Chapter Text
It's stress. That's what everyone tells him.
His mother is the first one, and the one who most consistently extends this explanation. She comes into his bedroom, after Rufus has cried for a while, and says soothing things to him. He clings to her, burying his face in her dress, and cries again.
"Darling," she says, smoothing down his hair, "it's okay. He doesn't mean it. He loves you. He's just under a lot of stress right now. Shhhh, it's okay. Don't cry."
Rufus doesn't understand what she's saying; he's not quite five years old. He doesn't know what stress is, only that his father has frightened him, and it isn't the first time. He doesn't even know what he did to make his father so angry. He was excited, chattering about the trip to the zoo that he and his mother had taken that day, eager to share his excitement with his father.
But instead of smiling with him, his father had exploded with rage, telling Rufus to Shut up, shut up, you worthless little shit, aren't you ever quiet, and now Rufus sobs into his mother's embrace.
After a time, she pushes him gently back, making him sit up straight on the bed. "He loves you," she tells Rufus again, and wipes his face clean of salt. "Always remember that. He doesn't mean to yell at you."
Later, Rufus's father speaks gently to him, too, and asks him about the trip to the zoo and the exotic animals he saw there. Rufus is unable to recapture most of his earlier excitement, but is able to describe the trip. His father smiles and tousles his hair, and tells Rufus, "I love you."
"I love you, too," says Rufus, with his child's lisp.
By the time Rufus is eight, he has learned to keep his voice low when his father is around. That doesn't always help, because things sometimes set the man off that Rufus can't predict ahead of time, but being loud and excited is guaranteed to trigger an explosion. Rufus is never loud and excited when his father is home.
He has a tutor now, and his father asks him about his lessons at dinner every evening. Rufus is very interested in science, but after the first few animated descriptions of his science lessons his father begins to express disapproval. "You don't need to know that kind of nonsense," says the man. "We have a whole department for that."
Rufus is sensitive to his father's moods, and after that he no longer brings up the topic. The lessons still excite him, but he keeps his excitement to himself. He does not describe looking through a microscope at a drop of water, and all of the bizarre squirming life hidden in the drop. He does recount it when his tutor explains that the sun does not actually rise and cross the sky at all, but the planet itself instead spins and makes it appear that way, but he keeps the detail minimal, just a flat description of the lesson. As for the elation he feels at understanding this profound fact, he keeps that concealed and does not share it.
There is an entire universe of knowledge out there, and Rufus can feel himself on the fringes of it, barely brushing the edge. Every time his tutor gives him a new morsel of information about the way the world works, he devours it and finds that he wants more. He wants to know everything; he wants to understand everything. His tutor shows him a picture book full of fishes and sea life, and tells him that one of the fishes is not a fish at all but a mammal, like a cow or a person. Rufus is fascinated, and wants to know it all: what is a mammal, why does such a creature mimic a fish, why does it live in the sea instead of on land, can we go see one? He is shown that if common alcohol is poured into water, one cup of each turns into less than two cups of the combination, and wants to know why, and what is a molecule, and how does chemistry work.
But his father is not interested in such things, and Rufus knows that he does not want Rufus to be interested, either. His father wants Rufus to learn boring things, like math. Rufus's tutor forces him to learn math anyway, but it is dry, uncreative, a dead thing on paper. It is the structure of the world that fires his imagination.
One day, there is one of those unpredictable explosions: Rufus is describing his lessons in as little detail as he can (so that his father will not discover about the bean-vine-growing experiment that he and his tutor started today), and his father suddenly turns red and slams his fists on the table. "Are you an idiot or something?" he demands, and then he stands up and slams the table again. "What the hell is wrong with you? Are you stupid?"
Rufus has no idea why his father would think that, but the sudden rage frightens him and he begins to stammer incoherently. His father rises, and so does Rufus's mother, moving in between the two of them, but his father just throws her aside and a moment later is towering over Rufus.
"Are you broken in the head?" his father screams, and he grabs Rufus by the arm and starts to shake him. "Do you know how much I'm paying for that tutor of yours? Do you?"
Rufus does not, and tears are rising in his eyes; the grip on his arm is bruising, and his arm and shoulder are being yanked painfully back and forth. "I-I-I-I ..." is all he can say. His mother is clinging to his father's arm, her voice raised, trying to pull him away, but his father just shakes harder.
