Chapter 16: First Night
By the time they reached the first village it was evening, and Usagi was once again almost out of patience. She had regained consciousness about an hour after the fight, to find that she was riding on Neji's back as the procession continued toward the village. However, while she apparently wasn't being sent home, no one seemed willing to tell her exactly what had happened during the battle. She gathered that something had happened, and that it had something to do with her. Enough to do with her that it meant she could stay, apparently. She just couldn't fathom what it was she'd done, and whatever it was it must have been draining, because she was a bit too tired to care at the moment.
The room was arranged as they had been in the old days. Three of them went in, headbands hidden, to rent a large empty room and request plenty of pillows. Then the rest would sneak in through the windows in twos and threes. This was all done to disguise the fact that they were a large group of traveling shinobi. If someone got wind of just how big their party was, or worse, just who they were, there would be a terrible commotion. Best to just lay low.
While the rest of them waited for Ino, Choji and Shikamaru to return, Sakura flitted hither and thither tending to the wounded. Not that anyone was very badly hurt, exactly, but she patched up each bite and scrape as though it were a major injury. She was taking no chances.
"Sakura-san, really, I am fine!" Lee protested as she taped a compress over a scratch on his cheek. He was sitting with his back to the trunk of a tree, and she was kneeling in front of him, fussing over a number of small cuts on his face.
"I'm the medic, I'll decide when you're fine!" Sakura snapped.
Lee caught her wrist as she went for another compress to put on a small nick over his eye. "Sakura-san," he said gently, forcing her to pause and look at him, "I know that you feel guilty about not being able to help Naruto, but tending to every little scrape on the rest of us will not change things. No matter how good you take care of us, it will not bring him back."
Sakura looked at her knees. "I know," she whispered, "I just want to be careful, that's all. I don't want anything to happen to anyone else. Not when I could have done something."
Lee smiled warmly, gazing at her with perfect understanding. "I know," he said gently, quietly enough that only she could hear him, "but none of us is going to die of a cut, Sakura-chan."
"That's the signal," called Sasuke loudly, staring openly and the couple but pointing to where Ino was waving through the window of a room at the back of the inn. Sakura and Lee both sighed as they got to their feet, and neither failed to notice how Sasuke waited for them to get ahead of him so he could watched them as they all began to file in, two and three at a time. As the leader Sasuke went in last, and the few minutes he had to wait after Lee and Sakura entered before him was enough to make him wish Naruto was alive.
Once they were all inside they surveyed the room. "Wow," Tenten breathed, "it almost feels like we've been here before."
It was exactly as she remembered the rooms they'd always gotten to be. The room was large and empty, an unused storage room perhaps, and the floor was covered in a thick, soft layer of pillows. Choji had already relaxed onto a large pile of them, Ino cuddling into his side and making as though to climb onto his stomach. She yawned and laid her head on his chest, blinking sleepily.
"We should all get some rest," Sasuke told them, as they all began to drift off towards familiar positions. Hinata pulled a tired Usagi out of Neji's grasp and carried her to a pile of pillows near the rear wall, settling down on her side with her daughter tucked into her arms. The sand siblings each retreated to a corner, Shikamaru following Temari, and Kiba, who had managed to maneuver in Akamaru through the window, let the great white dog settle into a sleeping position, then sank down against his side. Shino laid down nearby, and Sakura and Lee curled up next to each other near the center of the room, allowing Sasuke to pick his position against the right wall and pretend to nod off, all the while watching the two of them carefully.
Tenten cast around the large room, looking for a place to sleep. She knew how she was used to sleeping in this kind of room, but she wasn't exactly sure that was going to fly anymore. True, she had walked with him, and Ino and Choji seemed to have fallen into their old sleeping arrangement, but she wasn't sure if it would be the same way with her and Neji. He picked a spot to sleep, not too far from Hinata and Usagi, but she hesitated. At last choosing a spot several feet away from him, between him and his cousin, she settled down, her back to him and her body struggling to relax.
