Well, if there are still people reading this: I missed my baby, that's all I have to say for my defence. Most of you already know what was up so I will just leave it at that. I changed a few things from what was original planned... For the better, I assure you. ;)
To Chisa Chispa: In case you haven't seen my other message: YOU NEVER BOTHER ME! I know it has been a while and that you must be more than a little annoyed, but I still hope that you will forgive me. :/ Thank you for your many reviews and encouraging words! They meant a lot to me.
To Fiona: Thank you for your review, dear! :)
To Guest: Neji is a king among mortals. *drops the mic* Hahaha. :P Thank you for your review, dear! :)
Okay, back to it now.
Summary of chapter 5: The chapter began with Sakura following Naruto toward the battlefield, still thinking she could save both Naruto and Sasuke. The timeline comes back a few days for Ibiki and Sora's reunion. During their conversation, it is hinted that the armour was imaginary and that Ibiki and Sora had known and loved each other for a long time. Ibiki having made a deal with Neji had sunk the imperial boat that was supposed to bring Tenten back to China. As he told Sora about sinking the ship, he also told her that she needed to come with him to the South as required by the Council of the Twelve Southern Tribes. Neji learned that Tenten had royal blood through her grandfather who was the youngest son of the previous emperor of China. Shikamaru then suggested that it may all be a ploy for her to take the throne with Danzo, but Neji refused to believe him. Naruto had finally arrived at the front and it became clear to Neji that even if he made a deal with Ibiki, he couldn't kill Hyuuga Hoheto at the moment. At the end of the chapter, Neji and Tenten are reunited and she confirmed that she didn't know about her grandfather or her mother having royal blood. She then told him that she was pregnant.
-X-
The Immobile Queen
by Clementive
-X-
14 years ago...
The child thought of his shoulders as a throne. And she reigned over the dry grass that reached up to her father's hip, the brittle castle that trembled and disappeared. She gave reason to the fog erasing the mountains to the faintest line of the horizon. She was queen and soldier and all the creatures of the night, her mother had told her about when she was younger. If she turned towards the ocean, she could conquer the beaches of Japan and the sea monsters that lurked in the darkness and bubbled near the island.
She twisted her neck glancing up at the clouds. They thickened with darkness, already draping the night over the villages below the hills.
Her fingers dangled from her trying to reach the sky.
She imagined the silky touch of the clouds, her fingers, stretching above her head, searching for the faintest graze. Light. Darkness. Maybe she could hold them both in her palms and showed her mother. Maybe it would make her rise from her bed and quell her coughs and hisses. Her father groaned and tapped swiftly onto her leg bringing her back to reality. She hadn't noticed the tension in his shoulder until now. She stilled. She wanted to move beyond the mountain he was but he hated myths and giants and she couldn't lose him too.
"Stop it, shrimp, or I may drop you," Qiang barked, squinting at their house.
"I can walk now, sir," she muttered, but he clicked his tongue, his foot kicking a rock out of the way.
Her movements rolled stiff and rough, nested uncomfortably in her still dangling fingers; the way he had shown her to move when they trained. The way he liked. When she imitated her mother's gait, he would sneer, his chest widening with a bark and she would wonder, frozen in terror, if the mountain, the height and his smiles would be denied to her one day. There was no honour on the battlefield for women; she couldn't move like one. She couldn't move like a child either.
"Remember, don't tell your mother what we have been doing. Do you understand? You bring her her meal and then you go help your grandmother. No slumping around like yesterday, do you hear?"
"Hai."
She bit her tongue, wincing, but the big hand already grabbed her by the collar. The ground came fast, swayed by the wind rising among the grass. Blue and brown and green spun, now reversed when she blinked again. Grasshoppers caressed her ankles, singing, twisting out of reach. Her heart pounded. He levelled his eyes to hers, his hand holding her into place. She already missed the smile and the approving nod. No, no, no, she locked her jaw, her glance on the ants snaking on the hard mud. The air around them stilled, but the rest of the world carried on. If she truly were queen, she would snap her fingers and stilled them all. They were too many motions she didn't grasp, too many words she couldn't hold in. It started like that with her mother, one misplaced word and she was disappointed. And she turned on her side, hissing in pain, having taken her needles back.
"Do not ever speak to me in that language again," he said slowly, his jaw twitching over each word. She nodded, fast and steady. "You're Chinese, not Japanese."
