A/N: Yeah, I had the last chapter saved on my computer all complete for a few days and I totally forgot about it. And school started again. So those are my excuses.

This chapter should be rather interesting…

Choco chip protein bars taste funny and break your jaw. No kidding. And I think you could think of the chapter starts, "day 6" for example, as the days that Tenten is working or is making some kind of improvement with her relationships. Does that make sense at ALL?

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Day 6

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The next day, even though she no longer had to, Tenten went out early in the morning and walked directly to the Hyuuga Compound to visit Neji.

She didn't know what possessed her to do it: she no longer was being paid for it, and Neji was hardly good company. Hanabi and Hinata, she barely knew, though they both seemed reasonably nice. Nicer than Ino and Sakura were being to her.

Naruto and Lee had not made any further visits to her recently, though they took up most of her thoughts while she had spare time. She worried about the drastic measures they took: both took their personal prides so seriously that it was almost exasperating. Naruto would be sure to go overboard and do something he would regret. She shook her head as she knocked on the Compound's doorway.

To her surprise, Hinata opened the door, her lovely pale eyes shy and downcast. She looked almost afraid of anybody that would talk to her. Tenten tried a small smile, and timidly, Hinata smiled back.

"H-Hello…Tenten-san?" she questioned. Tenten nodded, and stepped inside, pushing off her Nikes with her feet. Hinata was wearing a pair of plaid slippers, her fingers twiddling so fast it looked like they had the twitches. Tenten followed her through the numerous hallways. Hinata remained silent, so Tenten attempted to strike up a conversation.

"So you're his cousin?" She didn't know what to call Neji. If she referred to him as Hyuuga-san, that could refer to really anybody that lived there.

Hinata flinched, and nodded shyly, not meeting Tenten's eyes. "H-Hai. Hiashi-sama is m-my father."

"Oh. He seemed…nice," Tenten muttered, trying for the right words.

Hinata smiled slightly. She had a sweet smile that reached her eyes, though it never showed her teeth. Her fingers had stopped twitching. "Hiashi-sama c-can seem strict at t-times, but h-he can also b-be kind." Tenten didn't know what it was about her tone, but it sounded like Hinata was attempting to lie through her teeth about the part on being kind. Tenten had not at any time thought that Hiashi seemed like a kind person.

"Where's your room?" she inquired.

Hinata made a little shrugging motion. "Oh, it's n-not on this side of the b-building. Neji-nii-san is a b-branch member, and I am a m-main member, so I sleep on the other s-side." For some reason, she sounded almost ashamed of this fact. "I d-don't see him often," she murmured quietly.

"He said that you're…getting married."

Hinata's head seemed to droop minimally. "W-We are."

"Oh." Tenten chided herself for not being able to come up with a better response. "…Congratulations." It came out sounding like a question.

"T-Thank you." She didn't sound like she meant it. "W-Where do you l-live, Tenten-san? I am sure that y-your home must be b-beautiful," Hinata said. She sounded like she actually meant this one. "Our h-home is very t-traditional. Sometimes I f-feel a bit tired of it." She laughed lightly, which sounded like bells. It fit her character perfectly.

"Oh, I'm staying at a boarding house for the summer because my mom went on vacation," Tenten explained quickly. "If you want to reach me anytime, you know, that's where you can call me or anything. I'm not going to be home for another few weeks or so."

"R-Really?" Hinata's eyes were wide with surprise. "Your parents a-allow you to s-stay on your own h-here?"

"Well, just my mom, really," Tenten said quietly. "But I did have to argue a bit to get my way."

"I'm s-sorry," Hinata caught on quickly.

"No, it's okay. My dad left a long time ago," Tenten explained. They had arrived at Neji's door. Hinata looked awkward, not sure whether or not she wanted to leave. Tenten shrugged.

"You can come in with me, if you want," she suggested, feeling rude inviting somebody into a room in their own home. Hinata looked like she didn't mind, however.

"Oh. A-Alright."

The two girls entered the room, and quietly made their way over to the dreaded sofa. They sat stiffly on either end, both avoiding each other's eye. Tenten curled and uncurled her fingers. Neji ignored them both.

"Hyuuga-san…?" Tenten prompted at last.

