A/N: Wow. I took forever. Like. An eternity O.o
Pause.
I should probably beg for your mercy now xD I really am sorry. Writer's block coupled with a one-week vacation and other such things prevented me from typing up this chapter and updating.
…forgiveness? Possibly? –holds up cookies-
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Day 25
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"So…"
Sakura looked up from the sewing machine that she was hovering over and stopped trying to forcefully yank a piece of fabric out of the bobbin. Tenten was looking at her with the strangest expression on her face.
"What?" Sakura shrugged, going back to the bobbin.
Tenten sighed and reached over, easily twisting the fabric out of the jam. Sakura made a little huffing sound, and then went back to sewing. A fabric mask was forming under her fingers. The needle went click click click and Tenten watched it going up and down and up and down.
"Are you just going alone to the ball?" Tenten questioned.
Sakura looked up with a wary look. "That's the plan…why?"
Tenten shook her head with a small smile. "Nothing. It's just that you do seem like the kind of girl who would willingly go alone to a party…"
"But?" Sakura said in a quiet voice that suggested deadliness behind its calmness.
"I thought of the Uchiha," Tenten said, her brown eyes meeting Sakura's green without a trace of fear. Sakura's thin lips formed into a thinner line.
"No."
The room went curiously quiet. After a moment, Tenten stood up with a sigh, stretching her arms into the air. She walked over to the door and turned the knob, closing it softly behind her.
Sakura loosened up on the pedal a little, staring at the careful, tiny little stitched beads on her mask.
O0O
Tenten didn't think the fact that the Hyuugas were holding a masked ball right after she suggested Hinata find a way to talk to her father was a coincidence. After all, they hardly seemed like the sort of family who would usually hold a party. I mean, come on. Nevertheless, Tenten was going to attend and help Hinata in whatever way possible.
She was heading towards the park, where she had been planning to meet Neji for their "therapy", (Tenten was getting rather tired of his room, even with the newly let in sunshine). Maybe he could offer her an explanation. Or maybe he would just give her one of his cynical little pronouncements about fate. Hm.
Anyways, it was worth a shot.
He was sitting on the green bench with the slightly peeling paint closest to the half pipe where Naruto and his posse liked to hang. He sat cross-legged, his white eyes focused on what appeared to be a medical textbook in his lap. A few kids that passed giggled at him, but their parents shooed them away. Tenten smiled. Typical Neji.
She sat next to him on the bench, careful not to disturb him, although by the way that his muscles tensed and relaxed in the back, she knew that she had disturbed him anyways. Nevertheless, he kept on reading. Tenten peered over at the tiny text, unable to comprehend most of the kanji and their meanings. She shook her head.
Neji looked sideways at her slightly. "My reading bothers you?"
"Psh, nooooo…" Tenten said.
Neji's lips twitched. "Can you understand it?"
"Maaayyybe."
He closed the book with a snap and laid it carefully on the bench. Tenten opened her mouth to ask about the ball, but Neji got there first.
"I assume that you're confused about the upcoming event in the Compound."
"How do you do that?!"
"What do I do?"
"Read peoples' minds."
"It was obvious what you were going to ask me, Tenten."
"Oh, shut up. Is the ball some mad ploy for Hinata to get Hiashi not to marry her off?"
Neji's white eyes widened slightly. Tenten, in her haste, had almost forgotten that Neji was totally fine with the whole I-Am-Marrying-My-First-Cousin-In-An-Arranged-Marriage thing. Hell, he was even ALL FOR IT. His eyes narrowed.
"Tenten, did you put her up to this?"
"Neji, she has to do this! You both have to do this! I am not letting you sacrifice your chance for love because the honor of the clan or whatever else that may be coming this way depends on it. It's not fair."
"Tenten…" Neji's eyes softened a little. "Life isn't fair."
"Well, then I'm going to fix it to be fair!" Tenten yelled. "LISTEN TO SENSE, Neji!"
"I already found my sense a long time ago," Neji said softly. "This is my fate. I will either accept it or oppose it, but it will be easier if I relent. Nothing you do will change it."
Tenten slumped back against the back of the park chair and put her head in her hands. "Neji? You are a complete arse."
"…arse?"
"Yes. An arse."
