This is where the story will start to change completely, I hope that people will enjoy it more in this direction than the direction it was headed into last time. This story probably won't be pairing Rufus with anyone, unless there is a very big demand, which I doubt there will be.

Please Review if you can, I love feedback and I know this story hasn't been up for long. I had planned on editing the everything then posting, but in the middle of editing I realized that I was going to be changing the story's actual plot...so I posted what I DID edit, and now I'm going from there! :)

So please, if you can review! And if for some odd reason unknown to man if you can't, message me because I love feedback.

By the way, there's someone I'd love for you all to check out! JenesisX.

-Crimson

Redemption

Chapter Four – Rain

Saying that it was strange to be sleeping on something clean and soft again was an understatement, he couldn't remember the last time he had actually felt comfortable trying to sleep. Tifa had kept asking him to stay the night, along with Cid and Charles, so he finally gave up and decided that staying wasn't the worst idea.

It wasn't like had had anywhere else to go. Not anywhere he was ready to go.

It was to quiet to sleep though. He wasn't used to such a comfortable environment; he was used to the never ending torrents of screams and taunts. He was used to being kept awake for days at a time in labs while those people poked and prodded at his head. No, Rufus wasn't used to sleeping and he found that now that he had the chance, he just couldn't.

Maybe it was because he knew that Tseng, Cloud and Vincent were probably lying awake right now. Were they all just as terrified as he had been? Were they trembling? Screaming? Crying? What was going on there now? Once he started thinking about all of them, his mind just wouldn't shut off. All he could think about was whatever could be happening to them. He knew first hand that there wasn't a time where the pain stopped.

How could I be such an idiot? How did I not notice? How?

The thoughts kept plaguing his mind; he just couldn't stop screaming at himself. How? Why? It just wouldn't stop. He couldn't believe he had been so dense and self absorbed to not realize and look at his surroundings more! He had been so closed into himself, he had tried to shut down the outside world and in doing so, people he knew were slowly going to slip into insanity, just like he almost did.

Rufus stared at the ceiling, unable to close his eyes. Their faces kept flashing before his mind, making the thought of sleep nothing but a joke. He wondered if this is what Valentine felt like at one point, he used to blame himself for everything, just like Rufus was doing now. Why is it that now that I have my freedom, I feel the more restrained? He asked himself, unable to fathom the new self loathing feeling inside of him.

During the three and a half years of being nothing but a puppet, made Rufus hate himself for being weak. He had hated himself for turning into something that was uglier than a monster. He had wanted to die, and the only time he ever felt human was when he was put through pain. But this feeling was entirely different, he didn't hate himself because of his weakness, he hated himself because he was the cause of other people's pain, but not just anybody's pain – people he knew.

Tseng, the man that had practically raised him was now rotting somewhere under the Northern Crater, and there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn't tell people where they were being held captive, because then the WRO would go there and murder people who couldn't even control their own minds – that's just inhumane, ever for him. Rufus was no saint but he knew that bloodshed was not going to solve this problem.

What do you do with an army of people who are forced to be there?

Rufus shook his head once again and tried to rid his mind of the thoughts he was having. Slowly he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His feet hit the cold hardwood flooring and he stood up. He walked over to the dresser in the room and grabbed his daggers and guns, strapping them in place and shoving his cigarettes in his pocket. Walking over to the door he looked back at the room he had been allowed to stay in, he sighed and then slowly opened the door and walked out into the hallway. He made his way to the stairs quietly, hoping not to wake anyone else up.

It looked like it was at least five in the morning, which seemed about right because he hadn't lain down until about two and when he had he had been thinking. The sky was starting to light up, but the Sun was still nowhere in sight.

When Rufus walked into the bar section of the house, he was glad to see that no one else was there. He walked over to sit on one of the bar stools and then turned around to face the front windows, propping his elbows on the bar counter and leaning back on it. He had never actually observed the inside of the bar, because he had always been distracted by Tifa or Cloud. He looked over all the walls and saw that there were pictures everywhere. Pictures of AVALANCHE together were hung on the walls, and setting on shelves.

