Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
I have to preface this with a bit of explanation. This is very much a Qing Dynasty AU re-imagining Neji as the fourteenth prince who was locked away by his own brother for nearly a decade and a half on shaky charges of treason. There's been plenty of drama adaptations that mention this rather dark portion of history. And of course, because of that there's a very real world setting in this story, so sorry, no ninjas. That said, this is Neji's story, and not the fourteenth prince's so I've taken plenty of liberties with history.
Yuanfen- (n.) a chinese word that refers to a relationship brought about by fate or destiny.
"It is late." She watches him as he stares out into the garden.
At this time of year, the peonies lose their petals and become sad and forlorn looking. As it is, a trail of pink petals float down the small burbling stream that winds twice about the gazebo.
Summer has always made him not exactly sad, but pensive, prone to composing melancholic poetry and sitting in the garden well into the darkening shadows of dusk. Tenten herself quietly believes it to be nonsense.
If this whole situation had been up to her, they would not have languished here in what amounted to house arrest for nearly fourteen years.
She would have broken them out in the first week. Lee had been patiently waiting for them outside of the palace. They could have taken fast horses and left this place to go wherever they pleased. That is, they could have, until Emperor Hiashi had noticed, because Lee is not particularly subtle, and sent him off to defend the border.
For all the news of the outside world that she and Neji could get their hands on, Lee might be — might be dead, and they wouldn't know a thing about it.
The thought has always brought a thick choked up feeling to Tenten's throat. She wouldn't even know if the brother of her heart died while they're stuck inside their gilded cage.
But her prince's family loyalties were not up to her and are still not up to her to decide however she likes.
Her first loyalty is always to him ever since the first moment that they'd met.
Their considerations are such different ones. His first loyalty is still to the Empire that has robbed him of a crown. Despite the years, despite the anger, despite the tears, his first loyalty is still to the uncle who had betrayed him and the cousins who were too weak to protest injustice.
He sighs. "I'll go in in a moment, Tenten. Don't wait for me."
"If it is truly a moment, it will not be difficult to wait to go in with you." She folds her hands together in front of her and waits for him to move from his spot on the stone bench. It is likely that this will take more than a moment to resolve.
He has been here all afternoon, staring at the dying peonies, a calligraphy brush in hand.
There is not a single drop of ink on the scroll he has laid out beside him. His mind is too busy for the ink to make an impression.
Another unproductive afternoon as he thought about what might have been then. She is used to it, though it still cuts her open to have to watch the aftermath of yet another storm.
Most days, Neji is a caged tiger, pacing from one end of their allotted rooms to the other, anger and resentment barely contained inside his skin. Most days, Neji is completely fearless, vows of vengeance in the tense lines of his shoulders even if he never breathed a word aloud.
Most days, but the day the peonies die each year is different.
His late uncle had accused him of treason the year he turned twenty and promptly locked him under house arrest. It had been summer then too, Tenten remembered. Late summer. The peonies were dead by then.
It had been the merciful action. The courtiers claimed. True punishment for treason ought to be death. Emperor Hiashi had been so merciful to his traitorous nephew.
Bullocks. Tenten thinks. If Neji wasn't truly loyal, he wouldn't have endured this for fourteen years. He'd have killed everyone and staged a coup.
And endure Neji had. He had been called back from his military campaign with the expectation of gaining the title of crown prince and becoming the heir presumptive of his uncle. He'd been popular among his generals, the campaign had gone well, and he was talented both in the field and with a pen in his hand.
He had instead been falsely accused of planning a military coup and stuffed here instead, in a small set of rooms next to the ancestral tombs.
If Tenten had more say in this matter, the trial would have gotten a whole lot bloodier, and they could have been quite happy living in the mountains of Tibet or the steppes of Mongolia, or sailing across the sea to any one of the many islands, or even living plainly among the common people in a city where no one would ever be able to find them, or in her darkest fantasies, Neji would be emperor, and she would be his right hand as she always is.
As it is, Emperor Hiashi had died last week without a son to succeed him. Princess Hinata had personally written a letter of apology which was delivered this morning.
Neji had read it once, gone white with the shock, read it twice, hands shaking with anger, read it a third time, and gone with an odd silence out into the garden where he has stayed all afternoon.
"Do I forgive my cousin?" He asks her, voice soft and slow, with all the languidness of a flowing river. Princess Hinata's letter speaks of reconciliation then.
"You will do what you think is best." As you always do, because you love them. She does not add.
"I am asking you what you would do, Tenten." Neji turns to look at her for the first time during their exchange.
What would she do? She wets her lips and tightens her grip on her naginata "What is Princess Hinata offering?"
"Empress Dowager Hinata." Neji corrects her rather gently. "It seems that we've missed my nephew's coronation." He shifts in his seat. "As for what she's offering…my freedom." The corners of Neji's mouth twitches down. "And yours. We can go to see the mountains again, Tenten."
"His crown ought to have been yours." She doesn't mean to say this, but fourteen years is a long time to hold back a flood. "That's a far cry from being able to see mountains again, Neji." And so the dam breaks.
She's held her peace for fourteen years. She doesn't want to hold it any longer, so she lets it go.
"I will be satisfied with leaving this garden." Neji rises and offers her a hand. "There's been so much lost already. Why consider the bitter things?"
And that is true, it's true but...something like justice has always been more of her style.
She takes his hand anyway, because he is her first and last loyalty, her first and last love. "If that is what you've already decided, then why ask me?"
"You've been stuck here with me." He walks slowly, feeling the pins and needles from sitting so long in the same position no doubt. "And that means you get a say in the matter of whether or not we offer forgiveness."
"You are my prince." Tenten replies. "And from the first day we met, I knew I would follow you to Hell and back." The evening breeze ruffles through her hair. "What is fourteen years to that?"
"What did I do to deserve such loyalty?" He muses. "Tenten, you are far too good to me."
"You are yourself." She pushes open the door, and they go in.
Ling Tenten's father had always wished for a boy. She'd known that since her earliest memories of going with her father to sweep her mother's grave on Qingming.
The head of the royal guard wished for a son to carry on the family tradition of serving princes and emperors and royalty high and low alike.
A daughter might make a good lady-in-waiting to Princess Hinata, but Ling Liushan would not be satisfied with a daughter who might make a good lady-in-waiting to the eldest princess.
His ambitions aimed higher than that.
He had wept for her once, when she was a very small girl, at the injustice of it all, that her destiny was not for greater things, that if she wanted what a son of Ling Liushan could have easily gotten then her path would not be an easy one.
Still, she doesn't believe that she's ever disappointed her father, not when she had accomplished every ambition he had and then some. Ling Tenten married royalty.
