Please see first chapter for disclaimer, rating, warnings, pairings, etc.

Special Thanks: goes out to rao hyuga 18, Blood Soaked Redemption, DarkAnonymous324, Celtic-Memories, PolkadottedAngels, Glitterthorn, and Metoochocolate for making chapter thirteen the most reviewd yet - you all are nothing short of amazing! And, as usual, a special thanks goes out to everyone who is reading and who has favorited and alerted this story.

Author's Note: Not a lot to say about this chapter at the beginning, really. Just that I can promise you a lot of NejiTen interaction as a reward for all your patience waiting for them to get more time in the spotlight again. I can promise a lot more fun and interesting things coming on that part of the story development in the future, too... In the meantime, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

*~Chapter XIV~*

~Diversions~

"T-Tenten, calm d-down. It's all right." In a complete reversal of roles from the previous day, Hinata clasped Tenten's shaking hands comfortingly. "He said 'solitary walks,' d-didn't he?"

"Yes. Yes he did." Tenten closed her eyes, willing her breathing and heartrate to slow. She opened them again to look at her friend, a sheepish grin tugging the corners of her mouth. "Sorry, Hina. I guess my guilty conscience made me panic. He saw me without you, and worried I might be getting lazy about my responsibilities. After all, we've only been here, what? A month? Who could I possibly know to make me risk sneaking out at night to meet?" Other than Neji, a very small voice whispered very deep inside her.

"Perhaps one of the g-guardsmen whose offer for your hand K-Kakashi had to t-turn down?" Hinata suggested teasingly. Tenten covered her face with a exaggerated shudder of horror; the two collapsed into a fit of giggling.

"It threw me so off balance finding out Kakashi saw me the other night, I haven't asked how your dinner went," Tenten said once they'd recovered their composure.

"Oh, well, um." Hinata dropped her gaze to her fingers as they began their nervous tapping. "There is g-going to be a fair in the v-village this weekend. F-Father informed me Ino has invited us t-to be her houseguests d-during it."

"And Lord Hiashi actually said you could go?" Tenten gasped in shock; then quickly covered her mouth with both hands and added, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that!"

The heiress breathed a shaky laugh. "You only s-said what I thought! Our," she took a deep breath and finished in a rush, "that is, Ino's and m-my escorts are to b-be Shikamaru and L-Lord S-Sasuke."

This time Tenten managed to keep her caustic response behind her teeth, instead saying cheerfully, "This should be a lot of fun, then: Your first sleepover at Ino's plus your first-ever time attending a fair."

"Yes, I suppose," Hinata agreed with a complete lack of enthusiasm. "But Tenten," she went on with a deeply troubled look, "what are we going to d-do about N-Neji? It would b-be too c-cruel to abandon him again to isolation and l-loneliness. B-but we are p-putting his life in worse jeopardy by defying F-Father's b-ban on having any c-contact with him. Do you think your brother will b-be keeping an eye on you to m-make sure you obey him? If he sees you in the g-garden alone again-"

"He's never had any reason not to trust me," Tenten tried to ignore the dreary feeling trying to clamp over her heart, "so I don't expect he will actively spy on me. Anyway it would be hard for him to since he's busy most of the time guarding your father. It had to've been just bad luck he happened to look out and see me when he did."

"Dreadfully b-bad luck." Hinata absently nibbled her lower lip for a moment. "Did you arrange another m-meeting?"

"Yes, midnight at next moon dark," Tenten replied. "And I promise I'll be so careful when I go the moths won't even know I'm there."

"N-no. You are not g-going again at night so soon after K-Kakashi saw you." Hinata's voice, though soft, was resolute, even as she blinked back tears. She turned her head to gaze out the shouji, open as usual. She looked at Tenten again. "Even though I really d-don't want him to hear of my c-courtship," she nearly choked on the word, "only from servants' g-gossip either."

Tenten felt her spirits sink even lower at the thought of not seeing Neji as planned. She bit her lip, then felt her heart jerk in excitement as something else occurred to her. "Maybe there's another way, though. Neji told me his schedule, which areas of the gardens he always works in on which day of the week. Kakashi spends his days at the tower with Lord Hiashi, so we won't have to worry about him seeing me. If you can cover for me here again-"

"We will d-do as we did when I took you to the g-gazebo." Hinata's lilac-tinged eyes gleamed with enthusiasm. "You and I are g-going to take a l-leisurely, appreciative stroll around the garden t-tomorrow morning, right after breakfast."

