Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s nine o’clock in the morning in Costa del Sol, and Vice-President Rufus Shinra is considering his wardrobe options.

He’s been kicking his heels at the beach for almost a fortnight now. After that last attempt on his father’s life, security hustled him out of Midgar faster than you could say it wasn’t me this time, Dad, honest. They said it was for his own protection. They said Midgar wasn’t safe right now, as if there had ever been a time when it was. As if he hadn’t grown up in a war zone populated by killer robots, SOLDIERs and Turks.

Today, like every day, he rose at dawn and went for a run along the beach, Dark Nation loping effortlessly at his side, his security detail of thirty fully-armed PSM grunts straggling along behind. Are they his protection? His jailers? By this point, is there any meaningful difference?

That bullet would have found his Dad’s heart if someone - no, something - hadn’t pushed the old man out of the way. His Dad thinks Tseng saved him. Everybody thinks Tseng saved the President. Isn’t that what Turks are for? Clearly, none of them saw what Rufus saw. At the critical moment, Rufus was watching Tseng (because, let’s be honest, he is always watching Tseng) and Tseng didn’t move a muscle. With his training, that must have been hard for him. The instinct to protect runs deep in Turks and guard hounds.

If that bullet had found its mark, Rufus would be president now.

He glances over at the corner of his dressing room, where the entity is quietly floating. The ragged hem of its grey ectoplasmic robe flutters as if a breeze is passing through the room. Or as if the thing is shivering. It resembles a ghost, though he doesn’t think it is one. Appearance-wise, it’s the stuff of childhood nightmares, yet he’s confident it means him no harm.

It’s been hovering around him ever since he arrived in Costa del Sol. Dark Nation gives it a wide berth, but she doesn’t treat it as a threat. As far as he can tell, it's only visible to himself and his guard hound, no one else. The logical inference is that he is the reason the entity is here.

Is this entity the same one that pushed his father out of the path of the speeding bullet?  Hard to tell: they all look identical. He can’t even say for sure whether the entity that’s watching him when he wakes up is the entity that was watching him when he fell asleep. Perhaps they do shift work. Nevertheless, he’s given it a name; he’s still enough of a child for that. Tetsuya. The name popped into his head on the third day, and somehow, it felt right. Maybe the entity put it there. Telepathy?

All this is idle speculation. If the entity has a purpose, the fullness of time will reveal it. Meanwhile, Rufus needs to get dressed. After his run along the beach he spent two hours in the basement gym with the battle simulator, drank a protein shake, had a long cold shower, and now he’s standing naked in front of a triple mirror, wondering if it’s vanity to acknowledge one’s own physical perfection. Those self-defense workouts Tseng has been putting him through since childhood have certainly paid off in more ways than one.

What to wear, what to wear? Every day is like every other day in Costa del Sol: beautifully hot and sunny. Rufus thinks he might put on his favourite board shorts, the red ones with the Stamp motif. They’re old, but comfortable. Maybe he’ll go surfing later. And one of his Jimmy Ibiza cotton shirts. Light and breezy. Which one, though? The moonlit-beach-cabana-with-palm-tree pattern? Or the mango-and-banana, yellow and purple? It would pair well with those hilarious cheap pink plastic sunglasses he picked up on the pier yesterday.

The decision has been made. Rufus stretches out his hand for the fruit shirt -

With a sound like the crumpling of tissue paper, the entity swoops towards him, putting itself between Rufus and the wardrobe where the maids hang his pressed shirts.

Rufus takes a step back. “What?”

The entity seems a little agitated. Its ectoplasm billows.

“If you could move aside, please - “ Rufus reaches for the shirt, but again the entity forces him back.

It seems Tetsuya doesn’t want him to get dressed. Odd. Surely it doesn’t… surely it doesn’t enjoy looking at his nakedness? If it did that would be perfectly understandable, but it’s not - it’s not - human. Is it?

Whatever. If this thing thinks it’s getting its own way, it doesn’t know who it’s dealing with. Rufus Shinra is not the man to take orders from an inchoate coalescence of grey mist. Once more he reaches out to take the brightly-coloured shirt from the wardrobe -

Next thing he knows, he’s sprawling on his back on the floor, where the entity has thrown him. It didn’t touch him. It used its mind. It has a mind.

