Naruto© Masashi Kishimoto.

Author's notes: Thanks so much for the reviews! You all are wonderful, and I hope I can live up to any expectations.

Please note the rating, as later chapters will contain some very mature content. At this point, I don't know how graphic I'll be, but it will be dark even in passing.

The Hardest Journey

The sun was rising over the eastern hills in the most amazing display, slowly changing the color of the clear sky from the night's cobalt to the day's pale blue. Rays touch upon the clouds still clinging in the low valleys, and they reflect the palest pink hue before burning away entirely, leaving in their wake a lush green panorama. Light glints over the hundreds of small lakes and rivers that dot the landscape, creating a sparkling scene as far as the eye can see. It is a sight more beautiful than any painting by even the greatest of artists, and yet it is lost upon poor Tenten.

The young woman can be seen sitting upon the hard ground at the side of the path, leaning back against the old wooden supply cart. Her head is cradled between two of the wheel spokes, her thick brown hair- once again bundled up- acting as a pillow. Dark eyes are closed against the ever lightening day as her tired mind tries to catch up on lost sleep. The smell of breakfast cooking in the new camp, combined with the non-stop throbbing pain of her foot, are conspiring against her. Her stomach growls loudly, jolting her from her light doze, and Tenten frowns.

Will she ever feel truly rested again?

Footsteps alert her to another presence, and she opens her chocolate eyes just in time to see the young man with the broken arm come to a stop before her. In daylight, he looks much the worse for wear. Although the arm is now set and bundled into a sling made from his shirtsleeves, there are other wounds; a black eye, a split lip, and, when he smiles, a missing tooth towards the back. Amazingly, he seems to be in even less pain than she is, and when he catches her looking he merely tips his head toward the timber cart behind her. "That Jap did a number on me."

Tenten nods, recalling what she had seen of the last night's bloody battle. "Is Ying okay?" Ying, the other sentry who had helped to catch their enemy, had taken a pretty bad fall. Well, a bad throw, if one wanted to be technical. Still, while Tenten was unintentionally distracting the soldier, Ying had climbed back onto his feet and bashed him over the head with a rock, thus ending the encounter. The unconscious Japanese man had been bound up and tossed into the back of their cart amid the dwindling supplies. They would be interrogating him later.

"Ying's fine, just a little bruised. Here, take this." The young man hands her a rough wooden bowl filled to the brim with something pale, mushy and steaming. Tenten accepts it gratefully, murmuring her thanks. A moment later, she truly glances at it, and is hard pressed to hide her displeasure. Millet? They are once again resorting to consuming poor cereal? Remembering the plump and sticky rice of her childhood, she feels her throat close up. Back then, when she was young and her country free, the Zhu family would not have even fed this to their horses.

Her comrade must notice her disappointment, for he gives a discomforted little half-shrug and looks apologetic. "Sorry, but we're running low on rations again. Word has it we'll be sending someone to Kaili to see about getting some real food. In the meantime though, you should eat." He pauses and flexes his good arm, seeming concerned about its mobility, and the rope-like muscles in the tanned limb stand out tautly. Thus reassured by its condition, the teenaged guerilla adds, "You need to keep up your strength."

That much is true. After the capture of the Japanese soldier- presumed to have been on a scouting mission- their old leader had ordered them to break camp and fall back to the safety of the mountains. They had moved out long before dawn, marching uphill all the while. Due to her injured foot, Tenten had fallen steadily behind and had finally been assigned the exhausting task of pulling the supply cart at the rear of the train. More than once today, the young woman had angrily cursed the name of the traitor who had stolen their only horse when he deserted a month ago.

Tenten takes a determined mouthful of the unsalted porridge, doing her best to swallow the lumpy mass without gagging. Once the first warm bite goes down, however, she realizes how hungry she really is and begins to drain the bowl. It is only after the faintest tingling begins inside her mouth, signaling that she may be burning it, that she pauses. While waiting for the rest of the millet to cool, she tries to make conversation with her new friend. It suddenly dawns on her that they have not even introduced themselves. "What's your name?"

The young man sketches an awkward bow, unable to place his hands together in the proper form. Seated upon the hard ground, with a warm bowl clutched between her fingers, Tenten's own greeting is little better. Still, there is a certain respect present in the gestures, along with an informal understanding, and both adolescents are sastisfied with the attempt. "Li Hao. I'm Li Deng's younger brother. My family were farmers to the north and east of here, but the Japanese burned us out two years ago. And you?"

Hao's frankness, his openness, startles Tenten. She had expected him to give his name, not life's story, and now she fears that he expects the same from her. The last few years of her existence have been a hell she has not yet come to terms with, a nightmare from which she has not awoken. She will not dredge up the past, nor open the painful wounds by speaking about them. After an interminable pause, during which she senses his eagerness, she finally speaks, telling the truth. "I'm Zhu Tenten, and I was born in the north. I don't really want to talk about it. How I came to be here, I mean."

To her great relief, Hao does not take her rebuff personally. He smiles at her and bows once more, and she decides in that moment that he is very much like her cousin Lee. It is a happy thought, the first one she has had in sometime. "Pleased to meet you, Zhu Tenten. I'd love to stay and talk, but I'm going to attend a meeting. Our illustrious leader is trying to decide what to do about the barbarian in the cart. You'll make sure he doesn't get away, right? And please finish your breakfast."

As Hao turns and heads back up the rocky path toward the main group, Tenten finds it in her heart to give a little wave. Perhaps she is no longer alone.

