[ 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.]
[ it's a pivot, and it makes Reno grin a little, audible in his tone when he answers. ]
I'm insubordinate. [ and he takes great pride in it, evidently! ] Nah—I call him "sir" in front of people, but... President Shinra was his daddy. Y'know?
[ so "Rufus" it is. just to differentiate him from the monster of a man who made him. ]
[ this is much more event ground. while Reno doesn't exactly mind telling Thancred about his job, about the things ShinRa did, every story is one step closer to Thancred finding out the truth of who Reno is, and that's an inevitability he'd like to postpone for as long as possible. ]
I'd have to take the reins and delve a bit into more of the politics of Eitherys to do it, but aye. The short answer is, one of my comrades had a firm disagreement with his father recently, and showed the old man up and then some.
[He lets that sit a beat, to stew over.]
I'll give you the long answer as well, if you want it.
[Oh. Hmm. That's — Reno affecting a Sharlayan accent is...unexpectedly...hoo boy. Now that's a thought to save for a rainy day, or at least the shower.]
I've mentioned a bit about Sharlayan, and the man who brought me to be educated there, its founding families and all that. The boy in question is that man's grandson. His father, Louisoix's son, is a member of Sharlayan's ruling body, the Forum — one hundred serving representatives who cast votes to decide the nation's policies.
[He pauses a minute, thinking over how to go about this.]
I recall I've also mentioned that Sharlayan is staunchly isolationist, and exercises a policy of strict nonintervention. Louisoix never agreed with that; his son, however, espouses it. I reckon you can guess where this all might be going, mm?
[ post about it on the "reasons I'm hot for bae today" blog Thancred
Reno does recall both of these facts, from what he sort of fondly recalls as The Joyride Night—in the sense that Reno had happily ridden two separate joysticks. ]
I remember, yeah. I'm guessin' the grandson ain't exactly trying to follow in dear old dad's footsteps? Maybe he takes after your Louisoix in that way?
Mmhmm. And they had good reason to clash about it quite recently. Said father has spent the better part of his life and career making ready preparations to save the inhabitants of the star from certain doom — or at least, the ones willing to cooperate with Sharlayan. The ones who wouldn't cause trouble. The ones who could be persuaded to accept what the Forum saw as the only choice.
[But, he thinks — this doesn't sound so different, really, from what Reno himself described, a maniac flying about the universe, landing on planets, bringing them to ruin. It's not the same, not by a longshot, but it's an eerie analogy nevertheless.]
Imagine a "planetkiller" like your Sephiroth wanted to become. The Forum knew something like that was coming for us, and that it was only a matter of time until it reached us. So they made preparations, and with the help of some rather unusual allies, constructed a vessel that could spirit most all of the life on the star away from it before the planetkiller reached us. In effect, we would turn tail and run. Lifeboat as much as we could away, and leave the rest to oblivion.
[He goes quiet a minute. It's a different sort of quiet than his pauses before.]
...Ryne would've — she would've been among the latter. The oblivion.
[ the good of the many and the good of the few. Reno is too familiar with the calculations that go into the decision of how many dead is collateral damage, acceptable risk. those decisions are made by men at desks far away from the lives they'll end—they never have to look the condemned in the face before they die.
nor had Reno, not really. numbers on a screen. a body count on the news. the thought of it makes him nauseated. ]
We all did. But Alphinaud — his father had disowned him and his sister over their differences. Claimed he was doing it for their sakes, despite refusing to listen to their feelings. So standing up to him wasn't just a matter of winning the moral debate, for Alphinaud — it was about being heard by his own father. As if what we were doing wasn't reckless and strenuous enough already.
[He'll be after your seat on the Forum next, Estinien had taunted the old man, and gods know Alphinaud has earned it by now. Not just by hereditary right or scholarly aptitude — he's been out in the real world, gone from thinking he was clever enough to save it to watching it all fail catastrophically before his eyes to walking the long slow path to really do it, one painful step at a time.]
We convinced them — he convinced them — to gamble with all our lives, instead of going through with the completion of their plan. To use their resources not for escape but to go out and confront the planetkiller ourselves, before it reached us. We must've sounded right mad...but there's something to it, I suppose. The thought that we'd all stand united in success or in failure, rather than partitioning off what we could and abandoning the rest.
[ there have been a few moments so far in which Reno has been made keenly aware of just how good Thancred is, how strong. how likely he is to throw himself into the line of fire for the sake of those who can't fight for themselves. maybe he doesn't see it, himself, but Reno does: the fierce warm glow of him, his determination and passion and desire to do what's right, no matter the cost.
illuminated from behind, light comes through the cracks. Reno thinks of that fragile moment on the gala dance floor, when he'd looked up into Thancred's face and felt the lure of temptation to crush this decliate thing growing between them before it had a chance to crush him first.
he should have done it. it would have been kinder. just the thought of how badly it will hurt Thancred to find out who, to find out what Reno really is (and he's under no delusions, here; Thancred will find out, eventually) aches enough that Reno has to pull the phone away from his face to exhale a sharp breath. he should have done it.
but Reno is selfish, and he cares about Thancred more than he knows how to put words to, so after no more than a second's pause he brings the phone back to his face and says, ] So you went up into space to fight your Jenova before she had a chance to land?
