Business As Usual
Chapter #29: Hell's Too Big for the Hand-basket
Miya's Note: Whoo! A semi-timely update AND the longest and one of the most action-packed chapters yet. I hope you all love it. I think I did a really good job of balancing the game content and the original, and I hope everyone agrees.
Well, we're getting close. It's just this chapter, then Chapter 30: In Memorandum, and the Epilogue: Lies (and I even gave you titles)! I don't know about all of you, but I'm really excited.
Really, really excited. I have a good chunk of the rest of the story all finished, including the ending of this chapter, the ending of 30, and the entirety of the Epilogue. That means that this should, hopefully, not take that long, assuming that I don't get writer's block on the rest of 30.
Did I mention that I'm excited?
I have a lot going in P3 already, and I'm ready to move onto that. I need a change, even if it's just to the sequel. Can you guys believe I've been working on BAU for over 2 years? It's gonna be nice to finish it, but hard. It's gonna be even harder to start narrating from Rufus' POV instead of Reno's. Weird.
As before, read White Flag if you still haven't, and don't forget to try the contest from before if you want. Time's running out. Just remember: e-mail, not PM, because PMs have been wonky.
Oh, and many thanks to Little Chiba's FF7 Script for any game text I used. I couldn't have done this without it.
Or, well, I could have, but it would have been a real pain.
I'd honestly never been to a proper funeral for someone I knew before. Interestingly enough, the only thing close to a proper funeral I'd ever been to at all before this one was for Tseng's sister.
Rufus wasn't crying. I didn't expect him to. He was simply sitting, very quietly, at the front of the rows of chairs, in all black, his face completely blank.
Because there was no grass anywhere around Midgar to hold the funeral on or to have the burial under, it was an indoor event, and the coffin that would have contained Tseng's body if there had been any body left--as was the custom with all deaths in our over-crowded city--would be thrown into the Mako vents, presumably to mimic the act of cremating the corpse and sending it straight into the Lifestream. The only difference between the death of a Shinra employee or plate-dweller and a slum rat when it came to the vents was whether or not there was a coffin around the body, figurative or not, when it went in. In fact, had this been a slum-rat, there probably wouldn't have even been a figurative burial.
When I looked out the windows, it was raining, like something you'd see in a movie. It made me even more glad we were inside. Midgar had major acid rain, and it would set your skin on fire, and leave you covered in a strange kind of spotty, bumpy rash. Rain aside, Elena was sitting in between me and Rude, understandably distraught. Both me and my best friend were holding her around the shoulders as she cried, while the both of us avoided tears at all cost. We had to be her rocks.
Our reason for not crying was very different from Rufus'. He just had a different view on death.
I had a second reason, on top of having to keep strong for Elena. Starting that moment, I was the Turks' leader. I wasn't just Elena's rock, but Rude's, which is funny when you realize that Rude is the most stone-faced and stoic of all of us. I was getting thrown into a lot of responsibility; responsibility that I didn't know, really, if I could handle. How did it come to this? I was just one of the slum rats. A lowly hacker from Sector 7. Now I was the leader of the Turks.
That was as high as a man could get, without being an Exec, or Rufus himself.
I started to get scared of falling.
After the funeral, while everyone was milling about, talking about the great moments in Tseng's life and how sad it was that he was dead, Rude watched, holding Elena while she cried to his chest, as his redheaded now-leader apologized and peeled off from the Turk group. Rude knew where he was going.
Rufus held the elevator door open as Reno ran toward him.
"You trying to skimp out early, without all the sad talk?" the redhead asked. "Nobody else is leaving yet."
"I hate funerals. They just anger me."
"Why?"
"Too many false pretenses. Too many people acting like they knew the deceased who didn't, and who just say nice things to be polite, as much as they may have actually hated the person who passed."
"Oh."
Rufus turned to his lover, serious. "If you must have a funeral for me, make it just you, Rude, and Elena. I don't need anybody else there. They'll just defile my body with their sugar-coated deceit. At least if you guys have anything bad to say about me, you'll just say it there. Even better, I'd prefer you or them tell me directly now."
Reno's heart dropped. "What makes you think you're gonna die before the rest of us? You're not gonna try anything funny, are you?"
"No. It's only an if."
Reno wasn't so sure, and his face showed it.
"Don't worry so much. Pretty soon, we'll all be going through hell, and my death will be the least of your concerns."
"That's supposed to make me worry less?"
Rufus leaned in. "Listen, in the Temple of the Ancients, Tseng gave his life trying to get the Black Materia, on my orders. Tseng didn't make it, but AVALANCHE did. They currently have it, but I have a suspicious feeling that Sephiroth isn't going to have much trouble getting it from them. He gets that Materia, and he summons Meteor. I don't know why he wants it. I don't know why he would want to destroy the world, but if Meteor hits, there won't be much left of us or anything else."
"How do you know what it is? The Black Materia? I don't remember reading about that."
"Bugenhagen."
"Who?"
"The elder at Cosmo Canyon."
Reno thought for a long while, and then the blonde could almost see the gears in the crimson-covered head connect. "Oh, I remember now. I'd forgotten about all that."
Rufus slumped up against the wall, and pushed the button for a different floor. The two stopped, the elevator opened, but neither man moved. The elevator continued again, this time downward. "There has to be more. I can feel it, but it's faint," said the blonde more to himself than to his companion.
"Wait a second!" said Reno, staring intently at the floor that Rufus had lit up on the panel. "No, you can't be going there."
"Don't worry. It'll be empty. Hojo quit, remember?"
Reno slumped onto his respective wall as well, so he and Rufus were on opposing sides of the elevator. The blonde continued. "I talked to Reeve, who had his spy in the Temple with Cloud's group. The Temple itself was the Black Materia, but you could only change its form from the inside. Ingenious of the Cetra, wasn't it? He sacrificed the Cait Sith Entity prototype to get it, without knowing that Tseng was still inside, I presume, but he told me something else. Cloud has the Materia, safe, for now, but he was acting strangely. Reeve thinks he may be under Sephiroth's influence somehow."
"So you wanted to get it to keep it away from the madman? He just would have killed you, even with all your superhuman Rufus powers."
"I may have to take that risk. The Black Materia needs to be destroyed. We can't gamble Sephiroth, or anyone that may come after him if he doesn't succeed, getting their hands on the thing."
"Wow, you're starting to sound like a good guy." Reno chuckled.
Rufus didn't respond to that, but instead went off on another tangent. "I think Jenova has something to do with this. That's why I can feel it. It's like she's speaking to me. I occasionally hear a voice…my mother's, but I know it can't be her…" The blonde shook his head, holding his hand across his eyes in a visible sign of frustration. "I need to get into the lab, and hope that there's something of Jenova left there."
The elevator stopped with a ding. "Speaking of which…" trailed Reno. "I don't like this place. I really don't. There's just something creepy about it. Probably Hojo's…essence, or some shit like that."
Rufus dragged Reno out of the small lift compartment before the doors shut again. "Believe it or not, I've known Hojo for a long time, and he doesn't scare me as much as he probably should."
