Four Conversations on the Subject of Flight.

Flight (flīt)

n. 1. The act, manner, or power of flying.
2. The act or an instance of running away; an escape.

She can't remember which goddamned country she is in anymore, but it really doesn't matter. The earth is wet and viscous beneath her, the cold seeping through torn cloth and clenching sharply into every bone. A thin mist hovers in the air, smudging the sky a pale, dirty grey. She can still smell the sulphuric stench of the poison but it no longer chokes the air around her, the heavy gas no doubt having sunken slowly into the trenches that demarcate the nearby land.

Her throat is burned raw, flashes of acid gold exploding across her vision with each inhalation. Hypothermia is going to set in soon if she doesn't get the hell out of here and so she winces, forces back a whimper as she digs her elbows into the ground and heaves herself upright. Barren, wet fields stretch out endlessly into the horizon in all directions, broken only by the irrigation channels dug deep into the ground. There is no one here, only the stark silhouettes of dead black trees thrusting up dead black limbs in search for a sun that is not there. Tenten is alone without even an enemy-nin to remind her who she is and why she is here, cast adrift in the middle of nowhere and she's trying to roll onto her knees and to push herself up off the ground but she can't help but think this is what I tried to tell him, this is exactly how it feels.

She remembers flying, steel in her hands, the thrill of victory arching her spine as she sees the enemy flee or sink into the mud. Oh she flew alright, but this is the aftermath that must be faced and suddenly her knee gives out and she lurches forwards, hands shooting out in front of her but it is too late, she's tumbling into the trench she swears had not been there a minute ago and yes, there's the yellow smoke, there's the poison and she's down and under and her throat is scorching her fears into oblivion.

It is only a year before his fight with Naruto that she tells him: "Flying is not as perfect as you imagine it to be, you know. Flying is just falling up."

"What are you talking about?" he asks, languidly watching her calloused fingertips as they ghost between his. He feels mildly confused, a little irritated; it is unlike Tenten to speak in riddles.

"I'm talking about flying," she explains absently, eyes on the vast expanse of blue stretching out above them. "I'm talking about counting birds, the sky, leaving. Freedom."

"Freedom?"

"Isn't that what you want?"

His gaze shifts to her face, frowning. "You know what I think about such things."

"What, that you'll never have it?"

"Fated not to."

"But you want it anyway."

He does not reply, merely holding out his other hand for her as she helps him retie his frayed bandages. They are taking a short break from sparring, resting between the gnarled roots of an enormous oak growing near their training grounds. The sun is out and pale, hazy swathes of sunlight sink slowly down upon them through the branches, settling softly over the rich hazel of her hair.

"I know you want it," she persists unhurriedly, "But freedom is not….freedom is….."

"Is?" He raises an eyebrow with a sceptical expression entirely too old for his thirteen year old features. Tenten only shrugs.

"Intimidating. Terrifying, almost. Look at me," she says, "I don't have a family to hold me down, nothing that really binds me to anything or anyone. After a while you begin to think that freedom means being alone, and sometimes…..sometimes I feel like a drifter, like I'm lost. It's so easy for me to leave that it scares me, somehow."

"I can't understand that," he tells her bluntly, and she smiles. A deft flick of the wrist, a final tug of her fingers and she has secured the knot tightly around his arm.

"I wouldn't expect you to."

Neji looks at her and wonders childishly why she cannot appreciate her liberty; why she is so afraid of leaving, when it is all he wishes for.

"Let's start again," he says instead, picking himself off the ground, and she only echoes him quietly as she follows:

"Yes, let's."

He finally understands what she means seven years later, standing in front of the Hokage's desk and staring at the painted mask placed before him.

"Congratulations," Tsunade says coolly, running a lacquered fingernail along the rim of her mug. "You're in ANBU."

An eyebrow arches in mild confusion. "I didn't apply. Couldn't," he reminds her, the faintest trace of resentment lacing his voice.

