those are pearls that were his eyes
Characters: Tenten, Rock Lee, Hyuuga Hizashi, Might Gai
Pairings: N/A
Warnings: Offscreen death(s), half-forgotten attempts at pretentious imagery and symbolism, and embarrassing amounts of ambiguity and vague plot points on the part of the author. Maybe some vaguely purple prose, too, if you really want to get nitpicky about it.
Rating: T
Prompt: "I pledge my fealty to you." — royalty AU
Word count: 1264
Summary: She remembers eyes like cold starlight, when she thinks of her childhood, and very little else.
Notes: I started writing this way back at the end of August, immediately after returning home from a five-week trip to India, and no matter how long I stared at this document, I couldn't for the life of me remember what sort of story I had been trying to tell in my jet-lagged state, beyond the fact that this was apparently a response to a royalty AU prompt I had seen. Which is why it's being posted here. Heh.
Posted: Sunday 20 November 2016.


"I pledge my fealty to you."


When Tenten is four years old, her small village is destroyed in a bandit attack. She does not remember it well, though sometimes when the night is darkest and most still, and sleep remains elusive, she closes her eyes, and wonders if she can almost smell the way the scent of copper had filled the air, taste the heaviness of ash on her tongue, hear the soft whisper of her mother's last words as she'd hidden Tenten beneath the pile of old, threadbare blankets in the corner that she had not yet had a chance to repair.

What Tenten remembers is this: how swiftly the village had grown silent in the aftermath of the attack, and how sharp the clack-clacking of hooves against the scorched earth had sounded in her ears day later. She and the other lone survivor of their village — the neighbor's son, a boy her own age named Lee whom she'd played with sometimes — had been discovered in the wreckage by a group of soldiers on patrol, and she remembers the curiously pale eyes of the captain observing them coolly from his saddle before snapping to focus on the man beside him.

"I leave them in your care, Gai," he had said, tugging on the reins of his horse to turn the animal around with one hand, signaling to the rest of the patrol with the other. "Take them back to Konoha. See to it that they are cleaned and fed and looked after, and join us again when they are properly housed — the rest of us will keep moving."

The other man only nodded once in understanding before leaping from the saddle of his own horse to land nimbly in front of them in an easy crouch. He had smiled at them, then, and Tenten remembers wondering what the tall man had done to get his teeth so shiny and white.

"There's no need to be scared anymore," he had said gently, offering a large, powerful hand to each of them. "You're fine, now. You're safe."

And Tenten remembers that large hand enveloping her own, and being pulled into the expanse of what was no doubt a broad and solid chest beneath the cool metal of battle-worn armor, and murmuring something — "Okay." — against the warm skin of the man's neck, and watching the back of the captain with the strange pale eyes as he rode off into the distance.


Tenten never does quite forget those eyes, really, but she imagines, sometimes, that she can feel the intensity of their moonlight-and-silver gaze watching her at times — in the market place, at the armory, the heavy stillness of the old libraries and at the edge of the ancient wood — and it is enough to make her wonder.

(Nor does she ever see the pale-eyed captain again.)


In the end, Gai never goes back to rejoin the patrol. He opens his home to Tenten and Lee and takes on the task of raising them himself instead, and nearly ten years pass before it occurs to her that she has never asked him why.

"My patrol fell in battle," Gai says when she finally asks him one evening, "shortly after I brought you both to Konoha. I received word about it as I was preparing to head out and rejoin them." His voice is even and measured, but Tenten and Lee both know that though Gai has lost comrades before, he still feels each loss as keenly as he would a dagger through the heart.

Even so, Tenten is grateful that Gai does not ask what had prompted her question, and that night she goes to sleep with the memory of pale, piercing eyes watching her from across the training grounds seared bone-deep into her dreams.


When she is made a squire, Tenten swears her oaths and fealty to the service of House Hyuuga under the somber scrutiny of a hundred pairs of silver eyes as sharp and cold and bright as starlight.


By the time Tenten is fifteen, she has made a name for herself as a marksman with no equal among the other squires, and hardly anyone is surprised when she is knighted less than a year later. Lee, too, has made a name for himself over the years in terms of sheer strength and power (they'd been knighted together, and she recalls Gai's blubbering enthusiasm and joy during the ceremony) and it is with a hint of fond amusement that Tenten hears the unrestrained pride in Gai's voice when he informs them that Lady Tsunade has personally requested them for a mission of top priority.

"My beautiful lotus!" Gai says as they make their way up the stairs to the Hokage's tower. "My handsome beast! You never fail to make me proud!"

He repeats it over and over again, interspersed occasionally with the occasional exclamation concerning "the springtime of youth", and as they near the door leading to the Hokage's personal study, Tenten is about to tell him to quiet down when something catches her attention, and she suddenly finds herself frozen in place under the scrutiny of a young man with a familiar sharp and silvery gaze.

"I could hear you from the moment you set foot in the tower," the man says (and he can't be any older than Lee or herself, she thinks) as he shifts his gaze to look at Gai, and Tenten takes the opportunity to compose herself back into some semblance of relaxed nonchalance, "and the entire time you were climbing the stairs — I would have thought you'd learned some amount of restraint over the years."

Gai snorts and folds his arms across his broad chest. "Nonsense! You should never hold back — one must always do things wholeheartedly, while fully embracing the exuberance of youth!"

Tenten rolls her eyes at the exclamation — an automatic reflex, now, after years of living and training with Gai and Lee — and somehow the action is enough for the young man to look back to Tenten once more. He observes her almost detachedly for a moment before his gaze moves on to Lee, and Tenten releases a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

For a moment, she wonders if it is the work of some strange magic, because the man standing before her, now, bears a resemblance to the captain she recalls from her youth (long dead, now, Tenten reminds herself) so uncanny it cannot be a coincidence. And yet, she thinks, the similarities between them are undeniable, in the shape of his jaw and the refined aristocracy of his features, the length of dark hair pulled away from his face by the simple leather thong resting against the nape of his neck. Beside her, Gai is speaking animatedly to this new man who is familiar-but-not, as Lee tries loudly to interject as well as he can wherever possible, but it isn't until she hears her name that Tenten is able to pull herself away from her thoughts.

"Tenten, Lee," Gai begins, and once again the note of affectionate pride that curls around his boisterous voice when he speaks does not go unnoticed, "it is my pleasure and honor to introduce you to Lord Neji of the illustrious House Hyuuga, son of my dear captain, comrade, and friend, the late Lord Hizashi."

It is then that Tenten recognizes the iciness of the young lord's gaze, and as she and Lee bow to him in deference, she finds herself wondering at the strangeness of her fate.