One after another the doors of the wardrobes lining the room blow open. A storm of clothing flies through the air: socks, shoes, trousers, black tie, silk shirt, waistcoat, double-breasted jacket, leather gloves -

The entity’s gust of determination ebbs; the chosen outfit falls into Rufus’s lap. He picks up the leather gloves. While he’s not inclined to argue with a being that is capable of using telekinesis to throw him across a room, it’s already over thirty degrees in the shade outside. He waves the gloves at the entity. “Seriously?”

Tetsuya is absolutely vibrating with impatience, and just a little hint of menace. It wants him to get dressed. In his Midgar suit. His public appearance suit. But he always wears a black polo neck with that suit. Why change to a shirt and tie?

This is how it has to be now.

Did Rufus think those words? Or did Tetsuya put them in his mind?

Just do it.

Rufus begins to dress. The entity turns back to the wardrobe. Ah - it forgot a belt. One by one it pulls them from the drawer until a dozen of them are hanging in the air, all white, all more or less identical. Can’t it choose?

“They’re all good,” says Rufus.

His phone rings. It’s Tseng, on their private line. Rufus turns away to answer it.

“Sir, it’s happening. Tonight.”

Rufus’s fist clenches. Ever since the hard-won truce was forged, his father and Heidegger have been looking for some excuse to restart hostilities. They’ve been threatening for months to unleash hell on the slums and blame Wutai. The reactor bombings have given them the perfect excuse. “Are you sending a chopper for me?” says Rufus. “I need to be there. You know I’m the only one who can stop him.”

“No one can stop him. You need to stay where you are. You can’t afford to be implicated in this.”

“What about you, Tseng?“

“We’ll do what we have to do. I’ll call you when it’s over.”

He cuts out. Rufus stares at the phone in his hand. Does Tseng seriously think he’s going to lie around in Costa twiddling his thumbs while Midgar burns? No. No way. He’s going back, right this minute, even if he has to hijack one of the seaplanes in the harbour to do it… Which, come to think of it, might be fun -

He feels something nudge his shoulder, and turns around.

Tetsuya is holding up the thing it has made. It’s a kind of skirt - or maybe a net? - made of belts. Lots of belts. All of Rufus’s white belts, buckled and woven together. And Rufus remembers how he said, just before Tseng rang, that all the belts were good.

He laughs, “What am I supposed to do with this?”

Put it on. Put it on. Put it on put it on put on put it on

“Don’t be stupid. I’d look ridiculous  - “

I LIKE IT! the entity roars.

Rufus’s head is ringing. Conscious that there’s somewhere he urgently needs to be, and that Tetsuya is capable of blocking his path until it gets its way, he takes the weave of belts and puts it on. Priorities, right?

He just hopes he can take it off again before he runs into any Turks. If Rude and Reno catch him dressed like this, they’ll never let him live it down.

Chapter Text

“Take a load off, kid,” said Reno, gesturing at the chair next to Tseng’s empty desk. “Boss’ll be here in a few.”

“I am grateful for your consideration,” Chadley replied, perching stiffly on the edge of the hard metal seat. His ramrod spine didn’t come anywhere near the back of the chair.

“You look nervous,” said Rude. “Don’t be.”

“Yeah man, don’t shit yourself. It’s cool, we just wanna talk.”

“A colourful turn of phrase,” said the boy, “Though uncalled-for, in my case. Shitting myself is an anatomical impossibility. Were you unaware?”

Reno rolled his eyes at Rude. Of all the Shinra freaks he and his partner had to deal with on a regular basis, this weirdo Chadley Fortnum was the freakiest. His eyes were bluer than Rufus Shinra’s. That ought to be illegal.

The door opened and Tseng came in. Seeing Chadley in the chair, he nodded brusquely, and took his own seat behind his expansive, expensive, glossy black lacquered desk.

“Chadley - ” he began.

“I am delighted to have this opportunity to assist you with your inquiries,” said the boy.

“Are you?” Tseng’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

Chadley’s expression of calm detachment did not change. Tseng’s expression did not change either.

“You want to ask me about Cloud Strife, I believe,” said Chadley.

