Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ I Know What Lies Beneath the Snowfields ❯ Chapter 84 ( Chapter 84 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

"I Know What's Beneath the Snow Fields"
Chapter 84

It was dark. Rufus could hear them. Voices. Tiny butterflies of
madness which fluttered about his ears. The boy wallowed within this tomb-like
existence, neither dead nor alive, awake or asleep. He didn't even
care. To him, it just didn't matter. Instead, he lay here blind and absolutely
still, listening to his own thoughts battle each other.

~...it's so cold here...~

~...it burns me up, but I'm so cold...~

Yes, he dully acknowledged. That same icy disease crawled beneath his
burning skin. Hadn't he experienced this paradox a thousand times before?

~... am I really all alone?...~

Alone. Vacant. Heavy. Low; his heart felt so unbearably low.

~...it doesn't matter anymore...~

No. It doesn't.

~... "Inside, Sir, you're exactly like me"...~

It's our blood. Our ShinRa blood.

~...it's too late...~

He knew.

~... you're already one of them...~

He knew.

~..."Inside, Sir, you're exactly like me"...~

He hated him.

~..."That man was your brother"...~

Stop. He wanted it to stop.

~..."your brother"...~

Stop.

~... "MY GOD, DONAL!! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!!"...~

Out of no where reverberated that terrible scream, fired like a
gunshot straight from a heart wrenched by anguish. It struck Rufus point-blank
in the core. At that surreal moment, when his entire psyche froze amidst
these raging flames, he beheld those tearful pink eyes, all that
wretchedness,
staring right back at him.

"My God, Davoren," the horrified boy whispered to himself, "..w..what
have *I* done?"

**********************************************

Wit h strong resolve and a steady balance, Rude shimmied along the
perilous cliffsides quickly yet cautiously, always staying close to the wall.
There was no clear path. That man had to carve his own way down this
mountainous terrain scaffold by scaffold. Loose debris beneath him. At one stage,
the ledge under his foot broke, almost ambushing him had his wits not been
faster. Keep moving. He reminded himself not to look below, just keep
moving.

Reno watched on with worried rigidity as his friend scaled further and
further downwards. In truth, he knew not what to think. Granted, Rude
possessed greater skill and a far more powerful physique for free
climbing.
Still, Reno mistrusted that injury in his flank. The manner he'd
clutched it suggested deeper trauma, maybe even a fracture. Add to that the man
carried twelve tons worth of fatigue on his shoulders, plus all those
injuries. The odds certainly did not look favorable.

Regardless, Rude persevered. He knew what he had to do. He clambered
down the escarpment's disfigured façade. Along the way he encountered a
gantry which traveled slanted from here towards an islet of garbage nearby.
The ex-Turk vaulted onto this skewered bridge. He scampered across to the
other side, then followed another highway into the jumbled latticework of
girders below. Deeper ventured Rude through this nightmarish architecture until
he reached the bottom. There, he swung onto the final scaffold.

Beyond this point, Rude could go no further without falling in. He
crouched onto all fours, where he leaned over the edge as far as
possible whilst maintaining equilibrium. By now, the man was drenched in sweat.
His senses blared danger on every side. His target lay down there just a
few meters away, oblivious of the deathtrap he'd been cast into, which only
added frustration to Rude's anxiety.


"Sir!" he called sharply, "Hey! Sir!!"

No response.

A harshness knit his brows. Rude bellowed louder, "Rufus! Dammit,
c'mon kid! Wake up! Rufus!!"

This time, his agitated cries dragged the boy out of absolute darkness
to a dim awareness. Rufus winced. His eyes opened to these grey, shaky
surroundings. The pandemonium and raucous shrieks so befuddled his
logic he couldn't distinguish between the bedlam outside and that still ravaging
his head inside. The boy awoke as a wreck; his scrawny carcass cut and
bruised, one arm burnt and a gash streaked alongside his dirty face. Clothes
were singed and torn, and his hair hung a mess.

Rufus clumsily propped himself on one elbow. The world and ground
never stopped rattling. He felt sick. He agonized with every breath just to
stay conscious. All the while, Rufus heard someone hollering nonsense at
him, or so it sounded to him. He pushed himself further up with one arm, and
let that voice guide his foggy sight upwards. He perceived a man, at first
a mere blur, positioned upon the scaffolding above.

"..R..Rude..??" he faltered weakly, unsure of his own eyes. Indeed,
Rude had been calling him this entire time.

