26
Tuesday, October 26th, 2:14pm – Room 101, Don Corneo's Mansion, Sector Six
He had taken his shades off only momentarily before the light stole the darkness and bleached his vision. The light had ironically blinded him, rendering him unable to open his eyes until his rummaging fingers successfully navigated the floor and found his sunglasses. He may have been able to see the room more comfortably in the dark, and felt more at home there, but the light gave it a new dimension. He could now appreciate its sheer volume, the colours of the walls, metallic grey with spatters of muddy-red and rust, and the faces of deceased Wutaian slaves that became real humans as opposed to lumps of flesh that emitted a foul stench. The light spared no grisly detail and reminded him why he loved the dark, why he loved to hide behind his shades. Unlike most rational people who feared things they could not see in darkness or in the future, he only feared the horrors presented before him. Even if he was aware of a source of fear, as long as he could not see it or feel it he would remain content and push it to the back of his mind.
He pushed himself upright and sat back against the wall as Corneo's cowboy boots click-clacked into the room, sidestepping the outstretched leg of one of his victims.
"Sorry about the smell," Corneo spoke as he gestured at the dead bodies with a nod of the head. "It seems like a pointless act of violence, I know, but these women were not murdered, at least not intentionally for some form of sick sexual gratification."
"It's nice to know you have limits regarding your disgusting sexual habits," Rude sniped.
"Yeah. Well, this is where I kept the bad eggs; the women that weren't obedient enough; the rebels if you will. They wouldn't follow orders, or work, or even eat or drink for that matter. They were useless to me and to all of my clients. I think they were all following the example set by this one," Corneo scoffed, nudging the foot of the corpse closest to his only living prisoner, disturbing the pullulating maggots hidden underneath. "So I responded to their rebellion by locking them down here until they came to their senses. It was either a life of humiliation or no life at all. Which do you think you would choose, Rude?"
The Turk nearly smiled.
"Are you serious?"
"Sure, it sounds like a stupid question, but give it a good think. Your life may be pathetic, but it's still a life. You can still feel, still think, still dream of a future better than this. Would you be brave enough to kill yourself, just to stick it to me? And I'm not talking about a quick bullet to the head or a peaceful drift into death with a slit of the wrists: I'm talking about dying of hunger, of thirst."
"I'm not playing your game, Corneo. Just tell me what you want."
"Of course you aren't," Corneo chuckled, pacing from side to side by Rude's feet. "Y'know, it's a shame Reno and Tifa couldn't stay here for the party. I wonder what happened to them."
"Are we really doing this?"
"Alright, alright, you said no more games; I'll play nice. In spite of that, however, I'm still very interested in why you let them go. They were my prisoners. You had no right to free them from my virtual abyss."
"Fuck you," he snapped, unwilling to waste his breath explaining the complications of his dysfunctional love for Tifa.
At least that's what he told himself. The fact that he simply did not know or did not want to know the answer felt more honest, but he was altogether too sick of honesty to care. What had it ever accomplished or done for him? If he had just kept his mouth shut around Reno regarding his love for Tifa he may have been able to sidestep this whole ordeal. If he hadn't gotten so tangled up in this web of jealousy and possession then he may have realised that he simply coveted her, had a crush on her that would have abated given enough time. He would have realised he did not really want her; he simply did not want Reno to have her.
Then again, it may have simply been a mixture of the two, ensnaring him in a state of ambivalence regarding the enemy. The beautiful enemy–
No! The truth was he had never loved anyone. He could describe his feelings towards other people, people close to him, his child, his parents, but compared to the lyrical poetry of others inspired by this intangible, spiritual adhesive he could only assume love was an unconquerable expectation. Perhaps this was his punishment for his Godless existence: or his test to return him to God's love, the only love that really matters. He often questioned God about his misfortunes, the majority of them focusing on Reno and why He had chosen to bring their lives together. But now he knew. He needed to see what a life of hedonism and debauchery could do to the soul, how it could rot it away into oblivion. Of course, this did not mean he would suddenly adopt a puritanical lifestyle straight away. It would take time to grow closer to God. And with this many guns trained to his skull he wouldn't probably have the time to change anyway.
Still, it's the thought that counts. At least that's what he hoped.
"Oh my God, that is pathetic," Corneo cackled after examining Rude's face closely. "You still love her don't you?"
This time Rude did smile. He knew Corneo was simply toying with him, that he just wanted to enjoy the thrill of the kill. With his limited strength he would not be able to escape alive. In actuality he was ready to die, ready to join the rebellion of the dead Wutaian slaves that engulfed him with their overpowering stench, ready to even starve to death or die of thirst or of pain itself. But he wouldn't admit that to Corneo, for admitting that would signal checkmate. He was simply a set of building blocks, and Corneo was the angry, chubby child that wanted to smash and break them down. Well, he was already broken, already worn down to his basic components of callousness, selfishness and immorality. But what he needed more than death was time, enough time for Reno to return and save Jake.
