~*~
"You're the best listener that I've ever met; you're my best friend; best friend with benefits…
… what took me so long…
I've never felt this healthy before; I've never wanted something rational…
… I am aware now…"
- Alanis Morisette, 'head over feet'
~*~
Part Two: Moving Forward
.
Reno didn't leave without a word, as I had half-expected; we'd suspected for months that he wanted out, and so Reeve helped me design a watch for him as a farewell gift, based off something I'd seen at a movie a long time ago…
Reno reminded me a bit of the character who wore it; they shared a dry wit, and what might be kindly called a certain finesse with women… and although this "James" character had a bit of a fixation for dry martinis, where Reno's usual was a gin and tonic, I figured it was close enough. Reeve chuckled when I told him about the comparison I had made; he was quite the fan of the series, apparently, but he agreed that keeping track of Reno was a good idea. If only for the sake of our sanities…
So we equipped the watch with a few mechanical goodies… not least, an offensive laser equipped into the mechanism, along with a communication chip that doubled as a tracking device. I could only hope that Reno didn't find the laser by accident… that particular addition had been Rude's idea, and although both Reeve and I had pestered him, wondering exactly why Reno should be permitted to carry something like that, in seconds, we looked at each other and laughed; this was Reno. One itty-bitty laser wasn't going to make that much of a difference, considering everything else that he carried.
A week after the three of us had planned out Reno's watch, I came into work, and found a small blue box resting on my desk. I opened it carefully, and as I did so, I felt a surprised smile slip across my face. Reading the note that was curled carefully into the strap of the sleek silver watch, the smile grew as Reeve's familiar handwriting explained how he had decided to make a matching set of timepieces.
'No laser for you, Laney,' the note read. 'I thought that you might prefer something a little more subtle, so if you turn the gold dial on the right of the face clockwise, your watch works like a camera. There's a tiny lens in the curlicue of the "E" engraving on the watch face, and I've programmed other parts to pick up sound. Feed goes directly to our A/V room, and Rude and I will receive alerts that you're online, so try to keep that to a minimum. Turn the face-frame counter-clockwise twice, and you can communicate with any of us vocally. I hope it fits… Reeve.'
A single, soft knock at the door alerted me to another's presence. Rude nodded slightly as I gestured him into the room.
"I see you've received Reeve's gift…" he rumbled, standing next to where I had perched on the front edge of my desk. Chairs were a dangerous place to be, I had learned, especially when you shared a floor with Reno.
"I have," I replied. "Shiva only knows when he had the time to make it, but it sure is lovely. I didn't get the watch-laser, though…" Pouting slightly, I looked up at Rude, whose smile grew as he answered.
"I did." Pushing up his left jacket sleeve, Rude gestured towards a familiar gold button on the side of his watch's face. "Reeve has outdone himself, I must admit."
Responding with a grin, and a playful punch to his arm, my joviality dissolved as I saw the bag Rude held in his left hand. "He's… he's really going, isn't he?"
It wasn't much, but his eyebrows furrowed, and pain flashed behind those normally impassive brown eyes. Rude didn't say anything, and neither did I. But, you remember that invisible line of romantic tension I mentioned earlier? We crossed it.
I couldn't tell you how – like most things, it just happened, leaving lots of food for thought for those upcoming, never-ending Tuesday nights – but that was in the future. This was now… So my arm that had punched his slipped around his back, my hand dusting his other shoulder as I slid closer to where he had been leaning against the desk. One hell of a picture we made, I'll tell you…
It shouldn't have worked; look at us. I mean, he's… Rude. He's the guy who shoved Barret Wallace back through half of the President's office with one hand, once, and Barret's no flyweight. But here I was, my comparatively tiny arm (and thus, most of my left side) curled around him in… what? I don't know if I could tell you – I just knew that I was moments away from having one of my closest friends slip away, and I wanted to feel something solid; stand with someone who wasn't going to disappear if I blinked at the wrong time.
I think I chose well.
