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Broken Wings	By : crystalwind Category: Final Fantasy VII > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 643 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Warnings: some language

Chapter Three – Hate

Winter, 2008
“Last time we met, we were speaking about Rude and Zack leaving you.”
“You open up these sessions with some really obvious, stupid lines. I know what we finished up with, I have a perfect memory, remember?”
“Of course, Reno. It’s really just for continuity in the recordings.” Reno merely rolled his eyes, so Dr. Gast continued. “Did you continue speaking with your friends after they left the Island?”
“Sure, for a while. Zack’s a pretty tough person to turn away, so it took me a while to get him to leave me alone.” Gast gazed at him, expecting him to continue, but Reno stared back placidly, apparently not intending to go on.
“And what about Rude?”
“Rude? I told you last time that I was glad that he was still my friend, that I wasn’t trying to push him away. I guess he wasn’t as glad to have me as his friend though… he’s the one who stopped talking to me.”

Spring, 2007
Reno’s first semester of 8^th grade was unpleasant, to say the least. After Rude’s departure, Reno only had Zack left to support him at home. Unfortunately for Reno, Zack was as persistent as ever in trying to “rehabilitate” his friend, and it didn’t take long for Reno to begin wishing that Zack would simply leave him alone; he pried into Reno’s personal affairs far deeper than Reno was comfortable with. By the time the semester ended, Reno had pushed Zack away as far as possible… and then his wish came true, although not in the way Reno had expected.
Shortly before the winter holidays ended, Zack had announced that he, too, was leaving. His father had been transferred to Midgar on the Mainland, and Zack didn’t know when – or if – he and Angeal would return. His relationship with Reno had deteriorated to the point where he didn’t bother trying to contact the redhead after his departure. The rumors about Reno grew worse over the school year, and he soon found that his phone calls with Rude were his only solace. He had successfully wounded Axel to the point where his brother would barely even look at him, let alone speak with or support him in any way. Although this was what Reno had been after, it was painful, and Rude was the only one he had left to turn to. Soon, however, even his most enduring friend began to desert him.
It began with an odd note to Rude’s voice; he began to sound awkward when he spoke to Reno. Then awkwardness turned to discomfort, and then the calls began decreasing. Reno didn’t hear from Rude as often, and his own calls went unanswered, his messages unreturned. By the end of the semester, he stopped contacting Reno entirely. Reno didn’t really know why Rude didn’t want to speak with him anymore, but he could only assume that Rude had finally realized what Reno had known all along: he was disgusting – trash – and not worth being friends with in any way.

Summer, 2007
Axel was having a better summer than he’d had for the past few years. He’d discovered that so long as he stayed out of the house and away from Reno, his brother didn’t bother him nearly as much; he stopped focusing on alienating Axel, and took to ignoring him instead. It still wasn’t the way Axel wanted it to be, but at least it was better than the open hostility that Reno had been showing him. Even better, their father was finally paying attention to him again.
Conversely, that summer without friends was the longest of Reno’s life. Reno had expected the cruel rumors to persist, but he was still surprised at how much they hurt him. Now without Rude to talk to at night, he had no one to turn to when his days were rough. To make matters worse, his plan of driving Axel away from the house and at the same time away from their father was no longer working; the other day he had been shocked to walk around the corner into the kitchen and see Axel and James standing together, their father’s hand resting lightly on Axel’s head, a thumb idly stroking his hair. James’ face had that cold, blank look on it, but Axel didn’t notice. He had spotted Reno round the corner and was peering up at him with a small smirk on his lips. Finally, it was his turn to get noticed around here, and he was very much enjoying the stunned look on Reno’s face.
Reno, for his part, was trying very hard not to show how ill he was feeling. James didn’t show affection just for the sake of showing it; not since losing his job. He was after something, and Reno was damned if it was going to be his brother.

