I had a hard time finding the time to type this and I wanted my update to be long and thoroughly corrected. I also wanted to add summaries at beginning of each chapter at the request of Ami1010. You will now find every chapter beginning with the summary of the previous chapter for a spoiler free environment. :)
Answers to reviews are at the end because I hate writing a long author's note at the beginning when I haven't updated in a while. I imagine most of you skip it, anyway. :P
Summary of Chapter 8: Morino Ibiki found Katsuo, a Hyuuga bastard, dead. He was killed by Maito Gai when he tried to protect Tenten from the Chinese soldiers that Gai brought along. In the meantime, Torune, Fu and Ino caught up on Tenten and the Chinese soldiers who were sent by her grandfather to protect her. Ino took a pill from her clan that made her fall into a deep sleep state when Fu drew his katana inside her. Tenten believed her to be dead. Tenten then agreed to go with Torune and Fu to stop them from killing anyone else, but they made her watch as they killed all the monks. Afterward, Sora is awoken in the middle of night by Morino Ibiki who informed her of what happened to Tenten. They then made a deal, so that Sora can see Tenten again. The chapter ends with Hinata pushing another pill in Ino's mouth so that she would remain unconscious. Her motives are still unclear for now.
Enjoy! ^_^
-X-
Tenten bowed low, her moist forehead lightly pressed against the floor. The tatami mats smelled fresh and the breeze was heavy with the last hours of the day, but all the scents were foul at the back of her mouth. Lingering. Rotting. They were all intertwined with Rong's silver teeth spattered with blood, soaked in Ino's blood.
She agreed out of ego and now she was alone.
"Danzo-sama."
The first time Tenten wore yellow and bowed to Shimura Danzo was also the first time she danced in front of men. She remembered the weight of her robes and their impatient stares. She remembered thinking she would have to wait with them for something to happen. They were promised magic in her movements, grace and satisfaction. But they shifted, glanced back and forth between the exit, she danced, but in the end, they simply waited for Danzo.
The first time she danced, she cut her tongue on the only needle she had in her mouth. When she began, sliding into the first step, she thought a needle could have kill them all if she wanted, but she was the only one who bled by her own hand in the end. There was a difference between owning metal and drawing blood, despite the short gap between life and death. Danzo showed her that. A snap of fingers and people clutched their stomachs. No metal, no direct hit, no battle nor war cry.
The first time she danced, none of the men survived.
They died clutching their stomach, blood in their vomit, and their hands threw their tea cups against the floor and walls. She kept waiting and dancing. It wasn't the magic she had been promised.
Tenten now imagined these men hanging in the room above their heads. She saw them perched behind her every night, she was then asked to dress for Danzo. She never stopped wondering, from this moment on, how men rose and fell.
As she bowed in front of him sitting on the Japanese throne, it seemed like she was still waiting for something, the last sliver of magic she was promised. They had taken her last dagger and there was only one needle left at the back of her throat.
She raised her head and met Danzo's glance. She smiled, despite the pain and her eyes rung with red. There no blood filling her mouth, only his dark glance and his half-burnt face, calm but triumphant. He wore his ceremonial robes solely for her, she knew. The curtains surrounding the throne and the cushions of silk on which he sat were meant to be part of her entrance in the castle. He wanted her to know one only one man could sit on the throne. All along she had been his pawn. He arranged faith like she had seen Chinese travellers play pupai or domino; pieces placed close to each other, creating a pattern that changed and morphed once the first piece is pushed down. His scope had always been wider than hers, than all of them, and they all served the purpose of making the other fall. Neji and her. Ino and Shikamaru. Naruto and Sakura.
The last domino had fallen and she had stopped dancing. Danzo was sitting on his throne and she was his prisoner. They had reached the end of the game.
"It has been a very long time, Danzo-sama. How are you faring?"
She would wait, one needle at a time, and he would die.
Torune grabbed her elbow and pulled her up, his scent hovering around him, rotten corpses and poison. His breath slid slick and moist against her neck.
"It's how I am faring you should be worried about, Tenten-chan." Roughly, he turned her head towards him. His nails dug into her skin and she stilled, her heartbeat raging against her ribs. "I will now take her to her room, Danzo-sama," he said louder, his dark eyes boring into hers. "Oh, we won't be sloppy like the Akatsuki, don't worry. Now, smile for me, Tenten-chan."
-X-
The First Needle
by Clementive
-X-
Every day, she lost.
Tenten didn't know how she scattered her soul, prying her grip loose on her reality, and sinking into herself. She simply didn't know how she thought she could ever win a game she was prisoner of.
Every day, she thought she could twist her freedom out of Torune's hands. Every day, his grip was firm and she saw no one but him, heard no one but him.
Danzo ignored her, but Torune told her one story every day.