"Yes, I'm sorry."
He straightened his back, releasing her. His glance left her and she kicked at the dirt. Often, she thought her parents were like water and fire with her mother's icy eyes and her father's broad laughter. Then, they would shift and they would be both water, harsh and icy, their too strong current running out of her reach. Before she could catch on to either of them and understand, they were back to water and fire; her mother erased and sick and her father strong and towering her world.
"I told your mother to stop teaching you that bastardized language," he shouted to no one in particular. He shifted the bag of weapons to his other shoulder. "She never listens." He gritted his teeth looking down at her again. "You need to listen to me, do you hear, shrimpie head? Don't be like her. You will never be a good soldier if you don't listen to me."
"I'm like you, she says," the child whispered.
When she looked up, a wild shadow crossed her father's face, curling around a snarl, tightening it. Then, it released it as quickly as it had appeared. The snarl was gone and he wasn't looking at her anymore. She needed to take three steps to match one of his.
"Oh, she'd better say that and mean it."
He walked fast and stiff. She gulped, rubbing her arms nervously so he wouldn't see that she was lying. Her mother spoke to her like her father didn't exist. She forced things in her hands that angered her father. She spoke to her in her mother's tongue even if her father and grandmother would yell at her that she was Chinese. Even if her daughter didn't understand. When no one was looking back at her, she would catch her smirk, part of her shadow, lingering and faint, and she would force another toy in her hands or teach her to pray in Japanese, her cold voice loud enough for her grandmother to come running out of her room, gritting her teeth.
There were moments when fire crackled only when her mother walked and the child made sure to stay out of her way when it happened. Because when her mother smiled and laughed, it echoed grittily, feral, like someone was shaking a bag of broken glass inside her chest, and her green eyes turned black.
"She took my needles back," she added chewing on her bottom lip and she picked at the hem of her shirt. "And then she said it," she took a careful inhale, glancing up at him, "that she was disappointed." Her father stilled, a mass of muscles usually twitching and rippling beneath his skin, turning blinking towards her. She stopped too, forcing her hands away from her shirt. "See?" She shifted from one foot to another, giving him a triumphant smile. "I'm like you. I'm a soldier, not a healer."
"What did you do?" He asked hollowly and it was like he was seeing through her.
He sprung forward. Chokes and shouts fell out of his chest and he was running, leaving her behind. She flinched. Her father's steps lift dirt into a hazy fog. She ran as fast as she could, yelling after him, breaking down from her stillness because she needed too many movements to catch on to him. She didn't want to be alone, behind and forgotten. Erased and sick and weak. Like her mother.
Her lungs burst out of her chest. Nausea settled on her stomach, twisting her insides in their joined voice: "What did you do?" "I'm disappointed, Tenten, get out." Her heart pounded wildly against her ribcage. A rope snapped, feet grazing the floor in a rustle of . She squinted. Her grandmother was leaning on the door frame of the kitchen to greet them.
She was blue, eerie.
Her grandmother's corpse dangled with the breeze five needles sticking out of her heart. Blood dripped without a pattern and her father yelled, choking onto words she didn't understand. But sometimes, he turned towards her, his pointing finger shaking, never approaching her.
"What did you do? What did you do?"
His roars would find her anywhere, she thought. This was the mountain crumbling down, dirt rolling off his clothes with their weapons spilled onto the ground. The mountain had a whole in its centre, it hunched forward. The mountain who had taught her to be strong was sobbing. She stared up at her grandmother and she found she had no tears. Her body was caving in, the blood snaking out of her as not to stir her awake. Her mother's room was gaping open, the darkness barely masking the sticky blood onto the floor. It marked an uneven path out of the room. Her mother's blood, her grandmother's blood, they interlaced, dark and gleaming, and she still didn't understand what she had done.
"What did you do?"
Her glance followed the blood trail to the forest. She remained frozen when the corpse was taken down. Her uncles looked through her. She kept snapping her fingers, waiting for the world to still and the night to fall permeably on the valley.
Because while her father shout, she could hear a distant laughter rising above her mountain.
Snap, snap, snap.
"I want her head! She's wounded so drag her back here! Drag her back by the hair if you have to! I want to break my fast with her stupid useless eyes staring back at me! Do you understand, you bunch of morons? Where's Katsuo? BRING ME THAT BASTARD!"
