fandomtownies | Covent Garden Flowers, Tuesday

If you'd like.

Romeo had gotten texts from Ino about the fog and the monsters, and he'd ~~handwavily~~ talked to her just enough to ascertain the broad outlines of the story.

But now he found himself on spring break, and -- with more time to spend worrying about Fandom -- decided to give Ino a call. He rested on his couch, idly tapping his feet against the wall as he dialed her number.

Ring, ring

Ino started at the ring of her phone—having been focused enough on her work that the sudden noise was disconcerting—and fumbled for it.

She blinked at the number for a second then picked it up.

“Yo,” Ino said, with a faint attempt at cheer.

Romeo couldn't hear the difference between fake cheer and real cheer from the other side of the globe, so he returned her greeting with genuine cheer. "Hello," he said. "It's Romeo. It seemed like time to check in with you, see if any monkeyponies were still loitering on the island, any of that. How are you?"

There were many kinds of cheer!

It was soothing, anyway, to hear him sounding so happy. “Hiii Romeo! No monkeyponies , I promise,” Ino answered lightly. “Everything is back to—well, the usual. Prom tickets are on sale and I’ve been amused that this year I can actually go without sneaking in via my date being in one of the right grades.”

... That kinda made her feel old, come to think of it. Clearly she was ancient at sixteen.

“I’ve been okay. The weather’s been pretty nice.”

That wasn’t nearly as small-talky as it sounded and Ino was pleased with herself for that. After all, the weather being nice was rather important when you were, say, sleeping outside. Yes.

"Did you miss any of the proms?" Romeo asked lightly. "Congratulations on life as an upperclassman, though. I'd wish a crown for you but that's not until next year."

For some crazy reason, he liked that the two people he'd dated at Fandom had both been on the prom court, and he wished the same for Ino.

"It's nice here too," he added, by the way of small talk. "The cherry blossoms are mostly gone, but the trees are all coming back in force. I'm spending as much time outside as I can."

“I missed one,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t a bad evening anyway—I spent it dancing by myself and that was nice.”

More than nice, really. That sort of thing was incredibly zen.

“Are you outside now?” Ino asked archly. “Getting your fresh air? You’d be a sad sight, without any sun.”

"Now?" Romeo echoed. "No, not now. There's a game show on the television now and people are throwing whipped cream."

A pause.

"What would be wrong with the way I looked without sun?"

“I like your hair when the sun is in it,” she answered whimsically, but entirely truthfully. “And you’d be ridiculous if you were totally pasty.”

Pale and pasty were not the same thing, no.

“Why’re they throwing whipped cream? It’s better used for desserts.”

A preening Romeo -- the boy liked compliments -- answered, "Italians don't get pasty."

Never mind that, name aside, he was only like a quarter Italian.

"I think they're throwing whipped cream because they're on a Japanese game show and it's the law those are as ridiculous as possible," he added. "They have some sardines out, too."

“Seems a bit silly,” she said, smiling. “But I suppose that if people have fun then it’s pointful,” totally a word as far as Ino was concerned, “enough. Sounds like you’re having fun though. Hasn’t been a whole lot of that here lately—not of that sort.”

"It is silly, and I'm not so sure there's a point," Romeo said, and frowned. "Something went wrong? Besides the fog, I mean."

“Nothing’s wrong personally,” she said slowly, picking her words. “But Zack’s... dealing with some stuff.”

Ino contemplated what to say to elaborate that. She was sure that if she left it he’d be all ‘...what sort of stuff?’ at her.

“A few things went down in his world,” Ino settled on. “And he lost someone close to him. He’s... got their weapon, now. It’s his. Giant sword. Like, seriously, the largest sword ever. Um, we’ve been sleeping outside the last few nights. He won’t put it in the locker and I wouldn’t ask him to, you know? Not right now. But I couldn’t just let him be alone either... Zack doesn’t deal well with that.”

It did help, in a very distant sort of way, that it was April and warm. Ino would’ve advocated the hotel at the top of her lungs had it been December. But mostly, she hadn’t been willing to leave Zack alone under any circumstance.

He would, in fact, have started with 'what sort of stuff.' Instead, he went quiet as he listened. Zack was from Reno's world; in a way, that made him a kind of friend-in-law, even if Ino didn't clearly care about him.

"He needs time," he said.

A different man, from a different world, would have suggested therapy.

"You're being kind, staying with him," he decided. "I don't know what more you could do."

"I don't know either," she confessed. Because therapy like that was so not something she understood as an option. "I feel like I should be doing more but I can't do anything other than keep him company and let him know it's okay to... not be happy. He does that a lot. Lies with a smile when he wants to hide."

"Told him I'd keep an eye on the sword, too, if he needed to get anything from the dorms. I can't lift it, but I can watch it for 'em. It's just... I don't like feeling useless."

That came out more plaintively than she liked.

"So don't be useless." Because it was just that simple, Romeo.

