Chapter #24: Identity Crisis

By Miyamashi

Miya's Note: Yay! I got this one up pretty quickly, compared to the last few. Aren't you all proud of me. I will warn you, though. This is quite the twisted one. I also introduce the other mystery character here. This one's dialogue-intensive, I'll warn you.

I really hope you all like it.

It was the scariest feeling in the world, to be trapped in a hospital bed with no control over myself or the things that were happening around me, especially these things.

So, yeah, I was happy He was back. But that didn't change the fact that my little relationship with Nora was going to cause problems.

Rufus was pissed. I kind of don't blame him, though. After all, he spent eight years waiting for his father to die so that he could finally come back.

You know, back to me.

But I couldn't just tell Nora, "I'm sorry. It's over, Hon. I'm going back to my ex now. Oh, by the way, my ex…yeah, he's a guy, and the President."

That would not have made for a pleasant situation.

Plus, Nora; she was in love with me. Fully and completely. I would watch guys hit on her at parties, and she wouldn't spare an extra second to them. "Sorry, I have a boyfriend," is all she would say. And then, if they didn't listen, she'd give them a look that would wither the strongest man from his ego to his pants and walk away. Then, she'd come to me and tell me how much she loved me and how those guys were nothing compared to me. And I would smile at her, and I would say "I love you, too."

But, I lied to myself about that fact. I'd been with her for two years. It had to be love, right? Yeah, she was attractive, and a nice girl. She was smart, she was funny, she could take care of herself. We didn't fight like Rufus and I did. She was loyal to a T. She was a strong businesswoman. She was good in bed. She was everything a man could ever want in a girl. And, when Rude would ask me if I loved her, I would always say "Yes", without a pause.

I was in denial. I was lying to her, to my friends, and to myself.

I never did love Leanora Richmond.

Even then, though I wouldn't have admitted it, that spot in my heart was reserved. And, even then, I knew that whatever he did to her, I would allow it.

I was powerless against him. Powerless in my little hospital bed.

Leanora Richmond's heels tapped over the floor of the Shinra Research and Development library.

"Is there something I can help you with?" asked the librarian, a man with blonde hair and bright brown eyes that, facially, reminded Nora startlingly of herself when she glanced over at him.

"No, I'm quite alright. I'm just looking for a book on the prototype weapons that have been developed in the past couple of years."

"Now why would a nice, young lady like yourself be interested in something like that?" asked the librarian, trying to get around Nora to look at her face.

"I'm just studying up on my boyfriend's weapon. It's an interesting little thing, really, and I kind of wanted to see if I could figure out a bit about how it works. He just kind of uses it, but never really asked about what all goes into it."

"So, you like that kind of thing?"

"I find it fascinating, yes." Nora stopped and looked square at the man. "And what would your name be?"

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. It was really rude of me not to introduce myself." The man adjusted his black-framed glasses on his nose and held out his hand for Nora to shake. "I'm Lucas Feltz, but everyone around here just calls me Feltz, because that's what I went by when I was in SOLDIER."

"Leanora Richmond. Nora for short."

"Nice to meet you, Nora."

"It's mutual, Mr. Feltz."

The librarian laughed. "Feltz is fine. I'm not that important. No need to get all formal with me."

Nora simply smiled. "Now, would you be so kind as to help me find that book? You do work here, right?"

Feltz laughed nervously. "Oh, wow, I'm so sorry."

"No need to apologize."

"No, really. I was just kind of taken aback. You just don't find beautiful women in here very often."

Nora raised an eyebrow. "Do I detect a bit of flirting in your voice?"

Feltz began to turn red, and turned to the shelves. "Uhm…books, books, oh how I love books…" he went on in a bit of a sing-song voice, in an attempt to hide the embarrassment there. "Ah, here you go, Ms. Richmond. I found what you were looking for."

Nora took the book, flipping through it. Feltz scuffed the toe of one boot on the ground. "Is it what you need?"

