Taking Care of Reno: Advent Children
Chapter 6: The Phone Call
Elena sat up and stretched. She’d drifted in and out of sleep all night long, and when the sun had finally started to rise, she’d decided to give up the pretense. Tseng, however, was still dozing peacefully, so she crept silently from the nest of blankets she’d curled up in, careful not to wake him as she made her way outside.
The forest around them was still and silent… almost unnaturally so. She wished she had a weapon. It had been difficult to relinquish her borrowed one back to its rightful owner. Speaking of whom, she belatedly caught sight of the former Turk, perched in the branches of a large tree, and moved toward him. As she approached, he glanced down at her, and a moment later, dropped neatly to the ground.
“Problem?” Vincent asked, and Elena shook her head.
“No… Just sick of pretending to sleep,” she replied. “I thought I’d get up before I woke Tseng.”
The dark man nodded in understanding. “I myself have little need of sleep. Though I sometimes wonder if that’s more a curse than a blessing.” He flashed her the barest hint of a smile. “I believe our pursuers have given up. Or at least simply lost interest, for now. I retraced our steps a little while ago. They were returning to the Cetra city.”
“Maybe just to regroup and rest…”
Vincent nodded. “Possibly. For the time being, though, we’re safe enough. How long we will remain so, I can’t say.”
“Then we need to find a way to contact help.”
“I would like nothing more. But our options are limited. Unless you intend to swim back to civilization or brave the snowfields on the other side of the mountain range, we’re stuck here until the next ship passes by.”
“… Kadaj and the others. They have my PHS. And Tseng’s,” she ventured. “Going back for them might be worth the risk.”
“I don’t recommend it,” Vincent said seriously, “Assuming they haven’t simply destroyed them, I doubt they’ve left them lying around for anyone to pick up. Tseng is certainly in no condition to fight, and you’re unarmed. I can’t take all three of them on my own. Nor would I particularly enjoy meeting the fate that would almost certainly await me should your husband find out that I let you walk right back into the enemy camp hours after you escaped it.”
Elena sighed. He was right. The safest course of action was to stay out of sight and wait, and she knew it. But Tseng was hurting… and so, she was sure, were Reno and Rude, albeit not in the same way. She would feel much better once she was able to tell them that she and the Turk leader were safe. For that matter… she’d feel much better once she was safe. Because if she was safe, then so was her baby.
“Does he know yet?” Vincent asked, breaking in on her thoughts, and Elena suddenly realized that her hands had unconsciously moved to shield her abdomen.
“… Not yet. I wasn’t going to say anything to Reno until I knew for sure. I was supposed to see the doctor when we got back from our mission.” She shuddered slightly. “Somehow… Kadaj could tell.”
“There’s something… abnormal… about those three,” he said, pensively. “Beyond the obvious, that is.”
“Do you have any idea where they might have come from?”
“Hojo’s experiments, one could assume.”
“We didn’t find any evidence of anything like that,” Elena said, shaking her head slightly. “And believe me, we looked. The President wanted to be absolutely certain the planet would never be threatened by another Sephiroth.”
“Then perhaps… neither Jenova nor Sephiroth were quite as obliterated as we thought they were. Obviously at least one piece of Jenova is still intact. You found it. And Sephiroth survived within lifestream itself for years, by will alone. Who’s to say a remnant of him didn’t manage to cling to some form of existence even after he was killed?”
“Is… is that even possible?”
Vincent turned his gaze on the forest, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I have no idea,” he replied, before looking back to her, “But the world believed him dead once before. I wouldn’t put much of anything past him.”
Reno frowned at his PHS. He’d put it off all morning, but he was out of excuses. With a resigned sigh, he dialed the number on the card, and listened to it ring.
And ring.
He scowled at the phone. Not exactly great customer service. At last someone picked up.
