Chapter Twenty
A/N: Neji begins to show his feelings more obviously in this chapter thanks to the return of two familiar faces. I know this is going to sound pathetic, but if you're reading this, I'd really like it if you review or email me and let me know you're reading, cause I have no idea how many people are reading other than those who review, and it makes me feel sad when no one reviews. To the three people who reviewed the last chapter, I love you and this chapter is dedicated wholly to you.
Kotetsu examined his future brother-in-law from behind the glass in the hospital room. He seemed to be in shock and just sat at TenTen's side staring into space.
"You feel sorry for him, don't you?" Izumo's voice.
Kotetsu snorted. "That kid deserves whatever he gets."
"You don't have to play the role of overprotective older brother anymore. Neji's a good kid, and he wants to protect your sister. Why else would he be here with her instead of training?"
"Because he feels guilty." He replied. "And because he's been disqualified."
"The old Hyuuga Neji would have been training regardless of being disqualified. He's a different kid now. A better one." He rested a hand on his friend's shoulder. "You can't tell me that you haven't noticed."
"He's not the only one who's changed since that day."
"I wanted to talk to you about that." Izumo sighed. "It's good that your sister's a bigger part of your life now, but you have to understand that she's had a lot of bad things happen to her in a very short period of time. She's adjusting and moving on, but to her, you're becoming a smaller and smaller part of her life. Maybe you need to move on too."
Neji hadn't meant to fall asleep. He had every intention of sitting next to TenTen and holding her hand until she woke up, but his body had other ideas.
He was sitting in a tree meditating when he heard her sneaking up to him. By now he knew her approaching presence by heart, and even though he couldn't see her, he knew she was there.
"Hey." She sounded shy, a tone she hadn't used with him since they first met.
"Hi."
"I know you said you didn't want me to do anything special for today, but I just had to do this for you."
Now intrigued, Neji hopped down from the tree, landing in front of her.
"I read somewhere once that dogs can be trained to help blind people out with their day to day activities, and Hinata told me that Kiba's parents' dogs just had a big litter, so I asked for one." She pressed a warm, wiggling creature into his arms. "He told me that they didn't usually give their ninja dogs away, but this was a special case." She petted the dog on the head. "If you want, I can help you train it."
Neji wanted to display his anger at what was an obvious act of sympathy towards him, but he couldn't. He found that he was so touched by her action, by the fact that she was just always thinking about him, that he couldn't be angry at her. He lifted the hand that wasn't carefully cradling the puppy and stretched it out towards her face. His fingers awkwardly struck the tip of her nose, and she blushed. He could feel the rising heat through his fingertips. "Sorry." He lowered his hand to her cheek. "I want to thank you. It's a great birthday present."
"It's not every day that you turn fourteen." She replied. "At least, with him with you I won't be so worried about you so much anymore."
"You don't have to worry about me TenTen. I've told you that a million times. I can take care of myself."
She sighed. "I know, but I can't help it. You're very important to me Neji, and I don't think I could take it if something happened to you."
The hand on her face found her lips and then he leaned closer and they kissed briefly. "Thank you."
Neji's eyes fluttered open. That was the second strange dream he'd had since returning to Konoha. They were as clear as memories, but it could not be possible for him to have memories of the future, and he was pretty sure the Phoenix was not capable of knowing the future, if it was it would have already found a way to break the seal that bound it to the Fire Clan. The dreams were probably as much as he hated to admit it, his own hopes for the future. Disrupting his thoughts, the door to the hospital room shook under the force of a loud knock.
"Who is it?"
"Gai!" The person shouted.
Neji groaned inwardly, he was blind, not deaf. "Come in sensei." He heard the door swing open and heavy footsteps on the ground as the man entered. On top of those he also heard a second pair of footsteps. "Is Lee with you?"
"Hai." A second voice that was obviously Lee's replied.
"So the rumors are true." Gai remarked gruffly. "You have lost your eyesight."
