Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Tenten, but this is something anyone would hate.
Summary: They were a family, a team, so much more than anything anyone could think of. They were Team Seven, and these are their stories.
Summary of Chapter: Tenten knows the balance of life and death.
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Tenten refuses to kill.
She thinks this is because of that moment in time in her life when Tenten doesn't think she can be a kuniouchi. A time way back when her name was still pronounced 'Teh-Teh' instead of the distinct diction she practices so no one will confuse her steel (because it has to be her steel or else she'll never make her own name.) for someone else's. The time is brief – a mere flash of a moment elongated for the singular purpose of scaring her half to death – but it scars in her heart forever.
She's only five when it happens. The day she finally (after hours and days and months of begging her father) is allowed to touch the steel. The weapons she has awed and drooled over for a year now. Her small hands wrap around the kunai like it was meant to be, like the tan colour of her hand is meant to hold this black symbol of the war she doesn't know exists.
She goes outside to practice, throwing and moving with the kunai like a dance, thinking of new ways to test its powers. Already formulating new moves to access every muscle in her body (That Hyuuga boy that Daddy talks about isn't the only genius!). It's only when she throws the kunai, only when it leaves her strong sturdy hand and flies without waver into the bushes.
Then there is a scream.
Maybe just a shriek, an animal; she moves slowly – fearfully – to where the kunai landed. She can't keep down the bile in her throat from rising when she sees a bunny, a pregnant bunny, lying there, in a pool of blood she caused. She starts screamingrantingcrying until she can't screamrantcry anymore. She makes a promise to herself (and she'll carve it into her fucking skin if she has to.) to nevernevernever take another life as long as she lives.
Tenten refuses to kill.
She lives long enough to stare at her hands and never see them run red with blood.
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I've always loved this idea, and when it popped into my head I HAD to write it down. :] tell me whatcha think!
~AU