They entered Konoha after dark.
It was known that Pain’s lair lay somewhere beneath the ruins, underground where it wasn’t easily accessible. Because of that, there had never been any way to know for sure how many ninja he had reporting to him, how many he could chakra-control. So they returned to their home village like thieves, cloaked and hooded, darting from shadow to shadow.
They saw no one. The village was eerily quiet with a clear, evening sky overhead. Starlight lit the tumbled mounds of houses, the broken remains of favorite restaurants and shops. Grass poked up through the cracked and uneven streets and more than once Tenten saw animals scurry into deserted buildings at their approach.
The place was well and truly deserted and had been, Tenten guessed, ever since they had taken Ranmaru away as a baby. The knowledge hurt, but it was a distant ache. The Konoha she had known was not this place and never would be again without all the loved ones they had lost.
If Ranmaru was disappointed by what he saw, he gave no sign. He followed Neji diligently, alert and ready for an attack, every inch the ninja they had trained him to be. Tenten brought up the rear with both Hyuugas in front of her, their blind spots easily within range of her protection. Each of them carried light packs of supplies and weapons, but precious little else. This was not to be a war but a single, calculated battle. They could not afford to face an army dancing on Pain’s strings. They had to find and eliminate him without getting drawn into a pitched battle. Anything more would surely end in their deaths.
In front, Neji held up a hand and both she and Ran halted, half crouched against the crumbling side of an apartment building. It was a moment before she realized where exactly they were.
“Neji,” she murmured.
The line of his shoulders was tense but he motioned them forward carefully and together they entered the shambles of what had once been the Hyuuga estate.
The courtyard was riddled with the telltale craters of Kaiten, a testament to the fact that the Hyuugas had not been defeated easily. The fountain had long since gone dry, the top smashed into broken bits of rock. The low family compounds seemed strangely intact but inside everything was destroyed. There were great rents in the walls, broken doors and everywhere dust and animal droppings. They moved silently past smashed paintings and splintered furniture and with each room Neji’s silence grew more and more strained until Tenten finally touched Ranmaru briefly on the arm.
“Why don’t you take a look at the perimeter, Ran. Set whatever you think is appropriate. Nothing too flashy.”
Her son blinked at her, his gaze flickering apprehensively to Neji’s back. “We’re staying the night here?”
“I think so,” she replied and he nodded once, squeezed her hand and vanished.
When she was sure he was no longer within earshot, she approached Neji slowly, not touching him, just being near. Her heart sank a bit though when he stepped across the hallway and into his old bedroom.
She had only been there a few times before and never for very long. The truth be told, she had never felt entirely comfortable there, as if every Hyuuga she saw was silently judging her behind their polite smiles and finding her somewhat lacking. She hadn’t blamed them at the time and still didn’t. It was not in her nature to begrudge the dead.
Neji’s old room was the same as the rest of the house – falling apart. The door was in one piece and slid back easily enough in Neji’s hand but dusty cobwebs coated everything and his window was broken, glass littering the floor allowing moonlight to filter in, highlighting the vast empty tomb Neji’s childhood home had become.
Tenten trailed her fingers over a ragged bookcase, two of its shelves missing, her fingers making clear tracks in the dust as Neji knelt a few feet away, pulling something out from under the shredded remains of what had once probably been his futon. She moved over to him and felt her throat close up at what he held.
It was a picture of them when they were thirteen, all three of them sitting on a beaten couch, young and just beginning their training together. Lee was flashing a victory sign, his grin so wide it was almost blinding. On the other end, Tenten herself sat almost primly, hands in her lap, smiling without showing any teeth as if to balance Lee’s obvious enthusiasm. And in between them sat Neji, arms crossed and looking slightly irritated at Gai behind the camera. It had been before his duel with Naruto, before he’d allowed himself to believe he had a future.
Looking at that picture, the memory of that day was so clear in her mind that her eyes burned with unshed tears at how much she abruptly missed their long-lost teammates. Unable to help herself, she touched a gentle, wistful finger to Lee’s image.
“That was a good day,” Neji said and she glanced up at him but his expression was unreadable, his eyes locked on their picture. “I didn’t think so then, but…” His grip tightened on the dirty frame, his knuckles whitening and she quickly covered his hand with hers, soothing him with her touch.
“We were young and neither of us were used to Lee & Gai yet.” She smiled, remembering. “Whatever you may have thought at first, they knew how much you grew to trust them, to believe in them.”
He did not reply but he let her take the picture from his hands and slide it carefully into her pack. When she turned back he was watching her with a look she had never seen before and it took her a moment to realize what it was.
Grief.
