Chap 3

Missing You
By Saori Runa Dempsey
Chapter III
Musoukage's Gift: The Eagle Takes Flight
They're here. That voice was back, and there was happiness in it that she'd never noticed. They come for you, see?
For me…? She wanted to ask who had come, but she still felt like she was trapped in her own body, hearing but unable to see or move. Of course…for me…
"Neji…"
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"Welcome." Dream Village's Musoukage was young and beautiful, smiling in warm welcome. After last night and being left shaken by it (not that his comrades were any the wiser – he'd taken the shinobi lesson of not showing his true emotions to heart), her greeting only rankled his nerves worse.
"The Spirit Lake is a mirror of the soul," the strange shinobi of the Dream Village had said. She'd introduced herself as Shadiri. "Those who look into it see what they want most in the world." She'd looked at him then, her strange eyes – dark as the night with gold specks like the ones on mini-Tenten in his dream – speculative. "Musoukage-sama was afraid you might fall into this forest's traps, so she has sent me to guide you the rest of the way. We've learned the land itself encourages…illusions for those who are often deep in thought."
A dream. His disappointment that the very convincing Tenten had been an illusion was great. He'd thought for a few moments…well…
"I hope you made it with little mishap?" Her strange eyes – the same as the shinobi girl Shadiri – observed them questioningly.
"Our journey was uneventful," he informed her blandly, bowing. "On behalf of Konohagakure, I thank you for the hospitality."
The woman – barely older then him at first glance – merely smiled largely and shook his hand firmly. "The pleasure is mine and Yumegakure's. We've heard much of your lands, young ambassador. Hyuuga-san, isn't it?"
He nodded once, politely, despite his foul mood.
"Come," she beckoned, motioning to the building which served as her home and headquarters. Were he not distracted by the memory of how real the illusion had been, he'd have seen the hard and serious look that came onto the Musoukage's eyes. "We have much to discuss, Hyuuga-san."
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There was finally light as she walked through this place – Tenten didn't know where she was, but it felt as if she'd been there before. And of course, she had…it was the academy training grounds, she realized with a smile a few moments later. A small glance up into one of the trees confirmed she wasn't alone, either. Neji was there, staring off into the distance as she noticed he did a lot, but she didn't say anything to him like usual. He didn't like talking to people, so why waste her breath? She made a point, however, of waving when she caught his eye.
As she'd thought, he just went back to staring and ignored her completely.
That was nothing new and it honestly didn't bother her – she was here for target practice, after all. That was how it had always gone with them back then, she remembered: Neji being indifferent to her, Tenten respecting his strange need for isolation. It had paid off in the end, however.
Right after the graduation ceremony, Tenten had gone to the training grounds again while all the families gushed over their children and congratulated them over their achievements. While she didn't mind being the only one who didn't have a mother there to kiss her cheeks or a father to hug her fiercely in congratulations, she didn't want to be around it either. Head protector in hand, she went to sit beneath one of the targets she aimed at, staring at Konoha's leaf symbol. Her only living family – a sister she hardly remembered but still kept in touch with through letters – was a travel-nin. She went where she was needed, lending her assistance to countries or people as needed, before moving on to her next place. Those shinobi had no home village, and in essence called whatever place they were in at the time their 'home'. Last Tenten had heard, she'd met a nice man and was traveling around with him, too.
In every letter, Shulin would then end by saying as usual, "It would be so nice, wouldn't it, if we could see the continent together, Tenten? From your Aneki, with love."
This recent letter, congratulating her on achieving Genin status, was no different, but Tenten strangely found herself contemplating it anyway. She'd always wanted to see the continent one day, and she had no real reason to stay in Konoha. She lived alone and had acquaintances at best, having never really attached herself to anyone that much.
This was how he – Neji – had found her, and had actually acknowledged her existence. He didn't say anything (she'd have been shocked if he had) and instead just stood there, the feel of his pure white eyes on the top of her bent head. When it finally became enough, Tenten refolded her sister's letter and looked up at him curiously. "Hello."
"Hnn." He gave a small nod – his version of a hello. Arms crossed, he leaned on his right leg as he regarded her with an unreadable expression.
With her nicest smile, Tenten stood up and faced him. While she had always been able to see why all the other girls in their class gushed over him (he WAS cute in his own morose-and-moody-boy type of way and she WAS a keenly observant female), Hyuuga Neji had always piqued her curiosity more then her hypoactive hormones. "Hyuuga-san. Congratulations on being best in our class."
Neji gave a small grunt in answer, looking neither this nor that. He just flat didn't seem to care. "We're on the same team," he stated, looking like each word was being forcefully yanked from his throat and out his mouth.
Not really understanding but nodding anyway, Tenten waited for whatever it was he wanted to say to be said mutely. Simply observing him made it obvious that it wouldn't be wise to say anything until he finished saying whatever he'd come to say.
