Business As Usual

Chapter 30: In Memorandum

Miya's Note: Holy Shit. I just finished BAU.

All that's left to submit is the Epilogue, which is already written. It's been a hell of a crazy journey, and I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. After the Ep. (which I'll get up in a few days. Don't want to post one after the other, but don't want to make you guys wait too long, either.), I get to start a new (albeit connected) journey with Parallel Threes

This is a fairly short chapter, comparatively, but, believe me when I say that's a good thing. This one's chock-full of emotions and stuff, and I, for one, think making it any longer would have either been too much, or it would have just ruined it.

Well, since this is a special moment, I'm not gonna mar it with too many words. This is the last author's note in BAU. None at the end of this chapter, and none in the Epilogue. Don't track me down and lynch me if you don't like the ending, please! You've had fair warning from the start. (As always, read White Flag if you still haven't! It's the prologue, and it's not too long, I swear, and if you haven't read it, you may be a bit lost with how people got where they were at the very end.) Also, you must remember that though this is the end of BAU, it's not the real end of their story, itself..

Oh, and as a random note, P3 will, along with connecting everything to Advent Children, finally explain who the hell Reno's actually telling the story to! Excitement!

I shut up now. Enjoy.

Well, I could say that I was happy about my little revelation of that night. I could say I was thrilled, even.

I could say it, but I'd be lying.

Okay, so I was actually damn glad to have finally said it. You know, the words. It was like I had solved one of the world's great mysteries or some shit like that. It was a load off. It was kind of weird, though, because I was completely vulnerable from that point forward. Not just 'cause I'd admitted it to Rufus, but because I'd admitted it to myself. The gods only know how long I'd felt it, but I know that being scared of losing him was the thing that finally got me to say it.

It was the most feeling I'd put into those words, ever. I'd said 'em before, yeah. Usually, I'd not be so fucking scared of the damned words, though. Just words, I used to think. Just words. I'd tell the girls that I actually felt something for them to get them in bed with me. Nora meant a bit more, yeah, but I still don't think it meant as much as it did then…to a guy, even. Who woulda' thought it?

And it was like I'd taken a knife to myself and opened up my chest. No ribs, no skin; nothing to protect the most vital parts of me.

Guess what I had gotten in return for it.

Rufus had been Rufus, and as I should have expected (and stopped myself in that split-second I had to choose not to say it), Rufus had reacted in a manner thoroughly suited to…well, to Rufus.

He had simply said nothing at all.

Hell, at least in the nightmare, he'd given me his heart.

Needless to say, I was a bit irked. The begrudgingly existent, hated part of me that's actually an optimist had almost expected him to, like, burst into tears of joy or something, and then throw the words back at me, laced with all sorts of pretty, flowery, rich-man talk that would make me melt like a prepubescent schoolgirl or something. (I don't think my masculinity has ever been as in danger as it was that moment. Man, I was a wreck…even more than now, I think, and that's saying a lot.) I just wish I'd gotten something out of him. Some words, some reaction. Anything.

Hell, he could have even just said it back all sarcastically, and I think I would have been happier than having him…nothing.

But no. This is Rufus we're talking about. He's about as stubborn as a fucking steel wall, and it would probably take something big to get him to say it, if he even felt it at all.

I like to delude myself and think that he did feel it, and I don't think anything's gonna change my mind about it unless he, you know, comes back from the dead and tells me he didn't, and all that sex we'd been having was just sex, and all those personal talks of ours were just him using me as entertainment all along, like he often claimed. Hell, even then I may not believe him, because he would still be, invariably, Rufus.

And Rufus lies. Just like every man, woman, and child in Midgar lies. Just like I'm lying to myself at this exact moment.

But, you know, the fact that he never said it back to me really can't change the fact that I really did feel like he…well, you know. I don't think I can say that…that not-just-a-damn-word again, alright? Not like this. Not with him gone and me here and everything else still stubbornly living on as if nothing happened.

But yeah, when we got back to Midgar, it sure did make my denial a hell of a lot easier, because the last time I ever went back into mine and Rufus' room in the Shinra Building, the first thing I saw was the painting he'd hung on the wall right inside the entryway.

