"I'd imagine the two of you have a fascinating story to tell me." The Hokage propped her chin on her folded hands as she leaned forward to glance between the two young men seated across the desk from her.
The two could not be more different –the boisterous and driven Lee, the quiet and serious Neji— occasionally Tsunade had to wonder how they even managed to get along at all. The bond of Team Gai was unique, that much was certain.
Lee, as usual, was the first to speak up. He launched into a jumbled explanation, punctuated by exclamations of youth and references to "Team Gai's lovely flower" or "delicate blossom", by which Tsunade could only assume he meant their absent team member. Neji just regarded him with an expression of barely contained patience, hidden behind layers of carefully practiced stoicism.
Tsunade held up a hand, which it took Lee several moments to notice, and even then he didn't stop immediately. It was only when she cleared her throat rather severely that his chatter slowly drew to a halt.
"I appreciate your attempt to explain, Lee, but I barely understood any of that."
The young man looked slightly crestfallen, but the expression was quickly replaced with one of renewed enthusiasm.
"Perhaps my youthful rival Neji can better explain the situation, Hokage-sama?"
Tsunade smiled slightly, struggling to contain a chuckle as she turned her gaze to Neji, quietly relieved that Lee had decided to turn the task over to his more straightforward teammate.
"Perhaps so."
Neji regarded her seriously.
"The mission had been proceeding as intended. We delivered Ryuushi-san to his destination and were planning to return to Konoha as fast as safe travel permitted. We encountered a slight… difficulty in navigation, however, which delayed us—"
Tsunade inferred from the slight change in his inflection that the "difficulty" had not been of his doing, and Lee's guilty look confirmed it, but she chose not to press the issue.
"—enough that when we came across one of the campsites we had selected along the route, we found ourselves walking into an ambush."
"An ambush by whom?" Tsunade interrupted, and Neji's eyes flickered with some emotion she could not identify.
"We do not know. They had no affiliation that we were able to recognize. The best we could determine was that they were perhaps rogue shinobi from a village that was destroyed by the war."
Tsunade frowned, not because she doubted him, but rather because she had all ideas that the young Hyuuga's assessment was quite correct. Following the devastation of the Shinobi World War, many villages had been forced to recover from utter decimation. The Five Nations were doing all they could to help those who were struggling, but they had their own wounds to heal as well. More and more recently, they had seen these bands of rogues popping up across the countryside, intent on taking their revenge on the shinobi of the Five Nations, blaming them for the misfortunes of their villages.
"And so you were forced into combat." She surmised.
Neji gave a succinct nod.
"We had no choice."
"And then the injury occurred?"
At that, Lee looked down, his face a mask of pain, and even Neji's passive countenance faltered for just an instant with a trace of what looked like anger or perhaps even guilt.
"Yes." He said more quietly. "We were outnumbered to a large extent. Each of us fought multiple opponents, outside of a formation. It was… an error in judgment, one for which I take full responsibility."
"I, too, take responsibility!" Lee interjected fiercely. "If I had not gotten us lost, our youthful blossom might not—"
Tsunade cut them both off. "Regardless, there is no use in dwelling on it. If you would, continue?"
Neji cleared his throat and Tsunade saw that Lee was practically on the verge of tears. She suppressed a sigh, wondering not for the first time how it was that the boy survived in the life of a shinobi.
"When we had disposed of our attackers, we did the best we could to dress the wound and make our way back to the village," Neji continued. "but our progress was considerably slowed in caring for the injury, and it took us longer than we anticipated."
That much Tsunade had inferred from the medical report given to her by Sakura. Both of the young men had problems consistent with injuries induced by strain, and the worsening of Tenten's injury had occurred, despite all their good intentions, from the fact that no trained medic had been able to attend to it immediately following the break.
Tsunade nodded to herself and stood up to pace behind her desk. Lee's gaze followed her, waiting expectantly, but Neji's remained fixed on a point in the distance.
It was interesting, she thought. Different as the two might be, she knew both of their thoughts rested in the same place. Sakura had already informed her of the previous night's small debacle, which had culminated in the young medic just giving up entirely on the idea of removing the two of them from their teammate's bedside. It was well enough that she hadn't been able to anyway, Tsunade considered. Better that the team be together.
"Well, as I'm sure you are both aware, the extent of your teammate's injuries are quite severe, but not impossible to recover from. She will need several weeks, if not months, of therapy to restore herself to the level at which I will deem her fit for missions. I will not be assigning missions to either of you for the next week, while you make your own recoveries."
Lee's mouth opened, but she turned swiftly and glared him down. His jaw quickly clamped shut.
