"Shit fire damn it fuck OW Elena!"
Elena snorted, tugged the tape a little tighter around Reno's ribcage, making him squeak in a most undignified way.
"God damn it, woman, friggin' Hojo's apprentice!"
Reaching over, Rude placed a heavy, splinted hand over Reno's face.
"Thank you," he heard Elena say. The door squeaked open and the hand dropped off his face.
Enter Strife. When the Cure spells had kicked in and fixed up most of that concussion, Reno had spent a good ten minutes fuming about being rescued by Cloud freakin' Strife and company. He'd almost rather be stuck in the rubble that had once been the Shinra building than be up here in Cid Highwind's amazing flying machine, enjoying the luxury of its only conference room unbound and free of charge. Almost.
At least Strife wasn't being smug about it. Actually, he kind of looked like shit. Tired, sore, some of the shine rubbed off his face. Like someone had stepped on him.
"You all need anything?" Strife's voice was the low creak that came from screaming for days at a time.
The three Turks looked at each other. Reno took the opportunity to shrug back into his shirt, wincing as newly aligned ribs flexed against the tape. At the moment, all he really wanted was a tequila sunrise, but somehow he doubted that would go over well. And Elena said he had no self-control.
"Whenever Red XIII is done with the rest of you, my leg needs some attention," Elena finally said. Said leg was propped up on the glossy conference table, theoretically to reduce swelling but actually because she couldn't bend it to fit under her chair. It was swollen enough that she couldn't get her pants off- they'd slit one leg up to mid-thigh instead of just rolling the cuff up over her knee, so Reno was willing to bet she was in a fair amount of pain.
"He's almost done with Barret. Vincent's taking over, so Red'll be here in a minute."
Reno opened his mouth to ask how Vincent could help dig shrapnel out of someone's bicep, then remembered the claw and shut it again. Winced. Nothing like battlefield medicine.
Strife didn't seem to have anything else to say, but he stood still, staring at a blank space on the conference room wall. Another three-way glance traveled the Turk circuit. Carefully, very slowly, Rude raised a hand and waved it in front of the ex-SOLDIER's face.
He blinked, started just a bit, and looked down at the three Turks seated at the table. "Sorry. I- I'm a little tired."
"I bet," Reno offered, not quite managing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Savior or no, Coud Strife and AVALANCHE had single-handedly taken everything Reno had worked for his entire adult life and thrown it away.
Cloud glared at him for a long moment, then dropped his gaze.
"How did AVALANCHE end up?" Elena asked, so gently Reno wasn't sure she had spoken at all.
Strife met her eyes for a moment and his were huge, darker than usual. "Aeris is dead."
Elena exhaled slowly. "I'm sorry."
What the hell was this? Reno chewed his lower lip furiously. Sure, AVALANCHE must have sacrificed, toiled, suffered, et cetera et cetera, but what about the Turks? They'd lost Tseng, Rufus, their whole way of life because a group of interfering country hicks had decided to practice their bomb-making techniques. And here was Elena, buddying up to Strife like she wanted to join the revolution! Did she even care? Had Tseng conveniently slipped her mind?
Well, Reno had seen this kind of thing before. She could be as sweet and charming as she wanted, but when push came to shove, she was still a Turk. AVALANCHE had only picked them up out of pity, and pity only went so far. Soon said hicks would be just as likely to boot all three of them off the observation deck as invite them to sit down for tea.
Strife nodded grimly. "Thank you. Red'll be here in a minute."
He was halfway out the door when Rude called: "Thanks for the pickup."
Strife paused, nodded, and left. The door slid shut behind him.
Reno spun in his chair to face the other Turks. "What the fuck was that?"
"What?" Elena's eyebrows buried themselves in her hair.
"You two! You practically invited him to the Shinra memorial Yule party!"
Rude spun his one-lensed sunglasses on the shiny table. "Reno, what the hell are you talking about?"
"You two all snuggling up to AVALANCHE like they didn't blow up the Shinra building!"
"They didn't," Elena pointed out. "Meteor did."
"Okay, bad example. But am I the only one who sees the connection between Cloud Strife and the end of Shinra?"
"No. But Shinra built the gun, loaded it, and handed it to Sephiroth. Cloud Strife just helped him aim it," Rude said in his usual matter-of-fact burr. "Cloud just helped him aim it."
"Isn't that enough?"
