Memory and Dream
by Angie
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Well. This is as good a time to tell it as any. I've been telling this story my whole life, it's a good time to let it be. I grew up in Sector Three. There's not much you can say about it, and what there is to say can be summed up neatly in just a few words: it's where you go if you want to worship the devil in peace. Three is full of people who'd share your exciting new outlook on life.

I had a childhood, of sorts. When I was really small, it used to be mostly running and hiding from the gangs who ran Three, recruiting for the lower echelons of Shinra, or more likely just out killing, depending on who was paying them that day. I don't remember my parents, and most of my friends from Three are dead now, remembered only as a stain on someone's knife or a half-forgotten shadow in the night. They taught me how to shoot, how to turn an insult- though maybe I was born knowing that. I grew up scratching at the feet of the Company for food, money, safety, a chance at life.

But when you grow up in Three, when the pain's so hot inside it's like a white knife twisting in your gut, you have to do whatever you can to stay alive. Taison and I- Taison was this Asian kid, my best friend then. He had parents, so he was kind of special. He was also 6'2 and growing nicely, so it paid dividends to let it be known you hung with him- anyway. Taison and I would have to go to Wall Market and do a spot of cottaging. Either that, or steal from someone, and I didn't like that, even then. For one thing, it meant using Taison's steal materia, and there wasn't enough of that stuff around to make the use of it ignorable. It tends to buy you interest from the gangs, and no-one would miss us then. Second, I just didn't like killing people without a good reason. Doesn't sound too likely, does it? A white trash kid from Sec' Three having some morals? Well, I guess you'll draw your own conclusions as to whether that's possible.

Taison was there for protection. I was just merchandise. You can't imagine what it was like- and you mostly likely don't want to. You'll be surprised what you'll sink to, to stay alive. Some of them weren't too bad- asked how I was, if I was getting enough to eat, what-have-you. But mostly? Cetras, it was hell. Half of it was the knowing that even after you'd got paid, stood up and washed the blood off you, if you could get the clean water for it-That they'd be right there when you closed your eyes.

The last trick I ever turned nearly killed me. Looked normal enough- normal as any of them ever is- but he started threatening me with all this shit. Don't make me _describe_ it to you....the nasty side of bondage, say. I have nightmares. I probably deserve them, too. Kind of a heavy conscience I carry.I tried yelling for Taison, of course, waiting patiently outside the toilets in the bar nursing a heavy beer, the first dividends this thing paid us. And as Taison raised the glass, the trick clamped one of those huge, clammy hands round my mouth and pulled this knife. How I got these scars, here on my cheeks. Something to remember the bastard by. Eventually Taison came to check on me- happened to be as the trick finished up- and the son of a bitch had no hesitation in killing Taison before walking out of that bar like nothing ever happened. Just raised an arm and shot him in the head, no hesitation, not even considering him worth a second's deliberation.I never understood why he didn't finish me, too.

No, that's a lie- the first of many, I suspect. Maybe I looked dead enough, to his cold eyes, covered in blood and semen, slumped against the cube door. Maybe he thought we'd do buisness again. I must have lain there for an hour easy, staring blankly at the body of my friend lying there in the pool of urine, mingling with his blood. In the end I forced myself to stand up, get myself and Taison out of there before the Shin-Ra came, too late, to launch an investigation. Like they'd bother. I remember vividly walking through that bar, covered in our blood, almost nude, and every single damn drinker in that bar staring glacially through us as if we didn't exist. If they realised we did, they surely hoped we'd stop it soon. I couldn't find anywhere to bury Taison in Midgar. There's no earth left in this city. We bury our dead in the reactors, let them burn with the fury of Mako power. There's nothing romantic about seeing your friends become dust to power some machine, and if that's 'returning to the planet' I'd rather be left in an alley, thanks.

I had to leave- to bury Taison in what little peace I could afford him. In the next days I saw more of Midgar than I ever have before, covering all of it on foot. Our fair city's really gone downhill. Kids playing with the fragments of a rifle, gangs on every corner, blades out, prostitutes selling, dealers calling to me with the self-assured tones of the unaddicted soul. I left through one of the holes a rebel group had blasted in the city wall, paid with the few gil Tais had on him (dead money, blood money, a little voice called) and then I was Outside.

