"I still can't believe it happened. I remember it happening, I can feel that it had happened. Yet, I still can't believe it. I know, it's not my fault. But it still feels like it was. I was wasted, and doing drugs. If I was clear headed, I would have realized exactly how bad things were getting." Sakura said as she sat in the back of her car while Hinata drove, staring up at the stars.
"Instead, I was all happy and peppy until he got so fed up with me, that he slapped me, and pushed me on ground right then and there. I don't want to press charges on him, because I love him. But I'm not entirely sure when I can forgive him." Sakura sighed, looking at Ino, beside her.
"I'm sorry I dragged you guys to the hospital with me. I was just really scared about it." Sakura explained as Ino pulled out a blanket for her from the trunk, by pulling the back of her seat forward.
"It's okay Sakura." Tenten assured her. "I think it's a really good thing you went in."
Sakura half smiled and started at the multi-coloured bright lights of the convenience store. "What are we stopping here for?"
"Munchies, slurpees and whatever comfort foods we can get here." Hinata said as she parked the car. "Me and Tenten and go get things. What would you guys like?"
"You can get me some chips, chocolate, and maybe some kind of gummy candy, a slurpee and a pop." Ino smiled as she looked at the entrance to the store. "Get me BBQ chips, and dark chocolate. As for slurpee and pop, you can get me Coke."
"Milk chocolate please." Sakura half smiled. "Sour cream and onion chips. A big bag. Same as the others with Ino, but those fruit flavoured gummies."
"Coming right up." Tenten smiled as her and Hinata left.
In the store, Tenten and Hinata shared a glance, both wondering exactly how Sakura really was.
"She'll be okay right?" Tenten asked as they gathered up what they were getting.
Hinata shrugged her shoulders. "I hope Sasuke learned his lesson though."
"No kidding. I guess he'd said something along the lines of, he thought she wanted it."
"Did he? What kind of girl wants to get raped?" Hinata growled as she finished grabbing what she had of her and Sakura's choices.
Tenten sighed, and nodded. The two placed everything on the counter. "It's all together." Tenten said as she pulled out her card she was given for emergencies.
The cashier stared at the large amount of food questioningly. "Uh, ok." She said, beginning the scanning.
Tenten and Hinata shared another, long look.
"You don't think Sakura would try to-"
"Never in a thousand years. I think..."
"What if she does?"
"We will be supportive and keep telling her how much we love her." Hinata explained as she stared grabbing bags off the counter while Tenten paid.
"Let's hope it doesn't ever come to that." Tenten said before they left the store.
-
"Remember when you had a place where you could be completely safe? No yelling, every conversation was calm, peaceful, and happy. You weren't afraid of being yourself and you never had a reason to feel ashamed about your thoughts and your feelings. But it's not like that anymore. Every decision you make, every road you walk down, there's an unspoken danger that with every step forward, all you can do is look back at the last five steps you toke and wonder what was so appealing about the road your on in the first place. Every conversation is filled with yelling, anger, hurt and no matter what you do, your world is spiralling. Everyone is yelling. No one is calm. And peace, fuck, peace doesn't even exist. You're afraid of the thoughts in your head being made into words. Your still scared people are going to make fun of you." Sakura said, mostly just speaking her mind.
"My parents used to be safe. And Sasuke used to be too."
"Same here, about my parents." Tenten said quietly.
"My parents are putting so much pressure on me about being a doctor. I want to do it, but they just keep getting on my back about everything." Sakura said, biting her lip.
"It's been ten days since I moved here, and I haven't even said more than five words to either one of my parents. They're never home just to be home anymore." Tenten said, watching Ino making shadow puppets on the ceiling, using the light from the lantern between all their heads.
"I wish my parents were like that. Sometimes it's as if they care too much." Ino said, dropping her hands down beside her.
"That's always funny how you always want what you don't have." Tenten chuckled.
"I can't believe it's already 9:30" Hinata said after a bit of silence.
"I'm kind of hungry, for food-food. Not the chips and salsa and dips and flavours." Ino announced.
"If Hinata doesn't mind, I'd like to make breakfast." Tenten volunteered.
"There's some pancake mix in one of the cupboards in the kitchen if you want to make that." Hinata said, turning onto her stomach. "It's only us five here."
"Five?" Ino asked, turning onto her stomach too, looking at Hinata questioningly.
"Neji." Tenten said, sparing a glance toward Ino before looking at Hinata. "Do you have eggs? I can make us pancakes and eggs."
Hinata nodded. "I can make some bacon too."
"Can I do it?" Ino asked, perking up.
"Uh, yeah sure. Sakura and I can wait for some breakfast in bed. Right Sakura?" Hinata said lightly, smiling at Sakura who was on her right.
Sakura nodded.
"Cool." Tenten and Ino said in unison, getting up quickly, scrambling toward the door.
"I gotta pee first. I'll meet you in the kitchen." Ino said, walking into the bathroom.
Tenten smirked but happily walked down, almost skipping, humming to herself as she walked into the Hyuga household's kitchen, momentarily startled by finding Neji seated at one of the bar stools at the high counter, reading a book while sipping away at some coffee.
