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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[raspberryturk]

So, Reno had had a good chat with Ghanima earlier. He hadn't come to visit her in particular, but the detour had been much needed. Much appreciated, he hoped, too. Kind of made him homesick for this stupid, fucked-up place.

But the person he had come to see had remained elusive, and so, while he had a good idea as to where she might be found, he wasn't going to engage her directly. Well. Not immediately.

Standing outside across the road from the Pick Your Poison, he pulled out his PHS and dialed his Rookie's number.

[intraspective]

It was long training and practice that kept her from flinching at the sound of her PHS as it shattered her concentration. She carefully set down the vial she’d been decanting and pushed away from her table, the wheels on her chair dead silent as they moved her across the floor.

Ino pulled down her face mask and, frowning at the number—Reno? Was she being called back to Gaia for a job?—answered it.

“Yo. What’s up?”

[raspberryturk]

"More like what's down, zoto. You wanna come take a quick peek out the front window of your cute little shop there, Rookie?"

Where a decidedly older Reno than Ino was likely expecting would be waiting, leaning back casually against a lamppost.

Ready to move if need be, because he wasn't stupid.

But 'casually.'

[intraspective]

Ino muttered something uncomplimentary under her breath, then heaved a sigh.

“If you ain’t here on orders I look forward to hearin’ you get in shit for this,” she warned him, nonetheless standing and pushing her goggles up onto her forehead as she sauntered over to the window.

Well.

To the peephole two feet to the left of the window.

Look, it weren’t paranoia if you were used to being hunted down.

[raspberryturk]

Hey, Reno wasn't going to judge anybody for a little bit of healthy paranoia.

"No permission necessary, yo."

He was already looking straight at that peephole, yes. As if he hadn't scoped the place out before calling?

"Ain't like Tuesti's gonna lose his shit if I take a weekend off now and again, anyway."

[intraspective]

Yeah, yeah she saw him. He was hard to miss.

Ino’s face closed down—not that he could see it.

“Saa,” she said, sighing.

Rage bubbled up underneath the surface but Ino was up here and he was down there. Smart move.

[raspberryturk]

Reno occasionally had his moments. Sure, showing up here at all maybe wasn't the wisest thing he'd ever done. But in his time creeping the radio's podcasts, he'd spent a lot of the past several months talking himself out of doing this, and found that he hadn't wanted to any less.

So.

"Yo."

He lifted his chin a little, tilted his head.

"Figured you had a bone to pick with me by now. Thought I'd give you the chance, zoto."

[intraspective]

“What’s the catch to this?” she asked slowly, her voice empty.

Rage made her want to do just that. Go down there. She could get at least a hit on him before he retaliated, more if she kept mind-wiping him as she whaled on him.

And gods it was tempting. So damn tempting.

(But she hadn't killed Tseng for lying to her either.)

[raspberryturk]

Reno's eyebrow quirked up just slightly.

"You only get one swing before I start swingin' back, so you got to make the first one count, yo."

That was it. That was the catch.

[intraspective]

She hummed noncommittally.

"Don't think you got any right to that."

[raspberryturk]

"Done plenty of things I ain't never had a right to, Rookie," Reno pointed out. "Never stopped me doin' a single one of 'em."

Came with the territory.

Came with the job.

[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.