Chapter 2- Run Away Reno
"I wanna run away/ Never say goodbye I wanna know the truth/ Instead of wondering why I wanna know the answers/ No more lies I wanna shut the door/ And open up my mind"
- Runaway, Linkin Park
Reno had been born into a home of domestic violence. He hadn't picked it that way, it just happened. Or rather, he happened.
Gongaga, twenty four years ago.
A teenage girl with dark auburn locks and brown eyes met a man, twice her age, a man enlisted in Soldier. They met a few times, at various locations during his time off, and became intimately involved. Frequently. When he came home from overseas, approximately three months from their last visit, she told him her happy news. He proposed to marry her and she accepted. Things went well for the first year. They had a daughter, his black hair and her eyes. Danielle. It wasn't until her second pregnancy that she started to notice the small differences. He yelled at her whenever he had the chance, usually over small things or nothing in particular. The second child was born in the hospital, but not the traditional way. It was a boy, his fathers eyes and his mothers hair. Reno. The mother died soon afterwards. She never saw him. She had been beaten unrecognizable with a iron skillet, and everyone was amazed the baby survived, being born three months early.
Survived. If Reno ever had a slogan for his life, that would be it. He survived the beatings, from both his father and his fathers many girlfriends over the early years of his life. He survived the car accident which was supposed to kill him when he was seven. He survived the Reactor Incident that killed so many others in the village. The day his father finally ended it all, taking his sister and a girlfriend with him, Reno was the last one standing. He had been hiding under his bed, under the floorboards he had pried loose years before to hide from the imminent beatings. He was 13. When the police took him into protective custody, he ran away. Labeled a rebel and a delinquent, he was placed into a home for unruly boys. There was no way he could deal with being put in a boys home. Seven times he ran, seven times he was taken back. Being the smallest, he was tortured mercilessly, in many ways, by the other boys. When he tried to get help, everyone told him he was full of shit. Five years he had to deal with it. The day he turned 18 he ran again, and never went back. He went to Costa Del Sol, the city of the sun.
The celebration of a new life. He would leave it all behind him and start living for the future, now that it looked like he was going to have one. He picked up a flier that was laying on the counter of the item store. "Looking for a change? Come to Midgar, the City in the Sky" He pocketed the paper, figuring it might be worth keeping. He was alone and had nowhere to go, no real plan for the time being. He spent the first few weeks like there was no tomorrow, just focusing on his wants. At the end of the month, he called the number on the flier, and arranged an interview for the next day. Dammed be it if he could find the place once he got there, or even a way to get there, but it seemed like the time. One last night, he figured, he'd party with the other teens on the beach, one more normal night, then he'd leave in the morning. And he did. He picked a small blonde girl to drink with, looking barely over 14, at the oldest. Definitely below the legal age, but he didn't care. He asked her to dance, at first, and she did. He got her to drink with him. He got her to come to the caves, just outside town. He got her to do the things he liked to do, and she never said a word against it. He even got her to take him home, where they practiced those things a few more times before the night was over. He left her in the morning, left the whole continent, leaving everything he hated so much behind, determined to survive in the big city.