A Secluded Area of the Preserve, Wednesday Evening

[intraspective]

When Reno had said they could go out for tea, Ino had kinda figured he'd meant some place like the Perk, or even Caritas if 'tea' meant 'booze' (and knowing Reno, she'd guessed that it might've meant that).

So when she'd wound up in the preserve with him, Ino absolutely, positively, had to be a brat:

"Don't think the trees serve tea, yo."

[For Reno, yoto!]

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[intraspective]

"'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.

[raspberryturk]

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'?"

[intraspective]

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."

[raspberryturk]

"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."

[intraspective]

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.

[raspberryturk]

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.

[intraspective]

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.

[raspberryturk]

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.

[intraspective]

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.

[raspberryturk]

Reno quirked a shadow of a smile, at that.

That was what he'd figured.

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

[intraspective]

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.

[raspberryturk]

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

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

[intraspective]

"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?"

[raspberryturk]

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?"

[intraspective]

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

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

[raspberryturk]

"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."

[intraspective]

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?

[raspberryturk]

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."

[intraspective]

"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.

[raspberryturk]

"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.

[intraspective]

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.

[raspberryturk]

"There's been... more'n one time I thought Tseng was dead," he continued as he settled back slightly against a nearby tree. "So... Fell on me to get the job done. Always does. I fuckin' hate it."

Which wasn't the point of the story, no.

"Thing is, first time, there was no damn way to go back an' do nothin' about it. Second time, Tseng," he left Elena out. It didn't seem right to talk about her brutal torture to someone who had been a classmate. Tseng was less personal, somehow, less of an intrusion, "was left at the bottom of the Northern Cave. You know about the crater, right?"

He was still going somewhere with this, yes. But this was Reno. He digressed. Frequently.

[intraspective]

She nodded, tucking her feet up under her and closing her eyes.

Yes, she knew. Not much, but she knew.

[raspberryturk]

"Left it down to just me an' Rude at the time," he said, shrugging. "I had to pull outta the crater without lookin' back, because the fucksticks that grabbed him were still down there. Three of 'em, shootin' him down at once. Shootin' Tseng down, zoto. Tells you what we were dealin' with, right?"

Reno's eyebrows furrowed as he thought back on it all, on how it felt to pull the chopper out of there like nobody's business, because he had that stupid head shoved in there with him. Because there was nowhere to touch down with the chopper and going back in there would have been suicide and then Elena screamed and their radio lines were cut...

"Had to go back to Rude. An' it was on my head to make the next call. Me, yo. Tryin' to protect the President an' maybe if I was real friggin' lucky, the guy I called for help would pull his head outta his ass long enough to get involved so the world wouldn't end. Again. An' the whole damn time, all I wanted was to go back down into that fuckin' cave, bring Rude along, an' see if we could find the Director's body, yo. And from there, we'd bust in the faces of the fucks who did it, right there on their own home turf, knowin' we'd die tryin'."

Reno shrugged.

"But if we did that, we wouldn't be Turks. Not me. Not even Rude. Even if that was all the Turks had left. When it was all done an' over with... We walked away from Rufus. Took away what made us Turks anyhow. An' I think to this day, even if it was Tseng's idea, it was my fault."

Sharing and caring time with Reno, Ino. Enjoy.

[intraspective]

Her lips trembled slightly.

"You did what needed to be done," she said softly. "And then... turn around and walk away from the reason why."