Later that night as she waited for sleep to come, Tenten's nerves kept fluttering with a mix of anticipation and apprehension. Strangely drawn as she felt to the young Hyuuga, the hours couldn't pass quickly enough until she saw him again; yet at the same time she dreaded whether he'd be withdrawn and sullen, as when she'd first met him. After all, so many years of solitude and neglect could not be swept away or healed overnight, no matter how she yearned for it to be so. . .

The next morning provided Tenten with a perfect opportunity to practice displaying outer calm while internally seething with impatience. She wanted nothing more than to strike out directly to where Neji would be working, like one of her knives flying true to the center of its target, even though she knew doing so would be utterly foolhardy. Instead she schooled herself to follow Hinata who, in order to further her intention of portraying a high-clan lady bent on a morning of leisure, carried a small silk-tasseled scroll of poems into the dew-glistening gardens.

Stopping first by a fountain, Hinata waited while Tenten, with a perfectly straight face, quickly dried a place on its rim for her mistress to sit. The heiress gracefully disposed herself on the basin's stony edge and started to read the opening lines of the first poem; then decided the water made too much noise for her to continue in that location. The second spot she chose she proclaimed too shady, and the third too sunny; while the fourth smelled too strongly of some flower neither girl could identify. By such degrees did they finally arrive at a very small, slightly sunken meditation garden consisting of moss-wisped chunks of granite standing starkly up from gravel that had been carefully raked into sweeping swirls around them.

Hinata sank down onto a two-person bench overlooking the garden. Unrolling her scroll again, she murmured under the pretext of reading aloud, "We can't b-be seen here from the house, but I think this is as c-close as I dare g-get." She flashed her eyes briefly up to Tenten's as she tipped her head toward the trees overhanging the far side of the graveled space. "Listen: Do you hear clippers snipping just over there?"

Tenten dipped her head in a tense nod. She very lightly touched one of her friend's hands in reassurance. Slipping swiftly and silently around the meditation garden's perimeter into the hidden track between the trees and some kind of tall evergreen hedge beyond, she followed the steady click-snick! coming from the other side, all her senses at full stretch, to a spot she judged to be opposite the person plying the shears. Relief tingled from the crown of her head to toes when she stealthily made gaps to peer through and saw Neji kneeling and trimming the grass border in front of the hedge.

Sinking down onto her knees, Tenten pushed a hand into the stiff foliage, grasped a sticky branch and gave it a gentle shake. "Lord Neji," she whispered; and more sharply when he didn't respond, "Lord Neji! It's Tenten!" She rustled the branch a little harder.

The young man sat back on his heels, brushing a stray strand of dark chocolate brown hair out of his face as he checked over his handiwork. As she gritted her teeth in frustration, he lifted his beautiful, lucent eyes to her hiding place in a piercing glance before looking down at the grass again. He smoothed a hand over it.

"You are a most - persistent - person," he sighed. "What is it going to take for you to stop calling me that?" Getting to his feet, he added, "Stay there. I will come to you."

Tenten stood as well. Within a few seconds he'd joined her in the fragrant, deep green closeness, and she instantly sensed how much effort it was costing him to control his impulse to panic. As succinctly yet as gently as she could, she told him of Hinata's impending courtship by Uchiha Sasuke, though not the underlying reason for it; then, with tears in her heart, told him also why they would not be able to meet as soon as they'd planned.

He stared past her when she'd finished, unspeaking, unmoving, his face beginning to take on the look she'd dreaded seeing there again. Unable to bear it, Tenten stepped closer to him.

"M'lord- Neji, please, listen to me." She put all the sincerity she possessed into her intense whisper. "This is just a temporary setback. We are not going to turn away from you. My heart nearly stopped when I found out Kakashi had actually seen me that night, even though it turned out he just thought I was getting a little careless about my duty to protect my lady. Neither of us - Hinata or I - would be able to live with the guilt if any harm came to you through our not being as careful as we could have been. "

"Yet I warned you from the very first that that was exactly what you were risking: did I not? You-" although he still refused to look at her, Tenten saw his throat spasm, "-you should have listened to me. Why didn't you listen to me?"

