Fortunes Retold
All of our actions have a price.
"You know Neji, you were always my safe bet."
Neji looked at his teammate of six years with a clear lack of understanding. She was rarely indirect with what she was saying, but at this moment, he really felt completely lost to her.
"What is your meaning, Tenten?"
She turned away from him to stare off into the forest. Konoha was surrounded by lush trees that spotted fire country. The Land of Fire was truly a land of green, and the Hidden Leaf certainly lived up to it's name. Neji didn't really think that she was paying attention to the forest, though.
They were taking a rest together following their usual spar; they'd continued the practice even as they'd both moved on from the necessity of their youth. They were both just sitting on the grass, relaxing within an arm's reach of one another.
She finally answered, but continued to stare off into nothing, "I always knew that if we ended up together, our lives would go on much as they have now."
Neji wasn't really startled, as he knew as well as she that there was a tension between them. Most three man teams had a female, and said female almost always was the center of attention for the two boys.
Both male teammates were friends with the girl, but eventually feelings developed, and she was forced to choose one. Neji knew this, just as he always knew that he would be Tenten's choice. Lee probably didn't even see her as more even after all of this time. She loved both of her teammates, but Neji knew that he his relationship with her was different.
"The feelings that often develop between teammates are perfectly natural in a shinobi's career." He didn't refer to himself. Although Neji had progressed greatly in his ability to express emotions, he still couldn't have a discussion about his own affections, especially with the one towards whom he directed his strongest emotions.
"Yeah, we both knew that though, right? It was always this thing that could happen between us. I always sort of figured that I'd end up married to you, giving me a different life, but not drastically so from what I have now." She looked at him again. "You'd never tolerate a weak wife, and the Hyuga expect a lot from their woman as well as men. Look at your poor cousins." She smiled, reminding him of how exactly he'd begun to love her. She was a relief from his pressure filled life. She didn't care if he were the best, if he could defeat his uncle, if he were a prodigy. She pushed him to become great for himself, and for her. She built him up so that she could grow with him.
"The Hyuga respect strength above even tradition." He could attest to this fact thanks to the newly cleaned foreheads of his fellow Branch members. He was supposed to receive the treatment soon as well.
Her smile faded and she mumbled something too low for him to hear. Her voice was louder and stronger when she answered him in a perfectly bland tone.
"But that's a moot point, Neji. It's never going to happen." She turned away from him again, giving him a bit of privacy for the emotions that were sure to cross his face.
Stunned wouldn't exactly describe Neji's reaction, but more how he would later recall the event. For at that moment, Neji changed. He changed even more than when Naruto had defeated fate, more than when his ideals had shifted.
At that moment, Neji wanted destiny to be real. He wanted the there to be a plan for the universe. He wanted his fate to be set in stone. He wanted the fate that was with him from birth. The fate that would give him and Tenten the life that he could almost imagine.
At that moment, Neji would gladly have forever served his cousin if it meant that he could have the one thing that he could never fight to win; he wanted Tenten's heart, mind, soul, body . . . her everything.
"Why?" He asked just one word, not understanding what was happening. He couldn't understand himself or her, and he felt afraid.
She didn't turn to him even as he asked, and he felt a rush of anger. How could she be this cold? He'd never been overly susceptible to temperature changes before, but he felt freezing now. Neji Hyuga was shaking from something other than muscle strain for the first time in his life.
"Have you even looked up at the stars, Neji?" She collapsed onto her back, still not seeing her teammate's reaction. "Remember how you mocked my fortune telling? Remember how you believed in fate, but you still said that my card, or palm, or star readings were all foolish nonsense? Do you remember those times?"
He wanted to tell her that he remembered every moment with her, but that would of course have been a lie. No one was capable of such a feat.
And he didn't remember her card readings, or her palm readings, or her star readings. He remembered that her strange little hobby kept her occupied during their down time, but he never bothered to pay attention when she told him about it.
He didn't know what to say, so he just was honest with her. "No, I don't."
Through her words he could hear her smile, "I figured that you wouldn't. No one really pays much attention to me. Not even you, and you love me. I'm nothing special or overly powerful. I'm a typical jonin of Konoha, powerful, but not someone of renown."
He wanted to to lie to her. He wanted to say that he always watched her, always listened to her, always loved her . . . always believed her special, but these too would have been lies.
More importantly than the lies that he wanted to tell, were the truths. He did love her, even if he never told her; he respected her, even if he sometimes ignored her; he wanted her, even if he rarely expressed his desire for her.
"You don't have to say anything, Neji. I know that you're listening and that right now your emotions are confused beyond belief. You don't know what to tell me."
She knew him so well, but he realized that he didn't know her at all. He had never believed that she could be this forceful. He had never thought that she could ever refuse him. He had never expected that she could do this.
"The first day that we were put on our genin teams, I read the cards." She paused for a moment in her thoughts to give him a warning, "And don't think that this is all false, Neji. Just listen."
"I was supposed to marry you or Lee. I was quite horrified, as you can expect. I just wanted to be great like Lady Tsunade and the cards told me that I was going to be married, not that I was going to be a great ninja."
Neji vaguely recalled their first day as genin when Tenten told her dream. He hadn't really paid attention then, only interested in what was useful to him and his ambitions.
"You probably just read what you subconsciously believed. Many kunoichi know that their future husbands are likely to be from their . . ." he didn't get to finish his thought, as she interrupted him.
"Quiet, Neji. Let me finish. I told you once, don't make me say it again." She chastised him like she would Lee. He felt insulted, but chose to say nothing. He was already barely reigning in his emotions.