She closed her eyes spinning while humming to herself: 'I'm queen. I'm queen. Mama is still here. Papa isn't angry with her.'
"He's gone too, Qiang-dàrén," someone whispered throatily. "All the Hyuuga are gone."
Their conversation titled, swirled out of her reach. They forgot about her.
She stopped spinning. The laughter was back, a brush against her cheek, and her feet sank in her mother's blood. Her foot had nudged the leather pouch that contained her needles. It was neatly tied, only soiled with dark fingerprints.
She shrieked with the bile exploding in her mouth. She choked onto her shrieks, tumbling, running. And there was no sound vibrating in her chest. And there was no real violent shrills pushing through the rustles of the leaves.
While she had hoped for the world to freeze, she, herself, was frozen, a coldness hammering in her veins. A blizzard blinding her.
She snapped her fingers until they were raw. She wished for time to fast-forward. She wished for more movements she could handle, for her mother to have remained erased and sick. For her grandmother's feet to stop dangling whenever she closed her eyes to draw another breath in. To keep shrieking. To keep moving.
Snap, snap, snap.
Her father came back for her the next day.
"Do you remember where your mother's wounds were on her arms?" He asked simply and he was once more a mountain, cold and his voice loud.
He held up a sketch of an armour in front of her. The rough scroll snapped in the wind and she found herself nodding, rocking back and forth with her pouch of needles.
"I know you remember, shrimp. You always notice details."
-X-
In war, Neji Hyuuga learned to fear silence.
With only Tenten's slowing breath tickling his neck, nighttime detonates in the husky prayers of the monks and howls of the lurking animals. Aggressively, the most subtle noise kindled the vivid images of the battlefield. It peeled away the impression of peace when Tenten moved closer, her small hands burning against his chest. He shouldn't be here.
In war, it was always about loss.
Neji held her tighter, feeling her stomach between them. Bile raised to his mouth and he buried his face in her loose locks, careful not to crush it. He knew he couldn't stay. He knew if she wanted their child, he endangered them both whenever something would point at him as the father. He knew if he were to lose, honour would sink everything that had once been his. For the briefest moment, he allowed his hand to rest against her stomach. He slid it across her thigh, breathing in her jasmine scent before his lips found her forehead.
In war, warlords learned to fear heirs more than soldiers.
The price of blood buried in their flesh, they were shadows. They were renegades with a bloodline that boiled and instinctively carried them towards weapons and war. They became men like Uchiha Sasuke who only believed in revenge and power and called it justice. Slowly, as not to disturb her slumber, he released his hold on Tenten.
Still in silence, he turned his back to her straightening his robes, smoothing the feel of her skin away from the tip of his fingers.
"Is it already time for you to go?"
He froze, his hand on the slim sliding doors. Shadows ran wild across them, servants and monks moving around them. She struggled the blanket off her shoulders, her fingers pushing back her heavy locks. She yawned blinking at the slivers of pale darkness dancing in front of her eyes.
"I can't be here, Tenten, you know that. If they catch me here, they will take you too," he said quietly, his knuckles shaking, whitening.
His blood hummed loudly to his ears. When he frowned he could see her flinch behind him, concealing it with careful gestures. Her form danced above the shadows. Her hand fell on her stomach and he clenched his jaw. Her hand always returned there.
"I'm keeping him, Neji, I have made my choice. You go fight your war and I will fight mine," she didn't raise her voice but it was as if she did.
She kept talking and he had to force his limbs to move and turn back towards her. Tenten already spoke of projects and names and places and moments he couldn't promise her. He didn't have it in him to deny them to her either. He glanced down at her stomach, expecting it to protest, to pierce through her in a faint line of blood that would free her of him, or him of her.
He expected fate to strike and take another child from him.
His eyes trailed up to her face and the way she shone, her palms open towards the sky. It was a prayer that knitted her brows and rumbled along her fingers. In an impulse he pulled her towards him, his lips pressed onto her forehead.
"Rong could see us," Tenten whispered, her breath tickling his cheek, and she closed her eyes.
She leaned forward, attracted to his warmth and gentle hands that caressed up her arms to cup her face. He kissed the tip of her nose, his thumbs rolling on her skin. Their breaths meddled in the brush of their lips. Then, they clung. Their lips crashed, begging for more. Tongue and teeth pressed them together, but it never seemed enough. She sucked on his bottom lip, grabbing onto his neck and his hands were no longer on her face, but tangled in her hair.