Rufus stood up and walked over to one of the walls, looking at all of the memories that the group shared together. He was surprised when he saw a picture of the young Cetra, Aerith. She stood in between Cloud and Tifa smiling brightly while making a peace sign. He saw that they were all standing on the beach, so it must have been taken at Costa de Sol. He took a step back and then looked over the other pictures hanging on the walls, and a certain one caught his eye.

The picture contained Tifa as a teenager, wearing a brown cowboy hat and vest. The shirt under the vest exposed her midriff and she wore a short brown skirt. She had boots that came up to her knees – she looked like a little cowgirl and Rufus found himself grinning because she looked so childish. However, that isn't why the picture caught his eye – he looked at the figure standing to her left and he felt a small stab of guilt.

Zack Fair was standing there beside her, showing off the grin he always gave people. He was giving the camera a thumbs up and he had his other hand holding onto the hilt of his sword. He had on the traditional SOLDIER 1st class uniform and he seemed to be enjoying the moment. Rufus sighed as he gave the ex SOLDIER one last look. He dragged his eyes to the next person, the one who surprised Rufus the most.

Sephiroth stood on the other side of Tifa. He had Masamune at his side and he really didn't seem like he cared about the picture one bit. It was his eyes that Rufus couldn't get out of his mind – they were so powerful, but they didn't hold the evil that they would later. This picture was the last sign of Sephiroth's sanity, the last living proof that he hadn't been born crazy. He really did just look like an important man with better things to do than take pictures.

He tore his gaze way from the picture, finding that seeing the old General in such a state of normality gave him the chills. He glanced at other pictures on the wall, and found that AVALANCHE really was a dysfunctional family, much like he and his Turks used to have. He was about to walk away when another picture stopped him.

Reno was sitting at the bar; he pointed his hands at the picture like they were guns and had a sloppy grin on his face. Rude was sitting next to him and seemed to be shaking his head at him. Rufus grinned when he saw his Turks, and then saw that Tseng and Elena were there as well in the background sitting at a booth, both glancing over at Reno with amused expressions. He was still grinning when he realized he was in the picture was well, he was on the other side of Rude, white suit on with a Wutian Tea to his lips. His hair was gelled back and he didn't even seem to be paying any attention to the camera. His grin slid off his face as he glanced from his new appearance to his old appearance.

He had changed so much since then, and it then made him think – if he, Rufus Shinra had undergone such a dramatic change, what about Strife, Valentine and Tseng? What was going to become of them?

"Rufus?"

His head snapped over in the direction of the voice that had just called his name. It was Tifa, she was staring at him with a curious expression on her face. She walked over to stand beside him and then looked at the pictures as well.

"It's strange sometimes, isn't it?" She asked quietly, "To see yourself from the past, or to see people's faces that you haven't seen in awhile."

"Yeah." He agreed slowly, glancing over at her. "Why do you keep this picture?" He asked after a few moments, pointing to the one that contained herself, Sephiroth and Zack.

"Oh." She said with a sad smile, "That picture. Well, in all honesty I hadn't planned on keeping it. When I found it I wanted to rip it up…" She shook her head then sighed, "But then I kept staring at Sephiroth, and I realized that he wasn't the same person who slaughtered my village…he was the great General, not a madman." She picked up the picture off the shelf and looked at it for a moment, "I think the main reason I kept it, was because I know that we're always going to remember him, but instead of remembering the insane driven monster…I would much rather remember the General of SOLDIER, I would much rather remember him before he went crazy." She sighed to herself and then set the picture back on the shelf.

"It kinda reminds you that he wasn't always crazy." Rufus mumbled more to himself than to her. He looked at the picture one last time before turning to face Tifa and settle his gaze on her.

