#1 When Sleep Comes
She moved on. At least, she pretended like she had. But it wasn't easy. After seeing the rest of her peers happy with their lives, their partners, their children... she had started questioning if it was worth pining over one guy forever.
Yes, she loved him. She still did but she had to get on with her life. But the more she invested into her dating quest, the more the dreams increased. The first one barely registered in her psyche. After all, it wasn't all that unusual for her to dream about Neji. But lately, her dream Neji had started taking a darker persona.
She could still remember her first dream. He had caught her in a tight embrace and vowed never to let her go. She remembered getting up and noticing her pillow soaked with her tears.
It was a far cry from the dream she had last night. That is, if she could call it a dream at all. And yet, they felt all too familiar because they had haunted her mind ever since she began dating Kiba, of all people.
Last night was a definite reminder that she needed to be afraid of her dream Neji.
Maybe, Tenten, she thought to herself, you could begin by not calling him yours.
How could she not...
Gently she closed her eyes and undid her tied hair to fall in gentle waves, rubbing her scalp to soothe it.
Unbidden sleep came like a gentle draft, and with sleep came yet another dream.
This time, not unlike the other times, she was in a pitch black room of sorts. Her hands were tied with chains and her mouth bound with some kind of barbed cloth. She knew it was a dream, because the barbs did not hurt her at all.
Any minute now, she knew he would appear. And he did, transparent and hollow, and yet beautiful. His white eyes made him look ethereal, his forehead unbranded, no longer a caged bird. At what price though. After all, what was freedom when he was dead.
"Tenten", he whispered, reaching out to cup her cheek, "my beautiful, loving Tenten."
She tried to fight against the bindings, wanting, needing to reply to him, but the barbs held firm. It was her second indication and push to reality that Neji was in fact dead. He would never speak so warmly, always stoic and harsh in his demeanour, even though she knew he was warm, kind and safe.
The air around her turned chilly as his mood changed. He pulled the chains that bound her hands. They clattered against the cold wall she was tied to, momentarily rendering her deaf.
"Why? Why? Why? WHY?"
Her only reply was a muffled gasp. She wanted to tell him, how much she loved him, how her heart seemed to stop when he wasn't around, and yet...
From experience she knew, she would wake up any moment now, but she didn't. Instead Neji dug his hands into her shoulders almost painfully and whispered into her ear. A soft, seductive tone.
"Die with me, Tenten. Prove to me that you love me."
She shuddered in his arms, her resolve weak, thinking of how easy it would be to meet her real Neji again.
"I..." she started to say through the cloth, when she felt the darkness ebb away, signalling the end of her dream.
"Noo." She woke up with a cry, her hands sweaty and shaking like the rest of her body.
"Tenten." She noticed Rock Lee standing there, wearing a partly confused and very worried expression.
"Good morning, she murmured.
"Good afternoon, you mean." Rock Lee corrected, "Tenten, this has got to stop. We are going to see Ino."
She nodded glibly. Grabbing a change of clothes she went to get dressed. When she looked presentable, she came out and followed Lee to the Yamanaka compound.
Just as she drew nearer, she stopped for a moment and told him, "I'll take care of this myself." Without giving Rock Lee a chance to consider she ran and made her getaway to her house.
As soon as she reached the safety of her walls, she locked her doors and windows and sat miserably with a pile of photos she had to beg from Hinata.
When she had sobbed to her hearts content, she looked at another packet filled with a charm from her Chinese grandmother and some salt and garlic.
Today she vowed. Today she would ward her house like she should have two months ago.
Today she would finally get closure and accept his death.
Today she would lose all connection with Neji.
Today, she promised herself as she took the packet and sat down on her bed.
Just five more minutes, were her last thoughts as she closed her eyes and lay down to sleep.
A/N: This is a set of ten one-shots written for apathy is my poison (Zero) from Caesar's Palace for the "Challenge: Quest Of A Hero".
The prompt was Write about a character of your choice dreaming (or having a nightmare) about a loved one.