Knitting Fate

Second installment in Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren series

Thirty-Sixth Thread

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This chapter has been beta'd for you by hestia8693.

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"Being brave means to know something is scary, difficult, and dangerous, and doing it anyway, because the possibility of winning the fight is worth the chance of losing it."
― Emilie Autumn

0

After telling Cobalt for what feels like the hundredth time that no, she may not eat the cat and no, she may not hunt it either, Ren scoops up the pathetic feline resignedly, casting a longing glance at the door of her apartment complex. She hates her life, to be honest, and even more than that, she hates how squishy and warm her insides can get upon seeing a small, lost, fluffy creature in need of help. She also hates her inability to turn away. It has happened before, obviously.

With Sasuke. And partly with Hana. And everyone else, pretty much.

"The Inuzuka compound is on the other side of the village," she bemoans, "and my apartment door is right there-!"

Life hates her. The mangy cat, cradled next to Cobalt, meows at her sympathetically. It's friendly, although probably has not seen human care for a long, long time. Maybe a runaway? Or, worse, thrown out? The cat seems young, not even fully grown yet. Can't be older than few months.

Ren hates people.

"Are we going home?" Cobalt asks, staring at her with those wide, black, beady eyes, and Ren sighs.

"Change of plans," she huffs, and she would scratch her neck, but she's run out of free hands. God damnit.

"What plans?" a familiar, amused voice asks from above her and Ren sighs long-sufferingly, craning her neck to look at Genma, sitting on the windowsill of his open window. He's smiling.

"I literally just picked up a cat," Ren groans, "so instead of going home, I'm going to the Inuzuka compound. Half a fucking village from here. Whereas here is right in front of my fucking doorstep."

Genma laughs, for once not gnawing on a senbon, and lets himself drop down without a sound right next to her. Ren sigh once again, glancing at him tiredly.

"Hi!" Cobalt chirps, raising one of her legs in greeting, and shaking it. "Are you a ninja, too?"

Genma laughs, scratching the back of his neck, "I guess I am."

"Cool!" Cobalt chirps again, and Genma looks at Ren, bemused. The girl only shrugs in response, and unstraps the giant summoning scroll she's been carrying all day long, setting it on the ground with one hand, somehow managing to hold both cat and spider with the other.

"Be a dear and put this in my living room? Also make sure Naruto and Sasuke do their homework," Ren sighs with a smile, and Genma chuckles.

"Sure," he agrees. "I'll tell them you're apparently getting a cat."

"Oh, shut up, you."

"Reeeen-"

"You still can't eat it, Cobalt."

"Aaaw."

She's darting through one of in-village miniature forest when she literally stumbles upon it and curses vehemently.

To save time, she'd decided to take the fastest route from her apartment to the Inuzuka compound. It takes her right by the Aburame Clan grounds, through the little forest they tend to use as a training field for their members to learn how to use their clan abilities proficiently. Where they can't creep civilians out.

She is drawn by the sounds of fighting. It's faint, but fighting nonetheless. It might very well just be someone training, and if it is, she'll just be on her way but… Ren prefers to be cautious and investigate. Or she's simply a fan of poking her nose into other's businesses. That might be the case, too, really, and there's no such thing as too precautious or too safe. It's never killed anybody, and has saved a great many lives.

In the end, she's glad that she chose to investigate, despite her armful of spider and cat and her nearly overwhelming wish to just be done with it and go home.

It's ANBU, except it's not, and Ren takes a deep, shaky breath. Their masks are wrong, distinctly shaped but otherwise undecorated, unlike every other ANBU mask she's seen that's painted, and their outfits are all wrong. It makes Ren grit her teeth. They're ROOT.

And they're trying to take Torune, who's currently covering Shino with his own body, his special deadly kikaichu buzzing around angrily. Shino is limp on the ground, and Ren curses as she sets Cobalt down on the branch before pressing her backpack against the trunk. By all means it's a stupid idea – a suicidal idea. But it's Torune and Shino, and they're hers. And she's not letting fucking Danzō have what's hers, even if it means she will go down trying.

"Keep an eye on my pack and the cat," she all but growls, and propels herself off the branch, leaving it shaking. There are three ROOT members, and a fourth is on the ground, twitching but otherwise immobile. Torune might be young and still in the Academy, but never underestimate an Aburame.

