This story is about three men who all learned, as very young boys, that it wasn't alright to cry.
It really isn't alright to cry. People like to tell children that everyone cries. But just because everyone does it, would you jump off London Bridge as well? Crying is a sign, an unforgivable sign, of weakness. A weakness of the heart and of the mind, a lack of control: this I firmly believe.
When Reno was born, his mother had held him to her bosom and sobbed into the little blue blanket the nurse wrapped him in because she hadn't known if his father would be coming home that night. He'd spent the first years of his young life holding his mother's hand as they went to visit his father in the hospital, at restaurants below the plate, and on train cars until his mother had one day left him in his father's arms and never come back for him. Reno remembered very little about his mother; he remembered a lighter red than his own hair, remembered wiping away her tears for her. Mama, don't cry. I'm here.
Sephiroth had never cried to anyone's knowledge, not even the day he was born. Perhaps it was because the doctor delivering him had cackled wildly and his mother had been dead. Perhaps it was because a man had been howling outside the door and the nurse had been screaming something horrific. But he hadn't cried, not once since he'd emerged from his mother's womb. Tears, he knew, would have gotten him hurt more, perhaps even cast aside for being a failure, because it would prove there was humanity in him and the worst thing he could be with Hojo watching his every move was human.
Under the great lamp and atop the operation table, Rufus had screamed instead of cried. A small baby, born underweight and tiny, he'd screamed out in pain when the doctor removed him from his mother during the cesarean. All these years later, he still had the scar on his back from the scalpel cut, still carried the discoloured patches of skin from the tough stickers used to measure heart rate and breathing. He didn't know when he stopped screaming when it came to pain, but he'd been shot, beaten, slashed, torn. Screaming was redundant at this point and crying had never gotten him anywhere.
This doesn't mean that they've never cried at all. In fact, in private, they cry an awful lot. Reno cries behind cigarette smoke and bathroom doors, Sephiroth with his head buried in his pillow and fist in his mouth, Rufus into a vodka bottle and blades of broken glass. But these are the men—boys, really—chosen to be our gods, our mortal gods, guide me on my steps to Heaven.
It really isn't alright to cry. This I firmly believe.
--
Turkish Delights
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27
Frankenstein
--
"What did you do to him?"
It was less of a question and more of a statement. Zack's voice was cold and hard.
"I didn't do anything."
"Bullshit."
A short silence and the boy stood alone before the great window, a silk robe on his shoulders and spread across the floor. He looked much like the blond prince he was often compared to, that figure that was hinted to already be worshipped beneath the plates.
"I don't lie, Zack," Rufus said in a quiet tone. "You know I don't lie."
The lamp on the desk rattled and fell over with the force of Zack's fist connecting with the tabletop. Rufus didn't turn around, keeping his hands clasped within the deep sleeves. He listened to the SOLDIER's heavy breathing.
"I didn't do anything," Rufus said again. "I wouldn't so much as lay a single finger such a precious ally. Sephiroth is much too precious to loose."
"Then why won't you tell me where he is?" the General's second cried, no longer angry but despairing. "You know everything that happens! You're supposed to be a goddamn messiah!"
Rufus didn't turn, but his head dipped low to his chest. "I am no prophet or god, Zack."
"Then are the stories all lies? What about the explosion in Nibelheim a few hours back? How did you know that was going to happen, that there were unnatural things in there that needed to be investigated? How is it that you knew what Wutai wanted at the end of the war? You know everything; admit it."
The robe had been woven perhaps two to three hundred years back when Wutai had been at the very height of its power. Tseng has gotten it imported for him through some of the background channels between the countries as a thirteenth birthday gift, had said the dusk red colour suited Rufus more than the vibrant passion of the golden phoenix. It had last been worn by the priest-prophet Heung Wan, the day before he died.
Rufus had read Priest Heung's works and life story. He respected the man.
"I only know possibilities," Rufus answered, shaking his head. "I really know no more than anyone else who has an imagination."
It had taken him a long time to admit that to himself. The future he knew was really only a possibility. A stone thrown into a pound made ripples, branching out and wafting in even patterns. But life was not water ripples, uniform and calm. Life was like light comprised of a great infinity of particles moving at a constant speed but changing frequency. Never uniform, never the same: life had no pattern.
--
His mouth tasted like dirt, dried blood, and grass. Reno groaned into the concoction, rolling over to face the darkened sky, eyes half-opening to take in the fire next to him. The guide girl, Tifa, was sitting cross-legged on a rock, a stick poking the fire as she started and turned her eyes to look him over.
"Oh," she said, "you're awake."
