Another fic about Reno, this time just before the plate-drop. This story partly comes out of ideas I had while thinking about Reno's character after reading a great fic on Archive of our Own called axis mundi by anax. It's all about Rufus, and I highly recommend it.

Thank you to Licoriceallsorts for helping with some questions I had about the BC timeline and FF7 plot holes. For the purposes of this story I'm assuming that Reno, Rude and Tseng believe all the BC Turks died fighting Zirconiade at this point in time, although I now think they most likely did know they were still alive.

I'm also assuming that Reno only wanted his men to shoot Cloud in the church when he went to arrest Aerith, even though in the game he's totally blasé about the fact that they might both be dead, and that he would then be responsible for the loss of the Promised Land! This game drives me crazy. Mostly in a good way.

Janus

"Ah, shit that - that hurts!"

"Yeah, I know, I know. Hold on, man, I'm on it – here…"

The green glow of Cure magic filled the church, and Dylan's body tensed even more for a moment, his back arching off the ground, before he sagged with the relief of pain purged. He took a shuddering breath and managed a laugh. "Thanks. Would've been embarrassing – killed by a fucking barrel!"

Reno flicked the restore materia back into its slot in his gun, and looked over at Jackson, who was standing with Trent, both of them looking somewhat shell-shocked.

"You two okay now?"

"Yes, Boss," Jackson affirmed, taking off his helmet and running thin fingers through his abundant brown curls, as Trent nodded, still breathless from the Cure Jackson had applied to his wounds. "Never expected a SOLDIER though."

"No," Reno agreed. "Who the hell was that? Mako eyes, for sure. Can this day get any worse? This whole fucking year, come to think…" His eyes narrowed as he gazed up at the hole in the roof, and the damaged plate above it. "That wasn't there before. If he fell from somewhere near the reactor… Shit – if the Ancient's in the hands of a terrorist…"

"Are we going to be in trouble for this?" Trent asked nervously. It was only his second patrol as a Private First Class, and he didn't want to blow his hard-won promotion.

"I'll most likely 'catch holy hell' as you put it," Reno said, "But what's new? Don't worry, you three did okay. No one reckoned on a SOLDIER. And what were we supposed to do? Be a whole lot worse if we'd killed the target by mistake. Thought we were fucked when she fell while you were firing at SOLDIER boy. I'll report in."

"Aren't we going after her, Sir?" Jackson asked.

"Not right now. Where can she go? The city's on lock-down because of the terrorist attacks. We'll pick her up later, once we have more intel on this rogue SOLDIER. I just hope he doesn't realise what she is – but even if he is with the terrorists, unless they have some inside info, that ain't likely." Reno frowned, thinking, remembering a moment in the Corel reactor when Rufus Shinra's association with terrorists had looked like getting most of the Turks killed in one fell swoop. Still, that was in the past, and Rufus had come through this time, effectively saving the three remaining Turks from the President's ire and summary execution. But that had been yesterday. Would screwing up this mission put him in the firing line again, Reno wondered? Tseng would be ambivalent about his failure – the Boss's relationship with the Ancient girl was complicated, and Reno knew he'd been unhappy about the order to bring her in, but defying the President's direct order at this stage of proceedings would be tantamount to suicide.

With a sigh that he tried to conceal from the infantrymen, Reno pulled his PHS from his pocket and called Tseng. When he answered, Tseng's voice was strained. "Reno? Is she – safe?"

"She escaped. There was a SOLDIER here. Looked kinda familiar, but I can't place him… He put up quite a fight. Couple of the guys were wounded, but they're okay. Fuck knows what the hell's going on. Sir."

"It's chaos up here. The terrorists escaped but we have intel that they might be operating out of the Seven slums. Heidegger's got Corneo involved in confirming that. There have been eyewitness accounts of a man with a gun grafted onto his arm, which tallies with the footage from the Reactor One cameras during the last attack. The President demanded to be flown into Reactor Five with a whole platoon of infantry and Scarlet's latest weapon as soon as the alarms went. He spoke to the terrorists. One of them was trooper Cloud Strife. Zack's fellow escapee."

"Yeah," Reno said slowly. "Yeah I think that was him. He was wearing a SOLDIER uniform though, and fighting like a fuckin' First. Thought he looked familiar from the files. Well - the Anci – uh – Aerith is with him now."

