Reno

MOTHERFUCKER.

I whirled my EMR around on its strap. Elena stood a good distance from me, an added bonus. I ground gum between my teeth, flavorless and pitiful. I'd run out of cigarettes. Anyway the wind on the airstrip was too intense to light one. I glared at the distance, my back against the helicopter door. It was holding me up. Elena didn't know.


"Report to the airstrip tomorrow at 4 a.m.," Tseng had told me at the end of the day before. "Elena will accompany you to Junon." He passed across a file to me. I opened it, frowning, and examined the scarce text.

"Labcoats again?" I said with a sniff. My nostrils burned, but I was still having trouble focusing. I promised myself I'd take a bump in the restroom right after this meeting. "Thought me and Rude were supposed to do this."

"You'll be partnered with Elena from now on," Tseng said smoothly.

My head flipped up, mouth dropping in shock.

MOTHERFUCKERRR.


"You're awfully quiet," I snapped at Elena. I rolled my head toward her insolently.

She slid her eyes around to me, arms folded, then looked over to her left and jerked her chin so I'd follow her gaze. I twisted, squinting, but didn't dare try to stand. My legs shook even leaning most of my weight on good old Number Four.


I didn't go straight to the bar. I drove in a murderously fast roundabout way further downtown, pockets stuffed with gil. I cursed when a mutt ran under my wheels, my stomach lurching sickly. I knew that once I got to my destination, I wouldn't care about the stupid thing, or about that—

MO-THER-FUCK-ER.


Our contact strolled toward us, wobbly and indistinct to my blurred vision. I twirled my nightstick on the end of the strap, agitated. I didn't like not being able to see. Bad enough we didn't even know his name.

Elena's fingers twitched on her arm, just visible as little peach blurs on black with pink gloss dotting them. Her back was to me. Her silky blonde hair flipped in the wind, a fuzzy cloud.

I chomped harder on my gum. I normally would have pointed at her hair, elbowed the omnipresent dark-skinned tall guy beside me, and snickered to him, "Look who borrowed Cloud's wig today."

Except that MOTHERFUCKER wasn't there.


Dough turned into dust, I inhaled quite a bit standing right there while the guy was still counting my gil. It was unfortunate that then the details of his water-damaged sty then became painfully clear to me, but I couldn't stand to wait and at least here I knew was safe to do it without anyone fucking with me.

A girl like a deformed sack of bones hung half-off the couch. A grimy syringe dangled from twiglike fingers wrapped in translucent gauze of cracked skin. Her other hand curtained her eyes, thank god. I don't think I would have liked to see either her expression or myself reflected.

Burning traveled like a dynamite wick up into my brain, where it flickered and exploded in fiery pain. I shuddered, tipping my head back. My heart's status felt like Fury-Haste-Poison, achingly fast thuds beating on my ribcage to get out. I fumbled the bag trying to put it away, but my reflexes were so spun up I caught it before it hit the carpet. My knees hit instead with a jarring thud that rammed my teeth down on my numb tongue.

"Careful, there," said the rough-voiced man behind me.

I seethed, getting to my feet. It's a sorry thing when your dealer tells you to go easy, but I was beyond warnings. I managed to leave without smashing in or even looking at his face.

I knew I would need him again tomorrow, and the next day, and probably every day until I forgot for good the smell of her hair, the touch of her skin, the taste of her pouty lower lip, the sound of her laugh, the sight of her lighting up whenever she saw me even if it had only been a couple of hours. As if I was as awesome as I pretended to be.


Elena didn't dare look back at me. Somewhere in the leaky lurching chemical factory of my brain I knew I should be standing with her to meet this guy and show solidarity. Just as keenly, though, I knew if I stood upright I would fall on my face. I knew that would compromise our show of strength to a much greater degree than if I just affected this so-what bored lean that was actually a desperate need of physical support.


I'd gone to the Dragon & Dolphin then.

I'm pretty sure I didn't stay long.

