Mako Reactor

I respectfully credit all Original Creators, namely Squaresoft, which became SquareEnix,for these characters. In this way, I pay homage to my Fandom's Original Creator, and illustrate my Community's belief that Fan Fiction is "fair use". I do not claim to own these characters. I do not make money or gil from using these protected characters, nor do I wish to make money or gil from them. In other words, I am borrowing these characters to entertain the adult fanfiction community, but I am doing so with the highest degree of respect to the engineers, game designers, music makers, and voice actors.



“Next stop, Shin-Ra Experimental Labs,” Strife said. “Same groups as before. I estimate we’ll all have to camp two nights before reaching the Labs.” He passed out hand-drawn maps. “We meet at the address on the bottom of the paper. The next morning, we strike. If any group isn’t with the two others, we still act.” He regarded us all one by one, his striking blue eyes somber and fond. “I trust we will all make it in time.”

We broke apart without ceremony. I liked this about our group. For a bunch of informal rag-tags, we worked together or apart equally well.

Valentine and I took the mountainous passage while the others skirted the sides of the mountain. I let him do his silent brooding; realizing I likely wouldn’t change this about him. He seemed to need a certain amount of time for gloomy introspection and a bleak outlook.

At noon we stopped. He tucked himself under the shadow of a tall tree while I ate in the full strength of the sun. The near-perfect temperature had a slightly cool breeze. When sitting still I needed that sun to keep me warm.

“When we get there, will we find a lab like your old one?” he asked abruptly.

“I imagine it won’t be as elaborate, but there will be similarities,” I said after a moment’s consideration. “Paul Grey was an underling of mine, long ago. He had no discipline but he did watch how I worked.”

“What sort of discipline?” His voice held interest as well as trepidation.

“One needs patience and strict methods in science, as well as a logical mind.”

He snorted.

“Logical doesn’t mean sane, Valentine,” I pointed out. “My insanity didn’t get in the way of my logical adherences.” I tossed my apple core and grabbed a bagel. “Besides, I had moments of complete rationality on the odd occasion.”

“What happened to you?” he blurted. “You are different. It’s as if someone threw a switch inside your head.”

“I really don’t know. I woke up one morning and I heard no voices but my own. I saw my work and my past stretch out before me like the dry and scorching span of a desert.”

“Then, you found Cloud.”

“No, I spent a few weeks wandering around in a morass of guilt and lost opportunity. I attempted and failed two suicides. I began giving merciful death to the inhabitants of my lab, those that could not be saved.” My stomach knotted as I spoke. I put the rest of my bagel away, knowing I wouldn’t manage it now. “Then, I approached Strife.”

Valentine got up and walked into the sun, blinking a little as the rays struck his face. His pale and perfect luminescence made a sharp contrast to the red and the black covering his big body. “He asked me to tolerate you,” he revealed. “He reminded me that people make mistakes and that you would be useful in taking down the labs.”

“That sounds exactly like him.” I stood up. “And, I will be useful. I know how Shin-Ra technology works and I know codes. I understand the override protocols on their computers.”

He just looked down at me for a long moment, eyes thoughtful. His lips parted. “It’s a relief,” he said. “I don’t have to hate you anymore.”

I knew exactly what he meant. And, as simply expressed, he’d actually been eloquent about it. To express my approval, I merely nodded. We weren’t far enough along for anything tender. I didn’t expect him to ever be tender, really. Jocks and Turks weren’t known for that.

On we walked.

With my feeling of satisfaction, we stopped for the night. Valentine pitched my tent for me as I built a fire. His energy remained supernatural, thanks to his mako treatment. I knew years would pass before he needed another. It worried me he wouldn’t think of learning to inject himself, though. I suspected his need for aloof independence would eventually win out over a simple phobia.

I ate a little. He sat near to me, but not close, watching the movements of my hand. “Where is your wedding ring?” he asked suddenly.

“I gave it to the clerk to pay for our room damages,” I said, hoping the bacon I’d just eaten didn’t poison me. It’d occupied the bottom of my pack all day and I didn’t trust pork to begin with.

When the silence began to stretch, I turned my head. “What?” I asked.

He met my eyes. “You exchanged your wedding ring to pay for our room damages,” he said, as if I had the intelligence quotient of a four year old.

“I don’t need the ring anymore,” I replied.

“You let go of her a little bit at a time, piece by piece,” Valentine countered. “You don’t want to remember her?”

“I don’t need relics.” I looked at the ring on my right pinkie. Hers. Her wedding band. She’d taken it off halfway through a year of letting this beautiful man fuck her. I’d put it on and she’d never said a word. She knew I’d forgive her. “It’s damaging, Valentine, to carry sorrowful mementoes.”

