Room 429, Monday Evening

[raspberryturk]

Reno was going to sit on his bed and eye his cellphone. Dojima was right, really. If he couldn't understand the concept of giving people time, he should at least call Rude and tell him that he wasn't five anymore, and all reports for the time being would be typed up in a semi-sane manner.

And that would be why he was eying his phone.

He wasn't, however, reaching for it.

It was just fine where it was sitting. He could call Rude up any time, take the heat for getting him in crap with Tseng or whatever, and maybe he'd have things sorted out a little better by then. There were, after all, a lot of things to sort through.

Yeah. Yeah, he didn't have to pick up the phone after all. Save Rude the trouble. The big guy would appreciate it later.

[ooc: The door is open a crack, and the post is totally open for invasion from random persons. Oooooo.]

Comments

[the_merriest]

"I told me not too!" There was the foot-stomping again. "I don't hate! It'd be way too easy to just ... give in and go, they did bad things because they're horrible freaking people and I hate them! They're trying to leave Guadosalam, they can't handle the guilt of what they did, and I don't get to go good! You should feel guilty! My friends are dead! My family's dead! Feel bad about it, dammit! Don't expect me to tell you --"

She squeezed her eyes shut. "Never mind."

[raspberryturk]

He shook his head and pushed away from the doorframe again.

"It's okay to keep talking, Rikku. I mean, get it off your chest, or somethin'. If it means yellin, or puttin' blame on someone, or even hating..." He shrugged. "You don't gotta keep hating. But if you keep tryin' to swallow it, that don't help, either, yo."

[the_merriest]

"What would you know about it?" she said, eyes blazing suddenly. "Have you ever tried? I'll be the better person. I'll apologize, when Wakka calls me a heathen. I'll be polite, when my kind isn't welcome in the temple. I'll smile and be fucking nice because if I'm hateful and angry then they get to justify all their stupid petty-minded prejudices. Those Al Bhed are just bad-tempered! All I did was call her a grease-monkey and she went off on me! You can't trust those people."

[raspberryturk]

"It's not like nobody ever gave me reason to hate 'em before, Rikku. Real reason to make fists with my hands and wanna go out there and hurt people, because they deserved it, not because of who they were." Reno took a deep breath, trying like hell to keep from raising his voice. "It ain't the same. Sure as hell ain't the same, zoto. But just because I didn't live your life don't mean I got no clue what it's like to have reason to hate."

[the_merriest]

"You're damn right it's not the same!" She stomped closer, waving her hands around crazily. "You go beat somebody up, it's some guy beating up someone else. I do it? It's just another sign you can't trust those Al Bhed. After Mi'ihen? After everything failed? The Yevonites decided it was their punishment. They had teamed up with us! Therefore Yevon was pissed and that's why everybody died. I don't know where that leaves us! Maybe our half of the group died because we were just the fucking Al Bhed!"

[raspberryturk]

If Reno were to straighten his posture any more, he might end up hurting himself.

"I. Didn't. Do. That." His voice was very strained, now, as he tried not to yell back. "I did a lot of dirty, dirty shit under ShinRa orders, but that wasn't me, Rikku. I never had anything against anyone just for bein' what they are. Shit, I never heard half those words you just said in my life, yoto."

[the_merriest]

"You would have," she said coldly. "You said it yourself. They give you orders. Home, the Sector Seven slums, Fandom, just point me there and I'll kill those people. I can do it wholesale so I don't have to work overtime."

[raspberryturk]

A slow, deep breath. Hold it. Hold it.

Reno closed his eyes and bit his tongue, bit back the urge to scream and kick and smash his hand through the wall.

"Wasn't just the slums. Topside got wiped out, too. Wasn't about... Wasn't just..." Another breath. "Wasn't just because they gave me the order, Rikku."

[the_merriest]

"Oh, that's much better," she chirped. "I'm glad you're also a sociopath who enjoys mass killing."

[raspberryturk]

"That isn't it!" His hands were going to stay in his pockets, because if they left, she would see them shaking, and no, no, there was no way he was going to let her see him lose it, here. Wasn't going to happen. Last time she caught him losing it was the time that started all of this. "They weren't Al Bhed, Rikku! It wasn't about Yevon or the Guado or whatever. They took everything, dammit! AVALANCHE took fucking everything and were going to take more and-"

He choked on it. Shook his head. When he spoke next, the fight was gone all over again.

"Wasn't just about the fact that they only left three of us. But that's most of it. Not the same. You're right."

[the_merriest]

Three of them left. Rikku stared for a few seconds, wrapping her head around what he was suggesting.

"The Turks," she breathed. "The ones that ... never came home. They did that?"

There had been more of them once, this group of his, and then something terrible happened to most of them, and she was resisting the urge to reach out to him.

"We ... shouldn't be arguing here," she said quickly. "The hallway. This has to be ... you know."

[raspberryturk]

He nodded. He could do that, could manage a nod. Toward the door. Into his room? Closed doors. This was a good conversation for behind closed doors. Yelling about it all in the hallways...

Not so good.

Closed doors, please?

Words weren't so terribly cooperative at the moment, so he hoped that the nod would get the point across, there.

