A/N: Okay, I know the chapter titles are weird. Please bear with me. Okay? Okay. I also know that the personalities in this fic are different from how they are in the show or other fanfictions that I've written for Naruto. Why? I was looking for a breath of fresh air. I am SO TIRED of being me. (That sounds strange, but I'm hoping you guys can relate.)
Sometimes, some psycho ideas can be really, really good for you.
Yeah. I know you just want to read the fic. You're saying "SHUT UP ALREADY". So, since I'm a windbag and I'll keep going for a another few paragraphs if somebody doesn't stop me, here's the fiction chapter three.
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Day 3
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"Shut up, Ino."
Ino cackled, and tried without success to stifle her mirth. Tenten scowled at the blonde. Sakura was in the corner on the swivel chair, listening to her iPod and completely ignoring her two roommates.
"You. Got. A. Mental. Patient," she choked.
Tenten sighed. "He's not a mental patient. Just a…traumatized patient." She paused. "Yeah. That sounded weird. Anyways, I'm sure he's a pretty nice person once I get to know him." Who am I kidding?
Ino rolled her eyes and snorted. "As if. Anyways, why are they making you do this? Why are you choosing to do this? It's not like you can't just quit. They shouldn't be doing this. You don't have any degrees or anything."
Tenten sighed again. Leave it to Ino to get right to the point, (which she had been avoiding.)
"They think that having 'another kid his age' to talk to will help with the therapy that they're already giving," Tenten explained. "And who better than me, who they're already paying? They're pretty sure that I don't secretly smuggle illegal drugs or get drunk on weekends or something, since my mom works there." She shrugged.
"So they want you to talk to him," Ino finished.
Tenten nodded. "Yeah, that's pretty much it." She picked at her cutoffs and felt the fuzz around the edges. She had to stitch them up, or they were going to flay apart. "I just have one problem with this whole arrangement."
Ino raised an eyebrow. "I would have thought that you had more than one problem with it, but shoot."
Tenten sighed and put her face in her hands. "What do you talk about with a guy who has long hair, suffered childhood trauma, and virtually does not get along with normal people? I guess they had a reason for paying me extra for this."
Ino laughed. "Is that all?"
"Is that all? Don't you think that's enough to worry about?"
"You're not thinking about what your mother will think once she's back. Or your reputation. Or the fact that he could be mentally unstable and attack you or something. Or that you could get in trouble with the law for interfering with professional psychological issues-"
"Okay, Ino! I really needed that right now!" Tenten exploded. "Just because your pink life is perfect, you think that I'm crap? Thanks a lot!" She stormed out of the room. Sakura pulled down her earpieces in interest, her pink eyebrows furrowed at Ino in question.
"Smooth, Ino-pig."
"You know what, Forehead-girl?"
"What?"
"I hate you, very, very much. Enough so that if we were on some island in Antarctica and there were plenty of penguins to eat, I would still happily chop you into pieces and boil you instead."
She didn't really say that. Well, at least she hadn't meant to. What she meant to actually say aloud was a simple "shut up".
Instead, Sakura rummaged through her teeth cracks, (small as they were), with a toothpick, and spat in Ino's general direction. "Did you just say that you would cheerfully eat me? Are the diets you use so bad that you're that desperate?"
O0O
Tenten was calm.
"I am calm," she said out loud just for good measure. A man in his forties and his small, black-haired daughter stared at her. She had on a baseball cap. "I swear to myself, right now, that I am perfectly calm," she reasoned, again out loud. The man and his daughter continued to stare, though they were trying to be subtle about it.
"WHY THE HELL ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME FUNNY?!"
They crossed the street. She cursed at herself.
"Go to Hell!" she very sweetly told her inner demon, again out loud. The little girl with the hat had come back to retrieve the bottle cap that she had dropped and rolled away. She stared up at Tenten warily.
"How?" she asked.
"What?"
"Well, you said to go to Hell. How?"
"STOP LOOKING AT ME FUNNY!"
She scrambled away. She sighed. She really, really had anger management issues now. Maybe it ran down her mother's side.
