midnightdiddle

A ficlet. A Reeve-ficlet, even~

Rocking Horse People: A Love Story

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
Where rocking horse people eat marshmellow pies
--The Beatles

Reeve fell in love while he was in college. He can't quite remember her name, but he can remember her hair, red-blonde, and her eyes, brown. He remembers the way she would stand on tip-toe to kiss him, and he remembers the way her fingers, small and a little ink-stained, unhooked her bra. He remembers the way she stood in his doorway once, rain in her hair and on her eyelashes.

Reeve was in love once, but he's a busy man, always has been. His life was taken up by blue-prints and department meetings, thesis papers on materials and materia, metal and mako and reactors that spewed green-white light into the air. Love didn't have time for him, or maybe he didn't have time for love, and so now he's here, sitting in what used to be the greatest city in the world, a city he built and watched fall to pieces only decades later.

It's a little sad, but then, Reeve thinks as he lights a cigarette, he's always been a sad man.

x

Midgar was always his greatest success. He still has the original drafts, sharp lines on yellowing paper, and sometimes he unrolls the plans, spreads the papers out over his floor, a book holding this end flat, a coffee cup holding that end. It's like a love affair, something secret and beautiful and unbelievably unfulfilling, for all that it makes him dream.

Edge is little better than Midgar. If hard-pressed, Reeve would say it's worse, because Edge was built on the tail-end of an apocolypse. Edge is something full of raw need and want and desperation; it's rough around the edges, ready to cut and shred if there's a single mis-step, because Edge is nothing more than a self-destructive illusion of safety. Midgar was never like that. Midgar was beautiful, perfect, a dream in the middle of the night; Midgar was something that Reeve lived for, would've died for, still wants to die for.

Sometimes he looks out his window, some twelve miles to the west, and he watches Midgar fall apart a little more, bit by bit. Sometimes he leans against the windowframe, glass cold against his skin, and he wonders how something so perfect became so wrong so quickly.

Sometimes Reeve wonders when he grew so old.

x

Reeve doesn't sleep much anymore. He doesn't have much time for it, and he doesn't have much use for it. He has the WRO; he has plans to build. He has lives to fix, penance to make, and so when night comes he flips on all the lights in his office. He lives on coffee and cigarettes, snatches of sandwiches here and there. The computer screen in front of him flickers blue and white, and he can't quite remember when he last left his office.

The last of the Deepground Soldiers are rounded up and quietly executed. Bodies of lost WRO soldiers are being recovered and cremated. The widows and orphans of WRO soldiers are names on thick stacks of paper, and Reeve writes letters, signs checks, offers his condolences in ink.

The average age of the Deepground Soldiers ia about nine years younger than Reeve. The average age of the WRO soldiers is about thirteen years younger than Reeve. Reeve reads the numbers, looks at the pictures, signs the papers, and wonders how time has passed so quickly.

x

Cait Sith started out as an escapism for Reeve. The first prototype was built while he was still in college, designed during classes, pieces of metal and wiring welded and twisted together during late nights in the workshops. It'd started out as something Reeve did to pass the time, to give himself a chance to relax and not worry about exams. Cait Sith had started out as a toy.

Now Cait Sith is something very different. He's real, or as real as anything can get in Reeve's life. Sometimes, when Reeve glances at the small monitor sitting on his desk, watching the world through cat eyes thousands of miles away, Reeve thinks Cait Sith is more real than Reeve himself will ever be.

He finds it funny, somewhere inside, when Cait Sith controls a second Reeve. He finds it almost fitting, that the puppet should be the master of the maker. He laughs as he watches the world through Cait Sith's eyes, and he watches as Cait Sith pulls his strings, making Reeve jump and sing and dance. Reeve laughs, and Reeve wonders just how fucked up he really is.

x

Reeve runs into Rufus at what's left of the Shinra building. He's not sure who finds who, but at the end of confusing greetings, he sits on the crumbling front steps, a few feet away from where Rufus is awkwardly sitting. There is a cane in Rufus's hand now, black and silver, and Rufus taps it slowly against his legs.