Their mouths soon slowed again, stilling. They curved in a sad smile, pulling away, and he hated the way the war snuck between them. A tyrannic queen on the throne of death.
"You better come back to me, Hyuuga. I can't raise a child on my own," she whispered.
When she thought of mothers, she thought of her own, and the world was black and cold. She carried nothing from her childhood but her father's warmth and she knew she couldn't be both: cold and warm when her insides churn at the thought of being a mother and a widow.
"Tenten..."
"I know you can't promise me anything, Neji," she chewed on her lips, pushing him slightly away, "but I don't know what I will do if you aren't here for our son."
'If I'm not here, they won't let him live,' he stiffened, her fingers threading with his and his tongue didn't release the words that would make her stop and welcome silence the way he did. He prayed for a girl. A girl, they would let live.
"I think it's best if you go back North," his arms tightened around her bringing her back against his chest. "Go to your mother's house."
She struggled in his arms, fighting him. She shook her head, her chest heaving with dry laughter. He held on, pushing his chin against the top of her head.
"Right, and she will welcome me with open arms when she learns I'm bearing your child. A Hyuuga child, Neji. Are you insane, Hyuuga?"
She dug her fingers in his chest, glaring up at him.
"Please, stop shouting," Neji hissed in her ear. "I can't protect you but you will be safe with her and the House of Dragons. The war won't last nine months, Tenten, and you can't go back to Konoha."
"I'm not going there," she titled her chin upward, her lips set in a quivering line.
"Tenten, you're not safe here, or anywhere near me and the front."
He released her. He ran his hands in his hair, his lips still tingling with her taste.
"You know it's the only place safe for you."
"Neji," she growled, taking a step toward him. "Don't make me go there."
"If you want that child, you have to go to the House of Dragons. If you want that child," he pressed his hand for the first time on her stomach and his lips curled downwards, fighting back a wince. "You need to go to her. If you want that child, you need to make sacrifices," he breathed out, steeling himself, "like I'm doing right now by being here."
He turned back toward the sliding door, leaving her frozen into place. He counted her quick inhales, the number of times her knuckle cracked and she paced. There was still grace radiating off her, but her arms closed around her, as if she would rather contain it. He leaned his forehead on the sliding doors.
"This isn't an easy choice, for neither you or I. If it is a child you want, I will give you another, but if it is this child you want, then you need to go to your mother. You're sick and she's a healer."
"I don't want to be like her," she shook her head, stubbornly. "I've always wanted to be like my father and I fear that if I go to her, the first thing I will do as a mother is not hold it. Not smile at it. It's like going back in time and begging my mother to love me no matter who I was. Even if I got my hands and clothes filthy playing in the courtyard."
She was afraid if they kept whispering and hissing, they would never find their voices for what mattered most again. She was afraid they would lose and die in silence, without trace, childless. She couldn't think of a more bitter end, when she had played so often the immobile queen that couldn't rule the mountains. And she chased monster. And she never died. Never aged. It had all been a dream and a useless game as she had never learned to remain still. She had never learned to rule.
But she had learned to lie and deceive with a flick of the wrist.
"But you're right, I will go to her."
He closed his eyes leaning in her kiss and she kept hers open, praying the veins around his eyes wouldn't appear. She deepened the kiss, because she couldn't say it now: "I love you no matter what I do or say. No matter if I live or die."
"I need to go, now," he said against her mouth.
His touch lingered on her skin, and she looked at him through thick eyelashes, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. She twisted her body from his embrace making sure his eyes remained blind and focused on the shape of her mouth. As long as he saw a smile, she was safe. As long as he believed in her smile, she was free.
"Come for me soon."
He nodded and his arms slowly fell back to his sides, awkward without her to fill the space between them. Neji opened the sliding doors and stepped onto the veranda. The humid air pushed his robes against his torso. The night fell in thick curtains of warm rain. The temple disappeared in the mist, the Hyuuga soldiers' torches dull yellow under the empty welkin. He frowned, his sight clearing when he forced the muscles around his eyes to contract. He saw the fuming mountains of sand detaching themselves from the horizon, the stilled troops and the heraldry tightly plastered around the poles. He concentrated on the distance like his uncle had taught him but as he gave orders to his men, the bushes around him rustled.
