Embitterment
By: Glass Mermaid
Disclaimer: I own nothing that you recognize.
AN: Whew! Winding up here! Only a few more chapters to go!
Happy Mother's Day everyone!
Chapter Thirteen
A shrill peal of a PHS, fumbling, and the muttered curse of a disgruntled awoken rippled the early morning hush before it settled once again over the inn room.
"Reno?" a smooth, patrician voice grated against the redhead's senses, and he suppressed a snort of disgust.
Nobody should sound like they just stepped out of some fruity little wine and cheese party at seven in the goddamn morning.
"… the fuck you want Rufus, uh, sir?" he groaned, tugging himself upwards and resting his head in his palm.
He'd stayed up way until the sun rose and then crashed. He couldn't honestly be expected to function on two hours of sleep. Reno tried to convince himself that Rufus would completely understand if he hung up on him.
"I have some news," the blonde said carefully, and belatedly Reno caught the seriousness in his voice.
He tried to become more alert, his eyes narrowing as he focused. It was stupidly hard when he was so damn exhausted.
"Hit me," he said lazily.
Rufus sighed, pausing for a moment in such a way that had Reno's muscles tensing.
"We received a call this morning from Reeve about Wutai," he said.
Reno's blood froze, his already pale face whitening as thoughts of Yuffie broken and bloodied somewhere in the world appeared in his mind's eye. He'd seen enough of murder and violence to paint himself lurid, gruesome imagery, and swallowed hard to keep back the bile.
"Yea?" he rasped.
"Yes," Rufus continued calmly. "It seems as though the assassination attempts on Godo were finally successful. Nobody has been able to find Yuffie as of this morning, so word has not reached her. Vincent Valentine has continued bribing the Innkeepers to contact him if anyone with her description is spotted, but she continues to keep out of sight."
"Fuck," Reno sighed, relieved and regretful as the fear eased away from his stomach, "this is going to mess her up."
"Tseng was successful enough in finding out who was behind it, but it seems as though it is too little too late," Rufus shrugged.
Reno snorted. "Maybe, maybe not. We've still got to help her, right? Give me everything you've got on those goddamn fucks."
"Since you asked so nicely," Rufus drawled, and proceeded to tell Reno all the information they'd gathered about a darker side of political Wutai.
It took way too long, in the Turk's opinion.
"We done?" Reno said shortly when Rufus finally drew to a halt in his summary.
"I suppose," the other man sniffed. "I had something further planned, but if you're not interested…"
"Oh?" Reno sniggered, impatient but amused.
He scrabbled for his pants, yanking them on with one hand as the other held the PHS to his ear.
"I'm sending Rude out with the helicopter. Take it. It's a temporary loan."
Reno cocked a brow though Rufus couldn't see him, halting with his arm half through his sleeve.
"What's in it for you?" he asked warily.
Smirking on the other end of the line, Rufus released an exaggerated sigh. "After all we've been though together you still don't trust me?"
"I trust you about as much as I do myself," Reno snorted, buttoning his shirt.
"And well you do to remember that," he sighed. "Rude is leaving as we speak. I'm nothing if not efficient with my time."
There was a pause.
"…and Reno?"
Rolling his eyes as he checked the clip of his gun, Reno urged him to continue with a grunt.
"Try not to break my helicopter. They are rather expensive," he finished.
Reno hung up.
In desperate need of a bath, Yuffie shuffled into the Nibelheim Inn and practically slumped onto the counter where the innkeeper awaited his customers.
"Help you, miss?" he asked politely.
"Oh gawd yes," she whined. "I smell so bad."
He reared back slightly, attempting to remain unaffected as well as out of her unpleasant odor range. "Uh, a room with bathing facilities?"
"Please!" she moaned, shoving gil over the counter without bothering to count it.
He nodded, carefully extracting the fee for a night and no more, before pushing it back towards her.
"Name?" he inquired, fingers poised to type.
"Yuffie Kisaragi," she muttered, glancing around to make sure nobody else heard her. "Spell it however you want. I'm too tired to care."
The innkeeper straightened, inhaling sharply. This was the girl! The one from AVALANCHE that that terrifying man in the red cloak was hunting for! He fumbled for the phone, shoving it hastily across the desk toward the girl who eyed him suspiciously.