"Yes, exactly. Here it is, the electro-mag rod." The woman smiled. "Thank you."

The ends of the librarian's mouth twitched upward nervously, and he laughed slightly.

"Don't worry. This won't be the last time you see me here. But don't expect anything too drastic to go on between us. Remember that I do have a boyfriend."

The man's smile dropped.

"I'm sorry, but I had to be frank with you. I am a woman of honor."

Feltz nodded, holding his hand out. "Well, I will see you around, I guess, Ms. Richmond?"

"Nora."

"I'll see you around, Nora."

"Friends?"

The man smiled. "Yeah, friends."

The sound of Nora's heels faded away, leaving Feltz with a half-smile on his face.

Rufus sat at his new desk, looking over the various computer monitors there. He smiled. He had known his father was paranoid and a control freak, but he hadn't really paid attention to what the use of half of those monitors was.

They were wired into the security cameras, and Rufus just happened to have looked at the perfect one. There she was, Leanora Richmond, speaking with the Research and Development librarian. He watched the two interact, fascinated.

As Nora left the library, Rufus, too, stood from his desk and left his office.

Lucas Feltz saluted out of reflex when the new President walked into his library.

"What is your name, Sir?" asked Rufus to the man.

"Feltz, Mr. President, Sir. Lucas Feltz."

"Mr. Feltz, I have a very important assignment for you."

"What is it, Sir? Anything, Sir."

"I need for you to keep contact with the woman who just left here, and for you to report the entirety of all conversations that you have with her to me. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Drop the formalities, please. I don't need another yes-man. Just do the job, starting with a report of the meeting that just transpired. On paper, please, when you have some time off."

Feltz nodded.

"Get back to work." And Rufus patted the man on the back and walked out. Feltz watched him, a little afraid, and much more confused.

Why would Nora be under surveillance by the President?

"I got a new friend today, I think."

"That's nice."

"He's a librarian."

"That's nice, hon."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"I don't believe you."

Reno kind of shrugged as best he could in his condition.

"Reno, there's something wrong. I can hear it in your voice."

"Yeah, there is."

"I don't understand."

"You don't need to."

"Fine." And Nora walked out, the sound of her heels sharper than usual, in what Reno could tell was obvious anger.

It was weeks later that Reno Kiribani was released from the infirmary, and the man was relieved to find that nothing much had changed. Nora was unharmed. Rufus was still settling into his new job, and would be having his official welcoming ceremony soon in his second home of Junon.

Things seemed to be going surprisingly well, and this only worried Reno more.

He walked slowly through Rufus' new office doors, still sore from his old injuries. The new President looked far more regal than the old behind the bulletproof glass of the desk. The reflection of the sun that only reached the very top floors of the Shinra building over the smog reflected off the white of Rufus' coat like off of snow and gave him a kind of a glow.

The blonde looked up and smiled.

"I was wondering how much longer it was going to be for you to heal."

"I'm surprised. You haven't done anything yet."

"What do you mean?"

"You know exactly what I mean. I'm talking about Nora."

Rufus smirked, his teeth and eyes both flashing slightly, like a predator's. "No, I haven't done anything yet. What did you expect?"

Reno found himself shivering slightly, even though it wasn't in the least bit cold in the office. "And you had better not, Rufus."

"Or you'll…?"

Reno faltered.

"Don't worry. I'm just watching her right now. I'm not planning anything at the moment."

"How about you just leave my girlfriend alone, since you're the one who left me here alone in the first place? If you're gonna punish anyone, you should punish me. She has nothing to do with any of this."

"You know, I did notice that she looks a bit like me in ways. Was that intentional?"

"Shut the fuck up, Rufus."

"Ooh, somebody's grown a set of balls, I see. Gotten some independence since I left, hm?"

"Yeah, I guess I have." Reno sneered darkly. "Just leave Nora alone."

