Desha's Reno of the Turks Fan Fiction

Chapter 5: Long Way Down

“Check this one out… A bird!” Reno cried, with far too much enthusiasm. His long fingers fluttered spastically in front of the light that emanated from the tip of his electro mag-rod. On the wall, the shadows created a vaguely avian-like form. One that appeared to be flailing about in its death throes. Elena wondered if she could put it out of its misery.

“This is unbelievable,” she groused from the opposite side of the darkened elevator car. A state of the art building, with billions of gil in technology, and she was stuck. In a damn elevator. With Reno and his pathetic puppet show. Why couldn’t the power have just waited thirty more seconds to go out? She could be home by now, slipping into a nice warm bath with a book and a glass of wine.

“Yeah, I know. I rock,” Reno grinned, “Heh… an elephant!”

Elena let her head bang once against the metal wall… Elephant. Reno’s shadow puppet looked more like a mutant sea urchin than anything else. Did the man even know what a damn elephant looked like? He was doing it on purpose. She knew he was. Sure, they’d called a truce and things had quieted down since that little… incident… at the Sordid Rose. And they’d even kept to it… in a manner of speaking. There had been no pranks, tricks, or practical jokes in over a week. Instead, they’d switched from public humiliation to subtle torture; driving one another crazy in little ways, striving to irritate each other without drawing attention to their antics.

It wasn’t quite the same… but it did have its moments. Elena couldn’t remember ever having derived so much enjoyment from lime Jell-O, for instance. She’d forced Reno to choke down every last drop of the lime Jell-O he’d taken the liberty of filling her bathtub with when she’s finally caught up with him outside of the Sordid Rose… and ever since, the mere sight of the wobbly dessert turned him a shade of green to match. She’d made a point of requesting it in the cafeteria every day for the last week.

“And now… A bunny!”

“Dear Holy, will you just stop?!” she cried, her reminiscence interrupted. She couldn’t take much more of this. Reno flashed her a grin, the odd lighting from his electro mag-rod making the expression look downright evil… At least she hoped it was just an effect of the lighting.

“So how about a dog?” he asked innocently.

“Reno, I swear, if you don’t knock it off, I’ll shove that nightstick of yours so far up your…”

She was cut off in mid-threat by Reno’s laughter. “Now, now ‘Lena… That’s no way to speak to a fellow-Turk… and a superior at that,” he chided, smirking.

‘I’m not going to let him get to me… I’m not. I’m just going to ignore him until someone gets us out of here,’ she thought, glaring at him, ‘Ugh, why couldn’t I have gotten stuck in here with Tseng? Or Rude? Or that creepy guy from the nineteenth floor that’s always staring at my ass in the gym?’

“So what, now you’re gonna pout?” Reno teased, “Don’t act so weak, ‘Lena.”

‘Don’t act so weak… Don’t act so weak…’ she mimicked silently, ‘Can’t the son of a bitch think of a better insult?’

Weak? She hated it when he called her that. Almost as much as she hated it when he called her “‘Lena”. She honestly didn’t know if it was Reno’s fucked up idea of motivation, or if that was how he really saw her. Either way, it infuriated her to no end. One of these days, he was going to say it one too many times… then he’d see just how “weak” she was.

“Dammit… You’d think they’d have us out of here by now,” Reno said, his tone turning momentarily serious, as he finally grew bored of the puppet show. Elena looked at her watch, squinting to see the tiny hands in the dim light. Seven fourteen pm.

“We’ve only been in here for twenty minutes,” she said. She could hardly deny that she’d actually thought it had been considerably longer than that, and was starting to get a little antsy herself. But she wasn’t about to agree with anything Reno had to say.

“Twenty minutes too long,” Reno muttered, “I hate these damn elevators…”

“Scared of elevators? Ha! Now who’s weak?” Elena replied smugly.

“I’m not afraid of elevators, in general” Reno said, with a huff of exasperation, returning to his shadow puppets, though with less than his previous enthusiasm, “I’m just not overly fond of these in particular. You tellin’ me that the idea of hangin’… where are we right now? Fifty two? Hangin’ fifty two stories in the air from a cable that’s only ’bout as big around as your thumb doesn’t bother you?”

