Author's Note: …So I wasn't meant to poke this again, but in the bowels of my tumblr, I found another Libra companion piece I wrote back in April 2014. I thought anyone who liked the story might like to see this old piece too. Set somewhere in the two years in between the second last chapter and the epilogue. Enjoy!
Reno may not have been halfway done or somewhere in between anymore, but there were so many days, too many days where he felt like he was.
There were too many days where he would be desperate to revert to the man he was. To go back to the days when he would seek out someone to kill just to get that stupid, incessant noise in his head to stop, stop, stop. Where he wanted to use torture on those who tried to fight against Shinra just to know why.
It would be so easy. Just to slip backwards. Just to take one, two, three steps away from the person he was trying to be.
It was only when Marlene was away that he would crack and feel the need to be that Turk from long ago. When it was just him and Cissnei, trying to come to grips with the kind of people they were, the people they were trying to become; when they were trying to understand each other. As she tried to remember. As he tried to forget. As they were allowed neither.
Reno decided that no, someone cannot move on when they have seen and done so many terrible things.
Reno could not forget the way children would scream. He could not forget the way he would laugh through it all, because it really was, and even now still is, so very funny to him. He could not forget the thrill that would go through his body as he walked into missions, caring so little about his life. He could not forget the guilt that seared his being when he failed who had been a good man, perhaps the best he had ever known. He hoped Cissnei would never remember failing Zack like he did.
Of course, in time, she did, and it nearly ruined her.
He was a bad person. He saw it in the way the citizens would look him, even as he tried to make amends for who he had been, for the company that had failed them all. He saw it in the way Cid fought to look at him in the face, even though they had both changed and gone through so much, even though Reno had been generous to him. He saw it in the way he still longed, and would always long for Tifa; the way she would never visit him or look at him because she still longed, and would always long for Cloud. The shadow of Zack.
He felt it in the way he tried to be better. For her. For Marlene. And he felt it in his bones as he failed each and every time the moment she walked away to be with people who were more capable to look after her than he was. He felt it in his iron heart, bruised, beaten and broken simply because there was too much to fix.
He was a villain. He always would be. He could try to be good but he would always have the ringing, the laughing and the memories in his mind to remind him what was burned into his skin. He could fight to do right by so many people, but his hands would always shake, they would never truly be stable.
And as he checked the calendar, waiting for the day for Marlene to return, waiting for Cissnei to wake up and peel herself off of him, waiting for the tremors and the ringing and his insanity to stop… He remembered. Villains don't get happy endings.
So he closed his eyes and decided that he would try again.