He would sit in front of her, cocking his head on the side, watching her and the pain in her cheeks was constant until he began his stories. She never stopped smiling.
Tenten told herself that she was waiting, but she grew restless with every flower that bloomed, every day the sky hung clear and light above her head and the birds were abundant, constantly filling the gardens. She wasn't allowed in the gardens, they confined her to a room, but from there, she could see the day unfold, the birds, the drifting petals, and the sun, turning silver until it sank and morphed with the darkness. Like her. And she was haunted by ghosts. Ino and her father would take turn and expect her to do something, to sever her chains, but Torune had kept his words about not being sloppy like the Akatsuki. If she woke with hope, she went to sleep inwardly screaming, her cushion pressed against her face to smother her tears and breathing.
"How do you like your tomb, Tenten-chan? Because this will be the room where you give birth and the one where you will die shortly after."
She had vowed to turn her heart to stone. She had thought she could fight, one pawn at a time, her fingers relaxed around her fan, but Torune's words followed throughout the night, harassing her, soft, and taunting. Some nights, she closed her eyes and it was Ino's lips whispering his taunts. His words built bridges between each story, reaching in the darkest part of her past sometimes, a constant echo in the shell of her ears, even if she didn't know if they were true or fiction. She would surprise his words trailing in her thoughts and shuddered, knowing he was in his way to poisoning her heart.
"Should I tell you how many men Neji-sama has lost today, Tenten-chan? Should I tell you that Naruto-sama refuses to take the throne now? No, no, where are my manners? How are you faring, my dear little empress?"
There were moments when she thought no one was watching that she would dig her nails into her stomach, and for a fleeting moment, she was begging for the final move. But then servants would stop her and she would hear Torune's breathless laugh. If she turned then, there was no one and her saliva was thick in her mouth.
Sometimes, he made her forget about her last needle. Then she would nip the inside of her cheek and she would force herself to breath normally.
One needle against an invisible army of piling words and cadavers.
Torune was always watching her with an impenetrable smile. Whenever she closed her eyes, he was there, haunting the darkness, hovering around her closed lids, the servants always meek behind the wooden screens. Ino's ghost was fleeting, dressed in gore and bluish pallor, slowly dissolving into the nothingness that oppressed her.
She barely remembered her father face, but he called her weak.
"Should I tell you how many servants I have killed so far, my dear little empress? How desperate your husband must be to have you back... He sent five women to their death trying to save you. Maybe I should send him a scroll and tell him how many innocent people died because of you? Do you think he will stop caring about you then?"
Every day, servants asked her small clipped questions about the temperature of her bath or the colours of her kimono, always half of their bodies turned toward Torune. They were trembling and afraid, whenever they touched her. They exchanged glances: What if Torune thought they were traitors? They were the ones who scrubbed the blood of those who tried to save her and they wore nothing but yellow. Tenten mostly nodded, every word drained out of by Torune's stories. With each nod, she prayed her child would slip out of her. Instead, it grew stronger and there was no relief. An old servant rubbed her back and thighs every day, saying it would help her child stay.
She didn't want it to anymore.
-X-
Every time Hyuuga Neji looked upon a battlefield, he saw deserted lands ruled by crushing silence, even though it was filed with the latest scream, the first drawn sword. Every time a battle ended, it kept pushing and pulling back in his mind, as if behind his lids, time stopped and he couldn't hear or see anything beyond swords and blood and beaten mud clinging to his armour.
Yet, the monastery was nothing but the dead silence of an overcrowded tomb.
His men were calling his wife a traitor and he knew they expected him to turn his sword towards himself and die with honour. He imagined if his uncle or father were still alive, they would expect the same from him, the Hyuuga clan wasn't in the habit of carrying their ghosts in chains and letting them drag their steps. But Neji never had a family. He didn't know if his hatred was simply too strong for him to refuse to die or if it was the thought of leaving Tenten alone with their child. He didn't think either made him an honourable man. He hoped it made him a beast. His blood seething, his jaw clenched, and his eyes seeing beyond the soldiers he cut down. A beast. Because only a beast could tear Danzou's heart out and still refuse to bow to anyone.
Neji barely blinked when a shadow appeared beside his and when he looked up, Morino Ibiki was already staring at him. His black robes drew his scars out, carving the darkness out as to leave only the brutality behind each of his expressions.
"I would normally pretend to say something charming about your loss, but I'm not in the mood, Hyuuga. You and I had a little deal. Remember?" Ibiki snorted glancing briefly around him before narrowing his eyes at him.
His white eyes shifted to behind him where a small veiled woman was cocking her head at the scene. Imperceptibly, she turned slowly towards Neji, before pausing and turning her back to them. Her black kimono was ample, but it floated stiffly around her, her movement carefully controlled and restrained, as if her limbs were bound beneath her robes.
