[FF7-AC] Never to Hope Again

FF7-AC - Rating: PG-13 - Parts: 1 - Status: Complete - Warnings: Violence

Pairings: Tseng/Rufus, Kadaj/Rufus

Word count: 3,954

For Chauni

There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to,

That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,

More pangs and fears than wars or women have;

And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,

Never to hope again.

-- W. Shakespeare, Henry VIII

Summary: Rufus, a world that isn't what it should be, and a war that he can't perceive being waged around him. For Chauni.

It was with a certain amount of disorientation that he awoke, blinking at the light flooding in through the windows. He had been dreaming in a confused way; one of those dreams that was so vivid, so real, that he couldn’t remember where he was when he woke up.

He sat up, running fingers through his hair. He had not drawn the curtains the night before, and through the tall glass windows he could see the morning sun illuminating the Midgar skyline.

What was it that he had been dreaming of-- ah, some lodge in a forest, himself a few years older and terminally sick...

He glanced at the mirror in the bathroom, but no bandage was wrapped around his forehead, securing his left eye.

...Strange. Perhaps it had been the product of some subconscious fear of growing old and helpless.

There had been someone there, he recalled. A young Sephiroth, with shoulder-length hair and a smirk on his face. Kneeling before him-- had he been in a chair?-- smiling up at him, and as his eyes met those green ones, he had snapped awake.

The water was cold against his face, chasing away the looser fragments of the dream (something about Midgar being destroyed and the world as he knew it having ended?), but doing nothing to chase away the strange nagging sense of unease that was starting to build in the back of his mind. He had forgotten something, some appointment, perhaps. His father...

...He shook his head, suddenly confused. He had been dreaming of a time when his father was dead and gone, something he had taken as so natural, as so real, that it seemed...

He towelled off his face and hurried to his desk, heart thumping for no discernable reason. His laptop beeped as it fired up, and he got his login password wrong a few times before he tried an older one. The database was familiar, at least, as he called up his appointment calendar and glanced at the news. Storms over Costa del Sol. Golden Saucer reports that its profits were up 2.5% in the last quarter. President of Shinra Electric Company announces a 1.4% rate hike for mako power...

He leaned back in his chair, warring between a combination of relief and disappointment. It had seemed so real, that his father was gone at last, and...

...And that the world had ended. Right. Wistful thinking, Rufus. Escapism at its finest.

He flexed the fingers of his right hand experimentally, half expecting a flesh of pain, but none came.

Board meeting at 9. He glanced at the clock, frowned at the date, and tried to shake off the sense of wrong-ness.

This was the year... this was the year it all started. When the old man was murdered and--

The thought sounded unbidden in his hand, and he snarled at the disorientation. What was wrong with him? Dreams didn’t usually leave this much impact...

His fingers faltered on the keyboard, and the sense of unease swelled.

"Well, obviously, I’m not in Junon," he said out loud, before belatedly recalling the security cameras in his room that monitored his every move. Groaning mentally at having forgotten such a basic fact, he pinched the bridge of his nose and continued scrolling. Thinking he had been in Junon while he was in Midgar or vice versa was not uncommon, not when he was constantly being shuttled back and forth.

But wasn’t it good? the insidious little thought at the back of his head said. To be President. To run this company the way you wanted to run it, no more stupid and arbitrary rate hikes that only serve to stir up dissent while not actually generating much additional income. To do away with these stupid and pointless board meetings...

He was going to be late. He would have to skip breakfast. Sighing, he turned to his wardrobe, searching for a jacket.

He paused over the long white coat. This... had been...

...Had been...?

Where was...

There was something, terribly, terribly wrong with him today, and he could only hope that it would pass by the time he got to that meeting. Not being able to remember what year it was, not being able to remember what the agenda was, what their most recent plans were, what he was ...supposed... to have been doing...

He tugged on a black button down shirt and a white suit, foregoing the coat. Grabbed the laptop and the top-most binders off his desk, and rushed out of his room. He would have to stop by his office. He would just have to be late for this meeting, spend a few minutes flipping through his files, reorienting himself.

He almost laughed at that. Amnesia? At his age?

The sight of his office inspired a sense of relief, a solid anchor in the tide. He flipped on the lights, dumped his folders on a side table and made his way over to his desk. It was unusually clear of scattered work and files -- perhaps there was nothing in particular he had been working on. Perhaps he had cleared everything and that was why...

He resisted the urge to pinch himself to see if he would wake up. He was awake, after all.

9.04am. Well, he was late already, and the old man was going to be pissed. Too bad. He stood before his desk, rifling through the binders that he had brought from his room. Nothing much except the rate hike. Summer vacation. Things slowed down during this time of the year as people took leave...

The file colour was wrong.

He froze.

