When she is told Neji Hyuuga is dead, she laughs.
So they show her. His body, blood-stricken, with holes the size of his future, is draped in Lee's arms as he weeps. His eyes are whiter than usual. None-seeing. His forehead is vacant. Free.
She feels bad for whoever's fate has ended so cruelly, but she knows it can't be Neji.
So she calls Lee's name and pulls him away from the body, keeps her eyes dry and her weapon warm for the next enemy she needs to bring down. She avoids looking at the scar near the corpse's lip, the one that she has stared at for a thousand mornings, the one that confirmed what weighed her heart down to level the dirt he lay on: Neji is dead.
When the war ends, she vaguely recalls medics congratulate her and Lee. Neji survived. It's a miracle. He's back from the dead. She laughs. Was he ever among them?
He's alive, the medics say. Non-cooperative, but alive. Unconscious, but alive. His heartbeats are almost non-existent, but he's alive. She huffs. Is this life?
Lee breaks down again, in her scarred arms, against her aching heart. Thank God, he sobs. Thank God, Tenten.
Thank God, Lee, she wants to say. But she has no thanks to give. Not yet. Neji was never dead. Neji is barely alive. Neji is still dead. Which of these realities is the truth?
She only knows the following: she has absolute deaths to mourn, friends to comfort. Ino to get out of bed. Shikimaru to lend a shoulder to. A sensei to take care of. Neji's maybe death has no space in her body. This hopeful sadness is foreign and unwelcome.
She lets Lee and Gai be enthusiastic, but accepts no hope from their hearts into hers. She does not mourn Neji, either. He was never dead, but he is miraculously alive, but he is dead. Until she hears his voice, he is dead.
She hears his voice months later.
Until then, she visits his bedside a total of zero times. She lets Lee tell her of his recovery process. A slow, agonizing recovery, during which she only allows herself to picture him as she had found him on the battlefield. Dead.
As Lee informs her of updates, she imagines another person's body recovering. Another person's wounds healing. Not Neji. How could it be? He is not alive. Even if he is certainly not dead.
One night, she bolts up from a cruel dream to find herself sweating in her quiet apartment. Her body hurts in ways that cannot be achieved by intense training. Her chest is on fire, her mind is in agony. She closes her eyes to push away the smile that has frequented her nightmares lately.
It beams behind her eyelids, in the resolved, refrained manner he specializes in. The smile he offered her after every training session and during every mission. In her sleep, his eyes are a warm lavender, so full of life and so opposite to the white they held back on that field.
As she presses a hand to her aching chest and walks to open a window, a shadow catches her attention.
She is at the front door before Lee knocks. He is dead. Let him finally be dead. Let me mourn him finally and fully.
But Lee is smiling. Hope fills her heart up to her throat. Hope leaks from holes she had long decided to ignore in her heart. Her organs soak it up even as she wills them not to. Her brain is hazy from its power. Hope overcomes her every sense, and as Lee whispers to the a.m. night, "He's awake," she lets it guide her through the Konoha streets.
He is awake. He is not dead. He was. He had been. But not anymore. It's a miracle. He survived.
He's alive.
Her giddiness is humiliating, leading her running legs to room 406. She knows its number even though she has never stepped foot in it. She and Lee are giggling, dodging tired nurses, jumping up and down until she finds herself outside of his room. His room. The room he breathes in.
He's alive.
The thought is intoxicating and the urge to run inside and kiss him breathless fuels her body. She watches Lee step inside and follows. Her heart beats painfully fast. Her fingers shake.
Neji's eyes are open, his body is bandaged but his chest is moving— he's breathing. Thank God, she wants to scream. She beams and runs to his side, about to crush him in a hug.
He opens his mouth and before she can silence it with a kiss, he utters, "Can I help you?"
Neji is breathing.
Neji is in room 406 and he is alive, the doctors say.
Gai arrives and crushes Lee and her in a rejoiceful hug. Thank God, kids, he says.
Lee sheds a tear and nods. He is thankful, Tenten can see. He is miserable, Tenten can tell.
Tenten is neither. She is not thankful, for although Neji is breathing, although he had died and come back, Neji is anything but alive. She is not miserable, either. She is… angry. Furious.
At Neji, at first. "What?" she had choked.
"Are you the new nurses?" Neji had narrowed his eyes.
"Neji!" she gulps, and scrunches up his clothes over his bandaged collar. "Don't fuck with me."
Lee is at her side, batting down her hands and holding her back. Tenten is sure she'll explode. She doesn't understand.
"We are sorry," Lee mutters. "You don't remember us?"
