Warning: Contains Spoilers to Before Crisis

In his house, read: prison, in Junon, Rufus Shinra, still Vice President of Shin-Ra Inc. despite everything, sits and thinks about what he's done. Isn't that what boys in time out are supposed to do? His father always did treat him like a child. His father kept him in confinement for years, before simply exiling him to Junon under less harsh conditions. Officially his punishment is over, but Rufus knows the old man will never fully trust him again.

All the same, Rufus now suspects his father is almost proud of him for his betrayal. Not because he betrayed his father per se, but because he took the initiative to do it. And because he'd gotten away with it for so long, which was fairly impressive.

No one crossed Shinra and lived. That was the general thought on how things ought to be. Rufus knew he'd be an exception. His father was too old to groom another heir even if he could produce one. Do to a combination of factors, stress, weight, perhaps Mako exposure, the President had been all but infertile for years. It was a miracle, or rather a wonder of science, that Rufus had been conceived at all. Rufus wasn't a test tube baby by any means, the President wanted an heir, not one of Hojo's experiments. However, fertility pills apparently could work wonders if you tried hard enough. Rufus was a miracle, and as it turned out an asset his father couldn't afford to lose.

Oh, Rufus had been perturbed to learn about the bastard. The love child his father had conceived with some slum bitch almost two decades before Rufus was born, back when his father could still get it up and wasn't shooting blanks. Rufus's hatred of Lazard was no secret. Even if he acted civil enough in public. However, Rufus had never felt threatened by him. There was no way his father would chose the illegitimate over him. Rufus was groomed since birth to take follow in his father's footsteps. It was, quite literally, what he had been born to do. He suspected his father only married his mother so she could produce him.

His mother had been beautiful. So, perhaps the marriage had been partially out of the old man's desire to have such a precious trinket on his arm. Something the old man would never have been able to get if he wasn't who he was. Rufus didn't know which idea was easier to stomach, his mother as trophy or his mother chosen like some chocobo to be a good breeder.

Well, the Shinra family was the closest thing the planet had to royalty anymore. It made sense President Shinra to marry a woman because she'd give him a son. He knew his father had never loved his mother.

Maybe that's why he hated Lazard as much as he did, because he knew his father had loved Lazard's mother. He also knew that his father loved Lazard more than he'd ever loved him, if his father had loved Rufus at all. Not that the man didn't value Rufus, but if the President loved Rufus it was best described as the love a breeder feels for a thoroughbred Golden. Rufus was an asset. He was the heir, his father's son. An object more than a person in his father's eyes.

Although Rufus's childhood had been marked by neglect, his father had seen to it that Rufus was trained. Molded into what he must be. The man cared nothing for Rufus as a person. He didn't need a child, he needed an heir. Someone to be like him, and follow in his footsteps.

Rufus was more like his mother, in looks and in nature. Nature, however, is malleable. Take a perfectly nice guard hound puppy and treat it with cruelty and you'll get a killer fit for the illegal fighting rings.

Not that Rufus held with such things. His own guard hound, Dark Nation, had been treated with love and taught with care. Rufus knew the hound would die for him not because Rufus had made him a fighter, but because he loved Rufus. Rufus thought his methods of training far superior to those his father had used with him. He even extended his methods to his Turks, for they were all but his now. His father would have executed the lot of them had he not intervened on their behalf. Rufus knew this would ensure they'd be his, loyal to the end. Even if the collateral damage of his treason had cost them some of their own, and he had attempted to have them killed when it was to his benefit.

That had been an act of desperation. His game was up, check and mate, but Rufus had thought at the time he still had a way out. He had wanted to live. Wanted to win. In the games he played, much like chess, sacrifices had to be made. As he'd once told Reno, when they'd first met, that they couldn't be friends, because a person in Rufus's position didn't have the luxury of having friends, or any sort of sentiment. Father had taught Rufus that. Kings could not get attached to pawns. Besides, it was a gamble whether his father really meant to let him live after things had gone so far. Rufus had gambled on his own importance as sole heir, but he knew his father lacked the sentiment to spare him just because Rufus was his son. Better to avoid capture than to take the bet.