[ his incredulity isn't false, either. what in the hells were they thinking? ]
[I've died twice and had my soul removed once was one of the sentences that started this whole thing between them; in a way, he almost doesn't want to circle back to it now, for all that it's immediately pertinent. Difficult to delve deep into how something can be a suicide mission in which they all died and yet they all walked away, and not wind up making the conversation all the worse for it.
It makes him think, briefly, of the Northern Crater — of the way Reno's voice had gone tight when recounting how two of his comrades had stayed behind while he escaped, lost to necessity and the outcome that had to happen. That's not so far off from what happened at Ultima Thule, really. Better, perhaps, not to make him relive it all again.]
It wasn't one of our most sound ideas, I'll admit. Not that we had many to choose from.
[He lies still, just breathing, listening to the sound of Reno's voice. It's not the first time this conversation that he's wished they were together. It is the first that he's wished it for his own sake, instead of for Reno's.]
I thought it might have come for your Gaia, back when we were first comparing notes. That your Jenova was my Jenova, somehow.
[ even though Thancred doesn't mention it, Reno's thinking about it, about that sentence he'd read in Thancred's two truths and a lie post and how unbelievable he'd found it at the time. not so, any longer. now he has no trouble imagining Thancred letting himself die multiple times in the service of the greater good and, somehow, despite it all, finding his way back to life in the end.
for a moment they both fall quiet, just listening to each other breathe on the other end of the line. for all that it's just a moment of silence, it feels toe-curlingly intimate. Reno wishes he were there. ]
I'm glad you made it. [ is what he says eventually, a little more softly than he means to.
after another second, then, ] I remember that, when I first mentioned the calamity. Do you think it's the same still?
[And he finds himself thinking, briefly, fleetingly, of Papalymo — gods, how long has it been since he last thought of Papalymo? — and how impossible a thing it is to leave when one of your number intends to stand and fight, and how he'd had to drag their friend the Warrior bodily onto the airship because they wouldn't have left on their own...
They're alike, he and Reno. The ones who can see the writing on the wall, sometimes. It's never easy, but they do it. It's their job, to do it.]
Was our calamity something to do with Jenova, you mean? No, I'm certain it wasn't. Not if ShinRa worked out how to extract something from her and put it into people. The only influence ours had on people was —
[He stops. Thinks. How best to articulate the horror?]
— it prevented them from entering the Lifestream, upon their demise. Obliterated them, so there was nothing left to pass on at all. You would know, if this were that.
[ Reno's thoughts have drifted so far from the Northern Crater, to Jenova and the SOLDIER program and the collateral damage from the Sector 7 plate, that for a second Thancred's words—I know it wasn't an easy decision—stick like a knife in Reno's chest.
but he means the mission, doesn't he? the trip up north that left the Turks two men short and plus one alien head, the one where he'd taken the controls and pulled the bird up and assumed that the last he'd ever see of Tseng and Elena was their corpses on some cold foreign ground.
and that aches too, but in a different way, because it was an easy decision. when it was between the men and the mission, the mission always came first. ]
Fuck. [ Reno exhales a low curse at that. Jenova the calamity had been many things, but incapable of entering the Lifestream wasn't one of them. rather famously, in fact. ] How the fuck did you fight a creature that can obliterate people?
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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.
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[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?
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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.
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[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?
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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. ]
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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?
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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. ]
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[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.]
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[ 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.
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[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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I'm insubordinate. [ and he takes great pride in it, evidently! ] Nah—I call him "sir" in front of people, but... President Shinra was his daddy. Y'know?
[ so "Rufus" it is. just to differentiate him from the monster of a man who made him. ]
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[A beat passes.]
It's rather fun, watching the upstart son change his father's legacy, isn't it?
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[ this is much more event ground. while Reno doesn't exactly mind telling Thancred about his job, about the things ShinRa did, every story is one step closer to Thancred finding out the truth of who Reno is, and that's an inevitability he'd like to postpone for as long as possible. ]
You know something about it?
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[He lets that sit a beat, to stew over.]
I'll give you the long answer as well, if you want it.
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I've mentioned a bit about Sharlayan, and the man who brought me to be educated there, its founding families and all that. The boy in question is that man's grandson. His father, Louisoix's son, is a member of Sharlayan's ruling body, the Forum — one hundred serving representatives who cast votes to decide the nation's policies.
[He pauses a minute, thinking over how to go about this.]
I recall I've also mentioned that Sharlayan is staunchly isolationist, and exercises a policy of strict nonintervention. Louisoix never agreed with that; his son, however, espouses it. I reckon you can guess where this all might be going, mm?