"Do not call me that," Neji said coldly, turning to face them.

"F-Forgive my intrusion, N-Neji-nii-san," Hinata murmured, inclining her head politely. Tenten stared. They were cousins, for Heaven's sake, and Hinata was treating Neji like he was a king, or something.

"Hn."

"Well…if you're not Hyuuga-san, then who are you?" Tenten asked, slightly annoyed. If he asked her to call him Hyuuga-sama, then she was going to snap and pick up that vase by his head and bash out his brains.

Neji shrugged, indifferent. "Anything else."

Tenten cocked her head at him. "Is it alright if I call you Neji-kun, then?" It sounded much more natural on her tongue. She found that she liked how it sounded. Almost cute. Pretty much normal. Neji's eyes narrowed a moment before he nodded.

Silence abounded. Tenten was beginning to wonder why she had ever bothered to come here, before an idea hit her when she once again turned to glance at Hinata's lonely, nervous countenance.

"Hey…I have an idea," she said slowly.

Both Hinata and Neji raised their heads slightly at her.

"You know, if you want, you could come and stay with me for a little while," she told Hinata. "I know that you actually, well, live here and everything…but your father said that you trained in martial arts." Hinata nodded, not catching on. "Well, I do too," Tenten continued, "And I know that it's way better to have a sparring partner your own age. If Hiashi-san will allow it, I could help you out."

Hinata's face brightened considerably. She didn't make much of a secret, her dislike of this Compound. Neji's eyebrows raised ever so slightly at this idea.

"She will have to pay rent," he said stonily. "She could train with you, but stay here. Why waste money?"

"Don't worry, I'll work something out with the owners," Tenten shot back at Neji. "I think it would be nice for Hinata-san to stay with somebody other than her family for a while." She glanced at Hinata. Hinata nodded at her cousin.

"It w-would be a n-nice change," she murmured.

"Like a long-term sleepover, kind-of," Tenten said slowly, laughing a little. If she could help Hinata become somebody who her father could love just as much as her little sister, then she would feel just a bit better about herself. Besides, Hinata could use the vacation from her father, though she would never admit that this was one of the primary reasons why she was taking her away.

"I can also help make you a little more confident," Tenten said decidedly to Hinata. Hinata's eyes widened. "I swear, when she's back, Hinata will be a whole new woman," Tenten told Neji like he would care.

Neji eyed them both, and then seemed to decide that he really didn't care about what happened to either of them. He turned back to his window, and Tenten and Hinata left to go and see Hyuuga Hiashi.

O0O

"Spill."

Ino and Tenten sat staring at Sakura. Hinata was awkwardly sitting off to the side, eyeing them apprehensively. Getting Hiashi's permission had been easier than Tenten had expected: he seemed a little too eager to get Hinata off of his hands for the summer. He had coughed up the bills necessary for the stay, without asking many questions.

"Do I really have to tell you who he is?" Sakura whined. It was dark outside, but cozy in the room. Ino was basically ignoring Hinata. She found her boring and too quiet, Hinata was scared of Ino and Sakura both. This left Tenten, once again, in a rather awkward position.

"Yes," said Ino and Tenten in unison. Sakura grimaced.

"I don't really know where to start," she admitted at last. Ino rolled her eyes.

"Where else? At the beginning."

Sakura rolled her eyes right back, though she carried it off in a much different manner. She absently pulled her pink hair back into a ponytail under the jaunty baseball cap perched on her head.

"Fine. But it's a very, very long story."

Ino smirked. Tenten laughed. Hinata smiled slightly, more than slightly confused as to why Ino and Tenten wanted so badly to know who this "Uchiha Sasuke" was.

"We're listening," said Ino.

O0O

"I met him when we were really young, maybe only seven or eight years old. He went to my elementary school, but that wasn't around here. You wouldn't know it. Anyways, he was the top student in my class, but a bit of a social reject. Everybody wanted to be his friend, but he gave them all the cold shoulder." Sakura laughed at some memory that the others couldn't see.