He froze at first… and I think my heart stopped, if only for a second. Of course he knew what I had felt for Tseng; you can't work with someone as closely as we had and not know. Well… that and the fact that I had been blatantly obvious about it… Unable to hold back the cringe; realizing I had taken one step too far as usual, I had almost lifted my hand from his shoulder when I felt his right arm slip around my waist. Not possessively, not casually … nor was it the desperate grasp of a man whose world had decided to change utterly in the last year and a half, leaving him a fraction of, and yet a much greater man than he had been. The best word I can think of for his… embrace, I suppose, is 'tentative'… almost unsure. And as brown eyes lowered to mine in an unasked question, I realized how true that was.
So I smiled, feeling his arm relax around my waist as I did so, and stretched my neck in the slightest to pillow my head on his shoulder. Even though I was sitting on the desk's edge, and he was leaning against it, he was still just the tiniest bit tall… I found myself thinking that it was nothing that time couldn't fix, and blushed slightly. If he noticed, he didn't say anything; but come to think of it, that was only natural. Besides, it seemed almost wrong to interrupt whatever this moment was with words, so I took a page from his book, and merely acted. Some things didn't need words anyways.
I don't know how long we sat there; let's just say until I could feel that his shoulders had relaxed significantly, and his eyes had lost their haunted edge. We'd found peace, the two of us - the Turk who hid her pain behind a chipper smile and lots of words, and the other who masked everything behind what had to be the Planet's best poker face and a pair of unbreakable sunglasses.
It's a funny thing; I almost felt myself drifting off into sleep as I sat there, curled carefully around him… I didn't sleep well – never had – so this was a bit of a shock. But before my eyelids grew too heavy to open again, the sound of a keycard being scraped into my door lock snapped both Rude and I back to reality.
Of course it was Reno; no-one else just opened other people's doors without knocking first, or in our case, no-one dared. True, time had passed between our past lives and the ones we lived now, but the three of us were still treated with caution by the vast majority of those around us; nearly a century of tradition cannot be erased in a handful of years.
At the noise, Rude and I shifted apart quickly, not intending to let Reno see us like this… knowing him, he'd figure it out immediately, but as the two of us exchanged glances, it was clear we weren't going to give him that much of a hint.
So he tucked Reno's present into a desk drawer, and slid into my seat, pulling a blueprint out of his suit jacket. Grinning despite myself, I followed his lead, standing up, and turning around to look at the blueprint just as Reno stepped through the door… From the smirk on his face, I could tell that he had guessed that something was up, and the sparkle in his verdant eyes seemed to silently conclude that he was leaving both of us in good hands…
~*~
That said, I can just see the look on Yuffie's face when she finds out about Rude and I - and she will. Shiva only knows that the girl manages to find out everything… especially the things she's not supposed to know. Why, you ask, would the youngest and quite possibly loudest member of the infamous rebel group AVALANCHE be even the slightest bit interested in the welfare of the last Turks? I suppose you could say that we are friends, after a fashion…
It all started during the later days of the Meteor crisis, when the two of us were drugged, captured, and later forced to hang out (quite literally) on the side of a Wutaian mountain for way too much time with one of the slimiest and most perverted men that walked the Planet. An experience like that certainly leaves one looking for the lesser evil in the situation… So she and I got to talking, in between making sure that we weren't going to fall off the side of the aforementioned mountain.
I never thought I'd see the day when I would tie the bonds that held me tighter than they were before, but Corneo certainly couldn't tie a knot. And I wanted to survive for long enough to ask him exactly what he wanted to prove by tying up a member of AVALANCHE and a Turk on an isolated mountain. I mean, if he had a suicide wish, sure. I'd shoot him after this. At least once; I owed the old lech one for grabbing my ass as he and some of his lackeys forced Yuffie and I up Da Chao. But I doubted that my companions, once they inevitably arrived, would be as forgiving…
Yuffie shared my opinion, and although she was four years my junior - barely a slip of a girl - I wasn't about to stop her. The look in her eyes would have melted refined mythril, and for all that cold glares get the reputation for being really fierce, I'd spent the last year of my life around Reno. Hot anger is just as dangerous… if not more so because it's reckless.