"True. But I want you there, we're running short of men, and the top dogs over at ANBU have had their eyes on you for a long time now. You must have known that your curse seal was the only reason why they never recruited you earlier, Neji, and now that Hinata has been kind enough to abolish the branch system it can no longer present a danger to yourself or your fellow shinobi."

There is a palpable tension in the air as he silently examines the mask, bone white against the mahogany desk. The porcelain is painted with thin streaks of red and arches up into the cruel curve of a hawk's beak. He remembers the day Hyuuga Hiashi died, barely a year ago, killed protecting the clan during yet another raid in the Akatsuki's game of hide and seek with Leaf. Konoha is limping, restless; no official declaration of war has ever been made because there is nothing to fight against but a handful of renegade missing-nin hunting down their final jinchuuriki. Instead they are stuck painfully and awkwardly in the middle of a struggle that drains them little by little, still comparatively one of the strongest of the hidden villages in the shinobi countries but bleeding, losing its best as they follow the Uzumaki and leave the rest behind to haemorrhage and stumble. The past three years have been an exhausted cycle, scattered months of a thin, brittle peace lulling the lower ranks into a false sense of security before word comes of yet another fight between Team 7 and one of the Uchiha, yet another casualty, yet another raid upon their very doorstep that leaves their homes burning and a dozen more names etched onto the memorial stone. Sarutobi Asuma. Jiraiya. Mitarashi Anko. Maito Gai.

"I'm sorry." He shakes his head slowly. "I'm….honoured, to be asked, but I'm afraid I can't accept the offer."

"Why not?" For some reason Tsunade does not appear surprised. "It's ANBU, Neji. I would have thought an ambitious young man like you would jump at the chance to serve with them."

"I would like to, but…"

"But you have a team."

"Yes." He inclines his head politely and Tsunade sighs, leans back in her chair and looks him straight in the eye.

"Not anymore, you don't."

Silence.

"You've disbanded-" he begins incredulously, but she cuts him off impatiently with a brisk wave of her hand.

"I haven't disbanded anything. Your teammates - Lee and Tenten - came to see me two days ago. It was their decision to terminate Team Gai, not mine."

"They never told me anything about it." He's gripping the edge of the desk so tightly his knuckles drain white. "Why wasn't I consulted about this?"

"Ask them yourself." She shrugs, but there's a sympathetic light in her eyes as she leans forwards and gently pushes the mask towards him. "You're free now, Neji. I suggest you take advantage of it."

It is only later, as he steps gingerly out of the building and narrows his eyes at the crisp autumnal sunlight, that he realizes freedom and falling feel exactly the same; that suddenly he's been cast adrift like a feather in the wind, without fate or habit or even those closest to him to anchor him down; and that he is afraid.

"I know you're there," Tenten says the next evening, pulling a kunai out of one of the trees circling their training grounds and rubbing a thumb thoughtfully over the disfigured bark. Neji emerges wordlessly from behind an old oak, arms crossed.

She moves around the clearing, picking up the steel littered on the ground. When he doesn't say anything she looks up calmly, face carefully blank: "Well?"

"You didn't tell me about this."

"Tell you about what?" An unfurled scroll, a scattering of words muttered under her breath; the weapons vanish and thick lines of calligraphy melt onto the parchment.

"Tenten, what are you doing?" he demands quietly, each word edged with finely restrained anger, and she starts because it's the first time he has ever used that tone with her. "Breaking up the team behind my back and then acting as if everything is perfectly normal – what the hell do you think you are doing?"

"Look, I'm really tired right now," she mutters; "Just got back from a mission…I only came here to work off the adrenaline. Perhaps you should save the questions for Lee when he comes back from his tomorrow."

"Or you could just tell me what's wrong so we can be done with all this nonsense."

"Nothing's wrong," she tries again, almost pleadingly, "Isn't this what you've always wanted?"

"What, leaving Team Gai?" He stares at her in disbelief.

"No….ANBU. You've always wanted ANBU."

"Yes, but –"

"And now you can have it. Don't you see? Lee and I, we thought…we didn't want to hold you back. It'll be a while yet until we're capable of catching up with you and-"

"That's not true."

