The Wee Hours, Monday Morning, Room 429
It wasn't even dawn yet but Rikku couldn't get back to sleep. Lying here wasn't helping anything, either. So -- as quietly as she could -- she got up and tiptoed to the door of 429, stepping carefully past the cots and sleeping bags and hoping not to wake anyone
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It didn't take any deliberation at all before he slipped out of his sleeping bag and made his way out into the hallway to join her.
"Yo," he said, settling himself on the floor next to her.
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"Hey," she said. "It's okay, sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."
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Aside from all of the obvious that's been running around for two days, now?
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Like go fuck yourself and how dare you and go fuck yourself, mostly.
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Rufus doesn't have many Turks to choose from, and Hojo is dead, and there's no question about our loyalty now, and all of this is so fucking sick, I know. I know.
"I've been thinkin' about it, too. Can't just ... let him go back to that."
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"There's, uh." Reno leaned his head back against the wall, considering. "When he goes back, he'll be goin' to a lab. One of Hojo's. Hojo... likes doin' freaky experiments with Mako, shit like that, so he'll be someplace with a reactor. And none of us Turks is gonna know about him."
He paused, closed his eyes, and pursed his lips for a moment. He was saying all of this aloud, now, if only because maybe if he did so, she'd be able to grasp something that he was missing. "But if he knows things, then we gotta listen."
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She didn't, but a wider net couldn't hurt.
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He patted down his pockets, too. No, no pen in his pant pockets. He was never that organized. "And if he can't get in touch with any of those, shit, better give him the newbie's number. She's not very freakin' bright, but at least she's a Turk."
Elena's loyalty was still to ShinRa, however. But maybe, maybe, if there were no other options, she'd at least have enough of a soft spot for a kid who knew classified information who was trapped with fucking Hojo.
He stopped short and frowned a little.
"I don't know how he's gonna get to a phone."
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She crossed her legs, tucking her feet under. "A reactor sounds like a big place, has to be a phone somewhere. You give him a few key phrases that'll let anyone who picks up know he means business. And please tell me Rude's working on hunting down this Hojo sicko and beating the crap out of him?"
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Still paranoid that saying too much would get the big guy in trouble. That didn't mean Rude was trying to call him any less often. The quiet Turk was just as stubborn as Reno was, after all.
"Rede'll get... every phone number I can get my hands on. In my world, Hojo's dead, so kickin' the crap outta him ain't gonna do much good, I don't think. In his, I guess he ain't? That'll complicate shit, if he's right there while the kid's trying to make a phone call, yo. He's got no issues... terminatin' experiments gone awry, zoto."
He hated hated hated talking about Rede that way. But that was Hojo's brain, there, and Hojo was... sick. At his most pleasant.
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"Okay," she said finally. "Do we send him back and beg him to be extra-careful? Or do we give him a gun and tell him to shoot to kill?"
Hojo needed to be dead either way, and it was practically community service, but she really didn't want to pile the trauma on to a kid who couldn't be more than seven or eight.
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"We tell him to be real careful. And we give him a gun and show him how the hell to use it, just in case."
He was a Turk. He wasn't taking any chances.
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She stared at the floor for a long time. "It's better than not knowing. Never knowing. And wondering if ... you could have done more."
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He looked at her, tilting his head faintly.
"But that wasn't just about him, was it?"
She'd done this last year.
She hadn't known any of them, last year.
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She didn't look up from the floor.
"I thought Payido was someone else, at first," she admitted. "Blonde hair calling me Mommy. I keep waiting for her to show up. She's ... not going to."
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