A Secluded Area of the Preserve, Friday Early Morning

[intraspective]

It didn’t seem to matter that, when they’d woken up in a tangled grouping of hands and legs and eyes and smiles that touched their eyes until they’d woken up enough that the smiles stopped hitting their eyes, that they hadn’t really spoken at all as they’d gotten dressed.

As they’d headed down into town to pick up something for breakfast—they hadn’t really even glanced at the kitchen in the cabin—they still kept mostly to their silence, though he held her hand as they walked.

Or she held his. Ino wasn’t really sure if that distinction mattered. Either way, neither of them was letting go of the other.

It wasn’t a conscious decision either to head out to the preserve once food in neat brown bags had been obtained.

It wasn’t conscious, but she wasn’t going to complain as they walked deeper and deeper into the trees. Ino liked trees, she liked Zack, and she liked breakfast. The silence was just something that had happened. They’d work it out.

She glanced sidelong and up at him, blue eyes worried. Her smile had faded into something more serious. Last night had been only part of it. He’d needed last night. (He’d scared her last night.)

Ino didn’t know what this would bring, out here, with breakfast and him. Just that it happening was the only thing that made sense to her. A weird and twisted snarl of emotions curled in her mind and Ino thought it couldn’t be anything as bad as how he felt. That wasn’t comforting.

[For the one whose hand she won’t let go of.]

Comments

[puppy_fair]

Into the preserve, then. And when Zack found a spot that looked like a good place to sit down, that was where he came to a standstill, a tiny pull on the corners of his mouth suggesting that it was far more difficult for him to pull down his guards than he was possibly even aware. Trying to smile. Trying not to smile.

Stop lying to me.

"How about here?"

[intraspective]

Her eyes left off their study of his face reluctantly as Ino took in their surroundings. Much the same as the rest of the preserve, really, but far enough in that no one would look for them.

That was important, right now, in her head.

"Sure," she said quietly. "It looks alright to me."

[puppy_fair]

"Awesome."

Way to sound completely convinced, there, Zack.

That tiny echo of a smile didn't waver has he bent over and sat himself down. It probably wasn't going anywhere for a bit, at least.

"I... Uh..." He drew a slow breath, and then looked up at her. "You know... I don't mean to..." He stopped. No, that wasn't right. His smile, the one that he wore no matter what, it was deliberate. It had just been so deliberate that it had turned into habit. "I mean..."

And now he had no idea what it was that he'd wanted to say.

[intraspective]

She knelt down in front of him, elbows resting on her knees, chin resting on the palms of her hands. Her eyes solemn and gentle.

"I know you don't mean to," Ino said, and that made her sad--sad that it'd become such a habit for him. "But I don't want you to do it. Not to me."

Her eyes studied him.

"Is that unfair of me to want?"

Maybe it was. It was a lot to ask and she knew it.

[puppy_fair]

Zack shook his head a little bit. His jaw was set, and he was looking over her with a sort of firmness about him. It wasn't a smile, and it wasn't really how he felt on the inside, either. But he'd cried enough last night for his tastes. Firm might just keep him from cracking, again.

He hadn't pulled his armor back on this morning.

"It's not," he replied. "I don't want you to do it, either."

Checkmate.

[intraspective]

She would be lying worse than he if she went with her instinctive response of 'what are you talking about?' at this point, in this situation.

Ino knew.

"That's fair," she murmured. "I hate it, but that's fair."

[puppy_fair]

"Yeah," Zack echoed, nodding faintly and turning his gaze back down toward the ground. "So... last night. That was pretty..."

Painful, actually. But that wasn't the sort of thing that Zack was about to admit to so readily.

"... I mean, thank you for listening."

[intraspective]

Ino settled herself down, cross-legged in front of him, twitching the bag with food into her lap, before she thought of an answer for him.

"I told you I would," she said, finally. "I... Even if there's nothing else that's... solid, I want to be."

A pause.

"For you."

[puppy_fair]

He nodded slightly, reaching down with gloveless hands to pick idly at a nearby blade of grass.

"I guess it would be silly to ask where do I go from here, huh?"

[intraspective]

"I don't know," she replied, eyes trailing his movement absently. "Do you think it's silly? I don't think it is but--it's not me that's got to decide that."

[puppy_fair]

"Then maybe it's not..." Zack pursed his lips, and then he gave a tired sigh. "There's so much that's just been sitting on hold, lately," he added. "Maybe I should call Director Lazard and tell him that I need work. I'll take any mission he has for me, you know? It might not fix what's coming, but at least I won't be sitting here feeling useless all of the time."