"You may have amazing sight to find the door's failsafe switch in the dark," Corneo continued, "but you ain't deaf, are you, Rude? C'mon, you heard what she said."
"The fact that she no longer loves me does not mean I no longer love her."
"No longer? Fuck, Rude, I thought you were the smart one."
"I don't think she loved me the first time she saw me, nor do I think she loved me the last time she saw me. But there was something there in between. Some spark, some connection between the two of us that was only extinguished by the war between our people."
"Oh, how romantic," Corneo bleated sarcastically. "The star-crossed lovers were torn apart simply because one was a Montague and the other was a Capulet!"
"We shared one another's secrets. We're both still alive. What does that tell you?"
"Are you still talking about the woman that claimed she had killed you?"
"Maybe she was protecting me."
"Or maybe she was protecting herself!" he interjected, his grin growing at the sight of this sudden realisation creeping over his prisoner's face.
Corneo paced back and forth by Rude's feet once more. He wasn't really as morally deplorable as he let on: he didn't enjoy capturing children or threatening to kill people, but this was all in the name of honour. The bodies of the Wutaian slaves were proof of this, for he did not want to let them all die painfully. On the contrary, he gave them the choice to live and work by his rules. They would get shelter and food and freedom – well, freedom is a relative term – but they chose to die for their honour, just as he was prepared to kill for his. He had been pushed around and bullied by the Turks for long enough. It was time he reclaimed his territory and reclaimed the respect of his citizens. The word of his conquer over the Turks would spread across his kingdom like wildfire, and his knowledge of the whereabouts of a certain Monica Gauthier would keep the Shinra off his backs long enough for him to build an army of loyal men willing to die to protect their hero, their saviour of the Plate-dwelling oppressors, their king.
"My father designed this room to be a bomb shelter, y'know, back in the days when war with Wutai was an imminent threat. Sure their mechanical weapons were primitive, but nobody knew what kind of materia they had. We had to prepare for the worst."
Rude remained reticent. He didn't want to say anything stupid that would bring that disgusting grin back on Corneo's face.
"It's amazing what engineering can do these days," he continued, "I've always wanted to test this room out, take it for a test spin if you will, but ever since you bastards built that plate above us it kinda rendered it obsolete. But, then again, maybe we don't need a bomb from outside. I mean, I wonder if this room could withstand a detonation from a bomb that was inside it."
"Quit the fucking dramatics and just tell me what you want!" Rude bellowed, finally losing the last scraps of his patience.
Corneo appreciated the fact that the Turk's paroxysm of rage was incredibly abnormal, and so he decided to press on with a simple click of the fingers. It was enough to catch Rude's attention. He lifted his chin and stared at the chubby fingers as they almost pointed to the door he had earlier unlocked and used to free the other two corners of his love triangle. As though the he was looking at a negative of a familiar photograph, he strained to see through the doorway as the light within the bomb shelter was now brighter than that in the hallway. The shaded outline of three men entered. With a sense of great urgency, they pushed a smaller shadow ahead of them until it was visible as a small child – as Jake.
Rude quickly took to his feet before Corneo halted him with the sight of a gun trained to Jake's head. He froze in his tracks and followed the sight of the gun to tear tracks connecting the corners of the boy's eyes to the corners of his mouth. However, the sight of him in such danger was not the most heart wrenching. No, the fact that he looked more afraid of Rude than Corneo or any of his men felt like an icy dagger plunged in his side, twisting over and over again until he was incapable of speech, of movement, of breathing. He wanted to speak to his son, to tell him everything would be OK, even if he knew they probably wouldn't be. He just wanted to comfort him. He wanted his son to know he would protect him with his life, if only he knew how to communicate such sentiment without frightening him.
Jake backed away from Rude, bumping into one of his aggressors, finding more safety in their company than his own father's. They pushed him away from them again, almost as if they were more afraid of him than he was of them, and Rude soon realised why: he had become a human bomb. Wires of all colours sprouted from a jacket several sizes too large, originating from a lead case at the breast, more likely than not containing active mako, and connecting with the metal buttons of the cuffs that extended well beyond the length of his arms. Not only was the jacket intended for an adult body, it was also Shinra technology. It seemed Corneo had friends in very high places, both metaphorically and literally.
"OK, Rude. There's some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?" Expecting no response, he carried on. "Well the good news is I'm finally going to tell you what I want of you. But the bad news is I'm not done playing games. In fact, what I want of you is to play one final game for me. Oh but don't worry, it's a real fun one. Granted, I was wasted when I cooked it up, but that only adds to the fun."
"Fine. Just let my son go and I'll do whatever you want."
"That's what I like to hear. Restrain him, boys."