So we'd waited for someone to find us – we'd each tried the knots, but there was no way we could pull ourselves up backwards over the edge of a mountain… and going downwards was out of the question.
Neither the ninja girl nor I could hold back a chuckle as the first strains of approaching voices became audible. Typical… we ended up hearing both Reno and Cloud before we saw them…
It seemed that despite the fact that our groups were apparently "working together," – whose brilliant idea that was, I wasn't sure, but I was nonetheless glad to see someone. Unfortunately, this seemed to involve what Yuffie coined immaturely – but I can't say incorrectly – as a 'testosterone-charged pissing contest' between two particular spiky-haired, hot-tempered young men. In what probably wasn't her smartest move, she proceeded to inform the "young men" in question of what she thought of their so-called machismo quite loudly from where we were shackled on the mountain, and then telling them in no uncertain terms to get their butts in gear. Even though we were quite far from them still, as well as a hundred feet up or so, we could see Cloud go horribly pale, and Reno's face turn a furious red… Obviously, the ninja girl had hit her mark.
The brunette fist fighter with them – Tifa – seemed to find Yuffie's comment as amusing as I did… or perhaps half of her mirth came from seeing Rude quite literally pick up a snarling Reno by his collar and pull him away from a furious Cloud Strife… who was receiving similar treatment from Barret.
Everything seemed routine from then on; the motley group of fighters demolished the creature that Don Corneo had left to 'guard' us, Reno and Cloud continued to snipe verbally, Yuffie and I were freed from our restraints, and given a quick dose of energy from Tifa's Cure materia, "to be on the safe side," she told me, while lightly reassuring Yuffie – who was already regaining that ineffably characteristic bounce to her step – that she didn't really think the energetic ninja girl was in danger from her ex-captor.
Not to be outdone, Rude and Reno ensured that I was in one piece; Reno thankfully keeping the 'rookie' jokes to a minimum, while insinuating that if I wanted a closer "checkup," I knew where to find him. My arms and wrists were sore, and thus a little slower than usual – but the incorrigible redhead got a slap upside the head for his comment nonetheless. Reno retaliated, ruffling my hair as Rude chuckled, and checked over the work that Tifa had done, smiling briefly at the brunette in thanks.
~*~
Our groups went their own ways after that, as fate dictated – allies by necessity, enemies by decree – and I didn't see Yuffie again on relatively cordial terms until just before Reno left. She'd traveled to NeoMidgar to discuss a potential trade alliance between Wutai and NeoMidgar, as well as to take in the sights of the first Winter Festival for the new city with, as I learned, the rest of the members of AVALANCHE. And because I took care of the majority of NeoMidgar's executive external affairs, it was my job to meet with her, and negotiate.
When I saw "Y. Kisaragi" on my list of appointments for the day, I must admit I didn't expect her. I never learned Yuffie's last name, and she hardly presented herself as foreign emissary material when we had first met. So when she first came in, I told her that Reeve's office was two doors up, expecting that she had come by to see him, and simply taken a wrong turn.
Yuffie chuckled, and told me instead that she was the "Y. Kisaragi" appointment – to her delight, pointing it out on my daytimer before we sat down to negotiate.
She'd matured from the 'slip of a girl' I had met briefly, and fought against a handful of times. There was a graver cast to her face this time; shadows swirled through her brown eyes that weren't there before, and I mourned this, briefly, as I had when similar shadows – wraiths of my past - darkened my own. Even so, as the negotiations drew on, and she voiced her concerns and beliefs with similar fire, but with greater logic and patience, it was clear to see that her strength served her well… True, time had tested her as it had tested all of us, but Yuffie Kisaragi was anything but broken.
~*~
Almost a year has passed since that day; Yuffie and I remained in contact and slowly became friends; occasionally meeting for business, and sometimes just for a requisite "girl talk." After all, although Rude and Reeve are both incredible men, and probably the two people closest to me… there are some things that I simply couldn't discuss with them...
Reno did leave - albeit a modified watch and a Bahamut Materia richer, the latter of which was a gift from Reeve - and we kept tabs on the redhead's journey as he traveled towards Junon, spending some time in the port city, the last time we checked, he was crossing the ocean to Costa del Sol.