It was an absolutely gorgeously done, but unfinished picture of flowers, but it wasn't one of those girly little florals you see in hotels and things. These flowers were wicked. They looked poisonous, in blacks, reds, and greens, with this kind of purple-blue glow. These fuckin' flowers looked like they could kill you.

These were monster flowers.

In fact, these were the very same monster flowers that had been painted for me by Leanora Richmond as a get-well gift when I was in the infirmary with broken ribs.

I wasn't exactly sure what Rufus was trying to say by putting that painting right where I'd see it when I walked in, but I got the feeling that his intentions were good that time. Then, my doubt kicked in, and I couldn't help asking myself if he was mocking me. I walked closer to the painting, hoping to get some answers.

I did.

It had been expensively framed in the rich wood Rufus liked so much, with a small plaque under it that read, simply, "In Memorandum."

I think everything about me pooled into a great glob in the middle of my gut when I saw that, and I just stared at that plaque so long and so intently, running my hand over the etched words, that I barely noticed the apartment's front door opening behind me.

Arms snaked around my neck. His breath warmed the back of my left ear.

And for that moment, I could imagine that he felt it.

For that moment, I could imagine that I knew.

"Rufus, why?" asked Reno, turning and backing up. "Why this, why now, why…"

The blonde silenced Reno with a thin finger to the redhead's lips. Rufus smiled slightly and placed his hands on the other man's shoulders, drawing the two of them close again.

Reno moved to speak once more, but Rufus shook his head. He placed his hands gently--so gently, that it startled Reno far more than if he had taken out a gun and shot him--on tear-scarred cheeks.

A knot in the Turk's stomach tightened.

Rufus leaned just close enough so that Reno could taste the bitter-sweet of his breath. The blonde held his lover's face tighter when the Turk tried to bring their lips together. It became suddenly and blindingly obvious that Rufus had complete control, and the glint in his eyes seemed to urge Reno to simply relax and let him explore.

Ice eyes closed, and as the coldness left them between dark lashes it gripped Reno and he froze, his breath suddenly drawing more of Rufus' taste into his mouth before it hitched. The blonde loosened his grip, but Reno still didn't--couldn't force himself to move, watching eyelids and cheeks and lips as they softened into a strange, euphoric expression.

'I don't believe you, Rufus. I don't believe that any of this really means anything.'

Reno's eyes closed, too, for a split-second, as lips almost-brushed lips. Their noses touched, just slightly, and it seemed to surprise them both, and they drew back. Rufus was radiating heat.

'I need you to prove it.'

The ice was still gone from those eyes, and Reno shivered involuntarily as he felt it hang lazily around him. Rufus' fingers moved from his cheeks. One hand fell to the President's side, and the other dropped only a few inches to run lightly over the Turk's jaw line. A mischievous smirk graced the delicate features of Rufus Shinra's face, and Reno felt every muscle in his body tighten, and he still couldn't breathe, and the blonde was close--so close.

The ice returned to Rufus' eyes where it belonged, slowly, as their lips met, and the redhead warmed again as his own fire returned to him. At first, Reno was stunned by the kiss, but soon he felt himself relaxing--melting--into the touch that he had grown to know so well.

It was their first kiss again, with all the questioning, and the wonder, and the fear. It was their entire relationship summed up in a wordless show of adoration and passion and denial. It was the kiss that would define them in Reno's eyes, forever.

And it would be their last.

Reno collapsed soon after, almost inexplicably, the weight of everything--doubt, elation, love, fear--barreling him to the ground.

Rufus, dizzy from the pure, euphorically distracting dose of dopamine that had rushed to his head as their lips touched, and weak from his fight against a world whose fate he would refuse to share until it consumed him, fell victim to the weight of Reno's body against his and stumbled backward into the door, unable to catch the redhead as their bodies parted in the fall.

From the plush carpet of an apartment on Shinra Tower's seventh floor that would, in only a matter of too-few hours, be reduced to nothing but rubble, Reno Kiribani raised his heavy head to look toward eyes carved into ice, and at how they were accompanied by a newly-etched smile.

Reno knew, however, that ice sculptures were fleeting in the face of flame.