I'm almost positive there was a girl and a guy and we left together.

I'd hazard a guess we went back to their place.

It probably wouldn't be wrong to assume we all had sex.

In a blaze of red dust, I still couldn't forget, no matter how hard I tried, the sheen of sweat on his bald head under me. I only forgot what color the skin was.

I didn't want to remember.

I'd hurt him. A lot. Thinking about a motherfucker I wanted to hurt, and fucking some random bald guy. That bothered me way more than the fact that I couldn't remember if I'd used protection.


The wind was so bad and my ears humming so hard I could only make out fragments of words exchanged between Elena and the man in an olive trench coat. I strained to hear and my stomach roiled.

I tasted the brake-fluid aesthetic of cheap whiskey and bile at the back of my throat.


I'd thrown up all night afterward until it was time to go to the airstrip, doing desperate lines between dry heaves.

I'd had to drink half a bottle of whiskey to steady my hands, knowing Elena didn't have a pilot's license.

At the time it didn't occur to me that I shouldn't have been flying at all. I did what I always did—what I was ordered to do—my job.


Gunshots jolted me. I almost tumbled forward, but endorphins and instincts are a remarkable thing. I wouldn't say I entirely sobered in that moment, but icy spikes of reality jammed through my body and brain and hurled me at Elena, rolling her to the ground. I whipped my EMR up and around and on.

Fashion Victim lay dead beside us on the ground. A bullet grazed my upthrust wrist. I hissed in pain and twisted to check the chopper. So far no serious damage.

Elena struggled to sit up around me, her gun out, and the staccato bursts from it nearly deafened me. I scrambled up under her covering fire. Crouching, we ran for the chopper.

I wrenched open the door with my uninjured hand, shoved her in and scrambled up after her. Another sting of pain hit my calf, this one more profound. I screamed even as I punched up the engines and the blades roared to life overhead. I didn't even wait to strap in, aware that every bullet zinging through the air outside could hit the rotor or the fuel every moment Number Four was in range. I took off.

Elena was whimpering in the co-pilot's seat. I didn't turn to look, just got us up and away. She moved around beside me. Holding the control stick with my knees I fumbled around for my headset underneath the seat. Elena nudged me with mine, so I could jam it on over my ears and then focus on fastening straps.

"What the hell happened, Reno?" she snarled, gasping. "It was your mission, I'm supposed to be backup! I could have covered our asses if I hadn't had to talk to the contact while you dozed off! I don't care what Tseng says, I'm not partnering with you anymore until you shape up! Rude was right!"

"Shut up!" I snapped. "Just shut up, all right? I have to fly and I'm bleeding all over the fucking place, goddamn."

"So am I! And it's your fault!" she raged.

"It ain't my fault it was a fucking setup!" I said.

"More like an ambush, and they wouldn't have gotten the drop on us if you'd been doing your job!"

"Ambush, whatever! I don't fucking care!" My head spun, never a good thing when trying to fly a helicopter. "You got any cure materia? Or potions?"

"If I did I'd be using them on myself right now. Why didn't you bring any?!"

I seethed.

Because Rude…

Shut the fuck up, brain! Not now! I tried to kill the thought.

…always handles that shit.

"Reno."

I didn't answer, hoping she'd shut up.

"Reno. This is important. Are you high right now?"

I barked a laugh. "We're in the air, dipshit!"

"That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it! Are you on anything?"

"No."

"Reno. Don't you dare lie about this. If you're too fucked up to fly…"

"Since you didn't hear me the first time, I've been shot, Elena! I'm losing blood! I can't even check my leg to see how bad it is 'cause I need to pilot and I'm liable to pass out if I see my own blood right now. Unless you can produce another qualified pilot with that yammering little mouth of yours, just fucking SHUT IT!"

We flew back to Edge in merciful if furious silence.


