Summary: Reno and the Apocalypse. When everything is over there's always a report to write. And when the reports are written, there's always the Turks.

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Wolves of Hollow Conviction
By Kyra1

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The world ended on a Monday. No one was really surprised.

It was Meteor Fall, the end of the world, the Apocalypse, the end of days, the day of reckoning. At least, it was for most people, but for those in charge it just meant filling out paperwork. In triplicate. Apocalypses were so very inconvenient.

For those not in charge the end of life as we know it is a cause of mass panic, repentance of sins, expectations of rising to a higher plane where perfect peace and harmony would reign for eternity. For Reno, it's an inconvenient event that interrupts his busy little soup bowl of a life.

Its two full days and three coffee ridden nights of inconvenient scribbling of his end of the paper work in a tiny file room in the Junon headquarters. He knows he's lucky that files for the Turks tend to be rather hazy compared to some of the other Shinra files. Turks files were colored with codenames and various forms of blurring facts, and of course it helped that the central office was now a giant pile of rubble.

It's sometime during the second night and halfway through another pot of coffee when his pen began to run away with his fingers on its own accord leaving Blaze Sex Appeal to rescue Shades the Bald Stripper and their partner Flat Chest Fannie for the umpteenth time from the clutches of the silver haired Mama's Boy. By the time Blaze Sex Appeal had managed to pull Flat Chest Fannie from the ruins of Midgar and she had offered to repay him and Shades in quite a colorful fashion the door to the file room squeaked open.

"Hello?" Flat Chest Fannie calls stalking into the room with the tall wall that is Shades crossing in behind her. Everything about the pair from their wrinkled suits to their rigid posture is utterly worn. When Elena takes sight of Reno slouched over the table with pen in hand and paper littered about the area her demeanor falls further. "You don't really expect us to do that now? Who's going to read them?"

"There's always someone." He calls shuffling one of the sets of papers.

Rude passes between the two and resigns himself to the chair at Reno's left. It impresses him that the other man produces a pen and a stick of gum from within his inner coat pocket. Despite everything, there were still packs of gum in their coats. Rude set about unwrapping the thing. "Probably should get busy while it's still fresh in our minds."

"But sir!" Elena said raising a hand as if she could physically stop his words.

"Curtailing on your duties, rookie?" Reno knows it's too easy for him to get under her skin, and he can't help but weasel his way in. "That's not like you."

"And neither is you working."

He glances at Rude. The man doesn't speak only twists his lips in a way Reno knows that means he is outnumbered by that last thought. "Fine. Do what you want." He leans back and slings an arm over the back of his chair not even pretending to attempt to hide his growing smile.

For a moment she stutters, obviously trying to find some sort of retaliation. She grips the head of the empty chair and leans in over it. Her eyes narrow. "What's your gain in all this?"

This makes him toss his pen on the table and let out a sigh that's practically a moan. "Just have a seat." He motions to the chair she's leaning on and by the expression she gives him has forgotten entirely that she was holding. Elena's mouth snaps open and shut, and then she glares for good measure before flopping with a huff into the chair.

Having grown tired of the game Reno's already gathered his pen and paper searching for where he had left off when she begins to get herself organized. When one of her blank sheets of paper turns out to actually have writing covering it and is only blank by disguise she sighs. "This is yours."

And he already feels the beginning of a smile.

She's trying not to look as though she's reading the paper as she lifts and passes it to him. "Oh you are not a Blaze of Sex Appeal." Elena cringes not having meant to say it aloud, then hastily adds. "Sir." As if a little submission would sooth a wounded ego.

He surprises them all, including himself, when he laughs. "Suit yourself."

Silence lowers itself on the table. The little buzzing of their pens against paper is like the hum of fly wings in a window. After several minutes Reno drops his pen and reclines in the chair. Rude doesn't bother looking up, but Elena's eyes focus on his stack of papers.