When Tenten was born a mere four months after Prince Neji, her father made a public announcement that a child had been born to the royal guard and left it at that without disclosing whether he had a daughter or a son.
Ling Tenten's name could be for either a daughter or a son. Slowly, the wheels were beginning to turn and a different plan was formed.
In private though, from her earliest toddling days, her father had taught her that it didn't matter whether she was his son or his daughter, she would become Prince Neji's bodyguard.
She, Ling Tenten, would succeed no matter what obstacles the Gods or mere mortal men put in her path. She, Ling Tenten, was her father's daughter, and therefore no fate could hold her back from anything she might attempt to do. She was Ling Tenten, her name written with a double of the character for heaven, and heaven she would undoubtedly bend to her command.
That moto served her well through her toddling years, through the years and years of grueling training, other people's doubts, and protecting Neji right up until the moment Neji was betrayed by someone she couldn't possibly protect him from.
But that's still yet in the future.
She practices with the naginata, twirls it around and around almost idly after dinner as Neji watches.
They'd taken away his sword too, when they stuck him here, so he's been swordless except for her for fourteen years. She'd been both his sword and shield once upon a time.
It's a wonder no one has tried to assassinate him to gain favor with the late — and in her case, entirely unmourned — Emperor Hiashi. Well, she should amend that statement. It is a wonder no one has succeeded when she has been his first and last line of defense besides himself in fourteen years.
He still has his fists after all.
They still work fine though she doubts he's as sharp with a sword as he used to be. Fourteen years of disuse will dull even a finely honed blade.
She finishes with the naginata for the night and begins her stretches.
She's halfway through stretching her hamstring when Neji shifts. "Tenten?"
"Yes?" She pauses.
"We could go eat tanghulu again in Harbin." He wraps a hand around his ankle, pulling his foot up until it rests on his knee. "Or sesame dumplings." He makes a face. "Though granted, that's just outside the palace, but still."
"If they'd let us out, I promise we'll go eat everything that you've dreamed off all these years." She remembers the caramelized fruit skewers which had been so popular in the cold wintry outpost of Harbin. She had been there with Neji nearly seventeen years ago now when they'd been deployed to push back the rebels.
She didn't know that he missed it still. He'd made faces while eating them at the time, though he had indulged her and bought some.
"If they let us out?" Neji raises an eyebrow. "I don't think Hinata's developed a sudden faithless streak, have you?"
"You trusted your uncle too." Tenten replies evenly. Her father had taught her to not curb her tongue of speaking the truth to her prince. She's left this conversation for another day for far too long. "Wasn't he the one who sacrificed your father and then sacrificed you?"
Another thing that she could never quite forgive the late and completely unmourned Emperor Hiashi for: the death of Prince Hizashi.
She supposes that death makes martyrs of good men, and Prince Hizashi had never been anything less than a good man, but still, the late Emperor's late brother was a man practically beyond compare. She says practically, because of the man sitting across from her.
Neji, her prince, is beyond compare.
"Hinata has always been kind." Neji sighs. "I do hope this is not some cruel joke equating freedom with death." So he isn't certain then. "I will be very disappointed if it is."
His cousin has not visited him, not even once in fourteen years, and now she sends him a letter setting him free from his living tomb. Then, Princess — Empress Dowager — Hinata has always been indecisive and withdrawing. Of course, he isn't as certain as he is trying to appear.
Tenten should not be surprised, but she is still. "Perhaps it isn't. Perhaps your cousin just wants to right her father's wrongs." Or perhaps, in forteen years Hinata Hyuga has learned how to lie.
Still, Neji doesn't want to believe that, and neither does Tenten. Before everything had happened, in her childhood, she'd always thought that Princess Hinata was a nice girl, if a little more shy than she was used to.
She was ten years old when her father decided to broach the subject of Prince Neji's bodyguard with Prince Hizashi.
"I was wondering, your grace." Her father took a sip of his tea. "If you have considered one of the young recruits for a permanent position guarding Prince Neji." He and Prince Hizashi sat together at one of the stone tables in the back gardens of Ling Manor. Tenten stood right behind him, unmoving, unflinching, unfailing. "He is to be heir to the throne. He ought to deserve the best protection there is."
"I have every faith that you'll suggest one of them." Prince Hizashi idly waved his folding fan back and forth in the muggy summer air. "And that whichever you suggest will protect my Neji from all harm." Prince Hizashi turns to look over at the fountain where Tenten was often allowed to play when there were no guests about. "As for heir to the throne, we should not count our blessings before they're awarded."
Everyone knew that her father had spoken truthfully though.
Princess Hanabi's birth had taxed the Empress a great deal, and even now, nearly four years later, there was still no sign of the Emperor gaining a son of his own blood. Princess Hinata turns nine in the month before the New Year.
Everyone knew that Neji had the best claim to sit upon the Dragon's Throne someday in the not so very distant future. Prince Hizashi is just being modest.
"You'll consider my selection then." Tenten's father folded his hands together.
Prince Hizashi nodded. "I have always had paramount faith in your choices."
"Then might I suggest Ling Tenten?"
She'd known it was coming, that as soon as her father named her as his candidate for Prince Neji's sword and shield that Prince Hizashi would examine her, but that did not mean that she had braced herself hard enough for the impact.
A prince's regard was a heavy thing.
"Your daughter?" Prince Hizashi seemed to be considering the suggestion seriously. "You've overseen her training since her birth so that she might be worthy of guarding Neji?"
"I have every confidence in Tenten." It was high praise coming from a man so taciturn as Ling Liushan, and Tenten positively glowed with pride.
"Well," Prince Hizashi tapped his folded fan against the table. "We shall have to dress her like a boy until it can't be helped so my brother doesn't notice. I don't believe he knows whether you have a son or a daughter."
It was as simple as that. She had sweat and worked for so many years, and upon presentation to Prince Hizashi, it was her father's reputation as an honorable man that had gotten her through the door.
She would work hard to not sully that trust.
She would protect Prince Neji with her life.
Prince Hizashi beckoned to a servant. "Fetch Neji for me will you? I will have to introduce him to his new friend."
She had never even seen Prince Neji before, despite spending her entire life training to protect him. Still, she recognized him instantly when he entered the garden following a servant.
He had the signature pale eyes of the Hyuga dynasty, his father's straight dark hair, and impeccable posture.
Tenten felt slovenly compared to him. Sometimes, she would slump when there was no one looking. She couldn't imagine Prince Neji slouching even when there wasn't anyone watching.
"Neji," Prince Hizashi beckoned him closer. "This is Tenten. She is to be your sword and shield."
Prince Neji examined her for a long time in silence.
Tenten raised her chin. She wore her formal qipao today, and her hair was done up in two buns. She might not look particularly strong, but she was more than capable.
