- Thanks again for the review! I really appreciate it (seriously... it always makes my day when I see a review notification in my inbox!). I'm actually Japanese, so Japanese is my first language.

Echo the Ethereal Swordmaster - The timeline for Turks:The Kids Are Alright is really ambiguous. It's hard to figure stuff out, sometimes to the point of who's speaking what. I really need to catch up on writing...

Four days late. New chap coming on Friday, then it's back to schedule. So keep posted!

Chapter 9: A Girlfriend's Friend, a Friend's Girlfriend

The meeting was at seven, a rather odd time for him to go out for leisure; but he was off that day, and so had no problems meeting up with the caller at the specified time. Arien did not say much about it, merely asked him about the meal, and then he went on his way to have a talk with a man he necessarily did not like. Zen had a history of trying to break him up with Arien, and Reno wasn't really the one to forget grudges. Oh, he didn't really pay attention to them often, sure, but it didn't mean he forgot them.

Zen was already there when Reno entered the bar. The blond was rather conspicuous amidst the gloom, a faint light in the hazy darkness that made him look like one of the infants in a madonna painting, and Reno wondered why he had picked this particular bar instead of any number of other bars at his disposal. This was the seediest, filthiest, hinkiest bar in the entire Midgar Edge, and But the odd expression on his face made that comparison inappropriate, and as Reno sat down, he vaguely wondered why the blond needed to talk to him, and not, say, Axil, or Arien, or his wife. Maybe Ivy still didn't like the idea of them being together and had sent Zen to chew him out. Well, if that was the case, Reno wasn't going to budge. Arien was happy with him - or so he thought - and so he wasn't going to let random people change that. Besides, with Arien being that needy, who would say she didn't want him?

"Whiskey," he said lightly to the bartender, then sat down next to Zen at the counter. "So, what's up?"

Zen looked up, a frown on his face. And then he vaguely asked, "can we talk?"

"Well, that's what I'm here for, yeah." He nodded as the bartender slid a glass to him. "Though why you need to talk to me and not Axil I haven't a clue. But go ahead."

Zen absent-mindedly observed him, taking in his wild red hair and the pierced ear; his expression was languidly cynical, and there was a marked lack of gravity to the way he carried himself. It didn't help that he had a slight sneer on his face, or that his black T shirt made him look like a regular punk. Yes, it was extremely likely that Reno would have experience regarding what he was going to talk about; of course, that didn't bode well for Arien, but it was partly her fault for sticking with such a man, even after constant reminders that he was no good for her.

Zen stared into the glass, keeping his vigil for a moment, but then suddenly asked, "Have you ever cheated on someone?"

"Cheat?" Reno echoed. "Like, as in, cheat on someone with someone else?" He raised a brown eyebrow, as if he was asking whether Zen had completely lost his mind. "You jokin'? Why would I ever do that?"

"Bullshit!" Zen cried, almost desperately. "You've got your hands in so many damn pairs of panties that getting hitched won't change a thing."

"I'm not hitched." Reno waved a slender hand, devoid of any rings. "And as much as I'd like to brag just how many ladies have salivated over my rod, I'm sorry to say that no two women ever shared it. Well, without knowing about it," he amended, recalling the time he had gotten piss-drunk and had ended up in a threesome. That was when his boyhood dreams had ended and he had discovered that threesomes were way, way overrated. Zen made a face at the mention of saliva and "rod", and Reno grinned, satisfied that he had gotten the wanted results. "But no, man, Arien'd kill me if I did that. With a blunt spoon."

What did he just say? Despite it being easy for anyone to imagine Arien castrating someone with a spoon - although it was far more likely that she'd just shoot the unmentionables off and be done with it, no muss, no fuss - Zen tried to re-register what he had just heard. Did Reno just say he had never cheated on someone? Was that even remotely possible? Did they mean the same thing? But he must have meant the very thing Zen was thinking about, since he mentioned Arien…

Zen looked aghast. "Never?" He asked. "Like, never ever?"

