Well, I rewrite this chapter perhaps three times. As you may notice, it is longer and it is divided in two parts. In other words, I will post the second part in three days since half of it is already written.
More than half of this chapter are NejiTen moments. There's a flashback (bonussss!).
-X-
Blank Beast part 1
by Clementive
-X-
14 years ago
It hurt to breathe, to move.
The threads circled her left forearm biting at her flesh. Red threads, red with her blood. Stiff sweaty locks of hair that had fallen from her buns veiled her vision. She could only see the dirt beneath her and his broad legs.
He was a mountain to her, the giant that won wars over wars.
"What did we say about precision, little shrimp?"
She gulped, her mouth dry, scorched by the unbearable sun.
"That I could lose a limb if I'm not precise, sir."
She suddenly found herself in the shades as he advanced towards her. His stern eyes bore through her and she willed herself to stay still. One movement and the threads would take her arm.
"And what was that sorry excuse of a footing, shrimp?"
She winced, staring up at his wide sunburnt face.
"It was wrong, sir," she answered dead-panned.
The giant smirked satisfied. His big hands reached past her and relief flowed through her as the metallic threads curled away from her arm.
"We are done for the day."
He turned away already picking up his weapons.
"But I can still fight, sir."
The little girl hoped he didn't hear the despair creeping in her voice, in her movements. She felt at ease on fighting not in the kimono her mother forced down on her or when she made medical paste.
"Shrimp…" He murmured menacingly looking over his shoulder. "I make the rules, you follow them. Don't make me repeat myself."
She nodded picking up her weapons on the ground. She stopped, her chest compressed, her stomach in a knot. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw him cross his arms glaring down at her.
"Papa?"
She fixed her buns at the top of her head avoiding the narrowed eyes.
"No "papa" on the battlefield, shrimp!" He grunted.
"Are you proud of me, papa?"
Whenever he moved, she thought the whole world moved. Whenever he breathed, there was the wind.
His wide back turned back to her and his scars wrinkled near his frown. When she felt his hand on her head, her knees nearly gave up because of its weight.
"You are young to be learning the executioner style. Do you really think I would lose my time teaching it to a useless shrimp?"
She licked her dry lips not quite meeting his deep brown eyes.
"What if I didn't have the silver palm, papa?"
"What is this, shrimp? Are you trying to get me emotional?"
She shrugged nervously and he sighed ruffling her hair.
"Then you would have the healing palm and you still wouldn't be a useless shrimp."
"But would you be disappointed like her?"
The giant blinked understanding finally.
She let out a small cry and she was suddenly in the air until he set her on his shoulders. The young girl gulped as she saw the world from his perspective; rice fields curving the mountains and their shades cutting out the blue sky. The sound of the sea made its way to them at night, when the village was asleep and their forge lukewarm. For a long time, he didn't answer he just walked towards their house, their bags of weapon in his hands.
"Now you listen to me, you little shrimp. Your mother is going through a tough time since the miscarriage and this is the only reason why she said that she was disappointed in you. Do you understand?"
"Yes, papa."
Hesitation crept in her voice and he chose to ignore it. She saw more than disappointment in her mother's pale eyes when the words of a medicinal recipe escaped her. Sometimes, she suspected fear guiding her hand to take away any weapons from her hands. She felt like the small plain beast; the daughter of a giant and a regular mortal.
"Good, now what do we tell mama about the blood?"
"I ran through the forest chasing after a rabbit and branches whipped me and that you can't heal a wound without making it worse."
The mountain beneath her shook and she heard his throaty laugh. Her arms tightened their grip around his neck as the village unfolded before them. Slowly, her eyes ran along the linear scars on her arms soothed by the familiar cries of her brothers.
Soon, she would be a dragon.
-X-
Mirrors always showed her the side of herself that she sold in dancing robes, a plainness she had grown to despise. The Hyuuga compound unfortunately housed men and women with the ability to see beyond the lies, the perfect smile and the graceful flying fans during a dance.
The concubine needed a new mask, for what mirrors couldn't show her, Hyuuga could in the reflection of their moon-like eyes. They would see the remainder of a distant past that almost destroyed their clan, the daughter of the House of the Dragon.
