NessieGG's Fanfiction - [Naruto, NejiTen] "An Everlasting Vow" - Chapter 9

Title: An Everlasting Vow (Chapter 9)
Author: NessieGG
Genre: Romance/Fantasy/AU
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing/Characters: NejiTen, Tsunade, Hiashi, Shizune, Lee, Gai, Hinata, Orochimaru, Anko, Shikamaru, SasuSaku.
Rated: PG



Neji obscured himself behind a tree's wide trunk, mind racing in the shade of the leaves. A swan? He had seen no bodies of water near, and although he was not familiar with the terrain, there was no scent to indicate one within at least a mile. He had read in the various nature-focused books he favored that swans preferred moist, cool land.

He took a deep breath, prepared to ignore it, until the prince felt each individual hair on the back of his neck stand on end. A swan.

The most innocent of creatures, sleek and graceful. He watched it glide between trees, dappled sunlight dashing off its wings in golden arcs. Of course, Neji realized. It seemed to be, but it wasn't. How could anyone suspect a creature of treacherous deeds while in the form of a swan?

Without causing so much as a rustle of his shirt to disturb the quiet, Neji drew an arrow from the quiver at his back. The white bird was flying nearer wit each passing second, in which the prince grew ever more convinced that this had to be Tsunade's attacker now seeking him out for some cruel end. His mouth went dry and he nocked the arrow, the swan winging around an oak to his right. It trumpeted a cry Neji felt he could easily interpret as a challenge. With a thumb, he ruffled the tail of the arrow and waited.

Closer, he chanted inwardly. Closer. His blood rushed through every vein, but as badly he craved action, his patience endured. At last, the swan swept into a space through which he could send an arrow without interception.

Seizing the opportunity, Neji leapt out from behind the tree to land directly in front of the swan, scant feet between them. The swan blinked once in the confusion of any animal found by a hunter, but the prince released the deadly projectile before the bird could react. In the same instant, another bird, a raptor, burst from Neji's periphery and crashed into the swan a mere moment before the arrow could make contact. Both hurtled to safety, then took flight. What would have been a perfect shot to the swan's heart was now ruined.

Rage rose like flame inside Neji as instinct had his sprinting after the two. He avoided tree after tree, jumped logs, and all the while kept his hunter's eye trained on his target. He knew, almost tangibly, that allowing the swan to escape would be the gravest of mistakes. Bow clenched in hand, Neji ran and did not stop for anything.

---

Above, watched in the spaces between trees from the ground, Sasuke and Tenten flew ahead of Neji's footed chase.

He almost... Fairly traumatized, Tenten could not complete the sentence. There was a glassy sheen over the beady swan eyes.

He's a hunter, Sasuke succintly told her. And you are wild fowl. Did you think he would react otherwise?

But he seems so angry!

Sasuke was forced to speed up his own flapping to keep up with her. Slow down, Tenten, or we shall lose the prince.

No, no! she cried back. He's far too close already!

Close? I cannot even see him down there. If he loses track of us, he'll never make it to— An arrow suddenly shot up and between the two of them. Sasuke involuntarily cawed. Let's go, he amended.

They shot through the air, occasionally shocked when a lightning-fast length of pointed wood whizzed up at them, only missing by inches.

How is a pampered prince so quick? demanded Sasuke in clear irritation, risking a glance at the figure bounding over rocks and creeks below.

Tenten wagged her neck, disturbed. He was not pampered when it came to his training, Sasuke. Neji is a highly skilled combatant, and his teacher, Gai, is one of the fastest men in both East and West Fire. It is no wonder to me that he can move so. And he is remarkably stubborn.

So he shan't give up on us? At Tenten's nod, Sasuke said, Good. The sun has halfway set already. We'll be back at Orochimaru's castle within the next quarter hour, so if your prince does not stop following... He paused to dodge another arrow aimed for either him or the swan. Or he does not kill us first, he will be just in time for a reunion.

Tenten replied, I want to thank you.

It's thanks enough knowing that if I were a man at the present, I could beat this Neji Hyuuga to a transformation of his own.

She would have smiled if she'd had lips.

Their progress continued smoothly enough until they came near the wall surrounding Orochimaru's claimed palace. Sasuke flew sideways, signaling for Tenten to follow him as they descended to a level putting them in direct danger of Neji's archery so as to fly through the vine-covered entrance, leading the prince.

