The Fall

(Most of this fic takes place during the events of Before Crisis, though the ending will jump to the events after Final Fantasy VII and before Advent Children)


Ten-year-old Rufus Shinra made his way through his family's country estate. Located just an hour's helicopter ride from Midgar, the town it was situated in had sprung into existence only when his father had decided it would be a nice spot to weekend. It was fine, Rufus thought, but he much preferred their towering residence in the sky to this sprawling stone villa on the ground.

He had made his way through every room of the small mansion. Every servant's quarter, every bathroom, every nook and cranny. And then he had made his way over the grounds, in that cold, analytical way that so unnerved every one who knew or served him.

He spent two days looking. At the end of those two days he found his father, not the object of his initial search but an adequate source of information all the same. At the time his father had been younger, slim and handsome, a close approximation of the man Rufus himself would grow to be. President Shinra was holding court in the game room of the villa, executives gathered on leather armchairs. The smell of cigar smoke wafted down the hallways and out the windows, intermingling with the low murmurs of business being conducted.

"Where is mother," Rufus had asked, but it was more a statement then anything else. His voice was clear over the din of business, and there was silence as every one turned to regard him.

"Didn't any one tell you?" his father asked. "She went to Costa del Sol to get some sun."

Rufus didn't push, and soon the murmurs of business filled the room again. The small child turned and left. Over the next week no one would say anything to him. No one would say anything about his mother. His mother, whose clothing and luggage were still in her room, where they would remain until someone would remember to throw them out months later. It was as though she had never existed.

Rufus went back to his room. A small "meow" greeted him as he walked in, a small bundle of fur curled up on his bed. He gathered the kitten in his arms as he sat down on the bed.

"This is for you, Rufus," his mother had said, depositing the baby panther in his arms. She had seemed sad. Worried, maybe. "He'll be here to protect you, if I can't."

But that had been a week ago. Rufus buried his face in the cat's black fur as he looked out the window, contemplative. The cat looked up at him with curious, gold-green eyes.

"I guess it's just us now, Dark Nation."

* * *

Reno flicked the last two switches, hand a firm grip on the shaft as he lowered his helicopter onto Shinra's landing dock. He could smell the ocean from here, sharp and salty below him, churning white near the edge of the beach. Military grunts were waving flags to direct him, but now they were running towards the helicopter, no doubt eager to get the post-flight maintenance done before the next vessel came in.

Reno hopped out of the helicopter in one smooth, languid motion, pushing his goggles back up in his hair as he made his way to the entrance of the building. Junon. Operation Baby-sitter. If he could be anywhere in the world right now, it would be anywhere but here.

While the Turks took up quite a few floors in Midgar's Shinra Towers, official headquarters was its own wing at Shinra's Junon base, separate from the rest of the base save for one connecting corridor. Turk headquarters was where Reno headed now. Orders had come from Tseng just as Reno had come off of a mission with a new recruit. One of his, and he was more than happy with how she was coming along. And than Tseng had had to call him, had to tell him that the next shift was his. Because all Reno needed was a month with Rufus Shinra.

Three years. Three years since he had become a Turk, and Rufus had barely looked at him in all that time. Like he was nothing. And, worse yet, Reno still thought about the bastard whenever he jerked off.

Room 408. Reno only paused for a moment outside the door before swiping his keycard and letting himself in. Only to pause in shock at the state of the room.

"What. The. Hell." The door clanged shut behind him.

Rude looked up from where he was sitting at a kitchen island, cappuccino cup in hand. "Why they keep partnering us together, I will never know. Gotta talk to HR about it or something."

Reno didn't even bother to make his usual comment about how Rude loved being partnered with him and knew it. "I was told Rufus was under house arrest."

"He is."

"Confined to one room."

"Generally, yeah."

"What the hell kind of room is this?" Reno asked, not surprised when the end of his sentence actually echoed.

Rude shrugged. "Think it used to be an auditorium or something."

