More Tenten! Finally!

I couldn't help it… Saki-chan makes an appearance. I didn't mean to write her in, it's just when I was writing this story it made me think of Saki-chan, especially crazytoffee's version from Tangled Up in Lace (go read it!). That wasn't what I had intended, but since just writing it made me think of that so much, I added Saki-chan in for fun. Saki-chan is, for those who don't know, basically Sasuke in drag, gothic Lolita drag to be precise, created by the wonderfully talented Asuka Kureru (beware, her Saki-chan stories are most definitely NC-17, except one). He's so effed up.

I'm so close to the story being 1,000 words here! But… I didn't feel like trying to push it. Truthfully I was over 1,000 but I ended up cutting out a part I thought was boring and unnecessary.

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Doll's Dream

Running errands was not something that Tenten particularly minded doing, unlike most of the teens her age; it gave her an excuse to finally leave the section of town her family lived in, namely the part largely inhabited by the shinobi, and walk around the mainly civilian neighborhood. The civilian section could almost be another town entirely for all the differences between the two parts. In Tenten's part the houses were more apartments or long rows of houses that were attached to each other, all colored a dull tan with dark adornments. All shops sold equipment, even the grocery stores, that could be customized to the products they sold. However in the civilian section the houses were large and comfy, painted prettily in an assortment of colors from yellow houses with green shutters to blue houses with fuscia shutters. The stores were all specialty stores that sold only their products and nothing extra. Even the clothing stores were all different from one another. Shinobi didn't need many outfits, but these stores each specialized in their own way, whether for formal days, for cold days, for warm days, for casual days, for any day one could imagine. When Tenten saved up a decent amount of money she always liked to go to those stores and buy an expensive outfit that made her feel feminine and pretty. She would then wear it the next time she had to run an errand on the civilian side of town.

Sometimes she wondered if her own teammates would recognize her as she was when she went out. Makeup was not something she wore to train or on missions, but she applied it carefully when she ran errands. Dresses and skirts were impractical for her life as a kunoichi, but they were her staple outfits when she was a civilian. Even the ever present hitai-ate that she had been so proud to finally receive was removed and placed into a carefully chosen handbag. Her hair was released from its tight buns, letting her scalp relax, and hung gently around her face and down to her shoulders. Her hair was just a long as Neji's, but she felt foolish leaving it down, as if it would make her seem vain and not at all like a strong kunoichi. Standards were different between the men and the women she supposed, even if there was supposedly no gender on the battlefield.

The girl at the clothes store thought Tenten had a handsome boyfriend with dark black hair and bright green eyes, and he was a handsome shinobi who often left for long missions and when he came back all she did was spend time with him. Whenever Tenten couldn't make it to visit her friend at the shop she said her boyfriend returning home was the reason for her absence. She created a carefully constructed dream where she had both lives that she had always wanted. The life that all girls wanted, where she owned pretty things and gossiped about silly things, and then the life that she had always worked for, where she proved her strength each day and showed the men that she was just as good as every one of them.

Tenten had always liked to prove herself as being worthy.

That was when she had first seen him, on a trip to the civilian neighborhood. Tenten had naturally known that Uchiha Sasuke was back in town after he ran away, but she hadn't actually seen him around, probably because he was avoiding them, which was just what they all probably wanted anyway. She knew immediately that it was Sasuke, and perhaps he knew immediately that it was Tenten because Saki-chan didn't mind when Tenten slipped into the seat opposite the porcelain doll-looking boy/girl who had serious problems in most people's opinions (or perhaps it was just written off as another shinobi quirk).

"Saki-chan, I don't think we've ever been introduced. I'm Tenten," she introduced holding her hand over the tiny table covered by a lacy cloth. The tea shop was very cute with bows and ruffles and other girls dressed up in pretty flowered dresses sitting around chatting with patterned china tea cups held delicately in their gloved hands. Saki-chan hesitantly shook Tenten's hand. "Do you come here often?"

"I spend a lot of time on this side of town. They have the nicest tea shops. This one is my favorite," Saki-chan offered with a tiny smile.

Tenten knew just what that meant. It meant that Sasuke was never around because he spent so much time dressed up as a girl on the side of town where the people didn't know who Saki-chan really was. Sasuke was leading more of a double life than even Tenten. "This is my first time in a tea shop here. I usually come to shop. It's… a nice change of scene." Saki-chan smiled sweetly but Tenten saw the understanding in Sasuke's eyes. Everyone needed to get away from the shinobi life once in a while. "Well," she said standing up, "I'll let you finish your tea in peace, but… perhaps we could do this again sometime?"

"Of course," Saki-chan nodded. "I'll see you around I'm sure, and we can meet here when our schedules permit it."

The only schedule they needed to think about was Tenten's and when she didn't have a mission.

Back in her bedroom Tenten carefully wiped away all traced of her dolled up self until she was satisfied not even a hit of color was left upon her lips. Her hair was tied swiftly up in buns and her pretty clothing was folded away as she put back on her regular clothing. Sometimes she tried so hard to be the perfect kunoichi (no, more than a kunoichi, the perfect shinobi of Konohagakure) that she needed anything to remind her that she was still female, that she was still beautiful and something to be cherished and loved and admired.

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(A/N) The next part will show Tenten being strong and tough and stuff… Promise…