"Does anybody scare you as much as they should?"
Rufus noted the lack of his own "probably" in the echoed statement with a smirk.
He simply went on. "No, not that I can recall."
Reno trotted behind the blonde as he swiped his ID and stepped into the lab. "Do you know what you're looking for?" the Turk asked.
"Yes. I read Hojo's files. He had the manifest form of Jenova stored in a tank here. Sephiroth took it out, just before he killed my father and fled Midgar, but it was missing its head. My bet is that there's some of the head left in that tank."
"Eh? Why? If it was missing, doesn't that just mean Hojo probably found the thing headless?"
"Jenova's head was taken by a group of Cetra to try to stop her after she killed Yu Yahme and Sima. They destroyed the head, and sealed the neck's wound with a powerful magic so it wouldn't re-grow. But Jenova tried, and about every thousand years, would succeed, but the magic would cause the head to eventually wither and fall off."
"That's disgusting. You're looking for the withered head of a space parasite?"
"Basically."
Reno shivered, his face contorted. He stood back as Rufus searched the lab for the tank where Jenova had been stored. He found one, a permanent fixture in the floor, which had marks from a thin sword around the opening. The door seemed like it had been recently repaired. The blonde set one hand on the small, circular glass window near the top of the opening and the redhead watched as his body tensed and his head threw back in shock.
Reno made a slight move to go help, but Rufus hissed and drew back before the Turk could even really react.
"What's going on?" Reno asked, finally running to the President's side.
The blonde leaned against Reno's chest, his breaths ragged. "Sephiroth. I don't understand it. Why him? Why is that fucker always appearing everywhere? Why, Jenova?" Reno twitched as Rufus did, the blonde putting his hand back on the small porthole, his fingers tensing, causing his nails to scrape the glass with a shrill shriek. "The head…I have to get it…"
Rufus backed off from Reno so quickly that it caused the redhead's muscles to jar in surprise again, opened a couple of cabinets, found a large metal briefcase, and began to forcefully beat the door with it.
"Rufus, it has a latch," said Reno, unhelpfully.
"Yes, but I'm feeling particularly destructive today."
As the President beat on the door with a fervor that far crossed the border to the murderous insanity that always made Reno uneasy ("It's like stress relief," though Reno to himself reassuringly. "If he kills the door, he won't kill something that's actually alive."), the two men almost missed the slight scraping sound that came from behind them.
"Hello, Young Shinra," sneered a voice from a fittingly dark and creepy corner of the room.
"Good day, Aldous," Rufus returned pleasantly. "When did you get back?"
"Yesterday. So, the head is still in there, you think? Interesting." Hojo sneered in what Reno guessed was the closest the man could possibly manage to a smile. "You're right. Very good. I don't think it very like my son, though, to simply miss something so obvious, without having some reason for it, do you? This may be interesting to observe, and I will be able to stop targeting more innocent subjects for entertainment."
One of Reno's eyebrows raised. "Son?" Reno butted in. "You're entire family is whack! Who the hell are you targeting, anyway?"
"You're lying," said the blonde indifferently. "You couldn't have returned yesterday, because I saw you on the cameras a few days ago. You've been back for a while, but you just thought to do so without proper company supervision? I don't like it when people try and do things behind my back, Aldous." Rufus continued to beat the door, and the lock eventually broke. "And no, I don't think Sephiroth simply missed the head. There was probably good reason for his leaving it. Most likely hoping somebody else would find it. I plan to see why."
"And cameras!" yelled the Turk, turning to his President. "You said he was gone, Rufus! And, did you stop to think that maybe Sephiroth's just setting up a trap?"
The redhead was ignored.
"What does he want with Meteor, Hojo?"
"The consciousness of the world. A wound so large that every soul on Gaia has to move in to heal it. The knowledge of all Gaia, gathered in one place and ripe for the taking. Imagine. Isn't it brilliant? He'll be a god!"
Rufus opened the tank and flung the door out of his way as he threw the rather dented briefcase to one side, and snarled back. "Too bad Lucrecia won't get to see the advent of her Son's grand transcendence."
Reno could see Hojo's cheek twitch, and a fire lit behind the Professor's eyes. Rufus simply stood and gauged the reaction with a sense of arrogant fascination.
"I'm sure she is not much worse off than your mother," hissed Hojo back, finally.
The two continued to stare at each other, the Professor this time observing as Rufus' eyes narrowed, though his slight smile remained.
"Oh, but she only died, and then was absorbed from whence she came. Your dearest, on the other hand, didn't even get that luxury, did she? I'm sure still pining over Valentine, too, in her eternal hell."
There wasn't even time for another stare-down.
Aldous Hojo, in a rather surprising move, suddenly dashed past the redhead, hitting him with his shoulder on the way, and tackled Rufus straight into the tank.
Reno stumbled into the door, his balance thrown, and it closed under his weight.
The Turk began to panic as the muffled yells of the two men in Jenova's holding cell mixed with loud thuds on metal as Rufus and Hojo scrambled around the tank.
Good thing Reno had noticed the latch.
The redhead had to move out of the way as the two fighting men burst out the door and rolled past him, Rufus holding something out of Hojo's reach that was oozing some liquid down his arm. In fact, both men were covered in some kind of goo that Reno assumed was the gel that had supported Jenova in the tank, but that he really didn't want to have to touch, for fear of contamination.
Rufus pushed Hojo off of him with his legs and jumped up, still holding Jenova's head. Hojo fell back The blonde walked up to the scientist, who seemed to be choking on some of the gel. Rufus kicked him square in the ribs, and he coughed.
"What is Sephiroth's connection with Jenova?"
Hojo continued to cough. Rufus kicked him again, and the Professor spewed out a glob of the goo that had caught itself in the back of his throat.
"Tell me, Aldous! She wants him to summon Meteor! Why him?"
"Because…I made him a…part of her."
Rufus slid Hojo back into the tank over the wet laboratory floor with his foot, and again slammed the door.
"Reno, let's go. She will guide us."
Hojo yelled, his voice muffled, from inside of the tank.
Reno chose to stay outside the shower this time, still very much against touching the slime all over the blonde's soaked body. He and the head of Jenova had a stare-down that seemed almost comically like a parody of the two men earlier, and the shriveled skull, its sunken eye sockets unchanging from inside of the glass jar that slightly distorted their already grotesque shape, somehow seemed to be winning as Reno's face tinged a slight green-yellow.
"Reno, bring me a towel!" yelled Rufus from inside the bathroom.
"Gladly," the redhead murmured to himself, walking backwards from the jar instead of turning away from it in a uncontrollable bit of paranoia. When he was a satisfactory distance away from the head, Reno turned to the dresser and picked out one of Rufus' luxuriously fluffy, immaculately white towels.
With one look back across the room as if to make sure the jar hadn't moved and glad that he didn't have to step over any puddles of goo left by the blonde, who had obsessively wiped himself off as best he could before he and Reno had left the lab (as well as using that time to take the jar from the same cabinet where the briefcase had resided before it had been massacred in its use as a bludgeoning tool), Reno stepped into the bathroom, the steam of the shower almost unpleasantly warm against the uncovered skin on his face, chest, and hands.