Confidential material was always filed in black binders, but this was... blu...

Was black. Normal, staid black without a hint of blue.

Shaken, he picked up the file, adjusted the strap of the laptop bag across his shoulder-- hadn’t he grabbed the laptop without a bag? -- and headed towards the escalators.

9.10am.

He walked the distance from the elevator to the conference room, refusing to hurry and refusing to let anyone see him hurry. How had he woken up this late? He swiped his keycard through the reader, and sauntered into the room as the doors opened for him.

The conference room was empty, except for his father standing at the other end, his back to him.

"You’re late," the President snapped.

9.12am. Did I get the date wrong? "Was the meeting cancelled?"

The President waved, dismissive, and turned. "Regarding that matter..."

"Have you located it?"

"Which matter?"

The President scowled. "Watch your tone, boy."

He bowed slightly, and deposited the laptop bag and the files on the table. "I apologise, sir."

"The J project," the President said.

He drew a complete blank. "Allow me to refresh my memory, sir," he said, pulling out his laptop, and preparing to flip it open.

The President’s hand came crashing down on the cover of the laptop, making him jump. How had the man crossed the length of the boardroom in a flash...

He glanced up--

--"Mr President?"

"You don’t know?" his father demanded. "You put military secrets on a computer connected to the main network?"

"I..." He dug his heels in, refusing to shrink back under that burning gaze. He hadn’t bowed to threats in years. He wasn’t going to start...

"I have a mind to hand you over to Hojo. The JENOVA project. How could you have forgotten?"

Something. Something about a black box lost somewhere.

"You were tasked with the location of the sample that was stolen from the labs. If you can’t even remember your mission objectives, let alone execute them, how do you expect to be of any use to the Company whatsoever?!"

The boy in him cringed, mortified at having failed yet again. He hardened his expression, hoping that no hint of that was leaking out. "I apologise for the lapse. If it was a confidential military matter, I would certainly not have recorded it on an unsecured console. If I may--"

"Incompetence," the President spat, and Rufus had to forcibly suppress a flinch, while he ran frantically through his memories. He couldn’t have completely forgotten about something this important, could he?

No, that was wrong. That was where the thieves had taken it. The Turks had

The breath froze in his lungs. There was something deathly important about that, something that he had flagged as unable to tell the old man. A key... a...

"The search is still in progress," he lied smoothly. He would have to ask Tseng. He would certainly have told Tseng. No, Tseng would have been involved. "I’m afraid that there is nothing new to report at this time. And if the meeting has been cancelled, may I--"

The smack was unexpected. He stumbled back, ears ringing, as his cheek started burning. He reached instinctively for his gun, and stopped short when his fingers closed open empty air.

"Hurry up and get it done, or you can expect far worse. I expect results within the day. You’ve taken long enough as it is." The President scowled at him. "Now get out of my sight."

Furious and embarrassed, he grabbed his things and stormed out.

He had forgotten his PHS.

He returned to his office, located it on its charger and grabbed it, more angry than he could recall having been in --ages? But he was--

Fuck. If this didn’t stop he would have to go and... shoot something, probably. Since he could scarcely do anything else. Admitting to confusion and disorientation would be one step shy of admitting that he was losing his mind, in this place. And that would be akin to political suicide.

He hit the speed dial, and held the phone to his ear while he massaged his aching jaw, hoping that the mark would not be overly obvious. The pain didn’t bother him, but the humiliation did. He wasn’t a child who needed to be put into place any more. And not delivering results on time hardly warranted that...

There had been nothing on his laptop about it. There were no files about it. The J project, his father had called. The JENOVA project. The JENOVA…

...it was nagging at his head, bits and pieces, something about Sephiroth and that thing about the North Crater, but it just failed to come together.

The line clicked, connecting through. "Tseng."

"Please come to my office at your earliest convenience." His office was debugged, right? They had made sure of that… "There’s a matter I need to discuss with you."

He paused as Tseng acknowledged, wondering why his words had felt vaguely wrong. Should he have ordered? Made it explicitly clear that time was of the essence? But he didn’t need to do that with Tseng….

He should have ordered, he thought, as he placed the phone on the tabletop. That had been his style, back then—

--he scowled in frustration. He needed to stop that. He needed to settle down and focus. Recall those fragmented memories and piece together something. It was important. If nothing else, it would perhaps stop this infuriating sense of displacement.

Black box. Metal, heavy and alarmingly cold to the touch. Yellow tape running around the circumference.

The visuals came back to him as he frowned, closing his eyes. His fingers sought and found a pen, scrawling words over a piece of rough paper.

His eyes snapped open, and now he couldn’t stop the terrible sense of wrongness. He glanced around his room, eyes lighting on his bookshelf, but his concentration was so badly shot that he couldn’t make out the titles. Red blurred into green blurred into blue.

