Light.
Somewhere, someone was coughing. Ragged, wet-throat gasps that caught and tore soft tissues in the esophagus. She tasted blood.
Light.
Pinkish-orange and sunsetty. She'd been at the beach once, when the light was like this. A sun-warmed towel and drinks with little umbrellas.
GOD GET ME OUT OUT GOT TO GET OUT OH GOD PLEASE
Elena blinked, coughed, and spat blood onto the concrete block pinning one arm to her chest. Something sharp was digging just above her kidneys and she didn't even want to think about her left leg, it hurt so bad.
Light.
She was looking up. Light. Skylight.
OH GOD SAVE ME SOMEONE PLEASE CLIMB CLIMB BITCH CLIMB
Her free arm scrabbled helplessly above her head, caught on something, and pulled. Someone was screaming in her ear as a knee bent forward like it was supposed to, not back the way it had been pulled.
It smelled like blood and lighter fluid. Something sparked against her cheek, made her yip, swallow, and the screaming stopped.
That arm just kept pulling and in a minute the other one was loose, dangling down near her waist and when she raised it to help its twin it was red and wet and OH GOD JUST KEEP CLIMING ELENA ELENA CHRISTINA JACOBSEN DONT THINK JUST CLIMB
She pulled up eight inches, maybe a foot, stared into the wet ruin of a half-smashed Shinra employee and puked into what remained of its eye socket. When she ran out of things to throw up, she was crying, sobbing hollowly and feeling puke run down the inside of her blouse, between her breasts and into her pants.
YOURE GOING TO DIE DOWN HERE IN THE DARK AND THE RUIN
GET OUT
GET OUT
"LET ME OUT!" she screamed and it tore at her throat and echoed off metal and wire, but it felt good and she was pulling and pulling, putting her hands on hot things and shocking things and things that squished but she didn't care, she was climbing and climbing and screaming to god to save me, let me out, please god, just please-
Her arms ran out of things to grab and she'd slid back six inches before she realized she'd reached the surface. Her hands brushed cold breeze and broken glass and gripped like a newborn at the breast.
Her head emerged and the sunset blinded her. Her shoulders. Her back, breasts, belly, her legs, and she was free. She was whispering something that might have been a prayer, curling into a ball and crying until someone called her name once, again.
"Rude?" She croaked into the whipping night breeze.
"Elena-"
Then she was on her knees, crying out with the pain in her leg and back and body, scrabbling through the wreckage and trash and body parts, digging and digging.
"Rude, keep talking, say something to me! Rude! I need to hear where you are!"
"Here," he called, and she cleared a layer of debris, something that might have been a computer monitor, and his face stared pale and tight out of the dark hole in the ground.
"Are you all right?" Though that was probably the most ironic question she could have asked.
"I'll live. Reno's down here. He-" Swallow. "He's okay. Unconscious."
He had lost a lens from his sunglasses, and one eye beseeched, light green gray and somehow more intimate than that time she'd accidentally walked in on him in the shower.
"Grab my hand."
She did, trying to ignore two of the fingers with new extra joints that made Rude shout as she yanked up and up and up, fell backwards on her ass, and grabbed his hand again. Pulled. Pulled. One arm came free and Rude pulled himself the rest of the way out of the ground, pulling Reno by that damn red ponytail he insisted he kept just to piss her off. Reno, Rude, her only family, even if they weren't exactly friends, they were family, they were alive, here out of the mouth of the Apocalypse.
"Rude," she kept saying. "Rude. Tell me you're okay."
"I'm okay," he kept saying. "Are you okay? Are you okay?"
"I'm okay, in case anyone was interested," Reno muttered from the ground.
"Hey." Rude looked down with interest. "How're the ribs?"
"Broken. You?"
"Broken fingers. Broke my sunglasses. Otherwise just cuts and scrapes."Elena found her voice. "Ditto."
"Elena's missing half the skin on her back and has something wrong with her leg. Don't listen to her."
One of Reno's pupils was bigger than the other. "Both alive, right?"
They answered in unison. "Right."
"The sky's on fire."
They both craned their necks to see what he meant, and the Highwind flashed crimson sunset of its metal underbelly as it passed over them. Rude waved, it began to circle back and Elena let her body lower down to the ground, resting one hand on Reno's stomach.
"Stay home when it rains," he said firmly.
"I think you have a concussion," Rude said, sitting down on the Turk's other side.
"I think our lives are over."
The sentence was so morbidly lucid Elena had to check and make sure Reno wasn't dropping off to sleep. She bit her lower lip.
He was right- the sky really was on fire. Already there was less of that Midgar green in the horizon, and over the sea there were fat black rain clouds rolling in, like Nature herself sending in a cleanup crew. For now, however- for now the sky was red like the underside of a tongue, stroking inexorably against the teeth of the mountains.
They sat quietly atop the ruins of the Shinra Building, waiting for their enemies to come rescue them. As the Highwind began the slow arc back, Elena's eyelids began to droop. She stretched an arm out to catch Rude's sleeve, sprawled her body over the wreckage and dust. Reno made a disagreeable noise, but didn't move when she laid her head on his leg.
"I think," Rude spoke, making both of them jump. "the sun's setting. But it's going to come up tomorrow."
"Maybe." Reno concurred.
"I think we can find something to do then. Something new. Better."
"Yeah."
Elena was asleep, her head on Reno's thigh.