Approaching the three-story home, Aria and Vincent surveyed the massive gardens that made up its grounds. With a brief and quiet conversation with the two guards standing outside the large iron gates at the front of the property, Reno had gained the trio access. He now led them directly to the front door, a heavy dark wooden barrier with visible inlays of iron offering more protection than the average civilian could ever need. The redhead looked up into a camera above the door and within seconds, the door opened. Rude stood on the other side, silently allowing passage to the group, but visibly raising an eyebrow at Aria. She smiled politely, but he did not buy it.
In the large foyer, Reno turned around, addressing the pair quietly. "These grounds are obviously more secure than the WRO, and on the edge of town, they aren't easily accessible. We have snipers everywhere, so if Deepground approaches, we'll know a day in advance. I don't foresee that happening, but there are saferooms available if it should."
"No, there aren't. You can't stay here."
Six eyes raised to the top of grand staircase to find Tseng shaking his head.
"Out. Reno, you know better. Out." He spoke to all three, but looked only at Aria. She noticed.
"I'll play by your rules, Tseng. We just need a place to rest for the night. We'll be gone in the morning."
"Does the President know about this?" Tseng asked Reno. In response, the younger Turk only rolled his head back, looking at the ceiling in irritation.
"Do you know what just happened at the WRO? Do you know what's happening to Edge?"
Tseng stiffened even more. Aria was surprised it was possible.
"Yes, I know. Of course I know. That's why you're not letting these magnets in here. If trouble is out there, it will come looking for them. I won't be responsible for that."
Having taken a long look around the foyer, Vincent had surmised the direction of the kitchen and started walking away. Tseng inhaled deeply, then chased after him, knocking past Aria to spin Vincent around by a firm grip of his shoulder. The taller man allowed himself to turn, and when Tseng came face to face with him, he felt the muzzle of a gun press into the bottom of his jaw. Without missing a beat, Vincent coolly spoke.
"I saved your life in the Northern Crater. If that's not a debt you can pay, it's a service I can revoke."
Tseng released him, and Vincent disappeared through a tall doorway.
"Damn," Reno murmured. Tseng turned to face them. Aria rubbed her arm, sore from his impact on the healing wound.
"Dawn comes, you're out of here," he ordered before disappearing up the staircase again.
Reno sighed. "I should probably go talk to Rufus. Go get something to eat. The place is stocked. I'll get someone to set up a room for you. And maybe some dryer clothes."
She faced him in a rare moment of sincerity and nodded, a lopsided grin playing on her lips. "Thanks, Reno."
Vincent had found a leftover chicken and begun picking at it while perched on a pristine white marble counter. His form was a stark contrast against the entirely white kitchen. Aria raised her eyebrows on entering the room and finding him tearing pieces of meat from the cooked carcass.
"Hungry?" she teased. "You're eating with your hands, sitting on the counter...This is not the Vincent I know…"
He took notice of his behavior and put the container down. "No, perhaps not."
"Oh, don't be shy," she replied, quickly hopping up onto the counter beside him, taking the leftovers in her own hands. She pulled a long strip of flesh from the bones. "This is my natural form," she reminded him, fitting the long bite into her mouth with intentional ferocity. He grinned and allowed her to feed him an equally large bite before his eyes drifted into the space of the kitchen, going distant.
"So, who's your new friend?" she asked, recalling the face of a permanently-maimed scientist.
"Shalua Rui. She's a scientist with the WRO."
"She does not like Shinra. Popular opinion lately, I guess."
"I thought she thought you were Deepground," he replied.
"Yes. And then she recognized Reno."
"Ah."
"She's fought Shinra for years," he began, stopping short of her cause for such a fight.
"I gathered. So, you just met her there?"
He inhaled slowly before answering. "No. I found a man lying in an alley. Before he died, he said he had been attacked by Deepground. By a soldier in red. He said they had been gathering civilians at a warehouse, and I thought…" She knew the rest of the sentence: I thought I could save them. He continued. "I went to the warehouse and met this soldier. She is a Tsviet."
"She?"
"As was Shelke, the girl with Shalua."
"And we let her go?"
"Shelke may still be saved. With Shalua's help, she may cut her ties to Deepground."
Aria nodded, then pressed him. "And what about this red soldier? Who is she?"
"Rosso the Crimson."
"I sense a pattern." He nodded in agreement. "And I noticed the tense. She's still alive."
"Yes. I did not know what to expect. I was overpowered. Before she attacked me, she demanded something called protomateria. 'The key to controlling Omega,'" he quoted, still trying to make sense of it. "She said...I am the keeper of the protomateria."
"I see," Aria replied quietly, her head filling with more questions than answers.
"Then she attacked. And I could not keep up."
"How did you escape?"
"Chaos." Her back straightened at the name. "It happened so quickly...Shalua found me on the sidewalk. I woke up in a Mako tank in her lab."
"Were you hurt?"
