raspberryturk | Between... Somewhere, and the Dorms, Monday Night

"Keep pickin' up my phone and goin' to call Tseng, and I keep hangin' up. I mean, this should be easy to do. It's just a phone call. I dunno, maybe I'm worried I'm gonna talk to him, and he'll tell me Rufus cut some kinda deal, and he wants me back on Gaia now. I mean. Won't happen or nothin'. It's just too many maybes."

He was doing his best to keep up that smile. If he smiled, maybe he wouldn't look so tired. All he really accomplished was a tired smile.

Okay. So maybe he hadn't been too worried about his health, last week. Fine. Whatever.

"Oh," Rikku said, pulling her hand back uncertainly. "You could ... call and ... end up leaving, you mean. Yeah. That's."

A very good reason not to fall into bed with him, tonight.

Dammit.

She shrugged. "You should ... call. Worse not knowing, isn't it?"

He shrugged, too.

"I'd call and end up tellin' him I ain't goin' back. I'd call and it'd be... Maybe I'd leave. Wouldn't be to Gaia. Either way, it's the not knowin' that's the worst part. Tryin' to figure out if I'm gonna end up a fugitive, or if I'm just gonna end up jobless. Not much of a difference, if you squint at it."

"Not ... much of one at all," she echoed. That was. Well.

How many ways did he have to say it? No point to anything if he didn't have his job, right? He kept saying she was first, but she wasn't the thing he couldn't live without. Okay, then.

She leaned up to kiss his cheek. "Let me know. How it goes."

Keep her in the loop, or whatever. That'd be nice. She was ... gonna ... go now. Okay. Going.

He reached forward, then, grabbing her by her arms and shaking his head and trying to pull her close again.

"No. I mean... Either way, I'd be free of 'em. Free of all of ShinRa's shit. I don't mind bein' on the run. Did it before. I'm damn good at it. And Romeo was right- there are other worlds, there might not be other Turks, but that don't mean I don't have... options?"

Options. That word.

He wasn't holding her very tightly. If she wanted to try to go, she could. Just. He had to keep her here. Say that much.

"Don't mean I don't still have the rest of my life. I just gotta find a startin' point."

She wasn't pulling away. She wasn't turning around yet, either.

"You can't live like that," she said softly. "Even if you could, you wouldn't want to. You keep saying, you're ... nobody if you're not a Turk. You can't just give up all of that and pretend it doesn't matter. Not 'cause you think it'd ... make everything work."

"If I run away, I'd just be a Turk on the run." He swallowed, shook his head, let go of her arms. "Once a Turk, always a Turk. I don't gotta be a Turk for ShinRa. I can run and keep my pride with me. They'd stop followin' quick enough, anyhow. They don't wanna hunt me any more'n I'd wanna hunt them."

He was pretty sure. He hoped.

"Wouldn't just be doin' it to make things work. Would be doin' it to keep things from workin', too. Rufus doesn't get my help this time. Lessee how he does on his own, zoto."

She hugged her arms around herself. "Wouldn't you miss it? It's your home. Everything you ever ... you know? Knew. And your friends. You could ... help people. Except maybe you don't wanna. Spira, we ... we need to rebuild, too, and for a long time, I thought I didn't want to go back to that. It was all dead and dying and I just didn't want to be there for it, you know? I'm not so sure any more."

She made a frustrated noise. "But you said no one's hiring Turks, and if you're on the run, that kinda ... doesn't work anyway."

"Everything I ever knew was Midgar, Rikku. Top, bottom, it don't matter, there's nothin' there that's like it was before. I... could help. I wanna help. It's just too much, and I dunno where to start, even if I can make a clean break from ShinRa. Could run off with the WRO, I guess. But even that's kinda..."

Hey. His toes were fascinating right now.

"Could help with Spira, maybe. I mean, you want technology, I know technology, that kinda thing. Just, I dunno if you want it if it means your world turns into mine."

"You don't ... have to help," she said carefully, turning around. "I mean. That was why I left. Too much, and I didn't feel like helping, and I wanted to be somewhere where 'Al Bhed' didn't mean people treated me badly. We ..."

She lifted a shoulder. "Technology wouldn't turn my world into yours. Would it? I mean. This world has technology, and it's still alive. Yours has it, and it's dead, but mine's just as dead and it's never had any. Right?"

"Right..." He sighed and lifted a shoulder and turned to head up the stairs again. Walk and talk. They didn't have to have this conversation in the stairwell of the dorms, did they? "Everything I know how to pick apart runs on mako. And that won't do anyone any good on Gaia, either. So there's gotta be... other stuff. This world has things like solar and oil and wind power. Stuff like that. Works for them fine, right?"

