Extra note for chapter 2: i realise there arent any communists in this universe, slap my muse for that lame joke.. sorry.

You made me throw it all away.

My morals left to decay.

How many you betray.

You’ve taken everything

Don’t take it away from me.

I need someone to hold on to.

NIN – Terrible lie.

2. Terrible lie.

Standing outside the front door of what had been the last known address of Folsom, Reno almost chickened out. What the hell was he supposed to say to these people? Holy crap! There was just no way of saying this in a diplomatic way, not that diplomacy was his strongest side anyway. He took a deep breath as he knocked the door. The door opened and a tiny woman looked out and looked suspiciously at Reno.

“Good day miss, I am special agent Reno Vaughan, are you Gwen Harrison?”

The woman nodded, “What are you doing here? We have done nothing wrong.”

“No, no,” Reno said and shook his head. “I am here because I need to know about Folsom’s disappearance.”

“Did you find him?” the woman asked, her door still chained.

“Not exactly,” Reno said. “Look, can I come inside, it’s pretty wet out here.”

“You should have brought an umbrella, special agent,” Gwen said flatly, but didn’t budge.

“Alright,” Reno sighed, under other circumstances he would just have kicked the damn door down, but he was not here to scare the living daylights out of Mrs. Harrison. “Can you tell me what happened the day Folsom disappeared?”

“Don’t you have all that down on the station? I already went there and told them all of it,” the lady said.

“Well, ‘we got up, he was gone’ is not exactly much to go on lady. So help me out here, did he do something strange the day before, had he made new friends, or?”

“He ran away that ungrateful little shit,” Gwen said. “He even cost me a husband.”

Well isn’t that just sad, Reno thought to himself, but just smiled and said ,“did he leave a note or something?”

“Nope,” Gwen said, “he took all my change from the jar in the kitchen and that’s all.”

Reno shuffled his feet, feeling the rain seeping through his clothes as he stood there outside the Harrison’s’ door. “So, do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

“He might have gone to that abandoned house on DahmerBahn.” she said.

Reno searched his pocket and found an old receipt, he quickly wrote his phone number down on it, and handed her the wet note. “Call me if you think of anything, or hear from him, ok?”

“A receipt?” Gwen said as she studied the note. “Aren’t you guys supposed to have cards?”

“I don’t m’kay?” Reno said, trying to control the irrational anger outburst that was on is way, no wonder Folsom had had enough of this bitch. “Thank you for your time Mrs. Harrison” he said and turned to walk down to his car again.

“Trotskji!” she yelled after him. “Find him, special agent, he will know something.”

“Alright,” Reno called back, and then got into his car. “Ok lady, I will go search for a communist dude from the 1930’s. That’s just neato.”

________________

Driving away from the Harrison’s it took him past Tifa’s tavern. It was a strange feeling, like a time warp; he shrugged the melancholy off and called Tseng, as Tseng picked up Reno stopped the car. “So, miss Harrison is a bitch,” he said dryly. “and I am soaked, remind me again why we do this?”

“Shinra,” Tseng said.

“Yeah I know.. So please tell me you have caught the guy,” Reno said, “I don’t think I’m cut out to this, I am much better at fucking people up than asking questions.”

Tseng laughed on the other end. “Well, I have come up with absolutely nothing, other than this guy apparently used a hunting knife for the gutting, not that we found one, hunting knife I mean.”

Reno lit a cigarette, the last one that wasn’t soaked. “Well dear miss Gwen Harrison, told me to go to DahmerBahn and search for someone called Trotskji.”

“Alright hold on for a second,” Tseng said, Reno heard muffled voices in the background. And then Tseng came back on the phone. “Would you come down here?”

“Sure,” Reno groaned and hung up. Starting the car and driving off to the police labs.

__________________

Once there he quickly found Tseng, who was hovering over some odd machine that Reno didn’t recognize. “Hey there,” Reno said “So you’re getting nekkid shots of your new girlfriend there?” he pointed at all the pictures taken of Fedora’s carcass that were lying on the table.

“Funny” Tseng said dryly, as he turned to Reno. “Well I called the police station, and it so happens that they do have someone called Leo Trotskji in their detention, you might want to go and talk to him.”

“No kidding,” Reno said. “So did you ask me to come down here so I could drive to the other end of town again? Or did it actually have a purpose?”

“Well look at this,” Tseng said. And pointed at the blackboard on the wall, with a zillion names and arrows. There have been 5 child murders up until now, all of them with a different method of killing, and but they all have one thing in common, the note. Now I did a little digging around, and I thought you could perhaps help me out, because I am not that big on history.”

“Sure,” Reno said as he brushed some wet hair out of his eyes. “But neither am I.”

Tseng sighed and then looked intensely on the blackboard, “Bugge,” he said softly, “but the answer must be here, what do all these kids have in common?”

“Nothing apart they met a psycho one day and ended up being a special delivery to the president,” Reno said.

Tseng’s shoulder slumped. “My head is hurting,” he said.