Taison's buried west of Midgar, near the sea. I remember he said, once, when very drunk, that he'd always wanted to go to the sea. And being a Sec' Three kid, that was the only way he ever got to go. That's one of my few really clear memories, standing on that great expanse of sand, probably the most- the only- beautiful sight I'd seen in my seventeen years. The wind was whipping my hair into tangled strands, and through them I could see the sun, free for the first time of smog and pollution. I'd thought it was supposed to be grey.

I only had one thing to live for, then: I was going to kill the man who deprived Taison of that moment.Purposes, however bitter or evil or twisted, give you a reason to live. Perhaps, for Sec' Three kids, a right to live on under, but just outside of, ShinRa's protective dome. When the sun went down I left the place I called Solitude- I didn't know enough rudimentary geography then to know which way was up, let alone where it was. But I could find Midgar. I couldn't miss the city, growing and festering on the Continent like a fat cancer spinning with the neon lights of the damned. So I returned to Midgar, and took my dark-flame of a purpose with me. I expect you think I should have moved on? Forgiven and forgotten? I may have one fucked-up childhood, but give me some credit. I know about vengeance.

Those were hot, demon-haunted nights. Waking, in whatever squat I'd slunk into late that day, shivering and drenched in sweat, the image burning bright behind my eyes one of him as he raised his arm to end Taison's life. I didn't- couldn't- cottage any more. One, the memories, and two, I'd lost touch with my associates in Three while I'd been away. So no more protection, and for a guy like me, I would have needed it. Maybe the shape that had settled behind my eyes- blue, then, believe it or not- kept people from asking me. The last I ever saw of my friends from Three was Ashley, painfully thin and gaunt by now, throwing me a gun and slipping back into the night again, a shadow dissolving once more into the darkness. A favour repaid. Another guy with a purpose. One day I'll tell you about him. If we all live long enough. Somehow, I'd become more than property, no longer just something to be used up and thrown away on a whim. More, even, than Taison's rent-boy. Still below the ShinRa's attention, of course, but now I could see their black fingers spreading through Midgar's body. To one of them, it probably looks like a bone structure, essential for law and order.Tough shit. To me, it looks like terminal cancer.

The next month was unremarkable to me, perhaps less so to you: I was tracing Taison's murderer, reaching out with clinical hands and dissecting every move the fucker made. No, I didn't act on my fine revelations and lead a glorious uprising against ShinRa. Sorry, I've always been a dispappointment like that: I was in Sec' Three, moving ghost-like through my home..and I mean home in the purely technical sense of the word. Anyone who uses that word in a broader sense is enjoying a nice, raw kid.

I suppose it was luck that led me to him, or at least luck that kept me from dying before I met him. Anger was driving me in those days, and driven men have little care for their own safety. The scars on my face refused to heal over; they're so deep I guess I'll have them for the rest of my life. To anyone from ShinRa they mean nothing, just another cross someone bears that you don't talk about. Anyway. Pain and hate led me to him. Vision and the last of my friends gave me the gun. What little sense I had left gave me the cover I required. Maybe talent gave me the perfect shot at the bastard's head. The image was vivid in the eye I closed as I took aim, my skin crawling with the blood and semen of that night like a live thing.

A rent boy will never be just that to you again, I seem to remember yelling as I pulled the trigger. I have no excuses. I killed him- hunted him down, and killed him, when in the eyes of ShinRa, he'd done nothing wrong. It's strange, you know. Even though I know perfectly well the sound a gunshot makes is a dull crump sound, there's only one word that sums it up.

Bang.

He seemed to fall in slow motion, head whipping back with the force of the bullet my hand had unloaded into his skull. I felt the soft kick in my wrists, how used I'd get to that. But in my eyes, I wasn't seeing his last moments. I was seeing Taison, spitting blood as he cursed me with his dying breath. I didn't mention that the first time, did I?

Well, you know now. He used his final lungfuls of air to curse me for not giving in. And as the trick lay on the ground, I knew that now I had no one left to blame but myself. Revenge completed leaves a space inside you, a space that I now know fills up with guilt. I didn't try to play the 'you've saved guys like you' card. Maybe it's true, but I didn't do it for them. I did it for me, for Taison. I often wonder, if he hadn't caught me then, if I ever would have said yes. But he was, watching from the shadows my heart roll over and die with comic stupidity. There, to catch my arm, level a gun to my head and tell me he worked for the ShinRa, and that he was here to procure my services for the Company. An older man, early twenties then, shaven scalp very white under the neon signs, dark glasses hiding his eyes from me. Urban panther with a cloak of neon to hide it from my eyes. You going to tell me I had a choice?