Of course, when he did blurt it out, it came out in the way all Hyuuga tended to say things – bluntly and sounding like an order.
"Train with me."
For a minute, Tenten could only blink, unsure she'd even heard him right. He was way beyond her in terms of skill – why would he ask HER to train with him? "Why?"
The look he gave her was sour, no doubt resenting her for making him spell out his reasons – he who so obviously guarded his inner thoughts and musings fiercely. With an annoyed sound, he turned his back on her, arms crossing tighter as he audibly forced out two words: "Your eyes."
Tenten just stared at him, dot-eyed.
Neji shook his head at her, annoyance plain on his face. "So will you?"
Such an offer had been too good to pass up. Looking at her sister's letter, she mentally decided that staying here a little longer couldn't hurt and rubbed her fingers along the Konohagakure insignia. Just for now.
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"Hey."
For someone who'd been at death's doorstep, he didn't look bad, his dark hair billowing against the glaring white of the hospital's bed. She was glad one of them felt OK, at least – she personally felt like throwing up.
A small wry smile was on his face as she shut the door to his room, going to sit on the chair at his bedside. The mission to retrieve Uchiha Sasuke was a failure, he confided moodily. Hyuuga's hated losing, as she'd learned by now. He looked as if coming so close to death and going into a coma for a short time (a Hyuuga is too damn stubborn to go into one for a long time) after a mission was NORMAL. It was so aggravating Tenten felt like punting him through the window. Such emotional displays, however, would be of no use, so she kept her worry over him silent and just listened as he told her about all that had transpired during his absence.
"Tenten?" Noticing she was eerily silent (she was normally silent when he talked anyway, but not this type of deafening silence), Neji glanced at her when she blinked out of her stupor. "What?"
As was there way, words weren't needed. She raised her hand and gently touched the spot where the arrow had gone right through him, shutting her eyes and shaking her head. 'What if' scenarios were stupid things and she would NOT think about what could've happened to him had it hit him just a little more towards the left – closer to his heart.
Neji saw her expression and stared at the ceiling, closing his eyes briefly as he let his hand fall limply to his side. "Tenten."
"Hmm?" She gave him her full attention, still swimming to rise from her thoughts.
"Do you remember what I said about your eyes?"
She had to think a few moments before she could remember what he was talking about. "You mean that time after the academy graduation?" He nodded slightly. "What about it?"
"Did you ever figure it out?"
No, she hadn't, and she really didn't know what point he was trying to make. Shaking her head, she watched him in mild concern, wondering if his fever was spiking again. "No. What about it?'
The skin of her hand tingled as he let his own rest atop hers, right there over where he'd had a large gaping hole before. "This sort of stuff would never happen to you."
It actually took Tenten – who prided herself on being smarter then most – a few moments to understand what he'd meant.
"I'd never be the one watching you in a hospital bed."
She felt like laughing and bashing him on the head, but settled for a wide grin as he smiled softly, too, and leaned back saying, "I'm tired."
She was too hyped up over his backwards compliment (for such a blunt guy, he sure did give compliments in a very cryptic way) to really mind it. "I'll leave you be. Rest easy, Neji. I'll come visit again tomorrow."
"Hnn…" was his only response, more contented then she'd ever heard it as she closed the door behind her.
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Of all the things Neji had expected, for once keeping close to Kiba and the shadow user of his own volition, a bowing Musoukage towards him wasn't what he'd expected. The kunoichi, Shadiri, had also followed into a bow, both their postures screaming for forgiveness.
A twitch was in his right eye as he asked slowly, "Musoukage-sama?"
"Yumegakure begs yours and Konohagakure's forgiveness," she sighed, looking up at him with an expression that said just how much she disliked being in her current position.
"I would grant forgiveness if I knew what it was for, Musoukage-sama…" God, he hated politics. Bad enough that he had to deal with clan politics – he didn't even want to touch inter-territorial politics any more then was absolutely necessary. They were scarier then that Curry of Life that still gave him occasional nightmares.
"4 months ago, one of the Genin went into the plains outside Yumegakure's southern most border…" Sitting into an upright position, she beckoned the kunoichi to do the same. "The child had been practicing one of our country's most forbidden techniques…one that, if done wrong, has major consequences."
Plains outside of their southern most border? Unless he was remembering the maps wrong, that would be…
The Musoukage looked pissed as she shot and aggravated look towards the ceiling. "It's the plains closest to that of your clan's compound, Hyuuga-san. We were, I'm afraid, responsible for that large explosion."
Neji's blood ran cold and he barely noticed Kiba and Shikamaru squirm a couple of feet away from him on either side.
"Those who were there were put into a place we of Dream Village call the Spirit Plain." She looked towards Shadiri then and the girl nodded, picking up where she was leaving off.
