Rated T for language and minor sexual theme.
Disclaimer : sprinkled All Too Well (Taylor's Version) lyrics throughout the text because I can and I wrote in november listening to it on repeat. I'll never lose a chance to show admiration to Blondie.
Dark and Twisted
For the most part, Tenten was better. She had friends, friends that were like family, she had an exciting job that she pursued longer than other shinobis were given a chance to, she was pretty recognized in her own set of skills, and she even got to grow and foster her passion for weapons by tending to her little shop whenever she felt she needed more calm in her life.
Yes, for the most part, Tenten was happy and accomplished.
Yet, there was always something lurking in the depth of her heart. A little monster she came to tame that became as innocuous as it became familiar. Grief still followed her every step, and she learned in due time that there were two types of grief.
One you saw through and one that became part of you. Neji's death was, without a doubt, in the second category. She could never be, nor did she want to, be at peace with Neji's death.
In fact, there wasn't a single day she woke up in that she didn't think of him and what happened. Those intrusive thoughts, most of the time, did not hurt. But some moments when she was most vulnerable, like periods of stress, the holidays or near his anniversaries, Tenten noticed they actually did hurt. A great deal, even.
They didn't feel like setbacks, just a reminder of what she lost and what she missed. And how could she not miss him?
It was the memories. She remembered them all too well. She loved and hated it. It pierced her heart yet made it whole again. The worst feelings came when the veil between worlds was thin. When she was slowly waking up, her subconscious still dragged on in her mind and left all too clear images of her past in her conscious thoughts.
She'd remember with all the clarity in the world what was and what wasn't anymore. It hurt. It stopped being pleasant nostalgia and became acid-like regret, erosive and inescapable.
She wanted to run by his side again; she wanted him to turn towards her again, look at her, and see her for what she was and what she became. She wanted his eyes on her, on hers.
She wanted him to step on a table's leg to protect her. Even though he was too busy with everything else and knew perfectly well, she would have been able to dodge those weapons. She wanted to stand still, knowing the one person she had always relied on would protect her.
She wanted to sleep by his side next to a fire they made in a hurry during a tiring mission. She wanted to go to the bathhouse, walking down the streets with him, feeling the tips of his fingers brush hers and wonder if it was just in her head or if there was any intention on his part.
She wanted him to remember it all too well too.
She wanted him to chase that loneliness that had cloaked her like invisible dust she coughed on when her throat swelled in at his remembrance.
She wanted him, simply, truthfully, with a quivering vulnerability.
Yesterday was one of those days. Tenten took a break from the last mission report she was writing, and when she woke from her nap, remembrances of her younger self were assailing her mercilessly.
She'd like to be her old self again.
If Tenten could only find her. She was somewhere lost in the past, running after him, or scolding Lee, who had yet to become a father. She probably was still on that battlefield, holding him like she should have at that time if she hadn't been so shell-shocked. She probably followed him to that big vast nothingness he flew to.
She always followed him. That foolish girl, she would have followed him to the end of the world, the end of his, the end of hers.
Present-time Tenten was still the happy, bubbly, go-lucky kunoichi everybody in the village had always known. But deep inside her, something had changed, something that could never be recovered or repaired.
It's not that she was bruised or broken, but something continuously ached somewhere in the pit of her soul. Most of the time, it was a dull, throbbing pain she got used to, like the beating of her own heart. But when she came too close to the remnants of him, to the memory of his smell, or the odd similarity of his voice she could hear in his clansmen; when she let her guard down, it was a piercing, gutting despair.
A Kyuubi of grief. A monster of destruction she hadn't it in herself to reconcile with.
But whenever souvenirs of him catapulted in her brains in such a relentless manner;
Whenever she let them pin her on her bed as if nailed to her mattress by invisible spears, flattened by the weight of immeasurable distress, helplessly looking at the ceiling, defenceless to stop the tickle of that tear which fell down her temple, grating her nerves like nails on a chalkboard;
Whenever she was a prisoner of her enduring suffering, she could see her.
That foolish girl. That seventeen years old self she craved with her bruised womb of aborted dreams. That carefree, giggling kunoichi who took everything for granted. Who never thought in a million years he would die before her. She was so nonchalant. She had everything. All the opportunities and all the time left before her.
Regrets.