She sat down on an anonymous doorstep, and stared at the world around her. She was already starting to forget why she was mad at Ino. Maybe the blonde had actually been concerned for her when she was suggesting all of those problems. Ino? Tenten considered. Nah.
Come to think of it, Ino had been rather sad when she had come. Her beautiful blonde mother, back then seeming caring and sad to see her child leave, now seemed like she might have been trying to get rid of Ino by letting her stay in the boardinghouse. Tenten frowned. Why was Ino staying there anyways? She had never asked.
And Sakura, with her strange, abrupt request of a place to stay and her discomfort when she mentioned that request. Tenten frowned further, the corners of her lips pulling downwards. Maybe she would develop wrinkle lines. Where did Sakura come from? Did she have a family?
Ino had a mother and a brother at least, and that strange Shika boy. Who did Sakura have?
And didn't Ino mention something about a dog? Tenten sighed. She really was the worst person to put in a room with a mysterious punk-emo-goth girl and Ino the prep, who might have possibly been dumped by her own parents. Tenten hated embracing feelings, though she considered herself rather sensitive. (At least, her mother said so. Constantly.)
Where was her mother now? Was she having fun without Tenten, for once? She suddenly felt that fiery aching in your eyes you get when either they are very dried out after going to the pool, or you are about to cry. And hard. Tenten thought that she knew which one this aching was.
Had Tenten's mother only agreed to this arrangement so that she could get rid of Tenten? She shook her head. Her mother had wanted her to go on vacation with her. Aki wouldn't do something like that.
She stood, and dusted off the cutoffs. They really did need stitching, she noted. She was wearing the same soccer jersey from the coffee bar. She sniffed herself suddenly, self-conscious. Ugh. I really need a shower. She studied herself in the dusty window of a moving shop, next to the doorstep. Had it been noisy living there next to a store, she wondered?
She herself looked hopelessly average: the brown buns, brown eyes, and old jean cutoffs. The muddy Nikes, the purple soccer jersey. It all seemed so childish. The blend of the crowd rushed along behind her. Tenten suddenly felt very small and very vulnerable.
"You are lost?"
She whirled and nearly did a head-knock with Hyuuga Neji. She was now fairly sure that he was not blind in any way. On the contrary, he seemed to take in much more than she did from their surroundings. She had been about to chop him into pieces, (oh yes, she remembered another thing she was good at: karate. And tae-kwon-do. And kung fu. And all things martial arts).
"What are you doing here?" she let out before she could stop herself. Neji didn't respond. His stance was casual enough: the same white shirt and black shorts. Tenten had changed her clothes a few times since their first meeting. Maybe he wasn't as neat as she had first thought.
"It is a street. I am walking," he said. His head made a slight indication to the store. "Do you know the owners?"
She shook her head, still eyeing him warily. Are you stalking me?
"No. Just passing by. Speaking of which, I have someplace to go," she said stiffly. Her inward wince was the sign that she was aware of how impolite she sounded. It didn't seem to matter to the Hyuuga. He just nodded, and she dashed off. Of course she had nowhere to be.
Tenten, of current, really had no life.
O0O
She ran back into the little girl and her father on her way home. The girl was really starting to make Tenten POed again.
"Would you like a ride?" she asked politely from the side of the car she was riding in with his father. "You seemed like you could use one back there." She pointed at the intersection. Her father leaned over the seat and nodded. "We could go to Hell together, if you want," said the little girl hopefully.
Tenten fought back the urge to laugh. "Yeah…sorry about that, I really am," she said to the father, surprised that she had actually meant it. He really looked a lot like his daughter. They had the same long, dark hair, the same gaunt faces. The same pale eyes. Blind? No, he was driving. She started. Wait a minute...Doesn't Neji…?
He made a face that said, I think you're crazy, but that's okay.
She gave the two a thumbs up. "Thanks a lot for offering, but I'm only about a block away from where I'm staying." She gave two taps on the side of their door. The dad looked like he would probably be scrubbing the door free of crazy-germs for the next few days.
