intraspective | A Secluded Area of the Preserve, Wednesday Evening

"'Cause you'd lose it and then you'd reek," she said impishly while catching the tea and thermos.

She studied the choices the box gave her.

"Didn't know you were a fan of white teas."

Reno squinted at the box, and then looked at Ino and shrugged, helplessly.

"Too many damn colors for that kinda crap," he decided. "I wouldn't know if it's white or green or black or... friggin... purple with orange spots or whatever, if it bit me on the ass."

A pause.

"I think I'd be pretty sure it wasn't actually tea, if it was bitin' my ass, though."

"But they taste really different," Ino protested, picking a tea at random to add the bags to the thermos. "Green's the best, of course."

That was what happened when it was very nearly the only sort of tea you had around growing up. A hundred million varieties of green tea.

"So, I'll get it green next time," Reno replied easily. "You gonna drink it, or ain't you?"

He really didn't care one way or the other. He'd just promised tea, and so tea he'd brought.

"'Course I'll drink it," she said, wrinkling her nose at him.

He'd bought it for her, after all. Which made her smile.

"I'll even share with you," Ino added.

Reno snorted a little, and shrugged.

"I ain't all that big on tea myself, since takin' Biff's class for-friggin'-ever ago and endin' up blue because of it," he noted. "But sure, if you ain't gonna paralyse me and paint my face, I'll share your tea, yo."

See, he trusted his Rookie!

"So, how you doin'?"

It was funny how a question could change her demeanour so quickly. A relatively simple question, really, but one that she'd been kinda dreading from him.

"Oh, you know how it goes, this and that and smile 'till the world ends."

"Funny thing," Reno offered, carefully. "You see the world almost end enough times, you start to realize that smilin' don't make a hell of a lot of difference."

He shrugged, and then flopped backward to take a seat on the forest floor, patting the ground beside him.

"Talk to me, Rookie."

She flopped, in an almost boneless manner to sprawl out beside him.

"Don't tell me that," she said, sounding tired. "Smilin' makes less fuss. And Zack hovers enough already."

She loved him, but he did fuss.

... So did Reno, yes.

Reno did, but it was a very different sort of fussing than Zack's. Thank the Gods.

"Okay, I won't tell you that," he sighed, pursing his lips faintly. "I smile anyhow."

His smiles were a lazy, more bitchy sort, sure, but they technically counted.

Ino sipped at the tea and winced. Still a bit too hot, but it was something to do.

"If it weren't for Zack," she said finally. "I probably would get maybe an hour or two of sleep a night right now."

But Zack's presence kept her safe from the monsters in her head.

Oh, Reno knew that state of mind all too well.

"Good thing you have him, then." It was a simple statement, one that he'd scream at himself in a mirror about later, he was sure, but for the time being it was true, and he wasn't going to let so much as a flinch get in the way of him stating it, pure and true. "You got... anything else?"

Tactful, Reno.

Ino studied the thermos, rotating it in her hands.

"What do you think?" she asked quietly. "Who'd I go to first? Before Zack, even."

There'd been a reason for that.

Reno quirked a shadow of a smile, at that.

That was what he'd figured.

"You been keepin' up on your training, Rookie?"

She lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

"Better some days than others," Ino admitted, grateful for the chance to move to other grounds. "Some days it's... more complicated than others."

Some days, she just wanted to cry when she went to train and found her thoughts drifting to old training sessions, once upon a time.

That earned another small nod, then. Reno could only imagine.

"Need someone to kick your ass in a few training sessions sometime?"

"I'd like that," she said, shooting him a tiny smile. "Even if you just want to see how strong I've gotten."

She was teasing, really. She knew it was more than that. And if Reno didn't move, he was going to have a Rookie drooping to the side to lean against him.

"Reno?"

Hey, Reno wasn't going anywhere. If his lot in life was to play shoulder support for downtrodden Rookies, he'd he the world's best leaning post. Ever.

"Yeah?"

Ino was silent for a long long moment, then, in a tiny voice:

"What do you think of people who betray their team?"

"Betray 'em?" Reno shifted his weight just enough to look down at her, an eyebrow twitched upward. "That's a loaded question, zoto. Depends on what they did an' why."

She wasn't going to look at him, no.

"Sensei died," Ino said, because that was the starting place. "And they wanted revenge. I... wanted them alive more than I wanted revenge."

Was that wrong of her? That she'd rather focus on the living, even if the want for revenge burned in her mind at the same time?

Reno opened his mouth a little, about to speak. And then he thought better of whatever mishmash of syllables was about to come out. He took a moment to bite the inside of his cheek before words actually happened at last.

"I would'a done the same," he decided, "if somethin' happened to Tseng, and there were... you know, enough of us left for it to count. We do the job, yeah, but revenge ain't got no place on a professional field. Especially when odds are it'll just end up with you bitin' the dust, too. You ain't no good to nobody, dead."

"I sold them out to Hokage-sama," she said, in a near whisper. "And then we fought. We're--no longer a team. But they're alive."

And she was alone.

Ino did so very badly on her own.

"Alive's important," Reno said, his own voice a little more tired than he cared for it to be.

There was silence. And then, once again, he looked her way.

"You know, I'm second-in-command of the Turks?"

He was going somewhere with this, Ino. Bear with him.

She couldn't figure out what that was supposed to mean. Was he changing the subject?

Ino nodded a tiny bit and kept her silence.

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