[the_merriest]

Rikku nodded, and then seeing him suddenly ... fragile, almost hesitant, she reached forward and opened the door herself.

"C'mon," she said softly, stepping through and holding it open. "Not out there, zoto."

[raspberryturk]

Another breath, and another nod, and a couple of steps, and look at that, he was inside his room, standing inside and taking another breath, reaching for the door to close it behind them.

Presto. Closed door.

"Yeah. So."

Now that the hallway was on the other side of the door, he really had no idea what he was supposed to say.

[the_merriest]

Rikku took a deep breath. "That doesn't ... I mean, you can't ..."

Exhale. Think. Try to. Do not hug him. Still a mass-murderer. Okay, then.

"Sit," she said, nodding to his bed. She seated herself cross-legged on the floor. "Talk."

[raspberryturk]

"Right." He made his way across the room, took a seat on the edge of his bed, and took a breath. "It's... a long story. Probably won't make me look any better when I'm done, or whatever. Wouldn't be tellin' it just to improve my image, yo. It'd be... Maybe you'd know where my brain was, is all. You sure you wanna hear this?"

[the_merriest]

"I don't know," she admitted. "Are you sure you want to tell it? It's not gonna ..."

Rikku bit her lip. "There's no ... 'oh, hey, that's why you did it.' I'm not gonna suddenly ..."

[raspberryturk]

"I know. Wouldn't want you to. But... I dunno." He gave a small nod and took a breath. "Used to be an okay job. I mean, the stuff we did was never clean, but we never thought it'd get as bad as it did. We got a new kid one day, and it was that first-run of Sector Eight thing that the Turks do as a first assignment. Anyhow, this kid gets in shit with this terrorist group we ain't never heard of. They just crawled outta the freakin' woodwork and tried to blow up Midgar. We stopped 'em, but it kept gettin' worse from there."

He shrugged his shoulders, looking at the floor somewhere by her feet.

"They blew up reactors all over the place, brainwashed SOLDIERs and turned 'em against us. It's like everything that went wrong, there they were, for years on freakin' end. Turns out they were tryin' to save the planet, stop ShinRa from usin' the Mako from the Lifestream for electricity or whatever. They were gonna call this freakin' summon whose sole purpose was to kill all life on the planet's face. Just, hey, huge-ass summon, everyone dies, world is saved."

He took a breath. Okay. The rest was.

He didn't want to get to the rest. The rest sucked.

[the_merriest]

If all life were to end in Spira, all suffering would end. Don't you see?

Rikku shook her head. "People like that are crazy," she said. "They'll save the world by destroying it. You can't argue with them. You just have to take them out, as quickly as possible."

And hope they stayed dead. That bit, they had failed at.

[raspberryturk]

"We tried. One of us came up with this idea, get to the summon before they did. Call the thing- just a part of it. Not at full strength or whatever, I dunno how that works. Fight through it and the AVALANCHE psychos and save the world." He lifted a shoulder in a bit of a shrug. "Tseng, Rude, and I were off takin' care of somethin' else. ShinRa was tryin' to kill the whole freakin' lot of us for goin' against orders, and when it was all over with, the only ones who came back were me, Tseng, and Rude. No word from the others, nothin'. Just gone, zoto. We hoped maybe AVALANCHE was gone with 'em, at least."

[the_merriest]

Rikku hugged her knees, watching him carefully.

"You went against orders?" she asked softly. "In ... doing the Summon-thing? Did they succeed? Did you ever even ..."

All of them, gone, and Shinra after them?

[raspberryturk]

He didn't take his eyes from that place on the floor.

"The boss at the time, Verdot, tried to leave the Turks. Wanted to be with his daughter. There... there ain't no leavin' the Turks. We all said no. That's why President Shinra wanted us dead. Whole freakin' group of us just became his biggest liability. So, Rude and Tseng and me, we weren't with the rest of the Turks because we were helping Verdot fake his own death. Like hell we were gonna kill our boss. He was the only thing that kept us from dyin' all those years he was in charge of the Turks."

He swallowed and then licked his lips. They were getting dry. "So our names got cleared, and the others just... never came back. World didn't end. There were three of us left to appreciate that, zoto."

[the_merriest]

"He couldn't ... leave?" Rikku stared. "I mean, not even the boss? He ... your president just ..."

The entire group!?

"But they were ..." She swallowed past a lump. "Your family."

[raspberryturk]

Reno glanced up at that, to look her in the eyes as he nodded.

Damn, was he tired.

His eyes drifted back to the floor and he shrugged his shoudlers.

"Things weren't even quiet for long, zoto. Not long after, AVALANCHE is at it again. So they all died for nothin'. Great news. They attack the Number 1 and Number 5 reactors, and that leaves all of ShinRa freakin' out. The Turks didn't get 'em. Leaves us freakin' out. We ... They didn't..."

He swallowed.

"Somehow, the President gets a lead, they're in Sector Seven."

[the_merriest]

"How does he know?" she asked gently. "Were people ... hurt, when the reactors went? Why do that? That's ..."

"That doesn't make it okay," she said, her voice strained.