"As you sow..." Elena murmured.
"Please, Linney, don't go all metaphysical on me, you know I don't believe in that crap."
"I'm just saying, Shinra ruined Clouds life. Maybe even the General's. Sephiroth's. Don't call me Linney."
"So it's okay for them to ruin our lives?"
"Listen to yourself," Rude cut in. "We're in the business of revenge, Reno. We never cared where, why, or how we did our job. Why should they?"
Reno shut up. Rude had a point. He wanted to argue, though. Say it was wrong of AVALANCHE to rip his job, his world out from under him like he was nothing compared to their great cause. It was wrong, he believed that. And AVALANCHE didn't care, he believed that, too. But Elena and Rude? They were acting like they were fine with an upended life and no job, no more Turks, and he said as much.
"No," Elena said. "I don't know what Rude's thinking, but I'm not happy to be out of a job. There's nothing we can do about it, though. Rufus is dead, Tseng is- Tseng is dead. All we can do now is go on, whether we like it or not."
Rude nodded emphatically, almost in perfect rhythm with the soft scratching on the door. Being most intact, Rude got up and hitched his ass over to open it. The tawny red lionlike creature, Red XIII, padded silently into the room.
"I heard someone needed a doctor," it growled. He. He growled. Reno was still working on seeing him as a thinking being, instead of the scarred, snarling experimental specimen Reno had once or twice glimpsed changing elevators on the laboratory floor. It hadn't changed- well, maybe a little more muscular, but it was still one-eyed, wild-maned, and had those memorably sharp teeth. He. His sharp teeth. Shit.
"That's me." Elena waved from her chair. "Elena Jacobsen. I'd stand, but-"
"That's fine. I am Red XIII. Let's have a look at that leg, shall we?"
Wincing, Elena slid her foot off the table and onto the ground. "It bent backwards, or nearly, when the Shinra building came down."
Humming thoughtfully to himself, the lion sat before the knee, sniffed it, and closed his eyes. The material hanging in the headpiece he wore began to glow tropical green.
"You've certainly strained something here," he murmured, eyes still closed. "I can't tell if anything's torn, but it won't be quick to heal either way."
Elena's face was carefully neutral, but a certain tightness around the nostrils, a thinning of the lips gave her away. This would mean at least, at least a temporary retirement and re-application to the Turks. A Turk's body was their income. To lose use of any of it was to lose your position.
Then again, Reno remembered belatedly, Shinra wasn't really in a position to be hiring or firing anyone.
"I want to brace it for a few days so the swelling can come and go, and then we can look at treatment options," Red XIII continued.
That got Reno's full attention. "Wait- A few days?" he exclaimed. "Who said anything about being here a few days?"
Three disparaging looks didn't do much to improve his mood.
"What the fuck is this?" Suddenly he was on his feet, shouting. "Am I the only one who remembers where we are? These people are supposed to be our enemies! We've been fighting them for months and now we're all supposed to sit down and pass the potions? This is bullshit!"
With the last sentence, a jolt of pain lanced through his temples, bright white and crackling. His stomach lurched, he dropped back into his chair, held his head, and concentrated hard on not puking all over the shiny conference room table. When his eyes finally condescended to open, he had an hallucinatory close-up of something black and shiny. It receded and became Red XIII's nose.
"What's the matter?" he husked.
"Idiot's got a concussion," Rude's voice echoed in his head. "Overdid it."
Reno tried to speak through the pain, but all that came out was a groan.
A flash of blue, a murmured spell, and the pain washed away in a cool wave. It waited behind his brain, held in place by the Cure spell. "Shit," he whispered.
"Reno." Red XIII stared intently at him. "I understand how you feel, but you have to try not to strain yourself. The concussion isn't bad, but it you aggravate it, you could do yourself permanent harm. Understand?"
"Yeah," he smiled crookedly. "I bet you're as happy to have us here as I am, right?"
Red made a husky sneeze noise Reno took as a laugh. "I suppose so. Now." He turned back to the group. "Rude, don't use those fingers; Elena, keep the weight off that leg. Keep the knee iced, and elevated, and take 100 milligrams of anti-inflammatory pills every six hours. Stay here and I'll try and to find someone to fit you for a crutch. Reno, I'll find you some ibuprofen for those ribs. Any questions?"
Three heads shook.
