-------------Last Night On Planet-------------

-------------Written By: Reality Obscured-------------

Elena's POV

Elena sat, watching, a not so cold beer in her hand. Her eyes were on a well dressed gentleman sitting at a table on the opposite end of teh bar. Well, maybe not a gentleman, but closer to one than the red-headed man he was sitting with ever would be. Mdigar was falling apart, Rufus Shinra was dead, and it was well known that Meteor was going to destroy the world within the next twenty-four hours.

Even though, the Turks -or, ex-Turks, as it would be- were sitting at a bar in Junon, slugging alchohol as though it would be a crime for the end of the world to see them sober. Pathetic. Reno was soused to the incoheret point, his head having slammed down on the table long ago. Rude, on the other hand... It was unusual to see Rude go through only one beer. Elena knew she wasn't big on drinking, but Rude could put away a good 12-pack before the stumbling stage began. Maybe he wanted to see the end of the world. She knew she did. Elena looked down at her own bottle. She deserved it, especially with all the regrets she had. All time time she had wanted to impress everyone so much, but in the end she simply showed herself up to be a ditz on drugs. Tseng was dead without even knowing how she had felt about him, and as for respect? Respect was in short supply, even from the underlings of the company. Yeah, she deserved the world to blow up, starting with the ground right below her feet.

A bottle clattered to the floor, Rude the one who had knocked it away. The large ex-Turk stood up, a heavy frown on his usually neutral expression. Elena looked up at him and watched in confusion as he left the bar. Maybe he was taking this harder than she had thought. Standing up, she took a quick look back at the passed out Reno before walking out the door herself. Rude had been the only one besides Tseng who had shown her any sort of respect at all. He deserved someone to talk to. Catching sight of Rude disappearing down an alley, Elena jogged a little to catch up with him. She saw him turn around briefly, probably to see who was following him, but when he saw who it was he just turned right back around and continued walking. She caught up with him quickly and checked her stride to keep pace with his. Luckily for her Rude tended to be a slow walker, despite his height. She looked up at him.

"You ok?"

Rude, as always, "..."

"The end of the Planet, and you still won't say hardly anything to me?" "

She looked away, angling her gaze to the ground. Maybe it would be best if she just got a room at an inn and slept the world away. Rude obviously didn't want to talk, and since she didn't have anyone else to hang around... Something strong would help with that. She stopped and turned around, letting him walk on. That bar probably sold liquor by the bottle. Since it was the end of the world, spending all her money on booze didn't seem that bad.

About that time, she heard him speak. "It've got some beer up at my place. Want some?"

Her first thought was to ask what had been wrong with the beer at the bar but thought better of it. "Sure, ok. But Rude," She looked at him. "I didn't know you lived in Junon."

He just shrugged.

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Three and a half bottles later, Elena had loosened up, and generally was undergoing mood swings between depression and drunket optimism. She had stripped herself of her tie and slung it over her shoulder, her suit jacket unbuttond and her dress shirt untucked. This kind of sloppiness was what she frequently chastised Reno for, and was also told to shut up about just as frequently by Tseng and Reno both. Reno she ignored, but Tseng she couldn't. She was sitting on Rude's old black sofa, slumped over with her elbows on her knees. Rude's apartment wasn't what she had expected. It was actually a little more. Since he was both a Turk and a bachelor, Elena had thought there would only be a few sparse pieces of furniture sitting around. Rude didn't exactly come to Junon a lot, but he ended up having a fully furnished one bedroom apartment. Granted, the furniture looked old and worn, but it was still in good shape. Rude, by now, had downed a few more beers and was sitting on the other end of the couch. He had actually kept up a less sloppy appearance than she had.

"I didn't think it would end like this..." She said, back in her bout of depression once again. "Shot, sure, I expected that. Stabbed? That, too! But this?"

She had made it through the academy, positioned as a soldier, and then eventually as a secretary in one of Shinra HQ's higher offices. While the salary was a substantial upgrade, she had thought it was initially a downgrade from what she wanted. Her sharpshooting record was almost unmatched by any of the other soldiers currently in the military besides the elite factions. When she was served papers saying that she was to undergo training to become a Turk, she thought it would be a sincere upgrade to her current lifestyle. How in Hell she downgraded she had no idea... A hundred failed relationships and even more times of her making a fool of herself. That was what life was all about, it seemed.

