Chapter Text
The back of Jessie's neck itched.
She wasn't entirely when it started, only that she had noticed it somewhere in the Sector Five reactor. It was like a mild, dull pressure that made her roll her shoulders as if it were a phantom cramp that would go away if she ignored it for long enough.
That was how she'd been dealing with most of her problems, especially as of late—push it back, try to forget about it, pretend as if nothing was wrong because nothing was wrong.
Nothing could be wrong.
She had her sister, the only family left in her life after her father died working for Shinra when they were younger. It had destroyed their mother, a woman who had been so vibrant and alive, and yet she had faded like the sunlight did as they found themselves trapped in the all-encompassing dark of the slums.
It hadn't taken long, only a few months, before their mother was as dead as Jessie's dreams.
But she had become stronger, more resilient, more something. The Goddess may have kicked her in the teeth over and over again until her mouth filled with blood and her body screamed for death, but Jessie had survived. More than that, she had somehow thrived. AVALANCHE had given her something as beautiful as a bomb exploding in midair, slaking that all-encompassing hunger that gnawed at her insides like a beast trying to free itself from a trap.
She even had frien—
No, Jessie thought as the itching on her neck seemed to grow, enflaming her every nerve as it made its way down her spine.
She didn't have friends, not really. All her life, she had wanted the friends of her youth, the ones who had seemed so unique and inspiring. Not the kind of friends that turned their back on her when things got tough like they did when she was twelve and her belly was empty and her teeth chattering from the cold. None of the orphanages seemed to have a place for her and her sister to stay topside—not together, anyway—and that first year where Lona tried to figure out how to make ends meet had been so damn hard.
Everyone but Lona abandoned her. Their parents, her friends, the whole damn world.
And Lona... Lona had kept her safe and sheltered.
It'd been a blessing that Lona had managed to get herself into the Shinra nursing program at just the age of nineteen, and things had changed after that. It hadn't gotten good, not really, but it'd gotten better. There was food in Jessie's belly and there was electricity roaring through their tiny apartment, mako like a taste of acid in the back of her throat.
She hated it, but she loved her sister.
Her sister was good. Her sister was the only good thing about all of the godsforsaken Planet. Her sister held no love for Shinra, and neither did Jessie, but they paid the bills for them just as they did for most of Midgar.
Jessie remembered Barret's words the first time she'd met him ringing in her head like a gong. Oh, how much he had impressed her with his way with words and his understanding of exactly what to say to strike the right note in anyone's heart.
She wondered if any of the Turks ever tried to listen to Barret. Maybe if they did, then...
No. Batter never would have listened to Shinra, no matter how well-meaningly they played their game.
Blood money. Every single gil Shinra pulled into their coffers, every bit of mako they pumped with their reactors, every single bit of blood, sweat, and tears—that was the true price of Shinra.
And Jessie believed it, with every fiber of her being—Shinra was corruption and destruction and violation of everything she believed in. They were the enemy, would always be the enemy. It was why she joined AVALANCHE, why she had learned how to hack, why she experimented with bombs and guns and all the things her sister had taught her to stay away from, because her sister was a healer, her sister was kind, and Jessie...
Jessie wasn't.
Jessie wasn't that little girl, hungry and cold and so furious at the world that had wronged her, at the fates that had abandoned her.
And yet...
That was before everything had gone so damn wrong, before she had failed. Oh, how she'd thought that was was so much better than those Shinra scum, able to outmaneuver their hacking skills, able to outsmart them.
Hubris, Jessie remembered. Her father, before he died, had told her that it would be her undoing.
Everything had changed. The world had tilted on its axis and she was falling and falling and falling because she had failed, she had gone wrong, and this was her fault.
But one thing didn't change. One thing couldn't change. She would do anything to keep her sister safe.
Anything.
When Jessie pulled back her hand, she noticed the blood bright and red under her fingernails.
She deserved it.
She deserved it all.
She reached back up and continued to scratch.
Reno stared at Don Corneo's empty bed, its rumpled and twisted sheets on the floor, the smell of something faintly rotten mixing with sweat and cum making his nose itch.
Careful to avoid the trap floor in front of the bed, Reno leaned down ran the back of his hand against the garish red sheets.
"Still warm, eh?" Reno laughed before wiping his hand on the nearby curtains as if it would do anything to get rid of the feeling of touching something Corneo had fucked on. It didn't help, but that was just the price Reno had to pay for being a Turk.
