Chapter: 4, Lover I Don't Have To Love
Summary: Rayne's returned to the WRO HQ for more treatments while Reno battles with his own inner demons in trying to deal with her fate.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the main character, Rayne. Final Fantasy is a product of Square Enix, while Kingdom Hearts is a joint production of Square Enix and Disney Interactive Studios (Buena Vista Games)
((A/N: Hooray, got this one up a little quicker! Sorry for all the excuses for having so much time between them. I've been battling with being pregnant and having quite the hard time with it. It seems to be under control now, so lets hope to be cranking them out a little faster now.))
"You... never told me where you're from."
Rayne looked up sheepishly from her sea-salt ice cream atop the clock tower in Twilight Town, her mako-infused green eyes shining brightly in the setting sun. No, she hadn't told him where she was from... she hadn't told anyone where she was from. Who would believe that she wasn't from this realm to begin with?
"It's just... a place really far away. It doesn't matter now, I'm never going back," she replied finally, hurrying to lick up a few strands of the leaking ice cream before it fell.
Her companion was silent for a few minutes, leg swung over the side of the tower moving back and forth as he too enjoyed the ice cream. "So you're from another world... don't seem to get a lot of tourists here. Paths between worlds being closed an all."
She stiffened. How had he known? "Wait... you mean, people jump from different realms all the time? That doesn't strike you as... strange?"
"I'm a Nobody. Nothing strikes me as strange."
Rayne watched Axel for several moments after words, warring over her own mind in telling him where she was from and how she'd gotten there. He didn't seem like the type to betray her, so what did she have to lose? "I'm from a place called Midgar. I escaped from a research department when it was attacked by a former... employee." She used the last term lightly, not sure of what else to call Sephiroth.
"So you were an experiment? Bummer." He stood suddenly, dropping his stick, now barren of ice cream, over the side of the tower. "Seems we have more in common than I thought."
"What do you mean?" She asked, hurrying to scarf the rest of hers, getting brain freeze in the process.
"It seems neither one of us was supposed to exist after all..." He raised his hand, opening a black portal of shadow. Her eyes glittered as she watched it happen, wanting to know how he did that and where he drew his power from. "Not by normal means."
He offered a hand to her, which she took hesitantly as he began to walk within. "Wait... where are we going?"
Smiling, he turned around, his own green eyes shining cheerfully. "I have someone I want you to meet."
"Meet?"
He tugged at her hand lightly, his way of telling her not to worry. "Don't worry, Roxas won't bite."
- - - - -
With the multitude of machines that were monitoring Rayne's every reaction to the treatment, Reno pondered to himself just where the woman found the ability to sleep. Laid up in a bed in the Research wing once more, wires were connected to everything from her hands to her head to her chest and stomach. IVs let a constant drip of liquids into her blood stream, trying to fend off what they could of the degradation that now seeped and oozed a green-black substance into the bandages covering it.
Pressing his hand to the window, he brought his face closer, trying to make heads or tails of the medical jumbo the readouts displayed, but it was hopeless. This was why he was a Turk and not head of Research and Development. It was just job to secure the data, not read it.
"Have you slept?"
"Huh? Oh... no, wasn't tired," Reno replied off-handedly, meeting knuckles with his long-time partner. "It's been... awhile since we last worked together."
Rude nodded, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked into the window where Rayne lay. "Reeve keeps me busy."
"With Elena?"
There was a groan from the taller Turk who again only nodded in response. Reno smiled, trying to lighten the mood and nudged him a couple times in his ribs. "Maybe he's trying to tell her she's sweet on ya."
His jaw dropped, the wideness of his eyes apparent even behind his ever-present sunglasses. Reno chuckled, patting his friend on the back. "I don't think Tseng would be able to part with her."
A long moment of silence passed between the two, both just looking in, Reno studying while Rude more-or-less tried to figure out just what it was that made his friend so enamored. "This goes beyond Reeve's mission." It was a statement, one that left no room for debate, and defeated Reno conceded.
"Hey, you know me... charm a girl, get your fill, see her later. But... she's different, yo."
Rude didn't say anything for a moment before giving Reno a pat on the back. "Growing up."
He brushed him off, but there was still the slightly enamored grin from thinking about his heroine on his features. "I gave away childhood the moment I signed up with The Turks." He said only half-serious. The Turks may have been a huge step up from the past he hid, but that didn't mean he had to absolutely grow up. Pressing his forehead against the glass of the window, he sighed heavily. "She told me she's dying."
"You expected different?"
He flashed a dangerous look at his friend who only shook his head and elaborated. "Genesis and Angeal... degradation."
"Then there was Sephiroth... and Genesis found his cure somehow. You saw with the Tsuvets. Rayne's different, she wasn't made like them. I've read through her files. There just has to be something we're not seeing."