"Thank you, Reno," came the slightly echoed voice from under the shower's spray.
"Are you scalding yourself in there?"
"Disinfecting."
"It's gonna be safe for me to touch you after this, isn't it?" Reno hung the towel on its bar.
"Not any less than before. I was already injected with Jenova cells. You can't be more contaminated than that." Reno could hear Rufus' chuckle. "Much more pleasant after I'm clean, though, I assure you. Gelatin and formaldehyde are not particularly sexy to be covered in."
"Is that all it was?"
"By the smell, that's my guess."
Reno took the chance, since he felt it was finally safe, to take off his now slightly damp clothing to let his entire body be exposed to the steam, which, once he had adjusted, had become a rather inviting touch.
"Mind if I join you? I feel dirty just from bein' in that lab."
Rufus slid the curtain open. Reno heeded the summons and stepped into the shower, but backed up out of the water once he felt how high the heat really was.
Rufus turned the knob slightly as he saw the redhead recoil, and Reno put his hand under the stream to test, and then stepped in.
Rufus took no time in closing the space between them, pushing his lover against the shower wall, lips to the nape of Reno's neck, skin still hot from the blistering water before. Reno let his head fall back against the tile with a contented sigh, welcoming touches that he hadn't felt in far too long.
"It's amazing," said the Turk, not wasting time to separate sense and speech, "how much you know. I can't even imagine…it must be wonderful…hard, to have to keep all of that knowledge. Knowing…all this time…that somewhere in the world is a power capable of destroying everything…"
"I just know where to look," said Rufus in between kisses that he trailed across Reno's collarbone. "While Hojo was gone, I searched his files. Learned all about Lucrecia, and the experiments with their son. All about Vincent Valentine's affair with his wife, and about the kind of a things a man will do when his heart's been ripped in two. Beside, when your family has built a power, itself, with as much, if not more, destructive force than ancient magic, the idea of a large rock barreling into the planet doesn't seem as threatening."
"You…ah…really pushed his buttons back there. Any reason?"
"Hojo's mad, which makes him easy to predict. If I could get him in that tank…He already knew where the head was…I knew he would go for it in trying to keep it away from me."
Reno clenched his teeth as Rufus nipped at the base of his throat. "Mmn," was all he could reply, as an affirmative to the blonde's statement and the sensations coursing through his nerves to that spot in the back of his head that made him shiver and clutch at the other man's lower back, pulling their bodies closer.
Rufus grabbed Reno's hands and pulled them up for the Turk to grasp the blonde, wet hair on his superior's head, and slid down the mercenary's lithe body.
Reno gasped. "This…little role switch we've been practicing lately…"
"Hmm?"
"It's…nice…"
"And?"
"I want…" The redhead was cut short by a tongue on even more delicate flesh than before.
"Mmn?" Rufus purred questioningly, the vibrations from the sound intoxicating.
"More."
The Turk caught a groan in his throat as the tongue pulled away. "Are you confident enough in your masculinity for more?" the blonde taunted.
"I don't give a shit about my masculinity right now."
Rufus hit one of Reno's ankles lightly with the side of his fist, which caused the thinner man to slip and topple with a yelp. "Good," Rufus' voice rumbled from that primal space deep within his chest as he caught the redhead with still-surprising ease before he could hit the hard porcelain of the large tub. Reno found himself with the back of his head supported in Rufus' hands, his shoulder blades against the smooth surface of the bathtub floor, and his legs supported by and straddled around the hips of the blonde, who was kneeling over him, eyes a little clouded over.
As one of Rufus' hands slid out from the tendrils of red hair down the length of Reno's spine, the redhead had a sudden pang of fear, and his entire body tensed up.
"Don't worry," whispered Rufus, and Reno had to read his lips to catch it over the loud pattering of the water on the President's back.
Reno couldn't help but to relax into the touch as Rufus felt, with a gentleness and care that Reno had never seen from the man before, into a warmth hotter than the water.
For the first time since he and Rufus had met, Reno somehow felt safe, though the blonde was stabbing into him as deeply as a knife and the world outside was slipping into the cataclysmic brink of despair and everybody could feel it's climax nearing.
Reno came, his back arched and his body impaled.
"Do we have to sleep with that…thing right there?" asked Reno, pointing to the jar on the nightstand by the blonde's side of the bed.
"Jenova is a dream-speaker. If we are going to find Sephiroth…"
"Why are we finding Sephiroth in the first place? Don't we need to look for Cloud's group? And, if they're gonna follow Sephiroth, won't Reeve tell us where they're going?"
"I don't trust Reeve to give us truthful information. He has lied to me once before. I sensed it, already, that Sephiroth has the Black Materia."
"What?"
"I don't know when he got it, or how, but Reeve assured me that everything was alright, although I can feel that it isn't. He said that Cloud had it all under control. Didn't want me interfering, I assume."
"Why would…?"
Rufus sighed. "He's one of them, now. We can't count on him as our informant anymore. I'm taking things into my own hands. We sleep, and we learn."
Reno took a long time falling into sleep, and when he did, his dreams were a blur of colors and sounds that caused him to toss and turn, restlessly. Red, white, pink, purple, green, and black. Flashes of color, with very little real form. On occasion, he could make out bodies, but each time he tried to get closer to see who they belonged to, another flash, and another color in their place.
Rufus, in contrast, had a vision, not a dream, and his body was still as stone as he saw.
The images began with that of a clear lake. From beneath, he could just spot the glow of a small object, green as Mako light, and the water around it seemed to be resonating with the strange, eerie sound of a chanting requiem.
The images shifted. A vivid picture of Sephiroth's face, smiling madly. "All that is left is for me to go north. The Promised Land waits for me over the snowy fields," his voice sneered.
"Because you are…a puppet."
Then, blinding white, snow. The angry, paled face of Elena Pearce as she tried to hold back tears as she faced Cloud, blaming.
Lifestream. Endless Lifestream pooled within a great chasm that seemed to be calling to him. There, the song echoed again, the sullen voices of the spirits dripping with sorrow.
When Rufus woke, the movement of his sitting up suddenly jarred Reno awake.
"I am heading north, and bringing Hojo. She calls."
"I talked to Rufus," said Reno to the other two Turks. "He's had a…well, I guess you could say a premonition? I don't know if it's happening now, if it happened before, or if it's gonna happen. Maybe it wasn't even real, but I don't want to take the chance. He and the executives are going to the Northern Crater. I wanted us to go with him, but he refused. He said it'd be dangerous, which is exactly why I wanted to go with him…"
"Reno, what did he see?" interrupted Rude.
"He said that he could feel that Sephiroth had taken another life. He didn't know whose, but that person had great power. He said that when that person died, the earth wept."
