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Training Partners by niveaus

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Chapter notes: Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters.

Slightly unusual pairing, but I think it works. If you don't believe me watch the episode ;).
“Lee, you can stop now. Let’s take a break. Please?”

“You can take a break Tenten.” Lee continued to punch the air where a moment before Tenten had been training with him.

Tenten sat down against a tree and watched him. His incredible strength and stamina always amazed her, and as he had grown in the last few years the endless training had had a stunning effect on his now almost adult body. But she wished sometimes he’d ease off on the training. She didn’t think it could be healthy to train so obsessively, and furthermore, she wouldn’t have minded spending some proper time with him, instead of always having to settle for just training with him. Was that all he thought of her as? A training partner? Weren’t team members supposed to just be friends sometimes too?

“Lee, why do you train so hard? It wouldn’t hurt to take a day off now and again.”

Lee replied between kicks. “You know why. I still haven’t beaten Neji properly.”

Tenten sighed. “Yes, I know. But why does beating Neji matter so much?”

“You know that too. I have to prove that anyone can be as good as a genius if they try hard enough.”

“Why? If you know it’s true yourself already, who do you have to prove it too?”

Lee continued kicking the air in silence. After a pause Tenten began again.

“You know, it doesn’t make you any less of a person just because you haven’t beaten Neji.”

Lee switched back to punching. There she was again. Trying to make him give up. Telling him again that he shouldn’t try to beat Neji. She must really love Neji, to be protecting him like this. And it’s not surprising – he’s a genius. He’s talented, intelligent, handsome. Everything that I’m not. Which is why I will beat him. You’re the person I have to prove it to Tenten, I have to prove to you what you have never believed; that I can be as good as Neji. And then, perhaps, you’ll look at me.

Tenten sighed and gave up. He wouldn’t listen. And no matter how many times she suggested meeting up, he always insisted on training. Perhaps that was a good thing, otherwise she probably wouldn’t do enough training herself. But she wished he would relax around her sometimes too. Oh well. If training was what he valued above all else she musn’t slack off in front of him. Tenten got up and walked back to in front of Lee, holding out her hands for him to target.

“Thank you, Tenten. Two hundred punches, then we’ll swap.”

Two hundred? Couldn’t it just be twenty or thirty? Just holding her arms out like this on top of all the training earlier was exhausting. And she didn’t like to think about how she would manage the punching too. But as much as it exasperated her (and frequently exhausted her too), it was that determination, that incredible fighting spirit, which she admired in him more than anything.

Neji didn’t have anything like it. Neji was boring in fact – he had been given amazing talent, but he just accepted it and made use of it without trying to really achieve anything. She never understood it when other girls told her how lucky she was to be on Neji’s team. Neji? He was cold, closed off, indifferent. He was hardly even part of the team. He really did just see her as a training tool, Tenten was sure of that.




Four hundred punches later Tenten felt like she could just collapse right there and not care if she never got up again. Her arms had never ached like this before, and her legs were complaining fiercely too. Lee, however, seemed completely unaffected by the effort.

“Your turn to make the targets Tenten. Could you please move them around this time? Then we can practise kicking too.”

Tenten nodded and tried to steady her breathing after all those punches. She would impress Lee this time, she wouldn’t stop til he did. Surely it would only be fifty attacks now? She could manage that, couldn’t she?

“Five hundred kicks and punches. Start!”

Tenten hurriedly formed a target with both her hands. She wasn’t even sure where her hands were, but she couldn’t think beyond forming a safe surface for Lee to strike at. And then it began. An endless rain of blows as she moved her hands around hurriedly, trying to place them somewhere different each time. She lost count after twenty. She knew that she couldn’t go on much longer, and her hands began to move mechanically, almost subconsciously. Soon they were just jerking around almost randomly as she adapted to the regular three second pattern of Lee’s attacks.

And then, after one three second interval, the attack still hadn’t come. But her hands had moved on anyway, automatically. Tenten looked up in surprise. Lee was nearing the end of a dramatic spin that had taken a little extra time, and they both realised too late that he was going to kick her on the side of her head. Tenten hardly had time to register the incoming impact before she was knocked flying.

She lay motionless in the dirt for a few seconds, then tried to sit up. She knew Lee would feel terrible about this, and wanted to show him that she was fine. But when she reached a half-sitting position she realised that she blatantly wasn’t fine. A deafening headache screamed at her, and her vision flashed black as she began to collapse back onto the dirt. But before her head could hit the ground again she felt warm hands support it.

“Tenten, I’m so sorry.”

She managed to open her eyes again to see Lee’s face over hers, looking down with a powerful combination of sympathy and sorrow. He looked, she thought, almost as if he was about to cry.

“I’m really sorry. I got overexcited,” he continued, “I should have been more careful.”

She closed her eyes, then forced them open again, causing a fresh wave of pain from her head.

“It’s fine, Lee.” She managed to mumble before her eyes closed again. She relaxed her body and let him support her head fully. They sat like that for a while, with her head resting on his knee and his hands cupped around it. Then Tenten managed to open her eyes again, and smile a little.

“So you finally stopped training?” Tenten heard herself say.

“Tenten, I’m so sorry.” Lee said again.

She had to concentrate hard to find the right words, but eventually replied:

“It’s fine Lee, it was an accident. I’m sorry too.”

They were silent for a few more minutes, both secretly enjoying the warmth they felt emanating from the other. Then Lee broke the silence:

“Do you really want me to train less?” he asked.

Tenten sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. “I want you to be happy, and if that means training all the time then you should do that. But… but I would like it if sometimes we could just hang out without training.”

Lee was silent in surprise. Surely the only reason she came to find him so often was to train, wasn’t it? She didn’t want to hang out with him, did she? But here she was, with her head on his knee, saying she did. Recognising him. Had she always recognised him? Suddenly he saw differently the position she always took in his battles with Neji. What if she hadn’t been trying to protect Neji and kill Lee’s hope? What if she’d been trying to protect him? To reassure him that beating Neji didn’t matter? As if she knew his thoughts, Tenten continued:

“I told you, you don’t need to beat Neji to be his equal.” She blushed a little. “You probably already have more friends than him, more respect too, just for being who you are.”

Lee stared at her, open-mouthed. Did she really mean it? And did this mean that she, she too, thought more highly of him than of Neji? This unbelievable revelation had again rendered him speechless. Then he realised she was trying to sit up once more, and his hands automatically moved to support her back and help the movement.

“Are you okay?” he eventually asked when she was upright.

“Yes.” She smiled at him, and he felt a warm feeling drift through him. “Thank you for looking after me.”

“I’m still so sorry for kicking you.”

“It’s okay Lee, I was just tired out. You really train hard you know!”

“I’m sorry about that too. Umm, Tenten, then tomorrow… do you want to do something else instead of training?”

She put a hand back on his knee where her head had been and smiled at him again.

“Only if you want to, Lee. I do like training with you. But sometimes it would be nice to do something different, wouldn’t it?”

He managed to smile back at her. “Yes.”
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