Disclaimer: Still don't own Still being rather evil to Reeve. Vincent is still being troublesome, stupid man just won't fall in love with Reeve the way I want him to, but I suppose it'll happen as it does. Implied rape, and some non descriptive scenes (it's not written, but you'll get it). Rosso is wonderfully evil to write, I'm rather enjoying her, I can hear her voice in my head when she speaks.
Tainted
"Ah, darling, you look delicious!" Rosso beamed, stretching her body along Reeve's to lap at the blood on his chest. A month and she still had so much to do. She had barely scratched the surface, taking her time, now that she had it, to draw this out, she would make him suffer, in every way she could. Surprisingly she had found that anything of an intimate nature repulsed him, so she had adapted, fulfilling her own needs in that area as often as she pleased, loving the self disgust that washed across his face, the desperation to stop his body's natural response. it was a heady experience, and one she really, truly enjoyed. He was a talented man.
"Just kill me!" he ground out hoarsely, as he did once a day since she had taken him.
She pulled back, licking the remaining blood from her lips and smiling. "But darling," she told him, matter of factly. "I have not yet had the chance to peel your skin from your body while you writhe in agony, or remove each bone in your body, one at a time while you still breathe. There is so much I must do with you, so very much. And I cannot let the chance pass me by. So No, my darling, I will not kill you today."
He closed his eyes in despair.
She watched him, bending down for a last lick, swirling her tongue around a nipple, pleased as his body responded to her. She would destroy him, piece by piece, until he was nothing more than a shell. she would whittle him down to nothing, a mere shadow of who he once was. And perhaps then she would display him, have him ready should she feel the need to hurt him again. Or should she leave a glimmer of self within him, a faint light that could fester and then she could have the pleasure of destroying him all over again.
He was beautiful, everything she had ever wanted, a perfect victim for her whims.
And he was all hers.
~x~
Vincent had fallen into the role of leading the WRO surprisingly easily. It reminded him of his days paper pushing when he worked for the Turks. And there was a lot of Paperwork. How Reeve had coped with this and still found time to ask him out for drinks he couldn't even begin to guess. Thankfully Reeve's leadership had defined the WRO to the point that even though Vincent had replaced him, it functioned easily enough without him. For the moment at least.
Reeve's personal files had given him a detailed overview of every department, all current members and plans for expansion. Reeve had been a shrewd businessman, and it showed through. He had created at least twenty five year plans, with continued plans with multiple outcomes for ten years. He was very thorough.
But Vincent did feel uncomfortable, like he was taking over Reeve's life when he shouldn't. stepping into the mans shoes when he was still more than capable himself. It was unsettling. So he had simply set himself up as a temporary replacement, hoping in a few months he could pass the job on to someone else.
In another way he felt comfortable surrounded by Reeve's files, reading words penned by the man was comforting, in that way Reeve had. His heart twisted every time he remembered the man was dead now. If only he had not harboured Chaos, perhaps Reeve would still be alive.
And perhaps the world would now be an empty husk.
Was there any point in feeling guilty. He had been guilty for so many years. He had allowed that guilt to keep him locked away for thirty years. He had told Reeve that he had been a stone in the river of time before they had freed him, and reminded him to live again. He had made his peace, as much as he could, with his past. His mistakes would continue to follow him, but they no longer felt as pressing. They were the past, and without them the world would not be here.
Vincent heaved a sigh and sat his pen on the table, he had been tapping the ball on the page in front of him, leaving a bizarre pattern of dots there. This was frustrating. How could Reeve have left him in charge? Each of these files, filled with every detail of the WRO, with sections created for every contingency. There was even a personnel file on Shelke, with options given that would allow her to easily slot into the system here.
These files made it seem as if Reeve had known he would not be coming back, had known Vincent would be taking over.
That was a sobering thought, and not one Vincent wished to dwell on.
"Vincent Valentine."
