When You Were Young

[endless_scrolls]

Title: When You Were Young
Type: Fanfic
Fandom: AU!Naruto
Character(s): Tenten, Uchiha Fugaku; brief mentions of Uchiha Sasuke, Uchiha Itachi
Pairing(s): None
Warning(s): None
Disclaimer: I own nothing but these words.
Note: Randomly written fic inspired by the events and planned plots that took place at TheRisingSun. The headcanon wanted more. Who was I to deny it?
Dedicated to: nothinglanguage and soliloquiii

There were too many vases. Years later, when she looked back to that moment, it would be one of the few things she would remember from the experience, she was sure. -- It wasn't every day that she got to sit in Fugaku's office for the first time, after all. -- Well, that and how displeased he seemed at having to meet with her in the first place. Then again, there was hardly a time during their younger years where he hadn't looked somewhat displeased, for one reason or another. Of course, there was always cause for aversions when you were the head of a million dollar corporate crime ring. Meeting face to face with your sons' childhood friend was only one among many. Having to meeting with her because she managed to sneak past every single guard in the Hotel was another.

For Tenten, it had been a miracle she had managed to even get past the front desk. But there was something to be said about being small and unassuming enough to blend into the background. There were a lot of people who would pay for the services of someone who could disappear so easily, she knew. And, certainly, they did not exclude the man who sat before her.

Fingers laced together, he regarded her calmly if not with some amount of indifference. There was little that she could do now to harm him or his business, after all, not when she was at the very heart of his domain. Still, the young girl could tell that there was some tension lingering in the room. Not from his demeanor; Uchiha Fugaku was a man well versed in keeping his emotions in check. Tenten expected no less than such from someone who managed to sire the likes of both Itachi and Sasuke. The men who served to protect him, though, did not possess such a command over their emotions. She could read the nervousness and concerned curiosity floating just underneath the skin. During her martial arts tournaments, she had learned to read her opponents the same way. And they had been a lot better at hiding their intentions.

"I'm not here to kill you, if that's what you think," she commented, an air of defiance etched under the nonchalance of the remark, "I'm only sixteen."

The pointer finger on the right hand tapped out a single beat, probably to check himself and whatever thought had surfaced at her boldness before he snapped in anger. His disapproval was clear, there was no need to emphasize them with harsh words, at least not yet. Three more beats were tapped out before he finally spoke, the tone evened with practiced ease. "And yet you managed to get as far as you did without detection. I would be impressed if I didn't already know them to be incompetent."

A simple shift of his gaze just over her left shoulder was followed by the whispered ruffle of clothes as the men standing at the door shifted under his gaze. And the small little twitch in his brows was all that the young girl needed to see to know his thoughts: These were the men charged with protecting his life. These were the shoulders that his empire rested upon.

"But the question remains of what sort of business you have here." -- Another moment passed with them under his scrutiny, doing well to imply that should another incident like this occur under their watchful eye, they would no longer have to worry themselves over when their tenure would end. -- "Your father made it perfectly clear years ago that contact would be limited if not nonexistent, so I have a hard time believing he approved - "

" - He doesn't know."

That earned her a moment of careful scrutiny as well, leading Tenten to believe that, perhaps, the old man knew more than he was letting on. But then, it would be a foolish move to show the entire table all his cards before the appropriate time, wouldn't it? She might not have known much about what went on under the roof of his organization, but the young girl had seen enough of the tragedies and misfortunes that littered the streets of the city to know how things needed to work in order to build such a successful throne that he sat upon. It was the only way to ensure the clan would survive; that the Gods would reign supreme from atop of their untouchable Olympus. And there she was trying to reach for the sun on wax wings.

But even the Gods answered to the whims of the Moire. "...I wanted to see them."

Honey-brown eyes flickered to the back of the picture frame seated on his wide desk -- she assumed it was of his family, of his wife and two boys during happier times -- in reference, thinking it best to keep them unnamed. Trust was a fickle thing in the underworld, after all, and spies could be waiting in the shadows anywhere. A normal man would have moved to place the photo face down on the tabletop in reaction, or even held the image in their hands and think back to memory captured between the glass. But the head of the Uchiha organization, she knew, was a figure carved from years of experience and generation of work. An empire was not built on the backs of ordinary men. He would hold on to the stone and mortar of his facade and stand solid at the implications. And she was relieved for a few precious seconds to see that her suspicions weren't false.

