(Untitled)

[lonegun]

Who: Rosalind and Elena
Status: Closed
When: 900am
Where: Outside Shin-Ra Company Headquarters and elsewhere inside
What: Rosalind arrives and goes by the book...

Rosalind slipped out of the car and made her way out of the public area of the parking garage and to the front of the Shin-Ra Company building. Thump, thump, thump - her leather boots sounded

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[rookienomore]

Inside the lobby, chaos reigned.

The staff had, predictably, not taken the President's promise of an extra thirty minutes of paid lunch as well as he thought they would. Elena was left to deal with the aftermath.

Generally, people were not fond of coming to work, finding they can't get into their offices, and then having to go back downstairs and stand in a queue to get their keycards redone. Now that they were into the second hour of this nonsense, the employees were even more restless than before...not to mention the people who ran the food court upstairs. They were losing money by the minute. And Elena's coffee was wearing off.

She swiped yet another card, typed in the appropriate clearance, and called for the next in line.

She was not being paid enough for this.

[lonegun]

Pushing one of the doors open, Rosalind entered the chaos and sighed softly as she promptly got into queue.

Her eyes scanned the lines and desks and then stopped on her sister. She kept a smiled tucked away as she moved with the line and smoothed the sleeves of her jacket. Rosalind was proud of her sister's efficiency as she watched her.

Stepping up, she cracked her neck slightly. "Hello, Elena." Rosalind greeted her sister with her usual crisp and a wee bit dark voice.

[rookienomore]

The work was mind numbing. Take an ID card, verify clearance, reprogram. Each person took less than a minute to process...but there were so many of them. Even with some of the security guards working, it was still going to take a lot longer than anticipated.

Dammit. This was going to push all of her work back yet again, and she was going to have to spend another night in front of her computer, wasn't she?

She didn't know how much longer she could take this.

She barely noticed the person in front of her. Her mind was on auto-pilot at this point. She just reached for a card that she never got, and didn't care who it belonged to...until she heard that voice.

Elena looked up and found herself staring at the big sister she had not seen in about...five years.

"Lindy."

[lonegun]

Her right hand slipped into the inside left breast pocket of her jacket just as Elena was reaching out. Rosalind looked her little sister over. Five years, she had changed quite a bit.

"You look well," Rosalind nodded as she pulled out her ID card. Tipping it back and forth between her index and middle fingers, she then reached out and placed it in her sister's hand.

This was one of the hard parts of working for Shin-Ra - blood-linked family within the same ranks.

[rookienomore]

"Yeah, you too."

Elena gave her sister a weak grin. She...didn't know how to react, really. This didn't feel real.

Not to mention the fact that the people in line behind Rosalind were beginning to grumble.

With slightly unsteady hands, she took the ID card and gave it the highest clearance. Lindy was officially working for Shin-Ra again.

"Y-you want to help me out with this?" she asked, gesturing vaguely to the chaos in the foyer. "It'll go faster with more people working. And...we can talk. Because Mom and Daddy still think you're dead, and you probably ought to fix that."

[lonegun]

Rosalind turned her head slightly as she heard the people in behind her grumbling. She thought they should be appreciative that they still have jobs. Patience was a virtue.

Turning her back to face Elena again, she noticed her sister's slightly unsteady hands.

"Yes, yes I do," the oldest sister nodded and rounded Elena's station. "Yes," she whispered, "I will fix that this evening hopefully."

[rookienomore]

"Thanks," Elena said, choosing not to focus on the second part of Rosalind's response. That was between her and their parents.

She moved so that her sister could look over her shoulder. A lot had changed in five years, but not her height. Elena had stopped growing when she was thirteen. Rosalind would always be taller.

"It's pretty basic. You have to type in the employee's name manually--that's a pain in the ass--then the computer will confirm the clearance, you click 'okay,' and then you swipe the card to reprogram it."

[lonegun]

"Welcome," Rosalind nodded and bowed her head slowly to look her sister's shoulder. Little sister and her only sister. Family was truly something - blood or not.

Hopeful that her reflection wasn't visible in the computer monitor, she smiled a bit brighter as she watched and listened to Elena step her through. She had to be the big sister.

"Quite basic," Rosalind nodded and slipped over to the next computer terminal.

[rookienomore]

They worked in silence for the next several minutes, but Elena kept sneaking surreptitious glances at her sister. Five years. God. She looked different, of course...and yet, she was still recognizable as the teenager that Elena had both hero-worshiped and hated, the reason why she had cut off her pigtails and...

Elena realized (just in time) that she had given a typist Turk status. She voided the card and remedied the mistake, praying that she hadn't done the same thing with the dozens of other employees she'd scanned without really looking at.

It was time to get back to work.

[lonegun]

As they worked, Rosalind did not catch her little sister sneaking those glances at her. But she did expect Elena would have. The last five years were hard on her too - away from family, co-workers, and the job. Yet she couldn't have focused upon the worries. Did her sister truly miss her or did she still detested her? Now for more than one reason?

She put through the first three or four employee card clearances slowly just to get into the swing of it, but it wasn't too complicated. Soon, Rosalind was typing, clicking, and swiping away.

It would be no time until the lines of chaos would quiet down to "business as usual".

[rookienomore]

There was no such thing as 'business as usual' at Shin-Ra, really, but by 12:30, things were beginning to wind down. The crowd was finally starting to thin out, and even though Elena knew she would probably have a few very angry night workers on her hands, she wouldn't have to deal with them until after dinner. Hopefully she'd be able to get a few hours of sleep in the mean time.

The only problem was that Rod was still missing, and that worried her. He wasn't picking up his phone. It just kept ringing.

Trying to distract herself from the problem, Elena turned to her sister.

"So...what were you doing? With Veld and everyone else, I mean."

[lonegun]

Leaning back slightly and twisting slowly to hear her back pop, Rosalind looked over at Elena and exhaled.

Her eyes searched Elena's, formulating an answer that would sound the most reasonable. "I was doing what Veld told me to do," Rosalind answered.

[rookienomore]

Elena raised an eyebrow. "And calling home was out of the question?"

[lonegun]

She turned to face her sister fully and stepped closer. "I'm sorry," Rosalind whispered apologetically.

[rookienomore]

Elena shook her head. "It's not me you should be apologizing to. I knew you were alive. You should be apologizing to our parents. They're getting older, Ros. On top of everything else--Meteor and the collapse of Shin-Ra--losing you aged them."

And Elena had been forbidden from telling them herself.

[lonegun]

"I know that, Elena. And I will." Rosalind voice was hushed and dark. Being away for so long hurt her as well. Not calling home hurt her too. Blinking, she shook her head and asked, "Can we discuss this later?"