Tenten hated them because, in a way, she would have done everything the same had she had to do it all over again. Regret was probably the most useless feeling grief brought her. She had nothing to be regretful for. It's not like she could change death.
Nonetheless, that's all that inhabited her when she could gaze at her past self as if in a mirror. Her younger version smiled back at her, completely unaware of what was to come. The fool, she'd wave at her before turning her back on her to run after her teammate, following to neverland.
She missed that girl. She mostly missed the future that girl had, that was not yet robbed away, that still throbbed in her careless hands.
She had never pictured herself to be the married kind of woman. She always saw her future as uncertain and wild, and unattached. In that, she guessed she had succeeded.
But she always pictured herself with him. She thought they'd be teammates for years and decades to come. They'd probably be everyone's favourite aunt and uncle and relish in their roaming lifestyle like the two best-friends they always were.
Her nakama. Their story was still tattooed all over her body. Every spoken word, every exchanged glance, every deliberate and unthought touch. It was still here, cicatrizing on her skin, in the air she pained to breathe at times, reflected in the scorching tear that found its way out once in a while.
And since he was gone, she was alone to carry it all. At times it was too much, and other times, not enough. Too heavy a burden to carry all that was and could have been, and too little of him to sustain her for the rest of her life.
Maybe that's why she came to be so close with Hatake Kakashi. Of all the people she thought she'd be close friends with, she had never once thought her most intimate friend would be the former Hokage. But in her denial, she liked to blame it on her sensei.
As she came of age, Gai started to invite her more and more to drink with other shinobis. It was a weird rite of passage. She was entering this unofficial club of those shinobis who had prioritized their career over friends and family. She could see why her sensei spent more time with her when his favourite pupil started founding a family of his own.
Through those more often than not outings, Tenten regularly met with Kakashi.
She liked him well enough. For all purpose and matter, he reminded her of Neji. His attitude, his coldness that hid raging tempests of love that struggle to find a path to follow, the easiness she could read him whereas others failed to.
And not that she knew it, but she did remind him of Rin. The earnest brown of her gleaming eyes, the way she carried the grief of her teammate with a renewed sense of determination, the warmth of her smile.
Their intimacy was woven with their loved ones' life threads cut too short by death. Tenten loved being around him. He felt safe like she didn't have to pretend it didn't hurt like hell.
The outsiders of grief, they couldn't understand this type of pain, this unrelenting sadness. Either it scared them, or they pitied you, so you had to always put on a mask for their comfort. So you wouldn't be a walking reminder for the luckier ones of all they stood to lose. A breathing warning that it could have been them.
Tenten would come to believe that's why Kakashi always sported a mask so he would stop trying to fake a smile.
In due time, they even started going out for drinks only the two of them when Gai was too tired to, had a blind date or was on babysitting duty with Metal Lee.
Sometimes, they'd meet at his office when they wanted a calmer setting than the Shinobis' bar where everyone always met, mostly Friday nights when the raucous got louder than usual.
That night, it was raining when she barged through his door, soaking wet, returning from her mission in the Village of Waterfalls. She found him sitting back in his chair, his feet resting on the chestnut desk that had been repaired one too many times during Tsunade's rule, reading that book of his.
Tenten rolled her eyes at the book yet again in his hands. Though, she now suspected he read it more out of habit than for actual pleasure, a reminder of pre-fourth-war shinobi days, when an old mentor like Jiraya was still alive.
"Still reading that book of yours? "She gave him a teasing half-smile. Taking off her soaked tunic, she turned back to look at him.
She loved teasing him because he always answered back in a Neji-like indifference. And he loved when she teased him. Her eyes gleamed in a Rin-like mischievousness.
"Maybe you should give it a try."
Sometimes he teased back, and sometimes she liked it more this way. Because it felt just as unique seeing him letting her in as it was when Neji did.
"Maybe I will," She challenged back, unbuttoning her pants and throwing him another look over her shoulder, mimicking the smirk she could see under his mask.
"Spare clothes are…"
"In the closet on the right, I know." The brunette finished for him. It was odd how privy she was of her Hokage's office, but she'd turn back, and all she would see would be him, the man she felt the closest to since Neji.
It wasn't love, that she was sure. And it was different than with Gaara or Shino or any of the others she had let in since Neji. Gaara was sweet. There was tenderness and gentleness and a shared understanding of pain. Shino was a good friend, and she liked he knew of her heart, where it belonged. She liked that he belonged to the same era and had similar memories. At times, she felt uncomfortable sleeping with another man than Shino, she knew he knew he was always sharing her with Neji, but she wasn't convinced he knew he also shared her with other men. Although they have never talked about commitment, and he knew where she stood on this matter, sometimes she wondered if she shouldn't make it more explicit that she saw other people too.
Kakashi was different. He was a kindred spirit. Someone who could understand her tortured heart's twisted depth and see himself staring right back. She couldn't begin to compare her grief to his, but he didn't flinch looking at her scars. The pricks of her tormented soul didn't hurt him. He basked in the same anemone of sorrow as she did. They were both immunized to each other's unbearable burdens.
That night, they laughed and laughed around glasses of sake they kept refilling for each other. Kakashi shared the stupid things Naruto did in his younger days, and Tenten told some of Gai's craziest training ideas.
At some point, the laughter faded, she was still in his t-shirt, waiting for her clothes to dry, and she could feel his gaze linger on her exposed shoulder while she let her own trace the smooth skin of his bared face. She always felt tingles whenever he took his mask off, not because he was devilishly handsome, but because of what she knew it meant for him.
It was him allowing himself to show his vulnerable side in front of her. Now she understood how precious it was to be that person. The one a man like Kakashi bared himself in front of.
She hadn't understood how precious it was with Neji. She took it for granted that he had allowed her so close to him when he was still alive. He was her best friend, and she was his. She didn't try to understand things further than that. Oh, to be young and blissfully unaware. People would say something cruel about Neji, and she'd look at them defiantly because whatever they had just said was the opposite of his truth. A truth she was probably the only one to know of so wholly, so thoroughly. His kindness, his loyalty, his devotion.
Now that he's gone, she knew how rare that was. It was a masterpiece until he tore it all up.
Before he lost the one tangible thing she had ever known, murdering the best thing that never was truly hers.
That day, wind in his hair, she was there. She remembered it all too well. Still, after all these years, it was all too clear. What a punchline to life's humourless joke. She got older as he stayed that age. Eternally in the springtime of youth, just like Gai sensei would say.
She coughed to break the silence between her and Kakashi, grounding herself back in present times. There was no denying tension was escalating quickly with the amount of alcohol involved. Tenten was no fool. She knew how tempting she could be to the male gaze. She'd see how their eyes would travel down her curves, up her legs, along her collarbone, dropping to the valley of her breasts. She knew he was also not immune to it.
And she knew he knew she knew. He made no effort to hide his appreciative glance. For all his taciturn behaviour, everybody who knew him was also aware of the dripping lust that inhabited him, like overspill from the raging storms buried deep in him.
It's always the quiet ones you have to watch out for. Inattentive, a tranquil river could take you further than the alarming strong current you fought from the get-go.
How many times when she was younger, and they'd drink with Gai at the pub, would she see his eyes glaze over for a woman walking by him, and a few minutes later, he would excuse himself, taking his jacket with him?
She laughed it off every time. Years of odd friendship later, she realized she was not that different from Hatake Kakashi. But now, years later, as she had grown into a woman, he started looking at her just like so. And she started looking at him just as so.
She cleared her throat against the invisible noose around her neck. The noise reverberated through the room where the only sound that echoed was the deafening pitter-patter of the rain slamming against the glass windows.
Everything is too loud when truth isn't spoken.
He leaned back in his chair, mere centimetres from her own chair she brought next to him when they started drinking to the old days and to future generations, may they live happily ever after for the other poor unfortunate souls.
His legs were spread with all the confidence in the world. He gulped down another shot of sake as his eyes lazily followed the arch of Tenten's back when she leaned over him to reach the orange book by his side.
She could feel it, his eyes leaving blazing trails on her skin wherever they travelled through the oversized grey t-shirt she had borrowed from him.
She turned her head towards him, biting her lip, catching his glance.
"Can I borrow it?" Tenten really didn't know why she asked that. She didn't want to read the book that much; she mostly wanted to play with fire.
He raised a brow, not really believing her false pretence. He leaned closer, his lips mere centimetres from her ear.
"And what will you do with it, Tenten?" He whispered huskily, noticing the treacherous prickles of the skin of her neck betraying his effect on her.
