A/N: Really home I don’t sound like too much of an aggressive weirdo when I write this, but I think it’s going to come out that way. Anyway.

Some people disagreed with my portrayal of Shizune in this drabble collection called Quietly. It’s not an attack aimed against them or anything, it just got me thinking. I kinda wanted to back myself up. You don’t have to agree with me, don’t worry.

Disclaimer: I do not own Shizune or any of the other Naruto characters. This is just speculation on my part.

Inconspicuous

You don’t get here by being nice. Shizune knows that. She killed that part of herself a long time ago.

Sometimes she sees all of the freshly scrubbed faces, eager and bright and so easy to snuff out. Easy to lick her fingers and fizzle the skin in a sweet sear.

And then she wants to throw up. She wants to rage and scream and tear herself apart, this monster that she has become. This sadistic curiosity that makes her wonder, and push the edges of mortality to the point of ripping and shredding the seams into a kind of oblivion she can only dream of.

They’re children.

And they’re getting ready for war.

She tries to think about that. What is it that makes people justify their system, and how people are able to stand themselves. She wants to shake them, slap them, and demand, “Don’t you realize what you’re doing?!”

The stands are always packed with civilians for chuunin exams. They can preach their nobility and sportsmanship all they want, all she can see are children.

Children—

—twelveyearsold and sometimes less—

—killing each other.

And she wants to laugh in hysteric revulsion, to spit on their polished shoes and sneer, “Oh yes, it’s a slaughter today. Be sure you’ve gotten good seats.”

But she is not so revolted to turn a blind eye to her own sinful contamination, to forget the paths of scarlet that matted her hair and blinded her. She is not so foolish to ignore her past, or to pretend that the person she once was still remained.

She had once been a girl.

She never became a woman.

Tsunade told her, oh yes, she told her that she was weak. That she was clumsy and lacking the quick-twitch muscles any decent ninja needed if they wanted to survive. And she, a sweet wide-eyed girl of eleven had done what all the psychology books she had ever read foretold.

She had sought to please.

She wasn’t the fastest. She wasn’t the strongest. She wasn’t the smartest of the trickiest or a natural genius.

She just knew things that the others didn’t. She cut down her own childish nobility, the sense that you had to tell a person before you hit. She killed that girl. She never grew to be a woman.

She stabbed the other boy in the eye with a needle, and didn’t stop pushing until he was beyond the place of screaming.

It was just the way things were done.

She can’t atone for her sins the way Tsunade or Sakura can. She doesn’t have the control or the talent for that.

Sakura can save ninety five percent of her patients. The last five percent is slowly destroying her.

Shizune always smiles at Sakura, whose hands are not made for killing, and prays to God for her redemption. If someone can be saved, she is sure it is Sakura.

Shizune cannot tempt a mission’s success the way Kurenai or Ino can. She does not have the body or the face for such things.

Tsunade told her when she was a girl, the things that would happen to her. She smeared her cheap little-girl lipstick over the inn’s mirror and never turned back, hair crudely shorn with the dullest kunai she could find.

Shizune is the Lady of Screams, and she draws them out slowly and effortlessly. She tugs and pulls because she is trying to make a difference, and peace can only come from destruction.

It must.

If it doesn’t, she won’t know what to do.

You don’t become a ninja by being sweet or cute. Those are only the remnants of something that might have been, something she doesn’t have time for.

She will not hesitate. There is nothing left for her, only her duty.

Shizune does not have the talent, the control, or the body of a kunoichi.

But she has eyes—eyes that can see clearer than anyone else’s.

And as she gazes upon the perfect, childish faces, she knows for certain that they are all irrevocably damned.