Author's Notes: There will only be one more chapter after this. Thanks to all for reading!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and am making no profit from this fanfiction.

Venus or Themis

By Nessie

Part Five: To Make A Choice

Tenten Long, Neji learned, was a very heavy sleeper. This suited him fine as it gave him a chance to study her unguarded. Cheerful and carefree as she often appeared, he saw also the defenses she painstakingly maintained around others.

Her skin was nearly flawless with only a few pale scars here and there from life. It gleamed gold against the powder blue sheet that he had retrieved for them in the middle of the night because they had kicked it off during…well, during activity. Tenten's hair was lovely, some of it tossed over his arm from when she had turned over toward him. Neji enjoyed the pleasant softness of it in addition to the heat her body radiated, reminding him of last night when Tenten had locked the door behind them and performed a wonderful trick that involved wrapping one bare leg behind his knee.

Neji had no idea he was smiling. And when Tenten's eyes fluttered open to reveal dark amber, the smile was completely abolished because in that moment he had a split-second realization: he was certain he would have liked to stay here, right here, for the rest of his life.

Neji, while not normally an easily intimidated man, was terrified.

"I didn't think it was that bad."

Startled, he came back to the present. Tenten was looking blearily at him. Neutralizing his features, Neji allowed one corner of his mouth to quirk. "Not after the initial danger. I nearly tripped a few times." He gestured to the floor, on which was strewn not only their abandoned clothes but also an assortment of brick-a-brack taken up and tossed down again at her fickle will. Brushing the back of his hand over the inside of her thigh, they both recalled the undersized handgun he had discovered strapped there in the dark. "And then I could've been shot," he said lowly, liking it when her lips curved in response.

"Only if I'd pulled the trigger." Tenten sat up, perfectly comfortable when the sheet fell to her lap. "Now what?" she asked, gaze roving his newly-awakened body even as his roved hers. "Coffee? I'm a lousy cook, but I can manage a ham and cheese omelet."

Neji debated a moment, then figured there was no point in delaying an inevitable conversation. "Are you all right with this, Tenten?"

Their eyes met, and a spark of reason shone through the desire. She was so intelligent; she just happened to be scatter-brained as well. "Yes. After all, we're both consenting, clear-thinking adults."

He admitted to himself that he hadn't been thinking at all last night, let alone with any semblance of clarity. "That's true."

"Is there any reason why we couldn't separate work and a relationship?"

Also the truth: "I can't conceive one."

Tenten grinned. "So if we can both handle it, should we or should with not proceed with this," a smile threatened to overtake her mock serious face, "agreement?"

Her amusement was contagious. "Any clauses?"

"Well…" Settling herself across his chest, she ran a few fingers through his tangled black hair. "I would still appreciate some privacy as much as I imagined you would. And it would be nice if the sex continued to be phenomenal."

The lawyer felt a surge of male pride. "Guaranteed," he said. Cupping the back of her head, he initiated a good-morning kiss.

---

They were both so busy without a relationship that it took some practice to kick off theirs, but once they did the safety they experienced with each other was unmatched. Neji was informed by Tenten that she had been offered and planned to accept a position with the New York state department, which would allow for bigger career opportunities later. With this occurrence, she had to meet with "her attorney" several times a week to arrange her contract, and if the meeting transitioned from verbal to other forms of communication, Neji did not complain.

Shikamaru adjusted to the change in his partner's status well. He liked Tenten, and he often took a break to play a round of chess with her at the board he kept in his office if Neji wasn't immediately available (she always lost).

Neji was mildly surprised when she asked him to go with her to a friend's September wedding, at which she was a bridesmaid. He spent the service sitting with a sculptor, Tenten's best friend, whose extreme personality set Neji on edge, though he enjoyed the view of Tenten in her fancy, pearl pink bridesmaid gown.

He was intrigued by Doctor Sakura Haruno and her new husband, Sasuke Uchiha. The pair seemed so unlikely; Sakura was so perky, for one thing, while Sasuke was the brooding type, who face remained straight throughout the day but could not manage to remove his intense eyes from his wife for more than three seconds at a time. Clashing personalities, pure affection. The thought was reinforced when Neji realized that Sasuke's best man was no other than the loudmouthed Naruto Uzumaki. The two seemed the most unlikely friends in the world, yet Neji saw Sasuke actually smirk when the grinning blond passed him Sakura's ring.

There were only two disturbances of the day: the first was that Lee left just after the ceremony, saddening the bride. Tenen later explained that Sakura and Lee had dated in college, Lee had fallen in love with her, and Sakura had only thought she'd fallen in love with him. The collision of his passion for making himself stronger with Sakura's for making other people stronger had ended it. While they were still friends, Lee wasn't too keen on seeing her marry Sasuke, his polar opposite.

The second incident involved the bridal party's car being mobbed by paparazzi at the reception hall door due to the participation of supermodel Ino Yamanaka, who was Sakura's maid of honor and whose face was scattered in store windows and on billboards around the city. Apart from those, the wedding was problem-free, and Neji had the added bonus of getting Tenten out of her dress later on.