Elena sighed sadly. "Probably our only chance at pulling through this…gone…"
Rude looked over at her, and at the lack of hope in her bloodshot eyes. Then, he saw the shaking of her right hand as it grasped the inside of her other arm. He turned away, to the redhead. "What else?"
"He said that Sephiroth's going north, and then he saw another image of the crater. Said it was full of Mako, just like he'd imagined the Promised Land."
"That's all? I don't trust any of this, or Rufus," sneered the bald Turk, stepping to Elena and wrapping his arms around her.
"There was one more thing. Elena, he said he saw you. He said he thinks you were in Icicle Inn, confronting Cloud." Reno was deadpan-serious. "You weren't thinking of walking out on us and finding AVALANCHE on your own, were you?"
The girl gasped, her eyes wide, and she backed into Rude's embrace. "You don't understand! I saw it! I saw everything…while we were in the helicopter, like I was there…Tseng. Sephiroth attacked him…Cloud's group left him for dead in the Temple. I saw him die, and I couldn't do anything about it! I was right there, and so were they, but they didn't do anything! I'll kill them!"
Rude held on harder. "Elena, why Icicle Inn?"
"Reeve. I asked Reeve, and he said that Cloud has the Black Materia and is heading North; to the 'snowy fields', he said."
"He lied," said the redhead.
"I don't know how the President knows all of this…"
"Elena," chided Rude calmly. "I need to know something. What's wrong with your arm?"
"Nothing. Leave me alone."
"Let me see it, Elena. I need to know if you're injured."
"It's nothing, Rude!"
She struggled fitfully and tried to escape, but Rude only held her tighter. Reno walked up to the two to see if he could do anything to help, but had to back up quickly as he found a gun pointed at his head, as Rude's grip loosened. "Let me go, Reno. I don't want to have to do this," she hissed, stepping out from between her two partners. Reno saw Rude pull a small dagger from his side, clutching the wound.
"Don't, Elena. You could get yourself killed, and that's not what Tseng would have wanted."
"I talked to Hojo. He gave me the will to fight. He told me everything. Did you know that, with the Lifestream, you can be in two places at once? You can travel the will of the planet to find what's most precious to you? Tseng called to me, and I came. I came to the Temple of the Ancients, and I saw him die there." A spark flashed in Elena's eyes like green flame. Reno knew, immediately, that Elena was on Mako.
"Elena, how many doses did he give you?" came the Turk leader's voice, worried.
Rude looked over, surprised and confused.
"Just one. It's enough," the blond woman hissed back, and her arm twitched slightly where the injection had been.
Reno took a step forward. "It'll be gone by the time you get to Icicle Inn. What Rufus saw wasn't good, he said. You'll be weak. The cold will take you over, and you may die there, without even being able to do a thing to Cloud. Now, I'm ordering you to put the gun down…"
"Shut up!" Elena screamed, and she shot the ceiling, running out while her partners were caught off-guard.
Reno turned to his partner. "I'm following her. You're injured, so you'll be in danger in Icicle Inn's temperatures. I want you to get yourself healed, and then get on board that airship, and I want you to watch Rufus to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid. Got that?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Not Sir. I'm still just Reno, and I always will be. That's an order." And the redhead left.
In the helicopter, Elena shivered involuntarily, sweat running down her face in small rivulets. It was getting cold, but why was she burning? It seemed like an eternity before the helicopter landed in the snow.
"Ma'am, are you sure you will be able to complete your task?" asked one of the Soldiers that had accompanied her. When she didn't answer, he leaned in closer, his eyes worried from under his helmet. "What I'm asking, Ma'am, is if you're going to be alright."
"Just, help me out of here," was all she replied, her eyes downcast as two Soldiers grabbed her arms to lift her gently from the helicopter.
As she spotted Cloud's group walking around, gathering information, her energy seemed to return, and she broke from her group and made a mad dash toward AVALANCHE, yelling threats and wheezing, her throat constricting from the cold that her skin could barely feel.
Elena could feel herself speak, but it felt as if another person was controlling her mouth. "You've really got guts doin' my boss in like that!" she heard herself say, and was surprised at the lack of the usual delicate sadness that laced her voice when she spoke of Tseng.
Cloud idly retorted that Sephiroth had been the one to make the attack, and not his group.
The blond woman's voice was harsh and angry, and she almost jumped as she continued. "No! Don't think you can fool me, liar!"
Cloud was hesitant as he defended his innocence again, unsure what to think of the new monster that had developed in the Turk's voice.
"Don't try to act innocent! I'll never forget it!"
Elena could feel her body weakening in an odd near-repeat of the scene in Wutai. Her whole figure wanted to fight. Her eyes thirsted to see blood. Her ears wanted to hear his screams.
A small part of her in the back of the still-sane part of her mind, as her fist drew backwards, hoped that Cloud would avoid her punch.
And when he did, she tumbled down the snow-covered hill from Icicle Inn into the dead lands of Great Glacier.
She was pleasantly surprised that she could actually feel the coldness of the snow, then, and her mostly-unhurt body was screaming at her to move from the frigid wetness that was quickly seeping through her uniform and freezing the once-blazing skin underneath. The cold had begun to clear her brain, but her body in its shock refused to move, and she shook, terrified of what she had let herself become, if only for a short time, and of her fate.
It wasn't long before she felt the clasp of armor-laden arms around her, no warmer than the snow she had laid in before, but which, thankfully, had begun to move her from the spot that would have become her grave.
She wasn't quite sure what was happening when--how soon after, she couldn't tell--armor was replaced with slightly warm, stiff cloth covering thin and bony arms. She could hear a voice, muffled and distorted in her near-hypothermia.
The hill was too steep for Reno to carry her back to the helicopter, so he yelled up to one of the Soldiers that was still above the slope to fly the helicopter above them and send down a rescue line. The redhead knelt in the snow, hunched over his newest partner, trying to keep the both of them warm.
"C'mon, Elena. You gotta pull through this. Don't go trying to join Tseng in the Lifestream, now. I can't bear to lose another one of you guys."
"So, I finally found you," said Rufus from far above the Northern Crater, from within the Shinra airship, Highwind, named after its creator, the fallen Captain Cid of AVALANCHE.
He heard Scarlet's cackling laugh from behind him and cringed. "This is incredible!" she shrieked, leaning over the railing, her over-exposed chest propped up on the bars so as to flaunt what Rufus felt was a sickeningly overdone show of cleavage.
Since he had been younger, he'd had an almost-overwhelming urge to ask her if they were real. The urge was growing. If she slapped him, he would have adequate reason to fire her.
Heidegger's laugh was equally grating to his already edgy nerves. "This is the Promised Land the President has been looking for!"
Rufus knew that the General hadn't been talking about him, but about his Father, who had strived to find the Promised Land for very different reasons than he himself had. While Rufus wanted to use the place's bountiful energy to create a new life for the world, his father had only wished to expand, draining the paradise's plentiful Mako as he had that in the area around the original Midgar, until it tapped the world dry. "But, I'll be the one who gets it," the blonde hissed to Martinis Heidegger and Yvonnecka Scarlet before he turned back to the scene before him and stated in a coldly taunting voice to his father's presence in the Lifestream below, "Sorry, old man."
