A/N: For info on this story, please head to my profile!
Also, please please please review! If I end up not getting a lot of reviews, I will take the story down because I will assume that nobody is reading it. Even itf the review is a short, "Hey, I like your story and here's one reason why..." Or "I don't like your story because..." That would make my day!
Chapter 3: Things You Want Forgiven
The PHS had been ringing for the past half hour, going unanswered and buried under the pile of wet clothes Bee had left in her room. The bathroom was filled with steam, fogging up the mirror that hung on the wall over the sink. Scalding hot water beat down on Bee's back, but she barely noticed how hot it was as she sat on the floor of her tub, her arms crossed on her knees and her head resting on top. Leftover suds from her soap lingered around her feet, and she kicked at them, trying to make them disappear down the shower drain, but they were stubborn and instead clung to her toes. She kicked again, trying to fling them off her foot, but they seemed to cling even harder, and she was finally forced to wipe them off with her hand, smacking her palm into the water surrounding her. She brought her hand back to her knees, ignoring the pain that had shot through her arm from the force of her strike. She sat like that for a few more minutes until she heard her PHS ring again, for probably the twentieth time that day. Sighing, Bee stood and turned off the water, pulled back the shower curtain, and exited her tub. She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself and hurried down to her bedroom, water dripping a trail behind her. She dug through the wet clothes on her floor, and answered her phone, cutting of the obnoxious ringtone she had set for Tifa.
"I'm fine, calm down," Bee said hastily into the phone, standing up and moving to her dresser where she rummaged through the drawers for a bit, looking for a set of clothes to wear for the day.
"Bee! Do you even know what time it is?" Tifa's panicked voice came from the other end of the phone. Bee could imagine her pacing throughout the hallways and rooms of her apartment above the bar, as Marlene tagged along behind her, trying to calm her down.
Bee didn't take much time to think before answering, "Morning?"
"No!" Tifa yelled back, startling Bee a bit, causing her to drop the shirt she had planned on wearing for the day. Bee knelt down to pick it up as Tifa continued, "Bee, it's almost two in the afternoon! I came to the shop earlier to see if you were okay, you left the bar so drunk, and with Reno of all people! But your shop wasn't open and when I knocked and called up you didn't answer! I've been calling you ever since then! Where have you been, are you okay?! Did Reno hurt you? I'll kill him!"
"Tifa," Bee interrupted, wincing at how loud Tifa's voice was, "I'm fine. I just overslept. I'm allowed to do that every once in a while, aren't I?"
"Well... yes," Tifa said hesitantly, "But you still left with Reno!"
Bee grimaced at this, and struggled to put underwear on without dropping her phone. She decided to sit on her bed and place the phone between her cheek and her shoulder. "He didn't hurt me," Bee answered, but said nothing more on the subject. She stood, grabbed her pants and put them on, waiting for Tifa to say something back.
"Bee... You left holding his hand," Tifa told her. Bee couldn't tell if her voice was accusing, or concerned. It could have been both.
"I did," Bee stated back simply. She was fiddling with the clasp of her bra, cradling the phone in her neck again.
It took Tifa a minute or two to finally reply. "You slept with him."
Bee didn't answer this time. Having finally managed to get her bra on correctly, she held her shirt in her hand, looking down at the blue fabric and scrutinizing the stitching around the buttons of the front of it. She honestly didn't know what to say to Tifa. If she said yes, she was admitting to having a one night stand with a man she had just met one time, a man that had hunted Aerith for years. If she said no, she was lying to the woman who had given her a home and the means to start a new life.
Weighing her two options, she decided to tell the truth, as she knew Tifa of all people deserved Bee's honesty. "Yes." She placed her blue blouse on her dresser, deeming it necessary to wear a black tank top underneath it, and went through her drawers again until she found the article of clothing in question. Tifa said nothing again, and Bee knew she had stopped her pacing, and had probably kicked Marlene out of whatever room she had stopped in. Bee took the silence to tug on the tank top, and then slink her arms through her blouse, buttoning it up only halfway and letting the ends dangle over her white shorts. Tifa began talking again as Bee opened her closet, looking for her boots so that she could finally go and open her shop.
