Title: Secondhand Faith

Chapter Title: Playing With Fire

Author: Lell

Current Rating: PG-13

Warnings: Spoilers…pretty much up until the current chapters. While considered an AU, many things in the timeline remain the same. So, read at your own risk (though that warning applies to most of my work…) Tayuya's mouth and all subsequent obscenities and breaches of political correctness attributed to her.

Summary: They got Sasuke back (yay), Itachi died at his hands (more yay) and Konoha emerged triumphant after having been to hell and back in a handbasket (innumerable amounts of yay.) But sometimes peacetime is just as harrowing as war when old enemies and not so old friends convene at this year's Chuunin exams. (AU futurefic starring the Sand Sibs, various Otonin and the Konoha ensemble. All at once. Fear.)

oOo

"I'll give you good odds."

"No."

"Reeeally good odds."

"Still no, Kankurou."

The puppeteer rolled his eyes, dramatic in their setting of Kabuki facepaint and that ridiculous hood. "People are right about you."

Tenten shot him a look. "Right about what?"

His grin was feline and, eerily, a lot like Temari's version of the same expression. "That you're the boring one."

Tenten, naturally, was insulted. "What?"

Kankurou looked suitably blasé, buffing his nails casually against his chest. "Oh, you know. You're sensible. The reliable one. Very dependable. Just not someone who does anything interesting."

"Just because I won't lay bets on which kids are gonna fail a very important exam, doesn't mean I'm boring." Tenten looked pissed off, hands firmly ensconced on her skinny hips. "Sakura's way more boring than I am."

Kankurou shook his head, that amused little grin still playing around his lips just to annoy her. "Nah – Sakura's bossy and hot, like the sexy teacher you crush on because you want her to 'discipline' you." He leered comically.

Tenten stared at him for a while before wincing. "Guys, they're all messed up in the head." She muttered something about teachers not being that sexy, then paused mid-mumble with a decidedly peeved look on her face.

Kankurou sidled up to her side. "Just remember that you're a teacher?" he enquired slyly.

He got an automatic 'Shut up' and was suitably satisfied. Kankurou was very much an adrenalin junkie and aggravating a woman whose hobby revolved around sharp, pointy projectiles was pretty high in the danger thrills.

"I teach ten year olds," she grumbled, hand pushing her messy bangs out of her face. "I doubt they think of me in that manner."

"Because you're boring?" Kankurou offered helpfully, then ducked when she slung her (empty) Styrofoam cup at him.

"You wear more makeup than I do."

"…how is that related to you being boring?"

"It doesn't, but you should feel ashamed anyway."

"Ah." He watched the young woman as she ran her hands up and down her bare arms rapidly and shivered. "You should have worn more clothes."

"Yeah, yeah." Tenten's lips twisted about themselves. "I know what this place is like at night, but every time I come here, the heat in the day convinces me that it being this cold is impossible." She peered at their shadowy surroundings – the sun had long since set and narrow windows didn't give off much light. "Ever considered installing streetlamps?"

"We're ninja – we enjoy sneaking about in the dark. Let us have our fun."

Tenten's sigh was theatrical. "Do you ever take anything seriously?"

Kankurou looked thoughtful and made an effort to make it seem considering. "Food, possibly," he said after a while.

When she snickered, he looked at her suspiciously. The smug little look she was trying to hide made him all the more curious and he poked her in the side. "What?"

She looked pointedly in the general direction of his belly, then back up to his face. She smirked, again. "I can see."

Kankurou, shocked, jerked his eyes down towards his own midriff looking scandalised. "Hell, no." Back to her. "You're screwing with me." He stood up taller, self-conscious now and glared at her. "I'm the perfect figure of a shinobi."

"Mmhmm," Tenten agreed blithely and far too easily. "Sure. Whatever you say, Kankurou."

Holding his hand to his stomach, Kankurou shot the kunoichi a filthy look. He was sensitive about his weight – so what? He was big-boned, just like Temari, but he couldn't dress in nothing but fishnet and make it look good now, could he? He wasn't, say, Shikamaru. "You're a bitch, you know that right?"

Brown hair bobbed pleasantly as the woman laughed. "And I thought I was boring."

Kankurou, still grumbling (and sucking in his gut), shouldered her gruffly. Because she was a lot tinier than he was andher balance was impeded by her laughter, she stumbled and would have fallen over if someone hadn't been there to catch her.

"Mmmfarghji," she said.