"Good morning." She said brightly, looking at the many cupboards around her.
"Morning, how was your sleep?" he asked, looking up at her from his book.
"Uh, okay I guess. I only slept around three hours. The four of us were talking and we just realized the time. I offered to make breakfast, could you point out which cupboard holds the pancake mix?" Tenten asked, turning to him.
Neji chuckled, nodding in the general area beside the stove.
Tenten turned around, opening one side, looking inside, finding the box she had been looking for.
"How is she?" he asked quietly, setting down his coffee cup with a small clunk.
Tenten set the box down on the counter. Wondering exactly how to answer.
"She's not ready to talk at the moment." She said swiftly, turning to face him. "If I was looking for a mixing bowl in the Hyuga's kitchen, where would I look?"
"You'd look in the cupboard over the microwave." Neji said, flipping to the next page of his book.
Tenten smiled, and got herself the mixing bowl, turning to ask for a spatula of some sort, but Neji smiled at her. "Drawer beside the sink."
"What are you reading? It looks like it's been read a lot." Tenten said as she got what she needed from the fridge.
"Oliver Twist, and yes, I do read it a lot." Neji said, smiling, taking another drink of his coffee.
"You like Oliver Twist?" Tenten asked as she started measuring everything for her pancake breakfast for five.
"Uh, yeah, I do." Neji said sarcastically.
"You know what I meant." Tenten said, dumping some milk into the mixture in the bowl.
"Does it surprise you I read?" he asked, setting his cup down again, looking at Tenten expectantly.
Tenten stared at him for a moment; he actually, really did strike her as someone who probably would be an avid reader. He was calm that way.
"Not really."
Neji chuckled some more and closed his book. "You don't seem to have a headache at all."
Tenten stopped for a moment. "Uh yeah, I toke some Tylenol earlier, around four."
"Ah, good for you. The hang over must not have been that bad for you."
"Uh, yeah, hey! Shouldn't you have one?"
"A hangover? No. Why would I have a hangover when I didn't even drink?" he asked, taking another sip of coffee, he looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "I figured there'd be people who would end up in some trouble, so I steered clear of all that stuff, so I could help if need be."
"Really?" Tenten asked, completely surprised. "Why didn't you tell me you had planned on staying sober all night? I would have too with you if I knew. I didn't even want to be drinking last night anyway." I probably could have helped Sakura if I was sober...
Tenten thought it wise to not voice that last sentence.
"Why didn't you want to drink?" Neji asked, standing up and walking toward the coffee maker.
"Are you hungry? Would you like some of this?" she asked absent minded.
"No, I already ate. I'm going to go Shikamaru's place later."
"Oh."
Tenten didn't know how to answer his other question. If she answered, that would result in a very personal, heart to heart discussion. If she didn't, she'd feel guilty for keeping him out in the dark. She knew she was taking too long on deciding on whether or not she was going to answer, especially since Neji had just sat down, with his new cup of coffee in front of him.
"One of those Queen Bee things?" he asked lightly.
"Mostly... But, earlier, yesterday, I was unhappy about a few things. I just didn't want alcohol to be the thing that made me smile." Tenten explained, she had just finished mixing the pancake mix right. "Where are a pan, and a plate, and a flipper... thing?"
"The shelf above the sink for the plate. The cupboard in the corner underneath the counter for the pan, And same drawer as the spatula for the, flipper." Neji directed, with a smirk in place.
"Are you going to tell me what upset you yesterday, or is that in the same place as the sports question?" he asked as Tenten had set the pan on the stove, waiting for it to heat.
Tenten spun the mixture for a bit, to avoid answering.
"I used to completely hate my uncle. Hiashi was my father's twin brother. And I hated him for a while. I even hated Hinata and Hanabi because I really, did not like Hiashi." Neji explained as he spun a straw in his cup, watching the liquid spin.
"I hated him, until we'd had a chat about my father. After that, I'm much more open to him, and I ask myself, why I had ever hated him so much."
"Is this your way of telling me I'll be happier in the future if I tell you my problems now, rather than later?" Tenten asked, dripping some mixture into the pan, listening to it sizzle.
"No, I'm telling you something I have difficulty understanding myself, so you understand that I trust you to keep my problems a secret." He said, looking at her as she flipped over the pancake to cook the other side.
"And one time, I was driving and was really tired; I nodded off at some point, and landed myself straight into a ditch. I had bad back pain, but being the coward I was at the time, simply got myself out of the ditch and drove straight home."
"You idiot. Why didn't you go to the hospital?"
"I was scared."
Tenten gave him an expression that was something like 'oh', and then turned back to the stove.
There was some silence between the two, until Tenten sighed, leaning against the counter by the stove. "Yesterday, I woke up in my own bed, staring at the ceiling, with the entire house dead quiet. It's been like that every day since I moved to Konoha. And yet, I felt so, completely alone, I wanted to cry. Eventually, I got myself to school, wanting to die, and at lunch hour with the Bee's, Sakura decided, we should get matching tattoos. So, at one in the afternoon yesterday, I had just finished getting my hips inked with two, five pointed stars that mean absolutely nothing to me. And came home not feeling like I had to cover them at all because no one was home to discipline me for doing wrong. And it wasn't until I was at the party, that I realized, the only people who care about me right now, no matter how little, were friends."
