Please see first chapter for disclaimer, etc.

Prompt: Need

Special Thanks: goes out to naash, Franoncrack, DarkAnonymous324, BlackRose723, kenzinator, and SeiraXD for all your amazing reviews! I'm so happy you liked the last chapter!

Author's Note: This piece is a bit angst-heavy toward the beginning, but I promise that it gets happier toward the end. Thank you all once again for reading, reviewing, favoriting, and alerting my story, and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

*~Need~*

They approached with unhurried steps, emotionless masks adding an additional level of macabre formality to the proceedings. There were three on either side, walking precisely in step with the ease born of long practice, the stretcher between them barely shifting.

A crowd was beginning to gather, murmuring amongst themselves in voices too low for him to distinguish the individual words. The sounds were like a distant current, an erosion of his nerves that he couldn't escape.

The group had reached the village's gates now, pausing for the requisite identification before they could continue. All six ANBU kept their faces forward, standing perfectly at attention until they were allowed to enter Konoha.

He watched as their inexorable march took them straight past where he stood. They didn't even seem to notice him. Since they glanced neither to the right nor left, they probably noticed no one but each other and their charge.

Several teams had been out. Several jounin had been out, for that matter. When he'd heard of the approaching group, he'd told himself even as he went to the gates that it was somebody, anybody, but not someone. His presence was merely a formality to ease the slightly concerned ache at the back of his mind.

Beneath the white curtain, emblazoned with Konoha's distinctive symbol, he identified a female form. That narrowed the list of active jounin to kunoichi only, but there were still several of those in the field.

The foot of one of the ANBU slipped in a muddy patch, left by the recent heavy rains from which Konoha had suffered. His momentary bobble shifted the stretcher, and a slender, scarred, tanned hand slipped from beneath the shielding cover. It was visible for only a moment before the black ops member slid the appendage beneath the sheet again, but it was long enough.

A drop landed on his nose, and he noticed with detached surprise that it was beginning to rain again. The icy cold needles of water began to mingle with the hot tears that slid, unbidden, from his eyes. "Tenten…"

Neji woke even as his body rolled out of his bed, moving of its own accord. He half-stumbled his way across his room, still half-asleep, driven by a need he didn't completely understand.

He was halfway out of the Hyuuga compound before he noticed it was raining, the cold drops pounding against his fevered skin like miniature kunai. He welcomed the pain, clinging to the physical manifestation of sanity and reality as he shoved open the gates and then took a sharp left, stumbling walk picking up into a flowing run as he tore through the night. His mind wasn't entirely conscious of where he was going, but his body was. His feet were, and that was what mattered.

Neji stumbled more than once as he ran, but he didn't let it deter him. Several times he thought he saw masked figures in the shadows - knew more than one of them were probably very real - but no one stopped him. He was too focused on his strange need to wonder why.

At last he reached the familiar, scarred door he'd been searching for. His fist drew back to fall repeatedly against the wood, drowning out the thunder. Even registering a stinging pain in the outer edge of his fist didn't stop his assault as warm blood trickled over his wrist and down his arm.

The door jerked open so suddenly he fell forward, having lost the one thing holding him up. Surprised, the figure on the other side moved rapidly to catch him, small but strong arms locking around him as she half-dragged him into the apartment. Her bare foot impacted the door, kicking it closed with a bang that sounded louder than it probably was.

Desperate as a drowning man, Neji's hands clawed their way up her arms, across her shoulders, catching briefly in her loose, tangled dark hair before he was able to grasp her face. His wide white eyes followed the path his fingers blazed as he traced her features, stopping only when he reached the scar that slightly pulled down the corner of her left eye, forever disfiguring her still-beautiful face. "Ten…" He couldn't even finish her name as his knees buckled.

She went down with him, arms still wrapped tightly around his shuddering frame. Reaching up, Tenten (alive, breathing, warm, alive!) pushed his curtain of wet hair away from his face, palm pausing when she brushed his cheek. "You've got a fever." Her tone was not admonishing. "You're soaking wet, you're in your pajamas, you're barefoot, and Neji, why are you trying to kill yourself?"

Reality was beginning to set in, making him realize he'd been completely, utterly, shamefully, and uncharacteristically foolish. Shame scorched him as he pulled away from Tenten, shivering as his wet clothes began to feel like sheets of ice against his hot skin. "You're alive." His voice cracked, teeth slamming together at the end of the half-mangled second word.

The weapons expert stood, feet pattering against the floor as she moved toward one of the doorways off the main room of her small apartment. In the glow of the overhead lights, the patchy splotches of wetness where he'd touched her glared like splashes of blood, dark crimson on the lighter ruby of her pajamas. Neji curled a hand into a fist against the floor, unable to tear his eyes away from the doorway until he saw her reappear.

Once more Tenten knelt before him, draping a towel around his shoulders before she went to work on his hair, rubbing vigorously for a long time. Leaving off there when she was satisfied, she rubbed the other towel over his shoulders and down his arms, trying to dry him. She was attempting to keep him from getting sicker than he already was, though he had a feeling nothing could cure the sickness hovering at the edge of his mind, just waiting for him to snap so it could take over and burn him alive.

"I had the dream again," he finally admitted.

Her hands stilled against him, and he focused on them since he couldn't bring himself to look her in the face. She was silent, and he could almost feel the condemning weight of the words she wasn't saying.

He'd become the one thing he'd vowed never to be. Weak.

Arms curled around his shoulders, pulling him forward even though he resisted at first. But Tenten would not be deterred, and he finally surrendered, allowing her to guide his head into place. He kept his eyes closed as he heard the reassuring rhythm of her heart, steady and strong, beneath the veil of her skin. She was warm, her heart was beating, and he could feel the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed naturally. Bowing her head over his, she threaded gentle fingers through his tangled damp hair.

But it wasn't until her engagement ring caught that he allowed himself to fully relax, to accept that he wasn't still dreaming. Opening his eyes, he pulled back slightly so he could reach up and disentangle her ring from his hair; he held on to her hand as he completely leaned back.

Now that his panic had eased, he saw the half-packed boxes sitting around and remembered. In less than a week they would be married, and she would move into Hyuuga House with him. She had not died on the mission that had scarred her face; she had fought her way out and managed to meet up with the team of ANBU that had been dispatched to find her before she collapsed from exhaustion.

Neji had had the opportunity to propose to her when she woke in the hospital, instead of regretting his never having the chance to ask as he watched her still form be carried past him.

She was alive. If he had anything to say about it, she would stay that way for a good, long time.

Four days later, Neji held his wife's sleeping form close to his side as he felt that nameless need finally ease away, replaced by an entirely different, wonderful one. He brushed his hand through her unbound hair once before his heavy eyelids closed and he finally found the peaceful rest he'd been lacking, at last free from his nightmares.

*~The End~*

Author's Ending Notes: Poor Neji. I love torturing him every now and then … my twin sister says I'm evil. Perhaps I am. Anyway, I really hope you like this one, and thank you so very much for reading!