towerofanimus | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Characters: Reno, and you
Setting: Floor 76 - The Greenhouse, Jan 8th
Format: Either
Summary: Catch all for post-event things. Fall out goes further than battles won and battles lost.
Warnings: Mentions of a lot of things possibly in the future, tba (At least some blood)

A victory didn't mean they had won. It had taken years and a tower full of horrors for Reno to learn that. Everyone had died who had been involved. So many people that had trusted and fought for something they believed in, wiped out with barely a thought. People that trusted him fell because of he hadn't been good enough. At least, that's what he thought.

For days he had been avoiding people, even going to the hotel floor when he needed to sleep and have it mean something, so that's why he was able to stay out of his room for so long. His current haunt was the greenhouse, finding a strange comfort in the fake but poisonous plants that filled the place. He just, needed time to think, to go over everything in his head to make sure there had been nothing else he could do. But every time he did, he became convinced that there had been, if he had just protected them, some way, they would have made it.

He had failed them, and there was no forgiveness for that.

This day, he's sitting on a bench clear of plants, still wearing the same bloodstained clothes he had worn during the war. Arms wrapped around his middle and finger pulling at his lower lip, he thinks he's alone here. It isn't one of his usual haunts and nobody came here. A trip to the sauna had dealt with most of the dirt from the disaster, but his clothes were permanently stained with the blood of friend, enemy, and himself. It's fitting, metaphorically and literally, that he stayed bloodstained.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"What the fuck, you don't even have Lovecraft in your world?" He waved a hand dismissively. "Never mind. It's basically just a term for some incomprehensible creature that should not exist under basic laws of logic or decency."

See also: Jenova.

"Oh. Yeah, never heard of Lovecraft." But something about that sounds, really kind of familiar. "But I've heard of that idea before. It sounds like a perfect fit for Ruana and this whole damn place. Kinda a bit like Jenova and Sephiroth, too, but Ruana's got a whole new level of creepy on 'em."

"Ruana's the textbook definition, or at least I imagine she is under whatever glamour she has." But Ruana without glamour was very much not something Waver wanted to consider, so he changed the subject.

"Are you really so dead set on backing off of things? After we've all come this close, it seems...wrong, somehow."

"I'm pretty sure I'm not the one that should be dealin' with this..." Hearing that from Waver, of all people, was more than a little unnerving. "The team needs someone that's not goin' to crack under pressure."

"Then according to you, they'd need someone inhuman. Who wouldn't crack under all this? I obviously don't know about your world, but a place like this is beyond anything mine could possibly produce."

His tone was steady and matter-of-fact, stopping just short of admonishing.

"I'd be fucking terrified of someone that didn't start to break a little under all this. You're a reasonable and by all appearances reliable person, but even those types fall apart once in a while. But--and I know this is going to sound damn near impossible--you need to pull yourself together and keep going."

Being terrified of someone that didn't... the comment hit hard, even as Reno was thinking about Veld and how he always had it together. The one guy they always looked up to and followed. Veld couldn't have cracked, could he? Somewhere behind the scenes? But... in a way that was fairly terrifying.

Something in the back of his thoughts settled into place, and he looked shocked. He had been terrified of Veld. He looked up to the man and considered him a mentor, even a... maybe something like that, but it never occurred that partially, it might have had something to do with being scared.

A gun-

"He held a gun to my head."

"...Reno?" Waver narrowed his eyes in confusion, trying and failing to follow the other man's thought processes to that point. The magus was capable of quite some acrobatic leaps of logic on occasion, but this one was utterly escaping him.

"I don't understand what you're on about."

Oh, shit, Reno had said that out loud. Awkwardly rubbing his head, he shrugged and started ambling around again.

"When I got recruited, he held a gun to my head. He never blinked, and never cracked... he was like a rock we held on to when things got tough. And when he 'died'... I lost my father for the second time."

It was difficult to piece together what Reno was talking about, but that at least began to form a slightly clearer picture.

...Not much clearer, though.