“Aww… Reno, the big tough Turk is scared of a widdle elevator…” she taunted, laughing as she spoke. Finally, something she could do to annoy him for a change.

“Oooh… That’s real mature,” Reno retorted, “For the record, fear isn’t a weakness, ‘Lena. Giving into fear is. Anyway… only idiots and liars are scared of nothin’. And I’m neither.”

It was a fair enough point. But she’d be damned if she was going to concede it. She opted for a slightly different tactic, instead.

“Yeah… well… as if you’re one to lecture me on maturity, Mr. I-Still-Sleep-With-A-Stuffed-Animal!”

“W-what? I do not!” Reno replied, and if the lighting had been better, she was almost sure she’d have seen him turn a shade of red to rival his own hair.

“Oh yeah? Then what’s that ratty old stuffed bunny you keep on your bed for, hmm?” she said accusingly, daring him to deny it. She’d noticed the grungy-looking thing during her stay at Reno’s apartment when she’d taken him home while he was sick. It was the first thing he’d reached for when she’d finally gotten him to bed, and he’d curled up with it, much the way a child would cling to a favored toy. The bunny had definitely seen better days… In fact, it looked like it’d been dragged through the most vile gutters of the slums and then tossed into a washing machine in the hopes of restoring it to at least a sanitary condition again. But more importantly, it was information that she could, and was more than prepared to, use against him.

“Mr. Foo-Foo is not ratty!” Reno yelled back, realizing a moment too late what he’d just let slip.

“Mr… Foo-Foo?!” Elena managed to choke out before falling victim to a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Oh gods, it just got better and better…

“Yes, Mr. Foo-Foo,” he replied with as much dignity as he could muster, “And he’s not ratty… Just a little worn.”

Elena had to fight hard to get herself under control. All the while, Reno glared at her from across the elevator car. “Hee hee hee… Oh, wow. Just wait until Rude hears about this…”

“You wouldn’t dare…” Reno hissed, narrowing his eyes.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t… I still owe you for talking Tseng into assigning me to cover your incident report backlog. By the way… your handwriting is atrocious.”

“You say one word to Rude… One word… I will hunt you down and make sure no one ever finds the body,” he replied, knowing full well that his outwardly stoic partner would never, ever let him live something like this down. At least not without an explanation he wasn’t prepared to give.

“Oh, this is just too perfect… Finally, something I can hold over you…”

“Hmph… You’ve been hanging around Rufus too much, ‘Lena. You’re starting to think like him.”

“Oh, that’s not a very nice thing to say. I don’t think Mr. Foo-Foo would approve… Nope, not at all.” She could literally see Reno repressing the urge to strangle her. ‘Good… Now he knows how I feel…’ she thought happily.

“Just… Shut up!” he said at last. Reno folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall, turning his eyes away from her and pointedly staring at the ceiling. Elena decided to do just that, for the moment at least. Let him think over his position for awhile. If she played her cards right, maybe she could even get him to start calling her by her proper name for a change. Reno had always had power over her due to his rank… now, at last, the odds had been evened a bit.

She smiled in triumph and let herself sink to the floor, trying to find a comfortable position to sit in. The elevator was silent, aside from the incessant buzz from the glowing mag-rod and the occasional creak of the wires that held them suspended fifty two stories up. She thought back to what Reno had said earlier… about those wires only being about as thick as your thumb, and suppressed a shudder. Now that she actually thought about it… it was kind of unnerving.

‘The maintenance crew sure is taking their sweet time getting here,’ she thought to herself as Reno joined her on the floor, setting the electro mag-rod down between them as a sort of mutually acknowledged boundary. She wondered how long its power supply would hold out. She wasn’t intimately familiar with the weapon, but she did at least know that it wasn’t built for long-term discharge like this. Somehow, the idea of being trapped alone, in the dark, with Reno was not especially appealing… not when she’d managed to piss him off, at any rate. The reality was that she still didn’t really know Reno all that well. She honestly didn’t think he’d actually try to hurt her, no matter how mad he was at her… but that being said, they were currently trapped in a small, enclosed space. It wasn’t really the best time to test that theory.

