zugzwang

by amnixiel

Summary:

Love is a noose. You will never be lucky enough to evade its snare.
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Re: this is how this kind of love story was always going to end.

(an AU imagining of how the primary ongoing work in this series might end)

Notes:

Premise: the reader is a surgical resident discreetly subcontracted to the Shinra Turks to provide supportive medical care for Rufus receiving mako therapy under Hojo (see first in this series, primum non nocere).

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It's the obligatory party episode! I wrote this as a vision of the probable endgame for primum non nocere. Since that series is still in its extreme infancy, consider this to be an AU ending of that series (non-canon-compliant within my own continuity, I know, I know, so meta).

No knowledge of Final Fantasy XV required to enjoy this fic, though there will be heavy references and Easter eggs for those of you who are familiar. In this version of the FFVII universe, Final Fantasy XV is treated as the incarnation of the classic epic The Odyssey.

zugzwang (n): from German 'compulsion to move'; pronounced [ˈtsuːktsvaŋ]) is a situation found in chess and other turn-based games wherein one player is put at a disadvantage because of their obligation to make a move; a player is said to be "in zugzwang" when any legal move will worsen their position
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"These violent delights have violent ends."
- William Shakespeare

Chapter 1: opening

Laid out gasping on a marble floor, fingers going cold while your blood pooled around you and ruined your pretty gown.

You should have known that it would end like this.

The day starts auspiciously, which, in retrospect, should have been your first clue that disaster was imminent. It’s your golden weekend, and you’re truly off-duty: no scrubs, no pager, no twitch of dread anticipation every time you feel your phone ping. You wake to sunbeams on your pillow and the sound of little birds singing outside your window. There is nothing to keep you from lazing wantonly about your apartment all day long.

Nothing except for the ribboned envelope, sitting half-open on your kitchen countertop. Printed on thick cotton cardstock within is a coveted invitation to Midgar’s most extravagant party of the year: the SEPC charity ball.

And, for the first time in a very long time, you are genuinely looking forward to a party.

Rummaging in your dresser, you reason to yourself, sensibly, that there were plenty of perfectly valid reasons to attend the decadent Shinra bash. The food, for one—you’ve heard that this event booked the attentions of every purveyor of exotic goods in the city for a solid month in advance. Who wouldn’t want to sample all the luxuries that money could buy? It’s not like you could ever stomach the cost of those lavish commodities on your own, even on your generous Shinra salary.

The networking is another. As the nation’s economic and political crown jewel, SEPC can afford to be as choosy as they pleased in showing their favor to the country’s landed elite. Their party invitation list isn’t just a rote who’s who of Midgar’s oligarchy; it reflects a curated glimpse into the anointed leaders of Midgar’s sociopolitical future. A clever, enterprising soul such as yourself could discreetly identify the fresh faces at the SEPC ball and make some…prudent stock investments based on your findings.

And, yeah, ok, you’ll admit that your curiosity is morbidly piqued at the idea of spying on a bunch of heinously rich celebrities in vivo getting wasted and making fools out of themselves. You have a morbid, incurable fascination with melodrama. What’s so wrong with that?

The party also represents a rare, guaranteed opportunity to actually enjoy time with Elena. Despite the fact that you now both work for SEPC, most of your outings can be summed up as interrupted brunches and hasty coffee dates, squeezed in the brief gasps of respite between your ridiculous schedule as a surgeon and her ridiculous schedule as a Turk. You remain the best of friends, and there is little that can change that—but it is undeniably welcome to have a chance to dress up and spend some time together without the impending threat of a work call hanging over you both.

Yes, you think to yourself, as you fish out of the disorganized drawer the most impressive pair of real diamond earrings that you own. There were plenty of reasons to go.

But the one you won’t admit to anybody—ever—stares at you with cool, unblinking blue eyes from the cover of a magazine pinned under a glass as a makeshift coaster.

You put the glass in the dishwasher and throw the magazine away. Then you firmly tell your bed-headed, scraggly reflection in the refrigerator to stop fantasizing and worry about scrounging an appropriate outfit for the evening’s merriments before you made a fool of yourself.

It doesn’t entirely rid you of the feeling of blue eyes following you around your apartment while you fix yourself a slightly burnt breakfast of eggs and toast and head to your bedroom.

You pick your way through the minefield of discarded scrubs before settling in front of your closet, cross-armed, to contemplate the daunting task of figuring out what the hell you were supposed to wear to the most iconic fashion event of the year. Though the event is strictly private, the aristocracy’s unslakable vanity permits a few select media outlets each year to publish documentation of the arrival procession. You leafed through them in high school at sleepovers: full-page, high-gloss images of beautiful strangers promenading across a red carpet, nary a hair or thread out of place.

Even back then, you’d found the microscopic resolution of the photos a bit disturbing; now, the thought of being the subject of that merciless scrutiny was absolutely mortifying. You and your hair feuded most days, and usually your hair won. Not to mention that years of sleep deprivation had left your skin looking like Corel Desert.

You rally your courage. You’ve fed loops of glistening bowel back into a man’s flayed abdomen and plucked wriggling maggots off gangrenous toes. You’ve confronted the worst that the human body has to offer and eaten lunch afterwards. You can manage one little party, right?

Wrong. So terribly wrong. A Net search quickly informs you that your ability to sew up a man’s beating heart is going to be useless for a high-brow event like the SEPC ball. Journalists and fashion critics describe the dress code this year as ‘camp,’ which leads you on another merry goose chase to figure out what the hell ‘camp’ meant if not ‘having to do with sleeping outdoors in a tent with greasy hair and no access to running water.’

Squinting at the screen, you mouth along to the words, as if somehow that would make them more comprehensible: Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to ‘the serious.’ One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious…Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers.

“What the fuck.”

You slam the lid of your laptop shut and scrub your eyes.  Oh yeah, this party is high-brow, alright. So high-brow that their perfectly manicured eyebrows might as well be up in the stratosphere, looming haughtily over the planet like awful, furry satellites.

Fucking rich people and their stupid, inscrutable rich taste.

Alas, complaining does not solve your problem. You don’t own a dress made of three million feathers, or even one million. You own an ungodly number of pilfered scrubs from the hospital, a closet that you’ve opened three times in the past six months, and a down jacket smushed in the umbrella closet.

You briefly contemplate the wisdom of cannibalizing your jacket for feathers but decide you’re taking their recommendation too literally. After another ten minutes scrolling through increasingly pretentious beauty blogs on your phone, you give up and wilt face-first into a cushion on your sofa. You have a whole day to figure it out. Maybe you just need to give your subconscious some time to process this novel concept.

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Five hours later, you look up from marinating in trashy reality TV to realize in horror that you now have only two hours to make yourself presentable for possibly the most formal event you’ve ever attended in your life.

“Fucking ‘camp,’” you hiss, hurling open your closet doors less gently than you had this morning. For the first time in your life, you wish that you’d paid more attention to what Net influencers are always peddling and raving about. You’re dead in deep, unknown waters.

Too late now, though. Time to fall back on an old classic that had borne you through both awkward, sweaty high school dances and equally awkward, freezing hours in the operating room during medical school.

If you can’t blend in with the crowd, you can at least blend in behind them.

An ankle-length gown in black silk gazar fits the bill. The fitted bodice and flared skirt dramatically accentuate your silhouette, winnowing flatteringly at your waist. Trailing illusion half-sleeves patterned with flight feathers gather seamlessly at the plunging illusion back, cut and edged in the shape of swan’s remiges. It treads the line between dramatic and demure, and it’s probably your best shot at camouflage this evening.

You shake the dress out of its long hibernation to admire it in the full light of your bedroom. Its eye-watering price tag and impractical extravagance had nearly persuaded you not to buy it, but now you’re grateful for your unimpressive impulse control. Your clinic-appropriate formalwear would look downright dowdy to the glamorous attendees of the SEPC ball, and you desperately did not want to stick out tonight. Hopefully, it still fit.

Zipping up, you pause in front of the mirror. You look…elegant. Like someone who wore pearls and heels and had a healthy trust fund. Like someone who might receive a personal invitation to the SEPC ball. A black swan, mysterious and darkly glittering, who might be spotted at the side of Midgar’s heir.

You roll your eyes at yourself as you step out of dress and daydream. It’s a wonder that anybody takes you seriously, because you certainly can’t.

In your remaining hour, you rush through your most idiot-proof hair and makeup routines while simultaneously scurrying around your apartment to round up your keys, wallet, and other essential sundries. It’s been so long since you’ve gone out that you find yourself wasting precious minutes debating what is absolutely essential to take with you. Your clutch just feels too light in your hand, and you feel weirdly vulnerable without some basic supplies on you. Like, you never know when you’ll need to start an IV…right?

You compromise: leave out the suture and needle driver but pack the IV kit. Who’s going to go through your purse and judge you for being overprepared, anyway? The Turks would probably appreciate that you were ready for anything, anytime.

You rub the bridge of your nose. What does it say about you that you are using a band of assassins and thugs as justification for your sky-high hypervigilance these days?

“I need more friends,” you mumble as you fasten your earrings. Nice, normal friends who might not invite you to exclusive A-list parties but also wouldn’t actively feed your emerging paranoid personality disorder.

You’re ready to leave with minutes to spare. Clutch in hand, you slip into a pair of sensible black heels—cushioned toeboxes and robust arch support, because this is where you draw the line; you’d rather die than risk early-onset back pain—and give yourself one last look in the mirror by the entryway.

“You look as good as you’re going to get,” you inform your skeptical reflection before turning the handle and walking out the door.

Rush hour starts to pick up on the drive over, and you’re glad that you allowed yourself extra time to make your way to Upper Sector 7. The congestion is a running joke in Midgar at this point—though Upper Plate citizens enjoy privilege and opulence beyond the wildest dreams of the undercity, the Lower Sector will always have one thing that no amount of money can buy: a traffic-free commute.

You settle into your seat as the cars in front of you come to a standstill. It’s a joke in poor taste, of course; traffic doesn’t exist under the Plate because most undercity folks don’t have the means to own a car, instead throwing themselves on the mercy of Shinra public transportation. And you’ve worked in enough indigent clinics to know that traffic is an offensively trivial, Upper Sector problem compared to the real hardships that roil under the Plate.

“Trust the Upper Plate to make a Lower Plate problem all about them,” you sigh, waving another car into your lane. Who are you to talk, though? Even if you are hideously underpaid for your labor as a resident, you aren’t exactly scratching out a living from the dirt under the Plate. You harbor your fair share of aristocratique obliviousness.

Traffic thins as you near your destination: the Shinra Institute of Fine Arts. Plotted on several city blocks’ worth of manicured lawn, the museum’s gabled roof and colonnades tower above nearby residential zones. Statues of Guard Hounds stand guard at its entrances, supercilious sentinels immortalized in veined marble.

Most privately educated Upper Sector children make a field trip here at least once during elementary school, including you. Never having been a natural patron of the arts, you were still dutifully inculcated with a passing familiarity of the great artists and their works over the course of your education in the classics. You don’t remember much about your visit. You think you might have enjoyed some especially delicious strawberry sorbet in their cafeteria.

Returning now, as an adult and guest of the SEPC, is an entirely different experience. The perimeter of white brick and wrought-iron spikes suddenly seems much more formidable when manned by armored SOLDIERs every few yards. Entry has been throttled to a gated checkpoint wide enough for exactly one car, presided over by a phalanx of Second Class that don’t stow their rifles as they inspect cars and their occupants.

