All of a sudden, there's a bullet in Ma's forehead.

I'm just impressed he got into the room without me hearing him.

"I take it," I say, standing from the bed and turning to face the man holding the smoking gun in the doorway. He's still got my knife in his side, and I'll be damned before I'm sorry about it. ". . .You found the spare key?"

LOVELESS

Chapter I

My name's Reno.

At nineteen, I became a Turk, and at twenty-three, we were disbanded, a collective decision on the part of myself, my two best friends, and a spirit we all knew was in the office. Even if it was a while ago, we've still all managed to keep in touch. We all moved to Junon and I've been sleeping on Rude's couch since they kicked me out of my apartment. Elena tries to see us when she can pull herself off her job at the paper.

Oh, yeah. Happy birthday to me; I turned twenty-seven last week. I got a bottle of bourbon; a new pair of shoes. There was also a signed script from my favorite play, and Elena when came downtown to drop it off, she sewed the button back onto my suit jacket for the seventh time in four years. Wonderful girl, Laney, lemme tell ya.

We split the bourbon, the three of us, and went to the bar.

But all things end, and so here I am, six days later, leaning against a pillar in the newly-constructed Junon train station, waiting for the next to pull in. I'm wearing jeans, a shirt that's ripped up the back from a fence I didn't successfully hop over, but my coat's taking care of that. My hair's shorter these days, because. . .well, we'll get into that later. Right now, I'm in a good mood and don't want to bring myself back into that funk. These tattoos on my cheeks still make me look like a fucking hyena, but I don't feel like having laser surgery that close to my eyes.

Heh. Yeah. Like I can afford it, anyway.

I'm checking my watch again when the grind of steel on steel reaches me. It's two fifty-seven, and the petals of the rose bouquet crooked up behind my back are brushing against my neck like some high-school bully whispering death threats in my ear. That's me. Reno Gust, the romantic.

Oh, yeah, that's right. My last name's Gust. I remember, walking toward the train, when they had me assigned to Hojo for a month or so as his personal assistant. It drove him nuts, because when they called me on the PA system, the secretary's accent made it sound just like 'Gast.' He was an A-plus fuckwit, though, so whatever. I catch myself thinking about stuff like that a lot these days; memories of ShinRa. . .not fuckwits. Though they do seem to correspond a lot.

Cell phone jammed in her ear and a briefcase in her hand, my date steps off the train, yelling at somebody about something. It's probably Brent, the guy running the convention tonight. I haven't heard her talk to him without yelling at him, and from the one time I spoke to him, I'd be the same way. She almost walks right past me in distraction.

Goddamn, woman, you're a workaholic.

". . .and I hope he pisses in your soup!" She hangs up the phone as my hand touches her back, then she turns around and brandishes it at me. If she keeps doing cute shit like this, I might haul off and tell her I love her or something, lemme tell ya. She sighs, giggles at herself, and kisses me. "You'll drive me to drink yet, Gust," she laughs.

Ah, the innocent type; how attractive ye be. I hand her the flowers and smile at her. "I know I didn't have to," I cut her off. I love the way her eyebrows scrunch up when she's been beaten. I notice she's been doing it a lot more since I told her that, too. "But have I got a surprise for you."

"I dunno. Do ya?"

Har dee har. Tiffany Minster is the partial owner of a law firm in town, has more money than the Promised Land has hype, and still managed to ask me what time it was when she saw me sitting outside the limo service. I don't even want to know whether she thought I was a chauffeur or not; something about gift chocobos and their beaks. ( To tell you the truth, I was stealing hubcaps and pawning them off around the corner to help with rent for the month. ) A week later I was borrowing Rude's car and credit card to take her out to eat. A month and a half afterward, I told her they weren't really mine.

Wanna know how to make me feel special? Take the sentence "I'm unemployed and sleep on my best friend's couch" in stride, then tell me you don't care. I'll propose on spot. I might've if I hadn't choked on the straw I'd been chewing on.

We're inside a coffee shop in the station now, and I'm pulling the chair out for her. Yeah, don't give me that look; I told you, I'm in a good mood. I thump her on the head and smirk, because she's giving me the same look, and tell her the unemployed aren't all impolite scum. Just my friends.

"Such a nut," she mutters, shaking her head, and she ordersa cappuccino, like she always does. They don't even take my order, because anyone in the coffee business of Junon knows that I always take mine straight black, so a nod just means 'gimme some.' "So what's the big surprise, Mr. All-Smiles?"

It only gets bigger, babe.

I reach over the table, grab one of her hands – goddamn, the size of the rocks in the rings she wears, I swear – and breathe out. "I—. . ." I draw it out. She leans forward. ". . .Stopped drinking."

