Jenova's Daughter

CHAPTER SEVEN: Assassin


ReiMei moved as fast as she could away from the room now splattered liberally with her blood. She had used her time at the comps well, committing the ShinRa site map to memory. She dredged up the stark diagram to serve her. She traveled deep into the ShinRa complex ruins, seeking to conceal herself from her brothers. She crawled when she had to, worming her way through narrow openings and struggling to pull her failing body over mounds of jagged, broken concrete blocks. She stopped only when the wooden crutch snapped.

ReiMei slithered her way into the exposed water conduit, dry now for almost two years, since the explosions that had ripped the complex apart. Once she was no longer moving, her mind began to torment her, confusion and loss ruling her thoughts. Her primary purpose, to Bond with her Soldier brothers, was yet undone. The final step, to embrace them all at once and bring them together might never be achieved. She didn’t know if she wanted to live long enough to try.

Tears ran from her emerald eyes for a time. She had accepted Kadaj’s whispered apology, she’d touched her heart to tell him that she loved him. She now wondered if it was enough. Would Kadaj hurt her again? If that was what he desired, she would endure it, but her love was already wounded by his treatment of her. Would Yazoo enfold her in his arms now that she was scarred? Would Loz ever play his games with her again? Worst of all, would Hojo’s prophecy of betrayal and doom come to pass?

Desperate sobs wracked her body. She’d failed. Her body was broken. Her heart and her mind the same. Hojo would have been thoroughly disgusted with her. As the hours passed, ReiMei wept until she was empty and numb. There was no longer room within her to hold the triplet’s hearts, and she let them go. Her own heart had shattered into so many pieces, she knew it could never be re-made. She let the fragments go as well. There was nothing left to hold on to.

ReiMei lay in near total darkness, though she could see well even without light. She was silent now that she had cried herself out. Crippled thoughts still stumbled through her mind. She had done what she had been made to do, had not fought Hojo’s cruel geas. He would have destroyed her as a failed experiment. ReiMei could accept her fate. She had come to this place to die. By the time Yazoo and Loz brought their lights to her hiding place, she had succumbed to shock. She was no longer the Assassin she could have been, nor the open heart she had tried to be. Pain and fear had finally overwhelmed her, and when Yazoo touched her, she could only scream. The sound was loud in her mind, but near a whisper in reality.

Why couldn’t the hands leave her alone? Why had the light come when she wanted only darkness? Er eyes were open, but she could not see the compassion on Yazoo’s face. Loz’s tears went unnoticed. She could no longer hear them. The cool water they poured in her mouth, she could not taste, and found no relief from it.

Despite the light they carried, Yazoo and Loz could not prevent the shadows from closing in on their little sister, beating at her with black wings of despair. She no longer had the will to deny it, and surrendered to it gladly. If this was death come for her, she welcomed it.

She would not know that the triplets were near her as she lay in a near coma for two days. It was in a rare moment alone that Kadaj wept quietly on the other side of the steel immersion tank.

When ReiMei opened her eyes, she felt a momentary stab of panic. She was surrounded by a thick fluid. She could feel it crawl over her skin. She was aroused and repulsed in one feeling, and she bolted upright, pulling her head out of the liquid. Her hand came up to rip off the cold Oxymask, letting it splash and bubble to the bottom of the tank she now sat in.

Loz was asleep in a chair beside the tank, his head lolling to one side. ReiMei’s gaze swept over him and a hard glint shone in the swimming emerald of her slitted eyes. She jabbed two fingers near his spine at the nape of his neck. He wouldn’t be waking any time soon.

She rose to her feet, her long hair heavy with the nearly gelatinous muck she’d been laying in. Her body was almost thrumming with Mako energy, and it showed in the swirling irises of her feline eyes. They had once been the color of emeralds, but no longer. Her eyes were a very dark green with flecks of extremely light green dotting them like stars. Her hair, once silver, had also been tainted by the viridian hue.

ReiMei stepped from the tank, and as she walked slowly through the room, she shed the bandages that swathed her body. She made her way through the collection of spaces that led from the surgery and on through the beds, and out into the section that housed she and her brother’s rooms. Yazoo’s door was open, and her slitted pupils widened to show her where he lay in the darkness. His mien was sorrowful as if his dreams were unpleasant. They would have to remain so for a little while longer. Even as Yazoo opened his eyes, ReiMei had hit him three times in rapid succession, pushing him back into the land of his dreams.

Kadaj was not in the room he had tortured her in. The door was locked, and somehow, ReiMei knew that he had not slept there since the night of his Bonding. The next bedroom suite had a light showing beneath the door. Kadaj was awake. She kicked at the door once. She kicked at it twice. On the third attempt, it crashed inward. Her eldest brother sat on his bed wearing only light sleeping pants. His gaze was steady and he met ReiMei’s pure Mako eyes with ones the color of chilled jade.

“Have you come to kill me?” Kadaj asked her calmly.

“We both know I can’t do that.” ReiMei spat angrily. “But, I’ve come to warn you. Despite the love we are forced to bear one another, if you ever try to touch me like that again, I will find a way to break my conditioning and kill you. You are my superior, and I will follow you even unto death. You are my Bonded brother, and I will please you, as I am made to do. I am also an Assassin, and I am made to kill. I will trade one purpose for another. I swear it.”

“I can’t hurt you either.” Kadaj confessed. “I had hope you’d understood that.”

ReiMei stood in silence, the Mako light in her eyes swirling crazily.

“I had to be sure.” She said, turning away from her eldest brother. “The geas burns me.” She whispered, her voice almost the one she’d once had. The Assassin in her stepped back into the shadows to give way to the power that rose at it’s name.

“When our brothers wake, come to my room.” ReiMei ordered. “I must end this before I go mad.”

“End without betrayal?” Kadaj questioned before she walked away.

“You know I will not break the vows I have made.” ReiMei replied angrily, whirling back to face her brother. “You know I have not been made to be that kind of person. I only want to meet the conditions of Hojo’s orders so that I can be myself – even if I don’t know who that is!”

The small woman spun on her heel, her wrath radiating off of her in palpable waves that washed over Kadaj. His smile could have been one of Yazoo’s, or ReiMei’s. He understood completely.