Apartment Above Pick Your Poison, Sunday

[intraspective]

In the end, Ino hadn't bothered to go to the Parents' Weekend… thing…

She'd felt that it'd be pointless, all things considered, given her lack of visitors. It was nice, though, to feel the extra buzzing in the back of her mind that indicated more people on the island. Made it livelier. Reminded her a little of Midgar, though there were far more people in one block there than in the entire island here.

Usually she'd pay more attention to what was going on outside, but this weekend was making her feel weird and nostalgic and even a little envious (which was damn stupid, but there you go) and so she'd headed over to her shop and, rather than putter around in the front end, she'd locked the door behind her and headed into the apartment upstairs.

The back room on the ground floor was used for mixing most of her soaps, lotions, teas, and things like that. Things she sold to the average person without worrying about it.

Her upstairs apartment, however, was where she worked with the dangerous things.

Ino braided her hair back tightly, coiling it around and around her head like a crown, pulled her safety goggles on (it would be really fucking stupid to get poison in her eyes) and gloves on, and settled in to work on things most people would never get a chance to buy.

It was funny how this sort of thing relaxed her.

[Backdated due to internet issues. For one.]

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[intraspective]

… Point.

“Yeah, but most of that were for a point or for the job,” Ino pointed out. “Ain’t seein’ the up and up to not tellin’ me all the things when I were going to a different Gaia.”

[raspberryturk]

Reno tilted his head and raised an eyebrow a little.

"You knew the risks, Rookie. Warned you not to go, too. Ain't like I denied shit was gonna get ugly on you. I just didn't give you a date. Might not be my Gaia, but it's still a Gaia, yo. You really think that didn't matter to us once reality hoppin' proved it'd be a possibility? Once Tseng saw him again in one piece on the island and knew right off the bat what could happen to his world too?"

It wasn't like losing Zack had been easy on the Boss. If Tseng said they couldn't save this one too, then they couldn't save this one, too. Even if it left a sour taste in Reno's mouth now.

"Job's my life, Rookie. You don't think this was part of it, you ain't been payin' attention."

[intraspective]

"It weren't the dyin' that I'm protesting," Ino said savagely, though she'd desperately like to contest that. "It weren't that. I knew that. I didn't care. I choose to believe in your five year mark and go and do it anyway. Fuck Tseng. Fuck the idea of fate. Fuck you."

Ino struggled to find words to express what she’d gone through and, failing that, decided—

“You know what,” she said, “I’m callin’ this my one hit.”

That was all the warning she gave him.

It weren’t a physical hit she slammed into him. It was the weight of losing Zack only a handful of months into their five years to change everything. It was the weight of lie upon lie upon lie from her family, the Turks. It was the savage emptiness and rage that had driven her into the depths of substance abuse and had left her talking to the ghost of a dead man. It was the utterly bottomless grief that left her paying a phone bill for someone who never answered.

It was the absolute betrayal at finding out Zack had been alive the whole time and she’d done jack shit to help him.

It was the utter loneliness she felt, estranged from everyone she gave a damn about and too hurt and brittle to figure out how to fix it.

It was every vicious, ugly thing Iris (she) was.

Ino smashed all of that down on him ruthlessly and twisted.

Fuck him very much.

[raspberryturk]

That...

That was one hell of a hit. Exactly the sort of hit Reno hadn't been expecting, though he'd known well enough she was capable of it.

Idiot.

He gasped, there in the street where he was standing, phone falling to the ground eyes going wide, and then squeezing shut again. Five years of grief all honed into a razor's edge slammed into him mentally (bodily; he couldn't breathe couldn't move his legs weren't working under him was he on the ground??) and buried him more thoroughly than any falling godsdamned overpass could have.

He'd given her five years to save Zack.

It hadn't been a lie.

Zack was still alive, the five year mark ticking by behind them, now. How the hell was he supposed to know they'd lie to her face? All the Turks had been aware when Nibelheim had happened. The worst of the lies had been theirs.

But she was right.

He'd left out the possibility of all of this in between, and from where he was sitting on the ground, shaking and gasping to put his head back on right, maybe he was regretting that a little.

"Fuck," he muttered, barely getting the word out at all. "Fuck."

He'd had it coming.

[intraspective]

He’d neglected to think of all the possible outcomes and, while that was usually forgivable, unless someone was dead, it was harder this time. Ino was his Rookie and she blamed him for failing her.

It didn’t have to be entirely rational. It wasn’t entirely rational.

She sighed, her rage draining from her like puss from a wound as she watched him on the ground from her window. If she were a good Rookie she’d go help him up.


Ino didn’t know if he’d hear her, with his dropped phone, but she said, “If you want to talk, do it face-to-face.”

Then she hung up on him.

Ino wasn’t really a good Rookie these days.

[raspberryturk]

Reno wouldn't blame her.

He really couldn't blame her, not now that he knew something of what she'd been through. All at once, twisted into a blade and jammed right between his shoulders, maybe, but... something.

He wasn't surprised to find that she'd hung up by the time he had his senses back enough to pick up his PHS from the ground. He could guess what it was she wanted him to do if this wasn't going to be the end of it, anyway.

With a sigh, he wiped tears not completely his own from his cheeks with his sleeve, heaved himself to his feet, and headed for the shop.

"If you insist, Rookie."

He didn't suspect this was going to be pretty, but Reno didn't do pretty very well anyway.

[intraspective]

And she’d learned from him.

Ino didn’t bother to go downstairs and meet him. The door to the shop locked, sure, but that wasn’t going to stop Reno. If it did, well, he wasn’t much of a Turk, right?

She rescued her current poison before it boiled over and ate through her steel table and finished the notes she was working through as she waited for him.

