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Tenten | Shot Three
From then on, Tenten's life was defined by two specific things: School, for her father. Her grades and success, all for him and his approval.

And dance. That was for herself. When she was happy, she would dance. When she was sad, she would dance. When she was angry, she turned up the music as loud as the speakers would allow, and danced as hard as she possibly could. After a fight with her father, a reckless spin had sent her left arm into a bureau, breaking it in two places.

Though Chen got angry--hospital bills, Tenten! We don't have the money for this. Why are you so careless?--she couldn't find it within her to feel sorry.

She was only sorry that her injury prevented her from any serious dancing for nearly a month and a half.

High school glazed by. She graduated in the top of her class, surrounded by encouragement from her peers, her teachers, her close friends, and the rest of the world.

The only one who didn't offer encouragement was her father.

Though she slowly stopped caring, Tenten never stopped trying to win his favour. Though his words were cutting, and grew sharper over the years, more brutal and abusive as age rotted his heart, she continued to throw herself into her studies, hoping to somehow break through the wall he'd used to seal her away from him. Eventually, it even stopped hurting when she failed every time--even when she presented him a scholarship to a good college; one close to home, too.

"Baba, we won't even have to spend money on a dorm. I can walk to school. I'll get a job and help pay for the apartment, to help you along. Isn't it great?"

Chen was not a drinking man. He did not typically get drunk, or intake any large amount of substance. There was nothing that could be blamed on his ill treatment of his daughter but his own self, and for some reason, that made him resent her more. He wasn't the bad guy!

It was all Eliza's fucking fault.

She was in her Junior year of college when they had their final clash. Tenten came home after a party--it wasn't anything off of the norm, hardly unexpected, but it was different. Different because there were three streaks of red in her hair, stained with temporary dye at the insistence of one of her classmates. They were subtle against the warm brunette, but still very, very there.

When Chen saw them, he thought of her mother, and flew into a rage.

After telling her just how worthless she was, explaining to her--in detail--how much he wished that he had just given her whore of a mother the money to have her miserable existence removed from his life, he kicked her out, and told her never to come back again. Tenten was given a half hour to pack, and that was the last time she ever saw her father.

She cried for approximately two days after he abandoned her. Her friend let her crash in her dorm--it was the least she could do, once she found out Tenten's father had kicked her out because of the hair dye she had applied. When those two days were up, Tenten stopped crying, washed her reddened face, and went to dance class. She wouldn't want to miss a lesson, after all.

Thanks to her job in a fast food restaurant, Tenten was able to scrape by. She began auditioning for dancing roles in different revenue, hoping to bring in extra money. She rented an apartment--one more shoddy than her previous one--and continued going to dance lessons. Without her father to impress, her grades dropped, no longer a focus. Staying alive was more important than maintaining a 4.0. But she let them slip too far, neglected one too many essays, was just too tired from shaking her ass at a camera in the background of some half-rate musician's music video, and she ended up losing her scholarship. Without it, she couldn't afford to pay for the rest of her college.

Tenten was forced to drop out.

Dancing became her world. It kept her alive; kept the breath in her lungs and her head on her shoulders. But jobs were hard to find, and running the drive through at McDonald's was hardly a decent means of supporting herself. As money became more and more tight, she was forced to cut back on all sorts of expenses--food, clothing, heat, anything so that she wouldn't have to stop going to her dance lessons.