"The Spirit Plain is a place where those who are trapped there are neither living nor dead," she explained with nerves of steel, considering Neji's death glare on her head. "It is a dangerous place, one where only the Musoukage and myself have gone once before and been able to return alive, but it is possible to retrieve wandering souls and bring them back." She heaved a great sigh, shaking her head. "My sister, Kadiri, is fortunate she doesn't have the power needed to both kill and send the soul to the Spirit Plain, else a retrieval could never be done. The flesh and blood body is required for the retrieval technique to work."
"What are you saying?" Torn between rage and desperate hope, he watched them with a steady gaze that had made weaker women flinch.
Fortunately, neither of these women fell into that category.
"We found your comrades when we came and retrieved Kadiri. All of their bodies were untouched save some scratches." Both women shared a look of consternation before the Musoukage continued. "However, Shadiri and her team felt you and the rest coming so they…panicked. Unwilling to put any contact with your country in jeopardy, they brought them here, where we've been trying to nurse them to a state where retrieval is possible."
Shamefaced, said girl finally cringed as Neji shot her a scathing look. If he was understanding what they were both saying right, his family members and Tenten were not dead as they'd all been led to believe. They were, in fact, alive and very close by.
Kiba summed it up best as he moved as far away from the Hyuuga as physically possible while still remaining in the tent, Akamaru shivering in his lap (No light task since he was now twice Kiba's size) and said, "He's going to blow."
On the far other side, Shikamaru just said dryly to no one in particular, "How troublesome…"
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"Where is she?"
Neji? Above the muttered words of some spell, she felt his voice grow louder and louder, wondering vaguely why he sounded so strange. There were too many emotions in his voice that she couldn't identify, her mind too jumbled as she was, well, yanked back towards the light. She hit the surface with a gasp, snapping her eyes open to the strangest of sights…Nara Shikamaru was there, looking surprised, with Inuzuka Kiba staring at her with an unhinged jaw. Neji was closest to her and wore a passive expression, but he couldn't quite pull it off and looked as vulnerable as the Hyuuga heir would ever get.
She waited before the unfamiliar room stopped spinning before she said anything. "What's going on?" She looked around, smiling when Akamaru barked from his master's side and tried to bounce over to her, stopped only by the doorway which wouldn't fit his massive size. Looking at Neji, who sat on the chair closest to her bed, she smiled slightly, questions in her eyes. "Hey. What's going on, Neji?"
Ignoring the people in the room, he merely stared at her eyes, an expression she'd never seen before in his eyes. "Tenten…are you alright? No illusion?"
She blinked, question marks floating in the air around her. "…What…?" She made a weird noise as Neji grabbed her chin, gently turning her head this way and that while checking her eyes and every possible facial pore in her body. "Neji, what in the world are you…stop that!"
Being the genius he was, he pulled back with that look still on his face, unfazed as she batted at him but…relieved at the same time before looking at the two strange women with even stranger eyes. "She's really…real?"
"She's the real deal, Hyuuga-san," the younger kunoichi (she had to be with those weapons on her back) said with a wry smile. "The others should be up soon, as well."
"I'll leave them to you," he said, speaking to Kiba and Shikamaru without a glance. Kiba whined at that, but Shikamaru dragged him out of the room muttering about troublesome mutts with Akamaru trotting placidly behind them. After them, he addressed the two remaining women. "Can I speak with her alone?"
The older woman didn't even say a word; she just grabbed the younger kunoichi and bee-lined for the door.
Tenten watched them disappear, dot-eyed. "Uh…Neji…really…can you tell me what's going on?"
He didn't answer her, which annoyed Tenten, until she realized why when he sat back down on the bed, grabbed both of her hands between his and simply rested his forehead against their entwined hands. Her mouth opened and closed, not sure of what to do or say as she stared at him worriedly. "Hey, really…what's…?" She trailed off and her eyes widened, feeling drops of liquid running through her fingers. "Neji…?"
"I…" His voice sounded choked, head bent so she couldn't see the silent tears that ran freely down his face. "I just missed you…"
"I was only gone a little while," she laughed nervously. "Right?"
She felt the last of the tears drip before he dried them away with his sleeve, forgetting the strict Hyuuga rules that no doubt said somewhere that he shouldn't wipe tears on official clan robes. "We thought…" he shook his head, finally looking up at her with his white eyes and smiling wryly. "You've been gone for 4 months."
Konoha itself heard the shriek which came, announcing to the heavens that Weapon's Mistress Tenten had been found. The village didn't fin out until a week later when Hyuuga Neji and his team returned with a dozen perplexed Hyuuga's and a frozen Tenten, slung over the Hyuuga's back like a sack of rice.
It was a day Konohagakure would never forget.