"What am I spending all that money on? You're not learning a Gaiadamned thing!" There is probably more to that thought, but Rufus interrupts by starting to cry. He watches with horror as his tears cause his father go momentarily crazed with fury; a moment later he is on the floor, with his ears ringing and the side of his face numb. "Stop crying," his father is yelling. "You're like a Gaiadamned baby!"
Rufus's mother finally gets his father dragged away, and he turns on her. "This is your fault!" the man screams, as Rufus lays on the floor, stunned and trying to pull himself together. "You're good for nothing, and so is he!" She pleads with him, and he strikes her as well but maybe not as hard.
"Stop it," she cries, and her voice is shaking. "Please, don't take it out on him! We'll just fire Reynolds and find someone else ..."
"That won't help if he doesn't learn," says his father, and he strikes Rufus's mother again. "He has to learn. I can't have a blubbering idiot for a son!"
"He does the best he can! Please, stop, please calm down ..."
"I am calm!"
Rufus is kept inside for the next two weeks and away from visitors, while the dark bruise on his face heals. Every time his father catches sight of him, the man starts to look angry, so Rufus keeps away as much as possible.
When Rufus goes to his mother for comfort, she provides it. "Don't be too hard on him," his mother tells him, her voice low and gentle. "He's under a lot of pressure right now. You don't really know what's going on with the company. If you did, you'd understand. He works very hard to give us the life we have." She strokes his hair, and adds, "You shouldn't cry in front of him, Rufus. It just makes him angry."
It's only when the mark on his face is gone that his father corners him, sits down with him, and his father's voice, too, is now gentle. "Rufus," he says, "you're going to run the company some day. You'll need to know things. You'll have to be able to understand what people are saying to you when they report to you. You'll have to know enough to tell when they're lying to you and when they're telling you the truth. There will be some things you need to keep to yourself, so you have to be able to run the numbers and figure things out on your own."
"Yes, father," says Rufus, because there's nothing else for him to say.
"Your mother and I are going to send you to a school," his father says. "You'll learn the things you need to know there. You're going to have to work very hard, and be very smart. You have to make me proud."
"Yes, father. I'll make you proud."
His father kisses him on the head, and smiles at him. "I know you will."
The bean-growing experiment is never completed; the plants die in their boxes, un-cared-for. Rufus never sees his tutor again.
The school is located in the countryside outside Midgar, and Rufus stays there during the week, coming home on the weekends. The school teaches him math, reading and literature, economics, and history. There are no microscopes to examine the hidden world of miniature life, and no telescopes to behold the splendor of the heavens.
There are other boys, however, and there are Turks. The Turks come with Rufus - two of them at first, and later, when the school is deemed secure, just one at a time. A Turk accompanies Rufus to the school, stays there with him all week, and returns with him for the weekend; the next week, a different Turk does the same. They are omnipresent, always somewhere in the background wherever Rufus goes. They call him sir.
It is perhaps the Turks who keep the other boys at bay the first few days, prevent them from even attempting to hold a conversation with Rufus, but it is Rufus who keeps them at bay after that. The first child to hazard an approach to the President's son is met with silence, as Rufus has no experience with other children and has no idea how to make friends or even why he would want them. The second child meets the same wall. After that, no one attempts to talk to Rufus. They merely talk about him behind his back, and make sure he can hear whenever they can manage it.
It's Tseng - seventeen years old, too fresh on the job to know what is Turk business and what isn't - who brings up this problem with Veld. "He doesn't have any friends at school," Tseng reports. "The only time the other kids interact with him at all is when they tease him."
Veld hears him out as Tseng describes Rufus's isolation at school, and then says, "There's nothing we can do."
"Director, surely there's ..."
Veld raises a hand to cut him off. "You can't force the other boys to make friends with him. How would you even try?"
Tseng hadn't really thought that far before coming to his boss. "Maybe ... maybe President Shinra ..."
Again, Veld cuts him off. "The President would not want to be bothered with something like this. I suggest you do not bring it up with him."
Tseng doesn't. Rufus endures the snide comments made around him, never at him, but always just within earshot. No one does anything. Tseng, however, tries to talk with Rufus during the drives to and from school. Sometimes Rufus will talk, and sometimes Tseng is met with complete silence.
When Rufus goes home each weekend, he is required to describe the week's lessons to his father, who sometimes listens with apparent approval, and who at other times becomes furious for reasons Rufus never quite understands. He does not strike Rufus on the face again, but hard shakes are frequent when he's in a poor mood. The violence is accompanied by shouted insults, little shit, waste of money, idiot, wish you'd never been born, and it leaves behind ugly marks on Rufus's arms. He wears long-sleeved shirts to hide them.
