"P-professer Hojo?"
Hojo straightened and turned at the sound of the young and frightened voice. Just inside the doorway, a tiny figure dressed wholly in white stood looking at Hojo expectantly.
"I-I- my father told me to-" Looking abashed, the boy shrugged and stared at the floor, leaving his sentence unfinished. His young face was smooth and unblemished, showing no signs at all of the abuse he had suffered the day before.
"Get out," Hojo snapped at the SOLDIER who had accompanied the boy. The anonymous blue-clad figure saluted sharply and spun around to leave. As soon as the doors had closed, Hojo switched his gaze to the trembling little boy who still stood in front of the doorway.
"I'm going to let you know right now," Hojo said without any preamble, "that I resent your father for what he's done. He knows damn well that I have absolutely no time to spare to act in loco parentis. So don't come in here expecting me to take care of you, because I can't and I won't. Understand me?"
"Yessir," Rufus mumbled quietly. "No sir."
"Good. Now I don't expect you to know anything about science." At Rufus' affirming nod, Hojo clenched his teeth. He had been expecting as much, but still-
"And I haven't the time to teach you." Thank you, Shinra, Hojo thought bitterly, for sending me the most useless sentient being in this entire building. Remind me to repay the favor one day.
"I assume that you know how to read and write?" Hojo asked, trusting Shinra to have taught the boy at least as much in anticipation of the day he would take over the business
"Yessir." Rufus still hadn't looked up. Hojo grunted slightly in satisfaction.
"Fine. You can catalogue those shelves over there for me," Hojo said, waving his hand off in the direction of an old and dusty corner of the room. "Just take a rag and a pad of paper and as you list each item dust it off as best you can. You can handle that by yourself, I trust?"
The boy lifted his head as a brief flash of resentment passed over his eyes and nodded.
"Don't glare at me, boy," Hojo said negligently, turning back to his lab table. "Things like that don't affect me anymore. I can't afford to be bothered. When your done with that, leave the list over on the table to my left and I'll find something else for you to do. Until then, don't bother me."
"Yessir." Sullenly, Rufus found a couple scraps of old fabric and some writing materials and went off in the direction of the shelves. As soon as he heard the boy setting to work, Hojo put him out of his mind as he returned to his business.
* * *
Carefully. Steadily. Slowly.
Hojo narrowed his eyes as he tipped a beaker filled with a light blue solution into another of crystalline clarity. Just a drop, just a single drop-
"Professor Hojo?"
"Dammit, boy!" Hojo cursed as he held a cloth to his smarting hand. The blue fluid was already smoking as it ate through a glass micro plate. Hojo cursed again as blood seeped through the towel.
"I-I'm sorry, sir," Rufus stammered, dropping his eyes to the floor. "I-"
"Never mind, never mind!" Hojo shouted at him. "Just clean up this mess while I do something about my hand." Fuming, Hojo stormed off in the direction of the large sink he used for cleaning his lab equipment.
Cursing again as he rinsed his hand under a stream of cold water, Hojo tried to rein in his temper before he did something drastic and killed the boy. He had a feeling that it would give Shinra too much satisfaction.
Once the bleeding stopped, Hojo saw that the injury was minor. Probably just sliced his hand with a piece of glass from the broken test tube. Slowly, he bandaged his hand up, giving his temper a chance to cool before he returned to the mess at his lab table.
"I'm sorry, Hojo, sir." Rufus said again, sweeping the fragments from the shattered test tube into the disposal unit. "I didn't mean to-"
"Yes, yes, I know." Hojo reached out impatiently to move the boy out of the way and accidentally brushed his hand against the boy's back.
Immediately, Rufus hissed in pain and jerked away. Hojo saw tears of discomfort in his young eyes before he blinked them away.
"What's wrong with you, boy?" Hojo demanded.
"Nothing." Rufus' voice was surly and abrupt.
"Don't lie to me, boy. What's wrong with you?" This time, Hojo grabbed the boy's arm and spun him around to face him as he moved to turn away.
Rufus just looked at him, his blue eyes opaque.
"Listen," Hojo growled. "You're taking up enough of my time as it is, so don't lie to me. If you're injured in any way, it could interfere with your work and mine, so I want to know about it now."
Rufus glared at him silently for a moment more, then dropped his gaze. "My back."