"Bye!" she called as they drove away.
A bottle cap rolled to a stop next to her feet. She picked it up. It was from a cappuccino bottle. She smiled to herself, holding it up to the light, and then she toasted the car as it drove away. At the closest stoplight, (though this was about two blocks away), she could have sworn that the little girl waved at her.
Maybe she wasn't such a bad person after all.
O0O
"Ino? I'm sorry?"
"Leave me alone. The world hates me. I hate the world more," Ino sulked into her pillow. Her quilt, out even though it was summer, was a paler pink than the violently hot pink pillows he was cuddling. It had white flowers on it. Tenten winced.
"It's all my fault? I'll be your slave for life if you forgive me?"
Ino sat up. Tenten felt a small lurch of guilt when she realized that Ino's eyes were pink and puffy. Pink. Haha. She matched with her bedding. And her pajamas. And her bags…Tenten didn't think it very funny right then.
"Slave for life…?"
"Okay, I take that back," she said quickly. "Just…I'm really sorry for lashing out like that. I didn't think that I had it in me."
Ino's blue eyes softened slightly. "Okay, Ugly. I forgive you."
Tenten sighed and sat down on her bed across from Ino. Much as her preppiness annoyed her and gave Tenten possible reasons to want to strangle her, Ino was an okay person. Somewhere deep, deep down inside. Deep. Deep down inside.
Tenten swallowed. "Right. Thanks."
Tenten was a person who wanted friends, and had trouble making them. She couldn't shake the feeling of contempt that she felt whenever she looked at Ino and her pink. She subconsciously felt that she was better than that. Now she realized that she wasn't. Not at all. Tenten did not forgive easily. Funny. She had only thought of that as a virtue once she realized that it was something Ino had, and she, Tenten, did not.
"Wow. Clap, clap. I'm touched," Sakura drawled, lying on her back across the wooden slats that framed the bunk bed, her head hanging upside down and her back bent so far back and over the edge that Tenten feared for both Sakura's safety, Ino's safety, the bed's safety, and also that Sakura's chiropractor would be getting a healthy check sometime this month if she kept doing that.
Or maybe she was just jealous that Sakura was so flexible.
"Shut up. Not like you would know anything about apologies," Ino snapped.
Sakura shrugged, though the effect was strange when she was still upside down. "Figures that you would make so many assumptions about me," she snapped. Tenten felt herself relax as Sakura sat back up in her bunk and turned around in a more comfortable position to face them.
"What assumption? That you're a sucky person?" Ino suggested.
Sakura dropped the eyeliner that she was about to apply onto Ino's head. Ino glanced at the label. "You should so not wear blue on your eyes. It clashes," she quipped. Sakura stuck out her tongue.
"Prep."
"Punk."
"Self-absorbed princess."
"Suicidal nobody."
"Who's suicidal?"
"Hllo? Do you see me leaning backwards over the top bunk?"
"No, because I would kill you before I let you up here with me and my stuff."
Tenten decided that this would be a good time to get up and leave. She tried to do so as quietly as possible, but the bed groaned in protest when she stood, and Sakura and Ino both turned to look at her.
"Where you going, Tenten?" said Sakura, as if she were the warden of this place. Tenten glared at her. She was usually slightly more affectionate towards Sakura than Ino, (mostly because Sakura did not talk to her much), but now was not one of these moments.
"Nowhere in particular."
"You just went out! Aren't you guys going to finish your mushy apologies? Don't let me break it up!" Sakura feigned a look of mock horror, and lay down on her stomach to listen to her iPod some more.
"Forehead-girl…" Ino said, annoyed, poking the mattress between the slats. Sakura rolled over and started thumping her heel to the rhythm.
"Don't be out to late," she called to Tenten, ignoring Ino, who looked about ready to shoot Sakura with a machine gun.
"Don't tell me what to do," Tenten snapped, sulking, and once again went out of the door.
O0O
The next morning, she was feeling really glad that her three days at the office were over, but when Yumi called to inform her that her new "duties" with Neji would take up a day or two more of her time, she wasn't surprised. When you thought that life couldn't get any worse, it always set out to prove you wrong.