Things had changed between Neji and Tenten. He knew that. They had decided it was best they not see each other, in the romantic sense, once they'd gotten back to the village, but somehow this just didn't seem right. Everything was as it had been, everyone was where they'd been. Except Tenten. He lay there, staring intently at the back of her head, as though willing it to open and give him some insight as to why things felt so painfully different.
His first night back in the village all that time ago had been hard. Hell, who was he kidding, the first month had been hard, trying to get to sleep without her familiar warmth held tightly in his arms. He knew this should be easy, he'd been sleeping without her ever since then, but something about being back here, in this situation, in a room like this, everyone exactly where they had been, made him wish that she would come back to where she'd always slept.
-Later That Night-
Tenten wasn't exactly sure when she'd woken up, but she had a vague sense of having lain there, eyes closed but not asleep, listening to the gentle rhythmic sounds of the others breathing, for quite some time. At last deciding she would get no more sleep tonight, or at least for a while, she rolled over onto her back and looked at the ceiling. She wanted to turn over and look at Neji, to watch him while he slept, but she held back. That act alone made it impossible to relax. This wasn't right. This didn't feel right. This wasn't the way it had been. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. But this was how it was.
She guessed this was how Hinata must feel, for the first time in years having to get to sleep holding a child instead of being held by her husband. Then again, at least she had someone. It wasn't fair, damn it! Everybody else curled up together, Lee and Sakura, Shikamaru and Temari, hell even Ino and Choji! Even Hinata wasn't totally alone, she at least had a small reminder of the one she loved, the legacy he'd left behind. Tenten had nothing, she had no one, and after all that time spent with him, walking through hell by his side, she still didn't have the right to roll over into his arms and sleep in his embrace again. It wasn't fair!
Almost angrily, she turned over to face him . . . but he wasn't there. Sitting up, she scanned the room, looking for some sign that he had moved. There was everyone, three couples, seven individuals and a massive white dog, each tucked into a predesignated space that had been decided on more than seven years ago. But Neji was missing.
Tenten stood and crossed to the window where they'd all entered. Looking out, she scanned the street and the nearby forest, but there was no one out at this hour. Sighing, she pulled herself out the window and swung up onto the roof.
There he was.
She landed, feather light, crouching on the roof, to find him sitting on the opposite edge, staring out into the night. He turned.
"Tenten," he whispered simply, reminding her forcibly of when she had tripped and fallen into his arms. Had it really been just a few days earlier?
She stared, a little dumbstruck, for a moment, then shook herself. "I'm sorry!" she said hurriedly, turning to climb down off the roof, "I'll just . . ."
"That's alright," he told her, and she stilled, looking at him as though a little lost. "Sit with me."
Cautiously, as though she wasn't sure what to expect, she complied, crawling across the roof to where he sat and swinging her legs over the side, settling herself a short distance away from him. They sat in silence for a moment, simply staring straight ahead, then . . .
"I'm sorry!" she blurted. He turned to her, a little perplexed. "I'm sorry," she repeated, more calmly this time, but it was a forced calm. She looked determinedly at her knees. "I'm sorry I . . . I'm just sorry. I'm sorry if I was too . . . if I started acting like we were back then, and everything was the same. I know things are different now, it isn't like the old days. Things have changed."
"Tenten-chan," he tried to interrupt, the beginning of a smile spreading across his face, but she barely seemed to hear him, forging on as though he hadn't spoken.
"I'm sorry if I got a little angry with you, because I did. I probably made you feel really uncomfortable, walking beside you like we used to, and then trying to sleep so close to you, and I'm just . . ."
She never got to finish he sentence. At that precise moment Neji took hold of her chin, turned her face toward him and pressed his lips ever so gently against hers'. For a moment her eyes went wide with shock, then she relaxed into the kiss, letting him wrap his arms around her and draw her close to him.
"Tenten-chan," he said again once he pulled away, "what ever made you think I didn't want you to sleep beside me?"
"I don't know," Tenten said truthfully, her head spinning a little, "I guess . . . we just spent so long apart . . . I wasn't sure if you wanted things to go back to the way they were."
"Tenten-chan," he repeated, smiling broadly now, "I have always wanted things to be the way they were."
With that he pressed his lips against her temple and pulled her into his tight embrace.