"Keep staring at her and this discussion ends now with your head in my fist and an awful quantity of blood," Ibiki hissed.
Her laughter was raspy and barely rose from her chest. She kept walking away without looking back until she reached the horses draped in black and silver, the colours of the Morino clan. Even when she touched her horse, her hand was careful and her movements swift. Neji frowned, detached from the scene in front of him and the strange woman who wore her veil without grace.
"Just go home, woman. I'll take care of this. There's no need for you to act like a stubborn kid."
Even if the woman was far, Neji saw her shoulders tensed beneath the heavy clothes. Then, she paused and he noticed that they were all turned toward her now. He didn't know what shifted in the air, what stopped and carried on between the woman and them, but the cries of the birds were now deafening along with the rustles of the branches. Wherever his pupils turned, there were brown spots fading into dirt and grit of the desert, and swallowing the greenery whole. It ate at the white sky and his heart. Tenten's body was the only one missing, while Yamanaka Ino still lied in a frozen slumber.
They had lost this war many times over without it being official yet.
"Yes, there is because you're nothing but a selfish man."
In a quick movement, her black robes rippled and floated mid-air when she pushed herself up on the saddle. The horse's hooves brought up dust and sand and Neji had to protect his face. Carefully, Ibiki clenched and unclenched his fists before briskly turning towards him.
"Our deal, Hyuuga," Ibiki growled, carefully spreading his fingers. The leather of his gloves barely tensed and he could feel his thirst dulled at the back of his throat. He preferred her far away for what he was about to say and do.
"She would want me to let her fight," Neji whispered, paling, because he thought if there was one thing Morino Ibiki and he agreed about it was Tenten's safety, "but I just want her safe and away from the fight. Does this make me a bad husband?"
"Oh, I'm not here to talk about your demons," Ibiki said lowly, menacingly, as if he had to contain all the impatience and his urge to pass his hand over his scars again. Sora had a way of infiltrating his thoughts whenever he felt his scars and he heard nothing but her screams, and he couldn't have that now. He couldn't tell her the truth about her daughter or her brother. Not now. Not while Hyuuga Hoheto was still alive and his revenge wasn't executed. "I'm definitely not here to mother you, Hyuuga. I'm here to collect. Where's the bastard's head?" The last part he ended up shouting.
At this point, he wanted to address no one's demons but his own. Selfish, she had called him, and she was right. He thought of no one but himself for too long. He loved no one but himself for too long.
"After the war..."
"When I was in Konoha, I was a slave to your clan," Ibiki cut Neji off, taking a step toward him, until his height towered him. He was careful to notice the faintest flinch before speaking again as if they were in his torture chamber. His stomach twisted and he wished they were, with nothing but blood between them. "I obeyed and obeyed because I was banned from my home. For over 25 years, I was your dog, your little bitch. Your goddamn mother licking your ass every time your grandfather, then your uncle and now you, shat all over the place and I needed to clean up after you, dogs. Today, you're my little bitch, Hyuuga," he dug his finger in Neji's chest, smiling savagely when he took a step back under the pressure. He had to bite down a snarl, his thirst for blood rising in his chest and pounding in his ears. He had waited too long for this. Revenge and power once more lacing his words and posture. "Today, your men are in the South and I own the South. Every little grain of sand twisted between your goddamn toes is mine. Mine, you hear? As long as your ass is here, I own it. So, let me remind you again that I'm here to collect: where is his head?"
"Ibiki-san, Tenten..."
"Yes, yes, Tenten, that little wife of yours who doesn't know any of your secrets. The first time you tried to kill your uncle. The first time you tried to kill your cousin. Ah! The second time. The only time you cheated on your dead wife. Boring secrets, but secrets nonetheless."
"She would know it's in the past." His jaw clenched and he found he couldn't look away from the dark eyes.
Neji had known Morino Ibiki was dangerous before. He had heard the stories, seen nothing but broken men crawled out of his torture chambers, but it had never occurred to him before then, there may have a been a polished howling thirst behind it all. He didn't understand how his inclination toward inflicting pain was not to serve either anger or pain. Or honour. When Tenten spoke of him, she dismissed his roughness as a flaw in his character, not as a way of being contained, away from his sharp instruments and the smell of blood. She hadn't seen him the way he appeared to his eyes; caged, and now free. And he supposed they all didn't. They had all made the mistake of dismissing him as the tool he was because they were too disgust, too arrogant, to cut through skin and bones like he did to learn what they wanted to thought he was a sadist instead of a dangerous man with an obscure past and twisted thoughts. His stare stopped on the bandana covering his head and Neji found he couldn't breathe.
Beneath his scars, he could see his skull rippling towards the surface as if something inside of him was awakening. He was wearing his torture gloves.