Neji stares and stares. Into Lee's eyes. Into Tenten's. His white eyes narrow— white, Tenten notices. As white as that day ten months ago— but then he shakes his head. "Am I supposed to?"
Tenten lets out a dry wail and escapes Neji's room.
Neji is breathing but he is dead.
After they talk to the doctors— 5% chance he'll regain his memory; an impossible feat, even for a prodigy—, Tenten is angry at Lee. Her screams echo in the empty hospital halls. "You should've found out before you told me!"
"I'm sorry," he whispers as his tears drop in a constant stream. "I didn't… I didn't think—"
Tenten shakes with anger as she turns and flees to the hospital garden.
All along, Tenten is mad at herself. It's her own fault to let hope control her. Hadn't she spent ten months avoiding this exact reaction?
Around her, the leaves rustle and the moon stares at her, as white as Neji's forgetful eyes. Her knees collapse under his fate's weight. She lands on her palms and she wails and screams, wills her eyes to shed tears but there is nothing— dry as the universe's cruel humor.
She registers Lee's hand on her shoulder and he pulls her into a hug. Sheds the tears she can't.
"What the fuck," she cries. Over and over again. Anything but this. She can handle his death. She can't handle this.
Lee sobs and brushes her hair.
Neji's family arrives. Hiashi steps alone into 406 and shuts the door behind him. Tenten waits until he steps out and sends a threatening kunai that lands next to his face on the door.
He looks up with an intent to kill, but his eyes land on Neji's teammates and his shoulders drop. He is guilty and he knows it. Tenten glares at him until he leaves; Lee's fists clench as a threat; Gai's jaw sets. "Don't ever come near him again," they threaten silently, and Hiashi understands.
Hinata is next. She does not come in. "I can't," she whispers to her father.
"Then leave," spits Tenten. Rage contracts her muscles. Of course she can't. She's weak. It's your fault, she wants to scream. Gai's hand on her shoulder calms her down, but Hinata leaves anyway.
She spends an hour among his visitors. Watches as one by one, they leave disappointed, and she sneers. He couldn't remember her or Lee or Gai. What made them think he'd remember insignificant them?
She leaves mourning like never before. A new grief. More painful than any loss. Neji alive but dead. It fucks with her brain and sends shockwaves of pain across her head and through her body.
It takes a month for Lee to convince her to visit him again. The doctors have given up trying to make Neji remember, and so have they. But Tenten misses him all the same, and reluctantly she makes her way with a fruit basket to 406 alongside Lee.
"Knock knock," calls Lee cheerfully.
"Hn." Tenten feels her feet freeze at the sound of it. So familiar, yet it sounds so dead. She almost turns on her heels and runs away, but steels her nerves, clutches the kunai strapped to her thigh to steady her hands, and steps inside.
Neji sits in the couch, staring out the window. His fingers tread his clear forehead, like it itches, but he brings his hand down when his teammates enter.
"We brought you fruits." Lee takes the basket out of Tenten's hands and sets it on Neji's bedside.
Neji nods politely. His hands fiddle nervously— an act Neji would never do—, and Tenten feels discomfort tease her joints. She does not know this person.
"Apparently, I liked pumpkin," Neji points out the many mini pumpkins spread out in the basket.
A silence washes over Lee and Tenten, which Lee embarrassingly breaks, "Actually… that was a joke. You weren't very fond—"
Tenten loses her patience. "You loathed it. Couldn't stand it. How can someone not remember what food he enjoys?"
Lee's eyes widen at her, a plea to knock it off. But Tenten's anger increases tenfold. This is a joke. A fat fucking joke from an unfunny God.
Neji frowns at her. There is a defensive look in his eyes, but mostly they're sad.
She turns and leaves.
It takes another week for Lee to drag her to his room again.
"And that's how Naruto defeated you. It was pure luck, if you ask me!" Lee winks.
Neji smiles gratefully at Lee's stories from the Chuunin exams, which feel like ages ago. Tenten watches from her spot in the corner, half-believing that the stories she is hearing are of different people than the ones in 406. "Thank you, Lee."
They sit in silence for a while. Neji then asks, "My uncle hasn't visited since I woke up. Did he tell you anything?"
Lee shoots Tenten a dark look. "We… kind of told him not to."
"Why?" Neji tilts his head.
"Because… you know, your childhood and all."
"Yes. I have been told." Neji looks at the ceiling for a second. "But… if it's true that I died for his daughter, then… that must mean I chose to forgive them." He glances at Tenten. "Right?"