"Something wrong?" He says smirking.

She shakes her head and scribbles a few more words trying to ignore his laughing eyes. The table creaks when she slams her pen flat which forces even Rude to look up. "You don't really expect me to believe you're finished?"

He wants to write The End and give it an underline for good measure, but he settles for motioning to his book high stack of paper and laughing. "Believe what you want." This causes her to stare at him. He'd like to stick his tongue out at her so she'd make a different expression rather than staring blankly at him, but he knows she'd probably say that they were always harassing her.

The idea makes him smile. He knows it's true.

Without a word he stands and heads for the door, two sets of eyes watching his back slide out of sight. By the time he makes it down to the cafeteria and is able to sort through the kitchen, Elena has made herself a small stack of papers. Her pen had raced furiously across the page to catch up.

"The Rookie's at it again." He calls from the doorway with a bottle in one hand and three glasses pinched in the other.

Rude chuckles. "She's just eager."

Cheeks flushing bright against her blond hair, Elena flounders. "I'm- I'm just trying to get my work done."

"There's no one here to impress." Then he crosses between two large shelves and sits the bottle of Junon's worst on the table. The glasses clink against each other as he sits them down with a grin. "Man enough?"

Rude sticks the pen back inside his coat pocket.

Two glasses were filled, and then Reno pauses with the bottle hovering above the third. He can tell she's trying to decide. She eyes the glass with her lips pursed and then glances at Rude for his approval. Rushing her, Reno sighs. "What's it gonna be Elena?"

Her bottom lip starts to redden where she's worrying it. Finally, she leans forward. "Count me in."

"That's my girl!" He laughs appreciatively, fills the third glass then flops unceremoniously into the chair.

"What are we drinking to?" Rude asks pulling his glass across the table.

Reno lets out a laugh, low and masochistic. "The end of the world."

"End of Shinra."

"To the Turks." Elena tries, and he's not at all surprised, but by the way she laughs he realizes she's poking fun of herself. About damn time.

"To the Turks." He says lifting his glass too quickly so that a little sloshes over the rim.

She lifts her own. "Surviving the end of the world."

Rude drops his chin so that he's looking at them over the rim of his dark sunglasses. "Now that I can drink to."

And so they do. Reno downs his in several gulps without stopping for air. Rude pauses only once while Elena takes a few small sips and sits it down. She's shifting all ants in her pants trying not to let them know she's thrilled to be included.

He'd been like her once; young, eager and completely ignorant. It took him longer than he cared to admit for him to realize what the job meant. What it really meant to wear the suit. It happened about sixteen months into the job. He had been tailing a man suspected of laundering money from the company, not that it mattered why because the Turks always follow orders. The man put up a fight stalling for more time, when a swing of his nightstick connected. It cracked against his skull, the man staggering to regain his balance as his legs went limp. Reno watched the body tumble down the stairs and all he could think was that it wasn't near as entertaining as a slinky. That's when he knew. He finally understood what it meant to be a Turk. What it meant giving up.

They had all gone crazy.

He needs another drink as it's far too early in the evening to be thinking such thoughts.

Reno looks at the half empty bottle and then glances at Rude where he knows behind those glasses the other man is staring back. Tension snapping he heaves forward with his arms flailing so that the table shakes and the stack of papers fall and slide about. Rude swipes the bottle deftly with his left hand just before Reno can cross the distance. The creases along Rude's forehead are all turning upward, so that Reno knows he's pleased with himself as he fills his glance. Reno slides back in his chair, watching Rude and waiting for him to fill his own. He doesn't bother glancing at the woman. She'd probably just be rolling her eyes.

When Rude has filled his glass for him, Elena breaks the silence. "This stuff's awful." Her lips pull back in bitter agony as she finishes her own glass.

"Rank." Rude agrees.

"The place is in shambles," He says downing his own glass, and somehow proud that he only winces slightly at the taste. "That's the best I could do."

