Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 19 – Introspection
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 3,329
Summary: AU. Sakura gives up on Kakashi as a teacher after Team 7 falls apart. Too bad fate, enemy ninja, and sheer bad luck have other plans.
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. Part 19 of ? Unbeta'd.
Notes: Despite being planned for ages, this chapter gave me an absolutely beastly time.
I was right. It's definitely thirty-four years.
There's a possibility that she's missed something but Tenten has confidence in her research ability. She's spent the better part of the last few weeks looking into the matter and it's the same number all the way down.
If it's wrong then it's wrong deliberately and she's probably not supposed to notice because it's the same information in every record she can get her hands and the records were published at different times, by different people.
Assumptions in the field can get people killed but, in this case, Tenten is confident that she can safely assume the information is as accurate as it's allowed to be.
The question, now, is to decide what to do about it.
If I do anything. I might not, she admits to herself. Tenten had started looking into the whole matter because she couldn't remember and, as someone whose passions were for history and weapons, that had offended her own sensibilities.
She'd kept looking, confirming the matter beyond the first resource, then the second, then the third...
Because it's bothering me.
Tenten rolls her neck, shakes her shoulders out, and carefully, painstakingly, begins the process of sealing her research away, safe in scrolls that only her blood can unlock. It cost her a lot of money to get the lessons that had been necessary for making these scrolls, but it had been totally worth it.
Besides, she still lived at home. It wasn't like she had much to do with her money except for saving it up.
A Genin's salary wasn't much but combined with the C-rank mission bonus payouts and some careful frugality on her part, well, it was easy enough to afford the things she wanted so long as she was patient. And she was very patient.
Once everything is tucked away, Tenten leaves her bedroom breezily, heading down to poke her head into the shop on the main floor.
"Mom, do you need any help?" she asks.
"There's a new shipment of senbon in," her mom says. "And some of the spears need to be taken down, cleaned and polished. A dusty weapon never sells!"
"You bet," she says, pulling on an apron and protective gloves and getting to work. "Are these senbon poisoned or-?"
"They're clean but absorbent," comes the answer and Tenten nods.
They're not poisonous, then, because they're designed for the shinobi who will buy them to add their own poisons. Or pay extra for them to do it, though most shinobi tend to be paranoid and would rather do their own anyway.
Not that I really blame them. I'd do my own too.
But she isn't a huge fan of poisoning her weapons. There is too much room for error and a poisoned weapon being used against you in the field was doubly worse when it was your own.
But maybe, maybe eventually…
Ino is giving her advice on how to build up her resistances. Tenten never wants to become the sort of kunoichi that relies on poisons to be her first line of offense or to rely on them… but a little surprise now and then isn't a bad idea. Especially when weapons are her specialty. Poisons will catch people off guard.
The time in her parents' shop goes by quickly. It always does, since Tenten loves helping other shinobi figure out which weapon would suit them best. She doesn't even mind the Academy-level students, who come in and look avidly without buying anything; how could she mind? Once upon a time that had basically been her, even though she'd worked the till for years.
And it gives her something productive to do while under the supervision of an adult. Tenten has been an adult in the eye of the village for nearly a year and a half, but this is the longest she's gone without being accountable to anyone and having them check in on her progress. She understands all the reasons why, and she supports that Gai-sensei is running the missions he can't take them on yet, but it makes her antsy at the same time, not having someone around her who she can reach out to and ask to check in on the steps she's taken to improve herself, if they can tell she's improving or if there's a flaw in her stances or...
Well, anything.
Lee is still in the hospital recuperating-she visits him most days and he's always glad to see her-and Neji is behind the walls of the Hyuuga compound, where the closest she can get to him is asking Hinata how he's been doing.
But...
I'm lonely and antsy.
It's okay to feel these things, to wrap them around herself as she thinks about ways to improve her skills, but it's also because of these feelings that she's going to take her time before making any decisions. All her books say that, in the midst of feeling negative emotions, it's best to take a year before making any drastic changes.
