Ok so this is my first story so don't expect to much. Updates will be a week or more apart depending on how much time my studies take up and how well my reserch for this story goes. I'm not Chinese or Japanese so I have to do research to be as historically and culturally accurate as possible. Please try to over look any mistakes and my terrible spelling and grammer (I don't have spell-check and have to do everything the old fashioned way). This is a Tenten story just cause she gets no love in the manga and very very little in the anime. You won't see most of the other Naruto characters won't be seen till later now, for now get ready for OCs. So...here's my story.
And it goes without saying that I don't own Naruto, Tenten, Lee or any of the others, they belong to Kishimoto Masashi-sama, or else I would be rich, Naruto would be a chick and she'd be getting busy "restoreing" the Uchiha clan with a certain avanger by now...AND JIRAIYA WOULD STILL BE ALIVE runs into a corner a weeps for her fallen idol
Lee makes me so mad, I could just strangle that man! Tureing on the shink as I prepair a cup of tea I can't do anything to easy my fear.
Placing the kettle on the stove I move to the living room to collect myself. Sitting back in a large blue recliner my son-in-law bought me some five years ago I can feel the paper thiness on my skin and bones. I was like the willow tree, bending and swaying but never bearking. Maybe that was my problem.
These days all it takes is a mild breeze to turn my bones to ice or a fly landing on my hand to cause blood vessals to burst and pools of purple liquid to collect behinth the surface of my flesh.
I don't know what I'm going to do. With Lee deadset on unravaling the secterts I've been waving for years there really is nothing I can do, except for what I really dn't want to do. It's all that man and his silly superstions' fault. I've told him time and again that we live in America now, there's no need for that old chinese thinking, but he dosen't listen and never has. Not in the eighty-something years we've been togather. I knew something was going on two days ago while Sakura and I were working on the the hóng bāo(1) for Chinese New Year. The strange thing is that it came at a time when I was receiving news I've waited from for over sixty years for.
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New Years for the Chinese is not like American New Years, full of boozing and parting and being wild. For the Chinese news years is a celebration for like christmas to Americans, lots of food, family, and friends. It is a time to give gifts and pray for luck and prosperity in the following year. It takes weeks to get ready and lasts a whole month, not like the one day in America. So much work goes into New Years, cleaning out the house and grounds, hanging up lanterns and couplets with all the proper wishes of long life and health. And so much cooking.
Sakura had been in a frenzy making sure all the preperations ran smoothly not because she genuinly cared but because this would be the first time Peony brought one of her boyfriend to a family gathering to meet the family. Something she had never done before, probable afraid that her parents would embarrass her. Not a baseless fear I would add. "Family" included Lee and Sakura and their seven other daughters, their husbands and boyfriends and their childeren, there were twelve last time I checked, not to mention Sora and myself, her three little girls and her husband.
Peony is the youngest of Lee and Sakura's eight daughters, even younger then my Sora. And as the youngest she was condemed growing up to always be the smallest, the weakest, the lest knowing, the last to do anything. She was also a fat little thing till about college and very shy. Because of all this she was the target of her sister's teasing and that sharp, bitter-sweet crulty that only girls seem do be capable of. So, yes, her parents and I coddled her, we spoiled her with hugs and kisses and secret little treats here and there for different reasons For her parents it was the pain seeing your child hurt by those who should love, for me it was a result of the memories of my own childhood surrounded by little girls who spent to much time togather and were made compatative and vicious by it and other things.
It was something I understood.
Even after all these years Peony is still the baby, so of couse Sakura was unbearable in making sure everthing was perfect for her baby.
"Oh Tenten can't you make those characters straighter."
"Tenten be a dear and finish dusting the mantle for me, thanks."
"Tenten do this-"
"Tenten do that-"
Tenten, Tenten, Tenten!
I swear that women can be such a menace. For all her perfectionism, Sakura wasn't very happy about her baby having a man in her life.
"Of couse I'm happy to know Peony is finally out of that akward stage," she said, "but this-this boy, she actually considering leaving Brown and transfering to come school in California to be closer to him. After all that work she put in to getting there, just to throw it all away!"
