Title: A Reflection, by Rufus Shinra
Claim: Rufus/Reno, fics in an arc, 1000+ words each
Themes: 17. Virus, 18. Fever, 55. Logic, 56. Ties, 95. Escape
Wordcount: 3940
Rating: T
Summary: A summation of the entire arc, narrated from Rufus' point of view
Note: Written because Rufus was demanding his viewpoint on a handful of things I was trying to write, and because I realized that that the refrain of this song is just perfect for his perspective on all of this.
I got a disease
Deep inside me
Makes me feel uneasy baby
I can't live without you
Tell me what I am supposed to do about it
Keep your distance from it
Don't pay no attention to me
I got a disease
I think that I'm sick
But leave me be while my world is coming down on me
You taste like honey, honey
Tell me can I be your honey
Be, be strong
Keep telling myself it that won't take long till
I'm free of my disease
-Matchbox 20 - Disease
A Reflection
by Rufus Shinra
In my life, I've only ever had two lasting illnesses. The one most people know about was called Geostigma. It's a horrible, debilitating thing that makes your skin turn black. I won't go into the details, but it's very painful. I'm cured of that, and I daresay it was largely my other disease that got me through it. That might sound odd, but really it's not when you think about it.
You see, my second affliction's name is Reno.
I knew of him from when I was fairly young. At that time, he was a new recruit to the Turks, and that was most of what I knew about him. I knew that he was said to be very fast, that he had exceptionally bright red hair, and that I found him more than a little weird. He never wore a tie, like the other Turks did. That bothered me. Later, I came to accept that as part of his charm, but it irked me when I was twelve or so. I was very stringent about things back then.
Alright, I still am, and it still does, but nevertheless it is part of his charm, so I got over it. Sort of.
Anyway, I had known of him for a while, but the first time I ever really spoke with him was after that horrid incident with Avalanche. If you don't know what I'm talking about, so much the better. I'm not going to tell you. Suffice it to say that for a while I was under the supervision of the Turks, and for the first few days they felt the need to have someone sit with me. Constantly. Reno was one of those people.
If I make it sound like he was a special case even then, it's because he was. Most of them would sit quietly and watch me, which admittedly was a little disconcerting, but nothing I wasn't used to, to be honest. Reno though, would not shut up. He insisted on having a conversation. Not because he was interested, but because he was bored. That label of "fast" also finds a form in "can't sit still for five seconds."
Now before you get the wrong idea, we hated each other back then. I suspect we would have literally killed each other if circumstances hadn't prevented it.
Oh the irony if he had been the first person I ever actually pulled the trigger on.
But I'll get to that.
Somewhere in there, he started hounding me about whether or not I had friends. I didn't. Girlfriend? I didn't. Boyfriend? I didn't. At which point I told him that I did not need any friends or anything else and if he wasn't interested in being my friend himself, which I still guarantee at that point he wasn't, he should not be sounding like he was making an offer. For some reason the conversation really made me miss my cat, but that's beside the point.
Actually, since I brought him up, I will take a moment to talk about Dark Nation. "Cat" is a bit of an understatement, as Reno found out the hard way one day when Dark Nation practically knocked him out of bed. Frankly, it was pretty hysterical to see Reno jump like that, but I can't quite blame him. I suppose Dark Nation isn't what comes to most peoples' minds at the word "pet." He was a rare form of black Cuahl, very expensive, very hard to handle, and he loved me.
Sorry, I had to laugh for a second, because I realized that description also applies to Reno. Minus, perhaps, the "expensive."
Anyway, what I told Reno back then when he asked about whether or not I had friends was that I had Dark Nation, and in many ways that was the truest thing I could have said. He was my only real friend growing up, and I will admit I still miss him. But enough about Dark Nation, and back to that discussion about me, friends, and Reno.
I thoroughly believed that I was fine by myself. As I already said, I had Dark Nation, and that was enough companionship. I figured a cat couldn't easily betray me or give away secrets, so that was fine with me. I want to say that something nagged at me about that conversation and such, but really it didn't. I never thought much about it at all, and I'm not convinced he did either. That said, I am sure that's when the infection started, because it's the first time Reno saw something about me that I didn't see myself. I was lonely.