Rude turned from Rufus to Hojo, who had begun to laugh from one corner of the airship's bridge. "That land is no one's," sneered the man.
The bald Turk could see that Rufus had shifted his stance slightly at the retort, but he didn't say anything.
"It's where the Reunion will take place. I wonder if I will see…Sephiroth."
Rufus didn't turn as he spoke. "Oh, you will. He's here, she told me as much."
"Oh, so he has used her as a beacon, to bring you straight to him. It will be glorious when he absorbs your essence into his own."
Rude backed away from the Professor, seeing the fierce energy that transformed his face.
"Is that what your Reunion is, Aldous?" asked Rufus blandly. "The souls of the world, gathered in the Promised Land to be absorbed by Sephiroth so that he can become a god?"
Scarlet and Heidegger backed away from Rufus in a similar fashion to Rude's retreat from Hojo.
"Those with Sephiroth's cells within them and those infected by Jenova like you, young Shinra, will gather here, and he will kill you and take your life forces to grow stronger until he has the power to summon Meteor."
"I'm afraid to break it to you, Hojo, but there's only one god allowed in this world." Rufus finally turned, holding the jar with Jenova's head. Hojo, in seeing it, stood and walked calmly to the new era's leader, then struck, snake-like, and Rufus had to move quickly to avoid the jar being ripped from his grip. He dropped the jar to the ground and it shattered, and Scarlet backed away as far as she could from it with a shrill shriek.
Hojo picked the piece of his most beloved specimen from the ground, his hand's clenched around the head as it stared lifelessly at him, visions of his unfaithful wife's once-loving smile flooding into his mind.
Before Rufus could move to take it back, the ship jarred as it his a turbulent space in the air where the Lifestream had begun to swirl like angry wind, and the scientist stumbled to the side of the ship and dropped the head from its side, as Rufus tried to stop it. Inadvertently, by doing so, he had only served to save Hojo from falling, himself.
The Lifestream parted where the shriveled head fell, as if cringing away from the dark presence that this part of Jenova still held.
It was alright, though, Rufus realized. He didn't need her anymore. He had found what he had been looking for.
"We approach. Sephiroth is here," sneered Hojo, his hands covered in the formaldehyde gel and in some of Jenova's cells that he had squeezed from the head, which were staining his fingers a luminescent pink-purple.
Scarlet ran in first, overzealous as always, surveying the place like a tourist at Costa Del Sol. "Wow, that's amazing! It's all Materia!"
The odd clearing was vast and cave-like, and the beauty of it culminated in a great structure of pure crystallized Lifestream that resembled a giant tree. The high walls of the cave seemed to have something within or behind them that towered over the group like a huge blue mass of rock.
Rufus looked around, taking in his surroundings with a slight smile. "The outside is rich with Mako energy. The inside is a treasure-trove of Materia. This truly is the Promised Land."
Hojo audibly sneered behind him. "There is no such thing as the Promised Land. It's a legend…an old wives' tale. It's utterly ridiculous."
Rufus turned to face the Professor. "Everything is as I imagined it to be. Isn't it splendid?" Rufus sneered back at the sickened expression that Hojo was giving him. "It is that kind of dullness that makes you a second-rate scientist."
Suddenly, the walls began to shake, and the sound the Materia gave off was like the singing of a glass. Rufus turned quickly in shock, recognizing the song from his visions, and he looked into the walls, searching. "What's happening."
Scarlet screeched. "It's coming from within the wall! Something's in there! It's moving!"
As Rufus looked, an enormous green eye opened on the mass of blue stone and looked back.
Hojo backed up slightly. "Weapon…Then it really does exist…I didn't believe in it."
"What does this mean?" asked the new President.
"Weapon. A monster created by the planet. It appears when the Planet is in danger, reducing everything to nothingness. That's what was stated in Professor Gast's report."
"I never saw that report," hissed Rufus, still looking at the eye. "Where is it?"
The blonde heard the rustling of papers behind him. "Here. Right here."
The eye blinked at Rufus. "You keep a lot of things to yourself."
Hojo walked up and handed the papers to the blonde. "Oh, but we can't have young Shinras snooping through the reports, can we?"
"Why are you giving them to me, if you obviously didn't want me to read them before?"
"I think that it may be useful for you to have the knowledge, now. I assume that you plan to fight it, when it wakes fully."
Rufus looked over the reports, and the eye scrutinized him carefully. "Where are the others?"
"Others?"
"The other Weapons. Neither you nor the reports mention others, but the Cetra wrote that there were more than one. Yu Yahme created them, and the planet took them after his death."
Hojo stepped in front of the blonde. "I don't bother reading fairy tales." Rude, from behind them, pulled out his gun, ready to stop Hojo by force if he tried anything.
"Oh, but if you did, you would realize that it makes no sense for the Weapons to destroy everything if they were made to protect." Rufus pushed past the scientist, and stepped closer to the eye.
Scarlet and Heidegger stepped further from the wall.
"Weapon!" yelled Rufus, and his voice echoed through the space. "Do you wish to kill me? Your master was Yu Yahme, but he has been dead for far too long. He was taken by Jenova. Is that who your enemy is? Those corrupted by Jenova? Humans?"
The eye grew wider, angry. Hojo stepped back, fascinated.
"You hear me! You are a obsolete power. The world is ours, now, not the Cetra's! Hear me, Weapon! We will destroy you!"
Scarlet rushed up, and Rufus was surprised that she had the nerve to lay a hand on him, jerking him by the shoulder away from the wall and Weapon. "Stop it! You're going to make it angry! Can't you see it's bigger than you! It'll just crush you, and all of us. Mr. President, I've got a bad feeling about this place."
Rufus' body relaxed, and he turned, for once calm, to the woman. "Hmm, perhaps we should return to the ship now. We need to prepare for the inspection, anyway."
As Rufus broke from her grip and began to walk back from the way in which he came, Cloud appeared in a flash of light, seemingly from nowhere, before him.
"Hey! Where did you come from?" screeched Scarlet.
"…don't know…" mumbled Cloud with a shrug. Rufus could see that something was odd with him.
"This place is going to get rough," said AVALANCHE's leader to Shinra's. "Better leave things to me and get out of here while you still can."
Rufus laughed, flipping the stray hair out of his face as he did so. "Leave things to you?" The President huffed. "I don't know what you mean."
Cloud turned away, gesturing upward and around the cave with his arms. "This is where the Reunion is happening. Where everything begins and ends."
Rufus could see Sephiroth in his eyes when he turned back.
As Tifa Lockhart and the red creature from his encounter with AVALANCHE at the tower entered, calling that they were there to help their leader, Cloud Strife clutched the sides of his head and looked like he was about to either scream or burst into tears. Shinra's President thought of making a move to help, but Cloud's hands shook, and he eventually ripped them away from his head and took a few, slow steps toward the creature.