I hadn't checked up on him in a while, and I figured he'd moved on – Reno's patterns of movement indicated that he never liked to stay long in a place. As I looked down at my watch, I spun the frame a requisite three times to see the little lights indicating our locations on the 'world map'. Hardly specific, but as I noted the little red light – Reno's – heading east towards Wutai, I wondered if I would be the one to tell Yuffie about Rude and I, or if Reno would beat me to it…
A few days later, just as the preparations for the second annual Winter Festival were beginning, we received a postcard from him, sent from Costa del Sol and postmarked a month earlier. It was one of those corny, souvenir-shop ones, but Reno had pasted a picture of his head over the head of the bodybuilder (surrounded, naturally, by gorgeous, scantily-clad women) on the front to add what he called a "personal" touch. Neither Rude nor I could stifle a grin as he boasted about how great winter was in the popular resort town, or teased us about having to deal with the pile of snow that NeoMidgar inevitably turned into in the more wintry months.
Reno didn't mention anything about heading to Wutai, and this led me to wonder exactly why he was traveling, seemingly in a deliberate fashion, to the residence of one particularly fiery ninja… The few times that their paths had crossed in the last year or so, usually when Yuffie visited NeoMidgar, resulted in a rather intense exhibition… the verbal sparring between the two of them was flat-out impressive, as long as you stayed at least ten feet back as each tried to one-up the other…
But I was distracted from these thoughts by the comment at the end of the card… something rather graphically implying about Rude and I keeping each other warm… and oh, I decided, I was going to kill Reno when I saw him next.
But Rude only smiled at it, placing his hands on my shoulders from where he had been standing behind me, and reading over my shoulder. Obviously guessing why I had tensed, his hands caressed my shoulders, massaging out the knots that had materialized. "It's all right, 'Lane. So he guessed; I'd be more surprised if he didn't. It's Reno, after all, that we're talking about… he's spent more time with us than pretty much everyone else on this Planet combined. So it's his right to tease us."
"… I guess you're right," I muttered darkly, turning to face him. "But still…!"
Rude only smiled. He'd been doing a lot more of that recently, and this particular smile was my favorite… barely more than the corners of his lips curled up at the ends, but his eyes shone down at me as he did so, and any anger I may have felt towards Reno's relative audacity melted away.
"Do what you want," Rude replied. "Just don't think that you can use me as a human shield this time when he comes looking for you…"
"I never!" I retorted quickly… and then I realized that I had. And I'd deserved what I had coming that time, too. You don't dump an entire bottle of water over a dozing Reno Fraser to wake him up and expect to get away with it… oh no.
"You remember…"
"Mmmhmm…" Smirking slightly, my arms slipped around his neck, and our eyes met in an unspoken challenge. "And now I'm going to make you forget…"
I won't say much on what happened after that, but I will say that I most definitely succeeded in making him forget...
I suppose the point I'm trying to make with all of this, mixed amidst the memories of our misadventures, doomed romances, and close scrapes with death, is that while Turks aren't supposed to have relationships, and even when they dare, the track record is hardly encouraging. . . we do, anyways. And in the end, that's what matters.
~*~
fin…
~*~
DISCLAIMER: Again, the Turks don't belong to me… nor does the concept of NeoMidgar, or much anything else you recognize. They "belong" to Square. The concept for Reno's watch, and the "James" allusions are, of course, referring to the James Bond franchise, which I don't own either; the watch specifically from 'Goldeneye.'
Sabriel's Scribbles: Oy. It's done! This was supposed to be a short, fluffy one-shot Rulena, and… well… didn't work out that way. But it actually is a lot more useful… because this can work either as a standalone, or, if you liked what you read, this works as well as a prologue to "Not What I'll Have You Believe"… which begins almost directly after this fic finishes…
Huge thank-you's to Jess Angel and Tijuana Pirate for your reviews of part I … ^-^
And to all my readers and reviewers; thank you. I hope you enjoyed what you read; if you wish to leave your mark, or a comment or two, I'd love to hear from you. Peace, and Starry Nights.