felt for Sasuke would ever compare to what Tenten must have been feeling. Sakura was young when he left, and Sasuke was still alive. Tenten had been with Neji her entire teenage life, and he was dead.
Those facts alone upset Sakura more than she was willing to admit, and she turned to look at the scroll she'd abandoned the night before.
"How do I make it stop?" Tenten's voice cracked, and Sakura's heart contracted.
She wanted to shrug –how would she know what helped heal a broken heart? She'd wallowed in self-pity for nearly 6 months until Tsunade told her to get her shit together – "You can't. The only thing you really can do is surround yourself with people who love and care about you."
That was true. After her training had really begun, and she volunteered at the hospital helped Tsunade and Shizune with the Hokage's paperwork, she started feeling better. It didn't make the pain go away; but it took her mind off it for long enough so it wasn't all she thought about. Then, after a while, she didn't think about him every day.
While Tenten's situation was entirely different, Sakura thought that maybe the healing would be the same.
There was a pregnant pause, and Sakura looked up, thinking that maybe Tenten had left.
"So…I should spend more time with Lee and Gai-sensei?" Tenten looked like that was exactly what she didn't want to do.
"That's what I would suggest."
Another pause. Sakura looked back down at her scroll and barely skimmed the first line when she heard Tenten's small, shaking voice. "…and you? You'll be here for me?"
Sakura smiled. "What are friends for?"
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Notes3: Review.