"Well, you won't actually have to come to the office," Yumi explained. "You'll be going over to the Hyuuga Compound to visit Hyuuga-kun. Here's the address." Tenten wrote it down while Yumi said it slowly twice. It reminded her of a commercial on TV.
"Good luck! Just give him a call when you want to go over, you know, for warning. I'll check in to make sure you're doing your job." It sounded like a threat. She repeated Neji's phone number for her twice, slowly. Commercial-lady style.
"Good luck again!" Tenten opened her mouth to say goodbye, (or to scream some profanities, she wasn't sure which), but the phone went dead on the other end. She sighed, half relieved and half disappointed. At least she wouldn't lose her job for cussing at Yumi for no reason.
"Ja ne," she waved to Sakura and Ino, who were pointedly ignoring each other. They ignored her too.
She decided not to call Neji, just to irk him. He irked her, but she didn't really know why. Now she wanted to return the favor in full.
"Hello, I'm Tenten. From the office?" she said, once she had finally arrived at the house. (It was quite a bit of walking. Her blisters were protesting.) Her knuckles hurt from knocking too hard on their door. She was staring at her feet. (Bad manners, she noted dully. She didn't care).
"Yes," said a deep male voice from the door. It was a grown man, she noted from the style of slippers, the voice, and the way that this person stood with a distinct air of machoness. (She found it sounded lame even in her head, but she couldn't describe it any way else.) "We have been expecting you. I wish that you had called, however." Now he sounded amused.
She looked up, finally, once she had found the courage, and nearly choked in surprise. It was the man with the black hair and the pale eyes and the daughter who wanted to go with Tenten on a vacation to Hell.
He looked slightly surprised to see her, too, though he handled it much better. He stuck out his hand. "Hyuuga Hiashi." Her hands were lost in his big, callused ones. She gulped. She was shaking.
"Come in," he said, standing aside. She took off her Nikes, wishing that they weren't quite so muddy, and bowed, feeling sheepish.
"None of that. Neji is waiting for you." Hiashi said Neji's name with a note of bitterness in his voice. Tenten wondered why that was so. Maybe it was just the fact that she, a junior psychologist, was in his house and about to talk with his son about childhood trauma. Maybe it was Hiashi's fault.
"Uh, your son's really nice," she said weakly as he showed her the way to Neji's room. He looked surprised and pained.
"Neji is not…my son. He was my twin brother's."
Tenten fell silent. "Oh."
"I believe that you met my daughter, however, yesterday," he said. Sure enough, the little girl with the long black hair and sullen, yet strangely pleasant, face was sitting at the dining table, writing something on a piece of paper. She looked up at Tenten.
"Oh. You."
"Hi," said Tenten. "I'm…pleased to meet you. My name is-"
"Yeah, I know," said the girl absently, turning back to her paper. "I'm Hanabi." Tenten sensed that she was going to be ignored from now on, so she turned to Hiashi, and they continued to walk through the many, many hallways in the compound.
"Hanabi is my younger daughter. She is quite bright," said Hiashi in a monotone as their feet pattered over the traditional wood. Tenten felt awkward in her borrowed slippers. "My older one is supposed to be training," his voice hardened, "But she does not show much promise."
Tenten couldn't help but feel indignant for this mysterious other daughter. Why was her father so obviously picking favorites? Tenten felt a flash of guilt. She wouldn't know about favorites, being an only child and all.
"Training?" she inquired instead.
"Yes. Martial arts."
"Oh. I practice that too," she said in surprise.
"This is his room," said Hiashi, stopping in front of an average wooden door. Tenten would never have noticed it on her own. She bowed respectfully again, having no practice with this type of thing. Here in this ancient-feeling wooden home, her clothes and attitude seemed so out of place that it hurt.
"Thank you very much," she said quietly. Hiashi grunted, and left.
She took a deep breath, turned to face the door, and knocked.
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A/N: Okay, cliffy. Again. Please review!