A/N: This is based off two drabbles from A Thread of Scarlet ("Vanity" and "Prince in Love" ). There is more to come!
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Fate
Tenten is seven when her mother takes her to meet a fortune-teller. The old woman cradles Tenten's hands in her own, and tells her after she traces the lines of her palms, that she will be blessed with a kind husband. "Your heart line is very clean," the old woman informs Tenten, but Tenten is young and marriage does not concern her. She waits with wide, curious brown eyes for the woman to tell her something more relevant, but the woman drops her hands and turns to her mother for her payment.
Tenten frowns as she walks with her mother to their home. "That woman is a thief, " she tells her mother seriously, as they wait to cross a busy street, but her mother only eyes her sternly. "You are a very lucky girl, Tenten," she chides, and says nothing more.
Tenten examines her palms as she lies in bed that evening. Her heart line on each hand curves upwards to her index finger, and when she puts her palms side by side, the lines connect to make a perfect crescent moon. The lines are clean, she concedes, her small pink lips twisting into a frown, and she vows to remedy that.
Years pass and against her mother's approval, she begins to aid her father in his work in the smithy. The smithy is hot and dirty, but Tenten decides nothing feels better than the ache in her back after a long day of work. She examines her hands occasionally, and smiles in secret satisfaction as scars and callouses begin to mar the lines of her palms.
The war begins at the height of a hot, sticky summer, and her father's smithy is busier than she has ever seen it. They have important clients now, wealthy families and even nobles. There is one noble family in particular, the great Hyuga clan, which seems to have taken a keen interest in her father's work.
The clan head, Hiashi Hyuga, comes to speak with her father one morning, but pauses at the door of the smithy to watch her work, a strange smile forming on his lips. Tenten is eighteen now, and her years of work in the smithy have given her a muscled, lean figure. She has begun to attract the attention of the young men in her village, but so far, to her mother's disappointment, she has harshly rebuffed any attempts at courtship.
Hiashi Hyuga becomes a frequent visitor after that morning, and Tenten sometimes pauses in her work in hopes of overhearing a glimmer of the conversation between Hiashi and her father. The two men always speak in low tones, and occasionally, though Tenten cannot be sure, she hears the mention of her name. She asks her father about it one evening, in what she hopes is a casual manner, but her father only shakes his head and tells her that the business of men does not concern her.
She only learns of her betrothal after her father has signed an exclusive contract with the Hyuga family. Her mother is overjoyed and smirks in victory as her father calmly explains that she will be married in two month's time over dinner one night. It is for her protection, her father stresses, but Tenten storms from the kitchen and locks herself in her bedroom, angry tears sliding down her cheeks. She is surprised when her mother does not break down her bedroom door and thrash her for being disrespectful, but she suspects it is her father's doing.
She does not sleep that night.
At dawn she examines her hands and scolds herself. Foolish girl. Her heart line remains a clean crescent across her palms. It seems her work in the smithy for all these years has done nothing to interfere with the meddlesome hands of fate.
A/N: Thank you for reading and please review!
~M.I.