I Tried - Chapter 4

SAVE TONIGHT

Mariah and Reno were at a small chocobo ranch, just outside of Midgar. "We are going to meet Master Zangan here." Mariah was explaining. She was walking around the stables, showing the grounds to Reno while she explained their trip. "We need to ride a chocobo to-" Mariah looked down only to notice Reno had taken off. "Damn that kid!" She looked around. "Reno! Get back here!" Suddenly, a loud clang and warking were heard form the barn.

Chocobo Bill was tottering about with a water bucket on his head. The chocobos seemed to be laughing at him. "Bill?" Mariah pulled on the bucket to little avail. Exasperated, she gave a hard tug on the bucket and sent both herself and Bill into a haystack. She sat up and scanned the still warking birds. On top of a small red chocobo was Reno, laughing his ass off. "That is IT mister." She dashed over and plucked the young boy off the bird. Both red headed creatures stopped their noises; they knew they were in trouble. "What happened?" she asked, still suspending Reno in the air.

The boy kicked his feet a bit, urging Mariah to lower him to the ground. When she did he motioned to a suspension rope. "I jus wanted ta know what dat rope did. An' he wouldn't tell- so, I pulled it." Reno began playing in the dirt with the toe of his shoe. "I didn't mean ta drop it on his head." The boy started to smirk again.

The fighter took a few deep breaths, getting herself under control. "Wipe that smirk off your face right now. Bill could have been hurt, Reno. You need to say sorry."

Bill stood beside Mariah and looked angrily around at his birds. The chocobos seemed to pick up on the hint and quieted down. "I can't believe my wife wants one of those things." He muttered to Mariah about children. "Ok you little heathen, let's have it." He requested of Reno.

"I'm sorry." Reno seemed much more interested in the dirt then his apology.

"Not that. I want the materia back you snatched." Reno hunched his shoulders and dug into his oversized blue hoodie. After he handed over the orb he muttered another apology and Mariah promptly drug him back outside.

"Why can't you just be good Reno? Why?" Mariah hated yelling at him; Reno behaved, but only when he wanted to. It wasn't like he was stupid, far from it. It also wasn't about him disliking them; at least, she wanted to think that. It was more that Reno simply pushed them out of his life whenever he got the chance. As if being yelled at was the comfortable norm, despite all his assurances to the contrary.

"I try Mar. Really I do. It's just dat I- I don't know. It's funny, and no one gets hurt then what's the big deal?" Reno grinned sheepishly.

"The big deal is that you shouldn't hurt people, even do anything that can hurt them. Don't you get that?"

The boy sulked again, mumbling what sounded like another "I'm sorry" into his shoe. Then he looked up. "I'll behave the rest of the trip, promise."

That earned a smile, from Mariah. One thing she could always say, was that he never broke promises when he could help it. She silently thanked his mother for at least being able to instill that value in him. She then shaded her face with her hand and noted a ship on the horizon. "You had better; I see Master Zangan on the way."

A medium sized plane touched down and extended a walkway to earth. After the doors opened, a man and a young girl emerged from the vessel. The girl was looking around wide eyed and excited. Her master walked out in front to where they were waiting. Reno stood half behind Mariah, scanning the man and girl. "Mariah! You look well, how are you?" Mariah hugged the tall, slightly graying man. While Zangan's hair was graying, the rest of his body showed no sign of his age. He turned his slate blue eyes to Reno. "Is this the boy you told me about?"

Reno edged further behind Mariah; he didn't like being stared at. Being stared at meant that someone had an interest in something. From the slums, that never was a good thing. Mariah looked down at him, folding her arms over her chest. "Now, I know that you aren't shy, come out here and say 'hello', Reno."

"Don't push him." Zangan responded waving a hand. "He will open up in time; it's not smart to just talk to anyone." He looked down to the little girl he was with. "Ms. Mariah and I have some things to talk about, why don't you go introduce yourself to Reno?"

The little girl smiled brightly and walked up to Mariah. She peeked around the woman's legs to extend a hand to Reno. "Hi! I'm Tifa."

He had almost edged around Mariah, but the older woman left them alone with a gentle pat to his head and an urging to be good. With Mariah gone, he found himself face to face with a total stranger. At a loss, really, of what to do, he took her hand in his. "Reno," the boy muttered, trying to keep the squeak from his voice.

Tifa cocked her head to the side, letting go of Reno's hand. She was staring at his face; more exactly, she was already formulating questions about his scars.

Reno tolerated it for a few moments, knowing that his eyes were the one thing people always commented on. He also knew that his scars were directly under them, it was impossible to look him in the eye and not notice them. His narrowed after he was fed up with her perusal. "Can I help you?"

