Knitting Fate

Second installment in Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren series

Fifty-Fifth Thread

•••

This chapter has been beta'd for you by hestia8693, who deserves sainthood for the sole fact that she didn't run away screaming yet.

I have no excuse for the lateness of this chapter except I'm a lazy loser.

Also; do NOT write me reviews that are not in English or in Polish, if only because those are only two languages I know. Someone has een periodically writing me comments in what might be Spanish, and it pisses me to no end, because I don't understand what they're writing. So stop. If you can't be bothered to write English under an English-language story you've read, and you don't know Polish, honestly- Don't write at all, because I can't understand a word and it's also simply rude.

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"Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in."
― Isaac Asimov

0

Ren isn't stupid. She can be an idiot, sure, sometimes to the point of annoying everyone around her, but under no circumstance is she stupid. She has been a ninja for four years, and before that, she was a member of a much crueler society for over thirty years. And that is why, combined with her knowledge and even before the ROOT agent's body hit the ground, she finds herself blurting:

"I can pay you twice my bounty to let me live."

The black tendrils making their way towards her stop just short of her calf. Her bounty, despite being a B-Rank, is two million ryō, boosted mainly due to her eyes. Everyone wants Uchiha eyes, and she's been good at evading or outright disposing of the various bounty hunters that came her way hoping for easy cash. Ren is an absolute menace on the battlefield, especially when properly motivated.

However, this is Jashin-damned Kakuzu, and she isn't even going to try to go against him. It might not seem like it at first glance, but Ren does not, in fact, have a death wish.

"Three times," he says, and the tendrils don't retract. Ren narrows her now-black eyes at him.

"Two and a half, max," she haggles as if she were haggling at a market for groceries rather than in the middle of nowhere for her life. "Five million is still much better than two. And I suppose I can throw in half my mission pay too, if you insist."

Kakuzu regards her for what feels like a lifetime in the face of her stuttering heart and coursing adrenaline, before something flashes in his eyes, looking oddly like approval. Ren doesn't know if it's because she has the guts to haggle with him, or to stand up to him at all, but the threads retract back into his sleeves.

Ren sags in relief, suddenly remembering that she had been stabbed, repeatedly, and also slashed- and fuck, that hurts- so she hisses out a curse and wonders just what Kakuzu must be thinking, looking at her, bleeding from her split lip and not bleeding from her stab wounds only thanks to-

Ren's mind comes to a screeching halt as she sways on her feet, anxiety filling her in place of the fading adrenaline. She really hopes her spiders are okay.

"What makes me wonder," Kakuzu starts, giving her an unimpressed once-over, and Ren isn't even offended because she realizes how she must look, "is why one of your own presumably tried to murder you."

"You saw the fight?" she asks.

"Most of it," he shrugs. "Enough. Pretty ingenious use of whatever you had on hand, though by your reaction I'd wager you were actually expecting the attack. And yet, you panicked."

"I pissed off a powerful person back home," she answers truthfully, because Danzō is powerful, and he's pissed at her. Probably more so once this gets back to him, and she shudders at the thought, because soon he might drop all pretense of subtlety, and Ren still has no idea how to confront him. "Granted, it's a person who should not, under any circumstance, be allowed to have power. Delusions of grandeur, 'our hands are the cleanest' mentality, zero accountability, shady underground organization, all that jazz."

Kakuzu blinks down at her. "And you're telling me this because...?"

"I like yapping to random powerful people? Or blood loss, who knows," she shrugs. "Shimura Danzō, ring any bells? One eye, bandages, likes pretending to be a cripple. Super shady bastard."

"Ah. Konoha's War Hawk," Kakuzu muses. "Massive bounty."

"People do hold grudges," she nods. "Not worth it though, he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve."

"Well, aren't you an information mine," he quirks an eyebrow at her, and she shrugs.