Tenten can't tell if the question is meant for her, so she remains silent. The Neji she knows would still be angry. Forgive, maybe, but never forget.
What does it matter. The Neji she knows is gone. She won't let this new one get his way.
"You'd be dumb if you do," she scoffs.
Neji scoffs back. "What's her problem?" he asks Lee.
Lee rubs his neck nervously. "She—she doesn't have one! Haha! Just a temper—"
"Does it hurt?" Tenten's eyes widen at her own question. It had slipped without her meaning to. Through the hazy pain of seeing Neji but him not seeing her back— what a waste of your eyes, Hyuuga—, she realizes she has been staring at his bandaged chest for the whole day.
Neji and Lee stare at her, confused at first. But Neji catches on— At least he's still smart. He looks down for a quiet minute. Then meets her eyes. "Yes."
Tenten nods. Without a goodbye, she strolls out of his room.
Over the next few months, she visits more frequently. Always with Lee, sometimes pushing Gai's wheelchair inside, as well.
They tell him stories of missions, of Chuunin exams, of colleagues, memories, training sessions. But mostly Tenten listens. She holds her stories close. Refuses to let go of them. The stories she shares of Neji are hers and Neji's only, and this bandaged man is not Neji, although Neji's familiar scar decorates his face. Neji is dead.
She thinks of the times he had encouraged her, their daily one-on-one training, the countless kisses they've almost shared, the countless fights, the countless times they have been mistaken for a couple. In the corner of 406, in the dark, a tear rolls down her cheek as she listens to her sensei laugh about a particular mission. Neji's head whips toward her, but he gives no indication that he saw it other than the lingering of his white eyes on hers, before he continues asking his other teammates questions.
That night for the first time, as she leaves, she whispers a "goodnight" as she shuts the door on his weary body.
A year goes by. Neji knows more now. He memorizes ex-classmates' and teachers' names. He knows more about their jutsus as well as his own. More about his tragic family and his love for Hinata.
He knows all this. But Tenten knows he feels none of it.
Her visits become less frequent. Weekly, then biweekly. Eventually, once a month. He acknowledges her with a "Tenten" and a nod. Her name sounds eerie on his tongue. She sits in her corner and answers any questions he points at her, which are only few. An hour later she gets up, whispers a "goodnight", then leaves before she hears his answer.
She buries herself in her work. Gets promoted to a jounin, which Gai-sensei cries with pride over for hours. He treats her to her favorite restaurant and he knows her well enough to avoid talk about the old days, because the old days mean Neji, and Neji is dead. To Tenten, Neji is dead.
All around her, life goes on. Her friends grow up, slowly but surely. Wardrobes change. Ninja fall in love. Ino gets better and learns how to laugh again. Shikamaru smokes packs and packs a day but is smiling and is in love. Sasuke atones for his sins; Sakura forgives; Naruto forgets. The leaf village is rebuilt, slowly, up from rubble all around her.
It feels like she's the only one stuck. She drags her feet forward every day, but a truth weighs her down, pulls her back. A nagging memory, like something she has forgotten.
Neji's death, she realizes. She had never mourned it properly. She had never celebrated properly. He is stuck in between death and life, and is holding her back with him.
When she realizes this in the forest during her training, her punch rattles the trees. She hates him. He should have died.
Another year later, she learns that Neji has been discharged. He is under strict orders: no training, no running, no throwing weapons. She laughs. Ridiculous. This is no Neji Hyuuga.
It has been months since her last visit. She sends her regards with Lee and Gai, who have learned not to pressure her to accompany them any longer. Fate is cruel, she has decided. The old Neji was right. Fate is cruel and it played her like a toy.
Neji is not alive and he is not dead. But her Neji was dead, long gone.
Now, Tenten walks through the streets, and catches a glimpse of Hinata, hand in hand with Naruto. Her eyes are lavender, like Neji's. Like her dead Neji's.
Hinata catches her eye and looks down, ashamed for being caught so happy. Good. Let her. Tenten bites down the bile in her throat, the jealousy and hatred and anger. The weight of two friendships lost: Neji's and Hinata's. And Tenten drags her feet forward.
She stands outside a For Sale sign, peeking into the empty garage. A perfect spot for a weapon shop, she thinks giddily. She wants to buy it right now, but dreams are delusional and her savings are faint. Still, she sets her mind on the little shop, promises to come back in a few years to—
"Tenten."
Her heart sinks. She knows this voice. It's Neji's.