Ordinarily when forced to wait in the director's office for him, I would snoop through his shit. He had it laid out exactly like his old office in the Shinra Building in Midgar, albeit smaller. I'd loved to prowl his space like a cat, keeping an ear cocked for the sound of his careful, light footfalls on the carpet outside. That day my head was spinning from the painkillers I'd scarfed down as soon as I had them in my hot little hand, regardless of the booze I'd had earlier.

My head swam and nodded as I waited to get discharged from Shinra's medical unit. I'd lied through my teeth during intake about my drug habits and what I'd taken that day, trying to negate the danger to my career above the damage to my body. If I'd cared about my mortality more than my job I wouldn't have been made a Turk in the first place.

I did a line of Move the first moment I had to myself, in the med-unit restroom. While it kept me from falling asleep, it made me feel like my skull was being ripped apart from the inside and vampire bats were flapping under every corner of my skin. I scratched at my scalp frantically, almost unable to stop.

Mercifully, I couldn't feel my leg anymore. I hadn't had to put up with any physical discomfort for more than a few hours in over a year. The doctor had said something about how many weeks I'd have to take it easy on my leg, but the specifics hazed in the blaring drugged-out discotheque in my brain. I remember feeling really pissed at Schala destroying my pain endurance by healing even the slightest papercut whenever she touched me.

All this is your fucking fault, you sadistic bitch! I raged at her in my head. I wish you were still alive so I could fucking murder you!

God, you'd be so hard to kill… you'd just keep healing… and screaming…

I clutched and bent my head, whole body twitching and shivering, filled with revulsion and satisfaction at the sick fantasy unfolding in my head. My legs twisted around the legs of the chair, trying to hold my body to where I was. I felt acidic memory bubbling up and seeping around the edges of my thoughts.

Blood, all around and under and over me, violent hands of wind dragging at me, sky like boiling cigarette ash. Weight so light and so heavy in my arms as she fails to move. My voice trapped behind a wall or underwater, softly screaming two syllables that do fuck all. Smell of iron.

A noise shattered the scene, which in my state didn't even have the courtesy to feel like a memory anymore. I spun around, knocking the chair over and nearly stumbling where it caught around my feet. Tseng stood behind me, his face not quite blank.

I struggled to uncoil. My fists wouldn't release, nails digging harshly into my palm.

"Sir," I said through my teeth, not out of anger but effort. My world hung ragged around me like skin around a deep bloody wound. I tried to pick up the chair I'd upset with my foot and staggered. Disoriented, I bent to lift it with my hands. It took all my focus to get it right side up and then myself also right side up in it. I clenched the arms. Tseng walked around his desk but instead of sitting he went to the window and looked out, still as a statue.

The silence made me uncomfortable. In it I heard, like distant sirens, a tide of screams beckoning from the hellish sea of my past. Some of the screams had the resonance of my own heard from inside my head. Far more were those I'd instigated and witnessed.

I wanted to talk over them, but didn't know what to say. I had no desire to explain myself to Tseng. In retrospect, I couldn't have even explained myself to me, nor did I give a fuck. I didn't know what storm was gathering in that deceptively pretty Wuteng skull and wanted to reserve all my defensiveness and charm to counter whatever he threw at me.

"The reprimands and warnings I gave you have gone unheeded," he said. "You're suspended for two weeks. If you cannot pull yourself together in that time your employment will be terminated."

"What?" I said.

He said nothing.

"…Wait, what?!" I leaned forward. "You can't be serious!" The nightmares in my head fused to the one unfolding before me. The buildings outside flickered, as did the size and coloring of Tseng's office, as Edge and Midgar got muddled. Tseng's office had been six times higher in Midgar, so the buildings subsided and surged up like the track of a rollercoaster, switching between the Plate and a forest of brand-new skyscraper husks.

"What the fuck is your problem?!" I screamed at his unmoving back. "Okay, yeah, I fucked up today! I'll admit it! But goddamn, Tseng, missions go bad for all of us! It's not like it's never happened to you, sir!"

