Prologue, Part I

There was a rose on the table. Beside it, an empty coffee cup that was, for some reason, clean. Only one chair was placed at the table, pushed half way in. The table was put in front of a window that looked out upon the ocean. The walls of the dining hall were a deep maroon, like that of his father's business suits. They were dark at night, and the priceless paintings and the elaborate light fixtures upon them were faint objects in the colorless night. To the left of the table was an entrance to a hallway that led to a vast library library. To the right was a closed door that opened into an equally massive kitchen. President Shinra once held massive parties in this area of the mansion, but his death brought change. Rufus, his socially inept son, lived there alone, ate alone, and worked alone. He had a house that could host and comfort almost one hundred residents and he was the only one that ever stepped foot inside it.

Shinra was destroyed, along with the city its fortunes were kept in. The thirty-three year old man was destroyed as a result of the ten years following meteor. He grieved for something, but was unsure of what. He had closed himself off from the world and was unaware of anything outside of his large, empty home.

He did not call it that.

His worst memories played in his mind night after night. He saw his mother, dancing with his father when he was two. He saw her, in bed, with a stranger when he was six. He saw her dead the next day, with his father and a gun stooping over the body. He saw the empty walls of his room, and the shadow of a menace approaching the corner, and he was struck. He saw the blood pouring from his nose when he was eleven, and his father stooping over him the same way he had seen him over his mother. At twelve, the horror stopped. He was sent to a private school to learn how to become his father's son.

He had scars from his return at eighteen, and scars from his rebellion at nineteen. At twenty, Rufus stayed in Junon. His father could not touch him there, but managed to control him using precious gil. He was forced into a military life. This, too, gave him scars. At twenty-one, he commanded the Turks in his first test of freedom. The bastard allowed him his own life in exchange for the lives of others. Here, Rufus formed a delicate, loose friendship with Tseng and the young recruit, Elena. The only thing that held it together was the small sense of hope Rufus allowed him. For the next two years, he became a man he liked and kept as little contact with his father as possible. He gained freedom at twenty-three and smiled at the sight of steel buried in his father's heart of metal and mako.

And the day after, he found himself fighting tears and watching blood drip onto the marble surface of the desk the old man died at. The tears were not for his father. They were not for Rufus. They were not for Shinra or the Turks. They had no meaning. The blood from his lip came from trying to hide back the streams from his eyes.

Rufus Shinra quickly fell into routine, faking emotions and lying. He became his father at the same age: eager, repressed, and entirely false. His second chance of life cut through his facade and allowed for emotion to show. But what good was it when the only thing to see him sad or vengeful was the mirror in his bathroom?

Life goes on, but only for those not holding on to some invisible thing they cannot identify. For Rufus, this killed him. He was no longer a man, but a zombie going through task after task and doing only the bare minimum to keep himself alive. His only passion was something instilled in him by his father, whose drunken masquerades required waltzes and scherzi played on the family's grand piano. When he would play, it touched on that invisible thing, but gave no clue to its name or face.

Ten years allowed him time enough to play through the repertoire housed in the library. He had mastered every one of the piano pieces he owned. Repeating a work was pointless. His only passion was without fuel. Realizing this, Rufus made a decision to break routine and venture out into the world for the first time since coming back from the wreckage of Midgar.

Stepping out of the house made him feel worthless without reason.

Each step granted Rufus new knowledge, and he looked at things for the first time with his heart, and not the judgmental, critical eyes inherited from his dethroned name.

Rufus Shinra had forgotten the world. He had forgotten the way to the city.

Rufus Shinra was lost.