She closed her eyes sensing the quiet presence of her servant as she kneeled in front of the mirror crushing the rice into a white powder. Beneath the tatamis, the wood vibrated slightly under the weight of the clansmen returning from their early sparring. The warmth of the sun filtered through the paper screens of the sliding doors.
There was no escape from their glance but the mask. It slowly became a white paste when Matsuri added water to the rice powder.
Sighing, she opened her eyes reaching for the brush before her.
The sound of the sliding doors barely made her flinch as she raised a brow at his reflection in the mirror. A smirk slowly curved on her lips when she noticed the firmness of his jaw, the anger in his pearl eyes.
"I have been training with my men and do you know how many times I hit the target with my kunais?"
Neji pinched his lips nearing her kneeling form. Sometimes, he forgot who she was as she lost herself to the arms of a fictive physical aspect. He noticed her sleepless nights, the tremors running through her members as elders' eyes slid across her. He noticed the way her eyes averted the clansmen with missing limbs.
He didn't ask question; there was a silence between them that he caused.
"I don't know, Hyuuga-sama, I wasn't there," Tenten answered in a peachy voice.
It was all part of the act, the mask was being painted. She now needed to adjust her voice, the right vocal and the right impassivity, the calmness of a courtesan.
Somehow, his anger very morning was reaching for the part of her that disarmed him weeks ago. Somehow, he still found the patience within him to try to sever her mask.
Every morning, he tried to reach for her.
"Oh you weren't but my soldiers were!" the shogun shouted icily untying his sheath from his belt.
She approached the whitened brush from her face then she paused. It pained her to paint herself blank, to make herself disappear. Slowly controlling her breathing, she drew firm pattern until her face and neck were covered. Her fingers faintly brushed the powder on her brows.
She looked like a ghost, blank to her very core.
Pacing behind her, he passed a hand through his hair.
"Not once did I touch the target," he hissed glaring at her back. "When my weapon specialist looked at my weapons he said that the weight was maladjusted to my hand and height. You wouldn't happen to know who messed with my weapon, now would you?" He added dryly, his wheezing breath filling her cold uncaring silence.
In a delicate composed manner, she dabbed the powder on her face with a cloth that a shivering Matsuri held up to her. The shogun's lips became a hard line as he watched her light a thin long morsel of wood with the fire of the lamp.
The warlord stopped, giving in, pleading her with his eyes for a reaction.
"How long is this going to last, Tenten?"
She blew the fire out, staring in his softening eyes through the mirror as pale smoke framed her pale face.
"It depends, Neji."
Her finger felt the tepid blackened wood before she proceeded to blacken her eyebrows. She carefully drew straight thin lines above her eyes and used the rest of the dark morsel for her lids.
"How are the seconds of your time passing by? Any regret yet?" She uttered quietly her lips barely moving.
He shook his head turning away from her, away from her disguise.
With her, it has always been about the mask, the silk and the machinations darkening their relations.
With him, it has always been about imprisonment in the past.
-X-
Again, there was heavy silence between them as they lay in the darkness. An apology died on his lips as her most intimate fears died on hers.
The concubine imagined the face of fear to be as impassive and white as her mask. She just wished that she could wash it away at nighttime, watch it flow away from her as pale and dirty liquid snakes.
Invisible hands seemed to close up around her neck in the rest of the clan's presence. Tenten kept picturing the missing limbs and fingers, permanent remainder of their war against the Hyuuga clan more than a decennia ago. 'And that was only one day,' she thought wincing at the thought of a rising sun, of another day near them.
She watched the shogun's chest rise and fall in a rhythmic slow breathing. Yet, she couldn't sleep. Dusk paled the narrow horizon and only a few hours separated her from whitening her face once more.
Then there would be the same silence, the same routine imprisoning them.
She stared up at her scarred wrists and arms in the moonlight. The sheets hung to her body form with sweat and Tenten resisted the urge to kick them away in fear she would wake him up.
"You can't wake me up since I'm already awoken."