Reno looked at his watch. “Maybe you should call it a day then.”

Tseng turned around and looked at his new partner and raised a brow. “You’re not even funny,” he said and returned to the blackboard.

“Alright,” Reno said, “Stare at this all you want, I should go speak with that kid.”

“He’s not a kid,” Tseng said, “He’s 50 years old.”

“Oh,” Reno said, “Well then I am going to talk with gramps.”

Tseng just nodded. “Call me if you learn something interesting,” he said to Reno’s back.

“Will do,” Reno said with a half-hearted wave of his hand.

_____________________________________________________

It was around midnight as Reno climbed the stairs to his apartment. That Trotskji fella had turned up a nill, he didn’t know anything, he knew who Folsom was, but said he had not seen him at the abandoned building at all, and Reno had no choice but to believe him. So all in all, the sum total he had gotten out of today was being soaked, and sore feet.

Flicking on the light, he hung his wet jacket over a chair and made his way to the kitchen, he needed a drink badly. Reno took his coffee cup from this morning and rinsed it again, only to fill it with liquor. He downed it in one drag, and left the cup in the kitchen only to bring the bottle, he shouldn’t mix liquor with the sleeping pills, but right now he didn’t care. He fetched the phone from his pocket and stood with it in his hand for a little while, until he dialled Cloud’s number, only to once more reach his voice mail. “Where the hell are you at?” he said flatly, he was about to say something more, when his phone beeped and ran out of battery, “crap” he said to himself and stuck the phone in its charger.

He sat down on his bed and turned on the television, it was just mindless shit, how could people watch this crap? He took another sip of the bottle, and rested up against the wall, he didn’t understand why Cloud had jus disappeared like this, he knew he had issues, sure.. But didn’t they all? And he could to some extent understand why he would just have disappeared out of his life, but why Tifa and the kids? Reno had never asked him to choose, he would have understood why he would have wanted to be there for them.

Taking another sip he vaguely thought about calling Rude again, but his phone was dead for at least twenty minutes to come. And besides he knew what his old partner would say, he would tell him to get laid and shake the blues. But that was the point exactly, he had not even thought about anyone else but Cloud, how pathetic was that? He didn’t even want to touch someone else, but on the other hand he couldn't stay in this self chosen celibacy forever. Cloud was not coming back, and his own right hand was just not as appealing as the real thing. “When even masturbation has lost its fun,” Reno said flatly to the bottle before he took another mouthful.

_________________________________________________

The phone rang, waking Reno from his dreamless sleep, he grabbed it and groaned, “this better be good.”

“They found Folsom,” he heard Tseng say in the other end.

“Shit,” Reno whined. Then all his work had been for nothing, he had told Tseng that the kid was already a goner.

“I am on my way there,” Tseng said. “Want me to pick you up?”

“Yea,” Reno said. “I will be down in ten.”

“Alrigh,t” Tseng said and hung up.

Reno got out of bed, and got his clothes on, his jacket was still damp, but it just had to do. He ran out the door and was halfway down the stairs when he remembered he had forgotten his phone, and ran up again. As he came down the hall he could hear it ring, that only stressed his already fogged mind even more as he fought to make the key fit, when he came in the door, the phone had stopped ringing, and he swiftly grabbed it, and locked his door again, just throwing the phone in his pocket as he ran down to Tseng who was waiting outside his building in his car.

Reno threw himself into the passenger seat, and closed the door. “Won’t this fucking rain ever end?” he complained.

“My god Reno, did you go out last night?” Tseng said as he wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“No, why?” Reno said.

“You stink,” Tseng stated.

“Ah, well I had a drink or two when I got home.. I have a little trouble sleeping these days,” he said with an apologetic shrug.

Tseng started driving, and Reno pulled his phone from his pocket and flipped it open, on the display it said ‘1 unanswered call’ and under it a message blinked ‘1 voice message’ Reno turned to Tseng, “Did you call me just now?”

“No” Tseng just said, concentrating on the road in the rain.

“Oh,” Reno said and dialled the number for his answering machine. What he heard left him hot and cold, bothered, sad, and happy. ‘Don’t worry, I will be home soon.’ he heard Cloud’s voice say and then the message ended. It had been Cloud that had called! How he hated himself for being so confused that he had forgotten his damn phone.

He must have seemed strange, because Tseng remarked on it. “Are you alright there, Reno?”

“Oh, yea, I’m fine,” Reno said as he cleared his throat. He would be home soon, he had said so!

“You don’t look fine,” Tseng said.

“I just need some coffee,” Reno said. “So what do we know about this Folsom thing”? Reno hoped that the diversion would work on Tseng; he did not feel like involving Tseng in his personal life at all.

“What I know is that he is in a bad state, and that he was found at the shanty town, outside of the city limits,” Tseng said. “But its hard to know much before we have had tests done.”

Reno nodded and leaned back in the seat, he didn’t really hear all what Tseng said, all he could think off was that Cloud had called, he would be home son, he had promised!

TBC