Before we begin, I'd just like to thank all you guys who have been reading, and especially those who have been reviewing and emailing me about this fic! I'm really excited about writing it, and I've been having a blast. Thanks!!!
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XI. Rude
Rufus had ordered him to go back to bed, but Rude couldn't do that. Not with a potential enemy on the loose, not with the organization in disarray and their financial situation in shreds. Not with Reno in the shape he was in, which Rude suspected was only slightly better than someone on injured status, though Reno hadn't suffered a scratch in last night's escapade.
Tseng's office was locked, but Rufus had a master key, and it had been no difficult feat to unlock the heavy wooden door. Rude had been too late for that ceremonious entry, having been still five floors down waiting for the elevator because he didn't think his body would hold up from pounding up five flights of stairs. Rufus, who was not about to let his bad leg stop him, hadn't been patient enough to wait.
By the time he got there, there were five Green Earth finance employees digging through what remained of the files in Tseng's desk, two of their technicians dismantling his computer, another one rummaging through a file cabinet under Rufus' eagle-eyed gaze. Reno was not there. Elena was standing guard by the door.
"Hi," he said to her, a little short of breath.
The petite woman with the gun stared at him, eyes going up to his face and then down to his bandaged side. "You look near death," she said, and then her face softened. "I heard what happened. Go back to bed."
Rude shook his head. "Can't." He surveyed the situation again, saw Rufus glance up briefly at him and make eye contact before going back to his hurried consultation with file cabinet guy. "What happened?"
Elena looked sour. "I can't say I know. I was in the office going over some reports and stuff, you know, the usual, and I get a phone call from Reno saying get my ass down here. And here I'm upset because I have five reports due at twenty-hundred hours and I've timed it perfectly so that if I don't do ANYTHING but sit there for the next three hours, I'll get them all in on time."
Rude nodded patiently. "And?"
"Reno says, 'Tseng is missing.' And I'm like, 'What?'" Her sour expression intensified, and Rude wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that she and Tseng had once been a couple, if not quite lovers. He had never felt it his place to pry, and Elena had never deigned to talk about it, which, for Elena, meant that it was really no one's business. He waited for her to continue, but she had stopped, her eyes staring past him, a little unfocused, remembering. Rude knew how that was, too.
Finally, she said, "The bastard."
He couldn't quite wrap his mind around the fact that Tseng might have just betrayed not only Green Earth and Rufus Shinra's dream, but also more than fifteen years of what he and Reno and Elena and all the rest had seen as an unbreakable friendship, a brotherhood forged in blood. No, he thought, it couldn't be. It was all a mistake and they would sort it out soon. Aloud, he said, "I wouldn't jump to conclusions just yet, Elena."
"You're going to tell me that it's always my weak point," she told him, "but you'd be wrong. I'm not jumping to conclusions. Tseng won't be back." She squared her shoulders, eyes narrowing. "And if he does try and crawl back home, I'll shoot him right between the eyes."
That sounded a little extreme to Rude, but he looked at Elena's clenched fists and the way she stood, rigid and unflexing, and he realized that she was angrier than he had ever seen her. It was, he reflected, almost like Tseng had betrayed her personally, as if by the simple act of walking out on them he had given her a personal shove.
As all this passed through Rude's head, he then realized that Elena was still in love with Tseng.
"I understand," he told her, and she stared at him uncomprehendingly. Perhaps she thought he was being cold, stoic Rude, but he couldn't think of anything else to say. He would not think of Tifa, would not think of how she had not even told him goodbye as she had left Corel. He wondered if she would be back, or if all this finally had become too much to bear for her, because he had always loved her much more than she had loved him.
If she loved you at all, the little voice whispered inside his head.
He shook his head a little bit to get rid of it, wondering if he was going senile already. But no, it was only Rufus waving to him, so he nodded to Elena, leaving her standing there looking a bit lost and alone in the doorway, and went over to the man who he had served for so many years. "The verdict?" he said quietly.
Rufus shifted his weight on his cane. His eyes were hard. "I have no idea why Tseng would do this to us," he said. "This is totally unexpected. I never..." he trailed off.