His hand slid to the edge of his desk, and his fingers caught, held. He wanted to run so badly that it almost choked him. Wanted to race to the helipad and fly off into the distance, except for the sense that nowhere was far enough.

He slammed his fist down on his desk, clenching his jaw shut. He was. Not. Going. Anywhere. He had work to do. Tseng was coming up, and once he had a chance to talk to him they would get this entire mess sorted out, and if there really was no other work perhaps he’d go out for the evening.

He blinked. He and Tseng were…

He glanced down at his right hand, but the skin on the back was clear. Unmarked.

"I’m going insane," he muttered.

"I doubt that, sir."

He glanced up sharply at that, then nearly sighed in relief as Tseng bowed to him and shut the door. His-- the Turk stepped quietly across the carpet, coming to a stop before his desk. "How may I assist you?"

"It regards your latest mission." Rufus ran a hand across his eyes and sat up straight. "To North Crater."

"Ah," Tseng said.

Do I admit to having forgotten? Or … or perhaps the reason why I don’t know is because I was never told? He studied Tseng’s face for the slightest reaction, but the other was as inscrutable as ever. Damn it all, but he hated working in an information vacuum. Gamble, then.

"I believe you have yet to debrief me on the outcome of that matter."

Tseng frowned. "I did, sir. We handed the target object over to you at 1500 hours yesterday, whereupon you said that you would store it at a secure location."

Rufus drummed his fingers on the table. "I’m afraid I have no recollection of that." Let Tseng draw whatever conclusions he would. "What secure location?"

"That is what I hoped you could tell me, Vice President."

"Did I not…?"

"No, sir. And the President requests that you relay it to me immediately. We are required to retrieve it urgently."

He stared down at the paper in front of him, coated in barely legible scribbles.

"Why not ask me directly, then?" he murmured.

"He did," Tseng said, and something in his voice made Rufus look up again. "I believe you lied to him."

"I did—"

Tseng moved, a flash of black and white, and Rufus found himself hefted out of his chair, pressed up against the windows behind, the collar of his shirt caught in Tseng’s grasp. He kicked out instinctively, attempting to get some leverage to throw Tseng, like the Turks had trained him to do—

--there was a click, and Tseng wedged a pistol under his chin. The cold seemed to burn all the way into his throat.

"What is this?" he demanded.

"The President is willing to overlook your ... treason ... against the Company, if you will but divulge the location of the sample."

‘I don’t know where it is’, did not seem like a good thing to say. "Treason?" he asked instead. "I acted according to orders—"

The pistol ground in deeper, pressing against his windpipe. "Do not play games with us, sir. I do not wish to resort to more extreme methods of interrogation. Where is the box?"

He looked into Tseng’s eyes and saw only blackness reflected back at him. Darkness. Nothingness. Death.

"Tseng," he said, slow terror burning its way through his limbs. "I don’t recall. Give me a moment. Put me down, man. I’m not going anywhere."

The pistol shifted, and the gunshot exploded in the small room, tearing through flesh and glass beyond. Rufus strangled back a scream, clawing at his shoulder as red soaked through the white. "Tse...ng... What.. the..." he tore at the hand grasping his collar, but the Turk’s grip was like iron.

"Perhaps that will spur your memory, sir," Tseng said calmly.

"One can... barely... think when..."

"You’ll be surprised, sir."

His thigh exploded in pain, his foot kicking back so hard from the impact that he heard the glass behind crunch. He sucked in a breath between shaking teeth, warring desperately for control. The box. The damn box. Where was it?

"Helicopter..." he whispered.

"We loaded it into the helicopter and brought it back, yes."

"Gave it ... to me...?"

"Yes."

"Then I..." he shook his head desperately, trying to think through the pain. "I..."

He saw Tseng narrow his eyes, and he glanced away, jaw clenched, waiting for the—

The gunshot rang and he bit down hard on his tongue to keep from crying out. The pain was a supernova, a white-hot stake, driven, searing straight through his right hand

accompanied by the tinkling of shattered glass, and he was spitting out blood, slamming his head back against the window as he writhed, eyes squeezed shut.

"Tell me." Tseng’s breath was warm against his ear, a compelling whisper, promising both relief and further torment, the god who held his entire world in his hand, and his left eye was burning again from the proximity of that presence, and there was no point in resisting, no point in...

..."Why?" he grated out, voice hoarse. Shaking. Weak.

"For your own protection, Rufus." Soft words. Comforting words, lips tracing the shell of his ear, wandering down towards his jaw line, nuzzling the burning mark on his cheek that his father had left him earlier. "To save you from yourself."