Your eyebrow rises as you queue in the growing line of vehicles waiting to enter. You probably should have guessed that this would happen, considering the number and prominence of attendees at this party. This ball, charity or not, is one of the last havens for the rich and famous to mingle unfettered by public scrutiny or concern for reputation. It’s not exactly unexpected—or unwarranted—for SEPC to take such extreme security measures to preserve the exclusivity and privacy of their most exclusive, private event of the year.

All the same, your palms feel a bit damp when you pull up to the gate. True to its roots in arms dealing, Shinra doesn’t believe in security theatre; every weapon you’ve seen is undoubtedly loaded with live ammunition. You hope that your belongings aren’t subject to search, because you’re not sure how you’d explain the sharps rolling around next to the lip balm in your bag. “Please don’t mind the needles, sir, I swear I’m not a drug addict; I’m just a freak who thinks that IV kits are appropriate accessories to bring to a party.” Yeah, that’s sure to go over well.

A SOLDIER in Second Class violet approaches your car as you pull up to the gate. You roll down the window, striving to look as nonthreatening as possible.

“Good evening, madam. Welcome to the Shinra Energy and Power Company Charity Ball,” he greets cheerily. He’s young for a SOLDIER, cheeks still boyishly rounded, but his eyes are a vibrant wall of telltale green. You can’t help but stare. That overt sign of mako induction is fascinating, no matter how many times you see it.

He holds out a gloved hand. “May I see your invitation, madam?”

Your eyes affix to the glinting barrel of his gun as you hand it over.

He scans over the text. The gatekeeper then turns to one of his squadmates, who consults a handheld tablet, examines your face, and nods.

Another SOLDIER melts into your passenger-side peripheral vision, ghost-like in his silence. He smiles at you briefly when you meet his eyes—also incandescent with mako—before nodding at the gatekeeper. He must have been checking your car while you were focused on presenting your credentials, though you hadn’t heard so much as a crunch of gravel.

“Enjoy your evening, Doctor,” the gatekeeper chirps, handing your invitation back to you. Folding it back into your purse, you nearly cut yourself on it when he continues: “Vice President Rufus Shinra looks forward to seeing you this evening.”

You stare at the guard.

“It’s on your invitation, Doctor,” he says helpfully, customer-service smile unfaltering. “You’ve been invited as his personal guest.”

“Oh.” You’d assumed that his name had been printed on all the invitations as a matter of procedure. You didn’t know that yours had been marked any differently. “Right.”

Personal guest…

Pull. Yourself. Together. Your hands tighten and relax rhythmically on the steering wheel as you steer your car through the gates. If this is how you’re going to react to the mere mention of his name, you might as well just admit yourself to the neurological intensive care unit now. You’re liable to stroke out when you actually see him.

The strict geometry of the outer walls unravels rapidly into an arboreal dreamscape as you near the museum proper. A promenade of artistically cultivated hedges spirits you into a tunnel of bowed trellises, profuse with wisteria. Curtains of hanging blossoms part over your windshield to receive you into the property’s penetralium, and in the gaps between the flower arches, even the stars seem to twinkle a little more radiantly against the moonless sky.

You’re not sure if you were just an exceptionally unobservant child when you first visited all those years ago or if SEPC has spruced up the place specially to host their gala, but it’s impossible now to miss how much effort has gone into raising this lush oasis out of the bustle of the city. Where else in Midgar could you roll down your window to the smell of dew and cricket song, not mako ozone and the steady grumble of car engines? This place is more than a retreat; it’s a living gem grafted into the heart of Midgar’s urban jungle by virtue of SEPC’s limitless resources and willpower. Its mere existence is obscene and awesome, all at once.

Petals churn under your tires like seafoam as you loop around a sparkling marble fountain sculpted in a dramatic battle scene—the Pact of the Leviathan from the classical epic The Odyssey, you vaguely recognize from your elementary schooldays. The serpentine body of the Tidemother writhes in the low light flickering through the water, and, wielding her sacred Trident at the apex of the Leviathan’s coils, the benevolent Oracle Lunafreya Nox Fleuret watches over the guests arriving with weeping, jeweled eyes.

A handful of couples and a few lone men approach the fountain with flowers in hand, mouth a silent prayer, and float them into the water. You’re struck by the quaintness of this ancient romantic ritual at so contemporary an event as the Shinra gala. By virtue of her own sorrowful romance with the ill-fated protagonist of The Odyssey, Lunafreya is the patron of star-crossed lovers. Offering flowers to her likeness is fabled to bring her blessing on troubled relationships.

Looking up into that sad, solemn face, you mostly feel sorry for her. A little fucked up to be remembered primarily for dying a horrible death to save her fiancé—who, if you recall correctly, went on to die his own horrible death later to save the world.

You wish her a bit of happiness for herself as you roll to a stop in front of the museum’s entrance.

A valet in mirror-shined shoes and crisp-pressed uniform springs over.

“Welcome to the Institute, Doctor,” he greets, opening your car door and ushering you towards the red velvet carpet stretched across the stairs. You don’t bother asking how he knows your identity, and he does not comment on how your trusty, fuel-efficient SUV sticks out like a rotting pumpkin coach between sporty coupes and chauffeured luxury autos. It’s not like he needs to say anything. Every inch of your wide-eyed face stares at you out of pristinely waxed hoods as you pass them by.

The venue is strangely quiet—quiet enough to hear the muffled clip of your heels and the live harp music drifting soothingly over the arriving guests. The cacophony of camera shutters is missing, you realize. Only an orderly handful of photographers stand along the red carpet in lieu of the usual penned rabble of media and press. The gentle camber of the path laid out for you barely requires you to raise the hem of your skirt as you pass the harpist and enter the museum’s lobby.

A few dim childhood memories wiggle loose when you spot the iconic marble rendering of an entwined Ifrit and Shiva. Perhaps you had sat there with your cup of gelato, at Shiva’s frozen slipper; maybe you had touched Ifrit’s gargantuan toe with sticky fingers as you had stood to leave. They have always been celebrated for their hyperrealism, but tonight, you’re almost surprised that Shiva hasn’t drawn breath.

You tilt your head. It’s more than just your imagination; there’s a trick to the light tonight, effusive and otherworldly. The forms of the guests around you are soft, almost smudgy, as if you were looking through a thin layer of petroleum jelly, and your eyes water trying to focus the image. You’ve seen this before, somewhere…

Mako. You remember now: on one of your rare onsite visits to Shinra headquarters, Tseng had discreetly escorted you through a series of service corridors that housed the bulk of the building’s power systems. Vats of luminous mako pumped to generators through a twisting maze of clear pipes, the figurative and literal lifeblood of Shinra’s empire. The light they radiated had an eerie, luminous evenness that erased blemishes and blurred textures, casting Tseng’s face in uncannily smooth porcelain.

It is the same phenomenon that you see now. Mako suffuses the museum entryway, and wherever you look around you, the other attendees’ eyes and lips and hair seem kissed by starlight—ever so slightly tinted in that distinctive green. You can see where it’s coming from, too, now that you know what you’re looking for. Cleverly worked into climbing foliage and canopy boughs, a trellis of long hoses feed mako into hanging crystal bulbs and weave the illusion of stars close enough to touch. Moving through its shadowless light feels strangely like a baptism, an unearthly induction into temporary godhood while you bask in its light.

It is also a poetic grandiosity: raw mako, the bedrock on which Shinra raised its iron-fisted energy monopoly, is a highly volatile substance that commands outrageous refinement and maintenance costs to remain in a safe, stable state. Only Shinra had the access and funds to eat the cost of putting it on display as stage dressing. For a fucking dinner party.

You’ve spent enough time with etiquette masters to know when you should and shouldn’t gawk, but there’s a limit to affected apathy, and Shinra knows how to hurdle it with style. The expressions on the other guests’ faces attest as much, filled with just as much wide-eyed wonder as yours. You smile a little, seeing Upper Plate socialites forget their jaded masks, even if only for a moment.

And seeing mako used for a purpose other than medical experimentation is…nice. You’ve spent so much time fighting it and fearing it and treating it like a poison that you’ve almost forgotten it wasn’t meant to be used in that way.

Not tonight, you promise yourself. Tonight, mako is for magic. Mako is for making dreams come true.

Drifting further into the gallery with the flow of other guests, you try not to think too hard about what dream you meant by that.

Notes:

"A dream is a wish your heart makes," isn't it? Hm. I wonder what that means.
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Thanks for reading this far! Drop a comment if you have time; I adore hearing from readers.

See you in the next one.

Chapter 2: middlegame

Notes:

I'm sure I'll regret posting this so hastily later, but a girl can only look at the same words so many times before she goes insane and starts firing at will.

I present to you my albatross, eight years (lmao) in the making.
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"Fools give you reasons. Wise men never try."
- Frank Sinatra, "Some Enchanted Evening"

In the passage leading to the main event hall, the other major gods of Ifrit and Shiva’s pantheon stand vigil, several times larger than life in gleaming bronze. Ramuh casts his gaze sternly under furrowed brows; across from him, Garuda’s mouth-splitting grin cackles in silence at the arriving guests. A copper rendering of the Leviathan bathes in another long fountain that runs the length of the corridor, guiding you from the entry atrium into a soaring ballroom.

Just before you cross the threshold, you check your phone. No messages from Elena. You crane around hopefully for the flame of Reno’s hair or Rude’s tall, solid frame. No luck, there, either.

You square your shoulders. On your own for now, then.

The ballroom is set for hundreds, an expansive wood dance floor ringed with high tables for cocktails and hors d’oeurves and seated tables for dining on more solid fare. Banquet tables entice you from the perimeter of the room with baskets of still-steaming bread and platters of exotic meats, standing opposite dessert bars piled high with carved fruits and impossibly intricate confections.

Still too anxious to work up an appetite, you look surreptitiously at the guests around you—and relax just a fraction. You needn’t have worried about any pearl-clutching over your lowly presence. The blinding flash and pageantry at this party easily drowns out little old you.

Apparently, Camp translates to ‘free license for haute couture designers to try and outdo each other in a competition to appall the layman’s fashion sensibilities.’ A man walks by in a suit made entirely out of tiny, chiming chainmail rings; a supermodel sashays past in little more than a web of strategically placed rhinestones. The demurest outfit you see is worn by a nervous, thin-shouldered man whom you recognize as a recently minted titan of the software industry: skinny jeans and a black hoodie studded with gil, the words “I MIN/MAXED CHA FOR INT” sewn in gold thread across the back. You’re not sure what that means, but it doesn’t sound complimentary. Judging from his expression, he doesn’t seem to think it is, either.

Three million feathers would have looked positively pedestrian here.

Though you recognize many of the famous faces floating past, you realize that don’t actually know anybody here. This is not your social stratosphere; you have no welcoming clique to exclaim how glad they are to see you and conjecture about who had made the invitation list this year. You’re debating whether you should linger at the bar, where Reno is sure to appear eventually, or stand somewhere conspicuous for Elena and Rude to spot you when a uniformed server approaches and offers you a tall crystal of something rosy and glittering.

“Aperitif rosso, doctor,” he explains, extending the crystal to you with its stem wrapped in a silk napkin. “Non-alcoholic. Selected by your host, per your preference.”

You goggle him. “Per my…”

“Is there something else you’d prefer, doctor? Our sommelier would be more than happy to accommodate.”

“Aren’t sommelier supposed to be wine…” Questioning generosity is for the rich. You close your mouth and accept the glass. “Thank you. Please send my gratitude.”