"You're misunderstanding me, Hyuuga. At sunset, I either have his head or I take yours. The rest was just small talk because you're sulking and it disgusts me." Ibiki leaned in and his lips curled back on his teeth, deepening his scars. He knew what would be his next move. Men on the verge of breaking were always so predictable.
"Wherever you go," he whispered, his eyes hard on the last trails of blood. "I'll find you, Hyuuga. There's always a price for everything and I will make you pay. I will even make you scream if I have to. Remember that."
-X-
The fire inside her was dying.
Tenten glanced at the high walls, the mats creaking softly beneath the ball of her feet and knees, the sun pouring longer with each passing day. And she knew all of it was a mirage; the cedar was ashes, the sun would soon turn cold and each day she was alive now was one day less she would live after childbirth.
"Do you want to know what Konoha's lords say about you, Tenten-chan?"
Behind her smile, her mind stretched and bent with blood and tears. She heard the whispers from her room when nobles hurried by on light foot. They said she chose a throne over her husband and they called her a seductress, their tone altering between disgust and thrill. To them, a woman was either cunning enough to raise in the world or she was dead and insignificant.
"May I pray to my ancestors?" Hesitantly, she ran her tongue on her dry lips.
Torune cocked his head on the side sighing softly. She opened her mouth again, but he tapped her cheek like she was a child. She quelled a shudder when he leaned closer.
"You are not getting alive out of here, Tenten-chan," he whispered in her ear as he gripped her elbow pulling her toward him. "And you are not getting near anything that produces fire. No incense for you, little empress. No shrine that you can throw or use as weapon. We both know you don't know your ancestors. Ah! Maybe, they will call you the Orphan Empress?"
He released her slowly, smiling his enigmatic smile. Out the corner of her eyes, she caught the frown on her oldest maid and she stepped back. Her heart beat roughly against her ribcage as they stared at each other. Oblivious to them, Torune stood up, stretching his legs as he walked past her. He stopped when he reached the sliding doors and turned back toward her, his lips curved in an empty smile.
"The lords have sent a formal request to Hyuuga Neji to die in honour. The South has withdrawn its support to him. Do you know what he did?"
"He surrendered." Her lips barely moved and thick ice water filled her. Her eardrums buzzed like she was drowning.
"No, no, no!" He clasped his arms behind his back, watching her like a hawk as she blinked slowly. One last gulp of air before sinking.
"I don't understand," she shook her head because it pounded with what she knew of Neji. How strictly he followed the rules. How he believed in honour and doing the right thing. How he carried the memories and spirits of his uncle and father in every decision he made.
"He ran away. Your husband is now a dishonoured runaway with no name. I would think you have changed him. But don't worry, Tenten-chan, it means that now, we don't have to wait for him to die in honour anymore before you marry Danzou-sama. His grandfather already proclaimed your marriage null and void and disowned him. He agrees that the best course of action to restore his family honour is for his great-grandson to be raised by an emperor."
Sharply, he bent over and he touched her stomach, but she barely felt his hands.
There was no need to run away anymore.
-X-
The moon was new when the longest shadows of the night spoke to her through the breeze the air of the night carried through the screens.
"Tenten... Like heaven. Little by little. I like your name, Tenten-dekka. It was a long time since I last heard it."
Tenten stared at the ceiling, panting. She wondered if it had all been a dream. Neji, running away. Neji, giving up and her still carrying their child. She reached across from her, but the sheets were empty.
"Don't search for me there, Tenten-dekka."
The voice seemed to bleed down the walls, sneaked between the wooden slates, reaching her one cold syllable at a time. She thought she had still a step in her dreams. Her skin hummed with the last traces of them, her skin slick and warm. Almost instinctively, her hand fell on her swollen stomach.
"Cold, cold. You must be so cold. All this time..."
Softly, the voice laughed and the hair of her arms stood on end at the nape of her neck. Tenten rose her body on her elbows, her eyes searching the darkness. On the veranda, a lantern burnt, distorting the shape of a servant kneeling in front of the sliding doors. She narrowed her eyes at the darkness nearer her. Her breath quickened, uncomfortable in her mouth.
"Yes, a very long time."
"Who is this?" Tenten breathed out, closing the silk around her body more tightly. Her needle burnt on her tongue, swaying with her heavy pants.
"Secrets, secrets," the voice went on and Tenten startled when she felt a cold breath sliding down her cheek. "So many secrets in your name. How cold you must be." Then, fingers grazed her. Icy and long, spreading across her skin like spiders.
Tenten screamed so loudly she felt something inside her shatter, wrinkled and torn out of her throat.
"Your mother too is cold," it whispered directly into her ear and something dropped onto her laps.
It clicked softly when she reached for it. Naturally, her fists closed around it and the darkness pulsed around the metal, a gentle caress.