"He left the next morning without saying good bye, didn't he?" Tifa asked, her voice neutral. Bee was impressed by how monotone Tifa had managed to ask the question.
"He's a Turk, Tifa," Bee answered, slipping her feet into her black leather boots, buckling the sides of them. She then went to her mirror and brushed her wet hair out of her face, and put a simple black headband in it. "Turks don't do anything past one night. Relationships complicate things."
"You... sound like you already knew this," Tifa said in surprise.
Bee shrugged, even though she knew Tifa couldn't see it. She walked out of her bedroom and down the hallway, and stopped in her kitchen. "Tseng really liked Aerith, and yet he never did anything about it. Besides, the Turks are well known. I think everyone knows it." She grabbed a glass from her cabinet, and filled it with water, gulping it down quickly before turning to another cabinet and pulling out a protein bar. She unwrapped it as she made her way to her staircase and into her shop.
"I guess," Tifa answered back, her voice trailing off. Bee said nothing back. Finally, Tifa continued, "Are you okay?"
Bee stopped walking. Was she okay? No. No she wasn't in the least bit okay. She had had a one night stand, her first in her life. She honestly felt disgusting. Her first thought when she had realized it earlier was that Aerith would never have let something like that happen. Aerith would never have gotten drunk in the first place, would never have let a man go home with her. Bee was ashamed of herself.
"I've had sex before," Bee answered, dodging around the question in the best way she could. She continued her walk to the shop door, unlocking it, and flipping the sign that hung from the glass window to "Open".
She heard Tifa sigh in exasperation on the other end, a noise that came across like static. "You dated the two guys you had sex with. This isn't the same thing."
Bee rolled her eyes and moved to lean against the register counter. "I know, Tifa. I don't... I don't want to talk about this, okay?"
Tifa heard the pleading in her younger friend's voice and gave another sigh, filling Bee's ear with the sound of static again. "Fine," she recoiled, "I just wanted to make sure that you weren't hurt."
"You think Reno would have hurt me?" Bee asked, purely curious. Sure, Reno was a Turk, but Tifa had let him stay in her bar, and had even had a pleasant conversation with the man. They didn't seem to be friends, but they were definitely no longer enemies.
"No, actually," Tifa answered, surprising even herself with the answer, "I don't think he would have hurt you. Reno isn't like that. He maybe in the Turks, but he has a conscience. You know, the Turks tried to save Zack and Cloud."
"Really?" Bee asked in surprise. She had never really heard the specifics of Zack's death. She only knew that Zack and Cloud had been taken by Hojo to be experimented on, and Zack had been killed by Shinra soldiers when he tried to return to Midgar.
"Yeah," Tifa told her, her voice light and she thought back on the story Tseng had told her shortly after Kadaj and his gang had been defeated. Searching for the true events of the day Zack died, Tifa had been too afraid to ask Cloud and had sought out the Turk instead. "They had been ordered to bring Cloud and Zack back to Shinra, but they ignored the orders. Tseng ordered them to bring them safely back to Midgar instead, keeping them away from Shinra. Reno took a helicopter and searched for them, but the Turks never found them..."
Bee closed her eyes, knowing that Shinra found them instead. "I never knew..." she told Tifa, her eyes still closed.
"The Turks... are not the same as they were before," Tifa said, her voice slightly strangled, "But their job is still dangerous, and they don't like to get too close to anyone else. Reno's best friend is his partner, Rude. He only ever really came to the bar on occasion, before you started to. He stopped for a while because the WRO had become so busy, and Rufus was taking a more hands on approach to the organization. Every once in a while, he has a job for Cloud, delivering something for Rufus."
"Cloud delivers stuff for Rufus Shinra?" Bee asked in disbelief. She turned around to gaze out the front window, watching several people pass by her shop.
"Yeah, sometimes. But that's not the point," Tifa said hurriedly, "Stop changing the subject. I called to make sure you're okay."
Bee was the one to sigh this time, sending her own static over to Tifa. "I just... want to act like it never happened, okay?" she told Tifa, her voice sounding small even to her own ears, and she felt pathetic, "Please don't tell Cloud."
"Bee..." Tifa began to protest but Bee cut her off.
"I want to forget it," Bee said, a little harsher than she meant to. Shocked at her own forcefulness, she said, "I'm sorry, Tifa. I know you are concerned, but this is something I want to let go. Please?"
