raspberryturk | A Secluded Corner of the Beach, Sunday Evening

Reno stared at Rikku somewhat incredulously.

"Okay. He sounds like the kinda guy who'd throw his girly little arms in the air and shriek like a toddler with a squirrel in his pants before he'd ever make a move to protect himself if he was attacked by a monster. Uh."

Reno knew nothing about this Toronto place, but he was pretty sure that even weird Canadian cities had their rough neighborhoods. And possibly moose. He'd heard something about Canada having moose.

"There's a difference between ugly and important, Rikku. If I don't take the ugly ones, Rude or Elena will. Elena's not really a rookie no more, zoto. She's earned her stripes." He shrugged. "Just so long as I ain't stuck at the 'helpin' old ladies cross the road' point, I'm good."

He was watching the sky pretty intently, now. There were stars up there, once the clouds drifted past. "Levels. I mean. Like you gave things numbers, you know? You said Turks came first, and you came second, and... That ain't the case. I mean, I'm kinda at a loss without the Turks, but if it was just them... I'd be runnin' in place, yoto. I moved forward, since I got here. Since I met you."

Edited 2008-11-18 06:29 (UTC)

"He's not from worlds like we are," Rikku said, loyally. "It was hard for him. I'd go off world-saving and he'd stress about it. So I tried not to, so much, any more, because he couldn't handle it. But I think that was just ... not ever going to be right, you know? That's what I mean. That I don't ever want you to feel like that."

She was going to stare at the water, again. "If the ugly ones were important ... I mean ... if you had to do awful things, but there was a good reason for it? That'd be different, I think. If you had to go ... take someone out, but there was a good reason for it that wasn't just, your boss wanted them dead. Not just, hey, he's a bad guy anyway. I don't know. I think I have a screwy moral center." She frowned, at that. "It's been wobbly lately. I think. I don't know if that's ..."

Rikku shook her head to clear it and looked over at him. "You mean that?"

Reno quirked an eyebrow. He'd met plenty of people here in Fandom who wasn't from a place like Gaia or Spira. Hell, their best friends here were both from a place without monsters.

... Poor Romeo. Reno would have warned him about things like dragons if he'd had any clue they were going to be casually swinging on by to save the world.

"I mean that. I mean... You remember when you met me? About fifteen pounds of lighter and missin' sparrin' dates so I could lose my head in smokes and tequila?" He pursed his lips a little and looked at her, giving her another little squeeze. "I sleep more, you know. Not so many nights just... up lookin' out the window, or whatever."

... Well. For Reno this was clearly a big change.

"... How do you mean, 'wobbly?'"

"I've noticed you putting on weight," she smiled. And then facepalmed. "Not in a bad way. That sounds like ... dude, you were all skin and bones, you know? Your face kinda filled in some. You're ... you seem like you sleep better. Like you're not just gonna waste away into nothing."

She was chewing away her lower lip. "No, that's not right. You never -- you never seemed like you were going to break. Just that you were going to get more and more stretched out. Hollowed out, almost. I don't know." She kissed his cheek. "I worried about you. Still kinda do. Just ... less."

Rikku hugged her knees in closer, mulling over the question. Or avoiding it. "It's nothing," she said. "Just a little ..." She had her hand see-saw back and forth. "Wobbly."

"Wobbly." Reno mimicked the see-saw motion, an eyebrow twitching upward. "I know all about wobbly moral centers, Rikku. Trust me, you can expand on that a little. I ain't gonna judge you, here."

"I know you won't," she said, quickly. "It's not that, honest. It's ... nothing. I've been worrying about some things, but I think it's just ..."

She shrugged, awkwardly. "I'm making too big a deal out of nothing."

"If it was nothing," Reno reasoned, "you wouldn't be makin' a deal out of it at all, zoto."

In Reno's experience, Rikku made big deals out of big things. Mass murder, racial slurs, Petey's hairballs. That sort of thing.

Petey managed to land hairballs right on things she liked. Like engines, and notebooks, and t-shirts. If he weren't dim, she'd think he was secretly evil and doing it on purpose.

She lifted a shoulder again. "It's ... I told you about it already. I pulled a gun out and I pointed it at your boss. The evil one. I was gonna shoot him, but I didn't. Deadpool said that's what matters, that I didn't. And he's a bad guy, anyway, so it's not like ..."

Not like she had been considering murdering him, or anything. Okay.

Reno frowned faintly.

"You regret anything about it?" It was a very neutral sort of question. The kind of question that was very clearly for the sake of knowing, not for judging.

Reno wouldn't have had the right to judge, even if Rikku regretted not pulling the trigger.

Hugging her knees. Staring at her toes. Thinking. Worrying.

"No," she said carefully.

That was the hell of it, right there.

Reno chewed on that for a moment, and then pulled back just far enough to look her in the eye.

"Why didn't you?"

Again. Asking for the sake of knowing.

"Tseng stopped me," she said dully. "He talked me out of it. Maybe I never had the guts to do it, anyway. I wanted to. If I regret anything, it's ... that I let him stop me. He started talking and I listened to him. Stupid. If it had been you, you would've shot him and tossed the gun somewhere before anyone had the chance to stop you."

"I kill people for a living and make bets with Rude to see how loud I can make them go crunch," Reno pointed out, reaching for one of her hands. "You ain't me. You won't be. That's fine."

...

"Did Tseng stop you? Or did you stop you, and Tseng tellin' you not to is the easiest excuse for your changin' your mind?"

She let him take her hand, idly, twining her fingers through his. Still not looking over.

"I don't know," she said, in that same flat tone. Shrugging again. "I had the gun, I wanted him dead. He should be dead. Then Tseng jumped in front of him, because hey, you guys can die, but not the fucking President. I said he should move or I'd shoot both of them, but ... I couldn't have. The other boss, yes, but not him and Tseng. And then Tseng said we should go look for you guys, and I got so angry. He knew you had to be ... dead, he was just trying to distract me. And then he said you ... you d-deserved a ..."