"Thanks…Red XIII…"
Rufus noticed that something was different in the man's voice and his posture as he said this and stepped closer to the beast he now knew was called Red XIII.
"Where's the Black Materia?" asked Cloud, and Rufus wanted to move up and stop him from getting closer, feeling that something was terribly wrong, but something held him there. He could hear the light beginnings to Hojo's laughter behind him.
Tifa yelled her leader's name, but he didn't seem to hear her.
Red XIII spoke. "It's safe. I'm holding onto it."
Rufus wondered whether AVALANCHE had recovered the Materia from Sephiroth, or if he had been wrong all along.
Cloud spoke again, as if in a trance. "I'll take it from here. Give me the…Black Materia."
Rufus could only watch, his mind no longer comprehending the words of the group before him. Sephiroth…He could see the shadow of Sephiroth surrounding the body of Cloud Strife as he took the Black Materia.
No.
This is the end.
Rufus was broken slightly from his stupor as Cloud turned to him and, oddly, apologized, but didn't really begin to hear until the shrill, cackling voice of Aldous Hojo cut into his thoughts.
"This is perfect!" he screamed wildly. "It means that my experiment was a complete success. What number are you? Huh? Where is your tattoo?"
Cloud turned to the scientist. "Professor Hojo…I don't have a number. You didn't give me one because I was a failed experiment."
"What the…You mean only a failure made it here?"
"Professor…please give me a number. Please, Professor…"
"Shut up, miserable failure!"
Rufus' head was reeling. Sephiroth and Cloud were one, and the General was everywhere…in the room, above him…around him…inside of his very mind. Cloud…Sephiroth…was rising into the air. Spinning. Out of control.
There was a flash.
"Who was that?" asked Rufus to the Professor, breathless, as flashes of the Materia tree mixed with the sight of what was actually before him.
Hojo came closer. "He's a Sephiroth clone I created after the real Sephiroth died five years ago. Jenova cells and Mako, with my knowledge and skills, have been combined with science and nature to bring him to life."
'Just like you, Specimen,' hissed Rufus' own thoughts, darkly, his own voice mixed with those of Hojo's, Cloud's and Sephiroth's.
"I'm not wild about the failure part, but the Jenova Reunion Theory has now been proven. You see, even if Jenova's body is dismembered, it will eventually become one again. That's what is meant by Jenova's Reunion.
'It begins with the head.'
"I have been waiting for the Reunion to start. Five years have passed, and now the clones have begun to return. I thought the clones would begin to gather at Midgar where Jenova was stored, but my predictions were not entirely correct. Jenova itself began to move away from the Shinra Building."
'And she led you with her.'
"But being the genius that I am, I soon figured it out. You see, it was all Sephiroth's doing. Sephiroth is not just content to diffuse his will into the Lifestream; he wants to manipulate the clones himself."
'I will not be content to become his puppet.'
And the voice was only his.
He could hear Hojo, still ranting behind him, as he ran out, pulling Scarlet, Heidegger, and Rude along with him. The President ran to the airship, checking back to make sure his employees had followed, and ordered them to go on board before he ran back. Rude went to follow, but Heidegger, as his superior, stopped him.
"It's the President's orders."
Rufus had to really work to remain standing upright as the entire area began to quake. He dashed back into the cave, and looked up briefly to see Cloud standing, sideways against all logic, next to a silver-haired form within the Materia tree.
Rufus yelled to the group within the cave. "Whatever I say now is too little, too late. We must evacuate. I want you all to come with me. There is still much more I want to hear."
Red XIII wasn't listening, but was yelling up at Cloud. "Cloud, no! Stop! Please!"
Tifa yelled for Cloud as Rufus grabbed her wrist and dragged her with him. Red XIII and Hojo followed, the latter still laughing.
Cloud Strife handed the Black Materia to the true body of Sephiroth, who rested within the Materia tree, and the entire cave began to crumble apart as the General's eyes opened, his body filling with Meteor's energy.
"Cloud!" screamed Tifa as Rufus dragged her. "We can't just leave him here! He'll die for sure."
"Just shut up!" yelled Rufus back, gripping her wrist tighter and practically dragging her toward the Highwind as she fought with him, trying to run back to help Cloud. "This is the only time you're ever going to find me trying to save your sorry ass, so take what you can get."
'Cloud! Let me go! Let me…" Tifa finally went limp and fell to the ground, and Rufus just picked her up and carried her. Rude was watching, wide-eyed, as the President finally got her on board the airship.
"Is she…?" asked Rude.
"She's unconscious. Watch her for me. We're leaving Strife here. I will tell the pilot to take off."
"Yes, Sir."
In the hotel of Icicle Inn, Reno's PHS rang. He picked up without even checking to see who it was.
"Reno, I'm…sorry." came Rufus' voice.
"What the hell are you apologizing for? What happened? You okay?"
"He's going to summon Meteor. There was nothing I could do. I've failed."
Reno jumped up from Elena's bedside, and the woman stirred slightly, but didn't wake. "What? How did he…?"
"Strife was one of Hojo's experiments. A…'Sephiroth clone', he said. The true Sephiroth was in Northern Crater…it shouldn't be long, now, before Meteor comes. It's over."
"Hey, you can't just give up like that, you know? Maybe there's still something we can do! We can still…maybe…you gotta tell me there's something we can do, Rufus! Do the Cetra say anything about what happens if Meteor is summoned? Is there a way to stop it."
"Reno, if Meteor is summoned, the world ends. But I…I won't just die like this, like a coward. I'm in Junon. I'm going to watch it come. I just wish…" Rufus trailed off.
"What is it?"
"I wish you were here with me."
"Elena is unconscious. You were right, she went to Icicle Inn to face Cloud. I'm here with her, but I think she's in a good enough condition…I'll be there as soon as I can, okay?"
"It has begun…"
"No!" Reno yelled back, holding the PHS a little ways away from his face. "It can't happen yet! Everything can't just end like this!"
"Go outside. You have to see it…It's almost…I can't believe it, Reno. It's almost…beautiful."
Unbelieving, Reno sprinted to the front door, opened it, and stepped through, closing it behind him so as not to let the cold air in to harm Elena further.
Thousands of miles apart, Reno and Rufus watched as red light spread across the horizon like a sunset in fast-forward. From the North, the red light gained form and began to swirl together. It blocked the sun and turned the world to crimson night as the mass of blood-like light grew dark and began, it seemed, to pull the very stars from the sky into itself.
Meteor came, but it didn't move.
"Rufus…what's happening? Why aren't we dead yet?"
"Something…is stopping it. There's another energy keeping it from coming down. Do you see it?"
Reno, still staring at what had become almost a second sun, could see a strange kind of force around Meteor. He wasn't sure what it was, but he found himself agreeing with Rufus that this had to be some other energy trying to stop it.
He thanked whatever kind of Cetra gods there were, and he went back into the hotel. As he hit the warmer inside air, he realized he was shaking violently, both from the cold and for fear of the sheer impending doom hanging above the head of the world.
"Rufus, I am taking this chance, and I'm coming to Junon."