"Look...people are breakable by nature, even the strongest ones. And repressing this sort of thing doesn't improve it, I assure you. If someone has a problem like this, it just means they're human and arguably still sane."

"Fine, what do you suggest, Waver? You're the only one that hasn't yelled at me for not getting back up." The mood shifted, and Reno sounded exasperated and tired. Mostly tired, but he was coming quickly to the end of his rope and if that was what it took to get people off of his back, he'd take it, if he could.

"Don't get me wrong, if you really do give up now I'm going to start swearing and shouting until I pass out from lack of air."

Like most everything Waver said, that was strangely deadpan.

"Unfortunately, I have a very good perspective on how you're likely to be feeling. Even so there isn't much I can offer in the way of specific advice but to step back and try to pull yourself together. Even if we've limited time left, try not to rush yourself. You have a family here; spend a little time with them."

Losing the flat tone, his voice began to pick up a stronger and more forceful edge.

"Where you are is somewhere I've been several times here and back home as well. And coming from that, I'm going to tell you this: No matter how it hurts or how broken you feel like you are, either go down fighting or keep going until you win. The way to deal with this is remind yourself you have a reason to fight, then pick yourself off the ground and fucking fight for it."

"Even if I sacrifice my family to do it?" Reno's question is a lot more calm than he looked or felt.

"Regardless of how painful the idea is, I'd imagine any of them to be willing to die for you. If I'm right and that is the case, is it not a complete disregard of that sacrifice to give up and quit fighting?"

When was he going to draw the line in the sand and say no more? Before coming to the Tower, Reno had never thought about these things on a regular basis like this. He hadn't even cared most of the time, back then, not much more than was understandable, but the Tower had a way of magnifying the faults and fissures inside a person's head.

Hanging his head, Reno remained silent.

"Reno...look. I get it, I really do. My family and everyone I've ever really given a shit about--before I got here, they'd all been dead for years. Giving up would have been easier, and I certainly want to. But I can't--we can't just drop to the ground and wait for this to be over. We're too close now and I think you know that."

Whatever experiences he was talking about, Waver sounded strangely sympathetic.

"If someone as pathetic as me can keep fighting, do you really think that you can't?"

"You're not pathetic. You and Shion got the same strength." And it's a strength Reno would never have, but the kind that could serve far pass the day when physical strength faded.

"Then what's that say about you, other than 'don't be fucking stupid'?" His demeanor shifted again, settling in some strange area between 'irritation' and 'sympathy'.

"You're not the only one that's miserable here, and you're not the only one with something to protect. If you ask me, I'll tell you what you should do is straighten yourself out and protect it, strength and weakness be damned."

"I know I'm not, I just don't see a freakin' point constantly talkin' about how much it sucks here. Every damn time I get dragged into one of these talks, it never helps. I get wound up for a while, then shit happens again. Besides, Elena's told me she doesn't need a hero." Slumping, he leaned against a pillar, looking defeated and lost from all of the things that have impacted since December started. "But they want me to be something I'm not."

Waver let out a long and quiet sigh, most of whatever strength and pride the magus held draining out of him. Shoulders slumped and hands in his pockets, no response came for nearly half a minute.

"...They really think too highly of us." he muttered in a weary voice half under his breath. Drawing his right hand from his pocket, Waver glanced over some incredibly faint scarlet marks burned onto the back of it.

"Let me guess--and feel free to throw a punch if I'm off the mark, I might deserve it. She doesn't need a hero, so she must think you're good enough as you are. But you..." His voice turned unusually soft as he continued. "I'd bet you don't think you're worth even that, do you? I'd say we're both stuck in that perspective and for good reason."

With a low and short sigh of frustration, Waver turned his back under the pretense of looking at their surroundings and lighting a cigarette. "I'm not going to sugarcoat this with optimism. We could spend the rest of our time going through this mess of despair with the occasional spot of hope to break it up, to have it all amount to nothing....and that scares the hell out of me. I don't know about you, but I'm so fucking broken by this point that I'd fight a losing battle just so they might think their faith in me wasn't misplaced."

