Part Two: Memory and Dream
by Angie
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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. One of those dinky little bones popped in my back, one of those sounds that's almost amusing until you start to feel it. Then there was the blissful moment when you don't recall anything; when there's just your physical body and not the weight of your concience bowing your shoulders. I stood in my room, in the grey out-of-focus dawn, barefoot and, I noted later, shirtless....And then it hits you again, like being kicked in the stomach with hiking boots.

Just this little smug voice, the voices of all the people who've ever told me what a fuck-up I am rolled into one. You've messed it up again, Reno, they smirk, and fold their hands and shake their heads.

Permit me my moment of self-pity. The shock of what I'd done hurt me all the more because I felt, I really did, as if the one thing I could do with my life that would mean anything..would be to spend it with Rude.

I'm sure it makes no sense to you, reading this. I have no delusions about my place in this food chain (low) or the place of people like Rude and the President (off the fucking scale) but I have one thing going for me. I know when to let a dream go.

So I wasted no time berating myself over the end of it. I went and found my missing shirt, meticulously folded, on my bed. Interesting, Rude's sense of morals. I wouldn't have put it past most people to have neatly removed /all/ my clothing, and worst of all, half of me was wishing he had. Interesting, but also difficult, because it made the next bit harder for me. I did what any good ShinRa employee would have done: I put my shirt on, ran a careless hand through my hair and found my shoes, and I went to work.

It's easier than you would think to simulate normality, especially when you're the office joker. Toss out a few assembly-line smiles and some dirty jokes about the virility of the President, and its origins, and in their eagerness to believe nothing ever changes, people will do the rest for you. So my clothes were rumpled and my hair tousled. That, for me, /is/ normal, just as it's normal for me to expect to end an evening at least semi-drunk. Oddly, one of the evenings it /had/ all ended like that floated back to me. A bar, naturally, after the conclusion of an all-night assignment. I had buried my feelings and my tiredness by getting very drunk very quickly, but Rude had retreated even more completely into himself than usual, silent and pensive over his pint. We never used to get hassled in bars- I've never got hassled in bars, usually because I'm always with someone twice my size, first Taison and then Rude. I was cracking my usual comments about how I had a headache the size of Rufus' cock, and so on, and Rude had frowned, exhaled smoke from a Gauloise, and asked me whether I was happy here.

Happy? I didn't understand him then and I still don't now. At the time I passed it off as some half-drunken remark and answered with something cynical, but it came back to me then. I'm unsure whether, in some respect, he felt responsible for bringing me into this, or whether it was something he was genuinely curious about.

I am, as all the Turks are, almost completely unknown to most of the standard employees. The little they pick up doesn't stretch past knowing that we have the highest key-card access of anyone, bar the President himself, and that son he never sees. The building is designed to minimise interaction and maximise work, a fairly a-typical ShinRa ideal: you walk in the doorway, cross the foyer to one of the elevators, slot your key, and most days you don't see anyone else until you walk into your office. Yeah, we have offices. I'm still unsure why. Tseng takes care of most of the paperwork, and we're almost always abroad or out in Lower Midgar. It's mostly a formality, so on the days when we are in the building if the President were suddenly to walk by, we'd be seen diligently working.

But the thought of the office had terrified me all the way to work. Small, confined, quiet spaces were exactly the kind of environment I didn't want to be sharing with Rude. Naturally he would be at least puzzled and probably contemptuous, and he was the only thing that could break down this mask of mine. In the end I just went in as normal, which for me meant slouching into the office half an hour late, to see Rude already seated at his desk, thankfully nearly hidden behind a mound of paperwork. I tossed off some greeting to him, as cheerful as I ever was on a Monday morning. Strategy Number One: never allow yourself to /act/ as if it happened, even if you both know perfectly well it did. Rude raised his head from this week's assignment listings, one eyebrow slightly raised, but his expression was unreadable and his voice as low and steady as ever. I completed my classic arrival by slumping so hard into my chair the springs creaked in protest, immediately swinging my legs up onto the desk and leaning the chair back against the wall.

