Over the years, Tenten gradually accumulated a lunar landscape of scars. Oh, she wasn't unique in this. Pretty much all ninja had as many scars as the moon had craters.

The first wound she had ever received as a genin had been during Guy-sensei's "test," so to speak. The time when he had told them that if they wanted to continue on as ninja, they'd better fight him with everything they had with the full power of their "YOUTH!", complete with his thumbs-up, flashing, burning smile and sunsets, dolphins, and ocean waves in the background. Combined with his unnaturally shiny black bowl cut and uncomfortably green one piece jumpsuit, it was puke-inducing and horrific. Tenten had glanced around, and to her disappointment, no one seemed to share this opinion. Neji had that ever-present, stoic, deadpan expression on his face, his white eyes giving away nothing, whereas Lee was gawping at Guy-sensei in awe, as though their questionably sane teacher was dispensing timeless nuggets of wisdom.

The fight had been, to her surprise, quite lengthy. Tenten was realistic. She knew that as insane as Guy-sensei appeared to be, he was still a jounin, a highly-trained machine capable of killing any who would threaten Konoha, and she and her teammates were mere genin-to-be, rookies who had barely mastered the basics of shuriken throwing and the Kawarimi Jutsu. The fight, in her estimation, would last approximately 0.5 seconds. And yet, Guy-sensei pushed them, challenged them. She knew he wasn't fighting at his full power, but he was clearly not patronizing them nor was he dismissive of them. He may have been toning himself down a bit for their sakes, but as Tenten attempted a scissor kick only for him to block her with one powerful, muscular arm, she could feel the unhappy collision of his bones with hers, and she felt...well, not ecstatic, as the presently sobbing Lee seemed to be, but...she liked it. Liked that he was taking them all seriously. Tenten could appreciate that, even through his obsession with the springtime of youth.

And that motivated her to fight with the full power of her youth (ugh, gross), which Guy-sensei also clearly appreciated, if the incredibly suffocating hug he'd swept them all into was any indication. And so it was with sore muscles, an aching leg, and a pulsating pain in her skull that she became a genin.

As Team Guy sat down together for their first youthful lunch ever (Tenten shuddered), she lifted up the hem of her pants to find a blistering purple-blue bruise on her right calf, standing out against her skin like a black sheep in a flock of white. She gingerly touched the edge of the bruise and winced as sharp spikes of pain flooded through her nerve endings. Yeah. Guy-sensei had taken her all too seriously. What were his arms made of? Iron?

"You don't look well," said a low voice. Tenten whirled around. Behind her was Hyuuga Neji, white eyes fixed on the rotten orange color of her bruise.

"Oh, hi...Neji...kun." She eyed him warily. Despite having been classmates with him for many years, she could count on her fingers the number of times they'd actually spoken (twice, once to apologize for bumping into him in the hallway, another time to pass him a homework assignment).

He was classically graceful, some would say even beautiful, with his pale skin and dark hair and lithe frame, the kind of guy who would have a horde of fans wherever he went. But he gave off these...vibes. They were what some of the meaner kids in class called "human repellant vibes," all tracing back to something that had happened to him as a kid, an incident which no one seemed to want to speak of.

What was he going to do? Humiliate her in front of Guy-sensei and Lee?

"You should put some ointment on that," he said in that flat, blank voice that she was only just becoming accustomed to.

"I don't have any." There was no way she could have predicted that Guy-sensei would be...Guy-sensei, or else she would have stocked up. She made a mental note to always bring a first-aid kit with her whenever she met up with her new team.

Neji hesitated for a moment, and through the pale ice of his eyes, Tenten caught a glimmer of an unidentifiable emotion. He reached into the pocket of his pants and tossed her a tub of cream.

"Use that," he said, before sitting down to unpack his lunch.

She gingerly applied the paste to her swollen leg, and to her surprise, the bruise cleared up instantly.

She stared at the lid of the tub, emblazoned with the symbol of Konoha. Where did he get it from? The hospital? How strange. But how rude of her, to assume things about him based on hearsay.

"Um...Neji-kun?" she said quietly. Neji paused, his rice ball halfway to his mouth, watching her impassively. "Thank you."

Neji nodded imperceptibly. Tenten started to unpack her own lunch, when she heard the slightest of rustling movements.

"Just Neji is fine," he said. His face spasmed in an approximation of a smile, and all Tenten could think was, no matter what their old classmates said about his "human repellant vibes," that Hyuuga Neji was excellent at healing scars.