"Barely. I just...struggled to come back after Chaos took over. I don't know what happened. When I came to, she told me that she knew about Chaos. About Lucrecia's...experiments...on me."
The name alone caused tension in Aria, but with the words that followed, she had to fight to stay seated. She wanted to leap off the counter, rampage through the room, demand more information that he soon confessed he did not have.
"So. As the target of the Tsviets, I feel I should know what, exactly, they want from me. I have to go…"
"Back to Nibelheim."
He nodded once. She shrugged and picked again at the cold chicken.
"Then I'll go with you."
"Reeve recommended entering through the sewers. The grounds are crawling with Deepground, apparently."
"Gross." The pair looked to the doorway to find Reno in sweats, holding two sets of clothes. "I'm not going through any sewers. Those days are over. Here," he said, dropping the clothes on the island. Aria jumped up and picked out the shorter pair of Shinra embossed sweatpants and the smaller T-shirt. "You can leave your clothes on the shelf near the shower. Someone will clean them. What a perk, right?"
"Shower?" she asked. He pointed upward.
"Upstairs, go right. Last door on the left. Your room is right across from it. Stay on the right end of the hall."
Vincent nodded, but she rolled her eyes.
Aria had gone upstairs and begun her shower while Vincent finished eating. Reno stayed in the kitchen, making tea for Vincent and himself.
"So, you're at the heart of this whole mess, huh? Must be a new sensation."
Vincent nodded, then replied, "To think, we became involved for her." Reno cocked his head to the side.
"It happens that way sometimes. Tell me, honestly, do you think she'll find her sister?"
Meeting his eyes, Reno sensed that he had struck a nerve. Still, Vincent shook his head.
"I cannot say."
He nodded in understanding. "Well," he surmised, handing over the warm cup of tea, "if we've learned anything in the past year, it's that reunions are not always for the best."
Upstairs, Aria pulled on her new T-shirt and looked in the bathroom mirror. The Shinra logo felt heavy on the fabric.
"You just don't know how to let go, do you?" she asked her reflection, unsure of whether she was joking.
Stepping into and across the hall, she turned to look down the long corridor as her hand fell upon her designated doorknob. Something down that hall beckoned her to cross the invisible barrier of the staircase. Someone. She shook her head and grinned, remembering her promise to Tseng: I'll play by your rules.
Her eyes remained at the far end of the hall as she opened her door and stepped through.
"Why that smirk? What do you know that I don't?"
She jumped at the voice, surprised to find Rufus sitting at the end of the bed within.
"God, you scared me."
"Finally."
She approached slowly and sat at the head of the bed, facing him. "Did Tseng tell on us?"
"You think I didn't know you were coming before you even reached the gate?"
She smiled and raised her head in illumination. "Of course. Stupid question. So why not tell him? He seemed pretty worked up."
"He doesn't like you, Aria." Her name slid smoothly from his mouth. She figured he recalled his slip during their last meeting
"Oh, I know. But do we dare go down that road?" She could see a flicker of something dangerous in his eyes.
"The one that leads to me ordering the death of your family?" She did not break her gaze into his face at the words, but his resolve was just as strong. "Or the one where you allowed the death of mine?" She swallowed hard, hearing the edge in his voice more clearly now. The room suddenly felt too small, too isolated for the two of them. He kept on. "Isn't it wild, how jealous I was of your fucked up relationship with Sephiroth..." She blinked as he voiced the name. "...and yet it is that dysfunctional little bond that gave me everything I have now. Who knows how long my father would have lived? I could still be the VP, you know."
She tilted her head. "Oh, Rufus...will we always be so hot and cold? You were so cordial last time we met. What happened to leaving the past in the past?"
He gave a lopsided grin. "I just don't know. I have always had this nagging feeling that you were going to turn on me. I suppress it, ignore it, and yet it won't go away. No matter how friendly you get, you're still a walking betrayal."
She sighed. "What is it, Rufus? What is it that you're not saying?"
He looked toward the door, eyes glassy and remote. "You weren't there." She leaned back against the headboard, pulling her knees into her chest as he spoke. "I called out for two people, and only one came."
"The Weapon. The day the tower fell."
"I suppose you trained him well, because when I finally had a reason to call on him, he was there. But I wanted you. I thought...I thought I would die. Even in the hospital, I thought I couldn't survive. I wanted you to tell me, as you had so many times before, that I was fine. That I was overreacting."
"I didn't agree with what you were doing. I couldn't be a part of that toxicity anymore. I wanted to be free."
He turned sharply toward her. "What did you need that we wouldn't have given you? You were a Legend."
"After you put on a contract on my head. Which you've done twice, now, by the way."
"Maybe someday I'll hire someone competent." She narrowed her eyes at the joke. "I have an excellent team now. The WRO is relying almost solely on my contributions," he explained. She interrupted.
