a/n: Oh dear, it seems I've updated about two days later than expected, eh? I apologize; I just didn't think that my teachers would give out so much homework during the first week. Hell, I've got a quiz tomorrow and a test the next day but enough of my whining. That's not what you clicked on this page for! ;)

Anyway, as you might have noticed, I changed my name. Again.

From Celestine's Moon, to Mizuki Celestine, and finally to Celadonya. This is all because my proferred username was already taken and now I'm toying around with a few replacements. But I think I'll stick with Celadonya. I quite like it. XD

So, without further ado, I present to you, Chapter 4. ;)

disclaimer: My birth certificate does not say Masashi Kishimoto. Nor am I a man. Therefore, I do not own Naruto.

~Cel

BUTTERFLY WINGS
CHAPTER 4
~Trigger~

Neji woke up the next morning before Tenten did, surprised that somehow, during the course of the night, his hand had snaked its way around her shoulders. Wide-eyed, he quickly withdrew his hand before she was aware of his boldness and eased himself out of the bed.

Glancing back, he saw that she was still sleeping peacefully and exited the room before she had a chance to question why he was still in her room.

Downstairs, early morning sunlight was streaming in through the windows, directing Neji's gaze onto the piece of paper he had left on the table. Frowning slightly, he picked it up and studied the words he had scrawled on the paper. "This has got to be it," he muttered, slapping it back onto the tabletop with unnecessary force. "If it's not the answer…then something is terribly wrong."

He looked up when he heard footsteps and tried to smile up at a bedraggled Tenten. Her hair had a frizzy look to it, like chocolate wisps of smoke clinging to her head, and the rumpled clothes looked like elephant's skin. Nevertheless, she smiled wryly and took a seat at the table.

"I know what you're thinking," she announced after a moment of studying him.

Neji raised an eyebrow disbelievingly. "Oh?"

She nodded and rested her head on her folded arms, waiting.

He also remained silent, but when she showed no signs of talking, he took the reins. "Did I wake you up?"

"I actually woke up before you," Tenten admitted, grinning.

Damn.

Neji inwardly winced, hoping that she wouldn't bring up the subject of his embracing her. "So, your nightmare…"

"It was pretty bad," she agreed.

"Does it happen often?"

"Yes, but I've never had someone to comfort me before." Her eyes shone with gratitude.

He cleared his throat and looked away, suddenly feeling rather uncomfortable. "You're welcome."

"I never thanked you," she pointed out.

"Then you should have." Neji smirked.

"Maybe."

Enough of this beating around the bush. Neji, you have to find out what's bothering her.

"Tenten, I need to ask you something," he began but she cut him off.

"Is this about your 'unanswered questions' or what I was dreaming about?" She displayed her own rendition of his smirk as he studied her. "Told you I knew what you were thinking."

"What happened last night isn't normal," Neji told her as if she didn't already know. "You need to tell me what you dreamt about so I can help you."

Her eyes narrowed. "What are you, a psychiatrist?"

"No, but I want to help you. And not just for your benefit; I don't plan on being awoken every night just to comfort you and banish the figments of your imagination that terrify you." When he was finished, he realized how harsh he had sounded but tossed the thought aside. If that's what it took…

Tenten closed her eyes and let out a deep, shuddering sigh, looking so disturbed that Neji was afraid that she had suffered a heart attack and died. "It wasn't my imagination. I revisited a real scene, a very real scene, that has scarred me for life. Then again, I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"I didn't mean to belittle you," Neji defended himself, "I just wanted you to know that it's essential for you to tell me."

She opened one eye and seemed to look right through him with one piercing hazel eye. "What have I got to lose?"

And as soon as she uttered this phrase, Neji realized the utter truth of it. Despite how many people carelessly tossed those six words around like they weren't shit, none of them really applied to the rhetorical question. Surely they had something that they didn't want to lose; family members, objects with sentimental value.

But here was a girl standing in front of him – living, breathing, and beating – who had nothing, nothing to call her own. Homeless with no family that he knew of, no friends that he knew of, no possessions that he knew of other than the clothes on her back and the hair on her head.

The words were spoken with dignity, however, no matter how melodramatic they might seem. She was proud, fucking proud, that she had nothing to lose. It made her fearless, strong, bold, unafraid of what the consequences were. It allowed her to take risks that normal people would never dream of doing, too attached to the things they held dear.