Neji looked down at her coolly, seemingly unperturbed by her face being buried in his chest. "Translation, please."

Tenten extracted herself, fussily checking that her hair was still up in its buns. "Thank you, Neji."

"You're welcome." Unflappable, the Hyuuga was.

Kankurou doffed an imaginary hat to Neji. "If it isn't Hyuuga-hime, herself."

Neji, to the untrained eye, didn't react, but Kankurou knew what to look for. The minute flare of his nostrils, the slight tightening of his aristocratic lips, the look in those pale eyes that turned all the more supercilious. Yup, he could still needle Neji.

"Kankurou," was all that the Sand-nin got.

Tenten (fascinating though the byplay was between her teammate and her friend) was more interested in the cluster of quiet, tired looking children behind Neji. The girl's and one of the boy's eyes were red-rimmed and moist; all three of them looked as if they'd been shattered and then pieced back together again. Messily. "How'd you guys do?" she asked, kindly.

The girl offered the older woman a wan smile that quavered at the edges. A stiff breeze would knock it off her face, like the last leaf on a tree in autumn. "We passed, Tenten-san. All of us."

"But it was hard," the boy who hadn't cried, but was stained with sweat, said. "I wouldn't want to do it again." His teammates nodded along fervently.

Tenten looked sympathetic and Kankurou was interested to watch the play of emotions across her face – a little bit of sorrow, a hell of a lot of resignation, more than a little pride – and reasoned that she must have taught the brats at the Academy. Then she turned her head so that all he really saw of her face was her eye patch and some wisps of brown hair. Plus some nose. "Hopefully you won't have to," she said reassuringly.

Kankurou smirked suddenly and, when Neji tilted his head in question, shook his own. "Nothing. Temari's just gonna lose some money."

"She bet against Neji's team?" Tenten's expression was slightly cross. "Tch."

Despite the rumours, Kankurou knew that his little friend wasn't attached romantically to the stoic Hyuuga, but he could see how the notion was so popular and plausible, what with her jumping to his defence at most opportunities.

She was cute and loyal like that.

"You of all people should know that I have no sway over what by darling big sister does." He held up his large hands in supplication when she looked disapproving. "Shikamaru bet too."

He didn't really feel guilty for dropping the lazy shinobi in it – he needed some excitement in his life anyway.

"Why am I not surprised?" Tenten asked rhetorically.

Neji's elegant eyebrow was still suspended somewhere between his hairline and his eyes. "Your sister wagered that my team would fail?"

"Yup."

"Hnn." He sounded more icy than usual – perhaps that stick up his ass wasn't pressing his prostate quite right. But that was Temari's problem – Kankurou would just have to be there to witness it.

And, possibly, to film it.

"Do you know who else passed?" Tenten was enquiring of Neji when Kankurou returned to paying attention to his surroundings. The taller jounin still showed no real signs of outward irritation, but it could be theorised that he would rather talk to Tenten than to the errant brother of the Kazekage.

"Ino's," he said, with his usual stingy way with words. "Yuugao's youngest one cracked, so they all failed. Only one of the Sand teams passed." Kankurou was sure he didn't imagine the smug cast Neji's expression produced for all of a second. "Two from Grass and one from Rain and Sound each."

"Seven then – not a bad number." Tenten smiled, sudden and brilliant even in the dark. "It should be quite the show."

"All the more reason to lay a healthy wager on the outcome," Kankurou chimed in. He looked at her beseechingly while she rolled her single eye and flapped a dismissive hand at him. They were used to this dance – the teasing and the bantering – so it was surprising when another person entered into the fray.

"One hundred on more Konoha genin being promoted than Suna," Neji said with a voice as flat and as even as his eyes.

Kankurou admitted to being surprised for a few moments (beside him, Tenten's jaw flapped most inelegantly before she caught herself and closed it, looking abashed) but his devilish nature won out soon enough. "So Hyuuga-hime does know how to have fun," he purred (rumbled, really – he was too large to purr despite the deceptive kitty ear things.) "But, personally, I think we could make it even more interesting."

"Oh?" The Hyuuga managed to fit an entire glacier into a single syllable and the devil on Kankurou's shoulder wanted to laugh hysterically. The angel supposed to be on his other shoulder was on vacation.

With all the innocence of a virginal lamb, Kankurou slung an arm out and neatly hooked an arm around Tenten's waist. She squawked – mostly because he'd come at her from her blind side and, yeah, he was a little guilty about that – but was reeled in so that she ended up pressed against the puppeteer's side. Kankurou's arm wound around her in perfectly executed possessiveness. She eyed him with a suspicion that rapidly dissolved into outrage when, quite glibly, he stated "Winner gets a date with her."

