Sector 5 Church, Midgar, Gaia, Friday Late Night

[intraspective]

This time of night all the good boys and girls were in bed.

At least, they usually were in the stories. Ino knew far, far too much about how Midgar (and life in general) worked to think that being up late was any real indicator of good or badness.

She didn't have to be out tonight, patrolling, and she wasn't officially on the clock anyway (not that that meant much) but she'd been away for the last few weeks, out in Wutai since it was easy for her to pass as a native there, and so she wanted to reacquaint herself with her home.

Midgar was an ugly city, all dark metal, rust, and green smoke skies. She still thought it was beautiful, when she saw the flicker and glitter of mako lit streetlights and the old empty-eyed fallen trains. Beautiful in a lonely sort of way, which suited her mood completely.

There'd been no time, out in Wutai to celebrate her birthday (she was twenty-two now), and while the Turks had offered to take her out tonight, none of them had been surprised when she'd begged off. They could go drinking without her.

As she usually did, when she was in this sort of mood, her footsteps ghosted her to Aerith's church. This time of night, Aerith wasn't there. Aerith was (mostly) a good girl.

Letting the door slip shut behind her, Ino approached the flowers, somehow lit by the moon despite the plate overhead (she knew, she'd gone looking once and it still didn't make sense), and knelt down to touch them.

"Hey," she said, smiling slightly as her hair spilled over her shoulders to touch the flowers too. "How've you been? Being good for your mom?"

[OOC: Expecting one, but open for calls/texts, sure.]

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[intraspective]

"Ain't nothing wrong with being Tseng," Ino said, tilting her head back to look into the rafters of the church. If she pretended hard enough, maybe she'd see starlight.

"But ain't much my type. And I weren't his either. The wife he ordered me to be were more like someone else."

Ino was judging Tseng pretty hard for that, but it was funny here and now.

[puppy_fair]

Somebody else? Oh?

Zack could spot a crush at fifty paces, apparently unless it involved Tseng's feelings for Aerith.

[intraspective]

Which was... well, Zack always did have an odd blind spot there.

"Well," Ino said, "her hair's darker than mine, and she's got green eyes, and she likes flowers..."

[puppy_fair]

Aerith? Tseng likes AERITH? I had no idea!

... Seriously, Zack. Seriously. You found a freaking camera with his name on it outside the church, once.

...

Which was actually really creepy.

[intraspective]

Or it was part of the job. All of the Turks were pretty creepy, even Ino.

She laughed again, that bright, silvery laugh that only rarely came out. "But it's so obvious!"

[puppy_fair]

Well, nobody told me!

HONESTLY, ZACK.

Why doesn't he just ask her out, then? Just one date!

Because he clearly hadn't been to the Zack Fair School of Romance.

[intraspective]

To salvage Tseng's reputation with a ghost or not...

"I think he's shy," Ino said helpfully.

She was pretty sure it had to do more with Aerith not being interested and the fact that the Turks could not be, officially, Aerith's friends. She was a job.

Or, well, she was meant to be.

[puppy_fair]

Well, I wish I'd known, Zack groused. I would've introduced them. We could have gone on a double date!

There had to be at least a dozen different reasons why that never would have worked.

[intraspective]

"I..."

Wow, could she ever think of all the ways that wouldn't work.

"He probably wouldn't've wanted to if I'd been there," she said lightly. "Since he's my boss and all."

[puppy_fair]

Well, he's...

Zack's friend? Zack... didn't even know, anymore. He'd seen faces. He'd seen black suits. Ino's face hadn't been among them, but Tseng...

Tseng had been there. He could swear he still heard Tseng from time to time.

He's really got to work on his people skills, huh?

There. Winning save for team Fair.

[intraspective]

"Yeah," she said, smiling slightly. "Though he wouldn't say so. Maybe they hook up in some other world, huh? Where things go a little different."

[puppy_fair]

Zack gave that at least a little bit of serious consideration. It wasn't like he was in any hurry to get anywhere. He had the dubious luxury of being able to fall silent for a few extra moments to think.

There are plenty of different realities, he said, finally. Maybe somewhere, everybody gets the chance to be happy.

