This Fragile Life
Elena: La Nuit Blanche



Elena muttered a final Cure spell and re-bandaged Rude's arm. "Cait did a pretty good job on him." She pulled the blanket up over him and strapped him onto the table against turbulence, then gripped the edge of the bed as another surge of nausea struck. Rude, oblivious due to a mild sedative, continued snoring gently. Hojo had left the lab a mess, files and sample tubes everywhere, furious at being evicted to allow Elena to care for Rude. Rude had merely been thoroughly embarrassed - first at having been stripped down to his boxers, then at having to lean heavily on Reno to get on the plane, and then at Elena telling him to 'Planet, Rude, lie down, I can't do anything for you until you do!'

"For a toy cat," Reno muttered, sitting in a bolted-down chair by Rude's sickbed. "How is he?"

"He'll be all right," Elena said, leaning on his chair as the nausea receded. "He's probably in better shape than you were after Avalanche beat on you at the pillar."

Reno buried his face in her side and wound his arms tightly around her waist. Elena was ready to smack him until she realized he was shaking like a frightened child.

"Come on, Reno. He'll be fine," she said, running her fingers through his hair. "Get him back to headquarters and someone with a better Cure, and he'll probably be ready for a drink."

" I could use a drink," Reno muttered. The plane lurched in the air; files skidded and papers flew through the air. Sample tubes pinged as they bounced over the lab, one smacking painfully into Elena's elbow.

She clapped her other hand over her mouth as the nausea surged again. "S-sorry, Reno. You'll have to wait until we get back." She swallowed hard. She'd only been able to eat half a ration bar that morning; she couldn't possibly have anything left to throw up. Her fingers clenched briefly in Reno's hair. The turbulence eased and her stomach settled down.

Reno settled his head more comfortably against her side as she continued to absently run her fingers through his hair, her other arm curling around his shoulders. "What, you think Hojo didn't smuggle a bottle on board?"

"Really bad sake, Reno. Only Hojo would drink it." She'd gotten a whiff of it when he'd opened the bottle, and it had made her stomach churn. It was the worst sort of cheap sake, found only in overpriced bottles in gourmet stores on the upper plate. The Wutai immigrants in the slums had family to send them better sake.

"Damn." Reno sighed deeply, leaning into her, one of his hands starting to drift downward. "Shoulda left him in the City. S'a disgusting little pervert."

Elena laughed, then grabbed Reno's hand before it could wander any further afield. She stepped away, or as far away as she could get since she'd only grabbed one of his hands. "You have no room to talk," she told him, slapping him firmly across the face.

"I'm not a pervert," Reno said indignantly. "I'm a hedonist." He snapped his wrist free and dragged her back, snuggling his head against her side again.

"You're impossible . You're acting like a five-year-old." Hojo walked into the room, glowering, just as Elena removed Reno's arms and stepped away. He stalked across to his desk, sniffing audibly at the mess.

"Are you quite through wasting time?" He knelt down to begin collecting his scattered files and sample tubes.

Reno stood up and walked around the chair to lean back against it. "Don't quite see how putting Rude back together is wasted time, Professor Hojo." He rapped his knuckles on his thigh, not quite reaching for his nightstick.

The scientist made a disgusted noise and finished collecting his files; he stood up and glowered at them. " That was not giving your colleague medical treatment." He looked at Elena, his eyes dropping immediately to her chest; she kicked the sample tube at him. It bounced off his shin, and his eyes flashed once. "If you are quite done, I require the use of my lab."

"Well, that could be a bit of a problem, since Rude here's out cold," Reno replied, eyes narrowing. "Guess you'll just have to wait until we get back to Midgar."

Before Hojo could reply, the plane bounced and lurched, dropping a few thousand feet in a heartbeat. Elena lost her balance and would have fallen if Reno hadn't grabbed her, her hands clapped over her mouth as her stomach protested. Hojo staggered, grabbing his desk for balance. Elena lost the battle against the nausea and dry-heaved, nothing left in her stomach to throw up.

"Strap yourselves in!" the pilot yelled over the intercom. "Emergency landing!"

Reno picked her up and carried her into the seating area over her protests. "Strap in! You got Rude strapped down, he'll be fine."

Elena strapped herself in, starting to heave again, as Hojo fell into the seat next to Reno. The plane lurched again, rolling with the rapidly-changing wind, bouncing as the pilot tried to control the altitude. Hojo and Reno strapped themselves in and the light coming in the windows turned brilliant red.