Rude almost reached out to touch him, to lay a hand on his arm, something. But this was Rufus Shinra, and old habits were hard to break, so he didn't. "There must be some mistake," he said.
Rufus smiled coldly. "Tseng does not make mistakes."
Rude knew that too. This was not some spur-of-the-moment crime, not for someone of Tseng's standing and caliber, not as a former Turk. The only conclusion he could draw was that Tseng had been methodically planning this for some time, plotting his course and concealing his footprints, and for some reason, all of the people who had called themselves closest to him had somehow missed it.
Rude wondered if Tseng had ever considered him a friend. The logical conclusion, he thought, would be no. But that didn't make any sense either, because they had been friends. He would have died for Tseng. He would still die for him.
Would he?
"You, on the other hand," Rufus said, and he realized that the other man had been speaking and he hadn't been listening.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I was thinking."
"You need to go back and rest." Rufus smiled again, this time more genuinely, though full of worry and shadows. "I'll call you a cab."
"Where's Reno?"
Rufus looked like he was about to say something, and then changed his mind, and said, "I don't know. Elena said she'd seen him on his way downstairs when she arrived. I assumed he was going to do some more digging."
"I need to find Reno," Rude said. Rufus frowned, and Rude held up one hand. "I promise I will return to the hospital right afterwards. I'll call a cab myself."
"I trust you," Rufus said, and nodded towards the door. Rude didn't need to look to know that he was nodding to Elena, and that she would understand that she was in charge of his well-being now. "Don't go haring after any dream-monsters this time."
Not even your dream-monsters? Rude thought silently to himself, but he nodded to Rufus and exited the room, nodded again to Elena as he passed her, and she raised one eyebrow.
"Half an hour and your ass is in a cab back to the hospital, no excuses!"
Reno would have given her some smart comment. Rude wasn't up-to-date on his sarcasm, so he nodded again and headed to the stairwell. Going down the stairs would probably be easier than going up, and he had an inkling that Reno was on just the next floor down.
He found the red-haired man in the building's atrium, just like he'd thought. The finance building's atrium wasn't large, nor were its glass-windowed confines large enough to house a decent variety of plants, but it was quiet and dark now with the falling of night, and Reno had always liked quiet places to think. His friend was sitting on a bench, arms draped over the back, legs spreadeagled, looking as exhausted as he probably felt.
"Go home," Reno said to him.
"Take your own advice," Rude returned, walking around to the front of the bench and nudging Reno aside so he could take a seat on the corner that was left.
They sat in silence for a while and Rude watched the scenery outside the windows idly. It was dark enough in the atrium that the windows still afforded a good snapshot view of the center of the Green Earth grounds, illuminated by the occasional car's headlights and pricked by a few streetlamps around the central driveway. But all in all, it was dark and he could see the stars.
"I've never been to Cosmo Canyon," he said suddenly, and he could feel Reno's frown.
"What?"
"The stars," Rude told him. "I hear that you can see them big and up close there. Like you're standing on the edge of the Lifestream, about to jump in."
"I feel like that at the moment," Reno said. "But in the end, I'm always too scared to jump."
Rude waited for the silence to stretch, and then he said, "What happened with Tseng?"
Reno gave a short, self-deprecating laugh. "What happened? I failed, that's what happened. Your favorite fucking failure, that's what I am. Always 'almost, but not quite' whenever the shit hits the fan."
"Tseng betrayed the company on his own," Rude said. "You didn't contribute to that whatsoever."
When Reno didn't answer, Rude looked over at the other man's shadowy silhouette and was surprised to see that Reno had sat up straight, clenching both hands together, trembling. "I almost did," he said. "I almost helped him. I almost bought into it."
"But you didn't," Rude said, not trying to be soothing or helpful, but just laying out the facts like he always did. It was one thing he was good at. "Tseng's gone, and you're here now because you realized what he was going to do."
"Realized too late, you mean."
"Stop beating yourself up about it," Rude began, and Reno slammed the palm of his hand down hard on the iron of the bench.
"Dammit, Rude!"
