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.]

Comments

[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?"

[raspberryturk]

"At this point..." Reno frowned a little. Her near future was his own distant past, it was surreal to be scouring it for clues. "... Depends how far gone you are. Shin-Ra put a target on your backs yet?"

Wasn't like Zack was the only one with that problem, after all.

[intraspective]

And she... she'd never known much about this part of the future. Just that it happened.

"Not yet," she said, frowning at the leaves. "We got standin' orders to shoot Verdot on sight; Tseng just took over but, like, it's Verdot." So that order wasn't being paid much attention to. "Ain't much going on right now. Quiet, with Zack havin' gotten out early and Cloud having disappeared. AVALANCHE lookin' for materia, we're playin' the game of mousing around for what they've got."

[raspberryturk]

Reno smirked a little at that. Oh, shit, yeah. He remembered the stupid 'shoot on sight' order they'd been under, as if the Turks were going to turn on and kill their own boss.

Their loyalty to the company was second only to their loyalty to one another.

"You got any of 'em yet?"

Because he was already thinking of a really easy solution to the giant murder summon issue.

[intraspective]

A slow smirk crossed her face at that.

Did they have any of them?

"What?" she said wickedly. "You mean like this one?"

Yeah, that was one of the materia they were looking for that Ino tossed into the air and caught. Absolutely.

[raspberryturk]

Reno actually blinked. Blinked and stared, hard, at the materia that he was suddenly looking at.

Gods, that was a familiar little ball.

"... You ain't takin' that back with you to Gaia, are you?"

Like, ever?

[intraspective]

"It usually lives with all my other materia," Ino admitted. Deep in the depths of her pockets where most people forgot she had it. "So this marble ain't a thing I should be doin' that with?"

[raspberryturk]

"No materia, no Zirconaide," Reno replied, wide-eyed. "Shit. Fuck, Rookie," sorry, he wasn't even thinking about not calling her that right then, "that's the fuckin' out we never had. You got a whole gods-damned multiverse to hide that little round bastard in. Best we had was keepin' it on us at all times."

[intraspective]

Ino flinched, her fingers fumbling with the materia--not dropping it, but almost. Almost.

"I'll get rid of it," she managed to say, her voice tight. A little higher.

It hurt. She hadn't thought being claimed that way would hurt so bad.

[raspberryturk]

Reno caught that flinch and checked himself, taking a moment to dial it back. Compose himself again.

Mind his mouth.

"... AVALANCHE would still be a problem," he noted, more sedately. "They'd still need to be taken care of. But you'd basically neuter 'em if you can put that materia somewhere they can't get it. Then all you'd have to deal with are the Ravens, the AVALANCHE crazies themselves, and ShinRa's hard-on for takin' out Verdot."

He paused.

"... An' Sephiroth, later. But with a full pack of Turks, what the hell, right?"