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The gouges through Neji’s arms, shoulders and scalp ran deep, Tenten thought as her quivering fingers applied antiseptic solution wipes to cleanse them. She cleansed blood along with traces of orange and brown fur and dirt that had invaded his wounds. Tenten wondered whether Tora the cat – a rite of passage for genin teams and practically a revenue machine for the village – had claws of sharpened carbon steel. Neji drew a sharp breath between his locked teeth at the sting of alcohol against his fresh wounds, and Tenten thanked the gods that she hadn’t experienced the brunt of those claws.
Instead, Neji had shoved her to the forest floor, and wrestled the cat himself. She'd gotten a mouthful of leaf litter and a bruised ego, which were mild by comparison. Seconds after his capture, Tora then wriggled from Neji’s grasping arms, bounding over his bloodied shoulder to sprint back up a tree. Lee’s round eyes appeared to grow just a bit wider when he saw that his rival had fallen short of capturing the wayward cat, and he’d sprinted after Tora with Might Gai’s hoots behind him.
“Hey, you okay?” Tenten asked, her hand lingering over a raw cut that managed to rip out a stripe of Neji’s hair. “Need me to slow down? I can – just tell me, okay?”
“N-no.”
Neji’s shoulders stiffened and he gave a single shake of his head. Yet Tenten heard his breathing accelerate just a touch after her expression of concern. She’d touched on something more raw than even the physical injuries criss-crossing his body. Tenten knew her teammate well enough not to prod that wound further, and opted to pretend that she’d never noticed his display of vulnerability.
Taking care of Neji was the least she owed him, when it was her pride and her drive to prove herself that landed him in his current state. The Hyuga genin had shown little interest in their cat-catching mission before she almost found herself entangled in Tora’s whirlwind of claws and teeth. No, Tenten insisted to herself. It had been Neji’s choice to spare her Tora’s wrath, and that was a choice he was willing to accept the consequences for.
You do owe him, though, a voice countered.
I guess, she responded to the nagging voice.
Silence thickened the air between the teammates, punctuated only by the whoosh of wind through the trees above them. Lee and their sensei had pushed onward ever deeper into the forest in search of Tora, but Gai insisted that Neji remain behind with Tenten so he could receive basic first aid. She had a feeling that he’d foisted the role on her not due to her sex, but because the thrill of the chase had infected him like it possessed Lee. A lead weight had settled at the base of her stomach when she considered the possibility of sitting so close to Neji Hyuga – the prodigy, the cold one, the angry one – for the time she’d need to treat his wounds. To her pleasant surprise, he’d been cooperative, respectful of her space, deferential to her instruction as she mustered her knowledge of first aid from the academy. If there was anything her education had taught her, it was that maiming the human body was much easier than healing it.
Now the weight coalesced in Tenten’s gut for a different reason, not because of their uncomfortable proximity but what it meant for them as teammates. Maybe Neji and Tenten were friends now – did saving a teammate from an unhinged, borderline feral cat count as friendship?
“You need to be more careful, Tenten,” Neji ventured. “You were rather reckless back there.”
If Rock Lee twisted an ankle or broke a bone in his quest to outdo Team Gai’s prodigy, Neji's tone took on a decidedly different lilt when he rebuked their teammate for showing too little care. Now, Tenten heard no contempt, none of the hard, sharp edges in his words. She’d never heard him sound so concerned for anyone’s welfare. The air in her lungs stalled as her frozen hands dropped the wipe between her fingers.
“Yeah. Yeah, sorry. It’s just that...you and Lee always...you’re always trying to get the credit. I want to be good, too,” Tenten stammered. “Like you.”
Spoken aloud, her dreams of recognition from her teammates and the hokage sounded like so much whining. Returning a runaway cat wasn’t the kind of mission on which shinobi legends were built, and Neji knew as well as she did. Tsunade, the Legendary Sannin, hadn’t become her idol by excelling at D-rank missions and letting her pride compromise common sense. Tenten ground the inside of her bottom lip between her teeth and released a quick little laugh. In the first aid kit next to her leg, she searched for gauze and antibiotic ointment. Bandages, too – Neji would need plenty of them.
Turning his head to face her, Neji sighed, pinching the corners of his lips.
“Don’t be foolish. A little compliment from the hokage isn’t worth...this,” he answered. This meant the wounds she was treating. Hot blood rushed to her face and neck.
“Sorry. That’s my fault. You really didn’t need to save me back there.”
“It’s nothing,” Neji cut in, not even a second after she finished speaking. “Don’t mention it.”
His interjection was partly a relief, freeing her from needing to grovel before him. Someone else might have insisted that Tenten show him how sorry she was and how much she appreciated his sacrifice. Another side of Tenten saw his dismissal as grounds to press her remorse and emphasize what she owed him – and what did she owe him? She couldn’t be sure what he wanted if she didn’t even know why he’d done it.