The server bows and vanishes. Your drink in one hand and your clutch in the other, you scurry to claim an unoccupied cocktail table near the periphery of the ballroom. Stooped and vulture-like, you snoop on everyone else.

Hierarchy reigns even here, in the rarefied air of the SEPC ball. Attendees of lesser note and hangers-on like you languish in anonymity upon arrival, filtering into the room at ground level in modest groups. The snub is implied: we have magnanimously allowed your presence, but you are not one of us.

The Shinra inner circle—C-suite, generational family allies, and key political pawns—receive a more regal welcome. They enter through a magnificent archway of woven wisteria at the top of a marble imperial staircase; then, as they stand and survey the guests below, a uniformed herald announces the guests’ arrival loudly across the entire ballroom. It’s all very slick and choreographed and pretentious as all hell.

Watching a scandalously dressed blonde Shinra executive deliver a mawkish panegyric for President Shinra, you nearly swoon with gratitude that your invitation had not qualified you for such deification. The slavish practice is threat acknowledgment and oath renewal, efficiently rolled into one: The Lord Shinra giveth, and he taketh away; we shall obey or be forever damned. Though you might not exactly be the shining paragon of morality, you want no part in any weird corporate cult.

You also couldn’t imagine reciting such a dire vow in public. You have enough trouble unlinking the concepts of your patient and employer Rufus Shinra from extremely attractive, intelligent, eligible bachelor Rufus Shinra without the additional complication of being so…matrimonially sworn to the company he was destined to inherit.

Besides, you were already married to your job, thank you very much.

The remainder of the guest list does not disappoint. Standing out from even the milieu of colorful costumes this evening, Shinra’s prized flock of reclusive First-Class SOLDIERs is in full attendance. You have only a passing knowledge of them, gleaned from gossip rags and the occasional ad run by their dedicated fan groups, and they’re just as statuesque and mysterious in person as they appear in media coverage—Angeal, a cross-armed obelisk of muscle presiding over a cadre of starry-eyed Second-Class SOLDIERs; Genesis, a brooding vision in red, hunched muttering over his dog-eared copy of Loveless; and between them fair Sephiroth, commanding ten yards’ berth of empty space with the sheer magnitude of his legendary presence.

They are all of them fearsomely magnificent and utterly miserable, like chained dancing bears. Unlike the Turks, whose talents lie in remaining undetected in perfect camouflage, the SOLDIER First Class is the iconic symbol of the Shinra paramilitary arm. From their eye-catching armor to their deliberately curated media following, they are linebreakers, keenly designed to pierce and demoralize enemy resistance at the thick of the fight. They radiate outrageous strength and suppressed violence and are about as suited to party meet-and-greets as tigers are to a children’s petting zoo.

At least people have the good sense to leave them alone.

President Shinra himself makes his grand appearance an hour into the party amid a trumpet fanfare and a chorus of fawning supplicants. Despite rationality telling you that you’re probably no more than a vague black smudge from his lofty perspective, you shrink when his gaze sweeps across the crowd. You wholeheartedly trust that the Turks have done an excellent job of concealing your existence from President Shinra and the other prying eyes at SEPC, but you’ve also heard the stories of what happens to people who cross them. You don’t want to end up as another parable to the effect of don’t fuck with Shinra.

That unflattering scarlet suit, though… You wince. If it had been anybody else, you would have thought that he was being bullied by his stylist. That shade of red? On his complexion? He looks waxy and sallow, even with the help of his height and his double-breasted jacket. But only you care that the Emperor has no clothes, apparently; a pair of nearby ladies are filled with nothing but vociferous praise for the daring, Avant Garde flair of their host.

No wonder Shinra Jr. insists on a monochrome color palette. Who could possibly develop normal taste growing up with a fashion terrorist like that?

By contrast, Rufus Shinra arrives fifteen minutes later as a mere blip in the parade of illustrious attendees. His name and imperious carriage command attention, and the Turks (Tseng and Reno, you guess from the hair) trailing at his flanks are too interesting a novelty to ignore. But he conspicuously lacks his father’s forceful demand for notice, only tolerating the collected scrutiny of the crowds for exactly as long as socially acceptable before quietly melting into the other partygoers.

You press your lips together to hide a smile. Pale and reluctant, a specter at his own feast.

But he is a co-host of tonight’s party, and such a title carries obligations that even a Shinra cannot shirk. He migrates to the inner circle of Shinra executives to socialize, maintaining casual distance from his father. On this rare joint appearance, it’s easy to compare the two—and wonder.

They share proud, patrician features, with the same ash-blond hair and straight browlines that darken deep-set eyes, but the resemblance drops off with his orbital bone. His jaw is more delicate; his mouth peaks in a cupid’s bow. His shoulders are slighter than his father’s, sloping and relaxed compared to his father’s rigid right-angle. His torso is long and narrow, thinning at the waist where his father is square and solid as a bear.

You wonder what his mother had looked like. Did he even remember what she looked like? Or did he only know of her from murky childhood memories and age-yellowed photographs, recognizing only echoes of her in himself when he looked in the mirror?

Someone exclaims your name, and you turn just in time to be swept into Elena’s exuberant hug. She affectionately squeezes the life out of you for a few seconds before drawing back, beaming. “You came!”

“I couldn’t turn down the hottest party of the year and a chance to hang out with my best friend.” Relief floods you as her arrival banishes an anxiety that had been running deeper than you realized. Your cheeks pinch at how hard you’re grinning. “And you know no resident in their right mind will turn down free food.”

Elena has reincarnated in the image of a peacock. A delicate fan of iridescent feathers bobs gently from her swept-back chignon. A coiffed wave over her brow showcases all the subtle golden tones in her hair, echoed in shimmering powder around her eyes and fine gilt strands shot through the sapphire fabric of her dress. Ornate ocelli appliques twine down her sleeve and neckline and onto the clinging skirt of blue-green chiffon silk that drifts open just enough for a peek of her thigh.

You are perfectly aware that the little flicker of skin is entirely a distraction from the gun that you know is strapped to her other thigh. A sneaky, practical woman, your Elena.

“Elena, you look spectacular.”

“You think so?” She performs a half-pirouette. Peacock eyes wink and eddy hypnotically around her ankles. “I was worried it might be a little too much, but…”

She hushes. A woman hobbles past in what appears to be a giant, upside-down traffic cone. You both track the bobbing orange monstrosity in silence until she moves out of earshot and then erupt into laughter. “…I should have known that it would be fine.”

“I was starting to think that you might not have anything left in your closet other than black pantsuits,” you tease.

“Oh my God, Reno and Rude were betting each other this morning about how long it would take for me to forget that I’m not in dress blacks and trip over the hem of my own dress or something.” She rolls her eyes in a flash of gold. “Of course, I couldn’t just let that go, so I betted them both double that I wouldn’t.”

“Fools easily parted from their money, I see,” you nod sagely. Like you, Elena had been born and raised in capital-S Society; no matter how much she had strayed from the destiny of a young glitterati, Elena couldn’t look ungraceful in a gown if she tried.

Elena giggles. “I’ll take you out for brunch somewhere nice when I collect.”

Scanning over you in turn, her smile grows sly. “You look pretty glammed up yourself, though, Doctor.”

Your eyes narrow suspiciously at her tone. “Thanks…”

“You know, some psychologists say that you subconsciously dress in the favorite colors of the people you’re interested in,” she sings, batting her eyes at you. “You’re a pretty incorrigible contrarian who loves denying your feelings, though, so I feel like the fact that you’re wearing all black might be a little overcompensation—”

“Could you not.” Heat flushes up from your neck to your ears. You had expected at least one of the Turks to make a passing comment tonight about your increasingly obvious and problematic feelings about your shared employer, but you had not expected the first volley to come from your sweet, beneficent best friend Elena.

That was your mistake, though. Elena isn’t just your sweet, beneficent childhood friend anymore; she’s also a Turk now, armed with the same unsparing wit as her colleagues.

She sure still sounds sweet and beneficent, you sulk as she laughs prettily at whatever flustered expression you’re wearing now. You ponder the depths of your drink and whether you should ask for something stronger to help you weather the jibes that are sure to come tonight.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.” She wipes the last tears of mirth out of her eyes and pats your arm. “Seriously, though, you look amazing. I’m really happy you could make it.”

She pauses. Something uncertain and pensive wavers in her face, like she’s trying to decide if she should say something aloud. “You know…for what it’s worth…I think—”

But you don’t get to hear what she thinks, because Reno pops into the space next to you and barges into your conversation with the abrupt and perfectly inconvenient timing that is his hallmark.

“Doooc.” Elena squawks indignantly as the red-haired Turk shoves his head between Elena’s face and yours, greeting you with a stretch of teeth in which you discern genuine fondness. Eschewing dress code, he’s shown up in exactly the same barely-buttoned Turk uniform that he wears on duty, aviation goggles propping up a shelf of unruly bangs. The pungent tang of gun oil rises off his collar. “Always a pleasure. Glad ta see ya.”

“Glad to be here,” you reply truthfully. “No costume for you tonight?”

“’Fraid not. Higher ups couldn’t risk me hogging the spotlight,” he drawls. You believe him, too; it was far too easy to imagine him showing up in nothing but a brave fig leaf.

Elena sidesteps Reno and huffs. “I thought that you were on shadow detail tonight.”

“He is.” Rude quietly joins the three of you at your table holding a glass of something pink and sparkling like yours. You wonder what you must look like to the other guests. Turks are, on the whole, a famously reclusive bunch, and being approached by even one is the stuff of urban legends among the Midgar upper class. Here you are, surrounded by three, two in obvious uniform.

“So why aren’t you shadowing and not here?” Elena growls at Reno, looking very ready to dump a drink on top of his head. Rude takes a conspicuous sip from his glass, removing his from the equation. You surreptitiously scoot your flute out of her reach, too, just in case.

“I got bored,” Reno complains, leaning his elbows on the table. “You know what it’s like, bein’ the second Turk on the same assignment as Tseng. It’s awful. I’m as useless as—as—”

“As useless as a second Turk on the same assignment as Tseng?” you supply, only half-facetiously.

Reno releases a sharp bark of laughter. “Yeah, exactly.” He nudges you with his elbow. “See, Laney, Doc gets it.

“Besides,” he continues, amused green eyes darting between you and Elena. “Can’t let you go around spillin’ all the boss’s secrets to the good doctor, Laney.”

Now it’s Elena’s turn to blush. “I’m just trying to—to help.”

“In his own time,” Rude comments cryptically.

“Um.” You’ve missed something. “What are you—”

“Enough ‘bout us, though.” Reno waves his hand like he’s dispersing smoke. “Laney, you told us that you were getting all dolled up. But you coulda at least warned us about the doctor.”

The anxiety you’d felt a few hours ago, standing in front of your upended closet, surges back in full force. You can practically feel the sweat beading along your brow as your worst nightmare is realized: your attempt at camouflage tonight has failed.

You should have gone shopping for a new dress. You should have relented to get your hair and makeup done professionally by people who actually know what the fuck Camp is, should have shelled out the cash for an emergency consultation with a glam squad, no matter how stupid it sounded—

“Because the doctor is in tonight.”

Reno has built a career on being full of surprises, and he surprises you now, once again, with the sincerity of his compliment. Jubilance—because you did it! You blended in!—tinged with embarrassment thaws the dread that had been creeping up your spine.

“I dunno. I’m starting to think that I would have been better off dunking myself in glue and rolling in a pile of glitter.” You raise an eyebrow and exaggerate a critical survey of the guests around you. “Probably should have just rolled up in scrubs.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Rude says, warm and kind and appreciative.

“That’s right,” Elena choruses with a firm nod. “You look wonderful. It would have been a crime for you not to wear this dress.”

Your embarrassment intensifies at the center of their concentrated positivity. “Even in all black?” you deflect teasingly.

“Especially in all black,” hums Reno with a coy smirk. “Siegfried is in all white tonight, Odile.”

You grit your teeth. “They must not be working you hard enough, if you have time to be reading Swan Lake.”

Reno chortles, and you wonder where you went so wrong in your life that Reno and Elena, of all people, have ganged up to torment you. With your eyes, you silently plea to Rude, the last haven of reason in this merry band of idiots. The tall Turk takes another sip of his drink and ignores you.

Resigning yourself to fending both of them off for the rest of the night, you look out over the other partygoers. The party’s become livelier as the general level of inebriation has risen, business deals and shop talk relaxing into giggles and flirtatious chatter. Ties slacken, then disappear entirely; buttons and zippers come undone. Cumbersome costumes are cast aside; you spot the lady in the traffic cone stripped down to a skin-fitted orange bodycon and seated, giggling, on the lap of someone you vaguely recognize as one of Shinra’s executives.

The ballroom floor has also grown more populated, couples taking measured turns across the marble. Like Elena, many of these socialites have a practiced grace to their steps that intoxication cannot dampen. From your vantage point, deep in the shadow, the dancers seem sealed in another world, painted figurines revolving in a snow globe.

Reno taps your arm. “How ‘bout a dance, Doc?”

“What?”

Reno’s brows shoot upward at the forcefulness of your outburst. Oof, that was a mistake. You backpedal: “I mean—it’s just that—I just don’t know how to dance.”

“That so.” Too late. Reno’s smelled blood in the water, and he’s wearing that frightening, playful grin you’ve only seen when he’s plotting something truly dreadful. He turns away from you, towards Elena. “Tell me, Laney. Whaddya say about that?”

When Elena scowls at him and opens her mouth, you think you’re saved—

Rude clears his throat.

And then, before your eyes, her indignance inexplicably dissolves into a strange thoughtfulness that sets your nerves on edge. Why do you feel like you are not going to like whatever it is that she is about to say?

“Actually…” Elena’s peculiar in-between expression yields to a conspiratorial smile. “We did weeks of cotillion together when we were in school. Learned all the ballroom dances under the sun. I know it’s been a while, but don’t tell me you’ve forgotten all of it!”

Oh, you wish you could forget.

Elena intimately knows your catastrophic failure to rise to gentility. Like her, you had been too impatient for all the trappings of aristocracy and only learned the bare minimum to pass as a lady of Society and make your parents happy; unlike her, you also lacked the natural affinity for the gentry, which is why you’d elected to go to medical school. You had decided long ago that you would rather slog through human refuse and gore before you ever hung your future on the whim of some bored, rich bachelor.

You also held the dubious distinction of being the only pupil in your dance instructor’s career to frustrate her to tears. You stare at Elena, bewildered by the betrayal. What is she playing at?

Interpreting your dumbstruck paralysis as assent, Reno links arms with you and tugs you towards the dance floor. “C’mon, Doc.” You whip toward him to protest, but his eyes are fixed on something in the distance. You trace it to a point in the crowd—

“Ah-ah-ah.” Spinning you into his arm with a surprisingly graceful turn of his wrist, Reno breaks your line of sight. He winks. “Need to know, m‘fraid, Doc. Classified ‘n’ all.”

Yeah, somehow you had your doubts. Rolling your eyes, you peel away from his bare chest. “O-kay. Well, while I appreciate the offer to dance, Reno—”

Elena cuts you off, clasping your hands in hers. “Trust me?” The twinkle in her eyes screams Ulterior Motive. “It won’t be that bad—Rude and I will go with you! It might even be…fun.”

You give her a long look. She’d pulled the “trust me” card. You could hardly say no now.

You spare one last glance over the crowd to make sure that there aren’t any untoward individuals watching. President Shinra is deeply engrossed in discussion with a gaggle of suits, faced away from the dance floor entirely. Rufus and Tseng are nowhere to be seen, probably buried just as deep in corporate suitors.

“Alright,” you sigh, shoulders dropping in defeat. Elena glows at you and tucks her hand into Rude’s arm as you reluctantly take Reno’s, migrating as a flock towards the dance floor.

“Don’t look too excited,” Reno chuckles, patting your whitened knuckles. You shoot him a withering look, and he laughs again. “I promise I don’t bite.”

“So,” you say tersely, trying to brush off your dusty memory of dance lessons. “What exactly are we doing?”

“Expediting.”

“Hush.”

Your eyes jump to Rude, but the big, quiet man chaperones Elena as mute as a rock. Elena tilts her head innocently. Had you just imagined…?

“Geez, Doc.” Reno feigns offense at your distraction, splaying his free hand across his sternum. “I know ol’ Baldy’s got his charm, but I thought it was manners t’ take your first dance with the one that brought ya.”

“If we’re going by those rules, Reno,” you reply dryly, “you aren’t really the one who brought me, either. It isn’t your name printed on my invitation.”

“Sure wasn’t.” The smugness in his voice begs questioning, but you’ve reached the edge of the dance floor. You feel like a calf led to an abattoir.

“D’ya remember how to waltz, Doc?”

Your brain regurgitates every textbook fact you recall from those lessons so many years ago. The waltz is a classic dance, more challenging than the foxtrot because of its 3/4 timing but algorithmic enough that you could probably figure it out with a skilled dance partner.

…probably.

Against your better judgment, you nod and slide your hand out of Reno’s elbow, down his arm, and into his upturned palm, draping the other over his shoulder and bicep. His touch alighting at your waist sends you nearly jumping out of your skin—but he respects the sliver of space between your bodies and doesn’t move to close the distance. Glancing around the room, you can tell that your lower ribcage should be grazing his, but you’re not feeling bold or motivated enough to get that cozy with Reno just for the sake of a dance. Even if you would trust him with your life.

“Shakin’ like a leaf, Doc.” Reno chuckles. In heels, you’re nearly the same height as him. The tattoos parenthesizing his eyes stand out more than usual at this range. “’M I makin’ ya nervous?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, tough guy,” you retort. “Just make sure you know what you’re doing. It’s been about a decade since I’ve even thought about dancing.”

“Ooh, yes, ma’am.”

The soft tuning of strings and reeds from the orchestra curbs your rejoinder. Reno hums along, and you’re close enough that you can feel the timber of his voice thrumming the ball of lead growing into the pit of your stomach. From where she’s paired with Rude a few feet away, Elena gives you a bright smile that’s probably meant to be encouraging but instead leads you to question, once again, all the choices you’ve made in your life leading up to this point.

You take a steadying breath. It’s one dance. You can survive one dance. Maybe you’ll get lucky and get a slow waltz.

And then the violin strings trill the ominous first bars of Saint-Saëns.

“Danse Macabre?” you hiss before Reno takes his first step.

Latched onto Reno for dear life, you fumble to the rhythm and try your best not to kill either of you. You trip over your feet; your ankles tangle with his, and your weight crashes into his with every change in direction. The formidable, premeditated intelligence that has served you so well in the operating room is now your worst enemy. Between trying to match your feet to the music and predict Reno’s next move, you’re overwhelmed, off-balance, and careening haphazardly in whatever direction Reno tips you.

You don’t even want to think about how you measure up to the other graceful ladies of Society twirling around you. Danse macabre, indeed.

Reno’s still humming, in high spirits despite the disaster unfolding at your feet. He’s clearly a gifted dancer in his own right, but he truly excels as a dance partner: rock steady in spite of your flailing and an elegant improvisor, incorporating your jerky missteps into deliberate flourishes.

All is going exactly as horribly as you had expected. “Why did I let Elena talk me into this?” you mutter as Reno smoothly rescues you both from a direct collision with another couple.

“Gotta let me lead, Doc.”

It takes a moment for your beleaguered brain to process what Reno’s just whispered in your ear. You look up at him, startled. “What?”

Eyes twinkling, Reno gently squeezes your leading hand. “Ain’t the OR, Doc. We’re dancin’. One of us’s gotta follow.”

‘Follow’? Every time you step to the operating table, you stake your head, your license, and your pride on the patient whose life has been entrusted to your hands. Bearing the tremendous weight of this responsibility has made you accustomed to being the ultimate authority in the room, and you don’t relinquish that authority for a second because—

(Because you’re still a resident, and you’re worth less than even your least talented attendings in the rigid medical hierarchy. Because you didn’t graduate from a top medical school like your pedigreed colleagues, and your wall stands conspicuously wanting where theirs exhibit coveted diplomas. Because you’re a woman, and you know—despite all your years of ferocious dedication and painstakingly honed technical skill—what some men still whisper about you and women like you behind your back.)

Because when you’re scrubbed and gowned, you must embody perfection incarnate, lest you give the world another excuse to call you anything less than surgeon.

So, yeah, you had some control issues, and you’d be the first to admit that, even among your colleagues, you have a bit of an iron fist in the OR. It’s reasonable to infer that, despite your excellence at compartmentalization, some of that ruthless intensity has bled into the less dire aspects of your life.

Like dancing.

You take a deep breath. Like Reno said, this isn’t surgery. It’s a party. Nothing would die tonight because of you, except for your dignity.

Maybe, just this once, it would be ok to trust someone else.

You loosen your vise grip on his metacarpals. You step in until your leading thigh brushes his, enough for Reno to telegraph his next move to you with the slight shifts of his weight.

To your great surprise, Reno spares you the expected teasing, only smiling and ferrying you along with renewed confidence. “That’s it, Doc. You’re doin’ great.”

You would have bristled at being complimented for such a minor feat under any other circumstances. Instead, you cling grimly to his reassurance. You are too focused on survival; there is no room for your pride here.

To your astonishment, though, you find your feet gradually following something resembling a recognizable pattern. You’re not deluded enough to call it a waltz, per se; but Reno knows exactly how to micromanage your weight and balance such that you fall in directions that mimic the dancers around you. Against all odds, you’re learning to respond to the split-second cues of his motions, too, your feet retreating when he surges forward and crowding in when his weight recedes. It’s working infinitely better than any attempt you could have made while leading.

Your mouth takes a wry twist. It’s an uncomfortable but…pleasant realization, acknowledging that you are not perfect at everything and that you don’t have to be.

And, truthfully, it is fun. You’re twirling in a beautiful gown under a roof of glittering lights, at a party attended by society’s elite. And though you’d never admit it to his face, Reno is a beautiful man. It is not so terrible to be dressed in a beautiful dress, in a beautiful ballroom, dancing with a beautiful man, living out the fairytale of little girls everywhere.

Damn Elena for being right all the time.

You’re amused at your own twinge of disappointment when the song tapers to its final soft notes. Reno releases you but stays close as you make your way back to your table, Elena and Rude not far behind.

“That was great!” Elena gushes, clearly under the influence of delusion born from your deep friendship. “You did amazing.”

“Reno did amazing,” you correct, straightening your sleeves. “I was just there.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Doc.” A waiter wordlessly provides two fresh drinks for you and Rude, out of which Reno promptly steals the cherry. Chewing, he points at you with the cherry stem. “You’re a quick study, don’tcha know.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” you retort. “The fact that I didn’t end up flat on my ass within the first thirty seconds is a pretty heroic accomplishment.”

