The first thought that occurred to Neji when he woke was that this was not the Hyuuga compound.

The second came as a vague sense that something here was wrong.

He had never quite been able to explain it – the eerie intuition he had when something was wrong with one, or both, of his teammates. But it might as well have been an alarm blaring in his head, ringing painfully through his ears until he could barely even think.

Sitting up on the couch, Neji looked around him. It came back to him slowly: the long night at the hospital, the walk back with his teammates, and the exhaustion that had weighed him down like a lead weight as soon as he sat down. He leaned forward, listening for any sound from the back of the house, where Tenten would likely be, if not sleeping then at least recovering. He strained to hear the sound of her breathing, the rustle of sheets, anything to indicate her presence, but his efforts were rewarded with silence.

The pieces came together in mere seconds, shocking his limbs into action before his rational processes could make sense of it. Running purely on impulse, he threw the door to her bedroom open, but in the recesses of his mind, he already knew what he would find: rumpled sheets and drawers carefully replaced, but mostly empty. He did a cursory check of the bathroom and closet, and then ducked his head into the other rooms of the apartment, but each empty room only confirmed what he had already suspected.

She was gone.

"What happened?"

It had been simple enough to find Lee. In the afternoon on any given day, he was at one of the training grounds, fulfilling some ridiculous task that Gai-sensei had given him. When Neji found him, he had been in the midst of kicking a wooden post, with his legs weighed down by weights five times the normal size of the restraints he wore.

Today, however, his training would have to wait.

"My youthful rival, what brings you to...?" Lee stopped in mid-kick, his face registering confusion.

"You are upset." He observed, returning to normal posture. He circled Neji with all the innocence of a curious puppy.

It took all of Neji's meditative training not to the throttle the boy. Yes, he was upset. That should have been blatantly obvious from the moment he stormed onto the training field.

But getting angry would do him no good now. "What happened, Lee? Where is she?"

"Where is wh—"

Neji watched the realization sink in, painting Lee's face ashen. His already round eyes widened even further. "Oh no."

"What do you know?"

"We had an argument," Lee explained quickly, "I told her that trying to keep her injuries from us was very un-youthful and that we must face the trial as a team! I did not mean any harm, I merely thought…"

He looked at Neji, his features stricken with desperation. "What have I done to the youthful blossom of our team?"

"You idiot!" Neji hissed. In his anger, he almost sent a flare of chakra to activate his Byakugan, but he took a deep breath and allowed it to pass.

Getting angry at Lee will not help the situation, he reminded himself for the second time.

"Well, she is gone. I came here as soon as I woke and found the house empty, but I have no idea when she left."

"I have only been training for approximately three hours," Lee offered. "She cannot have been gone for much longer than that."

"Where would she have gone?" Neji mused, more to himself than to Lee.

"She cannot have gotten far, can she? I do not doubt the spirit of our youthful blossom, but she was only released from the hospital this morning."

For once, Lee's logic actually made sense. In his mind, Neji mapped the area around Konoha, calculating distances three hours out, and subtracting a bit for a slowed pace. Lee was right: she could only have gotten so far.

"Lee, check as much of the village as you can, starting with the places she would be most likely to visit. I'll do a search of the village's perimeter."

Lee nodded solemnly, falling into his nice guy pose.

"We will find our beloved teammate, no matter what."

Neji nodded succinctly, ignoring the anxiety growing quietly like a constricting vine in his chest.

Her apartment had revealed no clues to her whereabouts, so Neji was left to work purely on speculation. He began with the sections of the surrounding forest that were closest to other villages, but they yielded few results. The closest he came was a set of footprints leading to a small village known for their weapons, but it proved to be nothing more than a travelling merchant returning from a supply trip. Aside from that he found no tracks, which he took as an indicator that she hadn't gone this way. Tenten was skilled enough to know to cover her tracks, but doing so would also have cost her time. If she'd been this way, and been careful enough to cover her tracks, she wouldn't have gotten much farther than that point.

Lee checked in periodically using a radio Neji had salvaged from a previous mission, but he had even less success. He had been subtly asking around town– at least, as subtly as Lee could ever manage – if anyone had seen Tenten, but to no avail. Most reported not having seen her in days, since she had been cooped up in her house recovering. Not seeing her around the village didn't seem to set off an alarm in anyone's head.

And Neji was beginning to get frustrated.

The search continued for hours, with the sun spilling down through the trees, baking the earth below. Neji, however, could barely feel the heat, focused as he was on the task at hand. He had pushed the Byakugan to its very limits, scanning the surrounding area, but after the strain of constant searching, his vision was beginning to blur. As night began to fall, he was finally forced to let his eyes rest for a few minutes. The moment he cut off the chakra, the world seemed to fade into black and white, a series of blurred shapes that swayed gently through his line of sight. Normally, it would have caused him great concern, but with Tenten still missing, he couldn't afford to be preoccupied with such trivial matters.

His mind kept darting back to the conversation he'd overhead her having with Lee only a few days earlier.

"If I'd just been more careful…"

"It's not your responsibility…"

The thoughts swirled like stinging insects through his head, irritating and sharply painful. Here he had been thinking that they'd made it clear to her that she wasn't a burden. That they were more than happy to see her to a healthy recovery, however long it took. Even if that meant sleepless nights and endless frustration, he had thought that she knew… thought that she understood…

But then again, it was Tenten, and though the logic behind her current actions eluded him, he knew her. They had been training partners for years, and he had become well accustomed to every little mannerism of hers, every little quirk of her personality. She didn't like things to be implicitly stated. Tenten wanted the truth, bold and brazen, no matter how unpleasant or unfortunate it might be. Perhaps that had been his mistake. He had told her that she wasn't a burden, that it was their privilege to help her, but he'd spent the rest of his time dancing around the subject, when perhaps all she'd really needed was to be told, point-blank, the truth of the matter. That he was not about to simply give up on her, and that it was more than just the obligation of a teammate, a point that was being driven into his head all the more strongly by every panicked moment of searching.

Because, truth be told, he would do whatever it took to help her, because more than anything, he needed her to be alright.

Darkness was closing in on the forest, and Neji had almost reached his breaking point when the radio crackled to life. Lee's tired and not-quite-as-enthusiastic-as-usual voice buzzed in his ear.

"Neji, you must return to the village at once. Tsunade-sama wishes to see us."

A/N: Hello, my dears. I realize this chapter's a bit short, but it's an interlude, so bear with me.

Thanks to Ani, Clovergirl100, Melodies Unwritten, Kratos Wilder, Ami1010, Ivyfeather319, Guest, pusa-is-me, Dancing-Souls, and McKazekage for your reviews of Chapter 9, and thanks to everyone else who has stuck with the story. I really appreciate it.

As always, I'm happy to hear your thoughts.

- Senka Hitomi