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Pupiless lavender eyes stared back at her. The familiar sight brought a slight twinge in her stomach for some reason, but she dismissed it in favor of figuring out her next move.
Neji was currently dominating the spar, having won two out of five rounds so far. She had won a single round herself, so she was losing, horribly.
Or at least she was trying to convince herself of that.
Tenten brought her hands down to her weapons pouches, hoping Neji wouldn’t notice as he was winding up to do his favorite move, the eight trigrams mountain crusher.
She knew it would be a pain in the ass to unblock all of her chakra points, so she wouldn’t let Neji get the drop on her. She would have to strike first.
Just as Neji made a motion to move, Tenten shot up and activated the seals on her pouches. Hundreds of senbon rained down upon Neji forcing him to use his move to deflect the senbon instead of defeating Tenten.
She grinned seeing the results of her plan. Now, she had a bit more time and space to knock Neji out and win the round. Tenten knew she didn’t have much more inventory left, most of it being wiped out from the second round where Neji lit her scroll on fire showering both of them with the hundreds of weapons sealed in the scroll.
But, she had one trick up her sleeve. She grinned, it was a dirty move, but sue her, she was a ninja.
As the last few senbon fell, she ran towards Neji’s back. He immediately tensed expecting one of Tenten’s absolutely brutal punches to his blindspot, but instead, he felt two arms encircle his waist.
Neji was still waiting for an attack, in case Tenten was using this as a tactic, before realizing she probably wasn’t going to continue to fight him if she was holding him like this.
She could feel him relaxing into her hold once he realized the mood was changing.
Tenten softly smiled. She loved moments like these between herself and Neji where she could see how much their relationship had changed from the beginning and how Neji himself had changed. He never would’ve done something like this even just a couple years ago.
And he never would again…
She furrowed her brow, where had that thought come in? She shook her head to get rid of any strange thoughts just to focus on the man in front of her.
Tenten hooked her chin on his shoulder and leaned in towards his ear.
“Hey Neji, what do you say, let's take a break from sparring?”
She could feel his grin against her cheek, “Alright Tenten.”
“Finally!” She cried of joy.
Tenten released her hold and spun him around to hug him quickly. She loved moments like these more when Neji finally stopped driving them into the ground with his training methods.
“-, but we’ll be spending more time tomorrow.”
Or not. She glared at Neji for a moment, but she couldn’t hold it for long against his smile. Neji was also clearly happy to stop training as well. Tenten had to call him out on it, she couldn’t let me keep getting away with pretending to like training more than hanging out with her.
“Admit it, you’re glad to take a break today. It’s better hanging out on a nice day like this than training like maniacs!” She exclaimed.
Neji just chuckled instead of denying it like she expected.
Why was Neji acting so differently? He would’ve scowled instead of showcasing this beautiful smile.
“It’ll be nice to spend the day with you Tenten. I’m happy to train or hang out, it’s just nice to do it with you.”
Tenten stood in shock in front of him. That had to be the nicest thing he had ever said to her.
But, it was strange.
Neji would never say something like that to her even if he had felt that way. It was one of his more frustrating qualities.
It was frustrating that she could never tell him how she felt either.
Once was a coincidence, but twice was a pattern. Strange conflicting thoughts from the back of her mind brought a chill down her spine, and she was only alive this long because of her instincts for detecting danger. Tenten backed away from the imposter that was standing in Neji’s place.
Something wasn’t right.
She looked up at the sky, and had the nagging feeling that the sky blue was supposed to be a dark gray , the green fields were actually supposed to be burning.
And Neji, she realized as a tear slid down her face.
He wasn’t right.
She let out a small gasp, almost a sob, as those thoughts started forming memories, scenes of a battlefield. And, images of Neji getting so severely injured right in front of her.
“You’re not Neji.”
Neji smiled at her, and crossed his arms.
“There’s no one else that could replace me.”
Tenten smiled back at Neji as tears slid down her face.
She brought her hands up to form a kai with a kunai held between her hands.
“I know, Neji. I know.”
Her voice trailed off into a sob as she built up her chakra to break the genjutsu she was in, pushing the kunai through each hand because through one way or the other, she was getting out of this.
Tenten couldn’t take her eyes off the man in front of her, though. It took her a bit longer to break out of this nightmare of a genjutsu, but she just knew it was the last time she was going to see Neji alive and well.
At the last moment, before she released her chakra, she mouthed the words that she wished she could say to Neji before he died, and closed her eyes, not waiting for the response of a half-baked dream.
She opened her eyes to see the wasted battlefield alongside everyone else who were in similar states of disarray waking up from the genjutsu.
She looked up at the sky, hoping to see some sort of monumental change as their entire world had changed after the war.
But the sky was frustratingly similar, except for the one little tiny star in the sky right next to the moon.
If she had just looked back for one moment, she would have seen Neji’s eyes widening with the face of gut wrenching fear, not the face of a man who was a puppet, but maybe a man who had one last wish left unfulfilled.
He whispered the words back to the woman who disappeared.
“I love you.”
Even in this dream, they would never be able to know how the other felt.
Neji waited hesitantly to move away from the spot Tenten disappeared, but he knew that neither of them could meet again until she joined him in the Pure Lands. He hoped it wouldn’t happen for a long time because while he didn’t get the time he wanted, Tenten deserved it.