He'd promised Tseng that he would never cut himself again. It had been an unspoken promise, one that they both had understood in that moment—the moment when Rufus had asked Tseng to save his life as the Vice President had bled on that balcony in Costa del Sol. The Turk had been pushing him to get the problem treated for years before that, but Rufus had always been a stubborn lump of a boy when it came to his own health and how he treated his body.
Or, really, he'd always been a lack of a stubborn lump when it came to his body. Rufus, in his short lifespan of twenty-two years, had developed as many addictions as humanly possible; from morphine, which had lasted two weeks until Tseng caught him shooting up in the bathroom and had completely flipped, to alcohol, which was the longest lasting and most prevalent. As far as obsessions went, Rufus had to admit that Tseng was right: he had an unnatural obsession with avoiding food as if it were the plague. Counting the times that the Turk had force-fed him was almost like counting the number of blow-jobs the older man had given him except much less enjoyable.
Rufus didn't know why he was thinking of this as he sat in the bathtub, his twelve-year-old body once more cut up with a letter opener. He watched with detached fascination as the mako in his body—now so much a part of his body—rushed to heal the fine incisions, the flesh knitting together, so much like snakes, like the traitor, angus in herba. God, he'd forgotten how good this felt. It was better than being drunk, a hundred times better.
"I'm on top of the world, looking down on creation…"
--
Turkish Delights
--
11
As You Like It
--
Sensual lips, stained red from a strawberry's juice, gawked at the older man as the boy tried on his first suit.
"Wutai?" Reno's voice had a shrill pitch to it, his eyes popping. "We're being sent to Wutai?"
The boy had no training, yet that was what the orders said. Rude shrugged, shook his head, and stared down at the papers in his hands. Newest Turk squad to be consistent of quantity one crack Reno Kiribani, one jack Rude Hortensio, one specialist Tseng Chak-Wong, and one tactical advisor Rufus Shinra. Order forms and reports never failed to make Rude feel like an object on a sales rack.
"It doesn't make sense. You have no training…"
"And why is the Vice President being sent with us?" Reno piped up apparently not very worried that he'd been labeled as a crack, a professional thief.
Rude scanned the order papers again, flipping from the front page to the back of the surprisingly thin packet, but found no explanation for that particular question. "I don't know. I don't know why he's labeled as tactical advisor either."
Reno's eyebrows knitted together as he struggled with the tie. "What does a tactical advisor do?"
--
The plane, a bulky, unpleasant thing, hummed loudly along through the smoggy, stagnant air above Midgar, its occupants either staring with varying interest out the windows or looking wearily at papers. Reno had forsaken his tie, much to Rude's chagrin, and was currently intently watching the younger, blond boy who sat across of him, blue eyes rimmed strongly with a green glow, who was looking dully out at the industrial landscape below them. Although the boy was dressed in a black suit with a black turtleneck and looked much smaller than Reno had expected, it was unmistakably Rufus Shinra.
In the newspapers, there had been only ever short blurbs about the Shinra heir except for the one long article published when he was initiated as Vice President. Apparently he'd only ever been educated by the best and had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth; he was admitted quite pretty for a boy of his age and seemed every bit as promising in his speech earlier that week as some of the most optimistic people had hoped he'd be. But now, as Reno watched, Rufus looked as weary as Reno was beginning to feel, the euphoria of becoming a Turk and being given such an important mission so quickly fading away.
Tactical advisor, huh? The job of a tactical advisor to the Turks from what Rude had said was to map out and plan all attacks, going out with the troops and the Turks to make sure everything was carried out to plan. In a way, it was a bit like being a scout and a planner tied into one except this was a boy, a very important boy, but their orders showed he was to be treated just like any other person on the Wutai front.
"Rufus," the Wutaian Turk, Tseng, spoke quietly into the Vice President's ear, "are you alright?"
Blond hair and pale face nodded. "I've just figuring a few factors, Tseng," he said in a soft, cool voice with a frightening smile. "Just a few factors…"
Abruptly, Rufus's glowing eyes slid shut and his head slumped forward, pretending to have fallen asleep but his hands were clenched, white and angry against the fabric of his suit. Yet his breathing was slow and even almost as if he was drifting between two different planes of consciousness, still able to express emotion yet unaware of what happened in this world.
--
"Why haven't you killed him yet?"
The green had turned unfriendly, angry. Rufus clenched his fists and he spun about in the chorusing voices, eyes wandering and flashing when a ripple or shimmer got too close.
"I can't."
Green flashed and he winced as a shock surged through his body. "Why not?"
"He's…" Rufus choked as the green started to become too intense. "I can't…"
"Why?"
Rufus struggled, bit back tears of frustration. "You ask too much of me."
Laughter met his words. The laughter was cruel, biting even, not at all what he would have expected from a chorus of gods and human life controllers. But he didn't voice this feeling; it was too much like salt in an already open wound.
"You hate him. You should jump at a chance to be rid of him again."
He would not beg. "The man…Yes, I hate him, but he is still my father…"
--
President Solomon Shinra was moving down the corridor where his son's now vacant office was located, his footsteps heavy and a line of dark cigar smoke curling out behind him.
Upstairs in his office, the young and up-and-coming Lower Head of Urban Development lay across a couch in the bathroom, eyes glazed and staring without sight up at the ceiling. Once upon a time, Solomon had been a man of morals, who had married a woman that he'd loved and had had a son, vowing that he would do anything to give his boy a better life than he had had. People, he'd always said, didn't start off evil; no one, no matter their deeds, was ever truly evil.
