Summary: The kunoichi remember a time when they didn’t have to lie to themselves, every moment of every day. Part I: Tenten.

Author’s Note: I realized recently that you can find the same themes in nearly all my stories, especially about kunoichi. I’m still trying to figure out whether that’s good or not.

Chapter Summary: She is kunoichi and this is how it is, and as she shatters she pretends she doesn’t.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Unheard:

Study I: Tenten

Tenten is more shinobi than kunoichi, because she does not paint her face and put on fancy kimonos and let her hair down. Tenten does the shinobi’s job, maybe because she never needed to be kunoichi, maybe because she never wanted to. But it has never been asked of her to be the “distraction,” and maybe it never will, because Neji would take it as a personal offense that they even needed a distraction, and Lee would cry rivers of tears and destroy the environment, so she has never brought it up. (Or, perhaps, she has never brought it up because she does not dare to, does not want to know the answers, because the little lies she lives in are all she has.)

But she knows that if it were ever to be asked of her, she would agree, because being shinobi – and kunoichi – is her life. Is more than her life. So she would agree, for duty and for loyalty, and never question, because the mission comes above all. The mission is all.

But, still, Tenten breaks and Tenten screams and Tenten cries, because even if she is shinobi, she cannot be heartless and kill without mercy, without doubt. And even if she is kunoichi, she cannot hide her feelings behind a flawlessly gracious mask.

And yet she does, because she is shinobi and she is kunoichi and this is how it is. This is how it goes, and as she shatters she pretends she doesn’t and wonders how she let this happen.

But that doesn’t mean that she has to like it, so she doesn’t.

(And one day, she thinks, one day she will be free. It is the only thing she has left to hope for, the one wish that she does not want granted, and the one dream she knows will be left unfulfilled.)