Reno—Edge
Six days of work done in four. I was on the phone through most of this, getting reports from the team looking for the director and Elena, the president, and deployments of Turks on missions spread across the planet needing orders.
I still noticed Schala running herself into the ground. At night she was so cold she could barely sleep even with me wrapped around her and all the blankets we could find cocooning us. She cried out in her sleep, but I was too exhausted to care. I conked out quickly after her outbursts. She, clearly, did not.
That last day at Chocobo Farm was the worst, when she openly wept in front of me. The sight of that helplessness in her, that ultimate loss of control in the face of a goddamn bird, speared me in the chest.
I didn't want to think why she was doing it. I was pushing myself quite hard enough I didn't need any distractions. If I'd had the time to think I might have realized she didn't need to push herself too. She was choosing to do it, so I could get to Edge faster.
The importance of my job outweighed all this. I had to focus.
We landed on a rooftop in Edge. With the blades still spinning down I hopped out of the cockpit and ran, jacket sleeve over my eyes to guard against grit stirred up by our descent. Twyla and Godfrey squinted into the wind, their Turk uniforms immaculate.
Amateurs, I thought with disdain. Trying to impress me, though. Got that right.
"Okay!" I shouted over the sound of the powering-down chopper engine. "Truck's downstairs, right? Let's get her to the hospital! I'll go over everything again on the way!"
The lift was a joke, a platform on a metal rope, but at least it worked. Twyla and Godfrey introduced themselves stiffly to Schala, and they all shook hands. Her eyes were glazed and she swayed on her feet.
Her black cloak whipped around her and plastered along her body on one side. On the other, it revealed that the form-fitting pink cheongsam we'd gotten in Wutai a couple of months ago now hung off her like a sack. I sized her up with some alarm and sidled over to Rude.
"When did she last eat? She does eat with us, doesn't she?" I muttered to him.
"Man, I've been eating alone," said Rude. "You're both too busy to eat."
"Yeah, but she…" I trailed off, watching her stare at nothing as we descended through the shell of a building. "Damn!"
My PHS rang and I flipped it out and on in one practiced move. I dreaded hearing the president's voice yet again, and felt relief when I heard Turk Hilo's strained voice on the other end.
It took a while to sort him out, since he was in charge of a team for the first time and head of one of the two retrieval squads deployed looking for the director and Elena. By the time I'd finished, I realized I'd strolled outside on autopilot and was leaning on the lip of a truck bed. I straightened and swiveled to face Godfrey.
"All right! Everyone in the truck," I ordered, and glanced around. "Where the hell is Schala?"
"Er… she went off that way a little bit ago," Twyla said unhelpfully, gesturing.
"God fucking damn it!" I snarled. "Rude! Rude, what the fuck?!"
Rude spun around, and I saw he was on his PHS as well, frowning in confusion. As my temporary deputy he'd been dealing with shit Tseng normally fielded to me.
"Fuck!" I screamed and rounded on my already-failed protection squad. "You two are not making a good first impression! Godfrey, take the truck and follow that street as far as you can! Twyla, Rude, come with me!" I charged off in the direction Twyla had pointed.
My head whipped right and left to check the cross-streets and alleys I passed. Edge is primarily built out of the edge of the ruins of Midgar, which are ridiculously labyrinthine. I sent Rude down the first major street we passed, stood aside to let Godfrey pass in the truck, and at the next main intersection I went one way, Twyla went the other.
We didn't have the squad strength to effect a proper search. Hell, even if we'd had the entirety of the rest of the Turks, including Tseng and Elena, we probably couldn't have combed the whole city effectively. I had no real plan, just anger, three Turks, a truck and my own damn feet. I took streets on a whim, hoping she was still within a reasonable radius and I didn't need to start asking random locals if they'd seen her.
I will never know by what chance I spotted the trailing edge of her cloak. I chased after her with renewed purpose. She was really booking it herself. The motors of cars whizzing past drowned out my attempts to shout for her.
