[It's a pertinent question, isn't it? What would he want, for a holiday or otherwise, if he could get it? It's difficult, when the things he wants most aren't ones that come tidy in a box. He wants people, he wants outcomes. What would he do if he were a gillionaire, after all?]
something i could wear, i think something small like a charm or a ribbon or a pretty stone
the sort of thing i could keep like a memory on a chain
[ Reno's got his work cut out for him. he's not sure he's ever really thought about gifts before; they didn't celebrate anything like this in Midgar, and even if they did, he wouldn't have had anyone to give gifts to. ]
do you think it's gonna snow here?
Edited (did not mean to hit post this is what i get for tagging from mobile) 2023-12-13 21:12 (UTC)
sometimes, yeah. same as Sharlayan, mostly flurries or those real fat snowflakes that float around but melt as soon as they touch anything
and mostly above the plate, obviously. couldn't get down to the lower city unless it was a real bad storm and blew in from the side
the last time I saw real snow, I mean deep snow that stuck, was up in the Northern Crater and that shit fucking sucked. eager to replace those shitty memories with much less violent ones
but he does call after a few seconds. it doesn't really make a difference in the grander scheme of things, given that either way Reno is about to give away government secrets for free, but it somehow feels better to do it verbally than in writing. ]
Hey baby. [ his grin is audible in his voice as Reno rolls onto his back on the bed, where he still is, even after having been texting for some time. ] I think it can be flirty and true at the same time, no law against it.
[ he stretches out with a luxuriant groan and then settles again so he can say, ] All settled in?
[ because it's storytime. and he has to say it all at once or he'll start second-guessing himself and cut himself off. ]
Northern Crater's where the calamity Jenova landed when she hit the Planet runnin' all those thousands of years ago. The Ancients sealed her up there for a long while until we came and dug her up for the glory of the ShinRa Company.
[ "we" is used loosely, here—this was before Reno was even born. still, he feels the weight of responsibility for all the bullshit President Shinra and his ilk did to the Planet. ]
Ten, twenty years of shit happens after that... experimentation, gene splicing, the SOLDIER program, yadda yadda. Quest to make the perfect soldier by giving them Jenova cells. Finally make one, just the one, but they kinda forget to tell him his mom's an alien and when he finds out he loses his shit entirely. Burns the lab down, steals Jenova's head, and fucks off back up to the Northern Crater where he sits and stews in his own crazy for a while.
[ there's a curious blankness to Reno's irreverent retelling of Sephiroth's life story. it's the only way he can get through the horror of it, still. ]
Another intervening coupla years, more yadda yadda, he's the one who summons Meteor to destroy the world. Eventually he bites it, but he leaves Jenova's head up there in the crater, and wouldn't ya know it? He ain't all the way dead, actually, or at least he's alive enough to spit a few clones outta the Lifestream to search for the head and bring back Sephiroth himself.
So the Turks—or what's left of us anyway, we got a vested interest now in makin' sure Sephiroth doesn't come back for round 2. So me and Tseng, that's my boss, and Elena, she's our newest recruit, we take one of the birds and fly up to the crater to see if we can't rustle up Jenova's head before Sephiroth's puppets get their hands on it. It's cold as Shiva's cunt up there and dangerous, foggy, hard to get around... Tseng and Elena find the thing, but they got company. They show up, the puppets. Tseng and Elena go down, I— [ he swallows. ] Abandon 'em to their fates and fly the head back to base. The puppets tortured 'em for weeks before Vincent showed up and saved 'em.
[ a pause, and Reno inhales a slow breath. ]
So you see why I ain't the biggest fan of the Northern Crater.
[He listens, quietly, because that's what Reno needs from him right now, but also because there isn't much to say even if he did want to interrupt. Stories like these aren't told for the sake of sympathy, but for information. Reno recites the first half like a mission report and Thancred knows exactly where it comes from and why.
So really it's just the tells that he marks. The hitches of breath, the bits of description offered a little too fast. The significance of the catch in his throat that he has to swallow back when he talks about abandoning his people to certain death, or torture at least.
He wishes, suddenly, that they weren't doing this over the phone. That he were close enough to be able to pull Reno against him, fit him up back to chest and just hold him against his own warmth, to remind him of where he is and where he isn't.]
...Sephirot is a man, then, on Gaia?
[It's telling that his pronunciation of the name is slightly off. A sharper consonant on the end than when Reno says it.]
Or, well. Something more than a man, it sounds like. But not a god.