Elena suddenly looks up from where her tiny fingers are clutching the glass. Though her hair falls to shade her eyes Reno can still see the worry sitting about her shoulders. "What are we going to do?" Her voice is tiny and almost drowned in the silence.

"Well," He says while motioning for another refill. "We won't be getting orders anytime soon so I guess whatever you want." Though he already knows he didn't really answer her question, so it's not a surprise when she glares at him while tucking some hair behind one of her ears.

"I've got some leave built up." The bald man says refilling her glass.

"Yeah?"

"I hear Mideel is nice this time of year."

Elena coughs and shakes her head as if it could shake the taste from her mouth when she downs half her glass. "It's nice practically all year."

It's too easy for him to change the subject. He was never very good with the other sort of conversation. Slinging an arm over the head of his chair, Reno smirks. "When you go you should take her with you and get one of those little red bikinis."

"You want who to get a bikini?" The edge in her voice was a warning that he knew he was going to blow right passed.

Baiting her, he sinks even further into his chair and props his feet with a dull clank onto the edge of the table between them. "Well I'm certainly not talking about Rude."

"Red is not my color." Catching on Rude shakes his head.

The statement is so completely outrageous that before whatever retort she was planning can slice across the room she freezes. Several times in quick succession Elena blinks at the man behind the sunglasses, then without warning falls forward onto the table laughing at the image. The men exchange glances then the two slowly begin to let themselves be taken in by the laughter. Their voices fill the empty file room with a strangely sort of off key music.

It doesn't take long for the laughter to fade away like the changing of the tides. Between hiccupping laughs Elena tries again. "We can't go back." She pauses fidgeting with her empty glass, all traces of mirth gone when she continues. "Not to our old lives."

"I wouldn't want it back." Reno says moving his hands to cradle the back of his head.

Rude shifts his glasses uneasily. "I wouldn't either."

"What?" She says pulling herself up onto her elbows and practically gaping at them like a child. "You guys don't ever let the job bother you?" When neither one answers she continues. "You don't wonder about who's side we're really on?"

Rude drops his head and rubs at the back of his collar. "You can't let yourself be split. You have to decide and do it."

A sigh drags itself like a dying animal from Reno's lips. He refuses to meet her eyes, and remains leaned back with his hands behind his head staring at the fluorescent light panels. They needed to be cleaned. The plastic covering was littered with black spots that were most likely the tiny bodies of flies. He'd seen his share of bodies, tiny included.

"Sure," Reno says letting all pretense of mirth slip away and finds that his voice is surprisingly level. "Sometimes in the dark of night when I can't sleep, I wonder about the meaning of life, if that's what you mean." Then he lets his voice pick up speed. "Other times, I just lay with my head on my pillow and try to force myself to dream about macaroni."

"With extra cheese." Rude adds with the barest of smirks.

"Oh I know the ones with the shells…"

"I can't believe it!" The table jumps under the slam of her fist against its frame, causing one of the glasses to rock like a tiny boat out on the vast ocean, sloshing the last of its contents on one of Reno's papers. She's standing now with her eyes frighteningly dark, and it's in that moment that he finally understands why she was a Turk. "I can't believe that the two of you can just sit here and talk about macaroni!"

Reno lets out another one of those deep soul suffering sighs and pulls himself upright in his chair. "Okay, so what do you want us to talk about? Feelings?" Ponytail swinging wildly at the quick motion, he stood and hurried towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Elena growls as she twists to keep sight of him, snapping a hand out in a surprisingly sharp snatch of his wrist.

"It's going to take a helluva lot more booze to get me to talk about feelings." Reno pries her fingers from where they were digging into his wrist, and doesn't even wait around to see her reaction. He knows she's probably taking his exit as just another example of men's inability to have a 'meaningful conversation,' and admittedly part of it was, but only for her sake. Whatever she hoped to gain Reno knew he had lost some time ago, because that's how it always went. A person went crazy in stages, so slow that they hardly ever noticed. He had gone all at once.

