Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Summary: That is kunoichi, trapped forever between the girl and the woman.

Women

Lost.

That is kunoichi.

Trapped, forever caught between girlhood and womanhood.

Not girls, for what do girls know? They are children. They know nothing of death, war, sex. They have not understood, have not been shown the shortness of life.

Their hands are clean. The hands of a kunoichi are stained with blood.

Yet kunoichi cannot be women, for women are creators, makers, and kunoichi know only how to break.

Kunoichi are caught in the gray between the innocence of a girl and the acceptance of a woman. In the gray area, where you kill or be killed, where you fight and fuck to live.

It is the world they chose when they were girls, when they thought the life of a kunoichi was about glory and being strong and tough and beautiful, and having your pick of the strong boys. Girls believed that being kunoichi was the ultimate sacrifice, the greatest gift you could give to your home.

Now you realize that the gift contained more than you thought: that you gave your mind, body, and soul.

You learn that being a kunoichi is about killing, and sex, and never being free, never being able to wash the blood from your hands.

You wonder what the woman you would become would say, but you know you'll never know.

Kunoichi don't live long enough to become women.