Entry for ten_squared theme of the month: Fooled you
So I sat down planning to write another sappy piece for the theme (come on, 'Fooled you' sounds like its dying for some major fluff), but I was consumed with TEH ANGST! ( <-------- that's the warning, btw. No fluff will be found here.) T____T I keep killing characters off in my stories nowadays. GAH.
and I really should start writing about pairings other than Nejiten
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Stay Safe
The cold was creeping into her bones, a searing iciness stinging her skin before frayed nerves burned out, a brief, blindingly painful moment when her mind flashed white-grey and her hands clenched and unclenched, fingers digging into the wet earth; the moment passed, her head snapped back, lips parting and a numbing sensation a thousand times worse than the earlier pain began to spread through her extremities in soft, irrevocable touches.
“I’m alright.”
Her voice cracked and she tugged the receiver down from her lips, clutching it to the weakening pulse at the base of her throat. She tilted her face away from the tiny microphone because she couldn’t risk him hearing the deep, shuddering gasps that racked her torso, thrusting her ribcage up and down in an unsteady rhythm.
The voice issuing from the speaker by her ear was metallic, scattered and slightly disembodied from the static and yet she could still hear his concern, a strained heaviness weighing down the normally cool timbre. “Tenten. If you can’t make it, we can still call it off. There is still time.......”
But oh, he was so, so far away -
“.....Tenten? Tenten, are you there?”
Petal thin eyelids slowly drew shut; she licked her lips. “I’m alright.”
“You are absolutely certain I don’t have to come for you.”
“I’m there already, Neji. I’ll be setting up the trap in a few minutes. There is no need for you to come.”
“I can help you. Nara said the Mist-nin will be there very soon - if I help you set up the bomb we can both be out of there under a much safer time limit.”
Nara was wrong. The Mist-nin had already arrived, more than an hour ago. Half a dozen shinobi had lain in wait for her in the small clearing where she was supposed to have ambushed them. One second she had been fumbling with the bomb, hurriedly setting up the various controls; the next she had been surrounded on all sides by swirling, suffocating mist, acid flung burning onto her skin and oh God when had they developed these jutsus because Tsunade-sama sure as hell never mentioned that they could do that and fuck this, she was bleeding, sinking to her knees before she could even reach for her blades -
Ironically enough, after all the water-based attacks that had burned her into a bloody mess, her final, fatal injury came from a knife just under the ribs. The handle was broken off and the jagged metal now stuck haphazardly up through broken skin, dried blood crusting it in a rusty crimson.
“.....Tenten?”
A sudden warmth at the corners of her eyes seemed to burn her skin, hot tears unexpectedly tracing down bloodied porcelain cheeks. “I’ll be alright. Don’t come.”
“But you-”
“Don’t come.”
Nervous silence hung suspended on both ends, Tenten’s heart was beating too fast in her chest and she was scared, so scared, but Neji must be kept safe and right now -
- right now safe was as far away from here as possible. Far, far away.
“.........If you insist.” He drew out the words slowly, reluctantly. “I’ll be waiting at the checkpoint, then.”
“I’ll be there.” She caught a glimpse of shadows at the edge of the forest clearing, dark figures creeping steadily closer. The Mist-nin had retreated back behind the trees after she fell down, spread out like a rag doll on earth that was drenched in her own blood. Tenten had known they were waiting for the rest of her team to show up; she had smiled to herself, brokenly, because she would be damned if she let any of her comrades come near and risk their lives for her own. Now she supposed they had grown tired of the delay and intended to finish her off. “I have to go now, Neji. I don’t want the Mist-nin to hear me in case they’re nearby.”
A pause. Then Neji sighed, a low, whispered breath cracking and breaking through transmission. “Stay safe, Tenten.”
“I will.”
An awkward jerk of her thumb; the speaker crackled, died out into a numbing silence. The shadows drew closer and she slowly reached out a trembling hand, stretching her fingers out over the earth to grasp onto the smooth outlines of the remote still attached to the bomb, fumbling tiredly with the straps until she had freed it from its confines.
What the Mist-nin did not know was that Tenten had already managed to fully calibrate the bomb before their attack.
Shadows appeared above her, blurred outlines drawing closer. She hugged the remote to her chest, fingers lightly brushing over the small, black button. One of the nin reached down, tugged the blade from her body with a brutal, wrenching twist; Tenten choked, fresh blood spurting out from the wound and running thickly over her abdomen and oh God it hurt, it hurt, Neji it hurt -
And then she pressed down, hard, and her world exploded into ribbons of fire and light.