It happened in the morning. He'd been living in a rundown hovel beneath the Sector 4 plate. His breakfast was beginning to bubble on the stove when there was a knock at the door so light he had thought it was only the old boards creaking as they always did. On the other side of the door a young Wutaian had stood. The man smiled politely and had went about introducing himself and explaining the situation as towards how he had come to know of Reno's measly existence. He was the first person in years to treat him with respect, and give the starving a taste, they always craved more.

He was about to sell his soul to the devil. Somehow, thinking back on it, he thought it had been more dramatic.

Only once did he wonder what his life would have been like if he hadn't have opened the door. It had lead to Tseng standing outside in the morning sunshine waiting until Reno had finally decided to leave the house to go to a bar. He couldn't have escaped it. At least that was how he always saw it.

Reno made his way back down to the cafeteria, cutting behind the doors that were labeled for employees only. The kitchen wasn't as large as the one back in Midgar, before Meteor had fallen and crushed the damn thing. He moved through it on his toes as though he half expected one of the cooks to still be hanging around this late in the evening. By the time he made it to the pantry his toes were burning under the extra weight. He scanned the shelves for anything other than the poor quality liquor he had found earlier as if someone would have actually come and restocked it in his short absence. Deciding no one had, he grabs for three more bottles of the worst Junon had to offer and one bottle of a wine from a name he didn't recognize that he could only assume would taste just as horrible as the name sounded.

When he pushes the door to the file room open Elena is fanning the paper she had spilt a drink on. "I'm not flat chested." She says without looking up.

"If you say so." Reno shrugs, and tosses a bottle to Rude who catches it, then lifts it in silent salute.

She pauses mid fan and cuts her eyes towards him. "It's the uniform."

"If I was in charge you wouldn't have to wear a suit." He takes his seat and uses his teeth to open one of the bottles. "Women would wear nothing but a smile."

This causes Rude to smile, and lean around the table to clap him on the shoulder. "I'll support you."

"Reno," She says matter-of-factly as she snatches at the other bottle of liquor. "If we weren't allowed to wear anything then we wouldn't be smiling."

"That'll work too." And he flashes her a grin. Despite herself Elena laughs too, shaking her head and unconsciously straitening her shoulders.

"You're in there too." She says passing the paper towards Rude, who simply places it neatly back on the stack.

"I know," He reaches up to straighten at his already flawless tie. "But he gave me character."

Elena shakes her head and runs a finger along the rim of her empty glass. "If you call stripping character…"

.oOo.

Sometime later as it is nearing three – there's only a third of the liquor left – she's reclining in her chair explaining why she prefers chewy to crunchy cookies to Rude. He's hunched over the table, his glasses have slipped down his nose and Reno can see that he's struggling to stay awake. Elena doesn't seem to notice and waves a hand over exaggeratedly which causes her to lose her balance and slip further in the chair.

Reno can tell she's content and pleased to be included. She hates feeling left out, which has caused him to wonder if she was an outcast as a child or if she was overlooked because of siblings. She was always fighting so hard to fit in.

They allow her to feel like a part of their mixed up little family, and although neither will admit it, she is. They couldn't leave her now – they've tried – because somehow she was sitting at the table with them drinking the worst that Junon had to offer and rambling on about the time she was locked outside her apartment.

"I've never done that before." She nods for emphasis having rambled into another topic and reaches for the bottle she had laid claim to. "I'm always so careful."

"It always works that way." Reno leans forward and swipes the bottle in front of his dozing partner and pours himself a glass. He won't dare drink after the other man. He'd always had a thing about germs. "It's like the moment you announce to the world that you're the perfect cook, the next soufflé you bake will come out as flat as a pancake, or your oven will explode, or your family will die of food poisoning."