"You aren't like any other guards I've met before." Was all Prince Neji finally said. His voice was soft and quiet, reserved in ways that the guards at the barracks never were.
"I'm Ling Tenten." She said and hoped that she sounded more confident than she felt. "I'm honored to meet you." She bowed in his direction, ninety degrees because he was to be her whole life now.
"Likewise." Prince Neji murmured as he helped her up. "Honored Father, may I and my shield be excused to the other side of the garden?"
Prince Hizashi nodded in their direction, a fond light in his eyes though his lips didn't so much as twitch. "You may."
Once he sits down on the other side of the garden behind some shrubbery, Prince Neji gestured for her to do the same. "Sit down. There's no need for you to keep being uncomfortable and stiff."
Gingerly, she did so. She was rewarded with a small smile.
"So you're Guardsman Ling's daughter?" Prince Neji asked. "Is he as strict with you as he is with the other guards that I've met?"
The corner of Tenten's mouth turned down a slight amount. "More." She clarified at Prince Neji's dumbstruck look. "My father is stricter with me than he is with his men."
Empress Dowager Hinata's son is a boy of fourteen. He had been born when Neji was away on his last military campaign. Tenten has never met him, has never even seen him, but already she can tell that she doesn't like him.
He had taken Neji's crown. It had only been after Prince Boruto's birth that Emperor Hiashi had felt safe with discarding his nephew in favor of his grandson. She recognizes on some level, that this is unfair of her, but still, she can't shake the feelings.
Neji dresses in his old clothing, the same shirt, pants and long robe he'd worn when he faced court day fourteen years ago. There's a bloodstain on the front of the right shoulder — his sword arm that Tenten had not been protecting but should have — that he has purposefully left alone. He ties a white band in his hair, perpetual mourning for Prince Hizashi. Tenten is no seamstress, so the rips and gashes she's repaired stand out noticeably.
Does the new child-emperor know his own history, that he climbed onto the Dragon's Throne through a maze of betrayal, sacrifice, and treachery?
Have the commoners forgotten the People's Prince already?
Tenten doesn't know. She hasn't been out of this gilded cage in fourteen years. She wouldn't leave Neji, and Neji couldn't go anywhere.
She stands in the same clothing she wore to court that day, a short qipao shirt patterned with plum flowers, ripped across the front, and matching bloodstained pants. Her naginata is in hand, and her hair is bound up in two buns.
They cut a ghostly figure, she likes to think. The entire court will see how Neji has been wronged.
"Neji." Sasuke drawls from his end of the garden. "The Emperor is waiting for you, you know. You ought to hurry and change out of those robes."
"We can go now." The shirt hangs a little looser on Neji's frame than it used to. Time has not been a kind hand. "I ought to reappear in court the same way I left it, don't you think, Sasuke?"
"Minister Uchiha now." Sasuke takes a step forward, tension in his shoulders. "It's a promotion some eight years old." Tenten resists the urge to smack the Uchiha over the head with the flat of her naginata. It would do them no good.
"Forgive me." Neji smiles sardonically. "I didn't realize, seeing as I was living next to the tombs, that you'd been promoted since I've been gone."
He and Sasuke had been at least friendly acquaintances once upon a time, but then, everyone had been at least friendly acquaintances with the heir presumptive of the throne. They'd all fallen away at the first scent of blood.
Only she and Lee had stayed loyal. Perhaps it is because, as sad as it sounds, they were the only ones who had loved Neji for Neji instead of his position at court.
Sasuke shifts on his feet but says nothing else about Neji's imprisonment. "Are you sure you want to provoke court with your clothing choice of all things?"
"I don't see how there is anything wrong with what I'm wearing." Neji takes a step forward, past the permanent guards posted at the garden gate. "They were after all, a present from my late uncle."
Sasuke falls silent. Tenten falls in step behind Neji with a nod to the guardsmen who hesitantly nod back.
It is not their fault that they do their jobs. If they'd let Neji escape, it would mean their heads and the heads of their families. They had their orders, and they could ill-afford to deviate from them by even the slightest bit, but they'd done their best to afford Neji respect as a prince of the blood to the best of their abilities.
"Come on." Prince Neji tugged at her wrist. "I am dressed like a commoner now, and I would like to taste those sweet dumplings you mentioned."
She had only been in Prince Neji's service for a year, but even so, she knew that such a request is unusual of him.
Prince Neji was always perfectly behaved, kind, courteous, and not the least bit prone to rebellion of any sort, much less against his beloved father. He and Prince Hizashi were tremendously close, and the Emperor's brother took a great deal of interest in his son's studies, martial or otherwise.
"You could ask the palace cooks to make you sesame dumplings, your grace." Tenten refused to be budged from her place before his door. "They would be honored to oblige your desires."
"But you said that the street food cart in the Qianshi Hutong is the best you've ever had." Prince Neji looked back at her with wide eyes. "You promised one day we'd go together, Tenten. Do not tell me you are going back on your word now."
"I said one day, your grace." Tenten planted her feet shoulder with apart and resisted being dragged away. "That day is not today."
Prince Neji abruptly dropped her hand. "Then I shall go alone, if my shield is not willing to come with me. If I am hurt at all, I'm sure you'll feel guilty." He set off down the hall moving briskly.
"Wait!" That was not what she had intended to happen at all. She'd thought that he'd give up on the idea of sneaking out of the palace if she would not go with him to guide him about the streets.
"I am not waiting." Prince Neji crossed his arms over his chest and kept walking. "You may stay in front of my door."
But he had gotten her to move from the door already. She'd already given in. "They'll recognize you if you go out in those clothes." Someone would see. Someone would know. Prince Neji was eleven years old and he'd never been out among the busy streets of the Capital without a full escort before.
He was still wearing the dragon emblem stitched on all the royal clothes.
If Tenten didn't do something about that right now, then she might never see Prince Neji again, and then where would she be? What would she do? How would she ever live with herself?
Prince Neji turned to her with a small smile. "Then fetch me some guardsman's clothes from the barracks and then you can take me to eat sesame dumplings in the capital."
Well, Tenten thinks. At least this way, I will be able to protect him.
An hour and a half later found them sitting by a street stand in the dusty streets of Beijing.
Prince Neji looked out of place here, even with dirt smudged over his face, his hat pulled low over his distinctive eyes and clothing from the guardsmen's barracks. It was something about the way he sat, or the way he moved, too stiff and too contained for a trainee guardsman.
Luckily, Tenten knew how to not draw attention, because her father had taught her that. Extra money for bribing the vendors to look the other way had never gone amiss before.
Behind them, an altercation started to turn ugly. "We should go." Tenten muttered as she reached for Prince Neji. "This is no longer a good place to stay."
