Author's Note: I'm spending my summer bathing in music, literature, and good company. And I'm going to finish this story, if only for my own entertainment. So if you're sticking with it, stick with it. We'll see the finish line.

Advisory: The last part of this chapter is a rape scene. It's not graphic, I have no experience personally, and I'm sorry if I've made it unrealistic or upset anyone by writing it without knowing it firsthand. My email is on my profile for any comments, questions, or requests to remove it, most of which I will honor.

Feel free to skip it if you're not sure of it – I'm making sure that it's not absolutely essential to the plot to give you, the reader, that freedom without feeling like you missed part of the movie.

WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS

BY RENO SPIEGEL

- - - - -

Mideel had changed. She'd known that.

After the Lifestream and its residue had leveled the town, the politicians had urged everyone to take up a year of residence somewhere else, for both safety and for legislative reasons. The same politicians had taken the year to move to Cosmo Canyon and contemplate what might be found in a new Mideel. Certainly the residents wouldn't want to come back to the very same town, as it was, when it had turned their lives upside-down.

They'd turned to Kalm and began rebuilding on that note: a more quiet community, still specializing in medicinal training, with a smaller tourism industry. It had only backfired in the latter respect. This brand new Mideel became its own sort of attraction, but the inn owners still had jobs and thus it was a sacrifice worth making.

Still a little unsure of her legs, Elena found herself wandering through the roads of the relatively new town, wondering if it was all just an overpriced ruse to buy time before the next Lifestream leak. She knew Reno would have – and probably had – ranted and raged about the façade and what it had done to his hometown. Junon had stayed the same – industrial, full of trade and wanderers – so while Elena couldn't relate to such a complaint, she thought she might at least be in a position of empathy.

The town had shrunk, too. She noticed clever diversions away from the parts of town the Lifestream had completely destroyed, giving the whole place a very strange shape. Boys and girls on bicycles were using this to their advantages, racing from one end to the other.

One thing that hadn't changed, as far as she could remember, was the town newspaper, The Mideal.

"It's supposed to sound foreign," a memory of her redheaded superior told her, "or old. Or foreign. Some fucking thing." He'd taken a drag from his cigarette, flipped to the obituaries, and written something on the cuff of his shirt.

Today the paper told her that the Last Seven were still doing okay, considering the situation. A few messages had been translated as generally positive, something about being able to sustain themselves at least until Midgar was out from under administrative quarantine, and the minor headlines only held local news for which she had no frame of reference. She turned to the Visiting section, though, which she knew would tell her the most popular places to eat, stay, and visit for tourists. The number one spot this week was The Breaking Day, a family restaurant across town, and she wandered that way.

Many of the people in town were wearing sky blue ribbons around their wrists, but Elena wasn't sure what they were there for. Something she'd always respected about Mideel was its sense of community, and Reno was living proof of that. Even after years in ShinRa, he still pledged allegiance to the town, refusing any mission that involved any offense toward a fellow resident.

At one point she and Tseng had been sneaking in the back door of a known Mideelan arms dealer that had given a bad price to the Don. They'd been hired to go take care of her, or at least teach her a sizeable lesson. Tseng, as usual, had gone first, creeping through the kitchen and toward the living room with his shotgun drawn. "Pellets," he'd explained to her wide eyes. "I can fire these at someone's legs and just hurt him enough to drop him – not kill him." He'd been turning the corner into the hallway when he jolted, raising the gun. Before Elena had a chance to take hers from its holster, there had been a loud crack and Tseng was encased in a familiar golden pyramid, swelling large enough to wedge itself firmly in the walls of the house and making both it and its occupant impossible to pass. By the time she'd gotten out the back door and around the front of the house, their dealer was bolting down her dirt road on the back of a motorcycle whose tires, Elena had a feeling, were bulletproof.

They hadn't checked Reno for an alibi. There had been a bouquet of flowers – Reno's silent "I'm sorry, but you understand" – on Tseng's desk by the time they were back at the ShinRa Building. The profile for the hit had disappeared from the company computer system.

Elena was taking her time, still working out exactly what she was going to do when she got where she was headed. She fingered the business card in her pocket, hoping it might point her in the right direction both figuratively and literally. She had hesitated many times over the past few days, thinking about Tseng's frequent clashes with the rest of the company that had made even Rufus once confront him about his loyalty. Still, she found it hard to betray a comrade's dying orders, and pushed herself on.

She stopped in a millenary shop briefly, asking for directions to The Breaking Day and telling herself that this was the right thing to do – at the very least, in the name of honor. "Down the road," said the woman in the shop, "a left at the grocer, and not too far from there."

Elena followed the verbal steps, hoping this was indeed the right direction.

She thought of the old man in the boat and the directions he took – that they were directions that were given to him, yet seemed to be taken on his own accord. He was completely in control of where he was going, though his very life was dedicated to reading the maps of others. Elena thought she might tell his stories to people when she got back to Junon – even if she made them all up.

"Did you know," she might say to someone headed toward the Mythril Mines, "that Zoloms are in the seas now? They've got hands, and they tap the boats for echoes."

The same children whizzed by her on their bikes again, and she increased her pace. She was nervous, and not only for what she would have to do. She was more nervous that he wouldn't be here at all – and then what? What did that say for the card in her pocket, and for her enhanced memory, and for all the moments they'd shared, learning each other? What if there was no restaurant called The Breaking Day at all, and the blue ribbons on the residents' arms said that they were all in on the joke, that some great administration was laughing at her right now? Blue was the color of the Turks, after all – what if they all knew that she was coming here to play out the rest of ShinRa?

She kept a beat in time with her steps, tapping the handle of her gun under her jacket. It was all that kept her from turning and running, from holing up in her apartment in Junon and never answering another letter, never buying another grocery.