"You make it sound as if she's already married and pregnent by him," I said lightly, "Peony is a smart girl, she'll make the right choice."
Sakura snorted, clearly not please that I didn't share her fear. She's always been like that, expecting me to follow her ways of thinking, even when we were young. If I followed her thinking we'd still be in Japan.
"He's American," she said like it was a ethnicity in and of inself, what she meant was he was white, "not even in college, droppout to 'find himself' in europe," she complained. "She's only nineteen," she continued over tea that afternoon, "she should focus on her schooling not on men. A girl's first priority should be her education, she needs to be focused."
"Like you were at that age?" I snorted.
She quickly throws me one of her pouty-princess-denied-her-tiara frowns and leans in closed to me. "That was different," she whispered, "that was business, I had no choice."
"Yes you did...as did I," I responded.
A stale akwardness filled the room at this mention of the past.
"You know...," Sakura begain slowly in Japanese, her grass green eyes where cast anywhere but my face. I was on the alart instintly, Sakura had always been proud of how quickly she'd learned English after moving to this country, much quicker then Lee or I had. As a result, she didn't use her native tongue very often, even around those who would have understood. In fact the only times Sakura spoke Japanese were when she was drunk or very serious. She wasn't drunk and it wasn't just any kind of Japanese she was speaking either. It was the old Kyoto dilect.
"You know Tenten-chan I received a letter from Kyoto the other." She glanced at me to see if it was safe to keep going.
"And," I demanded impatiatly, fearfully.
"It was from Shikamaru, you remember him, ne? That lazy Naru boy?"
Of course I remebered Shikamaru, I owed him my life.
"Well is letter said that...," Sakura took in a deep breath as mine completly stopped.
"Well..."
"It said that-that man is finaly dead, as is that horrible woman, you know who I mean."
I did. It didn't make me happy, nothing related to those two devils could inspire my heart with joy, but I felt a weight left itself from my shoulders. They were gone.
"His he sure? How does he know for sure? What happened?" After so many years, I had to know.
"Oh wouldn't you know it," Sakura replied testily, "he died in bed surrounded by family and friend-he must have been a real fossil by now- as for her, she had a heart attack."
"No possible," I said, "she had no heart. That woman kept herself alive purely to spit the world-and me."
"For that time you switched her kimono with Ichimitsu's at the General's party maybe," she said with a sly smile.
That that we both laugh out load at the old memory, the feeling I felt was deeper then relife, to heavy to be happiness. After all these long years I was truely free from them and beyond their reach. Knowing them they probably had been keeping themselves alive only in the hopes of making me fear. But if was over, they were gone and that ws what mattered.
"As long as we're taking about the past," the former pinkette begain,"well Lee was thinking...that maybe now is a safe time to tell Sora the truth, about her father and such."
At that I started to choke on the saliva in my own mouth.
"Are you out of your mind!" I said, "tell her the truth? When I'm finally ride of then both for good? When I can breath easy at last, knowing they can't reach me? You want me to dig up all that now that there is no reason for it?"
"It was just an idea Tenten!" injected the once pink-now-white-haired women in front of me now speaking in her near flawless American English. "It was just an idea, Lee's idea! Calm down. I told Lee it was stupid and unnessasary."
I thought and hoped that would be the end of it. Apparently I was wrong.
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When Sakura didn't work Lee talked to me himself. His classic Lee exagerations littered the conversation.
Tenten, you can not keep hiding your true self from your daughter any longer. Keeping these secrats is poisening your heart like the bit of a serpent. Please do this do this for me, as a last token of love to your ailing friend.
Ailing friend indeed. Three months ago the Docter's found a small pre-cancerous spot on his arm, nothing serious. I suspect it is from his childhood spent in the feilds with if father when we were young. It was quickly and easily, removed and he was given a clean bill of health. But trust in Lee to blow everything out of proportion and assume that his skin is disesed and it is only a matter of time before "the grim and grave master of all that is dark and cold and unyouthful" comes to claim he.
