On their way home, Tenten and Neji were quiet. Tenten was carrying the scrolls again. As soon as they were home, they would go through them and see whether anything sparked Tenten's memory. Tsunade had sent Hinata to clean up the mess and then retrieve the scrolls from them, so that Hiashi's hand would not be tipped. Thank the gods Hinata had been acting on her own and she was fairly certain she could ask the guard to keep quiet. After all, he hadn't asked any questions when she'd asked him to hide at the entrance. He wouldn't ask any when she wanted him to keep quiet about having been out cold. There was hardly anything to report, anyway. What would he say - "Hinata asked me to change my post but I fell unconscious until the morning. The End"?
Neji noticed how Tenten stroked the leather of her kunai again. Maybe it was a thinking gesture. She stopped when they entered Neji's home and got to work.
Tenten emptied the scrolls onto Neji's table and took a seat on the lumpy sofa. Neji came to sit next to her, patiently explaining anything she pointed at. None of them were very helpful. But among the scrolls was also one badly-wrinkled paper. As Tenten was stuffing the scrolls back into the satchel, Neji took a glimpse at it. What he saw shocked him.
The shock reverberated through him silently. Neji was not prone to physiological displays. Before he could say anything, a shadow slipped into Neji's house unannounced.
Hinata looked rushed and tired.
"I straightened up everything at home but one of you is going to have to come with me and tell me where exactly all these scrolls were."
Since Neji had the eidetic memory, he volunteered. As he slipped out of his own house like a thief, he really wished he had had the opportunity to tell Tenten what he hadn't known. But they didn't get the opportunity to discuss what was on that very wrinkled piece of paper because Tenten stuffed it back into her belt and Neji needed to leave with Hinata.
ttt
Back at Hiashi's office, Neji found the correct tatami mat, lifted it and revealed the panel with the hidden space beneath it. Putting the scrolls back the way they had found them might have been impossible for anyone else, but Neji had placed the majority of the scrolls in the satchel himself while Tenten had been busy with Hinata. So his memory served him well in placing the different scrolls exactly where he had removed them. It was a good bet that Hiashi wouldn't know they had been moved.
Before closing the panel in the floor, Neji even found a bit of translucent string, barely visible, that acted as a trap. If someone opened and closed the floor panels without making sure to thread the string back out of the opening, then Hiashi would know someone had gained access. But with the urgency removed, Neji's eyes didn't miss such a detail and he made sure his uncle would never know they'd been here.
On his way out of his ancestral home, Hinata held him back. There was something she needed to ask him before he left.
"Is that woman really Tenten but from the future?"
Neji just nodded. Hinata looked him deep in the eyes and then just said "Ok" and slunk off into the dark of the mansion.
ttt
Getting home did not take long for Neji. Upon his return, he could see that Tenten had fallen asleep in a sitting position on his sofa, her head having fallen onto her chest.
Quietly, Neji went to finally wash the grease off his face, and then he considered what to do with Tenten. He wondered whether it was disrespectful to carry her to bed given that now she was basically his superior. Deciding that ensuring his mission leader got good quality sleep was his duty, he relished the experience. Apparently, last night would not be the last time he carried her in his arms.
He gathered her up carefully and maneuvered them out of the tiny den without incident. Before he put her down on her side of the bed, he breathed a kiss into her hair out of an impulse he didn't care to examine. Then he righted himself again to walk around to his side of the bed while untying his clothes.
"What? No help with my clothes?" Tenten asked sleepily behind him. Neji spun around, his shirt half-off, and didn't know what to say. Unable to do anything else, he continued undressing himself completely and shrugged on his nightwear. He clearly did not know this Tenten as well as her younger version - how could he not have noticed she hadn't been sleeping? Trying to shake the eerie feeling that this Tenten was a lot more difficult to read, he brought another set of nemaki for her over to the bed with him.
"Does anything still hurt?" he wanted to know.
Tenten shook her head.
"What do you need help with?"
"Nothing," she confessed. Tenten unwrapped herself from the cloak and started untying her arms and her waist so that the garment became a lot less tight and could easily be pulled over her head. Her pants were already loose since she had used the straps to secure Sakura.
As she undressed, Neji kept staring at her back. He was frightened and excited to go to bed.
When Tenten had stripped bare, he remembered the nemaki he was still holding and threw it onto the bed. Then he - finally, respectfully - turned around. When he heard the rustling of bed sheets, he slipped into bed as well, carefully keeping his eyes glued to the ceiling.
He still really wanted to tell her something. He wasn't even sure it was important for her to know but the desire to tell her burned in his mind.
"I didn't know about the-" it finally just started to spill out of Neji, but - before it could turn into one of those verbiage waterfalls he'd only experienced once since the woman next to him had arrived - she interrupted him.
"I know."
Neji swallowed hard.
"How?"
As Neji lay stiff as a board, Tenten turned around to try and make out his profile in the dark. Yet more proof that she really did not possess any of the Hyūgas' extraordinary abilities.