Her scream died out instantly while outside, steps and voices rose and amplified.
When the servants found her, she had a kunai in her hand. She smiled when her fingers were pried open. They cracked with a satisfying sound. Behind them, the screen doors looked like they had been clawed down by a dragon. Torune entered last, his dark eyes unsettled and his clothes wrinkled.
She wouldn't be cold for long now. She didn't know how, she didn't know when because she was smiling and waiting and letting the servants guide her to the bath house, and her head was filled with Torune's stories and Neji's abandoning her to the fate of hearing them over and over again. Her eyes burnt from crying and her heart ached, but inside her, there was nothing but churning anger.
Behind her, Torune hissed when he touched the blade, its coldness branding his skin just as hot iron would have. She didn't see his face, but she heard his breath catch. She heard every single of his previous words and it was like his spell was broken and he was picking at its pieces.
Tenten was still smiling, her teeth, sharp pearls in the darkness.
The will for revenge. She knew the feeling, the rusty scent dulling her senses, the humming under her skin. The visceral pull. Anger and hatred toward those she loved, she also knew.
She would kill them all one needle at a time, she decided.
-X-
"Sora."
Lowly, he cursed. He refused to run after her in front of his men.
"Sora!"
"You lied to me," she whispered, as she always began her arguments; one whisper before the cut. Always a whisper at the beginning, because there was a time, where all she did was whisper and bow. She clenched her teeth, her fingers tearing the black veil from her head. She let it slip onto the floor, her steps determined and not slowing. Ibiki followed her into the main part of his compound, his lips still clenched in curses. His cousins were smirking.
"Goddamn woman, can you..."
"You lied to me!" She snapped coldly while roughly shaking her head, her eyes trailing on every slants instead of turning back toward him. Sora counted them, keeping their colour and details in her mind, so she wouldn't turn back. "You told me Hoheto-niisama was dead, but you only made a deal."
"Does it matter?"
"Yes, it does," Sora yelled and she didn't know where it came from, raw and thundering. They both stopped on the veranda, breathing hard. She was suddenly afraid that she meant it for everything they had silently agreed to leave buried. Everything mattered. Between them. Around them. Her and him, divided. She panted violently refusing to shake her head again and again. They faced each other and as always, it shifted something inside her.
"If he truly was dead, then I would know you did it for us, but now I know you did it for you," Sora stated coldly.
She refused to flinch when he narrowed his eyes. Or when he closed the distance between them. She counted the wooden slants beneath her feet, controlling her intakes. An odd number. She pursued her lips, she hated odd numbers.
"Oh, I did. At first, I thought it was for you, but I realized that... All you care about is your daughter and if you had to choose again, you would still choose her over me. I'm not selfish, Sora, I'm just tired of waiting for you. I'm tired of thinking this is some sort of unpleasant spell because I still can't have you. Even after all I did for you. Even if every day, when I go to sleep all I hear is your goddamn screams because you just couldn't let it go and you had to fix my face. I'm still alive because of you and you won't even take me."
She saw his impatience and despair on the curve of his lips, interrupted by his scars and she took a step back. Slowly, she counted the bears painted across the screen nearer them.
"I know you aren't good with social interactions, woman," he hissed, his hand nervously reaching for the scars, "but this is the moment, you say something back."
"You're the only one who cares about your face." She stated coldly, pivoting on her heels. She realized she too sounded tired. She was tired of the same conversation, the same fight between a man who used to be handsome and her, who was born disabled and never grew to be whole.
"Don't walk away from me, Sora." He blocked her way, raising her hands and his eyes were wide. He was careful not to touch her. It made her pause because she knew who lurked underneath his skin when he was terrified to touch her and it was his past intertwined with hers. It was his father, his mother and his training as a torturer. She stared hard at a loose thread of the embroidery on the cuffs of his robes.
"Would you just look at me?"
She blinked because she saw giving up, his body already leaning away from her. She reached for the thread and he stilled when she leaned him with a needle. He let her fix the thread, her mouth pinched around more needles. He let her redo the design and she frowned when he still wouldn't speak first. If she saw things beyond people's skin, he had always been the one to truly understand them.
"Is it what you truly want?" she whispered softly, letting his cuff go. Glancing up at him, she clenched her fists slowly, watching the muscles ripple beneath the skin, igniting a dull pain in her joints. They used to understand each other through pain, now that there was nothing else standing in their way, she wondered if they hadn't simply became numb. "You want me to choose you? Don't you know, then?" She laughed bitterly and her cheeks barely trembled. Her laugh was always either empty or filled with everything but happiness. "Oh, but you do know what happened last time I chose you. Hiashi-niisama kneeled in front of me, Ibiki, when he told me what you had done to... him." Even after all this time, Sora found she couldn't say his name, afraid it would evoke his spirit and she would lose everything again. "So, I know that you know," she added slowly. Her eyes burnt, but she refused to blink, counting the bears engraved onto the pillars behind him. "You know that the last time I chose you, I nearly died. Now, you fix us, like a man."