"It isn't that bad." Rude said. "Maybe, if we're lucky, we won't see it coming."

"Trying to cheer me up, Rude?" A small smile crossed her lips. " Elena gave a short chuckle. "Well, it worked."

Rude was right. Maybe Meteor would blindside them all. She'd be sleeping and then WHAM, she wouldn't be sleeping anymore. Then again, she would, but it would be more of the eternal sleep than just getting through a night.

"Elena..." Rude started. She looked up at him. "You do know I like you, right?"

Elena was stunned. She hadn't expected that. "You've...never said anything..."

He took another drink. "..."

Suddenly, she gave an outburst that even she thought that she didn't have in her. She hit her hand on the sofa arm, standing up, her voice hard. "I'm such a fuck up!" She walked over to the apartment's only window, which was only a few strides away, looking out it. "I'm glad Meteor's coming! With everything passing right in front of me, I might as well be dead!"

Her entire body felt like it was shaking from the inside out, and tears were starting to run down her cheeks. She didn't care what Rude thought. It didn't matter. She had been told to keep it inside by almost everyone that she had come across, and if tonight of all nights she couldn't release some of this tension she didn't know when! It was finally getting to her, the incredibility of the moment. The world was dying and she would be dead about this time tomorrow.

"We're all dead." She said, almost a whisper. "We just don't know it yet."

A strong arm was put around her shoulder, and Elena turned, burying her face in Rude's chest, her arms around him. She didn't know how long he held her, but she did know that she felt herself falling asleep in his warm embrace.

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Elena woke up on the couch with a pillow and a blanket thrown over her that she didn't remember falling asleep with. In fact, she didn't remember falling asleep at all. Her headache wasn't as bad as she thought it would be, but it was still bad enough to make her not want to move. Pleasantly enough, the blinds had been lowered to keep the light out. Obviously Rude knew what kind of hangover measures to take. Rude!

She sat up and immediately wished she hadn't. Whatever pain she was feeling at the time, her thoughts were on something else. She hadn't been so bad as to she couldn't remember what had happened last night. Rude had confessed to her that he liked her, and she had made a scene of herself by going off on a rant. While that hadn't been like her at all, it had felt good.

Most of all, she remembered what it had felt like when Rude had tried his hand at comforting her, something she hadn't ever thought was in the big Turk...and succeeded! She had seen him merciless kill with those same hands, crack a man's neck without hesitation with those same arms, but he had held her as gently with them as if she had been the most fragile thing in the world. Something told her she had to change her way of thinking now that this new information had come to light. Speaking of which, where was Rude? Just listening to the silence told her that he wasn't in the apartment anywhere. Reno had been drunk off his gord last night, something that wasn't entirely new to him. After listening to him babble on and on about how the Planet should thank him for everything he had done, Elena was glad when he had finally passed out. Rude was probably checking on him. They were friends, after all, though she didn't know why.

She thought about just walking out onto the street just as she was, knowing that it wouldn't really matter to anyone how she looked. However, she ended up making herself more presentable on her own terms, tucking in her shirt again and making it as straight as possible. After that, she made her way back to the bar, mostly to see if she could locate Rude. In the bar, all she found was the bartender, no patrons of any sort anywhere to be found. The barkeeper looked up at her as she walked in.

"Looking for that tall bald guy?"

Elena nodded, stepping up to the bar. "Do you know where he is?"

The scruffy, none too slim man went back to cleaning out the joint's shot glasses, every now and then wiping the counter with the same old, stained rag. "Happens every time. They come in, get drunk, an' that red headed guy spends the night. Th' bald guy always picks him up later."

What a life. "Guess you don't know where they go?"

"Not really, but do I care? Nope. Not at all." He turned his back to her, bending over to put the glasses on a shelf down below on the other side of the bar. His crack showed too obviously for her, and she had to advert her gaze. "Not on a day like this. Sure, someone comes in, an' I'll still charge 'em, but that's only b'cause Meteor might not hit."

"What if it does hit?"

"Then it wouldn't really matter, now would it?"