"I will, until she does something that prompts me to do otherwise."

"Like what?"

"I don't know yet."

"You always have been a loose cannonball. That's one of the things I hate about you."

"There's a lot to hate about me."

"I do, Rufus. Hate you."

"I know." The blonde laughed. "I hate me, too."

Reno grunted, and left the office.

"Feltz, can I tell you something?" Nora asked in mid-stride, the sound of heels absent because she had taken her shoes off to run better.

Lucas Feltz turned very quickly at the sound of the fear in her voice.

"Feltz, please, I need to tell somebody."

The librarian stood stock-still, staring at the tears streaming from the bright, blue eyes. "Nora, I don't know if that's…"

"Please, Feltz!" Nora almost shrieked.

And she dropped to her knees, shaking violently with silent sobs.

Feltz looked around, taking a chance glance at the security camera above their heads. He dropped down next to the woman, and whispered into her ear. "Nora, yes, you can tell me, but we have to go somewhere else. I think we may be being watched."

Leanora Richmond looked up and nodded slowly.

The man grabbed her lightly by the wrist, and led her into a small office, the doors of which were almost hidden in the corner of the library. "What is it?"

"I have to leave here. I can't do this to him."

"Who?"

"Reno."

"Is that your boyfriend?"

"Yes. He can't know about this. It could ruin his job, and his life."

"What is it?"

"Feltz, I need you to help me. I'm running away, into the slums where he won't find me."

"Nora, the slums? Do you know how dangerous it is down there?"

"I don't care. I can't go to the plate, because it'll be too easy to track me down, and I can't leave Midgar, because I still have to try and keep contact with the museum."

"I don't understand. Why…?"

"Feltz, I'm pregnant."

The librarian gaped. "How long?"

"A couple of months."

"I'll help you. I promise. I'll do whatever I can, if it's for you."

Rufus smiled at what lay on his desk. "So, he's keeping secrets, now." The President read the paper again, remembering what he had seen on the security monitor earlier that day. In scrawling handwriting that looked far too rushed to be an innocent commentary on the conversation that had transpired, Lucas Feltz's report simply said, "Nothing interesting today with Nora. Same old, same old."

The blonde laughed, and told Janice over the intercom to call the librarian into his office.

Feltz seemed to be crumpling under the cold gaze of his superior from the moment he walked in. "Sir, I…"

"Don't finish that. In fact, do not speak until you are given permission."

Feltz didn't.

"Now, I am sure that you know that I am not someone to be toyed with. Is this correct, Mr. Feltz?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And, you do understand that there are consequences for lying to me, which, as you know from being a military man, is treason, correct?"

"Affirmative, Sir."

"Now, I would like you to tell me exactly what transpired inside of your office today. I assure you, I saw you and Ms. Richmond attempting to avoid detection."

"Sir, I'm sorry, but I can't do that. That woman trusts me with her life."

Rufus smiled at that. "Well, I did tell you I didn't want another yes-man."

"What?"

"I have learned to have a certain appreciation for upright defiance. So rare. So unusual."

Feltz could do nothing but stare.

"But, that doesn't change the fact that I need to know what really happened in that room. I assure you that I am a fair man, and that I will not harm Ms. Richmond unless she is doing something that compromises me or this company."

"I…I don't know. She was just scared."

"Scared of…?"

"She didn't want to tell her boyfriend…"

Rufus found himself leaning forward on his desk. His eyes grew colder.

"…that she's carrying his child."

Rufus burst into positive hysteria.

Leanora Richmond visited the library again the next day. Lucas Feltz smiled slightly, his face downcast. "Are you ready?"

Nora thought he looked a bit odd.

She let that thought go, excusing it as worry. After all, he was her friend, and she wasn't only leaving Reno, but him as well.

"I'm ready," she said with a nod.

Feltz wasn't looking at her as he led her from the room.

