I rather like this chapter the best.

vi. bittersweet ending

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.drink down your last swallow, boozer.

Scarlet...

Throwing her hands down on the table where he sat at, her long painted nails hitting the surface with a brief click, the long familiar fingers he would so often slip his hands into cautiously, and so sneakily when no one was looking. Her soft green eyes, he so used to seeing staring at him in loving consideration, begging pleasure, or naughty glances at the office now screamed at him in fiery anger. Knocking the needle out of his hands, her soft mouth so usually speaking words of gentle praise, or slow moaning of agreement, now tightly spit fire at his hazy eyes.

"A lying, cheating, drug-usin' murderer, that's what you are!"

He really did try to get up, and out of the glued chair he was in, but his strength was lost in the hazy euphoria of the needle's potent effect. He supposed, lazily as he watched the red back of the dress spin on pointed heels, that he would have left long ago if he were the wearer of the dress.

As the door slammed, closing a part of his life and a part of conscious mind, he slid to the floor, the glue holding him from the chair oozing down and over his face, running down like streams of hot water in the spring. He promised to himself he would never let this happen to himself again, never, never. The needle fell from his vein and smashed onto the floor into a million shards of glass. The quiet shatter from the syringe exploded in his mind, and all of a sudden everything went silent, save the relentless clomp clomp clomp of red spiked heels and a flicker of a lighter.

-

.light your last fuse, chimney.

Reno let himself fall, hitting the sofa with nonchalant carelessness, the music and his eyes glazing over with inconsolable placidity. He could feel one of his moods coming on again, as he made no effort to rise from his slouched, lethargic poise on the beaten down coach in his apartment. Even his cigarette craving wouldn't budge him. He felt so...

Had it been a few hours ago that he grabbed her, right there in the bar, right there in front of all the SOLDIER men and Rude and the bartender and kissed her? Combed his fingers through her soft blond hair and caressed her smooth velvet lips? Even in her drunken state and bumbling tears of rejection, had he pulled her head close to his and kissed her, furiously, passionately, and unlike all of his other affectionate recipients, really meant it when he said those three words?

Yes, but then she said it.

As the two young Turks hit the wall, a frenzy of hormones and pent up frustration allowing the affectionate exploitation, and then in a moan of uncontrollable outburst, she had actually said it.

"Rufus."

Hearing the name, his stomach had turned to a boiling ice. At his finest moment, even if it were in a drunken pub in the allies of Junon with a craving nicotine fix clawing at him, it was still with her, and it was still something he'd longed to do ever since he'd laid eyes on her. And that little brat had come and ruin it again.

Her touch had been acid after that, him pushing her away and somehow it was like he was climbing glass stairs and every time he would finally make it to the top, Rufus Shinra was standing there, snow-clad and covered in ice - ready to kick him back down. What, he would fall back sixty floors and land on the cold, muddy ground of Midgar again? Makes me laugh.

As he lay there in languid pain, his PHS rang in his suit, a loud ring breaking the silence of the room with beeping intervals. Reno, uncaring for the caller barely heard the device, but something made him think. If it were Elena? Hope cluing to his chest, but it was simply discarded by the thought she would never call him, and especially after the incident in the bar.

Closing his eyes, blocking out the angry tears choking his lungs and the pounding headache, he pulled out a cigarette, lit up and watched as the smoke filled the room in front of his eyes. Block it out, all out, maybe I'll smoke away the night...

-

.cry me a river, gold-digger.

Sobbing, Elena angrily slammed the phone down, her last hope unanswered. She turned the amps of the volume louder, despising the sound of her own desolate voice. And even through the sound of synthesizers and MIDI boards flooding the apartment 120 beats per minute, she could still hear herself thinking.

I am a Turk, for Christ's sake.

What was she thinking, walking in the pub intent on getting rip roaring drunk? Stumbling home to some deprived SOLDIER's dingy barracks with a wife waiting at home in Nibelheim wasn't going to make her feel any better, certainly not with the rumours that would have been spread around faster than the newest member at the Honeybee Inn.

And at that moment when she'd realized it wasn't Rufus after all, she'd opened up her mouth and she'd uttered the one person who had been giving her everything but gratitude. And she had ruined it all. Wasn't wasn't wasn't doing her any good.

I'm sorry...
I didn't realize...
Come back...

Useless thoughts, useless pleads. She couldn't stop the tears from flowing down her face, pooling into the boiling hot coffee that she had brewed in hopes to calm down her sobering headache. Every time she thought of the messy red hair, the common lewd jokes in the lobby, his habit of lateness, it all added to her weeping lament. And the more she cried, the angrier she got.

I am a Turk. I should be strong, unemotional like Rude, uncaring like Reno and cruel like Rufus. not like this. Not like this. I am not a Turk.

Despair and disgust at herself pulled her to the floor, and focused her eyes on an item that had fallen with a beat, almost blending in with the fast paced beats of the deafening music. It's long, black barrel lined up with a tile on the floor, making an L-shape with the corners and she stared at the weapon for a long time, her tears stopped but the slag water still blurring her vision. She almost didn't believe it was laying there, until Elena touched her belt where the gun holder was empty.

"Look, this used to be Tseng's heater. Don't ask how I got it, just keep it safe." Reeve, her first day.

She was suddenly brought back to her lesson on guns.

"Now listen, if the gun aint on safe, it's much easy to go off at any given time - so during serious cases, keep the damn thin' pointed to the ground.
"Hit yer trigger and it releases the hammer, and the hammer strikes the powder causin' an explosion. This blasts your metal slug, here, off the open end'a the shell and the explodin' poweder flies out the barrel of the gun, naturally focusing rocketing slug into your target."

"And always, always keep your gun on you and loaded as a Turk."

Somehow Elena was standing and thinking about the simple mechanics of the pistol, staring down the hollow barrel, staring down, down, down, and somehow her fingers wrapped around the slight trigger, the lesson playing over and over in her mind.

I'm sorry Reno. I love you.

And somewhere, in the midst of Sector 6 in an apartment across the Loveless theatre, through trance blasted music you could hear a young woman's scream followed by a very quiet ping if you were so inclined.

--

Ah, that's a shame. I know rather drastic.
So, what do you think?