Veld had wanted him brought back alive. Insisted that his father only wanted Rufus to be happy, because that's what parents want for their children. Rufus would have laughed, if Veld hadn't been so sincere. If Veld hadn't been more of a father than his old man ever had. If Rufus regretted anything, it had been in his kill order on the Turks. Not because it had failed, because AVALANCHE were no longer his pawns or maybe had never been, but because as much as he tried to squash his sentiment, Veld reminded him of it. Rufus liked the Turks. But all the same, he didn't share Veld's faith in his father, he knew better, and you do what you must to survive. Another lesson from his father.

He can't undo the past, but Rufus thinks he's made amends for his betrayal of the Turks when he saved them. Rufus knows that that Turks won't forget that he saved their lives and trusts that they, like Dark Nation, will stay at his side.

The President wouldn't have understood such things. His was the way of the hound fighter. Rufus had taught by whip and harsh words. He'd been raised to be cold, and to be cruel. Taught that life didn't matter, because other people's live's were beneath him. He was trained to be a ruler, indeed trained to be a tyrant, and he knew it. The problem was, if you trained a hound to be vicious, you'd end up getting bitten yourself. His father must have known he'd vie for power even if it meant bringing his father's empire to the ground. Whatever it took to humiliate the old man, and hasten the day that he would claim all that his father possessed.

He hadn't exactly succeeded in his little scheme. Rufus had been caught and banished to the gilded cage in Junon. He was alive, however, and given the circumstances, that meant a lot. Rufus had gambled and won. He was too important to be put down. Perhaps he might not have been so lucky if he'd been caught before Lazard had gone, shameful as it was, his father might have backed the one he loved over the one he'd groomed.

Then there would have been a tragedy, a car accident or helicopter crash, and the President would announce his son had been killed. The public would mourn their prince as they'd mourned the passing of his mother. A woman much loved by the people, but loved too much by the cameras and other men. His father was not one to be humiliated, and even Shinra couldn't burry all the incriminating evidence the paparazzi caught. By the time he reached his 17th birthday he was sure his father had arranged her death and had found the proof in the Turks' records.

Accessing said records had been no easy task, but there was more to Rufus than met the eye. Tseng had told him that if he'd been anyone else the Turks might have recruited him or killed him. Rufus liked the idea that if fate had dealt him a different hand he might have been a Turk. Veld and Tseng had been more like fathers to him than his real sire ever had, so the idea of joining the Turks family pleased him.

The death threat, well that was to be expected given what he'd done, but given who he was the Turks wouldn't touch him unless ordered to by his father, and in the end the Turks never told his father Rufus had discovered the truth. Rufus swore he'd never bring any of it to light or bring it up with the old man, it wasn't worth starting trouble over. So Veld had let it go. To Rufus, the truth about his mother's fate became just another of the many reasons that he hated his father.

This hatred, coupled with his own ambitions, had led him aid AVALANCHE both financially and with the top level intelligence he'd provided. Fortunately for Rufus, he wasn't like his mother. While she'd served her purpose as soon as he'd been handed to the wet nurse, Rufus's purpose was to inherit his father's empire. His father's blood flowed in his veins, and the old man was too vein to think of his company going to someone who wasn't a Shinra, who wasn't his. Even in his defiance and treason, Rufus had proved he was his father's son.

A frown creased Rufus's features for a moment. Did this mean his father had won after all?

Note: Thanks for reading. I've never written an FF7 fic before, so feedback would be appreciated. Please let me know if I got any of the facts wrong so I can fix things. Oh and credit to redcherryamber and her wonderful fic Somewhere in Midgar Two Children for the idea of President Shinra having his wife killed. It makes a lot of sense, and helps explain part of the reason Rufus wanted to kill his own father.