"Please!" he stammered, awed that another one of the people who had saved the world twice was standing before him. He was a bit star struck, though he'd never imagined they could be so dirty looking. "A man was here, Vincent Valentine! He told me it was extremely urgent that if I saw you, I insisted that you call him without delay!"
The innkeeper sank back slightly, recalling the crimson eyes and deathly pale face of the looming figure. He glanced back at the no longer slouching girl, seeing her frozen features. He didn't want to contemplate how badly things might go if she refused him though, and so he pushed the phone towards her again.
"He said it was an emergency," he pleaded.
Feeling sick but resigned, Yuffie lifted the receiver to her ear and dialed the familiar PHS number. It only rang once before Vincent's somber voice greeted her.
"What is it?"
"Vincent?" she said uncertainly, "What's up, Tall, Dark and Gloomy?"
"Yuffie, where are you?" he said sharply, concern touching his husky voice in a way she had rarely ever heard.
"Uh, Nibelheim," she replied uneasily.
What was going on?
"Yuffie, you must listen carefully," he said soberly, and Yuffie's wary instincts sharpened painfully at the tone of it.
"Give it to me straight, doc," she jested weakly.
A pause.
"Your father has been murdered," he said stonily. "Word has not yet reached the continent. It was in the early hours of the morning. I am sorry."
Godo? Dad?
Yuffie's tears were sharp and hot, spilling from eyes that saw nothing before her. Respectfully, the Innkeeper moved quietly away. Her stomach was hurting, so badly. Why was it hurting there? She would have thought her chest – her heart – would have been the source of such pain, but all she could feel was her stomach. Her stupid, stupid, icy cold, heaving stomach. She felt numb everywhere else, and distantly, she glanced down to assure herself that her legs were still beneath her. She could hear Vincent talking, his usually coldly comforting voice nothing but a grating in her ear as he told her the hard details of what he knew.
He had nothing else to offer her.
"Vincent?" she whispered, and he fell silent immediately.
"Yes, Yuffie?" he asked.
"I'm sorry I just took off on everyone," she breathed absently.
"Nobody is angry with you," he replied.
Her voice was blank, wooden. "I meant from the WRO. From Reeve. From you. I'm sorry."
"Do not worry about such things now," he ordered, worried for the tiny ninja and the distress he'd had to bring to her.
"I don't really feel like talking right now, Vincent. I'm tired. I want to go to sleep," she rasped.
"Yuffie," he said calmly, "you are in shock. We're sending somebody out there. Reeve organized it all this morning. Go to your room. Rest."
"Yea," she whispered numbly. "I will."
She clumsily hung up the phone and the Innkeeper handed her a key, telling her the room number. Yuffie nodded, forcing her wobbly legs to move forward and snatching up her pack with frozen fingers. It was cold. She was so, so cold.
Opening the door and locking it behind her, she wandered aimlessly across the room until she found the bathroom door. Avoiding her eyes in the mirror, she unwrapped the complimentary toothbrush and paste, and brushed until her gums were bleeding before turning around.
The shower was a little stall, and she turned the taps on, shoving her hand beneath the water until the heat soaked into the numbness. Dropping her dirty clothes to the floor one by one, she slunk inside and shut the door, curling herself up into the corner against the cold tiles she did not feel.
As the heat of the water thawed the numbness of shock from her mind and brought feeling back to her limbs, the tears came hard and swift and endless.
She mourned for her father for not being young enough, strong enough, to fend off such an attempt. She mourned for her people for losing their leader.
She cursed herself for not being there. She cursed Godo for losing that last fight.
She grieved for the loss of her father. She grieved for the loss of her freedom.
Finally, Yuffie twisted off the taps and staggered out to the bed, burrowing herself beneath the covers without bothering to towel off. Her hair and skin soaked the sheets, the blankets, and she shivered alone.
On the heels of her grief came fury, scalding and freezing her from inside. The same men who had attacked her had done this. The same cursed house had sent the one who had taken Godo's life. The deceitful, power hungry, murderous traitors had forged a formidable debt when they spilled the blood of a Kisaragi. For nothing. They had killed an old man who had lived only for them, for nothing but greed and stale values.
And if she had to burn down every ancient house in Wutai, slaughter every noble family she knew, she would reclaim the stolen blood of her family and take her place on the throne as Godo's daughter.
She had no choice. She had no choice.
She sobbed, shivered and swore herself to sleep.