Ren pounces on the ROOT member closest to her, somehow managing to surprise the woman with a kick to her side that sends her flying. Ren doesn't stop, rebounding from the impact and Sharingan spinning wildly as she hurls a barrage of kunai at the other two and lands next to Torune. His lethal bugs welcome her eagerly and almost affectionately, circling around her arms and legs even before the boy himself registers that it's her.

"Care to explain why you are attacking two Aburame clan heirs?" Ren growls, red eyes all but glowing in the rapidly darkening atmosphere. The sun is down, and it will be night in a matter of moments. "You know it's an act of treason against the village, don't you?" She cocks her eyebrow, and the ROOT agents, surprised by her appearance, don't attack for a second, even if the woman Ren kicked comes back.

"We work on behalf of the village," comes the emotionless, predictable reply, and Ren snorts.

"If by that you mean endangering children and clan heirs, which, let me stress, is an act of treason, then sure, mister traitor in a blank mask," she snorts. "Look, I don't know what your business is-" lie, a blatant lie, "-but would you kindly leave Shino and Torune here before things escalate and you cause some sort of civil war?"

"This matter does not concern you, Uchiha Ren," the other ROOT agent says, and Ren makes a show of morphing her expression into that of shock as she reaches into her kunai pouch, grabbing a flare instead of a kunai.

"You know my name?" she asks, sounding surprised. "Wow, that's super creepy," she hisses in disgust and, as fast as she can force her muscles to move, raises her hand and sets off a slightly overpowered red flare. Standard emergency signal: 'immediate danger, send help'. The ROOT agents visibly tense even more. Ren sincerely hopes that they would just scatter and stop bothering them, but she knows it's a vain prayer. If Danzō sent them for an Aburame, an Aburame they will get, unless there's absolutely no way.

It's bad, but not tragic. They only need to hold off for the minute or two it will take for ANBU to come and investigate. Nobody, after all, fires red flares inside the village without good reason. What reason might be better than an organization that should have been disbanded years ago and is currently committing treason?

Ren manages to evade a lethal injury from the next attack only because her guard and Sharingan are on the highest alert she can possibly muster. Her attacker's tantō grazes her left shoulder as the woman she kicked goes for her.

A mistake on her part, because Torune's bugs are suddenly there, and the woman grunts in pain, propelling herself back. Her right hand is limp and blackened and dead, and Ren can't help but feel a sense of satisfaction. The other two would probably have attacked as well, but Torune's bugs flare anew. Ren knows that Torune has run out of chakra to feed them, so she flares her own, and they latch onto her, feeding and buzzing anew.

Had she not found them, Torune would've collapsed from exhaustion and have been taken. He or Shino. But Ren has made it her purpose to change the plot of Naruto, and she likes Torune as not a ROOT agent. It was honestly a godsend that she stumbled upon the fight. Danzō hates her, anyway – she was supposed to be eliminated, after all, during the massacre.

But she knows too many people who would become much too annoying if she suddenly disappears or winds up dead. If Danzō wants to remain in the shadows, he has to leave Ren alone, or try to sabotage her missions. Ren knows that on any mission that she is sent on with ninja she doesn't know, she would have to have her guard up in order to not end up with a kunai in her spine or gut, guided by the hand of her 'fellow Konoha' shinobi, but those are the dangers she signed up for when she chose this path.

It doesn't mean she would leave him alone. It's about damn time she introduces her foolproof plan of leeching information off him. With her method she can't reliably share it with anyone as it wouldn't generate any kind of hard proof, but seeing as she's here with Torune only because of dumb luck and a cat, she really needs to know what is going on in the meddler's secret office, and be a step ahead. Or two. Or three.

There is a nice colony of Jorō spiders not so far away from where she lives that she would recruit for help with that. They are absolutely adorable sweethearts, and exceptionally common for the climate. They are also very talkative when bribed with food.

(Ren does not need to know what kind and how many ladies the owner of the pawn shop a few blocks down invites home every night. She also does not need to know the details of what he does with said ladies, but that one spider nesting on the man's windowsill just wouldn't shut up-)

One of the ROOT agents appears behind them, only to be intercepted by the revitalized bugs. Ren makes use of his moment of distraction to hurl shuriken at him, embedding them deep into his right leg. She wishes that reinforcements would hurry the fuck up, thank you very much.