He entered the impersonal office and stared at the neat, clean desk and slightly lopsided potted plant in the corner. In many ways, his son was everything that he was not; his son—in other words, the boy he had named for the colour red, the colour of hope and passion—had natural charisma, a cold demeanor tempered by a capacity for great kindness if he wanted to bestow it upon another. Deep down, as much as Rufus infuriated and frightened his father, Solomon had to admit the boy was worthy of being his son.
Father and son though they were, they were nothing alike. Perhaps that was why he hated the boy so much. It wasn't just the feminine features and the strange way the boy had begun acting recently: it was also that whatever Rufus did ran against his father like oil and water, never mixing, never cooperating. Tracing a hand over the large chair in the room, Solomon looked down at where his son should have been, staring up at him with admiring eyes.
No, Solomon realized, he could never love Rufus but he could never hate the boy truly either. To hate the boy would be like hating his image in the mirror—backwards and wrong but still of his own flesh. It was like young Tuetsi upstairs; there was no feeling, just a need to use, to exploit, to prove that he was still human. But Rufus had stopped screaming, had stopped begging him to stop.
That was why he had sent the boy away. Not because he hated his son, not because he loved his son, but because, now, he feared his son, the son he'd once named in hope of better days.
He wondered if Rufus would come back in a coffin, colour faded, or if the boy would come home red, so very red in such a different way. And somewhere deep down, beneath the layers of hardened politics and business, he already regretted either outcome.
--
The pain slipped away and the shimmers seemed to stare at him. It was a strange, uncomfortable feeling, much like being a dove in a Skinner box, observed for any behavior changes at all times, not unlike being in a hospital or another sterile place.
"After all he's done to you, you still care about him."
There was a flat tone to this voice, a singular voice. Rufus shifted uneasily, twisting the hem of his black suit.
"He's my father. I don't care about him, but I don't want to kill him."
"Why?"
"I…" Rufus swallowed, the tingling of the Lifestream now streaming at his self-inflicted wounds, knitting together the deeper ones that hadn't healed on their own, "don't want to be like him."
"Don't want to be like him?" the voice echoed.
"I became like him once before. I don't want to kill him and become like him again."
Silence and the green began to fade away.
--
They were flying over the ripped land of the Wutai front when Rufus Shinra finally reopened his eyes, eyes that glowed harder and brighter green than before. He turned immediately to Tseng who was looking pointedly anywhere but the windows, where the ruined lands could be compared to his memories of their glory.
"Tseng," the boy spoke in a slow, detached voice, "have you ever killed someone before?"
There was a long moment, almost cold in its shock, but then Tseng blinked and looked down at his young hands. It was a personal question, and, sadly, he was ashamed to answer: "No."
Reno noticed Rude look up sharply at his fellow Turk and then to the slow nodding of their leader and tactical advisor. Rufus leaned back and looked down at the wrecked landscape.
"It's not that bad," the boy said after a moment. "Just don't look too hard that their eyes."
"It's the mouth that bother me," Reno found himself saying rather loudly. "You know, like, the way it twists."
For the first time since they'd communicated silently during the Vice President's speech, the blue-green eyes were on him, a raised eyebrow betraying curiousness. "Who have you killed?"
Reno shifted uneasily. "I ain't proud of it…" he said lamely. "I just do as I do to get by."
Rufus shook his head and leaned forward. "No, I'm just interested. Perhaps we may trade tips."
It was a poor attempt at humour coming from someone so wholly unhumourous, but Reno found himself smiling anyways. It had always helped that Reno had an easy smile.
"I don't think you'd be likin' some of my styles," Reno said philosophically, unaware that everyone on the plane was watching the pair. "I mean, I ain't no great shakes at being subtle. You look like a guy who likes things done pretty."
The tactical advisor shrugged with a certain empirical air about him. "Well, this is a war no matter what my father decides to say. I do prefer something cleaner and dispassionate—sniping and poison, if you please—but I'm going to have to get down and dirty at some point in my life, if not now."
Tseng was watching the conversation, his face working through a set of interesting expressions as if he couldn't quite decide to be horrified or to be intrigued. Rude had a stony look on his face as did their pilot and his co-pilot.
"Most of the time I fucked 'em first, you know, to get their guards down." Reno swung his legs in his seat, looking somewhat despondent. "They're easy to kill after… you know, when they're all limp and weak."
For some odd reason, Rufus Shinra had tilted his head to the side and was regarding him with a thoughtful look on his face. "Ah…" he began slowly, a creepy smile on his face, "I could learn a few things from you."
Around them, machinery hummed, muting the two boy's laughter, muting the underlying fear and disgust between them and fusing together in a strange, certain camaraderie. Tseng and Rude looked at each other, Tseng's eighteen-year-old hand clenched in his lap and Rude's twenty-one years of age lending him no experience to prepare himself for the impending landing.
--
Executive Order
Jurisdiction TURK; Class AB Confidential
… Newest Turk squad to be consistent of quantity one crack Reno Kiribani, one jack Rude Hortensio, one specialist Tseng Chak-Wong, and one tactical advisor Rufus Shinra. To be stationed at frontline sector HA-12 in assistance to SOLDIER Squad OR-014. In the event of casualty … notification to take place only after condition confirmed.