"Yeah, but if you want that info, you gotta earn it. I'm already paying you five million ryō just to not kill me so, yeah," she pats herself down, hisses when she feels her wounds under her fingers, and spits some blood out. She needs to do something about that split lip soon; the blood is dripping down her chin and onto her flak jacket in a very unattractive manner. The jacket is beyond saving anyway, with two bloodied tears in it, dirtied further with the sticky resin-like salve that Takuya-sensei put on her wounds. Ren isn't sure what it is, but she knows it's a temporary thing that will dissolve soon enough. Probably. It's most likely that wound sealant Takuya-sensei was babbling about finally finishing a few weeks back.

Thanks for using Ren as a fucking guinea pig.

"Would you mind if I summon some of my spiders?" she asks, shrugging off her torn flak jacket and resealing Sumire back into its scroll. Kakuzu doesn't answer, instead meandering to the ROOT agent's mangled corpse and thoroughly ransacking his pockets. Figures. Ren rolls her eyes, dabs her fingers in the blood seeping from her split chin – it's a really ugly cut, she knows, without even seeing it, from above the right corner of her lip down to the end of her chin – and moves through the familiar handsigns. A puff of smoke later, she finds herself with an armful of some of the deadliest spiders in existence. Takuya-sensei, slightly ruffled but otherwise seemingly okay, just looks at her judgmentally.

"So you're alive," he states, and Ren rolls her eyes, smiling anyway – or, well, more like smirking, because that seeping wound on the right side hurts.

"Are you all okay?" she asks instead, as Takuya-sensei climbs her like a tree, and then begins to apply the same temporary adhesive on her lip. She hasn't lost that much blood – a miracle in itself, given her track record – but it is still enough that she is starting to feel slightly dizzy. Or maybe it's the pain, but she is used to pain.

And isn't that a fucked-up thought. Pain is not something one should ever get used to.

Her musings are cut short when a scroll collides with her head. Ren yelps in a rather undignified manner and fumbles a bit before finally catching the damn thing and giving Kakuzu a stink eye. Takuya-sensei, once again almost hit with something, hisses angrily at the man.

"Did you know about this?" he asks simply, crossing his arms on his chest. Ren wonders idly just how he managed to find the scroll and go through it in so little time, but obediently cracks the thing open anyway, and reads it.

Then reads it again. And every kanji makes her angrier.

That ROOT bastard was not only meant to kill her, he had been instructed to broker some sort of deal with Doku Romi, a very notorious Suna nukenin with an equally telling name. Better yet, whatever barebones information Ren could get from it without looking at the attached documents further sealed in the scroll very plainly state that it would eventually negatively impact Konoha.

What the fuck is Danzō thinking?

"What the fuck," she says, as she usually does, though it's not a question. More of a complaint, really. Doku Romi is notorious enough that people like her generally talk about and try to avoid her if possible, because – from what Ren has heard, anyway – she is even better with poisons than Sasori of the Red Sand. She then looks at Kakuzu, as seriously as she can right now, bloodied, tattered, and otherwise ruffled, and says in a rather offended tone: "Let's go kill her."

Kakuzu, clearly not expecting such an answer, snorts in surprise. "In your state?"

Ren huffs, handing him back the scroll – she's rude, but not rude enough to throw it back at Jashin-damned Kakuzu, and not only because he could snap her spine like a matchstick – and realizes that he's right. Doku Romi may not be the best hand-to-hand fighter, but she doesn't have to be. Wounded and weakened like this, Ren would be a prime target for the nukenin's poisons.

"Fine," she huffs like a brat, which she admittedly is, at least now, despite mentally being over thirty. "I have my own kill to take care of anyway."

Kakuzu harrumphs at her, pocketing the scroll, and Ren rolls her eyes. She needs to dress all those wounds she got from the previous fight – being friends with Hana comes with the perk of having more than just basic first aid hammered into her head until she can recite all the steps while half-asleep, especially after the Deidara situation – and on top of that, she could use an hour or two of sleep. All that stress and adrenaline had taken a lot out of her, something she only just now realizes. And there's also another question, one that Ren isn't sure how she's supposed to really handle.