“Damn… is it hot in here, or what?” Reno muttered.

“It’s that stupid overgrown flashlight of yours,” said Elena, nodding to the mag-rod. It was probably getting close to overheating, it’d been on so long.

“Well, we could always sit around in the dark,” he spat back. Elena glared, but couldn’t really comment, given that her own thoughts had been traveling in a similar direction just a moment ago. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Reno added when she didn’t answer.

Reno shrugged his jacket off and tossed it on the floor beside him. He shifted uncomfortably for a moment before beginning to unbutton his shirt as well.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“What’s it look like?” Reno drawled, “It’s like a fucking sauna in here. ‘Sides… It’s not like its anything you haven’t seen before.”

“Once was enough,” Elena replied drily, rolling her eyes. Reno smirked and started to whistle innocently. When Elena cringed, he switched over to a harshly nasal tune. Her eyes narrowed at him and he paused just long enough to grin at her before continuing with what was almost certainly, knowing Reno, the most obnoxious rendition imaginable of a popular drinking song from one of his favorite bars.

He only did this when he really wanted to get under her skin. She had made the mistake of letting him know just how much that sound annoyed her. Whistling had always gotten to her, ever since she was very young. She had no idea why… She just. Couldn’t. Stand it. She’d tried asking him calmly to stop, tried screaming at him, threatening him, even tried throwing various office supplies at him, but that had only seemed to reinforce in his mind that this was a great way to get on her nerves.

She hated that sound so much, and it didn’t help that Reno’s whistling always had a shrill, grating quality to it… nor did it help that the obnoxious bastard pretended to be utterly tone-deaf when he did it so that even songs that might have been at least tolerable were butchered and mangled so horribly that it was unbearable. And of course, she knew damn well that he did that on purpose, too… She’d had only a handful of opportunities to hear Reno sing – properly… not as a joke – but could safely say that, while he was certainly no undiscovered pop star, he could at least carry a tune.

She couldn’t take anymore. The sharp whistle bounced off the walls of the little elevator car, which only served to amplify the detestable sound. Elena could already feel the beginnings of what was sure to become a splitting headache. Sadistically, she toyed with the idea of drawing her gun and simply putting him out of her misery… but she knew that realistically, it wasn’t an option. Aside from the the obvious fact that shooting a fellow-Turk for whistling would effectively end her career, any shots fired in the confines of the elevator would almost undoubtedly ricochet. With her luck, she’d probably end up shooting both Reno and herself. Hell, even if she managed to come up with an excuse to justify it to Tseng, she’d never get away with it anyway. The little red light on the security camera in the corner told her that they were being recorded. The elevator may not have power, but security was on a separate circuit… with its own set of dedicated backup generators if main power failed. Finally, she settled on doing the next best thing to shooting him. She slipped off a shoe and flung it at Reno, nailing him squarely in the face. The whistle promptly died on his lips.

“Ow!” he yelled, rubbing his forehead. He snatched Elena’s shoe from the floor, “Know what? Just for that, I’m keeping it.”

“Fine!” she replied, “In that case, you’ll want the other one to go with it!” She hurled the other shoe at Reno as hard as she could, hitting him in the chest. He flinched.

“Ow, dammit! Come on, ‘Lena. I bruise easy, ya know…” She wished she had something else to hit him with. But at least he didn’t start whistling again.

“Yeah? Tell it to Mr. Foo-Foo,” she muttered, and glanced down at her watch. ‘Half and hour stuck in here,’ she thought, ‘Where are those repair guys? They’ve gotta know we’re in here…’

She leaned back against the wall and sighed, gazing up at the security camera. Someone had to be watching… And if they weren’t, that someone was going to lose his job just as soon as she got out of here. But thoughts of vengeance were suddenly shoved aside as the faint odor of smoke registered.

“Reno?” she said, alarmed.

“What?” he replied, only barely acknowledging her.

“Do you smell smoke?”

Reno’s eyes widened and he sat up, just as the light from the mag-rod began to flicker.