Bee watched a happy couple walk by the store this time, and she felt sick as she saw the woman smile up at the man and he leant down to kiss her softly. She turned away from the window completely, already tired of people watching.
"Okay," Tifa answered after some thought, "Okay, but only because this is something that you have to deal with yourself, not me."
"I know," Bee answered, looking down at her feet, which she had turned inward, the toe of her boots hitting each other in an awkward fashion. She looked up when the bell above her shop door rang, and she turned around again, seeing that an elderly man had walked into her shop. "Tifa, I have a customer, I'm sorry. I will come by the bar later okay?"
"Okay," Tifa answered, "Marlene misses you. You didn't get to see her yesterday because you were late."
"Yeah," Bee answered, "I can come play with her today, promise."
"Alright..." Tifa trailed off, unsure of how to end the conversation. Finally, she opted on saying, "You will be okay."
Bee frowned and watched the elderly man in her shop head over to her healing potion section. "I know," she told Tifa. "See you later."
After she had hung up, she wandered over to the man, a fake smile plastered on her face, and a spring in her step and greeted him. "Hello! You're interested in a potion? What specifically were you looking for...?"
The rest of the month went by normally. Bee sold enough of her potions to make a living, visited her patients after hours, and ended every night at 7th Heaven. Yuffie came back to Edge, and Bee was relieved to be able to hang out with someone other than Tifa. Bee loved Tifa, she really did, but Tifa had started treating Bee like a porcelain doll, afraid that the girl would break at any second. It drove Bee crazy; all she wanted to do was forget anything had ever happened, and Tifa's over-protectiveness was not helping.
Reno didn't come back to the bar again, and Bee had overheard Cloud mentioning that the Turks had returned to Wutai, their negotiations having not been finished because of the assassination attempts during the previous negotiations. Yuffie later confirmed this, telling Tifa that Godo had contacted her and wanted her help with Rufus. She had refused, taking it as a ploy to get her to return home and stating that she would rather kiss a cactuar on the mouth than deal with Rufus Shinra. Bee had laughed at this, but was secretly grateful that her friend wouldn't be leaving her anytime soon.
But still, Bee's thoughts often drifted to how Aerith would have reacted to Bee's sleeping with a stranger, had she still been around. The thoughts drove her mad, causing her to be sick to her stomach, and so Bee threw herself into her alchemy even more so than usual, creating complex potions, and even more intricate antidotes that could counteract the most resilient poisons. Instead of drinking at the bar, when Bee went to visit, she would hide up in Cloud and Tifa's apartment, playing with Marlene and Denzel, or teaching Shelke about basic human interactions, an activity that exhausted Bee by the time she was finished. Bee never went home drunk again after that night, never really touched a glass of alcohol unless Yuffie invited her to drink. When Bee had refused the first time, Yuffie had looked at her in suspicion. Bee never refused Yuffie again.
By the end of that month, the only thing to remind Bee of what had happened was Tifa's worried gaze. The martial artist thought that Bee didn't notice, but she wasn't stupid. When Bee turned around, Tifa was there, fawning over her as if she was sick. Cloud had noticed, but never questioned. Bee came to the conclusion that Cloud knew what had happened, but never brought up the subject. He had stopped by Bee's store ten days after that night, carrying Bee's denim jacket in his hand. Bee hadn't brought it back home, refusing to even look at the jacket whenever she left the bar.
Cloud walked slowly through the front door, waiting by the register when he noticed Bee helping out a customer who was looking over tranquilizers. She looked up when she heard the bell, saw Cloud, and held up a finger in a silent request for him to wait until she was finished. Then she saw the jacket, and Cloud couldn't help but notice that her face went pale, and she stuttered at the man she was helping. She turned back to the man, ignoring Cloud and the jacket until her customer had walked out of the store, a paper bag with a tranquilizer in hand.
"You left this at the bar the other week," Cloud told her, handing the jacket over to her.
She took it and nodded. "Yeah. I guess I just kept forgetting to bring it back," she said timidly, though Cloud could tell that she was trying her hardest to act normally. She was failing miserably.