And so she does what she usually does: blurts it out without any care for decorum.

"Do you want to team up?" she starts, looking at Kakuzu, "um, since I owe you money anyway. I might not be of that much help, but I have a wide variety of summons. Poisons, genjutsu, assassinations, you name it, I'll see if I have it. And I probably will."

Kakuzu looks at her, and she's looking right back, and for a moment, they just stare. Her eyelid twitches, because all she wants now is to just sit down, go to sleep, dress her wounds, and maybe eat something. And not necessarily in that order, given that she has basically been running purely on stress for the last few days.

"Fine," Kakuzu says grumpily, and Ren sighs. He starts walking away at a moderate pace, but Ren still pounces on the ROOT agent, looting the corpse of everything Kakuzu had apparently deemed unworthy to take – weapons and some equipment scrolls, mostly – that Ren might benefit from at one point or another. Her task completed, she swiftly seals the body into a scroll and moves to follow him. She'll decide what to do with it later. Make it so it seems Doku Romi killed him, maybe dispose of the body, or send Danzō a crisp? So many choices. Except the last one, probably, because that might just provoke Danzō to attack her more openly, which, nope.

His latest attempt had almost cost her life, so thanks but no thanks, even for the higher purpose of pissing him off.

Kakuzu leads Ren and the spiders to some sort of encampment, or a remnant of one, at least. There are tents set up for more than one person, and the bloodstains are pretty telling in themselves.

Ren just plops down on a log, shedding her upper clothes until she's left with just the crop-top that she uses as a sports bra. She wants to wear her original uniform again, but it could really use a proper washing first to get at least some of the blood and gunk off, not to mention sewing in the case of her shirt. Thankfully, Ren is not stupid and always tries to be prepared – spare clothing included. Oh, the joys of storage scrolls.

"This is gonna need stitches," Ren grumbles, looking at the – for now – sealed gash on her side, and cranes her neck to try to see the one on the side of her back. There's no way she's getting to it without assistance, and spiders don't have fingers, let alone opposable thumbs. Fuck.

She looks at Kakuzu, and the man narrows his eyes at her.

"Can you help me with these?" Ren once again blurts out without any thought to manners or decorum, gesturing at the gashes. "I should have a curved needle and some thread in my pack-"

He pinches the bridge of his nose, but gets up and walks over to her. Ren blinks up at him, and wonders what could possibly be going through his head, as he sits next to her, looking critically over her wounds. Money, or something else? He could've just ignored her. Hell, he could have – and still can – kill her at any moment, and compared to him, Ren is nothing in both power and experience. He doesn't have to do anything, let alone actually help her, and yet – here he is.

Maybe he's just misunderstood? Maybe he's actually a genuinely good guy? Maybe he's just a bitter old scrooge who wants her to shut up? Who knows; Ren doesn't. What she does know is that he did once care for Hidan, in a future that hopefully won't be, in his own twisted way that wasn't entirely healthy. And that he's sacrificing his own threads right now to stitch Ren's wounds back together.

Speaking of which, she doesn't jump when she feels the semi-sentient tendrils puncture through the skin and gather it together, though she does squeak and whine, albeit quietly, for the duration of the action- procedure? However long it takes Kakuzu to put the sutures in, which admittedly isn't all that long.

He even sews the gash in her face closed, grumbling all the while, after watching her attempt to do it herself. She was not doing a very good job in his opinion, apparently.

Ren just smiles gently, with only one corner of her lip, at the man, the monster, who had once tried to murder the founder of the village she's now a part of, remembering the not-yet member of an organization that would hunt one of those she cares for in an effort to bring about the end of the world, and can't help but think just how surprisingly one's life can turn out, for as long as they're open to the possibilities.

"Thank you," she tells him when her wounds are finally taken care of, and it's a heartfelt thing, because she really is grateful. Kakuzu looks at her for a long moment, then turns and walks to the other side of the fire. He doesn't scoff.

Maybe, Ren thinks, he's just lonely.