Author's notes: I've been re-reading one of my old favourite Final Fantasy VII fics recently (very much not written by me btw), and it put me in the mood to write about two of my favourite characters from the game. This is set just after the Plate falls in Midgar and is a little about how Rude and Reno deal with the aftermath.

Warning is for strong language due to Reno's foul mouth.

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A Day Without Rain.

"Reno."

A single word, spoken like the final amen, punctuated the stillness.

He considered briefly the merits of simply not answering, letting the intrusion slide off his wall of protective stillness like rain over the Perspex windows of the Shinra building. His thoughts kept him unmoving and held down the lid of spoken thought until he wondered if he would ever speak again. He considered that too, and then discarded the idea for its folly. It was funny, he felt that he had been discarding a lot of important things these days.

A sigh. And then footsteps. He listened distractedly as they rang hollowly around the cubicles, sound ricocheting like shrapnel against the white and black of tiles. These were better tiles than you got in the middle levels, these tiles had class. The thought made his lips twist in the approximation of a smile. Not nearly his usual rogue's grin, that currently would have hurt too much.

The footsteps halted a few feet from his side, the remnants of their passing still reverberating in the silence and he felt rather than saw the loss of light that their owner's shadow caused. He tried and failed to hear the other's breathing even in the quiet of the empty room. That was as it always was he supposed.

"What are you doing here?"

Straight to the point. Good old Rude. Reno tilted his head upwards, squinting against the fluorescent halo from the strip lights that crowned his partner's head, and tried to look the other in the eyes. His gaze was met by the reflective black plastic of Rude's ever-present shades so that all he could see was his own ragged image mirrored back at him. Even he had to admit, he was looking kinda rough.

"How'd you find me?"

It was a diversion tactic and they both knew it.

Rude's face was impassive and if he felt any emotion he chose not to show it.

"Your passcard is not authorised for this section without prior consent from Tseng or Heidegger. It showed up on the computer system in 65a. I came to check it out."

"I thought that was Eric's job."

Rude continued to stare down at his partner, and did not deign to reply. Finally he sighed and reached up to remove his sunglasses, folding the black plastic neatly with large hands before slipping them into the inside pocket of his jacket. Then with meticulous care, he hitched his black suit trousers up and lowered himself onto the tiled floor beside the other man.

Reno regarded his partner sideways with a tired gaze and pulled his knees further up into his chest. The other Turk was silent, staring straight ahead and up, his eyes finding the rain-streaked window that Reno had spent the last hour watching in silence. Reno rested his cheek on his knees and half-heartedly blew a strand of red hair out of his face where it had slipped loose from the rest of its unruly mass.

"Took you long enough."

A soft sound that may have been amusement was the only reply Rude gave, instead he looked slowly around the room, dark eyes noting the fittings and dismissing them in the same breath. His gaze lingered for a moment on a discarded and empty pack of cigarettes before moving on again.

"Why are you here, Reno?" he said quietly.

"I dunno. It's quiet."

He heard the shifting of cloth as Rude turned his head, felt his eyes on the back of his neck.

"Its a shower room, Reno."

"Yeah. I know. Posh ain't it? You don't see fittings like that in the general staffrooms. We don't have fittings like that."

The silence stretched between them and suddenly Reno detested the sound-proofing of the windows. He'd have liked to have heard the rain as it sheeted down, it would have given him something else to think about, something to distract from the unease he now felt. He wished he could think of something to say. Instead he fingered the neck of the bottle held against his side, rolling it from side to side against the tiles. He could have pretended to be drunk, evading all questions that way, but he didn't think that Rude would have fallen for it. The older Turk knew him too damn well.

Perhaps he could start now. He hefted the bottle in his hand and lifted it, grimacing at the pain the movement caused. His shoulder hurt dammit. The painkillers that they had handed him in their brown plastic bottle with their tiny typed instructions just weren't enough. Damn medics hadn't even had the backbone to look him in the eye. He guessed he understood why, he was famous now after all wasn't he? Or was it just notorious. He hissed between clenched teeth as the effort it took to unscrew the cap caused shooting pains across his healing ribcage.

"They told you to lay off that stuff while you're on the drugs."

"Yeah? And who are you? My goddamned mother?"

The other Turk sighed and shook his head slightly at the words, his expression weary.

Reno shifted his back against the sink cabinets and changed his grip. The pain was horrible, ribs that were broken in more than one place and as yet barely healed screamed their protest, and his wrist, materia-healed, threatened to join in the riot of protest.

"Fuck's sake!"

He slumped back against the tiles, the bottle falling undefeated to his side. After a moment, Rude reached over him and picked it up.

"It's not even decent anyway. How much did you pay for it?"

"A gil."

"Hn. Shows."

Reno let his head fall back onto the tiles, the grin that was tugging at the corners of his lips fading slowly as his eyes came to rest on the rain-streaked windows. They were set high up in the wall and through the reinforced glass, he could see that the world was darkening to black. Occasional strobe effect produced by the whip of lightning across the sky was like something out of a cheap horror flick. There was no sound to accompany the show as he tracked the crawl of water down the glass and frowned. It had been raining ever since he'd woken up.

"I really messed up, didn't I?"

He felt Rude stiffen almost imperceptibly beside him, would have missed it if he hadn't been waiting for it. Inside, he cringed. Pathetic excuse for a person. Like a dog whining for scraps at the master's table he was. Should never have dared to dream. Street trash was street trash through and through until the end.

"Hardly."

Reno blinked, his self-pity not expecting the answer.

"What?"

Rude turned his head to look across at the younger man, blue eyes that were normally hidden behind his shades sharp as they met Reno's.

"Is that what this is all about?"