He didn't notice gold eyes widening, a flash of white belonging to a man craning his head. His shadow quivered with breathless laughter and he lapsed back in the forest. The imperial crest of China bathed in silver rays and Tenten appeared holding her stomach.
He smirked, this was all Lord Danzo needed.
An imperial child.
-X-
The forest imprisoned her in the whirling emotions that chilled her bones. The moisture of the raging wind silenced the howls of pain perched on her lips. Nara Ino stepped carefully on the ground, avoiding the rocks that would break her sandals. She puffed and steered with rage. She had hoped her marriage to be an endless nights like the many ones they had spent together, clandestine and raw. Instead, the war had sent him back within himself and they weren't as bare as to one another.
She was the doll of the forest, mistress of the power of love men thought to possess. The propriety of Shimura Danzo or a pawn in her husband's board.
Ino clenched her eyes shut, her fingers scraping at the trunk of the tree she leaned against. She may be Nara Ino, but she couldn't run from the flesh of men grazing hers for as long as she remembered. They took pieces of her beauty while Shikamaru was supposed to hold it whole. She wondered if she ever was the queen on his board.
"Ino-chan?"
Briskly, she turned around, her fingers finding her dagger in the sleeve of her kimono. She forced a smile to graze her lips as Fu emerged from between the trees. He looked around him, his eyebrows drawn together, and the shadows of the foliage flicked across his face. Shakily, she forced her fists open. The branches broke beneath his feet and he didn't take his golden eyes from her. Mud smeared his cheek where he scratched.
"Danzo-sama is waiting for me. Have I angered him? Is that why Danzo-sama sent you?" She giggled, taking a careful step back when she noticed his stiffened shoulders.
He walked like a man who had nothing to lose. He walked like a man who took without asking. He smiled savagely and the sound of the forest deadened around them. Her pulse quickened, her hand weighing the dagger in the palm of her hand, but his eyes roamed around them and she wondered if he had seen through her all along. He stopped in front of her, Aburame Turane emerging from the darkness in his gliding gait that reminded her of a worm. Her smile faltered. Danzo rarely sent Turane out in mission but when he did, he went with Fu, silent and stoic, reeking of poison. A faint grey cloud buzzed around his head, the insects drawn to his scent.
"Fu-san? Torune-san? Shouldn't we-"
"You aren't wearing yellow today," Torune stated harshly, his veiled eyes focusing on her face.
She pressed her back to the tree cocking her head playfully on the side. She wondered how much time she could keep it up. With the proximity of his smell and hands, she couldn't help the shudders running down her body and the pearls of sweat forming on her back.
"I didn't have time to change... I came-"
"It doesn't matter now. We need Tenten, now," Fu snapped, waving her away and she stilled. Her smile tore from her face, hanging hollowly between them. He didn't turn and she almost disappeared, fear gnawing at her, dragging her down. She really was of no importance.
"Tenten?" Her whisper fell frozen on her lips and she could taste on them the envy that so often snapped their fans open when they shared Senju Tsunade's attention.
They would distract themselves with the colours spinning in the air when they danced. They would pretend that the coldly charged distance between them didn't exist. Their geisha smile curling their bright lips, they could quell the surge of bitterness that harassed them. They didn't have to recognize that if they were friends, they were also rivals.
"Not only are you not wearing yellow, but you also seem dense today, Ino-chan." Torune moved his too big hands around him, his gait slumping, distorting his body with the same laziness that ripped the insides open of his targets.
"I'm just wondering about the original plan," Ino stammered, her eyes flickering nervously between him and Fu.
"These are Danzo-sama's new orders. This isn't a land of wonder, Ino-chan," he pressed her name on his palate, mocking her.
They strolled in front of her, flies invading her senses and she glanced back at the red haze creeping onto the forest. She hadn't told Shikamaru she was living. She laughed dryly, her throat closing in as she followed the two men. She heard herself speak of weather, fake gossips falling out of her mouth between giggles. She was attentive to the faintest flicker of her jaw and fear crushed her insides, screeching.
Inward or outward, it didn't matter.
She was already gone. Leagues away, screaming and pulling at her hair and her voice was still too high-pitched when her dagger's pommel fell in the curve of her palm. Ino's eyes fell on the fragile flesh of their napes.
But she knew she could never make them disappear as easily as they could. Another giggled ripped through her. The wind shifted around her and she wished she could remind behind and stop talking. Stop thinking. Stop hurting.
-X-
I hope you don't hate me too much? :P