As she thought about the answer to Neji's question, she had to admit that she had not always known. When first seeing the proof of an engagement between Neji and a Sand Princess, there had been doubt. All those little things this Neji did that she never knew about her own Neji: the cocky comments, the playful flirting, the passionate swearing. At times, it made her feel as though she had never known her Neji.
The Neji she spent hours with, the one who made her hairs stand on end when he accidentally touched her over dinner, for whom her heart hurt when he said goodbye at the end of an evening because she knew it would probably be another month before she saw him again. The friend she missed on a daily basis.
There was this doubt, tainting all her memories, that they had all been an illusion. Even that naked evening in the water. Apparently, none of it signified an intimacy that would warrant sharing that one had been engaged. He hadn't told her.
Still, Tenten knew some things about Neji to be true. Sure, it was likely he would not have told her of such an engagement. But she firmly believed that Neji would have moved heaven and earth to make sure there was no engagement - had he known of it. There was a certainty about this in her mind…
'He stays [...] available,' Neji had said about himself. The words echoed in Tenten's mind in an eerie way, emphasizing their quiet passion. Being available was important to him.
That's how she knew the Hyūgas didn't know about these secret engagements. If the arrangement stood, then it must have been made without Neji's knowledge, and, if Neji didn't know, Hinata probably didn't either. Tenten couldn't be sure, but she made a bet that the document might be important to pull some of the Hyūga offspring onto their side … and it had been. Had Hinata not known of her father's betrayal of her trust, she may not have believed he would betray the village's trust as well.
But all Tenten told Neji was:
"I knew you were … available."
There was a lump in his throat. He felt weirdly exposed and it was both scary as hell and exhilaratingly thrilling.
He wanted to be more exposed. Ever since he had met this Tenten, he'd been pouring himself at her feet, spilling all his secrets. It had felt relieving at first but now it was also scary because he was getting to know this Tenten more and more. And she was the same and simultaneously not the same as his Tenten and this oxymoronic dichotomy was almost more than his mind could take. Being here with her - laying in the same bed, her knowing his darkest secret - was a moment that went beyond beauty. It was really a sublime experience: both pleasure and terror.
And then he wasn't her colleague anymore, or her subordinate, he wasn't even one of two people on a mission anymore. They were just two people in the same bed, in the same time.
"Feels nice, you knowing me like that," Neji ventured, but Tenten didn't respond.
"How does it make you feel?" he asked then, this time turning his head so his gaze pierced her in the dark.
"Scary."
"You know what's scary?" Neji held against that. "You."
Tenten's features looked wary and it let Neji know he needed to be more specific.
"The way you took down my cousin was rather scary. It makes me wonder..." Neji licked his lips and he could see how Tenten's gaze fell to his mouth in the dark.
"What do you wonder?"
"Whether you could beat me."
This prompted one side of Tenten's mouth to twitch amusedly.
"That would indeed be interesting to know," she confirmed. But then she looked a little downtrodden, before she ventured:
"Sometimes I feel like I don't know you."
"You must be jesting. I think you know me better than I do. You've known me longer than I've known myself."
Tenten's mouth opened but no sound came out. She looked torn.
"Tell me," Neji insisted in husky tones. He didn't want to be prying like he suspected everyone else was, demanding to know about the future. But if there was something she wanted to tell him, he wanted to know it.
"I don't know this Neji."
His eyebrows rose but too late did Neji realize that Tenten couldn't see as well as he could in the dark.
"You realize it's the same me, right? Just like you're the sa-" Neji stopped mid-sentence as he realized his own mistake. If he was having trouble putting the incongruous picture of two different same people together, then maybe so had Tenten.
"There, that exactly!" Tenten pinpointed, half triumphantly. It was the loudest she'd been all night.
"What?"
"That's exactly what I mean. The Neji I know doesn't stop mid-sentence. He says exactly what he means. Not more, not less. And it's always correct and well thought through. My Neji isn't impulsive and he definitely doesn't talk to me like… well, the way you do."
"I think maybe your Neji is hiding something from you."
Tenten winced at how he said the sentence.
"It makes me wonder whether I knew him at all."
"Well, then get to know him." He briefly wondered whether he was betraying the consent or trust of his future self. Was he allowed to tell Tenten things about himself that his future self clearly did not want her to know? Tenten obviously had no such qualms, because she wondered in a matter-of-fact voice:
"Ok, so who are all these older women you slept with?"
"That's your first question?" Neji wondered aloud, now turning not only his head but his entire torso towards her. "I wasn't exactly expecting a green-eyed monster," he clarified.
Tenten looked disappointed in him.
"It's not jealousy," she began. "But you have a habit of telling me stuff … about me. It's very intimate and … confusing. I can't always handle when you tell me about those things. So, instead, I wanna get to know something about you that doesn't make my stomach churn."
