Nanashi
Haven't we met?
You're some kind of beautiful stranger
You could be good for me
I've got the taste for the danger
If I'm smart then I'll run away
But I'm not so I guess I'll stay
Haven't you heard?
I fell in love with a beautiful stranger
"Beautiful Stranger"
Madonna
Reno watched the nameless girl
out of the corner of his eye as he drove the car at breakneck speed down the
street of Sector Five, steering expertly around fallen heaps of rubble with the
ease of long practice, trying to ignore the stretchy feeling that the wind
roaring in his face left on his skin. He still had no windshield; his car hadn't grown another one since the
shoot-out with the Stalker half an hour ago. Piece of shit car. And now it
had dozens of not-so-attractive bullet holes all over its formerly spotless
chrome body.
I'm gonna have to ask Rude
to drive me to work until I can get this hunk of junk a makeover, Reno
thought grumpily. Just great. My car's a big piece of crap now, and I
still have this weird-ass, mute chick with me. She still hasn't said a word to me, and I just risked everything to save
her ass. Now isn't that gratitude for
you, boys and girls?
But it was more than sour
feelings that kept Reno from leaving the girl unobserved for more than a few
seconds. He was actually afraid that
she was going to suddenly jump out of the car or do some other crazy thing;
that's why he was driving so fast. In
the short time he had "known" her, Reno had already come to the conclusion that
his silent companion was no ordinary female, and the fact that she had seemed
eager to shake him off before was only making him more paranoid that she would
ditch him if given half a chance. And
Reno wasn't about to lose her now that he had gone through so much trouble just
to keep her safe.
So far, however, she had shown
no signs of wanting to escape. She just
sat there on the other side of the front seat with her seat belt buckled around
her waist and her hands folded neatly in her lap. She seemed completely oblivious to the wind tearing at her inky
hair, and though she was squinting instinctively to keep the wind from ravaging
her tender eyes, she appeared to be relatively at peace. The streetlamps, as Reno sped past them,
cast their harsh light on her unnaturally pale skin, flickering yellow and
ghostly blue-white dancing across her exposed flesh like invading imps in
heaven. And not for the first time,
Reno was inundated with the thought that she wasn't an ordinary human being, if
she was even human, that is.
"Who are you?" he suddenly
demanded, speaking loudly enough to be heard over the wind.
The girl turned her golden gaze
to him, eyes staring at him with seemingly unshakable calm. "My identity is of no concern to you," she
said calmly.
Reno snorted, dissatisfied with
her answer. "Better watch it," he
threatened half-heartedly. "Or I just
might make it my concern."
"May I ask where we're going?"
the girl inquired of him, abruptly shifting subjects. She appeared to be undaunted by his threat.
"No, you may not," Reno answered
matter-of-factly, steering around a corner so sharply that he nearly capsized
the car.
"Then I demand to know
where you are taking me," she said coldly, eyes drilling holes into the side of
his face.
That made Reno grin for some
reason. "You're a real feisty one,
aren't you?" he asked of her. "Tread
carefully, honey. Men like feisty
women, but there's a fine line between feisty and bitchy, and you're straddling
that line, baby girl."
"Don't call me that," she
suddenly hissed, that strange natural glow in her eyes suddenly intensifying as
she narrowed her eyes into slits.
Whoa…that got a reaction
out of her. Memo to self: call her
"baby girl" when I want to piss her off.
Reno still had the audacity to
send a smile in her direction as he steered his battered convertible into the
parking lot of his apartment complex. "We're here, sister," he told her with mocking cheerfulness as he killed
the engine. He noticed in passing that
he was taking up two parking spaces, but he didn't really give a damn.
The girl didn't say anything,
but she folded her arms across her chest in a clear expression of defiance and
turned her cold gaze forward, refusing to look at Reno. For his part, Reno exited the car as quickly
as possible, still fearful that she would make a run for it when he was walking
around the vehicle to her side. However, she didn't even budge from her spot or bat an eyelash as he
strode around the front of the convertible in long strides, glaring at her mute
figure the entire way.