This was ridiculous. Reno had imagined Rufus locked up in a small twelve-by-twelve room, his laptop the only thing to keep him company through the long days. On some level, he had even felt sorry for the guy, despite their history together. Instead, Rufus had a huge loft to himself. The room had to be two stories high. There was a kitchen bigger than Reno's apartment, a small gym set off from the main area with a glass wall, and a miniature jungle built right smack dab in the middle of everything for Dark Nation to lay around in. The far wall of the room was industrial glass and metal, giving an unobstructed view of cliff and ocean that most people would die for. There was a set of double doors open on the side of the room, and Reno guessed that that's where Rufus' room was.

"Want the rundown?" Rude asked, and Reno could only nod dumbly.

"The vice president," Rude said, pointing to the double doors.

"Your room." A small door just yards from where Rufus' was.

"My room." Another door, but this one closer to the entrance.

"Security cameras." Rude gestured up towards the kitchen cabinets, and Reno walked closer to see a string of five monitors attached to the wall. He could see Rufus sitting at a desk, drinking tea as he read something on a huge monitor. Rufus' room had been built into a split-level, a comfortable living areas downstairs and a sleek office upstairs, filled with all sorts of technology. "You can flip through three of these, but two are always on Rufus' room."

"And, most important of all, cappuccino machine," Rude said, pointing at an antique copper monstrosity.

"Clearly."

"The vp usually wakes up at 8. Reads all the newspapers. Lunch, then training and exercise. . . there's a gun range next door we can escort him to. Then he watches his machines until midnight, a break for dinner whenever he's hungry. Apparently they've gone all out in his office, access to every database and security camera they have. He pretty much knows everything that's going on in Shinra and in real time too."

"Figures. He tries to kill his dad and what does he get? Better opportunity to do it."

"Well, that's what we're here for, make sure he doesn't pull something like that again." Rude took another sip of his cappuccino. "You better report in with him."

"Doesn't that beat all. He's the prisoner, but we're still taking orders from him."

Rude shrugged, his next words uttered as though they explained everything. "He's our vice president."

Reno took slow steps towards Rufus' room. He hadn't seen Rufus since what happened at the mako reactor, when it came out Rufus had been plotting to kill his old man. They had been fighting Avalanche for so long, and then to find out Rufus had been funding Avalanch and even supplying them with information. . . and the worse part to Reno was his own reaction to situation.

"Sir, why are you doing this?" Like a loyal dog, whimpering at his master's betrayal. It made Reno want to throw up.

Reno had watched him later, all of them waiting to be transported away from the reactor. The green glow cast strange shadows over the planes of his face, a seething anger in his usually cold eyes. Anger at what, Reno wasn't sure, but it could have been a lot of things. Anger at Avalanche for turning on him. Anger at himself for not expecting it. Anger at failing.

Reno hadn't said anything else to the other man that night.

And now he was hesitating at the base of a spiral staircase, sure that Rufus had heard him come in, but not able to bring himself to climb up. But there was nothing for it, and at some point Reno decided he had been waiting there for too long, and started the trek upwards. When he got to the top he shifted uncomfortably, as Rufus' only acknowledgment wasn't an acknowledgment at all, only a slow sip from his tea cup.

"Sir," Reno finally said, "Reno reporting for duty."

A casual dismissal of his hand. Rufus was still looking at his monitor and hadn't even looked over at him, and Reno decided not to leave just yet. He had never seen Rufus like this, dressed only in a thin white t-shirt and track pants. The shirt clung to his body, smooth muscles filling out a slender frame. Those muscles flexed, however minutely, as he reached across the keyboard, a quiet power beneath the movements.

"Reno."

Reno's head snapped up at his name, looking into detached blue eyes. The fact that Rufus' attention was on him for the first time in three years wasn't lost on him, but the moment wasn't exactly what he had imagined.

"You may leave now."

Reno nodded, knowing the statement wasn't an option but an order. He turned and went back downstairs, letting out the breath he didn't know he was holding. He strode into the kitchen, grabbing a beer out of the refrigerator and plopping himself down at the kitchen island.

"What's the matter with you?" Rude asked, pouring himself another cappuccino from the machine.

