Chapter Text
Another day in the bag. Reno stepped inside his apartment, slamming the door shut with a foot and then dropping onto the couch to sprawl.
Tseng was on an assignment over in Wutai, so Reno had far more paperwork than he liked. Hunting escaped monsters from Science? Sniffing out Corneo’s thugs? Getting lectured by random old ladies for his haircut? All more fun than organizing Shinra’s paperwork. He couldn’t wait for Tseng to get back and take his usual spot managing Verdot’s overflow.
After a bare minute his stomach reminded Reno that he’d had a greasy sandwich for lunch and nothing since, so he lurched to his feet and headed to the kitchen to see what was in the fridge. Halfway there, the world suddenly tilted and greyed out. Blackness crept in around him as Reno groped for a chair and missed. He slammed into the floor, excruciating cold wracking his body from the inside out.
Passing out was a relief.
There was a pounding on a door and also Reno’s head. He groaned, rolled over, levered himself up from the surprisingly clean floor.
Surprisingly bright, too.
As in, not in some dark underground cave.
He brushed himself off and noticed he wasn’t wearing the same suit he’d last had on, either.
This was his old suit. His classic suit. His “back in the day” suit. He hadn’t worn one of these in years.
He was almost mentally prepared for it when he opened up the front door of the apartment to see a very young Rude waiting there.
Reno was tempted to swear off cleaning up Shinra’s Science messes ever again. But that was a part of the job, and Turks did their jobs.
Rude stared at him. Reno knew his partner’s silences. This one was concern dressed up as judgement so nobody would realize Rude actually liked Reno.
“Reno,” Rude said.
Reno leaned casually against the door frame, belatedly adopting his normal slouch. “Yeah?”
“You’re late.”
Reno ran a hand through his hair and winced slightly as he brushed a large bruise on his head. “Damn. Gimme a moment.” He left Rude standing in the doorway as he collected his gear. Mag-rod, phone, everything right where it should be.
Should he really know this old place this well anymore? His thoughts raced along parallel tracks as he tried to make sense of it, piecing together two sets of memories. He remembered investigating Deepground’s leftovers, the weird pool of stagnant mako with the dimly glowing greyish materia. He also remembered a day of paperwork and messing with secretaries, running around looking into things for Verdot. It lined up jaggedly, like a zipper that wasn’t seated right before being pulled.
Reno headed for the door with his gear but Rude didn’t step aside to let him out. Instead, his partner looked Reno up and down with another long silence.
“You okay?” he asked flatly.
Man, Reno must look terrible if Rude was asking out loud.
“Fine,” he said. “Forgot to eat, yo.”
The excuse must have been good enough since Rude let him pass. Reno closed up and began extolling the virtues of donuts for breakfast as they headed towards work. One little detour wouldn’t hurt too much if he was already late.
Reno was grateful for paperwork for the first time in his entire life. Every file brought into focus long buried memories, reminded him what had been going on back when he was twenty-one. Old memories combined with the weirdly fresh ones of his own doings from the past week or two in this time, leaving his head slightly swimmy.
It was a good thing nobody was watching him work. He’d brazened his way through all the raised eyebrows from the handful of Turks in the building, bulling through with sheer confidence as usual. But when he took a break and went to the bathroom, the sight in the mirror was a bit of a shock.
First, he felt a jarring sense of both displacement and continuity at seeing his much younger face, tattooed lines on his cheeks fresh but the red hair still too short to sport a ponytail. He needed to grow that out, definitely.
Second, he looked terrible. Between his pallor and the circles under his eyes, he looked like he hadn’t slept for a week. Either that or he’d just got up from a major illness.
Given that stagnant mako was supposed to practically eat people, Reno supposed he’d gotten off light by merely looking like the walking dead. He hadn’t even touched any of it, just fished out one of the grey orbs with a stick and BAM, cold and dark and pain forever. Then waking up more than a decade before he passed out, in what looked like the same world it ever was. Shinra in its prime.
What the hells was he supposed to do now?
Rude put up only a token protest when Reno dragged him out onto the Plate for lunch. There was a burger joint that served drippy, delightful burgers that Reno had long since learned how to eat without getting any stains on his suit.
Rude stuck close. Reno appreciated it, even if it was only because he knew he looked like he was going to pass out again at any moment. Partners took care of each other in the Turks. That’s why Reno was telling Rude first.