He turned his attention to the fire, his jaw clenching. “The way you excise her from yourself is enviable and chilling,” he growled. “I know she meant something to you.”

“At one time she meant everything,” I agreed. “But, I grew up. It only took me four decades.”

He laughed softly and bitterly. “Then help me do the same,” he said, half asking, half demanding. “I live with her ghost.”

“No, you live with her ideal, because she made you feel better about yourself.” I stirred the fire to conceal my shaking hands. He’d asked me for help. Would miracles never cease? “She had a way of doing that, Valentine. She could make a monster feel valuable. When she still loved me, she nurtured my inner fiend. Then, she did the same for you. She even convinced you that you needed more monsters, going so far as to introduce them into you one by one until you shared space with four extra demons.”

He stood and began to pace back and forth, his body taut with tension. “Goddamn it,” he swore. “I hate that you just know these things!” He tore off his cloak and tossed it down, his pacing become more of a predatory stalk, the way a balefore cat walks impatiently under a tree for a clumsy bit of meat.

“Then tell this sort of thing to your friends so the contrast won’t be so bad,’ I advised. “You’re too used to being alone with it anyway. It isn’t healthy.”

“You’re so fucking smart,” he muttered.

“All this fuss because I turned a painful token back into the metal that made it,” I commented. “It was just a ring, Valentine. My marriage dissolved years ago. I only still wore it because I’d always worn it.”

“Symbolism means nothing to you, Hojo,” he returned in a dark tone. “Where is your soul?”

I took my turn staring into the fire. He had a point.

Eventually I left his company and bedded down. My eyes felt as tired as the rest of me, sore and dry from staring and attempting to hold back a wealth of frustrated tears. For every step forward I made with Turk-jock, he took a step backward. We still had Lucretia between us even though she was effectively dead and beyond our grasp. I didn’t want her anymore. I missed her at times, but I didn’t want her.

He did.

Valentine couldn’t let go of her. He could learn to accept my sexual advances, even to exploring on his own, but his emotions wouldn’t wrap around her loss. I realized that he’d loved her more, and that humbled me. Still, love is easy to maintain and elevate to godly proportions when the everyday, mundane life doesn’t creep in.

He hadn’t seen her sitting at her dressing table, her hair up and her cold cream slathered all over her face. He hadn’t gone out at three in the morning to buy tampons. He hadn’t suffered through her hissy-fits and hormonal havoc, or talked her down from a rant because she kept the neighbors awake. He hadn’t been her punching bag when she lost her good sense.

No, Valentine had only experienced the purity of returned infatuation, good sex and sweet pillow talk. He’d gone along with her experiments on him happily, easily able to ignore the pain and moralistic issue while she smiled and gave her sunny approval. He didn’t know she wasn’t perfect. He didn’t believe me when I pointed it out. He couldn’t accept it.

I heard his silence. It raised the hair on my nape. I put my glasses back on and left the tent, eyes searching for him.

He sat with his back to me, head bowed. I knew if he could weep tears, he would, just by the angle of his back. He was miserable. It made me feel horrible to know I’d poked holes in his nobility, claiming he suffered wrongly. He deeply, deeply missed my fickle, faithless wife.

I didn’t know if he would take my comfort or not. It was worth a shot.

“I loved her too, Turk,” I said quietly, sitting just beside him.

“You’ve said,” he replied, his voice just a rasp. “I believe you mean that.” He wouldn’t look at me.

I slid her ring off my finger, holding it out to him in my palm. “This was hers,” I said. “You probably didn’t see it that much.”

He hesitated a bare moment before taking it, letting it rest in his own hand. His eyes studied it a moment. “Her wedding band?” he asked gruffly.

“Yes. Take it.”

“No.” His fist clenched over it. “It is for a union no longer valid, a union not mine.” He tried to give it back to me then, pushing it at me.

“Have you no sense of symbolism?” I asked, giving his words back to him, though slightly changed.

He blinked. Relaxing slightly, he looked at the ring again. “You gave away your part of the marriage,” he said slowly. “Now you’re giving her part away to me.”

“You can do what you like with it,” I confirmed, getting back up. He hadn’t gotten all the symbolism, for all he seemed to think himself the king of it. But, he would eventually. He wasn’t as stupid as I liked to claim at times. “Good-night, Vincent.”

I went back into the tent and once more attempted sleep. I must have succeeded, for the next thing I knew, Valentine was shaking me awake in weak daylight.

*************************************************************************************

He treated me to more dark and fretful silence. I accepted it, pretending it didn’t bother me. Even at lunch he remained taciturn, taking himself off to a clearing a good fifteen meters away. I ate little, my stomach a shriveled sac containing bile and no appetite.