About five years passed, without much in the way of interaction between us. But he watched me, and even if he didn't know I noticed, I knew he was watching me, and I knew he actually saw me. I suspect that might have influenced me more than I often think, but it's hard to say. I know I put tremendous effort into making certain that no one else knew much of anything about me, and hoped that he wasn't gaining any other particular insights. But, as I said, I might have done that anyway. Regardless, the shift in our relationship happened one day when he was serving as my bodyguard and things went awry. By awry, I mean we were unexpectedly attacked by a group of five men. Reno took care of most of them pretty easily, and was all set let the last guy go with a scary look and a warning.
I admit I was a little impressed with the way Reno handled that, up until the guy snuck back up behind him. Ungrateful little shit. Really.
I would have alerted Reno, but I didn't see the guy coming soon enough, either. So instead, I shot him. He fell to the ground and for a moment that felt like an eternity, all I could do was stare. Blood was everywhere and half the man's head was missing. Reno said something, probably along the lines of "thank you," but I have no idea what it actually was.
It would be both stereotypical and inaccurate to say I felt sick. Trust me, gruesome was not something I was that unaccustomed to. But it was the first time I had ever actually been the person to pull the trigger, and I did not expect to react to that the way I did. Namely, turning into a trembling mess.
Yes, the first time I ever actually killed someone myself was when I was twenty. I know. Shut up.
Now think about that comment I made earlier about irony, trigger, and Reno. You see why that's funny.
Reno, for some reason, decided he was worried about me, and that the best thing to do was to go and get me drunk. Don't ask me about the logic behind this. From what I can tell, that's his solution to a lot of things. And I can say it did at least keep me from spending the night trembling in a corner or something. By all guesses, that's probably more or less what I would have done, provided nobody was around to see it.
For the record, I didn't just say that.
As you might guess, my recollection of that particular night is a little hazy. I know we went to some bar in the middle of some slum, and I drank something that tasted completely awful, followed by another drink that I don't know if it was actually delicious, or just by comparison. In any case, it was alcoholic, and that's the important part.
I also know that Reno took me back to his apartment and dropped me on his bed, and then he tried to walk away. I grabbed hold of his wrist and told him not to leave. He was confused, so I pulled him over onto me and kissed him. I think that scared him, just a little. And really I'm not sure what was going through my mind that made me do that, but it wasn't entirely the alcohol. I wanted him, and that was still true even after I was sober. Like I said, he had already infected me, a long time before then.
And, admittedly, he is just really damn sexy. I didn't say that, either.
I lost, in the end. He went and slept on the couch. Fucking gentleman. Smart, I suppose, to not take my word on things while I was incapable of walking in a straight line, but even so. That annoyed me terribly, and drowned any inclination I might have had to bring up the subject again.
At the time, I would have said that annoyance was all there was to it, but now I realize I was horribly afraid that it meant he didn't actually want me too, and I simply did not want to hear that. As it turns out, the fact that I didn't bring it up inspired similar thoughts from him, and it took us a couple of torturous weeks to get that out in the open. Which could have been avoided if either one of us had just been a little less stubborn.
Ah, hindsight. What a lovely thing.
Let me say here that Reno's got a bit of a reputation, not just for sleeping with a lot of people (and I suspect that part is actually pretty exaggerated, given what I now know of him), but for being very, very good at it. He deserves every word of praise ever given to him in this category. I could go on, but I will spare your ears.
You really don't need to know.
And then the time came when I was finally going to be President, and not Vice President. To this day, I have no idea why that made me freak out as much as it did. "Freak out" might be a poor choice of words. I was calm, outwardly. But inwardly, I was concerned about a lot of things I hadn't been up until then. The relevant one being that reputation I mentioned Reno has and how that was probably not so good for my soon-to-be-even-more-in-the-public-limelight image.
It took me a long time to realize that what I was actually afraid of there was not anything to do with reputations or anything of the sort, but of actually being at the top. I know that sounds ridiculous, but let me put it this way: it wasn't Reno's reputation I was worried about. It was just Reno. He was a weakness and a liability in oh so many ways. Do I really need to explain?
At the time, of course, what had caught my attention was his reputation, and I explained that to him as the reason we couldn't be together anymore. I didn't realize myself how bad a decision that was until much, much later. At the time, I was just happy to have one less thing to worry about. Especially when that one thing less was someone infinitely capable of noticing all my weaknesses, in addition to being one of them. It was nice to be free of that, even if it meant that I was back to being lonely, and ever more aware of it after having been less so for a while. I ignored that last. There were more important things to think about than my own loneliness. And fundamentally, I still thoroughly believed I didn't need anyone.
