[FF7] Across Distant Shores - 5
FF7 - Rating: PG-13 - Part 5/? - Warnings: None
Pairings: Rufus/Reno - Status: In progress, incomplete.
Summary: "You're stuck on the shores of Hell, and the only way out... is through." Shinra moves against its own, the President against the Vice President, with the Turks caught in between. Rufus goes missing, Reno defies orders and goes after him, leaving Tseng and Rude to cover up his treason against the company.
Mini-chapter word count: 2,019
Total: 9,364
Point V: Rewind
“Reno.”
The voice … seems at once far away and too close. He smiles, dredging himself out of sleep. He knows that voice, almost as well as he knows his own, and he can’t help but respond.
“Reno,” the voice says again, slightly more urgently, and fingers run through his hair as he forces heavy lids open. Damn, but he’s tired…
“Yeah,” he says lazily, warm and comfortable. “I’m here.”
They’re in Gongaga, camped out in a meadow somewhere near the reactor, in a scene straight out of one of his favourite memories. Rufus is kneeling beside him, and while he doesn’t exactly beam when Reno meets his gaze, his eyes do seem to light up. Behind him, the sky is the perfect blue of a beautiful day in late spring.
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” he says with a grin. “Missed me so much that you can’t even let me take a nap in peace?”
Rufus’ fingers entangle themselves in his bangs and tug slightly. “Pay attention,” the other says, a small smile playing over his face.
He vaguely wonders if the weather was this good that day. He is comfortable; neither warm nor cold, feeling almost as if he's floating on the sea of grass.
“Always, chief,” he drawls. “What’re your orders this time?”
“Stop fighting,” Rufus says, and Reno frowns in confusion. That wasn’t how it went, surely. They’d talked, yeah, about insignificant things like assassinating the President or eloping to Wutai. It had been a nice day, too nice to spend on talking about serious shit.
What do you mean? he opens his mouth to say, but the words twist into something else. “I can’t,” he says instead. He struggles to sit up, but Rufus is pushing him down, one slender hand on his chest.
“You don’t think,” Rufus says, in a tone of fond exasperation.
“You know you like it that way.”
“Not where it comes to your wellbeing. Listen. You don’t have infinite chances. Choose the best time and place in which to strike. Let it be on your terms. And fight to win.”
“Rufus.” He grabs the other’s hand, trying to pull him closer, but Rufus is already standing, pulling away. “Don’t go.”
“Duty calls,” the Vice President says, but his voice is hollow. The wind is starting to feel cold, the sky somehow not as blue as it was, but turning a dismal shade of gray.
“Screw duty.”
Rufus glances sharply away, and Reno attempts to clamber to his feet, but he can’t seem to find the strength. There’s something hauling him down, and the ground is freezing and heavy against his back.
“I can’t,” Rufus says, so softly that Reno half thinks he imagined the words. The Vice President glances back, one moment of unguarded despair lighting blue eyes, before his face shutters, emotions locked away. A stranger stares back at him, the stranger who is yet heart achingly familiar, and Reno struggles furiously against whatever it is that is holding him back, screaming words that he can’t hear.
“Stop fighting,” Rufus repeats. Quietly. Calmly. Reno pauses, and in that moment it all falls apart, light splintering into darkness before a whirlwind tears all sight away.
He awakes with a jerk, a heavy weight on his chest preventing him from sitting up.
“Relax,” a voice murmurs, but it’s not Rufus, not his Rufus, not--
--memory cascades in: darkness blood darkness blood the explosive crack of gunfire...
“Fucking hell,” he gasps, lashing out blindly at the blurred shape hovering over him. His fist cuts through cold air, braced for the impact. It never hits. Something intercepts it midway, a grip around the wrist that twists just so--
The flash of pain jolts him back to his senses. He’s panting, vision swimming madly and mouth choked with the sickening aftertaste that he’s come to associate with healing materia. Tseng -- for it is Tseng, still grasping his wrist -- is standing over him, concern etched faintly onto his features.
“Boss,” Reno says. Babbles, almost. He wants to grab Tseng’s tie and scream at him for a status update. He wants, no, needs, to know where Rufus is, what happened to him and how they can nail the bastards who did that to him. The question burns heavy on his heart and tongue, but can’t be said, not here not now not until he knows who else is listening in or what the situation is like.
