It didn't matter how good looking you actually were, a voice said quietly in the back of Reno's head as he surveyed the carnage in front of him, lying sprawled in a puddle of blood was incredibly unattractive. As difficult as it was, the former Turk tore his eyes from Yuffie's laid out form and raised them to fall upon the still figured of Elena and Tseng, who stood quite still with smoking pistols still clenched in their hands.
He couldn't believe it. Out of all things, out of all the ways he had expected this tangled situation to end up, this had never entered his mind. Somehow it didn't seem entirely fair, not so much in the deed but in the fact that he hadn't even seen it unfold, that he hadn't figured it out until the end. That, after everything was said and done, he had been of no help whatsoever in preventing the murder of Yuffie Kisaragi.
Showing his trademark lack of emotion, Tseng stepped lightly over the cooling puddles of blood that dotted the pavement ground, apparently more afraid of having blood on his shoes than on his hands. He placed his foot on one of the few unstained parts of the immobile corpse and kicked hard, flipping it over onto its back. Brown eyes stared lifelessly up at the darkening sky, lips parted never to speak again, and crimson blood congealed in the thick black hairs of the victim's beard.
"Hey Turkey," came a steady but clearly pained whisper from the ground, where Yuffie lay clutching her leg. "Are you going to help me up, or am I going to have to crawl over there and punch you in the shin?"
Nodding slowly, Reno tossed Rude's gun aside and walked over to her, walking carelessly through the blood that Tseng had just avoided. He knelt down and allowed Yuffie to hook her arm over the back of his neck, grabbing her around the waist and lifting her up into the air, holding her like a child with her legs dangling over his arm, the steady drip of blood from her leg splattering against the ground. The noise caught Elena's attention, who to Reno's immense shock didn't even pale. "Your going to want to get some medical attention for that," she said, "but I don't think you're in too much danger."
"I don't really want to admit it," Yuffie said with laborious breaths, "but I'm confused, babe."
"Babe?" Reno gave the woman in his arms a quick look. "I knock over one bald man who's chasing you down and you go from screaming at me to pet names?"
"Shut up," Yuffie replied tersely, "and explain."
"You can't just spread around someone else's business card at the scene of a murder and not pay for it," Reno replied quickly, "but I didn't think-"
"-didn't think what?" Tseng cut him off with a sharp tone in his voice. "That we had the resources to hear about it so soon, to get over here to fast? Or maybe you thought that we would just let it slide? We might not have as much money anymore, Reno, but we still have our pride."
What could he say to that? Reno readjusted his grip on the bleeding princess in his arms and turned away from Tseng, towards the sound of an entrance that was anything but silent. Holding a wall for balance, but still hobbling considerably, was Rude, his holster empty and his foot a bloody mess. Elena let loose a gasp of surprise and ran over to him, dropping down to one knee to examine his wound as the bald man glared daggers at Reno through askewed sunglasses.
"If you'd been like that when I chased you away from Chekov's house," Reno remarked quietly, tempting fate but not really caring, "I would have been able to catch you."
"You didn't chase me away from Chekov's," Rude remarked, grunting in pain as Elena ripped the sleeve off her blue jacket and began to wrap it around his damaged foot. "You chased him." He gestured towards the bullet ridden corpse that now lay face up in the alley, it's chest blown to pieces. Elena's aim has been improving, Reno observed, her bullet had landed just an inch to the left of the center of the heart- also known as the point that Tseng's bullet had landed. "And so did I," Rude continued slowly, "but he got away from both of us."
"You saw Rude at Chekov's!?" Yuffie demanded, and if she could have done it without crumpling to the ground in agony Reno was fairy sure she would have dropped down and kicked him. "Thanks for telling me." She paused, putting the puzzle pieces together in her mind. "Oh... so that's why there was no Turk card at his house. You were there waiting for the assassin, and chased him off."
"We can't have an amateur tainting our name with shoddy work," Tseng said coolly, "shots to the back of the neck are so risky. Permanent paralysis doesn't do much in the way of fulfilling a murder contract."