She jolted in surprise.
Without thinking, she let her fist fall on his shoulder earning a glare from him. His pearl orbs glowed for a moment then he closed his eyes once more his hand on her thin wrist.
"That was uncalled for, Tenten," he said coolly.
Rolling her eyes, she shrugged off his grip and turned her back to him.
"I don't care, I will be sick tomorrow. I'm not doing anymore tea ceremony with creepy eyes following my every move."
"As you wish but the matriarch of the Branch House will come to inspect you thinking you are pregnant."
His concubine could sense his smirk in the darkness as she grunted pushing away the sheets from her moist skin. Murmuring to herself, she turned back towards him searching from the slightest breeze from the agape sliding doors.
Ignoring her hectic movements, Neji brushed the silver thread still embedded in the skin of his cheek. She froze suddenly so near to his face that some trends of hair brushed his skin. His breath caught in his throat but then she was gone.
"Oh."
"What?" He snapped.
When he cracked an eye open she was kneeling next to him staring at his cheek with widened eyes her hand pressed against her mouth.
"I think I need to take those off today or you will have it embedded in your cheek for the rest of your life."
Abruptly, he sat up staring sternly at her. She cocked her head on the side and her mind whirled around what her mother used to say about sewed wounds.
"You think?" He asked incredulous catching both her reaching hands in his. "You mean, you have no idea how and when to take it off?"
"If I remember correctly, she did say something about three days." She murmured to herself pushing his hands away.
"If you remember correctly?" He repeated slowly, his stature frozen by her doubt.
He fought her despite her skin burning his at each contact.
"Stop moving, Hyuuga," Tenten growled imprisoning his face in her hands.
Warily, he watched her inspected the scar, a needle dangling between her pinched lips.
"Wash it first."
"What if in one minute the thread is embedded in that pretty face forever?" She smirked waving the needle in front of his face. "But you are right, second heads grow out of my saliva all the time."
"Hygiene is no laughing matter, Tenten."
He glared at her before following the needle with his eyes as it approached his cheek.
"So is medicine," She added with a predatory smile. "As in I may poke your precious eyeball, if you don't stop moving."
He snapped his mouth shut glaring down her as her nimble fingers moved in rhythmic series of movements. She locked glance with him the entire time, a smirk plastered on her face. The flesh of his cheek pulled and suddenly he felt the free thread brushing against his cheek.
"There. Ask someone to put a medicinal cream on it and the scar will fade to a minimum."
He cleared his throat feeling with the tip of his fingers the pink scar on his cheek. A smirk played on his lips as she lay back on their bed staring up at the ceiling. Dark locks spilled around her and she closed her eyes in the moonlight. Carefully, he approached her, his breath mingling with the jasmine scent of her hair.
"Does you calling my face pretty mean that you find me attractive?"
Eyes wide-open, Tenten looked up in his pearl amused orbs trying to ignore the heat of his body radiating on hers.
"No," she snapped red-faced. "It means that tomorrow you still won't be able to land a weapon in any target, that servants would still be talking about your impotence and that if you keep annoying me I will kick you out of your own bed."
"Servants are talking about my what?"
She laughed quietly, her eyes sparkling with malice in the shades of their room.
"Every second, Hyuuga, so start counting."
-X-
As she slipped in her kimono, the elaborate hairstyle bound at her nape felt and moist by the heat of the breaking day. The mirror enhanced her imperfections. Disgust with herself, she reached for the powder pot where timeless pain and possibility of recognition were supposed to die.
Their backs to one another, they moved in the shadows for they couldn't face one another. In silence, the shogun pulled training robes while his concubine slipped back in her disguise.
Past their silence still lied her anger.
"I prefer you without make-up, Tenten," he declared clumsily wincing inwardly at the roll of her eyes.
"And I prefer my old house." she shot back in a leveled voice.
Immediately, she smoothed the cracking edges of her white face with her fingers avoiding looking at the muscles of his back through the mirror.
"Hn."
His breathing and his scent had become so familiar to her that it scared her. She found it too ironic, too painful that his presence reassured her from the unflinching stares of the rest of the clan.
