Winter you find him in the depths of Midgar, smoking and staring at the ground. It's raining, bullet-hard and cold the way only Midgar knows how to rain, and he's under the only bit of awning for miles, but if it's dead or close to him the choice is obvious. You turn away to continue, but he calls after you, "Cloud." His voice is a barely audible croak and when you turn around he hasn't moved his gaze.
It isn't much of an opener and you know it's a dumb thing to do, but you go back anyway, lean against the wall beside him. At least you're out of the rain. He offers you nothing more; words, acknowledgement, not even a cigarette. You don't smoke, but he couldn't know that, and who is he to presume you haven't changed in nine years?
"They say it might snow." His words come from nowhere again, and are so average, so restrained, so un-Reno you can think of nothing to say. It's been so long since it was just the two of you, and he wasn't trying to kill you and you weren't trying to kill him.
"We don't talk about the weather much," you finally reply, which is true save occasional comments that it's too cold for work today and such-and-such will never be finished unless it warms up and Wutai is never all gloomy like this and Cloud please don't go out today.
Reno snorts but says nothing more. You both look out into the rain for a while.
"Do you remember the time we got trapped off base in that storm?" he asks, and this time you're less taken aback by the suddenness, even though it's the sort of comment that would usually take you aback anywhere, anytime.
"No," you say, which you think is truth. You can remember flashing pink light and pure white terror, but you've learned not to trust your memories, and don't want to talk about things anyway. You wish he'd go back to the weather.
"You were sure you'd be thrown out. It was the first time you'd ever yelled at us."
"Why are you telling me this?" you ask him, more harshly than you probably need to.
He looks up at you at last. It isn't like him to remain sitting, to let you loom above him so he has to tilt his head right back, but then, you remind yourself, you don't know him anymore, if you ever did.
"I don't know," he says, genuinely, as confused as you are. "It's just… some things need to be said, you know? It isn't good to just… leave things."
"Yeah well. Some things need to be left," you tell him like you mean it, and you do. That wasn't the same you kicking restlessly at the ground, and he isn't the same him who drew from his cigarette and laughed into the sky, swaying madly from something he'd drank, or something he'd taken, or possibly just from himself. And there wasn't the third person, the ever-present, ever-buoyant completion of the triangle, or the circle, or everything. That's all you have, you can't properly even remember what it was like back then, or if it's worth whatever it will take for whatever it could be.
He's still staring at you. "Why'd you come over here then?"
You have no answer, except, because he called you. And that isn't an answer. "Why'd you ask me to?" you reply, though that still doesn't even come close to answering anything.
"Long story," he says, and you take that to mean he hasn't got one either.
It occurs to you that you have no idea what he's up to these days, why he's out here in the rain. If the Turks are still together he's still with them, but no one's tried to kill you lately. Then again, you're not doing anything to warrant being killed, so maybe they just don't care about you anymore.
"We never could talk without Zack."
It shouldn't still hurt like it does, and you can see that he can see it. But you can see that it hurts him too. This surprises you, though thinking about it you don't really know why.
"I still remember him," Reno offers by way of explanation. Maybe you don't need to talk.
"So do I," you reply. "Sort of."
"Well." He leans his head back against the wall, sucks in air through his teeth. "What the fuck else do we need?" He says it like it's a real question, like he wants an answer, but you have none to give him, to give anyone. In the end you don't need to, because suddenly it does start to snow. It's brown and slushy, but it is something, and as Reno stands and walks into it you see that his hand is under his shirt and it's red with blood, all of it, and red is pooling into the snow at your feet and he leaves a trail of it, and he's pretty much doomed.
You don't go after him because he's Reno and doomed is his domain, and because where you are certainly isn't the type of place where you could offer to help him, or he'd accept it, and you don't even know whether you want him alive another day, but you are somewhere, and he's there too, you suppose.