Reno just shook his head.

* * *

"Tea?" Rufus asked, completely pleasant, as though this were a social visit. Although, Tseng supposed, in a way it was.

"I always thought you were a scotch man."

"The key is moderation." Rufus crossed his legs, took another sip. "You do realize that I'll have to report to the president than Veld has abandoned his position as the director of the Turks."

Tseng's eyes flashed, momentarily, before he stifled it. Instead he focused on the waves visible just outside Rufus' window, violent sprays against the almost vertical cliffside. Veld had been the man who had made Tseng who he was today. . . maybe he hadn't done such a good job, Tseng thought, because he felt as though the world was crumbling around him. But, no. That was no doubt a weakness on his part. "I understand."

"Really?" Rufus looked, for the moment, amused. "I wonder what my father will do. Will he put you in charge? Make you report to that imbecile Heidigger? If that ends up being the case, Tseng, I don't envy you. My father will also, undoubtedly, issue orders to find and kill Veld."

Tseng nodded slowly, hands clasped and knuckles white in his lap.

"What will you do then, Tseng?"

Tseng looked up. Rufus' eyes were cold, measuring, and he seemed as though he knew exactly what Tseng would do. "Mr. Vice President, I would never do anything to hurt Shinra Corp.'s interests."

Shock, for a second. "In that case, I overestimated you."

Tseng blinked several times, confused.

"You Turks," Rufus began, arm sweeping in a wide arch. "Do you really have no loftier goals then to serve my father, a man who day by day grows fatter in his gluttony? Stupider in his complacency? To go to such lengths for such a man."

"Sir, I don't think you understand. The Turks only exist to protect Shinra. Without that goal, what exactly are we?"

"I suppose that's the difference between the two of us." Rufus placed his cup back in its saucer, placed the saucer on his desk. He turned around, back to his monitor, and Tseng took the gesture for the dismissal that it was. He got up to leave, but Rufus had apparently changed his mind, speaking without turning forward to look at him. "When you disobey my father's orders and decide not to kill Veld, you'll be making an enemy of Shinra, of course. But he won't dare touch you. Not while you still have me."

"Yes, sir."

Tseng made his way down the stairs, feeling a little heavier with each step.

* * *

Reno could sense Tseng coming unraveled. It made him nervous, made him bouncy and twitchy and wanting to get out of Junon. Tseng had always been a constant in his life, ever since bailing him out the slums, and now he was coming apart.

"I'm sorry," Tseng had said to them once. "I've made you all enemies of the people you're supposed to protect."

"Hey, boss," Reno had said, "it's cool. It's not like we could have killed Veld, you know?"

But Tseng had only shaken his head. "It's not the kind of decision that Veld would have made."

Now that the Turks had decided to go against Shinra's commands and let Veld go, there was a big void in all of their lives. No Shinra. No Turks. No missions. Just Junon, just headquarters, just Rufus. Reno didn't mind doing babysitting duty now, not so much anyway. Missions really were far and few between, now that they were on their own. If he wasn't pulling duty with Rufus he was wondering through the halls in headquarters, and the bed in Rufus' room was a lot more comfortable than the cots they used in the dorms. He didn't even mind that Rufus spent most of the time he was there ignoring him. Rufus ignoring him meant he didn't have to feel self-conscious about following the other man around, lounging in Rufus' couch while he monitored Shinra's business, sitting on a nearby bench while he threw jabs at a punching bag.

"You were going to kill us," Reno had said one day, a bottle of whisky in his hand while Rufus typed some kind of memo on his laptop, both of them out in the communal living area. He was referring, of course, to that day at the mako reactor.

Rufus hadn't even looked up. "You were interfering with my plans."

"You were going to kill me."

"I'm genuinely sorry," he had said, sounding anything but. "Now can we please move past it?."

Reno had tried getting out before, going to Costa del Sol for some incognito kind of vacation. He had ended up running into Reeve Tuesti, the encounter leading to a high-speed foot chase through sunlit streets and plazas. The older man had been quicker than a middle-aged executive should be, and had actually caught up with him by the Font de Ledesma.