"Come on, sister," Reno ordered,
opening her car door. "Get your ass
outta the car."
"Only if I may walk away freely
after I do," she said coldly, staring at the dashboard as if it were the most
interesting thing in the world. The
streetlight in front of Reno's apartment building flickered on and off, sending
flashes of synthetic light dancing across her red-black hair and her
unnaturally pale skin.
"You ain't going nowhere," Reno
said firmly, gripping the metal of the car door in a white-knuckled grip. "You're going to stay at my place with me."
The girl shifted her gaze to
glare up at him, golden eyes flashing like yellow fire in the dark night. "If you're expecting some sort of reward for
your rescuing me, then I would advise you think again. I have nothing at all to give you."
Reno grinned as he heard the
hidden meaning in her words. "You still
think I wanna bang you, huh?" he asked, using the most stinging terminology he
could think of.
The girl just glared daggers at
him.
Reno leaned casually against the
car door, ignoring the way its creaks protested his added weight. "Honey," he said. "I know you ain't no whore. I never thought you were in the first place, you know."
"And you seriously expect me to
believe that?" she asked coldly, lifting a dark brow.
Reno snorted. "Those clothes aren't yours, are they?" he
asked, eyes roving over the fishnet hose, the slinky dress, and the heeled
boots.
The girl was silent for a
moment, then she said quietly, "No."
"You stole them," Reno stated.
"Borrowed them," the girl
corrected icily. "There is a difference
between stealing and borrowing. I
intend to return these as soon possible."
Reno rolled his aquamarine eyes
towards the night sky, briefly allowing his sardonic gaze to flick across the
starry sky before reverting his attention back to the girl still seated in his
passenger seat.
"I'm sure you do," he said
sarcastically, eyes glittering down at her with wicked humor. "Now, get outta the car before I have to
force you outta it."
The girl turned her face away
from him, her gaze falling to rest once more on the now-tattered dashboard. She didn't budge.
Reno felt anger slowly rising in
his heart. Shit, this is gonna be
harder than I thought. She's so
hell-bent on showing who's in charge here…well, I'll show her that I'm the boss
around here, not her!
He suddenly lunged forward with
the intention of grabbing her by the arm and hauling her out of the car. Though he had left the Turks and Shinra
behind to burn in the fires of blackest hell, Reno knew that he got into enough
fights to keep his reflexes sharp. Before this mysterious girl, he was under the impression that no
civilian could evade an attack from him.
That's why he was stunned out of
his mind when he suddenly felt the girl's hand strike his attacking one with a
stinging slap that startled Reno so badly that he withdrew his hand back to his
side, a red welt forming on the pale skin. For a moment, all he did was stare at her, completely dumbfounded that
she had actually hit him when he hadn't even seen her hand move. And now she was glaring at him as if he
had done something to violate her!
A deep scowl formed on his face
as he fought to keep a damper on his temper, knowing that he should have
learned that brute force wasn't going to work on this girl. Reno didn't know who or what she was, but
she had quicker reflexes than he did, apparently.
Ok. Plan B: try being…nice. Gag me, but here goes.
Reno smiled sweetly, the
expression of decorousness not quite reaching his eyes. He stepped back from the side of the car and
held the door wide open, bowing and making a sweeping motion with his arm as he
did so.
"Please," he said as politely as
he could. "Your Most Royal Highness, it
would give me great pleasure if you would step out of the car, please."
"Ok."
"What?!" Reno practically
screeched, dropping his chauffeur act as easily as he dropped the women he
dated. Anger smoldered in his
aquamarine eyes as he watched the girl calmly unbuckle herself and step
gracefully out of the wartorn convertible, sliding the car door from his limp
fingers and shutting it quietly behind her. She straightened her dress and clasped her hands together in front of
her, staring up at him with something that might have been humor flickering in
her eyes.
For a moment, all Reno did was
stare at her dumbly, his gaze darted from her calm face to the empty seat she
had just abandoned readily, as if that had been her intentions all along.
Playing with me. She was playing with me!
"You bitch," Reno cursed, eyes
flashing angrily as he glared down at her. "You just wanted to make me say 'please', didn't you?"