They got their burgers, fries, and shakes and took a seat. The vicinity cleared out remarkably, the regular people of Midgar giving a pair of Turks their space. Nobody close enough to overhear, and with food to hold between bites, no way for someone to read lips.
Plus, the food was really, really good. Reno had missed this place so much.
He took the time to really savor the first few bites before getting into it.
“So, ever since last night,” he practically felt Rude’s attention focus, “I’ve got two sets of memories, yo. Normal memories, and some from another me that lived about twelve more years and saw some serious shit go down.” Reno felt more like the older Reno than the younger, but it was easier to explain it the other way around.
Rude’s silence was as skeptical as Reno expected. After a bite of his own, Rude asked, “What kind of shit?”
Reno smirked at him. He figured Rude couldn’t resist asking. “Well for starters, as soon as we win the war against Wutai, both Rufus and Lazard start their own little rebellions against Shinra Sr.” He munched on a fry thoughtfully. “Both of them end up wrecking a lot of property, but I guess you might say Lazard’s worked better since it gets Sephiroth to turn on Shinra in the end.”
Rude tilted his head to look at Reno over the top of his shades. “Sephiroth?”
Reno shrugged. “I know, right? Who knew he had it in him?”
He waited out the next silence patiently. Years of experience had taught him Rude couldn’t be rushed. That was just how he was.
“Do you have any actionable intel from those twelve years?” Rude asked flatly.
Reno chuckled. “Man, do I. Who can I tell, though?” He shook his head and took another bite of his burger. “So, there’s a couple of things the boss would be interested in right away. First, there’s a Turk buried under Shinra Manor in Nibelheim named Vincent Valentine. But he’s actually alive, yo.”
Rude nodded. “And the second?”
Reno finished his burger and wiped his mouth. “Boss’s daughter survived the Kalm firebombing but lost her memory. Some scientist named, uh, Fajita?” Reno snapped his fingers. “No, Fuhito. He’s got her, yo. She goes by the name of Elfe these days.”
Reno stole some of Rude’s fries while his partner sat and thought that over.
“Do you know where she is?” Rude asked.
Reno shook his head. “Not a clue. She and Fuhito and another guy led this anti-Shinra group called Avalanche. Rufus was leaking information to them. I dunno if he contacted them this early, though. We still got another year and change of war to get through if things go the same way.” Reno chewed it over as well as a few more fries. “I bet he made contact after he got promoted to veep, yo. I think he went on a ‘business trip’ right after, and our problems with Avalanche started about the time he started showing up for board meetings.”
He realized his tenses were wandering a bit, but time travel made things complicated.
“We’re going to have to tell the chief,” Rude observed.
Reno nodded. He expected that.
It was probably even a good idea.
Veld Verdot had speculated about Reno’s sudden turn of ill health. He had placed the highest likelihood on a debilitating hangover- Reno was much better about avoiding overindulging than when he’d been a teenager, but he'd been chasing budget expenditures half the day yesterday. Those certainly made Veld want to drink.
Still, he’d come up with a few other possibilities and patiently waited to see if Reno would fess up to any of them.
Time travel hadn’t even been on the list.
Reno outlined betrayals, assassinations, and apocalyptic attacks, and it was aggravating how few details Veld recognized. But even worse...
“You don’t actually have proof of any of this,” Veld observed calmly.
Reno shrugged at him. “Nah, haven’t had time to go pokin’ around yet.”
Rude stood impassively at his side, neither filling in nor commenting, just listening.
“What do you propose, then?” Veld said, throwing the ball back in Reno’s court. The kid was intelligent, surely he had ideas.
Reno leaned forward, resting a hand on Veld’s desk and drumming his fingers. “Easiest proof to dig up would probably be Valentine, yo. Do a little reactor check in Nibelheim, stay in the mansion there. I’d have plenty of time to find the basement where he’s supposed to be.”
Veld nodded. He would personally like to see Vincent again. “I could arrange a review of the personnel there. That’s well within our department’s purview. What else?”
Reno hmmed. “A lot of it hasn’t even started yet, but Deepground should be there.” He frowned. “Thing is, it looked like that was Heidegger and Hojo’s little playground. Gettin’ information about it’s probably gonna piss them off.” He considered it a bit longer, then grinned a shark grin.
“We should just tell Reeve, yo. I bet if he knew there was a secret reactor under Midgar, he wouldn’t rest until he knew why.”
Veld leaned back in his chair to consider the idea. Certainly Reeve hadn’t shown much initiative in his post as head of Urban Development, but there was appeal in tossing this to another Director and making it his problem.