Fall, 2007
“I didn’t fucking do anything! You’re all a bunch of goddamn idiots for even listening to that lying snake!”
The social workers glanced over at their police escort. Usually when a teenager called child services to try and get a sibling taken away, it was a deceit of some kind; more often than not, it was the child making the accusations that needed to be removed from the household – usually needing some kind of psychological help. In this case, however, they had to admit that the subject they were there to inspect really did seem to be the one in need of removal. The boy was acting extremely unstable and aggressive. It didn’t help his case that many of the townspeople had corroborated the stories about Axel’s cruelty towards his brother, citing many occasions on which Reno had showed up to school with black eyes and clearly visible handprints on his face. The boy was taller and stockier than his older twin, so it wasn’t difficult to believe that he was the aggressor in the relationship.
Reno watched the scene in the living room from the doorway, staring quietly at his brother. It had taken him a while to set the stage for this. It was fairly easy to convince Axel that he was jealous of their father’s divided attentions; turning Axel’s spiteful condescension into loathing was and equally simple task. The hard part was turning the rest of the town’s opinions against Axel instead of him. In the end he was able to plant rumors with Setzer’s group of cronies about Axel hitting him; people quickly brought up the summer two years ago, when Reno had showed up at Zack’s house with a handprint on his face, and Reno hadn’t needed to do anything else. For once the rumors worked in his favor, and by the time school was close to starting up again, almost everyone believed that Axel was abusing his brother.
Axel saw Reno standing there and snarled, pointing furiously at him. “He’s just jealous because he’s not the ‘golden boy’ of the house any more, he’s not the one getting good grades and getting picked for the sports teams, he’s just throwing a little bitch fit because Dad’s paying attention to me and not spending all of his time with him anymore!”
The social workers stared at James questioningly. If he confirmed that the boys were in some sort of competition for attention, then it was highly doubtful that the older twin was entirely blameless in the whole mess. This was starting to look like they might actually have to do an investigation, instead of simply removing the wayward child.
“I’m sorry, I honestly have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Or maybe not. The social workers nodded to their escort, and one of the police officers stepped forward to take Axel by the arm. The workers didn’t notice the brief glance between James and Reno, but Axel did. It was glaringly obvious to him what was going on here, even if the social workers were too blind to see it. Reno was so jealous that he wasn’t getting all of the attention that he’d called social services to take him away; Axel didn’t know why their father would take Reno’s side in things, but he obviously had no friends in this household.
Reno touched Axel’s arm lightly as he passed by, and Axel turned to glare at him. “I love you, Axel. You’ll understand all of this someday.”
Reno’s words were soft, his gaze sad, but Axel’s voice and gaze were both harsh, poisonous. “I hate you.”

Winter, 2008
“Your father must not have been very pleased when you thwarted his plans for your brother like that.”
“You’re sure some kind of genius, huh?” Reno laughed humorlessly. “It’s not like he could do anything about it at the time; he knew I would have told them what was going on, to protect Axel.”
“If you had told someone, you would have been free from him. You could have fixed things with your brother, stopped it before your father almost killed you. Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“You don’t understand. Why would anyone else?”
“Understand what?”
Reno stared at him like he was an idiot. “Well, that it was my fault. I deserved it.”
Dr. Gast leaned forward, frowning at his troubled ward. It had taken nearly half a year to get Reno to even speak about his past at all; now was the first time that the teen had said anything that Gast could actually use to try and get into his mind, to finally begin helping him. He needed to be careful now to keep Reno from retreating into his usual defensive posture, although he had to admit to himself that it was extremely unlikely that Reno would continue to speak this session. “Reno, what exactly makes you believe that you deserved what happened to you?”
Reno studied him for a few moments, tapping his fingers restlessly inside the sleeves of his straitjacket. “You get paid to study people, but I bet I’m just as good at it as you; I’ve been here long enough to have learned your game. Your whole posture just changed; whatever I just said is some kind of ‘ticket in’ to you, isn’t it?”
“You make it sound as though I think of you as a meal ticket, Reno. This isn’t about me, it’s about me helping you. Will you answer my question?”
Reno glanced up at the clock. “I’m hungry. Can I go now?”
Dr. Gast sighed. At least now he’d made the first crack in Reno’s armor; it would be easier to get him to speak again at the next session. “Yes. I’ll call the orderlies to come get you.”
He watched closely when the orderlies came in, noting the way Reno’s face went blank at the sight of the mask. He couldn’t quite hide the despondent look in his eyes, however, and Gast made a quick decision. “Leave the mask. We’ll keep him under twenty-four-hour monitoring until we can be sure that it won’t be a problem.”
Reno was quick to try and hide the look of surprised relief on his face, but he couldn’t quite keep the corners of his mouth from twitching. The shadow of a smile graced his face as he left Dr. Gast’s office, walking out without his mask for the first time.

A/N:
Whew, took me long enough to get this one finished! I started and stopped it so many times that I’m worried it might be a little choppy, but I’ve been working on it too much for a read-through to help me any. So, if anybody agrees that it’s choppy, feel free to offer tips for improvement :p

That out of the way, the next chapter should catch us up in the timeline, so that the flashbacks link up with Reno’s current time in the mental hospital. You’ll get to find out how he went from getting Axel sent away to getting institutionalized himself, and from there it’ll only take a paragraph or two to catch up his time in the hospital, since I already talked about his hospital time in the prologue.

Regarding Axel getting sent away, yes, it’s insanely unrealistic I know, but… as you’re going to continue seeing throughout this story, social services in this world really aren’t up to snuff. At all.

And… regarding my next update, I have a pretty clear view of how the chapter’s going to go, so once I start typing it up it should go pretty quickly. The problem is, I’m going to SERE school tomorrow, so I’m going to be cut off from the rest of the world for three weeks. Meaning no update for another month probably. Sorry about the timing, but… life’s like that sometimes I guess :-/

Reviews!

Anonymous – I’m glad you’re enjoying it :) Not much progression this chapter, in my opinion, but the next one should be a good one ;)
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Broken Wings