raspberryturk | Room 501, Wednesday Evening

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Room 501, Wednesday Evening

Why yes, yes Reno does, in fact, check his e-mail.

Junk, junk, junk, junk with spam filling, ten messages from the boss informing him that his second report is half a week late, junk, invite to the Girls with Guns club, spam, spam, junk, jun-- Ooooh.

He scrolled up and clicked on the invite, reading it over a good three times and grinning all the more as he did so.

"Chicks and firearms," he said aloud. "I'm so there, yoto."

[[Door and post open like an open thing. Give Reno another reason to put off writing that "no, really, I'm not insane, I just wasn't me at all this weekend" report for Tseng.]]

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Naminé looked up suddenly. "I'm sorry, I'm going on and on about all sorts of people you don't know and this must be terribly confusing."

Except ... he didn't seem confused.

He stood up. Sitting wasn't doing it for him anymore, here, and he had to be on his feet for a bit, maybe pacing. Moving around, because moving meant that he was still all there. Really.

"Don't worry about it."

He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a wadded piece of notebook paper. He'd been carrying it with him since the weekend just so he could look at it to remind himself that he hadn't lost his freaking mind and hallucinated it all.

He absently wadded it in his hands a little more before unfolding it and eying it. And then he handed Naminé the note.

"Got a pretty good idea who's who, yo."

Naminé took the note and read it over ... and then stared, jaw dropping without her even realizing it.

She must have reread it four or five times before she managed to look up at him, dazed.

"How did you get this?"

"Sora," came the very carefully neutral reply with a shrug of his shoulders. "Said he must've written it in his sleep or whatever. Handed it to Axel."

The day after Axel went freaking flaming ape shit on the roof. For good reason, Reno figured. If anyone had believably told him the same about Rude, the electrical storm they had yesterday wouldn't have even begun to compare with the aftermath.

"I ..." Naminé stared at it, and then looked up at Reno, and then stared at it again, shaking her head. "In his sleep? So Roxas is ... there, but ..."

Couldn't step forward to write his own note? That would make sense. What else had she expected? Roxas was staying in the back, observing, but not participating. Just like she would.

It was better than fading into darkness, and she was only feeling sorry for herself. She cleared her throat and tried to find something to say.

"You're one of them, too." It really was a question, no matter how straightforward it seemed. "Not quite all--?"

He gestured vaguely at his chest with one hand.

"We're Nobodies," she said softly. "Roxas, Axel, the rest of the Organization, and myself. Sora's a person. The rest of us never were. Just echoes left behind."

"Didn't feel too much like an echo," Reno mused, giving his head a bit of a shake.

No, everything had been way too freakin' intense for all of that to just be an echo.

Naminé lifted a shoulder. "DiZ said ... that Nobodies can't feel. We remember feelings that we had, when we were people, and we act them out, either to fool ourselves or to manipulate others, but ... that we aren't capable. I wouldn't know. I've never been anything other than myself."

"Comin' from a guy who's been himself his entire life right up until this weekend?" He lifted a shoulder and shoved his hands back into his pockets. "Had a lot of shit happen to me where it felt like my chest was gonna explode because of all that was freakin' the matter. Like this kinda... pressure. Dunno how else to put it."

He was going to pace again.

"Axel sure as hell felt that and more."

Naminé stared, unable to find her voice for a few moments.

"Maybe you only thought that," she said weakly. "Maybe ... you kept your heart, even when you were him?"

If Axel could feel ...

But that was crazy. Wasn't it?

"If it was my heart the whole time, I don't think the name 'Roxas' would have really had that effect on me," Reno reasoned. "One, because I just don't get upset over people I've never heard of, and two, because Axel wouldn't have ever had the chance to feel anything for Roxas without a heart in the first place, zoto."

He offered a bit of an uneasy smile. "He nearly tried to burn down the dorms."

Axel had a heart. Axel?

It made perfect sense and it was completely insane.

"They were best friends," she said, to say something. "Axel ... I think he risked a lot, to try to get Roxas back. In Twilight Town. From the way he was talking when we left, I think he'd turned on them. The Organization."

Blink.

"The dorms? Why?"

Reno was wearing that carefully controlled face of his again. The 'too tough to be upset by this, see?' face. He was a Turk. He got angry and he could get annoyed, but upset wasn't allowed.

"Was standin' on the roof when they told Axel about little things, like how he's gonna die, and how his partner's gonna leave the Organization and join with Sora." Little, dismissive shrug. Pacing again. "Nothin' huge."

Right.

"Axel ... dies?" Naminé said softly.

Reno paused in his pacing to look over his shoulder at her.

"That wasn't the part he seemed real concerned about."

Honestly. Dying was inevitable. Part of the job. The rest of it, not so much. Typically.

"Roxas had to go back," she said, shaking her head. "It was the only way he could be whole again. I tried to tell him that, but I'm not sure how much he understood, before the end."

"I wouldn't know," Reno said, and he was going to start his agitated rounds of the room again, here. "Never met Roxas, myself. Wouldn't know him to see him. But Axel didn't seem to know about any of it. Total shock, yoto."

Naminé shook her head. "That doesn't make any sense. He told Axel, just before he left. I saw it in his memories. Axel might have been the only one who even knew."

"Maybe he hadn't left yet."

While they were playing with alternate universes and the like, might as well toss some fun with timelines into the mix to properly destroy Reno's sense of reality, here.

"Do you remember anything?" Naminé asked. "How long it had been since Castle Oblivion? Where everyone was?"

"Look, I don't..." Reno allowed himself a frown as he thought back on the weekend. This was the sort of thing he'd rather avoid dwelling on too hard. But at the same time. "He was surprised that Sora remembered his name?"

Was that something?

Naminé nodded, slowly. "If this was before Roxas left, that makes sense. Sora wouldn't remember anything from Castle Oblivion; I was rewriting his memories to the way they should have been, but that meant losing what happened while I was changing them. So he shouldn't have known Axel at all. Or me."

"That sounds like about the same sort of notion that Axel had," Reno agreed.

This wasn't the sort of conversation he usually tried to have with a cute girl in his room on a Wednesday evening. But then, he didn't usually spend his weekends quite the way he had spent this past one, either.

"Can pinpoint every emotion he felt through that freakin' conversation, zoto. Annoyed to surprised to- to I don't think there's a word for that one. And then angry. Really damn angry, in a desperate kinda way."

"That would have been a lot to take in," Naminé said softly. "It would be an upsetting thing to experience."

Her tone left it carefully open which of them she was referring to.

Room 501, Wednesday Evening

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