"Wait." She says sitting up, giggling as she wobbles to keep her balance on the chair. "Your family died of food poisoning?"

"That's not the point." Reno sighs and uses his foot to push against her chair so that she wobbles and has to snap her arms on the table to keep from lying in a heap on the floor.

She sprawls forward stacking her fists neatly atop one another to rest her chin atop. "It's not?"

"No." And he finds himself smiling at her childlike expression of her lips pinched tight and brow furrowing as her mind in its sluggish state tries to work out the problem.

"Oh." Her face relaxes, and she smiles. "Well I still have to know."

"Well you're not gonna."

Rude uses his fist to cover a yawn as he starts to speak. "I seem to remember you also saying that about the Gala last year."

The reaction was instantaneous. Reno chokes on his drink, coughs and then freezes with his glass in hand and the dribble from his drink slipping down his chin. He drops his head and rubs at his neck, glancing sideways at his partner. Although his eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses, Reno has learned over the years to read around the obvious and into the smaller details. It's in the slightest crease of his forehead and the twitch of his nose. Sometimes it's best seen in his shoulders creeping up, or he could just see the smile spread across his normally stoic friend. A smile that is actually large enough to show the coffee stains on his teeth.

"Surely you haven't forgotten." Then his smile spreads large and Rude is grinning. There's a deep rumbling in his chest almost akin to laughter. "Because I haven't."

Recovering Reno leans forward to rest his elbows on the table. "What can I say? I was drunk and looking for a laugh."

Elena inches forward on her chair, watching the exchange with all the curiosity of a puppy trying to make out the words of its master.

"I was hoping you were joking."

"She came in with her legs showing, and we all know she's got nice legs." He grins and finds himself idly peeling at the bottle's label. "That dress is lethal."

"You don't mean?" The blond asks suddenly jumping up in her seat.

"With Scarlet." Reno smirks and sends her a wink so that she scrunches her face and waves her hands at him like he were a fly. "Yeah or at least I think it was her."

"You think?" She falls back in her chair and runs her hands along her cheeks and into her hairline. "How do you not know!"

"It would be like me to imagine that."

And he knows he's killed her. He half expects her to swat him on the arm or at least fall out of her chair swinging, but instead she closes her eyes and lets out a whoosh of air. He knows he's finally killed her and he's almost sad, because of the extra paper work he'd have to do. A glance at his partner, who simply shrugs causes him to lean further across the table with a finger outstretched.

Suddenly sober she slips further into her chair and receives the poke he was sending in her left cheek. "My God Reno."

Reno shifts uneasily at her inherent need to work God into the equation, then he quirks a lip. "Yeah, I met God on the corner of First and Main. He was smoking a cigarette and talking to the local hobo about life and fast cars."

"Re-no!" She drawls with her eyes like saucers, and then they all fall against the table laughing.

.oOo.

"You ever wonder what you'd be doing if you weren't a Turk?"

Like most questions, it comes in the middle of the night, when the liquor is low and the laughter has drained away. Reno is reclined with his feet atop the table so that the chair balances precariously on two legs. Finally forgetting form Rude slumps low in his chair. Elena is lying against her arm on the table watching as her fingers lazily trace patterns across the wood.

He's been waiting for this question. He's heard it many times.

There's a long period of quiet between them; he's unsure of what to say, and Rude is all too often silent. They communicated, yes, but it was much different. They had a language all their own, practically thought.

When the silence drones on she lifts herself enough to turn her head to Rude. He removes his coat, folds and sits it neatly in the extra chair between himself and Elena. "I suppose I would have taken over my father's business."

Elena smiles and lets the weight of her chin press against her arm. "What sort of business did he own?"

"Real estate." Rude lifts his empty glass and turns it about in his hand. "Though I never cared very much for it."