"So it would seem." Neji replied.
"Um…" Lee began, his voice sounding unusually timid. "Is TenTen okay?"
"The doctors say she should be fine, but she hasn't woken up in the day since she fell into a coma."
Gai spoke next. "Your team was disqualified from the Chuunin exam. What will you do now?"
"What can we do? The Kazekage wanted Chuunin, and we'll have to wait another six months before we get another chance, if we live that long. Temari will return and tell them that we died, but we don't know how long her word alone will convince them."
"The charges against you in Konoha have been dropped and it's obvious that you didn't share any of the village's techniques with them. You should be able to start over here."
Neji snorted. "Do you really think they'll trust us? If we stay here we'll be watched constantly."
"Then where do you plan to go?"
"If I tell you my plans wouldn't it be easy to have us followed?"
"Neji, you should trust Gai-sensei. He cares about all of us."
"Does he really? As a Jounin he should've known where we were being kept, why did he wait until now to come and see us?"
Lee jumped to the defense of his idol. "Can you blame him? How was he supposed to know if you guys were yourselves or not?"
"He could trust in the students he's taught for over a year." Neji turned his head away from their direction. "But everyone forgot us the way we are and assumed we had changed into criminal monsters."
"I suppose you heard the news about the Shiratori brothers?" Gai finally said.
"That the Jounin allowed them to escape?" He replied. "How could I not know? They can run all they want though. I promised TenTen that I would kill them and there's no way I would break my word to her."
"Killing them is not the answer. They should be put on trial and tried fairly in front of everyone."
"So they can get tossed in jail?" Neji was beginning to get angry. "Jail is not a fit punishment for rape. You have no idea how much TenTen has suffered because of what they did. You don't know how much I suffered."
"What does that have to do with you?"
Gai held a hand out in front of Lee to silence him. They'd always had a grudging respect for each other's skills, but their rivalry could cause the conversation to descend into a shouting match. "Neji has been by TenTen's side from the beginning, obviously he would've felt her pain."
He snorted. "This has got nothing to do with her pain. My blindness is as a direct result of what happened to her, and that has brought enough pain down on me to last a lifetime."
"From what I hear, you were the one who decided to make yourself more powerful by accepting her demons. Anything that happened to you after that is your own fault." Gai's voice remained stern and reprimanding.
"The last thing I need is a lecture. I've had enough from her brother." He motioned to the still girl. "Apparently this is my fault as well, even though she wanted to be Chuunin as much as I did."
Gai sighed. "You ever think that you're pushing her too much? She'll do things she doesn't want to, just because you want her to."
"You don't think I know that?" Neji snapped.
"Then why do you keep pushing her?"
"Because it's good for her. She doesn't have the same limits as everyone else. She ought to learn that."
"And the more you push the more she ends up in the hospital. Don't you think you should take a step or two back?"
A sudden rage flared up inside of Neji. "Don't tell me how to treat her. You don't know anything."
Gai rested a hand on his former pupil's shoulder. "I know that you can't treat a woman the same way you would treat a man."
"How would you know how to treat a woman sensei?"
Gai found he couldn't respond. The boy had struck a chord inside him.
"How dare you attack sensei like that?"
"Open your eyes." Neji snarled. "Gai-sensei is terrified of us, that's why he never bothered looking for us, that's why he told you to stay away from us, and even now he's shaking in his boots. Shiratori Ryoji and Shiratori Kenji had been arrested for killing their brother, but that doesn't change sensei's belief that TenTen and I are capable of murder. We are ninjas after all."
Lee turned to the older man. "Is that true sensei?"
"It's human nature to fear what you cannot understand." Gai clenched his fist. "However…I want to understand you. Neji, you are my student, and I will not lose faith in you. Even if your family deserts you, you can count on me to stand by your side and support you."
In spite of himself, Neji found that he was smiling at his former teacher's enthusiasm. "I would like that."