"Shelke." he responded, not bothering to look at the girl, she was the only one to call him by his full name after all.
"You are working late." she said. "Tifa asked me to bring you some food." she approached the desk and set a package in front of him.
"Thank you." he told her, looking at her at last. Her eyes were glancing over the many papers strewn on the desk. For some reason he felt the need to explain. "Reeve left a lot of information to go through."
Shelke looked at him, her blue eyes steady on his. "Would it not have been easier to have it all on computer?" she asked him.
Vincent shrugged, he was from the world where you did reports on paper with pens, not screens and keyboards. "This was what was left. I don't work well with computers."
Shelke looked thoughtful before nodding. "He prepared well for your takeover it seems." she told him.
Vincent blinked, and frowned, looking at the piles of paper once again. She was correct, it would have been much easier for Reeve to use the computer on this, the man was a technological genius after all, but instead there was paper, much of it handwritten by Reeve himself. It took him a moment to realise Shelke had continued speaking.
"-- told him about the orders, I had expected him to simply hide. When he did not I thought him foolish, but it seems he had matters well in hand."
"Orders?" Vincent asked.
Shelke nodded. "When I agreed to aid you, after Shalua's… accident. I informed the Commissioner of our orders pertaining to him." her slight hesitance of her sisters death did not go unnoticed, but Vincent was more interested on these orders, had Deepground had other designs on Reeve? "We were all shown his file, and told that should we come across him we should kill him, that he could be dangerous."
"The WRO you mean." Vincent clarified.
Shelke shook her head. "No, the WRO was a small part of it. Reeve Tuesti himself was deemed dangerous to us, his leadership of the WRO leant him soldiers, but they were easily taken care of. I do not know much more than that, all I can surmise is that it was perhaps his connection with you all that was the dangerous part, or his strange ability to control those robotic cats he had."
Vincent sat back in his chair, frowning deeply. "Reeve… dangerous?" the mere thought was a tad absurd. Why should Reeve threaten an organisation such as Deepground? "Is that why he was taken then? It was an opportunity too good to miss."
Shelke called back his attention with a slight shifting of her bodyweight, and he focused on her, and on her very serious expression. "I am not sure he was taken at all in truth Vincent Valentine." she told him.
"And why is that?" he asked of her.
"After the drop over Midgar, I can recall no sign of him on the Shera. He may have been busy, but would he not have been in the cockpit or the lab? He was in neither the whole of the flight as far as I can tell. I could possibly be reading more into this than I should." she shrugged, and did not continue.
"What do you know of Rosso?" Vincent asked, there had been no word yet on her, whether she was alive or dead. "Do you have any idea if she survived, where she would go, what she would do?"
Shelke considered for a long minute, before shaking her head. "I am afraid I do not know where she would go if she survived. But if she was alive I am sure we would have already heard reports of mass slaughter. She enjoyed such things, spoke of them often." there was silence for a few moments, it was true, if she were alive they should have been hearing reports of murders. Vincent doubted Rosso would care for lying low, she would probably enjoy the chase.
"She asked Weiss if she could have the task to kill Reeve Tuesti." Shelke offered.
"She did?" Vincent frowned deeper, the mere thought of Rosso attacking Reeve was enough to make his stomach clench and his anger rise. He ruthlessly shoved the feeling aside, Reeve was dead, there was no point thinking of 'might have been's'
"Azul mentioned that he thought she had no intentions of killing him, that he could see the lust in her eyes when she looked at the picture. Rosso went a little crazy after that, and told us that she would kill him, but that she wished to make it last. It quickly disintegrated into a trade of insults and insinuations." Shelke told him easily.
Vincent's blood ran cold. He couldn't explain it. But right there was the answer, the answer to something Vincent couldn't place. He closed his eyes briefly, pushing aside the images of Reeve and Rosso. He knew what she was like, ruthless and twisted. Thinking of Reeve in her clutches was terrible and horrifying. With a muted growl he opened his eyes.
