Transcend
He sits on a bar stool; blue smoke around him. Background noise fades to black as the tip of his cigarette glows faintly in the hazy room. He taps it lightly, and grey ash settles softly on the stained counter.
His eyes scan the room, looking for someone, but quickly return to the bottle of scotch sitting next to his arm. Water clings to the bottle, and he watches the dark ring it makes on the wood in the oppressively warm room. The sharp smell of alcohol hangs in the air, as he sits by himself in the corner of the dark bar, and he doesn't smile. There is a glass in front of him, and it catches the dim light, but he ignores it. Instead he reaches for the bottle, feeling the cold press against his overheated skin.
He drinks, slowly, although he almost doesn't taste it. He is only conscious of the smoke, the half full bottle and the way his fingers stick to the chilled bottle when he puts it back down.
He turns briefly to scan the room again, although it is getting harder to see through the dusky haze. Once more he returns to staring at the empty glass and the half full bottle, alone in the corner of the shadowed bar.
Silence.
It replaces the mischievous grin and the hinting, mocking voice. His friend's face is carefully neutral. They both know not to push the conversation further; he doesn't like to talk about that kind of thing, after all. Not when it comes to him. And anyway, Rude knows the way he is and doesn't need to ask the questions he'll never hear the answers for. Reno is glad.
They're standing in a forest, the two of them, waiting. It's humid and warm, and the air catches in their lungs. Scarlet and Tseng will be here soon, and then they can leave. Unless AVALANCHE arrives first, of course. Their job is to guard the demolished town and the remnants of the reactor for as long as possible, and they'll fight.
They've known each other for too many years, seen too many things together to not be able to hear what isn't being said. Reno feels, somewhere, that maybe it's an unfair exchange between people like them, something for nothing, but Rude knows. He knows better than Reno himself. Reno wants to break the silence, but there's nothing to say. So the silence remains as they wait to see who will come around the corner.
It will be the beginning of many things.
"Hey darling, how's about you come home with me tonight?"
The woman disengages herself easily from his arms, and pushes him gently, but firmly away. Her dark eyes smile warmly and knowingly.
"Sorry, Reno. It's not going to happen."
He's been drinking, and she can smell it on his breath. He looks good though, almost neat although certainly it won't last the week. His dark eyes shine as he grins back.
"Come on, tonight's a night to celebrate! Who'd of thought? Me, a Turk?"
He laughs, and she smiles again.
"Congratulations. But I still can't go with you."
His smile fades a little and he reached out for her once more. She lets him pull her close and a faint smile traces her lips ever so slightly as she rests her head against his shoulder.
"I always did like you too much."
Quietly, softly, she pulls back and meets his eyes again.
"I'm taking my little sister to the fireworks tonight. She's eleven this year, you know."
He starts to protest, but she shakes her head and he falls quiet again. He's known her for a year and a half years now, since the end of the war, but they've never slept together. She is always busy doing things to help her father run the town, but he still comes to Turtle's Paradise to see her. He'd been hoping that tonight he would finally persuade her.
Softly, she bends forward and kisses him gently on the forehead, and reluctantly he lets her go. The night air outside of the bar is pleasantly cool compared to inside, and the laughter from the party in full swing spills out onto the path. She says nothing, now, as she turns to go because the only thing she can think of to say is 'sorry', and if she says it again than she really will feel all the regret it implies. And so she leaves, and he watches.
When she is gone, he turns angrily back towards the bar, although he smiles before heading inside. The night is still young and filled with possibilities. He does not think of her when he pulls a young Shinra assistant close to him, and she giggles. He does not think of the woman with the dark eyes for the rest of the night.
The next day she and her mother are killed in an accident on Da Chao.
The bartender passes, and then returns. Reno meets his eye from his place in the shadows, but cannot force the usual smile. The man looks almost sympathetic, and he shakes his head.
"Don't you think you've had enough for the night?"
Reno doesn't answer immediately. He only watches the man, listening to the familiar silence, and seeing pictures of Meteor burning into Midgar behind his eyes. Years have not dulled the memories. He laughs then, darkly, and tilts the empty glass towards the bartender.
"I want a Sex on the Beach."
The man takes it with a sigh.
"Don't we all."
Reno drops his cigarette into the dusty grey ash tray and remembers.
She's running down the beach, in the heady, blue night, and he follows her with a grin. The stars are covered by thick, dark clouds and everything seems unreal. The ocean forms a seamless line of dark blue with the sky, and the waves lap against the white sand. She stops at the edge of the water and buries her toes in the wet sand, and the wind blows her hair all around. He wants to make a comment about how for once her hair is more messy that his, but the night takes all his words away.
Instead, he grabs her roughly when he reaches her, and she shrieks with laughter when he picks her up and spins her around. She struggles briefly in a half hearted attempt to get away, but all resistance is gone the moment he kisses her.
She has bottomless, dark eyes.
They're not supposed to be here; they keep their time together secret. She is supposed to be on the other side of the Planet, drafting a trading agreement between Wutai and Midgar for her father and Cloud, and no one thinks of him. They have been meeting for months now, and she is beginning to doubt whether she will be able to return to Wutai and her duties next time she comes. Every time she feels a little closer to something and a little further from the responsibilities that she never wanted or asked for. She also suspects she may be pregnant. She wants to ask him if she can stay, but doesn't know how.
He sweeps her legs out from under her before she can react, and she gasps, but she grabs hold of his collar and pulls him down with her. He is surprised, but doesn't waste a breath protesting when they hit the sand. Instead his lips are kissing her shoulders, her throat, her lips.
He remembers that blue night."
Do you love me?"
