They had just left the hospital and were now heading back to the Hokage's residence, ninken trailing behind them, when a scroll flying past his right ear forced Neji's focus to return to his immediate surroundings.
"Nothing!", Tenten spat, about to make a second scroll follow the first one.
"Maybe", Neji suggested "you should just give it -"
"No!", she cut him off.
"You're all doing something usefull. I'm not going to just stand by and look pretty!"
Neji sighed. He pointed out that evidently the scrolls they got from the village's archive didn't hold the information they were looking for and tossing them against the wall wouldn't change that.
Tenten hmpfed. She let herself sink back to the floor. A spider that had build her web around the ceiling-lamp's cord had just caught a moth, and Tenten watched as the arachnoid dealt with its prey.
"You know what I don't get?", she mused.
"If Madara can ressurect the dead, why can't he just ressurect himself? And even if he, for what ever reason, can't do that, if this technic he's using on Kakashi-sama is actually meant to be used on a fellow Uchiha – why doesn't he just go and ressurect one of them to use?"
"Maybe he can only ressurect people who died in a specific way", Neji suggested.
"And", he added "the reciever probably needs to posses the Mangekyo Sharingan, in which case ressurecting some random Uchiha wouldn't be of much use."
Tenten nodded, rubbed her nose pensively, while Neji once more activated his Byakugan, just as Sakura and Kakashi vanished inside the Hokage's Residence.
"Did he go see the girl?", Tenten suddenly asked.
"I don't see how that's relevant", Neji replied shortly. He got up, brushed down his clothes as he did so. It was late, he said, and he'd head home now.
"I thought you'd stay here?", Tenten got hold of his ankle as he walked past her.
"Even you can't observe him from the other end of the village", she added as he slipped from her grasp and knelt down, his face half an arm's length above hers.
"He's home by now, so I can't see him anyway."
"You don't take this serious!", Tenten caught a strand of his hair between her fingers.
"I do", Neji grimaced "I simply respect his privacy."
"Like you did when you caught him and Sakura making out?"
Tenten grinned triumphantly as Neji's cheeks turned a light pink.
"I... I just – I was...", he stammered, pulled away from her and walked over to the window.
"You just wanted to make sure, he wasn't possessed, right?", Tenten's grin turned into a smirk.
"Just imagine what poor Lee would say if he knew..."
"Hn", Neji continued looking outside.
"Oh – flower of my love, my youthful spirit wasn't enough to win your heart!", Tenten jumped up to strike a most dramatic pose „But why, oh why, did you have to choose this grey-haired scarecrow over me?"
"You shouldn't mock the dead like that", Neji commented.
"I'm not mocking him", Tenten replied.
"This, my dear friend, was tribute."
She walked over to Neji, let her shoulder bumb against his.
"So? You're staying or not?"

"Say", Tenten asked later, when they lay next to each other in her bed, each with his and her respective pillow and blanket, keeping just about the right amount of distance.
"Do you think, there really could be a way to get Naruto back?"
"I don't know...", Neji thought for a while.
"Even if there was – if doing so increases Madara's chance to return..."
"You don't think it'd be worth it?", Tenten turned to her side and eyed Neji carefully.
"I think", he hesitated "I think it would undo everything Naruto achieved when he defeated Madara... but", he added after a moment "if Madara is still able to attempt a comeback, maybe we shouldn't assume he was defeated in the first place."