Swapped Patterns

First installment in Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren series

II - Acceptance

If there are still mistakes, I'm sorry, but with my USB dying I lost corrected files and don't even remember if I found them on my mail, or if this is just an AO3 version.

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."
― Ernest Hemingway

0

Genma stays a bit longer after that, and all Renee can think of is 'god bless your kind soul' in the prism of the man. He also became more relaxed, after seeing that, after her initial freakout, she took the news in… well. Very well, even. But then, it was him seeing things through his experiences and thoughts. Renee was mostly relieved that Itachi – the idiotic, however good-natured genius, still completely, absolutely moronic for believing Danzo and Obito – was out of the picture for now, and hopefully would be for the next six or so years.

She had time. And, despite herself, she is already plotting. She likes to believe that she was given this chance for a reason, and she wasn't one to let it slip through her fingers. Life taught her to grasp at every opportunity to reach her goal, otherwise regret it forever.

But right now, she finds pestering Genma much more appealing, and really, she adores the guy with every fiber of her being. He seems even cooler in real life than he did on the screen, and Renee is more than happy with that.

"I'm Shiranui Genma, by the way," the tokujo finally says when they're done discussing the massacre, and she almost bites her tongue in order to not say 'I know'. So, instead, she introduces herself, too:

"I'm Ren," is all she says, because this name both is and isn't hers. Besides, she bets that he already knows, and does it only to be polite, because Genma is one who deserves her politeness.

"Well, if that's all, I'm gonna get going," the tokujo says after a while, and Renee can't help it as her lips form into a horseshoe of a pout.

"But…" she starts. "It's so boring in here. So boring I think I'm going to die of boredom, and-"

Genma chuckles. "All right, kid, what do you want?"

Did she mention that she absolutely adores this guy?

"A book, or two, or three-" she starts, cocking her head. "But bring me something about princesses, or glitter, or girly by standards, and I will bite."

This time Genma laughs, and ruffles Renee's hair. Normally, if this were anyone else, she would have punched them already, because she absolutely hates people touching her hair. But this is Genma, and his hands are far from sweaty, and it's nice, so she decides to allow it.

"Anything specific except for not-girly?" he asks, and Renee hums silently.

"Folklore, legends, folktales," she answers. "And something to write with, perhaps? I like doodling, too."

"I can do that," the tokujo says, standing up with a smile.

"Hey, by the way, why did you come?" Renee asks before he makes his way to the window (because who can forbid a ninja to do that?), and he stops. He turns his head around slowly, and smiles at her, warm and friendly.

"Because the Hokage said that I'm the most experienced with traumatized kids, and I was free at the moment," he says. "Besides, the nurse ran straight to the Hokage's Office and requested that it had to be a ninja."

Renee snorts, and doesn't even bother to feel bad about it, or for the woman.

"Come by some other time. It gets boring, and pestering you is fun."

"If I'm free," he clicks the senbon between his teeth and smiles. Then he jumps out of the window, and Renee wonders if that's what ninja just do. And if she will also develop an unhealthy love of invading people through their windows instead of the door.

If you need to talk, he doesn't say as he vanishes, a blurred shape on the rooftops.

When she closes her eyes, she isn't sure she dreams. It's too vivid, too real, to be a dream, and yet impossible enough to be one. She is someone, she knows, and she walks, she runs, yet she can't bring herself to be happy, somehow.

She is at a party, and she knows it's for a birthday. Eleventh birthday, no less, and she knows that it can't be hers, because she doesn't remember hers, and the blurred silhouettes of people are wearing traditional Japanese clothing and-

These are memories, she realizes with a start.

These are the memories of Uchiha Ren.

She wonders why. What's the cause of her re-living the life of a girl who was dead, whose skin she was wearing now. What's the cause, what's the reason, what's the point? She isn't Ren (yet at the same time, she is), per se. She never was or will be

(She dies about a month before her twelfth birthday, a cold, silver blade impaling her like a gruesome butterfly, with wings of blood pooling beneath her.)

Realizing that, after the short nap she took, she now knows much more about this current world, her clan, and everything else, is startling. It's as if the original Ren's memories were somewhere in there and waiting for an occasion to settle in, like a medicine or illness alike.