They parted; a stern shogun and a peachy concubine.
When Tenten stepped outside, the sun was alone in the sky setting her skin beneath the mask ablaze and pearl eyes were dancing, circling her once more. Claustrophobia wrapped its arms around her and she willed herself not to flinch. The quiet presence of Matsuri reached her with shades as she opened the sunshade above her.
"Today, Hanabi-hime will fight with twenty-five ladies of the lesser Houses of the clan," her servant explained pushing a rebellious lock of her hair out of her eyes.
"And let me guess," Tenten cut her off in a fake happy voice tranquilly fanning herself. "I need to watch in silence and sit at the back of the room considering my rank."
The sober decoration of the compound reminded her of a gaping wooden carcass in which everyone and everything was at his rightful place. The system of caste of the clan was an elaborate hierarchy and its rules seemed to escape her. Branch members bowed to her out of respect for Neji and often offered her advice to the consumption of a child while the few members of the Main House ignored her presence altogether, not even bowing down to their leader. Women and men were often training separately and there was an order that dictated who and when each step could be taken.
Grimly, she kneeled down in the wide training room of the main mansion of the compound. From her place, she could barely see past the top of the heads of the women before her. Fanning herself in regular movements, she watched the room filled in with similar angular faces. Unlike most women she had met from other clans, femininity in the Hyuuga clan embodied an impassive silence and soft whispers that contrasted drastically with the ways of the iki. Here smart comments or elaborate elegant outwears weren't encouraged.
Behind them, servants moved across the doors parting them, severing the union of dancing herons in bamboo forests. Something vibrated through her, despite the moist of the air and the proximity of the Hyuuga women next to her.
When the blades met for the time, she gasped.
Rapidly, the sound of fighting rose from the center of the room, echoing within her excitement that set her body aflame. She nearly choked onto the smell of weapon and sweat trying to keep her movements even.
"Why are they fighting with katana, Matsuri?" She whispered masking her mouth with her fan.
The concubine frowned when she didn't receive an answer. Turning discreetly, she noticed the pale cheeks of her servant. Her dark eyes stared into space, unwavering.
"Matsuri?"
The metallic sound ceased and she became aware of her servant's ragged breathing.
"You," exclaimed a childish voice behind her.
She blinked rapidly as the princess of the Hyuuga pointed her. Next to her, fans froze mid-air and curious blank eyes shifting their glance towards her. Beneath, her mask, her skin burned.
"I don't think Hyuuga-hime wants to lose her time with me."
"I decide how I manage my time," Hanabi replied impatiently. "I was told me you killed a man with a kunai, so surely a fight against a thirteen year old cannot scare you."
She detailed with her eyes, the savage impatient look of the princess and her small hands still gripping her katana.
"Hyuuga-sama wouldn't approve," Tenten hesitated as her hand twitched, betraying her want.
"And Hanabi-hime insists," a pinched voice snapped next to her. "Get up, your behaviour is shameful for the heiress."
Her jaw line clenched as she snapped shut her fan handing it to Matsuri. Quietly, she followed the young woman to the center of the room.
"Hand her one of Neji-niisan's spare katana," the girl ordered already taking her stance. "Offer her protections, she may need it."
Stiffly, she bowed. Her mask slid past the paste on her face. Her eyes now had a silver glow and a predatory smile unfroze her features. She shrugged off her kimono once the obi was untied by a faceless servant putting the Hyuuga training black shirt on top of her bandaged chest.
"I won't need any but I thank Hyuuga-hime for her generosity."
The weight of the katana almost sent her in rapture and she felt her heartbeat accelerated, beating her blood in a song she had long forgotten. She knew she was slipping, she knew she would regret it afterwards but the scent of silver claimed her body and she was a fighter again.
"Hanabi-hime will begin the fight when she will see it fit," an elder woman proclaimed ceremoniously.
As she expected, the child attacked her as soon as the elder ceased to speak. Easily, she moved across the tatami her wrists barely moving as she blocked the first attack. Her palm hit the center of the princess sending her puffing back to her initial position. She watched the reflection of her stare in her blade as she lunged forward. Hanabi's eyes widened as she felt the monstrous force of her opponent.