What the fuck is she doing? She's so tired she's snapped, that's it. Come totally untethered from reality, overwhelmed by the biggest city of the planet. Utterly lost little country mouse. Has she ever even been here before? Or to Midgar before the fall? Fuckfuckfuck.
She came out of downtown and wove through some ruins and scrap heaps that probably hadn't been touched since Meteorfall. I tried calling out to her again, but either she didn't hear me or ignored me. She rounded the corner of a huge building into a dusty straightaway. I nearly caught her. Then the alley we were in opened up and I saw her racing across open ground toward a church.
My pace faltered. I managed to keep running, but my brain kicked into overdrive. I knew that church. The ground suddenly seemed miles away as my feet pounded into it. I saw the chapel in grey ruined light, and also remembered it in the deep shadow of the Plate with only one shaft spiking down through the broken roof.
How the hell did this place survive…? I thought. Discomfort grew in me. She reached the door and pushed it wide, entering. I reached it a few seconds later and stood transfixed just inside.
She'd unfastened the cape, let it fall, and strode with casual purpose out from under the overhanging balconies into the light filling the main floor between the pews. She stopped on the edge of a bed of white and yellow flowers glowing in shafts of abnormally bright light penetrating the gloom. Her pink dress, red jacket, and dirt-covered boots lit up like electricity. The only glaring difference was that neon-blue mass of hair.
Oh my fuck.
The sight of her overlaid an almost identical memory in me. Same scene. Same place. Almost all the same details, two years ago, right at the beginning. Another mission, another lifetime, another Reno.
I'd been sent to collect the Ancient. I'd heard she hung out in this wrecked old church, and I swung by to talk to her. She was cute, I suppose, but in this irritating innocent little girl way that Tseng seemed to like a lot more than I did. I guess, being Wuteng, he's used to submissive, overly accommodating women.
I remembered it all in a searing moment, sucking in a sharp whistle of a breath. The taunts of the two insubordinate grunts I'd dragged along with me and regretted instantly. The smell of flowers crushed underfoot. The glow of Mako-blue eyes from her companion. That was the day I met a man who would haunt the rest of my life but was now blessedly absent from this upside-down inside-out reprise of the past.
Schala's head tipped back into the light. I felt paralyzed to move. The spell could not be broken. The supercharged air inside the cathedral wasn't something I had the courage to step into, too afraid I would move back in time and it would happen all over again.
Chasing Sephiroth. The fights with AVALANCHE. That dirty deed—the destruction of Sector Seven by my hand, my own hand, the one lifting right now before me to ward off the memory. The Plate collapse. Then, an unstoppable cascade of disasters all across the world. The death of Aerith, the rebirth of Sephiroth, the summoning of Meteor and the near-obliteration of the world.
No. No no no. This is now. That was then.
Then Cloud sat up and I had another mini-heart-attack. His Mako blue eyes glowed. He was sitting on a pallet off to the side of the flowers, his blond hair spiking in all directions. He wore an improbably casual black t-shirt and looked vulnerable without that giant freakin' sword around, or his usurped SOLDIER uniform.
She moved, drawing my eyes back to her. She circled around the flowers respectfully as I failed to do two years ago. Cloud watched her come to him, unmoving, probably as paralyzed as I was. He was staring into the same memory and finding it even more unbearable.
I know I'm totally self-involved, but I'd have to be someone like Sephiroth to have avoided the knowledge that Aerith meant everything to him, that he more or less saved the planet for her memory and not for us living freaks.
After that he dissolved to a shell of a man. An aimless, reclusive delivery boy in the place of the world's greatest hero. Thinking back, I shouldn't have been surprised to find him living in her church, consumed by the memory of her.
And now someone who looked almost exactly like her, even dressed alike, walked toward him in this place where Aerith had stubbornly grown flowers against all probability. Schala knelt beside him. I saw her reach out to his arm, and her hands glowed green.
