towerofanimus | (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

"Sounds about right in my experience. Insanity doesn't leave much room for logic."

"Kinda find logic overrated anyway. Logic doesn't work when it comes to humans." A puff of smoke escaped Reno's nose when he exhaled, the last one as the cigarette was pretty much done. "Thanks for the talk, Waver. Didn't expect you to be the one to talk me into sense this time..."

"I'm used to talking sense into Diarmuid time and again. I think I've gotten quite good at it the past few months."

Shrugging off the concept, Waver spoke in an unusually sincere voice.

"I don't have many friends. Well...none, really, aside from Diarmuid. So, er...thanks for putting up with me, is what I suppose I'm trying to say."

Now that had Reno laughing. Not just a soft chuckle like earlier, but like he'd heard a really good joke. "Waver, I've made friends with some'a the hardest assholes in Shinra. I'm one of the hardest asses in Shinra. Y'aren't that bad."

"I'm twenty-nine, completely socially backwards, and rely on a carefully-constructed reputation to keep myself alive. I'd be inclined to say you're the one that's not that bad."

Eyes flicked up to stare at Waver, with a slow, dangerous smirk crossing Reno's face. "Have ya ever dropped an entire city on another one?"

"Have you ever fought against a monster the size of a skyscraper made entirely of tentacles and murderous intent?"

Beat.

"...We have seen some shit, Reno."

"Was it big enough to kill the planet?"

So it's turned into a pissing match. Reno was more amused than anything.

"Considering the very real possibility of it turning into a perpetual motion machine of death? I wouldn't be surprised if it tried."

Bring it.

"Moon sized Meteor. Right over Midgar. Would've destroyed the entire planet."

Beat that.

"...Well, fuck me."

Point to Reno.

"...I guess it's really not somethin' to brag about. Makes me wonder if there's even a world where ya don't get all this weird crap going on." Humans were kind of awful, no matter how many worlds he heard about.

"If there is, I vote we find it and all move there immediately."

An entirely new problem hit Reno in the face the second Waver suggested that. There was something... not right about unleashing the kind of things they knew on an unsuspecting world like that.

"...Wouldn't wish us on anyone that wasn't prepared for it."

Sighing, Waver pressed a hand to his face in irritation.

"Valid point, actually."