It seems that Tseng perceives the desperate query in his eyes, for the Director shakes his head. “I don’t know. You were brought in at 1145 by airlift, and treated for multiple shot wounds. I believe that... the Vice President was also brought back to Midgar, but his whereabouts are-- no, not unknown, but we are in no position to find out.”
“We got busted.”
“Succinctly, yes.”
Reno feels the insane urge to laugh. It bubbles up in him, molten lava against barely healed wounds and a horribly parched throat. He coughs out a chuckle: a sobbing, strangled thing born of hysteria. “What now, then? They hauled my ass back, you’re still around...obviously they want us alive.” He pauses, glances around. “And Rude...?”
“Is alright.” Tseng releases his wrist, and Reno vaguely feels his hand thumping down to hit the covers.
“And now,” Tseng says, turning away, “we wait.”
--
Darkness engulfs him. He attempts to move, more tired than he can ever recall having been, but his limbs are lead and fail to respnod. There is no sensation here in limbo, neither heat nor cold, no sound, no smell. And, of course, no sight but the endless marches of black nothingness. His world has shrunk to the steady flow of air being pumped in and out of his lungs, the tube of the respirator lodged down his throat. And when he rubs his fingertips against each other, no sensation registers.
Exile, he reflects, with a morbid sort of calm. Exile into nothingness, more complete and more final than even the ends fo the world. In his mind, he closes his eyes and sighs, but there is no way to tell if his eyelids move, and his breathing is regulated and beyond his control. Everything is beyond his control now. It would be terrifying if he were not so tired, although he rather suspects that he has all the time in the world to rest and think. An eternity of this, with no possible escaspe... for someone who has always had his wit or his shotgun to get him out of the worst situations...
No, helplessness does not sit well with him at all.
That thought brings with it the first aching pangs of despair, and he shoves those thoughts away ruthlessly, refusing to give into panic. He casts his mind out: a lost boat desperately seeking a shore, and his thoughts light on a familiar visage. Green eyes. Red hair, and twin tattoos to match. It’s a good visage, one that makes a warmth kindle in the darkness, and perhaps he smiles, but he can’t tell.
Yet all too soon, the daggerpoints of loss dig in, his mind flashing from comfort to the fear of never seeing his Turk ever again, never to--
--his teeth clench around the ring of the respirator tube as he forcefully terminates that train of thought. Attempts to think of something, anything, besides that. His frustrated growl is mangled by the apparatus, and that irks him more than any thing else in this insane nightmare -- the fact that he can’t see can’t move can’t act can’t do anything but... can’t do anything period.
What have you done to me?
The thought echoes furiously in the confines of his head, and he longs to lash out, to scream it at a person he once called ‘Father’.
What kind of personalised hell is this?!
If his fingers have curled into a fist, he can’t feel it. The silence is defeaning, and now the darkness isn’t just engulfing him, it’s smothering him. The need to get out, to do something to distract himself from the thoughts that are tearing around in his head, is getting overwhelming. Adrenaline pumps through his veins, the fight or flight instinct playing havoc with his vain attempts to maintain calm. He thrashes, but with no wind against skin, without even the sensation of muscles tightening, it is as if he has been completely disembodied.
Get me out of here. The thought sounds clear in his mind, a clarion bell that strikes a chord in his very soul. Get me OUT of here!
He attempts to draw a deep breath; fails; attempts to scream; fails again. His mind is the only thing he has left, and right now it is his worst enemy. Desperation flares, attempting to claw free, a broken bird winging for altitude. His mind’s eye sees red, the red of fire morphing into the red of fire-bright hair. Stray thoughts rally around that image, all his panic and anger and fear wrappnig aruond a single word, a single name, and he’s screaming it out into the darkness as if it can actually reach its target--
RENO!
--
“Rufus.” Reno sits up, starting out of a daze he never knew he had fallen into. Tseng glances over, eyes narrowing, and Reno shakes his head sheepishly. The air of the hospital room irks him: it freaking stinks of detergent or whatever sterilising crap they use, and it’s driving him crazy. He needs a bath -- no, he needs a long drink first, and then a bath -- no, he needs to shoot something first, chase with a good drink or several -- no, he needs to... needs to... needs to...