The agitated ex-Turk shouted, "I can't reach you from here. Quick! Try
to climb over to me and I'll haul ya the rest of the way up! Just hurry!!"

His urgent plea passed by Rufus in fragments. Nor could the latter
string them into any meaning. Without aim or orientation, the beleaguered
lunatic struggled to rise. Rude was still yelling. He thought he also heard
Reno in the distance; he too was screaming down at them. Questions assaulted
him from every angle: what happened? Where was he? That explosion... why
hadn't they left? How... how could he still be alive? No actually, WHY was he
even alive??

~...it burns me up...~

~..."That man was your brother"...~

~..."inside, Sir, you're exactly like me"...~

~...My God, Davoren. What have I...~

A fresh shockwave suddenly swept the premises. The complex buckled in
a spastic fit. Everyone was thrown into disarray. Reno fell back. Rude,
who'd huddled in place to protect his head from raining rubbish, reacted
violently when he witnessed the buttress beneath Rufus finally collapse
at one end. Thus the disorientated boy went sliding downwards with a
alarmed cry. By sheer instinct, Rufus grabbed hold of the remaining structure,
which lurched further towards the pit yet thankfully stayed hinged the
main trunk. Gasping, bristling pure delirium, the boy clung to this mess
with both arms. Meanwhile, his legs dangled free above the void.

Despite the commotion, Reno soon recovered his co-ordination. He
scrambled back to the edge of the escarpment, only to view the fiasco below "Holy
shit!! Kid!!" he blared outloud, "Are ya alright?!"

Whether he meant physically or psychologically, the answer was no.
Rufus grunted. He attempted to climb up to safer grounds, but in his
confusion only crashed back to an even worse state. More than half his body now
hung in the open whereas he, a shaken, destitute shipwreck, held on with
arms wrapped around some garbage piece. Rufus never appeared more perturbed
or mentally wrangled than at that terrifying moment. The tumult outside
swirled into that inside until, quite overwhelmed, the boy hunched over
slightly to bury his face in shadow. Rufus didn't try again. Any
additional movement might break this flimsy lifeline. Besides, soon the buttress,
the entire Reactor in fact, would collapse by itself. It didn't matter to
him anymore. He wondered why he should continue holding on either. Why,
when by surviving that explosion, he'd actually failed?


Rufus clung in flustered limbo. Rude however had already made a snap
decision; he could no longer bear this uncertainty. He waited for the
storm to recede a bit. Then much to Reno's further consternation, the man
clambered off his scaffolding and deliberately dropped feet-first onto
the garbled junkyard below. Rude crouched in place as the structure
complained beneath his weight. Still, it did not collapse. Once certain of
himself, he crawled forth very, very warily towards the buttress tip. There hung
Rufus, wretched and isolated. .

The fragile architecture groaned continuous warnings. Rude refused to
be deterred. He edged to the last inch possible. With still a distance
between them, he stretched his big, strong hand as far out as he could,
"Rufus," he commanded, "Gimme your hand."

Rufus had either lost awareness of him or simply ignored him. He did
not respond.

"Rufus!" the ex-Turk insisted. His gruff voice forced the boy to peer
aside at him, but in a rather apathetic manner, as if to ask 'What do
you want from me now?'

"Gimme your hand!" Rude repeated, "I'll pull ya up!"

The environment tossed between sporadic tremors. The extensive
metallic plug lurched closer to catastrophe. Anxiety strained Rude's face. In
return, Rufus seemed perplexed. He viewed this man- a stranger from a
past he'd only discovered tonight, who be he foolish or brave had rushed
over to help him. But instead of comfort, his expression darkened to an
anguished look tainted with trouble and misgiving; like he couldn't understand
the gesture. Or maybe he scorned it. Indeed, the boy cast a sidelong glance
at that hand, then flicked his intense blue eyes away to the other corner.

"Why?" he snapped abruptly.

The ex-Turk blinked at the question: why what?

"Why should you pull me up?" Rufus persisted, disdain boiling hot
underneath his icy demeanor.

He seemed to expect an answer. When the baffled Rude failed to provide
one, the avoidant young man hissed, "Don't you understand yet, Rude?
'Genesis Retrial' may belong to Professor Hojo, but the crime itself is entirely
mine! Dammit, I could've stopped him!" a frustrated glower contorted
Rufus' face. He shot his glare back to the ex-Turk, "There was so much I
could've done. But I'd already become one of 'them'. Inside everything was
frozen. I had so much blood on my hands that I'd stopped noticing or even caring.
I just wanted power. I wanted it all to myself," he seethed, "I wanted to
make that bastard- that man who called himself my 'father'- ah! Dammit!
Dammit! I wanted to make HIM suffer!!"