[intraspective]

There was no real good way to answer that, was there?

"What," she said, "you mean you're not?"

She was sometimes, when she was busy, these days. On nights like this, she never was.

[puppy_fair]

Zack... Zack had no answer for that.

When questions like that came up, he never did. He fell silent for what had to be a solid half-minute before, finally, he came up with a reply.

How's Silly?

There. Talk about the bird. The bird was not a loaded subject.

[intraspective]

Whenever he went silent like that, Ino could never decide how to feel about it. Terror because a formless ghost of a voice was still something and she couldn't let go, and what if what she'd asked had finally pushed him away for good. Then there was the relief because it was hard to still have him be a formless ghost of a voice. When they didn't talk for a while, it was easier. She didn't have to dwell on things that hurt.

Maybe if they'd never talked, after he'd died, she'd be over him by now. High school loves didn't usually last so long, did they?

But every time they talked, there was still a bit of gladness. She was selfish and lonely. A ghost was a poor substitute for the real thing and, since she wasn't like Aerith, maybe it was just all in her head in the first place. Maybe she was just crazy.

"Still the same," she said quietly. "Silly never changes."

[puppy_fair]

Good. It's nice to have some good things that don't change, right?

Everything changed. Most thing changed for the worse. Silly was forever. And that meant that Ino wasn't alone. Not completely.

[intraspective]

"It hasn't been all bad," she protested.

It hadn't, that was the thing. Her world hadn't ended when he'd died, though it had felt that way for a while.

[puppy_fair]

No?

That was... it was good. It was. It was and Zack had to fight back the urge to cry all the same. It was easy enough to do, when he could barely move, he supposed.

It was good.

Then tell me some of the good. You deserve to think about the good things, too. It'll be like our birthday present.

[intraspective]

Yeah. That was the reason she never celebrated her birthday. It was too close to his.

"You think so?"

She could think of better presents, usually, though the one she wanted was impossible. He'd promised, back then, that while he was going to miss their birthdays, they'd go out when he got back. He'd insisted, though she hadn't cared.

But some promises never got kept. Ino didn't say that to him. It was funny how it mattered more after, when it hadn't been able to keep it though.

"I guess," she said. "I mean, it's probably the only present we can share."

[puppy_fair]

Afraid it is, he said, smiling ruefully at the Ino in his head. So long as I'm here, this is the best we can really do.

So long as he was here.

So long as Hojo didn't kill him, so long as he still had dreams.

[intraspective]

So long as he was dead and she wasn't.

"I know," she said, and fell silent. She had to think about what was a good thing, one that she wanted to share. Some of it she couldn't share and some of it Zack never would've considered good anyway.

But going through her life like this, thinking hard about it, was probably helpful, even if it was just for her and a ghost. The good things were never as easy to remember as the bad.

[puppy_fair]

It was okay if she needed some time to sort. Zack wasn't going anywhere, after all.

He patiently waited, looking at the clouds in his mind. There was a sky surrounding him, so that he was standing on nothing at all, sending ripples out from underfoot as though from the surface of a still pond.

And then maybe we can talk about any new dreams you might have...

[intraspective]

She blinked, her gaze following the path of moonlight down to the flowers. It was getting cold enough that they'd probably sleep soon, to come back in the spring.

"New dreams, huh?"

Did she even have any?

"Remember how I told you I was workin' on Rosa to, you know, actually talk to Elena?" Which had taken years of nagging and shoving. "Well... it finally looks like it's working out! Elena's got a new job and they're talking about living together again."

[puppy_fair]

Living together! Oh! See? See, there was some good news! Even if it was all in his head, even if this was good news that he was making up himself, it was a bright side. The world needed more bright sides. Good for them. Maybe they'll get back to being sisters, instead of at one another's throats all the time, huh?

[intraspective]

"I hope so," she said, smiling slightly. "It would be nice if they did before everything goes wrong. Reno got your date wrong but I don't think he's got the rest of it wrong. You weren't family."

The Turks were. Reno wouldn't be wrong about what went wrong there.

And they were coming up to the date. Soon. She didn't have an exact time laid out neatly but Ino knew it was soon.