“Fucking A,” he growls, stiffly and painfully kicking the sheets away. “How long are they going to keep us here?”
Tseng doesn’t bother to reply, arms crossed and brow furrowed as he stares at a wall in lieu of out of a window. Reno doesn’t need a clock to chart the hours here -- he can tell how much time has passed just by the increasing tension in his boss’ shoulders. It’s hard to say who’s more concerned for their missing Vice President. Reno has the claim, pure and simple, but somewhere along the line, Rufus won Tseng’s loyalty, and won it hard.
Reno doesn’t know what happened. Reno can’t even begin to guess what happened, because Tseng’s always been somewhat of an enigma to him. Everyone has their hooks and buttons and levers, but try as he might, he’s never really been able to find anything that works consistently with the boss. Perhaps the button is labelled ‘pretty blond teenage boys’, who knows.
He draws his knees up to his chest and flops his chin onto one, sighing noisily. Tseng fidgets.
“Damnit,” Reno mutters. “I need to get laid.”
That gets a reaction out of the other Turk, who turns and levels him with an utterly unimpressed stare. Reno smirks lazily at him, a quirk of the corner of his mouth. The sardonic expression doesn’t reach his eyes.
Tseng shakes his head and returns to studying the fire escape plan.
Reno quells the urge to chew his fingernails, and balls up the bedsheets and tosses them at the far wall instead.
Tseng taps a foot.
Reno flops back onto the pillows and groans.
Tseng sighs.
Reno sits up again, eyes scanning the room for something to fiddle with. He reaches over to tug the bedside drawer open, when he registers a sudden stillness in his boss.
He snaps straight into combat mode, reaching for the EMR that isn’t there. “What--“
Tseng holds up a hand and Reno lapses into silence. Then he hears it.
Footsteps. Heading down the corridor.
He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and staggers to his feet, daring them to head this way, to come into this room, to bring it on, you bastards...
...there’s the beep of a card swiping through electronic locks, and the door opens.
Pairings: Rufus/Reno - Status: In progress, incomplete.
Summary: "You're stuck on the shores of Hell, and the only way out... is through." Shinra moves against its own, the President against the Vice President, with the Turks caught in between. Rufus goes missing, Reno defies orders and goes after him, leaving Tseng and Rude to cover up his treason against the company.
Mini-chapter word count: 2,019
Total: 9,364
Point V: Rewind
“Reno.”
The voice … seems at once far away and too close. He smiles, dredging himself out of sleep. He knows that voice, almost as well as he knows his own, and he can’t help but respond.
“Reno,” the voice says again, slightly more urgently, and fingers run through his hair as he forces heavy lids open. Damn, but he’s tired…
“Yeah,” he says lazily, warm and comfortable. “I’m here.”
They’re in Gongaga, camped out in a meadow somewhere near the reactor, in a scene straight out of one of his favourite memories. Rufus is kneeling beside him, and while he doesn’t exactly beam when Reno meets his gaze, his eyes do seem to light up. Behind him, the sky is the perfect blue of a beautiful day in late spring.
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” he says with a grin. “Missed me so much that you can’t even let me take a nap in peace?”
Rufus’ fingers entangle themselves in his bangs and tug slightly. “Pay attention,” the other says, a small smile playing over his face.
He vaguely wonders if the weather was this good that day. He is comfortable; neither warm nor cold, feeling almost as if he's floating on the sea of grass.
“Always, chief,” he drawls. “What’re your orders this time?”
“Stop fighting,” Rufus says, and Reno frowns in confusion. That wasn’t how it went, surely. They’d talked, yeah, about insignificant things like assassinating the President or eloping to Wutai. It had been a nice day, too nice to spend on talking about serious shit.
What do you mean? he opens his mouth to say, but the words twist into something else. “I can’t,” he says instead. He struggles to sit up, but Rufus is pushing him down, one slender hand on his chest.
“You don’t think,” Rufus says, in a tone of fond exasperation.
“You know you like it that way.”