Oh, no way…! He has Geostigma, shit! …Well, not for long…
Everything was so silent and still, but for the oscillating green light washing over his mottled arm tied with a pink scrap of ribbon. He glanced down at his arm, then slowly lifted his head to look up at her again. I saw every detail of the sunlight sparkling through the tears on his face. He wept at her, looking like a lost little boy. She knelt there, healing him.
When the light subsided, she let go of his arm and reached up to cradle his face in her hands, stroking the tears away with her thumbs. I saw her in profile, smiling at him. He was a stranger to her, and she was smiling. She hadn't smiled at me when we met.
It hurt so bad.
It hurt more than anger, than gunshots, than stab wounds, than falling, than punches and kicks. It hurt like those first few beatings as a child, before you wise up and learn not to let them get to you, not to let them see you cry, to close off bits of you and open them only when you choose. All those fucking doors I spent my life and guts to build were slamming open and black roiling hurt poured through me.
It was so clear, that moment, the tenderness between them. I had lost something I had no idea I wanted so much. I leaned against a pillar, so weighted with despair I couldn't manage to hold my own fucking carcass up anymore.
His uncannily loud voice broke silence more oppressive than an entire inn's worth of musty thick blankets: "Who are you?"
Her hands dropped away from his face and she rose. His head tilted back, staring up at her as if she was his personal shaft of light. She swiveled on her heel, the smile gone from her face, and started to walk away.
Lightning-fast, he was on his feet. He grabbed her arm.
She pivoted equally fast, her other arm coming up, and before I registered what was happening she had thrown him. His body landed with a thump that rattled the entire rickety floor and I felt it twenty feet away.
My jaw dropped. I jerked upright. Reality crashed back in. Everything revved up into the now like a motorcycle engine kicking to life.
She threw him! She fucking threw Cloud! Holy fucking shit!
That's my giiiiiiirrrrrl!
Doesn't look so much like Aerith now, huh, delivery boy?
I still felt a residual dull all-permeating ache, but overwhelming it were internal whoops of triumph at seeing my student toss the hero of the world over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She turned again to go, fear etched on her face.
"Wait, please!" he called, scrambling up. "Please!" He nearly screamed in desperation.
She hesitated, glancing over her shoulder at him.
"I have a friend," he said, "with Geostigma as well. Please, can you… help him too?"
"Yes," she said.
Relief like morning sun washed his normally taciturn features. He nodded and turned back to his pallet, plucking up a shirt and shoulder guard. She waited, watching him dress. He sat down to put on his boots.
"I'm Cloud," he said as he tied his laces. He glanced up at her. "What's your name?"
She shifted from one foot to the other. "Schala Zeal. …Cid Highwind asked me to tell you to call him." She extended a hand down to him. He clasped it, shook it, and his eyes widened in shock when she pulled him to his feet.
He said nothing, just gestured for her to follow him, and headed in my direction. I leaned back against my pillar, folding my arms, slouching in protective nonchalance. I couldn't let either of them get to me.
He stopped dead when he saw me. He scowled in alarm. "What are you doing here?"
I grinned evilly and decided to fuck with him. I pointed at Schala. "I'm here for her."
He shifted his stance to place himself between her and me, knee bending, other foot sliding out. I laughed in his face.
"Where's your sword?" I said.
"There's a way out the back," he said, inclining his head to her.
"Excuse me," she said, "but is there a problem, Reno?"
I snickered. "Nope!"
He turned to her. "You… know him?"
She nodded. "He followed me here. He's my friend."
A hint of dismay crossed his features. I wanted to whoop and punch the air. In your face, delivery boy!
"What about your friend?" she said kindly, and touched his arm, fouling my glimmer of a good mood. "The one with Geostigma?"
He nodded, gave me a frown, and strode out through the doors. She trailed after him and I loped behind. He mounted the ridiculously huge black-armored motorcycle outside. She hitched up the sides of her cheongsam so the slits let her swing a leg over behind him. She settled her hands on his hips.
