Knitting Fate (Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren Part II)

Second Thread

"The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back."
― Abigail Van Buren

It only takes her five minutes to deeply regret jumping at the kid who's almost a decade younger than she is. Five minutes of her being angry and Sasuke latching onto her for dear life, and she's already cursing her stupidity and inability to control her emotions better. Five minutes, and she so desperately wishes she retained her former ability to dull her emotions and listen to reason alone.

But she can't, apparently. She either lost the ability, or has to re-learn it. Or, most likely, both.

And... Renee was never like her grandmother – and Ren is even further from that, she decides. She is a person capable of admitting her mistakes and acting to fix them, not the one to claim she did nothing wrong. So, after brief consideration, she sets Sasuke on the couch, pats him on the head, and walks back outside, into the garden. It doesn't matter whether it's a kid or not, she really should not have jumped on him like that, and is it even fair to blame Uchiha blood? No matter.

"Hey, squirt," she calls when she sees the boy, sulking by the koi pond. He flinches and looks up at her, arms around his knees. She just sighs and swallows a curse, because this is a small kid and she hates kids, but she sits beside him anyway. "I wanted to say that I'm sorry. I really shouldn't have gotten mad at you. You couldn't have known what happened."

"But evelybody knowsh," he sniffs, "I heald mama talk about it yeshtelday. That youl clan wash... Uh, what did they call it?"

"Massacred, kid," Ren sighs, rubbing her temples. Maybe it was just her, but children Renee could get in contact with were at least two times dumber than kids in this world. Konohamaru was three for crying out loud, and perfectly capable of constructing sentences that made actual sense.

"Yesh, mash... Masha- I don't know how to shay it," he admits solemnly, and she can't help a chuckle.

"You're only three, you'll learn to pronounce them soon enough."

"Yay! And... And I'm sholly, too," he says. "I should know thingsh like thish."

"Maybe you should," Ren agrees, "But I shouldn't have gotten all defensive. Now, how about we go and you say sorry to Sasuke and show us around the house then?"

"Okay!"

...ooo~(x)~ooo...  

Kakashi sighed from his place on the roof. Crisis, thankfully, seemed to diminish itself, and thank gods for that, because if it hadn't, he would have to go down and consolidate Hokage's grandson. That wasn't something he was all too eager to do, really, but then – every child was a nightmare to him.

He could even stand Tenzo and Shisui's bickering, but then, Shisui was dead, yet another casualty of Uchiha Massacre even before it happened – maybe its catalyst of a sort, and nobody was happy with the outcome. The ANBU was pretty much shaken to the ground, if he was to be honest; because Itachi was a former ANBU, and Shisui was still active one, and there were other Uchiha in it, so they lost quite a bit manpower. And morale.

"What are you thinking about so hard?" Tenzo asks, crouching on the tiles next to him. Kakashi just sighs, and shakes his head.

"Sasuke doesn't really look like Itachi at all," he settles for saying instead of any other nonsense he might've blurted out. "I hope he doesn't turn out like him."

"Yeah, me too," Tenzo agrees. "But he's got Ren, and she's unlikely to let go of him. And I've heard that Genma took interest in them."

"Genma?" Kakashi cocks his brow. "I thought he stopped taking strays after Iruka, honestly. But then, it is Genma, so I shouldn't be so surprised."