There was a pause, and then Tseng said, "In a phone call we received this morning claiming responsibility for Reactor One, they called themselves 'Avalanche'."

"But Fuhito's dead! I thought that was the end of it, damn it!"

"I don't know whether they're an offshoot, or a second unit, or if they've just taken the name," Tseng said, sounding very tired. "It doesn't matter, really. The President's had enough. He wants it over. I think he's planning something drastic."

"So - I should go after Aerith?"

This time Tseng's pause was longer. "No," he said eventually. "Not yet. If Strife helped her escape then she's probably not in danger from him. If this Avalanche is associated with Fuhito's operation, then we have to assume they know about Aerith's importance to the company, but if Strife had wanted her dead he could have done it... He's obviously regained his strength, and who knows what the levels of mako exposure he was subjected to might do to his capabilities?" Reno could feel the weight of Tseng's sorrow over the phone as he added, "We've lost too many Turks already. I'll - deal with Aerith from now on. Reno – take the rest of today off, and show up ready for anything tomorrow. I have a feeling we're going to be busy."

"Will do, Boss. Uh – thanks." Reno looked around at the three infantrymen. He was exhausted and he couldn't even think about what it would mean if Avalanche had survived after everything – after all of the others had given their lives defeating the terrifying summon Zirconiade. All Reno really wanted to do was to go back to the tower, maybe have a quiet drink with Rude, and then sleep. But that would hardly be fair to the three troopers. Dylan and Trent had both been badly wounded before Cure sorted them out, and Jackson had kept his head admirably.

"Calling off the search for tonight," Reno told them, mustering a smile from somewhere. "Drinks back at the Goblins? I'm buying."

It wasn't the same, but Reno tried. Dylan was friendly and talkative, and his wayward wiry hair reminded Reno of Rod, even if it was a dirty blond instead of the familiar red. Jackson was quieter, a little serious. He looked nothing like Kit, but something in his manner provoked memories nonetheless. Trent actually looked a bit like a Trig, although his hair was all tight, neat cornrows, and his eyes were brown rather than that unusual blue the girls used to call 'violet', much to Trig's embarrassment. Cassie had loved winding him up about that. She used to say –

No. Stop thinking about them. Does no good. They saved the world. They were doing their jobs.

"Okay, Sir?" Dylan asked. Reno looked up. "Oh – yeah. Thanks. Just thinkin' about that - SOLDIER."

"I know, right? Couldn't believe it! And that sword. You know who used to have a sword like that?"

"Angeal," Trent said, just as Jackson replied, "Yeah – Zack Fair."

"Zack's sword was Angeal's," Dylan told them. "But who was that guy?"

"Anti ShinRa," Reno said. "All we need to know."

"Yeah," Dylan agreed fervently. "He threw a fucking barrel at me! What happened to the honour of SOLDIER?"

"Ex SOLDIER," Jackson said quietly.

"I'll get more drinks," Reno put in, not wanting to get into a debate about Strife – not wanting to think about Zack Fair's fate, or Strife's probable reasons for siding with the enemy. Were the terrorists who'd blown up the reactors really part of Avalanche? If so, no wonder the President had had enough – Reno couldn't blame him for that. Something drastic, Tseng had said. Reno knew enough about what the President was capable of to be certain that, whatever it was, it wouldn't be pretty.

When he got back to the table Reno was relieved to see that the three troopers were focussed on something else. "Not again!" Dylan groaned. "This is impossible!"

"Bad luck," Trent offered.

Jackson smiled, scooping up a one-gil piece from the table. "Okay, sixth time lucky, huh?" he flipped the coin into the air and caught it, placing it on the back of his hand before revealing –

"Heads again! Sorry – I win."

"If I hadn't given it to you myself, I'd think it had heads on both sides," Dylan said.

"Let's see?" Reno asked. Jackson handed him an ordinary coin, the switch so well done that, if Reno hadn't been waiting for it, he wouldn't have noticed.

"Uh-uh. The other one."

Jackson grinned, and a second coin appeared between his fingers as if from nowhere. Reno took it from him and showed both faces to Dylan – two identical President Shinras: no mistaking the thrust of that pugnacious jaw and the famous moustache.

"Hey!" Dylan exclaimed, indignant.

"What?" Jackson laughed, "It's just a trick. I never got you to put money on it, did I?"

"No – but – Oh, okay. Show me how you do the switch?"