"Yeah, it helps because it at least reminds me that he didn't go there with evil intentions." She looked at Rufus and gave him a smile, "Are you hungry?"

There was never a time where the screaming stopped. Vincent Valentine had his eyes closed as he tried to escape from the chaos around him. He could almost feel other people's pain since it never ended. Someone was always screaming, and someone was always dying. He opened his eyes when someone's screaming came to an abrupt stop. He glanced over at Cloud to see him sitting beside the bars with his back leaning against the dirt wall behind him. He was staring at the hallway, waiting for something it seemed like.

Footsteps could be heard getting louder and louder. Vincent cast his gaze to the hallway and saw that two guards were walking side by side, making their way out of the cell chamber. Behind them was a body they were dragging with rope. It was mangled and bruised up, the cut on its forehead was fresh and the stab wound in its neck was bleeding profusely, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. Vincent couldn't tell the gender of the person because they were so disfigured, they barely resembled a human being. The gunslinger looked away, now wanting to see the result of the sick minds in control there.

"Vincent." Cloud's voice broke through the silence, and Vincent turned his attention to blonde that was not looking at him, "Do you think that's going to happen to Tseng?"

"I am not sure." Vincent said after a moment of contemplation. Tseng had been taken a few days ago, and he still hadn't returned. The gunslinger wasn't sure what to think at this point, they had all been taken at some point to get the chip implanted in their heads, but none of them had ever been gone days at a time before.

"Did you hear that Rufus got lose?" Cloud said dryly, still looking at Vincent.

"Yes, I heard some guards say something about it."

"What do you think?"

"That, I am not sure of yet."

Vincent remembered when he saw Rufus for the first time while he was in here. It took him a few seconds of staring at him, but once he saw his eyes he knew who it was. He was confused to why of all people Rufus Shinra was their "favorite." He was also so curious to what had happened to Rufus because he barely resembled his old self. With Vincent's enhanced sense, he could see the scars all over the ex President's face and hands neck. The one thing Vincent noticed the most was all the scars on his forehead. When Rufus had pushed a hand through his hair all of them were visible, which only made Vincent all the more curious to why so many operations were necessary.

Vincent sighed quietly and started to rack his brain to what was happening to Tseng. They had been there for a little over a year now, and he still wasn't used to how the Organization worked. All three of them, himself, Cloud and Tseng had been taken on the same day, which was the reason they were in the same cell.

"Do you think Rufus will tell them?" Cloud asked suddenly, his eyes still attached to the outside corridor.

"No."

It was silent for a moment, he saw the looks on the blonde's face then explained himself, "Rufus has always been smart, he won't just go and tell Reeve about all of this, or AVALANCHE for that matter. If they knew, then a war would erupt. Rufus knows that the people here can't control themselves, so it would be cruel to kill them."

There was nothing else said after that. Cloud continued to stare at the hallway and Vincent closed his eyes once again, trying to ignore the outside world. He didn't want to see any of the other people that were misfortunate enough to be here. He knew that there were four little kids across from them. None of them were passed the age ten, and all of them were boys. They had attempted to speak to Cloud and Vincent before, but had been yelled at and smacked with the hilt of a guard's gun.

About an hour passed before heavy footsteps made their way over to their cell. Vincent's eye's snapped open when he heard their cell door open. The guards threw Tseng in, then closed it quickly, and then glared at all of them before walking away. Tseng had hit the ground with a small thud. He sat up and then looked at Cloud and then at Vincent. His eyes looked absolutely miserable, and he was shaking slightly.

"They lied to us." Tseng said quietly, casting his gaze to the ground. "We aren't here because we sinned." The Turk pulled up his sleeve to reveal a small green mark on his wrist. It was very curvy and looked a lot like the lifestream. "They're marking us. They're saying that the planet wants us dead, and that we need to give it its life back." He looked up to meet Vincent's and Cloud's gazes, "Anyone with Mako in them is going to be purged."

