i.
It's a beautiful, beautiful day. The sky is the brightest of sapphire blue and there are only the faintest whisps of clouds scattered about. The sun lights the way ahead and Tenten and Lee are laughing and sprinting ahead of their irate client, a noblewoman from the Land of Rivers. It's the first "normal" mission they've been assigned for about ten months since the end of the war. Not that Tenten's been counting or anything...Oh, who is she kidding? Of course she's been counting. She's always proud and pleased to serve in the reconstruction efforts, but after witnessing the miserable status of ten consecutive towns destroyed by the Juubi, she feels nothing but blessed relief at the pedestrian C-rank escort mission that Tsunade-sama assigns her and Lee to on one lazy afternoon.
Tenten feels like a stifling mask has been ripped off her face and her grey eyes sparkle as she breathes in the fresh summer air. Lee is shouting something to her about how he's going to reach the nearest town, twenty miles away, in a mere twenty minutes, and Tenten is so blown away by the sheer lunacy of that statement that laughter gurgles from her throat like water from a fresh stream.
But then the leaves in the nearby woods rustle and they are soon confronted by a group of highwaymen, their faces and bodies covered in thick black cloth. Tenten sighs as she unfurls a scroll from her sleeve and Lee bellows that he'll finish off all the five highwaymen in just three minutes. This, too, is part and parcel of a routine C-rank mission and after seeing ten consecutive towns destroyed by the Juubi, Tenten feels that petty thieves are small potatoes. She and Lee slip into their familiar, well-versed battle formation, one of the first that Team Guy has ever learned. Lee makes quick work of one of them with a powerful Severe Leaf Hurricane and Tenten takes care of another two with a perfectly-timed Heavenly Chain Disaster.
So Tenten's feeling on top of the world when the dust clears and only two highwaymen remain, her deadly, unerring weapons strewn on the ground along with the other three robbers. She's about to unfurl her scroll and summon a kusarigama to finish them off when the leaves rustle again and the robbers suddenly retreat to the trees behind them. Tenten's mind goes into overdrive, calculating a million different scenarios and possibilities of attack.
Her mind settles on one, a sure-shot finisher, at practiced, lightning speed.
"Neji," she calls out. "Watch my back, I'll take point – "
And then the wind is knocked out of her and she's gasping for breath, blinking back tears of shock and pain. Her eyes clear and one of the masked highwaymen stands hulking in front of her, a simple hammer in hand.
"Who," he sneers, "is Neji? Your imaginary friend? Pay attention, girl, or I'll be caving in your skull."
Tenten's hand goes unconsciously to that one blind spot, that stinging, throbbing patch of skin on the back of her neck. Her hands shake and her eyes tear up again for reasons entirely unrelated to her injury.
She slowly and deliberately unrolls a second scroll from her sleeve.
Tenten does not in fact pull out a kusarigama as was her original plan.
The explosion shakes the world and the quaint dirt path splatters with blood and the bodies of the highwaymen are nowhere in sight. The black plume of smoke clears and Tenten's breathing is labored. Lee stares at her with wide eyes and the noblewoman is so terrified that she is hyperventilating.
Tsunade-sama reads the mission report a few days later and asks her to take a break from ninja duty and relearn that basic ninja formation that Tenten has been doing since the age of twelve. The basic ninja formation that she has been doing since the age of twelve. Only now an essential screw has gone missing and the formation has collapsed like a broken table.
Her idol's amber eyes are full of compassion and something that looks dreadfully close to empathy, like Tsunade-sama has been through the same thing in the past.
Tenten doesn't want to know about it. Her blind spot is purpling with an ugly bruise and she doesn't go to the hospital to heal it.
ii.
They're back at the curry of life store, she and Lee and Naruto. Tsunade-sama has sent them on a follow-up mission to the Katabami Gold Mine, and she's pleased to note that the town that she has last seen at the age of fourteen is now flourishing, its population having almost doubled over the course of four years. Katabami has been totally untouched by the war and Tenten smiles so brightly at this news that her cheeks hurt and Naruto claims with a smile of his own that her dimples are showing.
Old lady Sansho sets three plates of frighteningly red curry rice in front of them and all of them dig in for old time's sake, despite the fact that eating her concoctions is the same as drinking fiery lava.
Lee's on his third plate, inhaling the curry like a vacuum cleaner, and Tenten wonders with queasy awe if he has been practicing eating Sansho's food like he practices taijutsu. It would explain why he still hasn't reached for his glass of water (she and Naruto have already finished off three whole bottles between them). She smiles nostalgically and gingerly nibbles a small bite off her spoon, wincing as her ears begin ringing.
