Disclaimer: I don't own any Final Fantasy VII characters. Square-Enix does. :( Sadly enough!!
HI. Sorry for the pause in updates! Life has been hectic, and I can't tell if anyone likes this story...?? R&R please.
11.
White Flag
His fingertips wrapping around my arms, my hair. His sweet breath, cool against my neck, mesmerizing. Spinning. The world is spinning. Dizzy, drunk on his sweet fragrance.
Truth or dare? He asks, I grin.
Dare.
Kiss me. I press my lips against his and breathe his scent. The moist taste of his breath, his lips against my skin, my neck, my collarbone. Dizzy. The ground spins, quakes with fervor. His hair at my fingertips, rough and fine.
Daredevil, he breathes. Follow me.
--
Kalm. Small town, small people, small dreams, and it looked like nothing has changed here. Except me.
I had been just a seed planted in Kalm's soft soil, but grew until the town couldn't hold me anymore. Now, looking back I see what it really is: not a hometown, but a memory. Of a different, simpler life. And I was just getting back to my roots. The rooftops are a pale blue that looked fresher when I was young. The sky is a light gray, the sun peeking through wisps of cloud every now and then as I remember it. And the people, once tall and proud seemed shrunken and without cause.
I part ways with Tifa at the town inn and tell her I will be back after I look around. She nods in my direction and runs off on her own.
First stop, home.
Or what used to be.
The last time I saw my mother, I stood in the doorway with a bag full of clothes, and told her I was leaving. Then I walked out the front door and never came back. She didn't even look at me; I remember the placid look on her face as I told her of my plans. She didn't care--if anything, she was relieved. Whenever she did glance at me her gaze stung with hatred, reminding me I was a burden, unwanted. Now I finally understand why.
My father was an Ancient. And I was their mistake. It didn't matter to her whether I was breathing or not, my very presence was a reminder, a flashing sign that marked her faults. And here I am on my old doorstep. Wait...why was I here again? Oh, hell. I press the doorbell with little anticipation and wait for a reply.
It's not who I expect.
An old woman answers the door. She's covered in a shawl; she smiles at me with her eyes, amiable wrinkles creasing around her soft skin—remnants of the joy in her life, "And how many I help you, miss?"
"Well, uh...I was wondering...Do you know what happened to the woman who used to live here?"
"Oh, Ms. Zhu. She left long ago. At least four years ago. Quiet lady, said she wanted to leave as soon as she could," the old woman smiled. "I never understand why. It's a lovely town. And who might you be?"
"Oh...I'm...I'm just a visitor. Thank you," I smiled back at her and walked away. So, my mother left as soon as she could. As soon as she knew I was out of sight. To her, I was an obligation, an anchor, keeping her locked in the prison that was Kalm, where she never wanted to be. Forget it. It's not like I loved my mother or anything.
I stare at the sky, at the sun directly above my head—it seems about noon. Where would I find Martin at this time? Martin...I walk back into the tiled plaza. A few minutes of just standing there, I hear his familiar laughter, the cheerful ring sounding just east of where I am. I feel my heart thud, stop dead in its tracks. I turn my head, and I see him.
Damn. He looks more handsome than I remember: tall, broad shoulders, creamy dark skin, and flashing green eyes to compliment his ruffled brown hair. I almost shy away at first. He's walking in my direction with two other girls, but I pay no attention to them. A knot begins to build in my throat, my fingers start to shake. Martin... As soon as he sees me...I know things will be right. They have to be. I've been suffering for five long years for this moment. I step in front of him and gather my voice.
"Martin?" I ask. He looks stunned to see me, blinking to get a clear view.
"Well, hey there, honey. Would you like to join us for a drink?" he asks, and I feel myself shaking, staring desperately at him. No, no no. He knows me. We know each other.
"Martin, it's me, Jalen." His eyes widen and finally—that look! He gazes deeply into my eyes. Spinning. The world was spinning around us again. My knees shake, my breathing shallows. "You remember?" I whisper. He nods, his smile warm and his perfect lips stretching across his face in that beautiful toothy grin I remember. I feel my heart skip, throb in my chest, feel it fumble around and flip. Two pieces of one heart, finally reunited. I could live again.