“Yes? Strife Delivery Service…” a somewhat familiar voice said. Reno smirked. At least he didn’t have to go through Cloud personally for this. The guy was a real buzz-kill sometimes. “You name it –”
And since the woman wasn’t likely to be able to inflict much damage to him over the phone…
“Hey, Tifa… How’s shit?”
“… we de… liv… er…” she trailed off, uncertainly.
“Heh… You do remember me, right?”
To his surprise, he heard her laugh softly. “Oh, yeah. I remember you.”
“Tch… If I didn’t know better, I’d say you almost sounded happy to hear from me.”
“Don’t read too much into it. What is it you want, Reno?”
“Not so much what I want… More what the President wants. Strife busy? ‘Cause we got a job for him.”
“What sort of job?” she asked, some of the old suspicion creeping back into her voice.
“Didn’t say exactly,” Reno replied, which was true enough. Rufus hadn’t explicitly told him what he had in mind for Strife. Just that he thought the man would come in handy against those Sephiroth look-alikes. “He’ll have to come ask for himself up here at Healin. I’m just the messenger.”
“… I’ll pass it along. It might be a day or two. He’s gotten pretty bad about answering his phone lately.”
“Tell him it’s important,” the redhead responded, “We’ll be waitin’.”
“Reno?”
“Yeah?”
“Marlene said she saw you. The other night at the bar.”
“… Yeah… uh… she’s the one that came up to me… I didn’t –” he began, perhaps more defensively than was warranted.
“No, I didn’t mean… Look. I know we’re not exactly friends. But… you don’t have to hide. I’m not going to throw you out if you stop by for a drink.” She paused for a brief moment. “We… all did things we’re not proud of.”
“Some of us did worse than others,” he said, flatly.
“Maybe. Or maybe just terrible in different ways. But Marlene remembers you for how nice you were to her, and how you made sure she was safe. I think she’d like to see you once in awhile. Elena, too.”
His heart twisted at the mention of Elena’s name, and it took him a moment to respond.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. There was no reason to tell Tifa about Elena and Tseng. Maybe later, if Strife decided to help them out… but not at this point. He’d been trying very hard not to think about what could be happening to his beautiful Elena right now, anyway. “Long as you promise you’re not gonna drag me into the gutter by the balls again…”
“I promise nothing,” the bartender said with a faint chuckle.
The sand was surprisingly warm. She wouldn’t have expected it, so far north. The water, though… it was utterly freezing. She’d only dipped a foot in just to see. She hadn’t really been considering Vincent’s fleeting suggestion that she swim to the mainland… but she had to admit, it had briefly been a passing fantasy. But Elena wasn’t under any illusion she’d ever be able to pull off something like that. Besides which, the ocean still scared her a little.
She smiled slightly, thinking about how much she and Reno had enjoyed the beach in Costa del Sol, though. The redhead loved the water… and he’d encouraged her to join him in it more times than she could count while they’d been on their honeymoon. Almost to the point that she’d joked that they’d spent more time in the surf than in bed some days. And they’d certainly spent plenty of time in bed.
It had been an incredible week… Just the two of them, newly married and very much in love. Reno had gone out of his way to pepper their trip with little surprises every day. The first morning, she’d awoken, after a very… active… night, to breakfast in bed. Reno had gotten up before sunrise to ensure that the resort’s kitchen had included all of her favorite tropical fruits, and lazily fed them to her between teasing kisses. It was one of the sweetest things he’d ever done. Neither of them had been quite ready to leave when the week was over.
That had been almost two years ago, and she could still remember it as though it were yesterday. Since then, she’d only come to love her husband more, though it was hard to believe that was possible. Elena sighed softly. If it really took a week or more for that damn ship to show up… it would be the longest the two of them had been apart since before the wedding. It was beginning to feel as though a part of her was missing. And she she was beginning to hate that feeling.
“I hope you weren’t taking me seriously. I don’t think you’d make it such a distance.”
Elena glanced back and found that Vincent had silently joined her on the beach, and shook her head.