Tseng swiveled, his arms folded. His eyes were unbelievably hard. "This is not solely about the mission, although your performance and conduct today were below acceptability for even the lowest-ranking Shinra employee. There is no excuse for your incomparable failure."

I hissed through my teeth. I don't make a habit of bitching out my superiors. I do what I'm told and I'm incredible at it. I'm an insolent son of a bitch, but I don't make excuses, I make improvements. But this was too much.

"Look, sir, just 'cause I got your girlfriend shot…"—I saw his eyes flare but didn't connect that it was time to shut my trap—"ain't a reason to suspend me. This shit comes with the job, no one knows that better than you! She's a motherfucking Turk, for god's sake!"

"So are you!" he roared, and I reeled from his volume. Tseng's not a screamer. He's full of quiet menace and calculating sadism, the kind of evil I respect and admire but could never contain myself enough to emulate. Not that I'd want to—I like being loud and messy. This was the first time in all the years I'd known Tseng that he'd ever yelled at anyone, and it was me.

He stalked over and grabbed the arms of my chair and my wrists along with them, clamping down painfully hard as he leaned over me, fury flashing out of his dark eyes. I reflexively leaned back in alarm. I tugged on my wrists and he placed his right foot over mine and pushed down. My leg was numb, but not that numb.

"…For the time being," he added in a growl. "Two weeks is more than I would give anyone else. You have profoundly disappointed me. You have displayed unforgivable disrespect for your position, your company, your coworkers, and yourself, Reno."

He released me abruptly, spun away and circled his desk while my head was still spinning. At the time I was so fucked up that everything seemed surreal and out of place, so his uncharacteristic outburst just blended in with the rest of the insanity.

"Reflect on what you are becoming and come to a decision." He slid smoothly into his desk chair and touched his keyboard, not even looking at me anymore. "If you aren't sober by that time do not bother coming back. That is all."

Humiliated, furious, I stood up. I walked out and kicked the door shut so hard I left a dent in its flimsy white-painted metal and sent a screaming rocket of pain through the leg I'd forgotten was still injured.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" I limped down the hall, cursing at the top of my lungs.

The weight of the little plastic bag in my inner breast pocket felt insubstantial in the face of what just happened. I felt an urgent need to get downtown in a hurry. I walked faster, gritting my teeth through searing ribbons of pain from the insertion of my leg at my hip all the way to my toes. My tendons and muscles felt riddled with razor blades.

Fuck all this! I thought. Fuck Tseng! Fuck Rude! Fuck Elena! Fuck Schala! Fuck 'em all! Goddamn, I'm gonna rock so much Move I can't even feel my fucking leg so I can fucking beat the ever-loving holy shit out of those backstreet bitches! AAAAAARGH motherfucking goddamn shitting pissing bloody hell! Fuck it ALL!

FUCK ME! I'm motherfucking Reno of the goddamn Turks, I don't need this bullshit! You'll see, I'm gonna kill all you bitches and then I'll piss on your fucking graves! Goddamn, will you ever be sorry you fucked with me! FUUUCK!


Funny thing about rock bottom.

There are ledges on the way down. If you hit them with enough force, you don't realize there's farther still to fall.


I spun a complete one-eighty and slammed into the brick wall. My left hand came up reflexively to brace and shooting pain reminded me that it had been shot as well, albeit grazed. I snarled like an animal from deep in my gut. I shoved off and ducked as I spun to ram my right fist into the nutsack of the guy behind me.

My guts felt knotted up and acidic.

Sunday morning light streaming through the bare picture window frames her in a haze of gold. She's lying alone in the center of the bed, hand uncurled on the empty pillow next to her. Pale peach and electric blue against bright red sheets.

I rolled as I hit the ground. My eyes swam so much it took me a minute to realize I was fighting two jerks instead of one at this point. I grew incensed. The stronger the enemy I'm fighting the more jazzed about it I get. The more rein I let out for my anger to just go and carry me with it.

I heave my body off the doorframe and flop carelessly on the bed, jostling her awake.