"So who was it?" Reno asked, leaning back against the nearest brick wall. Yuffie was light, but he had been doing far too much running tonight, and his lungs were about ready to rebel against him and burrow out of his chest. "I mean, who would have access to those old cards? Shin-Ra only gave them out at his executive business parties."
"Don't recognize him?" Tseng asked. "I guess lipo-suction goes a long way these days. I figured the beard would be a dead give away."
Peering closer, Reno realized he was right. It would be hard to forget that face, even if he hadn't seen it every day, even if he hadn't had his attention drawn to it every five minutes by bursts of thick, braying laugher. "Heidegger?" he asked in disbelief. "I thought he was dead... but a hitman?"
"It beats living on welfare," Tseng said, his icy eyes falling on Reno. "For some of us."
"So..." Yuffie said quickly in an effort to diffuse the rapidly growing tension between the two, and distract herself from the neat little piercing that had been added to her lower leg, the single shot gotten off by her would-be hitman before Tseng and Elena had sent him to the Lifestream. "Since Rude and I are both crippled, I guess we're heading to the same place... the hospitals almost amount a mile away."
"Heading to the same place?" Tseng seemed to be thoughtful as he spoke. "No, we aren't." His eyes met Reno's, and for a long time they both simply stared, neither looking away. "Not yet, anyway."
Using the words of his former mentor as a cue, Reno swung Yuffie's bulk around and walked out of the clearing and into the street, making his way quickly down the road and in the direction of the Wutain hospital. He didn't look back, but Yuffie did, peering over his shoulder as he bore her away like some action hero carrying the damsel in distress. She watched as three people in blue, only two men, only two standing erect, gathered together to watch them leave.
Two weeks later...
"You never should have left."
Reno smirked through the bile that threatened to rush into his mouth, eyes sparkling with barely contained malice. In tiny numbers written in fire in the back of his mind he counted backwards from ten, breathing evenly. In through the mouth, out through the nose. Two months ago he would have just shot the man in the knee. Yuffie was having a bad influence on him already.
"I never should have done a lot of things, Tseng," he responded as evenly as he could, wondering if those little veins behind your eyes could actually burst in a crimson haze. "Several of my tattoos come to mind. That stripper in Junon. That wedding in Fort Condor. I could go on."
"Please don't." Whatever the new financial situation of the Turks was, the arrogant tone of their leader was as firmly in place as ever. Reno remembered when that voice would install some sort of battle fervor in the back of his mind. Now it felt like a rusty sawblade going to work somewhere between his navel and his knees.
"Listen," Reno started without much hope his words would be even listened to, "there's nothing you can offer me anymore. Nothing you can do. I set you up in that god damned fortress of one of the victims, so you can't even pretend I owe you anything."
"You'll get bored," Tseng said past a glass and through a mouthful of brandy. "What are you going to do, take a job tossing punks on the bottom floor of the Pagoda?"
"Maybe." Tseng searched Reno's eyes for any sign of jest, found none, and exhaled sharply as he shook his head.
"Well, I guess we don't have anything else to talk about," the Turk leader said at last. He watched silently as Reno finished his drink, went to finish another one, and decided to skip the middle man by taking a long drag right from the bottle. Reno handed it back to his former instructor and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Then why are you still here?"
"...you belong with us, Reno. We're your family. The Turks are your home."
Reno thought long and hard about that. Thought about being drug from a gutter and cleaned off, only to be covered with a whole new kind of dirt. Thought about having his empty stomach filled, his wounds healed, his addictions supplied. Tseng had saved his life at least a dozen times, Rude twice that. He'd exchanged more blood with these people than most vampires. They'd been the best thing to ever happen to him.
"Tseng?" he said softly.
"Yes?" the answer was eager, expectant.
"I already have a home. Get the fuck out of here."