The men that had pushed Jake into the room left and promptly returned with what appeared to be a large clasp so heavy it took all three of them to carry it in. They attached it to a free set of chains by the wall before carefully approaching Rude and gesturing for him to follow them calmly. He did not protest and walked over to the enormous restraint, relieving eye contact with his son to ease the boy's discomfort. He conveniently relieved his own discomfort in the process, but could only assume his sudden submersion in the light of faith highlighted every one of his actions as selfish or morally wrong. It wouldn't be all bad. He couldn't read his subconscious entirely well, after all. At least this way he was able to atone for any sin he committed, even the ones he wasn't sure he had actually committed.
Forgive me, Lord. Please take my life and spare my son.
They buckled the large clasp around his waist, surprised that its immense weight did not drag him to the floor where he belonged. He did not even flinch. He merely absorbed the pain as he was so used to doing. As soon as they had finished locking him in position, they all scurried out of the room, including the superfluous guards aiming their guns at the helpless child, until it was just the three of them. Jake shimmied away from the frightening bodies on the ground and picked an empty corner to sit and bury his head in his arms. He closed his eyes, covered his ears with his arms and rocked the way his mother had taught him to do whenever he was scared.
He thought of blue skies and songbirds, of flowers swaying in the breeze by rivers that flowed towards the sunset, of the immemorial days when he could take normality for granted, when he could take innocence for granted. He thought about Marlene. If only it could be just the two of them. They would jump into the picture that hung above the door in their classroom, the picture of the lone tree by the riverbed, extending its leafy branches over the face of the water. They would sit in that tree, hiding from all the darkness in the world within the branches, or go swimming in the cool water, or simply sit on the bank with their bare feet in the water, she talking about all the wonderful things they could see and do, he simply listening to the sound of her voice. Her voice, that of his one true friend, was enough to drown out the horrors of all the death and destruction that his father seemed to lure out of all the cracks and crevices of this world.
Corneo moved closer to Rude and lowered his voice to leave Jake in his blissful reverie. "I really don't want to kill the kid," he said, as he removed a hand gun from a holster in his jacket and, bizarrely, handed it over to Rude. Rude took a firm grasp of the nozzle, playing a miniature game of tug of war with the Don. "But, should anything happen to me–" He eventually released his grasp on the gun, before continuing, "–my men won't hesitate to walk in here and butcher your child in front of your very eyes."
"And what do you expect me to do with this?" Rude asked, inspecting the gun inside and out, forever buying more time. Of course he knew what he was supposed to do with it. There was only one bullet in the chamber: what else could he do with it?
"I expect you to entertain me, Rude. I'll be watching from up there." He pointed to a camera in the top corner of the room. "When you see the red light under the camera the bomb around your son will activate. The timer is only set for ten seconds. The only way to deactivate the bomb is for you to shoot yourself. No, that's not right. What I meant to say was that the only way to deactivate the bomb is for you to kill yourself. I don't you to shoot yourself in the arm and blame it on the semantics. I want that bullet to go through your brain." He turned back to face Jake, who was now staring at the two of them, transfixed in position by the gravity of the situation. "Looks like junior was listening, after all. I'm getting the impression he wants you dead almost as much as I do."
"You expect me to believe you? You think I'm that stupid?"
Corneo waddled over to the door, stopping to reassure his victim. "Contrary to what you might believe, when I say I don't want to kill the kid, I mean it."
"Well if you want me dead so much why don't you just shoot me yourself?"
"Because I don't want half of Shinra's army down my throat. When your boys in blue come down here to claim your body, I'll show them the security tape of you committing suicide. Of course the video will be the abridged version of the real thing, but your colleagues will get the gist of what happened down here."
"You may be able to pull the wool over Heidegger's eyes. God knows, you're probably already in cahoots with the fat bastard. But you won't be able to convince Reno or Tseng that I wanted to kill myself."
"Well, Tseng is next on my list of dead Turks. He's lying in the control room, boy he took a hell of a beating to render unconscious. You Turks are a tough breed, I'll give you that."
Rude ground his teeth together to prevent himself from cursing in front of his child. He knew Corneo was not bluffing. After all, Tseng had pushed the panic button indicating he had found Jake, and now Jake was sat before him, finding courage from the impending auto-execution to look him in the eye, or whatever he could fathom behind those shades.
"And as for Reno?" Rude hissed, through a clenched jaw.
"Well, he's going to have the death of one or maybe even two Carters on his conscience. I don't think he needs another Carter added onto it."
"What are you talking about?"
"Oh, that's right. She divorced you didn't she? What was her maiden name again?"
Rude could only weep inside. When would this end? How far could his Lord push and prod him before he simply denounced his faith. An eternal heaven was not worth this amount of excruciating pain, even if he only had to endure it for a matter of mere minutes.
"Tseng would never tell you where she is."