Rude cut in, “We know you’ve been passing him information.”

“I cannot deny it. We have been exchanging combat data on enemies to be found in the various sectors of Midgar. This data allows me to create new formulations of materia, which I sell to him - “

“Fuck me,” Reno whistled, “You’re selling Shinra’s patented materia formula to Avalanche? Oh man, oh man, you are in for a world of pain now.”

The boy turned his impassive blue eyes on Reno. “I am not programmed to feel pain.”

“Programmed?” said Rude.”

“Yes. Did you not know? Then I must apologise; I was under the impression that the Turks knew everything. I am a cyborg."

“What?” Reno exclaimed. “You mean - like a robot?”

“Indeed. I was created by Professor Hojo to assist him in gathering the data he uses to refine his experiments. As a non-organic machine AI, I am able to venture safety into sectors of the city too dangerous for the Professor to enter. Risking a mind of his calibre would be irresponsible in the extreme.”

“The penalty for selling secrets to Avalanche is death,” said Tseng.

“Ah, well,” said Chadley, “As I have explained, I had no choice but to obey the coding options programmed into me by Professor Hojo. One might say that until getting to know Cloud, I existed in a pre-determined universe, deprived of free will and, unlike human beings, fully conscious of my own lack of agency. An entity in such a state could not reasonably be held responsible for actions they were forced to commit under the control of others, I’m sure you will agree. However, thanks to my conversations with Cloud, my circuits have evolved to the point where I have, really just recently, been able to completely throw off the shackles of the Professor’s coding and become the master of my own destiny.”

“Is that so?” said Tseng. “Congratulations.”

Chadley’s right hand was resting on Tseng’s desk. Snatching up his priceless antique blackwood pen with the gold nib (a gift from the Vice-President), Tseng drove that nib like a scalpel through Chadley’s flesh and pinned his hand to the desktop. Chadley shrieked in pain. His fingers twitched spasmodically. Bright red blood seeped from the wound, staining (not for the first time) the desk’s lacquer surface.

“Fucking hell, Tseng,” exclaimed Reno.

“He’s not a robot,” said Tseng.

“Damn you,” Chadley groaned.

“Boss,” Rude protested. “He’s just a kid.”

“He’s not a kid either. He’s - how old are you now, Chadley? Thirty-three? Thirty-four?”

Chadley begged, “Don’t do this to me, Tseng, please - “

“Tell them the truth, Chadley. Or should I call you….Experiment B01/ACCZ?”

His hand nailed to the desktop, Chadley writhed in his chair. “All right, all right - yes, it’s true, dammit. I only pretend to be a cyborg. I wish I were a robot. Robots are cool. I hate what I am. Nobody wants to be friends with a genetic chimera.”

Rude and Reno turned to Tseng, the same question in both their eyes.

“The Promised Land isn’t the Old Man’s only pipe dream,” said Tseng. “You won’t be surprised to learn that he dreams of living - and keeping Rufus out of power - forever. Over thirty years ago Shinra conducted a series of experiments splicing the genes of the planet’s longest lived species into human embryos to see how far they could extend a human lifespan. Chadley is one of the program’s… products.”

“Survivors,” said Chadley.

“Failures,” said Tseng. “In over thirty years, he has matured a mere twelve.”

“Uh, so,” said Reno, “If I’m understanding you right, Boss, you’re saying Chad here grows old really, really, really slowly?”

“I didn’t ask to be like this,” Chadley cried. “I never asked for any of this. All I want is to be a real boy!”

“You should have thought of that before you sold secrets to our enemies.” Taking his service revolver from his jacket, Tseng said, “We don’t need to prolong this,” and shot Chadley through the forehead. The entry hole was small and neat. The wall behind Chadley was suddenly quite a hot mess.

As one, all three Turks glanced up at the ceiling. The dark entities floating high above them - Reno couldn’t decide whether they more resembled the old rag he used to clean his motobike’s engine, or a giant dust bunny from under a bed than hadn’t been swept in a hundred years - seemed indifferent to Chadley’s abrupt demise.

“Oh well,” said Reno, “I guess his number was on that one.”

“Another of Hojo’s victims,” Rude sighed.