Rude never once dismissed the boy as a loony or his words a madman's
ramble. Regardless of the calamity around them, he pensively listened
without interruption. He watched grief, self-disgust and bitterness
surge within until Rufus, tortured breathless, rasped out his most rueful
admission, "But I.. the only one I made suffer was Davoren! What's
worse, *I* killed him! I killed Davoren! The only person who hid me from
punishment, even though we both knew I deserved it, AND I STAB HIM
RIGHT THROUGH THE HEART!!!"


The ex-Turk maintained a sangfroid front despite all these acrid
lashings. Rufus, delirious with rage, scoffed back, "So tell me, Mr.
Rude, why should I let you pull someone like me up? Why are you even here? I
ordered you two leave because for the first time I realized what I had
to do! I'm no different than the rest of 'them'... those monsters...
hypocrites...liars... damn you anyway! It was my decision!!"

"And neither of us would have left you, even if it was your order,"
stated Rude calmly.

He snarled, "Because both of you are STUPID!!"

"Then I guess Davoren was just as stupid for caring so much about
you."

His cool rebuttal struck the furious young man into blank amazement;
he'd never considered his own words looking at them from that angle. Nor had
Rude intended to demean the importance the gunman bore to Rufus. On the
contrary, he wanted him to realize how highly he valued Davoren. Rude
continued on the same solemn, compassionate note, "I.. I can't begin to
imagine what you've been through: that WEAPON blast, the 'fire', living
like.. some wild animal with your mind raped every minute, and now
losing your friend like that. But kid, you gotta listen to me" he urged, "You
cannot just surrender to those demons pulling you down. Get your act
together! Fight back! And let others help you along the way. But don't
you give up like this! Otherwise, all Davoren ever meant to you becomes
worthless!!"

These words were the most Rufus had ever heard out of Rude. Yet in
truth, their candor exerted a profound effect upon him as regarded the earnest
ex-Turk, who'd taken all those destructive emotions inside and remolded
them into something different... something strangely more comforting.
Rude bore nothing but the sincerest intentions as a friend. Again, he
offered his hand to the bemused young man. However, he couldn't make him take
it.
That Rufus had to do of his own accord, at least for Davoren's sake.

Indeed, before he realized it, Rufus found himself slowly reaching out
for that hand.

By now, the rotunda had begun to convulse in wake of another disaster.
The distance between their fingertips narrowed. Rude gnashed his teeth with
effort. The buttress was already disintegrating. Plus he could see
Rufus' grip and consciousness fast on the wane. Closer. Closer. Just a few
inches more...

Too late. The long-suffering structure finally broke.

There followed an avalanche of debris as the entire archipelago
shifted geography. The latticework collapsed. Both men went keeling over. Rufus
lost consciousness somewhere in the chaos. Meanwhile, Rude had less
than a second to act: in an incredible burst of adrenaline, he thrust himself
out that extra bit to grab the boy by the wrist. Just as quickly, he reeled
both his own weight and Rufus' carcass back up, only to beat a hasty
retreat. Before gravity took full effect, Rude had long since leapt off
this degenerate branch onto another one, his parcel always clamped
under one armpit. He scurried across this mangled road like a maniac towards
the main trunk up ahead. Destruction chased hot on his heels. He'd almost
reached his destination when this branch also began to lurch. Mad with
desperation, the man sprinted till the very end of the girder,
whereupon he sprang forth just as it collapsed. Thus he clumsily landed against the
mainland junkyard. There Rude struggled to hold on. By chance, he
discovered a crevice. At once he grappled his way up and huddled deep
within, the comatose Rufus protected in both arms.


Holy Hell rained down. All the while, shrieks of metal, shaking
grounds and a terrible sense of foreboding choked the atmosphere. Rude kept his
head low and eyes squeezed shut as the onslaught raged on a few minutes
until it subdued again. Still, only after the din ringing inside his
head had abated did Rude, gasping and heart pumping hard, induce himself to
peek outside. The latticework had disappeared. The scaffoldings wasted to
ruins.
Looking around, the lower parts of this complex had been eroded, adding
more instability to the upper regions.

"RUDE! HEY! RUDE!!" a frantic voice cried.

