A/N: This chapter was by me, although Le Pecore Nere did the letter for me, coz I suck at stuff like that. I typed all this really quickly, so my wrists hurt now, my brain is too fast for my fingers it would seem XD

Enjoy

Chapter 16

Elena put the phone down and sighed to herself. She had spoken to her mother in the hope that it would make her feel better, but she had been wrong. If anything, she felt worse. She wasn't even sure why she felt so terrible, but something on her mind was eating away at her like a parasite, and she was pretty sure it was something to do with Gun and her family.

Her mother was all she had left now, and up until that very moment, Elena hadn't thought of the day that Gun's death had reached them. Her mother had been inconsolable, and Elena had been her strength. She never cried a tear, not once, just made sure she was there as a shoulder for her mother to cry on.

They hadn't seen Gun for a few days. Both Elena and her mother had gotten used to it by now. They both knew of her involvement with 'The Department of General Affairs' although neither of them knew exactly what she did there. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon, when Elena went to go out for a walk and she noticed a letter on the floor.

"To the relative of Trisha 'Gun' Spalinger,

We regret to inform you that Trisha "Gun" Spalinger has been in an incident that has taken her life. We are sorry to have to inform you of such news. Please drop by the Shin-Ra Corporation with this letter and a form of identification so we can verify that you are a relative of Trisha "Gun" Spalinger, so we may bring you her body to dispose of in your own fashion.

Yours sincerely,

Red"

She had not wanted to show her mother the letter, but of course, she wasn't stupid. She would realize something was wrong. Elena took a deep breathe and walked back into her living room and handed her mother the letter.

She saw her face fall the further down the letter she got. In silence, Elena's mother brushed her blonde hair out of her eyes and handed the letter back to Elena.

"Mom?" Elena said quietly. Her mother opened up her arms and pulled Elena into a hug. Elena let her do it, and hugged her back… but the strange thing was she felt nothing for Gun. In fact, she somehow felt she deserved it.

Recovering Gun's body was one of the hardest things Elena had been through. It wasn't because she was sad for her sister; she was sad for her mother. Tears had been streaming from her mothers blue eyes onto her creamy-skinned cheek all the while she was giving details to the man from Shinra. The man was one of those people that weren't particularly ugly, but it wasn't a face Elena remembered beyond that day. She remembered the people she saw; the blank looks on their faces as they walked past them one after the other. None of them seemed to have any emotion; none of them seemed to care at all. They were all the same…

"What the HELL do ya think ya doin'?" A voice practically screamed outside. Elena recognized it as Reno from the slightly nasal quality. Elena felt her heart racing, and instantly regretted once again letting herself fall into a thoughtful stupor.

"Piss off." Reno's voice said, slightly quieter. Elena saw her own door open and the red-head walked in, looking incredibly angry.

"Hey 'Laney." He said, his voice suddenly brightening.

"Don't knock, will you?" Elena said sarcastically. The red-head shot her a sly smile and Elena found herself smiling at him.

He was bright. That was the first thing she had noticed about him. His hair was bright; his eyes were bright, and his personality was bright. He was the oddball that had changed Elena's view on Shinra. At the moment, apart from her mother, Reno was the only person in the world she could trust.

"Anyway…" Reno carried on. "I was just wonderin'… I saw ya in the corridor an' ya looked a bit depressed."

"Oh… I was just thinking." Elena said, smiling at him as he sat down next to her.

"Whatcha thinkin' 'bout?" he asked her.

"My sister." Elena told him. She didn't know why, but she wanted to tell Reno all about it. She knew he would make her feel better. "I just remembered what happened to her."

"Ah, yeah… she was killed on a mission…" Reno said, looking slightly awkward.

Elena brushed her long blonde hair out of her eyes. "You know?"

"Course I know. I'm a Turk, ain't I? So was she… my partner for a while." Reno didn't look sad, but there was some sort of traceable emotion in his eyes.

"Your partner? You mean before Rude?" Elena asked. For some reason, this information scared her.

"Yeah…" The red-head suddenly looked like he didn't want to talk, but Elena didn't care. She wanted to know everything he knew about her sister.

"Reno…" she said, a thought suddenly coming to her head. "Who was 'Red'?"

"Heh…" Reno smiled grimly. "That was me."

"You wrote the letter… why?"

"Tseng was away for a while, so he left me 'in charge' so to speak." Reno said. "Look, do I really have to go through this?"

Elena stared at him unfalteringly and nodded her head.

"Fine." Reno said sighing. "Gun was killed on a mission…"

"Yeah, I know that." Elena said quickly. "How did she die?"

Reno seemed to take forever to answer the question. For the first time since Elena met him, he was lost for words… he seemed to have lost them in a pool of emotion. Eventually, he breathed out heavily.

"I killed her."

They had been separated for about an hour. Reno couldn't find Gun anywhere, and the whole building was dark, since Reno had cut the electricity. That was the only thing he hated about stake-out missions; the fact that for some reason, he always got separated from whoever he was with.

Gun was the first partner he'd had in a long time. The last one, Rikash… she had been murdered brutally. He and Gun had been partners for three months, and although it looked to anyone else that they hated each others guts, they were starting to form quite a beautiful friendship.

Reno was worried though. Gun had been in quite a steaming mood before they had gotten separated. Apparently spending an hour poking someone in the back of the head on the way to a mission was not something someone appreciates.

He could hear footsteps, running quickly, and from the pounding echo, Reno could sense that whoever it was, they were scared. Could it be Gun? Then suddenly the footsteps stopped, and Reno had the strange sense that someone was watching him. Pulling out his gun, he turned around and walked slowly but blindly forwards. He could hear his own footsteps on the floor and his blood rushing through his head.

Then the other footsteps started again, this time becoming louder and louder, so it was obvious the person was running towards him. Reno crouched slightly, readying himself, and the next thing he knew, he saw a very familiar person running at him. Green eyes filled with intense fear flashed in front of him and she pounced on him. Everything after that seemed to happen at once, and with a swift movement, Reno pulled the trigger on his gun, as though it were a reflex, and Gun fell to the ground.

Reno breathed out heavily and suddenly became aware of a sharp pain in his back. He crouched, cringing at the increasing burning sensation in his back and pulled a flare out of his pocket and lit it. In the green light, he could see the woman he had just shot, now dead, a knife in her right hand. So she had stabbed him… her green eyes were empty, and staring upwards at the ceiling, as though expecting something to come down and get her, there was a trickle of blood down her now slightly gray skin… Reno looked at the floor…

"I never found out why she went crazy…" Reno said quietly.

Elena stared at him. Although she felt hollow inside, it was nothing to how Reno looked. Anyone else telling such a touching tale would probably be crying right now. But not Reno; not one tear fell from his eyes. He looked drawn and gray, as if he had been the one shot, not Gun.

"I'm sorry 'Lena…" He muttered. His heart didn't sound in the apology, but Elena knew he meant it. In silence she moved closer to him and put her arm around his shoulder. He gave in and leaned into her, itching to get the comfort he should have received all that time ago. Elena felt like a mother, nursing a child after a skinned knee, but of course, this wasn't quite as simple to fix.