"You seem like the kind of
person who needs to learn some manners," she responded flatly.
Reno's eyes widened. "W-W-What???!!!" he sputtered, resisting the
urge to stamp his foot into the pavement so hard that he would make a hole to the
center of the Planet.
"I'm sure you don't believe that
you're the most decorous person in this world," the girl continued. "At least I hope you don't think that,
because if you do then I'm afraid you might be delusional."
"Shut the hell up!" Reno snapped,
his blood boiling with anger. No one
had ever told him that he was an asshole in such an elegant fashion
before. "You have absolutely no right
whatsoever to tell me all that shit! You don't know me!"
"Precisely," the girl said
flatly. "That's why I should leave
right now…"
Reno immediately snapped to
attention. "Oh no you don't," he
seethed, anger still running its course through his system. He stepped to the side and pointed firmly to
the building behind him, his eyes drilling holes into his rebellious
companion. "Up those stairs," he
ordered. "Now."
The girl didn't move.
Oh God…not again…
"Please," Reno said,
giving her a smile that more like a grimace.
By the time the dynamic duo had
reached Reno's apartment door, Reno was ready to blow his top and start raising
Cain in a blind rage. He'd never met
any woman as difficult to deal with as this one! He had saved her goddamn life, and she STILL didn't trust him for
crap! He had spent more time arguing
with her about who was going to walk up the stairs first than he spent actually
walking up the damn things. The girl
had insisted that she didn't want to go first because Reno would look up her
skirt. Well, she hadn't actually said
that, but Reno had inferred it from the deathglares she kept sending him
whenever he had ordered her to go up the stairs in front of him. Five minutes of arguing had only resulted in
Reno raising his voice to a level loud enough to break the sound barrier, the
girl glaring at him calmly and the landlady storming out and yelling at Reno
for making so much racket. He had
flipped the old lady off and walked up the steps side by side with the
girl. He now had several bruises on his
hip to show for all his troubles. The
stairwells in his shitty apartment complex were as narrow as hell.
"I hope you appreciate all the
trouble I'm going through for you," Reno snapped as he inserted his key in the
lock and twisted it so hard that he nearly snapped it in half.
The girl didn't say
anything. She only stood there staring
as Reno cursed and jangled the doorknob when the door refused to open.
Damn…I hate my life.
"Is this your house?" she
suddenly asked, examining the cracked wooden door and the soiled wallpaper that
surrounded it on all sides.
"This is my apartment,"
Reno grunted, a bit surprised she had asked. "I ain't got enough money to buy a goddamn house. There!"
With a triumphant grin, Reno
heard the lock click. He yanked the key
from the keyhole and shoved the door open, bracing it with his arm and
gesturing firmly for the girl to enter before him.
Okay, if she argues with
me this time, I swear I'm gonna…
But to his surprise, the girl
walked right in, and for the first time, Reno noticed that she had a light,
slightly tropical scent to her that tickled his sense of smell as she passed
by. He'd never smelled that kind of
perfume before, and the women he dated usually bathed in all kinds of scented
oils and soaps. You name it, they wore
it, anything to cover their true scents and their true selves.
Reno stepped into the dark
apartment and flipped the light switch next to the door, illuminating his pig's
pen living room for all to see. The
girl looked around curiously, her eyes roving over every dirty corner and surface,
seemingly undaunted by the mess lying everywhere. Reno was suddenly embarrassed that she had to see his place
looking like a hurricane had blown through it. He hadn't even thought about the mess he left in his apartment until
now. He usually didn't give a damn what he dropped on the floor or the
couch. Rude and Elena were the only
ones that saw his apartment, and he didn't care what they thought. They both knew that Reno was too lazy to
clean up after himself, and they – or Rude at least – didn't bother him about
it. And as for Reno's "lady friends,"
not a single one of them had ever seen his apartment. They always "entertained themselves" at a hotel or some other
place, never his.
"Do all apartments have all
these objects lying on the floor?" the girl suddenly asked, touching a discarded
dress shirt with the tip of her boot.
