A/N: Hey guys, what's up. Firstly, I have to apologize for not updating in the past. UH. I LOST COUNT. Months.
I'm really quite busy with school this year and all, cause I'm taking the GCSE O's this November, which is the local equivalent of the IGSEs, I guess? Yep, the O's are really important right now cause it ultimately decides which school I'll be going to next year. I'm aiming to study Mass Communications at a local polytechnic here, with an emphasis on writing and I hope to become a journalism and published writer evantually. Right now, I don't have time to update regularly between schoolwork and other things so my stories suffer (I'm sorry, stories!) but after my exams I'll have a lot of time to work on my fics and all so I hope you'll understand.
With this chapter of "Forever", I've decided to take the focus away from Cloud and Tifa. Cloud and Tifa drabble fic collections have pretty much been flooding , and honestly I think some of these writers are really fantastic. But anyway, read on.
Forever: The Long Way Home.
The man walks down the streets of Edge, exhausted. His white shirt is dirtied with mud, his blazer and trousers ripped in several places. His skin, like his clothes, were torn in several places. His hair was in a mad disarray and his face is muddied, scaring little children who were under the impression that they had just come across an insane homeless man on the streets. He gives his usual smirks to the one of the children watching him make his way down the street, sending the poor child scuttling. He laughs to himself, silently. How long had it been since he last laughed?
All around him, there are celebrations, celebrations of life, love and happiness. He stops in his tracks as he watches a young couple on the street run into each others arms, a loving embrace. He wonders how long had it been since he had been in the shoes of that young man, coming home to his love at the end of the day. He wonders how long it had been since he last saw her. Had it been a day, a week or had it already been a lifetime? He looks on enviously as they lock lips, reveling in their love for each other...
But he continues on his way, for he must not be distracted.
So far he has noticed that there is life, but now he realizes that there is also sadness. He walks into an alley and watches as a teenage girl cradles the body of her younger brother. The Cure had come too late for the boy. If he had only held on a little longer, he could have been alive right now. He could have been saved.
It was another person he had failed.
But the boy sleeps painlessly now, his dreams no longer the nightmares he fear, and his waking moments no longer the living nightmare they were. The man listens to the girl croon her brother to sleep, in the place of their absent mother. He wonders if their plight had been his fault. If he had not existed, would they have remained part of a happy family?
At this moment. he reminisces the past: His moments of folly and glory, pride and shame. He wonders if life could have turned out differently for him, too.
He wonders if he could have lived the past two years without people slamming doors in his face, without people spitting on him in the streets, telling him he was the scum of the Planet. He wonders if he could have always loved innocently, without price.
He wonders if he could have kissed her goodbye without that uncomfortable feeling in the back of his mind, that when he returned he would have killed at least one innocent life. He wonders if he could hold her in his arms and promised her and he would be there for her always. He wonders if he could tell her "I love you" without feeling guilty, for after all he was the reason she was in the state that she was in (If only he had not...)
He wonders if he could have always been by his daughter's side, watching her every step of the way. He wonders if his daughter would have heard honest stories about how her father was a good and honest man instead of white lies fabricated to make her believe he was good. He wonders if he could have held his daughter without the stain of innocent blood on his hands.
He shrugs, and continues on his way. He was almost there now.
Soon, he arrives at his destination: a block of apartments, somewhat run down with age. He walks up to the third floor and finds a door labeled "03-160". He remembers the unit number well. He searches his pockets for a small, worn silver key. Finding it, he hesitates, but he still fits the key into the padlock of the door. He turns the key...
To his surprise, the key still works. It was as if the apartment's occupants had been waiting for him. The door opens, and he walks into the apartment almost soundlessly. In the low light, he sees the familiar black leather sofa and glass coffee table. They had aged, but they were still the same. He spies the shoes rack – the shoes it carried had changed, but it was evident the shoes it held presently still belonged to the same owner as the shoes before them had.
He notices the walls are different too. It wasn't the paint – it was still the same paint as he had remembered it., but it was now decorated with a child's little crayons, framed and displayed proudly. "Just like their house", the man thought.
He moves towards the only light in the house - the lights in the kitchen. A strange sound was coming from the room. Rustle. Clank. Rustle. Rustle. But as he walks toward it he realizes it is the sound of running water and...dishes. Someone was washing the dishes. He sees a young woman with a bob of brown hair. It is exactly how he remembers her. He steps into the light...
"Claire..."
The woman drops the dish she is watching and turns to face the man. Her eyes were the same gray he remembers, and her features the same too. But he realizes that he is a total stranger to the woman standing in front of him. He is embarrassed, and turns to leave.
"Reno?"
She remembers.
"Reno, is that you?"
Reno turns back to face Claire and he thought she had changed with the years. She was no longer the schoolgirl thrust into adulthood that he remembered, but appeared to be a woman well adjusted to her life. She walks towards Reno and wraps her arms around him.
"I thought you were gone. I thought you were never coming back." Reno feels the wetness of her tears seep into his shirt. He combs his fingers through her hair, and suddenly he realizes she had not changed. She was still the scared schoolgirl she was back then, the one who cried when she failed her Chemistry Exams, the one who cried when she fractured her arm in gym, the one who cried when she showed Reno the positive pregnancy test results.
She was still the scared schoolgirl who cried when her parents threw her out of the house and disowned her for carrying Reno's child. She was still the scared schoolgirl who cried when she was giving birth to their daughter. She was still the scared schoolgirl who cried when Reno left, three years ago, summoned by Shinra to stop Sephiroth.
Reno remembered, but he could not fathom how it had been three years already. Holy shit. He told her he would be back soon. Three years was not "soon". He broke his promise.
He had failed her as well.
But he does not break from Claire's embrace as he would normally do, and instead kisses her on the forehead with his cracked lips.
"I'm sorry I took so long." he says, tenderly. "It was a long way home, but I'm here now ," and as he says this, realization dawns on his face.
"I'm...home."
And this time, he does not let guilt bother him. After all, he has a lot of time to make up for his mistakes. He had an eternity.
A/N: Yep, I'm writing about Reno. Let me tell you all first hand that other than FFVII and Advent Children, I have never played any other part of the compilation, cause my parents are kind of strict about getting my brother and I new gaming consoles so I don't even have a PSP, PS3,or PS2. No, no Xbox either, so my fics might not fit into canon so much, especially when it comes to the Turks, cause they don't have much of a role in FFVII other than opposing Cloud and Co. while in Advent Children what we see of the Turks is pretty sad. I have no idea what they do in BC, CC and DoC, so I'm fleshing out my own back stories for them and making up their ages. Here, Reno would be around the same age as Tifa. I'm assuming, of course, that Reno was trained to be a Turk since young, due to something along the lines of blackmail so yeah. I hope to be able to write a Turk-centric fic soon, especially on Reno cause he fascinates me. I should really stop rambling so I'll end off here.