He stood up and turned back around to look at her. "Go stay with family or somethin'. Anything but bugging me."

"What family?" Was her reply as she turned to leave.

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She had no family. Never had, and never would as far as she was concerned. Elena supposed she had hopes of the Turks becoming the closest to a family she had ever had. There was a certain closeness involved with being part of that group, but so much for that. The policies read that a Turk should never engage in any sort of carnal activity with another Turk, and actually one of the Turks wasn't supposed to have a family at all. Shinra Inc. was their family. That kept most of her thoughts of Tseng to herself. Right now, those same thoughts weren't helping, even the ones that reminded her of how quickly she'd meet him. Just a few hours now. It was around 2:00 in the afternoon already. If only her insides didn't feel like they were slowly rotting away. She wanted to puke.

"Hey, Elena."

The condition worsened as a familiar man walked up to her, casually putting his arm around her shoulders to hug her side to his as they walked. He hadn't had anything to drink yet as far as she could tell. Reno's suit was more roughed up than usual, and he had a good stubble going, meaning he had taken her considerations that she had gotten when she herself had awakened to heart.

"You, me, tonight... Whaddya say?" He asked, hardly subtle about it. Just the words were abrasive, like steel wool on the skin.

She pushed him away, which amounted to giving her only a foot's space between the two of them. "Leave me alone, Reno. It's my last day on the Planet, and I'm not spending it with you."

This didn't discourage him. "I remember the way you used to look at me. You've been playing hard to get."

Elena knew his sexual comments all too well, combined with the mental downgrading she usually received not too long afterward. His view on women was that they were all on the Planet for him just to enjoy. Whenever she wasn't able to ignore him any more, or when he would go too far, Tseng would throw him a threatening look or Rude would find a hint at he needed to back down.

"It's called loathing." She said. "You should be used to that."

He stopped. "Since when did you get an attitude?" She didn't answer him, but kept on walking. "You and Rude are just alike." He brushed his hair back. "He's all holed up in that thing he calls an apartment. But I guess he wasn't alone last night." A smile creeped its way across his lips. "Guess he tagged you first."

"You're disgusting." Her voice went flat. "Nobody tagged anybody."

"That's what Rude said. Personally, I'm not the only one who fantasizes about what you can do. Now, I'm willing to take seconds..."

"Reno!" Elena stopped dead in her tracks, spinning around to face him. He walked up to her, his eyes running up and down her body. He was decidedly bolder without someone around who could stop him, she instantly saw, but she wasn't exactly afraid like she had expected she would be.

"Stop hiding it. You're not exactly innocent, Elena"

Elena struck out, her white knuckled fist connecting squarely with Reno's jaw. He fell back and landed on the ground. He sat up a second later, his hand on his jaw. Disbelief was in his eyes, not the disbelief that Elena had hit him but that she had slugged him that hard! She had split Reno's lower lip, but the blood on the knuckles of her right hand wasn't his. She had broken the skin there pretty badly on his lower palate.

"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that." She said as she walked away, letting the blood start to drip down from her hand.

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The sun was starting to set. It was close to 6:00. Just six more hours until total destruction. Sounded good...if whoever was hearing it was some kind of morbid poet. Using her passcard, which still worked here in Junon, she had gone up to the huge expanse of the airfield. It could be considered the highest point of the city, and the view of the setting sun was excellent. Most of the aircraft were gone. It made sense. Rufus hadn't exactly been the best when it came to luck with planes.

Eventually, her hand had started to sting, and she had cleaned and bandaged it. It made her feel good that she had clocked Reno one. Now she was starting to wonder if Tseng would have reprimanded her if she had done it before now. There was the chance that he wouldn't have. A very good chance... Why did imminent doom make people think? A person could go throughout life without a single thought in their head, a perfect retard that, with luck on their side, could only sweep floors for a living, and they would suddenly become philosphers just a few hours from death.

In short, she hated being clueless, and it took her until this day to figure everything out. The reason Rude had always been somewhat nice to her was that he really liked her, and keeping Reno off of her back was just a way he showed her he cared without openly showing it. The entire time she had her heart on a lost cause and Rude was right there. Now she was angry with herself. It sure had taken her long enough! Elena spun around as she heard the platform just ten feet behind her activate, dropping to the next level. There stood Rude, looking surprised like he had been caught red handed. He regained his posture almost immediately, but it was pretty obvious that he had been watching her when the motion sensor on the platform had gone off.