Reno looked away, turning stubbornly back to the windows. He didn't want to hear this. He wished he'd opened that bottle before Rude had turned up and taken it. He could hardly get it off the big man now, and he doubted that the other Turk would let him have it anyway. Rude could be protective like that.

"Dammit Rude, I fucked up! Christ man, I thought I was gonna die out there. I thought…Jesus, they're gonna have me hit aren't they?"

It was obvious to him. They already had his replacement lined up. The girl was smart and pretty, with "a good head on her shoulders". He knew, he'd read the file on her. If direct confrontation hadn't worked, then they'd go for good old female charm. Reno sincerely doubted that it would work. He'd seen the cold glint in the boy's Mako blue eyes, and he'd seen death there too. Corny though it may sound, Reno knew better. The kid had been more than human, in an alien, unforgiving way. And with a replacement lined up, there was nowhere left for battered Reno to go. Turks did not retire. He wondered if they'd be waiting for him in his apartment. One or two? How much credit did they give to a failure? Or perhaps he'd not even make it that far.

"Reno, they're not going to have you hit. You're not being fired."

"Yeah? And why the hell not?"

There was silence for a long time in which they both sat and stared up at the rain. Then Rude placed the bottle down on the tiles with a clink that echoed amongst the cubicles and turned to lean on one shoulder facing his silent partner.

"This has gone further than what we are qualified to handle, Reno. The boy is SOLDIER. And that was a suicide mission. You know that as well as Tseng did."

Reno scowled and snapped, "it wasn't a goddamned suicide mission! Why the hell would Tseng send me out there if he knew I couldn't handle it?"

Rude met his furious gaze with searching eyes, looking for confirmation in the other Turk's eyes. His voice was low and level as he replied.

"You didn't know?"

Reno shook his head, strands of red hair flicking into his eyes and he ran a distracted hand roughly through them, pushing them back and away.

"He said I had, he said…Jesus, Rude…"

He mostly remembered surprise as the edge of the boy's blade had hit him square across the chest sending his mag rod spinning up and away from him. Then the pain had hit him and then…he remembered the heat of the explosion the most and the scream of tortured metal as it twisted and snapped, shearing away from its holdings. The fall had not been pleasant, not like in the stories anyway. He'd been terrified out of his mind, feeling the slow, inexorable pull of gravity as she took hold, making the blood seeping from his wounds run upwards across his face, blown by the savage updraft. He remembered hitting the platform, the pain as the impact crushed the breath from his lungs, the snapping as he felt his bones break…

"Jesus."

He covered his eyes with one hand, consciously stopping the images before they took hold. Beside him he heard Rude shift in concern, hesitate, and then draw back again.

"I did not know. I would not have let you go."

Reno did not move, did not trust himself to do anything that might jeopardise the moment. In truth, he did not know what to do. Tseng had known, Rude had not, and he, Reno, had been played for a fool. And they'd won, and he'd lost, or was it the other way around? He was still alive wasn't he? He bet that galled Heidegger no end.

"I don't get it, man."

He heard Rude sigh, long and deep, heard the slide of skin over glass as the other man shifted his grip on the bottle. He looked up and sideways to see the big man shaking his head almost imperceptibly.

"I don't know. Orders came down from above. The way it always is. I spoke to Tseng after they pulled you out of the wreckage. He said that there were bigger things afoot than we knew about."

Rude had spoken to Tseng, anger turning his usually measured voice menacing. He'd loomed over the smaller man, demanding answers, one hand around Tseng's upper arm holding him in place. Any other man would have quailed, for Rude was an intimidating figure when unprovoked if not angry, but the slender Wutaian had spoken calmly of "orders from above," reminded Rude of his duty as a Turk and coldly disengaged his arm before walking away. Rude had stared after him, fuming, and the medics had avoided him instinctively even amidst the chaos. Then he'd gone to find his friend.

"You were lucky. I saw where they found you. You should be dead."

Reno blinked once, twice. He hadn't known that Rude had been there. He'd thought, well, all he remembered was waking up amongst a nest of surveillance equipment attached to his body, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the world again. Then looking to the side to see his partner sitting regarding him from a chair placed in the corner of the room. He remembered how worn he had looked. But still Rude. The same old impassive and untouchable, silent mountain of a man.

"I thought I was."

Rude did not reply, but the ghost of a smile traced over his lips. It made Reno want to smile too. He leant his head in the palm of one hand, resting his elbow on his knee and regarded the other Turk.

"So what now then? If I ain't fired, then what? Why the new girl? What the hell's going on, Rude?"

Rude shook his head slowly. "I don't know."

Reno sighed. "And so we wait. Orders from above."

The older Turk raised one eyebrow. "Indeed."

His friend shook his head in mock despair. "I guess that's what it's all about, being a Turk. Do what they tell you, when they tell you, and god help you if you get it wrong. Orders from above. Jesus."

Rude nodded, the eyebrow still raised. He drew the sleeve of his jacket back from one wrist and regarded his watch in a businesslike fashion. "Are you going home tonight?"

Reno snorted and gestured at the rain-streaked window with one bandaged hand.

"In that? You gotta be kiddin' me."

Beside him, Rude levered himself to his feet and dusted imaginary specks of dust from his trousers before reaching into his inside pocket and drawing out his shades. He flipped them open and put them on before offering his hand down to Reno.

"I'll drive."

Reno regarded the hand for a second before giving in and allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. He grimaced at the pain that shot through his body and down his legs, but refused the steadying arm that Rude offered him. Flicking his pony tail back over one shoulder he started for the door.

"Fuck it, man. Don't forget the bottle," he said over his shoulder.

Rude sighed and shook his head before reaching down for the bottle and followed his partner to the door. Outside, unnoticed, the rain continued to fall.