“Very well,” Veld agreed. “I will arrange a mission for both of you to Nibelheim soon.” Rude opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it again and nodded. Good. “And I’ll ensure Reeve hears about Deepground. We’ll see what he turns up.” He stood. “Until then, Reno, I have more reports for you to process.” He selected a couple inches of paperwork from his inbox and handed them over.
Reno’s face fell, but he nodded. “Sure thing, boss.”
“Dismissed.”
The rest of the day went by as if Reno hadn’t spent the afternoon debriefing his boss (his boss’s ex-boss, some day) about a bunch of things that hadn’t happened yet.
Rude kept giving him looks. Nearly every time they were in the same room. Before lunch, they’d been making sure he wasn’t about to pass out. Now that the truth was spilled, though?
This Rude didn’t have the advantage of all those years, but they still knew each other pretty well. Reno talked a good game, but he was sure that his partner, at least, suspected his loyalties were compromised.
They weren’t- not on Reno’s terms. It’s just that if he was going to work for a Shinra, he liked Rufus a lot more than the old man.
And maybe he didn’t want things to get to the point where Sephiroth was trying to blow up the world again. He liked the world better intact.
Which meant that the reactors probably had to go somehow before they sucked all the life out of the planet, not to mention Hojo’s alien.
Damn, he was compromised.
Shit.
Reeve sorted through the papers in his inbox. Budget, expenses, blueprints to be finalized, vacation requests… all the usual. He started with the easiest things first- the personnel questions- then worked his way down through the blueprints, the materials tests, and then the budget.
He was eating a cold supper in his office when he stumbled across a page from somebody else’s budget report. It wasn’t his handwriting or that of any of the supervisors in his division.
But he recognized the equipment. Those were reactor parts. He looked to see which reactor the parts were requested for and couldn’t match it to any of the ones he knew about.
Which was wrong. So very, very wrong.
A few minutes of tracing shipping numbers and he was pretty sure the mystery reactor was in Midgar, but was absolutely sure none of the parts were going to reactors one through eight.
There were some other items listed, too, and those looked less like reactor parts and more like the sorts of things that got sent to the Drum.
Several of them were labeled “Deepground”.
Reeve paused, rubbed his eyes, and checked the time. Almost seven. If he were a sensible man, he’d close this all up, go home, get a good night’s sleep, and try to hunt down the mystery in the morning.
He got up and started a new pot of coffee.
Reno did his best to act natural the next few days. Well, natural for a Turk with a lot to think about- if he acted totally normal around other Turks, they’d know he was hiding something.
It sucked not being on the same page with everybody else. It made things complicated .
If he didn’t have to deal with the consequences of his actions, he’d just do in old man Shinra, tell Rufus what needed to be done, and let the kid get on with it.
There were two problems with that plan- first, Rufus was still living in Junon at this point. He wasn’t vice president and hadn’t even been to a single board meeting yet. He needed a couple of years to get established. Second, Reno did have to live with the consequences of his actions, and that would mean a messy end if he just up and assassinated President Shinra. For himself, and maybe some other Turks just to be sure his treason wasn’t contagious.
Not a great plan.
So a lot was riding on proving to Veld that the information he had was reliable- if he could demonstrate some credibility here, then the boss would listen to him later.
That meant Reno really needed to find Valentine when he and Rude went to Nibelheim.
Unfortunately, nobody ever told Reno exactly where the ex-Turk had been buried beyond in a coffin in the basement somewhere. That was it. Barrett’s Avalanche hadn’t had a lot of talkers in it. It was a damn shame Zack hadn’t survived that mess- the dude would have told everybody down to the last door opened or button pressed, if asked.
Reno couldn’t just look up the records, either- most of them didn’t even exist yet, but what did would be in Hojo’s hands. No thanks.
He took a break to get a snack, and that was when he remembered the sahagin. Everybody who’d known about the passages and sewers under Nibelheim mentioned the sahagin, even if the rest of the mansion was clear.
Reno stared at the vending machine. Rude was coming with him.
He didn’t know how well they’d fight together.
Normally they knew exactly what the other one was going to do- they’d been paired early in their careers and knew each other’s moves by heart. But they were unsynced now- Reno had more experience. Well, in theory, anyway.
Better find out how it worked in practice. Rude was sticking close to keep an eye on him. That meant he was free to go do a little monster hunting in the slums.