Reno blinked, baffled at his reaction. He had not taken the query seriously, and had simply assumed the question to be hypothetical, or even a joke. But Zen's expression had told him that this was not so, and that he was serious. Which meant…

"No," he said, his expression now serious. "Man, I'll never do that to Arien. She'd cry, and then god knows what kind of shit she'd do to herself. Then I gotta clean the mess up. It's too much hassle, and besides can you imagine what kind of a mess I'd be in at work? She's my coworker, remember?"

Zen's eyes widened.

Arien cries?

For Zen Flescher, Arien was a fairly tearless creature. Always controlled, always focused, always driven, she seemed almost like a machine, without the capability to cry or be moved in such a manner to elicit emotional responses. But Reno's expression was serious, and the latter part of the sentence told him that Arien, when deeply hurt, would run to such excessive measures, perhaps to regain control of herself… but whether that produced any measurable effect was clearly up to debate, and Reno's face told him that it didn't.

God, what have I done?!

Reno's serious countenance told him the gravity of his error, but he couldn't stop the confession now. Or could he? But then Reno was fairly astute when it came to these things, or so Axil had said once, so he'd probably know anyway, and then what? He'd tell Arien, and then she'd tell Ivy.

"I cheated on Ivy," Zen said in a rush to get the words out. Reno stopped drinking, then stared.

"You what?" He echoed.

Zen gulped down the alcohol. He was going to need every help he could get, and if it came from the chemicals and without judgement, more the better. But God, if Reno had never cheated on someone, what did that make him? Scum of scum?

"Look, it was an accident, okay?!"

"Hey, I haven't said nothin'." Reno tapped on the wooden counter and asked for another glass. "Anyway, what happened?"

"Look, this is really difficult to say it out loud, but-"

Reno was starting to look bored. Zen hurriedly continued.

"Well, Ivy was my third girlfriend, and she's older than me!" Zen blurted.

Reno raised an eyebrow. "So?" He shrugged. "You think Arie brings my past girlfriends up? She has her own and I've mine. Digging it out won't do us any good."

"You don't understand," Zen said, shaking his head. "You're older than Arien, you've had more experience than her, and that's fine. You're in the driver's seat, and Arien's happy going along with you. But Ivy… she's always ahead of me, older than me, have more experience than me… she's trying to make me quit my job-"

"Hang on a sec," Reno interrupted. "You're gonna quit your job?"

"The spying stuff, yeah. Ivy's nagging." Zen sighed. "Said if we were gonna start a family, I need to be concerned about the safety of the family too. Doesn't Arien say that to you?"

"Nope." He shrugged. "Arie knows damn well the dangers of my work, and she says nothing. But then again," he pointed out, "she has the same job. She'll have to quit too. Besides, she knows that I need it. Not the job, but I need this in my life."

I need to be running. I need a purpose.

"The excitement?"

"That too. But look, we all need something to live for. For some, it's booze. For me, it's this job." He swirled the amber liquid inside the glass. "So… why d'you do it?"

"I dunno." Zen sighed again. "I guess I wanted to do something without Ivy hanging over my shoulder, you know? Do something by myself. And kind of one-up her, I guess."

"So… you cheated."

A shrug was all Reno received as a response. Reno doubted Zen actually knew why he cheated; perhaps this was his rationalisation, as opposed to the truth. But what did that have to do with him? His job was to just drink and listen. Or at least pretend to listen. He wasn't particularly interested in actually listening to Zen Flescher's tales of misery and woe; it was his choice to get married to Ivy, and so it naturally fell to Zen to sort this mess out. And besides, since when was he a good listener?

"Does Ivy know?"

Zen shook his head in response.

"So why exactly did you want to talk to me?"

"I thought you'd understand."

Reno snorted. "What you meant is, you thought I'd have experience. Sorry buddy, I don't cheat on my girlfriends. I have enough lies in my life without adding to my personal one. I don't need more, especially with people I have to trust my life with." He tried to imagine how Arien would react, if he did indeed cheat on her and she found out; heartbroken wouldn't even begin to express the degree of hurt she'd be in. Despite what many people thought, she was a fragile creature, relying mostly on him for mental stability. The odd dichotomy of her angry independence and the reluctant admission of her incapability to finish emotional ordeals by herself was delicious; it was one thing to make a woman kneel, but it was quite another to make a woman that proud kneel and admit that she needed him. But it also came with the knowledge that she'd shatter if he betrayed her. Which would be way, way too much work for him to patch up. He could just imagine Rude's silent, judgemental stare. Elena would shriek like a harpy and even Tseng would look at him with disapproval. "But anyway. What do you wanna do?"