[intraspective]

"That might help," she agreed, and bit her lip. She didn't--really know what to say.

What was there to say?

"Moving forward is better than stagnating at the very least."

[puppy_fair]

"Yeah."

More silence. At least Zack had graduated from picking at the grass to picking at the edges of his paper bag.

"That still bugs you, too. Doesn't it?"

[intraspective]

Ino pressed her lips together so tightly that they all but disappeared.

Which was, in it's own way, answer enough.

"Should it not?" she asked, in a low voice. "Should I not be bothered?"

[puppy_fair]

"You're almost as good at hiding that sort of thing as I am," Zack replied. It was accompanied by a tiny smile that had no humor behind it at all. "I'm going to stand behind my offer, though. I mean... missions in Midgar. All of that. If you still want."

[intraspective]

"It'd help," she said, and didn't try to smile. Just looked tired. "I want to go. Be useful. But... it's not mine. I don't have a mine right now, not really."

[puppy_fair]

"It could be ours," Zack said, after a moment's pause. This was... a tentative offer, at best. But it was an offer, all the same. "Your Midgar and mine. I know... It's more than a bit of a fixer-upper. But..."

[intraspective]

She fussed with her bag and wound up pulling a muffin out of it. Muffins were easy to eat, right?

Ino found she had no appetite.

Turning it over in her hands gave her something to look at that wasn't him. "How do you figure it could be mine as well as yours?"

[puppy_fair]

"Well, you know... If it lasts..." He shrugged a bit. It was difficult to stay relentlessly optimistic in the face of the breakdown he'd had yesterday. He was still drowning in the wake of it, as it stood. "Help me save it, Ino."

[intraspective]

She hadn't meant it that way.

"I want to," she said, looking up to meet his eyes. "I've been tryin'. All those notebooks I got, they're bits an' pieces of the puzzle."

And he couldn't read them, she knew that. It was a clever way that let her keep them out in the open without him learning everything she'd known. Except he'd found out in other ways...

"I can help," she said, struggling with the words. "I will help. But it's still yours."

Did that make any sense?

[puppy_fair]

It almost made sense. Almost.

"What do you need, to make a place yours?"

It was a selfish question. All of his questions so far had been, he knew that. Asking her to come with him, to face down the worst. He shouldn't be asking at all.

But...

"What's missing, Ino?"

[intraspective]

"I don't know," she said, and the answer was weak. Weak and Ino needed a better one.

Zack deserved a better one. Ino was slowly picking her muffin to pieces as she struggled to find words.

"With you I feel like... I'm home," the words awkward, fumbling on her lips as she tried to put thoughts in order. Was she even saying it right. "But there's--no place for me there. Just you and I'd have to direct myself."

Ino didn't think that made sense but that was something, right?

[puppy_fair]

Zack bit his lip at that, nodding faintly. Right... He felt like he belonged when he went back to Midgar because he had something there. There was a uniform that proclaimed to everybody in the city that not only did he belong there, but that he'd earned his right to.

Ino didn't have that.

"We could... We could make a place for you," he tried, feebly. "ShinRa is always looking, especially lately with the... staffing shortage."

Okay, it was more like a mass exodus. Same thing.

[intraspective]

She had that for another world, another place. A stylized leaf on a metal headband. She belonged there.

And didn't.

Ino didn't know where she belonged these days. It hurt too much to prod at for long and yet she knew that Fandom wasn't home, wasn't home because it had to be a stopover to wherever she'd go next. Yet it felt more like home than home did.

And Gaia... Gaia was a place she wanted to know more about but didn't know enough to make a decision.

"I don't know," she said, as her eyes filled with tears. Ino hated that, hated this, hated not knowing what to do. "I don't know what I want to do. I just want to belong somewhere but I don't know where that somewhere is or what shape it'll take."

Reno had said to take her time to think about it and danced around the fact that, if she wanted it, he'd be more than willing to have her as a Turk. Zack was asking her to go to his world.

Ino just wanted the world to go back to normal. Where she was what she was and there was no need to think about it.

[puppy_fair]

"Maybe if you don't know, it's because it just hasn't taken a shape that can be found, yet," Zack offered. Somewhere in all of that, he'd pulled an apple out of his paper bag.

Apples here were red. That was so weird.

"Just like fate, you know? You might think you see the way everything is or isn't set out, but in the end, whatever you get is what you're going to take out of it yourself."