There's a smile working its way across the blond, and he almost finds it echoed in himself. He knows she must be picturing Rude in his suit helping a couple to navigate an apartment in the upscale section of Midgar above the plate. The suit would be the same and the civility. It was a strange thought the large man as a realtor, but it was also fitting. Perhaps another lifetime Reno could, no, he could not escape being a Turk.

"You?" Rude ventures.

"Don't know," She says, eyes running absently across the ceiling while she calculates. "But it might have been fun to have been a kindergarten teacher."

The snicker busts from him before he can turn his face. She glares and uses her free hand to swipe his feet off the table so that he pops forward with his arms waving for balance. She smiles victoriously. "What about you?"

"What about me?" He growls.

"If you weren't a Turk…." She lets her voice trail off.

He used to lie in his bed and listen, those nights. In the early days before he saved up enough to move out of the seedy section of Sector 4, he would listen, for the screams, and for the gun shots and the emergency sirens. He had wanted to get out, and Shinra had been his way. Shinra had rescued him when he didn't know how to rescue himself. When he finally had the means he had moved atop the plate, but by then he was a Turk, too deep to get out and too deluded to realize he needed it. If Shinra hadn't found him he could have been on the other side of that wall he had listened through. The gunfire, the screams, god, the screams in the night, and he had wondered when it would become his.

The answer comes to him unbidden, and it makes his palms sweat.

There is a long pause. Reno looks down at his glass, as if he was trying to scry something out of it. For a moment he forgets how to keep his face blank. It scrunches up so that his forehead is a network of worry lines. "No."

Her eyes are red and groggy when she looks up at them from where she's resting it on her arm. "What d'ya mean, no?"

He lets himself imagine Elena with her innocent face and calm disposition seated in a classroom with children running about her heels, then his mind wanders and he sees it. Had he stayed. Had he not opened the door that morning, he might have, no, he would have been there. And the image of himself limping down an alley in the night using a hand to press and try to hold himself together is clear for him to see. And he knows that when he falls no one will help him. The bums will rob him and the whores will look the other way, and his screams will fall into the darkness, a simple voice to be thrown into the abyss of the night, until his life fades away.

"I mean that I don't see myself doing anything else."

"You didn't have to be a Turk."

But he did. "Neither did you."

"I didn't know that you weren't imagina-"

"Look," He interrupts her without a glance up and then flicks a piece of lint from his coat. "I was on the wrong side to begin with. At least the team I'm playing for now is stronger than the first."

She holds her breath as she glances between the two, and then practically growls at him. "Don't start talking like you were destined to be a criminal. No one has to be a criminal."

"Darlin," he says using his wrist to scratch at his nose. "There's always a villain. You ought to know that."

"Your view of the world is very simplistic." Rude agrees leaning forward so that he was watching her above the rim of his glasses.

"I'm not as cold as you make me out to be." Reno raises the bottle to her and then turns it up, so that some of it spills out around his lips. "Take a good look at yourself and you'll realize that our shades of grey aren't even that much darker than yours."

Silence falls on the room like a scavenger.

Then with some force of strength Elena's voice cut through the feeding silence, low and unmatched. "No. I'm different."

He honestly hopes so, for her sake, but the darkness he had seen in her eyes earlier didn't leave much room for hope, however fleeting it may be. "We are different. You are what the world made you and I am what it made me...the only difference is that the suit took away my delusions about being human."

Elena stares back at him defiantly, though makes no move to challenge him. Finally she reaches up into her coat and withdraws a pack of cigarettes. As she frees herself a smoke she glances back up at him. The sympathy in her eyes cut deeper than any knife. "I'm sorry for you."

There's too much air in the room. He tries to keep the surprise from rushing out of him in one large whoosh of air, but there's too much in the room and too much inside him. He lets out the strangest of air squeaks in the back of his throat causing her to pull her gaze back to him. She's watching him as a chain of smoke rings leave her lips one by one. It was the single sexiest thing he'd ever seen her do. He wasn't even aware she knew what a cigarette was let alone carried packs.