On the other side of the line, Rufus hung up.
Rufus walked into the room where Tifa Lockheart and another one of her companions, the large man with the gun for an arm, one Barret Wallace, were sitting. "I thought Cloud would show up to save you all…Professor Hojo wanted to check up on Cloud, too."
Tifa's eyes lit up. If Rufus thought that Cloud was alive, there was maybe some hope left. "What are you going to do to Cloud?" she found herself asking.
"Sephiroth's alter-ego…" Rufus looked down, flipping that ever-present shock of hair out of his eyes. "Meteor has been summoned. Essentially, it's all but over now, so there's no need for you…No, maybe there is an important task for you."
As if on cue, Heidegger entered. "President! Preparations for the public execution are complete."
Barret, in response to that, jumped up rather abruptly, his face twisted in anger. "Execution? What're you gonna get by executin' us?"
"You are to be executed for causing this situation. People are ignorant. They'll feel better as long as someone is punished."
Barret stormed up to the President, towering over him with rage, though Rufus didn't react. The man with the gun arm looked back at Tifa for a moment and then yelled into Rufus' face, a bit of spit hitting the young President as he did. "I take back what little praise I had for this damn jackass!"
Rufus calmly wiped the spittle from his face and turned, beginning to walk out. "Well, enjoy your last moments together.
Soldiers held Barret back as he tried to follow Rufus out of the room.
Rude was on the other side of the doors. "Sir, I hate to go against your wishes, but may I speak freely?"
"Rude, as I have known you, even if not personally, for some time, and because of the fact that I happen to be sleeping with your best friend, I give you free reign to drop the formalities and call me by my name, and to voice any complaints you may have in regards to my orders."
Rude grimaced. "…Rufus, do you think it's right to have them executed? Isn't it a bit harsh?"
"I don't see why you should think so. Your orders up until this point have been that you should kill them yourselves, so why is my having them die publicly any worse? Not only am I doing the job that you and the other Turks failed to do, but I am also serving to placate the masses."
Rude was silent.
"Unless there's something else, and it's not just that you are turning over a new leaf and you wish that we could all just get along. Is it Lockhart? If you do not think that I noticed the way you pined over her when she was unconscious and didn't know that you were practically drooling over her like a sick puppy."
Rufus saw the bald Turk clench his teeth.
"Oh, was that a bit harsh? I apologize, Rude, but in case you haven't noticed, the world is about to end, and I don't have time to be nice at the moment. Now, if you will excuse me, Weapon is topside, now that the Materia in the crater shattered and set it free, so I have some fighting to do."
Rude watched the man walk away for a short period, but just before he could get out the door, the Turk stopped him. "If the world's about to end, why do anything at all? Why fight?"
"I have to do something to keep entertained until we all die. You should do the same. Go be angsty or something."
And Rufus walked out, leaving Rude, who suddenly figured that, since doomsday was coming anyway, he could risk his job to try and save the woman he cared for, even if she didn't give a damn about him.
But when he got to where he wanted to be, he found that the job had been done for him.
At just about this time, a helicopter, water still dripping from its base where ice had once been, landed at the pad on top of Junon. Reno, who had flown the helicopter stepped out, ordering a Soldier to take Elena to the nearest doctor and to keep her safe. As he stood on the city's highest level, a fierce wind gripped the platform and set the red hairs upon the Turk's head blowing so hard that they whipped his face and neck, leaving barely-noticeable, painful welts.
The ground shook. The reverberating sound of huge waves of water beating against the metal plates that protected the coastal city from the sea was almost deafening. The top of a massive, moving form was visible over the city top. Its color was that of a sapphire gem, and the light of the fiercely burning Meteor caused it to glisten. There was the sound of gunshots and yells in the distance, and Reno found himself running to the nearest flight of stairs to try and get under Junon's surface.
As Reno sprinted as fast down the stairs as he could without tripping, he had to stop and hold the railings as the great sound of an explosion shook the entire city and him within it.
He stopped, still holding the rails, the small space of the staircase seeming as if it were about to close in. For a while, there was nothing, but the sound of gunfire soon returned, along with the blast of sirens and the blinking, ominous red light that accompanied them. Reno could hear the sound of larger weapons' fire above the sound of the shots, and he wondered fearfully whether the explosion had been Junon's newly-installed cannon, or if it had been the city being hit.
There was another quake as Reno began to move again, slowly, down the steps. This one was different than before. There was no explosion, but only the sound of metal hitting metal.
They were being rammed.
Rude didn't know what to do. Tifa was still in the gas chamber where she'd been locked, though Reeve's Cait Sith Entity had rushed in to help Barret in attempt to save her. He couldn't do much more than watch from his place behind a locked, too-solid steel and bullet-proof glass door to the recording auditorium where the execution of the woman that he may have loved if given the chance was taking place, among the sounds of the mixed fires of Shinra and the Sapphire Weapon.
He couldn't see what was happening within the gas chamber, but he could see Scarlet's laughing face behind another door, safe from the angry threats that were probably coming from the couple of AVALANCHE members who he, for once, really hoped would be victorious.
Then, there was an explosion, and smoke blurred his vision, filling the room on the other side of the door. When it cleared, there was a hole where a wall had been; a wall that connected to the gas chamber itself. He could see straight through the city's barrier, and the huge, green eye of Weapon almost looked for a moment if it were staring at him. And, as quickly as it all had started, the whole city shook again, and the fire of Junon's cannon reduced the great, green eye and the head of Sapphire Weapon to dust
Rude only hoped that the explosion had saved Tifa, and not killed her.
The doors to Rufus' office burst open, and he was ready to turn around and yell at whoever it was that had come to bother him, but his voice faded to a mere whisper and his expression softened when he saw the lanky, redheaded man in the doorway.
Reno, finally to where he had wanted to be, slumped against the wall just inside the office with a sigh. Rufus watched as the Turk struggled to keep his breaths even, as if he had run a long distance.
The blonde ordered everyone except for Reno out of the room.
"So…how are you?" asked Reno, his voice breathy and ragged.
"I'm alright. The fortress suffered a lot of damage, we lost some men, and AVALANCHE escaped with the Highwind out of a hole that Weapon blew straight through the steel plating, but other than that, I'm just peachy."
"And Weapon?"
"Dead. Destroyed. Whatever word you would use to describe those things' demises."
"Things? As in multiple things?" Reno said, wheezing exasperatedly.
"Yes. My sources have found at least three more, in various places around the world. We have named them all according to color, in jewel tones because of the fact that they're shiny, just so Scarlet would shut up. That one was…"
"Sapphire, I know. I saw a bit of it." Reno looked up, grimacing. "So, what are the other ones?"
"Ruby, Emerald, and Diamond. There are rumors floating about of another one that is even nastier than the rest, but we don't know much about it, because it's supposed to be constantly moving." Rufus stepped over to the redhead, offering him and hand, and he helped Reno to get up and walk over to a chair. "Well, that's one down, I guess, and all we can do now is see who can hold out longer, until we're all just killed by Meteor anyway, and bide our time."