“Heroic is a strong word,” opines a familiar, mild voice from behind you. Your heart skips a beat.

Your group’s attention focuses behind you, all three of the Turks unconsciously straightening a bit. You turn—not too fast, lest you seem overeager; nor too slow, as not to seem fearful or reluctant—and behold Rufus Shinra.

(Be normal. Be normal. Just be normal, you beg of yourself.)

He’s shed his distinctive collared greatcoat tonight in favor of a traditional evening suit, styled in the striking monochrome that he favors. A scarlet tie drips from his throat, a solitary slash of color against the black dress shirt. Most striking, though, is the silky ruff of jet fur that rises off his lapel and frames his shoulders like a mane, beckoning you to bury your fingers in fur and fabric and forbidden flesh underneath.

The whole look would have bordered on gauche on literally anybody else, the exaggerated costume of a cat-stroking, cigar-smoking cartoon mobster. But this is Rufus Shinra. Even if he rejects the mawkish worship of his father’s sycophants, he is still heir apparent to Midgar, highest prince in a city rife with princes of inheritance and industry. That mantle suits him just as assuredly as the one piled around his neck, and he simply looks excruciatingly, imperiously beautiful.

By the Six, you sure know how to pick them. Of all the rich bachelors in this godsforsaken city…

Rufus accepts a drink from a passing waitstaff member as he approaches your table. “Enjoying ourselves, are we.”

“Boss,” Reno greets affably, pocketing his hands. Rude nods. Elena dips in a modified half-curtsey.

Rufus looks levelly at your erstwhile dance partner. “Very subtle, Reno.”

The redheaded Turk sinks into an exaggerated bow. “I do my very best, sir.”

Rufus fixes him with a slow, feline blink. “Yes. I’m sure you do.” Tseng tilts his head back a fraction, closes his eyes, and heaves a tiny sigh through his nose, looking very much in need of a stiff drink.

You’ve missed something. From behind your flute, you shoot a questioning glance at Elena. She only looks extremely satisfied with herself.

Your attention snaps back to Rufus when your name falls from his lips. “It’s a pleasure to have you join me this evening.”

You indulge yourself a moment. It continues to seem unbelievably discourteous that a man of his means, status, and stature should also bear the visage of a demigod. Mako has lent an unearthly refinement to his symmetry, but you’re certain that with his fair, patrician features, he would have been a celebrated beauty even if he had been born in a Lower Sector gutter.

There is no justice in this world.

You focus on not allowing your infatuation to strike you completely dumb. “I think I should be thanking you. For the invitation.”

You know you shouldn't, but it’s the easiest thing in the world to just...rest your eyes on him. He’s so damned pretty. Shorn of his usual gloves and greatcoat and swathed instead in furs, he looks less like the larger-than-life lion as which he’s portrayed in the media and more like a literal one. Your gaze stutters over the unfamiliar sight of his bare neck, roving over the unblemished skin; and of his hands, rays of woven tendon and muscle smattered with calluses and scars that remember his journey to mastering his sidearm. It’s half the surgeon and half the desiring animal in you that lingers on the soft groove where his carotid hides and wonders what it would taste like, pulsing under your tongue…

Oh, yeah, you got it bad. Literally the exposed skin of his neck is enough to have you mesmerized. You are truly, supremely fucked.

Fascinated, you watch his laryngeal cartilage nod as he speaks, barely remembering to meet his eyes by the time he finishes:

“You look lovely.”

You try not to appear too pleased and fail, a flattered smile working its way onto your mouth. “Thank you. Had to do a lot more research than I thought I would to figure out exactly what ‘Camp’ meant.”

You’re surprised when Rufus crowds in closer, displacing a complaining Reno at your side. He stops only when he’s close enough that the fine hairs along your neck stir as he whispers conspiratorially: “So did I.”

Your mind conjures up the image of him as you had been hours ago: half-dressed and hunched over a laptop at a kitchen counter strewn with rejected outfits; minimizing windows of half-finished reality TV clips and panic-clicking through contradicting beauty blogs. It’s such an absurd thought that you have to wipe tears from your eyes as the laughter bubbles out of you.

“What?” He nudges you, wearing the anticipating half-smile of someone waiting to be let in on a joke.

You shake your head, still chuckling. “Isn’t this your party?”

“Allegedly.” He shrugs, sending a shimmering ripple through the fur over his shoulders that immediately attracts your eye. This close, you can distinguish delicate rosettes trailing across the pelt, as crisp-edged as if they’d been inked there by a painter’s careful brush. The sleek guard hairs and tufted awn resemble fox fur, but you’ve never seen foxes dappled like this. Based on patterning alone, you might have said it was the pelt off a leopard or jaguar, but the hair length is too long, the texture too plush.

“Guard Hound.”

You look at him quizzically. “Hm?”

Rufus tilts his head, the dark fur purple against his skin. “It’s from a Guard Hound.”

You’d thought that the mako décor had achieved the zenith of excess, but you’ve underestimated Shinra again. Second only to the SOLDIER program, Guard Hounds are another of Shinra’s great success stories in the bioengineering sector, a carefully bred hybrid born of recombined feline and canine DNA. All the loyalty and inimitable olfactory prowess of a dog wrapped up in the lethal jaws and claws of a jaguar and topped off with an uncanny intelligence, the genetic origins of which nobody wanted to examine too closely.

As the product of pioneering biotechnology, they are also hideously expensive to produce. You’ve read that the breeding and rearing costs per head run into the seven digits.

And here is Rufus, wearing one as a goddamn scarf.

“I was going to say that I’ve never seen anything like it,” you remark, admiring with new eyes. “But now I’d bet that nobody here has ever seen anything like it.” A gross understatement. It’s a singular pièce de résistance created just for him, just for this party, so absurdly opulent and emblematic of Shinra extravagance that it will probably be displayed in a glass case in this very museum, one day.

You smile and take a risk. “It suits you.”

“Thank you,” he replies after a moment. If you didn’t know better, you’d almost say he sounded shy.

Abruptly, you remember yourself. Your fingers are almost touching, and your face is so close to his—when did you get so close to him? How long have you been leaning in like a trained spaniel eager to hear the slightest word of praise? You move back to a more professional distance, hoping that none of the attendees are sober enough to notice your misstep. Body language so obvious, you might as well have yelled across the room that you were spellbound by the most enchanting man in Midgar.

And as much as you would be gratified to adore him in close quarters for the rest of the party, you are aware that you are not the only guest at this party with whom Rufus is obligated to visit. Events as grand as these are touchstones where alliances are renewed and power is brokered, all lubricated by a generous supply of pricey alcohol. As one of the Shinra hydra’s many heads, Rufus has a part to play here entirely distinct from his reoccurring role as ‘object of your enduring affection.’

“I’m glad that we had a chance to talk,” you say, a rueful release for him to elegantly exit this conversation. “And thank you for letting me borrow Elena, Rude, and Reno for the evening. It’s wonderful to be among friends.”

His reaction isn’t what you expect. There’s a strange look on Rufus’s face: “I think my father can fend for himself.”

You tilt your head. “Oh. I didn’t realize that you had sent out separate invitations.” The guard’s words at the gate make more sense now, though—he’d called you Rufus’s ‘personal guest’ because your invitation had been from Rufus, not from Augustus. You glance over the crowd. There are some younger faces dotted through the crowd, perhaps of an age that might suit Rufus’s company. “Which are your guests?”

When Rufus remains silent, you turn back to be confronted by the startling and intent fixation of his gaze. On you. “I don’t have any other guests this evening.”

“Oh.”

And just like that, the universe tilts off its axis and plunges into the looking glass.

Contrary to what your co-workers often presumed from your icy demeanor, you’re not completely oblivious to romance. You’ve basked in the dopamine rush of courtship before, and you’ve had boyfriends, those rare men who still found you attractive once they realized that your demure façade was a disguise. It’s been years since you’ve had a suitor, though, and you can’t say you’ve missed the company of men enough to bother with the hassle of pursuing them yourself.

You’re rusty. And your amygdala and prefrontal cortex simply can’t agree on the answer to the simple question:

Is…this…a date?

“I—I—” You force your mouth closed to gather your thoughts.

What does it matter if this is a date? He is your patient. He is your boss. Since when have you been anything short of immaculate in front of your superiors?

(Since now, apparently.)

Levying your own heroic effort, you piece together a lame sentence: “I didn’t realize.”

There’s a faint scar next to his left eye that you’ve never noticed before, a little half-moon of silvery tissue that runs alarmingly close to the orbital rim. Its rapid, fluttery flexion and extension betrays an uncertainty that he would otherwise conceal so well, and when it settles, you look upon an expression that clearly has more to say:

“Do you dance, doctor?”

There are several reasonable reasons for him to ask that, you tell yourself. It is coincidence. After all, you had looked for him. You had looked, and you’d been so sure that he was nowhere in sight when the Reno-Elena-Rude coalition had strongarmed you onto the dance floors.

You had been sure…right?

Reason and panic prevail. There is definitely a possibility that you had missed him in your 500-millisecond glance over hundreds of glitzy attendees.

No. No. You absolutely cannot go out there again. Your performance had been bad enough when you’d been dancing with someone who didn’t set ablaze every oxytocin receptor in your brain. “Er, I don’t, really. I’m not much—”

“Oh, she’s great,” Elena pipes up, and for the second time that evening, you’re horrified speechless at her blatant lies. She must have suffered some kind of head injury in the past three minutes to forget the complete disaster that had just unfolded on the ballroom hardwood. You clutch at her elbow, desperate for her to cease her fictions, immediately. She turns pointedly away from you and towards Rufus, reiterating with gusto: “she’s excellent.”

There is a thin line between being a hype (wo)man and being full of shit. Elena is neck-deep in the latter. “Oh my God, Elena—Elena, please—”

“Prodigious,” Rude adds, the heartless turncoat.

“It seems there is a consensus.” The amusement written in Rufus’s mouth is touched by something else. “I’m afraid you’ve been revealed.”

More like betrayed. Thank the Six you’ve had years of experience breaking bad news, because it is high time for someone around here to be honest. “Rufus. I am not being humble when I say that I am not a good dancer. I think it’s charitable to call me a—a dancer at all.”

The urgency of your confessions is lost on him. “I haven’t heard this song in some time. It brings back memories of when…I was very young.” His eyes and mind are elsewhere, time traveling to a distant memory. “The first song I learned how to waltz.”

You tune into the background melody: Waltz No. 2 by Shostakovich. A stately melody, tinged with a melancholy out of place at an event like the Shinra gala, not that the laughing, flushed faces of the tipsy dancers would give you any indication.

And this odd song, swinging from timorous to romantic in lilting strings and dramatic swoops of brass, has inspired an unguarded wistfulness in Rufus’s face that leaves you baffled. Who in that family of death dealers and weapons contractors would ever bother teaching him how to dance? Who among them would have held his little hand, walked him through the steps for the first time with such gentleness and love that Rufus would remember it so fondly—

You search his face and suddenly see all the things that are not Shinra. Not in his father’s image.

You can feel your indignance crumbling. You have always been weak for lost things.

“I’m not…really wearing a waltzing dress,” you clutch madly at the last remaining strands of reasonable excuses. It’s true enough; silk gazar isn’t the kind of flowing, dynamic fabric that floats and flares with the dreamy revolutions of a waltz, even if Reno had managed to make it work. “Elena’s looks a lot nicer on the dance floor. And she’s by far the better dancer between us.”

