A/N: This is also not how I imagined this scene in the original conception. However, as far as story arcs go, this works much better. No leveling out of action for a little while like it originally did.

Has anybody guessed who, exactly, the puppet master is yet?

View the Puppet Master
By: Reggie

Chapter 19

He could hear her running out to the garden, just a few steps ahead of him. Neji was fast, but TenTen, like Lee, was always faster. She probably would have been long gone by now if it were for the way the kimono confined her movements. He heard her stumble and, with a burst of extra speed, he caught her elbow before she hit the ground.

“Let me go, Neji.” There was no emotion, not even anger, in her voice. It was unsettling.

“I didn’t spy on you.” He should have thought this through a little more. This wasn’t supposed to be about reclaiming his reputation. This was supposed to be making sure she was all right, that she understood that…that what? That he loved her? He couldn’t say that, she loved Naruto, and he’d promised himself he wouldn’t tell her because she was sure to reject him.

“It doesn’t really matter now, does it? You knew. Without asking me, you somehow knew.” She didn’t face him, but she didn’t pull her arm out of his grasp either. “And the point of it is still the same, isn’t it?”

“Don’t talk in riddles.” Why couldn’t she just get where she was going with this? Then he could apologize and the world would be okay again because TenTen was smiling at him. He never meant to tell her he loved her, but Neji just knew that things wouldn’t be the same if they couldn’t at least be friends. He needed her. Needed her to tell him things were fine, to watch his back, to remind him when he forgot that there were things in Konoha that deserved his protection. That he wouldn’t mind fighting and dying for.

He wouldn’t die if he lost that, but he knew he would be somehow less a person.

She did turn to face him now, and what Neji saw shook his world view slightly. There were tears on TenTen’s face. She wasn’t sobbing, they weren’t streaming, but there were drop silently falling from her eyes and trickling down her face.

TenTen didn’t cry. Neji could count on this in the same way he could count on Lee to be green, the sun to come up, Hinata to bring tea. It was a constant in his life; he counted it as fact.

Yet here she was, those quiet drops smearing her make up as the escaped her eyes. These weren’t regular tears, though. Neji was certain they were just another weapon in her arsenal because each drop hurt him like hell.

He had made her cry.

He had made TenTen cry.

He had been enough of an idiot to make TenTen, the most in control kunoichi he knew, cry.

“So now you’re tired of games?” Her voice still sounded empty, hollow, and she didn’t move to wipe the drops away at all. It was as if she just didn’t care anymore. “After a week of messing with my mind and…and…this constant back and forth thing you’ve been doing—when the game is reversed you don’t want to play anymore?”

“I haven’t been messing with your mind. My intentions were perfectly clear.”

“To who?” Now there was anger, which was better than the deadness of before. “One minute you’re trying to change everything about me, then you’re saying I’m beautiful, then you’re as cold and aloof as before and scowling and…how is anyone supposed to know what you mean? You’re so damn contradictory that any sensible conclusion I make is rendered illogical the next instant!”

“I never meant that I wanted to change you.” Not really, anyway. There was regular TenTen, the one he loved, and the TenTen he needed for two nights. And if her performance tonight was any indication, the TenTen he needed was just a different side of her personality.

“Well you did a marvelous job of telling me that, didn’t you?” Her teeth were bared, but not in a smile. The little part of Neji that had memorized the book on body language told him she was snarling because she felt trapped and cornered. In a dog, he would be afraid of an attack at any moment. With TenTen, he should probably feel that same caution. “Did you even realize, did you even think, about how I might feel about all of this?”

“Not at first.” Honesty. Honesty was almost always a good thing. At the very least it startled her away from gouging his eyes out with her nails. “I wasn’t really thinking about much of anything at first, except that those were the rules and you were the only girl I knew that…that was you.”

It made no sense at all, but that was the only way Neji could think to describe it. Just how long had he been in love with her, anyway? It seemed like he always had.

“I’m not some kind of tool to be used at your disposal, Neji.” Her body language—the stiff hunched shoulders, the firm stance, the clenched fists—it all screamed at him of aggression and hurt. Only the tears seemed off, but he couldn’t decide if that was because it meant something else or because it was TenTen. “I’m not a weapon, I’m a person. A person with actual feelings, unlike you!”

“I have feelings.” He’d been trying to keep a leash on them, actually, but now his temper was rising to match hers. She wasn’t listening at all. “I just choose not to display them so openly.”

“Because you don’t trust me! You never trust me.” They could probably hear her in the house, but even as he realized this Neji knew he didn’t care. Because this was important, whatever they were doing.

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“It has everything to do with me. We’re teammates, Neji. Partners. I would never do anything to betray you, but you…you go and dig up my past like that. How much do you know? Do you know what my parents are like? Do you know what they do all day?”

Yes, he did, but saying that seemed like a bad idea right now. “I just wanted to know why you didn’t know all the things we were teaching you. You’re a smart girl, TenTen, so I knew it had to be because no one taught you. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

She laughed, harshly, and shook her head. “See, you’re doing it again. I want to be mad at you. I have every right to be. But you say something so sweet like that and I start to hope that you’ve melted a little bit, and I got a glimpse of the real you.”

“I’m not hiding anything.” He wasn’t! He was always himself, and said what he meant, and expressed what he wanted to. Just because he was selective about what he displayed didn’t make what he offered her any less genuine.

“See, and now you’re back to hiding from everything! I can see it. Not your words; it’s your face and your eyes. You close off, withdraw. And I just want you to stay here with me, because…” She paused, obviously weighing what she was going to say next. “Because I love you so much that watching you go hurts.”

“You…you what?” This was no rushed betrayal of emotion, no accidental shout. She had deliberately chosen to tell him that. “How could you…” possibly love someone like me?

“I don’t know.” The tears were falling faster now. Had she told him because she thought she had nothing left to lose? “I didn’t mean to fall in love with you, it just happened. And I never meant to tell you, because I know I’m not good enough. Then you asked me to help you, and I thought maybe I could show you I can learn, that I wouldn’t disappoint you. But you know about my family.”

Neji didn’t know how that mattered. She knew about his family and she still loved him.

He couldn’t seem to get himself to process exactly what that meant. He should feel elated that TenTen had feelings for him, not Naruto, and if he told her now maybe they could be together.

Instead he just felt like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over his head. It had been bad enough knowing he’d hurt her when they’d been nothing but best friends. Knowing how much worse it must be, now, made it feel like he couldn’t breathe. He’d broken her heart. He hadn’t meant to, but he had. How could he fix this?

“I’m sorry.” TenTen’s voice had dropped to a whisper and she started to back away. What she was apologizing for, he didn’t know, and he should find out but he couldn’t make his body work the way he wanted. “I’m sorry for embarrassing you in front of your family, and, I’m sorry. Just sorry.”

She turned and fled, and though he wanted to follow her again his body did the opposite—sinking to the ground because it felt like his legs wouldn’t hold him any more. She was long gone by time he realized the first thing he should have said was ‘I love you, too.’