“Not where it comes to your wellbeing. Listen. You don’t have infinite chances. Choose the best time and place in which to strike. Let it be on your terms. And fight to win.”
“Rufus.” He grabs the other’s hand, trying to pull him closer, but Rufus is already standing, pulling away. “Don’t go.”
“Duty calls,” the Vice President says, but his voice is hollow. The wind is starting to feel cold, the sky somehow not as blue as it was, but turning a dismal shade of gray.
“Screw duty.”
Rufus glances sharply away, and Reno attempts to clamber to his feet, but he can’t seem to find the strength. There’s something hauling him down, and the ground is freezing and heavy against his back.
“I can’t,” Rufus says, so softly that Reno half thinks he imagined the words. The Vice President glances back, one moment of unguarded despair lighting blue eyes, before his face shutters, emotions locked away. A stranger stares back at him, the stranger who is yet heart achingly familiar, and Reno struggles furiously against whatever it is that is holding him back, screaming words that he can’t hear.
“Stop fighting,” Rufus repeats. Quietly. Calmly. Reno pauses, and in that moment it all falls apart, light splintering into darkness before a whirlwind tears all sight away.
He awakes with a jerk, a heavy weight on his chest preventing him from sitting up.
“Relax,” a voice murmurs, but it’s not Rufus, not his Rufus, not--
--memory cascades in: darkness blood darkness blood the explosive crack of gunfire...
“Fucking hell,” he gasps, lashing out blindly at the blurred shape hovering over him. His fist cuts through cold air, braced for the impact. It never hits. Something intercepts it midway, a grip around the wrist that twists just so--
The flash of pain jolts him back to his senses. He’s panting, vision swimming madly and mouth choked with the sickening aftertaste that he’s come to associate with healing materia. Tseng -- for it is Tseng, still grasping his wrist -- is standing over him, concern etched faintly onto his features.
“Boss,” Reno says. Babbles, almost. He wants to grab Tseng’s tie and scream at him for a status update. He wants, no, needs, to know where Rufus is, what happened to him and how they can nail the bastards who did that to him. The question burns heavy on his heart and tongue, but can’t be said, not here not now not until he knows who else is listening in or what the situation is like.
It seems that Tseng perceives the desperate query in his eyes, for the Director shakes his head. “I don’t know. You were brought in at 1145 by airlift, and treated for multiple shot wounds. I believe that... the Vice President was also brought back to Midgar, but his whereabouts are-- no, not unknown, but we are in no position to find out.”
“We got busted.”
“Succinctly, yes.”
Reno feels the insane urge to laugh. It bubbles up in him, molten lava against barely healed wounds and a horribly parched throat. He coughs out a chuckle: a sobbing, strangled thing born of hysteria. “What now, then? They hauled my ass back, you’re still around...obviously they want us alive.” He pauses, glances around. “And Rude...?”
“Is alright.” Tseng releases his wrist, and Reno vaguely feels his hand thumping down to hit the covers.
“And now,” Tseng says, turning away, “we wait.”
--
Darkness engulfs him. He attempts to move, more tired than he can ever recall having been, but his limbs are lead and fail to respnod. There is no sensation here in limbo, neither heat nor cold, no sound, no smell. And, of course, no sight but the endless marches of black nothingness. His world has shrunk to the steady flow of air being pumped in and out of his lungs, the tube of the respirator lodged down his throat. And when he rubs his fingertips against each other, no sensation registers.
Exile, he reflects, with a morbid sort of calm. Exile into nothingness, more complete and more final than even the ends fo the world. In his mind, he closes his eyes and sighs, but there is no way to tell if his eyelids move, and his breathing is regulated and beyond his control. Everything is beyond his control now. It would be terrifying if he were not so tired, although he rather suspects that he has all the time in the world to rest and think. An eternity of this, with no possible escaspe... for someone who has always had his wit or his shotgun to get him out of the worst situations...
No, helplessness does not sit well with him at all.
That thought brings with it the first aching pangs of despair, and he shoves those thoughts away ruthlessly, refusing to give into panic. He casts his mind out: a lost boat desperately seeking a shore, and his thoughts light on a familiar visage. Green eyes. Red hair, and twin tattoos to match. It’s a good visage, one that makes a warmth kindle in the darkness, and perhaps he smiles, but he can’t tell.