"Tifa told me Reno was in the bar that night," Cloud told her, giving nothing away in his voice, but watching for Bee's reaction.
"Ah, yeah. He was," Bee answered, shoving the jacket under the counter. She laced her hands together on the counter top and fidgeted nervously from once foot to the next. Cloud pretended not to notice. "I had never met him before. He was different from what I had pictured a Turk to be like."
Cloud didn't point out that Bee had met Tseng before. Instead, he placed both of his hands on her shoulders, causing her to look up at him. Cloud had never thought she had looked so young in the entire time he had known her. Her hair was braided again, exactly the way it had been when he had first met her. He knew she did it that way because it reminded her of Aerith, and she had never really been able to copy her late friend's hair style completely. She was wearing blue again, her favorite color, and her face had flushed. Her twenty second birthday was in a few weeks, and Cloud remembered that was how old Aerith was when he had met her.
"You're a good kid, Bee," he told her. When she began to protest that she wasn't a kid, he cut her off and continued, "You work hard, and you always do your best, and you should be proud of yourself. But, you should be yourself. Aerith... is gone. I know that you want to live her life for her, but that doesn't mean that you have to be her. Trust me on this, I know from experience."
Bee's face broke at this, and she looked down at the floor. "She was my idol..." she whispered sullenly to Cloud.
"I know," Cloud answered with a nod, "But even Aerith wasn't perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone... has things they want forgiven in their lives. Aerith wasn't any different, and neither are you."
Cloud left after that, and as he walked out the door, Bee was reminded of how Zack had left her house in much the same way that Cloud was leaving her shop now. The door shut behind him, but his words echoed throughout Bee's head. He knew, Bee determined. He knew about Reno. But what concerned Bee wasn't the fact that Cloud knew, it was the fact that Cloud had said that Aerith had things she wanted forgiven. And for the life of her, Bee couldn't think of a single thing that Aerith could have possibly wanted to be forgiven for.
Cloud never mentioned anything of the sort again, and Bee never brought it up. His words did help, however, and Bee managed to get through the rest of the month feeling less ashamed of herself, and tried her hardest to ignore Tifa's worried looks.
Everything was going fine until the Turks came back to Edge.
To be more specific, they showed up at Busy Bee's Potions and Poultices at approximately 3:42 am.
Bee awoke to furious knocking on her shop door, and yells from outside. She bolted upright in her bed, her blanket thrown off of her in the process. She paused and listened to the yelling outside, and froze when she heard a familiar voice.
"Bee!" the voice yelled up at her, "Bee, you gotta open up right now! You hear me! Get your buggy ass down here!"
Sure enough, when Bee stuck her head out her open window, it was Reno who was standing outside her shop door, and he wasn't alone. Bee recognized Tseng with him, along with a female Turk, another male Turk, and a crumpled man in a white suit. Reno was looking up at the window and when he saw that Bee had poked her head out, he gestured at her to come down.
"Come on! I need an antidote and pronto, yo!" he yelled up to her, motioning to the man in the white suit who was being held up by both Tseng and the other man in the Turk uniform. "Get down here!"
Overcome by her shock at Reno's sudden appearance, Bee panicked and pulled back from the window, hitting her head on the top glass in the process. She yelped in pain, and rubbed the spot where she had hit, and walked over to her dresser so that she could pull out a pair of soft shorts. She quickly pulled them on, and pulled down on the tank top she was wearing so that it covered her stomach. She paused only once on her way downstairs, but continued on when she realized that her fear of seeing Reno again was less important than healing someone who was poisoned. Nobody's life was worth jeopardizing like that.
Bee ran to her front door after that, flinging it open and backing up swiftly so that Reno and the others could enter into the shop. "I have a cot behind the counter, lay him there," she ordered Tseng and the other Turk carrying the indisposed man. Reno lead the way, and helped the other two carefully lay Bee's new patient on the cot she had pointed out. She shut the door with a slam after they had all gone through, and rushed to the cot's side, looking down at the man laying there, and she gasped in surprise.
The man laying on her cot was none other than Rufus Shinra. She recognized him from WRO propaganda posters that tried to make Rufus look respectable, a way to get people used to the idea that Rufus was funding the WRO and had left his Shinra days behind him.