But Prince Neji hardly seemed to have heard her. He turned around. "What are you doing?" His voice echoed loudly in the now silent square. "Let him go."
A boy about their age with cut short hair and wide, round eyes stared back at them through an angry group of grown men.
"None of your business." One of them growled. "Unless you want to bleed with him?"
This was the wrong thing to say to Prince Neji. "Let. Him. Go." He drew himself up to his full height, which was no taller than the man's chest, and stalked forward.
Tenten palmed the knives in her sleeves forward a little. This could get messy very quickly. Best be ready for it. Without warning, she dived across the space between Prince Neji and the aggressor.
Two strikes was all it took to send the rest of the men fleeing across the square.
A dead body dropped in her wake. She tugged on Prince Neji's sleeve, blood dripping from her knife. She wiped it on her thigh. Best not to leave traces of blood behind. "We have to go. Now." There'd been the city watch on their tails quick enough, and she didn't think Prince Hizashi, however nice he was, would appreciate knowing that his only son had been caught up in a street fight outside the palace, especially since they'd snuck out.
"In a moment, Tenten." Prince Neji offered the cowering boy across from him a hand. "Come with us." He declared. "And you can tell me why they were going to hurt you."
The other boy climbed to his feet as Tenten nervously fidgeted with her knife. They are running out of time. "I'm Lee! Rock Lee! It was good of you to defend me!"
Everything he said was done loudly. There were shouts in the square behind them. Tenten grabbed them both by the wrist and began to pull them in the opposite direction. "We need to go before we find our homes in a jail cell."
She was certainly nervous about it, the shame of it honestly, but still, her hands were coated with red, sticky blood, and it was the first time she killed for Prince Neji, though he didn't seem to mind her gesture of protection.
It won't be the last.
Court is still as miserable as always, full of vultures who whisper behind their folding fans and expensive silk and brocade robes, full of ministers with their judgemental glares, and full of family who had turned away from Neji at the slightest provocation.
Their choice of clothing has not gone unnoticed.
Hinata, at least, winces upon seeing them, even if such a thing is barely noticeable. "Brother Neji." She murmurs from her position behind the throne.
Neji glances at her, but doesn't say anything.
The boy on the throne has sun yellow hair and blue eyes, a far cry from the pale eyes and dark hair of the Hyuga bloodline.
Tenten would not hold it against him except for the fact that Hyuga Boruto sits in the same spot Neji should occupy. The Dragon's throne was not made for a boy of fourteen. She thinks and does not regret it.
"Uncle Sasuke." The young emperor nods to the man behind them. "I hope that you're well this morning."
Sasuke inclines his head. "Very well, thank you."
Princess Hinata had married...General Uzumaki. Uzumaki Naruto's childhood best friend was...Uchiha Sasuke, the younger son of Lord Fugaku.
Of course, Sasuke had been promoted. His best friend's son now sits on the throne.
Emperor Boruto turns to them, now that pleasantries are done. "Hyuga Neji, and Hyuga Tenten." He says softly. "Sentenced fourteen years ago for treason." In another life, Boruto would call Neji Uncle with the same fondness he now reserves for Uchiha Sasuke. "But still blood of my blood."
Neji inclines his head, but says nothing.
Whispers rise again. He does not bow for the dragon king. He does not kneel in the presence of the Son of Heaven.
In another life, in another life, but this life is the one that they live.
This one, where the peonies weep their petals into the water, and neither Tenten nor Neji bows to an Emperor who they should know better.
"Do you know why you're here?" Emperor Boruto asks.
"I have some idea." Neji meets his eyes. "Your mother wrote to me."
As Neji speaks with Boruto, Tenten counts the number of armed guards in the hall. She gets to forty before the silence draws out too thick and tense for her to pay attention to counting once more.
The last time they'd been in this situation, she'd been unprepared. She will not be unprepared this time. If they are to die today, it will be a fighting death instead of by the executioner's long bladed knife.
"He's gone." The news had broken over the Palace not four hours ago. They were once more at war. Neji shook his head as if he could shake the images from his mind. "My honored father is gone."
Prince Hizashi had gone to dine with the Turkish Ambassador in the place of his brother. Prince Hizashi hadn't made it out of the Turkish camp alive.
The invaders had sent his head to court in a bag. She and Neji had been there.
She'd been there to see Neji pale, to see the trembling of his hands, but only now away from everyone else, did he break.
Tenten took two steps forward and folded him into her arms. "Neji…" Her own mind was a mess. There'd been no word of what had happened to Prince Hizashi's retainers and guards.
Her own father had been among them, leaving the Palace.
If the Turks had beheaded Prince Hizashi because they would not agree to the terms of peace, then it was likely that her father, that Ling Liushan was...She put the thought away.
"He promised me he'd come back." Neji whispered against the crook of her neck, shoulders shaking like a leaf in the wind. "He was going to spar with me. We were going to read poetry together the next time the moon is full."
Tenten's father had not promised her anything of the sort. The last thing he'd said to her was "remember to protect Prince Neji with your life."
And she had answered him. "I always do."
He'd nodded back at her then — "My good daughter." — and headed out of Ling Manor to meet Prince Hizashi's party.
There wasn't anything she could say to comfort Neji. Everyone had seen the head roll out onto the royal table, identical to Emperor Hiashi's in every way, except for the small fact that it was no longer attached to a body.
Perhaps later, when she was alone, she would weep for Prince Hizashi, who had always been kind to her, and for her father, who had taught her that destiny meant nothing more than a wall she had to break through.
She'd stayed Neji's sword and shield by her own merits after all.
"Tenten! Prince Neji! Did you—" Lee rounded the corner behind the door and suddenly broke off. "I'm intruding again, aren't I?" Lee was still Lee even after four years. Social situations phased the Han orphan utterly.
Neji raised his head from Tenten's shoulder to huff at him. "Yes, you are."
The comment rolled off of Lee's thick skin like water. He was unusually serious for once. "I couldn't find any news of survivors of the trip to the Turkish camp." He turned to the side, face twisted in anger. "Foreign barbarians." Lee was rarely so harsh and confrontational, but he'd been there too, to see the final, shameful display of Prince Hizashi's head.
If they did not recover a body, then he'd never be at peace.
It had been part of the cause of Neji's breakdown. His father could not wander this world as a ghost while Neji still lived. It just wasn't done.
Lee couldn't find news of survivors.
Neji drew a sharp breath. "Guardsman Ling?" If she ever needed proof of her convictions — that Neji's heart was a tender one — then she need look no further than now, when in the midst of his grief, he asked about her father instead of drowning in the fate of his own.