"Reno," he had said, "I want to talk with Rufus."

"I don't know what you're talking about, yo."

"I know he's not on some extended business trip. Reno, where is he?"

But Reno had managed to twist away and off into a side street, finally losing Reeve about a mile later. After that he had pretty much stuck to Junon.

He didn't mind Junon. He didn't mind Rufus. He would have felt a little pathetic about being so fixated on a man who had never been anything but cruel to him, but it's not like Reno gave a fuck about something like that. He didn't have that kind of pride, and more often than not he found himself in that bed late a night, his cock in his hand and the knowledge that Rufus was just on the other side of the wall. It would be some small scrap of contact from that day that would set him off. Rufus' arm reaching over his arm for the newspaper. Rufus' eyes, blue flames as he deigned to tell Reno some new piece of corporate intrigue. And Reno would come, dirtying the sheets and wondering how long this was going to last.

* * *

It was four am. There was a noise coming from out in the living room, voices and static, and Reno got up to see what was going on. He and Tseng were on duty that night, and when Reno came out he saw that Tseng and Rufus were there, sitting at the kitchen island with a cell phone on speaker in between them.

It irked Reno to some small degree. As far as he could tell Rufus and Tseng had never been particularly chummy before. For whatever reason, Rufus only interacted with other members of the company for as much as he had to. But over the course of his confinement, Rufus had seemed to take Tseng in as kind of a confidante. What exactly was it about Tseng, Reno wondered, that made him so preferable?

The cell phone buzzed, a voice fading in and out, and Reno recognized it as Kora, one of the Turks they had recruited a little bit before confining Rufus.

"- test subjects from the mansion got away, I couldn't stop them."

"What do you mean by that?" Tseng asked. "How did you let them get away?"

"I couldn't help it. One of them was Zack."

Tseng's eyes widened, a look so full of shock and emotion passing over his face that Reno found himself almost scared. But then it was gone, fleeting, though Tseng had still not brought himself to say anything.

"Sir, hold on, I have to go check on something."

The cell phone fizzled out as the call was cut off, and Tseng hadn't moved an inch.

"Boss?" Reno asked, and when Tseng looked up his expression was completely calm, though his skin was pale.

"He was dead. He died in Nibelheim."

"Tseng. . . " Rufus' voice was almost hesitant. "If Shinra finds him, they'll kill him."

Tseng only nodded.

"Boss. . ." But Reno didn't know what else to say, didn't know the history behind this one, didn't know what was going on inside Tseng's head.

"If they're leaving Nibelheim," Rufus finally said, breaking the silence, "they may head to Midgar. You might be able to find them before Shinra."

Tseng nodded again.

"I can track troop movements from here," Rufus said. "Go with Reno, and I'll tell you where they're heading."

"Yes, sir. Reno, let's go."

They made their way to the launchpad, Reno hopping into the pilot's seat of one of their helicopters. It was suddenly awkward, all that silence in that cramped space, and he was never more glad than when his earpiece buzzed to life, Rufus' voice coming from the other end.

"The troops in the area seem to be mobilizing towards the desert. I'll read off general coordinates as they come in."

"Yes, sir."

Reno flew the bird into the stretch of sand and space between Nibelheim and Midgar. Every so often Rufus' voice would come through the earpiece with coordinates, a distant echo in their ears. But mostly it was thick, heavy silence, tempered only by the buzzing of the earpiece. Reno could sense more than see Tseng scanning the ground for any signs of life, and he tried to do the same, but the desert itself didn't seem to want to corporate. As time stretched on, the sand and wind became angrier, stirring up small clouds and tornados. Visibility was decreasing, and Reno could hear the course stuff getting stuck in the machinery.

"I have to land," he said, words heavy with apology, muffled in even his ears. As they settled down to wait out the storm, all they could hear was sand and static.

"He's a good soldier," Reno finally said, anything to break that awful silence. He didn't know Zack, save for a few missions they had worked on together, but he had always seemed like one of the decent ones.