[raspberryturk]

It took Reno about three minutes to get inside and get upstairs. Not great form, but really, that first punch had been a doozy and he was still reeling from it. Not that he let it show on the outside, but he knew perfectly well that that wouldn't stop her from knowing, either.

"You made it good," he noted as he appeared in the doorway. "Gotta watch for that right hook next time I give you a free swing, I guess."

[intraspective]

Ino glanced at him as she finished the last line she needed for now and closed her book. Everything was going to computers but her notebooks were more secure. And when working with what she did, that mattered.

“You’re planning on offerin’ one again?”

Brave, brave man.

[raspberryturk]

Brave man, stupid man, wasn't like Reno drew much of a line between the two until somebody pissed him off, anyway.

"Never know when it'll be relevant again. I'd ask how you been, but I think you just told me, huh?"

[intraspective]

It felt like the kind of conversation where it should happen under dimmed lights and amidst the shadows but Ino’s lab was brightly lit, almost painfully so. The furniture was all stainless steel or glass and half the lab had been converted into a nursery for plants that most people knew only by reputation—if that.

Some of them she'd cross-bred herself.

“Pretty honestly, yeah,” Ino said, keeping her voice level as she unhooked her face mask.

[raspberryturk]

Reno nodded a little, arms crossed over his chest.

"Real honestly," he agreed. He blew out a sigh. His hands were still shaking. Fuck. "Like what you done with the place."

Pretty. Murdery. All very Ino. Iris. Her.

[intraspective]

“It’s usable,” Ino said, which, given that her lab had been more expensive to set up than the rest of her shop, was a bit of an understatement. She leaned forward on her elbows, goggles still perched on her forehead.

“What are you doing here?”

[raspberryturk]

"Guess I owe you that much, huh?"

An explanation. Reno took a moment to scrape together the rest of his still somewhat scrambled brain cells, looking up toward the ceiling while he composed himself.

"Fucked up, huh? Gave you five years, meant it, even. Didn't account for Turks bein' Turks. Didn't account for you bein' a liability. Cost you. Didn't cost me shit to be wrong. And then you went dark, your whole friggin' world went dark, and after a few years I stopped tryin' to get through."

He shoved his hands in his pockets and titled his head a little as he looked back her way.

"Came to give you the apology I owe you for fuckin' up, is all. I am sorry, zoto."

There was something he didn't throw around lightly.

[intraspective]

And, you know what? She knew that. It mattered.

She mattered; she’d wondered in the years after Zack’s ‘death’ if she ever had.

“You think an apology is good enough?” Ino demanded. She wasn't able to do anything but make a demand. It was either that or start laughing and not stop. “You think that you can say that and just walk off again? No way, I ain’t accepting that.”

[raspberryturk]

"I say I thought it was good enough?" Reno raised an eyebrow at that. "Shit, you must'a hit me harder'n I thought."

It was never good enough. He didn't figure it could be good enough.

"Thought it'd be a start. Never figured it'd be the end."

[intraspective]

She brushed that off. Details.

He weren’t functioning at 100% but neither was she—and, truthfully, she hadn’t been for a long, long time.

No matter how good she was at hiding it to most.

“Yeah? So this was step one? What’s step two?”

[raspberryturk]

"Step two depends on you," Reno replied, and stopped himself before following that up with, 'Rookie.' Right now, he didn't figure he had the right. "Depends on what you want, depends on what you tell me to do next. You want me to take a long walk off a short bridge in Junon, fine."

He didn't figure she'd go that far. Didn't figure she'd let him off that easy, either.

"You want me in your world pullin' damage control... shit, I'll do that, too."

Wasn't like his Gaia needed him anymore. The WRO had it handled. He was the remnant of a dead era who scared the shit out of sane people and occasionally... grew beans. Sure.

Wasn't like Rikku needed him anymore, either. He wasn't going there, though.

[intraspective]

Yeahno, good call, unless he’d wanted to find himself on the ground for the second time that day.

She studied him with the gaze she wasted on people ShinRa ordered her to find and bring in for… experimentation.


Ino wasn’t really sure what to think of that last offer.

It could be useful.

[raspberryturk]

And Reno was patient then, tilting his head a little, frowning his usual 'doesn't give a coeurl's ass' frown, while under it all he was holding the perfect Turk demeanor. He'd made an offer.

He was committed to it.

And he wasn't going to speak another word until she did. This wasn't his call. Stopped being his call the moment he'd set foot on the island again.

[intraspective]

“You know,” she said, “Zirconaide ain’t happened yet.”

Just… tossing that out there.

It would matter to him. It mattered to her, too. There it was. Her expiry date if things went to shit as badly as they'd gone for Reno in his world.

Zack didn't know that.

[raspberryturk]

Reno inhaled. And Reno nodded.

"Right about that time soon, innit?"

It mattered a hell of a lot to him, yes.

[intraspective]

“Yeah,” Ino said, “it’s ‘bout that time.”

If dying soon bothered her, it didn't show. (It didn't bother her; she was so tired.)

Ino chewed on the inside of her cheek.

“Zack ain’t big on Gaia these days. He pays more attention to the tiny Rufus here than home. But me, I want to save my home.”

That was the worst part. All of this, all of everything, and Gaia were still her home.

She was okay with dying. She was less okay with it dying.

[raspberryturk]

Reno gave another slow, thoughtful nod.

"Yeah," he replied, finally. "Me too."

He pursed his lips a little.

"So, what you want me to do about it?"

Point him in a direction and let him loose, Ino. Go on.

Heh. He'd have seniority over Tseng. That'd be hilarious.

[intraspective]

She turned away from him, getting up to go and touch the leaves of one of her plants. The leaves were thick and deep, dark green, the undersides silver. They were the origin of the poison she'd given to Lucille on painted hairpins.

"It's too late for any one assassination to fix things, ain't it?"