They knew very little fighting, if only because both were used to accommodation in their professions. Neji was irked and amused in turn with her chronic untidiness, just as Tenten felt a little out of place at his beautifully organized condo. They eventually compromised that she would keep at least her bedroom decently near if he didn't insist on running to correct it every time she draped her jacket over the back of a chair or left the hand cloth on the sink instead of the towel bar. This Neji reluctantly agreed to.

---

In November, the time for Tenten's government form completion drew near. Neji still had not breached the subject of her parents. Hell, he hadn't even seen any pictures of a younger Tenten with a parent-like couple at her apartment. When he asked Shikamaru what a good method of obtaining the information might be, the engaged attorney was understandably irritated that Neji had omitted it at the start.

"Well, it's just her parents' names, maybe some medical history. What's the big deal?"

"Tenten never mentions them," confided Neji. "I'm sure they must have died."

"Not to be insensitive," said Shikamaru over the upright lid of his laptop computer, "but this is New York." At Neji's scowl, he gave a long-suffering sigh. "All right, sorry. I have a contact. There's a painless alternative to asking her."

"I'd do it, I'd ask her," Neji persisted, as though he couldn't get beyond the fact that he hadn't, "but we've hardly seen each other in the last month. Between her meetings and mine…we're having dinner on Sunday."

Shikamaru's eyebrow rose at his uncharacteristic rambling. "But her paperwork's due tomorrow, so you don't have time for a private chat. And you don't have to justify yourself to me, Hyuuga." He reached for the phone. "Let me make a call."

The "painless alternative" was a woman named from Hana Inuzuka, who wore her light brown hair short and spiky, along with ripped jeans and a T-shirt that bore the words: Why, yes, I AM a lesbian. She was, according to her self-introduction—

"—the most mad-skilled hacker on this half of the States!"

Neji pierced Shikamaru with a wary glance. "And that would be…because you haven't been caught?"

She laughed way too loudly. "Nah, been caught, but my bro's on the NYPD. He puts in a good word for me. I'm just awesome!"

"She can get into Columbia U's employee database," Nara pointed out.

Neji turned disapproving eyes to him. "Tell me you haven't used her 'abilities' to get evidence for a case."

"No." Affronted, Shikamaru slouched, his hands in his pockets. "Just to find people who have evidence."

Feeling uncertain, a rare occurrence, he led the hacker to his office, where she could use his computer. In less than an hour, he had two named. To the right of both on Columbia's list was one word – deceased.

---

Neji went to Tenten's place with more than a little anxiety. He was an orphan himself but had been raised in his uncle's family, so he had never been alone the way Tenten seemed to be. It bothered him that perhaps he didn't understand her the way he thought he had.

When he went inside via the key she had presented them with one month after their first night together, he was as close to being stunned as he ever had been in his life. The living room/kitchen area – which had always been demeaned with stacks of dishes or baskets of laundry or books Tenten meant to read or movies she meant to watch – was entirely spotless. Not a DVD was out of place on the TV shelf (upon closer inspection, Neji saw that were alphabetized, which he did not go so far to do), and even her ottoman was aligned with the sofa it matched.

Not only that, there was a delicious scent pervading the apartment, and he spied a dish of baked chicken in the oven and mixed vegetables on the stove. At her tiny dining table were two sat candles waiting to be lit between the twin place settings and a bottle of bubbly chilling to the side.

Neji passed a hand down his face, the anxiety transforming into pure guilt. Hanging his jacket on her coat rack (no longer bogged down with twenty different items but only four or five autumn coats), he moved down the hall to hear Tenten humming a tune from the musical he'd taken her to weeks ago, before their schedules had divided them.

She wore a denim skirt and violet scoop-necked sweater he hadn't seen before, and he watched as she dabbed on perfume in her equally immaculate vanity. Her hair was down and curled. Glancing at the bed, he could have groaned. Neji glimpsed the top right corner of a sheet that was new and satin – satin.

Tenten caught sight of him in the vanity mirror, a smile instantly adding a light to her face that the sparkling crystal earrings she wore could not. "Oh, hey, I didn't hear you come in."

"This is what you were doing yesterday while I was at court?" Had there been any more inflection in his tone, Neji might have sounded flabbergasted while she nodded. "What can the occasion be?"

"Not that I'd expect you to remember – it's a girl thing, I guess – but it's been three months since the day you asked me out." Giving a fluff to her newly voluminous hair, she turned on one high heel to meet him halfway across the room. "It's the longest I've ever been with someone, so I figured it was worth celebrating." She wound her arms about his neck.

He accepted the kiss, enjoyed it even, but let his hands rest on her waist and no further. "You didn't have to waste your day off."

"Are you kidding?" Laughing, she moved past him, her perfume enticing Neji as she went by. "I found five pairs of shoes I forgot I owned, the curling iron I used to do this," another hair fluff, "still in the box, the protection plan for my computer. I dressed up because you always look so nice when you get off work. And I called Ino. She talked me through the salad I made." He followed her back to the kitchen area, where she pulled a green-filled bowl from the refrigerator. "Ta-da! She claims the dressing is thirty calories to the gallon, but I think she's living a lie."