"Do?" Zen echoed.

"Well, are you gonna tell her?"

There was a fearful expression on Zen Flescher's cherubic face, which struck the redhead as comical. Blond hair shook as the man shook his head.

"Good. If you're gonna lie, take it to the grave. Worst thing you can do is lie badly," said the man who lied and killed for a living. "Well," he said, brightening, "you can always silence her. Permanently."

Zen goggled. "You mean, kill her?" He croaked. "It was my mistake! Surely she shouldn't-"

"Oh, c'mon. If the broad talks to your darling wife, things are gonna get really shitty," interrupted the redhead as he tapped the counter for another glass. There was a sly grin on his face that belied the joke, but someone who knew less would have taken him seriously. As for Zen, he was not quite sure whether Reno meant it or not. "You won't just have Ivy after you, man. You'll have all the other ladies after you, plus one hell of a good Turk-"

"Arien?"

"Elena." Reno grinned into the glass. Arien had her strengths, and she was an irreplaceable asset to the team, but he'd never, ever praise her; it was likely that he just didn't want to think of her as a Turk, but instead as a woman. "Didn't you know? 'Laney and the ladies are getting quite close. And trust me, her kicks are getting better." He looked at Zen's dumbstruck face, then grinned evilly. "You ain't just fightin' your wife, Zennie boy. You're fightin' the whole damn crew."

While Reno was talking with Zen and discovering that the upright man wasn't quite so upright after all, Ivy was at Arien's, stirring tea restlessly as Arien bustled her way around the kitchen. She hadn't pried about where Reno was going, or why - it seemed an all-boys thing - and had forgotten to think about it when Ivy had come over, who had been a little too busy recently to properly keep in touch as closely as before. Marriage life, evidently, meant that your time was no longer completely your own. Arien wasn't sure what was so different from her life and Ivy's to warrant more exclusivity on her silver-haired friend's part. After all, they both lived with men who seemed to have developed a distaste for laundry and a taste for clean clothes. The amount of chores should be the same, shouldn't it?

Ivy noticed that some hard edge was gone from Arien's face… she looked a little softer now, as if she didn't always have a shield up. She wondered why for a moment, then realised that it must be because of the redhead. Before Reno had entered her life, she had been almost averse to the male sexuality for some reason that even Arien herself didn't quite understand. Terrified of the sex, she had been always on alert, prickly and non too gentle; but she had been almost forced by circumstance to accept the redhead, and she had. Now it was up to Reno to beat off the other males, and Ivy assumed he did that task marvellously. He didn't quite seem the kind to be willing to share anything of her with any one else. Males, anyway.

"What's bothering you?" Ivy asked as Arien pulled out a large kitchen knife and set the blade against the tomatoes. She looked up, wearing a sour expression, but whether that was from the fumes of the green spicy peppers that had just been sliced up or from something else, she wasn't quite sure. She also had no idea what Arien was making. Ivy rarely tried a new recipe, while Arien seemed to never make the same dish twice.

"Zen's still in the business, isn't he?" she asked disapprovingly as she looked down and sliced the tomato in half.

"What business?"

Arien gave her a hard, steady look. Ivy nodded. Then asked, "why do you ask? Do you disapprove? Aren't you in it?"

"That's a lot of questions in one breath, Ivy," the woman complained. Schuck schuck schuck, went the knife as she sliced the fruit, but then she stopped her hand. "I do disapprove. And yes, I'm still in it."

"Isn't that hypocritical?"

"Not really." She shrugged. "Let's just say that I want him out because I'm in it. I know the effect it has on people, and trust me, Ivy, it's not pretty." Schuck schuck schuck went the knife again with a hiss of steel, separating the red flesh into two, then three. "Look… I didn't choose to be in this career. Reno didn't choose this career. If we had a choice, we'd have done something else. So why is Zen so crazy to keep doing this kind of job?"