Really, Bee shouldn't have been that surprised. She knew that the Turks had gone to Wutai to protect Rufus, and that there had already been assassination attempts on him. What she didn't understand was why he was being brought to her if he had been poisoned in Wutai. It wasn't like her shop was all that close to the country.
Reno looked at her expectantly, and Bee decided to ask questions after she saved Rufus. She looked Rufus over once, taking in how pale he was and noticing that some of the veins in his neck had risen very close to the surface of his skin, appearing like blue spiders along his neck. Bee knelt to look closer, then turned to Reno.
"What poisoned him?" she demanded, looking at the other three too.
The Turk with the sunglasses quickly stuck a hand in his blazer pocket and withdrew it, his fist clenched. He moved forward to hand Bee what looked like a small dart. Bee brought it up to her face to inspect, taking in how small the needle was, and the yellow design on the side of the cartridge where the poison had been. She ran over to a second counter in the back of the store, close to where the cot was located under the stairs. The counter served as her work station for when she made her potions and such. She placed the dart down on a small plate and turned back to Reno.
"Go upstairs and get my bracelet with the materia on it. It's on my dresser. Be quick about it," she ordered, and watched as Reno nodded and dashed away. She ignored the other three and bent over her work counter, inspecting the dart again. She turned to a plate of instruments a little down the counter, and picked up a small knife that she used for cutting plants. She then went further down her work counter, to a pack of gloves, slipping them on both hands, making sure they didn't get caught on her three rings. She the dug the knife into the dart cartridge, slicing it in half. Careful to not touch the left over drop of poison sitting in the bottom of the cartridge, she carried the sliced open dart a few inches down the counter and stopped before a beaker that sat on a hotplate. She turned the hotplate on and waited until the water bubbled inside. Finally, she held the dart above the beaker, and watched as the single drop of poison fell into the boiling water below.
Reno had already returned with her bracelet when Bee turned back around to face the Turks again. He held it out to her and she took it with a nod of thanks and slipped it over her wrist before walking back to the cot. She knelt beside Rufus and held a hand over his heart, touching the fabric of his suit jacket gently. Her hand glowed in the darkness of the stair alcove and the Turks watched in fascination. Bee stayed beside Rufus with her hand glowing until she saw the veins recede in his neck, and some of the color returned to his face. However, Rufus's breathing became more labored, his chest rising and falling in a restless pattern. This didn't seem to concern Bee, the Turks noticed, for she stood and turned to them.
"I delayed the spread of the poison for now," she informed them, "But it is a very strong poison, and I cannot remove it from his system entirely right now."
"So, he'll die?" the woman asked her, her voice squeaking a bit.
Bee shook her head. "No. I can make an antidote. I just don't have any antidotes to counteract this specific poison made right now, so I used Poisona to stop the poison from spreading. I should be able to make an antidote within the next half hour provided that I can figure out what kind of poison was actually used. I've never really seen Wutain poison before."
"But you can make an antidote?" Tseng asked her.
Bee nodded and began to walk back to her work counter. "Like I said, I should be able to. Making an antidote is basically just taking the poison in question and reverting it to a harmless state, then breaking it down and building it back up in a way that when injected into the human body, it creates an counteraction to the poison." She inspected the beaker she had left earlier, and when she didn't hear anyone respond, she turned back to look at them again, and couldn't help but laugh at the look on their faces. "It sounds harder than it is."
"I dunno..." Reno said with a shake of his head, "It sounds pretty hard to me."
Bee frowned at this, and the memory of telling Reno that she specialized in antidote making flashed through her head. She turned back to her beaker, which had turned a dark color now and said, "One of you should monitor Mr. Shinra's status. He will continue to breath pretty hard because the poison is moving so slowly through his heart, but his veins should not become so noticeable again. If that happens you should come get me. Otherwise, I'm going to work on the antidote. There is also a second cot folded up beside that one if one of you wants to go to sleep, and I have a couch upstairs you are also welcome to."
"I will monitor him," Tseng told her. Bee turned to nod at him and watched as he dragged the stool to the register counter over to the cot and sat down on it. The two Turks Bee didn't know stood awkwardly to the side, before Reno motioned for the woman to head upstairs. She refused at first, until finally Reno pushed her to the stairs, forcing her to take the couch and sleep for a while. The other Turk took the second cot, and dragged it across the room, away from Rufus and Tseng.