Perhaps it was just being there, in that place and knowing that all around them lay everything they had ever known to be good and right in the world, all of it gone, desecrated by those who knew nothing of its worth. She tried to remember, had Neji ever truly grieved for their loss? They had been so busy simply trying to stay alive she wasn’t sure he really had. And they had been apart so much in the beginning – had he ever let himself think of their deaths? Not only Lee and Gai, but all their childhood friends, their teachers, his family…
Alone in the woods with an infant, Tenten had had plenty of time to dwell on what she had lost. For several months afterwards she had spent her nights lying in bed, eyes glazed with tears and memories that played out before her as she watched. But Neji… Neji was too well disciplined to let himself do that. He would have walled it all up, blocked it off, focusing instead on their mission, their path.
It was only she who would have looked back.
But not now. Standing there in Konoha again made everything real. It was no longer something Neji could avoid seeing, not with his eyes.
“Oh Neji,” she breathed and wrapped her arms around him, standing on tiptoe to pull him as close as she could. His embrace was immediate and tight, his face pressed against her hair as if he couldn’t bear for there to be a breath of air between them. She stroked his neck and held him and hoped that she alone was enough.
He released her after several minutes and there was nothing on his face that said he was upset, but his fingers threaded through hers and did not let go. She pressed a kiss into his bicep.
“Come on,” she said softly, “Let’s go find our son.”
He was trying to hide it, but Ranmaru was nervous. Strangely enough, it seemed he was more concerned for her and Neji than he was for himself. Tenten had managed to force him to eat something but then he had gone right back out to stand watch, his Byakugan following Neji as the Hyuuga scouted out the area as if something would happen to him if Ran wasn’t watching.
“What do you think, Ran?” Tenten asked, leaning against the doorway to the Hyuuga courtyard. They had indeed decided to camp there for the night as it was in a bit better shape than the surrounding buildings. Surprisingly, it had been Neji who suggested they do so.
“About what?” he asked, distracted, still watching his uncle from three miles away.
“About Konoha.”
There was a pause and the veins around Ran’s eyes eased and he looked over at her, his eyebrows drawn together. “I don’t know. I know you and Uncle Neji loved this place but I… this place was not my home.”
She nodded, keeping her expression light so he would understand she was not upset. “Your mother lived here for most of her life but your father had quarters near the Hokage’s office were they stayed during the first part of their marriage. I do not know what’s left, but if you like, I can…”
“I don’t want to see it in ruin,” Ran answered quickly. “I want to picture them as they were in that photograph of yours – alive and happy.”
She smiled crookedly. “I understand.”
“Everything is going to change, isn’t it,” he said suddenly. He wasn’t looking at her. “Even all of this, the destruction. Days from now it will all be different.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“What if I… Mom, what if I lose? What if I can’t win against Pain and we-“
She cut him off by putting a hand over his mouth.
“Your Uncle and I are with you, Ran. We believe in you. Whatever you want to do, we will support you. Always.” She dropped her hand.
“Even if I say I want to leave?” he asked quietly, watching her with an intensity she recognized as Neji’s.
She smiled and leaned up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Even if.”
Tenten stumbled down the stone steps, half-crashing into the crumbling wall on her right as she hurried further down into the dark of the mountain. Guttering candles in tiny alcoves tried to light her way but they were placed so far apart that seas of dank emptiness rose between the flames, threatening to send her falling down the flight of steps with every misstep. Her traitorous body did nothing to help. In the dim light, the tiny candles sometimes doubled in her vision, giving her an odd sense of vertigo, and the sticky warmth of blood running down the side of her face would not slow, even after she’d put pressure on the head wound just above her hairline. She had at least two serious stab wounds, one in the shoulder and one through her left hand where she had reached out to stop a katana headed for Neji’s blind spot. The hand felt numb and she knew that should have worried her, but it was her leg that was causing the most difficultly. It didn’t seem to want to her hold her weight and she kept sliding down the steps, leaving smears of red down the side of the walls as she tried to slow her descent.
She was panting when she abruptly burst out into the basement, almost falling when her leg wobbled in protest of the suddenly level floor. She had three kunai threaded through her right hand before she’d even straightened, gritting her teeth against the rising pain of her wounded body as she readied herself for what was to come, the finale scene of a battle that had raged over her head, through the ruins of her hometown - for eighteen years of solitude and fear and grief.
“Pain!” she shouted, and coughed against the hoarse dryness of her own voice.
But it was not their nemesis that answered.
“Mama.”
Her chest tightened painfully and she staggered forward, a razor sharp fear closing her throat until she wasn’t sure she could breathe. Ran hadn’t called her ‘mama’ since he was a boy, it was always ‘mother’ or ‘mom’ now. She took a hitching breath and stopped as the flickering candlelight finally revealed her son. He was standing about ten feet in front of her, his head turned toward her, his young face relaxing when he saw her. He looked exhausted, sweat and dirt marring his clothes and skin, and his pale eyes burned with a fire she’d thought never to see again. Behind him, as indistinct as heat visions in the desert, three tails of pure chakra waved faintly, lingering on the edge of her vision.
