Bloodwitch Raven - Eh, we'll see. It might be fun to see how Reno reacts if Arien died... but then that'll end the series so maybe it's not a good idea. I do want to see how he reacts, though, as a "what if" situation.

Cecilia Dashwood - Aww, thank you! Your comment added more incentive for me to write the scene and upload it on time... I was in a bit of a split mind between skipping this scene and writing it. Hopefully I won't disappoint.

Echo the Ethereal Swordmaster - Well, yes, I'm up and running again. Nearly ACC... but I do have a minor arc I want to write before diving into ACC. Or maybe I'll interweave it with ACC. Not sure yet.

Back on schedule! Woo!

Chapter 35: Minor Happinesses

The next morning, nobody really bothered to get up early. Rufus was still asleep, and the rest just did not see the reason to get up when the big boss wasn't around to order them about.

The first thing Reno saw when he opened his eyes was the ceiling. For a moment he was disoriented, wondering where he was, then he remembered that he was back in Healin. Without looking he groped for cigarettes, found the pack, and pulled one out with his mouth. Reach for the lighter, rub the thumb along the top. The first cigarette tasted oddly tasteless, but he smoked it anyway, staring at the ceiling.

"Reno?"

He turned, saw Arien looking at him. Her eyes were sleepy, but not the sleepiness of someone waiting to die, just the last drops of stupor clinging onto her. The sun was high in the sky, but he felt oddly lethargic. Must be the exposure to the Lifestream, he thought to himself, knowing full well that wasn't the case. It was more a sated creature's lethargy, an animal with a full belly crawling back into its lair to sleep. Eyes half closed, he felt the bitterness spread in his mouth, fighting with his torpor.

"Your hands," she murmured softly. "I didn't notice your fingers were that slender."

"Eh?" he looked at his right hand; the left was busy covering his mouth and sandwiching the cigarette between the forefinger and the middle finger. "Is it?"

"It's very slender for a man," she noted. "They're bit thicker than mine, though." She showed him her own. The cut was now almost entirely healed, and Arien had removed the bandage. Indeed, her fingers were thinner, more delicate, the nails trimmed. They almost looked spidery, all long fingers.

"Yeah, well, you're a girl."

"I'm glad you noticed."

He smiled behind his hand. Arien was back, at least for now.

The entire group convened at the dinner table thirty minutes later. It was odd to see everyone out of their uniforms; Reno looked sleepy in a white T-shirt and jersey bottoms, his hair looking messier than ever. Arien was next to him, dressed in a long shirt that suspiciously looked like Reno's and a pair of jeans. Elena looked almost girlish in a green skirt and a pink blouse; Rude looked ready to work out in a black shirt and long trousers that allowed ease of movement, and Tseng looked as dour as ever in a button down shirt and slacks. Rufus had lost his white and black ensemble and was dressed a little more comfortably in just black, although to Reno he almost looked like a bartender on Friday night. Reno nearly laughed out loud at the thought of Rufus behind the counter, tending to the drunk patrons on a Friday night.

Maybe that'll teach him a few things about the crap we have to deal with, he thought. But then he saw Tseng glaring, and immediately wiped the smirk off his face. "So," he said, as he tapped the ash into the ashtray and yawning, "what now?"

"We know where to go next," said Tseng. "Evan Townsend found the JENOVA specimen. He-"

The rest of the Turks gaped at him.

"I sent you messages last night. I assume that as a responsible member of the squad you re-"

"Forget responsibility," Reno grumbled. "What about JENOVA?"

Tseng sighed at the subordinate's brash interruption, but knew better than to tell him off. "Evan Townsend came across what I assume to be a JENOVA specimen."

"So what did he do with it? Eat it?"

"He kicked it - or dropped it - in the Lifestream. Or that was what he had said. Honestly," grimaced the leader, "what did you do last night to not allow yourself to read my message?"

"I was fu-" Reno felt a sharp kick. "What?" He asked his neighbour. "I was fucking-"

"Ah, no need to elaborate further," said Tseng hastily, not really wanting to learn the intimate details of the redhead's sex life. "It is possible using the old system to map the flow of the Lifestream. From there, we can hypothesise-"

"English, Boss."

"We can take a guess where the sample might be."

"Good," said the president, who had remained silent all this time. "It appears the boy was not so useless, after all."

"Dude, Prez, he is kinda your bro-" Reno finally shut up, feeling Rufus' icy glare. "Right. Zip." He made a zipping motion with his hand across the mouth.

"Good idea," said Rufus. "I want you five to get onto this as soon as possible. Now. We've finally found it. Let us retrieve what is rightfully ours."

"Dun dun dunnn!"

"Reno," Tseng said, exasperated, "shut up." All he got in return was a mock salute. Something was keeping Reno in a good mood and ergo this brashness, and Tseng could guess just what the source of his good mood was. And it wasn't the good dinner from the previous night. Sure enough, Arien had a faint hint of a smile hovering just off the corner of her lips; she wasn't exactly smiling, but she looked closer to it than usual. These two were acting like two teenagers.