Rufus's mother is again the one to console him, although Rufus is learning not to cry, and again it is the stress that she emphasizes. "There are a lot of things going on right now," she tells Rufus. "Just ... just don't do anything to make him angry. All right?"
Sometimes Rufus's father is angry at her instead. Sometimes Rufus is wakened late in the evening by the sounds of shouting elsewhere in the house. He is sure that it is about something he has done, and he tries very hard to be calm and obedient, and to keep his voice low around his father. Often it works, and his father is full of smiles and affection. Occasionally it doesn't.
At the end of the term Rufus's grades are sent home, and Rufus expects his father to be pleased. His father, however, is not pleased. "What the hell is this?" the man yells, showing Rufus the single A-minus on his transcript. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Please," says Rufus's mother. "He did so well ..."
This earns her a glare. "There are no prizes for second place." The glare is turned on Rufus. "Do you hear me? Second place is a loss, and it makes you a loser."
"But ..." Rufus is about to defend himself. He did not place second; nobody else got grades better than his! "I'm not ..."
His attempt is cut short by the dark clouds that cross his father's face in an instant. "Are you talking back to me?" his father screams, and then without waiting for an answer he strips Rufus's pants off and whips him viciously with his belt. Rufus also screams, but with pain, and he cries, and his father beats him harder for crying.
"No son of mine cries," his father tells him, "and no son of mine gets an A-minus." Rufus's mother cries, though, sitting off to one side and sobbing because she can't stop what's happening.
When his father is finished, his backside is covered in sticky blood, and his father gives him a few final lashes for having ruined the belt by bleeding on it.
Tseng finds out the next day, when he collects Rufus to take him back to school; Rufus can't sit down in the car. In the back of the limo, Tseng gets the story out of him, slowly and in pieces, because Rufus doesn't want to talk about it at first. Afterward he lays on his belly across one of the seats in silence while the order of the world rearranges itself within Tseng's mind.
The following weekend, Tseng takes Rufus back home. Tseng meets again with Veld, who confirms that President Shinra can be short-tempered, but reaffirms that this is not Turk business. He looks out his office window while he says it, and Tseng knows that he would do something if he could.
At the same moment, President Shinra is sitting with his son in his bedroom, explaining that he was simply shocked to see the less-than-perfect grade on Rufus's transcript and lost control for a minute. "You have to be the best at everything," he tells Rufus. "I just want you to be the best you can be."
"Yes, father," says Rufus, uncomfortable, still in pain when he sits, and terrified of saying the wrong thing. Even hard work, it seems, might trigger his father's fury.
His father kisses him on the head, and says, "Come on. I bought you something and I want you to see it."
He takes Rufus outside Midgar. It's Rufus's first trip in a helicopter. When he realizes that they're going by chopper, Rufus becomes excited, but he quickly remembers himself and crushes his excitement before it can show. He presses his face against the glass of the window as they fly, marveling at how far away the ground is, how perfect and smooth.
They land near a stable, painted clean red-and-white and surrounded by fields with white fences. Rufus's father meets with a man dressed in tidy jeans and unmarked boots, with wild white hair under a straw hat, while Rufus stands near the chopper with Tseng. Then they go around the stable and into the paddock to see Rufus's present.
The chocobo is taller at the hip than Rufus is altogether; her feathers are down-soft and deep gold. She lowers her head to inspect him, and then opens her mouth and feels Rufus's shoulder with her beak and tongue. Despite the power in that beak she is gentle, and only explores and does not bite, but Rufus is alarmed and doesn't want to show it, so he stands stock-still. The barn manager guffaws and gives Rufus some greens to feed to the bird, and within a few minutes Rufus is stroking the animal's neck, charmed by her coos and the way she rubs her face against his arm. The chocobo is trusting, and free with her affection.
"She likes you," says the barn manager, and Rufus turns shining eyes to his father.
"She's really mine?" he asks.
"Yes." Rufus's father smiles, full of generosity. "Bring that grade up and you'll get riding lessons."
The chocobo is registered under the name Seven Sails (by Seven League Boots, out of Smooth Sailing), but Rufus names her Sunny. The barn staff follow his lead.
The next two weekends Rufus asks to visit his chocobo, and his father gets the Turks to arrange for a helicopter each time. The weekend after that his father is irritable again, finding fault in Rufus's table manners, so Rufus doesn't ask to see the chocobo for fear that the request might trigger his father's anger. The weekend following that one his father is still touchy, so Rufus again does not bother him with wanting to see a bird.