It was probably the most they had tip-toed around the line of what was permissible banter or flirt between them. It was not only reprehensible to sleep with her boss, but it was also an unspoken rule that Tenten was just like Gai's child, and everybody knew you did not go around screwing your best friend's daughter. No matter how relentless and sensuous she could be when she decided to throw her arsenal of charms at you.
He really tried to remind himself of that every time he saw the smouldering fire of desire in her eyes, whenever she unconsciously licked her bottom lip when she gazed at him in awe after he removed his mask, or whenever she thought herself slick enough to make it look like an accident that her fingertips brushed his forearm, jolting him with electricity urging him to reach for her.
He knew she played with him like a fire that couldn't burn her. But she was wrong. She thought herself above his desires as if he was some honourable man that wasn't fighting against every fibre of his muscles so he wouldn't just slam her against the wall, holding her there while he let his hand travel under her tunic, over her toned spasming stomach and up to the curve her breast.
She acted as if her careless banter and flirts wouldn't turn him on like any other man would when a woman like her bit her luscious lip or let her dark hazy eyes linger on him with the promise of mischief he'd bite into like a poisonous apple of desire.
Yet, she still ventured into the lion's den as if she could never be prey. It's not that she trusted his manners, but rather his traumas. She knew the one thing keeping him away from her was his utmost resolve to not be involved with someone too close to him.
Dark and twisted, that's what he loved about her. Behind the sweet facade of her angelic smile and doll-like skin, behind the crafted school girl blushes and the bow-wrapped innocent eyes, she was dark and twisted.
Just like him, she was all battle scars and emotional trauma. Her antler-like twisted obscure desires and hurt and fear fit right in into his, like two metal puzzle pieces hardened and tempered by the Styx river.
She stopped being the girl he knew as Gai's pupil that day she got back from a mission after being forced-paired with a Hyuuga clansman. That day, she had entered the pub, stomping her way in angrily, finding the first man whose eyes travelled up and on her body. He'll never forget that time, he was drinking with another woman when the twin-buns haired woman walked past him decidedly towards the unknown male and crashed her lips against his with all the fury only a scorned and broken heart could unleash.
She was the same as him, calm and collected on the outside, but a bared electrical wire in a thunderstorm on the inside. She was all frenzy and unwordable pain she couldn't heal but survive.
She finally withdrew her eyes away from him. "What do you suggest I do with it, Kakashi-sensei?" She asked innocently, throwing a look at the book.
He smirked.
She seldom called him sensei anymore. She used honorifics only in front of other people. When it was just the two of them, she always felt comfortable addressing him as an intimate friend.
Her head was turned towards him, her eyes honest, ready. A tense string seemed to connect his eyes to hers, and the moment he moved to close, the trap would snap.
She slid the borders of the book along her lip. The invisible string tensed even more, ready to break.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," He took another sip of sake, ironically trying to regain control through drinking more. "That book is very filthy."
She looked intensely at him, her crossed legs rubbing tightly against one another, as she could feel the deep darkness of her desire pooling low in her belly.
Then, without hesitation, like a snapping bow, as if her reply had been prepared for years: "Good."
Two pouty lips had formed a single word, and the string snapped. Her voice was firm. Her eyes never left his. Tenten dared him, pushed him. Kakashi could see it in the way she was drinking him, her molten eyes, like thick, melted cacao, running all over him. Rich, warm, spicy. He wanted to taste, possess all of it.
He took another look at her. Dark, twisted, sensual, hungry. Just like him.
"Good." He repeated more softly.
The feeling of his calloused thumb on her throbbing pulse made her gasp. The atmosphere was of lead and steel, compressing them towards one another. The air was heavy with need, so dense every movement he made felt purposeful yet restrained, so eager, yet hesitant. Like solemn steps between warriors dragging their swords on a warred land, knowing one would be the demise of the other.
His hand trembled a little, tickling thin skin covering her jugular, brushing a few hair strands out of her neck, her buns having been undone hours ago. She was his demise, but he wouldn't be the one suffering for this desire.
"You're still like a sensei." She said, her voice dripping with lasciviousness, subtly laced with a spark of snarkiness. A trap waiting for him at the end of her honeyed words.
She tapped the book against his torso, letting the corner rub against his contracting muscles. She slid her gaze from his musculature to his very own pupils dilated with desire.