"Why doesn't anyone else have these marks?" Vincent asked while feeling a strange feeling rise in his chest.

"It's a reaction to all of the injections they've given you; by tomorrow everyone in here will have one. They're going to send their actual troops to take over the WRO. They want to kill every last person who has any Mako in them what-so-ever. There are people that agree with them…people that they aren't forcing. Those are the ones they're sending." Tseng took a deep breath then sighed, "They're going to find every last person who has mako, and bring them here. They don't care who it is…women, children, whoever…"

"Why are we still in here then?" Cloud asked, "Why not kill us now? Why even go through all the trouble of kidnapping us?"

"They only kidnapped the ones worth using until the end." Vincent answered for him.

New Midgar. It was so strange to say even think that's where he was headed to at that moment. He had originally just wanted to take a walk because he needed some fresh air to clear his head. But he had seen a bus that was heading to New Midgar and just couldn't help himself. He felt like he had to see it.

So now he was on a bus, with his head against the glass window. He ignored all of the chatter that was going on around him and just tried to think about what exactly he was doing. He wasn't sure why he felt compelled to do something like this. However, there was a certain place he wanted to visit, he had heard a lot about it but had never been there before.

It took almost two hours to reach Sector Five of New Midgar and Rufus was more than happy to get off the bus. When he stepped off onto the ground he found that it had dropped him off in the Slums.

He felt like he should have been upset at seeing the Slums, but he wasn't. He had lived in dirt for so long that he didn't realize that most people probably weren't used to it. He walked with his hands in his pockets, and looked around at his surroundings. He wasn't sure what to make of all of it – New Midgar. It wasn't even close to being finished but it was still here. He had missed out on all its planning, the one thing he did say to was to keep the church.

The Church.

He wasn't sure where it was, but he knew it was in Sector Five. He decided that it couldn't be that hard to find, so he made his way through the crowds of people that lived there and just kept walking. He wondered if the people who lived here once lived here again. Some of them looked happy while other's looked angry.

He started to get jumbled in his own thoughts again, trying his best to maneuver through the crowds. He couldn't believe that something to farfetched had actually happened. He looked up at the plate and sighed, he forgot what the slums were like – closed and dirty, just like the Organization had been.

What was the point in rebuilding Midgar if they were just going to make it the same? Rufus couldn't fathom why Reeve would just let people live like this! People were poor and sickly looking all over again! It looked just like it did all those years ago! This wasn't a "New Midgar" this was a clone of Midgar and Rufus found that he was highly disappointed.

He stopped walking when he realized he was standing in front of a door. He looked up to see a nicely rebuilt church and was surprised he had found it by himself. He pushed all of his other thoughts aside and pushed the door open. It creaked slightly and when he walked in he saw that no one else was there, and the only thing they had rebuilt was the roof. There was a huge hole in the middle of the Church filled with water, and when Rufus racked his brain to why it dawned on him that it was the water that cured Geostigma.

He walked forward and he could hear his own footsteps echo throughout the abandoned building. When he reached the water's edge he sat down and stared at it, feeling a strange feeling while gazing at it. This is the water that had saved his life, and it was all thanks to the Cetra, Aerith. He had never really paid much attention to her, until he thought it was important and even then it was mainly Hojo who wanted her so badly.

He stared at his own reflection and then gazed at the church around him. Stained glass windows were everywhere, and the light that was able to shine through giving the place a serene and holy feeling. The more and more he looked around the more he felt a strange sense of responsibility. Aerith, that girl he had disregarded so much, had saved his life three times. He might have used the escape route that his father had built when Diamond WEAPON attacked him, but he still had deadly injuries that he should have died from, yet he hadn't and he knew it was because she helped saved him. She had cured Geostigma, and she had helped him break that God forsaken connection.

"Before Geostigma, there used to be a bunch of flowers here."