However, his father falls into another rage at the end of the day, calling Rufus an ungrateful wretch who obviously doesn't appreciate a valuable present since he hadn't so much as asked after the chocobo in two weeks. Rufus tries to explain himself, and is again punished with the belt for talking back.
His father threatens to have the chocobo butchered and served up for dinner. Rufus, half naked and already bloodied, bursts into tears and his father flies into a blind rage. Rufus is beaten raw and locked into his bedroom for the rest of the evening. He falls asleep sobbing into his pillow, his backside throbbing.
The next morning his father gently explains that he expected Rufus to take an interest in the bird, which has the finest bloodlines and is a daughter of champions. It had been a very expensive purchase, and it hurt him when Rufus didn't even ask after the chocobo for two weeks. He does not actually say he's sorry for what he did or the things he said, but he does say that he should not have lost control.
It's almost like an apology, and Rufus takes it as such. He forgives his father, and says that he would very much like to see his chocobo. The Turks take him that same afternoon; the chocobo is alive and un-butchered, and Rufus buries his face in the animal's warm feathers.
Rufus works hard, and the term ends with no A-minuses on his transcript. His father glows and praises him, and Rufus basks in his approval. The next weekend, when he comes home, arrangements have been made for riding lessons. One lesson a week, at first, but Rufus soon successfully begs for two, one on each weekend day. He enjoys the activity and exercise, and the time he spends with his chocobo; he needs to stand on a block to mount because she's so tall, but the animal warks when she sees him and scratches at the paddock to reach him. She never finds any fault in him. Rufus feels loved, unreservedly.
The lessons get him out of the house.
It is at this time that Veld decides to put Tseng with Rufus as much as possible. He is the youngest Turk, closer to Rufus in age than anyone else in the department, and Veld thinks that Rufus gets along best with Tseng. Veld does not consult anyone else in this decision or bring it up with Tseng; no one can object to or overrule a decision they don't know has been made.
When Rufus turns ten, his father moves the family from their house on the edge of the Sector Three plate to a suite within the Shinra Tower. "It's time you start learning how the company works," his father tells him. Rufus is removed from school, and a new tutor is hired. He is excited at first (although he hides it), because he thinks that maybe the science lessons will now resume, but that doesn't happen. The new tutor sticks to the same subjects as the school.
The riding lessons continue, although the days change; instead of Saturday and Sunday, they now take place on Saturday and Wednesday. Rufus and Sunny are learning dressage, with Sunny getting lessons from the trainer separately from Rufus. She is becoming a powerful bird, both fast and controlled, and Rufus is never happier than when he's on her back. Veld is also ordered to start Rufus on some firearms training. He assigns this to Tseng. Rufus is too young to control a pistol, so Tseng starts him first on a small rifle.
On Mondays Rufus is escorted around the building, shadowing different executives and visiting different departments, and Tseng is his near-constant companion. Rufus talks to Tseng more than he used to, asking him things, seeking his good opinion; Tseng is always there, after all, and always knows what Rufus has seen and heard, so Rufus can always talk to him without having to explain anything first.
The department visits are generally intimidating. The staff are uncomfortable with the President's son, not knowing how much will be reported back to the President, and the department heads think that explaining their business to a ten-year-old is humiliating. Rufus comes to generally dread Mondays. It is only the Space Research Department that proves interesting to Rufus, lighting his latent love of science. The actual Science Department, on the other hand, disturbs him. The head of the department, Hojo, looks at Rufus the way Rufus once looked through a microscope at hydra and amoebae, and speaks to Rufus as though he is too stupid to understand simple words.
Rufus also visits the Department of Administrative Research, and finds it to be unexpectedly full of Turks. Rufus has never really thought before about where the Turks come from, and is shocked to discover that they have a series of offices just like all the other company divisions. He knows all the Turks of course, but they are more relaxed here in their home territory. They are polite and welcoming, and more than pleased to show Rufus everything. They answer his questions without making him feel as though he is a waste of time. One of the women feeds him her home-cooked lunch. They all call him sir, just as they do when escorting him, but the word is used with a warmer tone.
When Rufus leaves he is happy, but he does not understand why, because he has never had friends.
Rufus is careful when he reports this department visit to his father, fearing that his enjoyment will mean that he will be forbidden from ever returning. Unexpectedly, his father is pleased by his rapport with the Turks. "Maybe I'll make you a Vice President over the department," his father tells him. He intends it as a jest, but Rufus does not realize this and thinks it is a serious statement.