For a second I think she might go into convulsions. I told her about how much I've been relying on alcohol since ShinRa went down, and she's been against it from the beginning, about four months back. She's been encouraging me to quit ever since, but to make it a complete surprise, I kept my progress to myself. I've been down to one drink a week for the past month, didn't even have any when I went out on my birthday, but she still thought I was hitting the bottle as regularly as ever.

"Reno!" she laughs, and for the first time in a long while, I feel like someone's proud of me. "Wow, that's fantastic!"

If it weren't for Tiff, I never would've done it. "C'mon, babe, don't sound so surprised. Definitely a better reaction that I got outta Laney and Rude." I blame it on the years of being a Turk and being given things to not care. They looked happy for a second, then went on with their card game, telling me they were glad I had, but would I be their designated when they went out? Having never had any intention of leaving them alone on a drinking night, I'll be more than happy to do it. "But anyway, how's work?"

I don't like talking about myself all that much, and I'm glad she's okay with changing the subject to the firm and things.

She launches into the past few days; all the cases she's handled, everything going on with her workers, the gossip of the neighborhood. By the time she's done, she's downed three cappuccinos, I've had two cups of coffee myself, and we're headed out the door. The air is colder than when we walked in. Convention nights always seem to be cold, and she goes to a lot, so I always end up lending her my jacket for the night, like I am now.

"Y'know, without that thing, you wouldn't get nearly the respect you do."

"Yeah?" She looks at me, clearly in doubt. "And if this thing's supposed to get you respect, then why's Rude always towing you around by the collar?"

Which reminds me, I need to have Laney reinforce the stitching next time I see her. I forgot to ask last week. "Because," I say, slinging an arm around her shoulders, "Rude is a foot taller than me and almost seventy-five pounds heavier." In short, slang terms: a fucking lummox. "You know what that means?" She guesses that means he's stronger. "Nope, 'just means his respect coat's bigger than mine."

She rolls her eyes, just like everyone else in life, but at least she's being nice about it. "Well, I think I'm the only one in the city dating an ex-Turk, so maybe I'll get some ideas out and win the lottery today."

As relaxed as I am with her, the instincts kicked in the second we got outside, and we're getting some strange looks. Then again, she's walking along in a cream-coloured outfit that a lot of people couldn't even dream of affording, and she's walking with a guy who used to be a Turk; now I've got jeans that look like they've seen a run-in with the farm and that shirt that didn't make the fence. My hair sure as hell hasn't gotten any nicer since then, either, lemme tell ya.

I only see one guy with a gun all the way to the centre, and he's a Force officer. I mention the dropped crime rate to her, my hands on her shoulders, and she says it's all because the world revolves around her. I kiss her for that one, because I know I'm rubbing off on her.

She leans up and mutters into my ear, "Pick me up tonight and I'll finally give you your birthday present." I chuckle, kiss her cheek, and send her on her way, knowing her well enough by now to know she's probably talking about a box of chocolates or something. I take a seat next to the door once she's inside, lighting a cigarette.

Don't give me that look either. Smokes are next on my quit-list.

Like I said, my instincts kicked in right when we left the door, so I'm not shocked when someone snags my lighter out of my hand. Rude sits down next to me and gives me a long look before he smiles. "Proud," is the first word he mutters. "She's a keeper."

I debate asking him whether or not I'm a keeper myself, then I realize how stupid that would sound coming from one former killer to another. 'Scuse me, Ace, as somebody who used to shoot rapists with me, do you think I'd be good for a long-time commitment?' I think he'd think I was trying to rape him and give me five seconds to be out of his sights. Yeah, definitely not a question to ask him.

I should mention: Rude makes it a habit, when he doesn't have work and I'm not in the apartment, to go out into the city and track me down, just for the sport of it. Sometimes he finds me, other times I get back before he does. It's a lot of fun, really, because years of working together got us used to each other's presence, so we have this kind of. . .internal tracking device on each other. Laney, too, but she's always working. I'll walk him for miles around a block to piss him off. He usually jogs to catch me and smacks me in the back of the neck when I do that.

"Seen Derrick?" he asks.

I shake my head. Derrick's a short little shit that runs around downtown Junon, a dealer of sorts. We don't go to him, but he's always looked up to the two of us since we saved him from a couple of thugs who were complaining about five hundred gil their friend was down. Rude keeps an eye on him a lot of the time, to make sure he's not getting in too much trouble.

Yep, that's us. We find a sixteen-year-old dealing hard drugs and not only do we not pull him off the street, but we make sure no one else does. I take a drag and a picture flashes through my head.

Rude and I.

Our suits and sunglasses.

My mag-rod pointed outward.

"Freedom fighters of a different breed."

I relay it to Rude and start to laugh. "That'd make a hell of a movie, eh?" He raises a brow at me, probably because the guy sleeping on his couch and leeching his smoke money just proposed we make a high-budget action flick. Yuffie Kisaragi as the lead female. Rude's the gunman. I'm the kickass driver, squealing around corners to run down cops. Rudolph the Cueball throws a bag of gil at the thug on the ground and says something inspirationally tough, like, "Nothing personal."