She clenched her fist completely and let herself be filled with pain. She didn't understand humans like he did. She didn't fully understand how much he cared for her or how much she loved him, but she understood pain. She understood the clarity it brought, the quelled anger it required.
Between them, it just wasn't enough anymore.
"You're not under a spell and I'm not a witch, Bibiki-kun." Her voice hardened and she could finally breathe normally. "You need to stop with these excuses, because I've negotiated enough for you and I too am tired. Now fix us or let me go."
She brushed past him, her eyes flickering between the number of doors on the veranda and the Morino soldiers still furtively watching them.
"Your brother is dead." He didn't look at her when she slowly turned back to face him.
"You idiot," she snapped with her lips curling around her teeth in a snarl. "I told you to leave these two morons alone. What do you think is going to happen now? Father will send someone after you, the Morino clan will send someone back..." She cocked her head on the side, glaring at him, because he didn't react and it unnerved her. "Which one is it?"
"I didn't mean those two. I meant Katsuo."
"He was with Tenten," she nodded stiffly. She had seen the monks sprayed against the monastery. She had seen the blood. She already knew it had been a possibility, but she still wanted Ibiki to stop talking. His father may have five sons, but she had always considered she had only one brother.
"Yes."
"I need to fix your other cuff. Who did this design, the threads are all loose."
His nose was already against her neck before she could finish talking. His hands titled her face up and her needle was inches from his cuffs.
"Stop it, little princess."
It was still familiar and she wasn't afraid. His lips grazed her cheek even if she didn't see them move. His hands moved carefully down her throat until they rested on her dancing bears tattoos above her chest. Distractingly, she counted the fading brown freckles in his eyes.
"Do you want his head?"
"I'm not crying." She bit her trembling lip and she stared above his head.
"I know."
"I want his head. Whoever did this, I want his head."
"I know."
She finally let him draw her to his chest. Her hands fisted his shirt, until her arms trembled. His hands sank in her hair until she stopped trembling against him. Then, slowly, she fixed his other cuff.
-X-
She needed to find the ghost, she told herself.
She needed to escape and turn away from Neji, one last time.
Wide awake, Tenten lied, unmoving, her breathing slow. Only her fingers twitched over her stomach. If it hadn't been for the weight of the kunai on her laps, then in her hand, she would have thought the voice was inside her head. The coldness, the spreading emptiness, was already hers. She wanted to touch a kunai again, so she waited for the ghost in the deepening darkness.
She grew tired, restless and she moved to her side. The shadow projected on above her head moved with her, stretching as the old servant crouched forward searching the darkness for a weapon. Tenten bit her below lip to keep her from reciting the prayers she half-remembered that were meant to call for ghosts. A sheen of sweat gathered above her brows, the night already advanced.
"Where are you?" she mouthed to the darkness.
"I need you," her lips wouldn't say.
Her muscles contracted, ready to spring, when silk bristled and the servant stood up silently sliding the screens open for a rare draft of air. Instead, a sigh drew goose bumps on her arms and neck. A strand of hair brushed against her cheek even if her eyes saw nothing.
"Kill Torune. Then, you will be saved."
Tenten almost screamed when no additional weight rest in her outstretched hand. Her fist closed around thin hair, her fingertips tingling with the brush of hard fabric.
-X-
Tenten watched the soft curves of the shaking branches, with the same heaviness in her chest she had felt for days. Beneath her knees, she could feel the slats bending under someone's weight. She wished she was like the ghost with no weight under her steps. She wished she gathered coldness on her skin instead of burying more underneath her skin. The ghost hadn't visited again and she still didn't know how to kill a man with a weapon she wanted to use against another.
Slowly, her eyes turned toward the screens they had replaced and she shivered. She remembered the icy rage and the ripping fabric. Human skin was more resistant and Torune had no more stories, yet he still came smiling at her. She knew, one day, he would enter her rooms and tell her with was time for her to marry Danzo. When she would stop startling at his approach. When she would have hoped he never did.
The floor snapped on the other side of the garden, the trees keeping her from seeing the nobleman or courtesan that passed by. She knew all the courtesans and noblemen left behind now all turned to Danzo because he was the one sitting on the throne. They had always bowed to the throne instead of the man. No emperor was simply mortal. He was a god, silky curtains carefully layered around a throne of cushions. He was chosen. He was not to be kept from the throne and they saw Danzo as this kind of force of nature; untamed and violent.