"Kankurou, what the-"

"Deal." Kankurou had been treated to the pretty little sight that had been his Hyuuga-hime looking genuinely surprised before a surprising anger had welled up into existence, cold and icy. Catching himself, Neji smoothed his face out into the indifferent mask he usually wore.

His unexpected agreement was enough to shock Tenten out of whatever little hissy fit she'd been working herself up to and she could only blink at Neji in a blend of shock and horror.

Kankurou thought she looked like a bush baby. A cute one, but he probably wouldn't share that particular image with her…

Watching Tenten trying to deal with this rapid turn of events (and, conveniently, forgetting the teensy little detail that she was mad at Kankurou) and Neji retaining his impassive expression even when irritation and improbable stubbornness lingered in the curve of his lips and the depth of his eyes reminded Kankurou of just how much of an evil (but devilishly handsome) genius he was.

"Does this mean that Kankurou-san is Neji-sensei's Ultimate Rival now?"

Leave it to kids to spoil a wonderful moment.

Neji glared at the genin in question. "What have I told you about talking to Lee?"

"That we shouldn't because he puts ridiculous notions in our heads?"

"Indeed."

oOo

"Ow. Ow. Okay, seriously, get the fuck off of—shit. Maggots, I'm gonna skin you if you don't get off. No, really. Don't make me count to three, you brats. Fine. One…two…"

Laughing and exuberant, the three genin disentangled themselves from their teacher. The woman in question looked ruffled and more than a little irate as she brushed herself down with the air of a misanthropist. "You," she said menacingly to the grinning children, "Are in so much shit."

Kidoumaru was lounging in a chair and he had a lot of limbs to lounge with. He smiled. "Give them a break, Tayu – they passed."

Cue wordless squeak of happiness from Kaede.

Tayuya continued to scowl. "Of courset hey passed, which is why they shouldn't be making such a big fucking deal about it." She snorted air out through her nose like a particularly irate bull. "Geez."

Since the redhead didn't seem inclined towards celebration, Kidoumaru chuckled and gestured to the genin team. "It's late – go and sleep. Leave Tayuya-sensei alone." Then, as an afterthought, "And don't rub it too much in the faces of Jiroubou's team – they won't be thrilled."

Seiichi's face turned disappointed, but Dai nodded (sober and quiet as always) and dragged the taller boy out of the room with a certain alacrity, the blonde girl following. Once they were gone, Tayuya huffed once more, quieter this time and thumped down onto the bed.

"You should be proud," Kidoumaru commented while he watched her settle herself into a casual, boyish cross-legged pose on the counterpane. "They're the only Sound team to have passed."

The look he got from Tayuya quite clearly expressed her view that pride over some brats passing a tiny little exam wasn't something that she felt like doing.

"They did okay," she admitted, grudgingly, removing her headscarf and shaking out her tangled mane of hair. It flopped into her eyes and, after a few futile attempts to blow it out of her face, she grumbled a few choice curses and went off in search of a rarely used hairbrush.

"Do you think we'd have passed the first time if we'd taken these exams?" Kidoumaru asked and instantly received a scathing glance from Tayuya.

"Of course we'd have passed," she said bitingly. "Crap as you are, we'd have still been leagues ahead of any of the opposition." Her laugh was harsh and cynical. "Not everyone had the 'special training' that we had."

Sympathy glimmered in Kidoumaru's dark eyes. "Tayuya…"

She ignored him, raking the brush through her hair and swearing when it caught on a particularly tough tangle. "Do you remember when Kimimaro used to gut us for fun?"

The bones in one of Kidoumaru's shoulders ached with the memory and he replied, drly, "Vaguely."

"These kids," Tayuya said, voice scornful. "They don't know what real hardship's like." She yanked the brush down fiercely, not caring that it left red strands between the teeth. "Their pretty little exams with their pretty little rules and their pretty little alliances – makes me sick." She spat on the floor, ignoring Kidoumaru's frown.

"You seem particularly…viperish today."

Tayuya paused. Frowned. Stared at her pale, wan face in the mirror and watched as a bitter, hateful expression formed upon it. "I saw that puppet guy again."

Realisation was like an unpleasant plunge in a glacial lake. "Oh."

"'Oh,'" she mimicked. "The bastard killed Sakon and Ukon and all you say is 'oh'."