His gut was twisting. "Tenten, you didn't put yourself out very much, did you?"

"No, dear, I had a good time with it. I've never been much of a cook, so it was a learning experience." She paused after dropping a pair of tongs into the salad to stick a postcard she'd noticed on the marble-topped island to the fridge with a magnet. "Lee's next show date; I think he's been doing stuff with limestone. I do admit to calling Sakura – only once! – in desperation about the cheesecake I made for dessert."

"You made cheesecake?"

"With strawberry topping on one half and cherry on the other because I know you told me you didn't like one but I couldn't remember which. The chicken was the easiest part, believe it or not." As if on cue, the stove timer buzzed. "And it's ready! Nice timing, Neji."

His mouth grew thin as she slipped on a pair of oven mitts and retrieved the tray from the oven. As she was transferring chicken breast to their plates on the table, Neji ventured to ask, "Why all of this? The wine, the dinner, the…the spring cleaning in November?"

The smile she gave him as she added her vegetables and a basket of bread was almost shy. "Because as cliché as it sounds, these last few months have been some of the happiest I've had in a long, long time."

Neji was incredulous. No wonder she was talking a mile a minute; it was one of her habits to ramble when she was in a particularly good mood. He took her in as she turned to him in a wordless signal that everything was ready; expressive eyes, soft hair, scatterbrain, talent, skin he knew every inch of, and a passionate identity he desperately wanted to – that was Tenten.

"I have to tell you something," he said suddenly.

Oh God, Neji realized even as he spoke, he loved her.

"What is it?"

And because he loved her, he had to be honest with her, even if it meant he didn't get the dinner, the satin sheets – hell, even if it meant he didn't get her.

Walking forward, he took her hands and found them warm from the oven tray. He couldn't quite meet her eyes. "I completed the paperwork for the state department today."

Tenten tilted her head. "That's good. That means you're looking at the newest addition to the armaments group on New York's payroll! I can probably afford that glassware set now, the one we saw at Crate & Barrel, remember?"

"Tenten." Locking gazes with her, Neji gripped her fingers more tightly. "I needed to look up your parents' names."

The smile vanished. It was as though someone had waved their hand and made it disappear. Judging by the way she went stonily quiet, her hands falling out of his, it would take magic to bring it back. "Neji…I never gave you my—"

"I know. I…I didn't want to trouble you by asking about them." This was absolutely true.

"Well then, how exactly did you go about getting them?" The sparkle of her earrings seemed almost sharp now, like he could be cut by it.

Neji confessed the events of the day, how Hana Inuzuka had broken into her work's mainframe for a check of fifty dollars. Throughout the recounting Tenten leaned against the island, toying with one still-empty salad plate, her features as neutral as she could make them.

"And," she said once he had finished, "you saw no positive aspect in calling one of my friends? At least trying with me again?"

"I know our time's been limited lately. I didn't want to ruin what we did have."

Her eyes clouded in seconds. "Why, because I might not have fucked you?"

"No!" Shocked, he reached for her. Tenten took one step back and he was effectively halted. "I merely—"

"You don't think I realize that we have sex every time we go home together? What's ridiculous, Neji, is that's the only half of the original 'clause' to this relationship."

His brow furrowed. "What—"

"I told you, Neji! You asked me if I had any conditions to us being together, and what did I say?" Tenten's hands curled into fists at her sides. "I said I would still like some privacy."

"But your job, Tenten." Groping for reasons, he fell short.

"Fine! I don't like talking about my parents, true, but that's a good reason for it." Eyes blazing, her volume rose. "My parents were shot to death on a walk through the park when I was fifteen. Isn't that what you wanted to know? Now you know!"

He was very close to pleading. "Either I did what I did or you'd miss your chance with the state department."

She only threw up her hands, too angry for words, beginning to pace the short space between the counter and the island. "You hacked into my confidential files. I'm obligated now to tell Columbia about the breach."

"Tenten, I had to make a choice."

At that, she stopped short. This time when he saw her eyes, he found them not only fuming but also brimming with tears. "I see." Her voice was beginning to shake, and he felt as though she'd punched him in the stomach. Swallowing, Tenten tried again, speaking steadily this time. "Love or law, right, Neji?"

The punch became a puncture. "Tenten…"

"Well." Marching past him, she unchained and unbolted the door, yanking it open and holding it that way. Her posture went ramrod straight. "You chose."

Neji breathed deeply. He wanted to say a mountain's worth of things, but none so much as the thing she was very clearly denying him now. Stepping gingerly, as though the recently polished floor might crack beneath his feet, he proceeded to the other side of the threshold.

He expected a last exclamation, something dramatic that he could turn over in his head all week, but Tenten said nothing. She only slammed the door shut. Neji stood there only for half a minute before very stoically turning around and beginning toward the elevator.

The door to her apartment opened again, and he whirled around, hoping she might have experienced a last-second change of mind—

Instead, he saw only his jacket sailing toward him, and then the door was once more closed and the chain was being slid back into place.

New York City seemed desolately dark and quiet that night.

To Be Continued