All throughout his life, Neji was told that to have nothing was terrible but there was a real oxymoron in front of him, staring him the face. She was alive and healthy and courageous, admirable traits that Neji realized he wished he had.

He wished that, upon learning that everything had been ripped away from him, he had taken the other road, to become stronger, rather than try and deny the truth. Sometimes, there was no way to hide from destiny and whether you turned alright or not all depended on your ability to perceive change and meet it head on.

And he was once again reminded of why he decided to ask Tenten to stay, to help him answer his questions. She was vibrant, bubbly, bursting with color and life, so much that it was almost intoxicating. Whether or not her emotions paralleled that was beside the point; she simply had an aura of living that Neji found himself gravitating towards, like a moth to light, flies to honey.

"What, indeed," Neji murmured under his breath, so low that Tenten couldn't hear.

"My parents are dead," Tenten stated simply but corrected herself as an afterthought. "No, my mother is dead and my father is who knows where. He's as good as dead to me." She waited, done for now.

Neji, however, was not one to let that fly. "That makes no sense. Both my parents are dead also, my father actually dead, but I don't have these night terrors."

"Did you see your mother die?" Tenten asked in a wispy voice.

"Yes."

"Was she murdered?"

He swallowed suddenly, shivering slightly. "Only by destiny."

"Then you understand why I'm so terrified," Tenten ended quietly.

"But of butterflies?" Neji forced himself not to laugh. "That's absurd."

"Insensitive bastard," she shot at him viciously. "Butterflies are the devil's greatest disguised, masked behind beauty so the viewer will be ill-fatedly misled to their own downfall. What is so absurd about that? My parents are dead, Neji, and it's all because of a butterfly. I freak out whenever I see one and there's nothing I can do about it."

Trigger.

"I know why you react so violently to butterflies, Tenten," Neji told her.

She looked up in shock. "Are you…serious?"

"I searched it up, studied it, and I think I know why."

"Is there any way I can get rid of it? I can't keep living my life like this. I need it gone!" Tenten exclaimed.

Neji tapped the paper still laying flat on the table. "It depends on you, whether you're strong enough to overcome your fear. It's more of a psychological problem so there's nothing I can do to help you, nor any other person. Therapists claim to help but I personally find it's much easier to do it with a person you're more comfortable with."

"What's wrong with me?" Tenten whispered, slightly afraid of what she might hear.

"Nothing, just what you've experienced. That's wrong." He cleared his throat and scanned the paper. "I'll read for you."

"Actually, I lied. I can read," Tenten confessed.

"I know." He smirked and began to read. "When someone has experienced an especially traumatic event, they may begin to associate a certain object, idea, or feeling with that occurrence. Whenever they catch sight of this item again, it brings back painful memories of what had happened. This is what some psychologists call a 'trigger' response; how something 'triggers' a panic attack."

"That explains it," Tenten murmured, not only talking about her problem, glad that the trigger she saw wasn't referring to a gun. "Is there anything I can do, Neji?"

"I wasn't able to find a cure," he confessed, passing the paper over to her. "Only you can overcome the fear."

She narrowed her eyes as she reviewed the words, written in Neji's neat calligraphy. "I suppose I'll have to shove my face in front of all the butterflies I can find and when I stop screaming I'll know I'm cured."

Neji frowned, not finding her dry humor very comical at all. "I think there are better ways than that. But of course, this may be one of the questions that take time to answer. And perhaps, it's even possible this is one of the unsolvable riddles. Only destiny can tell."

"Destiny," Tenten repeated, rolling her tongue across the word. "Perhaps…"

"Now," he continued in a business-like manner, his philosophical air disappearing at once, "you need more clothes than just that."

Tenten looked down at the rumpled hoodie and shorts and grinned. "If you say so…"

Neji led the way up the stairs and into his room. Tenten waited by the doorway awkwardly, unsure whether she should enter or not. His room was slightly messy; the bed not made and many articles of clothing strewn across the floor.

It was only when Neji pulled out a t-shirt and turned around to show Tenten when he noticed she was still waiting. "What are you doing?"

"I'm…I wasn't sure if I could come in or not," she stated.

"That's no excuse. Come in," he ordered monotonously.

She obliged and came to stand beside her host, watching as he pulled out various garments out of several drawers, only to plop them unceremoniously onto his unmade bed. When a decent sized mound had formed, he paused and smirked at her. "That should be enough until we can get to a store, hm?"