"By the way," old lady Sansho says, happily stirring her massive pot with an iron ladle, "wherever is that other young man? Neji-san? I was hoping to see him again."
And then it is as if the temperature of the shop drops to below freezing. Lee puts down his spoon and Naruto's blue eyes mist over. They're quiet for so long that Tenten wonders if some yokai has stolen their tongues from them. But old lady Sansho deserves to know why she'll never see Neji again and Tenten sets herself the task of doing so.
"He...he died," she says quietly. "In the war. A hero."
There is shocked silence from Sansho and Tenten's eyes turn as misty as Naruto's. For a moment, she swears she can see Neji sitting at this table with them and fainting after one bite of the new and improved curry. He had a sweet tooth the most extreme that Tenten had ever seen.
The ringing in her ears abruptly stops and Tenten's mouth tastes like dust.
She briefly wonders if her tongue is also a blind spot.
iii.
After the war, Tenten swears that she'll transcend her grief and move on. She swears that she won't be one of those traumatized ninja whom Sakura is treating in the hospital for various disturbances of the mind. She swears that she won't be one of the many opium addicts who have taken to wandering the streets, unable to bear the pain of life. She knows that Neji would want her to move on, that he sacrificed himself so that they could thrive, not so they could all be living corpses walking the world.
She doubles her training regime, she goes on ever more missions for the sake of her village, for the sake of Guy-sensei, for the sake of Lee, for the sake of her fellow ninja, for the sake of Neji.
It works. It really, really works. Tenten's mind is active and energetic and engaged in so many, many events. The world at peace has never been so inviting, and the fire-forged Shinobi Alliance seems set to last for a few generations at the very least (hopefully forever). She goes on with life. She laughs and jokes with Sakura and Ino, she squeals with delight when Naruto and Hinata are set to be married, and she rolls her eyes at Guy-sensei and Lee's ludicrous daily youth fests. She herself travels the Five Great Nations and collects so, so many sharp, pointy objects that she decides that a store is the only place she could possibly keep them all.
One grey early morning, before the sun rises, she decides to pay a visit to her old, old friend, the one she would see every other day in the weeks and months after the war. She still visits regularly, of course she does. He is a precious, precious being, and he is always in her mind and heart. It's just that she's been so busy for the past few weeks that she hasn't seen him as much as she would have liked. She decides that she'll apologize to him when she gets there. She knows he will understand (or rather, she hopes).
She settles herself in front of his grave and traces her fingers across the kanji of his clan name and smiles.
Hyuuga. Facing the sun.
That's right. He is eternally a sun, shining forever in her eyes, warm, kind, and life-giving.
She casts her eyes over the rest of the white stone.
She frowns as she notices the patchy, fuzzy growth of moss at the upper left corner of the stone, and to her astonishment, a little crack is at the foot of the grave. The white isn't as bright as it used to be in the early days of its presence (it will never be as white as his eyes).
Tenten blinks as she realizes that the grave is worn and faded. Her minds counts six years since its construction, six years since she last saw him.
Six years since she has been on a team with him. The same amount of time they were a team.
Over the years, Tenten has gotten to be quite the expert at transcending her grief and moving on, but then she traces his first name, and her eyes blur, and the wind is knocked out of her lungs once more. She has spent the same amount of time without him as with him now, and her blind spot twinges painfully.
Tenten isn't a living corpse walking the world. She has grown and thrived. Yet an essential screw is still missing, and she feels as though that old ninja formation can never be fixed.
iv.
Oddly enough, Kakashi-sensei, of all people in the world, is the one who understands her feelings. She's known him for years, her own sensei's best friend and eternal rival. She has seen him and Guy-sensei play rock-paper-scissors so many times her brain hurts from thinking about it, and she can recite their current rivalry tally by heart (50-50, a perfect tie).
Kakashi-sensei is easy-going, some would say lazy, a genius where Guy-sensei is a moron. He always hides his face under a mask and he is obsessed with Jiraiya-sama's extremely graphic novels. Kakashi-sensei is an eternal fixture in her life, not just because he is her sensei's best friend, but because he's the Rokudaime.
Kakashi-sensei, as she has since found, also knows what it's like to lose a precious teammate, two of them, in fact. Team 10 lost their sensei, a great and unimaginable pain, but teammate-teammate bonds are not the same as sensei-teammate bonds. Team 7 and Team 8 make it through the war unscathed (she is happy for them and always will be; she never wants anyone to share her team's fate).
