He didn't want to go straight home. Not yet. Something was still bugging him about the whole evening. It just wasn't…right. Not the kind of thing that he could go home and stew over. Besides, there was likely to be someone there. Rude, or maybe Elena. He doubted it, though--the rookie was likely to be with her new boyfriend--he snorted aloud at that--and Rude…well, Rude was usually working late. He glanced at the bright figures of his watch and decided that it was probably late enough for Rude to be home…all the more reason for him not to go there, right?

He stopped walking for a moment, realized he'd been heading instinctively towards one of the ruined Reactors to head up out of Sector 2. A sudden indecisiveness seized him as he wavered between safety and the unknown, between a familiar pillow to cry on--no, not cry on, he never cried--and a strange one, to listen to the sounds of the slums at night. Both sounded appealing in their differences, but…once again, there was that sense of wrongness. It tugged at his heart.

Sentimental bitch, Elena had once called him. He'd hotly denied it at the time, gone so far as to slap her to prove how cold-hearted he was, but when she broke into tears he'd held her for a moment, to show her that he was sorry. The same feeling seized him now, and he was nearly afraid of it. Fear was something he kept at bay, like tolerance and kindness, but sometimes it crept behind his defenses. Fear of understanding--he wondered for a moment if there was a technical term for it but dismissed it as being unimportant--lead to fear of other things. Like relationships, or people, or even the dark. He'd hate to be alone, but was more afraid of being with people who could sense that weakness.

That's why he'd let Yuffie go, he told himself, but he didn't really believe it. She'd let herself go.

So he turned on his heel and slouched down the street, ducking under low beams of jagged steel as he looked for a final destination.

The solution finally presented itself in the form of a small, whitewashed inn. The sign--reading, in bright letters, the Goldmine--hung proudly over the door. He strutted over in that proud, self-important walk that he had perfected so long ago and made his way inside. The air about the place, from the inside as well as the out, was one of cleanliness but deadly poverty. He was right in that assumption, too, when he found out that a one-person room for a night cost less than his drinks had.

When a bed was all made up for him by the pretty owner's daughter, he made his way upstairs into the gloomy hall and located his room. It was small like the rest of the place, but certainly serviceable. He stood in the doorway for a moment, uncertain--wasn't there some sort of unpacking ritual that one had to perform when they stopped in an inn?--before he flopped onto the bed.

But his eyes wouldn't shut. He supposed that there was too much going on in his head, too much alcohol left swimming through his veins to let him rest peacefully. Outside his window, somebody--a young woman, he guessed--was singing, like a nightingale. "I need some distraction," came her voice, "oh beautiful release, memory seeps from my veins…let me be empty and weightless and maybe I'll find some peace tonight…"

He settled back against the pillows further, pushing away the sound of her voice. "In the arms of an angel, fly away from here," it taunted him quietly, beneath his consciousness. "From this dark cold hotel room, and the endlessness that you fear…"

Reno thought about Yuffie. His…well, his lover for so long now. Two years? It had been punctuated by fights and affairs, ripped in many places and repaired with careful (although sometimes clumsy) stitches, but it was still a full two years. "You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie," came the singer's sweet voice again. "You're in the arms of the angel…may you find some comfort there."

In the arms of an angel, eh? he thought to himself. May I find some comfort here…