Tenten could have gone into shock when another arrow went through the feathers at the tip of her left wing without actually harming the wing itself. As they emerged into the open, they flew to where Sakura stood by her feeble shelter, away and unseen from the lake. Sasuke settled on the pink-haired woman's shoulder comfortably as Tenten ruffled in icy fear by her dress's hem.

Go to the lake, Sasuke said. He'll be over there.

She immediately protested. I cannot! He meant to end it with that last arrow. Neji shall kill me, Sasuke!

Sakura even seemed to understand her predicament despite her lack of recent involvement. In what might have been too bold a move had Tenten not so hungered for any sort of comfort in this moment, Haruno leaned down and ran two gentle fingers down the curve of the long swan neck. The physical contact helped to regulate Tenten's heartbeat enough for her to think more clearly.

If you fail to see him now, your chance is lost, Sasuke reminded her. He will mark you as a mistake, a loss, and he will never return here to find you but continue his search elsewhere.

The solemnity of his words rang too true for Tenten to attempt a path around, and presently she nodded. Saying nothing, she spread her wings and left them, gliding toward the moonlit lake.

---

Neji's chest heaved from the exertion of running so far and long after the swan and the meddling raptor. His arm did not yet burn from the loosing of so many arrows, although his quiver was three-fours emptier than it had been upon leaving the Hyuuga grounds this morning.

The presence of the waning crescent moon above disconcerted him. He had been mostly unconscious of the passage of time during his chase, as well as the darkness brought on by night. He was now not entirely certain of where he was after following that swan. The old castle in its disrepair combined with the lake, eerily uninhabited by wildlife, succeeded in unsettling him. Shifting his grip on his bow, Neji stared across the stone bridge and wondered hazy thoughts.

But when the sound of small pebbles hitting the water alerted him, Neji turned back to the lake and came close to gaping as the swan descended onto the lake directly in his field of vision, unprotected in the open space. Confusion caught at his mind, but he shoved it down. His life had taught him to be confident at all times.

Repositioning himself to shoot, Neji took aim. He did have confidence in this. Undeterred when the swan landed gracefully on the water, nor when it jerked in panic to see the moon, currently covered by clouds. Yet he could not help but cry out when, as before, the raptor appeared without signal and and hit him upside the head with its beak. Incensed, Neji turned on the preying bird. He reached for a new arrow as the impact had caused him to drop the other, but before he could nock it a light washed over him from behind and fell on the raptor, who at once ceased the chance to get away.

Neji whirled around to face the source of the illumination and witnessed a whole pillar of wave-like light rise around and above the swan, swirling gold in some places, white in others. The water it touched foamed and jumped in the reflection of the moon, now naked in the sky. When the light fell away, receding into the water's depths, his previously narrowed, colorless eyes widened.

In the shallows of the lake, right before him as in a dream he had not yet dared to have, stood Tenten. She was resplendent in her still impeccable red and white gown, her mahogany-brown hair long and waving to her elbows. Eyes Neji had longed for days to meet now did just that with a smile more powerful even than the one her lips now formed.

“Hello, Neji,” Tenten softly said.

Neji barely noticed even when he dropped both bow and arrow to the stone of the bridge, hastening forward even as Tenten lifted her arms to him. His feet splashed through the water until he finally took her by the waist, and in his disbelief, whirled her in midair to feel how her body resisted the gravity Neji practically no longer felt.

Placing her again on her feet, neither spoke a word before their lips met in a kiss lost somewhere between frenzy and elation, Tenten's hand gripping in the back of his shirt, Neji's buried in her hair behind neck. When they parted, speech seemed a faint memory to him.

“Neji,” she breathed, her forehead dropping to rest against the curve of his jaw. “I missed you so.”

As her fingers dug deeper into his shoulders, he pulled back just to look at her face. “No one would believe me,” he managed to tell her, slowly escaping his own amazement's thrall. “But, Tenten, I knew.”

Her face was a tapestry of shifting emotion, first joy at his presence, replaced quickly by obvious fear. “You cannot stay, Neji.”

“Can't stay?” He pulled the princess flush against him to show her his thoughts on this subject. “Tenten, no. I refuse to so much as let you out of my sight again!”

“Please, Neji, listen—” But she froze when from a distance there came a call of her name in a low, rasping voice. “No...”

“What?” Neji asked. “What's the matter?”

“It's him! He is early tonight!” Tenten stepped in front of him, but he reached for both of her hands and held fast. “He has me under a spell!” she told him, tormented.