He turned around again, holding the partially-empty pack of cigarettes and lighter out to Reno.

"Sorry. I'm sure the last thing either of us want is a competition of 'who's letting their partner down the most'."

Reno was silent for a long time, trying to process all of the things Waver had basically just admitted. He'd heard much of Diarmuid's opinion on the man, but it hadn't really... occurred to Reno not to take anything of what he said about Waver at his word. Diarmuid said so, and Waver must be it.

Slowly, he looked up, catching Waver's eye, sullen and vulnerable. He was surprised, too, that someone else felt this way. He could count the number of times he could tell when someone was feeling inferior on one hand. In a strange way, that Waver was afraid of the same things gave him comfort, that maybe he wasn't as badly off as the others made him feel.

"Broken people have strong fronts, don't they? Ones with spikes on the inside."

He took a cigarette and the lighter, lighting up with a desperate puff and inhale, and nodded a thanks.

A faint laugh left him at that, audibly tired and a little self-deprecating. Even so, he managed to crack a genuine smile at Reno's answer.

"...I didn't think I'd really get a chance to say that." he admitted. "I'm afraid I'm not the type to just...talk about myself. But looking at all this mess is uncomfortably familiar territory right now."

"Sometimes y'need to. Problem with breaking something is, when ya put it back together, not all the pieces fit together again. They're looking up to someone to keep themselves together." That's what it had to be. Reno's sure of it. He'd fallen into that same trap years ago, with Veld, then Tseng.

Waving a curl of smoke from out of his eyes, something started to make sense, maybe a fraction here and there. He'd been going on too long about what Veld or Tseng would do, what they would say, if they were here. Too long, and too much. Reno couldn't be like that and it hurt him trying. "They need a symbol, not someone who will disappoint them."

"And a human simply can't be a symbol themselves. Believe me, I've tried." Exhaling a thin smoke trail of his own, Waver seemed to be regaining his normal composure.

"So I certainly hope you have a better idea than that."

"Ideas make the best symbols. For SOLDIER, for a lot of 'em, it was honor. Not sure we can use that." Reno took a couple puffs before continuing. "Not everybody wants to go home. Taking Ruana out, not sure if that's a good one, either. I don't... know how to think like this. This's more something Rufus would come up with. Freedom is kinda ironic, because even if we succeeded, we'd still be stuck in this place unless we got our real bodies back."

A long, slow exhale followed, and Reno narrowed his eyes at the ground. "Waver, what's the one thing y'could safely say everybody wants in this place?"

"..." For just a second it sounded like a trick question. But if he considered it, that wasn't the case--just that the obvious answer of 'escape' wasn't the right one. There were sure to be others like Diarmuid who had nothing but death on their homeworlds to go back to in the first place, and that was if they could go anywhere but the world in which the Tower stood.

Destroying Ruana didn't come with Waver's same objections of doing as much to Jason, but in her case they simply didn't know enough to predict what losing her would do to the stability of the entire place. Or if the Tower could even exist as they knew it without her, for that matter. Maybe killing her would just make everything worse--best saved for a last-ditch desperation attack.

Silent for a long minute or two, Waver went over the long list of their most pressing priorities in his head. The letter allegedly from Dax that had been practically mass-distributed had carried the implication that their real bodies were somewhere in this place.

"Even if the worlds are restored..." he began to reason out audibly, "some simply don't have anything to return to. So there's no personal gain in fighting for that cause. But the one thing everyone has in common here is this." Tapping a finger against his green collar, Waver's voice took on a little more confidence as he determined this a solid line of logic. "The one thing just about everyone must surely want is to return to ourselves. Get our proper bodies and abilities back."

Of course, that presented another problem entirely.

"...But even so, there's too many variables to risk shooting straight for that. We don't know if we can survive here without this wireframe bullshit, and I'd bet my entire inheritance Jason can't revive flesh and blood."