"All right, then. Feel free to explore the airship, but stay out of the cockpit."
"Thank you," Elena murmured.
"Certainly."
Red XIII shuffled out of the room, followed closely by Rude. "Going to find the can," he muttered as the door whooshed shut behind him.
Elena watched it close, her back to Reno. There was a long silence.
Well, Reno didn't do silence so well. For that matter, neither did Elena, or at least not usually. "Something wrong?" he asked.
"Not really. Are you upset with me?"
"About being stuck here? That's not your fault."
"Okay." Her chin dropped to her chest.
Okay, now he really felt like a shmuck. "I wasn't yelling at you. Linney, really. Elena. Sorry."
"No, really, I'm just tired." She coughed halfheartedly, a sound that brought back memories of underground darkness and dust.
Reno sighed, bringing a pang from ribs too recently Cured. "Fuck, I wish those meds would get here."
"Me, too."
Someone rapped perfunctorily on the door, then swaggered in like he owned the room. Which he did. Cid Highwind, a length of pipe and rubber tubing in one hand, a cigarette in the other, was wearing the specific grimace of someone who hated his passengers, but knew the captain's job was to make everyone feel comfortable, if not safe.
"Brought you pills," he growled at Reno.
"Alle-freakin'-luia."
The pilot gestured the rubber tubing and pipe in Elena's general direction. "Here to fit you for a crutch."
"Okay."
Highwind leaned the rubber and pipe against the table, fished in a pocket of his coveralls and pulled out a pill bottle. Reno caught it awkwardly, stood, and lurched toward the door. At the moment, he never wanted to see a member of AVALANCHE again.
"Where're you off to?" Highwind's voice was the careful blend of caution -Reno was a self-made thief- and courtesy- someone had probably told him to play nice.
"Gonna find some water." At some point, Reno probably would have been amused by the pilot's discomfort, but he could feel his pulse in his temples and echoing down his ribs. All he wanted, besides to get off this ship, was to lie down and die for a little while.
"Head's on your left," Highwind was cut off by the automatic door, much to Reno's relief.
Rude had already cleared out of the bathroom. It was antiseptic white and steel, but it smelled like chocobo greens and musk. There was a stall right next door, but Reno didn't hear any of the shuffling and nervous chatter he usually associated with chocobos. Anarchists, hero mercenaries, and chocobo farmers too? He couldn't take any more of this contradiction crap.
Tossing back the pills and a mouthful of water, Reno teetered back out to the huge main room. Someone had set out a pile of self-inflating bedrolls under the staircase. Reno picked one up and pulled the tab.
He fell on the mattress while it was still inflating, feeling one shoulder hit the ground and elicit an extra special burst of complaint from his ribs. Muttering an expletive, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the viewports. The sky was smoky blue-black, studded with stars. Reno checked his watch; ten-thirty. He'd never gone to bed before midnight that he could remember.
The painkillers were kicking in with a warm, furry glow.
He'd make tonight an exception.
Something by his ear, warm and throbbing like a heartbeat. His first thought was of his mother, his second that his mother had never smelled like plastic and steel.
Reno came awake all at once, sweaty and overwarm in his shirt, pants, and blankets. The rubber pillow of the bedroll was sticky with sweat when he moved, so he sat up, shoving to one side and rolling painfully onto the blessedly cold steel of the deck. The heartbeat chugging he'd heard were the engines of the Highwind as it slid through the night.
It was dark as the devil's heart in here.
The obsidian and mother of pearl hands of his watch glowed in the dark. One forty-five. Reno sighed. It wasn't just him- it was too damn hot in here.
Sitting up, he realized why. All of AVALANCHE was sound asleep on the floor. Rude and Elena were nowhere to be seen- must still be in the conference room, he thought. The odds of AVALANCHE letting them in the cockpit, even to sleep, were about as good Hojo developing a religious vocation.
Why hadn't they woken him to move in with Rude and Elena? If he was them, no way he'd trust himself to sleep next to himself. Wait... That made no sense. Bottom line, they were idiots to all fall asleep near a Turk. Not that he was going to fuck with them at all, but still, it was the principal of the thing!
Reno scratched his head, cracked his neck contemplatively. Speaking of fucking with things...
He'd always wondered what the cockpit of an airship looked like.
He stood silently, picking his way out from under the staircase, and felt for the handrail in the near-pitch darkness. Maybe AVALANCHE just hadn't seen him under the stairs to make him move, he thought belatedly.