The screens snapped open and the servants bowed swiftly, their needle work disregarded. As it often did, the older servant's stare found hers, her mouth set in a hard line. Without ceremony, Torune crossed his legs beneath him on the cushions and reached for the bowl of fruits in front of Tenten.
"How are you faring, Tenten-chan?"
He didn't expect her to reply, so he turned toward the servants instead, asking them the same questions he always asked on the behalf of Danzo. Their voices grew muffled, most words resonating as orders from Torune. It made her wish, as it always did, that she had been better at the art of conversation. Ino could weave a tale with dropped eyelids and hushed words. Ino could use anything as a weapon, unlike her. Then, she froze, remembering the glance of the older servant.
"I need a fan," she said, "the day is too hot." Her voice was meeker than she would have liked, but Torune shrugged waving off one of the servant before reaching for another fruit.
"You should wipe your mouth, Torune-san."
He raised his head toward her this time, his eyes shining with the arrogant amusement she expected from him. His lips curled back and his fingers took the stone of the fruit. Without taking his eyes off her, he threw it in the bowl.
"This may appear as if you are a lady as you do nothing all day long but wait for men like Danzo and me to notice you. However, you are dirt. Never forget Tenten," he hissed the syllables of her name, his lips still glistering, "that you spread your legs for wealthy men all your life. You will never be a lady."
Hesitantly, the servant pushed at fan toward her laps.
"Well, I think we have now established why I have never lied with you." Her hand moved delicately in a reflex over the fan and it snap open while the silence weighed heavily on them. Servants crouched and soldiers stiffened. "You poor, poor man."
"You think he'd care if I took you, Tenten-chan?" Torune growled after he let the silence stretched.
She forced herself to shrug, her fan moving as the extension of the gesture. She had to quell the movement that would have brought it near her face. She had to force herself through the unfamiliarity of outrage and composure. Battlefields required neither. Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see the older servant had clenched her right fist briefly before relaxing it.
"I think Torune-san should wipe his mouth."
Before he could see that she bit her lip, unsure of her next words, Tenten turned away. If she killed Danzo with a needle, she would need to kill Torune with words. One story at a time. Swiftly, he grabbed her head turning her back toward him and her vision swam.
"What-"
He wrinkled her kimono wiping his mouth on it before pushing her away. She caught herself panting, hating that she trembled. She truly was no Ino. Her hands hesitated over the wet spot on her chest.
"When I said you were dirt, I meant it, Tenten-chan."
-X-
She needed to kill him.
Or she needed to make him kill her child.
When she bathed, Tenten often heard the whispers of nobles in the second chamber of the bathhouse. Hesitantly at first, she would shift their words to reply to Torune, layering her own story. It was meek and pitiful, when she first heard it in her own voice and he would laugh at her or ignore her.
"I haven't heard Lady Hiroko's voice in a long time," she shrugged feigning boredom but she knew Hiroko's husband had been close with the previous emperor. If he had a bastard, he would know even if he couldn't put anyone on the throne as long as his wife was held hostage at the castle. "She wrote to someone, her servant whispered."
The next day, Hiroko's servant was sent after by Danzo's men. They found her in the valley on the way to the shogunate of Fire, but they couldn't find any letter on her. They executed her, and Tenten found she didn't have enough strength to cry for her as she had been the one directing the blow. Neji was gone and she felt so was a part of her. If there was no use escaping for Neji anymore, she ought to escape for herself. Thinking of Neji's betrayal still drew a dull ache in a chest rather than the anger she expected to feel, but there was still the House of Dragons. There was still her child.
And she couldn't stay to marry Danzo, because Neji hadn't. She wouldn't be one more sacrifice.
She was surprised at how doing everything to survive readily came back to her. Maybe she had never became more than a Chinese orphan among Japanese people.
Torune now listened to her, so she had to be more careful. Imagined greed brewed from her words, tensed lies that suggested rebellion and masked anger. She now knew how many words were enough for him to think without being guided. She began collecting words like she had once collected weapons. She was careful in sparing them, polishing them until they turned deadly. She would feign discomfort when Torune leaned in too close, maintaining eye-contact with her oldest servant, because she was the only one who clicked her tongue when he touched her. She knew how women destroyed men, so she also started whispering at her servants about Torune in masked, but loaded expressions.
Danzo stopped ignoring her, then.
Fu started to visit her chambers, never entering but only speaking to the men guarding the entrance and sometimes the servant. She saw Torune's fall from afar, a gradual shift, in the way the servants didn't stop talking when he showed. It was hidden in the way the cook failed to lower his eyes and then in the way, guards and noblemen didn't stop when he passed, whistling his usual soft tune.
