InsaneJournal

Current mood:

curious

Fic: Palace Coup
Title: Palace Coup
Rating: Australian M15+ - R
Warnings: Sociopathy, violence, insanity, personality disorders; very dark, possibly triggering.
Summary: He's not a tame psycho.


Yeah, I did it. I pressed the button that dropped the Plate on sector seven. Killed loads of people.

I know none of 'em deserved it. Didn't matter. We were Turks, we had our orders, we had to carry 'em out. That's why I volunteered for the job, yo.

Because I could do it.

Goes back to a conversation with an old buddy from years back. This buddy of mine was in a tricky spot, and they said if the Turks ever got sent after 'em, they'd rather have me do the honours than anyone else. Cos I don't have a conscience, yo. I'd enjoy it. I'd do it right, do it messy if I'd been told to. And I wouldn't tell myself any lies about why I did it. It'd be one sociopath killing her at the orders of another. She said it was cleaner that way.

So that's why I volunteered.

I knew none of the folks in sector seven deserved it. Hells, I knew when I saw Strife on that platform we'd missed the only ones who might've. But I had orders, and I had to carry 'em out. I'd kill thousands of people, both above and below the Plate - what, did you think Ol' shinra had people evac'd up there? Nah. Too much effort, too much expense. Blame it all on the terrorists, and he'd know who killed them, and I'd know who killed them, and neither of us would give a damn.

An' y'know what? My old buddy was right. It was cleaner with me doing it. I got in, I did the job, I kept those fuckers from Avalanche from fucking things up, and I got out again. Damn near got the crap beaten out of me doing it, but hey, that was kinda fun, too. Tseng couldn't've done it - too much honor. Hell, Tseng had enough problems sleeping after hitting the flower chick. Rude would've choked up, had qualms. Elena? Oh come on, the kid didn't even get her start until I was in the hands of the medics afterward. None of the others coulda done it without problems - and if they'd had problems, they would've been shot.

Y' wanna know a secret? Sephiroth cropped up again *real* convenient. If he hadn't shown up and skewered Shinra that night, the old man wouldn't've lived to see dawn anyway. We'd had enough, yo.

~~

Rufus, you're going to have to think about what you're going to do about Reno. He's getting bored, and that's never a good thing.

He's a sociopath, Rufus. A sociopath your family trained up on blood and pain. It's an addiction with him. If you don't give it to him, he'll go out and find it on his own. And just like an addiction, the last hit was never quite good enough. There's always a better high just out of reach. If you want to keep him, you're going to have to be willing to sacrifice everything else to his addiction - and I do mean everything.

I can't cure him of it. I can make him more aware of who and what he is, although I don't think it's the wisest thing to do. But he is what he is. I can't change him.

There is no way of rehabilitating him, Rufus. There's nothing to rehabilitate him *to*. He's never been a normal person. He's never had normal needs. He never will have normal needs. His boredom threshold is set too low, and his excitement threshold is set far too high. All the therapy in the world won't change that, even if he chose to cooperate with it - which he won't. Oh, he'll come along to sessions, and he'll mouth the right mantras, and he'll tell me what he thinks I want to hear. But he won't change, because asking him to change is like asking a behemoth to fly.

Rufus, I'll be honest here: I don't care whether you think you have Reno under control. I'm telling you flat out, you don't. He doesn't have any rules, he doesn't have any loyalties, and if you think he's forgotten the little coup the Turks had planned for the night Sephiroth came back, you have another think coming.

Rufus, you appeared from Junon within a quarter of an hour of your father's death, having been ordered to stay the hell out of Midgar about five years back. I took the liberty of asking a couple of independent sources, and there is no way a helicopter of the model you were observed alighting from could have made that journey in the time available.

I'm not trying to blackmail you, Rufus. Your father was a lunatic, and I couldn't give a damn whether he was killed by Sephiroth in a fit of revenge, yourself in a fit of pique, or Reno in a fit of giggles. The man's dead, and good riddance. But I don't want you to be making the mistake of thinking everyone else is stupid. The facts don't fit, and anyone who bothers to do the math would figure it out. If people start disappearing from Edge, or corpses start appearing unexpectedly, I think some folks might start looking a bit harder at the figures.

