Mistakes Come in Threes
The first time they meet, he is swearing over a broken-down motorcycle on the outskirts of Sector 7. Jessie knows it's a bad idea to stop in this part of the slums. She knows it's even worse to offer help to a stranger, but she's never known when to walk away.
The bike is ancient. The leather seat is worn, the chrome pitted, but someone has maintained the engine with care. Jessie wonders if that someone is the gangly guy who has crouched down next to her, watching her every move like a hawk. He could be. His fingernails are framed by thin lines of engine grease, just like hers.
When the engine is rumbling again, he speaks.
"I like a girl who's good with her hands."
It should be cheesy, and it is, but when he says it like that, with an easy smile on his face, Jessie finds herself smiling back.
The second time they run into each other, he's having a drink in 7th Heaven. She recognizes the red hair, brighter than hers. He remembers her too, and asks her to have a seat next to him at the bar.
"Name's Reno," he says and offers to buy her a drink.
Jessie accepts. It's only to thank her for her help, after all, and with Barret manning the bar she's as safe as she can get below the plate.
They talk about motorcycles and engines and maintenance. Reno describes how he dragged his bike out of a junk heap outside Sector 5, abandoned there by some topsider, and nursed it back to life. She tells him about her fascination with the Midgar train system and how she's dying to take a ride up to the top some day, just to figure out how it works. Later, when the buzz of Barret's Corel wine has worn off, she'll regret babbling on about her weird obsessions, but Reno doesn't seem to mind. His lips are always smiling, his eyes too.
That night, as they part ways, he presses those smiling lips to hers for the first time. It won't be the last.
The last time they meet, he's wearing a suit.
Jessie has talked to Barret, to Tifa, to all the others. She knows what that suit means. She knows what Shinra is, and she knows what Shinra has done in Corel, in Nibelheim, in so many other places.
When Reno asks her to come with him, away from the slums to a life above the plate, she doesn't listen. She tries to tell him what she has heard, what the others have told her. He doesn't listen, either.
She calls him a bastard, a user, a liar. He calls her worse.
That night, she finally walks away.
At 7th Heaven, she seeks out Barret and asks for a private word. He listens, and then he speaks. Tifa, Biggs, Wedge; they all speak. By the time the sun rises on a new day, Jessie has embraced their cause.