"Stand down or we will eliminate you," the currently only unharmed agent says, and Ren snarls at him, Mangekyō Sharingan flaring to life of its own accord. She can feel a prickling in her right eye, this weird sensation her bloody eye is sending her, the 'want' for chakra, and frankly, if it could, her eye would be making grabby hands for her tenketsu. There's something akin to an electrical current coursing through her chakra coils. But so many weird things have happened today, so Ren just complies, pushing chakra into the eye, and it soaks in it, bubbling power and-

Oh.

Ren blinks, takes a deep breath, and-

"Takemikazuchi!" she hollers, and there's a sharp stab of pain in her right eye as she forces the chakra through it for a jutsu that isn't a jutsu, and there's a warm, slick wetness on her right cheek now, but that doesn't matter at all, because-

Because the woman, who decides to charge at them again, is suddenly struck by a white-black lightning with the sound of a thousand chirping birds.

Ren collapses, gasping for breath, and hopes, begs for a miracle, because this, at her current level, is the very last trump card, her own Mangekyō ability she didn't know she had unless she was forced to use as the absolute last, life-saving resort-

The two surviving ROOT agents promptly disappear as real ANBU shunshin onto the scene, and Ren can't help but feel relief at the sight of an untamed mop of white hair and dog-stylized mask. Torune collapses next to her, on all fours and panting, his kikaichu retreating back into his body.

"What happened here," one of the ANBU asks in a somewhat awed tone, staring at the steaming, charred lump that was a ROOT kunoichi just moments ago. It's still twitching, somehow. The other agent, the one Torune's bugs got before Ren got there, is a mutilated black mass, flesh instantly rotted due the venom. It-it stinks, now that Ren has the time to actually care about things like that.

She groans, moving from her knees to sit on the ground, and looks at Kakashi. Her entire body feels like jelly and tomorrow will be a bitch. Also, Hana will probably kill her for getting chakra exhaustion. Again. Inside the bloody village.

"I was going to the Inuzuka compound," she says, and she knows she sounds something between drunk and half-asleep, when it becomes apparent that Torune is too busy trying to breathe properly. "I found a cat and wanted it looked over, you know. And I stumbled upon signs of a fight, and- Well, there were those three people in blank white masks against Torune. Or four, but one was already dead. No idea what they might've wanted, aside from ruining what the village stands for," Ren lies again, because she knows exactly what – or who – they were there for.

Kakashi reaches down for the mask of the rotten man, because the kunoichi is just a pit of ash and steaming charred tissue now, and yanks it off, turning it around in his hands. He moves to say something, but suddenly the bushes nearby rustle, causing everyone to tense. A second later Cobalt crawls from between the leaves, Ren's backpack on her back visibly straining the tiny-gigantic spider, and the mangled cat on top of the backpack, only barely managing to balance itself.

"Don't leave me like that again," Cobalt whines, crawling to Ren like a lost puppy, and she sighs, picks up the cat, unwrapping the pack, and picks up the spider, too.

"Sorry," she sighs, and looks tiredly at Kakashi. He sighs, but doesn't try to object what he knows is coming. "Hey, Kacchan, can you get us to the Inuzuka compound and then back home? I had to feed Torune's bugs with my chakra, and that, whatever I did with that lightning, drained me. I mean, you're my couch potato, so work for your keep. Also, I don't think I can stand up, let alone go anywhere. I don't think I have much chakra left, if any at all. Hana is going to kill me, isn't she?"

"We need to know what happened here," ANBU in the mask of a grinning cat says sternly, and Ren groans, promptly flipping him off. He makes an offended noise.

"I just fucking told you what happened, and if you want a fucking written report then you have to fucking wait until I can fucking hold a pen, let alone write with it!" she snaps, tired and angry and totally not looking forward to being dumped on Hana's doorstep in a state that will prompt her friend to rant about her idiotic semi-suicidal best friend, again.

Shibi chooses this moment to jump into the clearing, uncharacteristically disheveled for the normally unflappable Aburame Clan head and sensei she knows. He takes one frantic look around, and is suddenly over by Shino and Torune and Ren can swear he bloody teleported because there is no other way in hell that was even a shunshin. He scoops both boys into his lap, hugging them tightly, and sighs, turning his head to look at Ren. She must paint a rather weird picture, pale and barely even awake, sitting on the grass not far away from a charred corpse, a cat and a giant spider in her arms, a backpack leaning on her leg, and Kakashi, in full ANBU attire, crouching by her.

