The person shifts to second, here, but the tense remains in the past. This one is from Hana's perspective, once again headcanons of mine.

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

Four years old, with your back to the door; all you could hear, was the family war.

You had woken up to the sound of glass shattering. It was nothing new, but it still made your heart beat quicker and tears prick your eyes every time. On the heels of the sound, muffled voices drifted to your ears. Mom and Dad were fighting, again. Doing your best to be quiet, you crawled out of bed. The floor was cold on your little bare feet, and moonlight spilled from your window, bathing everything a silvery grey blue. If you hadn't been about to cry, you might have thought it was pretty. Somehow, you made it to your door without making a sound; either that, or your parents were too busy screaming at each other to hear you. Well, certainly that was the case for your mother. But your father wasn't Clan, wasn't Pack, so he didn't have the senses that you all did. Either way, you opened the door just a tiny crack, glad that the hinges didn't squeak. Voices flooded into your room, raw and angry. Now you could hear some of the things they were saying, and you wished you couldn't.

"Hana is a child, Tsume! Let her be one, and wait two years for her to start training, like every other shinobi!"

Dad didn't understand, but he wasn't Clan, wasn't Pack – how could he?

"Hana may be a child, but she is my child! She is Pack, and she will be Alpha one day. I need to start training her now! She must be ready to lead the Clan!"

"Oh, here we go again! 'Pack, this,' and 'Clan, that!' You know why the noble Clans look down on you?! Because you're a bunch of wild animals!"

He would never understand, and you should have accepted that by now. You start your training the next day, and Dad starts taking longer and longer missions. You reason to yourself that this is normal. He's a highly skilled jounin, even if he isn't Clan or Pack, and thus is sought after by the Village to perform important missions. It makes sense. It's fine. He isn't doing everything he can to be away from you and your mother. It's just part of his job as a shinobi, and part of what your job will be some day. Dad still loves you and Mom, he does. It shows when he brings back little gifts for you from his missions. It shows when he and Mom don't fight at night. He still loves you both – he does. He has to. Time passes, as it so inevitably does, moving relentlessly forward. Soon, it has been almost a year since that fight you heard. Either your parents are fighting less, or doing it in places you can't overhear. Whichever it is, you're glad. It keeps the illusion together a bit longer.

You're five, freshly turned among the blooming sakura trees, when you receive your Clan tattoos. You receive your three ninken partners on the same day. The three Haimaru brothers will be your constant companions from this day forward, learning with you, growing with you, training with you, living with you. It is a day you've been waiting for since you could remember, watching older cousins receive their ninken partners and tattoos as you grew with ever more excitement and anticipation. (You don't learn until much later that being given three partners isn't necessarily a regular thing. As you grow, you're meant to choose only one to battle with you. You refuse this notion as soon as you learn of it; they are like your limbs, integral parts of your body. You will never choose one over the others.) Before the ceremonial tattooing begins, you look around for your father. The tears from when you don't find him are easily brushed off as pain you couldn't suppress. Either way, you don't cry out.

More than a year and a half later, your younger brother, Kiba, is born. More accurately, your best friend is born. Or, so your mother tells you, when you are allowed to hold the little one for the first time. It takes you a while to warm up to this fact, to be perfectly honest. All Kiba does is cry, eat, and sleep for the first few months of his life. You begin to wonder how in the world such a tiny, noisy, messy thing is ever meant to become your best friend. All in all, you have a very hard time visualizing such a thing, but even at six and a half, you've learned to keep some things to yourself. It's November by the time you see your father again, a full year since he was last home. Your happiness wilts quickly, however, almost as soon as he arrives home. Apparently, he can't believe that Kiba is his, even though Kiba looks like him. Your parents start fighting, and your brother wakes up, beginning to cry. You leave – they're too busy to notice – and go to comfort your brother. He smiles at you when you pick him up, and you start to see what your mother meant.

The spring you turned six, you had started attending the Academy. Your class isn't very large, though you've been told that it never is. But it's the people you attend classes with that catch your interest. Two Uchiha, an Akimichi, and various other children from the other Clans. And yet, all of them are treated as anything more or less than the others. Of course, the more skilled are more praised than those less so, but not simply by their blood or their names. You find friends among your classmates, but none end up as close as your little brother. Itachi Uchiha is admired and idolized, and you can understand it based on his skills. But the other girls confuse you, when they fawn over him based on his looks, rather than based on his skills. The kunoichi classes bore you, flower arrangement and using your "feminine wiles" never seeming that important to you. And yet, you keep at it, knowing that good marks all around will help you in the future.

In the end, it pays off. Your intense chakra control and voracious desire for knowledge get you noticed. You aren't like most genin, that much is true. You've spent three years dealing with your father being gone, your mother being busier than ever, and your brother being almost entirely reliant on you. Unlike most genin, you don't mind it. It keeps you from thinking too much, as odd and counter-intuitive as that may seem. It keeps you from wondering if your father left because of you. It keeps you from imagining how your brother will grow up with you as his closest role model. It keeps you from dwelling on something that you know with almost sick surety makes you different from all the other kunoichi your age. It makes you throw yourself into medicine when the prospect is presented to you, originally as the medic for your team, and later as a veterinary medic. You don't mind veering off of the traditional shinobi path, so long as it keeps you from thinking too much.

A fourteen, you participate in the Chuunin Exams. You don't know how you manage to pass, but somehow you do. You don't know why other Villages consider yours soft, since only a few passed the exams and most were Konoha nin. But it doesn't matter either way. Following the exams, you veer off from the traditional path completely, devoting almost all of your time and skill to veterinary medicine. The Clan begins to respect your skills, even though they didn't initially understand. Whatever happens, you are Pack, the next Alpha, and they will stand behind you no matter what you choose. Knowing this just makes you feel sick, even if it is supposed to fill you with warmth and love. How would they react, if they knew the truth? Would they turn their backs on you? Would they cast you out? Are you simply worrying for nothing? You say nothing, and so you receive no answers. You wonder if your ninken can smell the coward on you, leaking out from your pores.

Time still relentlessly marches on. You continue to grow in knowledge and skill, and so does Kiba. He really is your best friend. Your graduating class is in shambles; everyone you knew is either dead or in the higher ranks by now. You never really had friends, at least not after you all became genin and you all went your separate ways. The Academy may not have judged based on blood and Clan ties, but the Village certainly does, and you find it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. You understand that each shinobi has his or her special skill set, and that maybe all of this is just in your head, paranoia fueling tiny little scraps of information that would otherwise not bother you at all. You are nineteen, when you decide that if you continue to hide any longer, you will go mad from the strain. You take a patrol with your mother late at night, an unusual thing for you to do, and steel yourself to tell her. The truth has been driving you out of your mind, and you refuse to be driven to something drastic because of it.

Tsume just laughs – comforting, not condescending – and tells you she already knew.

A weight lifted from you, you slowly tell the Pack, and you marvel at not feeling like a coward.