Rude opened his mouth to say he was sorry, thought about it for a moment, and then sat back in silence. He waited. The stars glimmered outside the window. He heard the pounding of feet on the stairway, faint and echoing, and then a voice - Rufus'? - shouting orders, and then silence again.
"I wish I'd never met her," Reno said at last, low and desperate.
Her? Rude rolled the possibilities around in his head. Reno could be talking about his most recent ex-girlfriend, but he had barely known the girl before they'd called it quits, so that probably wasn't the answer. Not Tifa, unless his fiancee was secretly having an affair with Reno behind Rude's back, and he didn't think that would ever happen. Tifa was too honest. 'Her' could not possibly refer to Elena, who was so upset over Tseng's departure that she had barely spoken to Rude at all half an hour ago, and she and Reno had never been more than partners in crime.
"Yuffie?" Rude said.
"Smart, pal," Reno said. "Real smart."
"This is unexpected. What did Yuffie do now?"
"She's fucking insane," Reno spat to the nearest tree. "I can barely think when she's around. Every time I think I have her figured out, she does a complete turnaround on me. I've known the kid for fifteen years - you'd think I would have it all down by now!"
Rude began to see the big picture. "Yuffie left for Wutai a few hours ago, you know," he said. Testing.
Reno's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, I know. Good riddance. Not that we've anything left to say to each other anyway."
"You had an argument?"
"She slammed me against the floor and bit me. After I nearly ran her through the wall. I think that counts."
Rude raised one uncomprehending eyebrow. "She bit you?"
He could sense Reno's embarrassment, and barely resisted a bit of a grin. It was almost too easy, but he wasn't going to let his friend take the easy way out.
"We were having a...discussion. About some Materia."
"The Materia Vincent gave her, you mean. What on earth made you think you were going to be able to get it back from her?"
Reno gave him a scathing look that Rude couldn't see very well in the dark. At least he assumed it was scathing. "Even you know about that?"
"I'm a good eavesdropper."
"Tseng...ordered...me to get it from her. She'd offered to let me use her room for a nap since she was going out, and I figured I could just steal it while she was away. Easy. No confrontation."
"But you like confrontation."
"I'm getting old," Reno said. "I don't like it as much as I used to. Especially with a girl who I'd like nothing better than to kill one moment and then to-" he stopped.
Rude did smile then, though it was dark enough that he hoped Reno didn't see. "Nothing untoward happened, I hope?"
Reno shifted uncomfortably. "Nothing like that." A pause. "Not really."
"Are you in love with her?"
They'd had these types of conversations before, casual affairs in which Reno would ask him if he still liked Tifa and Rude would say yes, and then he'd ask Reno how his love life was going, and Reno would give him some dismal prediction on his girlfriend of the month. But this time, Rude felt, it was somehow different. Yuffie was not the girlfriend of the month, not someone who would flit in and out of their lives without a ripple.
"She's practically Rufus' girl," Reno said at last. "I couldn't do that."
"Perhaps Rufus thinks so," Rude countered. "As for Yuffie, I think she's too preoccupied to think of our great leader as anything more than a good friend. Now you, on the other hand-"
"Get off it," Reno growled. "I get the point. I kissed her, Rude, that's all. Totally unexpected, caught off guard, and not something I'd want to do again."
Rude sat back. "All right."
"I'm serious, man. I don't know what was the matter with me. I'm over it now."
"Which is why you're sitting here in the dark of the atrium of the finance building depressed."
He saw Reno cross shadowy arms across his chest. "Let me get this straight. Tseng just betrayed Green Earth, the organization is probably officially bankrupt, Rufus is as pissed off as I've seen him in years, Denzel is missing, Vincent Valentine is dying of Geostigma, there are unknown monsters on the prowl in Nibelheim, and you think I'm depressed because Yuffie Kisaragi won't go out with me?!"
"Well," Rude said. "Yes."
"You're fucking nuts."
The game had gone far enough, Rude decided, and he laughed softly. "Sorry. I know things are pretty bleak right now. I'm not doing too well myself."