The next day, during his shooting lesson with Tseng, he mentions what his father said, and because he believes it to be serious Tseng does as well. Tseng, in turn, brings up the possibility with Veld. Veld thanks Tseng for the information and says nothing else about it, and thinks to himself about what it might mean if that were to actually occur.
In the Shinra Tower, people sometimes talk about a war that has recently started. The talk is always distant, the war something that happens somewhere else, to other people. Several departments are involved in designing weapons and training SOLDIERs, but the weapons and SOLDIERs are sent elsewhere to be used, overseas, far away. This war is not a very interesting thing to Rufus, and he tends to just ignore it.
Rufus's parents start to bring him along to social and political functions. For the most part these are dinners, frequently held in the Tower but sometimes elsewhere, where many people make long speeches and talk about things Rufus neither cares about nor fully understands. They usually take place late in the evening, and Rufus falls asleep at the first one; his father is incensed when they get home, because everyone could see the Shinra heir napping inelegantly at the head table and it humiliated him. His father shouts, and Rufus is shaken and flung to the floor. His parents continue to argue about it after Rufus flees the room.
Later, his mother comes to his bedroom to talk to him; she, too, has marks darkening on her arm. "You have to remember who you are," she tells him. "You're Rufus Shinra. One day you'll be the wealthiest man on the planet, and these people will be coming to you for money. You must be presentable to them."
"I'm sorry, mother," says Rufus. He hadn't known, and the food had been good, and that and the late hour had made him so sleepy.
"Your father wants what's best for you, what's best for us. You must behave like a gentleman at these functions."
"Yes, mother."
He does not fall asleep in front of strangers again. Not even when it is very late and he is very bored. Whenever he is tempted, he has only to glance over at his father; the man always seems to know when Rufus is getting close to nodding off, and Rufus can see the threat in his eyes. Do it, the threat says, and when we get home you're going to get it.
Rufus has to learn to dance, to smile when he doesn't mean it, to feign interest and to talk to people for long periods without actually saying anything. He is dressed in perfectly-tailored suits, sized for his small frame. Everyone comments on what a beautiful family they are, how happy they are and how much they love one another.
Over time, Rufus begins to recognize the appeal of mathematics. His new tutor loves the subject, and she teaches her love to Rufus. She adds philosophy lessons to the curriculum when Rufus is twelve, and Rufus comes to realize that there is fundamental truth in math that can be found nowhere else. There is beauty in numbers, and purity in mathematical functions. It enchants him to realize that even the most perfect circle drawn on a sheet of paper is a poor substitute for a true circle, an ideal circle, one that can exist only as an equation and never in crude matter. His tutor teaches him how to construct a mathematical proof, and he sometimes entertains himself by finding proofs for different principles.
Mathematics are well-ordered, rigorous, and predictable. When done correctly, an equation produces the same result every time. Mathematics never lie, and are never wrong. They are true at all times, in all places, for all people, and would be true even if there were no people. Mathematics and logic are inextricably intertwined, and together form the foundation of reality. Where Rufus had once found math unutterably boring, now he thinks it transcendent.
His father is far more pleased by Rufus's interest in numbers than he had been when Rufus was interested in science. The man does not appreciate the elegant perfection of equations, but he knows how to apply mathematics to the task of calculating profit maximization, and to finding the lowest point in an efficiency curve. His rages are far less frequent now, and life feels good to Rufus.
Reno arrives when Rufus is approaching thirteen, and Rude is hired five months later. Rufus takes an immediate liking to Reno, who is darkly cheerful and does not censor his language around the boss's son. There are things that Reno talks about - killings and espionage and such - that the other Turks are more careful to keep circumspect. Tseng tells Veld, and Veld tries to keep Reno and Rufus apart, but when Rufus requests Reno as his guard and companion there is nothing to be done.
Before long, Rufus finds himself wanting Reno's approval in the same way he wants Tseng's, or his father's, but Reno's approval is much easier to obtain. He is more casual than Tseng, in his language and his behavior, more open, effusive where Tseng is reserved. Rufus shows Reno his chocobo, and Reno freely admires both the bird and Rufus's riding skills; Rufus shows Reno a mathematical proof he has just devised, and Reno admits that the whole business looks like a form of magic to him and Rufus must be some kind of fuckin' genius to understand it.
It's from Reno that Rufus gets his first taste of whiskey, and his first taste of cigarettes. He dislikes both immediately, but says otherwise so that the older and more-worldly Reno won't look down on him; Reno is not fooled, but is kind enough to pretend that he is.