"Sorry," I mutter.

"S'okay," she murmurs, stretching.

Sharp jabs of fingertips and edges of palms rained on me from three directions. Red mist veiled my sight. Blood flowed freely from my nose, my hair soaked with sweat and itching royally from the interaction of pain pills, booze and Move.

I don't know at what point the dogpile on me began in earnest. I didn't feel much of anything. My brain had come unmoored from the present and flapped around like a goddamn pleasurecraft sail. I'd somehow grasped the ability to keep fighting whether I was in my body or hammered into the claustrophobic coffin of a past I couldn't change.

"Everyone gone?" I say, over the shower.

"Rod's still here. He's like the dead."

I snicker. "Yup, that's Rod. Kid's still a lightweight. Fine, get in here." I rinse out my conditioner.

She shook her head, outside the open curtain. "I wish I could, I've got an appointment."

I spit water out of my mouth, blinking at her. "What appointment?"

"RAA!" I heard myself scream, as much at the fragments of memory as at the suffocating mass of men who were trying to smother me out of the world. I whirled, kicked, bit, flung bits of the grunting and sweating mass of testosterone across the smelly dirty pavement and up against convenient walls.

"I've got a new job. I have to get the paperwork filled out today."

"Job? Wait, what the fuck?" I lean out of the shower, dripping on the tile. "You never mentioned this."

Much as I tried to blot it out, I could feel what was coming, pressure dropping in my brain, a hurricane of trepidation at the knowledge of what this memory meant. The morning after our housewarming in Edge. I was about to feel more than I could bear.

It made me fierce and nasty. I assaulted the fighters on and around and over me. I spat something squishy out of my mouth. I didn't know if it was my flesh or someone else's. I almost couldn't feel anything anymore. Engines of adrenalin drove my helpless, numb body in the absence of sensory input of where each muscle and piece of myself lay. I felt like a marionette in the hands of my demonic rage.

"It happened last night. Reeve's given me a job at the WRO."

"Whaaaat?!" I shut off the shower. "What the fuck, Bami? What are you doing working for them? Why not Shinra? Fucking hell!" I scrambled for a towel, glaring at her.

A break in the storm. Everyone suddenly pulled back. I spun around, growling, paranoid, wondering if they were massing for a coordinated attack. I saw fear and disgust in their retreating faces. Some melted beyond the range of my visual focus, which was hampered by something dripping in my eyes and the persistent spinning of the alley around me.

"…What are you supposed to do?"

"Convince people with resources to put them toward projects that will help those in need—roads, fuel, food, hospitals, housing, and so forth. Educate, advocate, enlighten, inform, bring people together…"

The alley was nearly empty now. I took the opportunity to dig my Move out of my pants and do bumps from my nail, one for each nostril. Only a bit more of the hated memory squeaked out before the dust kicked in:

"…Reeve's just using you, you know…"

I ground my teeth, popped another pain pill to kill some random throbbing I felt dimly aware of, and followed it up with a fresh cube of gum to gnash on. I glanced around for someone else to distract with and found myself completely alone. I'd cleared the whole place.

My chest tightened. I scrambled for shoes and shirt, more afraid to be alone with myself than anything else in the world at that moment.

Me. Reno of the Turks. Who used to pride himself on not needing anyone, ever. My self-assured awesomeness had evaporated quicker than a blonde's virginity in my presence.

I scrambled to my car. When I yanked open the door two bottles hit the street and rolled. The jangling noise made me wince and undigested booze hit the back of my throat. I swallowed hastily as I slid into the squeaky leather seat. My whole body bathed in rank sweat. I couldn't remember when I'd last showered or seen daylight.

I peeled out recklessly.

I don't remember at what point I hit a streetlamp. I do remember cursing, bumping back off the curve so violently I fishtailed, and ramming my foot back on the accelerator as I careened.