It's all a polite conversation, particularly careful not to say much of anything at all. Reeve doesn't thank Rufus for backing the WRO, and Rufus doesn't thank Reeve for pretending Rufus has nothing to make amends for. Reeve's lulled into a calm, deep and empty and dark, watching the shadows grow longer as the sun set, and that's when Rufus looks over, eyes sharp and blue.

"Do you miss Midgar?" Rufus asks, smile deceptive.

"The president of the Shinra Company--" Reeve begins, but Rufus interrupts him, because Rufus has always interrupted everything, a skinny boy with big ideas and a bigger mouth.

"It was more your city than my father's," Rufus says in a drawl. "Midgar was always yours, Reeve. Not my father's, not mine. Midgar will always be yours."

Reeve looks at the empty buildings, twisted metal and cement, and can't think of anything to say, because Midgar, beautiful, painful Midgar, has always stolen his breath away.

"Edge isn't yours," Rufus is saying in that warm voice he has, the voice he uses when there's something he wants, and he knows he's going to get it. "Edge was never yours. Edge is everyone else's. Midgar, though, Midgar was always yours." Rufus is struggling to his feet, cane tapping against the cement steps, and Reeve looks up at him, feeling peculiarly light-headed.

"She could be yours again, Reeve," Rufus says. "Midgar can always be yours again."

Reeve watches Rufus limp away, flanked by his posse of Turks, and Reeve wonders what it is, exactly, that can always so easily seduce him back to Midgar.

He thinks it might be love.

x

Reeve thinks he might be going crazy when Vincent comes to his office. He's not sure how long it's been since he last slept, and he has to press the heels of his hands against his eyes, because he can't focus on anything that's not on computer screens or paper.

"Shelke said you haven't left your office for a few weeks," Vincent says by way of a greeting. Reeve looks at Vincent for a moment, feels his eyes blur, and wonders what the easiest way of getting a cup of coffee might be.

"I've been busy," Reeve says, and it's true. The lists of names never end, and the pleas for help are never quiet, and every day there are people screaming, crying, dying in the streets because they don't have enough of anything.

There's silence for a few minutes, Vincent ghosting about the room, a swirl of a red cape here, glint of golden claws there. Reeve watches Vincent tiredly for the first couple of minutes, then finally gets up, searching for his coffee mug and the pot of coffee.

"Midgar?" Vincent's voice asks as Reeve's pouring himself a cup of coffee. Reeve turns around, sees Vincent pick up part of blueprint with his clawed hand.

"Midgar," Reeve echoes. Vincent looks at him and Reeve stares back over the rim of his mug. "I should be able to rebuild--" Reeve begins, words half-muffled. He's not expecting it when Vincent pulls the coffee mug from his hands, metal clicking against glass.

"You can't fix everything," Vincent says, setting the coffee mug down on the table. Reeve lets himself sink to the floor, breath leaving in a sigh. "Get some rest," Vincent continues, and the footsteps towards the door are soft. "Tifa and Yuffie are worried about you."

When Reeve sleeps that night, he dreams of city of lights, where mako flows through the streets and the children cry for food.

x

Edge grows too fast to be able to support its own weight. There aren't enough buildings, so people live in tents and lean-tos built of discarded rubble. The city is rotting from the inside out, and when Reeve walks through the streets he's reminded how similar and how different Edge is from Midgar.

Shelke finds him standing in front of Seventh Heaven. She stands close to him, almost close enough for their skin to touch, and when he turns away to walk through the city, she follows. He watches the people of Edge, the children and the adults, and Shelke watches him, and somehow, Reeve can't find it in himself to ask why.

"It's a good city," Shelke says next to him, her voice smooth. "It's a strong city."

Reeve looks around him, at the dusty streets and the broken down city; he looks at the people below and the sky above.

"It is," he says, and thinks he might not be lying. He thinks that he might grow to love this city, built on the edge of life itself. He thinks he might grow to love everything here, the buildings and the people.

"It is," Reeve repeats, looking at Edge, his Edge, but when he closes his eyes, it's always Midgar that he sees.