Elena starts with an indignant sound of objection.

“Tell me, is it that you prefer Saint-Saëns?” A smile glimmers in Rufus’s voice. “Shall I ask them to play another?”

You freeze.

(You should have known better. There are no secrets in Shinra.)

“What do you mean?” you hear yourself ask distantly.

Rufus’s mouth curves. “I’m not asking to dance with a dress. I’m asking to dance. With you.”

Social hierarchy and your intense professional embarrassment at having a cliché attraction to your boss has never allowed you so many uninterrupted opportunities to study him up close. As you do now, you can appreciate the fine details of his live profile that no magazine cover could hope to capture: the subtle flicker of muscle at the corner of his mouth when he smiles; the touch of light at his waterline when his brow softens; the hypnotic tessellation of crypts and collarette breathing in his irises as he looks back at you.

You blink.

Oh shit, he’s looking back to you, staring at him.

Belatedly, you drop your eyes and refocus on a safe, anonymous point somewhere past his shoulder. It is only thanks to this wayward angle that you spot the unmistakable snubbed nose of a gun.

A gun in the hand of not a Turk, but a guest; a guest approaching your table at a pace too rapid to be social, eyes fixed on Rufus with the kind of flat, intractable resolution that heralds imminent violence.

Not even a guest, then. An assassin.

Stowing away your shock and fear happens on reflex, honed through years of courting death in the OR, and your head remains blessedly clear as you evaluate your circumstances.

An assassin has arrived. He is armed and nearly within point-blank range of Rufus, his presumed target.

It boils down to two possibilities: stop the assassin or stop the bullet.

The first option is a non-starter—you’re a doctor, dammit, not a Turk. You don’t have the first clue how to disarm a man, not that you feel particularly confident about your physical capability to take on an assassin. Even if you throw yourself at him, there’s still a high chance he lines up a decent shot, anyway.

So, then. Door number two.

What could you have on hand to stop a bullet, though? It’s not like you have an encyclopedic knowledge of bulletproof materials, and you sincerely doubt that any of them would be found at a posh dinner and dance soiree, even one hosted by a paranoid weapons contractor. Rude or Tseng are almost certainly wearing body armor under their suits, but you’re not about to start throwing your friends into the line of fire as human shields, even if they have demonstrated that they would lay down their lives gladly for their employer. You wouldn’t be able to live with yourself.

Time is the insurmountable here. There’s no time for you to think your way out of this pickle. No time to call for help from the Turks, the real professionals.

All you really have time left to do is step between Rufus and the muzzle of the gun as the assassin’s finger tightens on the trigger.

The deafening noise of the gunshot is more painful than the bullet. As your hands belatedly clap over your ears, there’s a staggering, wet impact to your side, as if you’ve been struck by an overripe tomato. You’ve almost convinced yourself that somehow the bullet missed you when abruptly notice a conspicuous fan of bright red blood flung dramatically all over Rufus’s nice white jacket.

Your bright red blood.

Ah, fuck.

Notes:

I always thought "crush" was an apt synonym for love. It really does feel like just that: a squeeze in your chest you can't loosen, a gravity for your gaze that you can't escape. What happens when you take a leap of faith right over the event horizon?
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"Should serving as a wingman for your boss be included in core Turk training curriculum? Please discuss in 1,000 words or less." - Tseng, probably. More than once while writing this, I sat back into my chair and really asked myself "wait am I writing a Reno/Reader fic or a Rufus/Reader rn lmao"

I'm still not really sure. Works take on a life of their own once they've had close to a decade to marinate in your hindbrain.

I ask humbly for your patience as I go through it again a million times, patch up holes, and iron things out <3 explicit depictions of gore to come. Thanks to all of you for bearing with my reckless posting. Drop me a comment below if you have time.

Take care, and see you in the next one <3

Chapter 3: endgame

Notes:

"It's not the end of the world, folks. It's just the end of the day."
- Pontypool (2008)

The room explodes into noise and motion around you. You are really mostly interested in figuring out where the blood is coming from, groping clumsily along your ribs in search of the hole that was surely there, somewhere. Your right hand stumbles into it first, fingertips coming back dip-dyed scarlet.

You crane your neck to triage it as best as you can. The wound is a surprisingly neat circle at the T4 vertebral level, midaxillary line, with no obvious exit wound. It’s bleeding, but the stream is less profuse than you’d expect and lacks the alarming pulse of an arterial leak; the lodged bullet is probably preventing any rapid exsanguination, adrenaline masking whatever pain you should be feeling. Lucky you.

The dress is probably a lost cause, though. Shame.

Satisfied that you aren’t in immediate danger of dying, you now turn your attention to the scene: if the danger is still near, if the scene has been cleared, if there are other casualties in more dire need of attention, etcetera, etcetera. Reno is among several Turks occupied with subduing the gunman, knotted around him in a dark python’s paralyzing embrace. You can still pick out the wild, helpless hatred blazing in the shooter’s eyes at you.

Oh, he has some nerve, looking at you like you were the one who’d paid him some grievous insult. As the only one who has literally and metaphorically shed blood this evening, you’re feeling entitled to a monopoly on righteous anger tonight. You know, because he fucking shot you.

You move on. The Shinra patriarch disappears behind a corner in a flicker of hideous burgundy, shielded by a small herd of Turks; you presume that Rufus, similarly, has been spirited away somewhere safe under Tseng’s protection. Elena and Rude are nowhere to be seen, either, undoubtedly carrying out some vital function to the evacuation of their employers.

Satisfied, you broaden your survey to include the rest of the partygoers. In your experience, normal people tend to either freeze or lose their minds entirely when faced with mortal peril. This pattern holds true among the SEPC oligarchy tonight. Amid the flurry of fleeing guests, you spot an older woman sitting on the floor with a line of blood oozing down the side of her head. Looking lost and scared, she grips her furs and casts terrified, searching eyes about the room.

You zero in on her like a heat-seeking missile. You’re a doctor. You can’t take incapacitate a man with your pinky like Elena or cleanly shave off a man’s eyebrow with a twenty-meter knife toss like Reno, but you can do something for the wounded. You move towards her—

“Where are you going?”

An iron grip on your bicep jerks you to a halt, lancing pain down your shoulder and igniting fire in your wounded side. It hurts. A lot. Dizzy at the sudden agony, you spin and stumble face-first into the owner of the hand wrapped around your arm.

You blink, unsure of the figure coming into focus through the haze of tears. “Rufus?”

He’s uncharacteristically disheveled: tie missing, jacket unbuttoned and askew. You’ve seen and treated him in worse, but it had been worlds away—cocooned away from prying eyes behind lead-lined walls and guarded by watchful Turks. Seeing him anything short of immaculate in public threatens the known order to your universe.

More bewilderingly, he’s now sporting his rifle. Concealing it under his voluminous greatcoat is one thing, but he’s wearing a tailored evening suit. You’re pretty sure you’d have noticed by now that he was carrying an entire rifle.

“Where were you even hiding…” The question dies on your tongue when you spot his expression.

His eyes are wild, burning brighter than usual around pupils dilated maximally by adrenaline. He’s breathing hard, shoulders rising and falling as the accessory respiratory muscles of his neck, ribs, and back work to open his lungs. A spattered arc of blood—your blood, you think woozily—rakes up the lapel of his suit and dries on his neck, where the carotid you’d been pondering earlier now races visibly under his skin.

You’ve longed to see what lied beyond that cool, poised veneer—wished to shatter that composure yourself one day—but this isn’t how you’d imagined it. A name arises, befitting this unfamiliar emotion that breaks over his face with all the subtlety of melting ice caps:

Fear.

“Rufus, are you okay?” Your cursory glance over him detects no obvious injury, but he’ll need a more comprehensive medical examination.

Preferably somewhere that isn’t here, meters away from where his would-be assassin is presently being wrestled into submission. You frown. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I shouldn’t be—” He pauses, staring. “You’ve been shot.”

“Which is why you shouldn’t be here. He might not have been working alone,” you reiterate, frown deepening. You scour the room for Tseng with growing concern; it is extremely uncharacteristic for the veteran Turk to leave his ward unattended in such a crisis. “Where’s Tseng?”

“We need to get you out of here.” Evidently summoned out of the cosmic ether at the mere utterance of his name, Tseng materializes on your other side. He continues: “Reno and Rude are securing egress. We’ll meet them on the way.”

“Yeah, get Junior out,” you concur, nudging Rufus towards the Turk with your elbow. You probably would have had more luck moving one of the enormous marble Guard Hound statues outside. Stupid mako-enhanced muscle fiber. You tried. Now that Tseng is here, convincing Rufus to leave is his problem. You have your duties to attend.

Tseng’s hand joins Rufus’s in holding you back when you move to do so.

“Doctor,” Tseng repeats slowly, the way you speak to trauma victims verging on the edge of hysteria. “We need to leave. You’re seriously injured.”

Oh.

Oh.

They were looking after you. How…unexpectedly sentimental.

“It’s not that bad,” you start, intending to explain how miraculously you’ve been spared immediate life-threatening injury when you are interrupted by a soft tickle in your chest.

The tickle slithers up from deep in your lungs and explodes into a wet cough that coats the inside of your mouth with copper. Hand flying up to your mouth, you turn away, but fat red drops slip through and rain down to join the spray on Rufus’s jacket.

“Ugh.” You just had to say something, didn’t you?

Sadly, this new development has lent some urgency to your need for medical attention. Stable thoracic injury is one thing, but hemoptysis heralds impending decompensation. There are a million things that can go wrong in the thorax, many of them rapidly fatal.

You’ve seen enough death to know that there is a familiar rhythm to dying and an equally matched counterrhythm to repelling it, so the eerie serenity that washes over you is all reflex. Your breathing slows; your mind clears. You may have never been the one dying before today, but that is no reason to start losing your cool now.

It would help, though, if you could catch your breath. Your chest feels uncomfortably tight. Air hunger—you’ve heard the term, ascribed it to old, barrel-chested smokers, but experiencing it yourself transcends the clinical sanitization of medical terminology. You are reduced to an animal gasping for air, diaphragm straining against the pressure ballooning in your chest. Oxygen-greedy muscles in your thighs spasm and burn with anaerobically generated lactic acid. Unvented carbon dioxide accumulates precipitously in your brain, sledgehammering your temples with the worst headache of your life. The room dims and flickers. Maybe lying down for a bit isn’t such a terrible idea.

Before your enervated legs dump you on the ground, an arm snakes under your neck and around your waist. Your face meets a ridge of supremely soft fur that slows your descent as you slump to the marble floor. Your limbs refuse to respond to your command, and your skull feels like it’s unscrewing from your spine. Your side aches. Your ribs feel as taut as the hide stretched over the rim of a drum.

Something about that comparison lights an epiphany in your head.

In fact, your chest feels exactly like the hide stretched over the rim of a drum. Fighting delirium, you percuss with your fingers across the lung field perforated by the bullet. The distinctive, high-pitched hyperresonance of a thoracic cavity overfilled with air sings back.

Aha.

And you’d thought you were paranoid for packing that IV kit.

You grasp for your clutch, fingers clumsily inching towards the needle peeking out of the top. It’s frustratingly just out of reach until Tseng cottons on and pushes it over to you. He’s saying something, too, but your air-starved brain has a rapidly waning bandwidth that is engaged entirely in the task of uncapping the needle tip.

You’ve bared the needle and aimed its beveled tip at the second intercostal space of your wounded side when Rufus’s hand seizes yours.