Bewildered, the man whirled his eyes towards the scarred escarpment
high up there. He spotted his friend gaping back down from over the brink,
lurched so far forward he risked falling in. To Rude, the distance
between them seemed infinite now; he cramped inside this crevice with a
magnificent view of the abyss below, another almost ballistic with worry.

Indeed, the brutal earthquake had forced Reno to also seek shelter,
during which he'd lost sight of his two friends. Now that the tempest had
dissipated again, he'd returned to the cliffsides to scour the
wastelands below. The distressed ex-Turk had tossed between hope and pessimism
until at long last he found them both still alive. Relieved, he bellowed,
"YOU TWO OKAY?!"

"..y..yeah..," the man fumbled, unsure. He checked the lifeless boy
supported close against him. Rufus seemed fine. However, as the
excitement began to fade, Rude became increasingly aware of his own state. He knew
he's pushed himself too far. His muscles ached. An invisible corset of
pain constrained his chest, turning respiration into a chore. Plus the
realisation of the danger he'd just narrowly escaped finally began to
catch up to his nerves. In truth, Rude marveled how he'd even survived this
far!

Meanwhile, Reno fumed alone on top. He searched for a solution to this
new dilemma. Rude had saved the young president. All well and good. But
now, BOTH men lingered over eminent death, the latter unconscious, and the
former injured and bereft of strength. And here he stood here
completely helpless!

"Shit! Shit! SHIT!" Reno muttered. Sweat streamed down his angry face.
He felt his sanity cracking under pressure: what should he do? He had to
do SOMETHING and FAST!

"Rude! Hang on, okay?" desperate for ideas, he took a diffident step
towards the cliff's edge with intention to descend further, "I'll climb
down there and h-"

"NO, YOU IDIOT!!" his friend barked, effectively pushing him back up
into place, "How the hell do you expect to climb down here when all the
scaffolds are gone? Besides! These parts will collapse any minute! Just
stay where you are!!"

Reno stood there at his wits' end, "B-but.. what about you?! If the
scaffolds are all destroyed, how're ya gonna climb back up?!"

Rude fell silent. He'd been so determined to rescue Rufus that he'd
charged into this deathtrap without once considering how he may return.
True he'd calmed the boy and saved him. But what good was that when
he'd only gotten them trapped inside this hole, cut off from help or any
means of escape. Then all he'd down was prolong their torture.


So much for heroics.

"NOW who's the idiot!!" exclaimed Reno at his incredible lack of
foresight.

"Well, the poor kid was confused and suicidal! What else should I have
done?!" the aggravated Rude retorted in self-defense, "Just let him
drop to his death?!"

"No, but at least think before ya do something risky like that!"

"Huh! Now that's pretty rich coming from you!"

"What the hell are you babbling about?"

Rude thrust his neck out to shout up at his preachy friend, "In case
you forgot, Mr. I-gotta-be-cool, YOU were the ass who made a grand
entrance, raised the alarm and got us into this pickle in the first place!!"

"That was a totally different situation!"

He snorted, "Funny! You seem to make an ass outta yourself in ANY
situation!"

"Oh, izzat so!" the indignant man shot back, "Well, at least I'm an
ass with a brain!!" but Reno stopped short: somehow, that retort didn't
sound right.

"Yeah! Some brain!" praised Rude with cutting sarcasm, "It's probably
rotted dead from alcohol... that's IF all that dye-shit you put in your
punk hair hasn't already killed it!!"

Strange how moments ago, their friendship seemed stronger than steel.
They'd always stuck together no matter the odds. Neither man knew why
they were bickering right now, especially when death loomed so certain upon
them. However, Reno did know one thing for sure: nobody insulted his
hair!

At once, he exploded louder than a volcano, "SHADDAP, BALDY!! The
closest YOU ever came to having hair was when Elena dragged us on her stupid
picnic'n I dropped that dead squirrel on yer head!!! Oh! And since we're on
the subject of animals, lemme tell-"

"Hey! Hey, you guys!" interrupted a new voice.

Both warring parties, caught completely off guard, turned their
attentions towards the speaker. High up there from the forgotten surveillance
room, they perceived a tall, imposing figure. His appearance was rough and
unclean, yet his visage nonchalant as ever, most striking those cool
pink eyes. He carried two guns; an assault rifle in one hand, another gun
tucked in that double-holster strapped around his shoulders. With the other
hand gripped on the windowsill, the man leaned forth to better view the
chaotic scene far below.

It was Davoren.