Reeve was dead.
Why did he have to keep reminding himself of that fact. Whatever feelings he had held for the man were null and void now.
Reeve was dead.
"Thank you Shelke." he said, and she knew by his tone it was a dismissal, because she left. He remained in Reeve's office, surrounded by Reeve's files, filled with Reeve's neat penmanship, and wished he was anywhere else.
~x~
Screams in Nibelhiem, but not from the Mansion as one would assume, instead the sound drifted through the mountains and to the small town from the old reactor. People here said that it sounded like the wailing of a banshee, every night for the past month, calling out for the death of someone. Yuffie did not believe these rumours, but they were enough to keep her in Nibelhiem until nightfall.
After Reeve's memorial service, Yuffie had left Edge, unable to stay and look on the ruins of Midgar without feeling a keen loss for the man they had lost. She had been the one to work most closely with him since Sephiroth's defeat, and she was one of the few people who found Cait Sith, Reeves more playful side to be fun to hang out with.
After the tragedy there she needed to return to Wutai, and reaffirm herself, make sure her father was still alive and kicking, that Deepground had not launched some late attack that had wiped her people off the map. She needed to go home. Nibelhiem had been a necessary stop along the road, to pick up some supplies and move on quickly.
She should have perhaps asked Cid to have one of his airships drop her back, but taking the long route allowed her the time to come to terms with the worst of possibilities, and to think on Reeve, and whether she really wanted to go back and work with the WRO. Vincent wouldn't stay the leader for long, she could feel it, and she doubted anyone else would be as accepting as Reeve had been to her quirks, he hadn't minded if she pocketed the odd materia she had come across so long as no one got angry about it.
But the talk of the townspeople had her intrigued. Wailings of a banshee? She had never heard of banshee's before, so the very notion of some dead, ghost woman, combing her head and crying for the dead made her curious, and she wanted to hear it herself before setting off again. She did not really believe it, after all, ghosts didn't really exist.
Night was falling slowly, in reds and pinks and oranges, and she wondered briefly if Reeve had ever been here. She didn't think he had been, and that made her a little more sad. He probably would have liked to see it, it was a really pretty place.
She was jerked out of her contemplation by the sharp echoing cry that seemed to use the slight wind to reach her, and she shuddered, knowing at once that it was not the sound of a ghost, but the very real sound of a person in great pain. She could see why they thought it might be a ghost, after all, how far away must the person be to have the sound so faded and echoed.
She was on her feet and heading up the rocky path towards the reactor before she could think. Knowing only that she would regret not going to investigate the sound. It took her hours to navigate the mountains, only vaguely recalling the way to the reactor, the cries continued, but each time they grew fainter, but as she approached the reactor they became clearer to.
She threw caution to the wind as she approached the reactor, feeling ill at the thought of someone suffering as much as this person seemed to be. Bolting up the metal steps, her footsteps silent, she entered the reactor, it's door slightly open. The cries had vanished into whimpers, which were in their own way more heart wrenching. Not calling out, assuming there must be someone causing the pain she snuck quickly through the reactor, following the whimpers, which echoed hollowly off the metal walls.
"Hush my precious." she heard, the voice naggingly familiar, though Yuffie could not place it. There was a muted howl, much closer that Yuffie thought it should have been. The familiar voice laughed and continued speaking. "If your cries were not so wonderful, I would have removed your tongue and eaten it already darling."
Yuffie moved closer to the voice, and peered round a corner. Her breath caught and her heart stopped dead at the sight. Pinned to a ragged, dirty mattress was Reeve, with Rosso the Crimson rubbing herself against him, one of her claws carving deep, elaborate patterns into his skin. Yuffie could see the agony on his face, and Rosso removed her claw and put her mouth over the bleeding cuts.
"Kill… me…" Reeve begged hoarsely.