"He's a good soldier," Tseng agreed, his voice not really there, "and he's a good man. A better man than me. It's no wonder. . . Aerith chose him over me."

Reno fixed his gaze on some distant point outside his side window, wanting to give Tseng some privacy even in the tiny space they currently shared.

The sand storm lasted an hour, and Reno had barely gotten the helicopter back into the air when Rufus' voice came over the line.

"Shinra found him. Tseng. . . I'm sorry."

* * *

Rufus could hear Tseng outside the door, and he poured a glass of scotch in preparation. Tseng came in, and he could have been sleepwalking to the kitchen, slumping down on a stool there. Rufus placed the glass in front of him, and Tseng took it automatically before raising it to his mouth. When he finally spoke it was a statement of regret.

"I've made so many mistakes in my life." His voice was slow, almost contemplative.

"Tseng," Rufus said, in a voice that was almost cruel. "You are a Turk. If you ever want to be some one great, if you ever want to stand on the same level as Veld, you have to stop letting your emotions dictate your life. You once said that a Turk's life was meaningless without Shinra to protect. In that case, stop living for yourself and start living for the company."

Tseng blinked up at him several times, face void. "Yes, sir."

Rufus left him then, turning back to go to his room. As he closed the door Tseng was still sitting in the kitchen, staring at some point past the glass of scotch in his hand.

Rufus frowned as he got into his bed. Tseng's emotions had been clear as day on his face. Guilt and grief and nothing else. Two emotions, Rufus found, that he was having trouble connecting with. Somehow, it disturbed him. To see some one mourn another life so completely. Rufus tried to think back upon his own life. Had he ever mourned some one? Had he ever cried to realize that some one he cared about would never be able to say hello to him again?

Had he mourned for his mother? In the moment he realized the answer was no, Rufus suddenly felt more alone than he ever had before.

There was a knock on his door. Before he could say words like "come in" or "go away," the door was opening and Reno was peering in at him.

"Sir," he said, voice oddly quiet, "I just wanted to say thank you."

Rufus was bewildered. "For what?"

"For helping us. For helping Tseng try to find his friend."

Rufus nodded, still not understanding completely. He had only helped, he told himself, on a whim. But Reno's eyes were a strange amber color as they looked at him, and Rufus was feeling lonely.

"Reno. Come here."

Without so much as a protest Reno shut the door and walked towards Rufus, hesitantly placing one leg, and then another, on his bed as he leaned towards him. Such a contrast from the man he had first met in the Blue Room, but Rufus was surprised to find this kind of obedience wasn't unattractive to him. His fingers laced in Reno's hair as he pulled the other man forward, gently, lips meeting in a deep, hungry kiss. Reno's hands wrapped themselves into the fabric of his shirt, too tight, and Rufus loosened them so he could pull their bodies together.

Reno was so warm. He had always been warm, Rufus remembered, body hot and needy to the touch even if Reno's words protested otherwise. Rufus pulled his lips away from Reno's insistent kisses, moving instead to kiss and suck a trail down Reno's neck. He wanted to taste him. Wanted the taste of salt and skin, wanted to feel that the man was actually there. That someone was there, tangible and real.

Sternum, nipples, and abdomen. . . and then Rufus took Reno's cock into his mouth, sucking and teasing the hard flesh. Reno's breath hitched, his back arched, and his hands were featherlight touches on Rufus's hair.

Soon after, Rufus made a space for himself in between Reno's legs, hand reaching down to guide his cock into Reno's hole. He eased himself into the other man, watching Reno's eyes close and mouth open in unadulterated pleasure. It felt so good, too good, tighter even than he remembered, and he leaned forward to bite and suck on Reno's neck as he thrust in and out.

"You belong to me," he said, not knowing what possessed him to say it, "always. No one else is allowed to touch you."

"Yes, sir." A moan, more than anything else, and Rufus reached in between them to tug Reno to completion. It didn't take long before he felt Reno jerk, felt something sticky spill over his hand and fingers, and he soon followed, seed emptying out into the other man.