I'm a tomboy and I know it. If not for my mother's appearance in the single picture I have of my family, I'd be right at home with bound breasts, short hair, wife beaters and cargos.

As it is, I wonder sometimes how freeing that would be. I wouldn't really be pretending, it'd just be myself in feathers more fitting to my own personality.

I know I'm not perceptive about the things that actually matter, and while my projectile aim is ten out of ten and I never misstep in battle, my attempts at ascribing peoples' characteristics are always off kilter. Too much spin and less wind than I realize, or the target is farther away or too close and I trip and fall and smash it to smithereens—

I imagine I'd be black.

Everyone says Ino's purple, Hinata is white, Neji is silver, Sakura's pink, Naruto is orange, Sasuke is black, and they can never seem to place me.

I disagree.

Ino is pink and Sakura is white, because while they've both only caught glimpses of only the shadows that Death employs, Ino's innocence is tinged with a touch too much rouge, too much flirting and want for another person, and Sakura is really a bluish-white, pastel-y, with the freshness of morning sky that gets a bit sickening when you've seen it far too much.

Hinata isn't white. She's seen Death, been close to it herself, been torn down so much she's struggling to stand firm, so she's not lavender or lilac, or snow or sugar, but she's a resolute indigo, a shade that stays true to itself even as you pour in the black, dump in the white. Hinata stays strong, but she's still got a breaking point even if she's not as delicate as people imagine.

Neji is no silver. He's tarnished gold, with so much talent and potential stained by death and second-guessing, all of the pride and yet he's soft on the inside, unsure and unsteady, with the malleability of pure gold.

Naruto is not orange and Sasuke is not black. They are both shades of gray, so fundamentally alike in composition but so seemingly contrasting in appearance that even they can't see past the outside. Naruto is the bright silver lining while Sasuke is the dark storm cloud, but neither has use or appreciation without the other. Few people like storm clouds but for the silver lining, and yet, the silver lining is invisible and meaningless in blue skies unless the storm backs it up.

I'm jade on the outside because it feels right, being decorative and pretty, like wearing the filigree and keeping my breasts unbound, even considering the push-up bra and the lacy dresses at all, but on the inside I'm black, the me I'm afraid to let out because it would be so different, it would be going around in a different skin.

I've stared Death in the face, willingly, and some of its curling tendrils have seeped into my soul and started to stain my heart, but it's comforting.

You see everything in stark sunlight, but in the darkness, no one has to even know you're there.

I debate whether I should stay true to the past I'm not even sure of, or true to the inside I'm not completely aware of, true to the history I don't want to let go, or true to my deepest wished.

I suppose I'd be black as murderous indecision and as black as the cold, lying heart of a killer, but then, isn't that what I'm striving to be? I'd be black as Naruto's secrets and as black as Sasuke's memories and I wonder if I'm in the wrong group of friends because I don't belong with discolored gold earnest crimson and perhaps I fit in with shades of gray because I'm not white, not black.

I'm ocean blue, pale yellow, and then I'm deep emerald, a touch lighter than the forest at midnight and darker than jealousy, and yet, I feel a medium gray.

And so my self-evaluation is constantly changing, unsettlingly incomplete, and there's something I'm missing that, for the life of me, I can't identify.

Maybe it's because I'm not very good at reading or characterizing people.

Or perhaps it's because I'm frighteningly correct and the truth is darker than silence.

A/N: I know this is choppy and run-on, sounding poetic one second and horrible the next, jumping around, but there's a reason for that. It's supposed to reflect Ten-ten's own indecision and constant change, and that's also why the end is really unsatisfactory and… hanging. It bugs me, but I feel it really expresses the unsettled mood I'm trying to set.