Which left just Reno, Bee noticed in aggravation. She turned back to her work, trying to ignore the fact that the red headed Turk had made a bee-line for the stool that Bee hadn't taken at her work counter. She always preferred to stand while she worked, only sitting down for the waiting parts. She ignored Reno, and turned off the hot plate below the beaker she had dripped the poison into. She was surprised that Reno sat quietly beside her as she set to work on creating an antidote, and that she was the one to break the silence between the two.
"Why did you bring him here?" Bee asked Reno, a sharp bite in her voice that she couldn't seem to keep down. She looked away from a second beaker when Reno gave a soft scoff at her.
"You said yourself, you specialize in antidote making," Reno explained, like it should have been obvious, "So, if my boss is poisoned by something even the Wutain themselves can't cure, who better to take him to?"
Bee looked up at him, eyebrows raised in surprise, her beaker forgotten. "You mean you did take him to a doctor in Wutai first?"
"Well yeah," Reno said, nodding a bit. He had been watching Bee work, fascinated by how quickly the girl was moving and how easily she moved about her work counter. When Bee stopped working, he had nothing to look at besides her now, so he inspected her face, noticing how tired she looked and the fact that she still had bed head. "Rough night?"
Bee scowled and turned back to her work, determined to not look at Reno again. "Yeah, well, some idiot woke me up pretty early in the morning to work on a near impossible task."
Reno gave a short laugh and watched as Bee emptied both of her beakers into a small bowl, and placed a glowing hand over it. "Sounds like a good time to me," he told her sarcastically.
"Then you have a pretty messed up sense of a good time," Bee retorted, barely even paying attention to Reno anymore, she was so submerged in her work. They sat in silence again as Bee hustled back and forth, up and down her work counter, grabbing a phial of this, cutting a stem of that. The beaker she had emptied into her bowl was full again with a strange brown liquid. Bee held her hand over the beaker, and it glowed again. Reno watched this with interest.
"What are you doing?" Reno asked curiously, pointing to Bee's glowing hand, "What magic are you using on an antidote?"
"It's something I picked up during my apprenticeship," Bee explained, focusing on her magic-casting, "You can cast magic on inanimate objects, but that doesn't always mean something will happen. However, when it comes to making potions and antidotes, if your materia is experienced enough, you can cast a spell while you are creating something to make it more potent. For example, if you cast poisona on an antidote, or cure on a potion, it works more effectively."
"That's something you just picked up?" Reno asked incredulously, looking at the girl next to him in disbelief, "What did you do, just decide to cast magic on things at random?"
Bee frowned up at him, over her beaker. She finished casting her magic and walked down the counter a bit and crouched down, shifting through a group of boxes stacked neatly under the counter. She lifted the flaps of the one on the far left, and pulled out a syringe, still sealed in a plastic cover. She carried it back with her to the beaker, and turned back to Reno.
"Don't be stupid," she said, waving a hand at him dismissively and then opening the plastic around the syringe she held, "It was a simple alchemy theory that I tested in a carefully calculated experiment. It just happened to be that my theory was correct, and my potions became that much more effective."
"You don't even sound like that little bug in the bar when you say stuff like that," Reno told her casually, leaning his elbows on the countertop.
Bee shot him a glare and one of the biggest frowns he had ever seen in his life, and he had seen a lot of frowns in his line of work. "I was drunk," she said through gritted teeth, leaving the unwrapped syringe forgotten on the counter.
Reno shrugged, and pointed at the syringe. "Weren't you doing something?" he asked with a smile, causing Bee's eyes to narrow even further than they already were, but she didn't comment back and turned back to the needle. She carefully picked it up, flipped it over her beaker, and dipped it into the liquid, sucking it up until the syringe was halfway full.
"This should be enough," she muttered, bringing the needle closer to her face, and looking it up and down. She nodded to herself and walked past Reno, heading towards Rufus and Tseng. "How is he?"
Tseng looked up at her, having focused his attention on Rufus for most of the time that Bee had been working on the antidote. "His breathing hasn't changed," the head Turk informed her.