There was a pause, and then Tenten had Neji give the deepest possible sigh that humans could sustain in their lungs. There was a rustle of fabric as he shifted a little. "Tenten. Look at me."
"You don't deserve to be looked at."
He sighed again, though not as lung-blowingly this time. Tenten smiled through her fingers. The next thing she knew, Neji's hands were gently prying her fingers away from her face. She struggled, but of course he won.
She was just going to put her hands back up because she was seriously not in the mood to deal with him right now and she was giving up on him and all of his creepiness and fate stunk and she was just tired of life not being fair. Seriously.
But Neji was smarter than that. He knew her. He kept her hands firmly folded inside of his.
"Now that you are going to be mature, please listen to me," he said stiffly.
It was Tenten's turn to try sighing. She found that she couldn't take in nearly as much air as Neji had. She tried to move her hands. Neji's grip tightened until she felt a crack. She winced.
"Um. You can let go now. I promise I'm not going to do anything that'll annoy you. Much."
Neji smiled slightly and loosened his grip. Tenten pulled her hands back and this time circled his hands. "Haha," she stuck out her tongue. Neji seemed close to rolling his eyes.
"Hm." She turned his hands a little so that the backs were facing up. His fingertips and palm were callused and rough, and the skin on the back of his hand was dry. The skin still had that scaly texture. She ran her thumbs over his knuckles. All the bones stuck out.
"You work too hard," she said.
Neji remained quiet, but he did close his eyes.
"You try too hard. The world doesn't rest on your shoulders, Neji-kun."
His eyes opened. "That is true, but my duty to uphold the honor of the Hyuuga clan does."
Tenten bit her lip and squeezed his hands. "Do what you want then. I guess I don't have the power to make you do something you don't want to do."
She stood up. Neji stood too, much more gracefully than she had. Out in the open, Tenten realized that he seemed to tower above her. She resisted the urge to stand on the tips of her toes to avoid feeling less dwarfed. She still had a little dignity left to preserve.
"Will you still come to the…ball?" Neji said, seeming to struggle over what to call it.
"Yes. For Hinata's sake. And yours."
"Mine?"
"Yes, yours. Who else is going to dance with you if I don't come?"
He smiled slightly. "Tenten."
"Ja ne," she waved over her shoulder, grinning as she left.
O0O
Tenten was really not a dress person. Seriously, that was really more Ino's department. Tenten did not like trying on multiple outfits in department stores. She did not enjoy shopping for new clothes. She did not particularly care for dressing up or anything. Really.
"Ino, I really, really don't like this one." The Weapons Mistress twirled around in a huge, pink monstrosity of a ball gown, eyeing her reflection in the mirror with an expression akin to horror. The back was open all the way to the waist. Tenten did not like open backs. At all.
Ino pouted. "But it was so perfect! I was sure you would like this one."
"You take it. I think it would be alright on you," Tenten muttered, stepping out of the nightmare dress. She slid on her own T-shirt and jeans, ambling out of the dressing room to search for something that she would actually be caught dead in.
Sakura was sitting on the edge of a table with folded up tank tops on it. She was looking at the department store dresses like they were dog poo. The day before, the pink-haired girl had escaped to the thrift shop to buy something, and set to attacking it with a sewing machine. Armed with various beads and bits of yarn, she had transformed it into something very Sakura-like and hidden it away under her bunk in the dorm. Nobody had been allowed to see it. Her mask had met the same fate.
Hinata had taken an afternoon to go back to the Hyuuga Compound and rifle through her closet to see if she had anything suitable for the ball before Tenten had a chance to question her about the event. Sakura acted like she knew something about what Hinata was planning, but refused to let on when Tenten asked.
In any case, the Hyuuga heiress had come back with a bulging black plastic bag. She hadn't let anybody see her dress or mask either, choosing to place it carefully inside of her trunk.
That left Ino and Tenten to their own methods of acquiring something to wear. Ino, of course, already had dozens of suitable gowns for the occasion, but insisted that she had to have a new one in order to enjoy herself. Tenten did not have anything remotely dress like in her wardrobe. Or skirt like, for that matter.
Ino tried on the pink monstrosity, and fell in love. Of course.