Several hours later, after sleeping the sleep of the soul wounded and world weary, she dragged herself from its murky depth. It was mid afternoon and the sun was an ancient, faded yellow that spilled through the windows and stung her scratchy eyes. Yuffie pulled herself upright and hugged her knees beneath the covers. It was a testament to both her exhaustion and his stealth that she startled when he spoke.
"I've been looking for you, kid."
She gasped, glancing wildly towards the sound. She spotted his lanky form on the bed beside her own and felt her heart nearly give. He was watching her, elbows resting comfortably on his knees, the glaze of sunlight melting into his hair and turning to a burning shade of orange. His eyes were narrowed slightly against the brightness, his mouth a sad, straight line. She blinked at him, not sure if she was still sleeping.
"Reno," she said quietly, and it hurt so bad to say his name.
"Yea," he replied huskily, because it hurt so bad to hear her say it.
"Reeve, Rufus… They sent you?" she whispered.
He watched her carefully.
"I've been tailing you for over a week. When we found out where you were, they called me. Godo… It was some family called Kawa. They hired the guys that got your dad."
Yuffie bit her lip, holding tighter to her knees and keenly aware of the bared skin of her back where the bedding fell away.
House Kawa, The River of Wutai. One of the ancient houses, steeped in tradition and the old ways. She wasn't surprised. She wondered if her father had known. She wondered if she was the only reason he'd been killed, or just a step on the progress to power.
"I was a coward," she murmured, risking another glance at him. "I should have been protecting him instead of running around whining about responsibility and heartbreak."
"We all got to run sometimes," he shrugged.
"It wasn't my right," she insisted in the same, quiet, unnerving tone so foreign to her.
Reno didn't know what she wanted him to say, and he fidgeted absently with his half filled pack of cigarettes, pinching the cellophane between his fingers and listening to the delicate crackling fill the silence.
It had been stupidly easy to pick the lock on the door, the inn still holding a foolish naivety when it came to the less scrupulous denizens of society despite the abuse it had suffered in previous years. He had expected to be met with either a physical attack or tears, but there was only her small, silent form beneath the covers.
Seeing her so close, vulnerable and bare in miserable sleep had been brutally difficult for him. He'd been unprepared. He wanted to scream at her, hold her and slap her all at once.
She'd been breathing evenly, black hair a tangled briar patch around her cheeks, lashes so stark against her flushed, tear burned skin that they looked like streaks of black paint. So many emotions that he didn't know how to deal with had flooded through him when he saw her after weeks of waiting, and so he had sat down on the opposite bed and stared at the floor until he heard her stirring.
And now she just shifted, deadened and lost on the bed as time kept marching between them.
His eyes followed her as she stepped sluggishly from the bed, naked and uncaring, rummaging through her pack until she withdrew a relatively clean bundle of clothes. He said nothing as she put on her underwear or shimmied into her little shorts. He stayed silent when she wrestled her shirt over her head and slipped her arms into the black vest. It was only when she expertly twisted her bandana around her head that she spoke.
"You know," she whispered, "you'd think that because of who I am and what I do, I'd be immune to stuff like assassinations, murders…"
"There's a difference between the shit I do and stuff you learned," he shrugged.
Her shoulders stiffened. "Yea."
She glanced at him over her shoulder, her fingers toying with the pocket of her shorts.
"The people who did this… killed Godo… They're just like you, right? They kill strangers, wreck lives, because somebody else told them to. Because somebody paid them to."
Her shoulder's fell momentarily, her voice thickened. "You'll just keep doing it, over and over until you're cut down first."
Reno didn't bother denying it, merely watched her, sensing the misplaced fury thickening the air with tension. She hung her head low, black hair sheathing her features as thoughts raced madly through her head. She wanted to ask him a hundred questions about how he could do the horrible things he did but miserable anger choked her voice. She sensed him stand, tensing as his sharp instincts warned him of danger.
Good, Yuffie laughed inside, tears filling her eyes. Bleed like me.
Reno swore as she spun on the balls of her feet, the assault he'd dreaded since the beginning finally arriving as her temper snapped. He felt sick within, knowing that she had every right and no right at all to take her grief out on him.
He'd come here for her. He'd come here to help her.