Rude didn't bat an eyelid or raise his voice a decibel. He informed me politely, in a neutral tone, that we were required on three assignments this week. Already there was something in the inflection of his voice, something in the way he made none of his usual comments of who I'd been with or where I'd woken up, that would tell people who knew him well, as I guess I do, that something changed. Then he hit me with the bombshell.

"You'll be partnered with Tseng, and I'll be with Elena-"

I didn't bother to catch the rest of the sentence. Never, /ever/, in my history of time with the company, have I been with Tseng when two pairs are required. Not because we don't get along, but simply because Rude and I..well, we're a team. We work well together, both on a psyche and a physical level. Have always worked well together. Behind the sunglasses, my eyes squeezed shut with a strange mix of pain and shame, but my mask remained in place and I told myself firmly that this was what I /wanted/, that this made it /easier/, while another part of my brain screamed at me to beg him to take me back, and the other part, the part that had let me kill Taison's murderer, watched coolly and detachedly, reserving judgement.

"And President ShinRa wanted to see you in his office as soon as you arrived."

Good morning.

Rude delivered this last missive glacially, without any indication last night had even happened. I'm not sure what I'd expected, but I'd definately met my match at Strategy Number One. Give me credit, though. I walked out of the office with exactly the same cocky smile on my face I've worn every other fucking day of this year. Usually, I wouldn't have bothered leaving until I was at least an hour late, but the silence in the office was deafening me. See, even before we'd become close, there'd always been this banter between us, Rude's dry and piercing remarks mixed with my sarcasm. It had never been that clinical, never that cold and buisnesslike. I'd never had to long for him to say something, anything at all to break the noise of the silence.

I wore that smile all the way up to floor 70. I wore it past Tseng, who reminded me of the new arrangements for the assingments, I wore it past Elena, who gave me a smouldering look that said that messy was definately in. It was my ticket to survival.

President ShinRa always makes you wait outside his office, no matter how late you are. It's way of establishing whose time is more important and just where you rank in the system of things, a reminder that as far as he is concerned, you are still an interchangeable part of his Empire. Oyabun-kobun.

Heidegger came out of the President's office and as usual, I met his military bearing and rigid demand for discipline with a sarcastic comment. He smirked down at me from that damn height advantage and reminded me of paragraph 409 in the safety detail: No Smoking anywhere in the building. I replied by saying I would like to report Palmer as a health violation for his continued causal of earth tremours within the building. Heidegger tutted critically and looked me up and down, noting every incorrect detail, his hands balling into fists at his sides with that urge to correct posture. Then he growled something about me praying I never fell under his jurisdiction, and the doors hissed open behind me.

I'm quaking. I'm not even capable of being intimidated by him anymore. In his way, Rude scares me more with one raised eyebrow than Heidegger does with his brealy concealed violence- I'm off the point again. Why does everything come back to Rude?

The President was seated, as usual, in his chair by the glass-fronted wall with its view of our cancerous city. I stood slightly straighter until he deigned to swing his chair around and notice me. You never get invited to sit, another of those social-status things. He's a small, rotund man, perenially draped in red silk, and I'd only ever seen him the once before, right back at the start of this. He led in with a few meaningless compliments about the standard of my work up until now. Efficiency, obvious talent, blah, blah. The crux of the supposedly fatherly chat was a Wonderful Opportunity for me. He pronounced it just like that, with the capital letters clear and defined. A way for a jerk like me to serve the company, and to continue to do so after my death, which he made sound very soon. Like Rude, he mentioned the talent I apparently had. I wish someone would tell me just exactly what this talent's supposed to be...

After all, all I had to do was sign over my blood and major organs to the newly-formed Exciting New Jenova Project, under the paternal jurisdiction of Simon Hojo, trusted employee. He was aware of my difficulties with Rude, he told me with vast, crushing and totally insincere regret. And so they had arranged this transfer for me, so that the split could be the most acrimonious for everyone.