Glancing around the room, Reno took in the half-drunk hyper on the nightstand and the whips lining the wall next to his bed. There had always been something about Corneo that made his stomach churn, though if it were just the little boy from the boonies in the middle of bumfuck nowhere or something else, something more visceral and dirty, Reno didn't know.
What he did know was that he was going to have to tell Tseng that Corneo had managed to escape from right under Reno's fingers, which really wasn't something he wanted on his to-do list, because Tseng would have questions. That was the kind of boss Tseng was, which sometimes made Reno yearn for the days where Veld would send them off into the unknown with nothing more than the most simple of orders.
It was easy to keep Veld happy.
Tseng?
Much less so.
Still, Reno couldn't help but frown as his eyes traced over the trapdoor again, mind swimming with the thoughts—thoughts that he'd spend nearly five years forcing back down, hiding from them as if his life depended on them.
He was a good Turk—a loyal Turk. He wasn't swayed by emotion or petty promises and soft memories. That kind of shit was for someone else, someone weak-willed and broken, haunted by memories and sweet nothings.
Reno wasn't broken. He'd been through too much, done too much, and had forged the pieces back together in the fires of his own despair and in the blood of the only person he had ever loved. He had tempered himself with that pain until every edge sparkled in the dull slum light, and then he'd done it over and over again until he could smile with bloody teeth as he watched the world burn around him.
The Turks had taught him that.
And Zack Fair, with his fucking sword and his swagger and his mako eyes that glowed with hate—
Reno gripped the bedpost, letting his nails rip into the wood. The pain felt good, like redemption in blood, but it wasn't enough. Nothing would be enough, because Reno had failed. That was all Reno could ever do when people needed him.
For just a moment, long enough to make Reno's breath catch in his throat, he thought of another face, another person he had failed. He could still feel the blood in his hands, the tears on his face, the constant whisper in the back of his mind that this was his fault.
All his fault.
"Heh," Reno laughed, wincing as he pulled his fingers open, feeling the splinters dig in deeper under his nails. The pain felt good, felt right, felt deserved.
And he did deserve it, didn't he?
There was nothing he could do, now. That time was gone, had faded into what once was and could never be again.
The silence was shattered by the ear-splitting shriek of his phone, the annoying theme playing so loud it made his teeth chatter. He was about to catch holy hell from Tseng for letting Corneo get away. The man had been a thorn in Shinra's side for long enough, and now that they knew he was willing to open his mouth and babble their secrets to anyone, it was time for them to finally rid the world of the scum.
Reno idly wondered if Larc would ask for the honor of getting to take out Corneo; he had, after all, worked for the man for years before the Turks had head-hunted him.
"Y'ello," Reno said as he raised his phone to his face, gritting his teeth as he felt the splinters dig in deeper.
"Reno—"
"Sorry, he got away before I got the chance to nab him. But he definitely spilled his guts ta AVALANCHE."
"And where are they?"
Reno looked back at the floor. "Let's just say they're... in deep shit?"
Reno knew Zack almost as well as he knew himself. Nothing too terrible was going to happen to them down in the sewers, even if there was a grain of truth about Corneo keeping a little pet down there.
Tseng didn't seem to find any humor in Reno, which wasn't all that out of the ordinary. Instead, he let out an audible sigh which Reno knew was accompanied by Tseng pinching the bridge of his nose as he cursed the day Reno was ever recruited. "How long will it take you to get to HQ?"
"About an hour?"
"Be here in forty-five minutes. We need to discuss what comes next."
What comes next.
Reno could have laughed, because what came next was dropping an entire city on top of another city. There was some type of irony in that, but what Reno couldn't exactly pinpoint. It was all just too much of a clusterfuck for him.
Something dragged itself through his guts, but he pushed it out of his mind. He was good at that, after all. Wasn't that what Jamie always sai—
Don't think about him. Don't think about that.
Reno didn't even bother to wait for Tseng to hang up on him, sliding his phone back into his pocket. He didn't know why, but he reached up for the curtains and wrapped his hands in them, pulling with all his weight and the mako sizzling through his veins. It wasn't enough to be a SOLDIER, would never be enough to be a SOLDIER, but it got the job done.
Not sparing another look at the room, Reno left, enjoying the feel of blood dripping down his fingers as he marched onward.