He jerked away, barely able to breathe. Tseng was pressed up against him, sandwiching him against the -- chair – window and he couldn’t even move his arm, his left arm that was caught under the sheet, fingers curled around the edges of the...

...It is...

"Tseng..."

"You wish to run, do you not? To get out of this nightmare you find yourself enfolded in..."

He shook his head.

"Let me help you. Give me the means with which to help you. To end your suffering."

The clap of the gunshot at this range almost deafened him. He spasmed, screaming, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t struggle, couldn’t get free, the only weapon he had was words, and he was staring into Tseng’s eyes, eyes that reflected such great sorrow at his treachery, his betrayal, his stubborn arrogance, that terrible, benevolent gaze that promised freedom and forgiveness and redemption if only he would just admit to his wrongdoing, his mortal sin against the Company, against the world, against ... his partner...

"Tell me." Fingers catching his chin, and he was drowning in that black gaze. "Tell me, Rufus."

His lips moved, even as he railed against himself, railed against his weakness, that he could be reduced to this, that all his vaunted self control could crumble so utterly...

Tseng smiled, and his eyes flashed to green.

There was movement. A blow across his cheek, right on his blind side. Hands tearing off the sheet that enfolded him, and he was lunging to his feet, ignoring the pain in his leg from the gunshot

And Tseng wasn’t there and he wasn’t in Midgar and...

"Shachou," Kadaj purred as the sheet fluttered away, and they stood just a few feet apart, the incriminating box caught under his left arm.

It was over. It was all over. His good eye flicked from shinentai to the wooden walls, to the sight of greenery through the windows, not buildings, to the Shinra emblem framed against the far wall, while Kadaj leaned back and enjoyed the terrible, terrible disorientation that was surging through him.

"Hidden in plain sight, I see," Kadaj said, and anger sparked in his eyes. "How terrible devious of you."

"A most inventive way of obtaining the information you desired," Rufus murmured in return. Years of memories were back, and he clutched at them, folding them around himself like armour. The experience. The stability. The pain and the loss and the wisdom gained from all of that that made him so much more than the Vice President he had been back then. Not that any of that could help him now.

Kadaj smiled thinly.

"Well then," Rufus sighed. "Shall we end this?"

It was hopeless, he knew. Burdened by injuries and illness, there was no way he could tackle this being with inhuman strength and speed. He reached for his sidearm, and Kadaj lunged at him, and he felt the crackle of Stop materia lock his muscles even as Kadaj tackled him, slamming him to the floor.

There was nothing to do but watch, paralysed, as the other pried the box from his nerveless fingers, gloating. There was nothing to do as Kadaj pried his jaw apart, bringing their lips together and thrusting his tongue into his mouth. No way to stop the violation. No way to express the slow, seething anger growing in him, the desire to rip the smirk from that pretty face, to rend it and destroy it and trample it underfoot.

"Thank you, Rufus," Kadaj said sweetly, and for a moment Rufus saw Tseng hovering over him, smiling.

He growled, and Kadaj laughed, standing up and pulling away as he pried the box open.

The transformation was rapid. The shinentai screamed as he buried the head into his chest, stumbling backwards and almost out of Rufus’ limited field of vision. As the effects of the stop spell began wearing off, he fought it, strained against its weakening hold to push himself upright. He succeeded only in propping himself up on his elbows, when Kadaj turned back to face him.

And his breath caught in his throat.

"Well," Sephiroth said, and in his burning green eyes, Rufus saw only all the demons of hell. "What shall I do with you, little President?"

He refused to look away. He met that impossible gaze, facing it down in a silence contest of wills. Locked stares with this nightmare, this legacy of his entire Company’s wrongdoings, this corrupted parody of the man that they had once called the great General.

"Such defiance," the other murmured, and Rufus raised an eyebrow. Neither Sephiroth nor his words could inspire any terror in him. There was nothing to left to be feared. There was nothing that this being could take from him that he had not lost already.

There was nothing left but the end, after all, but perhaps he could still make it an end to be proud of.

His left hand slipped into his pocket, cradling the device that lay within, one that he had commissioned for this very possibility. This very disaster. This very... inevitability.

Green met blue, and Rufus Shinra smirked, his left index finger twitching in that single, minute movement that would end it all.

And as the explosives concealed beneath the floor and between the walls of lodge went off, he found himself smiling.

END

A/N:

1. Bastardisation of Tseng’s characterisation? Completely, completely intentional. Put down those pitchforks and torches now.

2. Last line shamelessly stolen off ‘Stars’, from Les Miserables, the musical.

3. Yes, the ending sucked :D. I rewrote it a million times. I had a better ending, but it was shamelessly stolen so it came out more like a parody, which spoilt the entire effect.

4. Gosh, this fic was inspired. Everything but the ending was a breeze to write.