Oh, how very kind of them. I recoiled from his voice as if it were some kind of spore, poisoning my airwaves. Rude. Rude had told them. He wanted me out of his sight, preferably under some rock somewhere where I'd never sully his person again with my used body. The President had just neatly and clinically destroyed my will with three sentences, and it felt like the first moment when you're standing in front of the trick naked, waiting to see if he likes what he sees. That /anywhere/ is better than here feeling.

But here and now is different to back there. No-one knows that here, and that makes me as equal as anyone. So no need to disappear, Reno, even though the world is bleaker and sharper now and infinitely less worth caring about.

So I struck my slouching pose, an unlit virgin Marlboro in the corner of my mouth, and smiled the cocky smile, took the papers between my index and middle fingers, and I swaggered out. The more you hurt me, the less I care, and the more cynical I become. As I left, I caugh Hojo gazing at me with a preoccupied gaze I recognized. I'd seen it before in the eyes of customers: it said Item A.

Stormed in the office like a miniature tornado, the effort of constraining my temper proving too much for me. I slammed the door behind me so hard the walls shook, and Rude looked up from his report with a slightly startled expression. He asked me what was wrong, and I said something in a sarcastic tone, taking his remark for hypocrisy- he /knew/ what was wrong, didn't he?- grabbed the letter-opener from his desk and thumped down in my chair, slitting the envelope and skim-reading the fat sheaf of paper President ShinRa had given me. In the end I gave up reading it and just thumbed through it until I found a signature strip. Rude, typically suspicious of paperwork, and especially of me doing any, padded across the office with his panther-walk.

His hand slammed down on my desk as I rifled my desk drawers for a biro. It's just fucking typical, isn't it? The one time I actually do some paperwork, and the biros have been spirited away. I finally came up with one cowering under the /last/ report I hadn't filed for Tseng and began to scrawl my untidy signature across the strip until Rude grabbed my wrist, not hard but firmly enough so I couldn't finish signing. I snarled at him, asking what did he think he was /doing/? He grabbed me by the other shoulder, pulling me up and out of the chair with an consummate ease until I was slightly above him, and from the look in his narrowed eyes behind his glasses, I thought he was going to hit me. I couldn't help myself: I'd trusted this man, day in day out with my life, but I still flinched ever so slightly away from him. I guess that makes me a coward, but I'd been in that situation before, and-.. I don't want to talk about it.

Instead he brought his lips down hard on mine, all his previous gentleness evapourated. The kind of kiss that would get your attention even if you were driving a truck down Highway 101, and one that belied his true stength. Almost savage, raw and primal. It left me reeling, staring down at him with my eyes wide and surprised. I mean, just when I thought I had him sussed. After letting me dangle for a few moments, he lowered me to the ground, setting me down on legs that were suddenly wobbly and distant.

He sighed, and I realised he'd noticed the flinch. That behind the opaque wall of his sunglasses, he was trying to work it out as he sat on the corner of my desk. I collapsed into the desk chair, gracefully giving up standing in favour of stability.

Rude slid his sunglasses off and began to turn them over with his hand, as if wondering how to phrase something correctly. His eyes were deep brown and full of concern mixed with longing, and I avoided them at all costs, aware my own eyes already let me down and that they might do so again, when faced with his. After a long pause, filled only with the distant bustle of ShinRa buisness, he asked me in a low voice, why did I think he was going to hurt me? Didn't I know by now that he cared for me?

And I just lost my hold on the protective mask of detatched coolness, because once again I'd hurt him by being so fucking stupid. After all I'd done, I was still no smarter than I had been then. I don't, I don't think that, I told him over and over. Because it was true, I don't think he would. It's not /him/ at all, it's that...well, to him I said that I'd never had a relationship with another man, but I thought: it's that all the bad memories, all the waking up sore and aching, it weighs on you. Especially when, like me, you never even consider that someone else might want /you/ to feel good. It doesn't work like that if I don't pay them, does it?