"Uhm I'm sorry, I just never saw anyone with scars like that. I didn't mean to stare." Tifa blushed to match Reno's hair. She took a deep breath. "I'm really sorry, I'm just nervous..."

Reno made up his mind then, that he was going to like her. "It's okay, I guess. A lot of people have scars in Midgar." He looked over to the house, Bill's wife was baking. "Nobody bakes stuff there either."

"Is it true that there's no sun in Midgar?" Tifa moved a bit closer to Reno, forcing herself to be polite and not stare at his scars.

"Where I am from, yeah." He turned his head to the side, a smirk growing on his face. "You think'n what I'm think'n?" he asked.

It was then the sent of blackberry pie reached the little girl's nose. "Yeah," Tifa grinned, "pie."

"He is only six then?" Zangan had brought a few things to help Mariah out with Reno. "He's a tall kid."

"I think so too, but he says he is six, no reason to lie to us." She looked over an IQ test that Zangan had brought. "He is really smart, it's almost eerie. I think that that is why Padre is edgy around him."

Zangan had received an extensive letter from his old friend. As he recalled, Padre had described Reno as "cunning," and "slightly haunting." What bothered Zangan was the wise priest's warning "No matter what we do, I know when the boy grows up he will be deadly. I don't know how I can tell, old friend, but having him around is like having a dark dragon hatchling. He is cute now, but one day..."

"Master?" Mariah broke Zangan's thoughts. "Is this all? It's a bit too quiet out there; they may have gotten into something."

They walked outside to find Reno and Tifa sitting on the fence of the chocobo pen with blue faces. "Reno!" Mariah walked over. "And you too, Tifa?"

"How do you know that we didn't ask?" Reno snapped. Both Zangan and Mariah blinked at him. "You yell at me if I am good or not, I oughtta jus be bad. It's more fun."

"We did ask." Tifa said quietly, obviously unused to hearing someone talk back to adults. "Mrs. Bill gave it to us."

Mariah felt sick with herself. There she was, already thinking he was in the wrong without even asking him. That wasn't like her at all, she knew better. "I'm sorry Reno, Tifa. I won't jump to conclusions like that again." She leaned against the fence next to Reno. "Forgive me?"

He gave her a smirk.

"Oh come on and really smile for me Reno. You have such a nice one."

Reno smiled and shook his head.

Yeah he is going to be a lady killer, she thought "That's better. If you two aren't full of pie, let's eat and go to bed. We gotta go early in the morning."

Reno edged over to Tifa's bed. He never did sleep well, and when there were half a bazillion things to play with why even try? "Tifa" he whispered. The girl refused to move and he poked her in the stomach. "Hey wake up." The girl opened her garnet eyes and looked into Reno's blue ones. "Let's go play."

"Now?" She sat up rubbing her face.

The red head seemed to think about that for a minute then shrugged. "Why not?"

Mischievousness finally found its way onto Tifa's face. "Okay." She slipped down to the floor and the two kids ran out the door. "Let's go swimming!" Tifa proclaimed as soon as they were out of earshot. She smiled and ran ahead of Reno. "Betcha can't catch me!"

"Really?" Reno dashed for her and grabbed her shoulder. "Tag!" And he darted off. They chased each other to a little pond. Reno stooped down and looked into the water. "I never went swimming before." He noticed his reflection and scowled. In natural lighting the scars looked worse, even a full moon was better then the lighting under the plates. He flopped down, good mood gone.

"You all right Reno?" Tifa didn't like the change that simply seeing his reflection had brought on Reno. She sat down next to him and tapped him on the back "Reno?"

Calm, and unlike a child's words came the hollow explanation. "The guys that killed my mom did these to me." He seemed to want to elaborate, nothing, however, came to mind aside from, "I just don't like seeing them."

Tifa put her small hand in front of her mouth in a shocked expression. "Reno? I am so- are you okay?" They looked at each other for a few minutes. Tifa bit her bottom lip and softly told him "My mom died about three months ago." Her eyes began to well up with tears. She looked up into Reno's seemingly impassive face, "How do you stop from crying?"

He looked down, fiddling with a blade of grass. "I can't cry. It hurt so much when I did, that I- I stopped." Suddenly aware of how small they were, the children eked together. "I wish I could cry again sometimes, it made me feel better." Reno looked up at the sky for a moment before he settled to face Tifa. "If you want to cry do it, I miss my momma too. It still hurts a lot. I won't say nothin' about it."

Tifa hugged her new friend. "Thanks, Reno."

He hugged her back. "For what?"

"Understanding."