Lee's face fell. "I could not get close enough to the walls, but I thought I could make out the Captain's body." Every word was a blow. Her father was all the family she had left in the world. Lee scrubbed his face with his hands. "I will go to retrieve him when it is dark. We'll be able to hold a proper burial for adoptive father at least."
Neji sat heavily in a nearby chair. "That's good. Don't put yourself in too much danger, Lee."
Tenten woodenly followed him, two steps too slow. "It's alright, Lee. Everything will be alright."
The world had been flipped upside down and inside out. Everything was painted a shade too unreal.
Her father had always been forefront in her memories, strong and unbreakable. And now, her father was gone. Now Prince Hizashi was gone.
Now the some fifty good men that had gone with them were gone.
"Princess Hinata arriving!" A retainer announced the eldest princess from the hallway, and the three of the scrambled to make the room and themselves look more decent.
It wasn't done for a prince to collapse sobbing in the arms of his shield any more than it was for Lee and Tenten to sit in Neji's presence.
"Brother Neji?" Princess Hinata pushed the door open, and came into the room alone. Perhaps the retainers allowed it because Tenten was rarely two steps from Neji's side and a woman so there was no need for a chaperone, or perhaps it is because Neji and Hinata are family, almost as close as brother and sister. "I'm so sorry."
Neji drew a shaky breath and let it out once more. "It was not your fault, Sister Hinata."
No, the invading Turkish army had nothing to do with Princess Hinata.
"I j-just wanted to say," Princess Hinata straightened her shoulders. "That anything you want to say, any grief that is too heavy for you to bear, I am always here, Brother Neji."
Neji smiled, but anyone who knew him well could see how fake it was. "Thank you, Sister Hinata."
Her words finished, Princess Hinata took her leave.
Neji turned back to Tenten. "Would you mind if I cried on you again?" He whispered as he took her hand. "I am so very sorry, you must be tired as well."
"Never." Tenten whispered back. "But only if you do not mind if I also cry." Princes and their shields were not supposed to cry, but that was okay, because there were only three people in this room and none of them would tell.
Besides, Lee had already started bawling the moment the door closed behind Princess Hinata.
The silence drags for a long pause before it breaks.
"My grandfather and my advisors say that if you live, I will never be able to sit comfortably on the throne." Boruto frowns. "I would like to think that's not true. Do you think that's naive of me, Cousin Neji?"
Neji's lips twitch upwards into the slightest of wry smiles. "I would suppose so, yes." It is the truthful thing to say, though it is not the proper thing to say.
"You don't kneel for me." Boruto says after another long pause. "If I let you go, will you come back here to take my seat with an army?"
"How will you know whether or not I'm lying to you?" Neji asks him. "I've been imprisoned by your grandfather for nearly as long as you've been alive. How do you know that my hatred for him has not extended to you?"
"My advisors thought about that as well." The frown on the boy's face deepens. "But the stories I've heard about you are all conflicting."
Tenten goes back to counting guards. Forty-one. Forty-two.
There's another one.
Forty-three is too many for me to defeat should this turn bloody.
"Uncle Sasuke says that you were not a traitor." The hall is hushed. "And my mother says the note they found was not in your handwriting." The boy's blue eyes are cold and inscrutable.
A boy of fourteen's eyes should not look so cold. Emperor Boruto had grown up in an unstable court then.
Tenten knows for a fact that Neji was nothing like this boy when he was fourteen. When we were fifteen, we started to grow up because we'd lost our fathers.
Only then.
Hyuga Boruto had to grow up long before then.
She feels a twinge of pity that she squashes down. Her first and last loyalty is to Neji, and Neji only.
"I want to believe my mother and Uncle Sasuke, Cousin Neji." Emperor Boruto sighs. "You and your wife come back to court dressed in the robes my grandfather betrayed you in. Am I right to assume that you don't want to stay?"
So he does know his history. If Tenten were any less numb, she'd be ashamed of how she thought of him.
But she is numb, and all of this has never been what Neji deserved.
She still hates the boy on the throne.
"No." Neji allows. "I do not want to stay." Everything about the Heavenly Hall is cast in bitter tones. Two flagstones to the right is where Yamanaka Sai had spilled Neji's blood. Tenten is sure he still wears the scars for that one.
"Where will you go?" Boruto leans forward, his elbows on his knees.
Neji looks over at her; their eyes meet, and the world drops away. "To the edge of heaven." Neji whispers. "To the corner of the sea." He slides his hand around hers and squeezes it. "With my wife."
"Then I will let you go." Emperor Boruto concedes. "I strip you and your wife of the right to use the name of Hyuga, of the titles Prince and Princess, and hereby banish you from the capital after sundown tomorrow." The whispering's started up again, but Tenten doesn't pay attention to that. They are free.
They are free.
"Please accept my apology for what my grandfather did, Cousin Neji."
Two years later, they were on the road to the northern outpost of Harbin. It had been a long ride of two weeks with fast horses and an army three thousand strong trailing in their wake, but a long at last, they were approaching the wintry city.
Neji was to take control of the governance there, to guard against an invasion from the north.
He had swelled with pride when Emperor Hiashi had handed him the official decree.
It had been the first time his uncle found him worthy to lead an army, even if said army is no larger than seven thousand strong — four thousand inside the city, and three thousand traveling on foot with them.
He'd been proud then, but right now, with the snow slushed about the horses hooves and his ears frozen through, it felt more like a curse than a blessing.
Tenten had her scarf wrapped over the bottom of her face, and her fingers were blue with the cold.
She looked forward to actually settling into the city proper, inside the governor's estate. There, she could draw a hot bath for Neji so that he could wring the water from his long, loose hair, and finally thaw herself by a roaring fire.
"Everybody! Keep your spirits up!" Lee's booming voice echoed over the line of soldiers and pack mules behind them. "Keep them up! We'll be at our destination by nightfall."
"He has far too much energy for his own good." Neji leaned in and murmured in her ear, breath coming in white puffs and hanging in the air. "Where does he get it from?"
"You know he gets it from the food he eats." Tenten smiled. "He packs away more than both of us combined."
She was rewarded with Neji's bright laughter, so common before Prince Hizashi's death, so rare afterwards. "Oh, Tenten. What would I do without you in such a cold and miserable place?"
She was in a cheeky mood, and now there was no one to blame her for teasing Neji. "Freeze perhaps." She jingled her reins at her horse. "Peach Blossom," she crooned "go faster so that we may beat his grace."
She didn't often refer to Neji by his titles anymore when they were alone.
Neji called her his closest and dearest friend, and wouldn't blame her if she didn't, so she called him Neji like his father used to, and he called her Tenten like nearly everyone else did, but with a smile he reserved only for her.
