towerofanimus | Just a drink

Entry tags:

Just a drink | closed

Characters: Cloud Strife (OU) and Reno (OU)
Setting: At the Turk's bar
Format: prose
Summary: A Turk and an Eco-terrorist walks into a bar...
Warnings: drinking, swearing, line facing - you know the drill

It wasn't a new thing. Cloud paused on his way to the bar, frowning to himself. Back on Gaia, they might have had some rough encounters but they weren't as hateful as they had use to be. Cloud was over what ShinRa did to his life and he was trying to move on, and it seemed like the Turks were only doing what they had to for the company that gave them a life. It was like what he told Elena. There really wasn't a need to fight each other any more.

Cloud walked over to the bar and sat down, setting his huge sword against the wall. If there was trouble he would be able to reach it in moments. But for now, he was looking for a drink.

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At the noise, Sparky lifted his head above the bar counter, peeking out at Cloud. He had gone behind the bar to check through his stores and see what needed replenished from the still. After three, four weeks and he definitely needed to get caught up.

"Hey, SOLDIER boy, how's it hanging?" The Turk ducked back under the bar, hunting for something special now that Cloud had shown up.

"Still hanging," he said with a shrug, planted his elbows against the bar and slowly leaned against the bar.

It wasn't that he was tired, Cloud was use to not catching that much sleep over the years. No, he was weary about losing people, about fighting, about getting tossed around like a particular bad luck charm no one seemed to really like. So right now, he just wanted to put his head down and maybe hope for a little bit of a buzz.

"Zack is gone."

"I heard." Was Reno's short answer, muffled by the bottles he was pawing through.

The Turk was definitely feeling the same, losing all of his friends, and even the enemies, even while he was gone. That hurt... and it was sad to say that he was getting used to it, but it didn't make it any more easy when he saw that there was one more name missing from the hallways.

"You want a drink, or something that might get ya a little buzzed in your boots?"

He just waves a hand in response. He wanted something that might possibly make him feel that five second buzz that he usually got when it came to drinking. He still couldn't believe at how much he missed drinking and actually feeling the alcohol since when he was a kid - before Hojo, before saving the world - he hated getting drunk. It was like crushed chili sauce. He hated it as a kid, but now he wished he could eat some without feeling like he just stuck his tongue into a volcano.

"Whatever you think will work."

Popping back up from the bar, Reno held out a bottle of a dark amber colored liquid. "I tried this recipe a while ago... it's got some herbs I found in the forest." Popping the stopper, he put out a glass and poured some into it. "Give it a try."

Cloud raised his head a little and sniffed. It smelled odd... but a lot things smelled odd to him in this place. He had to sit up before he took a cautious sip of the drink.

"You basically tossed everything into a pot and hoped someone would like it?"

"Hey, give me some credit, I got making this stuff down to an art. It's just.... this stuff in particular is really strong." Watching, Reno got something for himself that was clear and smelled of vodka. "It will knock me on my ass."

"Like your fireworks," he replied, just teasing a little bit there. "Then it has to be stronger then normal."

Turks were not SOLDIERs but they also were not normal humans. There was something about them that made them above human. A drink that would knock a Turk back might actually do something for him, although what Cloud wasn't sure. And since the sip didn't seem too bad and he didn't feel any hint of anything that would work against the strange cocktail that was in his blood, Cloud downed the rest of his glass.

Reno came from around the bar and sat next to Cloud, waiting. Staring quite intently.

After almost too many moments, he got impatient. "Well? How is it? Ya feel anything?"

He just glanced at Reno, a hint of a smile on his face as he refills his glass. It tasted a little like licorice and some kind of spice and maybe a hint of ash. It wasn't bad and it certainly had a little bit of an alcoholic burn to it.

Maybe Reno had found something that would work on a SOLDIER.

"It's not bad." He sipped his next drink. "But nothing that screams that I'm gonna get knocked onto my ass right now."

Scowling, he grabbed for the bottle and looked at it quite hard. "Damn, I was thinkin' I really had something here. It's almost pure alcohol..." Setting it back down, he shrugged and had some of his own. "Oh well. So tell me about the adventures we never had. Specially about these fireworks."

"It would probably work on a pure SOLDIER, Reno, not on one of Hojo's mutant super SOLDIERs Sephiroth clones."

Cloud didn't toss back this drink like he did the first one because he really did not need to test Fate. After all, he might trust Reno enough not to get rolled into the path of monsters, he just didn't rust himself if he did ever get drunk.

"Well... Where do you want me to start? Geostigma, the Remnants, or World Restoration Order?"

What was that last one? World Restoration Order? Reno's gaze sharpened.

"Let's start with the World... whatever it is. Is that the organization Rufus started to rebuild Midgar?"

"It's the name of the organization Reeve started to rebuild the world with."

Sorry Reno, he wasn't going to make it easier about everything with ShinRa. Despite having come to terms with the company himself, there were a lot of people that still did not trust or want ShinRa around.

"Everyone thought Rufus was dead at the time, at least, most of us did, and the world was very badly damaged between Meteor and the WEAPONs. Reeve started to organize people to rebuild all the cities and energy around the world, using what we could find naturally. When Rufus did resurface, he was in a wheelchair and suffering from Geostigma."

