Knitting Fate

Second installment in Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren series

Forty-Third Thread

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This chapter has been beta'd for you by hestia8693. Thanks a lot!

It's Christmas Break! Merry Christmas to y'all and thanks for waiting for me. If you frequent CPwUR Discord Channel, then you know that it's because University is a bitch :' D

"Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them."
― Dr. Seuss

0

Ren pounces at the deer – or elk? She doesn't know, it's a Cervid, okay – without it even noticing her. Bless chakra enabling ninja to move around on knee-deep snow like bloody Legolas, without falling in or having it even creak under their steps. She jumps at it by the tree line, and the animal doesn't even see her coming until it's too late. She jumps on its back, making the fragile cervid cave under her weigh, and knocks it out with a surge of foreign chakra right into its spine. The attack cripples the animal, the rush of energy ruining its nervous system. It'll probably die in an hour – not like Ren is going to allow it to, not really. Meat has to be drained, because bloody meat... ew. Not good for preparing due to the mess, and Ren would prefer to not to deal with blood stains on white, winter-geared outfits.

"Find me two trees to hang the deer between and dig a hole in the snow, okay?"

"Well, that was clean," Deidara comments with a nod, but otherwise doesn't really stop as he marches between the trees. He slides his backpack off his shoulders, setting it down by a fallen log, and starts digging a hole in the snow between two fairly large trees. Ren, in the meanwhile, slings the deer over her shoulder as though it weighed nothing and flashes through a few hand seals before pressing her hand to the snow. There's a telling poof of smoke, and a pale brown spider with a large, round abdomen crawls hastily up her leg.

"Reeeeeen," the spider whines, and Deidara can hear Anri scoff. "Must you summon me in this cold? You know I hate cold! Couldn't you have summoned Aki or Kyo instead?"

"Hello to you, too, Jun. I need you to help me suspend this deer between those two trees," Ren says, completely ignoring his whiny outburst. "Let's hurry, I want to drain it before it dies on its own accord."

"Oooh, you blew up its nervous system," Jun says, and, using Ren's shoulder as a springboard, jumps at a tree. "Okay then."

From there, hanging the deer between the trees and above the hole Deidara had dug in the snow is a matter of a few minutes. Spider silk, equally as sturdy, if not sturdier, than ninja wire, but much more delicate, is more than enough to have the animal hanging like laundry without fear of it snapping and falling down. Ren frees one of the scrolls from her utility belt when Jun finishes up, and with a poof of smoke, Ryuuzakura – the katana Sasuke gave her on her first birthday here – appears in her hand. With a nod towards Deidara, who moves to grab the deer by its antlers, she unsheathes the blade and cleanly cuts off the head in one fluid motion. As Deidara drags the head to the side, the fresh, warm arterial blood spurts right into the hole, steaming in the sub-zero temperature like boiling water. Soon, the white turns red and pink, as the carcass bleeds its life-force out. With it hanging upside down, gravity does all the work for them.

They wait a while to make sure all the blood is drained, and then Ren frees the carcass, slinging it over her shoulder, and helps Deidara cover the red pool with the previously moved snow. It will seep through, sure, but hopefully it's in a secluded enough location that nobody will really notice it. And with that, they turn to their original destination – the canyon-like rift in the rock.

But this hunt for the deer had unintentionally brought back Ren's memories. Memories of Back Then, that she had grown to associate with the disaster that was half of the second and whole third decade of her life. Enough for her to forget that the first decade wasn't that bad – quite enjoyable, even.

Renee Archer grew up on the Archer Farm. It was mainly a dairy farm, but they did have chickens and the occasional pig. And because of that, Ren had very set and categorized views of animals – even if they, in certain aspects, disagreed with her family's views, they were still similar. It was something she grew up with, and nothing in the world would be able to change her views.

There were pets, like cats and dogs – those dependent on the owner. Renee's family thought they needed to earn their keep as any member of the household, but she herself though that all these creatures deserved was unconditional love for the sole fact that they existed. They were pure, knew nothing but loyalty and instinct. If they killed, they killed for nourishment or safety – never hated, never questioned.

(Even – or especially – now, Ren really wouldn't bat an eye on atrocities committed by humans to other humans – unless those were her humans. But if an animal were to be abused, she would attack the abuser without a thought.)

Cows were the producers. They were kept in prime conditions, because they produced milk – second main, next to the crops, source of income of the farm. Ren didn't have much opinion on the cows, but she did like milk.

And then there was food. Pig and pork, chicken and poultry, bull and beef. She used these words interchangeably, because they meant the exact same thing to her, and racked her head on how people could keep them as pets, and even more on catcalls of animal cruelty. These animals were, after all, bred and raised only to be slaughtered, cooked, and eaten. That was all they were for – all they lived for.

Ren still remembers the time when she was Renee and seven years old and the world didn't seem to want to ruin her yet. The day her grandmother decided that their broiler chickens were ready to be picked out, killed, and processed. She watched, morbidly curious, as her grandfather cleanly chopped their heads off without missing, and how she stole chicken heads avoiding the blood from the spasming corpses, and then ran around with those heads with Killer – the pit-bull they had then – hot at her heels hoping that she would drop one for him to snatch and snack on.

