It was guilt.
Outwardly she was calm, responsible, cheerful and even-tempered. But the clean white pages of her life were stained with blood that she labored every day to blot out. She labored in vain and she knew it, yet the futility of her actions did nothing to dampen her resolve. If anything it drove her harder, for she was of one of those shinobi who is bravest in the face of defeat.
***
The source of Tenten's guilt could be found in her earliest memory. It was night and she was frightened of the dark forest around her, alive with the sound of rustling leaves and stirring animals. She yearned toward the bright comforting lights of the city, reaching out of her father's grasp to clutch at them with chubby little fists. She wanted to go there, not deeper into the scary woods.
"Shhhhh, Tenten," he soothed her when she whined. "Be quiet. Daddy's here." His voice was slow and comforting, and immediately she felt better. Her daddy was her whole world.
On his broad back, below the shoulder on which her tiny chin rested, was a bulging cloth sack. She didn't know what was in it or how he got it, but it was fun to watch the leafy shadows cast by the moonlight ripple across it as they moved farther and farther away from the city. Suddenly Tenten's smooth brow furrowed in puzzlement as one of those shadows stretched and then climbed up off the bag to loop over her father's shoulder and around his neck.
Her father made an abrupt choking noise and reached for his throat, dropping Tenten in the process. She started to cry but then stopped as her father fell to his knees, her shock overcoming her displeasure at being unceremoniously dumped on the ground. Daddy was clutching at his neck and gasping for air, and his eyes looked huge and bulgy.
"You made a mistake," said a strange voice from the darkness, and then a man stepped into view from behind a tree. He was dark and lean with spiky hair gathered into a ponytail. He scared Tenten and she began to cry again. "You should never have crossed into this clearing, where the moonlight lets me manipulate shadows even at night. If you had stayed out of the light I couldn't have touched you." Then he did something with his hands and her father started breathing again, though he didn't stand up and he didn't reach out for her. "I've switched from shadow strangulation to shadow mimicry," the man declared. "I don't intend to kill you, just bring you back to the village to answer for your crimes."
"Then," her father gasped hoarsely, "you have killed me."
The man shrugged. "Not necessarily," he replied. "The man whose home you broke into isn't dead yet. If he survives you might too, considering the circumstances." His eyes strayed to Tenten as he said this, and with a child's instinct she knew him to be a kind person. She ceased crying and looked from him to her daddy, taking in everything but understanding nothing.
"Let me go," her father pleaded. "We'll never come back here. No one would know."
The man shook his head slowly. "Can't do that," he said. "It's a pain, but I have to bring you in."
At this her father began to struggle. His muscles twitched and his breathing grew ragged as he tried fruitlessly to throw off the jutsu binding him. With the talent Tenten had inherited from him she could vaguely feel his chakra pushing against the other man's.
"Stop that," the spiky-haired man grunted, clenching his jaw. "You'll only hurt yourself." Then he began to sweat and cried, "Damn you have a lot of chakra!"
"Tenten," her daddy said tightly, looking over to where she watched it all in confusion, "I want you to do something for Daddy. Can you do that?"
Tenten's big brown eyes widened and she nodded. He was her whole world and she would do anything he asked.
"Okay," he said, the strain showing on his face as he continued to struggle, "stand up, Tenten, and come here."
She obeyed.
"Now reach into Daddy's pocket and take out one of the papers. You know – one of the pretty ones you like so much."
She stared at him solemnly and then replied, "Not supposed to touch those. You said."
Her father grimaced. He was shaking. "Now I'm saying it's okay. Just take one, Tenten. Do it now."
Slowly, cautiously, suspicious of this sudden change in policy, Tenten did as she was told. The white paper with its curly black writing, lit by the moonlight, seemed to shine in her small hand. She looked at it admiringly, for she had never before been allowed to handle one.
"Good girl," said her daddy, and warmth spread through her at the sound of his approval. "Now, Tenten, I want you to carry that paper over to the man. Put it down next to his feet, but don't touch him. Can you do that?"
Eager for more approval, she nodded brightly. " 'Course," she said proudly.
"You," gasped the man with spiky hair, "don't want to do this. Don't get the kid involved."
Her daddy ignored him and kept looking at her, then said, "Go now, Tenten. Be careful."
She stood up straight and clutched the paper tightly, then began slowly to pick her way across the clearing. She watched Spiky-hair the whole time, even though she knew somehow that he was no danger to her.
"That's my girl," called her daddy when she reached her destination. "Now just put it down next to his feet, and don't touch him."
She looked down at the paper regretfully, still powerfully attracted by its mysterious loopy markings. But her desire to please her father was stronger than her desire to keep the paper, so she set it down about six inches from Spiky-hair, and turned it so that its long edge was parallel to his shoe.
"Kid," gasped Spiky-hair, looking down at her. "Your name is Tenten, right?"
She nodded.
"Well, no one's gonna hurt you, Tenten, but you need to listen to me. I want you to tear up that paper."
She frowned and looked back at her daddy, unsure. He shook his head. "Don't do that, Tenten," he called to her. "Just come on back to me now."