Yuffie could see the despair, and she hated to see Reeve, cool, calm and in control Reeve, reduced to the man she saw before her. She did not think, just reacted, and it was the sheer surprise that gave her the advantage it did. The Conformer caught the unaware Rosso across her back and head, biting deeply into the skin and driving her to the side so that she was forced off Reeve, and knocked her head hard on the metal wall.
Yuffie did not wait to see if she was dead, injured or faking, she just rushed forward to Reeve, swallowing the bile when she saw him. Casting a cautious glare at the Tsviet woman, who lay crumpled not far away, Yuffie quickly pulled her fox poncho from her bag, and as best she could, put it on Reeve. She forced her sickness down when she saw his arm, black and twisted in ways arms were not supposed to go. There was no time to catalogue the mass of cuts, bruises and holes in Reeve, she had to get him out of here before that woman woke up and killed them both.
Her eyes glanced at Reeve's face, and she found normally warm and laughing brown eyes glazed and haunted, not really seeing her. She reached for his face, thinking that maybe her touch would comfort him, but he flinched away from her. She shot another glare at the prone Tsviet, and angrily stomped towards her, lifting the first thing she cam across, a broken metal pipe, and brought it down hard on Rosso, again and again, hitting her where she could and hoping the bitch was dead.
When she was done, and shaking from the effort, she dropped the pipe, a little distraught at what she had done, though if she could be bothered right now to think of it, more distraught over the fact that she didn't care if she had killed her. She turned back to Reeve, who had slumped, giving into the pain, eyes closed and breathing shallow and erratic. She couldn't take any chances, she needed to get Reeve out of here.
It took everything she had to make herself move him, to lift him, biting her lip when he let out a quite groan of pain no matter where she held him. He found no peace even in unconsciousness. She carried him outside, unhappy with how easy she could do so. He was lighter than Marlene. It was only his size compared to hers that made it difficult. When she had him outside, and a fair distance from the reactor she dug out her mobile phone.
She cast an apprehensive glance back towards the reactor, she had not killed Rosso, now wasn't the time for false self praise. Her gaze settled on Reeve, propped up against a rock, his head lolling to the side, showing off scabs and new cuts along his cheek and neck.
"Pick up Vinnie, Pick up!" she hummed nervously, anxious.
"Valentine."
"Oh god Vincent!" Yuffie screamed quietly. "Oh god, your never going to believe this. Vincent you need to send a truck, an airship, anything! And you need to do it now, I don't think I killed her, and when she wakes up and realises what I've done, we're dead Vinnie, dead! And I can't be dead, and Reeve can't be dead either! Not after I just found him, and god Vinnie, he's in such an awful state, and I don't even want to think of what she did to him… Please you have to send something, now Vinnie!"
The was a long and ominous silence on the other end, and Yuffie started to think they had been cut off, which wouldn't be good at all. "Vincent?" she knew she sounded just the smallest bit afraid, but right now it didn't matter. She didn't know what to do, for once, and she needed Vincent to do something… to tell her he was on his way, anything!
"Reeve?" Vincent asked, his voice hushed.
"Yes, Reeve. Please say you have something coming to get us?" she begged.
"Where are you Yuffie, and how badly injured is Reeve?"
"We're in Nibelhiem! And he's in a really bad way Vincent." she worried her lower lip, feeling tears of frustration well up.
"We'll be there in a few hours Yuffie, look after Reeve, and call me if there's any change, or your in trouble." Vincent told her and hung up.
Yuffie swallowed hard, a few hours, she could handle a few hours. Reeve would be fine. Even she wouldn't be able to back his condition any worse than it was. She looked back at the reactor and then to Reeve again. They needed to be further away.
I apologise for how abrupt the ending seems, but Yuffie is having a minor breakdown, as would any 18 year old girl, even if she was a super cool stealth ninja, if she found someone she was close to, and thought dead in the situation Reeve was in. I hope despite the random strangeness (which you will forgive) you have enjoyed this chapter.
Please review.
