A/N: Kishimoto owns Naruto, and all of his Narutoygoodness. I am just coping with having no updates on Wednesdays.
Apparently I am having coping issues, as my mini fics have been much darker than my usual style.
This is an angst/hurt/comfort [slight]AU fic, friends, set in the post-war canon Narutoverse where Tenten's life takes a dark turn when she can't cope with the loss of Neji.
Her choices dictate the creative license taken in this story and at least one non-canon pairing.

Intended to be a one-shot, this story will be published as a series of small vignettes of varying length of less than 1K, and up to 3K-4K. Planning on 20 installments, 15 of which are largely done. This is the first story I will be publishing/previewing on Tumblr as well. Thanks for coming along for the ride!


Kunoichi
I. She Can't.


She can't go to the gravesite.

She has never had a problem visiting the cemetery.

Konoha honors the fallen with a reverence and respect. She has always found the cemetery to be peaceful and reassuring.

The Will of Fire is cherished and fostered in all of Konoha's residents, shinobi and civilian alike. To be laid to rest having given one's very lifeblood for the village meant that your pulse thrummed on in the collective of those who lived, and your soul soared in the skies above the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

She has never feared death.

She still doesn't.

She is a shinobi of Konoha and death and loss is as much a part of life as anything else.

She always assumed that when it was her turn to sleep in the earthen embrace of Konoha, it would be with a heart stilled to peace by the knowledge she lived every day of her life defending and protecting her home and her people until her last breath at whatever age death came to greet her.

She has no fear of her own mortality.

But she still can't go to the grave.

She can't go and see his name hewn in the permanence and irrevocability of stone.

She can't face the inscription bookending his life from the day of his birth to the day death that came far too soon.

She can't stand over the grass knowing he lies buried directly below her feet, in restful repose having given everything he was for Konoha.

She can't accept the totality and finality of his sacrifice.

Not when her heart still bleeds and aches and cries out for him.

She can't go to his grave, because she feels she will dishonor him if she carries so heavy a heart to that place of stone and fire.

She doesn't want the weight of her sorrow to push down upon the earth and alert him to her devastation.

She can't go to his grave.

Instead, she goes to the training grounds in the hours of dawn when the stars still watch over the sleeping village. She trains and trains hard, ghosts of hours of blood and sweat vivid here, even as she sheds more blood and more sweat and the echoes of their shared past rings in the shallows of her breath and the burn of her muscles. She can almost see him when the light plays tricks, and she tells herself that she doesn't believe in ghosts. If he is a ghost, surely some part of him must be here, where he poured so much of himself into his training.

One morning, as the steam rises off of her sweat-drenched body, she goes to the memorial. She traces her finger over his name the smooth stone cold with the bite of the early morning. The pads of her fingers sink into ridges of his carved name, and she feels the stonestrokes being carved into her very being.

She can't go to his grave, but she can come here.

This is an Honor Roll; a listing of heroes unbound by dates of birth or death.

A band of brothers and sisters in arms.

It is a listing of comrades.

And for the first time she hates this era of peace because she may never be one of them. She may never rejoin him, etched into the eternal cohort of those that fought and died together. She breaks because it is just one more way in which he is now gone, and she may never be with him again.

The very next morning, she applies for the most dangerous missions available.


Next chapter: Two Years

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Cheers!
- Giada