Dammit. "Burial."

Edited 2008-11-18 10:47 (UTC)

"Turks don't get burials," Reno replied. It was a tired sort of reply, but he was just as intent on getting to the meat of the matter as he had been a moment before. "It bugs you, you didn't pull the trigger? Or what?"

Trying to understand. Trying to piece it together.

He hadn't exactly been there, after all.

"I know," she said. "We were going to find ... something we could ... bury. That's why we were ..."

Out there. Digging through rocks as her fingers cracked and bled.

"We killed Seymour," she said, finally. "We had to. He was a threat, he'd kidnapped Yunie, he was evil. And it still hit me pretty hard, when we did. That we'd taken a life. The finality of it. And Seymour was -- I mean, someone had to stop him. Yuna tried to get him to turn himself in and he just laughed at her. He was crazy. But it was still huge, just ... deciding to kill someone, and doing it."

There was a slight pause. "I didn't feel that. With your boss. Maybe 'cause I didn't do it. I thought ... once I was myself again, I'd be horrified that I was even going to. He wasn't killing anyone, standing right there. He wasn't holding a gun on me, and it was me or him. I just ... wanted him dead. And all I can think of is, I wish I hadn't let Tseng talk me out of it."

He furrowed his eyebrows a little and looked down at their hands. Hers in his. His, all bloody, even if the blood wasn't there to be seen, and hers... relatively clean.

Still clean. Damn near immaculate, in comparison, really.

"Maybe it's not that your moral center is gettin' wobbly," he ventured. "Maybe it's that your sense of reality is catchin' up to it."

Not that killing Rufus was going to save lives, or anything. But at the same time... Reno could trace a good many of the planet's problems back to the younger Shinra's actions.

Control. Through fear.

Rikku shook her head. Pulled her hand away.

"I don't kill people," she said. "Not unless they deserve it. Not unless I have to. That's what it means, being a Guardian. I don't just shoot people because I don't like them. Your boss-guy is evil. But I wasn't thinking about how evil he was, right then. I just wanted him to suffer. I should ... be bothered by that. Something. I don't understand."

Reno heaved a bit of a sigh, re-claiming his hand and looking out toward the water.

"Maybe Deadpool's right, then. Maybe all that matters is you didn't do it. Maybe you're right. Maybe you weren't gonna do it anyhow. You don't kill people. Don't just shoot 'em because you don't like 'em."

He chewed his lip for a second, and then shrugged.

"I dunno. I think if I ever watched you go up in a fireball, I'd probably take out whoever caused you the biggest trouble in your life, if they were sittin' right there, though. I mean. We already established that you're not me. But... Just sayin'."

"I wanted to," she said softly. "He ... I just thought it was his fault, you know? Because of him, you'd done terrible things, you'd had really awful stuff happen to you, and ... you were gone, and that meant he was going to hire someone else to fill your spot. And then they'd do terrible things, and get tortured, and blow themselves up. And he'd dust himself off and hire someone else. It had to stop. So ... I was gonna stop it."

He was reaching for her hand again. Tentatively, this time. If she pulled away again, he wouldn't blame her, really.

"When somethin' like that happens, maybe you're not supposed to think straight. Maybe, if you were lookin' back on it now and you didn't do anything at all, maybe that'd be when you started to think that somethin' was the matter." Reno looked down at the blanket they were sitting on, shrugging. "I mean. It... was a lot, yeah? And knowin' him, it ain't like he was makin' a big deal of it or whatever. Could be it wasn't reality catchin' up to your morals, just your morals kinda got caught up in the reality of it, instead."

She let his hand slide along hers, pulling it back towards her, grateful for the touch. Hoping he didn't take it amiss that she'd let go, a minute ago.

"I wanted him to hurt," she said, nodding along with what he said. "He didn't seem like he did, so I was gonna hurt him. That's ... not really good-guy-ish of me. So I should be glad Tseng stopped me. It just ... feels like I wimped out, instead. Like I'm too much of a good guy, too nice, too kind. I'd just put the gun down and be sad you were dead and ... I didn't want that."

"Plenty of stuff hurts Rufus," Reno mused. "Just not the stuff that ought to, I guess. Wouldn't surprise me." Rufus was, after all, the guy who ordered AVALANCHE to kill the Turks.

Nice guy.

"When big things happen, you wanna do somethin' about it, right? I mean... Even if there's nothin' you can do, it sorta feels like you're doin' it wrong if all you do is sit down and take it. Been through too much to take it all quiet-like." He shrugged. "That don't make you a failure for lettin' Tseng talk you down, Rikku."

A pause.

"The guy could probably talk his way outta hell the day he gets offed. But when you're dead-set on killin' someone, I don't think anyone can talk you down unless you really wanna be, somewhere in there."

"It felt like a failure," she said softly. "And it feels wrong that I wanted to. Except it doesn't. It feels wrong that I don't care that I wanted to. If he were still your boss ... if he were still handing you ugly assignments and filing his nails and whatever ... I'd ..."

She couldn't say for sure if she would, or not.

That ... kinda bugged her, too.

"Don't think on a what-if too hard, Rikku. You won't never figure it out for sure, and then you'll spend the rest of your life kickin' yourself over a 'maybe.'"

Now Reno was going to reach for the wine he'd brought along. And two glasses. It was a wine-in-glasses kind of moment, and Rikku was getting a small glass of it before he was going to even think about taking some for himself.

"You didn't do nothin' wrong. You didn't pull the trigger, and you didn't fail to act, either. You got your point across. That's somethin', Rikku."

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