Her hands were steadier, surer, quicker when she moved to finish binding and covering Neji’s wounds. Neji remained still, so still that his shallow breaths and occasional twitches in his shoulders were the only signs that he remained alive. He sighed when Tenten brushed a section of long black hair aside to bandage a thin scratch that ran from his collarbone up along the back of his neck. The grazing of her fingertips behind his ear drew a gasp, an oh that sounded so out of place for him. By contrast, he’d borne the sting of alcohol in his wounds with impressive composure.
“Is there anything wrong? I’m not hurting you, right?”
“No. You’re not. I’m not used to being touched like this. Like you’re doing. Keep going.”
Tenten placed the sticky end of a bandage down across the scratch on his neck, running a hand on the fabric to bind the adhesive to his skin. The skin beneath her hand was warm in a way that sent shudders down her spine. Neji’s expressions of shock – or pleasure, she couldn’t tell - graded into more subtle forms, into changes in the rhythm of his breath or tiny movements of his body. How strange to think that he liked feeling her touch. She could imagine he leaned in her hands while she pressed bandages into his shoulder and forearm.
“Do you mind if I ask...why did you do it?” Tenten whispered. “I mean, I don’t see you doing that for Lee.”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t have. Not for him, but I...feel differently about you.”
That much was clear. Neji Hyuga wasn't the kind to speak the language of feelings, or talk with uncertainty burdening his voice. The proximity between them and his strange predicament must have shaken the walls he put up around himself. Through the crack, she could read him just well enough to tell that she was special to him, however she tried to equivocate or deny it. He liked her, maybe, in the way that boyfriends liked their girlfriends. But this wasn’t the shallow infatuation she’d seen among other girls in their class, who whispered about Neji’s talents or pretty face among themselves in the academy courtyard. None of them had even spoken to him.
The thought of having a boyfriend, of being the object of some boy’s attention, turned her insides to jelly. Tenten had never experienced any kind of tender affection from anyone aside from her mother, father or grandparents.
“Different, how?”
Neji hummed and flinched away from Tenten’s fingertips. Because he wasn't practiced in articulating any shade of emotion that wasn’t a sense of superiority or outrage, maybe. Because she’d asked his feelings without first stating whether hers were the same. Declaring that he liked Tenten allowed her to hurt him if she rejected his feelings or worse – told him that she liked a different boy. No, Neji Hyuga was simply better than every genin of their generation, because he’d been born more talented and worked harder. How could he ever lower himself for someone like Tenten?
“I care about you, like a special friend.”
“A...best friend?” Tenten asked, her voice trailing off.
The more she helped his emotions take shape, the more she ventured into uncharted territory for both of them. Teammates were meant to know one another’s strengths and vulnerabilities so they could work together as one in the mission field and in battle. Yet their attachments needed to stay impersonal enough that one could leave another behind if the mission depended on it. Tenten knew, even at 13 years old, that emotions were weakness for shinobi. It was weakness, she concluded, that swelled her throat and kept her from shutting him up.
“Yes. Something like that. A bit more than a best friend.”
A rush of heat overwhelmed her core, and Neji must have seen the flush of pink creeping across her cheeks. The corners of his mouth lifted in a tentative smile, fingertips flying to his lips to cover them. Tenten’s vision blurred until only her teammate remained in sharp focus – not that she could bear to look at anything but Neji’s chin. She only prayed that her lack of eye contact didn’t appear disrespectful.
“I care about you and I want to protect you,” he continued. “Like nobody else.”
“Oh. That’s...good to know. I...uh, I mean, we’re supposed to take care of each other as a team, right?”
The quiver in her voice must have betrayed that her answer wasn’t convincing even to herself. Neji twisted his bandaged hands in his lap and narrowed his downcast white eyes. Pain flickered across his features. He must have taken her apprehension as rejection of his invitation to a special bond. Like nobody else. The words echoed in Tenten’s mind. Like nobody else. When she mulled them over a second time, Tenten found her resistance eroding.
Whatever Neji’s flaws, he was brave, strong, kind - to her at least, pleading for a chance to prove himself.
“Tenten. I know we’re not the same and I’m not meant to develop these kinds of attachments outside the clan. It was just a silly thought. I suppose there’s nothing I can do if you don’t feel -”
“You know, I don’t know if I do feel that way about you, but...I’m okay seeing where this goes.”
Tenten’s words elicited a smile wide enough to taper Neji’s white eyes at the corners. She’d never noticed the dimple on his right cheek before, never seen him stretch his lips enough to reveal it. Granting him access to a piece of her heart left her exposed in one respect, and part of her considered it weakness. But another part of Tenten couldn’t deny that together they could be stronger, ready to face the trials the world gave them – whether those were cat scratches or kunai.