Unsettling, like many things that happened today.

Unsettling, like many things that were bound to happen.

Worst of all, her actual memories are still perfectly intact. And whatever personality Ren's memories want to force unto her just slide off like water on glass.

(She might be wearing her skin now, but she isn't becoming her. She despises herself, but she will not be anybody else. She can't be anybody else.

It feels wrong.)

Genma is nowhere to be found – but he had been there, surely, judging by the pile of books seated on the pathetic imitation of a nightstand often found in hospitals. A stack of four, that's a good start, she thinks. All of them are either folktales or legends, and Renee feels like hugging the lungs out of the tokujo, because anything keeping her from boredom is more than welcome.

And from her dream. That one was… odd.

No, stop, she slaps herself mentally. That territory is wrong to explore.

So, instead, she just takes the first book, opens it (and doesn't find opening it backwards weird) and starts reading. She knows many kanji, she realizes, but some she also doesn't. She will have to learn, surely.

She's working her way through the last story of the first book, and chewing on what's supposed to be dinner that the wary nurse brought her, when there's a knock on her door for the second time today. She feels rather at ease, so she doesn't answer right away, stubbornly burying her nose in the book up until she reaches the end of the page. She will not bother trying to find where she ended if she can help it. And she can.

She finishes just as her visitor knocks for the second time.

"It's open!" she calls, annoyance evident in her voice. The door slides open, and Renee stops, fixing her gaze on the elderly man in red-and-white robes, and she knows it can't be good, because Yamanaka Inoichi is trailing right behind him with an awfully sweet smile on his lips-

"Hello, Ren-chan," Sarutobi Hiruzen greets her. Her eyes narrow as someone else tries to get into the room and she isn't having it. But then she sees that it's Genma, with one of his smug smiles, chewing on a senbon as always and she instantly feels her body relax.

"Do me a favor and don't use honorifics towards me, old man," she addresses Hokage, who doesn't even bother hiding his surprise at the statement. "They make me feel weird, especially those who soften the name. My mom was the only one who used to soften my name," she says, and something akin to compassion flickers across the Village Head's face.

"Apologies, I hadn't known," Hiruzen answers, and she just shrugs in answer, saying nothing as Genma sits on the bed next to her feet.

"Happens," Renee nods, crossing her arms on her chest. "So, what do you want? If to talk about what I saw, then… I saw nothing. I didn't even see Itachi, let alone the bodies, and I heard nothing. The only thing I remember is waking up here."

"Oh," is what Hokage says in answer.

"So, I neither mind nor am capable of answering questions about the massacre. To me, somebody could have been sent to assassinate only me just as well."

"It's good you're coping with it so well," Genma cuts in. "Same can't be said about Sasuke…"

Because, you idiot, Sasuke was confronted by his brother and put under the goddamn Tsukiyomi for gods know how long, Renee wants to yet cannot say. Because I'm from another world and I know it all, but it wasn't my family, my clan…

(Would I even care, had my family suffered the same fate?)

"What about Sasuke?" she asks, and finds herself surprised that she means it. She's always disliked Sasuke, more and more with each episode that featured him, and now… the thought of the tiny, eight-year-old boy whose world has just crumbled down, who has absolutely no one but his murderous, moronic brother…

No. Wait. She's an Uchiha now.

…

She is the only family left in Leaf that Sasuke has. Weird, that she hadn't realized it up until now, but it's true. Maybe not to her, but to them she's a living, breathing survivor of the massacre. Sasuke's only family.

I wonder, would he have turned into such an asshole had there been someone to actually take care of him? Of Sasuke, I mean, somebody had asked her once.

I don't know, she had answered truthfully then. To me he was always an asshole, masking his fear and loneliness with anger and distance, refusing any help.

But, right now, she isn't some random stranger that the boy could just tell to flip off.

(She hates children. She hates responsibility.)

"He's been very quiet, the last three days," Hiruzen says, and she snaps her head up to look at the man. "He doesn't speak to anyone, barely sleeps, and has to be force-fed, lest he starves. Now that I think of it, he hasn't spoken at all."

"Does he even know, that he isn't the only one left alive?" she asks, and Hiruzen hums, patting his chin.