"What did you do this time?" Shibi asks in a tone that Ren is personally well acquainted with and has come to call it 'what is my life' that Shibi tends to use when she does something dumb. She sighs heavily, weighing whether she has enough energy at the moment to say anything, and doubles over, her shoulder and head finding support on Kakashi's armored side.

"Killed some hobo in a white mask who was, I'm pretty sure, trying to kidnap the midgets," she says slowly and tiredly, and Shibi's arms tighten around the two boys. Shino's head rolls bonelessly over to rest on his father's shoulder, and Torune doesn't look particularly conscious anymore, either. "Oh, I also used my Mangekyō for real for the first time!" she says a bit more animatedly, and then grimaces. "Which also drained me of chakra. I'm getting used to chakra exhaustion, I think. Hana is so going to kill me."

"I doubt she will," Shibi says with a spark of amusement.

"Yeah, not really, but she will yell at me," she grumbles unhappily. "All I wanted was to give them the cat to look over."

"A cat?" Shibi asks, standing up and balancing the two children in his arms with grace only a shinobi could possibly muster. He doesn't seem to be bothered in the slightest with the ANBU examining the half-rotten corpse next to him. He seems to be rather acquainted with the rather specific brand of toxin Torune's bugs carry.

"Found a stray when I was coming home, there was a cat in the alley and I'm too soft to leave it there to die," Ren huffs, blushing faintly. "I gave Genma the summoning scroll to take home and headed straight for the Inuzuka compound. This place just so happens to be on the way. Jashin knows what would have happened if I hadn't gone."

Shibi smiles, even if his high-collared coat obscures the view, and somehow manages to pat Ren on the head.

"Come to the compound when you're feeling better, if you would?" he says, and Ren cocks her eyebrow, but nods nonetheless, and cranes her neck to look at Kakashi.

"Kacchan, can we go yet? I want to drop the cat off at the vet clinic and then sleep off this bloody exhaustion. I won't stay awake and coherent much longer anyway," she mumbles and, as if to back up her words, yawns loudly at the end. Kakashi sighs long-sufferingly, but scoops her up nevertheless, mumbling about ungrateful brats under his breath. And if Ren asks Cobalt to slap him, well.

If she wasn't half-asleep by the time they reach the Inuzuka compound, Ren is sure she would be getting an earful from Hana, because the girl is absolutely furious. As it is, Ren only shoves the mangled cat at her friend and nearly topples over, only to be caught by Tsume's ninken, Kuromaru, who catches her collar between his teeth and drags her back upwards, supporting her suddenly heavy body with his own.

"I'll tell you everything tomorrow, if I'm coherent enough," Ren sighs, fighting to keep her eyes open, and Hana rolls her eyes. "You can yell at me then, too."

"You're a bloody idiot, you know that?" Hana growls, smacking Ren's head, but Ren is too tired to react, or keep her head from falling onto her chest, before slowly raising it back up again. Tsume barks in laughter, and turns to Kakashi.

"Thanks, Hound. I'll take the brat home," she says, and Kakashi nods before disappearing. Ren honestly loves the Inuzuka matriarch. She may or may not be biased because she bit into Danzō like a rabid dog, but who cares.

Also, Kuromaru's fur is very soft, and he himself is the size of a small horse, which makes him very rideable.

So, yes. Ren rides a dog home. Cobalt seems to enjoy the ordeal a lot, if her happy clicks and squeals are any indication, but Ren is too out of it to do more than lean against Tsume's chest and try not to fall asleep. When the Inuzuka matriarch leaves her at the door of her apartment, she realizes she looks like a zombie, because once she enters, Sasuke and Naruto take one look at her and just remain silent, while Genma gives her The Look™.

Ren would very much like him to decide whether he wants to be her friend, older sibling figure, or parent figure, please and thank you.

Ren has no idea how she manages to change into her tank top and loose sweatpants that are her pajamas. She doesn't even know when exactly her body falls over onto the soft mattress of her bed – she doesn't care, she's already managed to stay conscious way beyond her limit. Somewhere between awareness and consciousness she registers two shapes lighter than her climbing up into the bed and laying at either side of her, but they're so warm, and there's something soft and purring right by her head, so she just slips away and allows the land of dreams to finally claim her for the night.