It's from Reno that Rufus gets his first kiss. It happens almost accidentally. Rufus asks about the weapon that Reno carries along with his gun, and Reno shows him how it's used. The way Reno swings the mag-rod against an imaginary attacker is so physical, so fast and fluid, and Rufus wants to try it. Reno gives him the rod, stands behind him and grips his wrists to push him into the correct stance, his body aligned behind Rufus in a way that is suddenly overwhelmingly intimate. Rufus becomes flustered, trips, and Reno has to catch him to keep him from falling on his face, and somehow they wind up facing one another with Reno holding Rufus upright.
There is a moment's pause, they stare at each other, with Rufus weirdly aware of Reno's body against his own and Reno's arms around him; he is uncomfortable, but somehow at the same time wants ... he has no idea what he wants. Reno hesitates, leans in a bit, and then there is soft warmth against Rufus's lips, and Reno's hand moves down his back.
Reno steps away a moment later, saying something inane about the weapon and how Rufus is obviously a natural with it, and Rufus complies with the unspoken request and pretends that did not just happen. The sensations imprint themselves on Rufus's body, however, and that night he has confused dreams that leave his bedclothes stained.
Rufus stops requesting Reno as his guard. Reno seems carefree about the change, and soon recruits Rude to be his partner in crime. They do not speak about the kiss, then or ever. Tseng resumes his previous position as Rufus's preferred guardian, and only surrenders this assignment when duty demands that he must absolutely be elsewhere.
For new Turks who arrive in the department after this, Guarding Rufus takes on the quality of a legendary assignment, one that is of momentous importance and immense prestige but which can almost never be obtained. It becomes almost a rite of passage, to be finally proven enough, trusted enough, to take Tseng's place when he has to step away from the President's son.
When Rufus is almost fourteen, the good life ends, seemingly overnight. The war is suddenly the topic of every conversation, and every conversation carries worried overtones. Rufus's father becomes more tense, more like he used to be before they moved into the Tower.
Rufus asks Tseng, one day after his riding lesson is finished and the Turk is prepping the helicopter to carry them back to Midgar. Tseng explains, in his calm and measured voice, that the war with Wutai has taken a bad turn. The Wutains have launched a major offensive, and they have obtained advanced weaponry from some unknown source; someone is selling them Shinra-made weapons. What had been a war practically won has become a war that might actually be lost.
At dinner that night, Rufus's father is stormy and barely civil; the tension frightens Rufus. He becomes clumsy, and accidentally drops a bite of sauced meat onto the tablecloth.
His father snaps. "What the fuck is the matter with you?" the man screams, and a moment later he has Rufus by the arm and is shaking him violently, the way he used to. "Huh? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you know how much this costs?"
Rufus's mother pleads with him, the way she used to, and Rufus's father strikes her away, exactly the way he used to. It's all so terrifyingly familiar that Rufus falls back into the same inarticulate stammered apologies, and it's like the intervening years of almost-peace never happened.
The next morning he has bruises across both his upper arms where his father grabbed him, and more over his ribs from being thrown against the table. He examines them dispassionately in the mirror, and chooses a long-sleeved shirt to wear, to hide them. He checks his wardrobe. Too many of his shirts have short sleeves.
That afternoon he asks his mother for money, to buy new clothes. She won't look at him at first, and then she pulls him to herself and begins to cry. "I'm sorry," she tells him, clutching his jacket. "He doesn't mean it, Rufus. He loves us, he's just under so much pressure right now. You don't know how hard he's been working."
"I know, mother," Rufus tells her. There is a great empty space inside him. "Don't cry. It will make him angry if he sees you crying."
Tseng escorts him to the tailor. Rufus tells the tailor that he's simply outgrowing everything, and he is measured for new clothes; the story is not questioned. He tries on a few off-the-rack jackets, just to get a feel for what kind of style he wants. The current fashion is for dark colors, black and charcoal and primary jewel tones. That has always looked good on him, brought out the ashy glint in his hair and the crystal blue of his eyes, but when he looks at himself in the mirror today all he can see are the bruises under the cloth.
"What if everything were white?" he asks the tailor.
The woman laughs in her motherly way, thinking he's kidding, but he assures her that he's serious so she gives it some serious thought. "If you were anyone else, I'd say it was a terrible idea," she says in the end. "Everyone would laugh. But you, Mr. Shinra?" She clucks. "I think you could get away with it. They'll say you're trendsetting."
