—scarborough fair;

.

She was seven, and he was a jerk. She wasn't sure what was wrong with him, but he was clearly touched in the head. Tenten knew this to be a fact because he was always spouting crap about destiny and fate like a deranged monk.

All he needed to do was shave that (beautiful, enviable) head of hair (that she wished that she had) and he would easily fit the part.

It could only mean one thing, she knew: when he was older, he would become a palm reader. Or a psychic. Or he would cave and write the horoscopes for the morning newspaper that her father always pored over while sipping his morning miso and picking at his natto was disinterest.

Clearly, Neji Hyuuga was in the wrong place. What he was doing in a shinobi academy was beyond her, but if he wanted to spend his time staring at the constellations and making up astrological predictions for the end of the world, that was just fine with her…as long as he didn't get in her way.

But because he was Neji, also known as the class genius, he was always upstaging her.

For all of his insanity and utter weirdness, he was, she had to grudgingly admit, excellent at what he did. But still, this did nothing to temper her attitude towards him and vice versa.

It was in the way he stared down at her—and that, alone, infuriated her. He was barely an inch taller than her, but he still felt the need to look down the length of his nose when he deigned to speak to her.

She wasn't some peasant. He could at least treat her like a human being instead of a dead bug on the bottom of his slipper.

She sneered to herself, tossing kunai with unerring accuracy at the target, venting her irritation.

She was seven, and he was a jerk. Something had to be done.

.

She was twelve and surrounded by crazy people.

There was her sensei, Gai, whose bowl cut and green, spandex leotard made her want to throw herself off of a building. He had an obsession about youthfulness and springtime, and Tenten was almost entirely sure that he did shrooms for breakfast every day.

There was Lee, who was like the miniaturized, boyish version of the former. Not only did he exhibit all the qualities of Gai, but he had seemed to have made it a life goal to alienate the supposed love of his life. Tenten couldn't help but feel sorry for the pink haired girl that Lee so obliviously badgered for attention.

And of course, because life had to hate her, there was Neji.

Cross her heart and hope to die, she was fairly sure he rigged the team selection process. Not only did he tell her a week beforehand that they would be "closer than ever" soon enough—a statement that made her back away slowly—but when he was called to be on her team, he had turned to her and smirked.

Smirked.

The bastard.

But somehow, through their fence painting missions and cat-rescue strategies, Tenten could almost admit to herself she enjoyed the company.

Lee was unfailingly upbeat, Neji was unfailingly arrogant, and she was unfailingly laughing at the altercations that occurred between the two boys.

Still, she would refuse that green outfit every time it was offered. She didn't love them that much.

Just enough, perhaps. Just enough.

.

She was thirteen and in the middle of the Forest of Death. Lee had been hopping from leg to leg in a panic, squealing about how his need to pee far exceeded their need to find the other scroll…and how his need to pee would probably result in his death.

Because obviously, some other pre-pubescent kid would strike him down while his skin tight pants were at his ankles.

Which is how she ended up there, her back to Lee, forced to listen to the sounds the stream of urine hitting—no, she didn't even want to think about it. All she knew was she was guarding his man parts, an array of weapons at her fingertips…while Neji watched over all of them with his energy sapping doujutsu.

All so that Lee could piss.

That was what family did for each other, she supposed, trying to justify why her ears were being subjected to this mild form of torture. Family had each other's backs.

…and, apparently, genitals.

.

It was her fifteenth birthday, and Neji took her to a festival in Stone.

Okay, so he didn't really take her. And don't get her wrong—it was most certainly not a date, regardless of what Ino said.

See, they'd been on a mission, the four of them, in the area—a fairly unproblematic escort mission by her standards—and had just dropped off a worrisome man's politically affiliated wife at the capitol building without a hitch.

They were ten hours ahead of schedule which, as usual, meant time to waste. Which was just fine with her, since that day had been her own very special day, and she intended to spend the rest of it getting the famed rock massages the area offered.

It was said it relaxed your muscles so that you felt like brand new—and goodness knows she could use some refreshment after days of travel. At the very least, it could energize her enough for the trip back.

