- By the Sea -
It was a sunny late afternoon in Junon. Blue skies opened up over dark smooth rippling waves, and far below the sleek metal tiers, golden beaches stretched far in either direction along the shore. Junon could be a beautiful city at times.
A fresh breeze of warm air came in off the ocean through the open windows of the cafe. I sat at the table closest to the overlook, with nothing but the perfectly straight line of the horizon in my view. An exact balance of sky and sea, in varying shades of blue. The edges of the sky were tipping towards a pale drained color as the day waned. I remember telling you once that Junon had the most beautiful sunsets.
"So what do you think, boss?"
The voice to my left brought my eyes back to the interior of the cafe. Two associates sat with me, one at either side of the table. They'd been arguing about something, but I hadn't been paying attention.
Dax, the younger of the two, was the speaker who'd asked my opinion. He was a sharp, desperate man who'd been involved in this business for as long as I'd been, if not longer. You'd remember him, I think. He was there the night of your death. He was the one who'd arrived with the materia too late, who'd trembled and let it drop from his hand as if delivering it to the floor would relieve him of any further obligations to anyone anywhere. I'd let him live that night, and his loyalty had followed me fiercely ever since.
The other was Misha, the woman in charge of mako distribution in Wutai. She'd been running that side of the planet since my boss and I forced the suppliers' hand long ago. Everyone knew Wutai was the source of the best strains of mako production, and Misha controlled the trafficking at all points through the town. She was cruel, precise, and expressly under my control.
They both represented the best of what our organization does. Dax, the contract assassin, with twin daggers at his waist and a disarming smile on his mouth, and Misha, the mako dealer, with a sweet disposition and careful eyes. A knife in the dark and a healthy dose of temporary bliss. But their names aren't important. You don't need to know these people. They are all just part of a life I have now, one that explicitly doesn't contain you. One that you'd never be able to coexist with.
You'd hate all this, you really would.
"Wutai needs assistance," Misha said, leaning over the table, voice low, "This army that Godo Kisaragi is building has been steadily cracking down on mako users. This isn't something we can wait on!"
"Wutai isn't exactly our top concern," Dax countered, glaring at her, "And our boss will be the judge of who gets extra protection in the coming months."
Both turned towards me.
It's amazing how much had changed in so little time. Some days it feels like your death wasn't that long ago and others it feels like a lifetime away. Everything has changed. Even the people around me are completely different from the friends you and I had back in Edge. But change is good. People are allowed to evolve and grow, become whoever they are meant to be.
"So what do you think, boss?" Dax asked me, "You think we trust that Wutai can't handle this so-called problem on their own?
"The remilitarization should not be taken lightly," Misha warned, "I do have some resources, but boss, you need to see this for yourself. It's not what the papers are reporting."
I took a long sip of coffee from the mug in front of me. Then I nodded at her.
"Okay, I'll go to Wutai tonight," I agreed, "Take the last airship out."
Losing a region like Wutai was not an option, even if it was a false alarm. News of the WRO backing a remilitarization plan for the formerly disgraced town had been on my radar lately, but this was the first time I'd heard of his troops interfering directly with the mako trade.
Dax looked like he wanted to protest, but he didn't. Misha smiled and bowed her head slightly.
"Thank you, boss. I'll arrange for a meeting with the supplier tonight," she said.
Then she stood and departed. Dax leaned back and crossed his arms. The sun dipped lower in the sky, behind a batch of clouds.
"Sir, there is one more thing to report," Dax said after a moment, "The traitor who fled the last contract, the one who'd gone across the sea, has been returned. I brought him back myself."
There was a brief silence as I recalled the situation.
"Good," I replied, "Bring him to the lower tier."
"Yes, boss." He rose and headed for the door.
After he'd left, I took another sip of coffee and sighed.
Godo Kisaragi… a name that I was hoping to not ever really care about again. A dull pain marched down the side of my face over the scar tissue. It settled in my stomach. Strange. I've finally found my place in the world, and I have the power and control that I'd unknowingly longed for all my life, yet there remained an underlying sense of dread. I'd lost you, I'd lost Denzel, I had nothing left of my old life and friends. There was nothing left to lose. Yet still that fear persisted.
Losing what I have now would mean I was wrong. I'd heard a saying once that it's lonely at the top. I think I know why.
"More coffee?"
The waitress stood next to me with coffee pot in hand. I nodded and she re-filled my mug before scurrying away. Her eyes lingered on the scar on my face long enough. I'm sure she remembers me from when I was half-dead, bleeding out in the backroom of this place not so long ago. I'd been such a mess back then.