It's not the bedridden Neji's voice. Not the cold, unrecognizable tone. This voice is all velvet, chocolate, lavender, and warmth. He says her name the old way: his voice picks up with the first Ten, then goes deeper on the second syllable. He says it like he always has: tenderly but not without the natural authority his voice seems to carry. Her name sounds pretty again, she realizes with a huff.
She turns around, scared of what she'll find.
Neji stands with his back straighter than it had been for the past two years. His arms are neatly tucked at his side. The bandages peak through his clothes. From his neck down to the tips of his fingers. The scar near his lip shines white under the sun. And his eyes…
Lavender.
"You remember," she whispers.
Neji stares at her with a slight frown. She cannot read his face. Oh, she wants to crumble to the floor and kiss the sky. She cannot read his face! Her Neji is back.
Neji nods.
Tenten does not know what to do with herself. An ache, another wave of grief, hits her, almost like it has finally caught up with all her years of running, and it makes her double over with pain.
Tears fall and she turns around to hide them. But they are pouring and she is laughing and she is aware she sounds mad. But he is back. Neji is alive. Neji died and came back but hasn't been alive since. Until now.
He keeps his distance until she collects herself. She looks at him again, then, and cannot hold it in any longer. She runs to his bandaged arms.
He lets her arms wrap around him but does not return her hug, which lasts only half a minute before Tenten steps back, questioning.
He does not meet her eyes. "You… you gave up on me."
Tenten freezes. Her hands drop to her side, heavy with a weight of a thousand kunai.
"You didn't even… try to make me remember."
Tenten's throat closes up.
"I'm—"
She cuts herself off. They stand silently in the midst of the buzzing street.
"It wasn't you. I… couldn't."
His face contracts and he pushes her away. She stumbles but stands her ground.
"What?" he spits. "You couldn't? You couldn't bring yourself to at least be kind to me?"
Her voice rose in response. "Yeah, Neji, I couldn't. I thought you were dead. For ten months, I was waiting for the day you'd be buried. And then one day you come back from the dead and you don't even remember my name—"
"I couldn't remember my own name. Do you know how scared I was?" For the first time ever, he is yelling.
"Of course I do," she yells. "I was scared for you. And of you. You weren't you, Neji. You were… dead. I saw you die—"
"I died! You saw it but I felt it! I'm the one who was dead. And then I woke up feeling gaping holes in my body and learning I died in battle for a cousin I don't even remember."
"You chose to die for her. Those are your own consequences."
"I have suffered them," he shouted. "Being reborn at eighteen is enough consequences on its own—"
"But I've had to suffer them, too. And Lee and sensei."
"So I should have stayed dead that night, then?"
"Maybe you should have," she screams, and her words ring under the sun, shushing the shoppers around them.
He stares at her with a set jaw for only a second. Then he leaves her in front of a shop she feels too small to hope for.
Her fingers, ever so steady, ever so precise, knock softly on his new apartment. He has moved out of the Hyuuga compound— a truth that made her burst with pride.
She shifts on her feet as she hears rustling on the other side of the door.
It opens and her jaw slackens open. Neji stands shirtless, with one hand holding the unrolled bandage over his waist, and the rest of it between his teeth. Tenten stares at his chest and involuntarily takes a step back.
His shoulder's tissues are mangled. His skin is thirty shades of red and pink and nude, all thrashing together in a disfigured array of cells. Scars and burns run down his collarbones to his chest, and Tenten gags as she realizes she may have glimpsed bone. She swallows the bile down and forces herself to look up at his eyes.
They are lavender, hard as they study her reaction. "Quite bad, huh?"
Tenten swallows again. Her breathing has picked up and she forces herself not to close her eyes for too long. Every time she does, his corpse stands in his place, blood pouring out of the freshly penetrated wounds. Her breath shivers as she jokes. "I've been through worse."
Neji stares at her, unamused, but she can tell he's trying to suppress a smirk. "Like what?"
Tenten thinks. "Periods."
Neji raises his eyebrows and guffaws a laugh, deep and rich. His eyes crinkle around the edges, a softer version of his Byakuugan when activated. He raises a hand to cover his mouth politely, a habit she noticed when she had first made him laugh—eight years ago.
Tenten lets out a choked chuckle, trying her damn hardest not to stare at his chest. She remembers the contents of her left hand and he barely flinches when she shoves the bouquet in his face.
She sinks her right nails into her palm and blurts, "I'm sorry. Can I come in?"
Neji sighs with a soft smile and steps aside, returning the end of the bandage to his mouth so he can close the door.
His apartment is cozy, not too small but definitely not as spacious as the living means he has been used to. "Make yourself at home."