Her wrist almost gave up then the weight was gone.
The concubine's body quivered fainting from her vision. Her breath caught in her throat, her eyes searching around her.
"Above you, Hanabi-hime!"
The force of the impact sent her to the ground. Breathless and dazzled, her body faintly trembled under the unflinching hazel stare that stood above her. The tip of her katana resting against the princess' neck, she stopped herself, she stopped the beast.
Tenten saw raw fear spread across her features.
Hanabi saw a monster imprisoned in hazel eyes; a blank beast.
-X-
Sweltering wind blew dirt around the Hyuuga compound. Neji Hyuuga stood on the veranda, sheltered from the sun as he saw the dance of weapons before him. The clashing of blade almost masked the barking of his lieutenant. The shades moved and a familiar presence stepped behind him. Clearing his throat, he slightly turned his head towards his captain.
"You told me you would be gone for a week. How was the wedding?"
Behind him, the lean man merely shrugged searching his robes for tobacco.
"Frankly, not as troublesome as I thought it would be."
Uncrossing his arms, the shogun began walking his gaze still lingering in twisting bodies and tensing muscles. He merely nodded sensing the shift in the stature of his subordinate. His hesitation was palpable in their shared silence.
"But you surely didn't come back to narrate your honeymoon to me?"
"Ino heard something that may have you concerned," Shikamaru admitted finally.
The lazy tone of his voice was muffled by the dangling pipe between his lips. It crackled alive and he drew the comforting smoke in his lungs.
"Uchiha?" He asked simply, disgust wrinkling his nose.
His men were not ready for a fight. His eyes saw the flaws in their style and Kiba's impatient loud voice only reminded him that a battlefield would mean certain dead for most of them.
"No, it's about your concubine," he replied carefully staring at him.
The warlord stopped his hand gripping the side of a wooden pillar. His blood gradually turned to ice in his veins and he closed his eyes fighting off his instinct.
"How is it that Tenten managed to shorten your honeymoon?"
"Her name is now in the Bingo book. The bounty is 10000 coins of gold. So let me return the compliment: I thought you were a smart man, Neji. Women are troublesome creatures that don't take well when they are told off."
The lazy man pushed his pipe away from his lips watching carefully comprehension crept on the older man's features.
"Are you saying that my wife listed my concubine in the Bingo Book?" He hissed, his knuckles turning white as he narrowed his eyes.
"Bounty hunters would soon be on her trail and we will all be targeted for this amount of money. What in the troublesome world were you thinking? Especially, knowing that we can't trust Tenten-san, she may as well be selling us."
Abruptly, they stood face to face, smoke snaking between their anger.
"What do you mean by that?"
His captain cursed under his breath, twisting his pipe between his fingers.
"She's too close from Danzou-sama, according to Ino. Your head is very likely to end up on a pike if you keep preparing a war against Uchiha and Danzou."
He began walking again, his hands twitching at his side. Shikamaru forced him to stop, an iron grip on his arm.
"Let her go, Neji. She's not worth it; she's endangering all of us."
"I suppose this is why Nara-hime isn't here. She doesn't approve," he replied dryly.
Stiffly, his captain nodded, tobacco smoke tightly drawing new shadows on his skin.
"Get rid of her, Neji, or she will drag you and your clan down."
She erupted from closed doors in her dancing footsteps, four elders around her, and his eyes were already following her. The humidity of the air plastered his robes on his torso and only his captain's grip on his arm kept him in place. The war cries around him blunted and for a brief moment she locked eyes with him.
Her make-up was washed away and her hair, out of her regular bun.
"I can't, Shikamaru, I just can't."
Sliding doors closed and another firm grip stopped him. The narrowed eyes of his grandfather and his grip pushed him on his knees. His mind swam, his heart hammering his rib cage. Next to him, his captain fell on his knees bowing to the patriarch of the Hyuuga clan.
Icily detailing the two warriors, his grandfather massaged the stump of his left hand.
"Follow me, Neji."
-X-
There you go! Review? :)