Author's Note: A bit of a rewrite. I replaced all the reviews, not out of ego, but because I like to look back and get motivation from them.
Sienna
He was lying in a bed that wasn't his; that much he knew. As for whose bed it was, he had a few guesses, but none of them had much evidence lent to them. He heard a shipping yard, though, and the wind coming in the window smelled like salt. Between those two and the third, which was that the language coming in with the breeze was one he hadn't been taught in basic school, he had concluded at least that he was in Wutai. The fact that Yuffie Kisaragi was standing in the doorway would have probably led most people to believe it was her room – but he knew, especially in his line of work, that having access to a bedroom didn't make it your own.
"There's something poetic about this, isn't there?"
That was her.
He, on the other hand, was blowing a series of smoke rings at the ceiling fan. They were all very short-lived, but they kept him entertained. "Me lying in your bed?"
"Something like that." Her face flushed for a moment, but he was too preoccupied to notice. "Exactly what we –"
He laughed. "So this is your room. I knew it." He congratulated himself by swirling his cigarette around in the air. "I didn't think so at first, then I listened and figured out that this is the second floor. Or third. Either way, I decided that a ninja like you wouldn't stake up in a room unless you could dart out of it and onto the roof at night, and I could tell it was Wutain a –"
"Reno," she said. "What were you doing in the forest?"
"Hugging a tree." He grinned, never missing a beat, and flicked his cigarette out the window. It was a few feet away, but he'd staked out places for thirteen hours at a time and had learned the art of skillful cigarette disposal. He wondered if he could still fire them out of the mag-rod like he did back when it was just Tseng and him. They'd burned down an entire apartment complex like that once – Tseng even bought the drinks that night.
Yuffie crossed the room and stood at his bedside, though not forgetting to keep her distance. He was still blowing smoke rings, sometimes pausing to rub a bit of mud from his suit. She was dressed in ceremonial garb, and her hair was pinned up. She was even wearing makeup. Her hair had grown over the past eleven months, Reno noticed. "Hugging a tree?" she repeated. He nodded absently. "How does that explain the broken leg?"
When she'd come upon him he had been unconscious at the mouth of a cave she'd been set to explore. His left leg was in the sort of position she knew left legs weren't supposed to be in, so she'd slung him over her shoulder and carried him all the way back to the house.
He smiled. "Oh, it does." She waited for more, but all she got was, "And thank you for bandaging it."
When she'd decided that he'd said all he was going to give her, she rolled her eyes and turned to leave. "Such a child," she sighed, closing the door behind her.
-
She brought him dinner that night and was almost insulted to see he was in the exact position she'd left him in. "Care to test the leg?" she tried.
"You don't want me to leave." He took the offered plate, propped himself against the pillows with some hassle, and began stirring his soup with the spoon she handed him. He could feel the look she was giving him. It was something less than friendly and something more than slightly questioning. He didn't budge. "It's okay – just ask and I'll stay."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean, Reno?"
"Just ask."
She watched him eat for a moment, trying to decide if anyone else had ever noticed the way his cheeks pulled in slightly when he swallowed. As thin as he was, he looked like a skeleton, briefly, for every bite he took. She decided not to tell him this. "All right. I'll joke with you – you're hurt and all. What makes you think I don't want you to leave?"
He held up a finger and swallowed. "Alright; are you ready for this? Watch." He laughed, cleared his throat, and said, "You're giving me dinner. It might be that you pity me, and so you've decided to feed me before kicking me out the door tonight because the diners are closed. However, we're right by the shipping yard – you know that I know that the restaurants are still open around here so the sailors can drink later. You know first-hand that the Wutain nightlife isn't any stranger to me, babe." He smirked at her expression. "I've got a nack for following people that are trying to follow me – you order rum when you don't think I'm watching, and sunrise sours when you know I am." He picked at the dirt under his nails. "Moving on. So clearly it's that you think I'm poor and can't afford to eat at these nice places, right? Wrong. You know how much gil I have on me – you put my wallet back into my pocket the wrong way. I make sure Elena's picture is always firmly kissing my ass." He blew on a bit of hot soup for the effect. "You're rusty, ninja."
"Reno," she reasoned, "you only think that because that's all you've been doing: thinking. All day. Mine, on the other hand, was hard – I came home and made some dinner – I had some extra – I thought maybe you'd want some. As far as your wallet goes, I found it a ways away from you on the ground. It had your license in it, I figured that meant it was yours, and I put it back after I got you here."
There was a moment of silence, then he shrugged. "Sure, maybe."
She stood up, rubbing at her forehead, and stood in front of the table in front of the window. The wind wasn't blowing anymore, so she closed it and lit a few candles. Turning back to the window, her reflection said that the bags under her eyes weren't going to go away on their own. "I'm going to bed, Reno. Whether you stay or not is your choice. I'll be on the couch if you need anything. The bathroom's down the hall; I'll leave this lit in case you need it." She was out the door and pulling it closed when he called to her. She turned and rested her forehead on the frame.
"I heard you come home – you pulled two cans of soup out of the cupboards."
The door had clicked into place before he'd even finished the sentence.
-
He felt his eyes open sometime in the night, and his hand went for the gun that wasn't under his pillow. He did those two before anything voluntary; he'd disliked that part of the job. Anytime someone entered a room he was sleeping in, he woke up and went for his gun, more out of conditioning than any real threat. They'd drilled that into his head during training. His fiancee had disappeared because of it.
He felt Yuffie in the room, slowly making her way across the floor. He heard the rattling of the windowpane and the sound of steady, hard rain on the roof. Thunder shook the house and the wind snaked through its cracks by the time he felt her weight on the bed.
His eyes glowed like dim bulbs – Mako, of course – and neither could hide knowing he was awake, so she felt a little less shame in lying next to him and pulling his arm around her. After a few unsure minutes, he seemed to relax and she moved closer, head on his shoulder. "Reno," she whispered. "Godo – he –"
Reno's jaw tensed. He wondered if she felt his fingers trembling.
"He kicked me out a month ago. I went to my boyfriend's house, and in a week, he'd decided he couldn't see me if Godo didn't see me fit for royal status anymore." Her breath and tears were hot on his neck. "It's a cold town, Reno. It's so damn cold. People are like that. I came here, to my Aunt Hoshi's house. Aunt on my mother's side, of course – she's not cold like the rest of them, you know? And four days ago, she. . ." She choked on her own words. "She. . .she vanished. Oh, God, Reno – I'm so lonely. This house is too big – they don't know where she is –"
She trailed off and he stared at the ceiling, listening to the storm. She shook as she cried quietly, and he tried to think about the ships tossing around in the harbor, instead of what he saw if he closed his eyes. He would see a beautiful, vaguely-familiar Wutain face on the missing persons report he'd dropped somewhere in the woods. He would see Reeve fiddling with a pen, chewing a coffee bean and looking across his desk. He would see his lips moving awkwardly, remembering how harsh the name Hoshi sounded when said by a man who only thought he understood people.