To Guest: Thank you for your review! Yeah, I feel you... I was beyond mad at Kishimoto when he said that... I totally agree with you about NaruHina: THERE ARE SO MANY OTHER WAYS FOR PEOPLE TO GET TOGETHER. I will rant about this forever. *shakes fist to the sky* The NejiTen in here was always meant to be (heavily) implied... This is mainly Tenten-centric, so there's no scene coming up about how they got together. Sorry :/
Some Gai - Tenten team spirit for my dark dark soul.
-X-
Instructor
by Clementive
-X-
The wooden puppets rose from the ground, eerily, standing bulky and wobbly above smoke as they took their first steps. The ground grumbled and sank beneath them. Strings snapped, whipped back against the branches.
Tenten grinned back at Gai-sensei.
"They are beautiful, aren't they?" she asked with a content sigh, the empty training grounds shaking with each movement of the puppets. "Imagine them dimming the genin in the forest of death. I added a few things," she paused moving her fingers expertly until their chest opened in unison, revealing gleaming weapons and more strings. "I'm not done yet with the bomb tags though... But just picture it: smoke, running genin... weapons... more weapons." She clasped her hands together, her eyes wide and her expression childish, and the puppets mirrored the gesture behind her. "So, what do you think?"
His smile slipped, his thumb-up bending back over his fist.
He hesitated.
Gai barely recognized her, the warmth behind her smile familiar, but the rest of her, dark and unstable, inscrutable. She shifted, glided, with delays and violence and restraint. Like one of her puppets. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He thought of Kakashi, he thought of his own loss, the ghosts of his legs, his career; everything the war had stolen from him.
"Gai-sensei?"
Nonchalantly, Tenten waved the puppets off and took a step toward him. She stared him, wide smile, the corner of her eyes wrinkled. He opened his mouth again, but stopped himself as she came nearer. The sun behind her was blinding and her dark eyes glistened reflecting nothing.
And all the strings lying around her, connecting her to her puppets, seemed to be pulling at her too, arranging her posture, her features.
"You know how youthful I think you are, my little flower!" Gai's voice boomed, and he tried to reach her, a smile, a glance.
She turned away from him.
"They won't kill the kids, no worries," Tenten said her fists on her hips, her head cocked on the side as she squinted back at her creations. "If they stay focused, they can avoid them easily. Well, maybe not easily-easily... But that's the point of the Chuunin exam, isn't it?"
The wooden beasts creaked and screeched smoothly turning back towards them when she whipped back her hand. They carved fleeting shadows around her eyes, her mouth, despite how much she beamed at him.
"Tenten..." Gai-sensei frowned, and she pouted, whirling back toward her puppets. Again and again, escaping him, ignoring his feeble attempts.
It was too late, her body shrilled. You can't be a sensei to me now that he's dead and Lee has moved on and I'm the only one who remains.
"Naruto tells me you refused to lead a genin team..."
Her back still to him, Tenten made quick hand seals and the puppets vanished in thin smoke.
"I'm a weapon mistress. I own a weapon shop. I just don't have time..." She shrugged.
"I recommended you for it," Gai said louder, straightening his back; he could see her adding more and more distance between them, burying him the same way she had buried her parents. Without a glance back. Without a name.
"I know, you've always believed in me."
Somehow, her smile was genuine, but her words rang hollow. His hand tensed, clammy, and his grip slipped around the wheel of his chair. He imagined himself reaching for her shoulder, standing on his legs.
"I think..." Gai said slowly, but with enthusiasm. "I think it'd do you good to have a team of your own. You travel a lot... It's time to take more youthful responsibilities."
"Yeah, well, it's out of youth that I'm an instructor now," Tenten said in a sing-song voice, again, her expression was perfect, her tone controlled, and he wished he could pretend nothing lurked behind it.
He leaned back against his chair, tired, drained, and guilt devoured his heart.
"You need some humanity in your life," Gai-sensei said softly and again, he saw the polished dark eyes of Kakashi in her. "Maybe, it's my fault, we should have had this conversation years ago... After Neji died, maybe, but I lost things too..." He pointed at his legs.
"What are you saying, Gai-sensei? You said, you liked my puppets! No take-backs!"
"I'm saying, I took you in my team for a reason," he said more firmly, ignoring her pout and sly smile.
Tenten said nothing, impenetrable, but her head titled back slightly. Sky bound.
"And I promised myself I would take care of you when your parents died," Gai continued. "I was with them... Lord Third must have told you."
"Take care of me, huh?" she smiled again, and Gai wondered if she rehearsed it, her smile, her warmth, while so much of her remained hidden, buried. "I never liked the thought of depending on someone," she said carelessly, but her face had grown stiff, placid, her eyes sharp and merciless.
"I promised them before they died," he lied because he saw a little girl in her hunched shoulders, a little girl angry at the world.
Paling, Gai rolled his chair toward her while she rolled back her scrolls and rearranged her weapons.
"I tried," Gai added desperately and her gestures quickened, "but it never seemed like you needed anything. You seemed strong-willed and perfectly happy, but now..."
"Now, what?" she asked coldly, impatiently pushing her bangs out of her eyes.
"Now, you seem... abandoned." Gai-sensei locked eyes with her, and vaguely Tenten saw a flash of grey spiky hair, disappearing between trees.
She took a step back from Gai-sensei.
When she looked down, the kunai shook in her hand, reflecting uneven sun-rays, her reflection distorted.
"I have nothing to teach," she said, aware of Kakashi, hiding between the trees, aware that Gai-sensei needed to hear something else.
If he hadn't spoken of her parents, she would have told him. She would have told him that she was whole, body and soul. For him. For his legacy.
She would have told him that the remaining ones hadn't drifted apart, visited too often by the dead.
Dead legs.
Dead rival.
Dead lover.
Dead parents.
(She doesn't visit them, she visits him.
Out of habit, out of loss.
As a child, she has passed by the gate of the graveyard, never entering. What would she say to them, a nameless wingless daughter? After the war, she has sat by Neji's tomb and look at theirs, rooted where his ashes were, refusing to acknowledge theirs. She has picked at the grass next to Neji, rested on the ground, she has talked to him, she has mourned him.
She has never truly understood why him, but not them. Looking in the eyes of the jounin who has survived, the jounin who has brought back her parents' bodies, she has seen herself as a child. She has seen herself throw her first kunai muttering their names, hoping they would call back to her.
"You abandoned me," she sneers over Neji's tomb because she can't walk to theirs. She has too much bellowing grief and anger, and she sinks onto the ground, gripping at the grass and his grave. Her nails bent uncomfortably and broke over the stone. Her eyes burning, her mouth snarling, she briskly slapped the dead flowers away.
"I couldn't stay your daughter. You abandoned me," she chokes, tumbles over the words, and she cries for the first time. Loud and devastated, her whole body torn, inanimate, Gai-sensei's lie still ringing in her ears.
She has never forgiven them.)