Teeth bared and tears falling, Yuffie lashed out wildly with every weapon she could reach on her body. She whipped several deadly throwing stars at the redhead, who dodged most of them with the honed skill of a man who spent much of his life cheating death.
He lunged for her, one blade nicking his forearm and slitting neatly through his jacket and the muscle beneath as if they were butter. If it hadn't hurt so much, hadn't infuriated him so badly, he might have admired her speed. The second cut his ear, slicing viciously through cartilage and several strands of scarlet hair. The blood flew, scalding his neck with its heat and dripping over his hand as enraged, he grabbed her by her rapidly moving wrists and twisted them brutally. It was only her grief that made it so easy to take her down.
She cried out with fury and pain, dropping the stars in her hand. Reno wrenched her around, crossing her slim arms over her body and using them to restrain her tightly against him. Immobilized she went limp, gasping wildly. Unwilling to trust her, the Turk kept his hold painfully tense, his jaw pressed against her cheek. Both of them focused on the wall in front of them, and Reno felt his ear bleeding heavily into her hair.
Fuck, he thought sharply, those things sting like a bitch.
"If you so much as fucking move those legs of yours an inch, I will dislocate both of your arms, and than break them in so many places you will never throw one of those goddamn things again," he warned spitefully, tightening his hold to show her how serious he was. She hissed in pain.
They were both panting, and the savage burn of Reno's wounds was beginning to penetrate his consciousness.
"Was this what you wanted?" he murmured harshly as his blood began to spill down the ninja's shoulder and drip heavily onto the floor on her opposite side. She shifted uneasily, and in the silence cleaving between them the patter of every thick droplet was a gunshot.
"Did you want to hurt me?" he hissed, his harsh words flaying her alive with each syllable. "Kill me because you're pissed somebody else took out your dad? Kill me because you weren't there to play hero?"
"Yes," she gasped, "It's what we both deserve."
"You don't get to decide that, kid. When this life is said and done we'll get what's coming to us, but until then," he snickered, "tough shit."
"I hate you! I hate you so much! After all the things you did and said… and I told myself you must have had a reason for the things you did! Godo, Godo… How could you keep doing it when it makes you just like them!" Yuffie sobbed.
She couldn't get all her words out or any of her words right, and she was anguished and ashamed and brokenhearted.
"You stupid, stupid girl," Reno's laughter was choked with misery. "If only you knew."
His hold became a violent embrace and he pressed a hard kiss against her ear. Yuffie, too numbed by her own sadness and anger to react, stood frozen.
"I'm sorry you saw what you did, I'm sorry this happened to your father, and I'm fucking sorry that I'm not who you want me to be, kid," he said quietly, "but I made a choice a long time ago, you little fool, and I live with that choice every day. If you think I don't go to bed every damn night wishing I could do it all over, knowing I can't and having to just keep going, then you don't understand anything about the world we live in."
"What am I supposed to do? What do you want from me?" she moaned, forgetting his warning and struggling to free herself.
Her arms ached terribly, and Reno released the hold only to twist her, shoving her against the wall and pressing his forearm into her throat. His other hand moved with blinding speed and pushed his EMR into her ribs. In return Yuffie had snatched a small knife from her boot as he wedged his arm under her chin, the point now pressed into his own ribs.
"You'll listen to what I have to say, or else we're both going to end up dead here, kid," he snarled, pressing himself against the tip of her dagger until he felt the tip of it pierce his skin. He felt her hand tremble, the knife pulling back slightly as she tried to keep from cutting him deeper.
He nudged her chin upwards with his arm until she met his eyes, and he was both infuriated and enamored with the mutiny he saw therein.
"I had to make a choice," he grit out.
"Nobody should be able to live with themselves after making the choices you did. You can't justify the things you've done. You're nothing but filthy, worthless scum," she returned fiercely.
Reno stared into her eyes. "Nobody," he said slowly, "knows that better than me."
The silence was barren and cold.
She slumped, her eyes suddenly filling with water, and he couldn't bear the defeat and remorse he could see there.
"I never wanted to love you," he scorned, "at least not like this."
As he holstered his weapon he kept a wary eye on the ninja. She shuffled nervously around the room, craning her neck to relieve the tension and seeming to mull over all he had said. It wasn't until she tried to rub a bit of warmth into her arms that she became aware of the ruby smeared over her skin once again. She met his eyes, stricken, before turning them back to her blood stained palms.
