Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Those Chosen By The Planet ❯ Act I : Anxious Hearts - Interlude ( Prologue )

Act I
"Anxious Hearts."

Interlude

"...Now I can't be sure of anything
Black is white, and cold is heat
For what I worshiped stole my love away
It was the ground beneath her feet
It was the ground beneath her feet."

~U2, "The Ground Beneath her Feet"

It was their fault.

He sat in darkness, staring in the darkness, with only darkness as company. His once proud upper Midgar apartment had been hollow since he'd returned from the bar, numb with disbelief.

She was dead. It was their fault.

The alcohol was beginning to wear off. Nothing could obstruct the path of truth as it washed over his senses. The harsh, unrelenting reality of it all. The cruel finality. She would never laugh, never smile, never nag him about the trivial and not so trivial things in life. They would never argue politics during breakfast, they would never kiss, they would never make love. It had been months since this realization had dawned on him, but it was back. With the truth revealed, it had come as well. Back to bite him in the ass.

He was still wearing his uniform. Dark blue suit, white dress shirt. Shinra. They were at fault. She'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who could have known the third valve in Reactor One would burst during her shift? Kalie Charlemagne, wife to Turk Reno Charlemange - accidental homicide due to a computer anomaly. He got the week off. Paid vacation time. That should make up for their screw up.

Screw up. It wasn't a screw up, it was an assassination. He didn't know who they had assigned to kill his wife, whether it had been a fellow Turk or someone else. But it changed little. She was dead and they had done it.

He knew the truth now. She had known too much. She'd stumbled upon information of a project. Some sort of strange human experiment. And for that she was dead.

If he still felt anything, he would fear for his life. If they ever found out that he knew the truth, he'd probably meet the same fate. But he didn't care. Life was nothing to him, just as it was nothing to Shinra. He got drunk every night, numbing himself up, and waiting until the next day would dawn, almost hoping that it wouldn't come. A whore here, a vodka shot there, nothing mattered. If he died within another day, another year, or another decade, he didn't care, and neither did Shinra. They'd just find another heartless bastard to replace him.

Eyes of cold emerald glass narrowed. He clenched his teeth, staring out the window to a cool, polluted, Midgar twilight. Shinra would go down. He'd served them long enough. He'd perpetuated its lies, fueled its existence, protected its leader. Shinra would go down. He'd make sure of that. They had fucked up his life and he would fuck up theirs. They would go down. Each and every one of them.

He stood up from cold, unfeeling bed, and grabbed a small black address book from the drawer of his nightstand.

They would pay. Reno knew just the place to go, and he knew just the woman to talk to.

A/N - I've worked a bit more of this out. Reno being Reno, I couldn't have him like this originally was, and then completely different only moments after in the first chapter. So he's a little cruder, and the events of his wife's death are a little different. Suffice it to say, I think this is quite a bit better...

On to Chapter one! ->