She knows that those poncy city people who were never in any proximity to actual processing of their food would start yelling that she was a monster, a growing psychopath. They would scream 'animal cruelty' like pigs before slaughter, and yet they would buy eggs of chickens kept in much worse conditions, eat meat of animals kept in horrid conditions, whereas the pigs on the Archer Farm at least had the shit taken out and new hay laid down every evening.

Fucking hypocrites.

To eat meat, you need to kill an animal. Some animals were kept and fed only to be killed. And that's how life works.

The meat doesn't taste bad, really. A bit bland, maybe, but not bad, and Deidara certainly can appreciate it over the dried shinobi rations he snagged upon leaving the village – but not over the cooking Ren could get up to with proper tools and ingredients. Alas, right now all she has are shinobi weapons, a mediocre bonfire, and some salt and medicinal-but-not-quite herbs. But he can also deeply appreciate Ren's sheer savagery, a necessary quality for ninja trying to survive outside of a safe village, and her ability to utilize it without hesitation.

Deidara isn't sure if they have a proper survival test at Konoha's Academy, but he feels decidedly better in the company of someone who knows what they're doing – most of the time, at least. Or pretends to know.

Honestly, everything is possible with one Uchiha Ren. One second she is the sharpest, most disciplined shinobi ever, and the next she turns into a suicidal clown whose survival to teenage-hood was either a miracle or a mistake. He hasn't decided yet.

Probably both.

"So. How do we go for them?" Deidara asks finally from above his meal. The two of them managed to find a small, but infinitely more comfortable, cave within the ravine, and set up temporary camp in there, safe from wind and snow. Without those two, the cold seemed almost bearable. The camp is about an hour at moderate speed to the North from them, so they aren't risking discovery.

"Dunno yet," Ren shrugs from above her plate. The fact that she had actually bothered bringing real cutlery in one of the scrolls affirmed Deidara in his opinion that she's an absolutely ridiculous woman like nothing she's done so far. She is also very... eccentric, for lack of a better word. Not that Deidara is complaining at this tiny imitation of luxury in a cave in the middle of nowhere – but that doesn't make the fact any less ridiculous.

Ren sighs, looks at Deidara, and says, "I'll be sending spiders in to see what we're really dealing with, and plan accordingly for tomorrow night. How does that sound?"

Deidara hums and looks down at his eyesore of a jacket, the Iwa-red screaming 'Hey, it's me, the target, aim right here'. It wasn't much of an issue before, because when escaping the village, he had explosions to turn the attention elsewhere, and then Ren would cover him with her white cloak when he attached himself to her like a limpet. Now, however-

He looks at Ren – dressed all in grays and whites instead of the blacks and faded purples he's seen her in during exams. Even her gloves are a pale gray. Spotting her in the snow, especially from a distance, would be highly difficult for someone without any sense enhancers, such as sensory awareness or fancy eyes. Deidara, on the other hand, looks like a bullseye on the snow.

"Hey, un. You have any spare clothes?" he asks finally after a slightly awkwardly long bout of silence. "I look like a target in mine."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, you mean like mine, so you won't be an eyesore in the snow?"

"Yeah, un."

"Well, they're gonna be way too big for you-" she starts to say, only to slap herself on the forehead in a very audible way that makes Deidara wince. "Okay, no, wait, fuck, I'm dumb. Jun and his brothers can resize them in no time. Okay, sorry."

Deidara just laughs at her flailing. That's Ren, alright.

With the additional food source in the form of bland, tightly sealed, roasted venison, Ren can happily say that they are no longer as pressed with time as they were before, when they were much more limited in resources. Therefore, she has no qualms against actually setting up a proper bedroll after setting Anri out to get a proper reconnaissance. Given that Deidara is capable of making small flying birds, he had helped in depositing the spider much closer to the nuke-nin camp than they were, without having to actually go there.

Knowing that Anri would take a while to get a proper look at everything, Ren decides to just go to sleep for the night, and Deidara, after changing into a resized, grayscale uniform made for sub-zero temperatures, can't help but agree.

A full night's sleep in a cave with the entrance tightly sealed with spider webs stronger than ninja wire turns out to be exactly what she needed after her trot through the snow, to regenerate what chakra she had used up and ease the pain in her overworked muscles. It made her feel like a human being once again, instead of whatever she felt like before. She awakens once more to Deidara latched to her side like a limpet and snuggling as if his life depends on it and Anri's sharp, slim legs digging insistently into her cheek.

There are seven people in the nuke-nin encampment for sure, and five of them are in various Bingo books – therefore, they are chūnin, or above. Two of them aren't. That gives two jōnin, three chūnin and two unknowns. Ren doesn't like unknowns. Ideally, she would have the spiders take out the jōnin, and she and Deidara would take on the rest, without the unknowns turning out to be something surprising.

Realistically, she knows this won't happen. Her spiders would do their best to incapacitate whomever they can, but one of the chūnin is a poison user, and spider venom, no matter how potent, is a simple toxin – a poison component. They will have to go for the poison user first, and hope the jōnin won't kill them in the meantime it takes for the spiders to bite and their toxin to work. And that the poison user doesn't incapacitate them instead – or that the unknowns won't pull aces out of their asses.

Knowing Ren's luck, they probably will, so she just resignedly readies herself for shit to go down, and prepares for every possibility she can plan for with her current limited resources and Deidara.

Then, as the sun starts to set, and they crawl onto the surface and head for the camp, she prays for a miracle she knows won't come, and readies herself for a bloodbath.