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Exhausted, weak and bleary eyed, Reno fumbled with his keys and dropped them onto the floor the moment he opened the door to his apartment. The clatter of them landing on the shiny, laminate wood made his head pound. He briefly considered picking them up, but bending down would probably kill him right now he figured, so he glared resentfully at them instead. As the throbbing subsided, he let out a sigh then grunted as the exhale caught painfully in his chest, wrenching his shattered rib cage in a way that almost floored him. He leaned forward against the wall with a groan and blew out several long, slow breaths.
"That blond little prick," he said out loud after a long moment. "He got me good, man. Fuck."
"Yeah," he heard Rude behind him as he closed the door. “Twice in one week, too.”
“You’re one to talk,” he spat, only half venomously. Rude hummed in answer. Reno didn't realise his eyes were clenched shut until he heard the scrape of Rude picking up the keys in front of him. He was still breathing hard when he put his large hand on Reno's back.
"Just...just give me a second," Reno said. Despite the pain he could feel his temper beginning to boil. He hated looking pathetic in front of Rude, it was embarrassing as hell. Rude always seemed to take a hit and keep his shit together. Why couldn’t he?
"Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nah, I'm good." No matter what, Reno knew he could not face a hospital tonight. He hated them at the best of times, but in the aftermath of what had happened tonight, no. It was unthinkable. "Look, I know I'm wrecked, but the hospitals will be a mess anyway, they won't be able to see me for hours, and anyhow I don't need a doc to tell me I got my ass beat like a little bitch."
Reno knew if Rude insisted, he'd have no choice but to go. It was just how they did things, they had each other's back like that. You couldn't always trust yourself to make smart, level-headed decisions in a job like theirs. Rude scratched at the stubble on his face, clearly conflicted.
"You got some supplies here?"
"Sure, somewhere."
"Okay," he said hesitantly. “No hospital.” It was a small victory for Reno. “But you gotta let me patch you up a bit. You look like hell.”
“Thanks, partner,” Reno drawled sarcastically. He tried to wink at him, but grimaced instead as Rude leaned in close and slowly shifted his weight from the wall, helping him back upright. Rude smelled like smoke, metal and charcoal, but Reno could still catch a hint of whatever clean smelling cologne he wore everyday. Reno breathed it in as Rude guided them slowly to the open-plan living space of Reno’s Shinra assigned apartment.
It was spotless, Reno noticed. The cleaning lady had obviously been this morning after he’d left. It struck him suddenly that he didn’t know where she lived. What if it was Sector 7, he thought with a sick swoop in his stomach. Had she cleaned his fucking apartment in the morning, picked up his socks, done his dishes then went home and got killed by Reno in the evening? Whether it was due to the thought or his appalling physical state, bile rose in his throat, and he slammed a hand over his mouth.
Rude made a noise and dropped him as if he'd been scalded. Rude was a good partner, but even he wasn’t willing to add vomit to his list of stenches this evening, not even for Reno. Luckily for them both, they were close enough to the island in the kitchen for Reno to grapple onto it. He leaned over the sink just in time to dry-heave pathetically. His stomach was empty but each groaning retch made it feel like his ribcage was crushing him from the inside. Reno knew he must look real shitty because Rude looked genuinely worried when he finally stopped.
“Reno-”
“I’m fine , man,” he said shakily. He washed his mouth out with water from the tap and avoided looking at him.
Rude sighed. “Medicine in the bathroom?”
Reno nodded and watched Rude walk swiftly down the hall. As he listened to Rude pottering around in his bathroom cabinets, he decided there had never been a better time for a stiff drink. He reached for the bottle of whisky across from the sink, tore the stopper out with his teeth and spat it back out in one quick motion. The piece of cork shot out of his mouth and ricocheted off the mirrored splashback above the stove. Watching it, Reno caught a look at his blurry reflection, his pale skin burned and bruised, his red hair flat and singed, and his clothes blood-stained and torn. He really did look awful, and he was so tired. He pulled off his goggles sluggishly then tried to wrangle the hair tie out of his ponytail with his empty hand. It was really matted. Apparently blood, dust, fire and sweat did not make a nice combination in hair. Nice, he thought, and left it half yanked out. That would be fun to untangle later when he couldn’t move.
Rude returned from down the bathroom holding a variety of bottles in one hand and a first aid kit in the other. Reno gestured to him with the whisky bottle in asking. Rude nodded and Reno poured them both an overly generous measure in crystal tumblers plucked from the drying board.
“Right, you ready for this?” Rude asked him.
Reno took a gulp from one of the glasses. “Nope,” he said hoarsely, popping the 'p'. The burning liquid hadn't gone down quite as smoothly as he’d hoped, but he resisted the urge to hurl it back up. They moved towards the long, L-shaped, grey couch in the middle of the room. Reno switched on the television absentmindedly before Rude could stop him.
“-terrorist group, AVALANCHE have not claimed credit for the devastating attack on Midgar’s Sector 7, but the foota-”
Rude yanked the remote from Reno’s stiff hands and switched the newscast off. The long, heavy silence that lay between them afterwards was palpable. Even from here, two Sectors away and far up topside, they could still hear the emergency service vehicles tearing through the highways of Midgar and even more distantly, the eerie public service announcement that played on repeat through the loudspeakers on the streets.
“Sit down,” Rude said. Reno did as he was told without thinking, the plush cushions of the couch were welcome against his aching body.