Though he seemed to realize that, faltering before he added, "He's trusting you to watch the sword. At least he can still trust, and that's good. And the lying with a smile -- he's trying to bear up."

"I know," she said quietly. "It's just... you've got to grieve too. So I've been... letting him know it's okay to. Sometimes it works."

And sometimes he clung to her like she was going to disappear but Ino wasn't going to say that.

"It's just, he's important. To me. So..."

Feeling useless was the worst thing ever. And there was no solution.

"So it hurts," Romeo finished quietly. "I'd offer to help, but there's nothing I can do."

A pause. "Is there anything Reno could do?" ~~Because Shannon's brain isn't broken enough yet.~~

“I haven’t told him,” she confessed, leaning over the counter to twitch an errant stem back into place. “It seems... weird. Like, he wants to know what’s going on but...”

Ino shrugged, though he couldn’t see it.

“He wants to know what’s going on and says he’ll help me change the future but he used to say that changing it was too dangerous and I couldn’t and shouldn’t even think ‘bout it ‘cause if things get messed up his world, Zack’s version of, might not even make it as well as Reno’s version did.” Words. She had them. “So... I don’t know. Ego says he changed his mind ‘cause of my insistence that it was possible to change the future for the better. But... I don’t know. He’s a Turk. I’m a Rookie. I trust him but... I don’t know that he’s got the same goal in mind as I do and so telling him ‘bout Zack is letting another bit of the timeline reach him so he knows where things are.”

Did that make sense? Ino was rambling. Ramble, Ino, ramble!

Ino was rambling excellently, and Romeo was nodding at the phone like she could see him.

When she seemed to be done rambling -- and he left a moment of dead air, just to be sure -- he cautiously said, "I don't think we can change things. I tried -- when the angels threw us into the past, and again with Tybalt --and it never did anything I can see."

"I don't know if that would make a difference."

Her chin took on a stubborn set. Well. More stubborn than normal. Not that he could see it. They were awesome at this.

“But one of the first things I found here was someone alive and ahead of me in my world’s timeline who is dead in my world’s past.”

That had left an impression on her, yes.

"Which means there's got to be something that can be changed."

"Something, but not all things," Romeo said.

As if that was wise, or something.

"Perhaps Reno's world can't be."

"But you don't know until you try," she pointed out. "Who is to say that I'm wrong? What if things got better?"

"Well," Romeo asked, giving up the philosophical and reaching for the practical, "what would you do to start to try to change things?"

“Gather more information from Reno’s world,” she said, meek enough now that it didn’t sound quite so much like he thought it was impossible. “But Reno makes that hard.”

That was a whine, yes.

“I know a lot ‘bout what it’s currently like in his world, at least ‘round Edge,” Ino continued, “and I know a whole lot of bits and pieces but I don’t have a full story.” Her picture was like one done in crayons and none of it inside the lines.

She chewed her lip thoughtfully.

“I’d probably tell someone, if I had enough information, to give them a heads up. They’d have a better idea of what to do.”

That’d be a mean thing to dump on Zack’s Tseng, Ino.

"I can't make Reno do anything," Romeo said, shaking his head -- not that he'd been asked to do that. "Rikku could, but we've fallen a bit out of touch." He regretted that; he'd make up for it over graduation.

"Could you give someone what you have, just to see what they do with it?"

Mean idea, Romeo.

Mean mean mean.

"I don't know that anyone but his boss can make Reno do something he doesn't want to," she said wryly. "Not when it comes to the possibility of another version of his world being destroyed 'cause of something being changed."

Ino tugged on her hair. "I don't know. I don't want to mess things up with only knowing half the story and then they take action that furthers bad things, yeah?"

One day Ino might have a problem that could be solved with advice. Today did not seem to be that day.

"Yeah," Romeo agreed, and there was a thoughtful pause, as he was all out of ideas. "... I'm afraid I'm out of things to say."

"That seems to be the general consensus," she sighed. "There's nothing I can really do right now and it's bothering me but... nothing. I don't know. You're more of a hero type than I am."

A beat.

"What am I doing trying to save a world?"

"I don't know," Romeo said. "I'm no one's hero. I leave that to other people."

"It's good that you care."

It was stupid, right, that she had to fight the urge to bristle defensively at that. Ino fussed with a pen while she tried to figure out how to respond to that.

"Am I not supposed to care?" she asked evenly.

"... are you trying to make that into an insult?"

Romeo was bewildered.

... Maybe.

Ino was pretty confused too.

"It just sounded--weird. Like I wasn't supposed to care, or something."

Well, Ino, this is what you get for not caring about a lot.

"I might have said it weird," Romeo decided. "I wouldn't tell anyone not to care."

"Okay," she said, a bit nettled and not sure why. "I'll... keep caring, I guess. I don't know that I can do anything else."

"Good," Romeo said, for want of anything better to say. "I'll talk to you soon, all right?"

If you'd rather.

In other news, Alex totally became the Dragonmaster last night.

... I totally have a life, really.

Covent Garden Flowers, Tuesday

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