"Antiheroes to the max, motherfucker." He gives me an even more bemused look, as if asking me to explain what kind of acid trip my mind is on, and I shake it off as I stand up. "No big, man. You gotta work tonight?"

His response is standing up, pulling a crumpled visor from his back pocket. He smacks it against the side of the convention centre, throwing his cigarette with one of the swings, and puts it on. Poor Rude's been reduced to head cook at the Eighth Avenue Club.

I told him to buy a hairnet just to fuck with 'em.

The bald man starts handing me the spare key. "You'll be back before me." I try to take it from him, but he tightens his grip at the last second and lets me see his eyes over his shades. They're fucking creepy, lemme tell ya. "If I come home. . ."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." I swipe the key, knowing what the end of that sentence is. Holy knows he tells me every time he goes to work. He should be a butler, as regular as he is. "No sex or you'll box my ears –" – Dad. I grin, and I can kind of see him do it, too. It's small. Too small for anyone not looking for it to see. ( Did I mention bad grammar was part of the reason I dropped out of school? ) I punch him in the shoulder and start heading back toward the apartment.

"'Ey, Re!"

Ah, now there's a neighbor I don't try to pick fights with. The Widow – her name's Margaret, but she doesn't look one bit like some dainty little Maggie – is a seventy-something, retired steel worker. She's in better shape than I am, has more tattoos than Rude does – if you've seen his, you were either fooling around with him or he was piss-drunk, I'll bet – and just might outlive both of us. Her husband died when his plane went down over Wutai, poor woman, but she's holding up real well.

The Widow, hair up in a bun and the sleeves of her grey flannel rolled up, leans out the propped-open door toward me. She's got a box in her arms, the kind of box anyone else over fifty would ask me to lift for them, but I know she could balance the thing on her head if she wanted. The old bird's buff as hell, and she packs one mean punch, lemme tell ya. Took her drinking a year or so back. The bartender tried to cut her off at three and she broke his nose.

Free tap the rest of the night, and it was glorious.

"What's up, Widow?" She knows the nickname isn't something I'm doing to pick on her. When an ex-Turk calls you somethin' like that, she told me once, it's a damned compliment. With her husband in the service, she came to actually like the company, and she considers us to be great people and fantastic neighbors. I wish there were more people around like her. If my grandma'd been more Widow-ish and less. . .grandmother-ish, I would've actually wanted to go stay with her once in a while. But, no, she was into that whole cookie-baking thing, and. . .well, you get it.

She looks me up and down, steps forward, and nudges me in the knee with her foot. "I'll bet I don't need two guesses whether you've got a job yet, y'slacker." She cocks her head and gives me a smile. It's amazing how someone that's got forty years on me can be so much more of a child than I can.

I laugh, "Oh, and you do?"

That's always my comeback, and she's been using the same answer since I met her: "Reno, I'm livin' on government money, and I couldn't be happier. Wanna sell some flower pots?" She balances the box on her hip and opens the lid. Rows and rows of 'em. Ceramic, brown-orange flower pots. . . .Widow, I'm not even gonna try to guess why you have so many of those. I just don't wanna know.

I start off down the hall with a wave, tossing the key as I do. "Y'know, there's a couch in Rude's apartment just begging to have me lay on it. Otherwise, I'd definitely take you up on that, lemme tell ya."

"Hold it!"

I turn around, and she's almost got a serious look on her face. The door clicks shut behind her, and her face scrunches up. "Lemme tell ya, lemme tell ya. You've been sayin' that for months now, kid. An ex-Turk, and your catch-phrase is 'lemme tell ya.'" I turn around and walk, so she can't see how hard I want to laugh, but she just calls, "Not 'fuck you, you old bat,' not 'fuck off and stay fucked,' not even 'eat shit and die.' It's 'lemme tell ya!' Here's one for ya, Re!"

I glance over my shoulder. The Widow's always worth turning your head; she flips me off and shouts, "You're a damn dirty loser, punk!" We laugh it off together as I slip into the apartment and she disappears in the general direction of the dumpster.

Didn't I tell you she was cool? If you had a grandma like her, you'd sacrifice all the baked goods in the world.

. . .Lemme tell ya.

-

Author's Note: Because I'm an unoriginal little freak, this is actually my NaNoWriMo project for the year, and I decided to do it in fanfiction form. However, to save myself a bit of originality, there're going to be quite a few original characters, it's in first-person-present-tense ( Hello, Silver Rose, how've you been? ) and slightly auto-biographical, though hopefully not in a self-insertion sense. Hyphen abuse aside, that's what's going on. Have fun, and reviews keep me on task. Aiming for fifty or sixty thousand words by the end of the month, y'know.