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Gai-sensei has them share a tent again. Neji had thought that perhaps after the first time, he would do the sensible thing and have two tents, rather than one. But no. When Gai-sensei is on watch, the three take the tent. When they watch, Gai-sensei takes the tent. “My mother,” Lee whispers, from his corner of the tent, muffled by the leg warmers he has tucked under his chin because he’s outgrown his sleeping bag, “says that even during her time as a shinobi, that the boys and girls did not share tents. Are your parents fine with this? It just… I do not think Gai-sensei is wrong, of course! It simply seems. Improper.”
He is watching the ceiling, looking away from where Tenten is curled into a small ball in the opposite corner of the tent. His whispering fills the tent, louder than the crackling of the fire outside, where Gai-sensei takes his watch.
Tenten sits up in her bundle of raggedy blankets. “Lee!” she hisses, barely audible. “You know Neji’s an orphan, you can’t just say it like that! You’re supposed to say guardian!”
Neji sighs at the ceiling, his silken sleep cap cutting into his forehead. He needs a bigger one to protect the whole length of his hair, before it becomes an unruly mess like hers. “Tenten. You’re also an orphan; I at least have a clan and clothes without holes.”
It’s only their second mission outside of the Village and they haven’t been a team for so long, but he does know that Tenten had lived in the Orphanage until becoming a genin. Now, she has the world’s most disgusting apartment. That Lee has failed to observe as much is hardly surprising.
“I’m not an orphan!” she snaps, and Gai-sensei coughs plaintively outside.
The three are still and quiet, until they can hear the crickets and the crackling of the fire again. Lee whisper-shouts, “I’m sorry, Neji! I was thoughtless in my words. I will do 2000 push-ups when we get home, and if I cannot—“ his words get louder and more excited as he goes, until Neji slides (sleeping bag and all) to Lee’s corner and kicks Lee in the side.
Lee stops talking.
Neji nudges back up into the center of the tent where he sleeps. Yet—it nags at him. “You have neither clan, nor name of worth. You grew up in the Orphanage,” he informs her. “You’re an orphan. To allow yourself delusions of a greater destiny… Some unknown parent to free you from your obscurity… I didn’t think you so fanciful, Tenten.”
Silence stretches between the three, until—Lee snaps the thread with movement, sitting up loudly. “You cannot refer to her so coldly! Tenten is a name of worth!”
“I have a dad,” Tenten says, her voice shaking. “I have a dad.”
“If that is true, where is he?” Neji sighs, deigning to look at her.
She sits up, her hair tumbling is a curly, jumbled mess around her shoulders. In the dark, he can just make out the way her hands curl into fists around her blankets. “…I don’t know,” she whispers, her voice thick and wet, and unbecoming for a shinobi. Normally, she is more logical. “He left me. We’d move around a lot, I don’t even know where we were most of the time. Called it camping.”
“He left?” Lee whispers. “When? How? Where?”
“I said I don’t know. I was. Like five? Dad brought me to a forest, gave me my book and a kunai, and his canteen and said…” her breath catches again. “That I’d find Konoha if I wanted to be strong someday. And to… never trust anybody wearing a mask.”
It does seem oddly specific to be entirely fabricated. But five year olds have no reason beyond mayhem and curses. “A mask?” Lee asks.
“I don’t know. That’s all he ever said about it.” She shakes her head.
“…What was in this book? Did your supposed father give it to you?” Neji sits up, and Lee takes that as tacit permission to come closer, until they’re both sitting next to Tenten as she pulls a heavy, worn book from her bag.
Even in the dark, he can tell that the covers have been resewn to the book and the titling worn away. Tenten cracks the book open. Lee peers down, nose nearly pressed to the page. With a sigh, Neji calls whispers of chakra to his fingers and a flickering blue light illuminates the tent.
Gai-sensei fake-sneezes outside.
Diagrams of spears of varying design and images of warriors fighting with them adorn the pages, and Tenten whispers, almost reverent, “Polearms, part one. It is easy to see that the addition of a long haft to weapons for cutting, thrusting, or clubbing might give the user advantage of reach over an enemy with a short weapon. It can also give a foot soldier the means to attack a horseman, or to keep him at a distance.”
Her fingers trace over the shapes of some of the spears. Neji frowns and reads the text she just recited. Right. Why is he surprised. Of course she’s memorized passages of this.
Lee flips through more pages, careful, so careful, and each page is adorned with more weapons from different regions, images of people using them, and war theory. “Your father gave this to you?” Lee asks, too loud and too bright.
“…Yeah. It’s… well. All I have left of him is the kunai, his canteen, and this book,” she trails her hand over descriptions of various explosive devices.
“Do you know why he abandoned you?” Neji asks.
Tenten shakes her head. “…No. He just… ditched me there in the forest. I don’t even know his name, or if he’s even alive. One of the gate guards found me wandering, and then… Some lady ask me a bunch of questions, and then they dumped me into the Orphanage.”
She’s a terrible liar, had failed every subterfuge test in Academy. Neji frowns. Well, at the very least, she believes her own story, so perhaps it’s not entirely baseless fantasy. The tent flap opens and Gai-sensei smiles at them, his teeth gleaming bright in the light of Neji’s chakra. They’re more than caught. And Gai-sensei had given them two warnings.
“Well, my dearest students! If you have breath to talk, you have breath to run! We’ll be back in the Village by morning,” he announces, bright and certain.
Neji grimaces in defeat, as Lee shouts, “Hai, Gai-sensei!” and even Tenten, to her credit, doesn’t grumble as she drags herself out from under her scraps of cloth to start pulling up camp.
No use fighting it. If they don’t make it back by morning, Neji doesn’t want to know what new form of training Gai-sensei will punish them with. He rolls up his sleeping bag and gathers his things so Lee can break down the tent.
Gai-sensei’s gaze lands heavily on Neji as Lee gathers up their supplies and Tenten begins sealing them away in her traveling scroll. “…Names are names. Worth is in action, not words. Pack up the cooking supplies.”
“Hai, sensei,” Neji says, inclining his head, but whatever Gai-sensei may say, destiny comes for them all. Those who begin as nothing, end as nothing.
He gathers up the pots and cups and teapot for Tenten to seal away, and he stills, watching, as Tenten offers a tired smile to Lee, her voice gentle when she says, “It’s okay. We’ll be quieter next time. And… Um. Thanks. For earlier. That was—nice of you to say.”
“I… do not know what I said to earn your praise, but you are welcome, Tenten! You are wonderful!” And he tries for a smile, but it doesn’t gleam as Gai-sensei’s does. Imitation can only take one so far.
His teammates are but stepping stones to becoming a jounin. That they work well together is a boon, of course, and Gai-sensei’s insistence on teamwork has served them well thus far. Yet, what would they be like, if they were destined to be great? What could they achieve then, with Lee’s willpower and Tenten’s perception?
It's pointless to dwell on what cannot be. He goes to give her the supplies to pack away; morning inches closer, and they are miles out from the Village still. Time to move.