Sorry for the wait. I fly back home this week-end so things should come out faster from that moment on. Please bear with me a little more. :) Anyway, this is a long chapter so it should make up for the wait.
Tessen= Japanese war fan
-dekka: suffix when referring to someone with royal blood
Summary of chapter 4: The chapter began with the Council of the Southern Twelve Tribes where the tribe leaders and Gaara, the shogun of the Wind, debated who they would support as future Emperor of Japan. As Gaara would like to see Naruto on the throne, he made a deal with Morino Ibiki as in exchange for his support, he would allow him to take in his custody a Chinese princess who could jeopardize the ascension to the throne. As for Naruto, he was on his way to the front. At the end of the chapter, Tenten was sick, but refused to drink the tea that would make her have an abortion. She learned more about her mother and her grandfather through her conversations with an elderly servant with silver teeth, Rong, as she was her mother's nurse. They learned the imperial ship had been sunk, so they need to resort to asking for a lord for another ship to return to China. It appeared that Neji is this lord.
Enjoy!
-X-
Uzumaki Sakura was one day away from the battlefield.
She had followed her husband, the moist of the leaves clinging at her ankles, scarce branches whipping her arms. It hadn't been so long ago that her feet had sunk in the same soil. Sakura fell the sun on the nape of her neck, blazing and triumphant, and she panted, lost and disoriented. The air clung to her clothes, the scent of death rising in tendrils of smoke towards her.
Before her lay a battlefield that could have been a cemetery covered in sandy pikes of blood and pain.
She caught herself on the trunk of a dead tree, her palm scratched, bleeding. In her chest, her heart was raw. She stared at her hand on the tree for a moment, breathing out the harsh ashes of the nearby battlefield. It irritated the back of her throat, brought tears to the corner of her eyes.
Now, she was used to the hollowness of her chest, to the pain of being left behind by the two men she had ever loved.
Sakura could hold the delicate pieces of the world she thought she had built in the palm of her hand. Her hand slipped when it came to Naruto. It refused to move and cup ashes of happy memories when it came to Sasuke. They both held her hands and she clung to them for as long as she remembered.
She believed she could still heal them, still sewed them back by her side.
Naruto had treated like a ghost. He had seen through her; her heart would never truly belong to him. So, he had turned away and left her with her demon with red eyes. She had been a ghost for the rest of the Uzumaki compound when she had slipped out of the main mansion in the night. She didn't look like a princess anymore, her burnt pink locks still spilled in a pond.
She wasn't Uzumaki Sakura anymore.
She was the ghost who still hoped to save them both.
She kept walking.
-X-
The Dance of Falling Heads
by Clementive
-X-
Three days earlier...
Hyuuga Haruka had believed like the sacred texts, the voice of destiny was written in black divine ink across their skin the day they were born. She married and died without raising a brow. Sora could still remember her mother's hand pushing the dagger in her stomach then holding it out to her. Blood dripped from its tip, crashing onto the tatami and she shook her head. She remembered seeing how she could have fixed her, sewed her back pieces by pieces. Her eyes had flickered and she never reached out for the blade. She could have fixed her. She kept thinking it when she faced her uncle's wrath, when he closed his hands around her arms pressing into her pain. It crescendoed, terrible, growing with her screams.
She never spoke of fate again.
For twelve years, Sora of China expected her judgement day. Somewhere, beneath her tattoos, she knew that God would punish her for wandering her own path. Somewhere, inside her she was still the little princess that knew nothing but pain. One day, He would crush her bones for having cheated death so many times, turned her back on what he had written on her skin. He would never be her saviour, she knew. Because she had been taught all her life that there were things that could never be avoided. In her case, it was her pain, the burning slice in her arms that made her worthless, ruined. The same pain that had killed her mother. It was Qiang's dying breath cursing her, her surviving brothers shunning her from the village she had rebuilt for them.