Reno watched the three troopers absorbed in Jackson's lesson. He leaned back against the wall and downed his second bottle of beer in one go. Better make this one the last, if the shit was likely to hit the fan tomorrow. Next one, anyway, or maybe the one after…

Trent turned to him, his face bright, full of youthful enthusiasm. "How'd you know, huh, Sir? About the coin?"

"Seen it before," Reno replied. "Two sides the same."

"Guess you see a lot of things, in the Turks," Trent said.

Reno looked at him. "Yeah."

Trent noticed that Reno's drink was already finished. "You want another? Yeah? I'll get another round in."

"Why not?" Reno replied.

When the barmaid called last orders Reno was surprised at how quickly the time had gone. The three troopers had turned out to be good company, and the two drinks he'd intended to be his limit had somehow become five or six. He was nowhere near drunk, but pleasantly in the moment, temporarily freed from thoughts of the past – or the future.

At some point someone had started a tab at the bar. "You get back to barracks," Reno told his men. "I'll settle up here."

"Thanks, Sir," Trent and Dylan chorused. Jackson smiled woozily as Trent helped him to his feet. At the doorway Jackson waved a cheery goodbye to Reno, who was at the bar paying the bill. Reno waved vaguely in Jackson's direction, wondering fleetingly whether it was worth trying it on with the pretty barmaid and deciding after all that he'd really rather just sleep.

On his way out of the bar Reno's eye was caught by something that glinted on the floor near the table where they'd been sitting. Bending to retrieve it, he found that it was Jackson's double-headed one gil piece. Slipping it into his pocket, Reno resolved to give it back next time he saw Jackson. They were good guys, those three. Not Turks – never Turks, but… Yeah. Good guys.

x

The lights in the hospital wing were low. Rude looked away from Reno's drugged and bandaged body, over to the neat row of empty beds. He tried not to think about the hospitals in Sectors Six and Eight – how the reporter on the news had commented on the frantic preparations to cope with survivors, which had turned out to be so tragically unnecessary. In the event, the destruction caused by the fall of the Sector Seven plate had been so absolute that no more than a handful of people had survived. Rude would have turned off the TV in the nurses' station if he could, but the duty nurse was watching – of course she was; every normal person would be – and even without looking Rude already knew all those images by heart: the baby they kept showing on every broadcast – the old man who was so pathetically grateful "only" to have lost a leg – the dog. Over and over again, the fucking dog.

Sometime, late in the night or early in the morning, Tseng appeared, his soft footsteps on the linoleum jolting Rude out of a doze.

"How is he?" Tseng asked.

Rude looked up at Tseng, somehow surprised that the director looked the same as he always did – neat, calm, orderly. "He'll make it. They're keeping him under until morning." Rude hesitated. "Is – she…"

"Yes."

Rude nodded, once.

"You did a good job, flying. I wasn't sure we'd be able to get close enough to get him off that support beam."

"Yeah." Rude looked across at Reno again – the unnatural stillness of his normally mobile face, the sickly pallor of his skin – then back at Tseng. "I said he should fly and I'd be the one to- to do it – but he – we – discussed –"

"Reno's not one to back down," Tseng said.

"He wouldn't listen. I didn't back down either. We argued about it. He seemed to think it was his place, but –"

"He's Second," Tseng said.

"Yeah – yeah, but – it shouldn't matter, not with something like this – you know? Something this big. I wasn't about to let him -"

"Someone had to do it," Tseng told Rude, firmly. "I would have done it myself, if -"

"She wouldn't have trusted anyone else," Rude said quickly, then turned his head away, appalled at his own lack of tact. After a long silence, he said, "But - Reno will have to live with this."

"We'll all have to live with it."

They both looked at Reno in silence, listening to the distant drone of the TV and the quiet, repetitive beep of the heart monitor.

Eventually Tseng asked, "So – how did you decide?"

Rude looked at the floor. The answer seemed somehow profoundly disrespectful after the event. Stupid to worry about that – given - everything. Still, Rude burned with deep embarrassment as he met Tseng's eyes and confessed, "We couldn't agree. In the end, Reno - well - he just - got a coin out of his pocket and said, "Oh, for fuck's sake! Heads it's me, tails it's you."

"And it was heads."

"Yeah."

Tseng nodded. "Sounds like Reno."

Silence fell between them again, as they watched their injured colleague sleeping – the solitary occupant of the pristine ward.