He didn't know my reasons, he told me on the train, and he didn't want to. As far as ShinRa was concerned, I had no past now. Under those fluorescent lights, his features were carved in stone. I still think of him that way, even now. Some kind of golem, maybe. Only they don't bleed, do they....He'd watched the way I tracked that man, and someone in the ShinRa cancer had liked what they saw. You've got a talent, he said. Use it.And who are you, I said with teenage arrogance born out of fear and gun-lust, to tell me what I can do?He raised an eyebrow, a small gesture noticeable mainly because, under the harsh caress of neon, his features were still. The one with the gun, he said, the one who could kill you now and tell ShinRa you were dead when I got there. The one who thought you had the talent in the first place. Was there, even then, a smile behind those words? I can't remember.

As you can imagine, things were different from then on. I still woke in the nights, slick with sweat, mouth open ready to scream. But I woke in a bed and during the day, I was as equal as any of them, elite even within ShinRa's executives. There's a lot to be said for a smart mouth and a willingness to kill people in ShinRa's 'line of duty'. It's funny....even looking up at the ShinRa headquaters from the gutters of Three, it's impossible to guague what's going on insde. That building is a ladder in its own right, with a thousand diligent employees stabbing each other in the back to ascend a rung; in other words, it's rather like Three in nature. I fit in fine.

Even the President, on our first meeting, commented on how well I was doing- though I don't count that as a compliment. The drones had little idea we even existed, he told me in a patronising rumble. Maybe he was worried that even they, corrupt little worker-bees they are, might have disapproved of some of the things we did. Before Taison, I might have too. Isn't it strange, how the ones that wield the power, care the least for what it does? There were months we- Tseng, Rude and I, that is- spent tracking the rebels, shooting people who could, I guess, have been the family of my friends. Shit, it could have been my family and I'd have been none the wiser. Being a Turk isn't complex, or at least it wasn't before the rise of Avalanche. They give you a piece of paper with a name on, and you find them and kill them. The rest is up to you. I may have lost my morals, but I didn't lose my talent. Or my sense of humour: I figured out very quickly I must be worth a lot to ShinRa, the amount of shit they were putting up with from me. Because I was cocky. I'd insult my superiors, disappear for days, get drunk and come in late. No-one ever said a thing. The three of us were less different, then, than we are now. Tseng's dead now, but in those days he was undisputably the one in charge, the one with the brains. Or so he thought. Rude, despite his appearence, is one of the most intelligent people I've met, and I spend so much time pretending to be stupid I've got it down to a fine art by now. We were the hitmen, the ones who stood behind you and pulled the trigger, the ones with the .22's who ran into houses and massacred everyone. Yes, massacre, did you think it was all kidnappings and blowing up pillars? God, you can tell you're not from Midgar.Tseng gave the orders. I was still at one remove, the sniper in the rubble with the .308 who lined up the prey in his sights and offloaded death. I couldn't have done what Rude did, not just from a physical point of view, but emotionally. He used to kill people up close, burn the bodies, that kind of thing. Tseng used to call him the Executioner- he had a weird sense of humour. But Rude wasn't sadistic. People get that impression....he's so quiet, you tend to think he isn't feeling it. I mean, fuck. He was supposed to be untouchable, how was I supposed to know?

I suppose there were signs. Once, in a factory, the body of a teenager at our feet, full of our bullets. The face, in death, losing its mask of anger and hatred and settling in the neutral expression death gives. I think I must have sworn, softly in the black closeness of night. The conclusion of a messy assignment, Tseng outside somewhere trying to find the stolen Mako we'd been sent to recieve. I mean, we'd got the Mako, but at what cost? None to ShinRa, of course. We're all three of use expendable, but maybe this kid wasn't. Maybe he'd have grown up and cured AIDS or something. And Rude, fiddling with the magazine of his gun, looked at me and asked me if I was okay. I was edgy, wired, still at the stage of life where you feel like you have something to prove. Angry words I spat at him. Of course I was okay. What did he care, anyway?He just looked at me from behind opaque lenses. Of course I care, he said. Who do you think I am? I remember choking on my cigarette, smoke pouring from my nose as I coughed. Well, let's just say I had to drag my foot out of my mouth then. What really got through to me was, he'd been hurt. My angry, unthinking words had done what I thought nothing could. Hurt him.