Neji nodded, and pushed his coffee away from him. "Why did you volunteer to make breakfast all on your lonesome?"
Tenten immediately remembered Ino. "Ino was supposed to help me, but by the looks of things, she's taking longer in the bathroom than we both assumed."
Neji laughed, and stood, getting out another pan and setting it beside the pan Tenten was using for pancakes. "What was Ino supposed to do?"
"Bacon, I believe. If not, I was going to do bacon and she was going to do eggs... or..."
"How's scrambled eggs sound?"
Tenten smiled up at him. "Sounds good."
After Tenten had finished the pancakes, Ino walked into the kitchen. "I'm sorry I toke forever Tenten, but Sasuke had called my cell, trying to get me to let him talk to Sakura."
Tenten looked at her friend, who looked very shaken, deciding it was true, Tenten smiled at her. "It's okay. Neji is helping. No worries."
Ino's shirt was a bit too short, length wise, showing part of her stomach, and the star tattoos on her hips, from the low cut short shorts. Tenten sighed, remembering her own branding, and then toke out four plates, putting pancakes on each.
"I'll start the bacon." Tenten said as Neji had evenly divided the eggs.
Ino stared at the plates. 'It's not like I could ever tell Tenten I'd over heard mostly the whole conversation between her and Neji. It was far too personal. I feel so bad now. Especially about the tattoos...' Ino told herself as she stared at the plates, not completely realizing it. 'Although, the Sasuke calling me thing wasn't a lie. He did. I just never answered.'
"And tada!" Tenten cheered happily as each plate was done. "Awesome! I can take Sakura and Hinata's plates up stairs to them, Ino, so you can just grab yours and take it up stairs. I'll come back down to get mine after I've finished cleaning things." Tenten explained to Ino as she grabbed two of the plates, and started walking toward the door.
Ino nodded, grabbing her own plate. She held up a moment, staring at Neji as Tenten toke off. She could hear Tenten's humming get quieter as she walked further away.
"Tenten used to play sports?" she asked quietly.
Neji raised an eyebrow, but slowly nodded his head. "You didn't know?"
Ino looked down at the floor. "Maybe it was a bad idea for me to tag her along with the Bee's."
Neji looked at her for a moment. "Don't," he paused, hating himself for what he was about to say. "Don't kick her out. But, don't force anything else on her for a bit. Especially not anymore tattoos."
Neji turned to the sink, beginning to clean up.
Ino nodded. "Keep her safe Neji. It's only been a few days, but I really do like Tenten. I love her, like a sister. She's great, and just, keep her safe from herself."
"I'll do what I can." Neji said as he started washing dishes.
Ino picked up her plate quickly walked out of the kitchen, running into Tenten as she was half way up the stairs. Ino smiled at her. "Neji is already starting dishes." She laughed as she kept walking.
Tenten hurried down into the kitchen, only to see that Ino had been right.
"Hey, what are you doing? I was going to clean up." She said as stopped by the island counter.
"Don't worry about it." He said, already drying everything, minus the pots, which were still very hot.
"Well um... thanks, I guess." Tenten said as she slid her own plate toward herself.
"I'm off to Shikamaru's now. I'll see you later." He smiled as he put things back into the places.
"May I finally get my kiss?" he asked, turning to face her.
Tenten felt her face heat up a bit. "Okay."
Neji smirked as he leaned toward her, pressing his lips against hers for a few moments, before moving his lips, his tongue swiping Tenten's top lip.
Tenten smiled into the kiss, pulling away before he could gain entrance into her mouth with his tongue.
"Save that for another time monsieur." She giggled before grabbing her plate and skipping out the kitchen door and back up the stairs.
She entered the room to find the other three staring at Sakura's phone, which lay open on her pillow.
"Sakura please, just talk to me! And I know you're with all of your friends, but please!" Sasuke's voice was loud and cracked through the phone's speaker.
Tenten toke her spot on her sleeping bag, staring at the phone, all happiness from before beginning to slip away as Sasuke kept making noises that sounded as if he were possibly crying.
Ino sighed, and decided she was going to eat, whether they listened to him talk or not.
"Sasuke, please, don't talk to me right now." Sakura said before hanging up her phone.
Tenten stared at Sakura, wishing she could make her friend feel better.
"You're parents come back tonight, right Hinata?" Sakura asked, looking up at Hinata.
Hinata nodded her head. "You can all still hang out here." Hinata said, putting her fork down as she spoke.
Sakura sighed. "I'd rather not go home, or be alone. But only with you three..."
"We can go to my house. I can leave a note for my Mom, in case she cares, to just leave us alone on the third floor. We wouldn't be bothered at all." Tenten suggested, after swallowing the food in her mouth.
"Okay. You sure?"
"Positive. And my dad is only ever in his office when he's home."
Sakura nodded. "Thank you, guys, for staying with me."
"No problem." Ino said.
"What are friends for?" Hinata added.