I savored the rest of my coffee and noticed the dozens of colorful dots of umbrellas far down on the beach below. There was one particular bright green one, and it made me think of that glimmer of materia as it rolled across the floor through the blood at my feet the night of your death.
I still kept that restore, safely in my pocket, though I'd never used it. I don't know why it felt important to hold onto, as if a piece of you were still attached with it. If I'd only been a moment earlier… There was a lifetime branching off from it, a different version slipping right beneath this world, where you and I were still together. I'd saved you and maybe you'd have stayed in Junon with me.
Except I knew the truth. It would've never worked, and I think sometimes that the way things turned out was somehow the best conclusion of our relationship. It was better to leave the future open like that, to think that you could have reconciled with me, than to live with the certainty that you'd never accept the life I'd built in Junon. I could stop longing for you.
Your status now was immovable, a point of fine detail in my memory.
It was time to go. But as I about to stand, an older woman approached my table. She was tired with the cautious frightened look of a first-time customer.
"Are you…?" she asked waveringly.
I nodded and invited her to sit. She did so apprehensively.
Then the usual conversation took place. She wanted her ex-husband dead and knew this cafe was the place where such a request could take form. After payment had been secured and details of the target had been given, she passed a photo of the ex across the table then nodded curtly and walked out. The bell above the door of the cafe jingled as she departed fast.
Then a message came in on my phone. The associate in the basement was ready.
Outside, the Junon air was fresh and salty from the wind blowing in across the sea. The sun burned overhead and the streets were bustling with weekend tourists. I moved through the city undisturbed, quietly making my way towards the lower tier. A strange sense of paranoia gripped me like I was being followed, but I brushed it aside. I'd learned long ago to dismiss the eerie sensations that often crept up when I'd been thinking of you.
At last, the abandoned tenement in the lower tier came into view. The entire block was in the slums, which now infested the underbelly of the city as well as the outskirts. Junon was a beautiful city, but like all beautiful things, there was an equally ugly mirrored side to it, hidden away from the glistening promenades of the sleek upper tier.
This was all because of drugs provided a subtle shade of clarity and serenity, a way forward for many in the wake of Meteor. But they were highly addictive with the occasional violent side effect. People like my old boss were able to rise to power by controlling the distribution of a drug eventually everyone wanted.
And the name 'mako' only came from one side effect of the drug. A dim luminescence shone in the user's eyes, a very strong resemblance to actual Mako saturation. But Soldiers were a thing of the past and the word 'mako' now only meant escape, tranquility, focus, not energy or ShinRa or materia. It was nice for me, as an interesting byproduct, to fade away within the public eye, no longer a troubling reminder of ShinRa's dark legacy of super soldiers and human experimentation. Nobody questioned the shine in my eyes because I might as well be an addict.
Of course, I wasn't. Not anymore.
Inside the dilapidated building, I went down into the concrete windowless basement, and there I found the source of pain from the last month. One of my old associates, beaten and bound, knelt in the center of the moldy, crumbling floor beneath a single naked bulb. His face was covered in sweat, one eye nearly swollen shut, and he noticed my presence with an almost giddy yelp.
"Boss!"
Like I was the best thing in the world.
"Boss, please…!"
He stumbled forward, falling to his hands and knees in pitiful prostration. Dax and another associate stood to either side, watching carefully in silence.
"I-I-I told them it was a misunderstanding!" he sputtered, "I told them I was sorry!"
I slowly unsheathed the sword from my back. His eyes went wide at the sight of the weapon. His lip trembled.
"No, boss, please! I...It was… I just-"
"You're lucky," I finally spoke, taking a step to the side, "Jude would've tortured you first. For hours."
At the mention of my old boss's name, the man stiffened and the slight semblance of hope in his face vanished like a snuffed candle. For a flicker of a second, his eyes went to the scar on my face. A long deep line that ran from around my eye down my cheek. Proof that I'd been the only person to survive Jude's psychopathic tendencies.
His eyes went back to mine, desperately. He tried to stand.
"Wait, wait a minute!" he begged.
The swords moved apart fast in my hands as I extracted a smaller blade from the nested hilt and slashed the man across his stomach. Blood dribbled off the edge, and he screamed. A cold harsh sound of defeat. He fell to the floor, bound arms pressing against his stomach as red poured from the gash.
I waited until his whimpers diminished. This was the exquisite part where he realized there was no way out. It shone across his face in a pale spread of horror.