"I didn't need Tseng to find her; I did it on my own, thank you very much. Turns out she's not very obedient. She didn't like staying under the radar or being told what to do, which made it unbelievably easy to find her. Is that one of the reasons you fell out of love with her? Or did she become like that after you fell out of love with her?"
Deflecting once more, biting through the pain, he reiterated his question. "When I asked you what you were talking about, I meant, why would Reno have our deaths on his conscience?"
Corneo let out a long sigh and shook his head. "Boy, I'd love to tell you that story. But I think I've done enough talking for now. It's time we got this show on the road."
"You're bluffing," he called, running on fumes now, desperate to earn a little more time. "I don't believe any of this. You haven't got Monica and that bomb around Jake will not go off, assuming it is actually a bomb."
"That's an interesting hypothesis – I guess there's only one way to see if it's true. When the light turns on you'll have ten seconds to kill yourself. Goodbye."
And with that Corneo left the room.
Tuesday, October 26th, 12:38pm – Train Graveyard, Sector Seven
Reno stopped the car, yanked the keys from the ignition and shouldered his door open. Tifa fumbled with her door, only managing to fall halfway out before he had already marched to other side of the car and began to pull her out by her hair. Thrown to the cold earth, she dug her nails into the soil and clawed her way further from Reno as he inched closer towards her, a maddened expression distorting that familiar face. She did not fight back and began to choke on her own tears, blocking out the physical pain but succumbing to the emotional distress. And she was confused. For as long as she had known him he had never even raised his voice to her. He was sweet, clumsy, forgetful, extroverted, funny, happy. He was everything she was not, and everything she wanted to be. He was the epitome of humanity, of normality. But of course, in Tifa's world, normality could never exist, at least not the normality relative to everyone else on the planet. In a strange way this was her normality: the people she grew to trust and love only ended up hurting her, hiding behind a facade of compassion or locked within their own heads amongst their inner demons. It had become so natural now that she should have realised he was too good to be true, that he was simply another conduit of evil sent by the Shinra to destroy her life.
"Reno... why are you...?"
"Cut the bullshit!" he yelled, aiming his gun for her heart as he watched her squirm away. "You know I'm not the same man that watched the sunset with you in Kalm or ate a picnic with you under the stars. I'm not the same guy that kissed you and embraced you and made you feel like you were the centre of the fucking universe, although you do a pretty good job of that alone. Oh, and as for the letters and e-mails you've been cherishing, it turns out you've been corresponding with Jeremy from Human Recourses while I was probably out getting drunk off my ass."
"What do you want from me?"
"I want to know everything about your involvement in AVALANCHE, their resurgence, and their plans to destroy the mako reactors."
"You're asking the wrong person. They just use me to hideout in my basement and to cook for them."
Without a shred of hesitation, he fired his gun mere millimetres from her waist, sending a miniature maelstrom of dust and debris into the air. The sheer volume of the bullet sent an icy pulse of fear through her spine, ringing still in her eardrums as the reverberations magnified under the plate soon faded away. Was it really the fear that had immediately tensed every muscle of her body as though they were trying to rip themselves off her bones, or was it simply the volume or the unexpectedness of it? Her life had followed a very tortuous path, fraught with innumerable hazards, but she had soldiered on in the hopes of the path straightening and smoothening for a journey free of turbulence. It had to happen soon; as long as she kept her spirits up and survive these hardships she would be rewarded. Her smile would beam and light up the path, her heart would sing and accompany her when she felt lonely. All she needed was time.
Of course, she thought she had emerged from her period of discontent when she met Reno. She no longer needed the fake smile and no longer needed to overburden her tired heart, for she could share his. He was her ticket out of the amalgam of the world's darkness and sorrow, her knight in shining armour. She needed him no matter how strongly she valued her independence; there were just some things she could not do alone. And now, he was gone. He was a mere spectre, an illusion of salvation. He was the enemy. He was darkness. He was the very evil from which she had been trying to escape.
And she couldn't take it any longer.
"Who are you?" she asked, finding illusory courage in her loss of fear.
"I ask all the questions here, alright?"
"Look, I'm not too happy about the position I've been landed in thanks to my so called friends," she sniped, her outward appearance of courage growing markedly, "so I'd gladly answer any of your questions. But I want to know a few things about you and the Turks first."
"This isn't how this fucking works here. I've got the gun: I command the authority!"
"You do have a gun. But if you wanted to shoot me you would have done it by now. And I'm guessing by the time you've eventually got all the information out of me you're just going to shoot me anyway, you heartless bastard. So at least let me die with a little peace of mind."