It takes him a minute to find his voice. His mouth bobs open and closed, flapping between the two positions like some sort of fish, like a dying fish. "Is that right?" He muttered at last finding his voice.

She sits for a moment with her cigarette held just an inch from her lips. "Of course." When she finally breaks the silence that follows, she leans across the table and lays her hand atop his, her voice soft. "You're still human."

He lets her hand rest atop his for a moment, staring at her tiny delicate fingers and the broad palm and small wrist. She could have been a pianist in another life. It was not the hand of a Turk.

"Whatever you say, Fannie." He blows a strand of hair from his face, and then slides his hand away. There's a touch of amusement showing in his eyes.

She huffs, retreating across the table and crossing her arms defensively. "Zip it."

"Come on." He laughs.

One arm is already halfway out of the sleeve to her coat before she speaks. "It's the suit." And then she tugs the other free. "It's not very flattering."

Reno snaps forward and points a long skinny finger towards his partner. "Personally, I think it fits Rude quite nicely."

"Thank you." Rude says in mid roll of his white shirt's sleeve.

She finds herself rolling her eyes again. "I meant on women."

"I know what you meant."

Elena stands, wobbling on her feet like a baby deer. "Well this has been fun and all, but..." She throws her coat over her shoulder. "I'll never get up as it is."

"Same here." Rude says, downing the last of the liquor and setting the bottle so that it clanks against the table top.

Elena doesn't look back, simply strides over to the door and swings it open so that she disappears around its frame. His partner waves goodnight and heads on his way. Reno is flipping the light switch off when Elena steps back into the doorway and places her hand on his arm to stop him. "Am I really no different?"

When he meets her gaze she's wide eyed and fearful. "Do you still wonder if you're really good?" When she doesn't answer, only stares at him with those heartbreakingly innocent eyes, he pulls his arm away and goes to move out the door, but not without calling over his shoulder. "That's your answer."

"Reno!"

He pauses as she hurries out of the room to catch up.

She thanks him by lightly squeezing his arm. He says 'you're an idiot' by rolling his eyes. When he walks away, he doesn't look back.

Later, when asked about that night, he'll say that he doesn't remember anything. He'll be lying, and no amount of her smiles and soft words can bring him to tell the truth. She'll brood for days for many different reasons. Reasons that include waking with a hangover, she hasn't had one in months, and she's angry that no one really answered her all her questions. She's angry that grey's can be different shades. And knowing that he's right.

He makes it down the stairs without major incident, but his ankles are stiff from missing the next to last to step. The front door to the Junon headquarters swings shut behind him before he realizes he's left his keys inside. They're probably upstairs in that little file room where his report was still lying stained and out of order with Shades stripping before they had rescued Junon instead of afterward for celebration. When he tries the door it doesn't budge, so he kicks it and drops his head while flicking the sides of his coat back so that he can rest his hands on his hips. He waits several minutes before he decides that no one is coming and turns to head into the early hours of the city.

It was starting to snow.

The white flakes fell from the sky like soft pieces of cotton, coating the ground's layer of dirt with its white purity. It covers everything in its path, enveloping it with its fresh coolness. It's a fresh start, casing all the filth and preparing it for the coming of spring. It's a new beginning of a new season and a new year.

Reno lets out a chain of smoke and sighs. "I hate Mondays."

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Author's Note: It's very difficult to explain how this came about. Originally I had planned a comedy with very little plot and somehow within the first page it had taken on a life of its own and ran away from me. This is how it ended and although I'm really pleased with the final product, however I'm pretty frustrated that I wasn't able to get the other story written. I'll reattempt it later. Make sure to check out my ongoing story Beneath the Bleeding Sun as it is only a few chapters in with several to go. I found it surprisingly difficult to keep the balance in seriousness and humor in Reno's personality as people tend to over play his humor. Having wrote this, I understand why a little more. Anyways, constructive criticism is always welcome!