“Maybe if I were a better swimmer,” she replied, with a ghost of a smile. “I haven’t seen anything out there. Not so much as a rowboat.”
“Icicle Inn is on the other side of the continent, and Bone Village has been abandoned for quite some time now. There’s little need for supply ships out here. The one that brought me runs between Kalm and western continent… but Kalm gets most of its deliveries by air these days, so it’s one of very few,” Vincent replied, “I’ve brought you something.”
Elena turned and was surprised to see him holding out a gun. An old revolver… not really her preferred style of firearm, but it was better than nothing.
“I found it this morning in one of the tents. It’s not exactly the most powerful of weapons and the ammunition is in short supply, but… I know how disconcerting it can be for a gunner to be without a gun.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Vincent.”
He never said so, but over the past several months, Elena had gotten the impression that Vincent enjoyed having reconnected with the Turks… even though there was next to nothing left of the Turks as he’d known them. There was even the rare occasion that he turned up at Healin Lodge with no particular objective but to visit. He was generally quiet and kept to himself, preferring to lurk more than interact… but Elena liked seeing him around all the same. So did the others. He got along particularly well with Rude.
“Tseng is awake, by the way.”
“How is he?” she asked, as they turned to head back up the path to the Bone Village.
“Uncomfortable and restless. I gather he’s not overly fond of having to take it easy…”
She snickered softly. “After the two months he spent in bed after he was attacked by Sephiroth? And all the months after that he spent recovering his strength from being in bed for so long? No. He’s not.”
Rude shook his head and did his best to ignore the table full of gun parts… but after a few minutes, Reno got the feeling that he was going to ask anyway.
“… What are you doing?” came the inevitable question. The redhead set aside the piece he was wiping down and looked up at him.
“She’s not here to do it herself.”
Elena took meticulous care of her guns, and cleaned and oiled them on a regular schedule. It had felt wrong to leave them neglected simply because she wasn’t there. That… and it made him feel slightly less useless than he already did.
It had been a day and a half since he’d called Cloud. Or attempted to call Cloud. The swordsman had yet to respond to Shinra’s summons, and Reno was starting to wonder if he’d bother. Likewise, their own investigation was still stalled… though if nothing turned up by tonight, he was thinking about taking the copter and heading back up north. It may ultimately prove fruitless, but he couldn’t stand just sitting around anymore. He needed to do something.
Which was why he currently had three separate guns laid out in front of him in pieces.
Rude drifted past him with a gentle squeeze of the shoulder, and went back to gathering what he needed for whatever dish he had in mind for lunch, as Reno locked the slide of one of the weapons back into place.
His phone rang, buzzing faintly against the tabletop, and he reached for it, somewhat distracted, before sparing a moment to glance at the screen. When he did, his breath caught in his throat and he nearly dropped the device in his hurry to accept the call.
“‘Lena?!” he answered, breathlessly, and Rude’s attention suddenly snapped away from what he was doing, as well.
The person on the other end of the line chuckled coldly.
“Where’s Mother?” an unfamiliar voice asked, and the redhead’s elation quickly turned to fury. There weren’t many people… besides Elena… who could possibly have her phone. Those bastards who’d taken her topped the list.
“Where are they, you son of a bitch?!” he shouted, “What have you done with them?!”
“You tell me what you’ve done with Mother… and maybe I’ll consider telling you what I’ve done with those two…”
Mother? What in Ifrit’s name were they talking about?
“We don’t have your mother…”
“Don’t tell me you’re trying to lead me on…” the voice said in feigned disbelief. “Because I think you do have Mother there.”
Reno searched his mind for a response, and it finally clicked. Jenova. That’s what they had to be talking about. But he could hardly tell them that Rufus what holding onto Jenova personally.
“Listen to me you little shit!” he growled angrily, “If you’ve hurt ’em, I’m gonna fuckin’ –”
“No need to shout,” the man replied, and Reno could practically hear the smirk in his voice. His tone suddenly sobered. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Put the President on.”
~end chapter 6~
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