For twelve years, Sora expected Hyuuga Hoheto to find her and drag her back to the South, his fingers pressed against the closed pressure points of her arms. She expected her daughter and the pounding truth between them, the letters she had sent her torn in dancing shreds in the wind. She expected her father's sons to snarl and strangle her in her sleep when her father would die.
She never expected the twisting shadows, the hammer of locked doors that sealed her from the sun. She never expected to be caged again. She never expected her mother's ghost and the shut doors that had been her childhood at the Hyuuga compound.
She never expected him to come after all those years.
Sora stilled, the darkness clearing around her as the edges of her study room sharpened. Her body was bent over a cadaver, her fingers still peeling apart the cold organs; her world of defined edges in black and white. The black heart rested in her palm as she pulled away, panting.
"If this is your idea of a childish prank, Shi..." she let it fall flatly in the silent room, her bloodied palms reaching over the table for her tessen.
They gleamed, quivered and disappeared and she jolted stepping away from her table until her back hit the sliding door. Petrified, her eyes flickered, searching the dark room for a human form. Her tongue unclasped the holster against her palate, her needles gleaming, pushing her lips apart. It didn't calm her hammering heart. Small breaths escaped her as her fingers closed around the door handle. She cried out, the weight of the door ripping through her arms, exploding in her shoulders. She trembled, fighting to regain her composure. The pants came out faster, her hands slipping on the wood, smearing the dead man's blood onto it.
She felt the doors closing in on her, pinning down what was left of her wings. She had never liked the darkness, he knew that.
"I know it's you," she pinched her blanched lips to hide the tremor in her cheek.
At this distance, only Morino were fast enough to deceive her eyes.
The door opened slightly across from her, a rectangle of light that made her pause. Awkwardly, she twisted her hands, stepping back towards the table in the centre of her study room. Sora slowly kneeled down to wash her bloodied hands in the bucket of water, waiting for him to stop moving long enough for her to see him. She paused over the reddening waters, uneasy by his silence and the apparent emptiness of the room.
The breeze against her back strengthened, her heartbeat slowing. She had never liked the sound of closing doors, he knew that too.
"Are you here to punish me, bibiki-kun?" she asked straightening her back.
Her eyes still searched for him as she dried her quivering hands on a towel as she rose back to her feet.
The rectangle of light at her feet faltered.
"For the last time, Sora, stop calling me that," Morino Ibiki hissed in her ear, his body finally slowing.
His body hardened and the green was completely gone from her eyes. She could read the surge of anger in the creases of his forehead and the thinned lips. She saw sadness, hesitation curving his lips, guilt working its way in the muscles of his cheeks. And new scars.
"I fixed your face."
He gripped her hips spinning her around, groaning. He touched her but it could have been Qiang by the way, she titled her head expecting and accepting the worst. Her vision blurred, his speed whipping her hair across her face. She straightened herself, a hand on his chest. It burnt her throat; the accusing tone, the memory of finding him half-dead without a face in the forest with Hizashi ordering her to leave him to die and Hiashi looking away. None of them had ever been in pain. None of them had understood then.
"Punish you?" he mused out loud, his eyes trailing down her exposed collar bones where dancing bears were leaning away from one another. "You are very good at doing that on your own, little princess."
She couldn't feel Qiang's breathless ghost between them like he did, yet he couldn't tear his glance away from the symbol of his clan on her porcelain skin. She didn't feel his blood on her hands the way he did or the weight of the sword that cut off his head. She felt years ripping them apart and the wait and the notion that it may have meant nothing to him.
"I fixed it," she repeated, the silver inside her mouth glistering.
Ibiki coldly smirked, pushing her against the wall. When the slap came, he blinked stunned by the strength of it. The side of his face became heavier, his throat closing in and she was already lowering herself to the ground, aiming the needles tangled around her palms at his shin. Sora met nothing but thin air. She gasped, her head hitting the floor, her hands immobilized beneath him. His weight pressed down against her midsection.
One by one, her needles slipped out of her hands.
"Goddamn woman," Ibiki growled, the words skewed and flattened by the numbness in his left cheek.