[ it's midway through the telling that Reno starts wishing for the same, and then starts wishing he wasn't wishing for the same, because it feels like a weakness to need to lean on Thancred that way. Reno has given reports in much, much worse conditions than these and never needed a crutch to get through it. he doesn't like to think about what it means that he now knows it feels better to say these things aloud when he can reach back for Thancred as he does it. ]
He wanted to be a god. He wanted to take up Jenova's mantle and become a planetkiller, flying around the cosmos and eating everything he found. [ Reno's voice is thoughtful. ] But no. No—he was just a man. A stronger man than most, augmented, but... not a god.
...Strange to think there's more than one of them. With that aim, I mean — going about, killing anything it found. I suppose I ought to be relieved nothing like that has found us.
[Yet. Or, well. At least not significantly enough to wreak the havoc that this Sephiroth did on Gaia.]
...What did ShinRa need the perfect soldier for, if it had the Turks? Or were these soldiers separate legions, or specialized somehow?
[ oh, now they're getting into the real classified shit. ]
It's SOLDIER—all caps, I guess to make sure you know they're different than normal infantry. Think of it like, if the Turks are a scalpel, SOLDIERs are a greatsword.
[ same general category; very different purposes, very different uses. ]
They're augmented. Supersoldiers. Not quite as elite as the Turks, but still pretty fuckin' elite... Not everybody survives the infusions.
[And he thinks to himself, the empire had their legati, their elites, and then they had their research facilities in Ala Mhigo — the testing grounds, the tubes, the monstrosities. The resonant and the hypertuned.]
...How many? Did they do it to. Hundreds, thousands?
[ yeah. Reno recognizes the tone of that ah, the realization of exactly how deep the rot goes. it's the same sort of noise he'd made the first time he was confronted with the mako tanks in the sub-basement, the first time he had been made to understand exactly what President Shinra was reaching for. ]
Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. [ there's no use in prevaricating, and he respects Thancred too much to lie to him. ] The program started before I was even born. Over the years...
[ he doesn't finish the sentence, but he trusts Thancred to understand what he means. he also trusts (hopes against hope) that Thancred can hear the tightness in his voice as he relays this. it's a glimpse of the depths of his regret, something he very rarely shows to anyone. ]
[And there's a question, one unasked question, that he knows has no point. That he knows isn't worth dwelling on. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people, with alien cells injected into their bodies in the hopes of making them better, stronger, superior. People made subject to experiments like Krile was made subject to them, people enhanced like they did to Fordola rem Lupis, cursed with the blessing of an uncontrollable Echo.
He knows what regrets sound like. He knows it because he's spoken things in that exact same tone, the same brevity. He knows it doesn't make a difference and he knows he shouldn't ask. The horror is enough as it is. It doesn't need to be personalized to be horrific.]
Would they have done it to you?
[He asks anyway.]
If you hadn't made the Turks. Was that...the alternative?
[ Reno draws in a breath, startled by the question. not because Thancred is off the mark, but because of how accurately he hit it, despite Reno's care to keep himself at a distance from the SOLDIER program.
there's a long pause before he says, ] I was a candidate.
[ he'd gone through the whole battery of tests, beforehand, all the panels to make sure that he wasn't likely to liquefy from the inside out the first time they put the mako solution in his veins. all of the results had indicated that it would have taken.
after another long second: ] The higher-ups thought about giving me the infusions even after I joined the Turks, but they changed their mind once they found out how fast I am. Too expensive to bother if I could hold my own with nothing but a good Haste spell and some thunder materia.
[ probably for the best, too. Reno's not sure what would have become of him after Genesis and Angeal took their leave of the organization and the Company decided they needed to clean up ranks. ]
[There are more creative curses he could employ — they've laughed about several of them before — but the gravity of the revelation leaves no room for anything but heavy, brief response. The way Reno talks about this program, the infusions — what it did even at its peak of success, how close he came to being subject to it —
There's always that question, who would I have been, but for. He still sometimes wonders it, when his devastated aether makes things inconvenient, limits him in ways that another wouldn't be. When he remembers he used to be able to heal others, and now all he can do is take the blows meant for them instead. So close, a close thing. What might have been.
It doesn't matter, in the end. They are who they are. But that doesn't make it go away, either.]
But you said things are different now, aye? That it all belongs to the son, and he's doing things differently. Did he keep the SOLDIERs?
[He pronounces it correctly this time, with the emphasis worthy of all capital letters.]
They are different, yeah. Not only because of Rufus.
[ Shinra junior, that is. Reno's quiet again, a thoughtful pause this time as he decides how best to summarize it all. ]
A lot of them deserted before the shit with Sephiroth even really kicked off, [ is what he eventually lands on to summarize everything that came before it—Genesis, Angeal, Zack Fair and the events leading up to his death.
of all the terrible things Reno has ever done, the only one he regrets close to as much as he regrets the plate is that he let Zack die. ] And after Sephiroth, and Meteor, there weren't that many left anyway.