That shit was just so not cool with me. I seethed, watching her. I couldn't tell which one I wanted to clock with my Electro-Mag Rod more. He kick-started the bike.
"Wait!" she shouted, and swiveled to me. "Well? Are you coming?"
He twisted to look at her. "You can't be serious."
"He'll fit, he's skinny," she said.
He shook his head. Quick as a flash she was off the bike.
"I'm not going anywhere without him," she said in voice cold as steel. She folded her arms, facing him. "He's my guard, and I don't know you."
Ooohooo! I thought, grinning at his ever-blank expression. His eyes slid from her to me, then twisted around to give a thousand-mile stare across the city. He nodded, once, begrudgingly.
She climbed back on the bike, and I swung a leg over after her before he could change his mind and take off with her. Her hands rested on his hips. I couldn't stop mine from sliding all the way around her waist, legs spooning hers, just as when we slept in the same bed. Her hair hung in my face.
I put my lips near her ear, but couldn't think what to say. I was just so fucking proud of her I couldn't stand it, and for the moment I wasn't letting go of her. He pushed off from the ground and we zipped across the landscape.
I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket, ring inaudible over the freaking roar of the enormous engine driving the monstrosity we rode. I shut my eyes to reality for a while, felt the wind in my face and the girl in my arms, smelled her Wutain shampoo, heard nothing but internal combustion and currents of air thick enough to bite.
Schala—Edge
I was so tired that I didn't care that the man flush in front of me I clung to was a total stranger and the man flush behind me who clung to me was someone I feared only wanted to conquer my body. A friend about to be wiped permanently from my life, to leave me alone in a world of ice-cold healing and need.
No, all I cared about in that moment was how warm their bodies made me, sandwiched around me, and how the cold wind nipped everywhere like razors at my bare skin, and self-recriminations for leaving my cloak behind.
I had no grasp of what had happened. I think even if I hadn't been tired the enormity of it would have eluded me. It felt potent. At that stage all that remained of me was a ball of feeling and nonsensical thought, so everything felt intense.
I wore clothes that reminded me of Aerith and the strength she'd given me as I neared the dreaded removal of Reno's support. From the second I arrived in Edge, I felt this singularly inexorable pull to the church. I knew something profound had seized me. From the look in Cloud's unreal eyes when he saw me, it seized him too.
I could tell Reno was profoundly shaken. His body was actually tense for the first time outside a physical fight. He coiled around me. I shut my eyes, head leaned on Cloud's sturdy back, and let my aching mind drift.
When the bike stopped, I felt as though I was falling forward. Reno slid off the bike. Cloud shut off the engine. My limbs felt weighted and numb and I seemed to be moving in slow motion as I climbed off. I felt hands catch and steady me. My body tensed but couldn't wake enough to shake them off. I glanced over my shoulder. Reno looked down at me. The red of his hair steadied me. I looked back up at Cloud, realized how tall both men were on either side of me, how close they stood to each other.
Cloud drifted off, up the steps we'd parked outside. A doorway moved past me, insubstantial as a curtain, and an ephemeral dark cool room materialized around me. I heard a glass shatter on the floor and cringed back into Reno. A woman with black hair and black sleeveless leather stared from behind the bar, mouth open wide. Cloud ignored her and went straight for the stairs, turning to look back at me, hand extended.
"This way," he urged, voice tight.
I forced my steps forward, eyes drifting up. I could feel the pull now, nothing like the one that drew me to Cloud, but there were so many tugs in all directions. The nearest was up the stairs. I filed up between the two men, followed blond sea-urchin-like hair into a dark bedroom smelling of sweat and unchanged sheets. I moved past Cloud to the bedside of a small boy tossing in his sleep. A girl stood on the other side of the bed, looking up at us with wide eyes and mouth.
I knelt by the bed. I felt so tired. I wanted the furniture to prop up my mortal remains. I laid my hand on the boy's black-blotched forehead. Cold dragged through me, out of my hands. I bent my head to the covers to hide my wince.