“What are you doing?” His expression is one you’re used to seeing on interns in their first code, and suddenly, you remember where you are and who your audience is. An emergent needle decompression looks barbaric, especially if performed on an awake patient. Especially especially if said awake patient is performing it on herself. It probably looks to him like you’re trying to stab yourself. It probably looks to him that you’re trying to kill yourself.

All the same, your chest needs to decompression, STAT, so explaining the physiologic intricacies of a tension pneumothorax is out of the question. With what precious little air is left in your lungs, you wheeze: “trust me.”

The dark spots across your vision fatten, and you think that you’ve miscalculated. But a millisecond later, the pressure on your wrist is gone, and you bury the needle into your chest to a sharp lance of pain.

Air escapes through the needle with a hiss, your left chest wall immediately softens, and your next breath draws like silk. Gasping, you pull the needle while keeping the catheter hubbed firmly against your skin. Tinny ringing in your ears cajoles you back to the mortal coil.

“Still with us, Doc?” queries a Reno-shaped red blur.

You nod once, too exhausted and greedy for air to waste precious breath speaking. You slowly blink your vision back into focus, teeth starting to chatter.

A broad, Chesire-cat smile spreads across the blur, relief almost a palpable ripple in the air. “Thatta girl.”

You’re know that you’re not out of the woods, though. As the overwhelming oppression of breathlessness recedes, your other senses start to report. The coppery smell of blood hangs thick and obliterating around you. You’re shivering, curling into yourself. Has the marble under you always been this freezing?

You startle a little when Rufus shifts you to pull off his jacket. It’s still warm as he slides it over your shoulders, between you and the cold stone. Then, unexpectedly, he pulls you up to droop against his shoulder, arm wrapped around you to keep you upright. You’re too grateful for the heat he radiates to question why he is willingly allowing you to touch him. Why he had reached for you.

Even his heat fails to dispel the chill that creeps its way up your limbs, though, and the growing pool of red that he’s kneeling in is the obvious culprit. You may have temporized impending death by respiratory collapse, but there is no heat in the world that can make up for the blood you’ve lost. Lungs abound in juicy arteries and veins to be torn open by wandering bullets. And unlike tension pneumothorax, massive pulmonary hemorrhage isn’t something you can patch slapdash with some spare medical supplies hoarded in a clutch.

“I got it,” Elena says breathlessly, sliding in next to Rufus. The waves of her once-perfect coif sways around her face, loosened during what must have been a dead sprint. Her arm trembles as she holds out a bright green Curaga materia. “Cast.”

Watching the golf-ball-sized orb exchange hands, the embers of something like hope sparks in you. Materia. You’d forgotten that Cure-class materia even existed because you were so accustomed to seeing the combat variants—Firaga, Blizzaga, Thundaga—embedded in Shinra weaponry or carried on SOLDIER utility belts. Most literature on materia is kept tightly locked under Shinra intellectual property licenses, and, for obvious reasons, the people who could afford Cure-class materia usually didn’t pass through your care.

The irrepressible clinician in you observes with great interest as Rufus prepares to cast, movements swift and practiced. He holds it directly against the wound’s entry site, and as the bright orb glows slightly brighter, you conjecture what will happen to the bullet still nestled in your ribcage somewhere. Will it be pushed out as the tissues close? Will it remain in place, isolated in a pocket of scar tissue? Will it be broken down and resorbed as elemental metals?

You’re beginning to wonder if you should be feeling differently when Rufus curses, the obscenity unpleasantly discordant with his delicate Upper-Sector accent. “Something’s wrong.”

“What is it?” Elena huddles closer, scanning over the wound. Her brow knits. “Why isn’t it casting?”

“I don’t know.” Rufus’s eyes dart over you. Growing slick in the unabated flow of blood, the Curaga materia slips from his grasp. Elena catches it before it can roll out of reach, but when she tries to give it back to him, Rufus hesitates.

“Rufus?” Elena’s fingers are dark and sticky as she nudges him. “We don’t have much time. Cast again.”

The instincts you honed overseeing trainee physicians awaken as you look up into Rufus’s face and scry the thoughts hiding there. This is not just hesitation; this is the frozen shock of a capable practitioner suddenly robbed of their confidence.

You’ve seen it before in a rising star of a resident who accidentally perforated an artery. He had stood there, still as a statue, as blood jetted across the room and hit the wall.  Even as a swarm of anesthesiologists descended on the scene, he stood there like the eye of the storm, watching the patient bleed to death and making no attempt to staunch the source until you’d moved to do it yourself and snapped him out of his horrified trance. The attending had told you later: everyone makes serious mistakes during their careers, but the ones who have the hardest time recovering are the ones who don’t make them often.

Clearly, Rufus has never failed at this before. And now that he has no idea what to do, for the second time this evening, he is afraid.

A conversation is happening between them, but you’re busy contemplating that you’re now two for four in the deadly diamond: hypothermia, hypocalcemia, metabolic acidosis, and coagulopathy. Every drop you bleed pushes you closer to four for four. If materia is not to be your salvation, the only things that can save you now are a cardiothoracic surgeon, a massive transfusion, and a whole lot of luck.

Fingers on your carotid pulses pull you back to reality, where Tseng frowns heavily at whatever he’s feeling. “Medivac is eight minutes out.”

Eight minutes, so at least sixteen before you reach the hospital. Including whatever time that it would take for them to actually find the source of bleeding, it’ll be an optimistic twenty-five minutes before you can stop bleeding.

You know, with a surgeon’s surety, that you don’t have twenty-five minutes. You probably have less than ten.

“Too long.” You push the words out through a mouth that feels full of cotton. “I’ll bleed out before—”

“Stop.” Rufus’s fingers whiten over the makeshift compress. “Just—tell me what I can do to help you.”

(Staring at the peaks of his knuckles, it occurs to you that this is the longest that you have ever seen Rufus willingly endure physical contact with anyone.)

You pause. Somewhere under the forced mask of calm lies an emotion that you can’t quite place. Not fear anymore, though. A pressurized urgency.

“Hey.” He shakes your shoulder. “Tell me.”

Desperation. That’s what it is; that’s what you see in the tense set of his jaw and feel in his grip over your wounded side.

You go to speak the answer—“nothing”—but it catches in your throat. You have seen this scenario play to its end on trauma call, blood leaving the body faster than you can replace it. You know what happens next. But for all your medical rationality, even you don’t want to say the truth out loud:

Nothing. Nothing can help me. I am going to die.

By the Six, by all the Eikons, by the Lifestream itself, you do not want to die.

Trying to avoid doing something embarrassing like cry, you look at everything but the desperation in Rufus’s face that calls to your own. The SOLDIERs and Turks have restored order with true professional efficiency, having hauled away the assassin and now chaperoning out those too injured or infirm to move. The First Class SOLDIERs are conspicuously absent, as is Tseng; all of them undoubtedly deployed to secure the venue grounds. The skirt of her dress tied roughly above her ankles, Elena is calling for a doctor. I’m a doctor, you think hazily, offended that she didn’t ask you first.

“Not you.” Reno gives you a tight smile as he pops into your field of view, bangs more ruffled than usual. “And how’s our favorite doctor doin’?” You vaguely feel him squeeze your shoulder. “Hangin’ in there? Tseng’s gone to light a fire under someone’s ass.”

Somehow, it is Reno who loosens the knot in your tongue. You’re struggling to spell your demise to Rufus Shinra, this complicated man who defies the neat boxes into which you’ve organized your life. You can’t even admit it to yourself. But to Reno, you can. Reno, whose greatest kindness to you has always been his naked honesty, has seen enough violence in his lifetime for you to confess the truth freely, if he hasn’t already guessed it himself.

“Reno. I’m going to die.”

Rufus immediately objects—“stop saying that”—and Reno does not. As you suspected, he knows; he had known even before you had said anything.

He squeezes your shoulder. “Two minutes.”

You feel relieved. It’s done. You’ve spoken the truth, set it free in the world to plague someone other than yourself, and the tension seeps out of your bones. Whatever else happens now, you are as uninvolved and unaffected by it as a cirrus layer passing over a cloudgazer.

“The doctor said it herself. We aren’t going to make it to a hospital in time.”

“You’d better not be fucking suggesting that we give up—”

“How far did we get with the Styx project?”

From where you’re leaned, head tipped back, you’re noticing the ceiling for the first time you’d come into the venue. Past the nets of strung-up mako bulbs, a gargantuan mural is faintly visible.

Hello again, Lady Lunafreya. The Oracle reclines in repose on high, every line of her divine face depicted as beautifully in fresco as it is in marble. The scene unfurling across the ceiling here, though, is different than the turbulent moment of painful triumph portrayed in the fountain outside. This is the moment of their wedding, consecrated in the afterlife by the gods as a reward for all their separation and heartache throughout their lives. She lays her head on her husband’s shoulder, eyes closed and smiling, her arm woven through his, seraphically content to join her husband in sleep.

Why, though? Much as you loathe how she’s constantly depicted as weeping or mourning in artwork, her story doesn’t give her many reasons to be happy. She was robbed of her parents, her birthright, and her future. She roamed hostile territories as a fugitive for her final year of life, pleading favor from indifferent gods for her fiancée’s doomed journey. And for all her labor of love, in place of a wedding ring, she received a blade in the heart. After all that, why? Why would someone with her story be happy?

And then, impossibly, she opens her eyes.

Lunafreya is the vision of elegance in motion, her hair cascading around her shoulders as she lifts her golden head to fix you with her serene gaze. She slowly casts a deliberate look over at her sleeping husband, her expression burning blindingly with love, and then back to you again. She doesn’t have a voice—of course she doesn’t have a voice, she’s a painting, and paintings can’t speak any more than they can suddenly come to life—but her words come through crystal clear to you all the same as you read the careful movement of her lips:

You know why.

“Call Hollander.”

“Holland—Abraham Hollander? That washout from S&R? Why?”

“Just call him, Reno. He owes me a favor. Tell him I’m calling it in.”

“…roger that.”

You blink when someone’s shadow passes over you, and the spell breaks. Lunafreya is once more dreaming beside her husband in static fresco, no more likely to commune with you than the statues of the Six you’d passed on your way into the ballroom.

Looking upon her does makes you a little sleepy, too. Between the massive blood loss and hypothermia, you think you’ve earned it. You’re drifting, ready to follow her lead, when you’re returned unwillingly to your body at the touch of Rufus sliding an arm under your shoulders.

“Go on ahead. I’ll carry her.”

Carry? Nobody seems to notice you trying to voice your strenuous objection to the plan. The shame at the thought of being hauled around like a sack of flour by your patient-employer-maybe-more-once-upon-a-time makes you wish you could hurry up and die faster.

It isn’t until he lifts you off the marble that you realize that you aren’t going to be hauled like a sack of flour; you’re being swept off your feet in a princess carry. An involuntary mewl of pain escapes you when the motion jars your side, and you stifle yourself immediately, mortified that you were physically capable of producing such a pitiful sound. You had a reputation to uphold, godsdammit. You wouldn’t have chosen to die today, but if you had to die, you were going to die calm and collected and dignified.

That resolution dissolves against the tantalizing warmth of his body. The primal relief of glorious, living heat soaking back into you has you blindly seeking its source, and your face presses into the hollow between his neck and shoulder. His carotid drums soothingly in your ear, kissing your temple with every steady beat.

You’re comfortable. Is it so wrong to want to die comfortable?

Someone calls your name.

You ignore it. You are dying. You can spend these last moments selfishly.