Feeling his focus on her double, Tenten's heart seemed to still at the way his brows knitted further with disdain and contained fury. "And for that, you broke through my security, infiltrated my stronghold without hesitation, and risked ending your life by getting caught. Just to see them."

A breath -- a moment -- passed while her resolve seemed to waver before the young girl hardened it with stubbornness and an invincibility that came with youthful age. And then the image of a darkened vehicle driving past in front of her school that afternoon solidified her determination, giving Tenten enough strength in her voice to answer. "Yes."

She felt, rather than heard or saw, the man give a long and drawn out exhale of breath. The gears in his head turned like some fathomed clock working towards the hourly chime of measurements, and Tenten was left struggling to make sense of every single detail that came flooding in at the long pause. With so much tension in the air and all her senses on alert, everything -- every little move and gesture -- came to her with crystal clarity. She could see every turn of the grain in the wood; heard every shift of the air around them as if seconds from death. Then the next thing she knew, the guards were being dismissed and the room echoed with the soft click of the door closing. The world was normal once more. And then Tenten was left alone with the clan patriarch.

There was little more else for the young girl to do but watch while he slowly slid his chair back from the desk and began walking the length of the room towards the large windows windows -- always the windows, she would later recall -- with hardly a sound.

Hands a lot smaller than she ever remembered easily and smoothly moved to grip at each other behind the man's back as Fugaku seemed to consider his next words. "It takes a lot of... loyalty and devotion to risk so much. Especially when there are no guarantees that they even remember you."

It would have been enough to suggest that she was foolish to think a simple girl could get far against a crack security team. But to imply the idea that they would have forgotten about her, about their friendship, was hitting dead center on the mark. It was Tenten's greatest concern that all of this was for nothing, that she had risked her life on an idea and a hope that was already unlikely when the thought had first formed in her mind. But the frequency of the black limousine outside of her school had been too consistent -- Mondays and Wednesdays, with the occasional appearance on Fridays; the exact same days her mother always came for lessons -- and the weight of someone's studying gaze all too familiar. She couldn't have assumed wrong about who had been watching her from behind the dark tinted glass.

"I wasn't anticipating much, ok?" she said after a while, "I didn't exactly plan this ahead."

"So you broke through my defenses with little preparation," was his evened response, "That's very comforting."

"You know what they say, you get what you paid for."

Even from where she sat, Tenten could hear the heavy exhale of breath Fugaku gave, forcing the young girl to check herself lest she end up thrown out. Or worse. After all, she might have been the daughter of his main weapons supplier and once was a close friend of his two sons, but as far as she knew, there was nothing binding between them that ensured Tenten could keep to her attitude and survive their encounter. Or that he would stand patiently and be subjected to her youth more than he could tolerate. Fugaku held all the Aces in this game, and Tenten was merely pulling out numbers.

"I expected better from you," he commented, finally stepping away from the window to address her with his full attention, "The fighter I saw at the Junior Chuunin Tournament was a lot less impulsive and a lot more calculating than that."

Tenten's head snapped up at the first mention of the Tournament, recognizing the name almost instantly. "You were there?" -- and then after seeing the casual glance of affirmation, her eyes furrowed as realization settled in -- "You've been watching me."

It might have been a trick of the light, or even the shock of the news he was being presented before her, but she was almost certain that a smile had ghosted across the man's lips. And in the following second, it was as if the sentiment had never been there to begin with, which was the more plausible idea. Uchiha Fugaku was not a man who smiled often, if at all.

"We've been monitoring you for some time, yes. Although with your father's influence, I questioned whether you would be a willing recruit." Stepping up to his abandoned desk, the head of the Uchiha clan and organization refrained from sitting down again. Instead, he opted to lean over the span of the tabletop, scarred and long fingers spanning out towards Tenten while his eyes locked with hers. "After that stunt, I'm almost certain of your compliance."

Unsure of just what those words meant, the young girl sat up straighter in her chair, her attention shifting to be more receptive to whatever answer came. "Compliance for what? What exactly do you want from me?"

"Well," Fugaku responded coolly, sliding back into his seat in one smooth motion, "That all depends on what you're willing to give."