intraspective | Room 504, Monday Evening

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Room 504, Monday Evening

Paperwork was not Ino's very bestest friend ever, no.

Especially when she probably didn't know enough about the subject to fill in all the blanks. This was not stopping her from going through the pile and filling in anything she did know, mind, but it did mean she was gathering a list of questions that Ino was pretty sure the village only wanted so they could totally be insanely nosey.

Did it really matter if he had siblings, after all?

Ino was pretty sure he didn't, anyway, but that wasn't the point.

Once you'd ascertained that, oh hey, no they were not a threat to Konoha and yes were willing to swear on this, Ino was of the opinion that the rest of it was garbage.

This did not stop her from doing it, of course, but it did mean she was muttering to herself about utter idiots who needed a book written for a visitor as she steadily worked her way down the questions. Music was on, the door was half open and Ino was working on her bed.

[Open door, open post!

ETA: The phone call with Reno is chronologically last, plz. The content of the call is NFB!]

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"Zack," she corrected, eyes narrowing but not really seeing her paperwork. "And yeah. A bit."

More than a bit, if she were honest.

"Enough that you hate knowin' shit about what happens around here, an' not bein' able to let him know," Reno replied, his tone even. Thoughtful, even while the rest of him hollowed itself out and he worked on not feeling anything.

"Call it a tiny sense of empathy," she drawled.

It... was sort of empathy. Ino wasn't good at labelling it as such, though.

"You know, after hearing 'bout Genesis Clones and Angeal killin' his own mom while Zack tried to save her and how things are fuckin' up royally there, right now."

Oh. Well, shit. Zack was there, then. Genesis was in the picture, now. Angeal's mother was dead, so Banora had probably been flattened.

And, to top it all off, Zack and Ino were apparently close enough that Zack felt comfortable telling her about it.

"That's Gaia for you," Reno replied, almost dismissively. Almost. Damn it, why did the Rookies all have to make friends with him? "Fucked up. Royally."

Her eyes sparked with anger.

"And you know what happens next," she scathed.

"And even I know just a tiny bit more than he does right now. Secrets within secrets and lies within lies."

Reno grit his teeth, then, and he managed to match her scathing tone with the barest hint of a snarl of his own.

"Yeah, I know what happens next. He musta just met Tseng. The Turks got friggin' records of everything from here on in, years of 'em. An' I can't afford to tell anyone what's on any of it. Gaia can't afford it. Midgar's bad off enough now."

Ino was tempted to hang up on Reno.

Except she wasn't sure if he'd call back right away, or if he'd stop talking to her, and Ino didn't want to know which it was.

"What about Zack?" she demanded. "Can he afford it?"

No.

No Zack can't afford it. And there's no way to fix this, and Reno had tried to save him, back when it was Zack living and breathing in his own time, and all they found was the mess left behind when it was all said and done.

Mission failed.

"That don't matter," Reno replied, finally. He put a little extra growl into it, just because if he didn't, then he was likely to mumble it. And this was not a conversation that he could afford to mumble through. "You saw the ruins, Rookie. The timeline gets fucked up, you wanna know how much worse it could get? I can tell you all about Meteorfall, if you'd like. Real good time, that was."

Get angry, Reno. If you get angry, then you won't have room to feel like shit about this.

"Timeline gets fucked up, maybe it gets better from being fucked with," she snapped, getting off her bed and slamming the door to her room hard enough that it smashed back at her before she got it shut, hard enough that he might have heard it, and bolted it shut.

"Different times, different futures. Meteorfall ain't happened yet! Your city ain't in ruins yet. Your planet ain't quite so dead yet!"

"You wanna gamble my entire world on that?"

That was said with that level of 'don't fuck with me' coldness to it that Reno very, very rarely felt the need to bust out. The one he reserved for moments like hitting a button and damning millions of people to a crushing, screaming death all at once.

"On a maybe."

"Not on a maybe," Ino insisted. She was stupidly fearless, sometimes. "On foresight--on, more knowledge. You know what's happening. You I bet know the whys and hows and where it could maybe be stopped."

"Risky, yeah. I know."

Reno shut his eyes and grit his teeth and sat himself up, burying his face in his hand for a moment. Drawing in a slow, deliberate breath.

"There's only one guy out there who could'a ever stopped it, Ino. An' for him to be able to do it, shit's gotta happen the way shit happened. S'all there is to it."

Ino didn't like that answer. Ino didn't believe in that answer.

Reno, however, she generally believed.

"Why?"

Reno took a deep breath. Counted to three. Let it out niiiice and slow. Seriously, seriously toyed with the options, here. Tried to figure out how much he needed to get into before this would be good enough.

Finally, he settled on, 'detailed, but still vague.'

"Because in order to save the world, this guy's gotta believe with everything he's got that he didn't live his own life. He's gotta believe that he lived Zack's."

"Thought you didn't like games with the mind, Reno."

Snide, oh yes. And maybe a bit cruel.

A bit, yes.

"I ain't the one fuckin' with him. He's the one that comes to that conclusion alllll on his own, zoto."

And, okay, sure. Maybe the Turks facilitated Hojo getting his hands on them in the first place. But that was then. This particular Reno wasn't putting his hands into it again.

"Anyhow, the guy gets better."

"And Edge becomes all that really gets left of Midgar."

Ino's mind still shuddered away from that much destruction.

"Funny way of savin' the world, yo."

"You got a better way of stoppin' a fuckin' moon from fallin' on the planet, feel free to let me in on the secret."

Little bitter on that point? Reno? Never.

"Ain't heard much 'bout how it was stopped in the first place. Some guy's imagination don't stop the moon."

"Took some dead chick to stop it," Reno noted. "By castin' the strongest spell that's ever existed on this friggin' planet."

And she wouldn't have gotten the chance to cast it, if it wasn't for Cloud.

Fucksakes.

"Gaia stopped it."

"Dead chick turns the planet alive?" Ino queried.

Seriously: what?

"Same dead chick cured Geostigma little more'n a year ago," Reno noted. "While the guy who thought he was Zack fought off the same bastard that tried to crush us under a rock. Again."

He was not going to mention that he was buried under a highway at the time. Nope.

"I was kinda buried under a highway overpass at the time."

Damn it!

"You're like a cockroach," she noted, more focused on the other bit.

"Dead chick does a lot for someone dead."

Reno totally deserved that cockroach comment.

"She does. No friggin' wonder Tseng liked her so damn much."

And Zack. Zack was dating her, for fucksakes. But Reno wasn't going to share that part. Nope.

"She wasn't quite human, yo. Guess that makes all the difference."

Probably a good idea.

Really.

"Thought your world was mostly monster and human?" she drawled idly. "She some sort of half-breed?"

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