"You are godless, you shouldn't say that," she felt too calm, her hands hesitating over his cheek.
She knew there were farther than they had ever been but her fingers worked around her needles unlocking the pressure points. She pestered herself for still hoping. Her fingers lingered and he pulled away. Sora clenched her teeth turning her attention to the rectangle of light on her side. Colours came back, the tension around her eyes released.
There was nothing left to see.
His weight shifted and she closed her eyes. She still carried her screams. Didn't he remember them? Had it really meant nothing to him their pain snaking out of their body when they thought all was lost? Or that she stayed behind while Hiashi and Hizashi were already gone?
"Why are you here?" she muttered and a part of her hoped he hadn't heard.
"You told your father you didn't kill Tenten."
Sora blinked, turning her pale glance back towards him. She resisted the urge to contract the muscles around her eyes. She wasn't sure she wanted to see what was pulling his lips over his teeth or what lay behind his cold glare.
"He's dying," she said coldly, feeling his breath against her neck. "He doesn't care if I disobeyed him and I hardly see why this is any concerns of yours."
"After all those years, you are still hiding, little princess," Ibiki snickered glancing over the opened door and she pinched her lips, narrowing her eyes. "You live in the middle of nowhere, among soldiers who are supposed to protect you yet won't. You even sent that boy away and you are there, waiting to die. Isn't it that right, Sora-dekka? What troubles me is that your father must be very weakened to actually think you'd admit to disobeying him without a plan behind your pretty little head."
Ibiki leaned forward tracking her glance but she didn't look away. He smirked wider, lowering his voice. He knew she wouldn't falter or flinch. He knew she would rather feel pain than nothing at all. He kept pounding between whispers and hisses. He had always had a way with words that made them merciless. His words could make anyone scream, beg and repent. Except her. They never really could silence the pain that already snarl in her arms.
He loved her for that.
"You're not sending your daughter back to China because your father is dying. You don't care about that sort of emotional things. You're letting your father take her back because you screwed up the little game you were playing when men came after that stupid imaginary armour," his lips grazed her ear and she battled with herself to remain still, not giving in, not denying it. "It's only a matter of time before Hoheto-sama hears of this and remembers you are the only who could possibly be stupid enough to close her own pressure points in a fight. I wonder what will happen then."
Sora wanted to both drown in his scent and push him away. Ibiki laughed silently as she said nothing, stubbornly. His fingers pressed on her cheeks and he pressed until she opened it to reveal needles. Ibiki ignored her indignant groans roughly shoving her face on the side, so they would slip out of her mouth.
She glared, breathing heavily through quivering lips when he released her. Her hair slipped out of her hair ties and he smirked watching her fight beneath him.
"I like it when you are angry."
He found her other needles and taking them out of her robes one by one. Sora turned cold. She thought it was futile if there was nothing left to fix, so she let him. If they hadn't healed by then, they never would. She watched him finding them without hesitation, without lingering on her body.
"Why are you here?"
"I need you to be cooperative," he said tersely. "I'm bringing you back to the South."
"Not until Tenten is on her way to China."
"Forget it, little princess, I have sunk the imperial ship. Your father's troops have been wandering around your mother's land, by the way. Imagine their surprise when they learned that you haven't been home in more than fifteen years. I guess your father knows by now that you have been playing him."
She had already given him her weapons, there was nothing left of her. Or of them and certainly not of home. Her mind raced, Tenten was the only one she still wanted to save. If not them, at least her.
"She's safe," he snapped, his shape becoming blur as he reached over for a box when he tossed all the needles he had taken from her.
As fast as before, Ibiki reached between them to grasp both her wrists before her needles could pierce his skin. Her eyes blackened once more, a dancing light reflected in them.
"Part of me wanted to kill her, you know." His voice slowed strained as he forced her hands open and his brutal grimace was not as imposing as she remembered it to be. "But, she looks so much like you. It would have been like killing you." Loosely, his hand closed around her neck, touching her the two bears.