"Don't step on that," Reno
snapped before he could stop himself. "I wear those to work."
The girl suddenly whirled
around, her hair whipping behind her. A
strange emotion hardened her eyes. She
backed up a step from where Reno was standing. "Work?" she echoed, her voice suddenly gone cold and flat. "And just what is your occupation?"
Though the sudden change in her
personality had freaked him out a bit, Reno pushed himself away from the door
and dropped his keys on a crappy little wooden table where he always put all
the junk he didn't want to carry. "I
don't see why it concerns you," he said flatly, enjoying the fact that he was
able to fling her own words back at her.
He instantly regretted his
little game, however, because it only seemed to anger the girl. Every muscle in her body went rigid, and
both of her hands curled into fists of rage. Her eyes seemed to gleam, catching the light and throwing it back at
him, full of violence and the smell of battle. The thought then occurred to Reno that the girl actually might
know how to fight. Her stance certainly
suggested that she did…
"I'm a bodyguard," he said,
watching her reaction to his words. "I protect
people, sister."
She lifted an eyebrow at him, but
something seemed to relax in her demeanor. "And this is why you saved me tonight?" she asked.
Reno snorted and removed his
jacket. "Honey, I don't know why I
saved your sorry ass tonight. You've
been nothing but thorn in my side." He
started to drop his jacket on the floor, but suddenly hung it up on the back of
the table's equally crappy wooden chair instead.
Sighing and rubbing the back of
his neck, Reno suddenly felt the toils of his little adventures that night
catch up with him. He hadn't had to
fight a battle like that in months, and the effects of his inactivity were just
starting to kick in. His legs ached as
he kicked his shoes into a corner of the room, trying to ignore the mysterious
girl staring at him.
Let her stare all she
wants. I don't care if she thinks I'm a
weirdo or something. Great, I have a
hole in my sock. Just perfect.
Refusing to look at the girl,
Reno turned into his kitchen and saw that it was just as messy as his living
room. Funny, how he had never noticed
such a thing before until he knew that someone else would be seeing it. Dirty dishes with some food still left on
them were piled up in the sink, and there were odd items like magazines, razors
and even an old toothbrush from who knows where lying on the counters. Reno scratched the back of his head just
above his ponytail, trying to remember just when all this crap had gotten
there.
Why the hell am I
worrying? Who gives a damn?
Wincing at how cold the floor
was beneath his thin socks, he crossed the filthy kitchen and flung open the
refrigerator door, only to be brutally disappointed that no new food had
materializes since he left for work in the morning. But, of course, he still had his endless supply of beer to keep
him company. He had just pulled one out
of the side rack when he heard the click of a heeled boot on the kitchen floor
– a cautious click, one that was not meant to be heard. Reno smiled without even turning. He had been wondering if he girl was going
to follow him around instead of wandering off on her own. If she followed him into the kitchen, it
meant that she trusted him in the slightest bit, if she wanted to be with
him. He was strangely pleased to see
that he had been partially right, even thought it had taken her longer to react
to the absence of his presence that he would have liked.
"Wanna beer, sister?" Reno
asked, as he popped the cap off of the brown bottle and took a deep gulp,
enjoying the bitterness of the liquid as it coursed down the length of his
throat.
"No thank you," the girl said
clearly.
Reno shrugged and turned to plop
down at the kitchen table, nearly breaking the old chair as he did so. "Your loss," he told the girl, watching with
carefully disguised interest as she examined everything in the kitchen with the
same thoroughness that she had the living room. Her observations were all visual, though; she didn't run over and
pick things up like some annoying people Reno knew. All she did was stand in the center of his kitchen like a goddess
from another time, her golden eyes roaming ceaselessly over everything they
could reach, drinking in their environment. And for the first time, he noticed that his new "friend" seemed to be
quite a curious creature, an aspect of her personality that he hadn't taken
note of before.
You'd think she'd never
seen a kitchen before, Reno thought as he took another swig from his
beer.
He waited until she seemed done
with her examination to say, "Sit down, honey." He gestured to the chair across the table from him. Then as an afterthought, he added, with a
disgusted snort, "Please."