Therefore, she finds it...difficult, at times, when she sees a complete Ino-Shika-Chou, a complete Shino-Kiba-Hinata, a complete Naruto-Sasuke-Sakura trio.
She would always look to the left and right, up and down, and Neji's absence would be as crushing as his Vacuum Palm. Her stomach would tighten in a knot, and then her blind spot would ache.
She once sees Kakashi-sensei at the graveyard. Actually, she sees him every other day at the graveyard, especially early in the morning, and after so many years of knowing her sensei's eternal rival, it is only when Tenten sees his lonesome figure at the memorial stone and at two graves that she finally understands the reason he's always late.
Kakashi-sensei also has a blind spot, she learns, during one of these shared vigils. It's in his left eye, and sometimes it hurts when it acts up unexpectedly, just like hers.
"I just don't like the idea that he won't be able to see the future he's created," she confides in Kakashi-sensei one day.
Then he smiles and pulls his hitai-ate over his left eye, even though his Sharingan is long gone. "Tenten, that means you just have to be his eye and see the future for him."
Kakashi-sensei's eye crinkles down at her and he vanishes in a flurry of leaves, leaving just her and Neji alone together.
v.
"Tenten oba-san, why aren't you married?" a young Himawari asks her one calm sunny afternoon. Neji's niece is a big hit with all the aunties and uncles of the Konoha 11, and as Naruto and Hinata have found, is the subject of doting attention, especially from her uncle's teammate. Tenten can't help it. Uzumaki Himawari is a perfect, harmonious blend of her parents. She is the spitting image of Hinata, and she has inherited Naruto's sky blue eyes and whisker marks.
Tenten searches Himawari's round, beautiful face, and in the nose and arch of the eyebrows, she thinks she can see a little bit of Neji staring back at her, giving his teammate a friendly wave from within his niece.
Tenten's heart twinges a bit and that old blind spot aches again. It's one of those days, then.
"Himawari-chan, my weapons are my boyfriends!" she says, winking at Neji's niece mischievously, drawing out gurgles of laughter from the young girl like a clear stream on a summer day fifteen years ago.
And then Himawari scrunches up her nose at Tenten in puzzlement, and Tenten can see Neji so clearly, giving her a calm, quiet smile.
It's the truth for sure. Her weapons are her boyfriends. She'll never find another man quite like him again.
The door creaks open and Tenten's ears perk up in excitement. It's a customer, a rare one, and her mind twinges once again as she sees that the man has long, dark hair (not nearly as luxurious as his, though).
Deep in her heart, she knows that she'll trade a hundred thousand customers and a booming business just to catch a glimpse of him again. But then, she realizes, beaming down at Himawari's beautiful face, she's seeing glimpses of him all the time.
v + i.
A warm, slender hand gently caresses the back of her neck, delicately trailing over her blind spot.
"You need to fix your posture, Tenten," Neji softly chides, white eyes warm and tender. "You really don't have the money to see a chiropractor with how terrible your sales are."
She turns around in her chair and sticks her tongue out at him. His nose scrunches up in amusement and Tenten's heart swells at the tiny gesture.
"I already have one, Hyuuga Neji," she says. "Now do your magical jyuuken neck massage for me."
"Hmph," he snorts, lips switching. "I'm not running a massage parlor, Hyuuga Tenten."
His hands knead at her neck, sending soothing tremors through it, and her blind spot stops aching.
Tenten smiles, and the laugh issuing from her throat is like a gurgling stream on a summer day.
A/N: Written for Day 18: Post-War and a sequel to Chapter 13. It's also inspired a little by "The Gravity of Absence" by matchaball, my favorite NejiTen fanfic ever.
I tried to write in present tense for the first time, and wow, it really changes the way everything reads. Present tense gives a totally different touch! I don't know how matchaball somehow wrote ten moments after Neji's death, because writing them is an exercise in masochism, to use her words. I did a "five moments after Neji's death and one moment where he's alive" to make it a bit less gut-wrenching. Or more gut-wrenching. Same difference. :) Katabami Gold Mine and Sansho are from episodes 152-157 of the original anime, just in case anyone doesn't know.
Everyone, please read The Gravity of Absence! It's right here on ffnet, and I leave you with (in my opinion) the most devastating lines in it (of many devastating lines):
"Against her will, she turns to look to her left.
Emptiness.
She stares at the space beside her for so long the spots of sun reflecting off her blade blink back at her like eyes and the ruffle of leaves swaying in the wind flutter like long tendrils of hair. The warmth of the sun wraps around her like the comforting drape of a haori.
Tenten blinks and he is gone."