My days are numbered my friend and I must see you again has the girl I knew so many years ago before the end. All those people you were so afraid of are dead, they can not harm you or Sora and if you keep running from the past your ancestors will not be able to find you.
His words not mine. And he forgets that I have good reson for not wanting my ancestors to find me.
He is not dying, he'll outlive everyone of us, I know it. Sakura knows it, their childeren know it, even little Amy, his 3-year-old granddaughter, knows it. But he dosn't and there is the problem. I know he's serious about this being "truthful" thing. I know that if I don't act he will. Worse still he'll get the whole story wrong and forget the really imporatnt parts. Lee want so far has to call up my daughter Sora and plant ideas in her head, like a wayward gardener.
"Ma are you well," she said over the phone in chinese, her voice like piano wire, "Uncle Lee said you needed to speak with me, he said it was very important and couldn't wait."
Damn. "Oh I'm fine you know you're uncle, he exagerats," I say. A part of me cringes when she calls Lee uncle, it's another lie I may have to confess.
"Well, alright then, if you're sure."
"I'm sure...but why don't you come over this Saturday, bring the girls"
"I-I guess Ma but why?"
"Aiya, a mother needs a special reason to want to see her only daughter and grandchildern? Love is not enough, just wanting to talk not enought"
"Oh Ma that's not what I meant. It's jusy noty like you to be so spontaneous...look we'll come by around three, okay?
The kettle starts to scream, alerting me that my water is done boiling. Sighing I heave myself up and back into the kitchen, ready to drown myself in tea soon and maybe come to some solution.
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Three hours and pricisely 42 cups of tea later I have come up with nothing but the most painfully obvious and,well, painfull. I'm going to have to tell her the truth. The meer thought makes my organs feel as if they are crusting over and my blood is running in the opposite direction, so unnatural. But it is very hard to suddenly start telling the truth when you've been living like an actor in some grand play of your own making. To just take off the mask that has septed into your pores like a fine oil or lotion is very hard. Lee wants me to tell her everything about China, my family, how Lee became her uncle, Gion, and...him.
She is your daughter, she will understand. Sora deserves to know her own mother, not just the mask she made to protect herself from evil spirits and her own sins. She's not a child anymore.
That's what Lee said because even without he saying a word he knows what I am feeling, what I am thinking, what I'm really afraid of.
She will still love you, she will forgive you.
It's evening now, my favorite time of day. The sun is setting and bleaching the sky in a blinding kelidoscope of colors; gold, yellow, red, orange, and purple-lavender. The lavender is my favorite, it reminds me of him, and his eyes. It comforts me to know the color of his eyes is in the sky after he spend his life trying to touch it, bring himself to it. He just might have done it if it weren't for me.
I haven't looked up at the sky in a long time for that very reason. I feel like they can all see me.
I have done many terrible things in my life. Things that can not be undone or taken back. And even if I could I wouldn't, most of them, because they were done for a reason. Yet there are some things that I don't belive I can ever aton for, people I hurt to much. Because of my arrogance, my ignorance, my blind selfishness I hurt the people I loved the most and who loved me. Maybe Lee is right, he has an irritating tendancy to do that, maybe I have been running and letting myself be poisened, not only by lies but the truth, too.
Maybe if I tell the truth out loud and they hear me and they will be able to understand. Maybe if the truth is passed on to my own daughter, my mother will forgive me for not keeping my promise and forgetting what she taught me. Maybe my sister will forgive me for stealing what should have been her's and my brtrayal. Tsuande and Naruto may just look past the ruin I brought to them. And maybe...he'll finally know how sorry I am and how much I really did love him.
Please forgive me.
1. hóng bāo or lai see are red envolopes given to family and friends at Chinese New Years and other holidays as a gift, usually filled with money. The amongt of
money will usually end in an even digit since out numbers are associated with funerals. They are red because that is a color that the Chinese have traditionally linked to luck, health, and prosperity in all it's forms.
Next updated will be around the 25 to the 27.
Constructive critique and critasicim much apprciated.