I know it's been a while, but here's the next chapter!
Disclaimer (because I'm an idiot who forgot it before): I don't own FFVII in any of its forms.
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As fate would have it, Rye got into SOLDIER and left for Wutai. It was strange without him around. Tough too, but it was more Tobar that had the hard time. The kids at his school knew that he was wutaiian and they gave him complete hell about it. Rye was barely gone a month before we pulled him out of school.
Soon after that, Akio and I dropped out too. He opened a grocery store that I worked in when I wasn't home-schooling Tobi. We felt that there were still some things he needed to learn, he was still young after all. Sure, Rye's income was enough to keep us stable, we just needed something to do with our time.
The store seemed to keep us from being completely shunned from Midgar's society. No one believed our brother was fighting for Shinra, but the fact that we were supplying the army with preserves sat well with them.
Though all this time, my twin and I were against the war. We never showed it, but in the privacy of our home, we'd talk about it and wonder how high the death toll was in all. Often, we had conversations about how well we thought Rye was taking it. It being attacking our homeland, our people. It seemed like such a clash of interests. Rye had told us once that one of the Turks was wutaiian. He, along with a few other Shinra employees, came into the bar he had worked in occasionally. Being inside, just like Rye was, he knew more about it, he knew if it was as evil as it seemed. The question was, did he feel the same?
The Wutai war seemed to last forever, I guess all wars are like that. If just a little more information had been released, it might have been different. All I remember hearing was "The SOLDIERs are overwhelming them, it'll be over any day now". That itself lasted for months.
We weren't even told that the war had ended, or that Shinra had won. I'm sure we would have found out within the next few days, but it didn't happen by hear-say. One evening, just before our store closed for the night, someone walked in, the jingling of the bells on the door gave them away. When we came to the front, we knew the war was over.
It's wrong for me to say it, let along think it, but I thought Rye had died. Not on the battle front either, oh no, I thought he had been taken prisoner then killed for fighting for the enemy. No one knew whether or not Wutai had an assassin group like Shinra did. It was thoughts like that that made being a Turk so easy for me.
Yet, he was there. Right there in the front of the shop. No words could ever describe that moment, the relief of seeing your brother alive. We embraced him, of course, and I think Tobi almost tackled him. But, I don't remember crying. The moment seemed beyond tears. I don't want to know what losing him would have done to us, back then anyway.
Our reunion overlooked the man who had walked in with Rye. It wasn't until he was introduced to us that we even knew he was there. His name was Zack, a 1st Class SOLDIER the same age as Rye. His hair was dark and spiky, kind of like Rye's but longer. His eyes were similar to our eldest brother's too, purple-blue with a tint of green. The same green tint Rye now had, the same tint that I would have. All in all, it was amazing and slightly scary how much alike the two looked.
No, I didn't notice all this in that one day. I'd already known his features, I had since the day we chased the SOLDIER convoy.
Rye told us Zack was from Gongaga, and his family still lived there, so he had invited him to eat with us tonight. I, for one, had no problem with it, and neither did anyone else. Tobar wanted to hear stories from the war, he was always like that.