"How are we going to get out?" Her heart beat loudly, its beats almost muffling the sounds of her own voice and Feltz's.

"Don't worry. Act natural."

She nodded. The two of them walked easily from the library, their bodies as relaxed as possible, as if they were going to get a cup of coffee. They left the library, and went into the glass elevator.

Instead of going to the 61st floor and the café, they pushed the button for the lobby.

And they walked straight out of the doors of Shinra tower.

To those they passed, it looked very natural, like two friends out for a stroll on the plate. But the closer they got to the train station that would take Nora to the slums, the more uneasy she could feel the energy that surrounded Lucas Feltz become. The two of them stepped into a small alleyway.

Feltz handed Nora a fake I.D., and as she looked down at it, the woman felt a cold pain shoot through her body.

"Feltz, what…?" Nora looked up at the man, and he smiled at her.

No, it wasn't right. This man was not Lucas Feltz. There was something wrong with how he looked.

"I am sorry, but I couldn't let you run, Ms. Richmond," said the voice of the man. She hadn't noticed how much colder it was than her friend's.

"Why…?" Nora felt the pain sharpen. She looked down at herself and saw blood where the knife had been pulled away. Blood covering the skin over where her womb should have been.

Right through her body and her child.

She fell, her ankle twisting from one high-heeled shoe.

The man who should have been Lucas Feltz looked down at the body through black-rimmed glasses and brown colored contacts.

"It wasn't your fault. Not until you tried to run away."

On the edge of a road that had never been completed because it had been meant for a Midgar expansion project that had fallen through, Lucas Feltz stood, gagged and afraid. He looked through foggy eyes at what seemed to be a carbon-copy of himself.

The gag was removed from his mouth. "What have you done with her?"

"She's dead, but I will give you the chance to escape."

Feltz recognized that voice. "Why did you kill her? What did she ever do to you? You promised me that you wouldn't hurt her if she hadn't done anything to you."

Rufus Shinra, in the guise of Lucas Feltz, smiled. "Oh, but she did. Now, I will give you a head start before I kill you. Run."

And Lucas Feltz, without his glasses, didn't even see that the road had suddenly ended right under him, and he fell approximately eighty feet to his death.

"Reno, there's something I need to tell you," stated Rude solemnly to his friend, who looked up suddenly from a glass of scotch.

The new café manager (the third that had been hired since the original's death) looked at the two of them, absently wiping out a glass.

"Maybe we should go somewhere else?" asked Rude.

"Sure," said Reno, trying to stay calm, despite the feeling of dread he'd been having all day. The redhead followed Rude into the bald man's apartment, where he'd been staying since Rufus had returned.

"You should sit down, Reno."

"She's dead, isn't she?"

"What?"

"Nora."

Rude took his sunglasses off and sat on the couch. "How did you know?"

"Had a feeling," said Reno, plopping down next to his friend. The redhead stared off into space.

"Are you okay?"

"No." Reno looked up at his best friend. "How'd you find out?"

"The company got a murder report. Someone found the body, in an alley right in the middle of the plate. She'd been stabbed through the womb."

"The womb?"

"Yes, Reno. Autopsy showed that she was pregnant."

The younger Turk couldn't find words to reply.

"One of the workers in the research and development library said he saw her leave with one of the other librarians right before she died. The guy's name was Lucas Feltz. We found his body, too, soon after. By the looks of it, he committed suicide, straight off of that road that goes to nowhere on the outer reaches of the city."

Reno didn't seem to want to hear anymore, and he stood and walked out the door.

"They look almost exactly alike. He looks…looked like him, and like her. All of them…gods, they could all be related," Reno murmured to himself as he stared at the file for Lucas Feltz. "I knew this guy. I can't believe it. He was in my battalion, under Pulitz."

"How ironic." Reno laughed bitterly.

The door to the tiny office that Reno had been given a couple years before opened, and footsteps told the redhead that someone had entered.