"You hated Sakon and Ukon." Kidoumaru felt the need to remind her of this.

"But they were ours!" Kidoumaru was surprised with the heat in her response, even more so when she turned on him, gesturing fiercely with the hairbrush. "They were ours and he killed them. He took them away from us and made us weak and left room for the fucking Uchiha to think he belonged in." She must have sensed the surprise and the sudden pity that rose in Kidoumaru at her response because her manner turned all the more angry. "Don't you dare pity me, you bastard spider, don't you fucking dare."

"I wasn't," Kidoumaru said. A lie, but one that served at least to divert her anger away from him because she sat down once more. Her movements remained jerky and angry as she dragged the brush through her hair with short, vicious strokes, but she wasn't on the point of explosion anymore.

"I hate it here."

"I know you do."

"I hate them."

"I know."

A long silence, broken only by the rhythmic sound of bristles passing through finally detangled hair.

"…you want an alliance, don't you?"

Kidoumaru met her suspicious, livid gaze levelly and (quite deliberately) shrugged. "What do you want me to say, Tayu?"

It was a risk, saying that. Tayuya had always been unpredictable, prone to rapid mood swings and violent reactions over the smallest provocation. Their standing in the world as a shinobi country had always been a sore point with her and, while the pair could be dubiously described as 'close', their relationship was punctuated with frequent and loud arguments.

Luck was on the spider's side because today, apparently, was not going to host one.

Her breath hissed through her teeth in exasperation. "Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing."

"You swear too much, you know this, right?"

"Who the hell are you - Jiroubou?"

Kidoumaru grinned. "Nah. He's moping around because his team failed."

A snort. "Serves 'em right. They didn't train hard enough."

He had to smile. Tayuya, for all her infuriating complexity, could often condense the world back down into beautiful simplicity when she felt like it. "Perhaps."

Finally satisfied (or at least able to see) Tayuya replaced her brush back in her bag (she still hadn't unpacked, either.) Her hair ran smooth and straight down her back though God only knew how long that would last. Kidoumaru admired it anyway with the abstract appreciation of someone with an inner artist that didn't get let loose very often. Despite their shared parentage of a child and the certain degree of affection he held for her, Tayuya was hardly someone who inspired anything of a romantic nature, so his admiration was purely aesthetic. Not everyone had hair like Tayuya and, most of the time, she hid it under that dratted cap of hers.

And cut it with kunai.

"I'd better go and get Hisoka," Tayuya grumbled, straightening up with a wince. Old injuries gained when they were young and limber seemed to be coming back more and more to plague them the further they got into their twenties. Kabuto had once said that it didn't really matter if they lived to thirty or not – their career as a shinobi depended upon how long it took all of their injuries to catch up with them.

"You do that," Kidoumaru replied amiably and she gave him the finger. He just smiled.

She was halfway through the door when he finally said anything else. "Tayu?"

"What, shithead?" she said in what was, for her, a positively friendly manner when she paused in the doorway, looking at him expectantly.

He allowed a trace of old and ancient grief to show on his face. "I hate them too, sometimes." She retreated behind her forelock again, clearly unsure how to respond to that. "I just know that we have to move on as well."

"…tch. You better have pissed off to bed by the time I'm back."

"Don't I get to kiss my son goodnight?"

Kidoumaru reasoned that the slammed door was a 'yes' in Tayu-ese.

oOo

Author's Comments:

Okay, okay – long time, no update. I know. There is a long, complicated story involving certain key files being trapped in certain inaccessible computers and then enough time having passed that things like boyfriends/Christmas/exams got in the way (curse all three equally!) but the point is that I'm updating?

Shortish chapter this time, but I'm particularly fond of how this one turned out, so I don't care. No plot development per se (aside from the little NejiTenKank subplot I dreamed up in the bath last night) but more of an insight into how I view a lot of these characters, a better idea of their 'voice' shall we call it?

Translation note: for those who aren't sure, Kankurou's addition of the suffix –hime to Neji's name translates as, quite literally, 'Princess Hyuuga.' Obviously, Kankurou is taking the piss, but this amuses me to no end so Neji has to suffer it. Evil

Want to know something crazy? This story's eighty pages long in word, minus all the author's comments and all that. I have never stuck with a project for this long. Wow. Even if you're not amazed, I am.

In Next Week's Episode:

There was no way in hell anyone would have been able to get her onto something that was, in her eyes, no better than a flying chicken with a bitch of a temper.