Reno had a snappy reply ready, but his mouth was too dry and icky tasting to warrant the effort of speech. Instead, he coughed and motioned to his throat with the universal sign for I'm thirsty, bitch; gimme water. She scowled at his attitude but handed him a canteen anyways. Reno took greedy gulps of the lukewarm liquid.
"Where's Rude?"
Tifa shrugged, her lips pursed as she watched him over her slender shoulder. Reno noticed she had abandoned or lost that ridiculous cowboy hat she'd been wearing before at some point.
"He's fixing the helicopter. It took some damages in the explosion."
The red-haired Turk let out a sigh he didn't know he'd been holding. Everything was alright. He was about to close his eyes again when the girl spoke, a soft, angry tone in her voice.
"You two are so disgusting, you know that?"
Reno's eyes snapped back over to her and he pushed himself up onto his elbow, frowning with narrowed eyes at the guide. She scowled back, hugging her knees to her blooming chest and idly twitching the poker-stick in the dirt.
"Whadda ya mean we're disgustin'?" Reno inquired, a little louder than he had intended.
Dusty shoulder rose and fell, like a horse shrugging off a fly. "I mean," she said in a slow tone, "I don't think you two should be kissing or anything like that. You're men. It's wrong."
For a long moment, Reno was silent. She watched him, waiting, like a panther on its prey.
"Well," Reno began in the same slow tone, "you're entitled to yer opinion. It ain't somethin' I wanted, you understand. But love is like that; it ain't a convenient thing. If it was, then my old man would've married some Shinra-lovin' betty and stayed a Turk, and I would've been born on the plate and gone to schoolin' and stuff rather than learnin' to gamble and steal in place of my letters and numbers. But it ain't, and that's how it is. Me an' Rude, we ain't got anybody else anymore."
She was silent, staring off at some point only she could see. Reno lay back and closed his eyes, listening to the nearby movements of his lover.
He slept.
--
A man and a teen walked into a bar.
The bartender was a stocky man with a flashy smile, but he had a kind enough disposition to be likeable, and the waitresses were dressed modestly and carried little or no change on them. In other words, it was a nice little bar with a bit of class.
The man and the teen seat themselves at a table near the back. They looked a little awkward in the beach town; their skin was pale, and they were both dressed from head to toe in black leather. The waitress took their orders (a shotgun and a sidecar respectively) without questions before trotting back up to the bar to deliver the information in a cheerful chirp.
"You don't like women much, do you?" the man asked, his tone not meant to be insulting.
Black-gloved fingers twirled a stray lock of uneven, feathery hair. "It was not considered an essential component for my development to develop relationships with anyone let alone the opposite sex. I do like women," he said after a moment, "but they are… puzzling."
"So you're straight?"
Sephiroth shrugged. "Of course I am," he started almost indignantly before a frown beset his features. "Did you think I wasn't?"
Vincent shrugged and sipped his drink. "No. I knew you had no interest in that friend of yours; you were far too attentive to the girls on the beach."
"Zack?" the younger asked, ignoring the later part of the statement. "Why would you say that?"
"He is completely enamored you."
There was a moment of silence before Sephiroth broke into peals of laughter. The bartender glanced up from mixing a cocktail to observe the shaggy-haired teen guffawing almost to the point of tears (indeed, he was very close to falling off his tall stool) and the man with the red scarf rolling his eyes. It seemed that it was only a couple of friends or cousins out on vacation together, celebrating life.
"Oh, that's a good one," Sephiroth sighed after his fit ended. "Pull the other, Valentine, pull the other."
Vincent beset his son and companion with, perhaps, the closest he could get to an expression outside of actually moving his facial muscles. The expression clearly was not terribly amused and indicated that his previous statement hadn't been a joke at all. Sephiroth smirk fell.
"Oh," he repeated but this time in a very small tone. "Oh."
"Buck up, my boy," Vincent said in a deep, mocking tone and a sly smile. "That means you're all the more desirable to the ladies."
A moment of silence before: "Valentine."
"…?" Vincent was currently distracted by a particularly tasty ice cube.
"We," Sephiroth stated with such intensity it would have detonated a nuclear bomb, "going to the beach tomorrow."
Vincent choked on his ice cube. "What?"
There was a strange gleam in Sephiroth's eyes. It was an unnerving gleam. It looked almost like fire, passionate fire, determined to get at any cost… Vincent felt his stomach meet his feet. Oh, no.
"We, my deprived and vampiric father, going to go babe-watching."
Vincent felt a little bit like Dr. Frankenstein. He had just unleashed a monster upon an unsuspecting world.