"There's no easy way to say this," I went on after he quieted down, "And I wish I didn't need to get involved here. I rarely get directly involved like this, you see. But you've purposefully evaded a contract that you were assigned. Your actions nearly exposed our supplier in Wutai and you killed a fellow associate."
The moment I'd said those words, his eyes revealed sudden total understanding. He must've thought I didn't know about the dead associate. He must've thought I'd been upset about him skipping out on a contract and hiding out in Wutai, but no, that wasn't grounds for death. Killing a fellow associate, however, was. And he knew it.
He was frozen, unfocused, watching something far away in his mind.
"You understand it's like this for a reason, right?" I continued nevertheless, "If I didn't kill you then there'd be no order. There'd be no reason for anyone to follow any rules. We can't have that."
I stood directly in front of his path of vision, forcing him to look at me. A bleary sunken expression dominated his face and he swallowed hard. This was the end, and it was culminating in a perfect single moment in his mind of acceptance and peace. The knowledge of no way out meant no more need to fight. His guilt had taken him over.
"Can't be entirely without merit," I told him, "We need to maintain structure. All of us do."
His eyes met mine one last time, and he nodded, scarcely fighting off the shivers threatening his body. A few incoherent words trailed from him, then the swords moved swift in my hands. A precise arc sliced open his throat and chest, dousing his shirt in dark red and he fell, gurgling, into a puddle on the floor.
Perfect elation breathed over me in a calm immaculate sensation synchronized to the death in front of me. Blood spread outward, following the cracks in the floor. Dax twirled one of his daggers in his hand.
"What a waste," I said after the moment had passed. When it was all said and done, it was just a cold empty husk left behind.
"A waste of your time, sir. I understand," Dax spoke up gravely.
"Forget it," I replied, "Just tell Wutai it's been handled."
"Yes, sir."
I never found out why the guy had initially fled his contract. The assassin who later completed the job reported that the target was a woman who'd claimed to know the man who'd originally been sent to kill her, and I was glad I hadn't personally followed up on that one. It would've reminded me of you and me, long ago. Our fateful reunion.
Since the later part of my evening was going to be consumed by whatever troubles awaited me in Wutai, I went back to my apartment to finish up some work first. In the dim orange glow of sunset, I sat on the couch with paperwork spread around me.
There were contracts to be assigned and completed assassinations to be relayed to customers. I wasn't necessarily good at this part of the job, but it was a task someone had to do and I generally knew best the skills and limitations of most assassins in our network. The ex-husband that the older woman in the cafe had requested earlier would be an easy job, and I sent the details to an associate.
As I perused a small pile of finished contracts, I got to one black and white photo of a woman with long dark hair. This was the one the dead guy in the basement had been assigned and lost his life over. I wondered what exactly had transpired in his head the second he'd seen her picture.
Nevermind. I downed a mako pill and resumed my work in the other room, leafing through contracts and photos. Then the words began blurring together. I had to go back and review a couple to find my place again.
It was suddenly hard to focus, and thoughts of you kept swimming up in my head, unwanted. Sometimes it just took longer for the effects to take hold. I waited, breathing out. Sometimes nothing felt real, like a recurring dream or a series of dreams that progress chronologically, outside of the normal flow of life. Like another world existed on top of this one, all around me, invisible yet absolute.
I doubled back through the papers and found the one the dead man had spurned. The lovely woman with long dark hair.
There'd been a different time that branched off from this one and maybe that's where you existed now. Somewhere out of reach, yet you clung to my skin and clothes like smoke. I knew if I could only turn around fast enough in my dreams, in that other place, that I'd see you standing there and I could finally hear your voice one more time.
It made me feel sick. I pushed the contracts aside. Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome, but chasing you nonetheless. Undoubtedly, this was insanity. And I felt it creeping closer. Consuming me.
No, I caught myself before the surreality lapsed on top of me. No, I wasn't asleep, and those dreams were irrelevant anyway. The materia. I held it out in my palm. A tiny orb of unblemished green. Yes, I still had this, and I could feel the drugs finally starting to work. A veil of induced tranquility pulled itself over me. I waited with my eyes closed until the sensation fully eclipsed the anxiety rummaging in my veins.
Then it was gone. I exhaled.
The contracts were strewn about on the floor, and I picked them up, sorting them appropriately as I went. Yes, each night I remembered you. I'd never stop. But I no longer needed you. I had my work and control and power that you would have never let me keep.
The night went on and I pushed you aside, finishing up the contracts then I headed out towards the airships. No matter what, I kept you close to me. I always would.
I miss you, but it's an echo of longing, not the true sense of the word. I miss you because I know you can never come back.