Author's Note: This sort of popped up in my brain and I wrote it down, really with no intention of publishing it, as (in my opinion) it's not something anyone's going to want to read. But I'm publishing it anyway. There are NO pairings in this, just a but of Reno-centric drabble about a co-worker that confuses him.

Disclaimer: I do not own Reno, or FFVII, both are property of Square Enix (the lucky bastards) Reno is simply easy to toy with.

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Reno just cannot comprehend things sometimes. Well, that would be an understatement, because as quick as he is, he almost always misses the subtleties. What subtleties? Well, ANY of them, pertaining to anything, really.

For instance, since the previous file-runner (they're supposed to be called "administrative assistants", but that title isn't fooling anyone) for the Turks division had to be "disappeared" because she was leaking info, a new girl had been taken on. Reno had no idea what her name was, nor did he particularly care, as she wasn't much to look at.

This is because of the girl's haircut, Reno thinks, as her mousy-colored hair is neatly cropped and combed in a way that makes her look something like a schoolboy—and the uniform-like suit doesn't help to sway the image in the redhead's mind, either.

Reno is sure he doesn't understand it. Her boyish looks confuse him—it's off-putting. And so, like many of the male species, he copes with his confusion in the only logical way: tormenting the object that's the cause of it.

She has headphones on most of the time she works, so it's a simple thing, even without Turk training, to antagonize her. Reno doesn't hurt her, at first, because though company policy wouldn't really affect him, Tseng would probably bury him in paperwork because he doesn't like messes.

Tripping her when she walks is a happy medium. Papers fly, because she isn't particularly graceful to begin with, so in her confusion, he mumbles his apology in mock-innocence and saunters off, right into Rude.

"I saw that," Rude says to Reno, scowling through his sunglasses.

"Saw what?" Reno arches his eyebrows angelically at his partner before continuing on his way, he palms feeling cold and clammy.

Later, he knocks a glass paperweight from her desk, and she jumps as it shatters against the tiled floor.

"Oops," he says, avoiding her gaze, and the silence that follows the trinket's crash. He thinks she'll accuse him of what he's really meant through the action, but she says nothing to him as she gets up and begins picking up the sharp pieces with her bare fingers.

Reno leaves her there, his heart pounding in his chest. She terrifies him for some reason, but he doesn't understand why.

The next day he passes her in the hall as she carries another pile of files. Her fingers and hands are wrapped in bandages, taped in a crudely self-done job. He stops, watching her walk away, her shoulders hunched, not understanding why she wouldn't go to the medical wing to get them fixed up professionally with a nice Cure spell.

Reno can't help but feel resentful. What's wrong with the little boy-girl? Had she been too afraid to talk to the doctors? Had she thought that she was too good to be treated? Does she think she's better than him and his little attempts to understand why she looks this way?

And, suddenly, he wants to hurt her. Then, maybe she would say something to him. He wants to do something that would make her normal.

Later, she sits at her desk, and he watches her from around the corner. Her face is empty, devoid of expression, and Reno wonders if the are any thoughts at all going around inside her head. Is she even a human being?

He starts to go around the corner, ready to confront her contemptuous silence, be he is stopped by Rude, who suddenly appears behind him.

"Reno," Rude says, grabbing his shoulder, "Stop it."

Reno hates Rude sometimes, because the big Turk always knows what he is thinking, no matter what it is. The redhead growls at him, and jerks away, storming off in the other direction, feeling cheated.

But, he sees her again when her work hours are ending. She heads to the elevator, and he follows.

The doors are closing before he is close enough, and he shouts for her to hold them, but she doesn't. He isn't surprised, and takes the freight elevator instead. It's faster than the personnel elevator, and he hopes to beat her to the First Floor.

When it touches down, Reno darts out of the doors, seeing her elevator opening now, and she steps out, her head down, eyes on her feet as she walks toward the building exit. There are people in the lobby, so he doesn't approach her.

Reno is on her tail as she leaves, and once they are outside the entrance, he charges her, seizing her upper arm and dragging her into the alley.

She still doesn't make a sound, but as he holds her there, standing still, the girl looks up at him, and suddenly Reno can't hear his own breathing anymore, even though he knows that it's unprofessionally loud.

Her gaze is entirely unremarkable. Reno despises her completely, because her face, pockmarked at the cheekbones, with circles under the eyes from long work hours, is neither feminine, nor masculine. She is a girl, that he can feel, with his hard body pressed against her soft one, but her androgyny is threatening to him in a way that is impossible to explain.

Reno doesn't understand why she doesn't have long hair—she's not a field agent by any terms. There is no practical reason. He doesn't understand why she doesn't wear make up or why she doesn't wear her clothes more tidily, in a better-fitting size.

"What the fuck is wrong with you!?" he hisses at her desperately, giving her a shake.

She doesn't say anything to him. The girl barely blinks and he puts his hands around her neck with every intention to squeeze the life out of it.

The reason she doesn't react, he now discovers, is because she has a knife pressed against his gut, ready to cut him open right there. It's a juvenile mistake at best, really, because any Turk is supposed to instinctively know if a person is armed.

He lets go of her neck, his thin fingers unwinding slowly from the bruises they have already left on the pallid skin. His hands slide away, coming to rest against her round shoulders.

The knife doesn't move from its position at his gut, and she still says nothing, but her heavily lidded eyes are still on him.

And, Reno moves away from the girl, his hands slipping off of her lapels. He says quietly, "I could kill you before you could even blink."

She speaks then, two soft words, completely lacking in poignancy of any kind save for the fact that it is the first thing he has ever heard her utter.

"I know," she says, her voice full of the femininity that has been bottled up, hidden from view.

The knife in her hand is lowered, and her gaze returned to her shoes. Reno stares at her, no longer feeling thwarted, so much as….sad. It's an emotion that he doesn't understand by a long shot, yet it's certainly something that he has had his fair share of contact with. It is something he can relate to with ease.

The girl turns away, and begins to walk quietly out of the alleyway, her back open for his attack. Only, he no longer wants to hurt her, because something about the girl, he can see now, is already broken, and it doesn't need to heal, because it won't—anything he could do won't be able to hurt her any more than she already is.

And then, the Turk no longer hates her because he doesn't understand her. She still makes no sense to him at all, but he suddenly can see that there isn't anything wrong with her. She doesn't care about him, or anything else other than self-preservation. In a way, really, she's a bit like him, he thinks.

Reno walks out of the alley-way now, and she is nowhere to be seen, so he returns to the Shin-Ra building. He doesn't see her at work again for a while, but then he begins to notice her, here and there around the department once more, and he thinks maybe she took a leave of absence after their encounter—if file-runners get those, he isn't quite sure if they do or not.

She seems happier now though, and he still doesn't understand why, but he decides to leave her alone for now. Maybe eventually she'll talk to him on her own.

FIN