Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

HE KNEW

"You knew?" Tenten asked Neji as they sat on the couch in her tiny apartment.

They had been talking for hours about what the future had in store for them now. There were still a lot of conflicts that would likely arise, but at the moment, all they needed to know was that they loved each other and would be there for one another.

"Hai" was the Hyuga's reply, as he looked deeply into his beloved's big brown eyes.

"How?" she asked, trying to find the answer to that question within the white orbs that stared back at her.

"So you knew all along that Tenten was pregnant?" Ino asked a sleepy looking Shikamaru, as the gang (1) listened in, all eager to know the reply to the blond's question.

"Well, not exactly." Shikamaru began. "I knew something was up because Neji usually prefers to train with Tenten then hanging with us guys, but lately he'd been spending more time with us."

"That's it? What if they were just fighting?" asked Choji, "You and Ino fight all the time, and our training gets cancelled." He observed.

"THAT'S NOT TRUE!" shouted Ino.

"Yes it is." Shikamaru responded, brushing off the angry look coming from his teammate. "Besides… that's not how I knew that he knew."

"Oh, then how did you know?" asked Sakura, who up until this point had been trying to figure it out her self, if there had been signs she had missed. It was bad enough her female intuition missed that Tenten and Neji were dating, but as a med-nin, how could she have missed, for two whole months, that fact that Tenten was pregnant?

"He wasn't surprised." Sasuke answered for Shikamaru. Though this had been an eventful day, Sasuke was starting to get irritated with all this talk, and wanted nothing more then to hurry it along and leave.

"That's right." replied Shikamaru, "Even an ice cube like Neji would have freaked out about news like that."

"That's true…" Naruto said, thoughtfully. He knew from his own experience in all this that HE had definitely freaked out when Tenten had told him that she was pregnant. True, he didn't know at the time that she was telling him (disguised as Neji) because she thought she was telling 'the father', but Naruto had still been freaked out by the announcement alone. And it didn't make it any less shocking when Tenten began to throw weapons at him for not responding.

'Come to think of it, why didn't she throw weapons at Neji when HE didn't respond? THAT's not fair!' the loudmouth shinobi thought angrily.

"Which could only lead to the conclusion that Neji had already had time to digest the information." a normally silent Shino observed.

"Exactly." Shikamaru agreed.

Neji watched as his beautiful fiancé slept cuddled in his arms. She'd had a long and eventful afternoon the day before.

She looked beautiful when she slept. Neji never understood why everyone referred to her as tomboyish. True, she tended to prefer training over chasing boys and shopping and make up, but she didn't exactly dress like a boy, and she didn't act like a boy; and she definitely didn't look like a boy.

Ever since the day Neji first met her at the academy, he always thought she had a glow to her. She was always happy, always laughing, always talking. She made friends rather easily too.

FLASH BACK

The day Neji met Tenten, she had been playing hide-and-go seek with a group of her friends. They said they were practicing their stealth and searching skills, but Neji thought it was just an excuse to goof off; plus he figured it would be too easy with his Byakugan, so he had declined the invitation to join them.

Instead of playing with the other children of the academy, Neji decided to sit under a tree and meditate until the teacher called them in to continue their studies. It was only a few minutes into the game, when everyone was finding places to hide, that Neji heard a twig snap on the other side of the tree.

The tree he was sitting under was rather wide. Whoever was on the other side certainly wouldn't have spotted him meditating on his side. But it annoyed Neji immensely, that one of his irritating classmates had made their way over to his side of the playground, especially when he had gone out of his way to avoid being disturbed by them.

He debated whether or not to ignore the intruder, or beat the crap out of whoever dared disturb the great Hyuga prodigy. He didn't have time to decide before he heard a giggle rising up into the tree. At first he was convinced it was angels singing from the heavens, but he immediately shook the thought and berated himself for allowing such frivolous daydreams.

It was at that moment, when something fell on him. Or rather, fell from the tree, nearly hitting him before he quickly dodged it. It was a kunai; an ugly, old, rusted kunai. Neji picked it up and examined it. There was nothing special about it. It looked perfectly worthless, and he determined that it would be useless on the battle field; possibly not even very good for training either. He was so deep in through, that he barely had time to notice a hand reaching out to snatch the old kunai from his hands.

Neji looked up at the hand that gently covered the kunai he held in his hands. It belonged to a girl about his age, wearing a bright pink Chinese top, with two light yellow dragons' embroidered onto the sides, and a pair of black capris. He also noticed that she wore her hair in an unusual way, but what caught his attention the most was the smile on her face. No one in the Hyuga house smiled, except for his cousin Hinata; though she usually hid her smile behind her hand. But it was nothing like the smile he saw on this little girl's face. It practically shone with a radiance rivaled only by the sun itself. For a moment, Neji almost wondered if his earlier assumption had been correct and she WAS an angel.

It was at that moment that Neji fell in love with Tenten. He didn't realize it at the time, but he knew there was something special about her.

END OF FLASHBACK

TBC...

(1) minus one Lee, and of course Neji and Tenten