NessieGG's Fanfiction - [Naruto, NejiTen] "An Everlasting Vow" - Chapter 6

Title: An Everlasting Vow (Chapter 6)
Author: NessieGG
Genre: Romance/Fantasy/AU
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing/Characters: NejiTen, Tsunade, Hiashi, Shizune, Lee, Gai, Hinata, Orochimaru, Anko, Shikamaru, SasuSaku.
Rated: PG

Queen Tsunade did not awaken to elaborate on her advice to Neji, leaving the prince with a mystery as to her meaning. King Hiashi ordered a team of servants to care for the queen until such a time when she would wake from her comatose state. Both Hyuuga men dealt with stressful situations; the queen out of commission and her daughter's whereabouts unknown.

Shizune had fallen asleep before the fire the night she had journeyed to tell of the attack upon her leader and now claimed no memory of the event. Devastated, she had remained by the queen's side since Tsunade was brought back to the palace.

Neji set several of his subordinates to work researching possibilities of magic, kidnapping, myths about light, anything to do with East Fire's monarch's words. He himself began a training regime even more strict than the one he had undergone before. Almost every spare moment was spent with Lee in hand-to-hand combat or his father, Gai, an old hand with swordplay.

Both of them had something to say of his obsession.

“It's madness!” exclaimed Gai in the midst of a duel of blades with the prince. “If it is magic that kidnapped Tenten—” Here he paused to clench his teeth while blocking a high thrust from Neji's advance. “—you will have a difficult time defeating the wielder with earthly weapons!”

“I've no choice,” maintained Neji, urging Gai to keep up his offense with a swipe at the advisor's ankles. “I will rescue her in whatever way I must!”

Lee watched stony-faced from a safe distance. After the ring of steel on steel had repeated enough to rival with even the church bells on holy days, he asked (quietly, for once), “You really believe she is alive?”

At that, Neji flung the sword to the ground and whirled to face his longtime friend. “Of course. Don't you?”

“I...” Lee's face looked on the verge of crumpling. “It's been almost four days, Neji, and you've had the whole of the kingdoms in both East and West Fire keeping watch for her. Wouldn't there be some word by now unless Tenten was—”

“She's out there,” Neji told him, his tone so firm it allowed no room for the other man to contend otherwise. “Tenten is strong. You know that.”

“Yes, but...she was taken in a flash, Neji. Queen Tsunade said she's gone. 'Gone' could mean...” Lee stopped, unwilling to continue after seeing the look that entered Neji's pallid eyes.

Gai sighed, then stepped forward to set a hand on one of Neji's straightened shoulders. “We cannot be certain of anything, Prince Neji, until we have seen it for ourselves. Lee is right to think logically, but I should think I have taught him to hold onto his hope longer than this.” His son visibly drooped in stance.

“Do the implications of the predicament not bother you?” Lee asked at last, trying to find some leeway for the justification of his worry.

“What bothers me,” intoned the prince in a low enough tone so that he would be heard by only the royal advisor and his son and not any of the courtiers roaming the sunny yards, “is that I ever let her leave me.”

For several moments, the two bowl-haired men looked sadly on their future king.

Neji recovered quickly, standing at his full height and taking on his usual confident air. “But it is no matter because I will bring her home here.”

---

“This is what concerns me,” King Hiashi said to Shizune. Beside window of Queen Tsunade's current bedchamber, the room she had so recently vacated only to return within the day, he watched Neji train and exchange words with Gai and Lee. “Neji makes a decision and cannot part from it no matter the circumstances.”

“One may call that dedication, my lord,” Shizune replied. Her voice seemed hollow, as though individual syllables could echo within it, from her place at Tsunade's bedside. “This is not a quality a great many young men possess these days.”

Pearlescent, age-lined eyes closed for a moment, considering. “This is true. But I would not have Neji destroy himself over the memory of Princess Tenten.”

“Memory?”

“She must be dead,” Hiashi said, failing to apologize for the cold reality of his words even when Shizune flinched. “Only if she appears, and soon, will I alter my thought on this. We do not know who attacked your mistress, but harm was clearly the intent. To kill the queen's only daughter – King Jiraiya's single chance for a legacy – would be the one thing that could kill the queen herself without losing a drop of blood.”

“But my queen is not dead!” Shizune pleaded. “She but sleeps, King Hiashi! Can that not mean Tenten still lives?”

“Yet I do not see any stirrings in the queen here.” Hiashi paused to study the face of his ally of so many years. Tsunade's face was paler despite the sunlight filtering in through the window, her hair lackluster in the sleep plait Shizune had tied the strands into. The hooded brown eyes did not seem even to twitch.

“Give him some time,” said Shizune to the older man, “I implore you. If it is passion your son feels toward Tenten, then surely that can lead him to at least traces of the truth. And if he finds clues of her death, then...” The assistant to Queen Tsunade hesitated, tears thickening her throat. “At least we will know.”

Hiashi turned his observing eyes to her. “You believe he could do this?”

“Do not you, my lord?”