"Black Wind," Neji said to his own horse. "Go faster so we may remind Tenten that she is not better than his grace" here he looked at her pointedly "at everything."
Lee's voice rose indistinctly behind them as he encouraged more foot soldiers further down the line.
Nothing more was said between them as they rode into the city at dusk.
"Tanghulu for sale!" "Fresh meat buns for a traveler!" "Warm furs!" The snow didn't seem to keep the vendors from the streets here in Harbin.
They were walking through the city to the governor's estate, leading their horses after stationing the men in the soldiers' barracks. It was easier to protect Neji on foot especially when they walked side by side like this.
"Neji!" She tugged on his sleeve. "They have tanghulu." The colorful red skewers of mountain hawthorne candy were a sight she hadn't seen since she was no more than a toddler.
"Is that a type of food?" It was colder than before, and his spirits were not high.
It was why she'd mentioned it. A snack might lift his soggy mood.
"Yes." She pointed to them. "They're a type of candy. I haven't had any since my father's trip to Shenyang when I was four."
He reached for his coin purse. "How much for two of those?" He asked the old man who took in his pale eyes and dark hair.
"For you, Prince Neji? They're free." He tried to hand Neji the skewers without payment, but Neji dropped four wen into the basket before taking the treats and passing one to Tenten.
"For you, since you said you liked them." His soul was still a kind one despite smiling less.
"How does it taste?" She asked after he took a bite.
He made a face. "Sour."
Ah, as it should be then. Tanghulu were nothing if not sour hawthorne wrapped in hard sugar to take the sting off.
That was why they were such a big metaphor for life after all. You couldn't have the sweet without the sour.
It is Shikamaru who sees them out of the Palace with what little belongings they had and two fast horses.
"Where is Lee?" Tenten asks. If he'd heard the news of their freedom, he'd be the first one here. He's not here, and that means something.
"Babaoshan." Shikamaru looks away. "He'd been quite vocal about your innocence, you see." The bottom drops out of her stomach. "We didn't really believe that you'd turned traitor, but no one could contain Lee's energy in forcibly removing you from your rooms so." Shikamaru shrugs. "That's where he is now."
"What?" Neji hisses. "You didn't just tell me that—" But he had.
Nara Shikamaru had just said that—
They turn away as one. There is nothing left for them here in the Capital besides one last visit.
They walk through the streets in silence into the Qianshi Hutong. How strange it is, that this is the first place they ever met Lee, and this is the place they go to pay their last respects.
It hurts. It hurts like a dull ache in her bones as they walk through the gated square, past the crypts, and among the marked graves searching for a name.
Rock Lee.
When they come to his affixed wooden placard beaten by the elements, Neji drops to his knees and sobs with his head in his hands. "Oh, Lee." He did not kneel for the dragon king, but he kneels now before the dead for the most loyal of friends and the best of comrades.
Tenten kneels down beside him. Something about the passage of time has made her numb. There are tears leaking from her eyes, a rough, raw pain in her heart, but she feels so far removed from everything that it scares her.
Have the years really made me so bitter?
Neji rests his head on her shoulder, the last place in the world where he can truly rest his head, and they stay there like that for a long, long time.
"He didn't deserve something like this." She says at last. "He didn't deserve anything like this."
"No." Neji agrees, softly, hollowly.
There will be no avenging Lee.
No.
If they want to go away, if they want to continue living, then they will have to bury even this, bury the last of their pride and go.
Lee had truly taken up arms against the throne, but for Neji, the brother of his heart, for Tenten, his dearest adoptive sister, for ideals and promises and visions that only Lee could see. His loyalty had been strong enough that he would die for them.
But would they die for him, now, years after the fact?
One more crime to place at the end of a long, never-ending line of crimes committed by Hyuga Hiashi.
There's nothing left in this city for them.
"Tenten?" Neji raised his head to look at her from his place on the divan. "If I asked you to spend the rest of your life with me, what would you say?" In the soft light of the candles, he looked less tired than he did during the day.
War took their toll on them.
She blinked. "I am already guaranteed to spend the rest of my life with you, Neji." Something about him seemed pensive today, as if he was thinking about a topic especially hard to consider. "I would go to hell and back for you." She would; it was no lie.
She'd started on this path because it was what her father wanted, and she wanted the recognition that would come with the position of a prince's personal guard, but somewhere along the line, that had changed.
Neji had touched her heart in more ways than one, always more than one.
She returned to polishing the blade of her naginata. Soon they would have to return to the frontlines. It was best to be prepared.
"You're my shield that's true." Neji rose from the divan and joined her on the bench by the door. "That wasn't what I meant to ask though." He set his hand on hers. "I meant by my side, Tenten, not a step behind me."
Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest. Did he mean what she thought he meant?
"Neji?" She asked. Did she dare to hope?
"You know I trust no one more than you." He said, even as he still stared straight ahead. "And I never will."
But no, this was not about what she wanted. This was about Neji's future. "You will have to learn." It was only a sentence of five words, but those five words cut far more than other words had.
He turned to look her in the eye, far more serious than she'd ever seen him before. "I won't." He took her other hand. "The decision is an unconventional one, but I am unconventional already." He shook his head as if shaking the doubts away. "Will you bow to Heaven and Earth with me? I want to spend my life with no one else."
He looked so earnest, so certain. "Marry me?"
Ling Tenten was only selfish one time in her entire life. "Yes."
His face lit up in a glowing smile. "Excellent. We can go down to the temple right now. I will collect Lee as our witness."
She muffled a laugh. "Neji, it is the middle of the night. We can wait until tomorrow."
He looked rather put out by this. "At least let me tell Lee that you agreed." He turned away, a blush rising on his cheeks. "I didn't know for sure that you would. He'll be overjoyed."
Tenten considered it. Yes, Lee would certainly be ecstatic. Still, her ears detected a shuffling outside their door that was probably… "Are you certain he isn't hiding outside the door sobbing his heart out over how beautiful everything is?"
Neji frowned and rose to open the door.
Lee tumbled in, still sniffling as he rubbed his eyes. "It's so beautiful!" He sobbed. "So youthful, so vibrant!"
Neji pinched the bridge of his nose. "Lee, you don't belong on the floor. And why are you crying? This is a happy occasion."
Lee climbed to his feet. "I'm just so happy! Both of my dearest friends in the world are getting married!" His arms squeezed all three of them together in a group hug. "Tomorrow will be the most blessed day this country has ever seen."
There in that moment, Tenten believed it.
They only stop when they reach a broken down inn just before daybreak. Neji swings off his horse first, and then offers her a hand to help her down.
He doesn't need to, but it's one of the facets that makes him so very human. "I feel so tired, Tenten." He doesn't look at her, just stands there with slumped shoulders and loose hands.