She quickly decided to play it casual. "Here to enjoy the sunset?" When he didn't answer, she continued. "How many sunsets have you enjoyed in your lifetime, Rude?"

"I always had better things to do." Was his reply. He strode up to her, stopping just a couple of feet away. His gaze moved toward the sun as it dropped on the horizon. "I saw Reno. You decked him good."

Elena wasn't sure, but he almost sounded pleased. "I guess..."

"It's about time."

That time he definitely sounded pleased, like he had been expecting it to happen all along. He probably was, as far as she could tell. She smiled, a little more pleased with herself than she had been before. It always felt good when someone had your back.

When the silence broke again, it was she who spoke. "Let's say Cloud and the others are successful and Meteor doesn't destroy the Planet. The Turks are dead. What are you going to do?"

"..."

"Come on." She goaded. "What have you got to lose from telling me?"

"..."

So much for holding a conversation.

She had almost forgotten how difficult it was to hold a conversation with the big guy. She shrugged and put her hands in her pockets, deciding just to drop the subject.

"The Turks are dead, but our reputation isn't. It'll be easy to land mercenary work." He said. "What about you?"

Elena's plans weren't as glamorous, but as long as she had Rude talking she wasn't about to quit now! She hadn't really planned them out. "I've got some Materia I can sell, then find a job as a waitress or something. Blonds in mini-skirts seem to be getting popular."

"You can do better."

"Work was hard to find before. It's not going to be easy now, Rude." She said in reply. "Moving up to the Icicle Inn area sounds nice. I've only been there once, but I really liked it."

There was a pause in the conversation for a few seconds, but Rude picked it up again. "Elena... Will you do me a favor?"

It wasn't like Rude to ask favors of anyone or anything. Lacking anything else to reply, "Sure, ok. What is it?"

She felt him turn her around, take her into his arms, and capture her mouth with his. The kiss wasn't soft, but it wasn't hard and demanding, either, but all the same Rude was kissing her! It surprised the heck out of her, but she didn't want to fight it. After a couple of seconds he broke the kiss, looking at her only a bit before turning aound and starting his walk back toward the base. The platform rose, and Elena watched as he rode it down. However long that passed before she regained her senses, she wasn't about to sit down and calculate. Very little thought went into her next action. Elena jumped on the platform that had risen again, jumping when it got close enough to the ground that she knew she could make it. Running, she caught him just as he started to open the door into the base. When he turned around, she kissed him, wrapping her arms around his neck. She felt him kiss her back, and he literally engulfed her smaller form in his embrace.

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Elena was led by Rude into his apartment, and as soon as the door was closed and locked she fell victim to his work. Silently, the two had decided the same thing. It was there last few hours and they were not going to wait. Her jacket was pulled off and dropped to the floor, as was his, and the buttons of her shirt were already getting worked on. her hands were on his shirt as well. She had half of the buttons undone by the time he had gotten through all of her own. She lost track what she was doing entirely when his mouth went to her neck and shoulder, his hands on her breasts.

The bra was removed a couple of seconds later. Her shirt was pulled away, and she saw his drop, too. Skin against skin as exilarating, and sometime in there she wanted to know what he tasted like. She began to kiss down his chest, using her the tip of her tongue to trace along the muscular lines she found. When she ringed it around one of his nipples, she felt him stiffen, which resulted in his actions having a couple seconds of delay. He picked her up and carried her to the bed. Small moans escaped her as she watched him remove her pants, kissing his way down her thigh as he went along. Now fully nude and exposed to him, she felt vulnerable, but not as embarrassed as her nakedness as she thought she would be.

He stood up, and she watched him now as he removed his own belt and pants. Seeing him in all his glory was far beyond anything she had expected. Toned and in shape, even with all the booze he had downed in his lifetime he was far from having a beer gut. From the pubic hair, she could guess that at one point he had probably been a brunette. Elena looked up, realizing that she had been caught staring. He was well endowed, after all.

For the first time in her life, Elena saw Rude smile at her.