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#01 – Walking
He takes her out one day; to the park, or so he says – twelve hours later,
she is trying to discern the difference between gil
and credit card in order to get him out of the drunk tank.
#02 – Waltz
“I can dance,” he tells her one night, and she brushes off his vehemence with
a shake of her head; “I can,” he insists – by the end of the night, in a
tangle of silken sheets, she does not need to be convinced.
#03 – Wishes
“What do you wish, my dear?” Reno
asks her, playing at chivalry, but Rydia cannot
bring himself to answer him.
#04 – Wonder
The garbage disposal makes a whirring noise, and she entertains herself one
afternoon by dropping things down it.
#05 – Worry
“Where have you been?” Reno
shouts at her when she comes home one evening, and Rydia
decides she doesn’t like that tone of voice.
#06 – Whimsy
“I miss the dresses,” Rydia tells him one day; “I
miss the embellished bodices and the flowing skirts… I miss feeling elegant,”
and she waits for him to tell her that she is always elegant, but he doesn’t.
#07 - Waste/Wasteland
He dreams of wastelands, of the devastation left behind in Meteor’s wake, of Jenova’s final resting place; and eventually, just by
proximity, so does Rydia.
#08 - Whiskey and rum
Reno’s lips taste of sour rum as he devours her, smothering her with kisses
against the doorframe.
#09 – War
She stands by the window of his flat, watching Midgar
live, and the longer she watches the war-touched
concrete and glass, the sicker she feels.
#10 – Weddings
The proposal takes a good deal longer than intended when he has to explain to
her the purpose of an engagement, and Rydia plays
with the idea of saying no, just out of resentment for the alien notion of
exchanging rings as tokens.
#11 – Birthday
Reno attempts
to find out her birthday, and she is surprised to find she doesn’t remember,
attributing the knowledge to a life that wasn’t hers anymore.
#12 – Blessing
“It’s going to be a boy,” she tells him, guiding his hands to her swollen belly.
#13 – Bias
Rydia does not want Reno to go, not now, not when
she’s just starting to become content in this new world, but it takes her
finest lingerie to convince him.
#14 – Burning
They are lying on the floor, post-coitus and caught in the sticky glow of
ardor and perspiration, when a shrill beeping cuts through the calm air, and
Reno realises he forgot all about the roast.
#15 – Breathing
Reno
concentrates on his pulse, on the thumping of his heart, and remembers what
waits for him at home.
#16 – Breaking
He is gone, she tells herself, and stares at the door long after it has been
shut.
#17 – Belief
She wonders about prayer, but he assures her religion is best reserved for
the bedroom.
#18 – Balloon
He is determined to win her the bear, but never stops to ask if she would
prefer the lizard.
#19 – Balcony
The view from his flat is very different from the castle, and she can’t
decide which one she prefers.
#20 – Bane
Fed up, Rydia makes him choose between the stray
cats and her.
#21 – Quiet
Tseng and Elena are methodical, observant, and Rude is truculent, but Reno is silent in her
presence, and she doesn’t care to think why.
#22 – Quirks
Rydia makes him cook for her, and cannot quite
assimilate the fact that he refuses to be in the same room with a tomato.
#23 – Question
“Will you still want me when I’m elderly?” she asks him one night, and she
laughs when he replies, lips against her throat, “No.”
#24 – Quarrel
“—and if you had deigned to even ask my opinion, you would be aware that!” Rydia shouts, her arms extending heavenward in her
frustration.
#25 – Quitting
He kisses her shoulder gently, and she turns over with the belief he is in a
romantic mood, but instead he just says, “Should I get a normal, boring job?”
and she kisses him, and tells him that for all she doesn’t like him being in
danger, he would never be happy in a ‘normal’ job.
#26 – Jump
The bathroom sink is broken, and Reno
refuses to hire a plumber; Rydia amuses herself by
sitting on the rim of the tub and making derogatory comments, until he turns
the water on her.
#27 – Jester
“Tell me a joke,” she asks one night, but when he does, she doesn’t laugh.
#28 – Jousting
He stares down the barrel of a gun, his own weapon extended in turn, and Rydia struggles against Rude’s
unyielding arm, holding her back from the fray.
#29 – Jewel
He glares at the glass surface, spurned by the knowledge that he couldn’t
afford a real diamond; it blinks light back up at him, fractured by the cuts
of the glass, innocent as a newborn.
#30 – Just
Rydia knows full well what his job entails, but
when he comes home with the malicious scent of death on his skin, she cannot
bear his touch.
#31 – Smirk
“—course, we could just go away for the weekend,” Reno says when he thinks she isn’t
listening.
#32 – Sorrow
“We were going to name him Adema,” she says, her
voice a broken whisper.
#33 – Stupidity
They get into a fight, their most heated ever, and in a swell of anger, he
tells her to just go home.
#34 – Serenade
Reno sings in
the shower, his voice horrendously off-key; she gets her revenge by flushing
the toilet.
#35 – Sarcasm
When she answers him with, “Of course I know how to cook,” he believes
her, until she heats up an unpeeled potato for ten seconds in the microwave
and then hands it to him.
#36 – Sordid
Rydia steels herself and asks about his love life
prior to her; of all the scenarios she envisioned, she never imagined she’d
laugh at most of it.
#37 – Soliloquy
“I used to have plenty of suitors,” she boasts; “Dozens, who would come with
verse and sonnet.”
#38 – Sojourn
He takes her to the village
of Talpestra,
but a few short hours into their reprieve, he is summoned back to Midgar.
#39 – Share
“I told you to leave the last piece of gum for me,” he whines, and she throws
the packet at him in response.
#40 – Solitary
He is gone for three days, and Rydia
begins to miss even the stray cats.
#41 – Nowhere
She finally figures out how to use the mobile phone he had bought her, but
when they speak, he refuses to tell her his location.
#42 – Neutral
“Do you think they were right?” she asks one night, referring to Kadaj and his brothers, and he is unexpectedly serious in
his response: “I think they were angry.”
#43 – Nuance
“No, that’s my credit card,” he says, taking the plastic card from her hand
with a firm grip, “It just creates debt; use my debit instead.”
#44 – Near
She can feel it when he is in Midgar, and although
she prefers him to be closer than far away, she would take any of those over
the third option.
#45 – Natural
They are out shopping, when a young girl with a ring through her nose asks Rydia where she buys her hair dye from; Reno just laughs.
#46 – Horizon
She likes to be up in time to watch the sun rise; on more than one occasion,
he joins her.
#47 – Valiant
When Reno brings death, Rydia shies away from him;
when Reno
preserves life, Rydia is
unremittingly drawn to him.
#48 – Virtuous
Reno still
kisses her, even when she is rife with sickness.
#49 – Victory
She doesn’t like watching him fight, and can’t bring herself to congratulate
him on his win.
#50 – Defeat
When he loses, Rydia sees to him being patched up,
and is anything but gentle in her tending.
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