IV.
They're going to kill her. She can't even hear them the rush of blood in her ears is so loud, but she knows they are close behind – too close – and she keeps running and running but each breath is shrapnel in her lungs, and her right leg had never fully recovered from yesterday and oh god she's going to die she's going to die she's going to-
Tenten half runs, half skids down a crumbling slope of thick, terracotta earth, red dust flying into her eyes. The kunai wound just above her hip is still wet, dark blood gleaming through her top. They're too strong, too many. She'd seen the weapons they carried, seen the jutsu ravaged on her partner, her now dead partner, had seen the way his bones had been crushed under the weight of – "Fuck."
The ground suddenly disintegrates beneath her feet, crumbling into fine powder that pulsates with foreign chakra. They've caught her. She's –
"-going to die," his partner tells him, "You lose the Byakugan, you die."
"Concentrate," Neji says, "Find them."
It's his fault. He should never have split the team up, shouldn't have put her with that new recruit. Their radio signal died nearly three hours ago, three hours for Tenten to get ambushed, get hurt. Lee is back at the camp, ready to run back to Konoha if something goes wrong with both teams. He should have let Lee go with her instead. Neji suddenly clutches at the side of his face, fingers brushing against the throbbing veins of his Byakugan. The terrain is difficult: steep granite mountains, jagged valleys cracked deep into the hard earth, boulders haphazardly strewn in crumbling piles from past avalanches.
"Captain," his partner says, "you need to rest."
Neji has been using the Byakugan for seventeen hours straight, through the first fight and the second, and it burns his face now as he scans the terrain for any signs of their missing teammates. He brushes the other man aside: "You take the Northwest for the next couple of kilometres, I'll take the Northeast. Keep your signal safe."
Tenten, he thinks grimly, she's going to-
End this, she has to end this, it hurts it hurts it hurts. Her ankle has been snapped. There's no running anymore. Just the red dust, the blood. And death.
Tenten fingers the small scroll hanging from her neck, feels the sharp edge tucked safely within. A surge of relief, warm, soothing: she's going to leave her own way. Tenten can hear them approaching when she unrolls the parchment and takes out the blade. Her eyes are watering from the dust but it glimmers between her fingers with a calming familiarity. Someone has written on it. She blinks, brushes a thumb over the dried black ink.
Stop.
She can recognize the brushwork straight away. Neji's calligraphy. She can see it all in the single character: his steady hand, his grace, his patience. Stop.
Neji, she thinks, Neji, what have you done.
Stop.
It is not an order. He probably tried to convince himself it is one, yet another of his quiet demands that he knows she unwaveringly obeys out of respect. Don't attack until we arrive. Let a medic take a look at your arm. Get some rest tonight. Wait for us by the border.
But this is not just another move in a battle plan and he is not writing in his capacity as a teammate, a captain of her ANBU squad. Tenten knows he must have realized with each brushstroke that she would only ever see his inked message when she is on the brink of being too far gone, must have known there would be a high chance that she will not, cannot obey.
It is not an order.
It is not even a request. Tenten suddenly feels like she is going to cry because this is the closest that Neji has ever come to begging, because Neji is asking her to stop, meaning please, meaning don't-
"Neji…."
-leave
"….you fool."
-me.
Neji keeps running. He can see far, far ahead, three hundred and fifty fucking nine degrees, and she is not there. Only earth and rock, dead red dust. Three hours and a half since her signal died.
Movement. He twists around rapidly, focuses on a spot a little over two hundred metres to the west. A team of three enemy-nin, heading his way. His Byakugan falters: the world falls in and out of focus suddenly, with a velocity and violence that alarms him. Then again, and again.
He rests his eyes briefly, readjusts his ANBU mask. Opens his eyes. The world sways. Focus.
Neji closes his eyes again, presses calloused fingertips to the heat of his temples. Focus. They are nearing; he will have to take them on alone.
When he opens his eyes he is blind.