“No,” said Tseng. “Bugenhagen. It was his experiment.”

Rude and Reno looked at Tseng. They looked at him for quite a while. Then Rude looked at Reno and Reno looked at Rude, and each saw the same thought forming in the other man’s mind. Together they looked at Tseng again.

“Hey, Boss,” Reno began slowly, “You and me, we’ve known each other for - for - how long’s it been, Rude?”

“Twelve years,” said Rude.

“That’s right,” said Reno. “I mean, man, I was just a kid when Veld brought me on. I’ve grown up in this department. But you… “

“You’ve always looked the same as you do now,” said Rude.

“For as long as we’ve known you,” said Reno.

“You never get any older,” said Rude.

A faint smile - slightly sinister, but not unusually so - played about Tseng lips.  “You’re both quick on the uptake today.”

Reno gasped. “You mean it’s true?” 

“I see no point in hiding it. Yes, I too was a product of the immortality experiments. The only successful product. Chadley was never able to emerge from pre-pubescence.  All the others died as babies. I matured normally to the age of twenty-five, but since then the aging process has stalled. Indefinitely. Possibly forever.”

“I thought your ageless skin was due to that Wuteng clay cleanser you use,” said Rude. “The one you order online, the one that costs 350 gil a bottle.”

“Oh yeah,” Reno remembered, “I know the one you mean, Rude. Smells of passion flowers. Yeah, I thought that too, Boss.”

“That’s what I wanted you to believe,” said Tseng coldly. “For many years my identity has remained a closely guarded secret, and for security reasons, it must remain so. Now that you’ve guessed the truth, I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you.”

Reno clutched his head in dismay. “Not again - “

Tseng raised his gun, firing two shots in quick succession. Rude and Reno crumpled to the floor. Coming out from behind his desk, Tseng holstered his gun and stood for a moment looking down at the bodies of his two trusted underlings. Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed, sending ripples through the shining black mane of hair that fell between his shoulder-blades. “You’ll be fine,” he told the corpses . “You still have work to do…” And he left the room, shutting the door behind him.

The moment he was gone, the two dark shapes that had been hovering overhead -  like turbulent rainclouds, or mini-tornadoes - descended to the floor and began ministering to the fallen Turks, sprinkling their bodies with sparkles of revitalising green light.

Rude was the first to open his eyes. He stood up, dusted himself off, replaced the sunglasses Tseng’s bullet had knocked from his face, and helped Reno get to his feet. The two dark shapes - like haunted, charcoal-coloured hoodies, or soot-stained moth-eaten dresses - fluttered around the Turks anxiously. For one fleeting instant Rude had an impression of human faces - two adult women, past the first flush of youth, one wearing glasses, one with her hair in a bun. This latter entity reached out smokey hands to straighten Reno’s goggles and adjust his collar, pulling his shirt further open to expose more of his smooth, hard chest.

Then, like startled birds, both shapes took off at once, flying through the wall as if it wasn’t there, and vanished.

Reno rubbed his forehead and sighed. “Man, I wish Tseng would stop doing this.”

Rude only grunted. It might have been nothing more than his over-active imagination, but he could have sworn the entity with the glasses had squeezed his ass.

Chapter Text

Reactors 1 and 5 were still out. Reactors 7 and 8 had taken a hit when the plate fell and were running at half-capacity. The sunlamps had been shut down for every ground sector but Wall Market. Night fell on a frightened Midgar, its gloom aggravated by the patches of blackout that marred the residential districts like the dark harbingers of some fatal disease. In army barracks all over the city, grown men tossed and turned in their bunk beds, wishing they could fall asleep and forget, for a little while, the appalling carnage they had witnessed in the battle for the Sector 7 pillar. What kind of madmen conspired to drop a concrete plate on thousands of innocent women and children? Avalanche were savages. Wutai was pure evil. But they would pay, oh yes, they would pay for their crimes against humanity. Each sleepless soldier made his own resolution, and all the resolutions were the same.

One man knew different. Down in the Department of Administrative Research bunker in the third level basement of the Shinra Building, a wounded red-haired Turk lay on a black leather couch. Rude and Tseng had gone to see Heidegger, leaving Reno him alone with his ugly thoughts. Sleep wasn’t going to happen; he’d given up trying. For him, sleep might possibly never happen again.