He chewed on his bottom lip and closed his eyes, his gun still in line with her heart as it trembled inside the grip of his unstable fingers. This, the train graveyard, was his home away from home, the one place he could find his own personal truth within this junkyard of a city. He came here in his element, given the divine task of ending life, of selecting the time, the cause and severity of death. The ashes and charred remains of Shinra's enemies lay hidden amidst the rubble of the abandoned trains, their spirits entombed in a sepulchre of twisted, rusting metal. They were the victims of textbook Turk murder: all identifiable portions of human anatomy destroyed by acid and fire. Be it cruel or vindictive, the job had to be done, and it remained the Turk's responsibility to oversee it. All of it. They had to watch the body disintegrate, to smell the putrid combination of acid and dead flesh, to taste the gasoline in the back of their throats as they splashed it liberally over the carcasses and inhale their victims' souls as they floated away with plumes of black smoke. It was not an easy job, but he took pride in it. He took pride in his sangfroid where others would vomit or feel disgusted, in his power over human life where others would be beaten by empathy.
But where was the pride now?
"There are other ways of making you talk, y'know."
"That's true. But I've known you, or a semblance of your character, for about a month now and I know that you are a man of efficiency. If there's any way you prefer, it's the easy way."
"You just asked me who I was a moment ago, and now you're acting as though have me all figured out?"
"Sort of, yeah. I mean, there are certain traits people can mask when they are pretending to be someone they are not. The obvious external things. But deep down inside I know who you are. I don't know why you are the way you are, but that's neither here nor there."
"It's funny how you didn't know I was a sociopath before I had to spell out for you with this gun."
"I'm not talking about your dark side. I'm talking about the goodness in you, the person that would have existed had you not joined the Shinra. I saw the things you could not hide, that nobody would be able to hide. That's the man I fell in love with."
He pondered for a moment, unable to find any scathing witticism to put her down. His mind was far too frazzled for that.
"So, what now?" he eventually enquired.
"Just ask yourself if you want to do this the easy way or the hard way, and when I say the easy way," she elucidated, slowly taking to her feet, watching as the gun rose with her, "I don't mean the way that will take less time. I mean, you could torture me and I'd reach my breaking point. I'm only human. But so are you. So, when I say the easy way, I mean the way that won't mentally disturb you for the rest of you pathetic little life."
She was taking a serious gamble here. She couldn't even be sure that a modicum of the affection he had shown her over the past month had been genuine. But she wanted it to be, for his sake and for hers. After all, maybe he was the light that would bring her out of darkness, the light tainted and warped by the malevolence of President Shinra and his wicked empire.
He lowered the gun. She had crushed his veil of dominance as easily as if she had crushed his genitals in the palm of her hand. It was a useless prop now, providing him with nothing more than a medium to visualise his fear; his fear of losing what made him special, his fear of losing that absence of human feeling upon ending human life, his fear of losing her forever.
"My name is Reno. I don't like using aliases."
Success!
"Why not?"
"Because I know that if there is anybody that gets close enough to actually discover my name, they will end up dead no matter what I do."
"And do all of these people have their blood on your hands?"
"Not all of them," he spoke, his volume severely muted. "Well, not physically. But I attract as much death and destruction as I inflict."
"Is that why you're so afraid of getting close to people?"
Her voice lingered in his mind like an autumnal fog, stimulating memories of her naked body, the warmth and softness of her skin, her fragrance, the taste of her lips. It was overpowering, piling emotional weight on a man already knee deep in quicksand.
"This is fucking stupid," he announced, lifting his gun up once more, this time aiming at her head. "I get enough of this shit from the company shrink; I don't need any more from you. We're not here to talk about me, we're here to talk about AVALANCHE."
She shuddered at the sight of his willingness – his desire – to live in such pitiful ignorance. Why was he so scared of the truth?
"How well do you know Rude Carter?" she asked, astonishing even herself at her tongue's ability to overpower her brain.
Just as she had spoken before thinking, he reacted before thinking. He lunged forward and struck the side of her jaw with the butt of his gun, sending her to the floor as though she were a marionette that had had her strings cut. Blood oozed from her gums and onto the ground through the corner of her mouth, staining her teeth with the rouge of combat. Perhaps she deserved that: perhaps he had overreacted. Either way it answered her question.
The harsh, bitter taste danced over her tongue as she slowly lifted her chin, her eyes following his lanky legs, up his dishevelled shirt, past his shoulders that hunched as though they were supporting the weight of the plate above him, and finally his harsh, bitter expression, an example of the beautiful symmetry they shared mixed with the inescapable pain and mistrust.
He still hadn't stopped shaking. In fact he'd gotten worse. He was alone in the world, and it was all her fault. She had stolen Rude from him, murdered him with enough sangfroid to put even himself to shame. While he never directly opened up to Rude he could still unleash a certain amount of his emotional baggage upon him in his own way, simply because Rude never offered him advice on how to absolve himself. He was simply there to listen to him, to nod along with him and tell him exactly what he wanted to hear: nothing at all. Rude did not judge him, nor did he care about his trivialities. He was just there to absorb Reno's voice and radiate back an intangible aura that defied solitude. He was the yin to his yang.