He made no move to try and hide his own excitement. He wanted that bold and insolent girl to know. It wasn't about "if" now, but when. If she hoped she'd win this game unscathed, she was a fool, but for all he possessed and all he witnessed, Kakashi would bet everything Tenten was no fool.
Her lips were closer than they had ever been, and they curved more seductively than they ever brazenly dared to. "Then, teach me, sensei."
Kakashi didn't know if it was because his pulse was beating so erratically, but everything else felt like in slow motion, mostly how her lips moved in tiny contractures to form words that sealed their fates.
Her hair looked like a perfect mess. Her lips looked as swollen as if all the kissing he had imagined he had already done.
Then she let her hand rest on his inner thigh, creeping higher than the morals he had tried to hold himself to and miserably failed.
"Tenten." He tried to warn her, not so she would back off, but so she would know what was about to come.
Was there ever anything on the Hokage's desk? Whenever Tenten thought of Tsunade's desk, it was full of folders and balanced empty coffee cups on top of it. But when she thought of Kakashi's desk, it was always empty, with paper scattered on the floor and her naked form writhing under his.
Years later, when it was Naruto's desk, Tenten often had to suppress a blush while looking at the lines of chestnut wood she had known all too well for all the time she had pushed him, straddle him over it; all the time she had been bent over it.
Sometimes she zoned out when Naruto spoke and instead could hear all the things he had whispered in her ears for every time he had taken her on that desk. How wet and needy she had been on that desk, what she had begged for on that desk. It was all too filthy, way too naughty for Naruto to simply be resting his elbows on it.
She'd sometimes stare at it oddly, finding it inconceivable that Kakashi didn't throw it away, burn it to the ground after everything they put it through. But she knew, oh she knew, how he did it to spite her. Somewhere, he was sitting down and laughing at her unusual bashfulness.
He knew how she'd hate seeing Naruto simply work on it when she could almost hear the noise of his hand coming down on her sensitive flesh, the sound of spanks and moans reverberating through the room as present-time Hokage told her of the details of her upcoming mission.
Tenten loved sex with Kakashi, and not only because he was Godsent in bed, not only because he was giving and domineering, rough and loving, greedy and insatiable. Not only because he knew exactly how to toy with her in the most torturously slow and animalistically passionate ways.
No, if Tenten was honest, she loved having full access to all his scars. She would run her fingers over it, nibble and bite the healthy skin around it.
For all his strength and power, Hatake Kakashi was just as screwed up as her, as imperfectly mended as she was. In a very odd way, that was comforting and in a very gut-wrenching way, probably the closest thing Tenten had left that resembled home.
Dark and twisted.
That's what Kakashi saw when he looked at Tenten.
Dark were her words, whispered in his ear in the depth of soul-like inky nights. Twisted were her limbs, wrapping themselves dramatically around him, sweaty, need, writhing like snakes, ready to tear him apart and suffocate him. She was a perilous nest of vipers, and he had never craved menace more than when she was around.
Because for all matters, Tenten was treacherous. Her honey skin, the perfect balance of her curves, the musk of her scent and the music of her moans. She was poison and antidote, an endless cycle of craving her and being filled by everything her, her smell, her voice, her touch.
She touched with abandoned care, ferocious lust. She roamed his skin like a lost monk querying for divine guidance, for quenching light.
She was all the right kinds of fucked up, and he adored it, to his better amusement and most shameful guilt. He didn't wish the kind of darkness he held on anyone else. Yet, she bore it so well. She fought it, and she wielded like any weapon she was the mistress. But it's when she shed her armour that she truly became a war goddess, binding him by her mercy.
He loved it because, at last, he didn't have to pretend with her. She wasn't some porcelain doll, some lovesick encounter, someone still clinging to the goodness of hope and life.
She didn't want love. She wanted pain. Pain that could measure up to what she felt. So she could lose herself in something other than grief. Pain that brought pleasure, so overwhelming, so disorienting that for a few moments, she was nothing but nerves ending exploding, and not a thinking being.
Because as soon as she thought, she felt; and as soon as she felt she died. But within that moment where everything was crystal clear with the piercing, guttering need to cry out her pleasure. Tenten was filled with emptiness, pure, white, ecstasy of nothingness. And for a brief second, in that clearance of everything but pain and bliss, lay a breath of life. Right before she came back to herself, a sharp intake of something unthinkable made her feel alive again.