“Ah, shit! It’s overheating…” he muttered, reaching for the weapon to turn it off. A stream of electricity arced out from the tip just before he touched it. Elena gasped as, for a moment, she could actually see the current flowing up his arm. Reno let out a pained yelp, skittering backwards as the rod shorted out, clutching his arm to his chest.

“Oh my god, Reno, are you alright?” she cried, her previous annoyance replaced with concern. The voltage off of that thing could be dangerous at higher levels, and she had no idea was setting it had been on. If Reno had been seriously injured by it, her options were severely limited.

“Yeah, I’m peachy,” he growled, “Great! This is just great! Now I’m going to have to deal with Scarlet to get it repaired! That’s always so much fun…”

She relaxed. If he was bitching about the head of weapons development, he was fine. She’d never gotten the whole story behind why Reno and Scarlet didn’t get along, but from what she’d gathered, it had something to do with him turning her down once. It seemed, she mused, even Reno had standards. In the pitch dark, Elena could hear him moving around for a moment before he sat back down.

“Perfect…” he continued, “Stuck, in the dark, in an elevator… with you!”

“What’s the matter Reno? Don’t like the dark? Maybe you’d feel better if Mr. Foo-Foo was here…” she teased.

“Oh, would you just drop it?!” his voice shouted at her from the darkness, with a surprising amount of venom, leaving Elena a little shocked. Apparently, she’d hit a nerve, “My mom gave me that toy! It’s the only thing they let me keep when…”

Whatever he’d been about to say, he caught himself and lapsed into silence. The tension hung thick between the two of them, but finally, Elena’s curiosity got the better of her.

“When what? Reno?” she prodded. He didn’t answer right away so she tried again, “Reno?”

Reno sighed softly, “… When they dragged me off to the orphanage after she died. There. Happy now?”

She’s been prepared to respond with another biting remark, but the sudden admission stopped her cold. She’d never known Reno had lived in an orphanage as a child. But she did know that he’d grown up in the slums… and orphanages in the slums weren’t exactly known for their safe, nurturing environments. How old had he been, she wondered. Hadn’t he had any other family? Were the stories she’d been told as a little girl, when she misbehaved and her father threatened to abandon her in one of those awful places, true or just stories meant to scare her into being good?

“I-I’m sorry,” she said dumbly, lacking anything more intelligent to say.

“Whatever.”

Neither of them said a word after that. They sat silently in the dark elevator until suddenly the car lurched and the fluorescent lights flickered back on as they began to descend.

‘Oh thank you… Thank you, thank you, thank you…’ Elena thought as she climbed to her feet. A few seconds later the chime sounded and the doors opened on the nearly empty parking level. The two Turks stepped out. Elena had expected someone to be waiting there for them – preferably with an explanation and an apology for leaving them stranded for so long – but the fact that she was finally free overshadowed that minor slight as she followed Reno towards their respective parking spaces.

“Um… Reno?” she asked, intending on apologizing again for their earlier conversation.

“Now what?” he sighed. She couldn’t help but notice how resigned he sounded, as if acknowledging already that he knew she wasn’t going to drop a subject that he really didn’t want to discuss further. She decided it was just a little too cruel to push him on it.

“Can I… um… have my shoes back please?”

Reno stopped in mid-stride and spun around to face her. That was obviously not what he’d been expecting to hear, and for a moment, Elena was quite pleased when the frown he wore quickly turned into his trademark smirk.

“No… I think I’ll keep ’em… They’ll look great on Mr. Foo-Foo…”

Elena stared at him, her mouth hanging open. ‘That’s it… I hate him…’

“H-hey!” she yelled as Reno turned and continued towards his car, “Give those back! Those shoes cost me 900 gil! On sale!”

Reno laughed wickedly and broke into a run, leaving Elena no other choice but to chase him or go home barefoot.

---

Rude turned away from the video monitor showing the interior of the elevator, and switched off the microphone he’d planted inside the car. Technically, he hadn’t been instructed to listen in. Just to hold them there for awhile. But it had definitely been worth the trouble. He wasn’t sure this had accomplished what Tseng had intended, but it certainly netted Rude some interesting information about his friend.

“Mr. Foo-Foo, eh? I’ll have to remember that one…” he said to himself.

-fin-