MisChibiOus: Thanks for the review. you got the first pairing/love triangle right on the head. Sadly, there will be no Naru/Hina/Kiba. Hinata is Kiba's girl in my mind. And I will see if I can work in a little Shika/Tem for you (I'm fond of that pairing as well).

Please enjoy.

Chapter 2: Carry Me Home

She was jarred awake by the sharp pings of small, hard projectiles bouncing off of her window pane. Groggily, she reached for her clock, pulling it close to her face so she could read the hands, then groaned. It was only 5:05, there was no way she was rolling out of bed this early. Maybe if she ignored him he'd just go away and come back at a more decent hour, like when they could see by the light of the sun.

"Tenten-chan!" She leapt up, unprepared to hear her name, or that voice. She was almost afraid to look at the window, but slowly turned toward it anyway. There was Lee's head, in all it's bowl-cut, fuzzy eyebrow-ed glory. As she was getting ready to tell him off a thought suddenly dawned on her. Lee couldn't use chakra like everyone else. She was on the second floor, with no trees in close proximity.

She stood up, walked over, opened the window, stuck her head out, brought it back in, looked at Lee, and said, "I'll be down in five minutes." He smiled and released his hold of her windowsill, falling painlessly to the ground.

Once she was sure he had scampered far enough away she changed out of her simple pajamas (a yellow tanktop and a pair of blue shorts) and into her training gear. After grabbing her forehead protector she hopped out the window, landing gracefully on her lawn. She looked up her window. Lee had been supporting himself effortlessly by the strength of his fingertips. He had made it look like he was casually resting his hands on her window sill.

As Lee led her to his favorite training area she did her hair, pulling the strands into the buns everyone was accustomed to her wearing.

She was a little anxious about training one on one with Lee. She knew he worked twenty times harder than her on nearly everything, and quite frankly, she was afraid she wouldn't be able to keep up.

They walked into a clearing with four trees moderately spaced in the middle. The trunks looked extremely worn, as though they'd been kicked thousands of times. She cast a side glance at Lee, and realized they probably had.

Lee stood in the center of the trees, hands on his hips, and took a deep, cleansing breath.

"Ready Tenten-chan?"

Whether she was or not, she was there. "Sure, what're we working on today?"

"Since you're far more proficient than I with long range weapons, I can't help you with that, and I don't really think you need help on that." He smiled in an almost charming way, and she couldn't help but smile back. "So I thought," he continued, "it would be more beneficial to work on your taijutsu"

He looked so pleased and excited she couldn't tell him she hated taijutsu. That was the original reason she took to the ranged attacks, and then it just turned out she had a knack for throwing sharp projectiles and hitting her targets.

But, she supposed learning taijutsu would benefit her a lot. No one at this point expects hand-to-hand combat from her, and to be able to bust it out in the middle of a match would give her quite the upper hand. She thought back to her battle years ago with Temari, who she had heard was a jounin now, and how it might have had different results if she practiced taijutsu rather than always relying on her aim.

"Okay, what do we do first?"

By the end of the day Tenten was so exhausted she didn't know if she'd be able to make it all the way home. It was glaringly obvious that she was nowhere near Lee's level, but she was proud of herself for sticking through the whole day, rather than pinning him to a tree with her shuriken and running away, as she had contemplated doing at least twice every hour.

About a quarter of a mile away from her house her legs completely gave out, and she felt herself falling back towards the ground. Well damn, she thought unenthusiastically. She didn't try to brace herself, so at first she didn't notice when she failed to hit the ground. It took her a few seconds to realize she was being supported by a pair of strong arms.

"Oh, thanks." She said as she tried to focus her tired eyes on the face above her.

"What happened to you?" Suddenly she didn't need her eyes anymore. She knew that voice all too well.

"I was training one-on-one with Lee." She answered, hoping it would be explanation enough. She tried to read his face for any kind of emotion, but he remained as cold and impassive towards her as ever. But then, to her surprise, he spoke.

"That's quite ambitious of you. You know how that guy trains."

"Firsthand," she said as he finally brought her upright again and let her go.

"Thanks," she said, taking a step and fallingonce moreas her knees involuntarily buckled. She silently cursed herself for looking and acting and being so weak in front of Neji as he caught her again. But this time instead of helping her stand he scooped up her legs and began walking toward her house, holding her like a groom carrying his bride over ther threshold.

"Wha-what are you doing?" She stammered, blood rushing all too quickly to her cheeks as she lay quite helplessly in his arms. It'd be kind of romantic if it weren't so terribly embarrassing.

"Getting you home." He answered simply. "You really shouldn't let Lee overwork you like this." Her face got even redder, both due to the situation, and her embarrassment and annoyance that he considered her too weak to train with Lee.

"It's not his fault. He said I could stop whenever I wanted." She argued without much force, not havingenough energy to be involved in a conversation. She fought to keep her eyelids open as he carried her the rest of the way home in silence, hoping no one she knew would see them intheir currentsituation. But she knew it was in vain, she just wasn't that lucky.

"This is far enough." She said as he stepped onto her front porch. He nodded, and she was relieved he didn't push the idea of carrying her to her room. Well, she thought she was relieved. A small, barely conscious part of her wanted him to insist he bring her up to her room himself to make sure she got there okay. God, she must be delirious.

He stood her in front of the door, allowing her to use his arm to steady herself. Sadly, she knew after tonight she'd have to work even harder to win his acknowledgement. What rotten luck she had.

"Thanks Neji." She said as she turned the knob. She almost bowed, but thought better of it after a few seconds of swaying just from standing upright on her own.

"Don't mention it." He answered, watching her until she got through the frame and closed the door.

Once inside she took two steps away from the door and collapsed again, this time falling to her knees. Luckily, they hadn't worked on the upper body too much, so she was able to move her body across the paneled floor to the stairs using her arms. If she had had any extra energy she might have laughed at herself and how she must look at this moment, pulling herself along like an infant who hadn't grasped the fundamentals of crawling yet. But when she reached the staircase that might as well have been a mountain,all thoughts of this being a humorous situation flew from her mind.

"Come on, you can do this," shegrimaced to herself as her strong arms gripped the banister and pulled her body up into a precarious standing position. Leaning heavily on the railing she willed her legs to move slowly upward, one stair at a time.

By the time she reached the top step she was so excited and exhausted she just let herself fall forward and dragged her body into her room, hoisted herself onto her bed, and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

Outside, a dark haired, white-eyed boy, well, really more of a man now, nodded toward the house, then turned to walk off into the night.

So, do tell me your thoughts. Are characters OOC much? This is my first try at a fic not centralized around team 8 or random side characters, so i'm not used to following the rules of very set characterization.