"I don't think anyone has told him yet," Hokage answers. "Your condition was severe enough that we were waiting for you to stabilize. For the first day you weren't in the most promising condition. Even now you're at risk of a heart attack."

"Because my heart was damaged?" she asks, but she knows the answer.

Because a heart attack happens when the cells in the muscle tissue of the heart don't receive enough ATP in time, the tissue becomes paralyzed and stops pumping blood. But honestly, she doubts she would've even realized, since her chest hurts no matter what.

"That's why your earlier panic attack was such a big deal," Genma adds, clicking the senbon against his teeth. "Don't scare us like that anymore, 'kay?"

Renee just smiles and nods. Genma is a really awesome person, and she knows it well. And she really respects him, too. He was, after all, in a team with Ebisu and Guy of all people. That in itself is worthy of respect, since he didn't become either a neat freak or a youthful, overly-exuberant Beast of the Leaf.

"I'm glad to see you are well," Hiruzen says, and Renee knows that he's lying. In rough translation he means; I don't trust you with yourself and I'm most worried for your well-being, so there will always be one or two ANBU around just in case, until I deem you stable enough.

Renee feels like snapping at him for that, but… that would be more trouble than it's worth. So she just shrugs and lets it pass.

(He is right, she realizes. She doesn't feel good with herself. With wearing somebody else's skin, with living somebody else's life.

It feels wrong. Renee is a worthless person. Ren, on the other hand, had a future.)

Genma stays after the Hokage's visit, and Renee is actually grateful for that. The tokujo's company keeps at bay the dark thoughts that have a tendency to cloud her mind when she's alone and has nothing better to do. Genma, on the other hand, is funny, charismatic, patient and simply the coolest person ever.

(Maybe aside from Kisame, Orochimaru, and Kakashi, but two out of those three are completely beyond her reach, and would probably kill her on sight, and Kakashi is still in ANBU. And the chances of one of the Leaf's best being assigned as a moody Uchiha kid's babysitter are… very unlikely. Besides, she knows that, well, Kakashi hates children.)

Right now, they're in the middle of a battle of life and death.

Genma clicks the senbon against his teeth, a singular drop of sweat rolling down his cheek, as he finally says; "E-10."

"Nothing," Renee says, her smile widening noticeably, and Genma gulps. "How about…" she trails the paper with a pen. "How about J-9?"

Genma pales, and she knows that she's won.

"Sunk," the tokujo says, his voice grim, and she offers him her sweetest smile, happily crossing his ship over on her paper. That makes the fourth time she's won out of the five matches they'd played. "Don't you have any other games?" he huffs, puffing his cheeks. Renee just shrugs.

"The other games I know involve physical exercise, which is rather, um," she motions her hand to her chest, "contraindicated."

"Where did you even learns words like that?" he asks, his eyebrows raised, and Renee offers him a toothy, sheepish smile.

"I'm an Uchiha, remember? The no-longer-existing clan of perfection-freaks?" she says, crossing her hands on her chest. "The type of people who count perfection as barely passable?"

"Man, that sounds awful," Genma agrees, nodding.

"It was expected that you'd have your sharingan awakened, and preferably matured, before your eighth birthday," she says. "If you didn't, you were called an idiot and a disgrace."

"Ouch," the tokujo says, genuinely compassionate. "Now as I hear it, it was really an awful clan, wasn't it?"

"What was awful wasn't the clan," Renee corrects, "but its people. If something's awful, know it's because the people that make it up are shit."

Genma makes a face at her word choice, and she just shrugs. She was always quite a bit of a foul-mouth, after all. And by quite a bit she meant that she could just as well make a seasoned sailor jealous.

She was, after all, very quick to offend people with her attitude.

(Spoiler: She didn't care.)

"Okay…" Genma says, eyeing her, and then at the paper he's holding. "Anything else you'd like to do to spend your time?"

"I'd like to dance around like there's no tomorrow," Renee admitted truthfully. "But my pulse would rise, and I'd risk my heart not being able to keep up, so I'm waiting out the healing period."

"Oh, you like dancing?"

"Yeah," she shrugs. "I like music in general, but I can't really sing. I mean, I don't sound like a choking chicken, or anything," pause for Genma to let out small chuckle, "but I'm by no means good. I can't hit the notes properly, but my feet can, so I'm not complaining."

