towerofanimus | (no subject)

Characters: Reno/Sparky, open
Setting: Sunday the 20th
Format: Prose OR action
Summary: Trying blatantly to ignore the horror of seeing his planet totally lifeless, Reno tries to go about life as normal- as it can get in the Tower.
Warnings: Broken people

Cafeteria

After his wake up in the tower again after visiting the home world, Reno had been shaken but forced it back down. Shion hadn't been in sight and he had focused on that. This morning, however, he sat at a table wearing his black shirt and pants, hair unbound, staring off into the distance and trying to process everything he had seen since Jason had sent him back.

One of the questions he had running around in his mind was why had they brought him back. He almost would have rather stayed. Everyone he knew had died, everything he knew was gone, save for this Tower- and the Tower was hardly the place he wanted to call his new home. It shouldn't have been him. There were better people that they could have saved, though even that he was torn on. The Tower was just so awful.

Call it survivor's guilt, or call it trauma, or stress or anything. Tried as he might to push it away, it was coming back to bite him in the ass this morning.

Floor 25 - Meadow

Much later, he was feeling a bit better, if still raw around the edges. The enormity of actually being there still hadn't hit him, not fully anyway, and he knew when it did, there was a distinct possibility he might go crazy. In the mean time, a routine was good, and he felt better sticking to something that was at least somewhat familiar by now. Besides, people were relying on him.

He showed up at the meadow for his usual training session, wondering if anyone else would come out of habit or stopped when he had gone home. It didn't matter either way, he was warming up, needing to do something other than think for a while.

Floor 32 - Forage Island

It was about a lunch time, if someone took their lunch late, and he was wandering the island on what was now Floor 32. He wandered around for a while, since this was a place he didn't get much time to explore after it appeared.

It kind of reminded him of the forests around Gongaga. Just about the time he realized that, he spotted a small cluster of berries.

Foood? Maybe, and it would be something more interesting than nutrient bars, but knowing this place? It was probably poisoned or would turn his insides out. Still- there was an idea.

Contemplating the different things he found, he started gathering some and putting them in his pockets to sort out later. Maybe he could find someone who knew how to identify these things.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The sound caught Reno's attention, and he paused in his warmup to look around the meadow before spotting- that man.

No way. He couldn't be here. Suddenly, the Tower felt odd, like Reno was suffering something wrong with his collar. Disconnected. That was the word. Not like he was a part of his body anymore. Nothing seemed real, least of all himself.

That was a thought. What if he wasn't himself? Just a copy of Reno from the boat, programmed with more memories? A strange rush of giddiness rose, and he laughed softly, covering his eyes with a hand.

Why had they brought Fuhito here? Not after everything they went through. Not after all the losses and the fighting. It should have been over by now. Every argument he could think of to protest Fuhito's presence died one by one, even as he remembered everything he had learned in this place. Timelines, alternate universes, resurrection. Still, that disconnected feeling managed a small moment of shock, oddly numbed, as if it was someone else feeling it. So soon after seeing everything dead on the Planet, and then seeing him. Maybe what was the most surprising was he didn't feel anger. Just calm and disconnected, with that occasional giddy rush.

"I'm too tired for this." Those words didn't seem like his either, sounding alien to his ears. They were of a man that had seen too much, someone that was far older than he was.

Fuhito tilted his head slightly to one side. He felt no need to reach for his weapon. There was a strange unreality to this scene. Here he stood in his bracers, his armbands, his gloves, himself inside his own skin (as far as he'd been able to determine), on a field of flowers suspended within a tower suspended (he supposed) in time-- he'd been thinking of Gaia, in all her infinite sweetness. And then this.

He regarded the Turk steadily, searching himself for emotion. Chagrin, yes, and wariness, but that was only to be expected. Real anger seemed abstract. Yes, he could recall the pain of death at the hands of the Turks, but even that intense sensation seemed more distant than it had since his waking in this place.

If only they had understood. She had been in so much pain. It had been worth any effort to save her. What was the meaning of a few lives next to Her life? What was the meaning of his own? In the end he had failed, of course. But not before exhausting the possibilities of the scenario he'd constructed. On the verge of the Lifestream, he'd been one with Her beauty at last-- for a moment. That loss rankled far more than that of his own life. No, the Turks were no longer his primary antagonists.

His assessment complete, he answered the Turk. His tone of voice was low, but somehow penetrating.

"Are you?

Yes, I can see that.
But what is it you're too tired for, Turk?"

"Whatever you got planned, I don't want to deal with it. The Planet's gone, and there sure as hell no point fighting."

That was about all he could manage. There were personal reasons he could have attacked Fuhito for, but there wasn't any point in that either. His colleagues were dead anyway, whether or not Fuhito had anything to do with it.

Something he had read recently in the library came to mind. In the face of death, few things remained important.

Fuhito sighs in annoyance, adjusts his glasses. Subtle annoyance, but most things about Fuhtio are subtle.

Then again, Reno has him reminded momentarily of Shears, crude, blunt instrument that he was-- it's pleasing, the thought of how very much being compared to a Turk would bother his former fellow member of AVALANCHE.

"Is it.

Tell me, what proofs do you have, that the Planet is gone? Do you believe because you were told so by your jailers?
Or have you been shown a realistic ruin? Are you so accepting, so easily demoralized?

The death of a world is much more difficult to bring about than you could possibly imagine, Turk."

"If these people are responsible for what I experienced on Gaia not more than a day ago, then they have far more power than either of us can imagine." He wasn't even going to bother lying to the man, as much as he had reason to hate him or lead him astray.

"I've been here more than ten weeks, and if this is a deception, then it's a pretty damn good deception, because I haven't found any holes in it. You of all people know what I'm trained to do. Someone would have slipped up; made a mistake somewhere. They haven't, so you keep thinking whatever the hell you want, Fuhito."

"If is a word of some consequence.

It is true that many aspects of this place defy the laws of physics and or nature itself as I know them. It is true that these aspects point to extreme technological development on the part of our-- hosts.

Theories supported by observation and proven facts, I will accept. I must accept.
What you will accept is apparently another matter entirely. You are willing to accept the conclusions of others, instead of testing conclusions of your own. Not entirely unsurprising, considering that yes, I do know what you are trained to do.

Hard science is hardly the sphere of the Turks. Enforcement in the cause of the powers that be is more your area.

For the first time since he saw Fuhito standing there, his expression changed- a slight smile. Good. Underestimating him already.

"By all means, Fuhito."

Snickering to himself like an asshole, he turned around and walked away, shaking his head.

Fuhito makes no move to follow, but he does speak. His tone of voice is low and penetrating, it carries well even in this open space. The Turk's words seems to lack context (what exactly is he meant to do...), so he ignores them in favor of the man's offensive, willful ignorance.

"You must love her so little, have so little faith in her power, to despair so easily.
How pitiful-- and ungrateful. She gave you life though it caused her pain-- and though you hurt her, she sustained you.

Ah, but I should not have expected you to understand. You've proved yourselves incapable of it, time and again. Carry on in ignorance, then. Until the end."

"Take a visit to Floor Five or Floor Twelve sometime." That was Reno's only reply. He grew tired of Fuhito's face, even more so for his insults. Fuhito and his terrorists had already caused enough injury, and Reno was too tired to be upset by that already. He drew the line at adding the insult to the list.

And so, he left Fuhito behind.