Hyuga Neji wakes to a pounding headache. The sun shines down upon him from high in the sky, bright and blazing and just a little past its zenith. He tries to pull his hands up to shade his oddly-colored eyes, only to find that they have been bound together and tied to his ankles with a thick, coarse rope. Turning gracelessly over, he buries his face into the rough hewn timbers of whatever it is he is lying upon. The neon streaks and spots gradually fade from his vision, leaving his mind as his only cloudy organ.

Where exactly is he? Lifting his head slowly and shaking the loose hair from his handsome face, he glances around and takes note of his surroundings. He is lying in a flat-bedded cart of some sort, wedged uncomfortably between two metal drums that have long been absorbing the heat of the day. Towards the back of the craft a few shabby blankets are piled high, all of them dirty and smelling of mold. Under the dingy coverlets is a large wooden box with a heavy and heavily rusted padlock. A weapons cache?

Curious, Neji begins to inch his way toward the crate, worming his way forward and feeling the splinters dig into his body. The cart shakes and gives a groan and he pauses, worried that it might be about to roll away or rot out from underneath him. When it holds, he begins to slide forward again, trying his best to balance his weight better and keep the noise to a minimum. It does not work; by the time he reaches the box, a head bobs into view, wearing two distinctive chignons. A plain but curious face, pretty in its own way, peers over the side.

Neji recognizes her immediately, his fuzzy mind suddenly sharpening. The young woman is the same from last night- or whenever, he is no longer certain of the time- the one who had seen him in the darkness and mistakenly called him by his father's name. How could this Chinese girl, certainly no older than himself, know of his long missing parent? Could she have just guessed the name? Had he perhaps misheard her? Determined to find out the truth, he asks again, struggling against his dry mouth and swollen tongue.

At the sound of his voice, she cocks her head to the side and stares with chocolate eyes. Neji cannot help but think she looks rather stupid, almost like a blank cow, gazing at him as though he were a strange zoological specimen and not someone talking to her. As the seconds tick by without any response, the young man feels himself growing ever more frustrated, to the point where he wishes he were unbound, merely so he could hit something. Why, he asks himself, does she not answer him? Especially when he was speaking perfect Tokyo-style Japanese?

"I don't know what you said."

The quiet, puzzled-sounding foreign words, punctuated by a slight shaking of the brunette head, filter into his aching brain slowly. Neji lowers his brow and curses himself for a fool at this realization; of course the girl does not understand the Japanese language! Why should she, living in this wild southern territory that has yet to be subdued? The teenaged soldier tries to converse with her once more, this time using the Mandarin dialect which she herself had spoken. Struggling for the words, he manages, "How do you know my father?"

The words are guttural, the pronunciation awful. The grammar is nothing to be proud of either, but the desperate message- spoken in her own native tongue which is not widely used this far south- is crystal clear. This strange prisoner, whose greatest worry should be escaping their band alive, wants only to know about his parent. A tender memory of the man in question rises to the surface of Tenten's astonished mind, but she shoves it away, hides it back under the painful multitude of others. She owes that man, Hyuga Hizashi. Not this one.

Tenten allows her chocolate eyes to rove dispassionately over the supine captive before her. In daylight, it becomes obvious that he is much younger than she had previously believed. Perhaps even her own age. Tall for his own people, although a little short for hers, she thinks they would be nearly the same height standing face to face. Peering unabashedly at his khaki uniformed body, noting the way the clothing fits, she decides that he is undoubtedly the better fed one. His skin, although chaffed by its bindings and slightly sunburned, is of a paler complexion than her own. Her honored mother had had such skin…

Mama…

No, don't think about it. There was nothing you could have done.

She resumes her scrutinizing. The soldier's face is much the same as his father's, but upon closer inspection Tenten becomes aware of a few key differences. To begin with, the fine ebony hair framing the face is much longer than Hizashi's, flowing down almost to mid-back. Certainly longer than regulations would allow, and Tenten wonders how he has managed to keep from cutting it. Cheekbones are not as pronounced, and that- combined with youth- gives him a less haggard appearance than his father's. Despite this, something about his visage just seems callous.

You're just like the rest of your people.

Unfeeling, uneducated thugs.

Tenten's dark, doe eyes meet his pearly ones, and it takes all the willpower she has to keep from looking away. Hizashi's pupil-less white orbs had carried a haunted look, one that she imagines she herself now wears, whereas this young man's seem naturally condescending, more defiant than beaten. The manner in which he watches her is completely at odds with his position; prisoners of war, tied up and lying vulnerable in the bottom of an old cart, are not supposed to gaze up at their captors in the same way that great lords stare down the hired help.

Especially when they want something.

Tenten is not by nature a violent or heated person, but years of war and its abuses have pushed her to the breaking point. Anger boils up and it blots out everything, including the memory of the night before when this young man had turned to her and so desperately asked for news of his father. Any sympathy she might have felt, any inclination to help him based upon that common ground of loss, is gone in an instant. All that is left in its place is the hate her people feel for his, and the burning desire to make him suffer even one iota of what she has.

"Please? My father?" he asks again, but there is no pleading in his tone, and to her sensitive ears it sounds more like an elitist order than a question. Tenten abruptly realizes that he thinks of her as less than human, that all of them think of her and her people that way, and that thought is the one that sends her over the edge. Her hand comes up, still clutching the bowl from her interrupted lunch- more millet, just reheated from before- and she brings it down upon his dark head so hard that the wood cracks.

He crumples without a sound.

"You aren't half the man your father was."

To be continued...