Great. Reeve. The guy had helped the Turks out on occasion, but his shifting loyalties were something Reno wasn't particularly comfortable with, though he did sort of understand the thinking behind the guy.

So Rufus was thought dead... so that meant the Turks were behind the scenes somewhere. "What the hell is this Geostigma thing?" Was his next question, as he filled both of their glasses again. "I don't remember any of that..."

"A disease. A JENOVA-made disease that seeped from the Lifestream and tainted anyone with a connection to her of Sephiroth. The stigma shows up when the body tries to fight off the taint and basically starts eating away at the host. It's nasty, and fatal."

He didn't bother with showing his arm where the taint was. The scars had mostly disappeared even though he can still feel it if he moved a certain way. It was like restoring muscle after breaking a bone. It healed, but the break will still cause it's own problems.

"And it's pandemic? Shiva's Tits..." Of course, that's what happened when you left Hojo to his own devices. "I don't think I want to hear anymore. No wonder Elena... she had to live through that."

Taking another long drink, he set his head down on the bar. It seemed like he'd been imbibing more than his share lately, but he didn't care. The memories of being alone for that long wasn't something he wanted to deal with.

"Why not? It's barely the beginning of everything."

He took a cautious sip of his third glass, feeling a slight buzz which usually only appeared after he had drank about half of Tifa's stock before. That was actually pretty impressive for a home brewed alcohol with a bunch of weird herbs in it.

"Elena had to live through what the Remnants did to her and Tseng. They were the ones directing the JENOVA cells at attack people in their search for their Mother."

"...and I helped you get these guys?" Reno was definitely sure he didn't want to hear much more, but... he needed to, somehow. He was a turk, he could take these things.

"You did. It distracted one and got the other two."

He wasn't going to say that the three were not mortal like Reno or Rude were. They weren't stopped completely by the bomb but instead blew themselves up trying to stop one of Cloud's berserker attacks. He wanted Reno to at least find peace with that kind of memory.

"And with them gone, the Geostigma started to fade, with a little help from Aerith in the Lifestream."

"Sounds like we were regular heroes." Cloud had always been the hero before, even when he first popped up in that church, he'd been trying to be a hero to Aerith. "...just more fighting."

"You were being Turks that wanted to get at the guys that hurt one of yours." Not that it still wasn't heroic of them. The Remnants were spirits made flesh, pieces of Sephiroth that couldn't be contained. It took a stupid sense of heroism to face something like that.

"Afterwards, ShinRa and WRO started working together trying to rebuild the planet."

Reno listened to the other man quietly for a bit, taking in everything. This was Cloud, he had to assume it was somewhat biased, or messed up in some way. Asking Elena and Tseng might be a good idea, at least as far as getting a detailed account of their side of things...

"Sounds great. Though isn't there something... kinda off about that? You say 'rebuild the planet'.... are ya saying that the damage from Meteor extended everywhere, not just Midgar?"

Cloud looked at Reno for a moment and then sighed, turning a little and leaning against the bar.

"Most places that had reactors had problems with them. Some of them exploded, some of them produced a lot of strange monsters before they were shut down. The WEAPONs did not help; they took down a few of the bigger cities before we stopped them."

He thought about what he had seen, driving through the lands and watching people trying to restart lives in the wake of ShinRa's meltdown. People got by, but the ease from Mako reactors was gone. It would take a while to rework the way energy was made.

"The Lifestream came up from the ground to help stop Meteor as well. That flow of energy did some damage as well. What was left was one big mess. Midgar didn't survive it. The people did, but not the city."

Settling down on the counter top a little, Reno took that in and sighed. "Cloud... I know about Lifestream. I was there in Midgar while it happened. I got caught right in the middle of it, y'know? White light everywhere... Midgar's gone. But the others, the WEAPONS didn't do that much damage if I'm remembering right... you took care of that. Did they come back or something?"

"Maybe I'm remembering it wrong; I was out for a couple months as well."

He shrugged, toying around with his glass. A second trip into the Lifestream didn't help his memories. Even though Tifa managed to piece together his personality, some things were still muddled in his skull.

"A lot of people without power and no one to take care of the monsters that came from the mako-tainted areas did a lot. I do remember that."

"Huh..." Reno listened, then shook his head. "Maybe that place ain't meant to be thought about much. It was sooner for me than for you, but it might as well been two years ago for all the memory fade."

"My memory shouldn't be trusted completely for anything. Too much mako floating around plus every time the J-cells decide to be cute..."

He doesn't finish his sentence. Instead he finished off his glass and blinked for a moment at it.

"...I feel a little light headed."

"From wha? The booze or the memories?" Because Reno wasn't sure if he could tell the difference, either.

"Both?"

Well, what did you know? Cloud finished off his glass and set it down with the care of someone not too sure if he was aiming at the right counter.

"Huh." Reno was slightly impressed and a bit surprised he managed to make something Cloud felt. Unless... "You're not putting me on, are ya?"

"Why would I do that?"

He slowly leaned forward, resting his head against the counter. "I've got no reason for doing that."

Watching, the Turk frowned, and then leaned down near him and poked the guy in the cheek. "I don't know. Man, I think my first impression was right, you are a weird one."

"Stop that." He waved a hand in Reno's general direction but doesn't push himself away.

"I'm not that weird."

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