A prompt from Bunrising (FFN, AO3)/tired-siopao (Tumblr). This appeared on our NejiTen Discord Server on 12/26/19, and the response sort of came out before I knew I was writing it.

Prompt:

And a few decades later, Nejiten as grandparents. They have earned the quiet, unhurried life of retirement. A growing pile of poetry books. Fresh vegetables from their humble garden. Always a pot of green tea ready to drink.

Neji's writing a letter when Tenten bursts through the door, carrying news that will change everything-their son and daughter-in-law have died on a mission gone wrong.

It's devastating, outliving their own child. He leaves behind two young girls, twins, who Neji and Tenten raise with all their love. The girls may know sorrow and grief, but Tenten's determined they also know kindness and hope and their own strength.

Shades of Konoha: Dragon and Phoenix
We Remember

That night she gathers them tightly in the large bed they will share, not because there isn't room elsewhere, but because separation is simply not an option right now.

She lets their tears soak into her clothing as she strokes their hair (and they love that just as their father did and she swallows her grief like a lump of dried mud at the surge of memory and grief) and listens to what they have to say, even if no words are used.

"Oh, my darlings," she breathes into their hair, and presses kisses wherever she is able, and there is such a depth of understanding in her voice that they look up to her.

"We know you understand," One twin says, feeling conflicted between wanting to grieve and to comfort.

"We know how much you loved them, too," the other adds.

"It isn't that I understand," she gives a soft exhalation. "It is that I remember."

"Remember what?" they ask.

"Coming home alone when my parents died. Watching my friends fall in wars and battles. Almost loosing Neji before our life even began... all of it," she holds them close. "And I remember the first time I felt your father move when I was pregnant, and when he was born, and when he first spoke of your mother, and the day they married, and when I held you both for the first time...I remember all of it."

She hugs them more tightly, and does not need to see him to know that Neji is now leaning in the door way. "I hated when people told me that they understood," she admits, a rueful bitterness in her tone. "So I won't tell you that I understand - because no one can know the insides of your heart. So I will tell you I remember - because that is bigger and it allows for the sorrow and the joy. One day, this will be one more thing we remember, my loves, but right now it is grief and pain, and you are allowed to feel everything and nothing as you are able."

"I won't tell you I understand," she repeats, kissing their heads. "I will tell you I remember, and you are not alone - no matter how lonely you may feel. Remember that you have each other,"

"And us," Neji adds, sitting on the bed, and opening his arms to the girls, who fall into him with sobs, clinging to him as he strokes their hair. He shares a look with Tenten, then, and the life they have shared is there in her eyes, even as the sorrow hangs heavy between them.

They hold the girls between them, because they know their pain, but see something they cannot yet see.

So until they are ready, Neji and Tenten will guard and protect the hope that sits quietly behind the tragedy, ready to carry them all to the next day, and the next, and all the ones that follow.

"We are here," he tells the girls as they fall asleep curled into each other, with Neji on one side and Tenten on the other. He takes his wife's hand and they hold the girls between them, and stay through the night to keep the terror at bay. When the morning comes, they face it together - and the grief is marginally smaller, and the hope is marginally larger, but the love is overwhelming and buoyant and real.

And in the end, that is what they remember.