The girl stared at him for a
second, golden eyes absorbing his figure as if the image of a red-haired man
slumped at a wooden kitchen table chugging a beer went perfectly with the
backdrop she had been looking at with such curiosity seconds before. Then, without a word of rebellion, she
strode over to the table and seated herself stiffly in the chair Reno had
indicated earlier, the wood creaking in protest even though she was a small
slip of a creature.
Reno studied her in silence for
a while, enjoying the way the lights illuminated her black-red hair and made
her skin look even paler than it did in the darkness of the night. The same light reflected and danced in her
golden eyes, and Reno noticed that she had a ring of black around each golden
iris, making them rather unnerving to look at. He hadn't noticed the dark rings in the night, but now that she was
under proper lighting, their sheer inhumanness seemed to leap out and scratch
him on the face.
And not for the first time, Reno
had the thought that this was no human sitting across from him.
"So," he said, trying to ignore
the shudders that were coursing down his spine. "What's your name, honey?"
The girl stared at him blankly,
but Reno got the distinct impression that she wanted him to mind his own
business.
He sighed melodramatically and
said, "And don't tell me, 'It doesn't concern you' or anything stupid like
that. I saved your life; I think the
least you can do is tell me what your name is."
"With all due respect," she
said, and Reno thought he heard a strange sad note in her voice. "I didn't request that you save me."
In an amazing feat of
self-discipline, Reno held his tongue and took a cool swig of his beer instead,
his aquamarine eyes glaring at her the whole time. She had to be the most impossible person he had ever met…
"Look," he said coolly, brushing
away a strand of blood-red hair as it flopped into his eye. "If you don't give me your name, I'll have
to give you one myself, honey." He
smiled mischievously.
"And what name would you give
me?"
Reno took a thoughtful gulp of
his beer and stared at her for a while, thinking of all the kinky, stupid names
that his devious little mind could come up with, but in the end, he settled for
a simple one that he hadn't heard in a while.
"Nanashi."
The girl blinked. "What?"
"Nanashi," Reno repeated, still
studying her with an out-of-place thoughtful look on his face. "It's Wutainese. It means 'No-name.' Not
very flattering either, sweetheart."
"Are you Wutainese?" the girl
asked, the curiosity returning to her face.
Reno shrugged his shoulders in
dismissal. "My last name is Sasuki, if
that means jack shit to you. It's
Wutainese."
"And what is your first name?"
A grin spread across Reno's
scarred face as his eyes glittered with amusement. "Ah, ah, ah," he chided, wagging a finger in the girl's
direction. "Until you tell me your
name, I'm Sasuki and you're Nanashi. So
'fess up, sister, or you're going to be 'No-name' the rest of your life."
The girl surprised him by
falling silent, sinking down slightly in the chair as if falling into the
depths of memory. Her golden eyes
became misted, the preternatural luster less prominent, but still captivating
in its own right. Reno had expected the
girl to snap at him, but his words appeared to have made her thoughtful, if not
a little sad.
Suddenly, those golden eyes
locked onto his with gentle intensity. "I don't have a name," she said in a rather quiet tone.
Reno blinked at her in surprise,
though he had been expecting as much. "Then you truly are Nanashi," he said, drumming his fingers against the
wooden tabletop, his gaze thoughtful.
"I do not wish to be called
Nanashi," she said firmly, though the fire was absent from her voice.
Reno shrugged and watched the
condensation drip down the side of his beer bottle until it pooled on the
tabletop in lonely little puddles. "So
give yourself a name, then," he said simply.
"But I was under the belief that
names were given to you by others."
This Reno dismissed with a snort
before taking another chug of beer. "Learn to take charge of your own life," he told her, liking how he was
sounding all philosophical. "If you
want to be sentimental and crap like that, then name yourself after some that
is special to you."
The girl was silent, but her
eyebrows knitted as a flash of pain crossed her face, as fleeting as a ghost in
the mists of memory and gone just as quickly, leaving a contemplative, pensive
look on her face.
