Edge, Thursday Evening

[raspberryturk]

"I'm friggin' bored," Reno announced, possibly to nobody in particular, possibly to the bowl of beans that he'd picked. "Bored bored bored."

The beans said nothing.

"You know how bored I am?"

The beans waited patiently for a reply.

"I'm so friggin' bored, I'm talkin' to string beans."

This was what happened when Reno got himself suspended from duty for two weeks.

Fear.

[NFB for distance, as usual, but totally open for phone calls!]

Comments

[raspberryturk]

"Shitty week," Reno sighed, pursing his lips and flopping backward. "Boss suspended me for bein' a shithead. That ain't fair. I'm good at bein' a shithead."

[intraspective]

"Very good," Ino replied agreeably. "Why were you a shithead this time 'round? Suspension's a bit of a big thing, yeah? Don't you guys, like, need people workin'?"

[raspberryturk]

"We do, but not after I take advantage of havin' tits for a day to completely bugger around with his head," Reno grinned. "I feel sorry for Rude, yo. He's pullin' my weight and Elena's, now. I bet Tseng's gonna be so damn far behind on his paperwork tryin' to cover too that we ain't gonna never catch up again."

[intraspective]

"You guys seriously need to hire people," she said--

Wait.

"...what did you do with your boobs?"

[raspberryturk]

"Wagged 'em around in his face," Reno replied. Entirely too proudly. "Topless."

They'd jiggled. Boobs were fun.

[intraspective]

Ino was... just going to picture that now.

"Um," she managed, around giggles. "I guess he must, uh, really like you if he's keeping you 'round."

'Cause, wow, way past professional.

"Maybe he secretly enjoyed it!" Excuse her, she was just going to laugh.

[raspberryturk]

"Oh, he's desperate," Reno replied, laughing as well. "An' anyhow, he's used to this kinda shit from me. You should'a seen some of the crap I pulled back when they couldn't fire me, yo."

Look, a Turk had to stay sane somehow. If that somehow just happened to involve driving other Turks insane, so what?

[intraspective]

"Must've been nice," she said, a bit wistfully. "Having limits like that--that's a lot of trust, you know?"

[raspberryturk]

"It's how Turks roll. We don't trust one another, we don't make it back alive," Reno replied, simply. "You gotta take pride in what you do, but that don't mean you let it suck who you are outta you, too."

[intraspective]

"Understood, Reno-taichou," Ino quipped pertly.

A beat.

"Alive is generally considered a good thing."

[raspberryturk]

"Last I checked, it was," Reno agreed, easily. "You'd be surprised how many Rookies I seen losin' their heads over this line of work, Ino. It ain't that they can't do the job. It's that they figure the job'll be easier if they ain't all there when they do it."

[intraspective]

Ino studied her equations absently.

"Do it long enough most don't consider you all there anyway," she pointed out. "That's probably their thinking. Rush the process, get better quicker."

It was hers, sometimes. What was up? What was down?

[raspberryturk]

"I wasn't all there, before Fandom," Reno noted, idly. "Took bein' sent to a friggin' high school I never wanted to go to in the first place for me to be able to figure out how to balance it all. Did you know it's possible to forgive yourself for the rough shit? I mean, not some of it. But you can look at the job an' remind yourself that it had to be done, an' if you didn't do it, maybe the next guy would'a done worse. I dunno."

It really didn't undo the fact that you were doing the dirty work, no. But it was still a weird little bit of comfort.

[intraspective]

Ino gave that a long pause.

"Why do you have to forgive yourself? Feel bad 'bout it?"

[raspberryturk]

"Nah," Reno replied. And it was true, to some degree. "But sometimes, it gets tiring. You get the wrong jobs, you watch the world fall down. You saw Midgar."

[intraspective]

"I saw it." Had been there, wanted to go back and explore. Thought Edge was sort of brokenly awesome. "But, you know--the world ain't always, don't seem like, it'd be all upright if it never fell. No one would know the difference. Falling makes it matter more."

[raspberryturk]

"To the people who survived," Reno sighed. "Midgar took millions, Ino. An' then Geostigma after that took millions more. It's hard to appreciate life when there ain't even a place to bury all the bodies."

[intraspective]

"Maybe?" She shrugged. "I mean--I don't even get those numbers. But, it don't sound hard to look 'round and see that maybe there's bodies everywhere, but there's still some people standing. 'Cause saying that it's hard to 'ppreciate what's good... kinda sounds like those that didn't make it are more important than those that did."

Ino tugged at her hair.

"But I'm just a stupid little Rookie, so who knows?"

[raspberryturk]

"You call yourself stupid to me again, Rookie, an' I'll hike to Fandom an' smack the stupid right outta ya, got that?"

He'd totally do it, too.

"We're from different worlds, is all. It ain't that people ain't happy to be alive. It's that they're damn tired. This has been goin' on for years, now."

[intraspective]

"You just want the excuse to come back to Fandom," she teased, skipping around what he'd actually said.

"What 'bout the kids?" Ino asked. "There's gotta be some, people'd be sleeping 'round no matter what. Those kids ain't going to be tired. They're going to look 'round and go 'hey, I wanna live'."

Even in the ashes, embers burned. Closest thing to a religion that Ino got. Will of Fire. Her village's creed.

[raspberryturk]

"The lucky ones'll get that chance," Reno agreed, poking at a bean with his free hand. "This is all they know. They'll wanna see better. I did."

[intraspective]

"Think you managed?" she questioned, kicking her feet idly over the edge of the roof and glad enough for this topic over the other one.

[raspberryturk]

"I'm a Turk, ain't I?"

So far as Reno was concerned, that much said it all.

[intraspective]

"Mmm," she hummed. "Good enough, I guess."

It was an interesting answer, at least.

[raspberryturk]

"Good enough for me," Reno decided, and then popped a bean into his mouth.

Mmmm. Beany.