Wordlessly, Hojo spun the boy around and lifted the back of his shirt. He raised an eyebrow at what he saw.
The boy's entire back was striped with raw, red marks, and his shoulders were covered with ugly blue and black bruises. In front of him, Hojo could hear the boy sniff back his tears as his battered shoulders shook with repressed sobs.
"Stay here," Hojo told the boy as he let the shirt drop. Rufus nodded with what seemed to Hojo as bitter relief and covered his face with his hands.
Without wasting a movement, Hojo went back to the sink and retrieved a towel and a bottle from under the table. Pouring the contents of the bottle liberally over the towel, he returned to the boy and began dressing his injured back.
"Your father did this to you?" Hojo asked as he finished with the boy and brushed his hands off on his lab coat. Rufus nodded reluctantly as he cautiously worked his shoulders.
"What is that?" he asked softly, looking at the bottle Hojo still held in his hands.
"Oil from a Shred, a monster found only on the Great Glacier," Hojo said, placing the bottle and the towel back under the sink. "Numbs pain and prevents infection from setting in an open wound."
"Oh." Rufus lapsed back into silence. Hojo glanced at him and hesitated.
"Here," he said finaly, handing him the bottle. "I can't have you working down here if your going to be constantly distracted by pain." Rufus blinked, then took the bottle.
"Professor Hojo?"
Both Hojo and the boy spun around. A man stood at the entrance of the laboratory, leaning against the doorframe. He seemed oddly familiar to them both.
"I'm here for the kid," the man continued before Hojo could speak. "Shinra caught me as I was walkin' by and sent me down to get him." He adjusted the sunglasses perched on the top of his head, brushed back a stray piece of red hair and waited.
"Fine," Hojo told him. "Take him and get out. I've got work to do."
"Gotcha." The man motioned for Rufus to follow him and strode out the door.
Out in the hallway, Reno slowed his pace enough for Rufus to catch up with him.
"Yer father wants me to bring ya up to yer room and make sure yer set," he told the boy. Silently, Rufus nodded. Reno could feel the hate and resentment coming off of him in waves.
T'seng had told him that he was on official leave, but Reno guessed that Shinra could not have cared less. To him, the Turks were just another section of employees for ShinRa to use to at it's abandon. So instead of arguing with the President when he had been stopped and sent on an errand, Reno decided it would be easier just to do what the President asked and continue on his way.
"Hey, kid." Rufus started visibly when Reno spoke but recovered quickly, to his credit.
"I've only been here fer a couple a months, so yer gonna hafta lemme know where yer room is," Reno told him. Rufus shrugged and nodded, continuing on in stony silence. That suited Reno just fine. He still had things on his mind that he wanted to sort out as soon as possible. Like what T'seng had said. Like what Rude had said.
"Here."
"Eh?" This time it was Reno who started at the sound of the boy's voice.
"This is my room." Rufus had stopped and was waiting for Reno to return to the present.
"Right. 'K, kid, I'll be seein' ya." Reno turned and started walking back down the hallway.
As soon as he turned the corner and was out of sight, Reno collapsed against the wall, his face contorted in pain.
He had seen the marks on the boy's back, he had seen the bruises on his shoulders. He had seen and had been so affected that he hadn't been able to speak until several moments after Hojo had gotten the boy fixed up. Not out of sympathy or disbelief, for he himself had suffered tenfold worse out on the streets, but because of the memories the sight had brought back. Memories that he had thought were dead and buried.
He was wrong.
"Damn," he breathed, covering his eyes with his hand. "Damn them all."
Memories of himself as a boy, tending to his sisters cuts and bruises the same way Hojo had treated Rufus' came flooding into his mind. Then later, as he knelt on the ground, waiting for one of the older kids in his gang to fix up the knife wounds in his back after a run in with a rival gang.
Odd, that he, some stupid street punk taken from the slums, should share something in common with the son of the richest man in Midgar. How ironic.
But they shared more than just physical pain. Much more. The pain of the heart, of the soul, of the mind. Pain that burned more deeply than pain of the body ever could. It filled their veins, mixing with their red, red blood.
You have everything you could ever want, Rufus Shinra, Reno thought to himself, except for what you need the most. I had nothing, but I didn't care because I had never known anything else. What does this say about us, young Shinra?
What does it say?