She didn't talk about her grief with him, and he knew it was because she thought hers to be less critical than his. She thought herself undeserving of being so crushed and ruined by losing only one person.
He lost all his team. Tsunade had lost every man she had ever loved. Ino, Choji and Shikamaru lost their mentor and their fathers. Naruto had lost everything from the beginning, and Sasuke had grown with an apocalypse amidst his clan.
Tenten had lost one person, and she was as devastated as if she had lost the whole world. But Kakashi wondered if that mattered. The number of those lost.
Sometimes, you could lose everyone and yet be bright like Naruto. Sometimes, you were left with almost nothing and shrouded yourself in darkness like Sasuke.
Jiraya had lost countless more than Kakashi ever had, and the old frog had never been as close to the darkness and loneliness that Kakashi bore since having lost Rin and Tobi.
Jiraya had lost so many, but he had never lost Tsunade.
And in that instant, Kakashi would wonder if it had changed anything, and his years of grief told him yes. It was losing the right person that made it all wrong. Tobi was the perfect example of this. Kakashi thought that as much as his loss lay heavy on his heart, he wouldn't trade it for Tenten's. He found a way to find the friendship he once had with his team in new people, like Gai. He doubted Tenten could replace just as easily what she had with Neji.
For Tenten, Neji was her everything, the nature of her bond, the depth of what they had weaved together. They were one and the same in their infinite differences. He remembered seeing them fight one time. Their movements continued the other without a second thought at a speed that was dizzying, even for Gai's pupils. There was a complementarity, a flow so natural that it seemed sacred, heaven-bestowed, like their lifeline streamed from the same divine source.
When his thread was severed, so was hers.
No one could come back from losing that. It was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of bond.
No one could suffer the severed relationship of one's soulmate and not find everything and the whole world lacking, a mere ghost of what it used to be. It was like going back to an old classroom and wondering if you had ever really been that little to fit in a desk so small.
The whole world became oddly sized, oddly shaped, oddly coloured to Tenten. She didn't fit in it anymore.
No one could understand that better, if not Kakashi. He would like to tell her she'd get better, that it would hurt less, and he knew it would. But he also knew that it would not matter. It wasn't about pain, it was about loss. About needing something that stopped existing, like trying to eat a dream and condemn yourself to infinite hunger.
Time could heal but it wouldn't soothe the yearning that still pulled in an unexplainable form of suffering that didn't hurt as much as it broke and deformed beyond saving.
She would burn alive with unquenchable desire for the rest of her life, hoping to hold, thirsting to love something that couldn't be anymore.
It was a wretched fate.
Wretchedness she carried in the depth of her belly, in the depth of her defying gaze whenever she rested her lust on him. She came for his own scars.
Misery was desperate for company.
And he was not above it. When she came for him, he came at her.
She was dark and twisted, just like him, so he could do as he pleased with her. He didn't tip-toe or waste time with pleasantries of soft-spoken words and delicate caress. She wanted his anguish just as much he needed hers.
He could bend her to his will, her back arching to his pleasure. He could bruise her with love, with sucked skin and bitten lips, with his needy fingers dragging the flesh of her back in his haste to possess her, to drink her fire she burned in.
She was not fragile, not frail, not soft. She was befuddled rage and lament.
And soft, timid love. Lost, cautious, uncertain love. Love like a scarred child that was scared to dream too loud, yet still so eager, so innocent. Tenten was so much wasted love. She was needy and begging. But at the same time, she was fierce and murderous.
She swayed dangerously from one side to the other, like a furious pendulum threatening to break anytime and destroy everything on its away. Killing everything but time. She swayed the way ten thousand candles do in a windy wooden temple, giving you the impression the place down would burn any second from now.
And he'd burn with her, with her feverish kisses and her rolling hips, her sweaty skin and her exhaled screams she breathed against his neck. For, in the brief moment when their mangled bodies found that clarity of washing ectasis, she was his respite.
A forbidden haven of lightness and light, where the air was suddenly a bit easier to breathe, more refreshing to inhale, sweeter to live.
And even when she walked back down to earth, away from that false-heaven where she sought Neji in vain; Tenten still held something for Kakashi, and he still had something for her.
