A/N: It's been a... very long time since I last visited Lots of things have changed, and I feel almost dubious posting my first fic in about a year. Or so. I think. In any case, yes. Ongoing NaNo which I hope to finish in three days. I die.
In any case, an alternate history for a Rufus who needs to transit between the game and AC proper.
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He cannot bear to love his mother.
He looks at her and thinks her weak, so weak. Her skin has been lily white for as long as he can remember. Even as a child, barely old enough to think or walk or do much else beyond mewl in her arms, he remembers her as pale and almost unnaturally white. Sitting there in her arms, he remembers her as flawless and unbroken, a goddess seated there, a madonna with the child. In those memories, his mother is perfect. In those memories, a select nucleus composed of comfort, warmth and ethereal whiteness wind one over another in soft, effusive layers. They form the entirety of his universe, untouchable and sacrosanct. In that nucleus, his father has no part. It is only his mother he sees, a woman sculpted of fine, fragile material, holding him in arms which never hurt him.
That, of course, was years ago. Rufus is old, even if he is only a child. He looks back on his memories and thinks them a different part of him, a part of him which deserves to be annexed if only to be kept separate from the new world he has composed around him. His mothers arms have long slipped away from their protective hold about his body, and he can no longer be defended in that same way. Because he hits and that which is lily white cannot stay lily white when the bruises start blooming. He hits, and he hits and he hits--
Rufus sat up in his bed, panting quietly. His pulse raced, the blood in his veins thumping a heavy rhythm across his senses. His chest heaved with each forceful intake of his breath as he tried to get himself under control. Just a dream, he thought to himself repeatedly, just a dream, nothing more. He cursed the clutch of his subconscious and licked his lips, uncurling his fisted hands from the sheets and bringing one up to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead. One last exhaled breath and he found himself able to think clearly again. Rufus slumped backwards, his back hitting the bed with a soft thud. He winced, and stretched his right hand over his chest so that he could bring it back to massage his aching shoulderblade. He could not see the ugly stripe there, but he could certainly feel it. Rufus slept shirtless for a reason.
He spent a long moment simply lying back on his bed, breathing quietly and keeping his mind blissfully blank. The floor to ceiling windows of his room had their curtains drawn back, and the undying glow of the city lights from beyond the Shinra building filtered inwards, throwing a soft gloom about the place. Rufus disliked pulling the curtains. He felt trapped otherwise, unable to see what existed beyond his cell in a building high in the sky.
In the dimness of his room, Rufus found his thoughts drawn to his mother. He thought of her skin, her smooth, soft skin and how, of late, it had struggled to remain as white as it had once been. Concealer could only do so much, and no matter how much there was one could never match up to the touch and texture of virgin skin unmarred by -- Rufus shuddered to think of it. He cannot bear to love his mother, no. As he stared up at the high ceiling, Rufus reflected that he did not deserve to love her, did not fulfil the right requirements. He was not son enough for his mother.
If he were, he knew, if he were he would have been able to protect her. They were separated only by that one door connecting their rooms, Rufus knew, but that door stood in the way of everything. He could open it at any time, but he did not dare to. His parents' domain was theirs alone, and if he entered god knew what his father would do to him. It only made things worse, of course. On some nights - thankfully not tonight - he had sat up in bed, his knees drawn up to his chest as he listened in silent despair to the sounds which filtered through the walls. The door was mean to be soundproofed, but the walls were of relative thinness. Things would thump against them, solid and heavy. His mother, most of the time, his mother flung against the walls in one of his father's drunken, work-induced ravings. Thump thump thump like the blood in his ears. And the next day that forsaken door would open and in his mother would sweep, serene as ever and dressed in one of those flimsy, paper-thin sundresses of hers. Sometimes with a thick scarf about his shoulders, "because I'm cold, darling, the weather's been getting worse", but Rufus knew better. His mother could wrap those swaths of cloth around her body like no other, and they disguised everything from the world. But not from Rufus' eyes.
Rufus sighed, and rubbed his eyes. A passing glance at the blinking digital clock on his bedside table told him that it was four twenty-eight in the morning. Tomorrow was going to be another long day of ridiculous schooling, but at the very least it meant that he could avoid meeting either one of his parents. His father for obvious reasons, and his mother because Rufus could not stand to see her anymore. Especially in recent days; every time he thought that was it, that was as bad as it was going to get, he was proved wrong. Sundresses and cloth could not conceal everything. There reached a point where too much cloth became impractical, became suspicious. But if anyone asked questions his mother made no mention of it, and her serenity - her sad, sad serenity - remained unbroken no matter how farcical their acting got.
Rufus' own methods, he thought to himself, were more discreet and far more prudent. A turtleneck worn in their climate raised no eyebrows, and since it looked smart his father had no complaints. Others thought it look sophisticated, even on a boy his age. Rufus thought that it served its purpose, and let others think what they would of it.
Sighing as he cast the clock a second look (four fifty-two), Rufus decided that sleep was the last thing on his mind and sat up again.
The sheets pooled on his lap as Rufus pushed himself upwards. There was no point of sheets with a thread count of 300 when one barely slept well in them. Poverty would have almost been a blessing. Swinging his legs off the side of the bed, Rufus stretched gingerly, feeling fully the as yet unhealed bruises. He did not complain. Standing, he padded across the carpeted floor towards the attached bathroom, leaving the lights off as he entered. He was familiar enough with his room in darkness to not need the illumination. He spent more time in it than he cared for, after all, and if his father locked him in there was really nothing he could do but trace the walls and go quietly mad.
He turned on the tap and listening to the quiet splash of the water against the basin. Like the rest of his room, the bathroom was all wood and metal and glass and mirrors which Rufus never really used. As cold and clinical and detached and dead as it seemed, Rufus found comfort in the ironinc absence of warmth in the ambience of his room, in Shinra, in the concrete and marble world he had to live in. He extended pale fingers into the drip and washed his face, the cold water bringing him to full wakefulness. A glance up into the shadowed mirror had Rufus spending a moment looking into his own eyes. A little alive, and a little blue. The moment passed, and Rufus knew that being maudlin was pointless. He brushed his teeth, thinking of nothing in particular as he went through the habitual motions of waking up, of facing the day. Wiping his face down with a facecloth, Rufus exited back into the main room and headed for his wardrobe. He pulled out his usual black turtleneck.
Black had never been Rufus' colour. He stood as a very pale creature by nature, always seeming delicate. The turtleneck - a shade of a shadow, but really very superficial - which he slipped over his skin was more of a reminder and a call to duty and a necessity than something Rufus did out of personal enjoyment. The opaqueness which the long sleeved piece of clothing offered hid the marks which he was not allowed to show. White, on the other hand. White had always been his, his and his mother's. There was something pristine about it, something so unlike yet similiar to his character that Rufus had always found it symbolic when worn. If he had to tell the truth, and if he had to consider black, it would have been Tseng's colour.
Rufus finished with the last of his buttons. Pulling slightly at the hem of the turtleneck, he walked over to his desk and picked up the satchel of books waiting there. It was particularly light; he had very little business in school that day. A parting glance at the clock read five in the morning. Tseng would be awake, levels down in his office somewhere in the gridlocked, windowless basement. Rufus glanced critically out of his own window and into the expanse of lightening sky and decided to make a move.
He did not bother to look at his desk calendar, sitting there unmarked on the anonymous date which had once been his birthday.