A/N: So here I am, writing another chapter. The ideas for this story just kept haunting me. It looks like I'm in for the long haul, and after plotting it out, it will be a looong haul.
I have to apologize. The first chapter of this story is a product of pure laziness. It isn't as polished or developed as it should be. There really isn't any excuse for that, except my uncertainty at the time with whether on not I'd continue writing this. Still, I shouldn't have posted it until I was sure. Sorry again. I'm probably going to go back and rewrite that one some.
Anyway, without further delay, here is part 2. I don't own FF7, but Ren Akabori is all mine—every last neurotic bit of him.
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Part 2: Family Portrait – Ren
When the first reactor blew in Midgar, Ren Akabori ran, just like everyone else. He hid in his apartment and waited for the news reports to come in, and when he finally heard that the attack had been waged by a terrorist group named Avalanche, and that among the members was a former SOLDIER, he hoped. He thought of his brother and he hoped, after promising himself two years ago that he wouldn't hope anymore.
He hoped until he saw the first news footage, captured by Shinra surveillance cameras, and he realized the hair of the man wearing the purple and blue SOLDIER uniform was blond instead of black.
When sector seven collapsed, with a crash so loud that it was days before he could hear correctly again, he realized that hope on its own was foolish. He forced himself to go there, even though the dust in the air was still so thick he could barely see. In the end, he was glad he could barely see.
That's when he finally understood. He remembered his brother's parting words as he left for the military, "Renny, I just can't sit around and wait my whole life for someone else to be the hero. I'm gonna do it myself, and I'm gonna have a hell of a good time with it too." It hadn't made sense to him then. Years later, when they told him his brother was missing and to expect the worst, it still hadn't made sense.
But there, standing on a pile of debris painted gray with ash, that could have been bodies or could have been steel, he understood.
He finally understood.
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Ren glares down at the book in front of him, eyes wet and glistening because he's forgotten to blink for so long. His shoulders are hunched forward tightly, his neck jutting outward at a right angle from them, white elbows pressed harshly against the enamel of the desk. He's holding a pen in one hand and the tendons of in his wrist and fingers pop upward alternatively under the thin layer of his skin as he flips the writing utensil over and over and over, incessantly.
A long stream of air seeps out from his lungs and he mutters, yet again, "So young."
Forming a sharp "V" in the creases of his brow, he squints at the picture of the young boy—narrow face, sapphire eyes, unruly bleach-blond hair jutting out rebelliously, the soft rounded lines of a child's cheeks. "So young. Did it really start this young for you Zack?" He shakes his head in an abrupt, curt motion, remembering his brother's last words that day he boarded the bus for Shinra headquarters to start a career with SOLDIER. Zack had only been fifteen.
Another long sigh, and his thin-lined voice fills the air again, "It did, didn't it? You knew even when you were only a child what you would be. And he knew too. It's in those eyes, the way the shadows fall across them, the way the youth stops at the black of his pupils." He drops the pen suddenly, sliding his hands with the screeching of sweat across the desk to cup the edges of the book. The picture is old. Ten years, two Sephiroths, the fall of Shinra, and countless civilian deaths old. The image was taken when the boy first entered the military, but the boy is a man now.
Cloud Strife. The name rolls through his head like tumbleweed, prickling his thoughts and repeating itself again and again and again, incessantly. Cloud Strife. Cloud Strife. Cloud Strife.
The man had been here yesterday. Ren had watched through the surveillance cameras, enraptured with the image of the blond, tall and muscular and clad in black leather, but with a gentle shading around the eyes and the mouth that made the hard depth of his glaze and the stiff set of his jaw so much more obvious. So, this was the face of a hero. When he entered a room, everyone turned to look, and when he walked the sound of his heavy boots against the floor and the large sword holster slapping against his back set the pace of every conversation around him.
Cloud Strife. Cloud Strife. Cloud Strife.
He wonders, did Zack command a room like that once? When he walked by with his ridiculous black spikes and that roguish smirk on his face, did people stop and stare? Did every turn of his heel, every twist of his wrist, every flex of a muscles drip intensity and formidability that stained the skin of anyone close enough to catch the shifting of the air as he passed? Did every mako-eyed look scream "hero"?
Cloud Strife. Cloud Strife. Cloud Strife.
He throws himself back in the chair, thrusting it out from under him and standing in a stream of jerky swift movements that don't quite connect right. A hand taps in an endless rhythm against his thigh as he walks over to the picture window on one wall of his office. The distant gleam of Midgar climbs up over the green hills in the afternoon sun. It is still a cluster of mostly smaller buildings but there are a few, a few that reach toward the sky, a few that refuse to remember the plates that once sealed them into the lower levels of the slums. They're building a new world. Everyone is building a new world. He glances at the logo of Holding Hands International, hanging in a frame behind his desk. It's a stylized knot of hands outlined in dark green. We're building a new world.
New worlds need heroes to protect them. Hand pressed against the window glass, he looks back out at the city of Midgar, rocking his jaw back and forth with a clicking noise as he thinks about the rising crime rate, the homeless living on the streets, the recent upward trend of gang involvement among the youth. He remembers Zack's parting words. "Renny, I just can't sit around and wait my whole life for someone else to be the hero."
Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait.
He won't wait. The world needs someone to protect them. The world needs more than just Cloud Strife and the other members of Avalanche who are scattered across the continents living their own lives. It needs youths with that certain mix of shadow and gleam in their eyes, ones who will dedicate themselves to something bigger, something greater. People like Zack used to be. People like Cloud Strife.
Ren forces the thin, compressed lines of his mouth into a jagged smile, a hand running over his slicked-back black hair and slipping down to grab onto the back of his neck and wait there, pressing into the tense muscles. His body is a cluster of angles, oddly put together, the lines of his pants and his button-up shirt over his frame seeming unnatural and misplaced. Ren has known since he was a boy that he was no hero, just like Zack always knew he was.
No, he is no Cloud Stife. But he doesn't need to be. That's not his goal.
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"Will it work?" Ren squints at the red-haired scientist with granite-blue eyes.
Jenkins smirks, widening his face with the puff of his cheeks and holds up the syringe of glowing green liquid. "Of course, man. Ya didn't hire me to dope this up."
"Obviously. But I like it confirmed. And there will be no side effects until we've had a chance to give several injections? The enhancements will be sufficiently delayed?"
Jenkins rolls his eyes and puts the syringe down on a metal lab bench. "Yes, yes, yes. Look Ren, this isn't exactly new technology. Shinra did a lot of research into this back in the day." Jenkins sits heavily on a stool, reaches in the pocket of his white lab coat, and pulls out a cigarette. The lab is a mess of papers scattered about across various chairs and tables. A stack of cages lines one off-white wall with a mix of birds and lizards and other small animals, every one different but every one the same because their eyes all grow with a greenish-blue hue.
"You need to clean this lab."
"You know, you say that every time you come down here."
Ren shoves his hands in his pockets to keep from straightening the pile of folders cascading across the table beside him. "It's still true. Please clean this lab now."
Jenkins waves a dismissive hand, cigarette imitating the gesture between his thick lips. "Sure, boss. So when do you want to start? I'm ready to shoot them up whenever."
"As soon as they arrive. It will be a few days. And Jenkins, try not to take this so casually."
Jenkins shrugs, smoke billowing out of his mouth and draping the red of his mustache.
Ren doesn't see it because he is turning and walking out the door with measured, mechanically precise steps, his fingers jittering a rapid beat against his leg. At the doorway he pauses, white knuckled hand clutching the doorframe and his mind rolling: Cloud Strife. Can't wait. Cloud Strife. Can't wait. Cloud Strife. Can't wait.
"Remember why we're here, Jenkins. We're building a better world."
He takes a steady breath for effect, counting out the seconds before he finally finishes:
"We're making heroes."
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Sometimes, when the sun falls below the horizon at night and he can only see the few dim lights of Midgar out his office window, Ren forgets for a moment what he is doing. It's a strange feeling and it always comes on suddenly, like he's pulled the fabric of his purpose so taunt that it starts to unravel. His hands fall limp against his sides and he doesn't move, blinking and feeling distinctly like he has just dropped a puzzle on the floor and is staring at all the pieces, unsure of where to begin.
After years of learning about the quirks of his personality, he has come to recognize these as symptoms of exhaustion, and he has learned to walk stiffly over to his desk, pull open the top draw, and clasp the picture frame inside with numb hands.
The picture is of his family. Mother, father, sister, brother, himself. He is only a toddler in the picture, taken before his sister was killed by a monster while she was playing at the city fringes with some friends. At one time, he had thought that was the reason Zack decided to become what he did. He thought the hero instinct was born of their tragedy. But after sector seven was destroyed, he took out this picture and he looked closer. He stared at it for hours, unable to ignore the ghosting of hard lines in his brother's features, the intensity in the way the mouth turned up at the edges and in the way the brows arched and in the way the eyes gleamed. It was something he'd never noticed before.
It was a revelation for him: Zack was born with the desire to save the world. He was born with dreams of something bigger.
It gives Ren strength to see that. He won't call it hope. It's something too tangible to be called that. Maybe he'll call it passion or maybe he'll call it inspiration.
Or maybe he'll call it family. His brother's legacy leading him on, encouraging him to spread his hands out to the rest of the world. He turns back to the window and holds the picture up, next to the lights of Midgar. It belongs like that, with his siblings and his parents and himself next to all the people that live behind those lights. Zack had understood this long before he had, but he'd learned. It had taken the near destruction of the planet but now he finally got it.
The lights of Midgar and the rest of the world next to his own flesh and blood.
This was their family portrait.
End Part 2
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A/N: I'm really enjoying writing Ren. As I develop the story, I'll explore more of what he thinks about SOLDIER and Shinra and what happened to Zack. You'll be seeing a lot of him because he will be one of the main characters. But don't worry, there will be plenty of Cloud too.
Pretty please leave me constructive criticism. I'm experimenting with some things while writing this, so I'd really appreciate some feedback. Thanks for reviewing!
The next chapter will bounce back to Cloud. Stay tuned.
