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In our darkest hours...
Locked inside our own minds, knowing only our own pain and suffering...
We must all come to terms with ourselves and realize...
We are never alone.

~Two of a Kind~

Ch.1

Elena lay her head against the cold wooden bartable, small movements gently accompanied by her left hand running her nimble typists fingers through her jaw-length blonde hair. After a hard mission at day's end, she sat in a low-key bar in downtown Junon, drunk.

Sitting at a table by herself, she closed her eyes and tried to visualize Tseng's face, smiling at her... This was what she wanted so dearly to be hers... This was also a difficult task because he rarely ever smiled, and usually if he did, it was at a secretary. While thanking one for getting his papers in on time. For running his suit to the cleaners. Flora, Nancy, Osiri, or this one or that one... Gaw he was such a womanizing jerk... But that wasn't her Tseng. He was... He was...

"Tilt yo head back and take it in one"

"Mmm?"
Elena lifted her drowsy head from the table to become eye-to-eye with an equally womanizing but highly more charasmatic -if not downright flamboyant- co-worker.

"Your beer, blondie. You ain't gonna let it go to waste now are you?"
Reno put his hands on the table and leaned forward to peer into the Elena's deeb brown eyes.

"You're a Turk now 'Lena. Act like it. Gaw..."

Reno turned and walked across the room to buy himself a beer, then came back and took the empty chair next to her. Spinning the chair around with one hand, he sat down on it backwards and rested his chin on the backrest.

"Fancy greeting you here hunh?"

Elena gently nodded her head, it was odd for her to be at a bar by herself.

"So... You got something on your mind in there or am I seeing things? Hmm?" Reno gently reached over and tapped Elena on the top of the head and she let him- she was far too exhausted from the day's mission to bother with his childishness.

"You're seeing things..." Elena barely made out in a flat whisper.

Reno sat back, looked down and shook his head with a slight smirk as he twisted off his top, allowing a few unruly strands of red to fall in front of his crystal blue Mako eyes.

"Yeah, I don't know about you sometimes you know?" He paused, to take a deep swig of his alcohol, then looked back over to the young female.

Elena turned her head a bit to the side and rolled her chestnut brown eyes up to meet his blue ones.

"What don't you know?" Elena whispered, in more of a rhaspy tone than intended.

In that instance, Reno met Elena's gaze and searched her eyes over for any signs of intelligence, but finding nothing but pain, gave up.

"I just... You know. Wish I could get in that lil mind of your sometimes. Figure you out and all..."

Reno tilted his head back a bit and took another swig of his beer, and Elena, watching, reached out and pulled hers near.

"Hey Reno..."

"A'yup?"

Elena sighed a laugh with a slight smile. His accent was quite funny sometimes, the seemingly perfect blend of a Wutaian and Gongogan accent... She would have to ask him of that one day, how he could be so perfectly...

{Ugh... Did I just say Reno and perfect in the same thought? Guh... I'm really out of it}

"Lena? ... Ello, Earth to Lalani? Aileen? Alini?"

Elena kicked at Reno from under the table.

"Ow..."

"Ah-Leigh-Nuh." She pronounced in a thick, forced Costan accent. "Is that what you wanted to know?" The blonde asked with a pitch of irritation in her voice.

Reno giggled and screwed his lips up into a impish grin.

"Nuh-unh... But now you mention it... What's your name mean anyway? In your language..."

{Just roll with it rookie... Roll with it. You and me both know we need to think of something else than what we've just done...}

Elena attempted to sit up but still was feeling to groggy, so she propped her chin up by her palms and rested her elbows on the table, still mostly slouched over.

"Elena... Means child of the sun. Why?"

Reno sat his half-empty beer down on the table and crossed his arms on the backrest, using his forearms as a headrest. He buried his nose into his work blazer's elbow and grined, his eyes twinkling as he relaxed a little.

"I just..." Reno breathed into the fabric. "Guess I wanted to know. Eu nao sei..."