"Excuse me, ladies." He carefully steps away from them, and towards me.
"You said you would buy us drinks, Martin," one of them says. I don't pay attention. I watch Martin, watch his eyes sparkle as he walks towards me, and feel my joints melt.
"It seems I have a visitor," he smirks. The girls don't matter. Nothing matters as he touches my arm and leans his head in gently towards mine, whispering, "Come with me." Daredevil, he breathes. Follow me. At this point my head is spinning, the ground twirling around me in blissful spins. I'm where I belong now. I'm finally safe. SOLDIER, Nibelhiem, Reno...they don't matter as long as I'm under that gaze. He takes my hand gently in his and leads me across the plaza to a house. This is his house, I remember...how could I forget? On the couch, we sit. "Jalen, huh?"
"Do you...do you remember me?" I swallow the knot in my throat. The nervous tangled feeling creeps along my skin as his eyes dart around my face.
"Of course I do," he says softly in his warm voice. "How could I forget you?"
"I joined SOLDIER, Martin," I try to tell him. I feel childish again, small and soft in his arms. "First class, just like Johny dared."
He draws his face closer to mine, and I smell his sweet breath, feel his words dissolve hot and sticky in the skin on my neck, "You look different. Your eyes, Jalen."
"It's...it's the Mako treatment." Dizzy. So dizzy. My head is spinning, still. The colors of the room begin to blur around us, around his beautiful face. I let myself cling onto his shoulders
"They're pretty," he murmurs, his lips sweeping across my skin. My knees buckle. He presses into me, holding the length of his body against me. I feel the heat of his body sink into my skin, his familiar touch sweeping along my thighs. His lips press against my neck, kissing me. My breath shallows, moans escaping the back of my throat. My breathing tenses as he trails his kisses to my lips and presses his mouth hard against mine. His tongue slips into my mouth and works against mine. I feel his hands clutch my back and my hair, his fingers slowly tracing up my sides, gently lifting up the edges of my shirt and pressing against my skin, but I stop him.
"Martin!" it comes out between gasps. "What are you doing?"
"I'm giving you what you want, but that means I get you too."
"Don't you care at all about where I've been?"
"No, I don't," he mumbles, lips still glued to my neck, trailing lower onto my chest.
"Stop it, Martin!" he stops for just a second and glares at me. I shrink a little; I've never seen this side of him before. I'm not asking for his body, I'm just asking for Martin to be my Martin, understanding and calm and hold me in his arms as if I'd never left—to make things okay, to make the ghost of Nibelheim disappear.
"Jalen, you were stupid to take those dares," he spits. I pull back my fingers into fists. This isn't my Martin anymore. My stomach is knotted into my chest, the tension building against my heart like a snake, constricting its flow and squeezing it until I'm sure it must have stopped. His eyes are dark and malicious. "This is all you've ever been good for."
At his words, the tension shatters, and I feel the pieces of myself begin to unravel, screaming and writhing. Scattered. Those pieces I'd spent weeks collecting, and they fall across the floor of my mind into a million shards, cackling into a burning dementia. Truth or dare. Everything I've built...What I fought for...the past five years...
And just like that,
I break.
--
Why the hell do I care again? Because she's a fucking experiment, right. And she's supposed to be dead, right. And if anyone sees her, I'm fucked, riiight...Just keep telling yourself that, Reno. I worked straight through lunch to leave early. Rude gives me the dirtiest stare—thinks I'm trying to get out of work, play hookey and steal extra time off. In a way, I guess that's true.
"You'll have to work more later," he mutters when I grabbed my coat and swing it over my shoulder.