She didn't know how it happened, honestly, but somehow, instead, she'd ended up at a casual civilian festival…with Neji.

One moment she was sitting on her bed sharpening her knives, staring at the list the front desk offered her, contemplating which place to book an appointment for, and the next…she was at a festival.

With Neji.

And no one else.

They had each purchased their own sticks of dango, and he had accompanied her as she browsed through the items of the small artisans lining the streets, selling their jewelry and clothes that she would never buy or wear for a price that she considered a steal.

She'd stopped only very briefly to purchase an elaborately decorated dagger, admiring the colored ink stains on the handle and the lack of weight the weapon had, but the incredibly sharpness the blade itself had instead.

It was a piece of art. It was a work of death.

"One day," she said with an air of premonition about her, "this blade will save my life while I write my own destiny."

Neji scoffs. "You canno—"

"Watch me."

And Tenten could've sworn that something changed in Neji's eyes that day. She didn't know what it was…but it changed.

.

The sunlight dappled on them through the overhead trees when she was sixteen and four months. The steady sound of Lee's cries of the amount of pushups he'd done was their permanent background noise. Steady as the beat of her heart.

"Hey, Neji?" she asked, eyes closed, lying down on the overgrown grass, fingers tracing invisible patterns in the dirt.

"Hm?" he looked up from the textbook he was poring over, pages crinkling slightly under his fingers.

"So in a few months' time, we'll probably be at war."

Neji stared at her for a long moment before dog-earing the page and setting the book down, giving her his full attention.

"If I die—"

"No."

"Neji, I'm being serious."

"So am I."

She opened her eyes and turned her head in his direction. "If I die, I'd die doing the thing I love. Fighting for the people I love, using the skills I excel at. I think I'd be okay with that, you know?"

"Stop, Tenten."

"I'm just…I'm trying to prepare—"

"Don't be a self-fulfilling prophecy," he bit out, staring at her more intensely than he'd ever before. "If it's life and death, Tenten, you have to fight. You have to."

"I thought I couldn't make my own fate, anyways," she replied with tinges of bitterness in her tone, turning her face back to the sky. "I thought we were all trapped in our gilded cages."

"You know I don't believe that anymore," he said, and she swore she could hear something close to desperation in his voice. "You know," and he paused, sounding more unsure of himself than ever. "I'd fight fate for you."

.

There was blood on her hands by the time she was seventeen. So much blood that she could barely comprehend the amount of lives she'd taken, the amount of times she'd almost lost her own.

The dust settled every once in a while and under the cover of the forest night, she would curl herself into the cool dirt, trying to come to grips with her place in the word, with the lives that would likely haunt her for the rest of her days.

"Tenten, we have to move."

They had changed since those eight months ago. She didn't like to admit it, but they had. And suddenly she understood why dying was almost a dream. It was because of the way Neji gripped her hands all too often these days, eyes bloodshot and face haggard.

It was the way that she hadn't seen Lee in weeks, him having been long since reassigned to a different task force, and she had not affirmation as to whether he was dead or alive.

But more than anything, it was the way in which this carnal being commanded her. There was no time for searching for excuses because this war, the war they were fighting, would and must always be in black and white.

And she had to keep it that way, because if she didn't, she would lose her mind.

"Tenten," Neji commanded again, his hands coming to cup her face urgently.

"Yeah," she answered after a long moment, voice hoarse. "Yeah, let's go."

And the days melted into nights.

.

"Did you mean it?" she whispered two weeks later, still seventeen and still striving. "That you would fight fate for me?"

"I would rather fight fate with you," he answered back leisurely, crouched under the makeshift shelter they had produced out of a few large slabs of bark and some blankets and rope.

She paused at that, trying to understand while re-bandaging her leg, wincing at the sight of the raw flesh open to the world. "Pass me the salve," she murmured, momentarily distracted as he pressed the bottle in her hand, fingers brushing her wrist so softly.

The rain thundered endlessly around them, so close but never quite touching. Just barely out of reach.

