Prologue
Earl had tasted his first kill at the tender age of 14. Family blood, as good as any other. The scuffle over drug money had turned messy when he took his dear brother's head off with a hatchet in a fit of anger. The latter had tossed and turned, comatose and unsuspecting as it fell.
Earl had screamed- at first, then realised that he quite enjoyed it.
It was all easy after that; he would kill to get what he wanted. And more then often, he simply killed.
Three years later they had him sentenced to the decrepit graveyard of a prison in the Midgar slums. Here, in the burgeoning population of rapist thieves and murderers he found his own little niche in society.
And so he lived, fought, gambled and killed every single inmate they threw in with him within a week. No one cared. No one got out of there alive anyway.
Its might have been a bright Sunday morning, or a dreary Monday one (Down here it didn't matter) when the guards brought him a new toy, still clad in bloodied civilian clothing, which meant they probably didn't expect (or want) him to stay alive long enough to bother dressing.
Earl was happy enough to oblige them. Besides, he had a two-day record going.
The new one didn't budge, lying in the corner without a sound as Earl introduced himself, his boots thudding into the body clothed in the dark blue suit and blood-stained white shirt.
It was an hour before he decided that this wasn't very much fun at all.
"Why so down pal?" his voice the paragon of innocence as he withdrew a rock sharpened coin from his coat jacket.
Might as well hear what the poor thing had to say before it got its throat slit.
"Girlfriend screwed you and ran?" he laughed then, at his own dismal attempt at humour.
That was when Reno decided he liked it quiet in prison.
A sliver of light glinted off the coin into his burning mako eyes.
Earl screamed, then was very sorry. And soon after Earl found out what happens to a person when he finds his insides invariably misplaced, introduced and twined around the cold steel of a prison window.
Chapter1: One Way Ticket
It had been three fuckin' years. Three fucking long years since the authorities had caught up with him, still stinking of cheap drink and soured perfume with a crime list so long he could have wiped his ass on it for a lifetime. And then some. It would have never come to pass of course, not till the snotty do good-ers, Avalanche had stuck their pissers where it didn't belong and brought the long ride of Shinra madness to a grinding halt.
Now those were the days. Where booze tasted like booze (and not something out of the warden's furry ass) and a man would dance and fizzle on whim for him at a flick of his night switch. Where bitches and 2 cent sluts tripped on their mismatched stilettos to cop a feel of his shock red hair and have his dick in their mouths.
All over now, with Rufus and his old man dead and gone, It was only a matter of time before they had burst through his apartment door and nailed him, armlet down, necking that little dynamite of a thing with the unruly raven hair. She had everything to do with it of course. Had set up the whole drinking binge and little make out session till he was so inflamed with lust and liquor he hadn't heard the coppers break in.
She told him as much through the sobs and tears as she slipped on that dirty green top. Payback the jealous bitch had spat.
Yea, so he had screwed her best friend. What was he to do? The whore had thrown herself all over him, never mind that innocent little Ancient face of hers.
They even had had something going. Devils mercy! He'd trusted that shuriken-wielding courtesan and look where that had got him. Stuck in a solitary cell (we all know what happened to the last inmate) with nothing but badly rolled tobacco and a life sentence over his sorry ass.
He drank then, the burning fluid he had beaten out of some janitor on a bad day. Choking as it rolled down his throat. The shit was only good for two things, car engines and a trip to a pretty place with naked fairies.
A swig would get the walls talking, two would put you back in bed with your first bang and a little more might just set you on an alcohol poisoned one way ticket out of here in a body bag.
Now, that was a thought…
Chapter 2: Blue Velvet
Reno was miserable. So miserable in fact that he almost failed to take note of the pounding migraine that was currently engaged in fierce competition for his sanity with the voice at the other end of a clear length of glass, mildly decorated by a spider-web of cracks
Having once been a leader in the field specialising in the extinguishment of human lives, he had also, not long before, reached a rather dismal conclusion. Not only was he quite alive, he had woken up sober.
Now, stuck in at rotted wooden chair that stank of mildew and ashes he was starting to severely regret his sordid vocation to die by the bottle. The voice, partially muted by the glasswork reached traumatic peaks, like a power drill through the brain.
"Reno, I'm sorry." - It's the 6th time you've told me that.
She was crying again, large eyes pooling with the silent sparkle of translucent diamond tears.
Wrung with the sudden urge to comfort her he chose instead to slide back into the chair, taking a pull of his half-spent cigarette, hating himself. An incongruous thought considering how she'd started it all in the first place.
Should have thought about it before you let them get me with my dick in your cunt.
It all seemed slightly surreal to him, talking to someone not a foot away separated by that clean broken sleet of glass. She muttered something incoherent, voice soft, tired.
He found himself staring up, unconditionally, a fleck of concern flickering in his mako tainted eyes. A closer inspection of her from his drink-dulled mind yielded a saddening realisation. The years had taken their toll. Exacted them in a slow painful manner.
Now clad in a clandestine dress of blue velvet she appeared almost emaciated, skin white as bone, eyes glazed and haunted. Drugs he thought grimly, his generous mouth drawing into a thin line even as he pulled his vision away from the tantalising glimpse of shoulder and neck, made all the more prominent by her lack of nourishment.
You are the first and last woman that's spoken to me in three years.
"Yuffie…" The name sounded vaguely foreign on his lips.
"How are you getting along girl?" he heard himself say with as much conviction a dying man had tightening his own noose.
Well, It's a start at least.
It was the first time he had deigned to reply since she appeared a week earlier, a silent reminder that nothing really surprised him anymore.
They sat there, each watching the other. The long silence broken only by the methodical ticking vigil of the old Victorian clock that hung despondently from the ceiling.
Then, finally she rose with a whisper.
"I'll get you out." Will you, really?
The click of the receiver, and she left in a soft rustle of cloth. In the silence he brooded, as a wave of silken perfume melded with burnt tobacco.
To be continued.