But when Reno and Arien returned to their room to pack and return to the Edge, Arien looked worried. "I have a bad feeling about this," she said, sitting down on the bed and looking up at the redhead.

"About what?"

"This." She shrugged. "JENOVA… is it really wise to dig that thing up?"

"Probably not," he agreed. "But what the hell can we do about it? Tell Rufus 'hi, I think your idea's dumb'?"

"Well, not that bluntly, but…"

"My point is, he won't listen. He orders. We listen. And it's gonna be like this: JENOVA makes the world explode or something again, and then he orders us to go take care of it." He shrugged helplessly. "By the way, do you reckon you can analyse what the hell that thing was?"

The inhuman moving… thing that had nearly taken Reno's eye out. Arien furrowed her eyebrows slightly, but nodded. "I managed to get live feed looped into the server before you blew the chopper up. I should be able to run analysis on it, if we're lucky."

"And if we aren't?"

"Nothing." She stood up, then grabbed one of the bags. "Let's go home," she said. "I can use a nap in my own bed."

Much to her surprise, the wireless connection towers seemed to be back up, allowing Arien the access to the network without cables. She saw the status bar on her phone, then dove into her bag as Reno drove them both back to the Edge. She tapped a few keys, balancing the laptop on her knees. "Oh hey!" she said, sounding excited. "The wireless is up! This makes my day!"

"Wireless connection makes you happy?" Reno jibed. "Isn't it big rocks for you girls? Or me?"

"Not me. About the only thing I liked about Midgar was the wireless access anywhere anytime," replied his fellow Turk as she opened the console she hadn't used in months. "Well, Tseng's message is here," she said cheerfully as she tapped on the envelope icon.

"Read it out loud, so Tseng won't yak at me again."

"Er." She put her face closer to the screen. "To all members," she began, "after some discussion with Evan Townsend, it has become clear that the whereabouts of the JENOVA specimen seems to be near the Northern Crater. To elaborate, the aforementioned subject has abandoned the specimen into what is assumed to be a Lifestream flow found in the tunnels reported by one of our members. The next step would be to triangulate the location as soon as possible and retrieve the sample before it is taken away by the wrong hands."

"So, basically, what he said at the meeting." Reno snorted. "Maybe the next time he'll fuckin' yell at me for not readin' his god-damn mind."

Arien chuckled at that, then opened the window. The breeze came rushing in, and she closed her eyes and threw her head back, feeling the thin fingers of air tousle her hair. Reno saw it, and stopped the car.

"What?" she said, opening her eyes and getting up. She stretched her arms, and Reno was again reminded of white snakes unfurling themselves. "Where are we…? Oh, middle of nowhere. What happened?"

He grinned. "Nothin'. It's just that we can use some alone time."

"We had some last night."

"Yeah, but I had to shut you up." His grin got wider. "'Sides, I'm getting drowsy."

"Want me to drive?"

He waved her offer off. "Let's just sit here. I can use some time not moving around."

"What do we tell Tseng?"

He shrugged, his eyes glinting like a mischievous boy's. "We'll tell him we got lost, the car broke down, we got hit by a chocobo, whatever." He gathered her into his arms, pressing his lips into her dark hair. "I just wanna spend some time without anyone else yelling through the wall."

She smiled, and he saw her smile as she moved her head away. He closed his eyes, feeling the fatigue wash over him, the soft kind like a blanket. The sun was shining, warming him through his cotton T shirt. The open window let the soft breeze in.

"We should've brought food," Arien murmured.

"I can think of other stuff to eat."

"Not that… Mmfgh." Her slender fingers raked through his hair as his mouth grinned into hers. He looked at himself and laughed.

"What?"

He pointed at his face. "I think your lipstick rubbed off." He laughed again when she looked slightly disturbed and rubbed her mouth with her fingertips. He reminisced, remembering their first, 'real' kiss; she had been wearing lipstick then too, and he remembered her writing her number on his arm with the lipstick. Fuchsia pink, it was; it was a good colour on her.

"It's not lipstick," came the explanation. "That's my tinted lip balm."

"Oh." No wonder it smelled like raspberry bubblegum.

By the time they got back to the Edge, the sun was already past its zenith and was making its way slowly down to the horizon. As he stepped through the front door, he took a moment to observe her closely, studying her for any signs of lifelessness that he had seen the night before. But Arien seemed normal, no more funk about her clinging like a bad odour. It looked like the few hours in the sun doing nothing seemed to work wonders.

Small joys, he said to himself as he watched her hum. I guess that's all she wants.

He suddenly recalled the lyrics to the song Arien was humming. It was one of the songs that had been all the rage two years ago, and it had been on air for thirty weeks straight. He found the lyrics foretelling… or ironic.

Heaven is where we are, with you it's never far, heaven's with you…

He wasn't sure if he was the right guy to "find heaven" with. But if Arien felt that way, well, he wasn't about to complain.