Elena's intrest was piqued by his last words.
"What?"

Reno looked lost and sat up a little.
"Whaat?"

It was Elena's turn to giggle softly.
"What did you say just then? I've heard Tseng say that often but I dont' know what it means."

Right," Reno added, with a nod.

Elena gave him a confused look.
"Hunh?"

"I don't know is all."

Elena scrunched her nose up and narrowed her eyes in confusion.
"I... Don't understand."

Reno, getting the idea, sighed and developed a tired smile.
"Eu nao sei... Means... I don't know, in loose street Wutaian. That's all."

Elena's eyes lit up and she softly bit her bottom lip as she realized what he had meant.

Reno watched her with little interest and, grinning, took his beer to hand and finished it off.

"How long you planning to sit in this place blondie," Reno asked as he stood up to go toss the bottle.

Elena didn't even want to respond to that. But she did, as he came back to the table.

"Till closing time I guess, I don't want to go home..." Elena lowered her voice into a whisper. "Don't want to be alone either though..."

Reno narrowed his eyes and clicked his tounge against his side teeth as he thougth for a minute.
{She don't want to go home... I don't want to be here... I wonder if she'd...}

"Well, you know you're always welcome at my place, you know, the door's always deadbolted."

Elena stifled a giggle. "Oh so welcoming Re, just like you..." Her words dripped of sarcasm.

Reno struck a pose and made a silly face as he pushed off the fact she had shot him down and {...Well, I ain't stickin around this place for nothin...} decided to take his exit.

"Guess I'm off then," The redhead said, a bit of dejection still lingering in his voice.

"Wait," Elena sat up and said with almost urgency.

Reno tilted his head to the side a bit, widened his eyes and bit his bottom lip with nervousness.
"Mmm?"

"You're not leaving me here are you," Elena asked with an undertone, hinting that maybe she had second-thoughted that earlier offer.

Reno yawned lazily and fished his truck keys from his blazer's inside pocket.

"Sure I am. Why would I do any different? I'm not anyone to you. I'm just..." {I'm just... Hunh.}

Something glittering in Elena's deep chestnut eyes made Reno stop with his sarcastic remark. Maybe it was hope. Maybe it was drunken lust. Either way, he was suddenly remarkably down with the idea of taking her home.

"Hungry. You want take out or pizza?"

Elena giggled, feeling a bit childish. She supported herself to stand up but wasn't sure how she was going to make it outside without the support of the chairs. Reno came around the table and helped her, slipping his left arm around her shoulder. "Need a crutch?"

Feeling overly woozy from standing up,or maybe just from the three and a half beers she had drank before he had shown up, Elena took up Reno's offer and clung to him, snugly slipping her arms around his soft midsection.

As Reno guided Elena to the door- wondering if she had more drinks than just the empties that had littered the table- a thought crossed his mind. He wasn't worried about her hurling all over the inside of his truck, but moreover... {If I take her to my place... What will she think of me?} Now, Reno never cared what anyone at work thought of him. But Elena...

After a few moments in the brisk, salty Junon Bay wind Elena quickly proved Reno's truck theories true as she emptied the contents of her stomach on the shrubbery outlining the sidewalk to the parking lot. Reno kept his left arm around her, and briskly swept her shoulder-length bangs back with his right hand, holding them back for her.

An akward silence followed as Elena tried to gather her thoughts past the tears of frusteration already dragging her mascara down her cheeks. "Sorry," she murmered, hidden behind sobs.

"Sorry? Bah... Least I don't gotta worry about my interior now nyeah?" Reno took Elena's chin in his hands and kissed her forhead. While rendering her speechless in the following seconds -something rare for Elena, even in a drunken stupor- Something happened that Reno couldn't quite explain.

Something Reno had missed.
Something Elena had never seen.

A slight tingling, turned into a burning tear... Confused, he turned away from Elena and lifted up the front tails of his button-up to find his white tank-top tinging red.

{I've... been shot...}

to be continued...

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