"Sounds fun."
"Exceedingly."
Reno leaned back in the chair. "I saw Rude on the way down here, when I got lost trying to find your fucking office. He was real upset. Said you ordered that Tifa girl executed, because you wanted scapegoats to keep the people placated. He likes her, you know."
"I got that."
"He also said you were a real ass about it."
"Well, he has to hate somebody, doesn't he? I'd prefer it be me than you."
Reno cocked his head to the side. "What are you talking about? Why would Rude hate me?"
"He's a bit…homophobic, if you haven't noticed. Probably comes from having a name like Gertrude. You, his best friend, are sleeping with another man. He's going to be angry at someone, and if he has someone to blame that isn't you, he's more likely to just think that you're being forced into it by my authority as President or something and to think of you as a victim, not a…well, a queer."
Reno cocked his head to the other side. "Oh. Uh…thanks?"
Rufus just shrugged, turning and looking out the window. "Heh, it's kind of ironic. I didn't realize it until I said it, but the reason I'm making Rude hate me is the exact same reason I was going to execute AVALANCHE in the first place. I wanted to give them somebody to blame for it all."
"Speaking of AVALANCHE, what are you gonna do about them?"
"I'm going to do the exact same thing that I've been doing for the past few months. I'm going to let them go. Maybe the masses will see them as the glorious heroes or something and start blaming us, instead. I don't really care, as this point, as long as they have someone to look up to as a hero and someone else to look down upon as a villain."
Reno smiled, leaning against his hand. "Yeah, I think we could all use a bit of simple black-and-white, fairy-tale logic to keep us feeling safe and sound right now. After all, the good guys always save the world, right?"
Rufus smiled back, but sadly. "But, in the end, we all know what happens to the bad guy."
The redhead's face went stern and his voice serious. "Not in my story."
That night, Reno was sitting in a bar, Rufus beside him, the blonde laughing mockingly at his stupid jokes and drinking from a glass of vodka.
"That one was really bad," said Rufus, smirking, as he downed another large sip.
"I have another one. This one's better."
"I appreciate your trying to make me feel better about this whole situation, but I would prefer that you don't. I think I've had enough bad jokes for the evening."
Reno pouted for a long while, before he and Rufus suddenly burst into another bout of laughter.
Rufus paused and smiled at him, looking out the window and pointing, mesmerized, toward a blazing white streak that was descending from the sky like an angel being expelled from the heavens.
"What is that?" asked Reno.
"It's me. I'm going to die," answered Rufus simply, still smiling.
"…What?"
"Don't worry, Reno. There is no reason to fret over something you cannot change."
"I thought you didn't believe in fate."
"It's hard to tell what I believe these days."
The redhead frowned, his brows knitting together, only partially hiding the terror in the eyes below them, which wandered down slightly from the blonde's face. "Rufus, you're bleeding."
And it was true. As the two men talked, blood spread from a point in the center of the other man's chest, staining the cloth, both the black and the white, around it.
The President of Shinra Incorporated turned his head downward like a man in prayer, gazing softly at the crimson on his chest. He touched the cloth, and blood tipped his slim fingers. "So delicate," he said. "We're all so fragile, humans."
"You're not. You're strong. You're immortal."
Rufus' sharp nails cut straight through the cloth of his shirt and pulled it away from where skin should have been. Instead, there lay a gaping hole.
To Reno's horror, Rufus reached inside of his own chest, pushing through the back of his shirt and jacket. As he began to retract his hand, he paused, groping the side of the chasm and pulling out his heart.
He held it out feebly to the redhead. "Do you want it?" asked Rufus.
"Rufus, no…"
"Take it, please, Reno. I don't need it. You need it. Take it before it dies like I will."
The heart slowly began to blacken and wither, and the Turk reached toward it quickly, trying to stop its decay. As his own, much rougher fingers closed around it, the heart once again turned scarlet, beginning to beat of its own accord.
It startled Reno, and his fingers let go before his mind could scream in protest. Instead of landing in a mass of blood as it should have, it shattered like a mirror--like a vial of something precious and irrevocably irreplaceable--turning clear and lying like sparkling tears on the floor.
Reno was left wordless, his mouth forming what seemed to be "I'm so sorry…" Rufus simply smiled.
"It was only glass. Just broken glass, as meaningless and easily replaced as any other commonplace possession."
"But…it was your…"
"Just glass, Reno."
"I'll fix it. I'll put it back together for you. I'll…"
Reno gathered up the shards and tried to fit them back together, but Rufus had begun to leave, stepping through the door of the bar into the cold, cruel, black night.
The redhead had no choice but to follow, leaving the shattered heart behind.
There was blood everywhere--not his, but Rufus'. The bar was gone. The blonde stood before him, staring at a macabre portrait of death.
Reno gazed at this picture, too, framed by the ragged edges of the hole through Rufus' body. The picture mirrored its frame perfectly, showing Rufus himself impaled on a metal girder sticking up sinisterly from the blackness.
Reno suddenly felt like a child. "Rufus…stop. Please, stop," he pleaded to the Rufus hanging limply in the air as the other seemed to simply fade away, forgotten.
"Stop what, Reno?" asked Rufus feebly as the blood ran down the beam through his back.
"Stop acting like you're not gonna make it…"
"Reno…"
Rufus awoke to a flailing and screaming beside him.
"Rufus…Rufus, please…no…no……you can't…"
It took a moment for the blonde to realize that his lover was still dreaming.
"No…wake up…you have to wake up…you can't be…"
Rufus flipped over and pinned Reno to the bed and shook him.
"Reno!" he yelled. "Reno, come on. Whatever it is, it's a dream. Wake up!"
"Wake up, Rufus…please…"
"No, Reno, it is you that needs to awaken."
Reno woke with a start, the feeling of weight on his shoulders and sweat on his brow telling him that this was real.
"Reno…" Rufus whispered.
"Rufus…you're…"
"I'm right here…right here. You were having a nightmare. I woke up to find you yelling."
"…You're alive." Reno wrapped his arms around the man above him, pulling Rufus closer to his body almost expecting to be greeted by the feeling of warm blood against his chest.
The redhead felt silly for thinking so as the blonde replied simply and confidently, "Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"
Reno held Rufus close, laying the blonde's head on his chest and stroking his hair. Reno had been right all along. Rufus was strong. He was invincible. The blonde snaked his arms around Reno's waist, listening to his lover's slow, shaky breathing.
Rufus could only lay there, trying to remain calm from the fright of waking up to the other man's screams, and trying even harder to somehow will Reno's heartbeat to slow from its fevered and frenzied pace.
There was a long moment of silence as the two stayed like that, in each other's arms, before Reno finally spoke, unsurely and cautiously, almost as if more afraid of the words than the dream.
"…I…love you."
Miya's Note: Finally! Some real feelings in this thing! I've had that last section written for forever, and I'm happy I finally got to fit it in here.
And, before anyone asks me, it's not over yet. Stay tuned for the last two parts, and then for P3.
So. Excited. :D