I parked askew across three spaces, not easy when you've got a toy-sized car like I did. I stumbled as I tried to stand. I slammed against the open car door I was climbing through. On the pavement, hands skinned and bleeding, I tried furiously to figure out why I'd fallen. I couldn't remember or feel my injury anymore.

I levered myself up and limped into a bar. As the door opened my ears filled with the sounds of happy drunk people. My libido stirred as my embittered heart withdrew into the past.

"Are you really upset?"

"I just…" I bury a hand in my hair, peering at her. "You really wanna do this, huh?"

In an overloud voice I ordered a drink. The prettiest and youngest shied away. I didn't give a shit. I needed warm, unresisting bodies. The place smelled like a dive, so clearly standards didn't run high here. I didn't want someone hard to get. I wanted someone alive. I wanted fresh. I needed to kill or fuck, and killing wasn't really on the Turks' agenda enough for my taste anymore.

She nods, searching my eyes, and sinks to her knees in front of me. "The world has given me so much. It gave me you. I want to give back."

I melt, reaching out to stroke her cheek.

I was too upset and too much in a hurry to race to the bathroom to do more Move, so I just popped another pill, and there I went blank for a while. I don't know how long.

"Hey, what gives?"

I struggled to connect to the voice in the present, paused in my thrusting. I leaned over the girl on her hands and knees, panting, my sweat dripping onto her back. Or maybe his back. It was a willowy, pale, generic back.

…melt, reaching out …

…her cheek…

"C'mon already!" The ass thrust back at me. I gave it a hearty smack, but more out of reflex and anger than any desire to please or be pleased. I heard a grunt beneath me.

My eyes slid shut, burning as if my lids were made of steel wool. My jaw refused to release even enough to breathe through my mouth. I sucked in air through my stopped-up nose in desperation.

It's YOUR FAULT, screamed my thoughts. You could have talked her out of it. When you realized just how much Reeve was using her, why didn't you tell her to stop?

It made her so happy, I remembered sickly.

Yeah, happy to get worked to death. You should have fought her, my brain hammered at me.

I groaned long and loud through my nose, pulling away from my thoughts as well as the protesting person. I grunted at his-or-her shrill voice as I searched around for my pants. Once I found them and located my Move, I stretched out on the linoleum, too weary to find a flatter surface, and started doing lines to cage and crush the shame.

The red ran out. No more. I felt gunshot-like panicked need bang through my body. I whimpered, pawed through pockets, heard a rattle and rolled out the pain pills.

My violently trembling, sweaty, numb hands made a mess of them, trying to scoop them into the bottle or my mouth. I heard them clattering, over and over, even after I'd swallowed and stopped moving. My brain replayed the painful noise in an endless loop.

…your FAULT… your fault… YOUR fault…

HOW COULD I HAVE KNOWN?!

An edge to a soft giggle somehow broke through my torment. I managed to peel my eyes open and found a girl with dirty, greasy hair falling in hanks around her face kneeling beside me in dim orange light through dirty windows. She giggled again, almost manically. I chilled, already clammy with sweat. She was doing something near the floor, out of sight. I smelled something like metal and burning hair.

I couldn't move. I couldn't speak to ask what the fuck she wanted. I only hoped whatever she had in mind would be over soon and wouldn't involve the leg that was starting to ache again.

She lifted her hands so they'd catch the light, squinting at what she held. A needle glinted on the end of her syringe.

No no no no no no no… I thought in hypnotic horror. I struggled to push noise out, some noise, any signal to stop her.

She looked down at me and grinned, eyes shining. She appeared to sense my distress.

"Shh," she said. "You're going to love it…"

NOOO! No no no!

She lowered the needle. I gave a last frantic try to move any part of me. I couldn't so much as get my fingers to twitch. The pain pills, booze and Move had all coalesced to turn my body into a weighted prison for my screaming mind.

I vaguely felt my mostly-numb arm being prodded. I flushed with heat. My skin pinched. Something cool washed into my veins. I had a split-second of nightmarish trepidation. And then the bottom dropped out.