"It is. You know it."

"So that's it," he snaps at her, and his voice is rough and bitter (but Tenten knows him enough to realize that his anger means fear and that his words mean don't let me go). "You're just happy to see this…see us….gone. Finished." He ends awkwardly, his usual control and quiet confidence deserting him when he tries and fails to express anything remotely sentimental.

"Look, Neji, it's not like we were going to stay together forever." Her expression darkens when he looks at her as if she has gone insane. "We weren't, Neji, you should have realized after Gai-" Her voice cracks. "-after Gai died, that nothing like this could be permanent…..Lee and I can't stay with you constantly. And it wasn't like we were taking missions together regularly anymore, anyway; I mean half the ones I take are solo or with someone else and I know it's the same for you, too."

"But if I'm in ANBU there will no possibility of any team missions at all," he reasons almost pathetically, feeling something twist deep in his gut when Tenten merely gives him a small, sad smile.

"We'll still see each other around. I mean –" She reaches out and punches him lightly on the arm, but he doesn't smirk like he used to and she falters slightly. "– It's not like we won't still be friends, right?"

He doesn't reply, merely staring down at her, examining her features intently and trying to work out where she has changed and how he has missed it. Tenten stands up on her toes, bracing herself against his shoulder; her lips press lightly against his cheek and he brings a hand up hesitantly, fingers sliding against the curve of her back to pull her close.

"ANBU needs you. Konoha needs you. But the three of us…we'll be okay, Neji," she promises him softly, because she knows that despite his current anger he will join ANBU to become even better, stronger, knows that he has wanted this for far too long and now he will have to face the consequences.

A pause.

"…No." His voice is oddly detached and he steps back, letting his hand drop stiffly to his side. "No, I don't think we will."

"Neji." But he's already turning and walking away. He hesitates briefly a few feet from her; she waits for him to look back and say something, anything – but after a moment he only moves on, and Tenten wonders why her heart can feel so damn heavy when she is the one who has cut him away. (She prefers to think of it as a matter of opening the cage, only right now she isn't quite selfless enough to feel happy about that.)

She lets a long moment go by, staring expressionlessly after him in the middle of the clearing. And gradually it dawns on her, clear and brittle as autumn light: this is kindness. The world is not hers anymore; she has given it away, let it slip through her fingers with the quiet rustle of fine cloth.

Fuck it, she mouths silently, fingers curling tightly into the dry parchment between her fingers. I miss him already.

"Do you think we did the right thing?" she asks Lee one afternoon, the two of them sprawled on the ground after a sparring session. "Do you think that, maybe…we should have discussed it with him first, and if he had really been against the idea, we could just have stayed together and…."

She trails off and stares up at the pale winter sky shimmering above them. It feels strange, not spending time with Neji every so often; they had stopped training together exclusively two years ago, their conflicting schedules having made it far too impractical, but he had still sought her out as often as possible for a quick spar or an afternoon in their old training grounds. Now there is….nothing. Only silent glances or formalities, only hurt and blame and cold.

The first time they met after their argument she had passed Neji in the corridors of the Hokage tower. They had walked past each other wordlessly, acknowledging the other with only a polite nod. Tenten had told herself that it was only because they were both too busy, too preoccupied at the time with work to do anything more. All too easily, however, once became twice became three months of ignoring each other this way: three months without a proper conversation or a meal together, three months of silence.

She glances over at Lee when she feels him squeeze her hand.

"I do not regret it." He smiles at her, not the blinding grin that he used to inflict upon them when Gai was still alive: this is gentler, subtler, kinder. "And neither should you."

"I hate how he's still angry at us….you'd think he'd realize by now that we did it for his sake." She sighs. "I miss him."

"So do I," he tells her gravely, "But you know as well I do that Neji-kun - as much as I respect my eternal rival - is rather thick in the head and would never have worked out what was good for him without some help from his friends. Neji-kun always talked admirably of breaking free, but he never seemed to realize that the chains were his own."