In silence, Reno drank whatever medicine Rude passed to him, the acrid taste of it familiar and unpleasant. With the healing concoction coursing through him, his overall discomfort eased somewhat, and he was able to remove his shirt and jacket with Rude’s help. Rude whistled when he saw the extent of the damage, his eyebrows high on his forehead.
“Hell, Reno. There isn't much we can do about those ribs. The medicine should help over the next couple of days, but otherwise you just have to sleep sitting up.”
“Oh, goodie.” He took another sip of the whisky.
“But I can sort out some of these burns and cuts. Gonna hurt though. Bottoms up.” They clinked and drank.
Rude shucked his own jacket and sat close to him. Using the first aid kit he maneuvered around Reno’s aching body, to clean, stitch and apply bandages to his wounds. Reno knew he wasn’t a highly skilled medic, there would be some scarring, but his touch was gentle and perfunctory. It would get the job done, and most importantly, he had the good manners to ignore Reno’s pathetic, pained whimpering and hissing.
His gaze flickered to Rude intermittently as he worked, though he tried to shift his attention to other things in the room: the potted plants by the floor-to-ceiling windows, the grotty hair ties on the television unit, the book Tseng gave him months ago that had stayed on his coffee table ever since, and the only photograph he had hanging up. It was of the old gang back when Veld was still around. What had he been thinking with his hair back then? Reno couldn’t stop the small, sad smile on his face as he remembered how he had ruined the first couple of attempts at the photograph because he kept making Rude laugh when Tseng had wanted everyone to seem corporate and unsmiling for the photo instead. They both got there in the end, they looked damn cool, but nevertheless Reno could still see the corner of Rude’s mouth was slightly upturned.
Reno noticed then that Rude had stopped sewing and poking at him. “Done, already?” he asked, and froze.
Rude was looking right at him, his eyes deadly serious. He looked like he needed to say something. He was very close. Reno caught that clean scent again. Then, just like that, Rude turned back to his task and jabbed at Reno with a needle so suddenly he yelped.
“Watch it, man. That hurt. ”
“Don’t whine,” he scolded.
Normally, Reno might take an opportunity like this to flirt a little with Rude as he enjoyed teasing him occasionally. Pressed near on the couch like this, his shirt already off, it would be easy to make him embarrassed...But his heart wasn’t in it at all, nothing was normal about tonight and even the thought of joking or laughing seemed obscene. Reno could still feel the flames on his cheek, hear the shriek of the metal tower collapsing on itself and he couldn’t stop replaying the moment in his mind when the helicopter came crashing down with Rude still inside. It just wasn’t right.
Reno shivered, and looked at Rude’s face. His eyes focussed in concentration, his tongue poking out between his teeth as he stitched up a gash on his shoulder. Rude was a stoic man, but Reno could tell that he felt torn up inside about what he had done. About what they had both done. Although it had been Rude who pushed the activation button in the end. It was supposed to have been Reno, he thought. It was supposed to be his burden.
For a guilty, fleeting moment Reno thought to himself that if it had been him at the console in the end, maybe, just maybe he wouldn't have been able to really go through with it. With a strange giddiness in his chest, he imagined a life where he had said no, and gave a big old ‘fuck you’ to President Shinra, and vaulted from the tower plate, free as a bird. Or more realistically, free as a penniless vigilante being hunted by Shinra and his friends like an animal before finally dying in a dirty ditch like Zack Fair had.
Of course, it was all a pretence, a comforting but utterly delusional lie that people like him had to tell themselves sometimes in order to get by. It was a teasing little droplet of possibility in the murky puddle of Reno’s predictable tale. His fleeting fantasy helped placate his uncharacteristically loud conscience for a second. ‘At least it wasn't me, I didn't do it, I’m not really an evil person,' he could think to himself, but it was a lie as much as his swanky apartment and shiny employee badge was. He was an assassin. Even pretending any differently for that tiny sliver of a moment made him feel deeply ashamed of himself. How dare he think he was any better than Rude, his partner, his friend, the man who had his back no matter what? You’re a coward, Reno, he thought. Rude only had to do Reno’s job for him because he got his ass handed to him, again.
If he was truly honest with himself, Reno knew there was no version of himself where he didn’t do exactly as Rude had done. It was supposed to have been his job, his guilt alone, but he knew now that this was a burden he had cursed Rude with too, and he would bear it alongside him until they died. It was a shitty feeling.Truly Reno loved being a part of The Turks, and he rarely questioned his choice to become one of them. The Turks had given him everything he had, and the most important person in his life. But tonight...He looked at his bandaged hands, as if he could see the blood of the thousands who died this evening on them. Tonight...he had questions. Reno and Rude had killed before, amongst a whole list of other unsavoury things. This didn’t feel like that. What they had done this evening was merciless and terrible in a greater, more atrocious way that Reno almost couldn’t connect to reality. It didn’t make any sense. None of it did.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice as Rude dabbed a solution on the cut on his face. He knew Rude would understand why. Reno couldn’t even look at him while he said it.
There was a long silence, helicopters and sirens screaming far in the distance. Rude clapped a hand on Reno’s good shoulder.
“Don’t be,” he said. It was a caution as much as it was a reassurance. The Turks couldn’t afford to be sorry. “You got my back, don’t you, partner?”
Reno folded his other hand over Rude’s, still clasped tight on his shoulder.
“Always,” he said.
-END-