Then there was this little thing called Diamond Weapon. If you don't know the story there, suffice it to say that it died, but not before it blasted the office building I happened to be standing in to bits. People generally assumed I was dead, and sometimes I'm still not sure why I wasn't. Meanwhile, I was trapped in the rubble with a broken leg, and it took a good week or so for someone to come by and rescue me. Thankfully I had enough water and snack food to last me that long. Just barely.
I don't have much to say about the next couple months. I had a lot of medical stuff going on, but I wasn't really focused on that, or anything else. I had gotten out of the rubble of the building, only to find that my life was basically rubble, too. I was raised as the Vice President of Shinra Electric Company, and the company more or less went down along with that building. Needless to say, I was a little lost.
Somewhere in the somewhat aimless wandering of those few months, I wound up on Reno's doorstep. I have to say, "You're not dead," was not precisely the greeting I was expecting. Actually I don't know what I expected, or what I wanted. I didn't quite dare think that he might still care about me, but as the conversation went on, it became apparent to me that he did. And that I did, which actually I hadn't quite realized. And that I had a very strong urge to kiss the man, which I did. I don't think I had ever seen him quite so happy before then.
Thus, I was very surprised when the first thing he did upon us entering his bedroom was punch me in the face. I fell onto his bed and looked up at him as I rubbed my jaw. I am sure I looked incredibly confused.
"What the fuck was that for?" I asked. Yes, in those words. I was not feeling particularly subtle. He hits hard.
"For not bothering to even tell me you were alive before now," he explained, then added with a bit less force, "And for, you know, just generally being an ass." It was the weirdest thing. When he started saying that, he was angry, but by the end of it, it was just gone. The look in his eyes was... torn. Like part of him wanted to be very angry with me, but just couldn't keep it up.
And that, more than anything, was what made me realize I deserved more than that punch in the face.
"I hurt you," I observed. I say "observed" because while I had known that for a long time, it hadn't quite struck me until just then. I've hurt a lot of people in my lifetime, and most of that still doesn't bother me. Reno, though. He was a special case. I hadn't actually intended to hurt him anywhere near as much as I did, and in that moment I realized just how much I had. It was written all over his face.
"Yeah, no shit," he replied, and I stared at the floor.
"I'm... sorry." It was nearly a whisper. Apologies are not something I do well, or often. I try to avoid them whenever possible. But apparently that was audible and sincere enough to get through to Reno. The next thing I knew, he was sitting next to me with his arms wrapped around me and his face buried in my shoulder.
"Oh hell with it, I've missed you Rufus." I couldn't say anything for a moment. I'd missed him, too. Or at least, I knew I had at that point. I hadn't quite paid enough attention up until then to notice. But the whole situation was making my head spin.
"You forgive me, then?" I didn't need to feel him nod against my shoulder to know the answer. But it was nice. A moment later, he pulled back enough to look at me.
"Why did you dump me? It wasn't just my reputation." The question caught me off guard, but once I processed it I couldn't help but laugh. Not like it was funny, but the kind of nervous laughter that happens when life just does something weird. Reno is good at inspiring that sort of laughter. You may remember I said that at the time I hadn't known, myself. And actually I'm not sure I ever really put the rest together until he pointed it out to me just then. Ironic, isn't it?
"Because you can say things like that," I said, once I got control over the laughter. He just blinked at me, confused. So insightful in some ways, and so clueless in others. "No one else would have noticed there was anything else to it," I clarified. Really, nobody. Even me, apparently. He continued to look confused for a moment and then something seemed to click. And I swear the next thing he said almost made me faint.
"Even you?"
"How the hell do you do that?" I stared at him for about a second, and then I couldn't look at him. I focused very intently on a randomly selected spot on the floor.
I'm not known for being transparent. Nor am I known for being cowardly. But there was Reno, for some reason able to read me like a fucking book, and really all I could think was run. Hide.
"I'm talented," he commented with a shrug, and put a hand on my chin and pulled me to where I was looking at him again. "It's not something you have to be afraid of."
No, seriously, how does he do that?