"Yeah," Reno told him dryly. "I noticed."
"But I figure," he continued, "if we can't laugh at ourselves once in a while, how are we going to be able to go on?"
"You're not going all philosophical on me, are you?"
"Tifa told me that once." He tried to keep the wistful tone out of his voice, but it was Reno, and Reno could read him like no one else. Not even Tifa.
"I'm real sorry about that. I didn't even think she'd leave without letting you know."
Rude shrugged. "She's her own woman. We'll be all right."
Reno didn't answer, and Rude thought about Yuffie Kisaragi, on a ship heading away from Corel with Vincent's Materia in tow. He hadn't managed to eavesdrop far enough into the conversation between the former Turk and Rufus to figure out exactly why that Materia was important, but knowing Vincent, he wouldn't have given it to Yuffie without dire warning. In retrospect, Yuffie was probably the best person he could have entrusted it to. If he'd handed it over to Reno, it would be in Tseng's hands by now.
Even not knowing what that Materia was, Rude was experienced enough to assume that would have been disastrous.
"We have to get that Summon Materia back," he said abruptly.
"Shouldn't you be thinking about more important things, like going back to the hospital?"
Rude frowned. "I'm quite serious. The way Vincent and Rufus were talking about that Materia, it's vital that it be back in our hands."
"Yuffie's smart."
"Smarter than Tseng?"
Reno considered this. "I don't know," he said at last.
"I know Yuffie can take care of herself. The fact is, however, that Tseng is now an unknown quantity. We don't know who or what he's allied with, but I do think he is allied with someone, because the Tseng I knew was cunning. He was no simple thief. And I am not naive enough to believe that the attacks on us and Vincent were pure chance."
"You're talking a lot tonight," Reno said sourly. "Stole all of Elena's vocabulary, have you?"
Rude sighed. "Help me out, please."
"Fine. So Yuffie's got the Materia we need. How we gonna get it back?" Reno glanced around at the atrium. "And I wonder if someone's got this place bugged?"
The hairs pricked on the back of Rude's neck. "Let's go," he said, and Reno pushed himself off the bench, holding out one hand to pull Rude to his feet. His legs didn't seem to be working, and he was probably an hour past Elena's half-hour time limit, but he thought she would understand.
They rode the elevator back down to the ground floor in silence. The building was quiet and dark now. Rufus and the security detail had long gone, probably taking everything out of Tseng's office in the process. He followed Reno out the back doors and into the rear lot of the finance building, half-filled with gravel and sand and scratched-out parking places for the few employees who drove to work. The moon was high over the Corel Mountains, bathing everything in eerie white.
"If I were Yuffie Kisaragi," Reno said at last, "Where would I go?"
"I would not go back to Wutai," Rude said.
He expected Reno to counter that, but instead his friend looked thoughtful. "You know, I thought she sounded kinda scared when she told me she was going home. I thought it was...because of what had just happened...but maybe I was wrong. And she was hanging onto that Materia way too hard for someone who just wanted to add another one to her collection."
"I don't think she went back to Wutai for two reasons. One, it's too far from the action. Two, she isn't the type of person to sit with an unknown quantity on her hands."
"Maybe she's outgrown the action," Reno suggested, and Rude didn't say anything. After a moment, Reno said, "Or maybe not."
"If I were Yuffie Kisaragi," Rude said, "and I'd just been entrusted with a piece of a secret and instructed not to let anyone else know, I'd head somewhere isolated, a place where I could find out exactly what that Materia was. A place that has the knowledge for something like that, but where I'd be left alone."
Understanding dawned. "Ah," said Reno. "You think she's gone to Cosmo Canyon."
"I'm in no shape to travel, unfortunately. And I don't want this getting out to the others. We lost Tseng; I don't know if anyone else is on his side."
"Whatever side that is," Reno muttered. "Do you trust Highwind?"
"No," Rude said. "I'd like to, but unfortunately no. Do you-?"
Reno snorted. "I wouldn't stoop so far as to steal a ship. I could never show my face around here again. And Cosmo Canyon's not that far. I'll steal someone's bike instead."