In a world they gravitated at the outskirts of, they held understanding and safety for each other. Because in the end, as furious as they could be when consuming each other, when all was said and done, all they wanted were crumbs of comfort. Some way to hold on until the end, without the darkness consuming more than it already took.
She'd hold on to him, her head buried in his chest, and he'd enlace her tightly. Protective of that frail creature that fell apart in his arms.
Rest. What a precious commodity, a little bit of rest in each other's embrace, for a night a bit calmer and less daunting than all the others where their own demons would resurface.
Darkness at that moment was lulling and motherly.
Tenten was dark and twisted, and Kakashi loved that about her.
But sometimes there was light.
Like that time he woke up around sunrise to an empty bed and knew right away where she had run to. When she ventured too far in her dreams to memories of him and woke up stabbed with the spears that had pierced him, Kakashi knew she had run to where he also ran all the time.
NEJI HYUGA.
She'd stare at the tomb wordlessly, hanging from the noose grief tightened around her airways. Finding breath hard to come by and asking all the right questions at the wrong time.
She was seated in front of his tomb, and she could have laughed at herself. Running at the night's end, running back to a cold tombstone like one would to an old ex-lover. Only clad in Kakashi's t-shirt, she'd think at least she had the decency to wear panties. Not that they did much against the cold, damp grass freezing her.
He'd watch her hug her knees, stubbornly stare at his stone as if her scorn could reach him to the other side.
Somehow, Kakashi believed it had. There was always a bird or two that always ended up perching itself on the tomb as if his spirit was enjoining her to be more reasonable. She'd glare at the bird as she would glare at the usual condescending way her companion used to sermon her, out of love and care.
If she had it in herself to be cruel, she would throw stones at those birds for conveying his gentle admonishing. After all, she knew he'd just want her to be happy even if he knew how in vain his intervention was. She'd throw stones as if to tell him to not be stupid. How could happiness be found so far away from him?
Kakashi would watch that silent exchange of the dead and finally see Tenten for what she finally was, when she was finally complete, next to him.
Light, blazing light, in the beaming waking sun, she was golden might.
He was often told grief was persevering love having nowhere to go. And when he looked straight at grief and love, it was a seated girl, watery eyes focused on nine letters that tried but could never bring back what was hers.
Grief was a lost child, a crying child, with a radiance brighter than the sun.
"Tenten." Kakashi would say her name, and she would turn towards him and the child would be gone.
She'd look back at the engraved name one last time before getting up to join him.
He'd call her, and she'd come. Always. Without much delay. Because likes know likes. Her depth was pulled to his. They were woven of the same inner fabric, black bared iron wires, knitted into each other's rusted, frayed memories of brighter days.
She never came back whole, though. Only the dark and twisted came back with her, the light she left at the shrine of Neji's sacrifice.
At that moment, for all the admiration he had for the boy, he sometimes wondered if Neji had known he'd be killing two people with his sacrifice and that idea roused Kakashi.
Neji.
She rarely spoke his name aloud, he'd think, reading the departed boy's name while she walked back towards him. The few times she did, she'd pronounce it solemn as a prayer, like it held the power of a dangerous summon of unbearable suffering. But she rarely did, for she'd leave his name there with her light, engraved in the past.
Some people brought him flowers. Tenten left him her soul.
Kakashi would extend his hand, almost scared she'd change her mind and decide to stay there until her bones turned to dust. He'd suppress the breath of relief every time she would take it.
She'd squeeze his fingers, and he would softly smile even if all that was left of her when she reached his side would be the twisted darkness.
The dark and twisted, it always came back. Always complete, always unscathed, always perfect.
But that's all Kakashi needed anyway.
Because it was his and always ready for him.
A/N: It's my first time writing Tenten in another pairing as Nejiten. I know I'm supposed to be finishing my other fics (and I am!), but I had this unfinished one shot gathering dust in my drive. I thought about it recently and decided to finish it. I wrote it as an epilogue of Fluttering Wings at first than it quickly became it's own thing. I wanted to dive in a sort of intense, very hot, very needy kind-of toxic relationship that left you comforted from your own demons. I wanted that bittersweet feeling of needing someone so desperately but for all the wrong reasons, yet against it all, it's still the healthiest one can have because it mends all the unthinkable parts of one's tortured hidden scars.
Well, well, well! I hope it was enjoyable at the very least and now I am going back to finish my other fics, promise!