Rufus slipped noiselessly out of Hojo's lab and headed straight towards his room. For reasons he didn't understand, he had become frightened of the old scientist. These past few days, Hojo had seemed to recede from the rest of the world, drawing back into himself until he was nearly in a world unto himself. No matter how much Rufus tried, his questions which had before pleased and amused the scientist now served only to bother him.
His young mind dwelled on these oddities as he walked back to his rooms, passing through into the bedroom. He went through the familiar routine of removing his jacket and locking the doors before reached under his bed for his paper wrapped secret. First he put aside the finished painting of Reno, the one he had created the day they had met. Then he sorted through a number of half completed portraits and landscapes before finaly putting them all aside. He shook his head, trying to clear his restless mind, brushing his fingers over a blank, white canvas. It was time for something new, something more than just mindless child's play. He needed to create something with meaning, that meant more to him than to anyone else. He had only created something like that once before, the portrait of Reno. Every time he looked at that painting, he felt a surge of emotion, too complicated for his young mind to sort out and comprehend. It was nearly sexual in its intensity, but there was none of the usual attraction that went along with such things. It was as if the painting was part of him.
None of these things passed through his conscious mind as he took out his brushes and gazed at the white canvas. Before he was fully aware of what he was doing, Rufus sketched the outline of a man leaning over a table. As he worked, the light in his eyes intensified and seemed almost to glow. He added details, then switched over to anther corner of the canvas where he began another outline. Then another. A fourth.
Hours later, four fully detailed drawings of two men stared abstractly out from the canvas. Hojo leaned over his beloved lab table, strands of hair hanging in his face. Above him, Reno stood with his mag-rod across his shoulders, a cigarette hanging easily from his fingers. In opposite corners, profiles of them both stared unblinkingly, their burdens clear in their eyes.
Rufus sighed as he gazed at the portraits. Perfect color stared back at him, neither challenging nor accepting. They simply were. Like so many things in life that he never questioned, never thought twice about. They simply were.
After he carefully placed it back under his bed, Rufus threw himself back on the bed and lay staring at the window, letting his thoughts arrange themselves in his head.
Absently, he laid his fingers on the bruise that covered his right jawbone and grimaced. By this stage in the game, he had learned to take the blows without complaint, as silently as he took everything else from his father. Not that it mattered, the contact between fist and bone had long since lost its pain. Nothing hurt him anymore, for nothing could compare to the most vicious abuse his father could mete out.
"I should have just had you killed with her."
Though he had tried, seeking solace for a time first in the lab work Hojo gave him, then in the trance of painting, Rufus could not erase from his memory the words his father had spat and burned into his brain. Now they came rushing back at him with full force.
He had suspected, of course, he was smarter than most people, including his father, gave him credit for. The official story was that his mother had died from an inadvertent overdose of sleeping pills. No one question the story, which seemed plausible enough. His mother, who had been a waitress at a bar when Shinra met her, had been taking a veritable cocktail of tranquilizers and anti-depressants to varying degrees of success. Not that anyone blamed her, either. After Rufus was born, Shinra had cast aside his wife in favor of a series of mistresses. Rufus' mother flatly denied any unfaithfulness on her husband's part, even as he was whispered about from all sides. Despite her denials, Rufus became more and more aware of a growing tension between his parents. He tried to brush it off as his imagination and when that became impossible, he threw himself into his art, trying to shut out the elements of the outside world.
After his mother's death, however, the whispers grew louder and more frequent until even he could no longer ignore them completely. Shinra himself began to show signs of discomfort, coming across as terse and snappish to his employees.
It took time, nearly six months after the fact, but eventually someone came out and said it. Jacob Shinra had killed his own wife. After that, the city was abuzz with gossip, some of it more true than other.
While Shinra had his hands full trying to appease a restless and demanding city, Rufus, in his quiet, unobtrusive manner, began to find out on his own just how much truth was in the rumors floating through the very halls of ShinRa. He had met with very limited success until now, nearly three years after he had stopped searching.
"I should have just had you killed with her."
Rufus hadn't even had to ask who he meant by "her." He knew, and somehow he'd known the whole time. Still, some parts of him refused to believe it. The little boy in him, for little boy was indeed still who he was, clung to the last shreds of the family he had created in his mind for himself, the accident, the grief stricken husband and father, the man who loved his son. Even through the beatings and the shouting, Rufus tried with all his heart to believe that his father was trying to do the best he could for his son in the only way he knew how. He wanted to believe and so, for a long while, he did.
But after last night, he knew he could not afford to believe any longer.
Why, father? For the first time since his mother died, Rufus felt the tears of grief sadness sting the backs of his eyes. It was fitting, for in a sense his father had died as well, the vision of a father that Rufus had secretly harbored in the corners of his heart. Now that vision was gone. It had been brought down by the words that still rang in his ears like the bells of Hell's chapel. He knew now, beyond the shadow of a doubt.
His father had killed his mother.
He had tried to avoid those words since his father himself had confirmed them. Against his will, though, they surfaced and stared at him, feeling like a slap in the face. Staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom, he mouthed the word through dry, cold lips.
Mother
And as he said it Rufus Shinra, heir to ShinRa Inc, broke down and cried.