The sudden voice made Rufus stand up and turn around so fast that he almost fell backwards into the water. He had his gun pulled and pointing at whoever had interrupted his thoughts without even thinking about who the voice might belong to. When his eyes met the person who had disturbed him, he almost dropped his gun.

"You okay Bossman? You seem startled, yo." Reno was standing there with his hands in his pockets, and didn't even seem fazed that there was a gun pointed at him. He was still wearing his messy businessman uniform and he was giving Rufus this look that he couldn't decipher.

Rufus slowly put down his gun and put it back in its place. He couldn't fathom the person who was in front of him. He could feel his hands shaking so he put them in his pockets so they wouldn't be noticeable. He felt his lungs start to burn at some point and he realized he had been holding his breath, he took a deep breath slowly and could feel the disbelief continue to hit him full force.

Reno, the man who annoyed him to no end, the man who was lazy and insufferable at times, the man who always showed up late – Reno, his Turk was standing right in front of him and Rufus finally understood why he had been avoiding seeing him.

It was because he had missed him, and now that he was back he wasn't sure what to do.

He was standing there in utter shock, staring at a face that he had tried so hard to forget about. His head started to throb and his throat felt restricted. This feeling of nausea swam over him and his stomach felt like it was floating. His mind couldn't even process why he was feeling this way, all he could understand at that moment was that his Turk was standing in front of him with fogged eyes.

Then a question popped into his mind, How did Reno find me here?

He found his voice after a few more seconds, "Reno?" He asked quietly, even though the answer was obvious. He looked exactly the same as Rufus remembered him - Red hair that was tied in a ponytail in the back, red tattoos on his cheeks and goggles on his forehead.

Instead of a sarcastic remark that he was expecting, the red head gave a small sad smile, "Yeah bossman, it's me." It was strange to Rufus to hear Reno speak in such a way, but at the moment he didn't let it linger in his mind. "Tifa said you went for a walk when I showed up…don't be mad, she called me last night and told me, anyway when I got there you were gone and when she said that I figured you'd want to see 'New' Midgar, so I took my chances and came here." His voice was even now, but there was still an underlying sadness in his tone that Rufus couldn't understand.

"I….see." Rufus said after clearing his throat. He was still trembling, and hearing Reno's voice again only made it worse. He couldn't understand what was going on! Why did he feel like this? Why was his throat close up? Why were his eyes burning?

Rufus was so caught up into his own thoughts that he didn't notice Reno walk closer to him. He snapped out of his thoughts when he heard the red head sit down beside where he was now standing. "It's just as nice as it was before, but I still liked the flowers more." Reno said with a grin, he looked up a Rufus and patted the seat next to him, "Don't worry yo, Tifa only told me so no one else should be giving you a heart attack any time soon."

Rufus nodded slowly and swallowed hard as he sat down beside his Turk. He let his eyes look at the water again, because he didn't think he could handle looking at Reno anymore. It was overwhelming him with emotions he didn't understand and he just didn't want to try to understand them at that point.

"You don't have anything to say?" Reno said after a few moments of silence.

The ex president took a deep breath and then continued to stare at the water, "I don't know what to say."

"How about you start with where you've been?" Reno said sharply, looking over at Rufus with narrowed eyes. Rufus noted that it wasn't just anger that was radiating off of Reno, it was also hurt. "Three and a half years Rufus." Reno said slowly, "You have to have something to say." He said the last sentence quietly, and Rufus was almost taken aback by the statement.

The ex president racked his brain what to say, something, anything. He looked over at his Turk finally and said quietly, "I missed you Reno."

Whether that's what Reno wanted to hear or not, Rufus didn't know. But after a moment of silence, the red headed Turk's mouth turned upward into a small smiled. "Don't get to mushy yo, it's weird."

I had some trouble writing this, because it was so strange to be actually writing again I guess. I'd really appreciate some feedback, and I hope this chapter is at least slightly enjoyable.

-Crimson

And remember, check out JenesisX! They're awesome.