Knitting Fate (Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren Part II)

Forty-Sixth Thread

"Lies and secrets, Tessa, they are like a cancer in the soul. They eat away what is good and leave only destruction behind."
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

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The aftermath of poisoning is never fun, that much is obvious. Therefore, when Ren wakes up in the wee hours of the morning, after what can be classified as a nap and not really sleep, she feels like death warmed over. Repeatedly. Rather obviously, it's not a nice feeling at the very least. It's mostly due to the paralyzer that is slowly wearing off, but it still leaves a disgusting aftertaste in Ren's mouth, and an unpleasant tingling in her muscles. Well, at least she can breathe now.

"Will you be able to walk before nightfall, or do we need to stay here for another day, un?" Deidara asks in the morning, as he rummages through Ren's pack, which he retrieved at some point, to get to the scroll containing the venison. He was out for roughly the same time as Ren did, but he slept infinitely better and it shows. He looks almost fresh and well-rested, where Ren is grumpier than usual, completely disheveled with bleary eyes and bigger eyebags than she's ever had.

"No," she answers honestly, dragging her still mostly paralyzed, injured leg closer to her, so that she can finally rip the herbal paste intermixed with blood out of the gash. The antidote, while preventing any kind of infection, did impede healing instead of boost it, leaving Ren with a raw, untended wound. "Spiders don't really have medics, so we're on our own."

"What do you mean, un?" Deidara asks, nibbling on some meat he'd taken out of the seal.

"I mean they don't have spiders that specialize in healing. They're very offensive summons, basically all hit-and-run unless they have really hard chitin," she explains, finding a scroll with medical equipment in her pack and removing the contents. She grabs the high-grade herbal-infused liquid that Hana had forced onto her and flushes the wound with it, wincing at the biting pain. "But their assassins are very well-versed in anatomy, both in and out and can operate in a pinch, and their poison-makers know their herbs enough to make medicinal concoctions."

"Oh, that's pretty neat, un," the blond answers, wiping his hands on one of the discarded pieces of clothes of the tent's former resident, and hands Ren a medical, curved needle that he threaded.

"What I wouldn't give for an industrial stapler right now," she grumbles, forcing the edges of the wound together and beginning the painstaking process of stitching it closed. Thankfully, her leg is still paralyzed and therefore she hardly feels a thing, but she wouldn't have been able to do it if it weren't. "Bloody Jashin, put some metal staples, wrap it up, and call it a day. But no, got to play at a fucking seamstress, yeah? Bloody fucking asshole had to go and stab me."

"Less bitching, more stitching, un."

"You little smartass, you could help."

"Nope. You got yourself into this mess, you deal with the consequences," Deidara shrugs. "I already packed the bodies. I mean, heads... You only had two body scrolls, and you can only cram two bodies into one scroll. More just won't fit, un."

"So you improvised," Ren hisses without looking up from where she viciously stabs the edges of her gash with the curved needle.

"Yeah, un. The jōnin were both wanted whole, so I crammed them in. We'll cash them in at some bounty point. The others were just wanted dead, so I cut off their heads and crammed them into the other scroll, un. I wanted to burn what's left of the bodies but, meh, you're way better at that so I'm just waiting for you, un."

Ren briefly looks up. "And that ice-release woman?"

"Set to be burned whole, head and all. Nobody needs to know she existed, un," Deidara says, and then shivers. "God knows what would happen if somebody got a whiff of someone with her abilities. Bad thing, un. Bad things. Bloodline limits are as much of a blessing as they are a curse."