Rufus was fighting. Against all odds, he was fighting, and Reno's fear for him grew. Already, the redhead could see his lover growing weary, his resolve crumbling. Skin fair like porcelain became skin pale as ash, and once-full pink and almost feminine lips became chapped and dry and gray. Ice cracked in eyes, and the copper-gold of hair grew tarnished.

Reno's Yu Yahme had grown tired, it seemed, of immortality.

He tried to ask about it. Rufus had seemed so sure of everything when he had assured the Turk that he was alive, but everything about the man spoke of a coming death.

Rufus just wanted to ask him, "Don't you feel it? How near the end has grown?" He had tried to steal the redhead's fire to understand how he couldn't. He used that fire as fuel to battle.

But the more fire he took, the more tired Reno grew, too, and the President soon would not allow himself to feed on it when he saw the damage it was causing.

"Rufus, tell me you're okay again," said Reno, standing at the door, his small suitcase packed for another mission.

"If I told you, would you believe me?"

"I don't know. Making myself believe things I shouldn't has gotten a lot easier lately."

"I'm alright," was the simple and empty reply.

Reno touched Rufus' cheek and gave him the fire that he had silently refused to take.

And then he left, and Rufus watched him go, still frozen and silent from the ice that wouldn't melt, and that had always held him back from doing what really mattered.

Words mattered. Fighting didn't matter, because Rufus knew it was futile. Still, it was all a matter of pride, and he would do it until the end.

He had sent Reno on a seemingly very important mission, to acquire a piece of so-called "Huge Materia" that may have, if used correctly (as according to Scarlet) been able to destroy Meteor. He knew there would be resistance to the plan. He knew in the deep pits of his mind that he would probably fail, so he secured the locations of as many of the materia as possible, as safeguards.

Which still, he knew, barely had a chance in hell of working.

Rufus remarked with a slight smirk at how his own incessant pessimism never ceased to amaze him.

He also remarked at the fact that it was rather oddly amusing that he was attempting to fight one big rock with another.

Over the course of just hours, Rufus Shinra got messages from various personnel in SOLDIER that, one after another, the transport of the Huge Materia had been intercepted by AVALANCHE.

Until only one was left, and Reno was the only futile hope he had.

Suddenly, it all made sense. It all came down to irony.

Reno stepped from the helicopter onto the still-debris-ridden platform at Junon.

Irony was that his last mission was in the city where it had all began, and where he'd longed to be for eight years, but that he, at that moment, wished to be back at the home he'd wanted to leave for far too long.

The Turk stepped down the many stairs toward where his mission lay, and each step made a strange sense of doom and dread grow in the back of his mind, the pit of his stomach (where it had been knotting itself up painfully for days), and the core of his chest.

Irony was the fact that flame was receding deep into the hellish pits of the earth, while ice was trying to touch the cold air of the heavens.

Step. His breaths echoed in the cavernous path to the underwater reactor that was his destination.

Irony was the fact that he had a gun and the keys to the helicopter and the realization of feelings that he had never felt or wished to feel; but that he feared, the same as he had on his first mission when he had been younger and naïve, with none of these things that he had, at one point, thought would make him a man.

Step, echo, step. His heart was beating so loudly it was filling his ears and threatening to make his skull shatter.

Irony was that he knew the gun was empty, and that, when he held it to his head and pulled the trigger, it clicked, and he found himself murmuring, "Bang, Kiribani."

Beat, step, echo, beat, step. He barely noticed the sound of the elevator doors that would take him the rest of the way to the reactor.

Irony was the fact that the only other person in the elevator was a man with a cigar and an arrogant sneer.

Echo, beat, echo. Reno watched the stone girders go by as he descended.

Irony was that he didn't notice, in the short space it was visible, the advertisement for the supposedly soon-to-be-built Junon Arts Museum that hung on the wall of one of the floors that he passed.

Ding, as the elevator stopped. Step, echo, beat, as he walked to his place. The sounds in Reno's head were drowning out the sounds of the SOLDIERs as they began to load the Huge Materia into the submarine that would take it to Rocket Town to be blasted into space, hopefully to collide with Meteor and destroy it.

Irony was Cloud Strife suddenly standing behind him, making snide remarks.

His thoughts were broken. Reno wasn't in the mood to fight. Lacking any usual vigor or urge to quip back, he sent a robot that he, ironically, knew would lose in battle to AVALANCHE.

