Mommy issues.
Temari never liked grass. She hated botany because it reminded her too much of her mother. In fact, she reminded herself too much of her mother with the green-blue eyes, the dirty blonde hair and the fan. Chiyo always did say that her mother liked fans.
She came to the realization that she hated botany when her father walked into the greenhouse when she was fourteen and choked on air. The papers fall from his hands and he would run out of the greenhouse like a madman, almost as if Gaara had been chasing after him with bloodlust in his eyes. Rasa of the sands, the wielder of the golden dust would run like a child caught stealing apples from her, a fourteen year old girl.
Chiyo had hugged her and told her it was because Karura loved gardening and it was the hair and posture which made her just like her mother. And of course that her father just could not stand the collective weight of memories.
So Temari changed. She tied her hair into four spiky ponytails, she wore the skirts and dresses which would have made her mother blush, she wielded the huge metallic fan which her mother considered cumbersome and overly masculine, she rejected the chance to become a medic nin under Chiyo just like her mother had. She didn't want to be the hypocritical healer her mother had been, she preferred to save lives on the battlefield, an active instead of a passive actor in conflict. She became the caustic, ice-cold, bitter as a balsam pear bitch which her domesticated and tangerine sweet mother was not.
And why? Because she never wanted to be her mother. Her mother was weak, her mother allowed for her own son to be inflicted with the Shukaku, her mother allowed the rest of her children to live in fear of her husband and her youngest child. Temari would have never allowed that. She would have kicked, scratched and run away with her children. She would have rather killed her child than to have left them at the mercy of the Shukaku and her cold-hearted husband.
"Don't you look strange."
Temari pivoted around towards the source of the derisive voice, her eyes narrowing. Her dirty blonde hair framed her face stopping short somewhere below her shoulder. It was already irritating enough that her hair ties had snapped and now she probably had to handle the off-handed comments which compared her to her mother.
"Fuck off," she muttered and rolled her eyes. Shikamaru strode towards her, yawning. She could already imagine the soon to be quizzical look that would be painted on his face as he asked what possessed her to let her hair down.
"Calm down, it's a change, not a nice change but you can still pull it off."
His lackadaisical voice hid a small smirk which she caught. Fucking asshole, always trying to rile her up.
"Excuse me?" she near shrieked, "I can damn well pull of this look. In fact, many people say I look like my mother this way and goddamn if she was not stunning."
The statement flew out of her mouth before she could stop herself. Fucking idiot, she screamed internally, the comment itself made her want to bang her head against the wall in apology to the ideals which had shaped her life. Fancy, ignoring all the reasons to love being Sabaaku no Temari for something as frivolous as being pretty or even worse, winning an argument against Shikamaru.
"Troublesome," muttered Shikamaru, scratching his head, in a half-hearted attempt to placate the irate woman who looked more than ready to beat him to a bloody pulp with her oversized fan. "Look, what I was saying was that you look to domestic with the hair down and all."
"Too domestic?"
Okay, maybe that was a slightly better answer. After all few things were worse than 'it's a change, not a nice change but you can still pull it off'.
"Your old hair made you look like you were going to beat the shit out of someone, this," he paused to point at her curling tresses, "just makes you look like you're an angry woman who's about to beat the shit out of someone trying to pretend to be a trophy wife."
Temari's eyes narrowed and watched silently as Shikamaru winced, perhaps internally preparing for an outpouring for her rage through a shouting match or even a brutal beating. Instead, she nodded and gave a small smile.
"Good answer."
Sometimes, it was nice to step out of her mother's shadow.