AN: Found out why I can't usually write during the school semester: my muse is about as nocturnal as I wish I could be. Give me a computer at 2 am and it all works out. XD
NUMBER 15: blue
Back when she was a little girl, naive and innocent and bright-eyed, she wore the dreamy blue of cloudless skies. And she accepted that she wasn't born into a strong clan, like the Uchiha or the Hyuuga or even the Yamanaka or Inuzuka; she knew she wasn't any sort of genius, wasn't a prodigy; she knew she wasn't even stunningly beautiful. After all, even when she was little, Tenten liked fortune-telling, and she knew you got the Tarot cards you were dealt, even if they weren't the so-called best.
No matter what she wasn't, though, Tenten knew she wanted to become something. Wanted to become something poignant (the word stumbled over her lips and she hardly knew what it meant, but her heart soared like a butterfly caught on an updraft when she even thought it).
...
Tenten grew older, and she traded the dreamy sky blues of her childhood for more sensible navies (although she favored reds and whites, some missions demanded night camouflage) and dark blues. She pulled a kunai out of the neck of some man whose name she'd forgotten and smeared the blood off onto the canvas of her midnight blue. The deep red she'd smeared on was immediately indistinguishable from the rest of the grime, and she frowned deeply.
Yeah, she was something real poignant (now she could pronounce the word and define it, and when she heard it, her heart gave a half-hearted spasm like the wings of a half-drowned moth), she thought acridly. A ninja on good days. A murderer on those days she was feeling scared and alone.
Some days she helped people. Killed criminals, fought off villainous maniacs (Orochimaru and his gang, plus Akatsuki), protected wealthy ladies from highway bandits and such. Some days she was just a butcher. Another kunai in another man's neck; another wife who'd be distraught when her husband never came home; another bribe taken.
If she'd wanted to be poignant (flutter, flop, spasm, soar) she should have just become another Naruto and preached love and peace and joy and butterflies or whatever that boy said that made people love him so much.
Instead, she became a savior on good days, a butcher on the days she felt nothing, a murderer on the days she just wanted to bury herself and die.
But on her worst days, she could see the little things that meant so much to her: Gai loudly encouraged her and Lee talked to her (at her) as they ran laps and Neji gave that small smile of recognition.
So she wasn't poignant, maybe, but what did children know?
She had her team, and she had plenty of friends, and her idol gave her a smile when they passed. And she could fly.
In hindsight, it was all worth it.
And hindsight is twenty-twenty.