He let it go only to open her robes in an impatient grunt. Her pulse quickened. His body melt against hers just as it had when they weren't as broken, bodies rotting across from one another. When there hadn't been years sinking in their bones and age and gore. They folded against the other, filling space with the memory they had of the other's limbs. His eyes remained distant and hers shone, a faint green rim and darkness that reflected everything within him he wanted to bury.
"You are a witch, Sora," he whispered, his hands sinking in her thick hair.
His weight lifted abruptly, his absence filling with the cold salty wind of the bank. Slowly, she sat up, her fingers massaging her arms, her robes still open. She watched him morphing into blurry shapes of speeding shadows. Enraged, he paced watching her warily.
"I hate what you are doing to me."
"Hn."
Her lips curved in an imperceptible smile, her loose hair framing her pale placid face. They still communicated through pain.
She loved him for that.
-X-
The muscles of his neck wouldn't unwind, the words wouldn't make sense. Hyuuga Neji's eyes shifted from one scroll to the other. He would have known. He would have seen it, somewhere, anywhere when they lay together. In her crooked smile, in the way she remembered her mother distant and unloving in a big house. In the way she spoke of the mountains and the field surrounding her childhood as if her father owned them and they would be passed down to her.
He clenched his jaw, his fingers grazing the Chinese imperial seal and her name below it. He turned away, retracting within himself. Morino Ibiki knew and he had still been played like a fool. When he thought it was over, when he thought it all came down to Tenten, him and the war, a voice persistently pushed forward the easiness clutching at his gut.
He was still searching for an explanation or for her. It was easier to find her, to cling to anything that had been thrown on the board of their war game.
"I hadn't considered this, but there is always the possibility Tenten-san wants the throne. With Danzo-sama..." Nara Shikamaru looked up from his tactical maps, twisting a pawn between his long fingers.
He had a flash of him telling her that she may have been the queen that he had been waiting for. A queen. A princess. Tenten. He shook his head, balling his fists and his body asked to jump back on the battlefield where he could see the end, the edges and the bodies tightly wrapped in blood and carried by death.
As for Tenten, she was fading; it had been too long since he had last caressed her skin and tasted her mouth.
"Are you done?" Neji snapped coldly his features hardening over the tremors around his mouth. "My wife isn't part of a plot to take over the Japanese throne."
Lazily, his captain uncrossed his legs and he approached him deliberately slowly. When he stopped, he was standing taller than him. He flicked the piece he had been holding and it landed back on the maps, indistinct among the other pawns.
"What if she is?"
They leaned forward, ready to bounce. The war had turned back into beasts. It was almost as if they carried the skin of their enemies and they ate nothing but their viscera cooked by the blazing sun.
"My wife isn't kissing Danzo-sama's feet like yours."
They towered one another because they couldn't stand as comrades. They were warriors and knew nothing but the voice of anger and violence. They had done it before; the survival, the schemes, the shared tents and the desire for human flesh both dead and alive.
"You are a fool, Neji. The things you do for that woman... You will lose your throne. She will rip it off you and she will wrap silk around it before she sits on it. Because that's what troublesome women do."
Inuzuka Kiba tossed the heavy curtains of the entrance, entering the tent in slow hesitant steps. He avoided looking at Neji's paling cheeks or Shikamaru's pursued lips. Yamanaka Ino didn't hesitate. His hand grazed the silk of her robes, but she bypassed him, standing among them. The mood shifted as she held back to her tears. She held all of them in place, frozen by the hatred and anger that rippled in her beauty. She found her husband's glance fighting the burn in her throat.
"And men... the things they wouldn't do." Her voice rang flatly without wavering. "Have you ever thought of that, Shikamaru?"
He blinked; he had expected a yell and she only gave up a whisper. Yet, her chest expanded and collapsed in brutal movements. She spun on her heels, the realization hitting him, creeping tangible between them for the first time in years. The words had come out too articulate for her mind not to have taunted her with them for days, weeks, years. He had lost count and she hadn't. Kiba didn't try to stop her this time, but Akamaru trailed behind her out of habit, its ears pressed to his head.