"That's normal," Bee said with a nod, moving closer to her patient and inspecting his neck. She was pleased to find that his veins had remained normal the entire time. She grabbed Rufus's arm and rolled up his jacket sleeve. "Normally, I would have my patient just drink the antidote, letting it absorb into the blood stream through the stomach. But seeing as how Mr. Shinra is so indisposed, and his poison is so strong, I made a dose that I can just inject into his system directly." Without further explanation, Bee plunged the needle into Rufus's arm, and pushed down on the syringe head. She watched until all of the brown liquid was gone, and then pulled the needle out of his arm. She hurried back to her counter, threw away the needle into a trash can that was under it, and grabbed a small square of gauze out of a cabinet on the far right of the counter. She brought it back to Rufus and wiped his arm thoroughly, then went an threw the gauze and her gloves away as well.
"Will he be okay, now?" Reno asked, watching as Rufus's breathing slowly began to return to normal.
Bee nodded, walking back over and then holding Rufus's wrist in her hand, feeling his heartbeat. "Yeah," she said, opening an eyelid and peering into Rufus's pupil, seeing that it was dilating normally. Finally, she took in the color of his cheeks and nodded again to herself before continuing, "He seems to be returning back to normal. It will take an hour or two for my antidote to completely make its way through his system, but from what I can see right now, it's working."
She walked back to her work counter and poured the rest of the contents of her beaker into a smaller phial, capping it as she walked back to Tseng. She handed it over to him and he took it and stuck it into his jacket pocket. "If it seems that by night time he still hasn't recovered fully, you can give him more of that. It won't hurt him even if the poison is completely gone, so if you want to be safe, you can give it to him anyway."
Tseng nodded at her and looked back to Rufus. "What should we do now?" he asked her, unsure of whether or not to move Rufus.
"Let him sleep," Bee told him with a shrug. She crossed her arms over her chest, and looked back down at Rufus as well. "Keeping him still is the best way to get the antidote through his system faster, and honestly he is probably exhausted from fighting off the poison as long as he did. I can't believe you made it back here without him dying. That poison was extremely powerful, I've never seen anything like it."
"The docs in Wutai cast poisona on him, like you did," Reno told her, catching her attention, "Like you said, it slowed down the spread of the poison, but they didn't have any antidote to cure it, and didn't know how to make it. The poison came from a rebel faction in Wutai. Those rebels must have created the poison themselves."
Bee frowned and furrowed her eyebrows in thought. She had never really interacted with Wutain poison before, but she was still surprised that there was a poison from that country that their own alchemists could not create an antidote for. That was troubling to her.
"What is wrong?" Tseng asked, noticing that Bee had been contemplating what Reno told her.
"It's just..." Bee trailed off, trying to think of a way to explain what she had been thinking. She turned back to Rufus and began again, "It's just that most poisons have an antidote already in existence. I pride myself in making antidotes, but I've never encountered this before. When I was in my apprenticeship, my teacher would often make me make antidotes from scratch, not having learned how to make them before. It was how I learned how antidotes were originally created. I'm really good at it. But a poison this strong that its country of origin didn't even know how to counteract is extremely concerning. Whoever created it is a very talented alchemist."
"Well... You're obviously more talented," Reno said with a shrug, unconcerned with Bee's trepidation. Rufus was healed, and that was really all he cared about.
Bee looked at him with sad eyes, taking Reno by surprise, his smile slipping from his face. The last thing Bee wanted was Reno's compliments, or even for Reno to be there. She turned from him and headed up the stairs towards her flat.
"One of you can take the floor in the living room. There are blankets in the closet in the hallway. The other should watch over Rufus, just in case. I want you all gone by sunrise. My hospitality for Shinra employees only goes so far," she told them over her shoulder. The two Turks watched as she disappeared up the stairs, and they did not see her again the rest of the night.
They were gone in the morning, just as Bee had asked them to. On the counter, beside the register, was a letter of credit, approving Bee to take 10,000 gil out of a secured bank account in Rufus's name, with his signature and spare Shinra ID taped to the bottom. Bee promptly ripped the paper up into tiny little pieces, and threw the pieces along with the ID into her trash can, then stared at it in silence for almost an hour. She refused to take money for saving someone's life, even if it was the life of Rufus Shinra.