She follows him to the living room, where he sits facing a mirror. He takes one edge of the bandage and starts wrapping it around his torso before it loosens and falls off. With a sharp sigh— Hyuuga Neji's equivalence to a loudmouthed curse—, he picks up the end again and restarts wrapping.
Tenten sets the flowers on the dining table and rubs her hands nervously.
With a shake in her step that she squeezes her muscles not to let show, she approaches Neji and kneels down next to him.
He stares down at her and in this light, his eyes hold more emotions than she has ever recalled finding in them. Something in them reeks of misery, of fatigue, and her heart aches. But there's something else. She finds it as his eyes traverse her entire face in a second. Neediness. Longing. Want.
She swallows and looks down. Her lip trembles as she comes face to face with the wound on his chest. Tenten scratches her knee, painfully, as she studies them, willing the tears to stay inside.
"Tenten," he whispers. There it is again, her pretty name. Her breaths are rapid and her eyes are overwhelmed with the tissues of his skin, all out of place.
Neji's thumb touches her chin, and he guides her gaze upward, toward his eyes. "I'm here."
The statement seems to unlock something in Tenten. Just as he says it, she lets out a sob, and covers her mouth with a hand. Yes, he's here. Neji is alive.
His thumb caresses her chin as she struggles against the sobs. She lets out a few more but he does not hold her, a fact she's grateful for knowing she cannot handle the texture of his wounds against her skin.
"Tenten," he calls after a minute. She looks at him, eyes wet but not fully crying. Suddenly she is angry with herself. Here Neji is, twice a miracle, with scars and limps that will last him a lifetime, and she's the one crying like a little girl.
She rubs her eyes with a forearm and reaches for the bandage in his hand. He hands it over with a concerned look. With a swallow and nerves she has always been praised for, she reaches for the wound on his chest, and glances questioningly at his face.
Neji nods and puts a gentle hand on hers, guiding her bare fingers slowly, carefully, on his butchered skin. Every bone in her body wants to pull away, to scream and puke till her guts are outside her body, but for Neji, she swallows hard and focuses.
She can feel the impact of every splinter of the wood that penetrated his body. She can discern burns from scars, scratches from stitches. For minutes, he guides her hand over his healing scars, and with every passing second, she is more sure of the fact that Neji is here.
He has suffered and paid for choosing to do the right thing, while she has been a cruel, selfish bitch and is being rewarded by his survival.
The universe is a jester, with humor as dry as the wounds under her fingers.
He teaches her how to bandage him, and with his help, they are done within fifteen minutes.
"You're good at this. Maybe you should have been a medical ninja after all."
"Heh. There's just nothing I'm not good at. Tsunade was just scared I'd surpass her when she rejected me."
Neji smirks and stares at her, then his eyes drop.
"Does it still hurt?"
He doesn't have to look at her to understand. "Sometimes."
"When?"
Neji closes his eyes tightly. "When I move."
She translates in her head: whenever I'm ninja. They both know he cannot be any longer, and the truth hangs between them like a dead body.
"You did well."
His head snaps toward her. He is surprised.
"When we thought you had… died, Gai-sensei wouldn't shut up about how proud he was of you. That you chose to save the ones you loved. That you changed your lonely, miserable way of thinking."
Neji stared with sad, sad eyes. Even with Gai's pride, even with all the honor in the world, he still paid with his life, and he regrets it.
"But I wasn't," she continued. "I was so angry. Such a stupid thing, Neji. To die for someone else who isn't half as powerful as you are. It took time for me to see why. Why you'd make such a huge sacrifice. You love Hinata. There was a time you weren't even capable of that. Of love."
Neji swallows, like he wants to say something. But she goes on.
"And now you've proved to everyone that you are. You're a better man than all of us. And," she stands up, and his eyes follow her as if hungrily. When she's level with his empty forehead, she plants a kiss on it. "And now you're free."
Neji stares up at her and she stares down at him. After a while, he reaches for her hand and plants a kiss in her palm, sending weeping butterflies flying from her hand to the pit of her stomach.
He stands up and kisses the inside of her wrist, the inside of her elbow, her shoulder. The kisses are so soft, so tender, that she wants to cry. It seems crying is all she wants to do ever since he came back. Neji is alive and he is planting kisses on her arms.
"You're wrong," he whispered. "I learned I was capable of love a long time ago." His lips brush over her collarbone, and she shudders. "I've loved you way longer, Tenten."
"I'm sorry I gave up on you," she chokes.
He kisses her forehead. "I'm sorry I died."
And he kisses her. In his apartment, with an injury that will never go away. But free, nonetheless.