He almost howled.
Ino disappeared behind the curtains, her robes falling away from her jerky violent gestures.
Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Kiba cleared his throat and the wariness still followed the two other men. They pretended to fold back away from one another. They pretended war was in the centre of it all, so they kept their words alive by turning away farther from the other. Shikamaru's back drew a straight line and he didn't lean back on the pillar behind him. He waited, calculated and almost hoped for the world around them to detonate in cries. He heard them from within, but he had never expected his wife's anger to join in, chant and cut through his detachment.
"I just meant to inform you that Naruto is getting some sleep with his men in the new tents we erected on the east side of camp."
Neji nodded stiffly as he rolled the scrolls back, the lanterns wicked and quivering.
"He wants Uchiha's head, doesn't he?"
"Well, yes," he admitted, crossing his arms over his broad chest, looking directly at the Nara. "He ordered the men to let him have him. I can only understand him if someone had touched my wife..."
Shikamaru blanched thinking of all the times, he did let men touch Ino. He let them cross his shadow without raising his hand. He thought of all the times he pretended he didn't care because there was a game between them and they were mere pawns.
"Hn," Neji laughed darkly waving Morino Ibiki's scroll. "And Ibiki-sama wants Hoheto-sama's head. That's his price for keeping Tenten in Japan."
"You should have let her go to China," Shikamaru said flatly, his body falling back into twisted shadows that the lanterns projected between them and his mouth filled with smoke. "That would have been the smartest move."
Pinching the bridge of his nose, the shogun closed his eyes. His instinct told him, it wasn't. His instinct assured him that she would have been in greater danger away from him and here, but it could have been love and desire. He didn't know anymore.
"Killing off Hoheto-sama now is a troublesome move. You shouldn't have signed a pact with that beast. Ibiki-sama isn't the sort of enemies you want to make, though."
"I know."
'But Tenten trusts him,' he couldn't help but think. Neji glanced over at the cold expression of his captain and for the first time, he wondered what he saw on the shogi board he spent his time building, adjusting, polishing. He wondered where was his place on it and what was the outcome he saw in everyone's move. Shikamaru never flinched before cadavers; they were numbers, they were pawns. He would replace them in the morning before it all started again. He was the shadowy king among them.
He held them in his grasp more than Ino's presence had.
"I will give him his head when we win this war."
They nodded grimly, falling back into their respective roles like nothing had happened. Neji watched Shikamaru walk away, in a stiffened gait that contrasted brutally with his usual slow pace. Kiba sighed heavily, rubbing briskly the centre of his chest.
"I smell distrust on you, Hyuuga."
He pinched his lips, turning his glance back towards the map. Flames licked their edges but the centre was barely illuminated.
"When the imperial troops will come, inform me. We will meet them at the temple at night. Uzumaki will take the lead, Shikamaru has to stay with him.
'What about Ino?' Kiba bit his tongue, flexing his muscles. Inwardly, he didn't even bother to call her Lady Ino, even less Nara Ino because he knew they weren't pawns. They were falling heads, crushed chest and sickened hearts who called themselves human.
-X-
Through the screens, Tenten recognized his shadow, tall and rigid.
The veil floated heavily around her but Rong kept pushing it back, pinching the fabric so it would cover her whole. She didn't feel holy, cleansed of demons that could reach within her abdomen. It impeded her breathing, weighing her down and she wished she could lie down and pretend the tatami was grass. She wished it was still the beginning and it was just the two of them without weapons between them for the first time.
Neji Hyuuga appeared between two soldiers of the second branch. In a metallic rustle that echoed through her, they kneeled down. They sat up not reaching for the tea servants had set in front of them. Pressing her sweaty palms to her laps, she wondered drowsily about Nara Shikamaru and Inuzuka Kiba. A dog howled and she smiled slowly, tired, even if he couldn't see her.
His eyes pierced through her, taking in her unstable posture and her head dropping forward. The heat boiled on her skin, her inhales drying her red parting lips. Tenten didn't bow along with the others and she thought if she stood taller than the others he would hear her silent plea.