"Rudy-boy," I smirk. "One plus one still equals two. Your addition's just a little slow." Rude doesn't really say anything. He's never been very good at math. I imagine he's still putting the numbers together in his head in his stolid silence. "Anyway, give Laney a squeeze for me, and tell Cissnei not to blow her top. Unless her top comes off." He smirks at that one, despite all the mathematics. Tseng will be suspicious, but I could care less what boss-man thinks. He's in love with an Ancient, he might actually sympathize with my efforts to protect Jay. With that, I leave the office.
Kalm is my first destination. Yesterday, I'd searched a nearby city, but no one had seen her. Today, I think a little smarter—it's two days travel by foot to get the Kalm, and even if she got there sooner, I had doubt she'd leave if she found her special little Martin. The trick is how to get her to leave Martin—or should I even force her to? She's not safe in the public eye—that's all I know, and I think that's my motive.
It had rained yesterday, and today it's just as cold. I hate to admit it, but the thought of Jalen in some alley again, eyes lifeless, but this time not able to wake up made me shiver, made me uncomfortable, and frightened. I refuse to believe it though. I have to find her, annoying as she can be. And when I do, she'll probably throw fists and I'll probably have to drag her in the car. Pulling a fighter to the frontlines. Not my smartest idea, but there was no other option.
I stop the car in the Kalm plaza and step out. I probably look pretty weird here, black suit, black pants, black tie, but that doesn't matter. This shouldn't be hard, I think to myself.
And I'm right. The town is quiet, except for a commotion in one house on the other side of the plaza. I walk over—Jalen is good at commotions. The door of the house swings open and a body is thrown out. In the doorway stands a man, yelling, "Come back again, baby!"
The girl stumbles onto the floor and stays where she is. That was too easy. I recognize Jalen's thin frame, her broad shoulders and the shape of her round hips. She's wearing something that looks like one of my favorite dress shirts, with thin blue vertical stripes—wait...that is mine—and jeans. That's exactly what she ran out of my apartment in. Sans the pants.
Her hair is a mess, straying all over the place, and she's on her knees, her elbows wrapped around her chest, clenching her body shut. But what really gets me. Her eyes are empty, blank and hollow—like the day I'd found her.
I saunter over her so that my shadow sprawls over her figure. "Well, well, well, look at what we have here," I say. There's no response. "Have a nice little run? You're a slippery one, Jalen. Reckless, merciless, but lacking direction."
She makes no motion.
"Jalen. Get in the car," I demand. She doesn't say anything, but unblinkingly, she slowly pushes herself up with the palms of her hands, awkward like a wound on her bones, and stands. There's an empty expression on her face still. She doesn't speak a word, just carries herself in tiny barefoot steps to the passenger side of the car door. Her hands motionless at her side.
She isn't fighting me. She isn't struggling. Something isn't right.
Maybe it's my pride that prevents me from saying anything. I walk over and swing the door open for her. She sits herself in and I drive.
The entire ride is silent, except for the sudden downpour of rain beating against the windshield. I hate rainy season, but at least it's better than the biting winter cold. After a while, the storm doesn't light, but gets worse. I peer over once or twice, but I can't read the emotion on her face...if there even is one. Her eyes face forward, but it seems as if she's staring inward, at herself.
We get back to the apartment and she walks in and sets herself onto the couch. I sit across from her on the other side.
"Jalen. What's going on. Who was that?" She doesn't say anything, just brings her knees up and holds them to herself. Nothing in her expression changes.
Okay, that's it. I'm in desperate need of alcohol. I go to the kitchen and pour myself some wine. "Honey, I have ways of making you talk," I tell her, but still no motion. I sigh and saunter down the hall to my room. I'll take a break. I grab my suitcase and set my coat on my bed.
I hear the front door open.
Then close.
I don't register it at first. Then it hits me.
I dash out through the hall, out the door, Jalen's about twenty feet out in the open and sitting herself down onto the ground. The rain beats against my arms, seeps into my shirt, and the cold bites at me. She'll die! Worst fucking storm of the century. She'll freeze. Crazy bitch!