Now, her books mean things like people having died, and this isn't it, but since Tenten doesn't plan on waiting a year to make up her mind, either, she feels that she can co-opt the same principal for a smaller issue.
That's why I'm going to wait. If I make a choice now, will it be because I'm lonely and anxious to be out there, doing more, or will it actually be for my long-term benefit?
She doesn't know yet. It's hard to make that judgment call.
Tenten is glad no one but herself is asking her to-so far. It would be awkward to be asked and to not know the answer.
Especially with Lee and Neji.
They're very different but they both know her. If she tried to step around a question...
They would know.
And she'd rather they didn't, for the foreseeable future, because she knows them, and they would assume the worst possible outcome for them would be the only possible outcome.
And it's not. It's really not. I just don't know what to do yet.
"What's your plans for after work?" her mom asks, in a lull between customers.
"Going to see Lee," Tenten says, putting back to rights their selection of kunai. That part is easy. It's always the same and she likes spending time with him-he's weird but he's a good teammate and friend. "Then probably training."
Her mom's silence has something to it though, so Tenten glances up.
"Why?" she asks. "Do you need me for something?"
Just then, a customer comes in, and her mom shakes her head-not in negation, but that she'll explain herself later.
Since Tenten doesn't want her family's business all over the village, she waits, working through it and glad for a new mystery to ponder (even if she's pretty sure it's going to be something as prosaic as hitting up a market on the way back from visiting Lee), until they're closing up for the evening meal (they'll be open again later in the evening for a few hours but that will be her elder brother's job, not hers).
It is a list of groceries to pick up, which she takes with a laugh, but it's also-
"You're friends with that pink-haired kunoichi, right?" her mom asks.
"Sure, I guess?" Tenten says, with a shrug. "Why? What's up?"
She doesn't explain that of the 'Rookie 9' kunoichi that Sakura's the one she knows the least. That Ino and Hinata are her real friends while she's just... friendly... with Sakura.
"It's just that your father heard that she turned down an apprenticeship with Tsunade-sama," her mother says. "So, we were wondering if that's something you were considering? You've always talked about her and if she's looking for an apprentice then..."
It feels a bit like being punched in the stomach with that old, old dream of hers being brought up now. She remembers telling Gai-sensei and Lee and Neji about it on their very first day of being Genin.
Gai-sensei had been incredibly supportive of her dream. Lee had been humbled by her determination to succeed. Neji had taken it as a matter of course that, obviously, if she was on his team then she'd be striving for the top.
And then... nothing had happened.
Oh, she's gotten stronger, there's no doubt about that, but her dream of being like Tsunade-sama had just sort of... stayed in dreamland.
And a lot of that is my fault too.
"Oh, Mom, I don't know," Tenten says. "Do you really think I could? Tsunade-sama isn't known for her weapons work and that's what I'm best at."
Her mom smacks her. A quick slap upside the head that reminds her, sharply, of the fact that her mom had been a kunoichi of Konoha too, until she'd chosen to retire and raise her children. It barely hurts, the sting already fading away, but the disappointment in her mother's eyes is more painful and will linger longer.
"You can do anything you want to do," her mother says severely. "Your dad and I raised you to see limitations as challenges. If you don't want to, then that's fine. If you're happy, that's fine. But lately you haven't been. So, figure out what you want to do, and we'll support you."
Tenten hugs her mom. Quick and close.
"I haven't decided what to do yet," she says, which is the absolute truth. "Though I've been looking at a few options. Do you know the significance of thirty-four years?"
Her mom doesn't.
That's alright. No one else she's asked has known either. It's one of the reasons she's been thinking about it so hard.
It matters to her, she finds, that thirty-four years.
"When I decide, I'll let you know," Tenten promises, folding the grocery list away into a pocket. "And... you know what? Maybe I should try and see if I can be what Tsunade-sama is looking for."