Neji looked away momentarily but in the dark Tenten probably wouldn't know.
"Wishful thinking then perhaps," he admitted. "I hope you know I never intended for you to be uncomfortable."
Before he saw it, he heard the bedding rustle. The old familiar spark ran up his arm when her fingertips grazed the back of his hand.
Her hand stayed there as Neji recounted some of his sexual encounters. He didn't tell her that he pictured her, that he always felt dissatisfied after. He told her how good it made him feel when his sexual partners complimented him on his technique. That made Tenten laugh.
"Of course," she chuckled. "You just have to be good at everything, don't you?"
"Seems that way," Neji admitted, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth too.
"Talking about past conquests," Neji continued. "Perhaps you could tell me of some of yours. Tit for tat?"
"They would actually be future conquests from your perspective," Tenten countered.
"I solemnly swear not to interfere with any of my Tenten's conquests."
Tenten looked at him as though she were trying to assess how serious he was. She seemed to decide that an oath was good enough for her.
"You might find some of them surprising. And others not so much."
"Ok, which ones are surprising?"
"Well, for one thing. Lee."
Neji frowned and looked as though he wanted to break his oath.
"Do I even want to know how that happened?" Neji was half-joking but Tenten's features were serious when she said:
"No, you really don't."
"I can't believe Lee gets to sleep with you. I mean… surely I make the list before he does…?"
Tenten looked over at him across the sheets. Her expression was wary.
"Neji…," she rasped.
"I know," he interrupted whatever she was about to say. Probably an admonishment.
"You don't divulge anything about the future. It's fine." He tried to shrug it off and gave her the Neji-version of a light-hearted smile. It was basically just a twitch of the lips.
"Fine. Sleep with Lee. I hope you two..." He stumbled over the following words, betraying their earnestness. "...you two will end up very happy together."
"That's not…" Tenten looked torn. Then she looked up at the ceiling as though she couldn't stand the sight of Neji's face any longer.
"Neji, you can't be so… possessive of-... I mean, you shouldn't…" Tenten's voice sounded meek. Neji kept a close eye on her chest and it seemed she had to wrestle the words from its depths. Finally, he had to admit he'd done wrong by her. He had been doing wrong by the Tenten that existed in his timeline and now he also was doing wrong by the future Tenten. Apparently, he could not get himself to act in an ethically responsible way with any of the Tentens in his life.
"I'm so sorry. I know, I shouldn't, Tenten. It's a petty feeling and I can't dump that on another person."
"No, you can't," she choked out.
"I just… I just wish it'd been me."
"Neji?" She sounded strange.
"Yeah?"
"I gotta tell you something. You die."
Neji didn't quite understand.
"What?"
"In the future, you never get to be that guy. Because you die."
"Die?"
"Yes."
"Hm," he said, dumb-founded. He would never get to be the guy that gets Tenten because he… died?
"Yeah. Remember when I told you you were gonna be a hero and you said that sounded like you?"
"Yeah… So, I'm going to die heroically?"
"Pretty much."
"But I'll never get to be with you…?"
"Exactly."
And there it was. Intense feeling crashed into Neji. It felt as though a hidden projectile had hit him. Before when he'd learned he would never lose his control around her, he'd been intensely relieved. Ecstatic even. What he was feeling now was just as intense but the complete opposite. He was disappointed with life, with himself, with everything.
He swallowed hard and almost choked on it. His eyes burned with a sensation he'd never felt before.
They lay silently on his bed for a private little eternity, staring up without really seeing at all. Both mirroring the other, there was nothing much to say. The only thing they really saw were their own little hells instead of Neji's cheap ceiling.
Until Neji realized something else. Namely that now, here with this Tenten, was his very last chance to lose control. What he always wanted to do was never, ever going to happen with the Tenten in his time. So this was the only moment that the universe had open for him. The last chance he was ever going to get to do… something. Anything.
Before he knew to expect his own behavior, his whole body had moved. Rolling over to where Tenten still lay, probably in shock. His left hand had sped towards her face. Surprisingly gentle, his thumb slipped over her cheek, so he could cup it.
Then Neji felt himself lean over towards her and, thankfully, he did not make a liar out of Tenten. He did not lose control completely because he could see her eyes in the dark were scared.
"Do you want me to stop?" he asked. Then he swallowed and managed to bring himself to say "Because I will, you know."
Her eyes were not less afraid, but she shook her head. She didn't want him to stop.
So, here in his bedroom after an exhausting mission was the first time Neji leaned over Tenten the way he'd been wanting to for a while. It might just be his last time too.
Before his lips touched hers though, he noticed her hands were twisted into the sheets, holding on tightly. Her eyes were open. And still scared.
"This was a mistake," she told him.
"Y-yeah," he agreed even though that's not how he felt.
"There's a bunch to do tomorrow. I have a mission to finish."
"Correct."
After the awkward exchange they just lay next to each other the way they had before, staring up into their own hell, side by side.