Don't let them see your weakness, I thought, paranoid. Don't let them see you're in pain. They'll get you if they can. Don't let them touch you, or you'll regret it.
All I could remember was fear, and cold, and need. Mine. Theirs. Everyone's. My life was a sketch of those three things, repeated over and over, unalleviated by sleep.
I heard movement around me, footsteps clomping, fabric rustling. A blanket wrapped tightly around me. Firm hands tucked it in such a way it wouldn't slip down. A body pressed up to mine as it was secured.
"Are there any more blankets?" a familiar voice said, and it took me a moment to identify the name that went with it. Reno. "Doing this makes her extremely cold."
"Of course," said a woman's voice faintly behind me, and I heard more footsteps.
"Is it her?" said a little girl's voice. No one answered. Footsteps returned, and a moment later I felt more layers being rolled around me.
The cold stopped flowing. I lifted my head, gaze spinning as I tried to focus on the boy. He sat up, blinking, and looked down at his hands, turning them over and over. The little girl let out a cry of delight and spun around, clapping her hands.
One tug answered, I became aware of more, and allowed them to pull me to my feet like puppet strings. The blankets came untucked and cascaded away. I swiveled and stepped around the redhead behind me. The blond behind him scooted out of the doorway as I slipped past, and the dark-haired woman behind him backed away into the hall. I descended the stairs, clinging to the banister with all my might.
I wasn't thinking. I just reacted to the pull. I knew I was supposed to. To get through as much as I could, as fast as I could. It had been all I'd known for days. I opened the door expecting blinding sunlight and got a faceful of gloom. I nearly stumbled down the stairs. I could feel intensity before me as I descended toward a sea of expectant faces.
I reached out my hands and green lit them up just as they met the arms of a withered old man.
"It's her!" I heard, so loud I winced, somewhere in the mass. Hands grabbed me from all sides. A press of bodies crushed in. I opened my mouth to scream that I couldn't breathe. A shockwave of cold pulsed through me. Darkness followed in its wake. I fell to my knees. Still I was grappled. My limbs twitched in panic, trying to draw up their fighting strength, but no more remained available.
I folded in on myself and hit the ground. I heard yelling and panic, but no longer knew if it was real or only in my mind. Didn't seem to matter much anymore. I was in hell, and the damned were crawling all over my flesh to peel me bare.
Reno—Edge
Imagine how I felt, watching Schala go down in the crowd. As quick as I am, the desperate seething mass was quicker and stronger by sheer numbers.
I engaged the Electro-Mag Rod. Yelling at the top of my lungs to be heard over the hysteria, I cleared a swath with electric pain to get to her. Cloud and Tifa were right behind me, and while I held the crazies at bay Cloud lifted Schala's unconscious body and strode powerfully back into the bar.
I snapped out my PHS and speed-dialed, still brandishing crawly little lightning bolts on the end of my nightstick at the panicked ranks of eyes. "Rude, I'm at Seventh Heaven," I barked into the receiver. "Get your ass over here with those two wastes of space,now!" I slammed it shut.
Among the sea of babble I picked out the recurring words 'stigma' and 'Geostigma' and 'sick,' as well as a host of synonyms for 'person I am related to.' And one recurring word pitched higher than all the rest in frantic need: 'DYING.'
I seethed inwardly, alarmed at the mob I was having to hold off alone until reinforcements arrived. Something more precious than a Mako reactor was at stake. Our future was trapped in those ridiculous bones, in that silly pink dress, locked in those too-thin hands placed in my care. And these people would rip her to shreds like pack animals in their mindless yearning.
Sweat trickled down inside my suit as year-long minutes crawled by before the truck screeched up, scattering the bastards. Twyla and Godfrey had failed to protect Schala their first moment, but almost made up for it the way they cordoned off and secured the exterior of the building without being instructed.
