"He's engaged!" I screeched, and Hinata looked down at her hands.
"I've been meaning to tell you," she said softly, and I dropped down onto her couch heavily. "He proposed to Mai just yesterday. I tried to talk him out of it, and I even told him the whole story about the pregnancy test and how I made you promise not to tell. He's still too heartbroken to accept it."
I was too stunned to say anything, and I was even more surprised to find that my eyes couldn't produce any tears. They felt too dry and shriveled up to gather any moisture.
He'd actually moved on. Maybe he wasn't still heartbroken but simply over it, over me. "He's engaged," I said again, barely even audible to my own ears.
Hinata continued on with her ranting, and I listened sub consciously. "He doesn't even know what he's doing. This is just some way to convince himself that he's over you. I mean, he's only known her for seven months. There's no possible way-"
"Maybe," I interrupted her in a soft voice, and she immediately stopped. "Maybe she really is right for him. It took him only seven months to propose to her, and he never even came close with me. It's just not meant to be."
Hinata looked at me as if I were insane. "Are you stupid!" she yelled, causing me to jump. I wasn't sure what astounded me more, the fact that she actually yelled or the suddenness of it. "He's in freaking love with you, Tenten, just as much as you are with him. The only reason he's even with that girl is because he's confused. Why aren't you chasing after him yet?"
Then, the tears that should have come earlier came in a furious torrent. "Because I'm tired, Hinata," I gasped. "I'm too tired to fight. It was too hard for me to even fight to go on without him those seven months, and now that he's let go of me to be with someone else the fight has gotten totally out of my range."
Hinata looked at me with crushed eyes, and I hung my head and let the tears drip off my nose. There was nothing more I could do anymore. I'd already lost. I had to give up now.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Damn those stupid fools at the gate. Didn't I look like hell enough for one of them to help me? I was limping and shit, and they didn't give me a second glance!
I was worse off than I looked. I'd been sent on a simple A-rank mission, which I'd completed with ease, and had been returning home when I'd been ambushed by fucking grass nin.
They would have been easy to defeat had there not been eight of them. The first four had gone down relatively easy, leaving me with only a few cuts and bruises, but it was the last four that got me in this condition. I'd already been exhausted from my lack of sleep, and the situation with Neji had my energy lower than normal, so I had basically gotten my ass kicked.
So here I was with a gash to my side, wobbly legs, several bleeding cuts, a dizzy head, and a stab wound to my shoulder. My life really sucked right now.
The hospital was too far. There was no way I was going to make it before passing out from loss of blood. The moonlit world tilted dangerously to one side, and I dropped to my knees as it began to spin out of control. My stomach churned uncomfortably, and I pressed my hands on the cool earth for a form of support.
"Tenten?"
The voice sounded so far away, but there was a person standing right in front of me. The person was tall and very lean with dark brown hair and- Kami, it was Neji.
I suddenly found it hard to breathe on top of all my other problems and had to turn my face away from him.
"Tenten," he said again, kneeling before me. His voice, though still sounding distant, was beautiful and calming to my ears and sounded slightly panicked. He couldn't be worried, could he?
"Neji," I gasped out as I fell forward, losing my balance.
His arms wound around me, catching me with ease, and he lifted me off the ground and began to make his way quickly to the hospital. I let my head fall against his chest, enjoying the feeling of his muscles moving in his arms.
The only thing I was aware of at that moment was his body touching mine and the rush of the cool night air. I gazed up into his face, trying to intake every little change that had happened in those seven months. Almost nothing had changed, except for the slightly hardened look in his eyes and the small scar that now adorned his right cheek.
I'd told myself that giving up on him was the best thing for me to do, but being so close to him again made my body resume that terrible ache for him. I didn't want to just let him go. I wanted him to be mine again.
My vision began to spin even faster than before, and I clutched Neji's shirt so tightly my fingers began to hurt. His words were the last thing that reached my ears before I blacked out.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Why were hospitals so….white? I mean, everything in this hospital was white: the walls, the bed sheets, and even the floor tiles had more white dots than blue. Someone seriously needed to redecorate.
I sighed and leaned back against the headboard of the bed. I'd been awake for about an hour now but decided not to press the little button that signaled for the nurses. My abdomen and shoulder were healed but still stiff and sore.
Lee had actually come to visit me a few minutes ago, looking quite worried, and I had to endure a twenty minute speech about youth. I wondered if that guy would be talking about youth even when he was old and wrinkly.
Throughout that ridiculous speech, I had sunk into my pillow and thought of the previous night. I could still smell him, that familiar woodsy scent. But there was something slightly different about it, something sweeter.
It took me only a few minutes to realize that it must have been the Mai's perfume combined with his scent. That realization hit hard and painfully, nearly knocking the breath out of me, and I had to fight hard to stop the waterfall of tears from falling in front of Lee.
But he and I had been friends for a long time, and he could tell that something was amiss. He didn't say anything, but I could tell by the way his eyes softened and looked into mine with an understanding that only a true friend could have that he knew of my pain. And before he left, he hugged me so fondly that I feared I would start bawling right there, but I managed to hold them back.
Even now that I was alone I still didn't want to cry. I didn't know why, but it felt so pathetic for me to be the one crying alone in a hospital. Usually, it was the people who weren't in the hospital who cried for those who were. Not the other way around.
My hair hung in a wild mass of brown around my head, and I shoved my fingers through it in an effort to tame it. The buns I had worn for the mission had fallen out during the fight, and I cringed. No wonder the guards at the gate hadn't wanted to help me.
"Tenten," came a gentle voice, and I glanced up to see Sakura entering the room. "How are you feeling?"
"Sore," I replied, and Sakura smiled.
"Good," she responded. "You passed out due to loss of blood, but luckily it wasn't anything extremely fatal. We managed to heal the stab wound and gash nicely, and your other injuries are only a few abrasions and bruises. I have to give you another examination before you're able to go."
This was what I respected about Sakura. She managed to be your friend while remaining professional and doing her job accordingly.
She did the exam quickly but didn't leave the room when she had finished. She looked like she was in deep thought, and I was about to ask her what was wrong when spoke up first.
"He was really worried, you know," she said, and I bit my lip and lowered my head. "He still cares for you."
"There's a difference between caring and loving," I muttered. Man, I was such a downer.
Sakura smiled softly, obviously not affected by my negativity. "He did that thing where he acts so calm and indifferent, but his eyes were going crazy, Ten. Have a little hope. I know what I saw, and it's the same thing that I used to see between you guys, and it's the same thing that I see now."
She left me to think about what she just said, and I felt that small glimmer of hope ignite within me. She said she saw it now. But there was a difference between loving and caring, and I wanted the loving side of him to be mine. No, it was impossible. But still, I couldn't stop the hope from growing within me when I remembered what he said to me last night before I went unconscious.
"Stay with me, Ten. Please don't leave me."
A/N: Okay so there was Neji and Tenten's first meeting after all this time. And things are going to get heated up between the two later on because HELLO they're Neji and Tenten, and their relationship is hot. Lol. I'm out.