Chapter Five; The once and future partners

A soft knock on the door brought Rude round to the present again. Before he could say anything, Tseng had turned the handle of the grey door and had stepped smoothly inside. Immaculate as always, his eyes seemed to carry some trace emotion of sadness in them, possibly pity. It was hard to tell with Tseng. There was a long silence.

'Mako guns are so temperamental.'

Rude was surprised, this seemingly unconnected comment made no sense to him. Tseng put his head to one side at Rude's puzzled glance.

'His gun failed, I suppose? I cannot think of any other reason for this situation.' Oh, that was it. Still…he didn't know for sure, and he wasn't the type to make assumptions with no evidence. He shook his head.

'Not sure.'

Tseng stood at the foot of the bed. Once again, the simple nonentity of him made even Rude want to fill the silence with something. Anything, no matter how inane. Reno defied disinterest, but Tseng defied calculated comments.

'The doctors say the cuts'll heal. The blood loss is no problem' he pointed to an intravenous feed of crimson liquid hanging by a metal stand, a long tube snaked into a square covered with tape on Reno's forearm, he felt a little odd when he thought about it, 'but they don't know how long it'll take for him to wake up.'

That was the longest sentence he had said in at least a week.

'I don't see how they could. This kind of thing rather relies on the person.'

Tseng tapped his perfect fingernails on the white-painted bedstead. Rude rubbed a hand across the back of his neck idly.

'I hope you managed to retrieve the drive.'

It sounded so very inconsiderate, but Rude understood; Shinra waited for no man, and they expected near-instant results from their special operations units.

'I think so. Reno probably had it in his jacket. It's in the locker outside.'

Tseng nodded and disappeared from the room for a moment. He reappeared briefly, tucking something into his jacket; the computer drive, Rude supposed, and holding a gun by the barrel. He raised it in an explanatory gesture;

'I thought so. Out of power.'

That explained a lot.

Tseng placed the gun on the bedside table and moved towards the door.

'I'm sorry that I can't stay longer, but I have to return this to the executives. Do you want me to put you in for leave until he…?'

He left it hanging. Rude had never asked for anything from Shinra except for his pay before. And he still couldn't bring himself to ask for a holiday just for this. He was a Turk. He had to keep on going.

He shook his head and looked up at his leader, who nodded again and left the room as silently as he had come.

Rude sighed for what felt like the hundredth time this night, and tried not to look at the face, normally so mobile, so cocky and professional. Now so immobile, so calm, so dead-looking.

The slim fingers twitched. Reno shuffled his shoulders further up the bed and turned his head away from Rude, who almost laughed out loud. Damn good. Reno was always getting ahead of him, even when he was spark-out in a hospital bed; he still managed to surprise him. He rested his head in one hand again. He felt a stab of anger again. What kind of idiot runs off into terrorist territory alone? What kind of idiot lets him go?

There was a click, and the door admitted a person to the room for the second time. It was Lorraine. She looked at the pair for a while, apparently lost in thought. When she had finally regained control of her senses fully, she spoke to Rude in a very human tone, one that he had not often heard from any official.

'We've got a spare room in our "overnight section"' she smiled weakly at the internal joke. ' If you want to spend the night, that is.'

Rude nodded curtly and stood up, his knees clicking dryly.

Lorraine smiled understandingly again. Rude felt like such a burden, but he knew that the good doctor knew him well enough not to offer if she didn't want him around. She held the door open for him. She was shorter than him by far, shorter even than Reno. He felt like some kind of Summon as he followed her wordlessly through a set of swinging doors and two halls, through the break room, and into a long corridor lined with doors. She fitted a key into the lock, and turned to face the towering man. He looked nonplussed.

'You're very organised about this.' He put his hands behind his back.

'Well, it happens a lot. We get a lot of Turks down here, well, you know that - ' Rude nodded contemplatively 'and some of them are close, you know best friends, or girlfriend and boyfriend, boyfriend and boyfriend…"

Rude started, and waved his hands hurriedly;

'…It's, er, not like that…' No, very much not like that, especially not since the kid had decided to get very well aquainted with almost everyone on the company's payroll in every spare second he had. Not like that at all, thank you Lorraine.

Lorraine blushed, putting a hand over her mouth to hide a smirk, not believing him for a second. She'd always half-believed the rumours that flew around the city about the Turks' night-time activities anyway.

' Oh, god, I didn't mean…you know. I didn't mean it like that. But…we started keeping a couple of rooms spare, I mean, lots of them want to stay with their …partners, to make sure nothing happens.' Rude nodded. Being a Turk granted you a kind of natural insecurity. After all, paranoia was no oddity when death really was potentially around every corner.

'Okay, good night then. If you need anything, just give me a call; I'm on the graveyard shift.'

After Lorraine had clicked her way through the doors, Rude let himself into the room and pocketed the key. He automatically checked the space, his brain too preoccupied to notice what his body was doing. The window was not overlooked by any other noticeable hiding place, the door was securely locked, and the adjacent bathroom was empty. He collapsed on the bed, still dressed, and stared through his sunglasses at the ceiling. He took them off lethargically and allowed his eyes to close.

He did not expect to dream. He never dreamed any more.

'I had such a weird dream.'

Rude tried to speak, he knew that voice. A couple of notes higher, and from a distance that he was sure had made his legs jerk convulsively in his bed. For, and he laughed silently at the clear realisation, he was dreaming. He never dreamed. This was strange.

Again he tried to reply to the painfully familiar sentence, but his voice seemed to give up halfway and come out as a non-confirmatory grunt. He sounded mildly interested, just like him; not wanting to get too involved.

'Aw, c'mon, you wanna know really.'