It was quiet between the two of them as she smeared the ointment over her thigh, trying to cover every crevice of the ugly wound. It was a methodical process, keeping her distracted for a time. She looked up finally, turning towards Neji who had measured out the amount of medical gauze she needed, handing it to her.

"Remember that time I told you about how the knife would save me? It did, you know. Today. For this," she said, gesturing to the newly acquired injury. "The Zetsu, you know," she said softly. "Nearly got me. But then I stabbed his eye," she said in this completely nonchalant manner, only the lines of stress on her face giving her away. "I lost my knife, though. You'd better buy me another one as compensation for this won bet."

"After this is all over, I will," he said finally.

She looked up just as she was tying the knot over the gauze. "After this is all over," she sighed, her hand coming up, unbidden, and tracing his face.

"I meant it," he recalled, suddenly, just as she was skating over his jaw.

When his lips pressed to hers, it was quiet and soft, and the rain never stopped.

.

It was three months later that she was reassigned…and Neji was taken elsewhere. She'd scanned his eyes desperately as he was guided away, and she called out to him. "After this is all over…?" she trailed off.

But he didn't respond, too far out of earshot. He never looked back.

He was such an arrogant man, she griped to herself, inwardly complaining over him in substitute for anxiety. She wasn't blind. She knew where they were taking him. She knew as soon as Naruto bounded out of a tent, slapping Neji on the back in greeting and joined the group, that Neji had gotten the short stick.

She stared at herself in the river, scrubbing her hands endlessly.

So much blood, so much blood.

Temari had had to guide her away from her own reflection for her to stop, her skin raw and red with irritation.

She didn't know when she started crying, but when the sky darkened with another explosion and the voice of Inoichi came through her head, she knew something was horribly wrong.

But more than anything, it was the messenger hawk that dropped the black scroll in her palm, heavy like a burden, that broke her. "But dying for people you love is an honorable way to die," she whispered to herself and her eyes emptied.

.

She was eighteen and the war was over when she was told, finally, of how Neji had thrown himself in the path of Hinata, how he had whispered words about how it was his genius. His prized intelligence, his battle skill.

How he understood the kind of value it meant to be able to choose your own death.

How he had died with valor. How he died for his country, ultimately paving the way for success.

But none of these things, this explanations, these stupid excuses, she thought as her nails bit into her palms, drawing blood, changed the fact that she was just eighteen as she traced his name in the marble stone, eyes closed, still feeling the whispers of his breath against her jaw, the feel of his fingers tracing her spine.

These things didn't change the fact that he was worth the cost of his name carved in the stone, in the end, the cost of his sacrifice in their chess game.

And they most certainly didn't change the raw, ripping sobs that came from her throat or the hot tears that came from her eyes when she thought about their promised "afters" that would never quite happen.

.

Tenten was twenty six.

There was something unexplainably beautiful and painful about looking down into that little crib when she babysat for Hinata. It was something in the way the moonlight cast through the floor to ceiling windows and through the light sheers. Something in the way that when she loomed over their firstborn, their baby, his eyes would flutter briefly before sliding shut again.

Something in the way that she could swear that she saw him in.

And that brief flash of striking blue was what did it for her. The sleepy, blissful blue…and then nothing.

He didn't look anything like his namesake. Not one bit. With the noisiness and restlessness of his father and the facial structure of his mother, the only thing that bore the least resemblance was the tuft of downy brown hair at the crown of his head.

But there was something in this spirit—and she had never been one to believe in auras or spirit-calling or those other false "arts"—but there was something in him that she could feel was the same.

Perhaps, she thought to herself, leaning over the crib, this was their after. Maybe this was all their after was meant to be.

A bittersweet smile twisted at her lips, and trembling, she cooed softly into the night words from a fairy tale, songs from a ballad, and the tales from her past as Neji slept.

"You're free, Neji," she whispered to the ceiling, whispered at the hanging mobile tipped with stars and constellations, tears brimming in her eyes. "You're free."

And her own gilded cage opened.

.

—remember me to one who lives there; for once, he was a true love of mine

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notes: no idea how to feel about this. we have a love hate/relationship, this piece and I. more leaning towards hate near the end, I think. eh. whatever. review?