He sits for a moment, in the dark room, the glow from his cigarette the only real light. Thin tendrils of smoke curl sinuously out the open balcony door. He stares thoughtfully into the dark room, as the silence counts the seconds. He exhales a stream of blue smoke, and does not look up.
"No."
The door closes behind her.
He wanders down the street aimlessly, everything blurring behind his vision. He stumbles now, and his shoulder collides hard with a nearby wall. The burst of pain clears things for a moment, and he uses the wall to navigate further down the street without falling over. The ground seems to be rising and falling under his feet, and he thinks for sure he is going to be sick.
When the wall disappears into the mouth of the next alleyway, he trips and falls. The ground seems softer than he remembers, and he just lays back against the concrete as the dizziness washes over him. He wonders how he can still think semi-coherently after everything, but doesn't reach the end of that train of thought. He doubles up, clutching his stomach and feeling like he wants to die.
He remembers a lot of things tonight, but he doesn't remember which ones have already happened and which ones are yet to come.
He just hopes the footsteps he can hear approaching aren't what he knows they will be.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the voice is pleasant, and the speaker smiles. "This is a story that deals with many of the events sagas have been written about, true, but it is also about much more than that. This is a story that was told to me when I was a child, and it was pieced together mostly by my mother."
The woman is standing on a podium, holding a book. She has auburn hair and brown eyes, and she smiles confidently.
"Does it have a happy ending? I wouldn't want to spoil it for you. But this, ladies and gentlemen, this is a true story.
"Don't get me wrong, though. I don't want to sound like a cliché, and I'd be lying if I told you anything except that this novel is much darker than anything else I've written. It doesn't makes sense read straight front to back, and maybe you'll hate some of the people in it. But they were real. They lived."
She pauses for a moment, as though thinking. "You see, the reason I have to tell this story is that there was always something drawing these people together, something that goes beyond time as we think of it.
"This is their story, so that we will never forget who they were, what they did."
He is dying.
The world is slipping away fast and he's panicking.
He'd always kind of imagined dying was like this, but he'd always expected to be a lot more prepared. Now he tries to hold on to the colors as they gradually drain away, but everything is becoming more and more gray. Except for the blood staining his shirt and hands. He doubts that even death could take that away.
Everything is slowly also turning cold, he realizes. He can barely feel his hands now, and even the hole in his chest that is leaking dark red has become mostly numb. That is scarier than he'd counted on, too. Somehow he'd hoped he would care less, that it would be faster, that there wouldn't be things he'd regret. It's ironic, really, he thinks light-headedly.
He'd always seen death as a gun. Not a sword like Strife's or Sephiroth's; not even Meteor. It had always been a gun, Turk's standard issue. Maybe it was just because he'd given enough of it away himself with the same thing. It was a natural association to make. The gun... yes. That part is right. The rest is wrong though. He's felt pain before, but nothing like this cold, and inside he feels like screaming, crying. But he cannot.
It is all finally going dark, and he wants to run but he can't think clearly anymore. Too much blood is trickling into the gutters. He is falling deeper and deeper into a hole and everything is losing its definition. He can't feel anything and even the memories are dropping away...
"Reno? Oh god, Reno! Please hold on! Help is coming!"
The voice seems far away, but he can still hear it. He tries to say something, chokes on the blood in his lungs, and stops. All of his remaining consciousness wraps around the slightest sensation of something or someone holding his hand. Slowly, he opens his eyes.
Dark eyes.
"I'm sorry I left! I shouldn't have... I just want to stay with you, Reno, you can't die! Please!"
She's crying, he can see, and it registers with some part of him. He watches through the shadows as she wraps her arms around him and cries. The sound of sirens in the distance is muted, but it's present, and soon they'll find her here and know that she's not in Wutai. He wants to tell her to go, but he can't. No, there's only one thing left.
He wants to put his arms around her but instead settles for the smallest smile. She looks up at him, and seeing him watching her she stares at him in shock. A cough wracks his body one last time, and through the blood and the cracked lips he says quietly,
"I lied."
Everything is black now, and he can't see her anymore but for some reason he can still feel her hand on his. He hopes that the ambulances get there in time because there were other things he wanted to say, but he doesn't mind dying anymore. The black doesn't seem so scary while she is still holding his hand.
And darkness comes again.
He is sitting in a bar on the west side of Midgar, smiling as he downs another shot. The bar is full of light and laughter, and to his right sits Tseng and further down is Rude. The mission had been a complete success, and now Tseng had taken them out as celebration. Reno is determined to take full advantage of it.
Tseng watches with amusement as the newest Turk calls loudly for another round before turning around with a brazen grin. His jacket is undone and he looks like he hasn't slept for a week, but Tseng has come to terms with these elements of the new recruit. He is a damn good Turk, after all.
Reno smirks openly at a barmaid passing by, who returns his smile with a raised eyebrow. Tseng shakes his head with a discreet smile and Reno returns the look with his grin unchanged.
"What?"
"Someday, Reno, you're going to fall in love and go to hell and back for it. That day I will truly laugh."
Accepting his drink from the bartender Reno turns back to his boss.
"As long as I come back, it's all good."
He takes a drink and winks outrageously before setting the cup down on the counter and then raising it again. His smile does not falter.
"Seriously, though. Here's to us." He lifts the cup as though in a toast. "That we will live forever, never be sober and always have someone to keep us company!"
Shaking his head and laughing, Tseng lifts his drink, followed by Rude, to meet Reno's toast.
Outside in the street, a young woman with dark eyes passes through the crowd unseen.
A/N – Hehe... Sorry? I knew what I wanted to do when I started this, but I have no idea where it went. ; It still had something of the effect I originally wanted though, so hopefully it wasn't all just confusing.