And then, of course, Tifa had stolen herself from him, too.
Up until now he had not dared to follow the line of interrogation involving the true origin of his anger because he knew that he had had a large part to play in his best friend's demise. But, now that she had brought the topic to his attention, he had no other choice. She had pushed him across the line over from the grey area that had blurred the margins of love and hate, however, although the prospect of this newfound clarity of mind sounded appealing, the sight of fear and helplessness in her eyes, the sight of which would usually spur him on, now only left him feeling a hollow sense of guilt. Fully aware that she was a master of martial arts, he even began to move closer to her, prompting her to knock the gun out of his hand and prove she had been lying to him all this time. He just needed an excuse. Any excuse.
"How well do you know Rude Carter?" he eventually asked, the long caesura damaging the credibility of his dominance even more.
It was a good question. She had immersed herself in her own problems and self-pity in Rude's company for so long that she had ignored most of his. Of all the images and memories she could recollect, his eyes stood out in her mind the most, the one memory from that fateful day in her bar that had haunted her to this very minute. She felt almost privileged to see those hazel irises behind his protective barrier, to see his tears, his raw emotions laid bare before her, endowing her with an undeserved impression of trust. And then there was the memory of his self sacrifice in Corneo's mansion. She had only looked back for a microsecond, but it was enough to catch a glimpse of him writhing on the floor, subjected to the perils of electricity. He could have escaped, but he chose to distract the majority of the guards. He chose to save her, even though she had done nothing to deserve such chivalry.
She wiped a tiny rivulet of blood off her chin with the back of her hand and studied the scarlet patterns that developed under her knuckles.
Yes, I definitely deserved this.
"I know he's a Turk. In fact, I've known for a long time."
"How long?" Reno asked, his voice beginning to tremble with the rest of his body.
"Does it matter?"
"He was my best friend, of course it fucking matters!"
He was his best friend? Tifa could only assume this meant she had had something to do with this termination of friendship between the two Turks. Perhaps that was why he was so angry.
"I dunno. Around two weeks. Pretty much the day I met him. I bumped into him on the street; we got to talking; we had a cup of coffee. Just as he was leaving my friend recognised him. He'd been snooping around our basement planting cameras to spy on us."
Reno grimaced. Had he not forced Rude to plant those wires this entire mission would not have gone awry and his partner would still be alive. This was exactly why he did not want to probe further into this issue.
"What else do you know about him?"
"I don't see what–"
"Just answer the question!"
There was just one more thing she could remember about Rude under such stressful circumstances, but she hesitated to utter it. She had known of Reno's rational jealousy over this other man, and still had not figured out what had stimulated this outburst. She had failed Jake once already and, given another chance, she would not fail him again.
"Nothing... I don't know anything else."
Reno was not expecting that. He almost commended her silence.
"That doesn't make any sense. You must have known him pretty intimately to have called his name out when you were fucking me."
"Why do you keep going on about that? You never even loved me..."
"Yes I did!"
There it was. The question he had been asking for so long had finally been answered thanks to an assiduous subconscious had been digesting constant streams of information and latent emotions until the truth finally erupted forth like lava from a volcano. And, considering what she had done, he could only assume that this was a universal truth akin to gravity or the rotation of the earth around the sun, and that neither of them could do nothing to alter it.
It was the single scariest and most beautiful thought of his life.
Eventually, Reno ended the inevitable silence by throwing his gun through the passenger window of a derailed train, savouring the satisfying sounds of metal clashing against glass and the wonderful visuals of the opaque shards raining over the twisted, uprooted train-tracks. He wandered over to the train, brushing away the larger glass shards with his foot, before leaning against it, sliding down to the ground and releasing a heavy sigh of defeat.
He had dreamed of professing his love for her for too long, and in each scenario he found that once he had done so the hardest part would be over. Then again, in his dreams Tifa would not have the murder of his best friend and a fat lip to deal with first. In reality, this was the hardest part: the quiet, the body language, the awkward glances, and the strenuous task of trying to read one another's thoughts.
"Let me tell you about Rude," Reno said. His voice was much softer and steadier now as he fixed his gaze straight ahead on the turnstiles laden with cobwebs across the other platform. "He was a good man. He deserved a better life, a life with his family, with his friends. But like all Turks, like all SOLDIERS, like any single person that gets infected by Shinra Incorporated, he became a slave to his job – he became a different man. You see, we're taught to expel all emotion. In fact we're brainwashed to trust nobody but ourselves, our partners and Mr. Shinra. They excavate the life within our hearts and leave us as these hollow automatons. Quite frankly, it makes me sick to my stomach."
"So why don't you just quit?"