He smiles, feeling nothing but that terrible emptiness. She is at least half-right ... no one who is anyone would be caught dead in white. Midgar is becoming more and more dingy by the day; white catches stains at worst, and captures the lurid green haloes in the sky at best. At this moment, Rufus doesn't care what anyone else might think. "I'd like that, then. Can I see some fabric?" She tries to make an appointment for him to come back for a fitting in three days, but he makes excuses and schedules it for two weeks. The bruises should be mostly gone by then.
Tseng does not volunteer an opinion, and Rufus does not ask for one.
His father is going to be furious - white is very unfashionable right now, and probably will be for the indefinite future - and when Rufus gets home he considers calling the tailor to cancel the order and ask for the pieces in more-trendy black. Anxiety builds within him, but he never picks up the phone.
Two weeks later, when Rufus is finally dressed in the first few new pieces and looks at himself in the tailor's mirror, something calms inside him that he didn't even know had been restless. The white of his new jacket is pure in a way that a colored fabric could never be. There is an ethereal quality to it that brings to mind the unattainable perfection of a circle, and Rufus thinks that the white-clad person in the mirror is someone who could never bear the marks of violence on his body. He will never see bruises under these clothes, not because they are concealed, but because they will be wiped away, made as though they had never existed.
The tailor fusses, tugging at the fabric here and there and fastening it with pins. "Only you could pull this off," she tells him, and she swipes her hand through his hair. "Such a handsome young man. Your father must be so proud of you."
Tseng stands near the door to the tailor's shop, and Rufus's eyes flick to his image in the mirror. The Turk is impassive, no hint on his face to betray what he might be thinking.
The cut and color of the new clothes feel so perfect to Rufus, so proper and right, but he knows how his father is going to react. He knows his father is not going to take this well. So he prepares to defend his choice. It has been a while since he last tried to defend himself and was whipped until he bled, and the very idea of it leaves him in a cold, fearful sweat. While the tailor takes a few more days to work again on the first batch, Rufus practices what he will say, how he will phrase his defense so as to not sound like he is talking back. He must be respectful, keep his voice down, not contradict anything his father says, and above all he must not cry.
He has another fitting, and then the day comes and his first few sets of new clothes are finished. They are delivered during the workday, while Rufus's father is not home, and Rufus takes them immediately to his bedroom and hangs them up in the wardrobe.
He tries on one of the suits, and of course it fits him perfectly. The cut of the jacket is very current and very stylish, and if it were black or gray it would be the absolute height of fashion.
His mother walks in while he is examining himself in the tri-fold mirror. "That's what you got?" she asks, and then she gives a nervous laugh.
Rufus feels very calm, very poised. Pure. Void. "Yes."
Her nervous laugh becomes a half-sob, and she presses her hands to her mouth. "He's going to be angry," she says. "Is that what you want? Are you deliberately trying to make him angry?"
He realizes that she won't understand, and he can't explain it to her. "Whatever."
She grabs him by the arm and yanks him around to face her, and shakes him. "Why are you doing this?" she demands. "Why have you done this?"
His mother is not as strong as his father, and Rufus is no longer five; her grip is bruising, but Rufus is able to pull away from her fairly easily. "It's mine to do!" he says, and he's not sure what that means exactly, but he says it again. "This is my thing to do! It has nothing to do with you!"
She slaps him, and he's so shocked by it that he's paralyzed. "Of course it has something to do with me!" she tells him, and then she turns and walks out of the room. He hears her give a frustrated scream in the hallway, and then sobbing across the suite. It is several minutes before he can move.
Rufus wears the new, white clothes to dinner. His father just stares when he walks into the dining room, stunned, and for an instant Rufus thinks he's going to get away with it. His father is going to laugh, let it go, think it's a funny joke, indulge him. "Do whatever you like, son," his father is going to say.
Then his father's expression twists, and the momentary fantasy of tolerance is blown aside by the explosion. His father grabs him by the lapels of the new jacket, tries to tear it off him, doesn't succeed but does manage to severely damage the fabric, and screams and screams about how much this cost and what people are going to say about us and we'll be the laughingstocks of the entire city. Rufus's prepared speeches fall out of his mind; he is reduced once more to gibbering terror. He is thrown so hard against a chair that the chair breaks; things go hazy after that, because his father slams his head down on the edge of the table, then hauls him up by the hair and does it again. Then again.
