In Firelight
I know you can feel it
you're already there
asleep under water
just screaming for air
I know you can feel it
you're already...
don't you know we're freaks and creatures
wake up I can almost see the light
I think we're alone here, you and I
I think we're alone left wondering why
I think we're alone here, you and I
I think we're alone in the universe tonight
- David Usher (Alone in the Universe)
"They said I was dead and I'd never have to be alive again." He turned to face Yuffie, his eyes unreadable. "That's the beauty of being a Turk. It's the ultimate form of running away."
Lying in the darkness, watching the firelight dance across Reno's face, Yuffie had nothing to say. Knowing it, Reno smiled his barbed, ironic smile.
"No one knows what it's like to feel pure Mako pumping through your veins, replacing pain, hate and happiness with this wonderful numbness. Not ever SOLDIER. That was ours alone. Now, no one ever will again." He frowned, looking up at the stars. The pale scars under each eye looked white in the pale light. "That's comforting, I guess; knowing nobody will ever go through the crap you went through." His eyes met Yuffie's again. "Knowing nobody will ever feel the highs you did."
She waited for the harsh laughter, but it never came. There was a moment's silence. When he spoke again it was with the same intensity, although his voice was softer now.
"I remember that day better than the others; the performance enhancers' primary side-effect was short-term memory loss."
He stretched out on the grass then, staring at the dark, cloudless sky. The silence of the empty camp seemed strange and jarring in the night, and Yuffie lay quietly by herself, wishing for the others to return. There would be arguments when they did, but it was better than this. Despite the strange feeling that had taken hold as soon as Reno had started talking in that strange voice, Yuffie was glad. She felt cold as she listened to him speak in that disturbingly dark, cynical tone, but it was infinitely better than the silence. Perhaps he spoke to her because he felt it too.
"I remember the metal trays in the sterile white rooms, and the needles and tools that glittered under the lights." It didn't really sound like he was completely talking to her, now that Yuffie could see his face. She wondered briefly if it was to himself, to absent friends, or perhaps the ghost of a time and place she knew nothing of. "I remember how it was just procedure as they stuck me full of syringes, not concerned that they were creating a killing machine that would take out two of them before his run was done. Or, maybe they were proud."
Yuffie lay in her sleeping bag, staring out across the protected field as Reno talked. The shadows matched his memories and her violet-gray eyes.
"Every single one of the busy, blank faces is burned in my fucking head. Sometimes I wonder just how far I'd go to get them outta there." He shrugged invisibly in the moonlight. "The tests came afterwards, of course, but those are mostly gone. All I have of that day is sitting on the white stretcher while one doctor injected the last Mako shot into my right arm. I remember... he talked a lot before it all went black."
The sounds of the Mideel forest didn't cover the quiet.
"...He said... Said the standard shit about Shinra loyalty, pride, whatever. But that wasn't what I wanted. I remember how... happy I was as he told me that I never needed to actually feel anything ever again. I remember that as he helped me lie down and the room started to spin, I was honestly happy when I realized that where all the hate, and fucked-up thoughts and conflicts had been, there was nothing."
Yuffie wondered if she should say something now, anything at all to show him she was at least listening. But she could think of nothing. There were no words to cover the silence in her own head.
"The next time I came too for real, even that was gone. It was the best feeling I'd ever known. Sure, I felt stuff after that; you can't live and not feel anything. But it was far away, or held so tightly that it soon became the nothing it'd always been. The world outside us, outside me, meant nothing."
Dark red hair looked like blood in the strange orange half-light of the fire.
"We were... friends, you would say. There was happiness between us, although it was quiet. None of us ever cried a single drop for Tseng, and I sincerely doubt we ever will. It doesn't matter though. No one will cry for me either."
The almost uncaring voice from the shadows sent a stray shiver up Yuffie's spine. She watched as Reno turned his head to look at her, silhouetted in part by the dancing flames. His blue eyes glowed ever so faintly in the darkness.
"But the last thing, the last real thing I felt was the desperate, relieved happiness that day in the white room. And now..."
The laughter finally did come, then, bitter and full of suppressed mirth.
"Now..." His eyes broke away, tracing the tree line. "Now it's starting to come back again." The wind whistled through the distant branches, sending leaves pirouetting in the abnormally cold air towards the dark sky.
"Just imagine... after so long of being empty, how do you feel again? Some nights I can feel the fear creeping up, only to realize it's just a memory. In the dark it's impossible to tell for sure what's real."
He stared up again, finally letting himself rest back. The cold didn't bother him, and the wind whipped his light shirt easily about, completely unheeded.
"I've never really considered putting a bullet through my head before, not seriously. There was always too much to do, too many people to see." He shook his head slowly. "I don't know. Maybe one day it'll come to that. I won't be the first or the last." He paused a last time, thinking.
"...I'm still not sure what's worse. To feel everything again, or to have nothing."
Under the firelight, lying alone, he looked nothing like the Reno Yuffie knew during the day, and somehow the revelation made a quiet part of her hurt. Pulling the sleeping bag up around her to keep away the chill, Yuffie tried to shut out the silence and the part of her that wanted to answer Reno's question for him. It wasn't her answer to give, but only his to find.
In the cold night filled with distant, icy stars, Yuffie searched for sleep and answers to questions that haunted the empty tents and trees and sky.
Only the wind answered back.
A/N – Short, I know. I originally meant this to be a future section of my big project, Blue Sky on Fire, and it fits in with events of the story. However, I felt it stood okay on its own, and it didn't really fit with what I was trying to do in the story anyway. In a way it's darker, although in another it's really, really not. Anyway, hope you enjoyed it, and I also hope to see you all around.