Reno could barely feel the sting of the slices as he watched her, the misery and betrayal boiling beneath his skin worse than any injury he'd felt before. Yuffie closed her hands, feeling the sticky liquid smearing unpleasantly.
"I'm sorry," she murmured. "I could have killed you."
"I hope it'll take more than a ninja in a tantrum to finish me," he shrugged, his weak attempt at humor falling on deaf ears, and leaned against the wall.
She was studying him, roaming over his haggard features, his tired gaze, and his defeated stance with uncertain eyes. Blood was still dripping lazily down his neck, smudged over his face and clotting in his hair. The collar of his shirt was drinking it greedily, and as she looked down at his arm, she could see the slash in his sleeves and the seeping cut in his arm. The crimson was running down his wrist and splattering messily onto the floor, but they could have been tiny insect bites for all the interest he was paying them. He dug into his pocket and slowly withdrew a cigarette and a lighter.
It was only as he thrust the smoke into his lips and moved to light it that she saw his hand was shaking.
With a sob she dove at him, burying herself in his arm and knocking the lighter from his hand.
"You big dumb Turkey!" she shouted, trying to crawl deeper into his arms and punch at him wildly at the same time.
Her little fists eventually slowed down and crept around him, snaking underneath his jacket and resting against the smooth warmth of his back. Reno, startled, let the cigarette drop from his lips and brought his arms around her.
"You stupid little ninja," he replied softly, as her tears wet his shirt.
"What if I had? What if I had?" she cried, "Reno, what if I had…"
"At least I would have gone down fighting," he shrugged.
Yuffie lifted her reddened gaze to his and glared.
He leaned down, slow and cautious and smiling, until he tasted her lips.
She exhaled shakily, standing on tiptoe to deepen the kiss. His long fingers twined into her hair, her hands swept up to his shoulders, and despite the blood and betrayal and questions still between them, they slid clumsily to the floor.
"I love you," she bemoaned wetly. "Even when I ran, I loved you. I'm so sorry…"
"It doesn't matter anymore," he murmured. "Let it go."
She wondered what a macabre tableau they were making as he rolled her underneath him and kissed her. She could taste the copper sting of his blood as he explored the inside of her mouth, could feel it cracking and flaking away between their lips. Blood, black old and crimson new, stained her thigh as he reached his arm down and urged her to wrap her leg around him. It smeared over her cheek with his long hair as he pressed stirring kisses down her neck. She wanted to weep and laugh, because it was monstrous and beautiful and everything they were together.
They shed their clothing like snakeskin, shimmying out and forgetting they ever had a use for it as they came back together, a shock of limbs sliding over limbs, whispers tumbling over whispers.
Reno's body was harsh and pale, scar stung and world raped, where she could read the harsh reality of his life in the bullet bitten constellations of his skin or the haphazard patchwork of his oft broken bones. Yuffie's body was lithe and small, culture bred and futilely beautiful, where he could see the faded splendor of her Wutaian teachings in the gentle slope of her shoulders or the desperate defiance of it in the proud arch of her spine.
She touched him gently, contrition and remorse in each graze of her fingers, her body begging his for forgiveness. His laughed at her efforts in return, fond and teasing; and over and over, his tongue etched his name into her skin. Yuffie felt like a broken doll when he parted her thighs and slid inside her, shattering fantastically each time the silk of his hair brushed over her collarbone. The air smelled of copper and salt, and tears stung her eyes and drove tracks through the dried blood on her cheek. Why was she forever crying?
He locked eyes with her, endlessly blue, endlessly green, and she tightened her legs around his waist, wishing she could wrap herself around him a million times over. She was sorry and stupid and sad, and she wound her arms around his neck and pulled his face to her own so she could forget it for now. His lips cajoled and teased until she was nearly frantic in her efforts to catch them. He finally gave in, closing his eyes so he could focus solely on the feel of her mouth against his.
"Reno," she sighed, and he shifted above her.
"Just let go," he urged, and his eyes were for once free of cynicism and reserve. She felt herself uncoiling, unclenching, from within, and gave in to the sweet strangeness between them. A savage kind of hope was rising in her soul; a knowledge that it was over and she could heal surging through her.
Reno watched her eyes grow soft and luminous, as black as pitch beneath the gentle hotel lights. He shuddered, terrified and awed by a depth of emotion he'd never known before.