Irony was that he had gotten to the point where he didn't care.

The faster this finished, the faster he could get back to Midgar. The robot fell, but the submarine got away. AVALANCHE commandeered a submarine of their own to follow.

Still, Reno didn't care.

Irony was the fact that the one man that Rufus had ever truly feared had, in all actuality, grown too afraid to act.

Whatever. Fuck the mission. Fuck fighting.

Step, echo, beat, echo, step, as he--tired--climbed the stairs again.

On the helicopter back to Midgar, Reno watched as a light was propelled into the sky from the horizon in the general direction of Rocket Town. He watched as the light collided with Meteor. He watched as the light became brighter as it hit, and the sound that echoed through the atmosphere went from deafening to utter silence in a matter of seconds.

Meteor, only slightly damaged from the rocket and Materia's blast, was putting itself back together.

As Meteor rebuilt, their last chance shattered.

Reno didn't see it the next morning, long after he had pulled into the city, that the Weapon that had been labeled Diamond had risen from the depths of the sea (that he, himself, had just left the night before), and was heading straight for Midgar. He, ignorant except for a feeling of dread in the back of his mind, the pit of his stomach, and the core of his chest, met up with Rude and Elena with a forced smile, just before the alarms started to sound.

All of Midgar looked up to see the recently-moved cannon from Junon that had killed this Weapon's Sapphire-hued kin, and wanted to feel safe, but couldn't.

And though the world was ending, though the legacy of a God named Simayahme, the legacy of a family named Shinra, and the legacy of a world named Gaia had lost all hope of life beyond the looming force of Meteor's crash; seventy stories in the air, a single ant, dying, too, from the exhaustion of its long journey in search of food for a nest and a queen that had, unbeknownst to it, been destroyed not twenty minutes before, crawled onto the desk of Rufus Shinra and quickly had the life snuffed from it by the hand of the last perhaps-God to walk the earth.

In feeling how easy it was to kill it, the perhaps-god wondered...

'How much thought does an ant put into dying?

What is the last thing running through its mind before the shoe, before the spray, before it is lifted to the sky and crushed between thumb and forefinger? Exactly how much thought, if any, does an ant put into dying? Does it think of its queen, or its friends?

Does an ant have friends?

Or maybe it agonizes over how it failed in life. Perhaps, instead, in realizing it is nothing more than an ant, it can die in peace: "So that was life, and this is death. There I was, and here I go. How pointless."

Or maybe it just thinks, "Damn." And then it dies.

It's funny, isn't it, that as I stand here knowing, somehow, that I am going to die--whether it be by Weapon, or a futile mistake I make in trying to save myself, or even in nothing dramatic like that where, instead, I trip down the stairs ten minutes from now and break my neck--I find myself thinking about ants?

I wonder what that says about me. Do the ants represent something? Maybe that's how I see myself, or Reno, or the people of my forsaken city.

Or, perchance, they are just ants, after all, and I am spending my last precious moments of life contemplating insects.

Weapon's looming in the distance like mechanical Death on the horizon. They tell me it's coming straight for Midgar, but Scarlet says we're prepared, the stupid bitch. She says the cannon is ready, and she decides to give it a name, the Sister Ray, but I know better. I try to resist laughing. How silly, to name something that will probably be destroyed in a matter of minutes. How silly, to care about names when you're about to die, as I knew we both were soon going to.

Not as silly as ants, I guess.

But, it doesn't hurt to play along. After all, you can't hurt a dead man.

So "Fire," I say simply as Weapon nears. Scarlet's Sister Ray cuts through the thing and destroys it as easily as if crushing an ant. But this one decided to fight back, and all that I can do is watch as the beams of light fly toward me like a reflection of our cannon's fire.

So, I have changed, Mother. I would have just stood there before, but now I'm running from the light. I run from that burning, blindingly white light toward the only darkness I can find.

And I realize that I just jumped through my office window.

Yes, I tried to save myself, Mother. I found my reason to live. I wonder if Reno can feel as well as I do how much closer I am to death. I gave him my gift. The question is whether he ever learned how to use it.

I never had vertigo before today. Now that I'm falling, I see why people were so afraid of heights.