Rude stood there for a moment longer, pity in his eyes for his friend. You don't fall in love with your mark, your mission. In fact, you stay completely emotionally distant to it so that there's no repercussions for the dirty work you have to do. And yet... part of him felt for him. Reno wasn't the type to just fall for someone, to fight for them versus his job. Rayne had to be something to do that to him.
"I've got to go. Mission, Gongaga. Checking on Cissnei."
Reno nodded, giving Rude a thumbs up. "Kick ass."
"Always do."
- - - - -
For someone who was supposedly dying, Rayne had to admit; she didn't feel any different than she always had. Granted there was now a gaping hole in her side to contend with and she had a wing that sometimes protruded from her back. But that all seemed sort of moot to the central fact that all-in-all...she felt like herself. However, that also raised another question entirely.
Had she been dying from the beginning?
How else could this have little other effect on her moods, on her energy?
"Hey kid...you look like hell," Reno commented coming through to doors as a technician left. She offered him a bored expression, raising a hand covered in IV's and wired and flipped him the bird.
"I could say the same thing about you. Same clothes you were wearing on vacation?" She lofted a brow, as he looked down at himself shrugging.
"Guess I haven't had time to change yet."
She smiled, pushing herself more into a sitting position on the bed, raising the back to support her. "What have you been doing all this time? Watching me from behind the glass?" She'd meant it as a joke...he probably would have laughed had it not been true.
"Well--"
"Reno!"
"Yeah, well you scared me back there with all that talk of dying!" He defended coming to stand by her bedside. Rayne's eyes lost their mirth, finding herself unable to look at him for a moment.
"It wasn't just talk. I'm degrading, just like the rest. It'll just keep up until I finally return to the Lifestream," she replied in a soft voice, almost feeling the devastation that now showed on his boyish features.
"But Genesis--"
"--Was a miracle. He found his 'Gift of the Goddess' and I was sadly forsaken. And don't say anything about Sephiroth, because there's never been another. I can't even find Hojo's papers on Project S, they were either lost in the ShinRa explosion or ShinRa did away with them to hide just how screwed up that man was."
Reno clenched his fists tightly, not willing to give into defeat so easily. "So you're just going to give up, lay here and die?"
Her pained eyes found his once more, and she had to bite back her tears. "What do you want me to do?!"
"I-I don't know! We're Turks, we don't give up!" He argued passionately.
"You're a Turk, I'm just some mark you were assigned to spy on and pretend you're friends with."
The venom in her tone caused him to visibly recoil, shrinking back some from the bed. "How did you...I mean..."
"I wasn't as asleep as you thought I was the other night when you called Reeve in," she answered cooly. "Did you really think you could just drag me along all this time, act all heart broken about me turning you down, when you were just wanting to finish a job, Reno? And here I thought I was being the civil one cutting you free so you wouldn't have anything to lose when I die."
"It's not like that, Rayne!" He protested.
"Oh, it's not? Then what is it? Because I've got too many enemies to worry about not to have to be dealing with some guy trying to fake his way into my head!"
"I love you!"
Silence. A total and unequivocal silence fell so suddenly and heavily over the room that Rayne thought she may had gone deaf. She couldn't hear the machines, or if he was still talking, or even the beat of her own heart. She opened her mouth to speak, but found nothing but air expelling from the breath she'd been unknowingly holding. Reno threw his arms around her suddenly, being careful of the cords.
"I love you, alright? Reeve knows it, Rude knows it, hell...Elena knows it and I don't even talk to her. I can't stop these feelings I have for you...no more than I can just give up and let you die. I...I can't imagine losing you."
He pulled away slightly, looking down into her mako-green eyes with his own crystal blue pools, his sincerity showing so boldly that she couldn't deny the truth in his words if she wanted to. Which she did, because she knew that he was going to be dragged down into this abysmal pit of death with her when she went, if only by the heart strings. "You...can't love me Reno." She spoke finally, her voice sounding breathless.
Their mouths were closer than she'd realized, she could feel his warm breath on her bottom lip and instinctively she brought it into her mouth to chew on nervously. "Why can't I?" He questioned, his voice merely a whisper. They both could feel it, that familiar pull between them, like magnets begging to meet. Energy surged through her spine, Reno's heart pounded in his ears. Neither moved, at least, not for the moment.
"Because...I wasn't supposed to exist anyway," she started, turning her head from him and ending the tormenting pressure between them. "The Planet is just righting a wrong."
((A/N: I thought this would be a good place to stop. This chapter was a little hard for me to write for some reason, I'm not sure why. I think I had the most trouble with the awkward reunion between Reno and Rude...I can't imagine them without one another and having had them spend so much time apart on different missions has left me trying to make up some material XD))
