"Naruto? Naruto!"

Kiba waved his hand in the 17-year-old's face.

"Naaaaaarutooo!"

"Eh?" the blonde replied groggily, blinking.

"You seem distant. You weren't really focusing these last two days on our mission at all. I thought you'd be back to normal when it was over, but..." he shook his head, mimicking deep concern. "I guess I was wrong."

Naruto poked the canine shinobi in the forehead with a scowl. "Shut up, Kiba."

The brunette shrugged. "Just sayin'... You seem kinda' happy." He grinned. "Got a girlfriend?"

The blonde grimaced. Was it really that obvious, that he was so deeply concerned about it, he didn't notice he wasn't paying any attention to anyone?

It wasn't that he was sad; far, far from it. That night in the park with Tenten was one of the best in his life. He just felt they were sort of... rushing it, almost.

"NARUTO! You're doing it again!" Kiba scowled. "You've got this dumb smile on your face. You get laid or something?"

"What?" he hissed, a dark blush flaring up his cheeks. "N-no! I mean, why would you think..."

"Just seein'." the other said with a toothy grin. He knew he had won.

"Whatever! Like I wanna' talk to you."

But, after hesitating a few seconds outside of the Hokage's office, he immediately went back.

"Uh... Tsunade... Would you happen to know where Tenten is..?"

"THAT'S WHO YOU'RE-?"

"She's out on a classified mission."

Naruto frowned, brow furrowing. "Oh." Without another word – or looking in the direction of the now spluttering Kiba – he left.

But sure enough, unable to contain himself he immediately stuck his head back in.

"Do you know when she'll be back?"

Tsunade gave a slightly annoyed grimace.

"No, in fact, I don't. It'll take several days, though."

Naruto backed out for a second, only to re-enter a moment later to ask, "Is-"

Tsunade slammed her hands on the table, looked him straight in the eye, and through grit teeth said, "The mission is B-rank, she's with Rock Lee and Maito Gai, they're going to assassinate someone on the outskirts of Kumogakure and yes I do know the risks, but they really aren't any of your business, now, are they?" She sat back triumphantly.

"Ah," Naruto replied, once he was finally given a chance to breath. "I see."

With that he turned and ran, as fast as he could.

5 Days Later

Naruto bit his lip, staring out between the orange-brown canopies that still stuck to the scraggly tops of the trees, refusing to fall. He let out a tortured sigh. She still wasn't back yet.

7 Days Later

He was beginning to lose himself in the possibility Tenten was dead. Over and over he mumbled, "Please… Please…" as if some higher being would take pity on him, and if she was indeed dead, allow her to rise from the grave. Of course this was stupid, because you can't bring back the dead, and actually Tenten wasn't dead, but exremeley tired and hunched over behind a bush, waiting for her target to come into view. Still, Naruto had no way of knowing this, and couldn't help but think of Gaara, who had suffered a similar situation only a few years before.

Friday

Tenten staggered through the main gate and head towards the inner city, body racked with exhaustion.

Their target had escaped three damn times before finally she'd caught up with him and… Well. Let's just say it involved shoving and a plethora of jagged rocks. Amazing how easy something that had seemed so difficult a few days before could turn out to be.

"Tenten!"

There was that blur of blonde again, so fast that before she realized it he was holding her so close, hot breath in her neck, seeming so distraught it'd been as if she'd… well, died and come back to life.

Naruto held her, ignoring the stares he earned from the two "green beasts" standing just a few yards away. Thankfully, they caught the signal of his annoyed stare and left.

Tenten planted a tender kiss on his neck; the embrace was so powerful she couldn't move, and it vaguely reminded her of Gai. She laughed to herself for thinking this.

"Naruto," she struggled.

"Tenten.."

"No, Naruto… You're crushing me… You're crushing my arm…"

"OH!" He let her go. Something about how quickly, how abruptly he had pushed her away made her sad. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize…" In a flash his face was pale as understanding washed over him.

"AAAAAAAAARGH!"

He had her in an embrace again, making it worse.

"My god, are you hurt? We've got to get you some help, this is-"

"It's just a small wound, but you'll make it damn bigger if you keep hugging the shit out of me!"

Naruto stepped away. The idiot was grinning; his whisker-like markings were arched along his cheeks.

"So… You're okay? You're really and seriously okay, right?"

"I'm absolutely fine."

"I'm so sorry… But it's bad. It's really bad."

She didn't look up. Meeting those eyes would hurt her, so badly.

"It's not bad enough we can't help."

"I don't have the money."

"It's cheap."

"No, it isn't."

"I'll make it cheap."

"I still can't pay that."

"Then it can be free."

Now she did look up, but not without avoiding the eyes.

"Tenten," Sakura continued, "please. The infection will only get so much worse. Soon, we won't be able to handle it. Please."

Tenten leaned back, clutching her hands to her forehead. Cold.

"I… I need time to think about this."

"One week," Sakura replied. "Take it or leave it."

She was beginning to feel like she was stuck in some awful, awful soap opera where the outcome could either be unrealistically beautiful… or tragic.

"Fine," said Tenten, "I'll consider the operation."

One Week Later

Naruto had only seen her once since then, briefly in passing.

It was worse than the first time, just a little while ago, that he had waited for her. There was one profound difference. Not that she was right beneath his nose and he couldn't talk to her, or the thousands of unanswered messages he'd left on her answering machine. But according to Neji, she'd be going into surgery soon. And that was the scariest part.

And Another Week Passed…

Naruto hadn't slept in days, and was feeling a bit under the weather. Every waking thought was Tenten. Every dream was death.