"Hello, Reno," said a smooth tenor voice.

"Hello, Feltz," said Reno.

"So, you followed my trail of bread crumbs, I see?"

"It was too easy. You should have made it harder to track. You look like the guy." Every word Reno said seemed pained. Forced.

"I know. Isn't that just convenient?"

"He was a bit more homely, though. How'd you pull it off, fooling her? You're still a bit recognizable…a bit…unique?"

"I just didn't talk much. Didn't look straight at her. She was so worried anyway that I knew she wouldn't notice."

"Did you do it because she was pregnant?"

"How did you find that out?"

"Rude told me. You fucking murderer, there was no reason for this!"

"She was running away, Reno. Just like I did."

"Why?"

"She didn't want to ruin your job, according to the librarian, so she was going to run away, to the slums, where you would be less likely to find her, and she could raise her child without interfering with your life. Now, do you see something wrong with this?"

"That's Nora for you, trying to save me from pain," the Turk murmured sadly.

"But, moving into the slums, Reno? What kind of life is that for a child?"

"Don't tell me you were trying to save the kid, Rufus. What? You'd just kill it instead?"

"Better than another child born in poverty."

"Bullshit, Rufus."

"But that's not all, and this is the tricky thing about this whole situation. Are you sure it was yours?" Rufus smiled.

"Don't even think that she could have been cheating on me, Rufus. Nora wouldn't have done that."

"Technically, she wasn't."

"What?"

"I want you to look up the file for Leanora Richmond." Rufus smiled, and Reno could see something there that was more detestation than triumph. He found this fact odd.

Reno tried to access the file, but the search came up with nothing. "That's weird, yeah, but I don't see what it has to do with anything."

"Now, try Leanora Shinra."

The redhead did a double-take. "What?"

"Just do it, Reno."

Tentatively, Reno typed in the name, expecting--no, hoping--not to come up with anything. Instead, one profile appeared, with a picture of his dead girlfriend staring at him from the screen. He clicked the profile, and it read, "Leanora Shinra. Marital Status: Widowed"

It seemed that Reno's girlfriend had been his ex boyfriend's stepmother.

"You see, Reno. She wasn't cheating on you, she was having an affair with you."

"But, that doesn't make sense, Rufus!" Reno screamed in disbelief. "She was just a girl from the museum. She couldn't have been his wife. Plus, you gave her money, Rufus. She didn't have money like that. Why would she have gone to the slums with money like that?"

"Because she made all of the donations to the Midgar Museum of Fine Arts herself. My father wasn't interested in art, Reno. And that's why she married him, I guess. If she supported the museum, she could help the arts, and maybe become a professional artist herself. She was pretty good, you know, judging by the paintings of hers I saw."

"Shut up." Reno had to keep himself from yelling. "No, it can't be…"

"Especially this one that I found in Father's old room. It was a strange one. An unfinished piece, of some very bizarre-looking flowers."

"Please, Rufus, stop."

"And, Reno, if you say a word of this to your comrades in the Turks or to anybody else, I will make it quite obvious that your record is no cleaner than mine."

"Stop it, Rufus. I don't even know what you're talking about!"

"Every couple of years or so, it is customary for me to go through the cold cases in the registry, and I found a very interesting name there."

"No, Rufus…"

"Zelig Morrison, the top suspect in a nine-year old unsolved rape case…"

"Oh, gods…"

"Possible second suspect, but no files found matching the DNA sample present. Second suspect assumed to be nonexistent, due to a tarnished sample."

"Rufus…"

"When examined more closely, the second DNA matched very closely with a later sample gathered in a Junon assassination attempt on me. One Gerome Pulitz, your very own ex-commander."

"Why…?"

"What a coincidence, Mr. Morrison."

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"Or should I say, Kiribani?"

Reno dropped to the ground at Rufus' feet.

Miya's Note: Yay! Emotional overload! What fun.

I hope you all enjoyed.