"I didn't want to believe it, so I later read the stars, and they told me that I would marry a prodigy from a strong family." Her voice took on a wistful quality as she added, "I knew then that I would surely marry you, but I wasn't frustrated any more. I'd met you and been on a team with you. I knew that you'd help me, not try to hold me back. We'd grow strong together"
She was saying that they were destined to be together, even how it was suited for her. She said how being with him had helped her, how it could help her. Yet, she was saying that they weren't meant to be. He was confused and waited impatiently for her to continue.
"I even read your palm when we were fourteen. You probably don't remember it, but it was right before the chunin exams. Our life lines were so similar once we became a team. I thought for sure that our lives were just too intertwined to disconnect."
He could sense that she was holding something back, something that she didn't want to talk about.
"I didn't bother to check to see if you won," she said as she flipped onto her stomach to face him again. "I didn't actually think that it mattered. Our fates couldn't possibly change from a stupid match." She sounded resentful, not angry, but annoyed.
"I didn't bother to read the cards or the stars again about my own future until last year. I figured that I already knew that was going to happen and reading my own fate always seemed a bit . . . wrong. Like somehow knowing my own future, but not being able to change it . . . " She didn't finish her thought.
She raised herself up, sitting on her legs. She brought her palms to her knees and stared down at them before speaking again.
"But then I noticed how my hand's had changed during that mission to Sand. They were rougher than they'd ever been, and I had more lines through my palms. I couldn't help but noticed how my life line was altered." She held her hands out before her, splaying her fingers so that Neji could see the evidence. She stared into his eyes, waiting for him to see the truth. She wanted him to look, maybe to understand, but Neji couldn't see anything. They were just hands. He'd never paid enough enough attention to her hands to know if they had changed. He was sure that more scars dotted her hands after many years, as the same was true of his own appendages.
"I looked at your hands a month later, and your hands were so different, Neji. I can't remember everything that I saw that first time, but nothing was there that I recalled. When I searched for anything similar to my own new hands, there was . . . nothing, Neji. Nothing . . ." her words drifted off at her last sentence. She continued to stare into his eyes as he finally began to understand what she was saying.
"I read the cards for me, I even did a reading for you, but you really didn't care. After that I spent a month's worth of evenings staring at the stars. They told me . . ." She smiled, and Neji noticed for the first time that she had tears in her eyes. Tenten was crying. He'd never seen her like this before.
"You did it, Neji. You defied your fate. You changed the stars, Neji!" She was excited for him through her tears, screaming out his accomplishment. She reached for him, wrapping her arms around him with a strength that he'd forgotten she possessed.
So he'd changed his destiny. Was everything that was supposed to be . . . everything that was supposed to become reality with his original fate . . . was that gone too?
"I knew when the Hyuga announced that the Branch family was going to be abolished that everything really was different. You changed your fate, Neji." He could feel her smile against his cheek, feel her breath as she said these words to him. She pulled him even closer and her breath warmed his cool ear. "You changed the universe, Neji," she whispered just before pulling back.
"I'll always love you," she promised as the tears finally escaped, forming two perfect paths from her brown eyes to her chin. Neji watched this play across her face, certain that he'd never seen a more beautiful, nor more tragic sight.
He reached his hands up, cupping her cheeks with both of his palms, careful not to touch the paths of salty water.
"I'll change my fate again then," he said with confidence. This solution was so simple, he didn't understand why Tenten couldn't see it. He'd done it once, surely he could do it again.
She gave a wistful smile that only made the tragedy of her tears seem more perfect. "I know that you would, Neji." Her smile faded as she closed her eyes and leaned her cheek into his palm. "But even if you'd give up your new fate for me, even if you'd changed what would need to be changed to bring us together, even if you could, Neji . . ." she kissed his palm and leaned away from his hands as she opened her eyes once more.
"I wouldn't allow it." Her eyes hardened as the tears on her cheeks weren't even dry.
"We're each meant for someone else now, we have another fate." She kissed each of his cheeks, lightly so that he wasn't even sure if she'd actually brushed her lips across his skin.
"And our new fates are even greater than before." She started to leave then, a final gesture of farewell, but Neji didn't want to let her go. She'd barely gotten to her feet when he grabbed her wrist, trying to pull her back and stop what he knew was coming.
"How can you know that?" he asked trying to grasp the final flaw in what she was telling him. "How could you possibly know that this new path is greater than what we could be together? How can you know that this is what is meant to be and that we're not meant to change fate once more?" Neji didn't believe in any of this. He couldn't accept that Tenten was right.
She didn't look at him as she whispered her final words before departing, continuing to stare off into an unknown darkness. "The stars told me," she promised, pausing as she took a deep breath, "and yesterday the Hokage told me that you're going to be the Hyuga clan's new heir."
His stunned silence allowed for Tenten to break from his grasp and disappear into the newly fallen night.
Author's note because everyone who reviews wants me to make a sequel:
My original idea had Tenten saying that Kankuro had asked her to marry him—note the mention of the Sand mission. I was thinking that Gaara and Neji had managed to change their fates, with the help of Naruto of course, which essentially changed what Tenten was reading, even if she really only saw Neji's impact.
I changed the story so that Neji becoming Clan Head was the final excuse because I figured that more people would enjoy that. I figured that you'd like it more . . . you wonderful little readers you!
But I should say that it's not that Neji's becoming Clan Head and that Tenten isn't worthy or something—it's that the stars were right. Neji has a brighter future, and that doesn't include TennyTen in the end. She has her own destiny in case you didn't catch that, so both of them are going to do something great. She doesn't say it, but Neji changed her fate too—for the better.
Special thanks to Sandataba, too! Hope you were cleared up on that clan head crap. Thanks for your 'flame,' but that was totally just an awesome critique. If you wanna read a flame, check out the reviews on my friend's HP fiction. OMG that's got some crazy stuff in there man.