It had been red with the coming of Meteor, of course. Since Meteor had appeared in the skies, everything had had a reddish tint. But now the sky was burning , hot angry light that wanted nothing more than to melt the flesh from their bones, and the plane was suddenly full of voices. Not like the feel of the crystal in the City of the Ancients this time, these were angry voices, raging screaming crying, and the light was trying to burn her to ash. Reno was saying something, but she couldn't hear him over the furious voices, and someone was laughing, the sound freezing her down to the core, and the burning light shifted up the spectrum to white-hot blinding and the laughter followed her down into the blindness, and her flesh was still burning, singing off her bones. The angry voices didn't, fading and fading and fading, and her flesh stopped burning. Eventually even the laughter faded, and there was only silent blindness.

After a while, it stopped being silent.

"What the hell happened?"

"I don't know," a very tired someone else said. "It didn't work."

"...We can see that. Did they get the materia off the rocket?"

"I don't know. We haven't found them yet."

"Fuck," the first person said succinctly. Reno , she remembered, and she became aware of light beyond her closed eyes.

"How's Elena?" the tired man asked. Reeve. She was lying on a cot, a blanket tucked around her. Her throat hurt. She couldn't remember why her throat hurt. Her head hurt too, a dull persistent pounding like the church bells ringing out the hours.

"She's still out. And Hojo's been trying to get at her and ... fuck, next time he shows up I'm gonna ..." An aggravating persistent hum undercut Reno's complaining.

"Enough, Reno," the other voice said. Rude. She couldn't open her eyes yet. "...Time to meet Rufus."

Someone brushed something cool and damp over her face. "She's not feverish anymore," Reeve said. "Look, I'll get her to the doctor when she wakes up. Rufus is furious."

"Like he's been anything else lately?" Reno asked, disgusted.

"...Take care of her, Reeve." It sounded almost like a threat. "Come on, Reno."

Two sets of footsteps left the room, the door closing behind them. Someone sat down in a chair nearby, and she finally pried her eyes open, finding herself in the Turks' office, lying next to Reno's desk. "Ugh," she said, failing to sit up.

"Elena! You're awake!" Reeve exclaimed. He got up and got her a glass of water, then helped her sit up to drink it. "What happened?"

"I was going to ask you that," she replied, appalled at the way her hands were shaking. She had to use both of them to hold the cup steady, but the water eased the ache in her throat. "Reno and Rude gone?"

"Rufus is furious about Cloud getting on the rocket," Reeve replied, carefully not supporting her, but close enough to catch her if she wavered. "He wanted to talk to them."

Elena blinked her eyes into focus, seeing a fresh bruise on Reeve's face. "You," she said, "have to start hitting back." She noticed another bruise, this one a few days old, under the open collar of his shirt. He was exhausted, face lined and weary, his hair fallen out of his ponytail, his shirt wrinkled and his jacket flung on a desk. Her desk, she noted, and his jacket was covering the paperwork she had been assiduously ignoring. Her jacket was hanging on her chair, and her shirt was probably in worse condition than Reeve's.

Reeve shook his head and changed the subject. "His plan ... didn't work." He opened the shades. Meteor loomed closer than ever, part of it blown apart, chunks of rock floating around held on by ... did dead planets even have lifestreams? She made a small sound, and he closed the shades again. "You've been out for most of a day, since about the time the rocket hit. Reno said something happened on the way back from Rocket Town. Didn't say what."

Elena shivered, remembering the light burning her flesh from her bones, screaming furious voices and the chilling laughter. "Think I started hallucinating or something. I thought ... never mind."

Reeve looked at her curiously. "Thought what? Tifa said she thought she heard someone laughing. She thought it was .. Sephiroth."

She looked up sharply. "She heard someone laughing?" At Reeve's nod, she asked, "Did she hear anything else?"
He shook his head. "Not that she said anything about, why?"

Elena considered and decided it was probably safe enough to tell him. "I heard ... voices. They were angry voices, at that. I felt like I was burning alive. Then I heard someone laughing. Whoever it was, he was insane."

"All Tifa said was that she heard someone laughing," he replied, shaking his head. "Don't know about the rest of it."

Elena shook her head, feeling much steadier; she pushed aside the blanket - a good light wool one, much better than anything she owned, and swung her legs down to the floor. "I have no idea. Maybe it was just being in close quarters with Hojo."

"You should go see your doctor," Reeve suggested. "You were pretty bad for a while."

