His stance was strong and closed; arms crossed, feet firmly planted. His face was still youthful, but his eyes and mouth were hardened and bitter. Some thought his lack of human kindness was the result of his taking the presidency at the age of 23. Others suspected that it had been there all along. But no matter what you thought about Rufus Shinra, you kept it to yourself for the same reasons that you leave a hungry tiger alone. It was just a good idea.
He glared as menacingly as one could from under strawberry-blonde eyebrows, surveying the blank and barren landscape before him. Most of the city had fled to smaller, outskirt towns or suburbs. Apparently Heidigger had suggested this, "for the safety of the citizens." Foolish and pointless, of course. Meteor would hit Kalm and Icicle Inn as hard as it would hit Midgar. Of course, WEAPON was less of a problem in small, noncoastal towns...
Damn WEAPON. He had enough to worry about, with insubordinate heads of department and Meteor and Huge Materia, without a Planet-created monster attacking whenever he was trying to catch his breath. And the paperwork it caused! Rebuilding reactors and tallying damage couldn't always be delegated down...and he was being swamped with report after report.
He didn't care, though, not really. One less reactor meant so little when everyone was dying anyway. Even him....but he didn't care. The intensity in his eyes was gone now. It had been missing ever since...ever since her.
She had been so beautiful--and so cold--like him. There was never any love between them, of course, none had been possible. But the connection between them had been so strong, and the few times they had been alone together it had been so incredibly--passionate? Maybe. But there was something that they had seen in each other, something that they hated in themselves and scorned in each other...yet he had never scorned her. He had never even known her real name, for god's sake! She was always just Aphrodite to him, goddess of beauty...even if she was nothing but a prostitute. There was a connection between them, one he would never be able to find again.
He picked up a small orb of red summon materia. It was anyone's guess why it was here in his office, but that didn't matter now. He toyed with it absently, watching the bright red of the orb swirl and ebb. He could feel it pulse slightly in the palm of his hand. He clenched his fist around it.
Their whirlwind affair was purely sexual in reality. Their meetings were quick and furtive, but he had never really known what else it had been until the day Meteor was summoned, and she had been found dead in an alley. Suicide.
His whole body tensed up. Without thinking, he hurled the materia orb with all his strength across the room. It smashed through an office window and disappeared into the dark city beyond.
After that, he had stopped caring about the rest of the world.
Nothing had changed in his life, except her death. Nothing at all. But as he stood alone, staring out the window and not seeing anything, he realized that it didn't matter whether or not he would die in the next seven days.
Which is why, when WEAPON's beam struck the Shinra HQ, he stood still, with only a hint of a smile on his proud, sculptured face.
A/N: Well, I reread this, and edited it some. I think it flows a little better now, but I'm still not happy with it. Tell me what you think. - Desdemona