Their eyes met one final time, but for the first time that Reno could ever remember Tseng looked away first. He tossed a wad of gil down on the table- easily more than enough to cover the drinks, but no longer enough to buy Reno's soul. "This bar is terrible anyway," he muttered, and was gone in a flash of silk suit and silkier hair.
Reno sighed, ignoring the roll of money completely and paying for his own drink. Some bar maid was going to have a hell of a tip waiting for her when she got back. He leaned down and snatched up the box he'd had sitting at the foot of the table, the box Tseng had brought with him but never addressed. He couldn't have been less surprised by the contents if he'd put them their himself. Dark blue pants, a navy jacket, and a Mako .45.
He carried the box out in front of him like a favorite niece or nephew as he left the bar that Rude had always loved so much. He figured that give or take a few hundred years, he might get used to the place in a life time. Location was important after all. Reno made his way down the street drawing the same old looks he always drew, catching the same old instant judgments. He smiled at the men and women condemning him in their minds.
His path lead easily to a front door he had become readily accustomed to. He couldn't really said he'd moved in, he reasoned. After all, he'd taken up residence here weeks ago to help solve a little problem with an attempted total overthrow of the current government system. Low grade stuff, really. After that little issue had been cleared up, he had simply not left. He had a patient to nurse back to health, after all.
Arms filled, he nudged the door open with his foot. He went to step inside, but something caused him to pause. The box in his hands weighed him down like an anchor around his neck. Taking a deep breath, he glanced through the doorway, scanning the comfort furniture and the incredibly irritating art. The piles of clothes. The TV they'd left on to some random martial arts movie.
One pair of pants. One jacket. One Mako .45.
Reno smirked and plucked the gun from the box. It had a hell of a balance to it, even if the recoil on these things always had bugged the hell out of him. There wasn't nearly enough. When he was blowing holes in something or someone, he wanted to feel some kick. The gun was tucked into the back of his belt, he no longer wore a holster to support one.
He dropped the box like it was hot, watching it clatter against the steps that lead to the house and tumble downwards with detached amusement. His hands now free, he was able to easily shut the door behind him as he stepped into his home.
Eventually, the wind caught the box, and carried it off into the past from whence it came.
Inside the house, Reno was eager to find his future.
~End.
He couldn't believe it. Out of all things, out of all the ways he had expected this tangled situation to end up, this had never entered his mind. Somehow it didn't seem entirely fair, not so much in the deed but in the fact that he hadn't even seen it unfold, that he hadn't figured it out until the end. That, after everything was said and done, he had been of no help whatsoever in preventing the murder of Yuffie Kisaragi.
Showing his trademark lack of emotion, Tseng stepped lightly over the cooling puddles of blood that dotted the pavement ground, apparently more afraid of having blood on his shoes than on his hands. He placed his foot on one of the few unstained parts of the immobile corpse and kicked hard, flipping it over onto its back. Brown eyes stared lifelessly up at the darkening sky, lips parted never to speak again, and crimson blood congealed in the thick black hairs of the victim's beard.
"Hey Turkey," came a steady but clearly pained whisper from the ground, where Yuffie lay clutching her leg. "Are you going to help me up, or am I going to have to crawl over there and punch you in the shin?"
Nodding slowly, Reno tossed Rude's gun aside and walked over to her, walking carelessly through the blood that Tseng had just avoided. He knelt down and allowed Yuffie to hook her arm over the back of his neck, grabbing her around the waist and lifting her up into the air, holding her like a child with her legs dangling over his arm, the steady drip of blood from her leg splattering against the ground. The noise caught Elena's attention, who to Reno's immense shock didn't even pale. "Your going to want to get some medical attention for that," she said, "but I don't think you're in too much danger."
"I don't really want to admit it," Yuffie said with laborious breaths, "but I'm confused, babe."
"Babe?" Reno gave the woman in his arms a quick look. "I knock over one bald man who's chasing you down and you go from screaming at me to pet names?"
"Shut up," Yuffie replied tersely, "and explain."