"I've wanted to for a long time, believe me. But leaving the Turks is not as simple as handing in your letter of resignation and expecting your gold watch in the mail. I mean you can't throw a freshwater fish into the ocean and just expect it to make do. I wouldn't know how to function in the real world. I can only dread the thought of developing a sense of empathy or a conscience. The things I've done... some of them are too unbearable to even mention. The thought of living with that over my head scares me more than anything in this world. That's why I cherish Shinra's grasp over my soul. I cherish it as much as I hate it." He found the courage to look at her. She met his gaze and shared his yo-yoing affection. "Besides, the Shinra wouldn't be very happy if I did find the courage to leave them. They don't usually give us much information, but I know just enough to be a liability. They'd hunt me down and everyone I loved from now until infinity. In fact, many of my past missions have involved silencing renegade Turks, people I knew intimately, people I once regarded as my family."
"Oh... I-I'm sorry."
It was a pathetic response, but the best she could muster.
He faced her once more, this time really exploring her features properly, reading her like an engrossing novel.
"I'm sorry I hit you," he apologised, now looking up to the concrete heavens above. He really was sorry. Having pained Rude and Jake simply to prolong his own happiness, a happiness that could never exist in light of the consequences, he could not be angry at Tifa for protecting herself or her ideals. And maybe she had done Rude a favour. He would be at peace now, free of guilt, of shame, of pain, of disgrace. "I shouldn't have blamed you for what happened," he continued. "I shouldn't have gotten so angry... I mean, I know I'd probably do the same thing if I was in your position and I can't be so hypocritical, especially seeing as though this is all my fucking fault. I... I'm just a little upset and confused, and this will take me a long time to... Are you OK?" he asked, returning his gaze to her pain-stricken expression.
She gritted her teeth and very laboriously sat upright. "No, it's my foot. It really hurts."
He dusted himself off before he pushed himself off the ground and rushed to her side. "We need to get you to a hospital. C'mon, I'll carry you to the car."
"Thanks," she replied, enjoying the warmth of his embrace for as long as it would last. "I have to ask you, though. Why did you get so angry when I asked you about Rude?"
"That's not funny," he responded bitterly.
"Seriously, I don't understand what happened. And what were you talking about just then about blaming me for what happened and stuff?"
He halted in his tracks, waiting for her to explain her crudity. Receiving nothing, he decided to elaborate. After all, he had experienced many visual hallucinations in that chamber. Her confession may have simply been a figment of his imagination, too.
"Back in Corneo's mansion, I heard you talking on your phone. You said you'd killed Rude."
Why couldn't the repercussions of her actions become clear to her before she opened her big mouth and said something stupid? Then again, how could she ever expect Reno, or anyone for that matter, to be with her in that dark chamber?
"I can't believe I said that," she mumbled, her voice muffled as she buried her face in her palms. "Oh, God. I didn't really mean what I said. Well I didn't mean it literally, anyway. He got caught by Corneo's men. He was protecting me; he stayed back and took the full brunt of their attack so that I had enough time to escape. Whatever happened to him after that would have been my fault. Plus I was upset and confused just like you are now, and I..."
"So, you're saying he's still alive?"
She could feel the enthusiasm in his voice vibrating through her body, borne of something she could only aspire to achieve: redemption.
"I don't know... maybe."
She bore the ensuing silence for as long as she could take while he stood in his vegetative state deciding where his priorities lay. Of course, he may have already made up his mind, spending this time developing an adequate reason why he should leave her to fend for herself while he went off to fight a lost cause. She wouldn't hold it over him if the latter was the case. After all, she too knew of the immense powers of guilt.
"You should go and help him," she eventually uttered, accepting the responsibility of making this difficult decision for him.
"Are you sure?"
"I'll be fine," she said behind a false smile. The agony radiating from her foot would not allow her to keep it up for very long, but it was enough to persuade Reno.
He gently placed her back in the dirt – Back where I belong – and rummaged through his pockets for his cell phone.
"Call an ambulance," he said, placing the phone in her palm. "They should be here within fifteen minutes."
Without as much as a goodbye he scuttled off, halting only at the sound of her frayed voice begging for his attention. He turned and slowly walked back to her side, finding a new sense of patience.
"Before you go," she whispered, utilising a low volume to beckon him closer. "After all of this is over, what's going to happen... with us?"
"I think you know the answer to that, Tifa."
"Just say it. I want to hear it from your lips."
"Don't make this any harder than it has to..."
"Five minutes ago you were willing to kill me. Then you were willing to cradle me in your arms even after you thought I had murdered your best friend. I just want to be sure of what to expect. I want to know whether you're going to come back and kill me in my sleep or come back and let me fall in love with you all over again."
His smile was discreet, but it was enough of an answer for Tifa.
"My worries are pointless aren't they?" she asked, feeling humiliated for thinking this dysfunctional relationship had the slightest chance of succeeding. "I'm never going to see you again."