True enough, Tenten thinks ruefully. Neji had always needed to have things beaten into him before he could abandon his own preconceptions and accept new ideas, new ways of life.

She doesn't tell Lee that he's there sometimes when she trains alone in the evenings; that sometimes she can feel his chakra, muted but still recognizable, hidden in between the foliage as she flings herself into the air, spinning amongst her smoke and dragons; that now and then she'd catch a glimpse of a porcelain mask and a flash of pale skin, but every time she'd looked closer there'd inevitably be no trace of the Hyuuga.

Tenten wonders who he trains with nowadays.

"I just never thought it'd come to this, really," she muses, eyes squinting against the sunlight; "After spending so many years as a team, growing up together…I mean I always knew that we were bound to break off sometime and move on, but I thought he'd know it too and that he'd take it better, really…I thought it wouldn't just end like this."

He tilts his head thoughtfully. "This is not the end, Tenten-chan. We still have a long way to go."

She blinks at him, mildly startled. He is right, as usual, and she lets out a short breath of laughter before replying: "Yeah. Next year, when the applications open for ANBU, you and I…we're gonna get in and give Neji a good beating in the ass."

One year later the invitation to join ANBU arrives after gruelling entrance exams and they finally realize what Neji had figured out years before. There are no permanent teams in ANBU. The mortality rate is too high; it would be simply inefficient and even dangerous to develop team bonds to the depth achieved in the average shinobi squad when one or two or all of a group could be eliminated without warning.

They see Neji sometimes in the ANBU headquarters, at a meeting, during debriefing sessions. They see a few others from their year, too, or at least recognize a bristly black ponytail or the kikaichu scurrying up the arm of the shinobi in the corner. Their real names are never mentioned. The ANBU address each other according to the animal on the mask, forcibly reducing a person to cold, hard porcelain. Often these are mere formalities: when she nods to Stork in the corridors Tenten knows that Shiranui Genma still hasn't given up his habit of chewing on his senbon, that Tiger is about to go on leave for god knows how long because Kurenai is pregnant again and the slight swelling beneath the silver ANBU uniform is becoming harder to ignore. When Monkey greets her exuberantly outside the Hokage's office she knows that the idiot is Lee not merely from the unfortunately unmistakable shiny bowl cut, but from the sheer warmth still so apparent in his voice despite the fact that they can hardly spend time together outside of work anymore.

After a while Tenten finds that she now responds to Phoenix as easily as she does her real name, and she finds that she doesn't mind, really. It's easier this way.

Between missions she still teases Shikamaru when he becomes embroiled in yet another tug of war between Temari and Ino, still jokes around with what's left of the rookie nine at the Ichiraku every once in a while; but once she steps foot into the ANBU headquarters Shikamaru becomes only a colleague at most, becomes only Crow, because there is no such thing as friendship for the ANBU (or there isn't supposed to be, anyway). At most there is duty, Konoha, captain, subordinate, and so they put on their masks and they forget and they fight and they bleed themselves dry, alone, always alone.

Formalities are there for a reason. She learns this the hard way two months into her work with ANBU, stumbling into the common room set aside for operatives waiting to report to their higher-up's. She had injured her ankle during the last mission, making it awkward now to negotiate the door with the thick stack of paperwork in her arms. She leans her back against it instead and tries to push her way in to what she assumes to be an empty room, but a sharp pain shoots up her leg as it turns and she hisses quietly, flustered and annoyed by her difficultly in opening a goddamn door of all things. When she finally manages to slip through her bangs are in her face, she is visibly limping and a familiar Hyuuga is sitting on the floor, leaning against a couch with clotted blood staining an entire arm and half way through the process of wrapping fresh bandages around his hands.

Perhaps it is due to her frustration, perhaps it's the fact that she has come into minimal contact with her former team mate in the past year; in either case Tenten hesitates, surprised despite herself. He looks up and she feels her mouth go dry, a dull ache clenching in her chest.

"…Neji?"