Her hands twitched with her longing to take his face between them and make him meet her eyes. She fought to keep her voice down to a whisper. "Because I couldn't. I still can't. I see the pain and the loneliness in your eyes and - and I see what life might have been for me, would have been for me if Kakashi hadn't adopted and raised me. I can't turn back time and erase all the hurts, all the wrongs in your past, no matter how badly I wish I could. But if you'll only let me, I want to help make your present better-" -And your future, she almost added; except it probably wouldn't sound right and she feared she'd said too much already. She dropped her gaze to the ground between their feet, her shoulders slumping in dejection.

"You are a - most - persistent person." Without warning, one of Neji's hands was under her chin, gently urging her to look up. She did, and found him regarding her with an utterly bemused expression on his face. "Whatever my fated lifespan, I see I will have no peace until you have your way. We will contrive some method of arranging when to meet. For now, though, you had best get back to-"

As though possessed by some outside force, Tenten's left hand suddenly flew up to cover Neji's lips. An instant later she saw understanding replace the startlement in his eyes, and knew he'd heard the same thing she had: voices, a girl's and a man's, getting closer and closer to the meditation garden where Hinata awaited Tenten's return.

Oh, great, now what do we do? shot through Tenten's mind even as she heard the man say, sounding greatly surprised, "Why, Lady Hinata! It is a long time since I have had the pleasure of seeing you here!"

"G-good morning, Iruka-sensei. G-good morning, little s-sister." Hinata's reply carried clearly to the two in hiding. "Yes, it has b-been too long a t-time since I sought the c-calm of this p-place."

Hanabi's voice came next, bored and petulant. "So where's what's-her-name? I thought she was supposed to stay with you all the time."

"Tenten," Hinata's tone held a definite if gentle note of reproof, "needed t-to return t-to the house for a time. And why should she not? Am I not c-completely safe within the grounds of m-my own home?"

At the same moment Tenten delightedly thought, Good thinking, Hinata! Neji took her hand from his lips and gestured for her to follow him. She nodded her understanding and agreement. They'd only taken a few silent steps, however, when Hanabi spoke again, sharply spiteful. "The way I heard it from Father, her main job is to keep you on the estate grounds, stupid older sister."

"Lady Hanabi," Iruka-sensei said sternly, but Tenten lost the rest of the tutor's rebuke as Neji abruptly whipped around, his mouth going thin and hard, his eyes flaring with white fire. In the very next instant the clippers he still carried in his other hand slipped from his grip and started to fall. Reacting with incredible swiftness he grabbed hold of them again before they could hit the ground and make a betraying noise. His face went white and twisted in a silent grimace of pain. As he laid the tool carefully to one side of the narrow track she looked down; saw with horror the bright blood welling from deep cuts on his fingers.

Let me bandage that! she mouthed at him as he straightened, her fingers already fumbling with the hem of her top.

No! he mouthed back, curling his injured hand into a tight fist he supported with the other, no time! Follow me, and be quiet! Turning away, he rapidly set off again, clearly expecting her to obey.

Tenten glared at the back of his head. Autocratic male! she thought balefully, even as she realized he was right and followed after him. Hinata had provided a perfectly blameless reason for Tenten's absence. It was now incumbent on them to make sure there could be no doubt she'd been somewhere other than the heiress had said.

Finally, after several minutes of soundless navigation, Neji halted and turned to face her. He looked, she thought, alarmingly pale. "Go around this arbor and then bear left along the path," he whispered hoarsely. "It'll lead you more or less to where Hina is, just as though you had actually been up to the house."

"All right," Tenten replied, "but first let me see your hand." She reached out to take it in her own.

"No," he said flatly, twisting his upper body away from her. "You can't have blood on you if you're seen by anyone other than Hinata. And probably not a good idea then," his lips quirked, "she'd more than likely faint on you." His expression softened a little, even if his whisper maintained an edge of impatience. "Don't worry, I'll be fine. The tendons aren't cut, I couldn't flex them if they were, and I'm not going to bleed to death, I promise. Now go, Tenten."

"Autocratic male." This time she did say it aloud, though it didn't have quite the same acerbic bite when spoken in a whisper.

"Well, if you're going to persist in calling me 'Lord Neji,' I suppose I need to start acting the part." The barest hint of a smile touched his pain tautened lips.