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Reno does recall both of these facts, from what he sort of fondly recalls as The Joyride Night—in the sense that Reno had happily ridden two separate joysticks. ]
I remember, yeah. I'm guessin' the grandson ain't exactly trying to follow in dear old dad's footsteps? Maybe he takes after your Louisoix in that way?
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[But, he thinks — this doesn't sound so different, really, from what Reno himself described, a maniac flying about the universe, landing on planets, bringing them to ruin. It's not the same, not by a longshot, but it's an eerie analogy nevertheless.]
Imagine a "planetkiller" like your Sephiroth wanted to become. The Forum knew something like that was coming for us, and that it was only a matter of time until it reached us. So they made preparations, and with the help of some rather unusual allies, constructed a vessel that could spirit most all of the life on the star away from it before the planetkiller reached us. In effect, we would turn tail and run. Lifeboat as much as we could away, and leave the rest to oblivion.
[He goes quiet a minute. It's a different sort of quiet than his pauses before.]
...Ryne would've — she would've been among the latter. The oblivion.
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nor had Reno, not really. numbers on a screen. a body count on the news. the thought of it makes him nauseated. ]
Did he put a stop to it?
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[He'll be after your seat on the Forum next, Estinien had taunted the old man, and gods know Alphinaud has earned it by now. Not just by hereditary right or scholarly aptitude — he's been out in the real world, gone from thinking he was clever enough to save it to watching it all fail catastrophically before his eyes to walking the long slow path to really do it, one painful step at a time.]
We convinced them — he convinced them — to gamble with all our lives, instead of going through with the completion of their plan. To use their resources not for escape but to go out and confront the planetkiller ourselves, before it reached us. We must've sounded right mad...but there's something to it, I suppose. The thought that we'd all stand united in success or in failure, rather than partitioning off what we could and abandoning the rest.
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illuminated from behind, light comes through the cracks. Reno thinks of that fragile moment on the gala dance floor, when he'd looked up into Thancred's face and felt the lure of temptation to crush this decliate thing growing between them before it had a chance to crush him first.
he should have done it. it would have been kinder. just the thought of how badly it will hurt Thancred to find out who, to find out what Reno really is (and he's under no delusions, here; Thancred will find out, eventually) aches enough that Reno has to pull the phone away from his face to exhale a sharp breath. he should have done it.
but Reno is selfish, and he cares about Thancred more than he knows how to put words to, so after no more than a second's pause he brings the phone back to his face and says, ] So you went up into space to fight your Jenova before she had a chance to land?
[ his incredulity isn't false, either. what in the hells were they thinking? ]
That sounds like a suicide mission.
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It makes him think, briefly, of the Northern Crater — of the way Reno's voice had gone tight when recounting how two of his comrades had stayed behind while he escaped, lost to necessity and the outcome that had to happen. That's not so far off from what happened at Ultima Thule, really. Better, perhaps, not to make him relive it all again.]
It wasn't one of our most sound ideas, I'll admit. Not that we had many to choose from.
[He lies still, just breathing, listening to the sound of Reno's voice. It's not the first time this conversation that he's wished they were together. It is the first that he's wished it for his own sake, instead of for Reno's.]
I thought it might have come for your Gaia, back when we were first comparing notes. That your Jenova was my Jenova, somehow.
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for a moment they both fall quiet, just listening to each other breathe on the other end of the line. for all that it's just a moment of silence, it feels toe-curlingly intimate. Reno wishes he were there. ]
I'm glad you made it. [ is what he says eventually, a little more softly than he means to.
after another second, then, ] I remember that, when I first mentioned the calamity. Do you think it's the same still?
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[And he finds himself thinking, briefly, fleetingly, of Papalymo — gods, how long has it been since he last thought of Papalymo? — and how impossible a thing it is to leave when one of your number intends to stand and fight, and how he'd had to drag their friend the Warrior bodily onto the airship because they wouldn't have left on their own...
They're alike, he and Reno. The ones who can see the writing on the wall, sometimes. It's never easy, but they do it. It's their job, to do it.]
Was our calamity something to do with Jenova, you mean? No, I'm certain it wasn't. Not if ShinRa worked out how to extract something from her and put it into people. The only influence ours had on people was —
[He stops. Thinks. How best to articulate the horror?]
— it prevented them from entering the Lifestream, upon their demise. Obliterated them, so there was nothing left to pass on at all. You would know, if this were that.
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but he means the mission, doesn't he? the trip up north that left the Turks two men short and plus one alien head, the one where he'd taken the controls and pulled the bird up and assumed that the last he'd ever see of Tseng and Elena was their corpses on some cold foreign ground.
and that aches too, but in a different way, because it was an easy decision. when it was between the men and the mission, the mission always came first. ]
Fuck. [ Reno exhales a low curse at that. Jenova the calamity had been many things, but incapable of entering the Lifestream wasn't one of them. rather famously, in fact. ] How the fuck did you fight a creature that can obliterate people?
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