A/N: Tried a LOT of new stuff with this one. Particularly interested in how it works for you.

WARNINGS: ANGST.

Threads
Rose

Beauty of the Thorn

The moonlight was drowning out even the air around her, bathing everything in TenTen's small apartment with ghostly light that drained all color. It seemed fitting that she had come to live for these times when sound, light, and color meant nothing more than they did in the grave.

If she had a ring on her finger, the light would surely have caught it. How foolish to think that. How foolish to want it, when it would only betray her position to enemies.

Ring. Ring. Ring around the rosies.

She lay on her side, back towards the rising moon, her fingers playing idly with the curtain of russet hair as her lover slept beside her. With the light reflecting off his pale skin he seemed to glow, like an ethereal being from some other realm. A spirit who was only staying there the night, and would evaporate at dawn.

Here lies TenTen, in a small one bedroom apartment and the illusion of something that might be love.

How long had it been now? Seven years, maybe eight. How old was Higure now? She didn't even know, and that knowledge stung. She didn't even know how old her own son was? Hikiake was three now, she knew that much. With her wide white eyes and reddish hair, that Hinata always kept up in pigtails at Neji's request. That meant Higure had to be six, and it was seven years since Hyuuga Hiashi had ruined everything that had once been TenTen.

It was the simplest way to unite the two houses. Neji's wedding to Hinata, an event she remembered as the day filled with white, had brought an end to the hatred that had divided the family, uniting them under the pair as leaders. But the death of all of TenTen's dreams had not been the birth of love as Hiashi had hoped. Neji always told her that Hinata would always, to him, be a beloved little sister-spoiled and indulged but never desired. Not the way he always had her.

She tried to comfort herself with that while she waited in the tomb-like silence of her apartment, but it gave little.

It had bothered her, at first, that she was technically the other woman in Neji's life-no matter that the lack of physical desire was a mutual thing. By now she was dead to the guilt and the whispers that followed her of those ninja that dared to wonder where the Hyuuga children had gotten their red hair.

Perhaps that's what bothered her the most. The cold aching numbness that had replaced every shred of integrity she had. The joy that had used to fill her waking hours was now twisted, decaying into a longing for the quiet hours of dark when Neji would come to her and she could pretend, for a little while, that they were a real, living family. That the children he gave her would be hers to keep, instead of being taken and raised to call another Mommy.

It had seemed so simple when she'd gotten pregnant that first time. She would give the child to Neji and Hinata to raise, allowing them to have the heir they needed and her to avoid the financial strain of raising a child alone. Hinata would fake a pregnancy, something that was surprisingly easy to do, while TenTen would hide hers. How blissfully ideal. How foolish.

She had held him, her beautiful, perfect child-her Higure-for only a few heartbeats before the child had been taken to Hinata so she could present him to her father. It was she that Neji had to dote upon, pretend that she was the mother of his child, while she waited in agonizing silence for his next chance to slip away.

Even that had settled into a chilling numbness until Neji proudly told her that Higure had spoken his first word. Mama. When she had realized that it was not her face her perfect boy saw when he said that word, that he didn't even know who she was, she had cried in the warm space Neji left on the pillow for the first time in over year.

With Hikiake, she had tried not to get attached. Attempted to fool herself with everyone else that it was Hinata that was expecting a child, and little TenTen was still virginal, childish, and alone. She ignored the fluttering movements and fledgling heartbeats. She looked away when they delivered her. Still, when she closed her eyes, she could see that face with Neji's eyes and jaw, but her nose, her lips, her long thick red hair.

Hate, then, had crept into the dark room. Not for Neji, her rose among the lilies, but for his family. For the woman who could have stood up to her father without consequence and didn't. The one who taught her children their ABC's and nothing of their real mother who was not even allowed within the compound walls.

The moon wondered, she knew, and so did Neji if these stolen moments of love where really worth it. If it was love at all.

TenTen didn't wonder. To have Neji lying beside her, safe as her arms held him and she kissed his hair with ghostly touches, was worth any crown of thorns she had to bare. She had succeeded in protecting his reputation and the united family he had worked so hard for. She had given her heart, her soul, for his dream. It might not be love, she didn't know, but if she told herself anything else then it would be impossible to rise again.

Ring. Ring around…