Tenten grinned reluctantly in return. She started to turn away, then paused to look him straight in the eye. "So, then, Lord Neji, we haven't settled yet on how to know when to meet again. What do you suggest?"

Neji took a couple of steps closer to her, making her tilt her head backwards to maintain eye contact with him. He was, she realized with an unanticipated thrill, nearly as tall as Kakashi. Reaching up past her head with his uninjured hand, he snapped a flower from the arbor behind her. "When you and Hina think it safe again," he pressed it into her hand, "put one of these over the shouji leading into her rooms from the verandah. I'll know to meet you in the gazebo at midnight that night." Pivoting, he walked back into the shadows of the gardeners' paths and was quickly lost to her view.

Only then did Tenten think to look at the blossom he'd given her: a half-opened white rose, the underside of its snowy petals unexpectedly smudged with vivid red. Moving past the arbor as she'd been instructed to do, she glanced back to see what the effect would be of a mass of them together. Her breath abruptly got stuck somewhere between her lungs and her throat.

Every other rose, from barely emergent bud to fully opened flower, was purest white. The red on hers came from Neji's blood.

Itachi slumped bonelessly on the floor against the wall just outside the door leading into the toilet room after another racking bout of sickness, trying to will enough strength into his limbs to finish pushing the trash can in ahead of him. If only the world would stop spinning and swaying around him, he thought muzzily, maybe he'd succeed in getting rid of its grim contents before Temari got back with the healer. He just needed to rest for a second. . . Maybe two. . .

"Itachi!" Temari's voice, high-pitched in alarm, penetrated the buzzing in his ears. He made an effort to raise a restraining hand. She mustn't come any closer, she mustn't see-

"Right, out you go, my dear," an older, reedy voice said firmly. "Pace the hallway all you like while Noriyuki and I take care of things in here." He heard the outer door close. A moment later he felt hands on either side of his face. "My, my, my, what do we have here, hm? Come now, Lord Itachi, up you get and back to bed with you. Noriyuki will help, then clean this up while we see what's going on with you."

Forcing his eyes open a slit, he got a brief impression of dark grey hair above an ancient face as softly crumpled as the petals of one of the antique roses his mother loved; and behind it a looming shadow that suddenly resolved into a middle-aged man who with the ease of long practice helped Itachi onto his feet, across the room and into bed. The old woman - Granny Chiyo, he remembered Temari calling her - bent over him, her wrinkled face intent as she examined him, muttering a continuous monologue under her breath.

"Fever, yes yes, and sensitivity to light, only to be expected. Neck glands slightly swollen and tender, well that's no surprise either. Heartbeat rapid but strong, no congestion in the lungs, that's good. Now what about the stomach, hmmm?" Her fingers pressed down with more strength than he would've expected; he reflexively flinched and gasped. "Oh, yes indeed, that's what I thought would happen. What about the lower right abdomen? No similar reaction there? Excellent, excellent. Well well, we'll just draw a wee bit of blood to test as a precaution, shall we? And then some medicine for the nausea, and that wicked, wicked headache. And some IV fluids, maybe? Yes, positively fluids are indicated, I do think our Suna climate has not agreed with the young lord from Konoha. Dehydration is definitely one of the culprits here. Let's take a look at your veins now, dear," he felt her lift his left hand and lightly tap the flat of her fingers across the back of it, "oh goodness yes, there's a very good one!"

Another wave of sickness began building in Itachi's burning midsection. He weakly tried to roll onto his side away from the old healer; heard her call her assistant's name out sharply. An instant later he felt his upper body being supported over the edge of the bed, his head firmly held between Granny Chiyo's hands as he heaved drily, embarrassment mingling with his general wretchedness. And then he somehow was lying flat on his back again, a tight discomfort just below his left bicep preceding a sharp pricking pain in the back of his hand. Voices talked back and forth over him, fading into a distant buzz as a stinging coolness - or was it heat? - flowed up his arm.

Itachi's world went blessedly black.

*~To Be Continued~*

Author's Ending Notes: Sorry that there wasn't much going on in the Suna front, but I was very happy to present you all a lot of things on the NejiTen one! Secondly, apologies for the semi-evil cliffhanger (again), but in my defense, my beta decided to chop it there and I don't want to add and post any more that hasn't been beta'd. Please don't kill me? Until next update, thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed, and I wish you all a safe, happy, and Merry Christmas!