Someone that's special to me,
she thought to herself. Her
surroundings seemed to vanish, those words running through her mind quite
freely until they finally rammed into and tore down the wall the girl had
placed between herself and her recent memories – memories she wanted to
forget. Cold, dank cell with hard
cement floors and moss-covered walls. Sound of dripping water in the darkness. Smell of death and madness drifting to her cell, like acid in the
air. No, the girl didn't care to recall
those things, those horrid things…
"Sister," the red-haired man
across the table from her called, his voice interrupting the flow of
memory. "You gotta name yet?"
"Hold on," she whispered, eyes
riveted on the table without seeing it. "I'm thinking."
Back to the memories, back to
the dark place she had been birthed into. A face floated in front of her. Wild, untamed black hair that lay against pale skin and coyly obscured
Mako blue eyes that had long ago lost the sparkle that the girl had loved to
see in those luminescent orbs.
Name? Zack. No, she could not
use that name. It was not a name
suitable for a female, and though she was sure Zack wouldn't mind if she took
on his name, it just didn't suit her well. Zack was Zack, and that was that. There would never be another like him. For a moment, the girl's heart ached terribly when she thought of him
still locked in that cell, forehead resting dismally against the bars as he
dreamed of freedom and violently cursed Fate for all it had done to him. She remembered his young male voice, full of
life and passion, ringing through the silence in their cell, until a softer,
accented feminine voice rose up with its own power to console him.
Another face swam into the
girl's vision. Chocolate brown skin
that sharply contrasted with the whiteness of her smile and the vivid liquid
green of her eyes. It was these eyes
that soothed the girl when she was pained by her loss of purpose, pained by the
bars keeping her imprisoned. And though
this woman must have felt that same pain, she lent the girl her endless amount
of inner strength, infusing her with courage, the courage she needed to
escape. It was this woman that first
called her "baby girl."
"Serena," the girl whispered
under her breath, and though she was sure that the man across from her had
heard a phantom of the name, he was wise enough not to question her.
Serena? Do I dare take on the name of such a
majestic woman? the girl wondered. Well, I won't take on the whole name, no. But I will take on a part of it. Then end of her name…yes…
"Rena," the girl said clearly,
her eyes snapped back into focus as she raised her gaze to the man across the
table from her.
Reno lifted an eyebrow,
amusement filling his eyes and curving one corner of his mouth into a
smile. "Rena?" he repeated, trying to
keep the laughter out of his voice.
Of all the names in the
freakin' world…
The girl now known as Rena
narrowed her eyes at him, obviously thinking that he was mocking her choice of
names. "Rena is a good name," she
insisted. "I did just as you instructed
and chose the name of a person that means a lot to me."
Reno laughed and held up his
hands in mock surrender. "Don't worry!"
he declared with a grin. "Rena is good
name. A very good name."
Rena leaned forward. "And what is your name, Mr. Sasuki?"
"Reno."
She blinked in surprise. "Come again, please?"
"My name is Reno," Reno said
slowly, unable to stop the grin that was spreading across his face. The situation was so entirely ridiculous
that he felt a bout of hysteria coming on.
"Oh," Rena said, looking
innocently puzzled, as if she couldn't believe that his name was so similar to
the one she had chosen. "Reno and
Rena," she suddenly said in a sing-song tone, as if announcing the winners to
some grand prize.
"Oh yeah, sister, what a
mismatched pair we're going to make. Reno and Rena."
Aquamarine eyes met golden ones,
and suddenly the tension that had been shoving the two strangers apart gave way
a little bit, and they both stared laughing, the pure sounds of mirth, true rarities
in both characters, filling the kitchen like a welcome breath of spring after a
long winter.
*
* * * * * * * *
Author's Note: ::yawn:: This chapter was more plot than action, but I didn't want to make it
sure long by adding a bunch of other stuff to it. That will come in future chapters! ^^ By the way, "Nanashi"
is actually Japanese for "No-name." Oh,
and you'll have to excuse any spelling or grammar errors! It's very late at night and I'm… ::falls asleep on keyboard::