I’d probably lost him.

The thought made me sick. I stumbled away for a small group of trees and concealing vines and promptly puked. Upon making my way back I discovered Valentine watching me from my original spot. “You vomit fairly often,” he said. “Are you certain you’re not chronically ill?”

I felt glad he talked to me now, but I found I didn’t have much to say. What could I say? I could tell him I’d gone from wanting his lovely body to wanting the whole of him, and that it upset me to think I lost out to my dead wife, but I doubted he’d like that little bombshell very much.

“I have a history with a tricky stomach,” I told him, stowing the rest of my lunch. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

Eternally damned, that’s what I was.

“I damaged you internally,” he said, eyeing my midsection. “You were passing blood in your urine. Is that still happening?”

“No, that went away days ago. I’m fine.” I hefted my pack. “Ready?”


That afternoon my stomach began to cramp. I excused myself and spent nearly an hour downwind of him, purging my system. Lightheaded, I felt like I floated back to his position, like I weighed nothing and could blow away in the slightest breeze. Drinking water helped a little.

I needed to keep my emotions out of my gut.

“We’ll be there early,” Valentine grunted at me, again setting up my tent. “If you’re sick, you should sleep now.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Don’t lie to me.” He suddenly loomed in my vision. “You’re important tomorrow. We can’t afford overestimating ourselves at this point.”

Well well well. Tactical intelligence from a jock. Perhaps his sports days were useful after all. I got up. I didn’t want to fight with him tonight. Slinging out the rest of my tea, I went into the tent and curled up. If I didn’t feel any better in the morning I’d give myself an injection of mako. It would help strengthen me and burn out this useless debility. I still didn’t know if my heartache caused the stomach fit or if it had been that wretched bacon.

I felt weary of being an island. I wanted a connection. I wanted a bridge. I wanted that beautiful simpleton out there at the fire to come in here and hold me.

Wish in one hand but shit in the other; see which hand gets full first.

For a good hour I just stared at the canvas. My stomach suddenly gave a mighty wrench. I wrestled free of the sleeping bag and exploded from the tent. I made it nearly to the tree line before hurling up about a gallon of water. I collapsed, dry heaving, seeing spots dance in my vision.

“You are very ill,” Valentine said from above and behind me. “What may be done?”


Show me a sign I haven’t lost my chance, I thought.


I couldn’t answer.

After a minute he picked me up and carried me back to the tent. I shivered now, violently. The sun had fallen and the cold damp seemed a personal attack. Valentine put me back in my camp bed and sat beside me. “You have drugs,” he pointed out. “I know you do. When we invaded the military encampment you put vials in your pack.”

I’d completely forgotten that. “Open the pack up and dump everything out,” I said, struggling to sit up.

He obeyed me. Eyes drifting a bit, I found a drug intended to stop violent nausea and calm the gall bladder. It took me forever to unwrap a needle.

“Can you do it?” Valentine asked, worry evident in his voice.

“I’ll have to, won’t I?” I said. “You wouldn’t let me teach you.”

He made a noise of frustration, taking the needle from me. “Just tell me what to fucking do, Hojo,” he demanded.

I complied. Even if he jabbed the immortal hell out of me I probably wouldn’t complain. “Swab off my inner elbow with an alcohol pad,” I instructed.

His nimble fingers tore at a swab pack. He took the tiny gauze out and carefully wiped off the area I directed. It looked surreal, his golden claws holding a tiny bit of fluff.

“Hold the vial securely and puncture the top with the needle. Draw a full chamber and put the vial back. Tap the needle to look for air bubbles, holding it point-up, and then push the plunger until you get the medicine to squirt out the top a little.”

He complied quickly, his face set with uncertainty and concentration.

“See this vein?” I tapped it a few times to make it stand out. “Go in at a slant and stop when you can’t see the hollow point of the needle anymore.”

Valentine slowly did as I told him. His hands didn’t shake and I’d had worse shots.

“Push it in slowly,” I said. “Very, very slowly. This sort of drug needs to be in a drip, not straight injected. Brace your hand on my arm if you have to.”

Five minutes later it was all over. Valentine opened the tent flap and threw the needle into the campfire. “You’ll feel better now?” he asked.

“I should.” I shivered again.

“You’re cold,” he stated.

“I’ll live,” I said, weary of speaking of the most obvious things. Sinking down, I covered back up and closed my eyes. Minutes later I felt his body lay against mine. He draped us with his cloak.

I instantly felt warmer. It could have been nothing more than illusion, but I took it anyway.