She doesn't care. She sits right in the middle of the street, her hands complacently at her side, a barren look still clouding her bright blue eyes. The cold sinks into her skin through her close and she gasps, but doesn't move. When I see this, I finally understand. She's given up.
"JALEN! JALEN—ARE YOU CRAZY!?" I grab her thin little body and pick her up, huddling her against my chest.
It's the second I touch her that the tears come. In drops, then streams. The rain's pouring all around us, plummeting in thick streams everywhere and from her eyes. "Jalen..." I carry her quickly back into the warmth of my apartment and flip on the heater. I carry her into my room and drop her onto the bed. I wrap my coat around her and shut her window.
Déjà vu.
She lies, completely subdued, everything in her shaking from the cold.
I sit down next to her and pull the wet hair out of her face. The tears keep on.
"Jalen...what the fuck did he do to you?" she finally looks at me with grave blue eyes.
"Reno," her voice is small and tired. "I'm cold."
Warm clothes...she struggles pulling the shirt over her head through the tears. I turn around and give her privacy. I pull my white tee over my head and drop it to her from behind my back. It's the warmest shirt I can think of now. She shuffles herself into it as I grab another tee from an open drawer and slip it on. She shoves off her pants and tosses them aside, curling her legs to her chest.
I turn around. She looks at me, then quickly looks away, staring again into nothing.
I sigh, and flip off the lights. In the second it takes my eyes to adjust, I drop my slacks—but not for the obvious reason. I slip around to her side and pull the covers over the two of us. She grasps onto my shoulders immediately with her little fingers. It hurts, seeing her so...submissive.
Jalen is a fighter. She never just goes with the flow, always carving her own path from nothing.
But now she's waving the white flag, wearing it in her bones, in the way she stares so bleakly into nothing. Transfixed on her pain.
And I hate to see it. Hate to feel her so calmly against my body without a struggle.
I want to grab her shoulders and shake her, shake this all out of her. I want her to shake me back and tell me to stop it. I want her to fight back.
"Jalen," I mutter. She doesn't respond. Her head is pressed into my neck, her breathing steady and light. I've got to do it. "Truth or dare, Jalen." I feel her breath stop against my neck, my skin tingling where its moist touch had been. I've got to press it out of her. "Come on, Jalen. Truth or dare."
Her grip on my shoulders tighten. I feel the tension build into her limbs.
"What, are you scared?" I whisper, a smirk curling onto my lips. I know she can see it, feel its challenge in the sly tone of my voice. "Come on. Truth or dare, Jalen."
It works. She pushes her fists against me. I look down. She stares at me, her eyes big and glossy, like it's the first time in a long while she's actually registering what she sees. The glare in her eyes is weary, but intense, the fight seeping slowly back into her skin. That's the Jalen I know. I shake her lightly. "Answer me, Jay."
"Dare, you bastard," she murmurs.
I knew this wasn't the time. I knew it was wrong to ask. Yes, she was vulnerable. Yes, she was scared. But we needed to stop playing this cat and mouse game. I needed to know.
"Be honest," I said. "Tell me if you love me." She presses her fist into my chest, a pained expression painting her face. She sighs, slightly exasperated, definitely annoyed.
"You stupid, stupid government scum," she mutters as she pushes against me with her angry little fists, her weariness apparent. The tone of her voice sounds like a sob, like a desperate cry. But she lowers her voice into a shaky whisper. "Why the hell..."
"Come on, daredevil."
Silence.
Then a sad attempt to kick me under the sheets that results in me catching her thigh and pulling her closer. She lifts her face so that her lips just barely touch my ear. She prepares herself for the final testimony of the night. I feel her breath, soft and weak against my neck as her response rolls out in a whisper:
"I love you...because you're the only thing that feels right to me, you stupid Turk."
I lower my face to hers and crush my lips against hers.
HI AGAIN. End of chapter! Leave me a message, write a review, whatever. Like I said before, sorry for the pause in updates. I don't really know if what I'm writing is being received poorly or well :( So, R&R
I was thinking about bringing the other Turks into play a lot more. Tell me if you want to see it!
