Rain
Takes place during and after Advent Children. In the rp Verse: A Dance of Red and Blue TW: Death and broken feelings. but also good ones at the end. q-q
“Rain”
Rufus was dead by the time he hit the nets after jumping from the building. The stress of the jump had been too much for the blonde’s Geostigma wracked body. His last act had been tossing Jenova to his Turks with a smirk, and trusting them to take care of it. Dying the way he lived, on his own terms. The Turks had indeed done their part, and the fight against the Remnants was won. The Turks sat sheltered from the healing rain in the lower levels of a half-destroyed parking garage. Exhausted. The fighting was over. While everyone else was celebrating and dancing in the healing rain, the Turks grieved and wore their pain openly in the privacy of the rubble.
Rufus had been lain out on Tseng’s jacket, the blazer no longer hiding the Geostigma that wracked his frame and seeped through his white shirt. Elena had given Rufus her jacket for a pillow while Reno and Rude gave the deceased their blazers as a shroud to cover him. It was the only time any of them had openly wept.
Reno sat on his shins, head bent and tears landing on pavement and Rufus’s cold hand, his warm hands wrapped around a frozen pale one wrought with Geostigma. He’d been the first to break down. He hadn’t so felt lost in years.
Elena had been next, her breath hitching as she watched Reno crack in broken bitter gut-wrenching sobs. A sound she’s never heard from him. She held her own infected arm in pain and leaned against Tseng as her own tears flowed freely. It was hard to watch Reno break when he had become just as much a source of strength as Tseng had been over the years. What did they have left in the world besides each other? Not much. Even less without Rufus.
It was a bitter end on a long painful road for a friend they had all been taking care of since the explosion at the ShinRa tower. They found him in the rubble with a sickness they couldn’t cure. A sickness that had only gotten worse, and worse and worse and infected them all.
Rude sniffed loudly and removed his sunglasses, folding them neatly and settling them in a pocket. He wept the same as the rest, not just for Rufus but for the rest of them too. Turks were a dying breed and he knew it. All of them were sick with Geostigma because they had all Refused to let Rufus suffer through it alone.
Tseng was the last. He stood proudly with his chin up, lips pressed into a thin line, and an arm around Elena as the tears fell. Tseng thought back on every death he regretted, every death he felt he could have done more to change and the Loss of Rufus next to all of the others was no different. It sat heavy in the belly, a feeling not unfamiliar to Tseng. He didn’t regret Rufus, not the knowing of him or the feeling in his chest that was bitter and angry in the knowledge that the Turks were alone in their grieving when Rufus deserved more.
None of them were ready to leave the parking garage and step out into the world again until the healing Rain was already gone. At the funeral service a week later Reno was soberer than he’d been all week. They found a giant tree in a place undisturbed and away from Midgar. Away from people that would desecrate the gravesite in their Hatred for ShinRa. The Tree they chose to bury him under was ancient, fitting since Rufus was half Cetra. The low shady Boughs reached out wider than the span of 3 cars and the ground was peaceful with its cover of moss and stone. All four of them had carved something into the casket’s side.
‘The honor was all mine Rufus, as both friend, and bodyguard. Goodbye.-Tseng’’
‘Good Throw. Next round is on me.-Rude’ ‘I’m going to miss teasing Reno together with you. Please don’t worry, We’ll be ok. We’re still Turks after all. Goodbye Rufus. -Elena’
‘Loving you was like flying. I could never get enough, and I adored every second of it. Love, Reno.’ Reno hung his head and sighed as he traced his hands over the carved words. He didn’t know what to do with this feeling. This sharp and cracked poison of lost love. He remembered how he and Rufus would spar in the pouring rain of Midgar up on the helipad. The Thunder of Rufus’s Shotgun and the Crack and Snap of lightning from Reno’s EMR as they danced in a storm of their own making until they were soaked to the bone, and the air reeked of ozone and gunpowder. Now he just had a storm in his heart where Rufus used to be. No more dancing with his thunderous, beautiful, regal blonde.