She knows he doesn't mean the lack of sleep.
The passage of time has not been kind. "I am the same." She whispers and takes his hand once more. "But the only way to go is forward."
That has always been what her father had said once upon a time. The only way to go is forward. She's already defied fate so many times. What is once more?
Neji nods, slowly, tiredly and sighs, a long breath trailing into the cool autumn air. "The only way to go is forward, but where is forward?"
That, Tenten doesn't know. "Food first." She checks the amount of money she has left. It will have to last them until Neji can figure out where they are going. "Then rest." Perhaps in the light of the evening, when the sun sinks behind the trees and the shadows stretch out long, they'll be able to make up their minds.
Prince Hizashi is gone. Her father is gone. Neji's uncle is gone. Emperor Boruto is gone. Empress Dowager Hinata is gone. Princess Hanabi is gone. The entirety of Court is gone. Her position in the guardsmen's barracks is gone.
His title of Prince is gone.
Lee is gone.
For the first time in their lives, all they have is each other.
Neji nods once more. "Food first." He squeezes her hand. "And then rest. And then we will…" He turns his face into the autumn breeze, his eyes closed. "We will go to see the mountains again. We'll find the tanghulu in Harbin again. And we'll live."
A long silence stretches out between them as Neji stands with his face upturned toward the heavens, and Tenten stands watching him.
"Lee wouldn't have wanted us to squander our freedom." He says at last. "Because that was all he fought for in the end."
A truth. Lee never cared for crowns or titles or power or thrones. He cared only for the feel of wind in his hair, the friends by his side and yet another obstacle to charge through before him.
"So we must move forward." She squeezes his hand back.
They watch as the day breaks over the trees.
The world has ended and began again.
"We must discuss your marriage options, Honored Nephew." Emperor Hiashi set down his teacup and glanced across the table at Neji. "You are after all, nearly twenty."
Tenten willed herself not to give anything away. They'd been recalled from the frontlines in the north by a jubilant messenger.
The Prince's twentieth birthday party was about to commence in the Capital in a mere five months, and they could hardly miss the guest of honor at the proceedings just because he was away fighting.
This topic was going to come up in conversation sometime. Tenten had been selfish.
Her prince had asked for her hand, and she hadn't had so much as a third second of doubt before answering yes.
She did not think that Neji would hide his marriage like a dirty secret, so it will out now.
Neji took a sip of his tea. "I don't believe such a thing will be necessary, Honored Uncle."
"Nonsense." Emperor Hiashi waved an attendant holding a scroll over. "You are a prince of the blood and cannot remain unmarried indefinitely."
"I don't mean that." Neji also set his teacup down on the table. "Honored Uncle, I cannot marry anyone else." This was untrue of course. A prince could take multiple wives, but — Even if it was in dire straits now, Tenten could still admit to feeling warmed by his words. "I am already married."
The silence in the room was total.
"You are already married." Emperor Hiashi states flatly. "Tell me, Neji, what northern household may now claim the lucky distinction of being related to royalty?"
The atmosphere of the room had changed, and both Neji and Tenten know it.
She started scanning the room for exits. There were three, but each were manned by at least four guards, two inside the room, and two outside.
It was unlikely that they'd be able to escape without consequence.
Neji calmly set his folding fan over his teacup, the golden tassel falling over the edge and onto the inky surface of the table. "No northern house, I'm sure you'll be pleased to discover." He smiled up at Tenten, even though the situation was so tense. "My wife is in the room with us, Honored Uncle."
Emperor Hiashi's eyes landed on her, and she felt her heart go to her throat.
If looks could kill, then she would not be able to protect herself, much less Neji.
"Ah," Emperor Hiashi smiled. "I see. A guardsman's daughter is perfectly acceptable as a second wife, Honored Nephew, but you must still choose a first wife."
Neji's smile dropped from his face. "Hyuga Tenten is my first wife, Honored Uncle. I will not marry anyone else."
There was another tense pause as the attendant hovered as if unsure of how to proceed.
Emperor Hiashi picked up his teacup and took another sip. "Very well then, Honored Nephew. I had wished to discuss your affairs with you today, but I had little idea that you'd already managed them so well."
Neji rose and bowed to the Emperor. "My Honored Uncle gives me far too much credit."
The entire scene left a sick feeling in Tenten's stomach.
It was only when they were alone again in Neji's rooms in the Palace that he turned to her with a smile. "We have passed the royal test then." His eyes were alight with a private joy. "Come. We haven't had your favorite in a long time."
"What's my favorite?" Neji thought that they had passed a test, and Tenten wasn't sure, but he was happy now, happy.
He squished her cheeks fondly. "Sesame dumplings of course."
The mountains roll out before them, a thousand shades of fiery red. Behind them, the Yalu River roars into the distance, on the other bank — Korea. They are on the very borders of the country now.
There's a peace to seeing Changbaishan again, when she'd thought she would only ever see this white peak again in her dreams.
Once, long ago, they'd fought a battle inside that mountain pass, a decisive victory for Neji and the survival of the Hyuga dynasty.
Lee had injured his right leg there, she remembers. Blood had seeped messily from his wound into his heavy woolen pants, and he had winced every time she jabbed the needle through his flesh to put him back together.
He could barely walk for days after..
But after the battle, adrenaline had been running high and he had barely thought to care. Instead. He had rode through the field searching for the injured among the dead.
Lee had always been a heavy hitter without patience for blades and the art of using a sword.
Lee had always had a giving heart and not enough guile to protect himself first.
Lee.
They'd put a thousand miles between them and the polluted air of the Capital, but still she thinks of Lee.
Of the golden days all three of them had had together. Of all the years that had gone up in smoke.
What are they now? A prince who is no longer a prince. A broken shield. A gravestone.
"Do you want to climb up to the pass?" She asks Neji, who has been lost in his own thoughts.
For a long moment, there is nothing but the sound of the wind and the crash of river water. "I'm tired, Tenten." He says at last. "I don't think I have it in me to brace myself against the elements anymore."
This statement scares her. Neji's haggard face and loose hands on the reins scares her.
He has never admitted to this sort of bone deep fatigue before.
"Then I will lend you my strength." She nudges her horse closer to his, close enough that their legs brush, and she can reach out to hold his hand. "When you don't think you have it in you, lean on me."
He smiles at her wanely. "All my life, I've been leaning on you. Do you ever get tired of the weight of me?"
"You're no burden, Neji." She squeezes his hand once, hard, and doesn't let go. "Never believe that of yourself."
"I could not give my brother a proper burial." He says at last. His thoughts too, have turned to Lee. "I could barely find the time to grieve him years after his death, and now I can barely use this life he's given me to give this world something good."