She groaned. "Rude insisted?"

"Yeah ... They brought you here instead because the infirmary was full of injured MPs. Something got loose out of Hojo's lab." Reeve offered her her jacket, and pulled his on. "Should have cleared out by now."

He accompanied her down to the medical level, ignoring some particularly snide comments from Scarlet. Elena felt Scarlet glaring at her back; the Head of the Weapons Department had found Reeve too tough a nut to crack. Elena, bemused, wondered if he preferred men or just didn't like women who were after conquests; he'd never been anything but a perfect gentleman to her, though that could just as easily be a strong sense of self-preservation.

The infirmary was largely empty, the injured from whatever had escaped Hojo's lab moved out. Turks, thankfully, did not have to wait; the nurse waved her in, took blood pressure, blood samples, and a urine sample, and summoned the doctor. The doctor took her history, asked some questions about the incident on the plane, and went to get the test results. Elena fumed.

"Ms. Elena?" The nurse, looking frightened and carrying a large manila folder, hurried into to the treatment room. "It's important, Ms. Elena," she whispered, shoving the folder at her. "Hojo's been paying Dr. Glatz off - I don't know what for - those records..." She straightened as the doctor returned; Elena hastily stuffed the folder in her jacket.

"Nurse, the patient in Room 6 needs to have his blood pressure checked and blood samples drawn," Dr. Glatz said. "Ms. Elena, if you'll come with me, we can treat the nausea you were experiencing."

"What kind of treatment?" she asked, warily, remembering the nurse's words.

"It's a brief course with an inhalant," he replied, checking his watch impatiently. "It's a fairly recently developed treatment, but it's quite effective."

Against her better judgement, Elena followed him down the hall to a small, bare room with a table, a small incomprehensible apparatus with two air tanks, a table, and a chair, and a mirror against the far wall. "If you'll just sit down there, yes ..." He strapped the face mask on her, then adjusted some dials and started the apparatus. "Now I'll be right back." He left, closing the door behind him.

Whatever was in the air tanks was sharp and bitter-tasting, going straight to her brain and leaving her lightheaded. She leaned her chin on her hand and found herself dozing, dreaming an odd and slightly incoherent dream about the Temple of the Ancients, Sephiroth and Tseng and then Tseng, on a boat in tossing seas. She snapped awake when the door opened.

Dr. Glatz turned off the machine and took off the mask. She took a few deep breaths of normal air.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

Somewhat surprised, she realized she was feeling much better. "Better. Is that it?"

"Yes, I'll have the nurse send you the paperwork to fill out, Ms. Elena," he said. "You showed up slightly anemic and a little low on vitamins, so keep an eye on your diet, and get some rest if you can."

She nodded and walked back out to the waiting room. Reeve was dozing in a chair, jumping a bit when she touched his shoulder. On the way back out, they saw Hojo hurrying for the elevator, and she was suddenly very conscious of the weight of the folder in her jacket.

"What's Hojo doing down here?" Reeve asked, glaring at the scientist's retreating back.

Elena shook her head. "Nothing I'll appreciate," she said, as they caught a different elevator. "Reeve-san, I need to ask some favors."

"Of me?" He sounded surprised. "I don't know where they are or if they've got the Huge Materia."

She shook her head as they reached his floor. "No, that's not it, Reeve-san. First - do you know the orphanage in the Sector Two slums?"

"The one the Sisters of the Rose run? Yes."

"Can you evacuate it?"

He pondered. "Probably. I've been trying to figure out how to get people to evacuate anyway, and the nuns might be able to help."

She took a business card from her wallet and handed it to him. "If you tell Neve I sent you, she'll help you figure out who to talk to."

He looked over the card and pocketed it. "What's the other one?"

"Can you get into Hojo's lab?"

Reeve choked. "What?!"

His floor was mostly deserted, and his secretary was temporarily elsewhere. "Hojo's been bribing my doctor, but I don't know what for," she told him quickly. "I need to find out, but if the Turks make inquiries..."

"Hojo will conveniently lose the records," Reeve nodded. "I can try, but no guarantees."

Her cell phone went off just before she could answer him. "Elena. Yes. I'll be right there."

"Your turn to get yelled at?" Reeve asked sympathetically.

She nodded. "Thank you, Reeve-san." She turned and walked away. Reeve watched her go.




* * *

Whew ... That last scene was a pain to write. Not sure who gets the next chapter - probably Hojo.* * *