The sakura were half-closed when Torune snapped his fingers in the direction of the servants and he sat in front of her. Tenten smiled, surprised he didn't catch the sudden hesitation, how no one was oriented toward him anymore. Then she recalled the wild eyes of the men who died on the first night she danced, how they searched the darkness for a demon that was already in their cup. No one could mistake Danzo's anger for too long though. The floor trembled beneath someone's weight and she knew it would Fu. So she leaned in before Torune could speak. Her mouth was painted in bright red and she left a mark on his earlobe.
"Danzo-sama now favours Fu, Torune-san."
He started sneering, then they heard Fu's calm deep voice addressing the soldiers. Tenten didn't have to wait long for the realization to hit him. His face twisted in surprise, his scent making her dizzy, but she kept watching his gaze dropping to her stomach.
He exploded, brutal and poisonous, like she expected him to, but he still knocked her on her back before Fu tore the screen opened with the guards. Both guards and he pulled Torune out of the room, their voice rising in a torrent of shouts that drew the other nobles out. Tenten touched her burst lip with the tip of her tongue, half her face now painted in bright red. Her blood hummed violently under her skin, making her deaf to the rest of the world around her. The ceiling quivered under the unstable flames of the lanterns servants brought and she couldn't help but smile, as they yelled asking her about the baby. If she was in pain.
Torune should have realized her child and her were worth much to Danzo than he could ever be.
"Oh, I'm perfectly fine now."
One pawn down.
-X-
Tenten was awoken by a stifled cry and a light pressure on her shoulder. She opened her eyes, disoriented, but her body was made of stone, dragging her back into her dreams.
"You need to dress now, Tenten-dekka."
Her servants pulled her up softly even if her limbs were still stiff. Through the sliding doors, she could see the orange sky and the black clouds, hovering, low, around the tallest tower of the castle. The stones appeared dulled in the rising day, swayed by light of contrasting colours. Tenten couldn't see the soldiers who usually patrolled the tower. Her breath stopped at the back of her throat until she swallowed, her teeth tightening their hold on her last needle. A sense of doom contracted her chest, her child now twice the weight it was when she fell asleep.
"Does Danzo-sama wish to speak with me?" Her words were detached even though when her tongue lightly rolled her needle, her mouth was set ablaze. She knew where to hit in his neck. Her night robes were hastily removed and this time, they didn't ask for her opinion, they tied a red kimono around her body. The servants' faces were ashen and when they looked up at her, she felt her insides turned to ice, receding to the pit of her stomach.
"Neji is here," she whispered.
One of the servants gripped her hand hard, making her bend. Her eyes widened at her expression.
"No, a ghost is here."
Immediately, the older servant clicked her tongue and smacked the other servant's hand. When Tenten turned blinking, they all drew the superstitious sign against malicious spirits in the air. She walked through the palace aware of the silence of the morning, and she thought of Torune's coming back to haunt her. She thought of at least a dozen men who could wake from their eternal sleep and wish for her death. Her mouth was thick and her hands were firmly clasped across her stomach. Her hair was loose, dancing heavily across her shoulders and back and she felt faint.
They were walking toward the throne room.
She noticed that even the soldiers seemed too stiff in their posture, their eyes following her as she passed as if she was the ghost. She barely remembered kneeling when the servants moved from her side to slide the doors open.
Her heart was loud in her ears when she saw Danzo in his night robes. The guards around him stood with drawn swords. They were frozen as if part of a kabuki play, hesitating between slaying their swords and screaming and she could feel their bodies fold and unfold a thousand times before her, trapped in the sequence of movements that awoken them.
Then the green eyes found hers and her breath was torn from her chest. She heard metal clicking and sliding onto itself, her tessen slowly snapping open on her thighs. Her kimono was slick black like her hair and Tenten couldn't help but think the sky had been bleeding when her mother decided to sit on the Japanese throne.
And she still didn't smile.
"I do hope you had every intention of inviting me to my grandchild's birth if not to your wedding, Tenten."
Her last needle nipped the inside of her cheek, her senses filled with blood. On her mother's laps, the tessen spread wider, its sharp edges gleaming in black tainted silver. Her heart hummed in her ears while already dead in her chest; she would die today, she knew.
Or they both would.
-X-
It may have taken a while but at least you get a long chapter and the other chapter is already typed. I just need to go through it a couple more time to correct grammar and other important stuff. Just so you know, next chapter is mostly in Hinata's POV and it will portray what happens at the front of the battlefield. As well as what 'in God's name' happened to Neji. *smiles innocently*
Answers to reviews:
To Chisa Chispa: Thank you for your review! :) You know this kidnapping was planned since the beignning, but Akatsuki one snuck up on me. Hahaha :P I didn't even realize until you say it that it may be redundant. Oh well, sorry about that ^_^'
To Crazee: I like to write unexpected stuff. ;) Thank you for your review!
Please let me know what you thought in a review!