Reno hummed cheerfully as he went to fetch his partner. It’d be nice to beat something up.
Reeve was not getting a lot of sleep.
He thought it was bad the first night, when he confirmed the existence of an underground reactor beneath Midgar and the associated Deepground project.
He got in just deep enough to recognize Scarlet’s hand in the technology. He took the next three nights to upgrade his own computer security before going back- he wasn’t going to risk getting caught .
Then another long night looking deep into Deepground’s records. After that, he decided it was high time to take a personal day.
He was supposed to be resting, catching up on all the sleep he’s missed the last few nights. But whenever he tried, he ended up staring at nothing, unable to stop thinking about the medical reports.
Children. Children bred and trained underground, with no sight of the sun. Enslaved children with chips in their heads so they couldn’t possibly escape or disobey.
He’d known that some of the other board members weren’t terribly principled, but he’d also really believed that more and cheaper power was improving people’s lives. Light, medical care, cheaper goods- all made possible by a steady supply of electricity.
Could all of that justify what he’d found, though? Could anything justify those horrors?
Well, if he wasn’t going to be able to sleep, maybe he could resolve some of the issues he’d been having with the Cait Sith project instead.
Reeve went to his workbench.
Monster hunting was never Reno’s favorite job. He didn’t bitch about it much, but he also tended to leave it to the infantry unless it was something really nasty. So Rude raised eyebrows when Reno decided to spend their afternoon taking out trash in the slums.
It took one fight for him to see why.
Reno was… off. Part of the time, they fought side-by-side like normal. Part of the time, Reno executed moves he’d never done before, smooth and precise. And the rest of the time?
Rude’s partner was tripping over himself like a rookie. He was getting upset by it, too, by the grumpy pout he was sporting.
Muscle memory problem. Rude knew how many hours it took to get a particular move down pat, until you didn’t even think when something came at you. Reno looked like he was training himself into new moves, but he acted like he ought to already know them cold.
Rude hadn’t entirely bought into his partner’s story about getting memories from the future. But this?
Yeah. It fit. It was convincing in a way that words weren’t.
Rude finished off an oversized rat and looked around. All clear. “Take a break,” he advised, and watched Reno snarl but nod, scowling as he slumped against a wall to mutter to himself. Give the hot-head a minute or two to cool off, he’d figure it out.
Reno’d been tense, lately. Rude could even understand why. But out here, with nobody to watch him but Rude, Reno relaxed, and Rude got a chance to watch him unguarded. Rude had been concerned about some weird new kind of infiltration- you never knew what could happen when Science got involved. But habits stuck. The way a person smiled or laughed, the way they moved their hands when they got frustrated, the little things somebody did to assert themselves against the world, those were hard to fake.
Rude had seen enough. Even in the middle of a fight, even when he missed a step and snarled in frustration, his partner’s body language was still all Reno . Rude adjusted his sunglasses, saw his partner tilt his head in question.
“All out of enemies,” he observed, lifting his hands. “Want to go a round?”
Reno gave him a crooked grin. “Let’s do it, yo.”
Something was patting Reeve’s face. Something soft, with tiny claw points. He was worried, no, someone else was worried. About him?
He stirred, waving away the paw and unsticking some tiny parts from his cheek. His back ached from sleeping at his workbench.
“Are ye okay?” asked a warbly voice.
Wait. He’d been alone in his house, hadn’t he?
Adrenaline jolted Reeve fully awake. He looked up, right into the plush face of his latest project.
The Cait Sith robot blinked back at him with curiosity and concern.
Reeve turned away from it and pawed through his notes. It shouldn’t be active- he’d only had some ideas, vaguely remembered a Eureka moment amid a sleep-deprived haze, but he hadn’t meant to turn it on . Frantically, he scanned over what he’d written down, traced how his handwriting deteriorated into gibberish with disappointment. Frankly, he drew better diagrams when drunk.
“Somethin’ wrong?” the robot asked.
“I’m not sure,” he told it. “Cait Sith?”
“Tha’s me, right?” it warbled in its odd accent. “I’m Cait Sith.”
“Y-yes.” And now that he’d admitted that much, he could also admit that he could feel Cait’s presence, right in front of him. That it was worried, maybe a little scared.
What the hell did he do?
And then, he recalled the reports he’d been reading, about tests of psychic abilities, enhancements, vivisections, all the things that happened underground, unseen, to people with some odd or interesting capability.
He absolutely could not let the Director of Science know about this.