The Turks laid Rufus into the ground with the jackets they had given him the day he died and said their goodbyes.
Reno had snapped a picture of their Farewells on his phone just as the cloudless rain fell and took away the sickness. All four of them stood in RELIEF from the constant stinging pain of Geostigma. There were no words passed between the Turks as the rain fell and healed them and all four of them Wondered if it might have been Rufus saying goodbye. Reno stared up into a cloudless sky and wondered, ‘Rufus.....Are you there?....Will I ever see you again? Does this really have to be goodbye?’
Reno never got an answer, none of them did but somehow the thought was comforting. That Rufus had come to see them off. They left the grave marked only with a stone. R.I.P Rufus ShinRa
”You were loved by your Turks more than the World will ever know.”
The Turks threw themselves into the work with the WRO, investigative work as usual for the next three years. Seven months after working nonstop with Valentine to weed out the last of Deepground and Reno would not have expected to get along with him well enough that they ended up an item. Reno had been surprised when it Rained the day he lost Rufus but he took a rare day off and spent it on top of the apartment complex, laminated photo in hand. “Rookie?” Reno heard Valentine over his shoulder and looked over to where the Veteran had climbed up the fire escape to join him. He was glad for the rain so Valentine couldn’t see he was upset. Reno hated crying. It made him feel pitiful and weak, even if that wasn’t the truth of sorrow. Vincent hummed as he sat shoulder to shoulder with Reno, Reno silently offered the photo for Valentine to see. “This was how we said goodbye.” Valentine didn’t ask but Reno bared out everything to Valentine in the Rain. It was Cathartic. The Ex-Turk let his claw rest on the Turk’s knee and Reno spoke. The words fell from his lips like the rain, freely and unending. “I wish you could have had a chance to really meet him Valentine. Your senses of humor are similar. People wouldn’t know it looking at him, but Rufus was like that. Kindness was always hidden, cold sarcasm at the front. I feel like if he’d gotten any other man for a Father he’d still be here. That he’d be missed by more than four people yo. Rufus was definitely a scheming arrogant unfeeling asshole to most people. So was everyone else though, save for Reeve. I knew him since I was fifteen and we were both still kids. He used to be all smiles and joy. I’d help him ditch the Turks on guard duty to go hang out on the Helipad and throw my EMR for Dark Nation.” It helped that Reno was speaking about Rufus and not himself, it made speaking of it easy. Of the ache at something lost that could have been if Rufus had just held out a little longer, or something had gone different along the way. “Between his Shit hole of a dad, and everyone hating him by association, or manipulating him to get something, that’s who he chose to be. To get by, surrounded by people that wouldn’t mind him out of the picture. It’s why he trusted fear from people more than love, or respect. Because it wasn’t just the people of the company that blamed him for the things his Father did, but the public too. I was a week out of the hospital after the plate dropped when I took a bullet for Rufus because someone blamed him for it. He’d been in Junon when it happened. He Flew back from Junon the same night the Turks dropped the plate when he heard I flat lined on the evac chopper. With us he was a different man. He never had the chance to be that guy with anyone but us. ”
While Valentine may not have pitied Rufus or even known him, he pressed a quiet kiss to the redheads temple and draped his cloak about the Turk’s shoulders to ward off at least some of the rain as they sat together. They sat for a solid two hours together in quiet, both of them soaked.
By the time the two of them went in the Rainstorm had worsened to a low rumbling thunderstorm. However, from where he sat in a tub of hot water with Valentine at his back and kissing his shoulders, It didn’t feel like one anymore in his heart. Slowly it got better, And Thunderstorms made Reno smile and Remember dancing in the rain with the Thunder of a Shotgun and the Crack of lightning off his EMR.
Eventually, it also made him think of warm kisses and wine in the bathtub.
.
