A/N: Life is making me angsty. Help.
This is also more of an open-ended extended drabble than a one-shot. It veers towards the darker side of Neji and Tenten's relationship. Make of it what you will.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Loving Neji can hurt like hell sometimes, Tenten decides as she steadies her stance. She bites her thumb and smears her blood across the symbols on her scroll to summon a large set of kunai and shuriken. As she takes stock of her weapons, she flexes her fingers, relishing in the simmering rage pulsing through her veins. Despite it being the dead of winter, Tenten shrugs off her cloak and welcomes the sting of the cold. Now is not the time for her to be calm and rational, she concedes. Now is the time for her to be absolutely furious without restraint.
"Bastard," she grits. The force of her throws embeds the shuriken halfway through the thick wood of the target board.
Really, after daring to chew her out in front of the rest of their platoon, she doesn't know why she hadn't wrung his neck right there in the middle of the jonin lounge. He hadn't yelled of course, he never yelled, and she is proud that she at least hadn't responded to his accusations like a screaming banshee. No, that would have only served to prove his point.
But still, what she would give to slap the smirk off his face.
He'd claimed afterwards that he had lost his temper, that he hadn't meant to humiliate her in front of the rest of their team, that he was sorry, and that he would really like for her to have dinner with him tonight, but Tenten's only answer had been a slamming door.
She regrets ever opening the door to even hear his pathetic apology in the first place.
Her fingers are slowly numbing, but Tenten does not pause. Even with the slight lilt her frustration lends to the trajectory of her kunai, she still hits dead center every time.
He'd given her an ultimatum then, to either open the door and settle this like adults, or end their relationship.
She had elected to remain in the kitchen, waiting to hear his footsteps finally fade down the hallway.
She is bothered by his calmness. He hadn't sounded perturbed at all when he'd spoken of breaking up, as if he didn't really expect her to have the will to leave him.
She did.
And only now can she feel the absolute hurricane he'd brought upon her. Everything in her aches from loving him for far too long, from complacently living under his caustic thumb, from staying small when he refused to grow. Their relationship should have been stifled at the stage when it was still only a silly schoolgirl crush; she'd never intended for them to flourish into a potential life partnership.
And yet she knows that leaving him does not equate to her not loving him. She knows he is really only a frightened boy behind a warrior's mask. She knows he loves her, truly and deeply, underneath all of his worst faults. But this distance between them now, she needs it, so that she can stop burning and start healing. And she knows that he needs it too, so that he can stop hurting and start growing.
And when she's cleaned all his salt from her wounds, and he's burned through all his bitterness, maybe they can try again.
Maybe.
A/N: Thank you for reading and please review!
~M.I.