As I attempt to stop myself, I feel my right shoulder rip from its socket. I tried, Reno. Aren't you proud of me, or am I being a masochist again? I know I am going to die, so why try to avoid the inevitable, when all it brings is pain?

But, nonetheless, I try again, and I am hanging onto something with my other hand. Not much farther, and it's over.

I am sorry, Reno. I cannot hold on.

So that was life, and this is death. There I was, and here I go. How pointless.

Reno, I lo…'

"Damn," was all that Reno Kiribani could bear to say. "Damn," was the only thing that he could manage as he came upon the impaled body of Rufus Shinra.

But "Damn," just didn't seem to adequately express what ran through his head at that moment.

Dead.

Rufus was dead.

No.

No, Reno couldn't believe it.

He wouldn't.

He moved quickly, running over the debris as fast as he could. Sharp pieces of the shrapnel of Midgar's lost battle cut into his skin, tearing gashes through his clothes, straight into his arms and legs.

He tripped once, and he stumbled many times, but he kept running, his body deteriorating more the farther his soul forced him to carry on.

The body was too high up for him to reach. He had to find a way, so he began to make a pile of the wreckage, having to ignore the presence of other corpses in favor of the man who, in death, ruled them.

He didn't notice as Rude and Elena emerged into the battlefield. They stood silently as their brother-in-arms fought to reach the God of Midgar. Rude's eyes lowered to face the ground. Elena's stared at the redhead, wide with confusion and fear.

Reno began to push the body from its pike. As he pushed it closer and closer toward the top, the two other Turks saw his struggle and ran to his aid.

Together, they brought Rufus down, and Reno dropped to the ground with him, cradling the blonde tenderly over his knees. He was blind to the blood over the man's form that had quickly begun to stain his hands and clothing. He held Rufus closer to him, hunching over and burying his face in the blood-soaked shirt.

And he began to cry, the slight spasms spreading the blood over his cheeks.

After a long while, he stopped and sat up slowly, looking down into Rufus' pale and unmoving face. He smiled softly, but failed to stop his tears.

Rufus' eyes stared back, neither cold as ice nor hot in passion, but empty and ash-gray as his skin.

"Rufus, hey…you're gonna be alright, okay?" Reno said, quietly, despite the lack of life in the gaze that couldn't quite lock with his. "I'll save you. Midgar's your fairy-tale city, right? We're gonna have a happy ending. I'll save you, just like you did for me. Gotta return the favor, right? Yeah, I know I'm being selfish again. That's what you're gonna say. I'm being selfish."

"Reno."

The redhead gasped slightly, staring hopefully at the blonde's lips, pleading with his eyes for movement, even though his subconscious told him that it was Rude speaking.

Irony was that he had almost expected the lips to move.

"Rufus, c'mon…wake up, okay? Everything's gonna be fine now. I'm here to save you."

"Reno, stop. It's no use. He's…"

"C'mon, okay? Just wake up…wake up! Please Rufus! You can't do this to me!"

"…dead, Reno. Reno."

"Why are you doing this? Why won't you wake up, you son of a bitch?"

"What's going on, Rude?" asked Elena meekly. "He was just our boss, right? I don't understand…"

"Just don't, Elena," reprimanded Rude gently.

"You're a bastard, Rufus…you're such a fucking bastard…I hate you! I hate you!"

The city was still. The cold metal of the wreckage seemed to ring with the echoes of Reno's screams, along with the ragged breaths of a lover killed inside by another's death. The ringing became song, and filled the redhead's mind.

Reno Kiribani looked up at his fellow Turks, tears cutting though Rufus' blood on his cheeks.

He spoke to them softly.

"He's not gonna wake up, is he? He's really dead…"

Rude and Elena were completely silent. The ringing chants grew louder. Reno felt like a child. His own screams' song was a lullaby from a mother he never knew. It was the loud music of bars on lonely nights that, with enough alcohol, could stop all negative thought. It was a smooth tenor voice in a bed on floor seven of a building that no longer existed, singing in ancient words he couldn't understand.

But, still, he wasn't comforted.

"Rufus, I'm sorry…my God, I'm so sorry…I couldn't save you."

There was nothing he could do. Reno had lost the battle.

It was over.

Dead, finished, done.

Even Midgar's metal dirge had grown suddenly silent.

Gone.