Fine. Feel free to ignore me, Rufus. But I'll warn you now: Reno is not going to give you any warning when he breaks his chain. I'm reasonably certain the first warning *I'll* get is when he kills you. If I'm lucky, he'll leave you where you can be found - but I doubt it. Keep the insurance paid up, Rufus. Your heirs will need it.

~~

Hey doll. Been a while, right? Nice of you to wait up for me.

Oh, so you heard the news. Yeah. Well, things got too dull around there, yo. Everyone was losin' their edge. Hell, Rude let me walk right up to him and snap his neck. Now I ask you, is that a way for a Turk to be?

Yeah. Elena's work. Kid turned out good, yo. Cracked a couple of my ribs while I was gettin' my jollies. But she still wasn't good enough.

Tseng? You would ask about him, yeah? Died protecting the boss. Didn't even land a bullet on me. An' before you ask, Rufus is dead too. Took his time dying, the stuck up bastard. Didn't know there was so much blood in the guy - by the time I'd finished, his whole damn suite was red. Made a nice change from all that white.

Now, c'mon Nesa, you know me, an' I know you. You're keepin' me talking for a reason, aren'tcha doll - like maybe you got some of Reeve's boys on call or something. Or maybe you got someone hiding out the back there? It'd be just like you to get someone in to keep an eye on things. Whoever it is, you know an' I know they ain't gonna be interfering in our quality time.

Told you, doll. Told you years ago - if anyone from the Turks kills you, it's gonna be me. An' hey, it's not like you got a choice now - not with all the others all dead and all.

Meant to tell you, doll, I've always appreciated the way you never tried to make me reform myself. Like you appreciated me for what I was. Not like the rest of 'em. Never tried to put strings on me, never tried to make me feel good about stuff. Real class, y'know. But then, you never were a typical headshrinker.

Never wanted to hear about my Mom, did you? Y'know, that's a shame. Cause what I did to dear old Mom was a classic. I mean, I was only just twelve - but then, I always was precocious.

Decided to resolve that ol' Oedipal conflict the good, old-fashioned way.

You're sharp, y'know? Yeah, I killed my dad (not like that was hard - knife in the kidneys, fucker squealled like a pig) and then I boned Mommy dearest. Had to kill her afterwards, of course, otherwise she woulda screamed the place down.

You are sharp! Yeah, that's the one. Heh, I'd almost forgotten about big sis. Came in at the wrong moment, and hoo boy! did she create a scene. Tried to order me around like she was my mother, so I gave her the same damn treatment.

Hey, not my problem the Shinra cops were stupid. I mean, it's this Big Society Murder and there's me, twelve years old, lookin' all timid an' frightened, telling them about this stranger who came in through the window and did all these horrible things, and I'm bruisin' up something gorgeous, two great big black eyes makin' them think I got hit up by the nasty man. Wasn't 'til Veld come in and started looking around things got tricky.

Yeah, he knew what'd happened, but he didn't bother to say otherwise to the cops. Just told me I was a Turk, dragged me down to some tatt guy, an' had the stripes put on me. Let me heal slow, too - no potions, no materia, nothin'. Hurt like a bitch, yeah? Told me it was a warning - if I did anything that dumb again, I'd wear it on my face. Always been kinda thankful for that, y'know, 'cos he's the one who taught me the most important thing: don't get caught.

Nobody's ever found him, right? Yeah, I think he woulda liked that.

Hmph. Sounds like you got company. You just sit here, doll. I'll be back in a bit. Don't go anywhere, right? Oh yeah - sorry about cutting your throat before we started this little chat, but you and me both know I ain't gonna take unnecessary risks, yo.

~

Author's Notes:
* These came out of a fairly strange place in my head, and out of my own fanon about Reno, which is that he has what is currently known as Antisocial Personality Disorder. Or in other words, he's a psychopath. The current record for successful treatment of APD is pretty negative - if you give a person with APD therapy, you get someone who's able to spout all the correct psychological reasons for why they don't think the same way the rest of us do. What you don't get is any genuine alteration in the way they think, act or behave. Any remorse expressed is generally fake. This is Reno as realistic psychopath, rather than the idealised version so common to the fandom.
* Yes, Reno is talking to a corpse in the final part. Psychopath does not and will never equal stupid. Neither does insane.


As always, all feedback is good feedback, and I'd be interested in hearing whether folks felt this one pinged them right or not.