"You can't just spread around someone else's business card at the scene of a murder and not pay for it," Reno replied quickly, "but I didn't think-"
"-didn't think what?" Tseng cut him off with a sharp tone in his voice. "That we had the resources to hear about it so soon, to get over here to fast? Or maybe you thought that we would just let it slide? We might not have as much money anymore, Reno, but we still have our pride."
What could he say to that? Reno readjusted his grip on the bleeding princess in his arms and turned away from Tseng, towards the sound of an entrance that was anything but silent. Holding a wall for balance, but still hobbling considerably, was Rude, his holster empty and his foot a bloody mess. Elena let loose a gasp of surprise and ran over to him, dropping down to one knee to examine his wound as the bald man glared daggers at Reno through askewed sunglasses.
"If you'd been like that when I chased you away from Chekov's house," Reno remarked quietly, tempting fate but not really caring, "I would have been able to catch you."
"You didn't chase me away from Chekov's," Rude remarked, grunting in pain as Elena ripped the sleeve off her blue jacket and began to wrap it around his damaged foot. "You chased him." He gestured towards the bullet ridden corpse that now lay face up in the alley, it's chest blown to pieces. Elena's aim has been improving, Reno observed, her bullet had landed just an inch to the left of the center of the heart- also known as the point that Tseng's bullet had landed. "And so did I," Rude continued slowly, "but he got away from both of us."
"You saw Rude at Chekov's!?" Yuffie demanded, and if she could have done it without crumpling to the ground in agony Reno was fairy sure she would have dropped down and kicked him. "Thanks for telling me." She paused, putting the puzzle pieces together in her mind. "Oh... so that's why there was no Turk card at his house. You were there waiting for the assassin, and chased him off."
"We can't have an amateur tainting our name with shoddy work," Tseng said coolly, "shots to the back of the neck are so risky. Permanent paralysis doesn't do much in the way of fulfilling a murder contract."
"So who was it?" Reno asked, leaning back against the nearest brick wall. Yuffie was light, but he had been doing far too much running tonight, and his lungs were about ready to rebel against him and burrow out of his chest. "I mean, who would have access to those old cards? Shin-Ra only gave them out at his executive business parties."
"Don't recognize him?" Tseng asked. "I guess lipo-suction goes a long way these days. I figured the beard would be a dead give away."
Peering closer, Reno realized he was right. It would be hard to forget that face, even if he hadn't seen it every day, even if he hadn't had his attention drawn to it every five minutes by bursts of thick, braying laugher. "Heidegger?" he asked in disbelief. "I thought he was dead... but a hitman?"
"It beats living on welfare," Tseng said, his icy eyes falling on Reno. "For some of us."
"So..." Yuffie said quickly in an effort to diffuse the rapidly growing tension between the two, and distract herself from the neat little piercing that had been added to her lower leg, the single shot gotten off by her would-be hitman before Tseng and Elena had sent him to the Lifestream. "Since Rude and I are both crippled, I guess we're heading to the same place... the hospitals almost amount a mile away."
"Heading to the same place?" Tseng seemed to be thoughtful as he spoke. "No, we aren't." His eyes met Reno's, and for a long time they both simply stared, neither looking away. "Not yet, anyway."
Using the words of his former mentor as a cue, Reno swung Yuffie's bulk around and walked out of the clearing and into the street, making his way quickly down the road and in the direction of the Wutain hospital. He didn't look back, but Yuffie did, peering over his shoulder as he bore her away like some action hero carrying the damsel in distress. She watched as three people in blue, only two men, only two standing erect, gathered together to watch them leave.
Two weeks later...
"You never should have left."
Reno smirked through the bile that threatened to rush into his mouth, eyes sparkling with barely contained malice. In tiny numbers written in fire in the back of his mind he counted backwards from ten, breathing evenly. In through the mouth, out through the nose. Two months ago he would have just shot the man in the knee. Yuffie was having a bad influence on him already.
