Not entirely sure about Deidara's techniques and personality. It was a while since I read that chapter.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Italics are flashbacks.
One Thousand Paper Cranes
"Here's your first one." She placed the paper crane on his table. "Remember, if you fold one thousand of them and with for yourself to get better, you'll be healthy in no time!"
Neji, sitting up in the hospital bed, rolled his eyes at her enthusiasm. Two years ago, he had been hospitalized after a mission when he was forced to swallow some of Deidara's clay.
"Byakugan!" Neji could see all of Deidara's tenketsu, and was trying to use Jyuuken on him. However, since Neji was used to short-range fighting and Deidara long-range, he was unable to get close enough. Lee and Gai were having similar problems. All they could do was dodge his clay bombs while Tenten tried to drive him closer to them.
Suddenly, Neji's head was thrown back against a tree by a hand pressed up against his mouth. He felt the said hand trying to force something into his mouth.
"Your friends are all surrounded by my bombs, un. Swallow this if you want the girl to live, un."
Neji's eyes looked past Deidara's cold ones to verify this statement. Tenten's scrolls lay unraveled around her as she panted for breath. She had used up all of her weapons trying to hit Deidara, but had also taken many indirect hits from his clay birds. Lee and Gai were fine, but all three of them were completely surrounded by Deidara's bombs. Any movement on their part would involve touching a bomb, which would cause a chain explosion, killing the shinobi in the middle.
"Oh, and don't try using Kaiten on me, un. Of course, you've already figured out why, un."
Deidara would fly straight into the bombs surrounding Tenten, this man thought up the whole thing really well. Using Rokujuu Yonshou would also throw him back into the bombs, killing Tenten.
"Hurry up and decide, un."
"Hurry up and use Kaiten on him!" Neji looked back at Tenten. He could see the pain and fear she was trying to hide, even as she was yelling at him. He then felt a sudden pain in his abdomen. He gasped, and Deidara took this time to shove the clay in Neji's open mouth, all the way to the back of his throat. He then used both hands to keep his mouth closed. The clay was choking him and blocking his windpipe, since is was shoved so far down.
He involuntarily swallowed. After the punch in the stomach, he desperately needed air, and he couldn't cough up the clay.
"Good. I'll be leaving now, un." Deidara summoned his giant clay bird and hopped onto it, the numerous little bombs around Tenten, Lee and Gai flying away afterwards.
"I'm sorry, but as of right now, there is no way to get the clay out of his body." Tsunade told everyone waiting for the diagnosis on Neji. "The clay dissolved itself into Neji's cells, so we can't take the clay out unless we destroy his body. Also, it's possible for the clay to detonate at any time, so it will be hard to continue being a shinobi.""
Neji closed his eyes after hearing the verdict. With the clay in his system, he would be a liability to his teammates. He could explode at any moment, taking Tenten, Lee, and Gai with him. However, he could still train…
"Also, any unnecessary movement could cause minute amounts of the clay to explode, so training isn't a very good idea either."
Damn.
Suddenly, Hyuuga Hiashi stood up. "Then Hyuuga Neji will stay here until the clay can be extracted."
Stupid main house members. He stared at the ceiling until everyone left except for his team.
"Yosh! Tsunade-sama will find a cure, and you'll be alright again!" Lee and Gai tried to reassure Neji. He just stared at them.
"However, we still need to run laps because we let an enemy do this to one of our teammates!" Lee and Gai departed to do their laps, leaving Tenten sitting there.
"Well, what they said is true. Tsunade-sama will definitely find a cure, and you'll be able to train with us again. Until then, I'm stuck with Lee and Gai. All by myself." Tenten tried to cheer Neji up, since his whole way of life had just been ended. "Until then, we'll visit you so you won't be bored." With a cheery wave, Tenten left Neji all alone.
As the days and weeks went by, the frequency of visits from Naruto, Lee, Gai, and Hinata, decreased. Tenten was the only one who came every day.
"Practice was so stupid today! I can't believe those two started telling me to go easy on our new teammate!" She viciously sliced the apple she had been peeling into two slices.
"Maybe you should. You're not supposed to kill your teammates." Over the weeks, Neji began talking more to Tenten either out of boredom or insanity. Or both.
"But she's so infuriating! She has no real taijutsu, ninjutsu, or genjutsu skills and complains about every little cut! She's better off being a normal person than a ninja! I don't even see how she passed the academy exam! How are we supposed to do ANYTHING with her on this team!"
Seeing as they couldn't have a team with only two people, Tsunade assigned a new Genin to their team so she would improve more quickly. Obviously, Tenten wasn't happy with her.
Neji elegantly raised an eyebrow. "You know, you might want to stop so you have an apple to eat."
Tenten glared at the apple, but put down the kunai. She would come in every day to update him on the team and tell him various other things. Over time, a few random bruises would show up on Neji, as a result of a little mass of clay in his system exploding. So far, it hadn't been serious.
Tenten then took out a stack of little squares of paper and placed them on his bedside desk. "I bet you have a lot of free time, so I brought you this. You should finish one thousand in no time."
"…Who told you this nonsense about cranes?"
"Some old guy on the street."
"…And I'm going to be cured," he twiddled the crane around in his fingers, "by a few paper cranes?"
"…Hey. You have nothing to do anyway. Now make one." Neji slowly picked up the first piece of paper, put it in his lap, and stared at it.
"…You don't know how to fold one, do you?" Tenten sighed.
"I was constantly training. I had no time to learn how to do trivial things like fold these things."
"Right." Tenten proceeded to teach him how to fold them.
The next day, Tenten found a little pile of cranes on Neji's bedside table. Neji was intently folding another one.
"I see you've been busy."
"Hn. I have nothing better to do."
"Well. Lucky for you," she pulled out another stack of paper, "I brought more!"
"…Great."
"Yup! You already have fifty, so only nine hundred and fifty left to go!" Tenten chose to ignore the fact that Neji looked paler than usual and had a bruise on his wrist. Instead, she cheerfully told him about the day's events.
"That new girl got injured!"
"…You never bothered to learn her name?"
"No. We were supposed to walk dogs, since she wasn't good enough to do anything else. Apparently, she can't even do that correctly. One of Kakashi's dogs dragged her around until Lee stopped it."
"…And?"
"She's in the hospital because she claims that she suffered a concussion. Or something," she said as she waved off the topic. "Anyway, we need to find another place to put the cranes."
"Hang them on the ceiling."
"Good idea!" With that, Tenten took out some string, a needle, and a lot of kunai.
"…You're just going to stab them to the ceiling?" he asked incredulously.
"…Any better ideas?" Just then, Sakura burst in, since it was her shift at the hospital.
"Konnichiwa, Tenten-san. Now Neji, we need another blood sample." Neji stuck his arm out while Sakura inserted a needle in his arm. After she got his blood, she left. "By the way, Tenten-san, I think you might want to make little wire loops and stick them in the ceiling…"
"…You know, she has a point. Kunai is…excessive."
"Stop whining. How long has she been doing that?"
"Every day for the past week. They're testing on the blood."
"Ah."
As the months went by, Neji became noticeably weaker, and most of the time spent with Tenten was in silence, Tenten hanging up cranes with a gloomy expression on her face. Eventually, Tenten just sat there staring at his unconscious figure.
"Seven hundred fifty-two…" She dejectedly placed another crane on the ground. She stared at the tombstone in front of her. "Neji…"
She blinked back tears as she numbly folded another square of paper, even though no one was there to see her cry. It had been a month since he died, and Tenten would finish all the cranes for him.
Deidara's way of talking really annoys me…