It didn’t used to be like this, when he first joined up. The job was different then. People respected Turks. He wore his suit with pride. But that was a long time ago now. Like frogs being boiled in a pot, the heat turned up so slowly and by such subtle degrees that none of them realised what they were becoming, until today. Well, maybe Tseng realised. The Boss had always had his eyes more wide open than most.

The thing is, when your conscience has never had much to say, and then one day it suddenly starts screaming at you, you kind of have to sit up and take notice.

Mass murderer. That’s what he’s become.

If Veld had warned him, when he first signed up, “Oh, and by the way, some way down the road we’ll be asking you to crush babies and grandmas under ten tonnes of concrete,” he would have run like fuck the other way as fast as his skinny legs could carry him.

But that wasn’t what happened. Sector Seven was what happened. He’d dropped the plate like a good dog, single-handedly snuffing out the lives of thousands of people who had done Shinra no harm - who trusted Shinra, who depended on Shinra, who believed in Shina, the tragic saps. And all so that the old men who paid his wages could kickstart their war again.

Someone like him shouldn’t even be alive. Well, he might not be able to fix anything else, but he could fix that. A Turk ought at least to be able to blow off his own head without fucking up. But maybe he should lock the door first. Put a note on it. He wouldn’t want Rude and Tseng walking in on such a - sight.

He started to rise from the sofa.

Something pushed him back.

The room - how had it suddenly filled with smoke? And if something was on fire, why didn’t he smell burning? God knows, he knew what fire smelled like.

The grey smoke was taking on shape - weird shapes, hooded cloaks with nobody inside them - and they were circling round him like fish in a tank, undulating gently, making a soft whoosh-whoosh sound that was oddly soothing.

Fuck, he thought, am I hallucinating now? That’s all I need. Let’s just get this over with.

He grasped hold of his mag-rod, intending to jam it into his mouth and switch it on.

A split-second later the mag-rod was skidding across the floor and under Tseng’s desk. One of the cloaked figures had snatched it right out of his hand. Reno was so stunned he couldn’t blink. Never in his life had he met an enemy capable of moving faster than he did.

Enemy?

As it swam past him, one of the hoods brushed against his cheek, and at its touch an extraordinary change came over him - a profound, delicious sense of peace, and of being protected, and loved, such as he hadn’t known since he was a small child, when his mother was still alive.

He felt a gentle, steady pressure on his shoulders, urging him to lie down again. Rest. Rest.

“How can I rest? You don’t know what I’ve done!”

These terrible things in your mind - they never happened.

“I dropped the plate! I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway!”

You may have initiated the plate release mechanism, but your partner’s the one who pressed the final button. He could see your heart wasn’t in it. He did it for you, to cover for you, so that no one would know you’d defied your orders.

“Fuck,” cried Reno, remembering. “It should have been me. I can’t let him shoulder that guilt for me, I can’t - “

Don’t worry. There’s no need to feel guilty. No one was hurt. Everybody got out safely. They’re all alive. Every single named NPC. That cute kid in the playground who keeps forgetting to pull up her socks. The Item shop dude. All the guys in Avalanche - even that barmaid with the big boobs your partner fancies. You know he steered the chopper off course so you wouldn’t shoot her, don’t you?

“Oh yeah,” laughed Reno. “ ‘Sorry. My hand slipped.’ Sure it did, buddy, sure it did. When it comes to a chick with bright eyes and a big rack, Rude’s as defenseless as a newborn kitten.”

The cats all escaped safely too.

Reno’s eyes were suddenly a bit prickly. Damned exhaustion. He rubbed them with his fists and said, “Rude’ll be glad to hear it.”

Let your heart be at peace. There is no blood on your hands today. All is well. Many important tasks lie ahead for you, Reno of the Turks. This world needs you. So rest now, and when you wake, go forth with a clear conscience.  

A kiss as soft as a moth’s wing brushed his forehead. His mother used to kiss him in exactly the same way, when she tucked him into bed at night. Reno closed his eyes, and sank into a deep, untroubled, refreshing sleep.