Reno glanced at his watch, squinting to discern the softly glowing numerals through the distortion of darkness and pouring rain. Five minutes. Five minutes… and he wouldn't have to think anymore. Counting crossties had worked for awhile as a distraction, but somewhere around seven hundred, he'd lost count.
A misstep in his drunken game of hopscotch along the center of the tracks almost sent him sprawling, but the bottle in his other hand didn't spill a drop. What the hell. At least he'd had the presence of mind to bring it with him; he didn't want to be sober for this. A broken laugh escaped him. As if it mattered when he would be splattered for a quarter mile through the slums in the next…he glanced at his watch…four minutes and thirty-eight seconds. He imagined he could already feel the vibration beneath his feet.
He laughed, thinking of the times he'd bitched to Tseng about the necessity of memorizing train schedules.
Three minutes, twenty-two seconds.
Nothing quite like being a complete failure. Especially when it spills over to drag someone else down with you. Can't ever be clean enough to touch you. Fuck. "I ain't no hero," he mumbled into the night.
The only thing in his life he'd managed to do halfway right, and then completely wrong. Blood on my hands… Fuck it. He hadn't come out here to indulge in a self-pity party.
Two minutes, fifty-seven seconds.
A part of him hoped Cloud would think he'd simply left, rather than inflict any more damage on his lover. Maybe Cloud thought he didn't deserve any better. "I won't let you make him die, too!" he yelled at his ghosts.
Cloud did deserve better. He deserved more than a lover who continually handed him his heart on a skewer. He deserved Zack; but Zack was gone. Hell…Reno wondered how the blond had managed to put up with him as long as he had.
Zack was so going to kick his ass when Reno met him in the Lifestream, if for no other reason than never thinking, never realizing how much hell he put Cloud through.
Zack. Sometimes he hated the bastard; simply for having existed. Even though Cloud had never once reproached him by comparing Reno to that impossible standard.. Cloud just didn't think that way. But he rarely talked, and Reno had forgotten how to listen to his silence. Until now.
One minute, forty-one seconds.
He wished he could remember the good times better. The times of listening to his lover breathe as he slept. The times they had breathed together, and it had been all they'd ever needed.
Nothing like being numb and blind, he decided. Blind to the pain in those impossibly blue eyes. Reno could hear the rumble above the rain now, and took another long, burning swallow of courage.
Thirty-nine seconds.
" How could you keep believing in me when I don't believe in myself? I ain't the one you need..." Reno closed his eyes against the brilliant glare of the headlamp outlining him in the pouring rain. The vibration beneath his feet became a small earthquake, making it difficult to stand. He stepped off the tracks for a moment. Timing was everything.
Seven seconds.
Funny how he'd expected it to hurt more, Reno thought when the impact came, along with the warning wail of the train's whistle.
He felt himself flung through the air, hitting hard and rolling in broken glass and gravel. "Did I fuck this up too?" he wondered as he lay there panting, afraid to open his eyes unless he find himself looking at his own body parts scattered along the tracks. Small comfort, there…he didn't want to have to think before he either bled out or his brain realized there wasn't anything left to do anymore.
The rain pelted into his face, and he managed to turn his head to the side, thinking of another rain, another day on the bluffs beyond Midgar. Another day when he had failed.
The train with its hundreds of cars blazed along beside him, the lighted windows from the passenger compartments winking through the darkness, passengers oblivious to the figure caught in the strobe of endless days and nights stretching across empty years.
Reno closed his eyes. If he lay here long enough…
But then there were footsteps.
"Wallet's in the pocket, man. You're welcome to it. Just go away, willya?"
He could hear the crunch of gravel as the person knelt, but then a hand brushed his soaked hair gently, the touch somehow taking away the pain as he was helped to sit. Reno opened his eyes, squinting against the rain, swaying as his unknown benefactor released him. The person spoke, and Reno felt a chill that had nothing to do with the rising wind.
"Go home, Reno…get it right this time. You can still be a hero."
When he looked up again, he was alone. He sat there a few moments longer, simply remembering how to breathe. Staggering to his feet, he turned back the way he had come. With any luck, he would be home by morning.
well there was a time when you let me know
what's really going on below
but now you never show that to me do you
but remember when i moved in you
and the holy dove was moving too
and every breath we drew was hallelujah
well, maybe there's a god above
but all i've ever learned from love
was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
it's not a cry that you hear at night
it's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah
hallelujah...
Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah