Room 501, Wednesday Evening

[raspberryturk]

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.]]

Comments

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

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?

[raspberryturk]

"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."

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

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?"

[raspberryturk]

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.

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

"Axel ... dies?" Naminé said softly.

[raspberryturk]

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.

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

"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."

[raspberryturk]

"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."

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

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."

[raspberryturk]

"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.

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

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

[raspberryturk]

"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?

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

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."

[raspberryturk]

"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."

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

"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.

[raspberryturk]

"Upsetting," he replied, "being an emotion, of course."

He took a seat on the edge of his bed again.

"And it was." So very matter-of-fact, here. Just because he could remember feeling it all didn't mean that it was really him who had been upset. He could talk about this without his pride taking a beating. "I'm willin' to bet it would be. For anyone, yo."

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

"I suppose it is," Naminé said, nodding. "Very well. So Axel, having emotions despite everything saying that he can't, was upset. Presumably about Roxas leaving, even though I think Roxas knew it was what he had to do. That wouldn't make it much easier, would it?"

[raspberryturk]

"Don't imagine so. You don't just turn and walk away from somethin' without there being consequences." Reno leaned backward again, palms pressed firmly into the mattress. "In this case, rippin' the heart outta someone who apparently doesn't have one to begin with. Good way to prove it's there, I'm thinkin'. Break it, yoto."

Again, this was purely platonic conversation about the emotions of someone who was obviously not him. Just because he had felt them, didn't mean they bothered him, or anything. Really.