Someone had left the door to the cockpit unlocked. Reno grinned. Some people're just asking for it.
The cockpit was built in two layers, a high viewing deck and a small bay to the rear that looked like it contained an on-ship diagnostic system. Reno whistled appreciatively. Scrappy as it looked, the ship could probably run herself for a week or two.
"What are you doing here?"
"Holy-" Reno's feet reconnected with the deck; he must have jumped, but he couldn't remember. Groping desperately for a nightstick he wasn't wearing, he spun to face the huge viewports. "Who the hell is that?"
A dark shape unfolded from the pilot's seat, sliding out from under a blanket or a cloak. Tall, long haired, probably male.
"Valentine," Reno croaked. Cleared his throat and tried again. "Don't you ever sleep?"
Valentine stepped forward, throwing his cloak over one shoulder. "I'm on watch. Cid likes having someone up here in case the autopilot malfunctions."
"Or in case nosy Turks come poking around."
Valentine raised one black eyebrow sardonically.
"Thought so." Just to spite him, Reno strode around the taller man and plopped himself down in the pilot's seat. "Mmm, leather."
To his surprise, Vincent just turned and sat in the co-pilot's chair, carefully arranging his left hand so the needle-tipped claws didn't puncture the fabric, and proceeded to stare out the viewports like no one else was there. Well, if he didn't want to talk, Reno was fine with that. He could sit here, silently, not doing anything, just... watching. Watching the stars. Quietly. Silently, even. He could be as silent as the freakin' grave. That was fine with him.
"So," Reno cracked his knuckles elaborately. "Sleepy yet?"
For a moment he thought Valentine would ignore him, but then: "Aren't you?"
"No, I mean- you should be. War's over, hail the conquering hero, et cetera. Shouldn't you be sleeping the sleep of the winner?"
A minimal shrug.
"I mean, no rest for the wicked, right?"
Again.
"So if the wicked can't rest, the good should be able to, right? I mean, if you ignore the whole subjective part of good and evil, you guys blew up Meteor, killed Sephiroth, saved the damsel, you know, the whole nine-"
"Reno." Vincent turned to look him full in the face. "Did you take too many potions?"
Reno stared back. "I'm not high, and if I was, it would only be because I took everything the furball gave me."
"Then why are you talking so much?"
"I always talk this much!"
He couldn't tell in the low light, but he thought Valentine rolled his eyes.
"Fuck you, okay, vampire?"
"Why are you here, Reno?"
"Why am I here? You could answer that, shithead! Because of you! If I hadn't been unconscious, I wouldn't have let you lot drag me onto this hunk of flying rust, because you would've done me a bigger favor leaving me there in the crater of the Shinra building to die!"
His outcry echoed off the glass, metal, the control panels glittering like Midgar city lights, hung in the air, then dropped and died.
There was a long moment of silence.
In Reno's experience, Valentine had virtually no facial expression. What little he was wearing now had changed oh-so-slightly. After a moment, his lips flattened.
"I was a Turk," he said. Reno's jaw dropped. "Thirty years ago." Reno's jaw dislocated in an attempt to drop lower. "You could say I'm- older than I look. My last assignment was to Nibelheim. It ended up being my last assignment because I was... injured, but if I hadn't been, I would have been retired anyway upon returning to Midgar. I'd- I was not in favor with my CO. When I went to Nibelheim, my contract was under my own name."
Reno winced. Security guards were rented out from Shinra under their own names instead of the company's. Telling a Turk to sign himself out was the final nail in the career coffin, a huge dishonor and the last step before a Turk was given, as the PR department had liked to say, 'involuntary retirement.'
"I went to Nibelheim on my last assignment. Probably feeling like you now. I felt hopeless. Afraid. But more than anything-"
"Angry." Reno ground his teeth. So friggin' angry-
"Yes. But what I learned from that was, even if I wasn't a Turk anymore, I still had all the qualifications. Do you understand? Shinra may be gone, but you don't need Shinra to still be the Turks. The nature of the job may change, but-"
"How can you say that?" Reno interrupted. "At least you the knew the Turks still existed. Tseng is dead, the President is dead, the job is-"
Valentine got a full facial expression, and it stopped Reno cold.
"What are you talking about?" Vincent asked. "Tseng is alive."