Tenten bobbed her head appreciatively. "Yes, thank you very much although I really don't need you to spend money on me." She began sorting through the pile, placing each piece into a separate pile.

Neji plucked a navy blue t-shirt out of Tenten's hands, folded it with expert skill, and reached for a pair of flannel pants as she struggled to match up the sleeves of a sweater. They soon began to fall into a rhythmical folding pattern as his neat pile grew exponentially and hers grew as slow as grass. Once in a while, he would reach over and reposition her hands, gently guiding her, only to smirk when she fumbled after he let go.

After dropping a pair of socks on the floor, Tenten grew brave. "Neji, what…why are you…you never answered my question," she finally stated.

"Which question?" He never took his eyes off of the shirt he was folding, already knowing what answer he had chosen to withhold from her.

"Why are you living here alone? I mean, you answered but the reply was so ambiguous and confusing that it was almost as if you hadn't said anything at all," Tenten explained. "I want to know about your past."

I can't tell her.

"It's nothing important," Neji lied convincingly, adding the last pair of pants onto his stack of clothes. "And I won't tell you even you ask me again," he added when she opened her mouth to plead.

Stung, Tenten recoiled as if slapped but Neji took no notice as he helped himself to her share of the work and was furiously folding the garments.

If he doesn't want to tell me, fine then. I'll act like I don't care.

"Oh, ok, I suppose it doesn't really matter," Tenten answered lightly. "I'll won't be staying long anyway, Hyuuga-san."

Neji, noticing the reappearance of the formalities, accidentally knocked over her pile of messily-folded clothes. Tenten's eyes widened. All her hard work was wasted. Even if it wasn't spectacularly done, she had still made her best effort and now…

You better apologize, Jerk-san.

But all he said was, "I see you're back to the honorifics."

Tenten pursed her lips and crossed her arms, scowling inwardly. Despite her common sense telling her that getting angry at your generous host was a very risky move, she allowed that scowl to emerge, etching itself onto her lips. "I think things have always been very formal around here."

With that, she spun on her heel and stalked over to her room, completely forgetting about the clothes that Neji had been so gracious as to give her. Once she was safely on her bed, the door shut and locked, Tenten stared at the ceiling, wondering how her current situation would change now that she had pissed off the Hyuuga boy.

"It doesn't matter, really, if I ever find out about his past," Tenten muttered to herself, rolling over and picking up a pillow off of the floor. "It's not like I want to know anymore. Which is good, because I'll probably be kicked out after this." She sighed and closed her eyes.

On the contrary, Neji blamed himself for her outburst, scolding himself for such dimwittedness. He could have just said that he didn't want to talk about it because it was a touchy subject. Instead, he had outright rejected her advances – he was sure she was just worried about him – leaving her with the suspicion that he didn't trust her.

Though, as strange as it seemed to him, he did trust her. Despite the fact that they had met less than forty-eight hours ago, he had developed a sort of bond with her. One-sided or not, Neji nevertheless found her to be a very pure person, surprisingly untainted for one who had more than enough reasons to be positively covered in grime and filth.

"I can't tell her," he said aloud, involuntarily reaching over to her knocked-over pile of clothes. "I don't want her to worry."

Glaring at the clothes in his hands, he threw them side and held his head in his hand. "I'm really selfish, so fucking selfish. I'm a stuck-up, self-conceited, spoiled jackass who thinks too much of himself. Allowing Tenten to stay here was for my own reasons, wanting answers to my questions, not because I'm being generous. If it were someone besides her, if it weren't for my confusion, I would have sent them off without another thought.

"But I'm willing to change now. Damn it, I'll prove it to everyone that I'm not an egocentric bastard. I'm going to help Tenten get rid of her fear as one of the many things I'll need to do to repent. I may not believe in a god or a deity, but if any one of them is listening now, I'll tell them that I promise to turn Tenten's life around, even if it's the last thing I do."

With that, Neji forced himself to calm down and quickly finished the folding, taking hold of everything and leaving it outside Tenten's door, making sure to knock before walking away. He didn't notice Tenten poke her head out, glance at the clothes and then at his back because he was too busy trying not to let foreboding thought enter his mind. Despite his best efforts, it managed to wriggle into his brain and slowly stain his thoughts.

In fact, I'm pretty sure it'll be the last thing I'll ever do.

