Knitting Fate (Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren Part II)

Sixty-Eighth Thread

In truth, she has no clue why she'd told him. It just came out, on its own. There's something about early mornings, before Ren's had her first coffee, especially if she hadn't sleep the night before, that just tones down what remains of her brain-to-mouth filter and makes her more honest than she'd usually like to be. Or, more willing to share information. Would she have ever thought the second person she'd tell about her situation would be Kurama the fucking Kyuubi no Kitsune? No. But here she is, and she doesn't regret it.

"And what do you know of the future?" he scoffs.

"Well, for example that you currently only have half your chakra, that you're sealed only because my good ole' grandpa Madara is a fucking moron and deserves to die, and that your grandmother is sealed in the moon and one of her creations is attempting to unseal it by manipulating shit from the shadows."

Kurama stiffens.

"My what?"

"Kaguya? Sage's mother? That crazy bitch who ate the chakra fruit and, well, went crazy? Ring a bell?"

Kurama looks at her with unbridled horror, and then pounces at her chest, pawing at her shoulders.

"When?!" he hisses. "How do we—You—I—"

"Relax," Ren huffs, patting his triangle head. "We still have a good decade. Besides, it's Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura who eventually beat her back into submission, and that's in the future where I died in the massacre and didn't actively push them to get stronger and more creative. It'll be fine."

He glares at her.

"You cannot just drop a bombshell like that and not elaborate!" he snarls. "I need—we need—my siblings! Ugh!"

He deflates, and moves to stand back on the counter, tail swishing furiously from side to side.

"The Akatsuki are the threat," Ren tells him. "I will bring them to the village's attention, when—when someone other than Hiruzen is in power. When they're actually big enough to be considered a threat. Okay?"

"You really don't trust the old ape, do you?" Kurama snarks.

"No, I don't," Ren sighs. "It's not like he's given me much reason to, either way. Some god he is," she scoffs. Kurama barks out a short, mean-spirited laugh. Ren throws him a piece of bacon.

"But you'll do something?" he asks, almost hopefully, once he's done scarfing down the meat. Ren nods.

It's cute, she decides, that he worries about his siblings, even if he won't actually say it out loud. A thousand years and counting, and the fox is still a stupid tsundere unable to honestly admit his feelings. Ren has never had any siblings, so she can't relate to that 'I'd die for you but if you breathe in my direction it's your corpse I'll be hiding' mindset, but it's fine. She doesn't have to. She understands familial love well enough.

At least nowadays, when she actually has people to love.

She pats Kurama on the head again, and he huffs at her in annoyance, but she sees the tail wag well enough. With that, she returns to the breakfast. She's hungry, and the kids will wake up soon.

"You still smell," Kurama complains anyway, like the little shit he is.

"Maybe you should get laid yourself, huh?"

Ren is pretty damn sure she's the first person in a very long time to make the old fox demon splutter.

000

Hana had decided to take a little random day off, Ren learns at around eight when she drops the brats off at school and is promptly hauled off by her best friend to do some long-overdue, mandatory bonding. But first, they both drink a lot of coffee strong enough to drive a lesser person into cardiac arrest.

But Hana is a sleep-deprived med-nin, and Ren's coffee habits had carried over from her past life and she's been slowly but surely rebuilding her resistance. They only vibrate a little.

"Mom wants to talk to you, later today," Hana tells her a little later. "Something about the pet project you've been working on with Shibi-sensei? Knowing you, it's probably dangerous."

"Well, yeah. If we fuck it up, I'll die," Ren says in the same tone she uses to talk about weather. Hana looks at her weird, like she had expected something like that but she's still disappointed.

"Should I even ask?"

"Maybe when we meet up with your mom. I'm not sure, you know, it's between clan heads—oh don't look at me like that, did you seriously forget I'm one too?"

Hana's silence says enough. Somehow it manages to sound like 'it's not like you act like one'.

"Fair enough. But then, you are the clan heir so maybe you're allowed to know? Huh. We're going to have to ask your mom, but trust me, it's an absolute clusterfuck."

"When isn't it with you?" Hana rolls her eyes. "But wait, aren't you leaving in like three days or something?"

"Yes. Are you proud of me? I'm removing myself from the greatest danger!"

"Yes, I'm so proud of you. What will you be doing?"

"Learning sage mode. And if I fuck up I'll either turn into stone, or lose my mind. Fun, isn't it?"

Hana cuffs her in the back of the head.

"HOW IS THAT LESS DANGEROUS YOU MORON?!"

Ren just cackles and runs off, a furious Inuzuka hot on her heels.