There are still some, sure. The ones who survived it all will probably be on ShinRa's payroll until they die. But the program is over, it fell when the Company did and Rufus seems pretty done with usin' the Lifestream for shit it shouldn't be used for.
One last generation, and someday they'll all be gone.
[And so ShinRa goes the way of Allag, and mayhap that's for the best. Or mayhap it goes the way of Garlemald, built by a monster and used as a machine for great and terrible ends, yet claimed back by the very citizens who they themselves were victims of it.
Garlemald has her pride, Jullus had roared. He never would've thought he'd find himself filled with pride at the sound of a Garlean war cry, himself, and yet there he was.]
You're on a first-name basis with the head of the company.
[It's a little bit a question, and yet not enough of one that it needn't necessarily be answered any further than it is.]
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no subject
let me think a bit
the trade guilds generally observe by making toys
although garments aren't unheard of
warm winter coats in particular are often a staple
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something i could wear, i think
something small like a charm or a ribbon or a pretty stone
the sort of thing i could keep
like a memory on a chain
no subject
[ Reno's got his work cut out for him. he's not sure he's ever really thought about gifts before; they didn't celebrate anything like this in Midgar, and even if they did, he wouldn't have had anyone to give gifts to. ]
do you think it's gonna snow here?
no subject
we used to get snow in sharlayan often
never deep or sticking much but we had flurries a lot of the time
did it snow in midgar, then?
no subject
and mostly above the plate, obviously. couldn't get down to the lower city unless it was a real bad storm and blew in from the side
the last time I saw real snow, I mean deep snow that stuck, was up in the Northern Crater and that shit fucking sucked. eager to replace those shitty memories with much less violent ones
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the one that reminds me somewhat of your midgar?
they're located in the snow
not by their own choice
they started as refugees from a warmer clime and merely made the best of it in the inhospitable lands they were exiled to
not that it absolves anything of course
but still
what happened in the northern crater?
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why not both?
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lemme call you?
[ he just can't rebel quite hard enough against his training to allow himself to put the story of Jenova in writing anywhere. ]
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hearing the sound of your voice
aye, go on then
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[ he's blushing!
but he does call after a few seconds. it doesn't really make a difference in the grander scheme of things, given that either way Reno is about to give away government secrets for free, but it somehow feels better to do it verbally than in writing. ]
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[THANCRED.]
Hello, there.
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[ he stretches out with a luxuriant groan and then settles again so he can say, ] All settled in?
[ because it's storytime. and he has to say it all at once or he'll start second-guessing himself and cut himself off. ]
Northern Crater's where the calamity Jenova landed when she hit the Planet runnin' all those thousands of years ago. The Ancients sealed her up there for a long while until we came and dug her up for the glory of the ShinRa Company.
[ "we" is used loosely, here—this was before Reno was even born. still, he feels the weight of responsibility for all the bullshit President Shinra and his ilk did to the Planet. ]
Ten, twenty years of shit happens after that... experimentation, gene splicing, the SOLDIER program, yadda yadda. Quest to make the perfect soldier by giving them Jenova cells. Finally make one, just the one, but they kinda forget to tell him his mom's an alien and when he finds out he loses his shit entirely. Burns the lab down, steals Jenova's head, and fucks off back up to the Northern Crater where he sits and stews in his own crazy for a while.
[ there's a curious blankness to Reno's irreverent retelling of Sephiroth's life story. it's the only way he can get through the horror of it, still. ]
Another intervening coupla years, more yadda yadda, he's the one who summons Meteor to destroy the world. Eventually he bites it, but he leaves Jenova's head up there in the crater, and wouldn't ya know it? He ain't all the way dead, actually, or at least he's alive enough to spit a few clones outta the Lifestream to search for the head and bring back Sephiroth himself.
So the Turks—or what's left of us anyway, we got a vested interest now in makin' sure Sephiroth doesn't come back for round 2. So me and Tseng, that's my boss, and Elena, she's our newest recruit, we take one of the birds and fly up to the crater to see if we can't rustle up Jenova's head before Sephiroth's puppets get their hands on it. It's cold as Shiva's cunt up there and dangerous, foggy, hard to get around... Tseng and Elena find the thing, but they got company. They show up, the puppets. Tseng and Elena go down, I— [ he swallows. ] Abandon 'em to their fates and fly the head back to base. The puppets tortured 'em for weeks before Vincent showed up and saved 'em.
[ a pause, and Reno inhales a slow breath. ]
So you see why I ain't the biggest fan of the Northern Crater.
no subject
So really it's just the tells that he marks. The hitches of breath, the bits of description offered a little too fast. The significance of the catch in his throat that he has to swallow back when he talks about abandoning his people to certain death, or torture at least.
He wishes, suddenly, that they weren't doing this over the phone. That he were close enough to be able to pull Reno against him, fit him up back to chest and just hold him against his own warmth, to remind him of where he is and where he isn't.]
