Vengeance

Don't piss off crazy people.
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Vengeance

What ravages of spirit
Conjured this temptuous rage
Created you a monster
Broken by the rules of love
And fate has led you through it
You do what you have to do—Sarah McLachlan

It had been a long time since Cloud Strife had killed in cold blood. He had retired, so to speak. He was a civilian now. He had become a delivery boy, laid to rest his demons, bought a condo, gotten married. He had built a comfortable happy life. A family and friends. Stability.

But that morning in Tseng’s office it had fallen into bitter ashes around him. He could see the commander of the Turks was shaken as well. Reno was practically family to him. But there was a long fucking way between practically family and…

Reno. He only partially heard the words coming from Tseng’s mouth. As he said the canned phrases, things like “remain calm” and “rescue mission” and “no reason to believe he is not still alive,” Cloud felt the cold steel of rage reborn in him. This was one thing, for all his training, he did not think Tseng understood. He might be able to rescue Reno, but he could not avenge him.

There’s not a thing I don’t cherish.

But in the years that had passed, Cloud had come to cherish some more than others.

How dare they.

He exited Tseng’s office in a storm of icy murder, his eyes terrifyingly blank. He paused at Rude’s desk to offer, or accept, words of comfort. Neither man had any.

“Do you need help?”

“No. You come with the Turks. I need to do this.”

Rude only nodded. He understood.

Cloud hadn’t been entirely honest; he stopped on the way out of town to pick up Vincent. Neither spoke of the line they were about to re-cross, for Vincent too had settled into a calm sort of suburbia. But also for Vincent, the veneer of civilized behavior was thin. Neither was entirely human. Both had learned normal behavior by rote memorization and didn’t really grasp why you just couldn’t kill people when they deserved it.

Like now, for instance. Really, you just didn’t fuck around with crazy people.

“So, who is behind this?”

“Some random fucker that wanted more power than he felt like working for. Somehow brought Yazoo and Loz back to fucking life to be his bad boys, don’t ask me how or why. Séance kind of shit, or something in a lab. Even Tseng wasn’t clear on that. Kadaj would have been along for the ride but apparently he died ‘at peace’ and was out of reach or some such.

“Anyway, his deal with the devil was to hand over me. That’s what they wanted, in revenge for killing their *brother*,” Cloud’s voice was monotone as he sharpened his sword, again. It was habit now, he’d been doing it for hours. He didn’t look up. Couldn’t look up.

“And for bait, they took Reno,” Vincent finished for him. All that forgiveness, the time they had spent forgiving the hardest debt of all. Themselves. If Reno…

Cloud nodded. Neither slept that night.

It was said that when a man married, he surrendered hostages to fortune. Cloud cursed himself. He should have known better, damn it. Someone, likely a lot of someones, would die for this. His thumb worried at a chip on the handle of his coffee mug as he and Vincent sat in Barrett’s kitchen.

Still no friend of the Turks, Barrett didn’t take kindly to anyone making his friend a widower. Or anyone fucking with his friend in any way whatsoever. Barrett was what you might call…loyal. Just a bit.

“So, you gonna kill these motherfuckers, right?” Barrett caught himself too late and looked around the corner. A quick check confirmed that Marlene was still playing her video game, oblivious to the doings of grownups.

“Yes, the Turks are mounting a search and rescue operation but Vin and I are working as…”

“Independent contractors.” Vincent filled in. It sounded better than “murderers” but he figured Barrett wouldn’t mind either term, really. Barrett nodded. He could easily accept the Turks needing a plan B.

“You’re welcome to any of the hardware here to ah…supplement what you already have,” he said, nodding toward Cerberus lying on the table and then to the rolling arsenal that was Fenrir. Cloud gave a sad smile. He could almost hear Reno making stiffie jokes about Barrett’s ammo stash. Crate after crate lay open on the table. Cloud and Vincent took everything they could carry, plus some bombs for good measure. You just never knew when you needed a few explosives to fuck up an asshole’s day.

Yes, pissing off crazy people was a really, really bad investment.

They had taken Reno. They would die for it, of that Cloud would be very sure.

Please be alive. Please wait just a little longer.

Never one to be happy with either small spaces or inactivity, Reno was getting righteously pissed. He had figured out that he was bait, though for what and why was still a mystery. That pissed him off even more. Worse, he had begun to suspect that they were laying a trap for Cloud. If something happened…Fuck. There weren’t enough bodies. There literally were not enough people to kill and torture, to expend his rage before he just went fucking mad. They had best not touch him. He called to mind for the millionth time Cloud’s perfect face, his warmth. Random details began to drift through his memory. Reno had left the dishes in the sink the morning he had left. Cloud had made omelets. He had meant to toss the takeout leftovers before they started to smell funny. They needed to go grocery shopping. He couldn’t smell Cloud’s shampoo on his hands anymore. He was starting to cry.

Damn it. He needed to get a grip. The first obligation of a prisoner was to escape.