Sasuke haunted the hospital hallways like a ghost, a raven-haired, pale-skinned ghost with brooding black eyes that seemed to hold an ethereal quality to them. His face, although still quite handsome, held a look of hopelessness, so intimidating that even the most vivacious of nurses had been too frightened to approach him, however good in bed she might think he was.

The hospital staff were quite used to him now and walked past him without any comment, save for the usual nod of the head. If any of them found his frequent visitations strange or unheard of, they did not mention it. It was this sort of professionalism that Sasuke extremely appreciated, especially during his hospital visits.

What did it matter that he had no close ties with the dying patient?

What did it matter that he wasn't related nor had any friendship?

He had his own reasons for what he did.

It was probably too confusing for their insolent little brains anyway, he'd always think with a smirk.

He paused outside the very familiar room and peered in through the small, square window, his heart dropping at how thin she had gotten, almost skeletal. Taking a deep breath, he twisted the doorknob and entered the room, plastering on a very fake smile, trying his very best to cheer her up.

She turned her pale eyes to him and frowned. "You're here again?" she spat out.

Sasuke said nothing, only seated himself in the chair beside her bed. "No word from Neji yet?"

"He's a bastard, a selfish bastard," she insisted, beginning to shake. "How dare he shirk away from his responsibilities! When Father found out he had disappeared, he…he…"

"Hey, don't overexcite yourself," Sasuke warned. "You don't want to start fainting again."

"What a pity that would be," she muttered. "At least I'll be free of this hell."

He smiled wryly. "It seems the possibility of death has hardened you, Hanabi."

"It's not a possibility," Hanabi contradicted, holding her head and falling back onto the pillow. "It's for certain that I'm going to die."

"But if Neji," Sasuke protested but she raised her voice, drowning him out.

"Neji won't come back, you idiot," Hanabi snapped, closing her eyes. "He's only ever thought of himself."

Sasuke glared at the Hyuuga heiress. "You shouldn't be so quick to judge."

"Why not?" she retorted. "My own cousin is condemning me to death. He's killing me, Sasuke. He's murdering me! Of course, I wouldn't expect you to agree, especially when you and Neji are such good friends. Always trying to see the good in people, eh?"

"Not as much as you'd like to think." He studied Hanabi's frail body before standing up suddenly and heading over to the door.

"Leaving so soon?" Hanabi called, making him freeze. "You're just like my father. He couldn't stand it when I told him that I was ready to die. And then he really lost it when I told him that Neji wasn't coming back. Really, even Hinata got worked up about it. I can tell because she starts to stutter even more. Of course, it ended with Father storming out of the room, yelling over his shoulder that I would live."

She sighed peacefully, smiling how at how Sasuke hadn't moved, and continued her dialogue. "I didn't reply, just stuck my tongue out at him. Thank Kami he didn't see me or he would have lectured me on proper behavior and the like, not matter how close to death I may be. Hinata even raised her voice a little bit – can you believe it? – but then told me that Father shouldn't have yelled at me. She's right, of course. You shouldn't shout at a sick person. It could trigger death. I'm pretty sure, at least."

She pouted and waited for Sasuke's response. When none came, Hanabi sighed and sat up in her bed. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to prove you wrong, Hanabi-chan," Sasuke answered lightly, heading out the door. "I'm going to find Neji."

a/n: And the plot thickens! I'm trying to build the suspense without giving too much away and at the same time trying to catch the reader's interest. So if you, the reader, find yourself enthralled, please do review. XD. You know what? Review even if you want to b*tch to me about how bad your day was or brag at how amazing it was. I don't care.

Actually, I kind of do. So please have some of it relate to the story. :)

Anyway, I originally plotted Hinata to be the 'sick and dying Hyuuga' but with the type of personality that they need just wouldnt fit Hinata, even if I mentioned that she was OOC. It's a bit too far of a stretch, even for me. So, I know Hanabi's supposed to be five years younger than Hinata (who would be sixteen) but we can tweak the facts a bit - this is an AU, after all - and say that she's thirteen.

I still believe that Neji's OOC. Personally, I think he's too nice. I'd love it if someone would either back me up or contradict me. I found a way to make him more standoffish that wouldnt change the plot too much and wouldnt appear too sudden, so if someone could let me know what they think of his character, that would be superbly hwamazing. :D

Sorry for the long Author's Note! And as always, PLEASE REVIEW!

Ahnyong~Cel :)