In honor of the New Year:
It was fiercely cold outside, the sort of frostbitten air that seemed to leach all the warmth out of your skin the moment you stepped out. Reno swore and dove his hands into the pockets of his jacket. Rude laughed silently, a puff of mist in the frigid air. "Shit, I'm not used to this sort of weather, " Reno complained as he hunched his head further down against the driving wind. "Can't we just go back to Midgar? What do we have to go out to the middle of fuckin' nowhere for?"
"We're Turks." Tseng's voice was as velvety smooth as ever. "We go where we are ordered."
Reno hushed his complaints, straightening in shame at having violated his training. He was new come to the Turks, still heady from his selection. At seventeen, he was the youngest Turk ever, and while he couldn't help but glow with pride over the fact, in the dark of the night he wondered whether it was a sign of desperation in the declining powers of ShinRa.
For now though he pushed aside all his worries and concentrated on the mission at hand. Guard duty, Tseng had called it. Baby-sitting, Reno had whispered to Rude. Nine-year-old Rufus, the only son of President Shinra, was going to visit his maternal grandparents in Wutai for the New Year's celebration. It did not promise to be a very demanding mission, which, Reno reflected, was probably why he had been assigned to it, along with Rude to provide backup and Tseng to provide reports on his conduct. In fact, so far the most dangerous aspect of the whole affair was trying to contain his temper whenever the presidential brat threw one of his numerous tantrums. Rufus-sama, as he insisted on being called, was fast grating on everyone's nerves, although both Rude and Tseng were far too professional to let it show. Reno, with only a couple of months of training under his belt, was still trying to emulate their detached responses.
Gods, why couldn't he be more like them? There were times when he hated the fieriness of his emotions, even as he had hated his fiery hair when he was younger. One night he had tried to shear it all off, and his mother had walked in to find him standing there—bits and pieces of red hair sticking up all over his head as if he'd been inefficiently scalped. She had been horrified by what he'd done and had grounded him for weeks. He chuckled softly over the memory now and watched it the proof of his laughter float in front of him in the icy air.
Rufus' eyes narrowed, and he turned around to face Reno. "Are you laughing at me?" he asked, with offended pride.
"No, Rufus-sama. I was just...thinking."
"You're a Turk. You don't have to think. You just have to do what I tell you to do."
Reno flushed, but bit back his retort when Tseng shot him a look. I am a Turk, he told himself. Even if I don't feel like one yet. I have to be strong, like the others. I don't have to listen to the insults of children. Even if, he told himself, that child will one day grow up to command me.
Tseng stepped forward, next to Rufus, and distracted him with a series of questions about his newest racing chocobo, gift from his grandparents. Reno loosened his tie and wondered yet again how the others could stand such a chafing bit of clothing. He waited, falling into step with Rude. The bald Turk, as usual said nothing, but Reno felt a curious sense of welcoming from him. Together they walked on in silence.
It was a long trudge back to the heliport. Rufus had wanted to ride his new chocobo, but they had already learned the consequences of letting him astride a faster mount than their own. Reno swore that his ears still smarted from the wrath of President Shinra's vitriolic tirade when he learned that his son had shown up unescorted at Costa del Sol and had proceeded to wreak havoc in the many bars for over an hour before his guards had arrived. Or maybe it wasn't the memory, but the wind, which had picked up its ferocity now that it was almost nightfall.
Reno wrapped his jacket tighter around himself and concentrated on nothing more than climbing up the last low hill before the helipad office. A gust of wind ruffled his spiky bangs. He looked up and saw what looked like a swarm of tiny white moths swirl past on the breeze. Before he could ask Rude what kind of insects they were, another swarm rushed towards him. He waved his arms, trying to knock them away, but it was useless. He closed his eyes against the impending attack and felt icy wetness sting his eyelids, instead of the flutter of wings that he had expected. He opened his eyes. "What the...?"
"It's snowing," Rude replied.
"Snow....?" He extended a hand cautiously, trying to catch one of the elusive flakes.
"Don't you know what snow is?" Rufus taunted. "Or don't they teach you anything under the plate?"
"I know what snow is." He could feel his face heating up, stung at being insulted by a child. "My mother told me about it. She'd seen it once." Once. Weather was still something new and strange to him, having grown up under the shadow of the plate. "She said that it was white and crunchy and achingly cold. And that it covered the ground and the buildings like a white blanket." He'd always more than half disbelieved her. After all, how could something that looked like a blanket be so cold?
"Well, how do you think it gets there, huh? It doesn't just spring up out of the ground." Reno ground his teeth in irritation, and Tseng hurried Rufus ahead, over the crest of the hill and towards the inviting warmth of the heliport. Reno hung back with Rude, and barked out a stream of invective as soon as the boy was out of hearing range. Stupid, goddamned, conceited kid. Rude touched his arm lightly, an unspoken order, and Reno guiltily calmed down.
It was almost fully dark, and the heliport had turned on all their outside lights. Where the yellow lights of the runway shone against the darkening sky, the snow looked like flakes of gold dust, swirling in the wind. A searchlight swept by, catching a few dancing flakes and lighting them up like frenzied lightning bugs. It was snowing harder now, and the flakes were sticking to his hair and jacket. A few even clung to Rude's perpetual sunglasses, and Reno grinned as he wondered if any stuck to his friend's bald head as well. An image popped into his head of Rude, with a tiny pile of snow atop his head. He laughed out loud and Rude smiled back, as if he caught a glimpse of Reno's imaginings, and was also struck by their absurdity.
Rude tilted his head back and stared up at the night sky. Reno copied him and gazed awestruck at the dancing flakes of white aswirl against the blackness. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. The snow danced through the air, dipping and sawing in an intricate dance to an unheard tune. Some of the flakes flew by so fast that they appeared as nothing more than silvery streaks across the sky, like shooting stars or rocket flares. Rude's voice broke the stillness around them. "They say that every snowflake is unique. No two are ever the same."
"How can you tell? There's so many of them and they all look the same to me."
"You just have to look at them up close enough. Everything looks the same from far away. It's not until you get close that you can see the differences."
Reno blinked away a stray flake that had landed on his lashes. He thought he understood what Rude was saying. It was a welcoming of sorts. It's snowing, he thought, and I am a Turk. He spun around in a circle, arms outflung, laughing his wonder into the cold night air.
Inside the warm glow of the heliport, standing at the window, Tseng whispered to the newest Turk, "Happy New Year."
Author's Notes: As you might have guessed, I come from a warm climate (Louisiana) where snow is very, very rare. So snow on New Year's Day was a big deal to me. That got me to thinking about what it might be like for another character to experience snow. One who hasn't ever seen it before. I know it's just short and fluffy, but on New Year's Day you don't need great angst. And, in case you couldn't tell, it's fairly loosely inspired by Tenshi no Korin and Llamajoy's FFVII arc.