Even further behind her son stood an odd, spider-like mechanical chair where a corpse sat, all sinew and bone and dry white hair.
Pain.
She swallowed, almost unable to speak. “Ran…”
“Mama,” he said again, a tremulous smile on his face. And then his eyes rolled back and his tall, lanky, eighteen year old body crumbled. She barely caught him, and with her badly damaged left hand that sent a bolt of pure agony up her body and right between her eyes. Her knees hit the ground under his weight and she could feel her heart pounding wildly as she fumbled at his neck for a pulse.
When she didn’t find one, she screamed.
Entering the room beneath the mountains of Konoha was like entering a nightmare. For eighteen years his greatest fear had been that one day he would return to the little cabin in the woods where he had hidden his heart and find it gone, or worse. It had been a slow torture to leave them behind while he roamed the villages tracking their enemy, and yet it was nothing compared to seeing Tenten kneeling on the cold stone floor, the child they’d raised cradled in her arms as if he were a baby again. She looked up when she heard him run down into the room, tears dripping down her face, making clean tracks through the blood caked on one cheek. She looked wrecked, bloodied and exhausted and her eyes pleaded with him, the scream that had sent him racing after her somehow echoing in her look.
“Neji,” her voice was a broken, wasted thing, “he’s not breathing.”
For a moment, he didn’t understand what she was saying, and then he was moving to her side, lifting two fingers as he went. “Byakugan.” Immediately, his head ached with strain, his chakra already dangerously low. It had been their plan that he and Tenten would hold off the Six Paths while Ran confronted Pain himself. The two of them had only seen four of the six but even then he and Tenten had been at their limit. Even now he wasn’t sure how long he could hold the Byakugan without losing consciousness. They had given everything for this one, final stand.
They’d even given their son.
A cold flame burned in the back of Neji’s throat and he felt Tenten’s broken gaze as he laid a palm on Ran’s forehead, gazing into him, through him. Their boy had given everything as well. It was obvious he had burned through an amazing amount of chakra in a short amount of time and it had cost him. Neji closed his eyes briefly and then moved his hand over Ran’s heart. Tenten shifted in agitation.
“Neji-”
Neji pushed, sending the dregs of his chakra through Ran’s young heart like a shockwave. The boy’s body jerked in his mother’s arms and Tenten sobbed aloud, unable to see what Neji was doing. But Ran didn’t inhale, so Neji sent another pinpoint burst. And another.
Tenten was shaking, her tears falling on Ran’s slack face when he finally shuddered in her arms and took a long, harsh breath that made Neji sit back on his heels, wrung out, his hand still over the boy’s heart.
“Ran, Ran,” Tenten murmured, brushing stray locks of dark hair out of her son’s face. It took him a moment, but Ran replied weakly.
“Hi Mom,” he whispered, and one of his hands came up to cover the one Neji had on his chest. “I’m back.”
They put Ran in Hinata’s old room at the manor. It was bigger than the one Neji had occupied as a child, enough to hold both Ran and Tenten, who looked as if she wouldn’t be conscious much longer. They moved what rubble they could out of the room and into the hallway and unrolled Ran’s futon, letting him sink down into it, asleep almost before his head came to rest on the pillow. Neji unfurled Tenten’s as well but kept her awake until he could catalogue her injuries. She had a laceration above her hairline but it wasn’t as deep as he’d thought, though it bled quite a bit. She had fractured her ankle as well but it was the stab wound in her left shoulder and the one through her left hand that that made his jaw tighten. They ended up burning the wound in her shoulder and wrapping it up as tightly as they could. The hand, however, was trickier.
“I can’t feel much,” Tenten murmured. He had sat her down on her futon so they could be near Ran if he needed them. She moved her fingers one at a time and they all moved, but sluggishly.
“All the nerves are intact,” he told her, “but there is a lot of muscle damage.”
She smiled faintly. “Does this mean I’ll never play the piano again?” Her gave a flat look that only made her smile widen as she leaned forward, resting her forehead against his. “We’re alive, Neji,” she whispered, eyes fluttering closed. “Pain is dead.”
Pain was dead.
He couldn’t quite believe it. After so many years in hiding, it was strange to think that Konoha was theirs now, that they could walk it’s streets in the pure light of day. That Ran would be able to live among other people for the first time in his life and actually be seen by them.