The king cast his eyes to the far wall, half-dazed. “I do. But I fear that he will and then never recover from the shock of Tenten's death.”

“It is a risk he will have to take,” acknowledged Shizune, her intelligent eyes narrowing at the sight of Prince Neji once again taking up swords with Gai. “And willingly, I think, he will.”

“But look at him!” exclaimed the king, failing to acknowledge that Shizune was already doing so. “He has been at this since bringing Tsunade back here. I cannot bear to see him so tormented.” He paused, considering what he would say next. “When my brother Hizashi died, I experienced the same inner tearing which Neji now suffers. To be ripped apart from the inside is the ultimate form of execution, Shizune.” Hiashi rested a clenched fist on the window sill. “On top of that, Neji is my heir. The torture he is performing on his mind can only damage him. Such does not befit the leader of a kingdom.”

Shizune regarded the ivory-eyed monarch with placid features until she finally gave a soft exhalation that was not quite a sigh. “You are correct in that, King Hiashi. What was it you did to save yourself from your thoughts?”

“I married, at once. I began a new family to replace that which I had lost and raised Neji for Hizashi.” Hiashi turned to her, his eyes glazed with reverie. “What do you suggest?”

“Merry-making.” She said it as simply as Tsunade would have in wakefulness. “A ball. Summon eligible princesses and let them distract Neji for awhile.” Shizune's lower lip began to tremble, betraying her usually impenetrable strength. “It is true, after all, that Tenten is – was – not the only girl plausible for marrying your nephew.”

Hiashi nodded, though the movement spoke of heaviness. “Very well. A ball it is.” A ball, thought the king, that would feel more like a wake in these conditions.

---

When night fell, Neji gave in to the urgings of the green-bedecked men to take in a meal and get some rest only due to the knowledge that he would not be at his physical best if he resisted. After washing for bed, he traversed the quiet halls to his bedchamber alone, the darkness on his face faintly revealed by the flickering candelabra on the walls.

When he neared his quarters, his excellent periphery took notice of a flash of white to his far rear-left, and he whirled to come face to face with his cousin, the princess Hinata.

She wore a sleeping gown of pale lavender and over that, a star-white dressing robe. Her long hair, the same shade of black as his own, was gathered over one shoulder. She appeared paler in the dim, inconsistent light, and this emphasized the expression of solemn anticipation on her face.

Neji paused. He and his cousin rarely encountered one another, their upbringings so entirely different. He had remained at the palace with Tenten while she was sent off to school in order to become a mannered lady of the court, since he, Neji, would be assuming the position that was actually her birthright. In light of this, he had always expected at least a little bitterness from Hinata, although the Hyuuga princess had never once indicated such.

Now, she stood waiting for him, her arms occupied by a thick tome, the weathered binding of which had been only recently cleared of years of dust.

“Hinata.” Neji hesitated, not sure if he should have used her formal title. Concluding from the lack of change in her stance or expression that she did not take offense, he went on, “What have you come here for at so late an hour?”

“T-to give you...well...this, Neji.” She took a timid step toward him, and when he did not promptly ignore her, ventured closer. “This volume was found in the higher level of the library. Within it is some information you may find h-helpful...” She faltered here as she made her assumption. “...in f-finding Princess Tenten.”

Neji regarded her quizzically but accepted the large book nonetheless. She did not immediately leaving but took a moment to watch as he opened to the page marked by a long, yellowed ribbon. Hundreds of lines of small-print text wrapped around an illustration of a mouse nibbling at a crumb. The picture showed the mouse morphing, enlarging and elongating, until the final form the creature assumed was that of a wide-winged dragon.

Neji stared, at once baffled and enlightened by the image. “Hinata,” he murmured, voice coated with realization. “You believe that what attacked Queen Tsunade was a beast?”

The younger royal nodded. “S-specifically, a shape-shifter. M-many of the girls at finishing school were very superstitious of the mystical arts, and one of them gave me this book s-so I would not be totally i-ignorant.” She took a deep breath to try and alleviate the stammer she had rarely been able to overcome in her life.

“What makes you think...”

“If she was kidnapped by m-magic,” Hinata continued, “then a creature that could change its form would be most c-capable. It would b-be difficult to track.”

Neji stared contemplatively at the illustration for another few seconds. The surrounding text told of transformations depending on the time of day, the presence of a certain star, the age of a creature, the light of the moon. So many variables quickly confused him, and despair reached gnarled fingers into his spirits.

Said Hinata in reminder, “But you are an excellent h-hunter, Neji.”

The prince's eyes darted from the old page to those of his cousin, silver meeting silver. Hinata lowered her gaze, but Neji's lips slowly curved. For a brief moment, he rested a hand on the princess's slim shoulder.

“Thank you, Hinata. You have accomplished that at which any number of scholars have failed.” Without another word, Neji slipped into his quarters, the book from his cousin tucked firmly in hand. A plan was forming in the prince's mind, as Hinata could easily tell.

What she could not discern was any sign of that plan's success.

To Be Continued...