Your name sounds again, softer but more insistent this time. “Hey.” You’re jostled, reigniting the pain across your side. “You’re not going to die.”

Groggily, you open your eyes. The world blurs past in a nauseating paste of murky colors. The only thing you can make out distinctly is a pair of fixed, glowing eyes floating over you.

Your next shuddering cough brings up another mouthful of blood that barely clears your airway. You’re too drained to do anything but lie quietly as someone wipes the trail of gore from your mouth.

“You’re going to be fine,” Elena reassures. Her warm, living hand burns against your frigid forehead. “You’re going to be okay.”

You wonder if this is some secret Shinra incantation that will come true if repeated often enough. You’ve heard of phoenix downs and the miracles they can perform, but they’re so vanishingly rare that it’s mostly treated as an urban legend among medical professionals. A semi-mythical luxury distributed sparingly to the most valuable military assets in the SOLDIER program and secreted in deep, underground family vaults by the ultrawealthy. Certainly not at the disposal of likes of you.

“We’re here,” Rufus murmurs, probably for your benefit. But where is here?

The sharp clasp of Rufus’s watch digs briefly into your shoulder before you’re delivered into what feels inexplicably like water. Warm water. It’s deliciously rejuvenating to your cooling flesh, and you’re taken by surprise at the second wind that drives enough consciousness back into you to wonder where exactly you are.

You search the gloom in vain for a recognizable landmark. You’re in water, somewhere, and they can’t have brought you far from the main ballroom. Have they brought you to a pool? Maybe the fountain? Why? You wonder deliriously if they’re planning on giving you a burial at sea, like the legendary warriors of old. You’re no legendary warrior, but you suppose anything else is better than the indignities that went into preparing a body for the proceedings of a traditional open-casket funeral.

“Embalming looks like it sucks, anyway,” you console yourself. Liquid lapping at the corners of your mouth garbles the last few syllables.

Before you can take your first amniotic breath of oblivion, a palm sweeps under your skull and lifts everything above your shoulders clear of the water. The full weight of your neck resting against a steady wrist, you fight your increasingly heavy eyelids. Rufus’s eyes, even more strikingly luminous with mako in the dim environs, swim into view. You glare at him for interrupting your attempt to make like Ophelia and salvage a decorous death in the deep.

“You are not going to die,” Rufus insists with annoying conviction.

With what breath you have left, you prepare to inform him how pigheadedly mulish he’s being.

And then another thought strikes you.

It’s possible that he’s not refusing to acknowledge reality; he may simply not understand the concept. You’ve worked for him long enough to witness the Turks’ uncanny way of surviving overwhelmingly stacked odds by the skin of their teeth and—limping and bleeding but alive—returning to his side, even in the face of all adversity. Sworn stewards that they were, Turks seemed unable even to die without express permission to do so.

And then there was Rufus’s own impossible luck. You’ve reviewed the data about Hojo’s internecine experimentation with mako; 45% of all his subjects died over the course of their treatment, and mortality soared to 80% in those who exhibited early signs of mako toxicity. Rufus had shown every sign of acute mako poisoning early in his course and, improbably, not only survived but thrived in his newly augmented body.

Accustomed to these miracles anomalously abundant in his life, he might simply lack a full understanding of the permanence of death. He’s evaded certain death countless times before, after all.

Shinras never bleed or cry. Enthusiastically circulated by SEPC’s propaganda machine, the half-reverent, half-fearful mantra is as much a part of Midgar’s culture as the Plate or the mako reactors. Having attended to Rufus Shinra in his most mortal moments, you are one of very privileged few who could claim to know for fact that it’s false. But sometimes—like now, studying the mako-perfected features of his beautiful, ageless face illuminated in ambient green light—you think that maybe Rufus himself believes it’s true.

By the end, maybe it will be.

“We can’t all be Shinra, Rufus.” Emboldened by your impending demise, you reach up and mold your hand to the side of his face. Your face is numb, but you think you’re smiling. “Some of us are only human.”

Unexpectedly, Rufus presses hard into your touch, the angle of his mandible slotting so surely into your palm that you wonder if he’s imagined the motion before. He leans in until he’s locked close enough to you in this slanted embrace that you feel as if he is about to lift you out of this dip and into the waltz he’d proposed what seems like ages ago. His mouth opens, and for a moment you think, crazily, that he might kiss you.

But he only hovers there, lips parted millimeters from yours and breathing as if the air is richer for having passed through your lungs first. It’s strange; such proximity would have sent you running for the hills a half hour ago, but now, with the end so near, it’s easy to bask in the undivided attention from someone you like.

No, there’s no point in lying to yourself about it now: someone you love. You’ve literally taken a bullet for him. Your years of toiling and training, your pride and aspirations—and at the moment of truth, you’d given it all up without a second thought to save him. Like the noble Lady Lunafreya, you’ve up and died for a man, and you aren’t even mad about it.

Not mad is a disingenuous description. You’re glad that he’s safe; you’re relieved that it was you instead; you’re…you’re happy.

(Lunafreya smiles.

You know why.)

Only, unlike Lunafreya, you’ve done all this for someone who doesn’t even love you back. This, more than anything else you’ve suffered this awful evening, sends the tears spilling from your eyes.

The calloused pad of Rufus’s thumb swipes them away. “So even my dear, brave doctor can feel fear, at the end.”

You freeze. You can’t breathe, and it’s not because of the gaping hole in your chest.

‘My dear, brave doctor’?

“I am not afraid, Rufus.”

His hand ghosts along your face. “Then whatever are these tears for?”

Something has changed. Somewhere along the walk from the ballroom to whatever grotto to which he’s brought you now, he has found purpose. Fear and desperation from before are gone, replaced by the imperturbable calm of someone who has made a difficult decision and is committed to seeing it through until the bitter end.

“I got shot,” you say finally in your defense.

“You did. Instead of me.” He speaks what you’ve done into reality, the act sounding foreign and heroic from another’s mouth: “You chose your death over mine.”

It’s oddly embarrassing to be faced with it. “I thought you said I wasn’t dying.”

“You are dying.” His eyes reflect green light. Peculiar, fluorescent green light coming from the waters below you. “But you are not going to die.”

It dawns on you like a nuclear sunrise. You know this green. You’ve seen it before, sealed in corrosion-proofed glass columns in Hojo’s lab and drip-fed into SOLDIERs’ veins.

Mako. You’re bathing in mako. The eitr of death, resurrection, and godhood.

You seize his wrist with strength that you didn’t know you still possessed—no, strength that you know you didn’t possess until you’d been dumped in a vat of mako. Since the moment you’ve entered the pool, mako has been busily knitting your flesh and bone back together with molecular precision; your second wind had been more than just a chemical trick of the mind. Even now, you can see the puckered edges of a scrape on your wrist slowly drawing closed, like someone is tugging a zipper across the wound.

“Rufus, what have you…” But you know what he’s done. There are two approaches to mako exposure therapy described to produce viable results. The SOLDIER program is built on the first: calculated doses delivered in a stepwise outpatient fashion over time, modeled after chemotherapy.

The second is so rarely practiced that you only ever found one report of it, published by a disgraced researcher from Banora whose name you cannot recall. You’d heard that even Hojo had turned his nose up at it for poor research methodology, and it was one of the few times you’d agreed with the man. The paper had described submerging the subject into high-concentration mako baths as life support until the subject’s body adapted to accept the toxic levels of mako.

Or died trying.

“The STYX is finished priming,” Rude’s disembodied voice reports from somewhere nearby. “You should get out, sir. The pool’s about to reach criticality, and your last dose was only two weeks ago.”

“Yeah, boss, let her rest in peace.” The absurdity of Reno’s terrible, off-color pun tears wet laughter out of your lungs, even as Elena snarls, ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’

His comment touches on your point, though. You have seen the results of Hojo’s failed projects—tortured obelisks of mutated flesh that recognize nothing of their past lives and know nothing but blind violence, their very existence sacrilegious to the soul that had inhabited it before.

That is what you fear most: to be added to the collection of Hojo’s grotesque meat puppets. You do not want your corpse reanimated by mako and enslaved to that loathsome excuse of a scientist, brutalizing innocents at his command. You have lived your entire life in service to the care of others, and you will not have your legacy—however unfinished and insignificant it is—profaned in the thirteenth hour by the will of that butcher. You would gladly rather return to dust.

“Rufus,” you breathe, not missing how he draws in closer to hear you. “Hojo—”

“Hojo doesn’t know about this place.” He understands now, slipping his hand out of your slackening fingers and wrapping it around your wrist. “It’s a private lab. I had it built under the museum’s generators after you told me that you could titrate mako better than he could. We had planned…” He pulls a wet lock of hair out of your eyes. “It doesn’t matter now.”

A strange wave of surprised flattery rolls through you. You had said that. Mostly in a blind fit of righteous fury, but you did remember saying it. You just didn’t know that Rufus had trusted it so implicitly that he would take such committed action upon your single declaration. Trusted you so implicitly.

Sitting here on the knife edge of your mortality, you are beginning to suspect that Rufus has had a great many thoughts concerning you, of which you have been blissfully unaware.

“The Turks will be the only ones watching over you here,” he continues. “It’s safe here. You can rest.”

‘Secret,’ ‘safe’—these are promises that nobody can keep, least of all the heir to the Shinra empire. Hojo has spies in the company, too, and there is always the chance that he discovers this place, commandeers your body, and turns you into something monstrous. There is always the chance that even this isn’t enough. There is always the chance that you die.

Whether through keen observation or preternatural intuition, Rufus senses your hesitance. “You saved me.” The green in his eyes holds the promise of second chances. Of rebirth. “Now let me save you.”

There is always the chance that you live.

(Maybe, just one more time, it’ll be ok to trust someone else.)

“Alright, Rufus.” You close your eyes. “Save me.”

The world unfurls in a sonic landscape. Enormous generators hum like a hive. Glass vessels quietly rattle and chime as mako gurgles through them. The Turks’ murmurs echo and fold in on themselves like a tesseract of ghost voices, but amid it all you hold fast to the most human metronome of them all beating a tattoo on the back of your neck: lub-dub. Lub-dub.

Hair tickles your cheek. The last thing you hear before your ears and lungs fill with mako is your name pillowed in a sigh:

“I’ll be waiting.”

You sleep for a long time.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

When you wake, he is there.

Notes:

Rufus Shinra is a man solidly grounded in this life, who does not know what it means to go gentle into that good night. The kind of man to stare down an alien titan like the Diamond Weapon from the top of his ivory tower; and when knocked from it, the kind of man who labors to reform an empire from its ashes.

The kind of man who would view death - not just for himself, but also for the ones bound to him - as an option and politely but resolutely decline every time: "no, thank you."

I tried to play the idea of this as an inversion of the tried-and-true trope of the martyr hero, as conveniently modeled in Final Fantasy XV by both Lunafreya and Noctis. Both of them walked tall into their doom because they gracefully accepted their predetermined roles. In my interpretation, Rufus (first of all, not a hero) would be the type to look at that sort of sacrifice and say "mm nah fuck that, I'm going to find a scenario where I get to live" and then find another path. No matter how deep into the mor(t)al twilight that path might wind.

Hope you all enjoyed this AU vision of a possible endgame for primum non nocere. That series is still in its extreme infancy (and is ongoing), so please consider this to be an AU ending of that series. Non-canon-compliant within my own non-compliant continuity, I know, I know...so meta.

Penny for your thoughts in the comments. See you back in primum non nocere.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of primum non nocere