That gave her another matter to consider. She apparently couldn't speak, or even think, in English, having magically lost the ability to do so (and the idea of secretly taking notes in English, so popular in the fanfics she read, just died). How would her singing songs turn out? Would they even make sense in the first place?

Well, that's something to test out. Later. When there's no Genma around who she could embarrass herself in front of. She didn't care about ANBU or the nurses, let them be tormented by her falsifications in tunes.

"If I'm being honest, dancing can be useful in taijutsu," Genma says, catching her attention. "Makes your movements more fluid, more… dancing," he chuckles, making Renee snort, "haven't tried it myself, though, just seen it."

"Shame," Renee admits. "I'd like to see you dance. I'm sure you'd get the moves better than right."

"Oh you," the tokujo waves his hand before his face, and then jabs his fingers at Renee's shoulder. "You little flattering brat."

She grinned at him widely. "At your service."

She was seven, when she activated her sharingan for the first time. She was seven, when she nearly drowned trying to save a puppy that Fugaku threw into the ice-cold water of the lake.

(You're not an Inuzuka, he said to her and the other girl she found the puppy with. The other girl was too frightened, but not her. She dove right in, muscles freezing instantly, but she didn't, couldn't give up.)

She caught the dog and threw it out and onto the shore, but that was all that the coolness of the water allowed her.

Fugaku helped her out, but only because of the red, she knew. The eerie crimson swirling in her eyes, sharpening her vision. The fierce red she stared him down with, even if he was twice her height.

(You're a pathetic excuse of a man, she had told him then, and watched in satisfaction as his face twisted into rage and shock.

You're despicable, indeed.)

There's something akin to sick satisfaction in knowing that she had talked back to the head of the clan. Ren, that is.

Renee would never be able to do it.

(She might be wrong. Her grandmother was, after all, much worse than Fugaku could ever be. She refused to acknowledge it.)

She could have graduated early, maybe even as early as Itachi did. She was no match for his natural genius, but with a certain amount of work she surely could have. But… why bother? It was what Fugaku wanted. What the elders wanted. Not what she wanted.

She never asked to be born into this cursed clan. She never asked to be cursed with its bloodline. She refused to do what was expected of her.

But all she could do was write down her frustrations in her diary.

Diary. So many answers for your questions. Your identity.

Are you Ren, or are you Renee?

(There isn't always a choice, and yet, there always is.

Look underneath the underneath.)

She wakes with a start, gasping for air, as a realization hit her, hard. But a realization of what, she didn't know. It was still rather dark out, and she was gasping for air, her chest aching with notably less pain than yesterday.

Whatever medications they had her on were working miracles. But then, medicine in ninja world was wound-oriented, be it stabs, burns, cuts, and other pleasant things like that. They knew what they were supposed to do.

And, right now, she had some time to think calmly about the latest events. Honestly, she… didn't really feel bad about dying. Being reincarnated and forced to wear somebody's else's skin was far worse than death could ever be, but… was it really someone else? It was an eerie feeling, deep inside her gut, but she knew, that part of her had already accepted the fact.

Are you Ren, or are you Renee?

She closes her eyes, clenching her fists and biting her lip. She wants to scream in frustration, yell out loud to the skies.

I don't know, she wants to yell. How the hell am I supposed to know?!

(No. Wait. Stop, hold it there. Breathe in, breathe out. Remember just how much you loathe those emo-emo-desu OC characters people from your Old World created? Yeah, that type of characters.)

She takes a deep breath in order to calm herself.

"You, with the sad eyes, don't be discouraged,
Though I realize, it's hard to take courage
In a world full of people, you can lose sight of it
And the darkness inside you makes you feel so small."

She was more whispering than singing, but remembering that song itself made her feel better. Also, it didn't sound weird, although it was definitely Japanese. She was glad.

But… but what were her true colors?

(There isn't always a choice, and yet, there always is.

Look underneath the underneath.)

It's a startling realization, but she wasn't surprised in the slightest. Because deep down, she knew that she was Ren. She wants to be Ren. She is Ren.

She will live her life. She will live it with pride and with no regrets. She will be the Ren that Renee could never be. She will be herself.