Then she saw him.

He was standing against the side of the building, fumbling with a lighter. He was less deft with one than she remembered, but the long red hair couldn't have been anyone else's. He'd traded his suit for a T-shirt and jeans, but he was still in shape under the sleeves. No glasses – he'd needed reading glasses before, which had always been his personal shame, but he refused to get the ShinRa-provided surgery, saying he'd "seen enough of their shit to not risk seeing it with their shit." She still couldn't see his eyes, because she was far enough away.

The shock of seeing him there made her trip for a moment, losing her cool, and he looked up at her as the gravel crunched under her feet. A few steps later, he looked back down at his lighter, and Elena had to admit her fault. It wasn't Reno at all, just someone about his age that looked startlingly like him. With all the people on the Planet, the coincidence wasn't uncalled-for – besides, if one Mideelan looked like Reno, probably another one would.

Elena kept her eyes on the man all the way to the door, but tried not to stare too heavily. He turned his face toward her with a warm smile, saying, "Hey, I'm an intern with the newspaper, and I'm doing a random poll of residents and visitors for next week's release. It's just one question. Are you left-handed, or right-handed?"

It had been a while since she'd thought about it, really, but she thought about where her gun was and said, "Right-handed."

"Thanks," he chirped, then lifted a boot and swung his heel hard against her wrist.

Suddenly the redhead wasn't the friendly doorman, and she'd been caught enough off guard for him to be able to shove her toward the alley, pushing his forearm against her shoulders and keeping his kicks at the backs of her ankles. He knew how to fight, certainly, but she didn't know how to come back without her hand or the advantage. She heard a gate kick into place behind her – no doubt something they put up at night to keep kids out from between the buildings – and her cheek hit the wall, pressure coming down on the back of her neck.

"Turk," he growled, barely keeping his voice restrained. "Turk, Turk, Turk, goddamn Turk." It was nothing less than a hiss now. He grabbed a handful of her jacket, pulled her gun out of its holster, and threw it down the alley. "Twenty fucking years it took you to get here," he said, shaking her. "Twenty years. Do you know what I've done in twenty years, Turk? I've waited. I've lifted, I've run, I've waited, and I knew that someday, somewhere on the face of this fucking Planet, I'd come across one of you."

Her head was swimming and her blood was pumping. She'd never seen this man before, and she clearly wasn't as on her game as she'd hoped. She'd worried about the suit, hadn't known how it would go over to make a statement like the Turks were still breathing, and her fears were answered. More surfaced when she heard him fumbling with his belt.

"I couldn't take the big guy," he whined, hysterical. "Nah, I saw him around, and I tried it, but even know he could just bat me away. 'know how embarrassing that was? Huh?" he insisted, shaking her again. She heard fabric. "I decided that the next time I saw a suit, it'd be different. I'd start it, I'd do it, I'd end it. No fight. Just like this, Turk."

"What?" she managed to gasp, hoping to stall him even a little.

His sharp hips ground into her, his arm still pinned against her neck, his other hand working awkwardly, pawing furiously at the waist of her suit pants. He kept enough force on her head to close one of her eyes, throwing off her depth perception. She didn't have any weapon besides her gun, and it was somewhere next to the trash outside The Breaking Day.

She heard him crying, but no less dangerous. "Biggs," he whispered, close to her ear. "Biggs, Jessie, Wedge. My friends, my friends, my best fucking friends, my hometown, everybody I goddamn knew. I barely kept it cool when AVALANCHE was around anymore – I kept wandering around, hoping I'd run into one of you fucks, hoping one of us would kill the other." He shook her again, and she felt a breeze on her thighs. She was almost crying now. "You don't know how that feels. That helplessness, that hope that some car's going to run you down at night. Wishing you were anyone, anywhere other than where you are."

She knew it now. His arm went away from her neck, around her front, the other at her hip. He was there, too much of him against too much of her suddenly, and she had nowhere to go.

"Well I can't drop a goddamn sector plate on your family, Turk," he growled, throwing his entire weight against her, and she didn't know where he was or where he was because he was touching every part of her and all she could really do was try to keep her neck from breaking against the wall, turning her forehead against it, closing her eyes and letting out a cry and a gasp, "but I can drag this out for as long as I need to, make you feel twenty years of hopelessness, make you know how it feels –" His breath hitched, and her fears were affirmed and the tears were hot on her cheeks. "Make you know how it feels," he repeated, breath labored, "to be invaded, torn apart, fucked over."

It was an hour, it was a second, it was ten minutes, it was twenty years. It was too long and not long enough before he was done, and she couldn't think enough to bring a hand behind her to stop him, and she couldn't move one leg without another to throw it at his shin. His head was against her neck and then it wasn't, though, and then he turned her around and grinned that predator's grin, reaching a hand out toward her dress shirt, shifting his weight, when a sharp popping noise rang out, his ears split and opened, and he fell into a heap.

Elena was still crying, too afraid to take solace in anything, only hearing the faint jangle of thin chains as she slid down the alley wall, scraping her back all the way down and tearing her jacket. So much for the shiny, new Mideel, she thought – it was still full of people with the reptilian brains of Turks, set to rape you in any alley on a twenty year grudge. She heard the body of her attacker being dragged clumsily down toward the garbage, then her gun being slid across the ground to knock into her exposed hip.

She still sat curled against the wall, but her eyes quickly dried when she felt the barrel being pressed gently against her hairline.

Looking up, her own eyes met two egg-white circles where pupils should have been, inches down from a pair of sunglasses perched atop a bald head. Towering six and a half feet over her, wearing a dark red suit and brown tie, eyes misshapen and morphed, was Rudolph Hurst, ex-Turk.

"Stop it," he mumbled, "or I'll blow your head off."