Tenten's fortune telling obsession was decidedly morbid.
"There," she said with some satisfaction as she flipped the last card before Neji, whose fatalistic insecurities meant that he always stayed till the end of the reading, in case tarot karma (a figment of Tenten's overactive imagination) was, despite all odds, a thing.
"The high priestess, in this context, something yet to be revealed. Neji Hyuga, you will die at thirteen," she said it so colorlessly, so seriously, that for a fraction of a heartbeat Neji's entire body stilled. Then breath returned to his iron lungs and his heart continued beating away, perhaps even more enthusiastically than usual.
"Alright, are you done?" he asked, getting up in one smooth moment. "You still owe me a training bout."
"You mean an ass whooping!" Tenten agreed excitedly, gathering her cards up with one smooth drag of her hand and depositing them in their special candy tin. Neji, a little off kilter, managed to hide a smile.
"Yes, that."
Tenten held her face in her hands, somewhere level with her knees. As Shizune and her team of medics worked to save Neji's life, all she could hear was the dull throb of sounds in her skull and a heart that pounded insistently in her temples. Lee sat on her right, Gai on her left.
Lee – it was him, he was the one hospitalized until a couple hours ago, he was the one who could end up dead if the surgery went poorly.
Tenten could barely breathe.
With Lee, there had been some time, time to numb herself from the possibilities. Lee was so full of life, even when he was injured. He would be out there in the yard, whacking away at wooden dummies as though he was going to live forever.
Neji's transfer back to Konoha had been so rushed, his injuries so sudden, that the immediacy of the matter had Tenten in a clawhold and would not let go. When he came into the hospital, he was barely breathing, appearing so peaceful that Tenten suspected he might slip into the void at any time. She hoped he wouldn't.
In a dream, she heard her own voice tell him, "Neji Hyuga, you will die at thirteen."
God, why had she told him that?
It was meant to be a joke. He hadn't even laughed.
Tenten used to lie awake at night sometimes, imagining what it would be like for her teammates to die in the line of action, one by one, leaving her with their legacy, their will of fire, to carry on into the future. She imagined that it made her some sort of unfortunate hero. Oh, Tenten, the orphan. Tenten, the only one left in her squad. She put a brave face to the world and kept her spirits up, but she had suffered so much that she won – she won at suffering.
God, what a self-involved little idiot.
She could see him now in the insides of her slightly sweaty palms, surrounded by medical personnel, wearing that peaceful expression, cultivated by years of practiced meditation. His life pulled so taut and thin, death might deign to rip through it like rice paper.
"God, I swear…" she muttered before she realized that she had spoken aloud. She sprang to her feet. Gai and Lee looked up at her, surprised.
"Neji Hyuga, I swear to God, if you die I will kill you," she yelled, fists balling up at her sides. She plopped back into her seat. Gai patted her vaguely across the shoulders. Lee drew her into a sticky hug, leaning her against him. They stayed that way until three in the morning, when Shizune emerged, sweaty and tired but smiling broadly.
"He's stabilized."
When Neji woke up, it was to the sound of cicadas, bright sunlight, and a patient, papery sound.
"Want some water? I sent Lee home to get rid of the stank, but he should be back after a quick shower. Gai-sensei got too antsy and is running a lap around the village, but he should check in around lunchtime," Tenten said, glancing up when Neji stirred.
"Water," he croaked in agreement, and Tenten helped him sit up before pouring him a glass. His hands were too weak to hold the glass up, but she didn't let go, and he took small sips under her careful supervision.
Once he was done, she leaned him back against the pillows and returned to her seat, where she was peeling a pear with a regular kitchen knife, which seemed oddly out of place in her hands. The peel was so thin Neji could see sunlight from the window through it, like a rice-paper screen door.
Noticing his gaze, Tenten dangled it up for him, an unbroken, smooth length of peel that looked crafted rather than something she would soon throw away.
"Pears are good when you're sick, but only if you can manage to stomach it. I just really needed something to do with my hands," Tenten explained.
"I'm not hungry," Neji whispered.
"Also," Tenten said, wiping her hands on a handkerchief and keeping her eyes downcast, "I was wrong."
Neji waited for her to explain, which she would do on her own time or not at all. Tenten pulled out a card and handed it to Neji, who had just enough time to notice that it was a tarot card before Lee and Gai burst through the hospital door and nearly brought the building down on him.
Only after they'd been escorted out of the hospital did Neji get to check the card. It was the high priestess. On the back was scribbled, "Neji Hyuga, you will NOT die at 13." It took Neji a couple years to guess that Lee and Gai had maybe been placed tactfully as a decoy, unbeknownst even to themselves. Whatever the case, Tenten's fascination with everything morbid and macabre lost a bit of its edge, although her interest in the supernatural never quite did.