She doesn't know if she can be a medical ninja. Her chakra control is pretty good, but she's never been spectacular at it. She loves her weapons. She doesn't know if she could give up focusing on them in order to start from scratch in a new specialty. She doesn't even know if Tsunade-sama is looking for an apprentice now that Sakura turned her down.
She doesn't know anything.
Maybe finding the answers out to a few of those questions would help her figure things out. Maybe that's one of the problems, that there's too many doors open, and she can't pick. Maybe if she can get a few of them closed, things will be clearer.
"Picking up a little more than basic first aid is never a bad idea," her mom says encouragingly. "Even if you decide not to go through with it all the way, you might learn something that could save a teammate's life."
This is true.
Every shinobi learns some first aid. They need it, even in the village, to properly care for training scrapes and bruises and to be able to gauge if a training accident is serious enough to need a visit to the hospital or if they can just... walk it off, take a few days a little easier.
But there's entire worlds of medical jutsu that Tenten knows are out there.
"I'll think about it," she says, and she will. "I'll be back in a bit with groceries, okay?"
As she leaves, her mom still looks a bit troubled.
Tenten is more than a bit troubled. Learning medicine is important. It's useful. It could keep her team safe.
And it would mean I'd be kept safe so that I can be their safety net.
Tenten hates that idea. She loves fighting. She's fine with being someone's guardian, their protector, but she's not fine with being someone's healer.
She didn't become a ninja to be taken care of. It's bad enough that Lee is a monster at taijutsu and that Neji is just a monster at everything.
What is she?
And that's one of the reasons she's struggled with her dream. She wants to be strong, like Tsunade-sama. She wants to be gorgeous, like Tsunade-sama. She wants to be well-known, like Tsunade-sama.
But she's pretty sure she doesn't want to be Tsunade-sama.
She's not sure she could be anyway. Tenten knows her strengths and weaknesses pretty well after a year and a half on active duty. Kunoichi like Tsunade-sama don't come around often and, frankly, she's done her research. If there's a magic level of skill or talent, she doesn't think she has it. If she's a genius of anything, she's like Lee, a genius of hard work.
Hard work alone doesn't make kunoichi like Tsunade-sama.
Mom would smack me upside the head again.
It's an ugly, uncomfortable truth but Tenten doesn't shy away from it. She's probably, almost certainly, not good enough to be a kunoichi like Tsunade-sama.
Despite saying that she'd go to the hospital to visit Lee, her feet take her in a different direction. She doesn't drift aimlessly, instead she walks with purpose, lost in her own thoughts, until she blinks and finds herself where she and her team had first sat down with Gai-sensei and he'd asked them about their dreams.
For a moment Tenten misses all three of them so badly that it's like a physical ache. She takes a seat, no one else is here, not even a random stranger.
She hates being indecisive.
But how can she not be when she's not sure what her dream ought to be anymore? She leans back, slinging her arms over the back of the bench, and looks up into the canopy of trees. Here, at least, she can't see any signs of destruction. The leaves are the same.
She's not the same as she was, nearly two years ago now, sitting in this very spot.
Tenten reaches for one of the leaves but, of course, they're all out of her reach.
Just like everything else, lately.
She wants to be a legendary kunoichi. She needs to be a legendary kunoichi. Not for anyone else's sake, but for her own, because her very best ought to be good enough to get her there, shouldn't it?
Two years in, she's not so sure. She has a better grasp of what genius is these days and where the gap between it and hard work lays. There's nothing shameful about not being a genius. Naruto literally beat that into Neji's head during the Chuunin exams.
But…
She's discontent and restless and… it rankles. No one talks about her. Everyone's been murmuring about Hinata-chan changing teams, even though Hinata has been quite clear that she doesn't want to, but no one has said anything about her. It's like she doesn't even exist.
Who talks about her?