It was on that day, as the sunlight smothered his room in a sickeningly cheery glow (the exact opposite of what he was feeling) that he realized something was dreadfully, dreadfully wrong.

He got up quickly, not bothering to brush or clean or shower, threw on his clothes, and rushed from his apartment in mere seconds.

He dashed along the main streets, back streets, twisting around houses and cussing when he hit a dead end and was delayed. Nervously, he focused on the empty, biting hunger in the pit of his stomach, trying to ignore the raw emotion that lay just underneath… the tickling, gut-tearing nausea that came with dread.

Frame by frame, the vision of Sasuke, hunched over, so bloody he couldn't even recognize the familiar features of his body and pretty face. His childhood companion so caked in blood and gore, half of which wasn't his own but just enough was that his condition was critical. He could see the crimson spray, coming from his mouth every few second when he gave out an especially ragged breath… He remembered gathering the body, so carefully as to not to hurt him, not caring if he did get the sticky red substance all over himself. He'd left Orochimaru's corpse, equally unidentifiable to rot. He was dead. No skin off his bones. (At this he'd been racked by a cold shudder.) Besides, even if he wasn't he wouldn't have gone back. Sasuke was too important to him.

"Naruto!"

The voice brought him out of his chain of thoughts, and he whirled to see Neji standing so confused in the opening of the alleyway Naruto had decided to duck into.

"What…?"

He sighed in relief; obviously, the Hyuuga didn't remember today was the day Tenten would be released from the operation room, and he was thankful for that. It meant he'd be saved the pain, at least another moment.

"I have something to do today, you take over our squad!"

"But where are you-"

He can't know, he can't know!

"It's important okay? Just please…"

Without another word he took off, jumping, faster and faster, more and more frantic, the other sense building up higher and higher until he felt it might topple from the weight. His friend's cries echoed uselessly into the background.

"No... NO…"

The world was racing by in multicolored blurs. People's murmurs bounced off the invisible walls of this hell-torn Twilight Zone that he himself had created from the epitomes of his deepest fears… He could almost hear his own tortured cries for help, which were the faintest in this place.

In an instant, this hallucination halted. It was gone as abruptly as it had come into existence. He was now outside the hospital. He didn't remember getting there.

Slowly, so slowly, like everything had gone from fast-forward to slow-motion, he pushed pass the front doors, the sound of the echoes as they went back into place deafening.

A few minutes later he arrived in a small, stark white room, escorted by someone he was sure he knew but didn't feel like making sure. His eyes were all for the girl lying motionlessly on the table in the middle of the room. A white blanket covered her body, and only the head showed. A disgusting stain of interchanging reds showed through the right side.

With a trembling hand he reached out to touch her face, the smooth beautiful skin now reflecting in the light a perfect, colorless porcelain.

Her hair was down and many dozens of strands stuck to her peaceful face in ways that he knew would usually cause her to be annoyed and brush them away… She did nothing of the sort now.

Naruto fell to his knees, soon to be a grown man in a few years time, and broke into hysteric sobs. All Tsunade could do as she stood, lost and out of place in the doorway was shake her head sadly and watch.

Naruto took a deep breath of the humid summer air, not caring that he had wasted an entire evening conversing with a gravestone.

"So, that's my story. Some more stuff happened, like the attack Kirigakure launched on Konoha, but I'm sure you knew all about that, seeming as that's how half those people we used to know got to you. But we can talk about it tomorrow, okay? We have a lot of catching-up to do."

For a second Naruto wondered at how silly he must have looked, playfully punching a mere hunk of stone stuck in the ground.

He hunched over, hugging his knees in a more comfortable position for a moment before stating, "I'd figured it out from day one, you know. How you bribed Kakashi with playboy mags, I mean. To advise me as not only ANBU, but captain." He sighed, stretching a bit. "Your last gift to me, I guess."

The stone did not reply.

Slowly, slowly, Naruto stood up, again grunting as his joints cracked uncomfortably.

"I'm too old for this crap."

His steps began to falter slightly as he neared the very stone, the very reason he'd avoided coming here all these years. If he'd at least come for Iruka, or Kakashi or anyone else, he would've wanted to come here. And he would've seen the writing on the plaque he wished he would've asked to change when he had the chance.

Tenten

But she'd been so much more than that. She'd been worth a thousand words, a hundred novels, a million pictures.

Something caught his eye, and he leaned down to investigate. His heart skipped a beat.

There was something hidden by the moss.

Frantically, losing the collected calm he had worked so hard to keep this whole time, he dug away at the cruel earth to reveal several more lines of writing that was almost poetic:

She Died Happy and in Love.

May We Never Forget Her

Or Her Contagious Smile

He let out a smothered choke. It wasn't the words that got him. "Sai… You son a bitch…" He smiled, blinking past tears. "My god, you stupid, stupid son of a bitch…"

Carved just bellow the three lines was the perfect likeness of Tenten

He could now just hear what she'd told him the night they'd made love, the night their affections soared higher and faster than rockets on New Year. The love that made another love so powerful that it could never be severed, even after she died and his heart shriveled to a withered husk of being.

"Are you sure you want to do this? It won't hurt you at all?"

And, after a long pause, she replied, "'I'd rather be hurt to heal than die painlessly alone."

Wow, I never dreamed After Twenty Years would be finished the weekend before my birthday! Care to shower me with reviews as a gift? ;)

I thank you all so much for reading. Hope the ending wasn't too much of a cliffhanger.