Swapped Patterns (Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren Part I)

I - Waking

  "When you connect to the silence within you, that is when you can make sense of the disturbance going on around you." 
― Stephen Richards

The clock ticks lazily, as if slowing down out of sheer spite in order to inhumanly prolong every single second; so that people working for hours already would feel like they still have another eternity to wait. Eternity called 'quarter to the end of shift', and it was, indeed, one hell of an agonizing time to wait, when even coffee fails to soothe sensation of time flowing slower.

She brushes some unruly strands back that decided to free themselves from a messy bun, while setting a finished report on top of other finished report. The pile is big, and she only has two of them left to complete and thus, with a heavy and resigned sigh, Renee Archer decides that yes, she will stay a bit longer than she has to in order to be finally free and done with the pile of work. Her eyes – brown – are dulled, and there are dark circles under them. Her form slouched, and skin pale; signs of lifestyle indicating too much work, too little sleep and diet composed mostly of coffee and sugar.

Had somebody told her, few years ago, that being a Detective Investigator is majorly about paperwork, she wouldn't really believe them. But now, having finally achieved this rank, Renee believes with her whole heard as she, day by day, drowns in pages of reports.

She lays her head on the desk and sighs again, this time somewhat heavier and with agony to it, yet somehow relieved. Just two more reports, it won't take more than an hour. Hopefully, because it's all that stands between her and ultimate freedom that is called The Mighty Weekend. And how come she was drowning in reports in the first place? Because she solved that one particularly tricky case – one of worst, if not the worst, she ever had to uptake – of kidnapping, nearly failing, which she sometimes did in her five-years-long career, but it was awful when child could've died. In the end, he didn't, and boy's mother even bought flowers for the team. But then, case solved, and... Paperwork. Ton and ton of it. And since Renee was one who did most of it, she was also tasked with writing and revising the case. Because it was just a shitload of paperwork, nothing much.

One would really think that being Detective Investigator is interesting and has trill to it- Well, sometimes it does. And then it doesn't, for a long while, and that's something that Renee learned well throughout past five years.

Her phone vibrates somewhere around the papers, annoying buzz shaking gently the tables surface, and Renee has to un-burry it in order to see who's calling. Then, she makes face pushing the deice away and patiently waits up until it shuts up. Grandmother, the contact said before the screen went black again, and Renee is unable to make herself feel bad for not picking up. Should've never taught the old woman to use it in the first place, she wouldn't be able to pester her now. And Renee refuses to allow the old harpy to destroy her life even further, even if she claims that it's for her own good.

Renee can hardly call being a greedy, narcissist person who cares only for money and social standing a particularly good thing, unlike her grandmother and mother who kept hammering those traits into her up until she snapped and promptly left the house.

Or how being controlled by the elderly woman could be good for her?

But she moved forward, instead of being stuck in the static past of her old-fashioned, nearly fanatically religious family, and she's content with that. Already broken, caring only for money and comfort in life, just exactly as she's been raised to, but refusing to be broken further.

That, of course, is heavily frowned upon in her family; as everything else that doesn't fit the scheme from sometime around two centuries ago. Even her becoming Detective Investigator, just like her uncle, despise it being quite well-paid, was heavily frowned upon. Because it was man's job.