A/N: Sorry about the length…this one is short, because I couldn't figure out how to fix it up the way I wanted to.
And let's ignore the geographical inaccuracies, and the blatant LACK of canon and HUGE amount of speculation, and just...roll with it for now. At least the plot thickens up. A bit.
Disclaimer: Tch. Like I can afford to buy rights... I wonder though... do you reckon you could use Naruto rights as a down-payment on a house? That could be interesting...
Vanishing Act
Chapter III
Gare de Lyon
(solaris)
He has been away for a month on Family Business, and as they approach the gates of the village he feels a queasy combination of excitement and apprehension and worry and relief. It has only been five months since he made genin, and his team have occupied his thoughts the entire time he was away, and even when he was training - the way that Gai-sensei told him to - he was unable to shake them from his mind. Would Gai-sensei be pleased with his progress? Would he have caught up to Neji yet? Would Tenten still have that look in her eyes?
And then he sees them, the three people he loves, most in the world, and his cousin, walking with him, sees the way his pace picks up. His family are merchants, and his grandparents are the only two who live in Konoha at all, the rest of the family travelling through the world, and if he hadn't decided to go to the academy one afternoon, he would have joined them,
And Lee has never been so sure that that was the right decision for him in his entire life.
Neji is pale as ice and his arms are folded against the heat of the late spring afternoon, and even from this far away Lee can see the grin on Gai-sensei's face, and Tenten is waving and his cousin says "Who are they?" and Lee turns, and smiles.
"They're my teammates, my best friends, and I'm going to know them until the day I die."
(remembrance)
The market place is beautiful here. Wind Country is filled with nomads, who know the trails through the ever shifting sands by heart, and congregate here, every six months, or so Gaara had said, to sell their carpets and their jewellery and their camels and their heady fragrant treasures. Frankincense from the trees that grow in only one grove in the entire world, perfume from places that have names that fall clumsily from her mouth and make her heart beat more quickly, and they walk, she and her teammate, through the stalls under the sky as if in a dream.
Lee and Gai-sensei are gone to beg for camel rides and she and Neji stand poised on the threshold of a shady tent, because she saw something glitter, and stopped. She turns to him and the channels around his eyes stand out briefly against his skin.
"Weapons." He confirms and she stoops to enter the stall.
There, a man sits, welcomes them to sit with him, serves tea and chats enthusiastically, and they talk to him for what seems like only minutes, but from the disintegration of the light is obviously much longer, and Neji's eloquence carries them a long way. Soon enough the sword seller disappears briefly, while she runs her fingers over the beautiful carpet covered floor, to emerge with a box of mahogany wood, dark and old and wide, under his arm.
Heart in her mouth, Tenten watches as he opens it, watches the way he lifts the lid slowly, and knows her longing is written all over her face. In the box lies a beautifully decorated hilt, covering a curved knife that she recognises with an intake of breath.
"You know the Karambit?" the nomad asks and she nods. "Mmm…" he says, and he looks at her, eyes enigmatic and penetrating. "I have not been to the Tiger Lands in many years," and pulls the weapon from its sheath.
Sometimes when they were in the forest, it felt like she could…feel them there, those most dangerous predators, and Neji would confirm this, coughing lightly to show that they were human, standing still, eyes byakugan wide and fearful. That was all you needed to do, show them you were human. Allegedly.
To survive, shinobi must respect their terrain, and the dense, uncharted forests require unparalleled respect, born of terror and the awareness that, in that realm, shinobi are not the most devastatingly powerful creatures. Those that come back chuckle blackly from their hospital beds, talk about the heart of the darkness and try to pretend that their wounds could be worse, and only once had someone looked into that darkness, and come through unbroken (though far from unscathed) and the knife in the nomad's hand was that nameless person's legacy.
Kuku Macan.
The knife is shaped like a tiger's claw, all blue steel and lethally sharp edge and cruel curved over end, possessed with a beauty no kunai could ever hope to match and Tenten has been obsessed with the grace of martial arts since before she began to speak (when they first brought her to the village, she did not speak their language), when she used to watch shinobi train, bodies lithe and sinuous and destructive – and none more so than the hard-faced specialists who entered a state of grace on the bare earth, weapons extensions of their bodies, beautiful and deadly – and she knows what art this man holds.
And he sees it in her too, and for the first time since they entered the shop he measures her in an almond green gaze.
"Do you know how to use it?"
"I've practiced with the ones in the Konoha collection."
"Do you know how to use it?" he repeats, and, heart thumping, she nods.
(duration)
When he wakes up, it's cold, and he can feel a cough lodged in his throat. So he clears it, and he feels Lee, at his back, stir. He turns, but his teammate lies still, sleeping.
The light that penetrates the dusty room through the gap between the curtains spreads itself in a golden bar over their tangled, blanket covered legs, and he closes his eyes again, wanting to melt into the mattress.
It doesn't work though. Inevitably, the sheet beneath his cheek is wet, dampened by someone's cold tears.
They hadn't curled up like children on purpose, but the funeral and the wake and the will reading and the unveiling had taken their toll on the three, and this was what had happened. One by one they'd dropped down onto the low bed and slept, keeping the bare world at bay with the oblivion of unconsciousness.
It's been a long time since he dreamed.
Of course, saying that is redundant, because he knows that you dream all the time, can be lost for hours in that world when, really, you've only been asleep for twenty minutes. That you only remember your dreams when they're interrupted. But still.
He wants to lie there forever.
Except that there are flies, buzzing noisily above him, cutting perfect buzzing squares through the silent air, and when she turns, he sees that he isn't the only one awake.
Her eyes zero in on his, and, later, he will tell himself that it was because she was still practically asleep that the words are burned into his memory, the strongest impression of the week of Gai-sensei's funeral that he has.
"Morning," he whispers, and she blinks, weariness still etched into her every movement, the way he expects his are, too. And then she opens her mouth, and whispers into the dusty golden gloom.
"I'm seventeen. Even though…"
She doesn't finish the sentence; the words have been spoken once, and the horror of them lingers, still. Rocking them, now and again, like a wave rolling through deep water. Barely noticable on the surface, but deep and manifest and filled with dread for miles below.
And in that moment, meeting her eyes over Lee's curled body, Neji wishes something unforgivable.
That she had never come into his life at all.
(resonance)
Word always gets around, when a great ninja dies, and he had been, if not good, certainly worthy of greatness. For a few days, it is all anyone can talk about, his death, the sordid details, the way that he went out, and she turns herself to stone to keep moving, to not throw herself to the ground and tear out her hair and die with him.
They would ask what right she had to do so.
The knowledge of this sits in her like a tumour, keeps her moving in silence, mechanically, to save herself, and him. Even in death she wants to protect him from herself. His fatal weakness, his greatest flaw. His hamartia. So it's only when his passing has become old news, eclipsed by greater, more pressing issues for the Leaf Village, only after training until her body is shaking and it is beyond her to stay standing, that Tenten sinks to the earth and cries for him. The earth of the training ground is smooth as the skin of her belly and she supposes that that's good, because elsewise she'd try to drown herself in the craters of hot earth that fill with rain and dew. And then she hears him. Lightning fast she turns, and through her grief she sees him, his eyes wide with shock, intruder on her secret misery.
She is nearly sixteen.
It is the last time she meets his eyes.
/End chapter… Cheers for reading