He felt his shoulder shrug against a hard, rustling surface. As he breathed in deeply, he smelt the earthy scent of good old Kalm grass. Recollection choked any words he had been about to say out of his throat. He remembered now. That holiday had only been four weeks ago, and he had been glad of it, even if he didn't know his skinny compatriot too well. He remembered. He was lying lazily and probably drunk in a thickly flowered field outside Kalm.

It was the most vivid dream…the most vivid memory… he had ever had. He could feel the sun warming his forehead, and was glad of the sunglasses, for once. He could feel the lush grass tickling his feet; or rather they would have been if he was at all ticklish, and he remembered that neither of them had been wearing any shoes, for some reason.

Reaching up to brush away a butterfly that had landed on his head, he felt his strangely bare elbow brush against unfamiliar skin, and felt the stubble of several days' neglect on his scalp at the same time as he turned his head to investigate. His hand froze on his darkened head as he saw a sight that he should have been prepared to see since he had recognised the familiar situation.

Reno, hair spread like a macabre halo around his face, glowing in the amber light in much the same way that it had when they had first met, was lying elbow-to-elbow with him. He frowned suddenly and pulled himself up by his stringy arms. Rude remembered the t-shirt that hung loosely off his shoulders. He had laughed for the first time in days when Reno had appeared in the car with it on. It was green, and carried a faded advert for 'Choco Bobby's bar + nightclub – "because the nights are cold".'

He looked down at himself; at the rough blue cargo trousers and the black shirt with a fake, and subtly insulting Shinra i.d. transfer of that brat Rufus' head superimposed on his corpulent father's body that he had received from the boy sitting next to him as a birthday present. He realised that Reno had spoken to him.

'What?'

His own voice sounded distant; filtered by time and memory loss. Reno rolled his eyes;

'You're sure acting weird. I told you not to mix that Solian stuff with gin.'

Rude groaned inwardly at the memory. He was no lightweight, but that fiendish drink had been the undoing of several lesser Shinra executives, and would probably explain his slow reaction time.

Reno let himself fall to the ground again, and lifted an arm lethargically, his raised index finger making a figure-of-eight in the clear, warm air.

'Where was I?'

He let his hand hang limp from the wrist for a moment, smiling in a serpentine way as the butterfly flitted from Rude's head to his limp fingers, creating a profile shot that Da Vinci would have mud-wrestled with Michelangelo to paint. Rude raised his voice in mockery of Reno's own sardonic tone;

'You had "such a weird dream".'

He thought he must have been getting control of his dream now, although he might have been mirroring his words of years ago. Reno's laugh snapped him back to the present…past…whatever.

'Yeah. Heh. I dreamed that we were Turks, those fully-fledged hard guys you see sometimes in HQ. We were on the Gelinka. You know, that emergency research charter plane they're making? There was a load of broken equipment there. Oh, it had sunk, did I mention that?'

Rude shook his head. Reno could climb vertical walls and kick his foot higher than his head, but he didn't really have a memory.

'Anyway, it had sunk. We were talking about something, anyway, I was. You hardly said a thing. Just like now, huh?'

Rude laughed shortly. He couldn't remember where this was leading, but he wanted it to last a while longer.

'Well, there was something about a materia being in there, but we couldn't open the door, and…these guys showed up. Freakiest looking weirdoes I've ever seen.'

He trailed off. Rude sat up, now more than mildly interested. They had left the field after this. Perhaps he could save the moment if he acted now? After all, it was only a dream; he should be able to alter it subconsciously, shouldn't he?

'And?'

Reno, shrugged.

'And nothing. I woke up.'

Rude sighed. Typical of Reno, telling a pointless story. A cloud passed over the azure sky. Reno sat up, stretching his arms out in front of him, dangling a pair of trainers from their laces. He finally turned a half-lidded eye to Rude.

'Think we'll be good Turks?'

He shrugged. He knew it was going to end; so, why not go out on a high note?

'Me, sure. But as for you…'

Reno hit him with a shoe.

Rude's head jerked off the crumpled sheets, almost tearing his ear off as an earring caught on the thin sheets. He swung an arm over and checked his black watch. The illuminated dials told him it was six-thirty. In the morning.

He raised his arms and allowed himself to be pulled up by natural muscle reactions. He sat on the edge of the warm patch in the otherwise frigid bed as the smell of grass faded, and the sunlight's warmth melted into a dull, throbbing headache. He clicked his tongue in annoyance. Reno had all of the migraine pills in his jacket. Well, he supposed he could drop round. He chided himself for the rationalisation of a visit that would be understood by any bystander.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and replacing his shades on his bony nose, he fumbled impatiently for the keys in his pocket. He nearly dropped the clinking trinkets on the industrially made carpet, hooking them at the last minute with his little finger. Finally opening the gate to his deep-frozen prison, he clumped his way sleepily through the deserted break room, and passed a few orderlies wordlessly, noting with some detachment that three crash victims were even now being rushed to the emergency ward.

He pulled the locker door open by one of the ventilation slots and fumbled through the sad little heap of clothes inside. Hesitating now that his fingers could feel cold, stiff stains on the lined cloth, he steeled himself (which took little effort) and pulled a little grey box of pills from the inside pocket. He broke the tinfoil seal on one of the yellow capsules with a bitten fingernail and swallowed the thing dry.

Reno got migraines sometimes. He swore that they had become sentient, and were out to get him. Stakeouts were a favourite to bring black spots dancing before his eyes, and after a few messy accidents; as the headaches made him even more wildly moody, he had taken to carrying heavy-duty pills with him. It was his one noticeable weakness, aside from his vicious temper and wild rebellious streak.

There was a scraping noise from inside the room. Rude jumped, baseless hope mingling with a dual terror as he came to two conclusions at the same time; either Reno had make a frankly miraculous recovery, or those AVALANCE deviants had come to finish the job.