because i could not stop for death
Characters: Tenten, Hyuuga Neji,
Pairings: NejiTen
Warnings: Implied sex, [vague] canon compliance.
Rating: T+/M
Prompt: N/A
Word count: 913
Summary: It is the night before war.
Notes: I actually already posted this to tumblr about a week or two ago, but I figured I could add this here, too, just to consolidate all of these into one place. Also, I might have been moved very close to tears while writing this, so. Yeah. Title courtesy of the poem by Emily Dickinson of the same name.
Posted: Saturday 29 October 2016
Tenten has never been a stranger to death; none of them are. This is their life, after all, their choice and burden to bear, and to live it was to accept it.
But it is the night before they leave for war, and as Death stares up at her from its position on the damp grass beneath their knees, Tenten feels a weight, cold and heavy, settle low in her belly. It worries her, and she doesn't look up at the man sitting beside her as she leans forward to gather her cards.
They have never been wrong, after all.
"It's not really that shocking," she murmurs, shuffling the cards idly before slipping them back into the pouch at her waist. "We're ninja, and this is war."
Beside her, Neji shifts, and Tenten's breath hitches in her throat — it always does, whenever he touches her like this — when his rough, calloused palm brushes against her cheek, along her jaw and the column of her neck, until it comes to rest at the hollow of her throat. One of his fingers traces the sharp edge of her collar bone, and she trembles a bit at the intimacy of it all.
"Yes," he replies, tilting his head down to look her in the eye. "It is."
When he kisses her a moment later, Neji's lips are so gentle against her own that Tenten wants to cry.
It does not take long for her to tangle her fingers in his hair, to pull him down to lay beside her, nor for his clever fingers to make their way beneath her clothes and brush feather-light against her skin, and when he pulls away from her for a moment, dark hair spread across the grass and the moonlight shining in his pearl-like eyes, she thinks she has never seen him look more beautiful.
Tenten tells him just as much, and Neji's only response is to smile at her in that gentle, knowing way she's grown to treasure.
"How interesting." His breath is warm against her cheek. "I was just thinking the same about you."
She remembers the way Death had looked at her, empty eyes unseeing and all-knowing all at once, and then she is kissing him again, before she can put a name to the feeling that settles like a vice around her heart, before the dark curtain of night is burned away by bloody-bright dawn and they are marching away, yesterday's children sent off to war, and it occurs to her, then, that she no longer knows what the future might bring.
And for the first time in her life, she thinks she might be afraid for it.
"I think," Tenten begins, her voice a whisper against his throat. She's not sure how to to tell him — she isn't even sure what she wants to say — and she lets the words die on her tongue before she tries again. "I think — Neji, I — "
Neji wraps an arm around her waist, presses his lips to her shoulder, and Tenten does not try to speak again; he knows, and that, she thinks as she removes the metal and fabric covering his forehead, kisses the seal that mars the skin there, is enough for her.
Love is not a word that passes easily between them. It is a fragile, tiny thing, with barely-fledged wings, and they both know it will be some time yet before either of them is able to put a name to this — the stolen moments in hidden corners, awkward fumbling and sounds and sensations (strange and new and exciting) in the dark, secret smiles and knowing looks and the knowledge that they are nothing more than them — but for now, this is enough.
The hours pass, and in time night gives way to the first blooms of a red October dawn. It is with no small amount of reluctance that they pull away from one another, as lingering touches and sidelong glances give way to rigid shoulders and hardened hearts, until they are no longer themselves but perfect soldiers set to lay down their lives for the sake of their mission — win — standing side-by-side in the growing light of the rising sun.
In the distance, they hear a shout: a summons to line up, the order to move out. With it comes sudden understanding.
"Stay alive, Tenten," Neji tells her, and she wonders at the emotion she hears in his voice, the sour note of uncertainty and doubt that curls around the words. "Stay alive, and come back."
Tenten does not cry when she wraps her arms around Neji's neck and kisses him, when she buries her face in the rough material of his flak jacket and wishes that the world would stop turning, if only for a moment, if only to let this moment stretch on forever. "Yeah," she replies, before looking up at him, memorizing every detail about him in that instant even as the vice around her heart squeezes tighter still, until she thinks it might burst from the pressure. "You too. I'll never forgive you if you don't."
If her voice wavers, cracks at the end, Neji says nothing. He presses his lips to her hair briefly, and then, all too soon, he is pulling away.
"I love you, you know," he whispers, and disappears a moment later.
Her heart shatters, then, and she leaves the broken pieces where Death had watched her the night before.
Notes
I can't tell if I prefer Tenten and Neji like this, or how I've been writing them in previous chapters. Maybe both, or something in between. Who knows.
Anyway. I will never get over Neji's death, and I am quite alright living with that fact until the day I die. So, there's that.