...Sephirot is a man, then, on Gaia?
[It's telling that his pronunciation of the name is slightly off. A sharper consonant on the end than when Reno says it.]
Or, well. Something more than a man, it sounds like. But not a god.
no subject
He wanted to be a god. He wanted to take up Jenova's mantle and become a planetkiller, flying around the cosmos and eating everything he found. [ Reno's voice is thoughtful. ] But no. No—he was just a man. A stronger man than most, augmented, but... not a god.
no subject
[Yet. Or, well. At least not significantly enough to wreak the havoc that this Sephiroth did on Gaia.]
...What did ShinRa need the perfect soldier for, if it had the Turks? Or were these soldiers separate legions, or specialized somehow?
no subject
It's SOLDIER—all caps, I guess to make sure you know they're different than normal infantry. Think of it like, if the Turks are a scalpel, SOLDIERs are a greatsword.
[ same general category; very different purposes, very different uses. ]
They're augmented. Supersoldiers. Not quite as elite as the Turks, but still pretty fuckin' elite... Not everybody survives the infusions.
no subject
[And he thinks to himself, the empire had their legati, their elites, and then they had their research facilities in Ala Mhigo — the testing grounds, the tubes, the monstrosities. The resonant and the hypertuned.]
...How many? Did they do it to. Hundreds, thousands?
no subject
Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. [ there's no use in prevaricating, and he respects Thancred too much to lie to him. ] The program started before I was even born. Over the years...
[ he doesn't finish the sentence, but he trusts Thancred to understand what he means. he also trusts (hopes against hope) that Thancred can hear the tightness in his voice as he relays this. it's a glimpse of the depths of his regret, something he very rarely shows to anyone. ]
no subject
He knows what regrets sound like. He knows it because he's spoken things in that exact same tone, the same brevity. He knows it doesn't make a difference and he knows he shouldn't ask. The horror is enough as it is. It doesn't need to be personalized to be horrific.]
Would they have done it to you?
[He asks anyway.]
If you hadn't made the Turks. Was that...the alternative?
no subject
there's a long pause before he says, ] I was a candidate.
[ he'd gone through the whole battery of tests, beforehand, all the panels to make sure that he wasn't likely to liquefy from the inside out the first time they put the mako solution in his veins. all of the results had indicated that it would have taken.
after another long second: ] The higher-ups thought about giving me the infusions even after I joined the Turks, but they changed their mind once they found out how fast I am. Too expensive to bother if I could hold my own with nothing but a good Haste spell and some thunder materia.
[ probably for the best, too. Reno's not sure what would have become of him after Genesis and Angeal took their leave of the organization and the Company decided they needed to clean up ranks. ]
no subject
[There are more creative curses he could employ — they've laughed about several of them before — but the gravity of the revelation leaves no room for anything but heavy, brief response. The way Reno talks about this program, the infusions — what it did even at its peak of success, how close he came to being subject to it —
There's always that question, who would I have been, but for. He still sometimes wonders it, when his devastated aether makes things inconvenient, limits him in ways that another wouldn't be. When he remembers he used to be able to heal others, and now all he can do is take the blows meant for them instead. So close, a close thing. What might have been.
It doesn't matter, in the end. They are who they are. But that doesn't make it go away, either.]
But you said things are different now, aye? That it all belongs to the son, and he's doing things differently. Did he keep the SOLDIERs?
[He pronounces it correctly this time, with the emphasis worthy of all capital letters.]
no subject
[ Shinra junior, that is. Reno's quiet again, a thoughtful pause this time as he decides how best to summarize it all. ]
A lot of them deserted before the shit with Sephiroth even really kicked off, [ is what he eventually lands on to summarize everything that came before it—Genesis, Angeal, Zack Fair and the events leading up to his death.
of all the terrible things Reno has ever done, the only one he regrets close to as much as he regrets the plate is that he let Zack die. ] And after Sephiroth, and Meteor, there weren't that many left anyway.
There are still some, sure. The ones who survived it all will probably be on ShinRa's payroll until they die. But the program is over, it fell when the Company did and Rufus seems pretty done with usin' the Lifestream for shit it shouldn't be used for.
no subject
[And so ShinRa goes the way of Allag, and mayhap that's for the best. Or mayhap it goes the way of Garlemald, built by a monster and used as a machine for great and terrible ends, yet claimed back by the very citizens who they themselves were victims of it.
Garlemald has her pride, Jullus had roared. He never would've thought he'd find himself filled with pride at the sound of a Garlean war cry, himself, and yet there he was.]
You're on a first-name basis with the head of the company.
[It's a little bit a question, and yet not enough of one that it needn't necessarily be answered any further than it is.]
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