"I never should have done a lot of things, Tseng," he responded as evenly as he could, wondering if those little veins behind your eyes could actually burst in a crimson haze. "Several of my tattoos come to mind. That stripper in Junon. That wedding in Fort Condor. I could go on."
"Please don't." Whatever the new financial situation of the Turks was, the arrogant tone of their leader was as firmly in place as ever. Reno remembered when that voice would install some sort of battle fervor in the back of his mind. Now it felt like a rusty sawblade going to work somewhere between his navel and his knees.
"Listen," Reno started without much hope his words would be even listened to, "there's nothing you can offer me anymore. Nothing you can do. I set you up in that god damned fortress of one of the victims, so you can't even pretend I owe you anything."
"You'll get bored," Tseng said past a glass and through a mouthful of brandy. "What are you going to do, take a job tossing punks on the bottom floor of the Pagoda?"
"Maybe." Tseng searched Reno's eyes for any sign of jest, found none, and exhaled sharply as he shook his head.
"Well, I guess we don't have anything else to talk about," the Turk leader said at last. He watched silently as Reno finished his drink, went to finish another one, and decided to skip the middle man by taking a long drag right from the bottle. Reno handed it back to his former instructor and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Then why are you still here?"
"...you belong with us, Reno. We're your family. The Turks are your home."
Reno thought long and hard about that. Thought about being drug from a gutter and cleaned off, only to be covered with a whole new kind of dirt. Thought about having his empty stomach filled, his wounds healed, his addictions supplied. Tseng had saved his life at least a dozen times, Rude twice that. He'd exchanged more blood with these people than most vampires. They'd been the best thing to ever happen to him.
"Tseng?" he said softly.
"Yes?" the answer was eager, expectant.
"I already have a home. Get the fuck out of here."
Their eyes met one final time, but for the first time that Reno could ever remember Tseng looked away first. He tossed a wad of gil down on the table- easily more than enough to cover the drinks, but no longer enough to buy Reno's soul. "This bar is terrible anyway," he muttered, and was gone in a flash of silk suit and silkier hair.
Reno sighed, ignoring the roll of money completely and paying for his own drink. Some bar maid was going to have a hell of a tip waiting for her when she got back. He leaned down and snatched up the box he'd had sitting at the foot of the table, the box Tseng had brought with him but never addressed. He couldn't have been less surprised by the contents if he'd put them their himself. Dark blue pants, a navy jacket, and a Mako .45.
He carried the box out in front of him like a favorite niece or nephew as he left the bar that Rude had always loved so much. He figured that give or take a few hundred years, he might get used to the place in a life time. Location was important after all. Reno made his way down the street drawing the same old looks he always drew, catching the same old instant judgments. He smiled at the men and women condemning him in their minds.
His path lead easily to a front door he had become readily accustomed to. He couldn't really said he'd moved in, he reasoned. After all, he'd taken up residence here weeks ago to help solve a little problem with an attempted total overthrow of the current government system. Low grade stuff, really. After that little issue had been cleared up, he had simply not left. He had a patient to nurse back to health, after all.
Arms filled, he nudged the door open with his foot. He went to step inside, but something caused him to pause. The box in his hands weighed him down like an anchor around his neck. Taking a deep breath, he glanced through the doorway, scanning the comfort furniture and the incredibly irritating art. The piles of clothes. The TV they'd left on to some random martial arts movie.
One pair of pants. One jacket. One Mako .45.
Reno smirked and plucked the gun from the box. It had a hell of a balance to it, even if the recoil on these things always had bugged the hell out of him. There wasn't nearly enough. When he was blowing holes in something or someone, he wanted to feel some kick. The gun was tucked into the back of his belt, he no longer wore a holster to support one.
He dropped the box like it was hot, watching it clatter against the steps that lead to the house and tumble downwards with detached amusement. His hands now free, he was able to easily shut the door behind him as he stepped into his home.
Eventually, the wind caught the box, and carried it off into the past from whence it came.
Inside the house, Reno was eager to find his future.
~End.