Ivy blinked again, shocked. It was true… Arien's life hadn't been exactly a happy one, all things considered, and not much of it had been up to her. Some people messed their lives up by choice; stupid choices, but they chose them anyway. All Arien could do with the circumstances she had been given was cope. Hers were reactions, not actions, but still she had ended up killing her own sister then having to lie to her father about it.

"And Reno… he's happy with his job?"

"I don't know if he's happy with it. I'm sure he has his moments of regret." Dark dreams plagued Reno's sleep; and unlike what he let on, Arien had a feeling he remembered his victim's faces. Well, some. His death tally included those he had never seen, thanks to the Sector 7 incident. That was still his worst nightmare, and she'd always wake him up when he dreamt about it, and then he'd hold her for hours, as if she was some deliverance. She wasn't, and he knew it, but he held her regardless. Reno, like her, had no choice to join the Turks; it was literally join or die for him, and who in the right mind wanted to die? But he had been forced to make hard choices, choices that still haunted him. It did him no good to explain that if he hadn't pressed the button, or killed a target, then Rude or Tseng or even she would have done it instead. He just went on, tasting guilt as if it was the finest liqueur. And to be honest, that was the one thing that kept Reno human; if he didn't have that guilt, he'd be a monster, and he constantly walked the fine line between that and what made people human.

And people wondered why he was so messed up.

"Rufus?" Ivy was asking. Arien snapped her attention back to her friend.

"What about him?"

"Is he okay with… what he orders people to do?"

She shrugged. "I don't have a clue what he's thinking. I don't even know if he has a conscience, Ivy. Consciences are rather personal, it's not something you fanfare about. You either have one, and then you act accordingly or you don't and end up feeling guilty, or you don't have one at all, in which case the point of guilt is moot. Can't feel guilty without conscience."

"And that's why you want Zen to get out."

Arien nodded. "Look, I'll be honest. The stuff we did… they weren't always good. Actually, they were rarely good. Espionage isn't a clean business." And that was why her father had wanted her to have a normal life. No such luck there. "Zen's relatively new, Ivy. Not like Felicita or Siva or Axil or Shivvalan or any other of the Intelligence that you know. He should get out before he crosses the line, because once you cross it, there's no going back. And Ivy? Living with someone who crossed the line isn't easy."

"But you do."

"Because I've crossed it as well. And hence, I'm going to hell."

If I'm not in one already.

"And… Siva? Felicita?"

A shrug was all that she offered as the reply. Neither of them had been a covert operative; it was likely neither of them had ever killed. It was also likely they both had killed. When it came to the missions, not even the members of the same section knew the details, and that was how the Intelligence operated. But it really wasn't her place to say anything either, as that prerogative belonged to them anyway.

"I want to see," Ivy said. "I want to see what sort of life you lead. Then I'll decide."

"Decide what?" Arien asked, putting the knife down and picking up an onion.

"Whether Zen should be in it or not."

She put the onion down, and turned to look at her, a frown on her face. "I don't think you should," she murmured. "There's no guarantee you'd come out of it unharmed, Ivy. Those men aren't what you'd see in the offices or labs. They aren't the Hojo variety of whack, but they aren't the safe kind either."

"Which is why I need to see," the silver-haired woman replied in a whisper. "I need to be in Zen's shoes, Arien. Otherwise I can't judge, can I?"

Arien sliced the onions, then added them to the pot and hit the switch. "I'm not going to guarantee you'd come out of it alive," she warned.

Ivy nodded. "I won't get in your way. I promise. Besides, Zen's only slightly more likely to come out of it alive than me, no?"

Arien considered this. The truth was, she and Reno'd come out of whatever'd transpire in that bar. Axil and Shivvalan might, if they tried hard. Siva and Felicita had a fifty fifty chance. And Zen… well, there was a reason she was strongly urging him to get out of this business. He really wasn't made to be in this kind of "shoot now or die" business, but he just couldn't be content sitting behind a computer and attacking the system cyber-side. He wanted all the "funsies" the world had to offer.

Idiot.

"Fine," she said, wiping her hand on a towel. She reached a holster that was hanging from a hook, then pulled it on; the Sig and the Glock slid home into their respective places, then she pulled on a blazer. "C'mon," she said, checking to see whether the stove was off. "Let's go see what the boys are up to."