His gaze hardened not leaving her, his face not giving in to any emotions.
"Step outside, all of you," he ordered in a toneless Chinese.
She would have laughed if it weren't from the fire running in her veins and the ache in her lower back. Against her leg, she felt Rong's body stiffened, the protest working up her body.
"Her Highness is married, Neji-sama. Surely, you would consider," the low lord accompanying them hesitated over a respectful turn of phrase in his laboured Japanese. "that a woman cannot stay alone with a man as righteous as he may be."
"She's married to a Japanese warlord, so she answers to me. Alone," he glared, his hand falling easily over his katana.
Tenten almost cried out. They were dragons; their bodies folded with silver and the dance of death. She had seen them fight and it was as if the House of Dragons lived on. They called themselves imperial troops belonging to the Prince Chao, but she saw the ghost of the House in them. With a katana, Neji wouldn't stand a chance against their swords. They exchanged a look, turning to her. When they passed next to her, sliding back towards the sliding doors in a kneeling position, they discreetly pressed a dagger in her palm.
She was as unstable as the silence falling between them, the kunai slipped from her hand and she sighed.
"Did you know?" he asked quietly when the sound of her escort's steps faded.
"Take off my veil, Neji, I can't breathe," Tenten managed to say and she wanted to continue on telling about his awful Chinese.
He relaxed when he smelled the jasmine on her skin; she couldn't be anyone else than is.
But there was a war between them, even when her first fresh inhale and the second one against his shoulder. She listened to his calm heartbeat, feeling his fingers hesitating over the elaborate hairstyle. Instead, his hands fell on her neck massaging it.
"Where's Gai-sensei? What happened?" he pressed her again, titling her chin upward, searching her face. "I found your horse."
He blinked noticing her almost transparent skin of her eyelids and her skin burned his fingers. The makeup hadn't lingered and Rong had given up after two tries, leaving only her lips bright red. She waved his hand away falling back against his chest. This time, his heartbeat hammered through her, his arms too loose around her.
"He was into it all along," she grunted, fisting his robes so he wouldn't pull her away to look at her face again. "He basically just handed me over to the imperial troops, but there is no way..." she shook her head, pressing her small nose against his shoulder. "There is no way my mother is a princess."
"You are with child."
His lips found her forehead, hesitant, volatile, his body still rigid against hers. She nodded, her eyelashes drawing a darker shade under her eyes. She relaxed against him, but his hand still didn't find her stomach. She had thought it would have rest onto it. He didn't smile and she almost stepped away from him. Scorched as she was, she remained against him.
"Tenten, you are sick."
Her eyes fluttered opened and she reached up to caress his cheeks, smoothing the concern creases around his mouth. He kissed her palm, lacing their fingers.
"I will give you another child, after the war," he muttered and she knew the thought of losing him before having was smothering them both.
"He's still here, Neji. I'm sure he will stay. I don't feel nauseous anymore."
"Tenten," he looked away, gulping with difficulty. "It would be best if..."
His jaw worked, clenching and unclenching and he still couldn't say it.
"I'm not getting rid of him. It may be our only chance. Rong keeps telling me it's because of the tea I have been drinking for years now."
When he tasted her mouth, there wasn't a raging war, burning flesh hanging and swinging on loose ropes between them. He had set his katana next to his leg and that was all there was. That was all they were and it was somehow enough.
"He will kill you, please. I will make you another child, Tenten. I-I," Neji searched for the right words, watching her closely as she kept shaking her head.
"I need you," he said finally holding her face delicately in his hands. "I want a child, but I need you."
-X-
I pushed by internship report on the side (I will cry for that later on) and wrote this instead. I hope you enjoyed the NejiTen in there. Fear not, dears, there will be another NejiTen scene in next chapter. ^_^
Next chapters will be intense with fighting, so I thought it would be nice to have couples, broken hearts and Tenten's growing belly before the gore that is coming.
For now, review pretty please? :)