"So you're buying another army…"
"Call it what you will. I am exactly where I belong: in command. This Deepground situation will pass, and I will be the benevolent CEO who paid for Edge's peace. Who funded the WRO with little to no acknowledgment…"
"Except that which you give yourself."
"And I'll be back at the top. You could have been there with me. Instead, you're down in the dirt, trying to be a hero. Speaking from my experience with you: you are no hero. You are a coward. You stir up trouble and when it comes time to answer for it, you disappear. You handed me over to Reno so easily, then vanished into Sephiroth's arms at the first chance you could. I know where you went the night of that gala. You thrust me into power by letting him kill my father, and when I need you most, you go AWOL. You promise to protect us from the Remnants with those Jenova cells, and when they come waltzing into Edge, you're nowhere to be found. You even abandoned Vincent to his old friends when it came to fighting Bahamut. There you stayed, in your little white house in the little white city, far from the cries of terrified citizens, the moans of searing pain caused by the Geostigma. When it came time to really get your hands dirty, you ran the other way. It seems you always have. And why not, when you have strong, brave, genetically altered men to do all your fighting for you?"
He seemed to know it was coming, and almost welcomed her fist as it crashed into his cheekbone. This was not the first time she had hit him, but it was certainly the first time he'd fought back.
Rufus took the first punch, then surprised Aria by grabbing her arm and yanking her from the bed, twisting her forearm behind her with enough force that, had he so desired, he could have broken it. Instead, he used his position to force her against a wall. He spoke roughly into her ear. She tried to turn from the heat of his breath against her skin.
"You have never taken me seriously."
"I don't think you were all that upset that I wasn't there. I think you're upset that you've depended on everyone else for so long. You needed us...because you couldn't save yourself."
Her head flew back, connecting with his nose and causing him to loosen his grip. She slipped out of his grasp and turned, driving her elbow into his jaw. For a fleeting moment, she could have sworn she felt a thrill of excitement. It passed as he kicked her knee, bending it to the side and causing her to drop. As she fell, he grabbed a fistfull of her wet hair and threw her head to the floor.
"You have never respected me," he added, his black shoe coming to rest on her neck. She allowed him the moment of power, then grabbed and twisted his ankle, bringing him to a knee beside her. He used the opportunity to throw a right hook into her cheek, his hand coming away bloodied. She covered her face with one hand, using the other to close in a fist of blond hair and use the leverage of pulling him down to also pull herself to her knees. He grabbed her wrists and, for a long moment, they wrestled for control, she using her knee to press into his hip bone, he pulling her down close enough to sink his teeth into her shoulder. As she cried out against the bite, her voice choked in her throat. Rolling off of him, she heard a similar choking coming from Rufus. The electricity she had felt seemed contagious, for when she turned to look at him, beneath the swell of a cracked lip, she could see the beginnings of a smile. She twisted her arm across her body to slap it away, which only caused it to grow. He repeated his initial attack, rising quickly to forcefully turn her over and hold her forearm against her back. She laughed, her face pressed into the floor.
"I think your brush with death has changed you. You're like us now. Just one of the animals."
He grabbed a fistful of her hair, leaning down to speak harshly into her ear.
"You never really saw me as a threat. And so I could never really be your ally, could I? If I didn't have the power to kill you, I must not have had the power to save you, is that it? How about now? Now that I'm no longer a child, afraid to take control? Now that I can defend myself? Now that I, too, am 'one of the animals'?"
She gasped for breath under the weight of his body on her back, but managed to work her own knee beneath her. As soon as he began to loosen his grip, she pushed off of her knee, throwing him backward into the nightstand, a brass lamp falling to the floor. In a daze, he could not fight her off as she clawed her way up his body, straddling his waist as her fingers came to rest in a deep squeeze around his neck. She stared with both amusement and fury at his face as it reddened, blond strands sticking to the blood on his forehead. He scratched at her arms, fingers like claws as they dug into her skin. Still, she stared down at his flailing form. Her intense gaze could not catch sight of his right arm as it reached to his side. She became entranced by the signs of death creeping into his face: bright red eyes, bursting capillaries, veins protruding from his temples. She began to smile again, realizing that she had won, but still appreciating the release that this fight had allowed. As her fingers loosened, she sat back on her heels, watching the blood drain from his face as he coughed, chest heaving for air. Her sore hands came to her face, one brushing wet strands from her forehead, the other covering her mouth as she laughed. He laughed once, too. It was the last thing she saw before he swung the fallen lamp into her head and knocked her back to the floor, unconscious.
Rufus started to sit up, then fell back to the floor, flat on his back as he laughed. A throat cleared in the doorway, and he tilted his head to see Reno and Vincent mirroring each other, each leaning on opposite sides of the doorframe with their arms crossed over their chests.
He laughed even harder.
As Reno stepped out of the room, he turned his head to Vincent, who had followed close behind. "Been waiting ten years for that." He shook his head in amusement. "At least they finally got it out of their systems."