Tenten grudgingly admitted that the dress actually suited the blonde when she came in to see what it looked like. Ino was somewhat taller than Tenten, so the back wasn't as low on her. The pink accentuated her eyes and white-blonde hair. Ino winked at herself in the mirror and started blowing kisses. Tenten rolled her eyes and got back out of there before it got too horrendous.
She moved to the shelves with blue and green dresses, rifling through in a hurry. Everything was slinky and short. God, Tenten would go to the ball in jeans before she wore something like that.
The Weapons Mistress was about to give up, when she saw it.
The dress.
She ran her fingers over the fabric in wonder. It didn't seem like it belonged in the department store. More like…in a fairy tale.
Tenten did believe the dress had found her. It was going home with her as a reward.
O0O
The girls had come to an agreement.
Since Sakura was guarding her dress design like a fire-breathing dragon, Hinata was hiding her entire outfit in her trunk, and Tenten had also refused to reveal her dress to the others, it was going to be a little difficult getting ready in the same dorm.
Therefore, Ino was going back to her parent's house, Hinata was going back to the Compound, and Tenten was going to Naruto's house beforehand to get ready. Sakura had claimed the dorm for herself. They would all be arriving at the party separately and seeing if they could find each other even with masks on.
Tenten gathered up her giant trash bag containing her dress, a mask that she had bought to go with it, and her only pair of black pumps that her mother had bought for her, (needless to say, they had rotted in their shoe box up until this point). Naruto's house wasn't exactly within walking distance, so a bike.
Naruto's dad answered the door, his bright yellow hair exactly the same shade as his son's. They were the spitting image of each other, besides the fact that Naruto's dad's hair was a little longer. Tenten knew him only as Uzumaki-san, although she had once heard Naruto call him Yondaime.
"Come on in," he smiled at her. "I think that Naruto is struggling to fit into a tux."
Tenten had invited Naruto as her guest. Seeing as she was pretty sure Lee would turn the place upside down, the blonde had been her only other choice. She smiled at his dad, and ran upstairs.
She peered into Naruto's room, which was seemingly covered in disposable ramen bowls and dirty T-shirts. Sighing, she closed the door behind her and quickly changed out of her street clothes and into the dress and pumps. Carefully, she let her hair down, combing it out with her fingers. The mask came down over her face in a perfect fit. Tenten no longer felt like herself.
The came a bang on the door and she flinched. "Oi, Tenten-chan! Lemme in! I need my bow tie," Naruto yelled.
Tenten laughed and opened the door. Naruto was in the classic white button-up shirt, black jacket and pants, plus some dress shoes that were too big for him, (most likely his dad's). Somebody had even stuck a rose in his buttonhole, (probably his mom). He stared at Tenten. "Uh, you are Tenten, aren't you?"
The Weapons Mistress giggled in a manner very unlike herself. "Stupid, just get your bow tie. I think we're running late."
Naruto shook his head and grabbed the bow tie off of his dresser. He held it out to Tenten. "Hey, could you help me fasten it?"
She did, rolling her eyes. "It's just a hook clasp." Naruto scowled.
"But I can't see it when I'm hooking it!"
Tenten sighed, and dragged him out of his room. "Look sharp, Hinata's going to be there."
Naruto laughed nervously. "I know." He rapidly tried to flatten his blonde hair when he thought Tenten wasn't looking. "My dad'll give us a ride. I think. OI, DAD!"
Ten minutes later, Tenten and Naruto were exiting the car door. Naruto happily waved goodbye to Uzumaki Senior, while Tenten looked nervously at the Hyuuga Compound. There were no disco lights or streamers or balloons or anything, although she thought she heard a faint stirring of classical violin music.
"Put on your mask, Naruto," she reminded him before they got to the main gates. He sighed and slipped on the classic Zorro-style mask.
"I hate this thing," he muttered as Tenten approached the doorman.
"Um, Tenten. And guest."
The white-eyed man standing there eyed her and Naruto, and nodded. He moved to the next couple in line. Naruto smiled and offered her his arm. She rolled her eyes and took it. Tenten took a deep, calming breath.
They made their entrance through the gate.
O0O
A/N: Sorry, guys, this is where the chapter ends…You'll have to see what happens next in chapter 26!!