"We're all going to be different people by tomorrow morning. A lot will change. But I will still be a Turk; I will still be the enemy."
"You'll still be a coward," she sniped.
He absorbed the insult with even more patience, a first for him, and probably a last, too.
"Yes. I am a coward. I want to quit and live a normal life, but I'm too scared. I'm scared of what they'll do to me... of what they'll do to you."
"I can look after myself, thank you very much."
He sighed heavily; his patience couldn't last forever.
"I want you to leave this city. Tomorrow I'll make arrangements for you to get out of this dump undetected where you can board a plane from Junon to Nibelheim. I'm not going to force you to go; the best I can do is give you the opportunity and the incentive."
"The incentive?"
"When I said I was the enemy, I wasn't kidding. Thanks to the Shinra's soul-numbing properties I'll lose all of... this: this emotion, this guilt, this sadness, this confusion, this anger. I'll be the hollow shell of a man you met at midnight last month. And you do not want to meet that person, I promise you."
"Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means the next time I see you, I'll be willing to hold a gun to your face again, but I won't hesitate to shoot."
She froze in disgust. Her eyes burnt, her heart pounded against her chest, her blood curdled.
Before she could react, or simply think of a reaction, he leaned closer to her, his cold, vampiric lips brushing against her ear as she remained as immobile as stone.
"I'm sorry...for everything."
Fearing her reprisal, he stole a quick kiss, a mere peck on her cheek to taste her skin and feel her warmth before all would be forgotten, before the remnants of his soul would surely be vacuumed from his body by his employers. It was cowardly, but he couldn't wait for it all to be over, to return to that virtual state of existence in which his body would become an avatar, a mere vessel that encased an empty mind. He didn't want this pain to consume him. He didn't want to think about her anymore, for her sake more than his own. He just wanted everything to return to normal.
Of course, there was another more pressing engagement to overcome, for this concept of love he had experienced was luckily ephemeral and could easily be erased. He had only known Tifa for a month, after all, and had only understood his love of her for a matter of minutes. But his friendship with Rude had spanned a decade. If he truly wanted to return to his distorted emotional equilibrium, he would have to fix this once and for all, and that would mean enlisting the help of everyone he could find. And that meant everyone.
Tifa thawed from her frozen state and slowly craned her neck to the side, watching Reno's car skid off and leave a plume of dust in its wake. The phone in her hand sapped all the warmth from it, numbing it slowly until her pounding heart forced hot blood through her fingers. She looked at the small device, emblazoned with Shinra's logo, and smashed it against the floor in rage. She didn't need an ambulance right now; the pain in her foot would become an adequate distraction for her to ignore her broken heart.
With a groan, she lifted herself off the ground and began the long limp to the nearest hospital. She would have to pass through the Sector Seven train station, the busiest of them all bar the stop at Wall Market in Sector Six. Sector Seven was famous for its bars and restaurants, attracting thousands during the lunch time rush. She would have to face them all, to carve her way through the throngs of people, masking the tears of agony radiating from her foot and elsewhere.
She supported her frame on the side of a disused train, pulling herself along as she hopped on one leg. Following the lengthy body, she stopped at the driver's cabin. The same Shinra logo emblazoned on Reno's phone was plastered over the side of the front cabin. The sight of it nearly made her faint as it flashed vertiginous memories of her past before her eyes: her father's death, the destruction of her hometown, the slow death of the planet, the slashing of her heartstrings. It was all too much to take.
She bent down, resting her palms against her knees as she inhaled as much air as she could. As soon as her head stopped spinning, she carried on, eventually making her way through to the more populated region of the train station. She ignored the staring strangers and let her throbbing foot do its worst. It would all be over soon. Even if she could survive the next month without drinking a drop of alcohol, the world as she knew it would soon come to an end thanks to the Shinra Electric Power Company.
Perhaps she should have just gone along with Barret and the others when they had devised their plan to blow up the reactors. At first she could not bear to think of the loss of life that would ensue from such extreme action, but the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. She had only been here for a few years and was already willing to kill herself to put an end to Shinra Inc. How would the native citizens feel, those living under the plate of oppression for an entire lifetime? Wouldn't they be willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the planet?
She eventually found the courage to look around her at the sea of potential sacrificial lambs. They looked neither happy nor sad, living in an emotional gray zone – much like Reno. They were hollow and insignificant and spiritually dead. They were not living, simply existing.
The sight of them simply added to her heartbreak. But they were not the only people destroyed by the Shinra that would strengthen her resolve. There was one more person that held more gravity than all of them combined.
His name was Cloud.
A/N
One more chapter to go. I know I have said this before, but back then I only had a vague idea of where I was going with this story and the depth into which I would go. Now I know exactly where this is going.
This chapter has not been beta read. I will fix any issues later when I have the strength.