When the Bonds Break part 3 TITLE: When the Bonds Break part 3 RATING: R (descriptions of violence, horrific images) SUMMARY: AU inspired by a K-Pop video on YouTube WORD COUNT: 835
The silver-haired man had stopped crying, but he wasn’t making any other sounds or even trying to move. Kyry pulled herself away, looking at him with concern. She had seen people get like this before: sometimes they recovered, sometimes they just died. She didn’t want him to die, especially since he said he could help make her better. She needed to get him to someplace safe, somewhere he could rest. But she was too small to get him to his feet.
Some of the children had gathered again. “You guys need to help me,” she said. “We need to get him inside.”
The children looked at each other, then at her. “Um…” one slightly older boy hesitated. “Why’s he all like that?”
“Because his brother died, Pare,” she said softly.
This was greeted with equally soft, sympathetic murmurings. They were all orphans, they all knew the first crushing instant of loss. Pare nodded, and grabbed the arm of another boy who was a little shorter but stocky. “Come on, Gree, we can take him if we get on each side.”
Yazuu was only vaguely aware of the children’s help. He managed to stand, one hand on each boy’s shoulder, then carefully put one foot in front of the other, led by girl with the doll. He was overwhelmed by emotions… the emotions Loz had been given as his share of their brother. His cool logic was floundering, drowning in the intensities he was completely unused to, and he didn’t know what else to do but as he was told.
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Rufus Shinra felt his control slipping, and he hated his Geostigma-fueled weakness more than ever. His missing Turks had been returned to him, but in terrible condition, and their rescuer hadn’t looked much better. The death of one of the troublesome Remnants was good news, but Vincent’s terse report (still so much Turk left in him, Rufus had mused) suggested that it had driven Kadaj completely insane, and that was a chaotic element he did not have the strength to deal with. Reno and Rude could only do so much, being mere mortals and not ex-SOLDIERs, and he had ordered Reno to leave Cloud another message.
The thing in his lap quivered.
The door to the lodge was blown off its hinges with a thunderclap, striking Rude with enough force to throw him across the room and leave him crumpled under the windows. A flash of light left Reno sprawled on the ground, white shirt smoking. A figure was silhouetted in the ruins of the doorframe, slender, androgynous, and giggling like a child with a new toy. He took one step inside.
The thing in Rufus’s lap keened, and he gasped, because it wasn’t possible, the thing was in an airtight container filled with numbing fluids and it was just a damn head it couldn’t draw breath and cry for it’s son -
Kadaj crossed the distance impossibly fast, fading like a ghost and reappearing much too close. Rufus looked up and into eyes that lacked any semblance of sanity or humanity and tried to force one hand to grip the container that was shaking of its own accord while the other fumbled for his shotgun. The silver-haired being snickered, raising his double-bladed sword high for the killing stroke.
Red flashed into his vision, and suddenly Rufus felt his wheelchair moving backwards, watching Reno give him the smirking grin that always heralded trouble for someone. Rufus couldn’t even scream when Reno’s gaze widened and turned down, looking at the steel that so precisely skewered him. Kadaj cackled, dancing the two of them around so that Rufus could see Reno’s spine nestled in between the two blades, and how one twist of his wrist could sever the vital links of nerves.
Now he could scream. He staggered to his feet, letting the blanket slither to the floor to reveal the container, the Geostigma, and the shotgun. Kadaj was at his side before he could steady himself, wrenching the container from his grasp and knocking the barrel of the shotgun towards the ceiling just before Rufus could pull the trigger. His feet got tangled in the blanket and he fell hard, his vision graying as his skull bounced off of the floor.
Someone… no, it was crooning from its container, an obscene lullaby that made Kadaj smile so sweetly as he stroked the green metal. There was a noise coming towards the lodge that made him look up, but then he cocked his head down, frowned, but nodded. Clutching his Mother to his chest, Kadaj leapt through the window, shattered glass raining down behind him.
There was something soft next to Rufus’s hand. He managed to turn his head and found that if he stretched out his fingers, he could stroke Reno’s hair, as red as the pool of blood being fed from the terrible wounds. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, touching Reno, and meaning the words more than he ever had before in his life. “I’m sorry.”