She could feel Neji's hands heat in anger against hers. “Who does?” When she didn't answer, “Tenten, who does?” he demanded.

“Tenten!” came the call again.

Neji took her by the shoulders and eased her back. “Let him come.” He put a hand to the hilt of his sword. “I will—”

Tenten did not budge. “No, Neji! Orochimaru has power higher than a human man's! You must go!”

Together they hurried out of the water and to the bridge. “You're coming with me then,” Neji asserted, reaching for her arm to help her over the steps.

“I cannot,” she said, intertwining their fingers even as she hoped he would leave. “With daybreak, I'll change again into a swan.”

He was beginning to understand, and Neji's jaw set.

“Please, Neji, you must trust me. If he finds you, we'll have nothing. Go!”

“There must be a way of breaking the spell,” he pressed, planting his feet when Tenten tried to push him along. Even in danger, his desire to stay with her controlled him.

Tenten's thoughts flashed to the scroll she had seen in Orochimaru's tower. “There is,” she sighed, having nearly forgotten. “But...”

“Tell me.”

“You must make a vow of everlasting love.”

The word stopped him, but only for the briefest of moments. Neji's tight fingers now relaxed over her terror-cold hands. “Tenten, I make it. Right now. I've wanting nothing else since...”

“You are to prove it to the world!” she insisted softly.

Here he faltered, a river in his path of success. “How?”

Tenten's hands fisted when another woman's might have wrung. Her knuckles blanched, but no answer was forthcoming.

“How?”

“I don't know!” she burst out, almost physically buckling from the pressure of their situation.

“Tenten!”

“Go!” She did push him now, over a shrub.

Neji swallowed, thinking rapidly. His uncle, of all people, came to mind. Turning, he whispered to her, “There will be a ball. Tomorrow night, come to the palace.” He gestured back toward his home. “Before the entire world, Tenten, I will make a vow of everlasting love.”

Orochimaru's voice shook with fury this time. “Tenten!”

“I am coming!” Tenten called out. She wanted to express her gratitude and the love she herself felt, but there was no time.

“Tomorrow night,” repeated Neji.

She could only nod, and in spite of herself, a smile surfaces. “Tomorrow night,” she agreed. “Now go!”

Neji at last made to run, then stopped and turned. From his pocket he drew something small, and Tenten caught the shining object he threw to her. She looked into her clutching hands to see the golden necklace, a long-ago gift from the Hyuuga. When she looked up again, Neji had disappeared.

“TENTEN!”

With a gasp, she spun to face Orochimaru, simultaneously hiding the hand holding the necklace behind her back. He scrutinized her in half curiosity, half anger. “Were you unable to hear me calling you?”

“I...”

“I heard voices,” he went on.

Not far away, Sasuke and Sakura suddenly spoke to each other far more loudly. Tenten had to restrain a sigh of relief, but to keep her friends from any vestiges of the sorcerer's wrath, she spoke up. “I – I have—”

“You have what?”

“I...have decided to accept your offer and marry you,” she said quickly. For effect, she curtsied deeply before him.

His eyebrows shot up moments before a smile twisted his face. “Oh, Tenten, you are indeed wiser than I initially thought. And kind! And good! And – oh, by the way,” he veered off-subject, smile falling away sooner than it had appeared. “You would not be aware of who possesses this, would you?” With a snap of his fingers, the longbow Neji had held came to his hand.

“ 'Come to the palace',” mocked Orochimaru. “ 'Before the world, a vow of everlasting love'!” With a mighty throw, Neji's bow splashed into the center of the lake.

Tenten's eyes narrowed, and she threw an arm out as a physical shield between him and her. “I will never be yours!” Orochimaru advanced, and she raged on, “I will marry Prince Neji, and you haven't the power to stop me.”

“Oh?” Seizing her wrist, Orochimaru succeeded in prying the necklace from her. “I hate to inform you of this, Tenten, but you have neglected a rather imperative detail. Tomorrow night,” he said, nostrils flaring, “there will be no moon!”

Tenten's widened eyes flicked to the sky as Sasuke and Sakura's talking abruptly ceased. Above the waning crescent moon no thicker than the breadth of a needle glimmered on. A new moon would shed no light on this lake the following day.

“No,” she exhaled as Orochimaru left her, his overjoyed laughter torture in her ears.

Neji!

To Be Continued...