"I'm not--" I started to protest, but realized the futility. I was terrified by this uncanny knack of his to know what I was thinking, and, by default, he knew it. "I mean--" Well, shit. I stopped, and growled slightly. "Why do you do this to me?" I had to leave. Coming back to Reno had been stupid. Very, very stupid, and the only thing I could do was get out. Run away. Remove him from my life. Again. I tried to stand, but he grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go.
"Don't leave," he said. "Don't you dare leave. Not again. I need you." I froze. And ironically what went through my mind was the echo of a time I had said the same thing to him. Don't leave. I had been drunk at the time, and I hadn't really known what I wanted. Reno wasn't drunk, and he knew exactly what he wanted, and that was me. Not the President of Shinra, not my money, not my status. Me. I sighed and draped an arm over him.
"I won't," I said, and I know I sounded more irritated than I meant to. "I can't." He looked up at me curiously, and I have to think he was wondering whether I meant that as an overall statement or just about that moment, given that he was holding me so tightly I could barely even breathe, much less run. So I clarified. "You're like a virus. I'm infected." That would be the origin of the metaphor I've been using here throughout, and I still consider it a good one. I was exposed to the man, there was a five year gestation period, and then he took hold and I wasn't going to get rid of him no matter how hard I tried.
"I don't think there's a cure, you know," he commented, with that adorably sexy lopsided grin of his. And looking back at him, I felt the truth of that statement. There was no cure. There wasn't even really a remedy. Even if I walked away, I was just going to end up coming back. Proven fact; I'd already done that. May as well surrender.
"I'm not convinced I want one," I said, and a split second later he was on top of me and kissing me. Had I mentioned, "fast"?
No more details about what happened after that. It involved a distinct lack of clothing. And you really don't need to know. It was an interesting night; leave it at that.
Alright, one more detail. You may remember that I mentioned being trapped in rubble, and a lot of medical work. I had a cast on my leg, assorted bandages, and a number of scars that hadn't been there before. That gave him pause, and at some point he commented that he would kill Diamond Weapon if it wasn't already dead. I didn't bother pointing out the several layers of futility in that statement. It was touching in its own way.
There was one thing that did bother me, though. It was the way he looked at me as if I was broken. And, by all respects, I was, but for him to look at me that way? I couldn't stand it.
"I'm fine," I told him.
"I know, but..."
"I'm fine," I insisted, and after a second he smiled.
"Well, anyway, you're still just as beautiful." I blinked at him.
Somehow, that had been bizarrely comforting to hear. "Capable" was the word I would have preferred, but he probably knew that and avoided saying it intentionally. He does that. And regardless, it was a good enough compliment.
He is too, incidentally. Beautiful. Absolutely, incredibly gorgeous. Don't tell him you heard that from me. I'm not in the habit of saying exactly what he wants to hear, either.
It was not too long after that when I first heard of Geostigma, and not long after that that it began affecting me. This led to more visits to doctors, more bandages, and eventually a wheelchair.
In all truth, I didn't really need the wheelchair. I was perfectly capable of walking. Most of the time. I know I said it earlier, but Geostigma is extremely painful. That hits in waves. If I happened to be standing when one of said waves hit, I was very quickly on the ground. I somehow never managed to further injure myself that way, but it was quickly decided that sooner or later I was going to end up with a concussion. Thus, the wheelchair.
There are whole segments from this time where my memories are lost to hellish fevers and the terrible nightmares they produced. For the most part, I now do not remember the dreams. Mostly what I recall is the feeling of Reno's fingers gently running through my hair, and the sound of his voice telling me that everything was alright.
Needless to say, this was not a good time in my life. But Reno was there, and that made it better. Tseng, Rude, and Elena reemerged as well. It was a little like the old days. Minus, well, just about everything. So not really much like the old days after all.
Somewhere in here, a trio of terrors surfaced, looking for their "mother." But that's a long story in and of itself. A lot happened, and the wheelchair was convenient for more reasons than simply getting to places.
The end result of all of that was a cure for the Geostigma. A little bit of water, and it all washed away. Simple as that. No more pain, no more ugly black skin, no more fevers, no more collapsing, no more wheelchair. I still have nightmares on occasion, but not like I used to. Though I still often wake from them with gentle fingers in my hair.
I hold no hope that there will ever be a cure for the disease called Reno. No cure; not even a remedy. No matter what happens, I'm stuck with him, probably for the rest of my life.
And for that, I just might be grateful.