We all shared something, partially because if you can't relax and trust your associates, you never trust them to save you in the line of fire. But I'm not going to lie to you this time; I was closer to Rude. Ever feel like someone fills the hole inside of you? I'm talking bullshit, I guess. Almost everyone has proved to me that love, if it does exist, doesn't consider me worthy of its affections; we were friends, close ones. I trusted him with my life every day, but that was nothing new; I did that with Tseng, too. But it was Rude I met after work for a drink, Rude I sparred with in the gym, Rude I laughed with. Undertones...all RIGHT, for my part, I knew he was gay. Something in his body language, a lot of it in his eyes. The way he routinely turned down all the offers of dates he got. Rumours, too, but if I believed them, I'd be earning something like three times my annual salary. Like I was ever going to do anything about it! Ya, right. Sleeping with your superiors might be a good way to get ahead in commerce and protection, but I wasn't going to do that. Far too similar to cottaging. No, I was a good little hitman, followed Tseng's 'orders' and exchanging sly smiles with Rude behind the President's back, flirting reflexively with Elena, going home and sleeping regular hours.No, I held it together for a long time. Rude and I worked well together, and I don't remember ever arguing with Tseng over anything more serious than whose packet of Marlboro's it was on the table.But secrets rot inside of you, and sooner or later someone will smell the stench of your past.Rude did. Who else?

I knew what I'd done the moment I saw him silohetted in my doorway that evening. I'd given away too much with my eyes, my hands that shook, with all the beer I drank to forget my guilt. He wasn't stupid; he just wanted the truth from me.Nothing, I told him. I used the word as a spiky barb to deflect the questions from me, my last line of defence. The last clear image I have of that night is of him, exasperated with me, staring into my eyes as if he wanted to extract the information by force. Something in my eyes must have shown him the hurt inside, eating my soul, and he must have thought he could alleviate it. Because he leaned across the space between us and kissed me.See, I lied again. I didn't ask him because I cared too much for him. I figured that him never knowing and us staying partners- and friends- was better than trying for it and risking never seeing him smile at me again. Even us killers have feelings. Believe it. Oh, Asheth, it was amazing. No-one could have ever thought that he was so gentle, the golem I'd thought him turning from stone to flesh and blood. And y'know, I felt safety then for the first time ever, in his arms. I really don't care what anybody thinks of me now. I've had that moment. I sound like some cheap romance novel, huh. But looking up at him in that evening almost made me believe that I deserved some of this stuff, too. I whispered at him, meaningless words that he ignored as he pushed me down onto the bed with strong arms. I remember biting my lip so hard the bitter taste of blood was on my tongue. Why is it always blood with me? People tell me it's the only way you learn. Scars make you remember to forget.

And he let one of his fingers brush against my cheek. A tender gesture, one just for me. Shame it was just exactly guarenteed to send me insane again. The dam of memories, shallow walls made of blinds and lies, broke. I was in the cube again, bastard trick's arms slamming my head against the wall over and over until I would say whatever he wanted. Glint of knife in the half-light, blood running down my cheeks in a flood of crimson. Flashes of fluorescent lighting scratching at my pupils and twisting, the noise of your own voice choking and dying in my ears."Fuck," I hissed, pinned under Rude's weight, my lungs refusing to do their job, so hysterically full with memories that I saw the trick's face above me. Lopsided sneer of contempt for me, that I was so weak I couldn't even stop him from half-killing me. Rude, misunderstanding, grinned and moved in to kiss my torso, broad hands unbuttoning my shirt with practised ease.

I kicked Rude off me by pure reflex, my nightmares alive and grown solid with his touch. Jacknifed upright, tearing headlong for the door. He caught my arm, spinning me back into him. Unwilling, I noticed later, to actually use any force to make me listen to him. He said something....I don't remember what. Puzzled, worried words. Even the pain in his voice couldn't reach me in my own, claustrophobic visions of self-pity. They rolled off me like so much bullshit; I was pure, animal fear by then, screaming at him to let me go, trying to tear myself free from his grasp so I could run.....And leave the memories behind.

Rude was quietly saying something, words intended to comfort I'm sure, but his tone just dragged me back to that dry voice, whispering to me as his hands closed greedily around my throat. Suffice to say I started to hyperventilate, choking on my own screams of fear, Rude's face, shocked beyond what I'd have ever thought possible, was the last thing I saw before I fainted.You expect to wake in a starch-white room, your colleagues massed round you with semi-sincere concern on their faces and grapes in their hands. I woke on the floor of my apartment, instantly recognizable by the rigidity of the floorboards beneath my spine as I rolled onto my side.

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Part Two
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