Rude's eyes said it did. He shook his head slightly, shifting his weight on the desk and running a hand over his head as if, again, he was lost for words. I wanted this over with, and soon, because I didn't think, feeling the way I did now, that I could bear the loathing in his eyes if he /ever/ found out the truth. Then what, he said. I thought you were-

No-one's ever hurt me, I interrupted in a dismissive tone of voice, leaning back in the chair in an attempt to break the inquisition atmosphere, and summoned the cocky smile, but it wouldn't come. I slumped, staring at my hands and not at Rude, though I could feel his eyes on me.

When he answered, I almost didn't hear him over the obscenely loud ticking of that fucking clock we're forced to have in our office. Why are you lying, Reno? he said, no longer just concerned but tired and frustrated and worried.

Oh, Gods. I said it, right there in the office at eleven twenty-five in the fucking morning. The hour of my defeat, the hour when I lost my facade and my heart- Ignore that. Where was I....my facade. Without realising it, I had bitten the Marlboro clean in two, and little flakes of tobacco were falling like snow on my crumpled suit. Rude's grip on the table was suddenly very tight as he informed me that if someone was still hurting me...He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to. His voice was strained, full of anger concealed only for my benefit.

That's why, isn't it, he muttered, as if still piecing it together. That's why...when I touched you- oh, gods, Reno, just tell me you're okay...And his eyes pleaded with me to /be/ okay.

Can I tell him that? Will I ever /be/ okay? Can't say. It certainly won't do any harm to tell him I am, so why do the words stick in my throat? It was then, ridiculously, that the tears came, blurring my vision and hiding Rude's face from me, thankfully. Why then, months and years after what happened? I sunk my head in my hands, muffling my sobs slightly. And I cried then, for all the nights of pain and fear, for all the days when I picked myself up from the floor and carried on again, for all the bruises, for the scars and for the little pool of blood which was my best friend. For the memories, and for the dreams. At some point, Rude placed him arm gingerly round my shoulders, not sure how I'd react. To be honest, I barely noticed the slight pressure until I had no more tears left to cry, and so he let it rest there, shaking his head and saying something biting to himself about how unobservant he must be. At the sound of his voice, I dragged myself back to my surroundings through oily, thick layers of dreams.

Rude was crouched beside the chair, one arm slung round my shaking shoulders, his face horrified, but not a face that sold me out to the President. I gasped something, some feeble excuse or apology, but Rude leaned in closer, his eyes serious now. It's too late for that, he told me bluntly. Even if you can't stand me, I am involved, and seeing you like this...how do you expect me /not/ to help you? I just wish you'd been able to tell me, that's all.

With an unconcious mirror of his gesture earlier, I ran a tense hand through my unruly hair, shivering. Because I know Rude, and I know Rude's determination. One way or another, he /was/ going to get it out of me. And through all the pain, a part of me was exulting in his touch on me, the part that was still savouring the taste of his lips on mine. Vaguely, I tried to joke with him. Of course I can stand you, I said, but my voice was low and husky with crying. And I don't need help, even yours.

And Rude stared deep into my narrowed, blurry eyes, and begged me with his voice and eyes to tell him. If it's over, he said, then surely you can tell me. And if it's not, then I'll break the face of whoever did....this...to you, he said with more vehemnence, running a finger along my cheekbone and catching a lone tear on his finger, as if trying to heal the scars with a touch. So, out of options and out of resistance, I began telling him this same story I've been telling you. All of it, with no excuses, no pauses, no omissions to lighten my shame.

I have no way to gauge your reaction to it, of course, but Rude stared at me with wide, appalled eyes for a second, and then enveloped me in a hug so tight and strong I had no choice but to sit there, head bowed, in a near-silence broken only by that fucking clock ticking away, letting one of my arms rest lightly on his shoulder. I execpted him to reject me, be disgusted, maybe even hate me. As a girl once said to me in a smoky bar, as I told her how much I hated the world today:

Maybe you hate yourself, Reno.

You won, I thought. Or maybe I just lost. Although sitting here, my shoulders lighter than they usually feel, with Rude's arms around me, it didn't seem as if I'd lost that much.

I lied again. We both won, and everyone else lost.

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