He washed out the ugly wound in Tenten’s hand with pure alcohol, turning her face a pasty white, before binding it as well. He thought he might try and stitch it up later but Tenten was too exhausted for it at the moment and he watched as she slipped into her own futon, tired and wounded, one hand reaching out to touch Ran’s sleeping face briefly before closing her eyes.
Only when he was sure she had fallen asleep did he take care of his own wounds. He wrapped bandages around his abdomen to steady two cracked ribs that seemed to ache with every breath and stitched a long, shallow slice in his thigh closed with bloody fingers. He was bruised and battered but the most dangerous condition was his low reserve of chakra. Even though Pain had been defeated, Neji was not foolish enough to think that all his close followers had fled. He was sure a few would try to avenge their leader, thinking to take his place. With both Ran and Tenten out at least for the next few hours, it was up to him to make sure they stayed safe.
While he still had the energy, he did his best to fortify the main compound. He strung wire and laid exploding tags and barred the front entrance by moving an old, dirty desk in front of it. They’d use the back entrance to get in and out and close off all the others to make it more secure.
And if they had to, they’d go through Konoha street by street and burn the room under the mountain to be sure that Pain’s taint was truly, and finally, gone.
“You tried to guide the world with pain, but my father thought differently. He fought against you and though he died, he didn’t lose. I’m here, and I know we can have peace, even if it’s painful. I can find it, I will find it, no matter how long it takes.”
The boy grinned.
“Believe it.”
Tenten gently brushed dirt and grass off the flat, overgrown rocks that marked the graves of Maito Gai and Rock Lee. Kneeling in front of them, in the field where they’d died, she felt almost as if they were really there, smiling at her, chiding her that they had been waiting a long, long time. The sun felt warm on her skin, birds were singing in the trees, and Neji stood near her shoulder, ever watchful.
Coming to see them had been one of the first things she’d wanted to do. Her body was still healing and though Neji had some reservations about how safe they actually were, he’d agreed they had to come. Gai and Lee had given their lives to protect Konoha. It was only right to let them know their watch had now ended.
“Hi, Lee, Gai-sensei,” she murmured. “I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you before, but it wasn’t safe for a very long time.” She paused. “I missed you all that time though, every day, and I wish you were here now, because I know you would be proud of Ran.” Unbidden, a laugh escaped her, bright and quick. “He’s so like Naruto sometimes, and he’s strong, much stronger than we were. Because of him, Konoha is free again.” Her voice quieted. “We’re free.”
Neji’s fingers brushed her cheek and she turned to look up at him, reaching up to slip her hand in his before he could let it drop away. Glancing down at the graves again, she smiled.
“So you two can sleep now and leave the rest to us. We won’t let you down, I promise.” Blinking back a tear or two, she ran a finger over Gai’s makeshift headstone. “We love you.”
When Neji drew her to her feet, she went slowly, still careful of her wounds. His arm draped around her waist and she slipped up against his side, resting her head against his shoulder.
They stood there for a long time, silent but together, Team Gai once again.
Ran had never seen the small, civilian village not far from Konoha before. He’d never been to any village before and he devoured the sight of it with hungry eyes. There were so many colors and sounds and smells and people. He was astonished that there could be so many people in one place, all of them chatting as they walked with friends or haggling with vendors. It was an overload of senses attuned to the quiet solitude of the forest.
He loved it.
He’d run forward through the village gates before realizing that neither Neji nor his mother were with him. Looking back over his shoulder, he found his uncle still standing in the road, carefully watching Tenten who was still standing in the shadow of the trees, arms crossed in front of her as if she were cold.
For a moment, he didn’t understand what was going on, and then he heard Neji say his mother’s name very gently and Ran realized what was wrong. Tenten hadn’t been around crowds of people since Ran was a tiny baby. The day she and his uncle had bought the cabin in the woods, she had left her old life behind her. She had only had him and Neji for eighteen years, and for a good portion of that time, she hadn’t even had Neji. She’d lived a life in self-imposed exile for so long, the sight of so many people where she was used to looking for enemies frightened her.
Ran’s heart went out to her. Standing at the treeline, she looked small and vulnerable, her left hand still bandaged and hugged tight against her chest as if she were shielding herself somehow. Ran jogged back to where his uncle stood, worried.
“Mom.”
Amber eyes swung to him and he read guilt and shame there, as if she thought she was somehow holding them back. He shook his head and lifted a hand out towards her, open palm up, beckoning.
“It’s okay now, Mom,” he said gently. “You don’t have to hide anymore.” He smiled. “Let’s go together.”
Silently, Neji put a hand out towards her as well and, after a few long minutes, Tenten finally took it with her bad hand, Neji closing over her wounded palm carefully. A second later she put her other hand in Ran’s and he squeezed it gently.
They took the first step together.
END.
For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. - John F. Kennedy