"We don't have mako," she shared, following him up the stairs. "And we've got some technology. It's not the power sources that get us, zoto. It's how to make things run that use them. We just don't know what there is to build and how to build it. That's why I send so many diagrams home. Charts and ... you know. Blueprints."

"What we really gotta do, then," Reno mused, finally stepping onto the fourth floor, "is take your power sources, and put 'em to our tech, and see if we can make that work for both worlds, yo. Gaia's biggest problem since losin' the mako is that it can't make anything run. And you got... nothin' to run? We just trade off, then. Make it work for both worlds."

It seemed simple enough in his head, anyhow.

"That ... sounds like it could work," she said, giving him a curious glance. "Which means we're totally missing something important, here, because nothing's ever that easy. Especially not once we've got the two of us involved, right?"

Exhibit A: their entire relationship.

"Somethin' like that." Reno was almost smiling again. It was still a tired smile. But it wasn't forced, this time. "I still gotta call Tseng. Who knows, maybe I can strike up some kinda deal, myself. I don't gotta go back to ShinRa, instead I get to help save the world."

And then he was laughing. It wasn't a strong laugh or a loud laugh. It wasn't much more than a chuckle, really. But it was a laugh.

"Maybe this way, it doesn't gotta suck."

"I doubt he'd want you ... bringing ShinRa technology for all the Al Bhed to borrow," she frowned. "You never know. You should call him. Does he want to save the world? Maybe he'd go for it."

They were almost at his room.

"Weren't we supposed to be ... uh."

You know. Bad idea sex? Something?

"In the hallway? We could. Wanna head back to that landing we were standin' in?" Reno smirked faintly and pulled out his room key, stepping up to his door. "Tell you what. We get into my room, and if we keep talkin', we keep talkin', and if we tackle one another and screw like chocobo in heat, then we tackle one another and screw like chocobo in heat, zoto. Win either way."

"I think we kinda lost the mood for the, uh, chocobo thing," she laughed. "I dunno. Maybe ... we just talk and ... uh."

She facepalmed. "I don't know what I'm doing. You know? We were all, whatever, and then tackle-y, and then talking, and I'm ... not sure ... what we're doing. Or I'm doing. I just ... not."

"C'mon in," Reno said, holding his door open. "Mako misses you, anyhow."

Not nearly as much as Reno had, granted. But Mako missed her.

"So, we talk. We figure out what we're doing. We ain't gonna sort it by runnin' all the time, you know."

"I don't know that we're gonna sort it anyway," Rikku said, stepping through the door and shrugging. "It's just ... a mess. Isn't it? I mean. I don't like what you do. But it's ... what you do, and who you are, and without it, you wouldn't be you. That's what this always comes back to. I'm not sure there's any way around that. You know?"

She was going to fidget, and mess with her hair, and glance around, awkwardly. Very awkwardly. "So ... what now?"

"Sit," Reno said, pointing at his bed and making his way over to the ferret cage. She didn't want to go at it like horny riding-chickens, then fine. Mako missed her, Mako was gonna get quality time, dammit. "You aren't sure it can be sorted out. That mean you're just not sure, or that mean you don't wanna try? Tell me now so you're not gettin' my hopes up, here."

The ferret, still kinda sleepy, was deposited unceremoniously on the bedsheets. Have at it, Dumbass.

"Hiiiiii, Mako," Rikku cooed, nudging him with her fingers. "Who's a sleepy guy? Huh? Who is that?"

Without looking up, she added, "It means I'm scared. If I didn't want to, I'd say that, zoto."

Mako was doing the sleepy-ferret-waddle over for attention. Hiii, attention. Finger. Finger could get snoozy-chewed, right? Omnom.

"Talkin' don't mean you gotta... commit to anything, or anything. I mean. Just means that if there's a chance... maybe we can work it out. Whatever you're scared of. Could maybe deal with it, zoto."

For that, she looked up, mid-sleepy-ferret-belly-rub.

"I wanna talk," she said with a faint smile. "I wanna ... you know. I want to work this out. I just meant ... that I worry that we're only ever gonna talk in circles and it won't help. I'm scared. That doesn't mean I'm giving up. I'm not."

"Then... then we don't let ourselves talk in circles." Reno crossed his arms over his chest, which was the best thing he could think of at the moment to keep himself from fidgeting. And he paced. Because tonight was a pacing sort of night. "Talk to me. I'll shut up and I'll listen and I'll hear you out, and you can tell me just what you think and what you want me to do- no matter what you think I'll think of it. An' I'll listen. Can't talk each other into circles if it's just one of us talkin' straight, right?"

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