"At first, I was really shy around him. I would turn red whenever he passed my desk, and I avoided him. The other kids were mostly afraid, though I was mainly embarrassed. Naturally, I thought that he was some kind of stuck up jerk." Sakura rolled her eyes. "Of course, that prediction turned out to be true, as you guys witnessed. Well, this is one of those love-hate stories, so brace yourselves."

"Two years after I met him, when we were in the fourth grade, I developed a…crush on him, so to speak," Sakura said, rolling her eyes again. She obviously didn't think much of her fourth grade self's judgment. "It wasn't anything new by then: more than half the class had crushes on the legendary Uchiha Sasuke, who had by then managed straight A's for the past two years. Or so the rumors went. Nobody else had been able to do that for years."

"The fan girls piled up, and I was just one of many. I'm not sure he even knew who I was." She paused. "That's when the whole tomato-gift thing came in. It's a bit of a joke. I decided to give him a bag of them, since that's what his favorite food was, and he threw it back into my face." Sakura laughed. "So that's why I decided to bring him a bag of tomatoes. It's like saying that I'm furious at him, in a sort-of ironic way. You'd have to be there to understand." She shook her head.

"Anyway, I got put in the same study group as him that year. Our class was divided into advanced, average, and below average, and I was pretty bright, if I do say so myself." She flipped back her hair, and Ino rolled her eyes this time. "I was one of the top students in the class, second only to him. There were a few other kids in our group, but by now their names escape me."

"I fawned over him like he was some kind of god. He ignored me completely, and one he did say something to me, it was to inform me of how unbelievably annoying I was. At least I was sure he knew of my existence by then."

"We weren't in the same class again, and then we went to separate middle schools. His memory faded somewhat in my head. I made new friends, got a few minor crushes, you know. But I never quite forgot about him. Uchiha Sasuke's not a person that you easily forget."

"He transferred into my high school in the middle of freshman year. Needless to say, most of the girls in my class nearly had a mental breakdown when he walked in. Apparently, everybody thinks that he's only gotten more good-looking. And of course, there's the famous earring." Sakura tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear, revealing the same hoop with the shark tooth that Sasuke had in his earlobe.

"He got more requests for dates than any other guy in our year. I mostly ignored him. He wasn't exactly my best friend in elementary, and I had decided that I had been stupid to be so fond of him in elementary. He was a bastard, and that was that."

"Then Orochimaru came along." Sakura's green eyes narrowed. Ino and Tenten sat closer, and Hinata's white eyes widened. Here came the good part; they sensed it.

"More than anything, Uchiha Sasuke wants power. His father is the head of a very successful car business, and he had some big shoes to fill. His older brother Itachi was even more successful than he already was, and secretly, I think he was jealous. Well, Orochimaru was a drug dealer." She looked straight into Tenten's wide eyes. "A real one."

"Orochimaru offered him a deal, after catching him alone outside of the school one day. He would share his profit with him, (Orochimaru's profit was rather considerable), if he worked for him secretly. Orochimaru needed the help, as the police were almost onto him, and who better to use as an accomplice than the baby Uchiha himself? So Sasuke entered into the drug business. He did some dirty deals, and got in way too deep." Sakura paused, and took a deep breath.

"With the money, I have no idea what he was doing, only that his father took much more notice of his younger son, and began boasting about him almost as much as Itachi after several months had passed. His mother was probably the only one that noticed."

"One day, I was walking home from school with a couple of other girls that I didn't know too well from my fourth period language arts class. I wanted to take the shortcut through an alley, but they were too scared, so I went myself. I think they're still mad at me for that." She chuckled.

"Orochimaru and all of his lackeys were there, dealing out their dirty money. I was scared like Hell when they saw me, but I guess he must have recognized me, because I'm still here right now without any holes in me." She sighed, unwilling to call Sasuke by his proper name. It was obvious she was still mad at him.

"It went pretty much downhill from there. They took me into a laundry woman's room in the side of the alley, whom they were paying to keep her mouth shut and to use her space. They tied me to a chair. Gagged me." Sakura took a deep breath, her hands shaking.

"I think that the only reason that I'm not either dead, or might as well be dead, is that he vouched for me. The Uchiha, that is. He stared at me for what seemed like a day, and then he told Orochimaru, 'Let her go'. Orochimaru and him had a stare down for what seemed like another day, and then he hissed for me to be untied. They kept a hold on me, though, and he repeated it: 'Let her go.'"