Please stay safe. I love you.

He worked off his frustrations by jiggling loose a bit of wooden windowsill and sharpening it on the metal bars. Gods bless backwater shitholes and their low tech jails.

Cloud and Vincent roared into town some time behind the Turks. They were late, lacking helicopters; the stop at Barrett’s for weapons of questionable legality had put them a little behind as well. The entire town looked like an anthill after gasoline had been poured on it. No one even noticed the two of them.

It facilitated things greatly, though they still had to fight their way to the center of town. Cloud made a mental note to send Barrett a thank you note for his generosity.

Since the Turks were, on the surface anyway, figures of lawful detainment, Cloud headed to the most obvious place to find a prisoner. He rode Fenrir right up the damn stairs and through the front door while Vincent stood guard outside, looking badass as ever. Entering the jail however, he saw no prisoners or guards.

Then a shock of red hair caught his eye on its way to the back of his motorcycle. “You the cavalry, babe?”

“No, the cavalry is outside. I’m just your ride out of this hellhole.” He laughed with sheer joy that Reno was alive. “What the fuck is that?”

“Home made knife. Please tell me you have something better, though this offed eight guards.”

Cloud accelerated and handed Reno a short sword. They were both warriors. As deep as their love bound them to each other, as hellish as the last days had been, they both knew there was business at hand and there was time for sentiment later. “Only eight?”

“Couldn’t find nine, yo!” Cloud could feel his mate grinning as they sped out of the jail.

He dropped Reno off with Tseng, once he found him, and Reno was correctly pronounced malnourished and dehydrated. Reno wasn’t happy about this as it meant he couldn’t go out and kick ass anymore, but he sat quietly and promised to behave. For a few hours. That was all he could commit. Cloud kissed him thoroughly while the rest of the Turks studied their shoes.

Cloud and Vincent picked up their weapons of choice and locked eyes.

“Time for killing, my friend.”

For the life of him, Cloud didn’t know why he always had to fight remnants while silhouetted against the sky like a fucking shooting gallery. The whole thing reeked of déjà vu. He looked down the mountain to see Vin climbing up behind him. Neither Yazoo nor Loz was anywhere in sight but that didn’t keep Cloud from feeling like he had a giant target on his...

They stepped out of nowhere; the scene was almost anticlimactic and Cloud felt suddenly tired. The undead, he mused, were some persistent motherfuckers. Before he could move, Vincent had shot Loz and his chest exploded in a haze of red. His face appeared almost humorously baffled.

Loz always was kind of…short bus.

“Thanks, friend.”

“One down, one to go.” They stood shoulder to shoulder and looked at Yazoo.

He laughed derisively. “You won’t kill me. I’m unarmed, brother!” He spread his arms to make the point, then curled his fingers in front of his face, as though his hand belonged to someone else. “You even let Kadaj return to Mother! You freed him! You freed him after all he had done to you! You and your little absolution fetish. You’re too honorable. It always was your fatal weak—“

He never finished his sentence. Cloud’s sword made a clean cut just above Yazoo’s shoulders and the remnant’s head rolled a few feet, stopping just before the cliff face.

“And fucking with Reno was yours. For the love of Gaia, stay dead this time.” He wiped the sweat from his eyes and rubbed the tension from his neck. “Come on, let’s see what the rest of the kids are up to.”

Cloud and Vincent returned to the temporary Turk base. “Are they dead? Did you kill them?” Reno sounded like a kid that had been sent to bed too early and didn’t get to see the end of the movie.

“Yes, dead. Vin and I split them up. Gods, I’m tired. Why was this easier two years ago? Were we that much younger?” Or was I just not in love with you then? Cloud drank deeply from his bottled water and collapsed next to Reno. “Ready to go home, love?”

“You don’t know. I’m starving, I want everything. Burger. Sushi. Just tell me we can eat something on the way home. And beer. Gallons of beer.”

“Absolutely.”

“Gods, to sleep in a bed tonight. I want a shower.”

“You NEED a shower. I love you anyway.”

“What about the would-be overlord who set this whole thing up?” Vincent asked Tseng just before they left.

“I let Rude have him.” The flat coldness in Tseng’s voice gave even Cloud a chill. Maybe Tseng understood vengeance after all.

The bomb on the desk was a fake, a decoy. The small greasy man in front of it didn’t know that yet, of course. Sweat ran down his temples as he watched the red numbers count slowly down to zero, watching his life as he knew it grow shorter by the second. And then, nothing.

Nothing at all happened. A brief flicker of joy as he strained at the ropes binding him to the chair. He would live! He would live after all, he could move to a new town and start over. He would build a new power base, not so ambitious as this one. It had been a terrible idea, really….

And then he realized the cruelest torture, that of giving a prisoner hope and then taking it away. The bald Turk walked into the office in utter silence. The little man remembered him, he had been here earlier with the Wutian.

The barrel of the pistol was the last thing he saw in this life before Rude blew him straight to hell.