The hand on his shoulder tightened. "I will plead with Tsunade-sama to allow you to continue on in the exam. You have grown up a lot since the last exam and you deserve your chance to become a Chuunin."
"Thank you."
The hand lifted from his shoulder. "Come Lee, we should go now."
"Um…sensei, if it's okay, could I stay with them a little longer?"
Gai smiled at his protégé. "Very well. I'll be waiting for you." He turned and left the room.
Lee stood with his hands in his pockets for a while before he worked up the courage to say anything. He licked his lips twice and then spoke. "Before I met you guys, I didn't have any friends. Everyone made fun of me because I couldn't use Ninjutsu or Genjutsu." He smiled. "You did too, but TenTen was the one who kept us from killing each other, or rather, you from killing me. Thanks to her, we've almost become friends, or as close to friends as either of us are going to have." He sighed. "It hurts me to see her like this, but it hurts me even more to see the way she hurts because of you."
Neji clenched his fists. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm sure you do. Any idiot can tell that TenTen likes you a lot, and after seeing the way you are with her, I know that deep down, you care about her too. She would stop being so sad if you told her one day."
The white-eyed boy relaxed his hands. "I will…tell her that is. Now's not the right time. She's not ready."
Lee smiled. "People are always happy to find out that they're loved. Sometimes it can bring them out of depression."
"Maybe that is so, but things have suddenly become very complicated for us." With his thumb he gently massaged the inside of her palm. "When this exam is over, Godaime will suddenly have to make a lot of decisions concerning us. Are we dangerous? Do we mean to destroy Konoha? Will I attack the main family for taking away my eyesight? I don't even know the answers to those questions. How can I convince everyone else to trust me if I don't trust myself?"
"I don't know what to say."
"TenTen believes in me no matter what I do. She'll do anything to make sure I'm happy, and she'll sacrifice everything to make sure I'm not hurt. No matter what I decide I know she'll follow me, but what if that's not what I want?"
"I don't understand…you like her, right?"
"Yeah, I like her, but if being around me and knowing me gets her hurt, then I don't want to be near her."
"TenTen is a ninja, she can handle herself. Besides, the last thing she would want is for you to leave her side."
"Sometimes the right thing to do is the hardest thing to do, right?"
Lee looked worried. "You aren't serious about leaving town without her, are you?"
He sighed. "Is it a big deal if I am?"
"Would you really leave without telling her? She'll hate you. I'll hate you."
"I would come back. We're only thirteen, we have our whole lives ahead of us."
"Can you really be sure you'd come back? What if you liked your new life better than your new one? Would you still remember any of us? Would you still remember her?" He looked down at the peacefully sleeping girl. "Do you really trust that she'll be safe without you?"
"You said that she could handle herself." Neji countered.
"That's not fair."
"If I decided to go, would you…would you watch her for me?"
"Neji…" Lee found that he couldn't respond.
"Would you?"
For some reason Neji's tone was heart-wrenching and coaxed Lee to reply. "If it came down to that I would be happy to keep an eye out for my friend." He shook his head. "But it shouldn't come down to that."
"It may."
"And I can't stop you?"
Neji felt frustrated. "I hate being handicapped, especially around her."
"Tsunade-sama is very good at performing surgeries. She'll fix your eyes good as new. Then you won't have anything to worry about."
Neji sighed. "Have you ever dreamed about the future Lee?"
"Once or twice."
"If my future is with her, what difference does it make if I spend a little time away from her in the present?"
"I don't know, but do you really want to leave her on top of everything else that's happened to her? She cares about you Neji, and even though she's probably not showing it, she's broken inside. If you left, it would probably kill her." He frowned at the thoughtful look on Neji's face. "I should go." Without waiting for the other boy's response, he walked out of the room.
Neji hadn't meant to say those things, he really hadn't, but there was some part of him that felt he'd gotten a raw deal and that it would be best for him if he left. Despite that, there was another part of him that didn't want to leave her side. Which part would win out however, was left to be seen.