"They did. They shoved me back out into the alley. I was shaking so hard that I could barely make it home. Once I did, I almost called 911. I don't know how or why I made myself stop dialing, but I did. I owed that Uchiha one for saving my life. I couldn't just get him arrested like that. It sucked, but it was the truth."

"The next day at school, he acted as if nothing at all had happened. I knew that he knew who I was, that little girl from his table at fourth grade, and that he had saved my life. He ignored me completely."

"I couldn't take it anymore after school. I confronted him about the whole thing. Much as I seethed, I forced myself to thank him. I had to. He looked all amused at me, like I was a freak, and then he told me to get lost."

"I punched him."

"You what?" Ino cut in, though nobody in the room found the fact that Sakura would hit somebody she was mad at that hard to believe. Hinata's opal eyes were wide with amazement, her hands clasped tightly together. Tenten had no difficulty at all believing that Hinata had never hit anybody in her life, except perhaps in martial arts training. Briefly, she wondered why such a timid girl would want to learn martial arts. Perhaps for self defense…? The curious thought drifted out of her head.

"I punched him," Sakura continued calmly, a hint of a smile on her lips. "But unlike the time where you guys so obviously followed me, he actually fought back. I'm pretty scarily strong when I want to be. In the end, he managed to clamp his hand on my mouth, because I was screaming at him, and I was causing a scene."

"He took me aside, though I fought against it," she noted bitterly, "And explained about the whole Orochimaru-drug-deal thing. I couldn't believe that he would be so stupid as to do something like that. Wouldn't his father be disappointed rather than proud of him if he found out? He completely ignored all of my accusations."

"And…the next day, he was gone. Vanished. He wasn't at school, and when I looked up his address, he wasn't at his house either. His parents were frantic with worry. Itachi didn't give a damn." She laughed, though there was nothing funny about the sound. Her eyes were like cold chips of emerald ice.

"I was confused and angry for the next half year. The school year ended, and I brooded all summer on his sudden disappearance. It was probably because of me that he left. The thought bothered me for a long time."

"This is the part that you know. A few days ago, a classmate of mine called to let me know that Uchiha Sasuke was back. Still, nobody had any inkling as to what he had left for in the first place. The first thing I did was that I went to the grocery store and got the tomatoes. And then…you know the rest."

Ino let out a breath. "Wow. That's…harsh."

Sakura sighed, and blew a strand of pink hair away from her face. Her expression was frustrated and angry, and it made her skin turn pale, and a few usually nonexistent freckles to appear on her skin. "Tell me about it. I'm not done with him yet." Her eyes glinted. Tenten shivered at the expression in them.

"You sure you're okay?" Ino asked doubtfully. Hinata was looking back and forth between the three of them in concern.

"I'm perfectly fine. What are you talking about?" Sakura said, surprised.

"I mean…why were you so mad when he left? Wouldn't it be better if he were just out of your life, since you disliked him so much? Why would you care if he got mixed up in all the drug stuff? He's not even your friend."

Sakura opened her mouth to answer, and then paused. "I really don't know. Some part of me has always wanted to look out for his wellbeing. It's obvious that he doesn't give a damn about how I'm doing."

Ino's blue eyes glinted with mischief. "You still love him, don't you?"

"No, I do not," Sakura said coldly, standing up and dusting herself off. "If you ever, ever say something like that again, then I will wring your neck quite happily. I have never loved Uchiha Sasuke, and I don't believe that I ever will."

"Someone's in denial," Ino smirked.

"Shut up, pig."

"Forehead-girl."

"Shut up!"

Tenten and Hinata exchanged a look. Tenten smiled in an exasperated way, rolling her eyes towards Ino and Sakura's bickering. Hinata smiled slightly, nervously, unsure of herself. Tenten smiled back wider, and went to sit by her.

"Don't worry. You get used to it," she motioned at the other girls.

Hinata gave one wide-eyed look at Tenten, then at Sakura and Ino, and then nodded like she hoped very much that she was dreaming.

A/N: Mainly Sakura and Sasuke's history in this one. I hope it surprised you somewhat, lol. Please read and review!