Is she really that over-shadowed by her teammates? They're both guys and Tenten is well aware that, automatically, that means people will talk about them more. (It's not fair. It's never been fair. It's still the truth.)
But before the exam and everything that had come with and after it, she'd thought she'd been holding her own. She'd felt confident in that.
Then she'd been beaten by a fan-user from Suna and no one cared about her anymore. There'd been no dramatic come back for her to make.
Just—that was it, she was done.
Ino and Sakura hadn't made it to the finals either, but their double knockout fight was already appearing in the latest editions of the records. It was so rare. People noticed.
People talked.
Even before the whole team transfer thing, people had talked. Now they talked more.
And Hinata had her own talk. The shy heiress, nearly brutally killed by her own cousin, but who had stood up until she passed out and then, unconscious, had stood up again. Hinata's status alone had people murmuring, but while she hadn't made it to the finals, she'd made it.
Hinata is not the daughter her father wished he had, but she was becoming a formidable kunoichi in her own way.
No one has forgotten any of the girls of the Rookie Nine. She doesn't think they will either.
"And here I am, feeling sorry for myself," she mutters, but it's true. She doesn't want to lose to a bunch of kunoichi younger than her. It stings her pride.
It's not fair.
Wind whips through the leaves, shivering a few of them free, and Tenten catches several, looking at them seriously.
It's not fair. She lost once, so what, no one was holding that against Kiba or Chouji or Lee. But it is an ugly black mark against her, since she's a girl. She knows it. Everyone knows it, even if everyone won't say it.
Only a third as many kunoichi graduate compared to their shinobi counterparts in the first place. Less than a fifth of that third ever make it to Jounin. Nearly forty percent male graduates that live through their first year as shinobi go on to make Special Jounin or Jounin.
The women that make it absolutely must be extraordinary. Most stop at Chuunin, either due to not having the skills to go further, injuries, or marriage and children. A kunoichi that makes it to Jounin has beaten the odds stacked against her.
And even the legendary Tsunade-sama is a medical ninja.
Which isn't what she wants to be. Irrationally and illogically, part of Tenten still desperately wants to become Tsunade-sama's apprentice. To take that fame and rise with it, making her own legend with her own hands.
Or, at the very least, maybe have someone notice her. She'd give a lot for that right now.
"Thirty-four years," she says. She can't forget this number. It rings against her spirit. It calls to her.
It's a long time. Even longer to shinobi records, which get broken every day, because there's always someone trying to break them.
Tenten sighs.
She hates indecisive people and she's the most indecisive person she knows right now. What she wouldn't give for Hinata's confidence that staying with her team is the best move for her. For Ino's audacity in switching teams, despite knowing it would hurt her and her teammates both.
Instead, Tenten wallows.
The wind snatches the leaves out of her hands, and she watches them go, dancing through branches, until she can't tell which are 'her' leaves anymore.
Then she stands.
I'll go see Lee. Then, while I'm there, I'll see if there's a course or something on field first aid that goes deeper than what I know already. That will make my mom happy and it is good to know, even if I hate that there's a disproportionate number of women in healing. It's the safe option for a kunoichi. If I see Tsunade-sama… I won't bring up the apprenticeship unless she asks me.
Tenten doesn't think she'll be asked. Even Sakura had to ask Tsunade-sama rather than the other way around. She also won't tell her mom that she didn't ask. She's not ready to look at that decision head-on right now.
Then I'll get groceries. Go home. Help make and eat supper.
She starts heading for the hospital with the same purposeful, thoughtful stride that had carried her here in the first place.
A leaf gets caught on one of her buns and she catches it before it can slip away. She studies the veins of it. Then, without quite knowing why, slides it into her pocket.
And after supper I'll continue training. Maybe I should also drop by the Missions Desk and ask if there's any news they can tell me about Gai-sensei.
She feels better, having a plan, even if it's only a plan for the rest of the day.
And maybe, just maybe, while I go step by step, I'll figure out if I want to do anything about that thirty-four years.