"Tenten," said Spiky-hair more urgently, "tear it up, then run. Get out of here and run for the village. Someone will find you – you'll be okay."
Tenten thought a moment. "I'm sorry mister," she said at last, as politely as she could. "I have to go back to my daddy now." Then she started back to where her daddy waited for her.
Before she got halfway there the paper bomb she had just planted exploded, detonated by her father from across the clearing. The man with the spiky hair was caught in an untenable position – rendered immobile by his own jutsu, he could not release his hold over his prey for fear of counterattack. Neither could he use his jutsu to control the little girl, for Tenten's father had so much chakra that it was taking all of his reserves just to control him, and even that was insufficient to stop him from forming the detonation sequence with his hands. The best solution he'd been able to come up with was to wait until the little girl was out of the way and then release the shadow-mimicry jutsu at the same time as he threw himself into the underbrush, and hope he got enough distance to survive the explosion. But he never got the chance, for Tenten's father detonated the bomb long before his daughter was safely clear.
Tenten was lifted off her feet and hurled into the woods, tumbling head-over-heels for a few terrifying instants before she struck a tree trunk with a sickening crack and lost consciousness.
That was the end of her first memory. It was also the last time she saw her father alive.
***
The shadow-user whom her father had blown up had been his second victim of the day, the first being an elderly shopkeeper whose house he'd burgled and whose throat he'd cut. Neither victim had survived, and though Tenten had no recollection of it she was told that she had been present for the first murder as well as the second, had watched her father rob and slice the old man.
The Leaf's justice had been summary and quick, a heavy ANBU sword that separated her father's head from his shoulders, just half a kilometer away from the site where the paper bomb had gone off and attracted the attention of Konoha's black ops. On their way back to report to the Hokage that night the ANBU carried five burdens: the messy remains of the man with spiky hair, her father's head, her father's body, her father's bag, and tiny wounded Tenten.
In the years that followed not one word of blame was ever directed at Tenten. Everyone was kind to her – the staff at Konoha's little orphanage, the wizened old Hokage, even the Nara clan, whose shinobi she had helped her father to kill. She had just been a little girl, they all said, and she was not responsible for anything that happened that night.
Intellectually these arguments all made perfect sense. But intellect had nothing to do with what Tenten felt, an acid guilt that dissolved her from within. With her own hands she had placed the bomb that killed the Nara, and in her veins ran the blood of the man who had set it off. Indeed, she was the last thing that remained of her criminal father on this earth, for even his name had been lost when he died – Tenten had not been able to remember it when they woke her in the hospital. For a long time she suffered her guilt in silence, hiding it from others but never escaping from it herself.
Then one day she was visited at the orphanage by the Third Hokage. This was not so unusual, for Sarutobi had made it his business to see that the little girl was not burdened too much by loneliness. On this day, though, he had come with a purpose.
"Tenten," he said gravely, addressing her seriously as he would an adult. "We don't know much about your family. But we do know that your father wielded tremendous chakra, and we suspect you may be able to do the same. I think it would be a good idea for you to go to the Academy and learn to be a Leaf ninja. What do you say to that?"
Tenten's brown eyes regarded Sarutobi steadily. In front of him she did not bother to disguise her natural solemnity, and he thought as always that she seemed a little too old for her years. "If I become a ninja," she said slowly, "wouldn't I have to hurt people?"
Sarutobi nodded. "Yes, Tenten, that is part of a ninja's duty. But a bigger part is protection of this village and the people in it. As a Leaf shinobi, you would be in a position to save other children from being orphaned like you."
Tenten heard his words and took from them a single fact: as a shinobi she could serve the Leaf. She knew that she owed the Leaf a great debt, for lives taken and for care received, and she hungered for redemption. "I'll do it," she said decisively.
So the next year she entered the Academy, where she displayed a natural aptitude for edged weapons. She also learned about the legendary Lady Tsunade, and thought privately that if she could become that strong, she would be capable of such service as might expiate her sins.
Eventually she was assigned to a team with Neji and Lee and Gai, and for the first time since her father she found herself at home, surrounded by comrades who came to feel like family as the years passed. She was even, to her great surprise, happy with her life as a kunoichi. Combat seemed to agree with her nature.
But this did not assuage her guilt. On the contrary, it fed it, for she couldn't help but wonder if someone as stained as she was had the right to feel happy. So she worked even harder, pushing herself to keep up with her exceptional team, finding in the process an intense satisfaction that again stung her conscience, on and on in a vicious cycle.
Her teammates had drives of their own, of course. But she came to know that her motives and theirs were fundamentally different, for theirs were attainable, finite. Hers, though, was like a gaping void into whose blackness she cast her accomplishments. It would never be satisfied, never be full, because no number of acts of service could change the past. Her sin was always there, compounded daily by the fact that in spite of herself she could not remember her father with anything other than love.
So she pushed on, driven forward by guilt that was less a weight than a goad. Every kunai she threw chipped away fractionally at her sin, leaving a miniscule nick in its colossal face. If she lived a thousand years she could never destroy it completely, but nevertheless she had no choice but to try.