If Tseng thought to reach the two Turks that evening, he was in for a big disappointment. For one, Reno had reported that the reason why they had arrived in the Edge later than anticipated was because a chocobo was running at Mach two into the car and he had to do some wild car chase in the badlands. It was a blatant, stupid lie, but Tseng knew that he was never going to get the truth out of the redhead. He'd stick to the story like glue. He then told the leader of the Turks that they'd get on with the tasks tomorrow morning, but they needed the night off. And for some reason, Rufus approved it.

Not really paying attention or caring about Tseng's puzzlement, the two Turks decided that they could use a night of relaxation with their friend. After a phone call and half an hour later, Axil was knocking on their door, with three bags in his left hand. "I brought booze," he said as he stepped in. "I couldn't find any quality stuff, though. They must have problems restocking."

"Don't care. At this point, I'll drink cleaning fluid," Reno replied as he took the bags. "How're you holdin' up?"

Axil moved his head noncommittally. "Sometimes it's really bad… during the daytime, I'm at work, but during the night, well, that's when it hits me." He grinned at Arien who came out. "I really appreciate you two doing this for me. At least this way I don't have to lie in my bed tossing and turning."

Arien was too tired to stand in the kitchen, so Reno had ordered delivery. "It's pizza," she grumbled as she opened a can of beer. "It's always pizza."

"I don't think Reno's aware that he can order other stuff."

"I'm a Costan. It's my duty to eat as much pizza as possible," Reno huffed.

But their conversations never discussed the future, nor Siva's death; instead, they merely talked about the 'good ol' days', when food was plentiful, electricity was cheap, Shinra was still standing and Midgar was corrupt in its splendour. The three were truly the children of Midgar, revelling in its rotten darkness that festered below the glamorous flash of the topside. It was the rotten underbelly that had fed them and clothed them in the shadows to keep them safe, and the three realised that they were all feeling a trifle naked without all the dark alleys and dilapidated buildings to hide in. It had been a city that offered a million vices and a billion ways to forget the current woes. The Edge was growing, but it just didn't have all the nooks and crannies they could dive into and feel safe for the moment. They talked about their past mishaps and missions, the time when Arien, Zen, Shivvalan and Axil had gone into one of the buildings in Sector 2 to root out a terrorist base. She looked a little embarrassed as Axil recounted the story.

"And so I hissed, 'not-' but she walked in anyway, and she nearly turned into paste-"

"For what it's worth, I swear I heard Shiv say 'done'."

"You know Shiv. He probably said 'bum'." Reno laughed. "Did I tell you about the time we got caught and we had to pretend to fuck each other to get out?"

Arien groaned. Reno ignored her and continued.

"So Arie and I were on this mission - Sector Three, I think - and we decided to go in from separate entrances, so we'd meet each other at a rendezvous spot before the big room. But I was giving her directions, and I said left, which meant her left, but she went my left, and walked into a staff member. 'Course, we weren't supposed to be there, so the entire building went on alert, and I got caught too."

"Again! That's your fault!"

"Yeah yeah. We're gettin' to the good part." Reno opened another can of beer. "So we get locked into this room together, it has one bed and a table and a chair. It's bugged like there's a termite problem. But for some reason they only had audio mics, not cameras, so I figured that if I can get rid of a few, we can scramble the rest and mask the signals. But you know, you need to cover the noise so they won't notice I'm fiddling with the microphone, so I told Arie to make noises like I was fucking her."

"In my defence," said the woman, "we couldn't talk and we could only gesture."

Axil laughed. "Go on."

"So I'm on top of her on the bed, and I'm supporting myself with one arm and the other hand's trying to rip the damn thing out, and Arie just lies there, mute. So I nudged her to thrash about on the bed so it'll squeak, and she finally starts making noises like an animal dying. I had to do my part too, and you know how hard it is to grunt while trying to yank a damn microphone the size of an ant from the wood?

"Anyway, so we managed to get rid of a few bugs, enough to you know, stop them from hearing what we were actually doing, then I pick the lock and we're out, and the first thing we hear from the guards is 'they're locked up and they're fucking'. After that, well…" he pointed at one of the last few remaining slices. The other two nodded, bidding him to go on and eat it. "Arie got a gun, and we made out."

"You mean, 'we made it out'," Arien said dryly. "We didn't, you know, make out."

Axil grinned again. "I know, that happened a bit later. I was there, remember?"

"You were…?" Arien looked at Reno, who had an almost identical grin to Axil, so much so that she wondered if they weren't actually related. "Oh. Oh!"

The two men laughed as she covered her face. "Still shy, eh?" Axil said, his voice full of mirth.

"Yeah. You'd think she's over it by now, considering the stuff-" he saw her glare, then laughed. "I'll shut up now."

"Good idea."

When Axil got up to leave, the two stopped him, offering to put him up for the evening. The Wutaian gladly accepted the offer; he wasn't that keen on returning to the empty home with all of Siva's remnants in every room. They stayed up late into the night, recalling friends present and past, because they were all uneasy with what the future held for them.