"And I will take no protests on that front. I may change my mind if I see fit, but that is my decision, and mine alone."
She gave them a slight smile.
"That will be all. Go and visit her now."
Lee was practically out the door before the words left her mouth. Neji stood and half-bowed.
"Thank you, Hokage-sama."
Tsunade frowned when he turned his back and walked out of the office, closing the door quietly behind him. Lee, she was sure, would make a full recovery, and despite his dramatics, would be back to his usual exuberant self as soon as Tenten was out of the hospital and on her way back to health. Neji, however… she had seen a hesitance in his manner that worried her. She made a note to herself to monitor his behavior over the next few weeks, in case any small signs of lingering guilt surfaced.
The last thing she needed was another Jounin with a guilt complex.
Lee was already a good ways down the road by the time Neji reached the bottom of the stairs leading away from the Hokage's office, a fact that made him slightly relieved.
Since this morning, his thoughts hadn't been coming together with the fluidity to which he'd become so accustomed, and he found it threw his whole mental process out of balance. He had woken still seated in the armchair at Tenten's bedside, his left hand completely numb where it was clenched in her grip. There had then been several tedious and uncomfortable minutes of trying to disentangle his hand from hers without waking her; fortunately, Lee had already gone to find breakfast, leaving Neji to struggle alone. For some unfathomable reason, he had found himself to be incredibly flushed and more than a little flustered, so that by the time he finally left the room, his desire to find a quiet place to meditate and re-center himself was almost overwhelming.
Rationally, he knew the source of this strange sensation of disarray. It was only logical that he should worry about his teammate, but to this extent? It was practically unthinkable for someone like Neji.
Perhaps, he considered, it was the dreams that augmented the feeling. Neji prided himself on having, for the most part, developed a mastery over those things that caused him fear. He had not experienced nightmares since he was a young child, but recently, old terrors had resurfaced in his dreams, leaving him restless and with a vague feeling of constant discomfort.
All the dreams, however, had one similarity: every single one culminated in not some phantom terror, but a very real memory and sensation. In each nightmare, he found himself rushing towards the village, carrying a barely conscious body that seemed to get paler and more deathlike with each passing moment. Fear blossomed like a gaping wound through his chest, and he couldn't shake it, no matter how hard he tried. As the memory progressed, his vision would fade, and he could feel the panic rising, as he realized that he couldn't rely on his sight to provide him with those faint signs that life still existed in the motionless body of his teammate.
He shook away the thought. It had carried him all the way back to the hospital, which gave him no more time to consider his strange reactions.
Lee was already standing outside the room, seemingly arguing with an insistent attendant.
"I must see our youthful flower!"
"Sir, I told you, she's being examined by the medic. I cannot permit her to see you now."
"But—" Lee's protest was stopped short by Neji's arrival. Lee looked to him for help, gesturing to the attendant, who was growing increasingly annoyed, but Neji just shook his head.
"Later."
"But—"
"Later, Lee."
Lee's shoulders slumped.
"Alright."
The attendant looked more than a little relieved as the two walked back down the hallway and out into the stark light of the day.
Truth be told, Neji was as eager as Lee to simply ignore the attendant and see Tenten anyway, but he hadn't lost complete control of his mental faculties yet.
They could wait, however painful it might be in the interim.
A/N: Hey, look, Senka hasn't fallen off the face of the planet! :D Just fallen into the swirling vortex that is reality, which means job, school and all the lovely things that come with being responsible. Yay...?
Anywho. Sorry if this chapter is absolutely unintelligible. My head has been a swirling vortex of stress and blank spaces recently, and I so desperately wanted to get this chapter out, because I've really missed writing. I know it's also kind of lacking in Tenten, but I wanted to shift the focus away from her while I'm setting up other things for future chapters.
And finally: You all (by which I am referring to you, dear readers) are utterly fabulous. I've gotten such a great response just from the first few chapters and I am so incredibly flattered by the compliments about my writing and this story. If I've not responded to your review personally, I apologize profusely. I will make my best attempt to do so now that my life is settling back into some sense of normalcy. Anyway, if I haven't, know that your reviews are very much appreciated, and I would love to hear your continuing thoughts on the story. Thank you and, as always, happy reading!
- Senka Hitomi
P.S. Okay, I know I said that was going to be the final thing, but I forgot: I think I might be in the market for a beta sometime in the near future. Considering the gaps in my writing and publishing that have recently occurred and the added stress of life in general, I really need someone other than myself to proofread my work. So if you're interested or know a beta looking to read the gibberish of a madwoman, let me know?