Perhaps the years have carved out something from the both of them, but Tenten refuses — she cannot believe it. She cannot. — to think that they're broken.
"All the more reason to go on to Harbin." She says. "The mountains can wait for another day, but the tanghulu are calling at my memories."
One day, she decides, he will have the strength to climb Changbaishan again.
He nods. "Do you think that Harbin is our last stop?" Do we have anywhere else in the world we need to go?
"We've lived here for a long time." She considers it. "It would not be so terrible to live here again."
Neji squeezes her hand back. "Then here we will stay. Our last stop." He turns his face toward the sky. "It feels almost like coming home."
Tenten smiles. "Yes." She agrees. So much is different now, but the white road to Harbin spreading out before them feels like an old friend they'd never truly left.
The city of Harbin is filled with better memories than the city they'd left behind. Somehow, winter holds all of their beginnings.
It had been a normal summons to court, which was why Lee was absent from the proceedings. He had gone out into the city in the early morning to find roasted duck and wine for lunch and would presumably be back laden with milk candies and sesame dumplings as well.
In the meantime, Neji prepared to face court with only Tenten at his side, dressed in the new, sky-blue robes his uncle had gifted him with a mere week ago.
There was white in his hair for Prince Hizashi, and he slid his short sword into his belt with practiced ease.
Tenten was dressed in a short qipao shirt patterned with plum flowers and matching pants. She carried her naginata in her right hand.
"Announcing Prince Neji and his shield, Tenten!" The crier called into the Heavenly Hall. Neji glanced at her once before striding forward.
She fell in step a scant foot behind him.
"Honored Nephew." The atmosphere in court was cold, all eyes upon them.
Tenten stiffend.
"Honored Uncle." Neji bowed, and normally he would rise, but today the Emperor said nothing, and before the royal decree he was not allowed to rise.
Emperor Hiashi held a single sheet of paper in his hand. "On the fifteenth of the month, we must secure the premises of the Emperor's bedchamber with our guards, and move to eradicate my most honored uncle."
Tenten was unaware of what sort of game they were now playing, but she saw a cold bead of sweat slide down Neji's brow, and her grip on her naginata tightened.
"Tell me, Neji." Emperor Hiashi raised his eyes from the sheet of paper. "After all the honors I have rained down upon you, was there something more you wanted from me?"
"No, Your Majesty." Neji still had not straightened, and in this position it was hard for him to defend himself.
Tenten very carefully took another step forward.
"You say you want nothing from me, Yet you plot treason against my very life." The word rang out in the chilly fall air. Treason.
Treason.
Treason.
Neji had committed no treason.
Her grip tightened further.
"Heaven knows the truth of the matter, Your Majesty." Neji straightened without warning. "And that is that I have always been loyal to my family."
Emperor Hiashi tossed the 'evidence' aside. "I have no more words for a traitor." He turned. "Guards! Arrest him!"
Tenten's blade was a dancing thing of silver dripping crimson in the morning light, but it was not enough to save them.
Sai's short sword stabbed into the sinew of Neji's shoulder, and her prince's sword clattered to the ground.
She slashed Sai across the chest a moment later, but Neji's gasp of pain from behind her distracted her long enough for Ko to put a blade to Neji's throat.
"Surrender your weapon, traitor." She'd known Ko all her life, had fought beside him even at times, but now she was nothing more than the word Traitor.
She'd spilled blood in the Heavenly Hall.
Surrender, or die.
Out of the corner of her eye, Neji closed his eyes and nodded.
Her naginata clattered to the floor.
Outside in the walkway, the pink peonies wept their petals into the water.
They were escorted into prepared rooms next to the royal tombs.
This is not a prison, Tenten thought. This is a living tomb. We have been buried here to be forgotten about.
"Mama! Look! There are sesame dumplings." Ling Yue'er pulls Tenten along by the hand in the busy market street of Harbin. "We should get some for Papa." Yue'er glances up at her with large, pale eyes. "They're Papa's favorite." She confesses this as if sharing a grave secret.
Tenten covers a smile behind her hand. Sesame dumplings are her favorite, and Neji will indulge in eating sweets at times, but it is beyond sweet that their daughter thinks he loves them most.
"Perhaps it will be alright." She considers it. They are her favorite. "It will be New Year's soon, and we should celebrate our entire family being together."
Yue'er nods along. "We should! Papa is away for the whole day sometimes."
Ah well, the white snow blanketing the streets says that winter is a time for new beginnings and an indulgence for the New Year won't hurt.
"Alright. We'll buy some."
She's rewarded with a cheer and eager clapping from Yue'er. "Mama's the best!"
She tucks her daughter's hand in hers as they make their way across the street and further as they trek through the snow back home.
"Neji?" She calls quietly. He should be in his study now, in the midst of another line of poetry.
There's great demand for his skill as an artist in Harbin these days. Ling Neji is well known and beloved.
It's best not to disturb him.
Yue'er has no such compunctions. "Papa!" She clatters down the hallway and through the doors at the end. "Papa! We got you a present at market today!"
The first thing she sees of Neji is the sweep of his hair, quickly followed by his hands as he swings Yue'er up so she can sit on his shoulders. "You brought me a present?" He smiles. "Am I allowed to ask what it is?"
There's still a hint of melancholy in his smile, a tinge of fatigue in the corners of his eyes, but it goes further away by the day.
Tenten is glad for it.
"No!" Yue'er nods firmly. "It's a surprise."
"Are you sure I can't know?" Neji troops down the hallway with their daughter still riding on his shoulders. "Not even if I ask very nicely?"
Yue'er wavers in the face of his pleading eyes. "Well, maybe…"
"Let me guess." He glances down at the steaming bag by Tenten's feet. "It's a food?"
"It's not just any food! It's Papa's favorite!" Yue'er slaps a hand over her mouth. "That's not fair, Papa!"
"Ah, so it's sesame dumplings." Neji squishes her cheeks together fondly. "Yue'er, fair is fair."
Yue'er huffs and turns away, her arms crossed over her chest. "Not fair, Papa!"
Tenten can't help it, she bursts into giggles. "Happy New Year." She gasps when both husband and daughter turn to look in her direction. "You two are too silly."
They converge upon her then, in the middle of her giggling fit. "Happy New Year." Neji whispers in her ear. "Three tenths fate and seven tenths hard work, was it?"
The corner of her mouth tilts up. "Always."
While Yuanfen is important, there's another popular saying when it comes to successful love — three tenths belong to fate, and seven tenths to hard work.
A.N. Happy NejiTen Month everyone! Have my second offering, half a week late. This is for the week one prompt, Yuanfen.
There will likely be more later, even though we resume with the normally scheduled fanfiction.
~Tavina