Rude stayed on door duty with that silvery stare. I slammed inside. I had to duck immediately to avoid being decapitated by a sword bigger than my entire body.
"Fucking hell, Cloud, why is everything of yours so ridiculously huge?!" I yelled. "Compensating, or what?" I didn't wait for an answer, didn't really care except to give vent to my terror and anger. I charged upstairs to the bedroom and found Tifa kneeling beside Schala where she lay on the bed. Tifa swiveled to face me. The two kids sat on the other bed, looking meek and worried.
A green materia glow was fading from the armlet Tifa wore. She rose to her feet.
"She's asleep," said Tifa. "Reno, she's exhausted. Who is she? What is she?"
"I don't know," I said, and leaned against the doorway. I rubbed my forehead. "She's…" My phone rang, interrupting me. "Shit." I snatched out my phone and opened it. "Yeah, what?"
"Reno, your status?" said the president, in that prim I'm-not-happy voice.
Shit. "Sir, we ran into some complications in Edge," I said. "I'm going to need a lot more resources here to keep her secure. Apparently word's gotten around and we're pinned down at Tifa's bar by a lot of pretty desperate people."
Rufus sighed heavily. "I'll make some calls. I need you up here in two hours, regardless."
"Regardless?! Sir…"
"That's all, Reno." He hung up on me.
I clapped my PHS shut in my hand. "Motherfucking…"
Tifa slammed a very strong hand over my mouth and flicked her eyes at the kids, then glared at me. I rolled my eyes.
"Sorry," I said as she removed her fingers. "I will be so happy when I'm not in charge any more. This sucks."
"In charge of what?" she said sweetly.
I glared at her. "Anything. There's too much da… there's too much work involved. I'm allergic to work." I glanced down at Schala, a whole pile of unsworn curses building up in me.
Tifa followed my gaze. "That's the girl who can cure Geostigma, huh?"
"Brilliant, Tif."
"Don't vex me. It's thanks to us she's alive."
"Yeah, sorry. Been a long day." I felt sticky and exhausted. "Is there a shower I can use?"
She laughed sharply.
"Shh, hell, don't wake her!" I hissed.
Tifa gave me the strangest, longest look I think I've ever seen out of her. Then, without words, she pointed across the hall.
"Thanks," I said. "Won't be a minute." Which was a lie, but I promised myself not to use all her hot water. God only knew how many unfortunates she was harboring in that place, and I may be a bastard, but those orphans looked so lost. None more so than Cloud.
I scrubbed vigorously at my hair, trying to forget the way he'd looked at Schala. The way she'd looked at him. The memory ran in my veins like poison.
She's not Aerith, you spiky-haired son of a bitch, I thought. Leave her alone.
Thing was, I knew with Cloud on the clock she was safer than anywhere else on the planet. Which pissed me off royally. Also it seemed clear that whatever he had been doing in that church, she was the answer. She'd arrowed straight for it, and him. And though I personally thought he was a bit of a self-righteous asshole, he's not nearly as selfish as I am. I was about to leave her in the care of a man who was predisposed to worship the ground she walked on, probably literally.
And that, some hot dark corner of my soul knew, was no less than someone like her deserved.
I got out of the worst shower I'd ever had ready to punch through a wall. It took all my restraint and control to get out of Seventh Heaven with not a word to Cloud, and content myself with a little subordinate-abuse of Twyla and Godfrey to put the fear of Reno into them should they fail to protect Schala.
I also shouted quite a lot at the miscellaneous still-loyal soldiers Rufus had mustered from somewhere before storming off to the helicopter with Rude. It was a long, long ride back up the skeletal skyscraper, my arms folded, a tight little ball of stress.
"She can't be safer than where she is now," Rude pointed out.
I pivoted slowly to face him. "I know that," I snarled. I saw from his facial tics he'd just rolled his eyes at me. I glared at him. He didn't say another fucking word, for which I was enormously grateful. Sometimes he's smart enough to figure out when not to push me.