Yet all too soon, the daggerpoints of loss dig in, his mind flashing from comfort to the fear of never seeing his Turk ever again, never to--
--his teeth clench around the ring of the respirator tube as he forcefully terminates that train of thought. Attempts to think of something, anything, besides that. His frustrated growl is mangled by the apparatus, and that irks him more than any thing else in this insane nightmare -- the fact that he can’t see can’t move can’t act can’t do anything but... can’t do anything period.
What have you done to me?
The thought echoes furiously in the confines of his head, and he longs to lash out, to scream it at a person he once called ‘Father’.
What kind of personalised hell is this?!
If his fingers have curled into a fist, he can’t feel it. The silence is defeaning, and now the darkness isn’t just engulfing him, it’s smothering him. The need to get out, to do something to distract himself from the thoughts that are tearing around in his head, is getting overwhelming. Adrenaline pumps through his veins, the fight or flight instinct playing havoc with his vain attempts to maintain calm. He thrashes, but with no wind against skin, without even the sensation of muscles tightening, it is as if he has been completely disembodied.
Get me out of here. The thought sounds clear in his mind, a clarion bell that strikes a chord in his very soul. Get me OUT of here!
He attempts to draw a deep breath; fails; attempts to scream; fails again. His mind is the only thing he has left, and right now it is his worst enemy. Desperation flares, attempting to claw free, a broken bird winging for altitude. His mind’s eye sees red, the red of fire morphing into the red of fire-bright hair. Stray thoughts rally around that image, all his panic and anger and fear wrappnig aruond a single word, a single name, and he’s screaming it out into the darkness as if it can actually reach its target--
RENO!
--
“Rufus.” Reno sits up, starting out of a daze he never knew he had fallen into. Tseng glances over, eyes narrowing, and Reno shakes his head sheepishly. The air of the hospital room irks him: it freaking stinks of detergent or whatever sterilising crap they use, and it’s driving him crazy. He needs a bath -- no, he needs a long drink first, and then a bath -- no, he needs to shoot something first, chase with a good drink or several -- no, he needs to... needs to... needs to...
“Fucking A,” he growls, stiffly and painfully kicking the sheets away. “How long are they going to keep us here?”
Tseng doesn’t bother to reply, arms crossed and brow furrowed as he stares at a wall in lieu of out of a window. Reno doesn’t need a clock to chart the hours here -- he can tell how much time has passed just by the increasing tension in his boss’ shoulders. It’s hard to say who’s more concerned for their missing Vice President. Reno has the claim, pure and simple, but somewhere along the line, Rufus won Tseng’s loyalty, and won it hard.
Reno doesn’t know what happened. Reno can’t even begin to guess what happened, because Tseng’s always been somewhat of an enigma to him. Everyone has their hooks and buttons and levers, but try as he might, he’s never really been able to find anything that works consistently with the boss. Perhaps the button is labelled ‘pretty blond teenage boys’, who knows.
He draws his knees up to his chest and flops his chin onto one, sighing noisily. Tseng fidgets.
“Damnit,” Reno mutters. “I need to get laid.”
That gets a reaction out of the other Turk, who turns and levels him with an utterly unimpressed stare. Reno smirks lazily at him, a quirk of the corner of his mouth. The sardonic expression doesn’t reach his eyes.
Tseng shakes his head and returns to studying the fire escape plan.
Reno quells the urge to chew his fingernails, and balls up the bedsheets and tosses them at the far wall instead.
Tseng taps a foot.
Reno flops back onto the pillows and groans.
Tseng sighs.
Reno sits up again, eyes scanning the room for something to fiddle with. He reaches over to tug the bedside drawer open, when he registers a sudden stillness in his boss.
He snaps straight into combat mode, reaching for the EMR that isn’t there. “What--“
Tseng holds up a hand and Reno lapses into silence. Then he hears it.
Footsteps. Heading down the corridor.
He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and staggers to his feet, daring them to head this way, to come into this room, to bring it on, you bastards...
...there’s the beep of a card swiping through electronic locks, and the door opens.