At some point Rufus winds up on his back on the floor, bewildered and bleeding, and his father is yelling hysterically, with a note in his voice that Rufus has never heard before and isn't sure he's hearing now. He's injured, he thinks dimly, and that's the most complex thought he can form. Eventually he becomes aware that more people are in the room, and he is being checked. They're talking but he can't understand what they're saying; he tries to tell them that he's hurt, but he can't seem to make the words come out correctly and keeps repeating it. Then he's lifted up onto an elevated surface and he realizes that it's a stretcher, and these are some of the company paramedics.
He's taken down to the infirmary and X-rayed, and the cuts on his head are stitched up. Tseng arrives shortly after Rufus and talks to the doctor. He's told that Rufus is concussed and should not be left alone, and he can't be given a potion until his confusion clears up a bit and he can be relied on to swallow it. Tseng sits next to the boy's bed and talks to him for a while. He does not convey the most important, most shattering bit of news, but instead discusses with him something relatively trivial: the progress of the war. Rufus remains confused and can't keep proper track of what Tseng is saying, and an hour later he becomes drowsy and badly nauseated.
Tseng calls the doctor back in, and another X-ray is taken and a cautious dose of curative magic is administered. This helps; the nausea goes away and Rufus is more awake. A few hours later he is coherent enough to take a potion.
The potion clears his head, mostly, and closes the wounds he sustained. A nurse carefully picks the stitches back out and tells Rufus and Tseng that there should be no visible scars. She is subdued, very quiet, but Rufus is still dazed enough to find nothing unusual in her behavior.
Mid-morning, Veld turns up in the infirmary. He takes Tseng aside, gives him the news that Tseng had been fearing all night.
"I have to tell him, don't I?" asks Tseng.
Veld rests a hand on his shoulder. "Yes." He does not have to explain why.
Once Veld is gone, Tseng returns to the room where Rufus is resting and sits down again next to the bed. "Sir," he says, and then in a moment of broken protocol, he says, "Rufus."
Rufus looks at him, and before Tseng even says anything at all, it strikes him. Somehow, he knows; that empty place inside him is no longer calm and still, no longer void, but full of a screaming agony. Still, he waits for the words, hoping against hope that they won't be what he knows they will be.
Tseng takes his hand. "Your mother ... passed away this morning."
There is a moment when the calm returns, and Rufus thinks, of course, of course. Then the moment passes, something within him breaks, and Tseng holds him and rubs his shoulder while he sobs into the Turk's chest.
It is the last time in his life that Rufus Shinra will cry.
When Rufus is well enough to return home, his father is out. The clothes that Rufus wore to that terrible dinner were utterly ruined, but he had more than the one set made. He initially fears that his father might have destroyed them, too, or thrown them out, but when he opens the wardrobe doors they're right there, hanging in neat rows. He takes out another white suit and puts it on. The fabric is heavy, expensive, and drapes in clean lines around him.
Rufus looks at himself in the mirror, and sees an untouched, untouchable creature. He nods. That's the person he wants to be.
When his father comes home, late that night, Rufus is sitting up waiting for him. The man's face twists when he sees what Rufus is wearing, and Rufus raises his chin, ready to be told that his mother's death is his fault, that he is the one who provoked that explosion. It won't matter. It's nothing he has not already said to himself.
The words don't come. His father says nothing. He turns aside, walks away, and does not confront his son.
All of Rufus's other clothes are discarded, and he fills his wardrobe with white. His riding clothes become white. His hat and gloves and all of his ties are white. His umbrella is white.
Tseng draws the line at white shoes. "You'll be having them polished four times a day," he tells Rufus, and Rufus has to concede that. This requires a slight compromise, because an ensemble of pure white with black shoes looks ridiculous. Rufus has some black shirts made, and some black vests and a few black ties, and when he sees himself in the mirror it feels less like a compromise. The chiaroscuro lines make the white even more pure, more uncontaminated.
He still must attend functions with his father, and he is the only person wearing white at each one. If anyone laughs about Rufus's new look, however, they do it far away from him, so far away that he never hears even the slightest rumor that someone is saying an unkind thing. Occasionally someone remarks that he must be doing it in his mother's memory, rest her soul, the poor dear taken so young, such a tragic accident ...
His father's remorse (if that's what it is) fades after a while, and within three months the strain of the Wutai war begins to again express itself in shouted words and blue-black marks on Rufus's body. Each time it happens, he checks his clothes for damage, throws them away if any is found, and re-dresses himself in clean, pure, flawless white. The bruises are gone while he's dressed, not merely invisible but completely gone. Sometimes he stays up all night, working on mathematical proofs to occupy himself, so that he won't have to get undressed and sleep.