"You don't look well," said a low voice. Tenten whirled around to find the concerned white eyes of Hyuuga Neji, fixed on the nasty gash running from her right elbow to her wrist.

"Yeah, well, it turns out, fighting myself was really tough, you know? I never knew how much Soshoryu could hurt until I was on the receiving end," she said, poking at the campfire with a stick.

They didn't have to struggle at all to find food in the desert, since Gaara had sent them off with enough provisions to feed an army. But much to their surprise, while food was a non-issue, the temperatures plunged from the daytime zenith of almost a hundred degrees to the nadir of what seemed to be barely above freezing at night. Team Guy and Team Kakashi had no choice but to huddle up close to share the warmth. This meant that Guy-sensei, disturbingly, had decided to wrap the insensate Kakashi-sensei with him in a stranglehold of blankets like a cocoon, prompting Naruto to turn a sickly shade of green and Sakura a sickly shade of blue. Lee thought it was amazingly youthful. Lee was insane.

"Tenten, you must be freezing sitting in that corner all by yourself. Come here." He unrolled a white cloak with red stripes from his knapsack – the Konoha standard issue wear for inclement weather. The cloak was big and billowy, made from a downy, insulating fabric, and the firelight reflected off Neji's eyes, turning them a gentle, inviting silver. Well, there was no arguing with his offer. Tenten scooted closer to Neji, allowing him to wrap the cloak around them both.

There were some things that Tenten didn't mind at all about the sub-zero temperatures after all. The dim light of the fire and the warmth of the cloak surreptitiously worked together to make her forget the sting of her wound and close her eyes.

A cold, goopy substance dribbled onto the gash and Tenten, through the fog of her drowsiness, felt the wound fading away with every passing second.

"Neji...?" she mumbled.

"Yes?"

"Thanks."

And then the fog overtook her mind completely, and her sight went black.

In the morning, there were only the faintest of scars visible on her arm, and Tenten had to bite back a smile at the thought that anyone had ever considered Neji to have had "human repellant vibes."

"You don't look well," said a low voice. Tenten whirled around and her heart almost stopped for a moment. Standing beside her with tenderness in his white eyes was none other than Hyuuga Neji. Classically graceful, with pale skin, long, dark hair and a lithe frame, Tenten at that moment knew that it wasn't just "some" people who would have considered him beautiful. No, that implied some level of doubt, that maybe some other people out there might not have considered him so. Of course, such people didn't exist in this world. And neither did Neji anymore. He hadn't existed in this world for quite a long time.

Death had turned Neji ethereal. Whereas, she, apparently, didn't look well. Tenten snorted. A string of consecutive A-rank missions for the reconstruction of the ninja world after the war had apparently fried her brain cells and induced bizarre hallucinations in her mind.

The frown on his face turned his eyes even gentler than before. "Tenten, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong? Hyuuga Neji, after seeing me for the first time in so many months, you tell me that I don't look well?"

"You look physically in good shape. I assure you, my comment wasn't an indictment of your good looks, Tenten," he said calmly, his white eyes scanning her, X-raying her, seeing into her mind and heart. "I just meant that I could tell that you're hurting."

"Yeah," she said, not bothering to hide the truth. What was the point? He could see through everything. "And this time, it's because of you, I guess."

The sadness in his eyes took Tenten's breath away. She willed herself to keep her heart beating.

"I know," he said quietly. "I'm sorry."

Tenten gulped up a gallon of air and gave him what was unfortunately shaping up to be a watery smile. "Don't...don't apologize. We're all ninja, aren't we? You did what you had to do, saving Naruto and Hinata's lives. Saving the world. And...and I'm grateful, and all, so – "

Suddenly her face was meeting warm fabric once more and she almost forgot how to breathe again.

"I know," he said again, arms wrapped around her shoulders, his eyes unbelievably warm, and Tenten could hardly believe that seven years ago, they had been icy. "It's really tough for you to fight yourself, right?"

Tenten couldn't speak through the lump in her throat. She settled for nodding instead.

They stood together like that for a long, long time.

"Tenten?" Neji finally said.

"Yeah?" she croaked.

"Thank you."

In the morning, Tenten woke up with the Hyuuga clan's ointment clutched in her hand. Her heart twinged, just a bit. In time, there would be a scar. But hopefully, its sting would lessen over the years, if only Neji would help her out a little with his soothing balm of a smile and his warm, warm eyes.

After all, he was excellent at healing scars.

A/N: Written for Day 8: Healing. Sorry for the bittersweet feeling of this. My mind just went there...

Thanks for reading, latte, and hope to get more reviews! :)