Categories > Games > Final Fantasy 7
Far Above Rubies
0 ReviewsRufus' mother writes a letter that she never expects him to see.
I suppose I should start from the beginning, but I was never one for starting where it didn't really matter. Suffice it to say, when I had married Richard, I had been utterly bedazzled. Promises after sweet promises were whispered in my ear, and I went quite happily to the altar. Months passed by and my life seemed only to get better and better.
My new husband's company was doing well, and was soon to launch a space program that had everybody talking. My, what a wonder! People, for the first time in history, would get to see the planet from the stars. Maybe, people were saying, we could go to the moon someday. After that? Who knows.
The sales of weapons were dwindling, but fortunately, or so it seemed at the time, my husband had invested in a group of scientists that had come up with a theory called Mako Energy.
I know this is very short and to the point, but this is not my story. At least, not a very big part.
It all started the day I started throwing up. I had been feeling quite sick in the mornings as of late, and this had thrown up an red flag in my mind. I checked my diary for the past few days. It seemed I was a little overdue on my period, and the sickness didn't help any. I felt a little giddy and light headed. Maybe I was pregnant.
Perhaps I should take a moment to explain about my diary. I have, since the first day I could write a single letter, kept a log of every single day of my life. If I had managed to miss a day, I always backdated. There was not a page left empty in my previous diaries. It was useful in finding out trends of what I was doing, or my interests, and always helped to keep a diary of symptoms.
The pregnancy had topped the cream in my life with a cherry. I had always loved children, even as a child I was helping out with the littler ones. They loved me too, and by the time I was grown, I had helped out with enough children in my lifetime to have been a mom three times already. Now I was expecting my very own, and my joy knew no bounds. I was also quite sure my husband would be as thrilled as I was.
I was rather shocked, when after I had taken a pregnancy test (which only proved positive), that he took it somewhat.. matter-of-factly. I had no idea at the time, but he was counting on it.
He smiled, said something I thought was sweet at the time, and went about the day as if nothing extra ordinary was happening. I was a little disappointed, but at least he had not been upset, like some men seem to get when babies are mentioned.
After several more months, my life changed, drastically. My husband had taken a great risk in an venture, and lost a lot of money. I started seeing the blunt end of things. Nothing doing for simple smacks and slaps on the face, he abused me in the truest sense of the word. There was not a day that my arms weren't purple, or my back. I had started to get quite fat and stiff in the middle by this time, and it was pure agony. I was always fearful he would hit me in the stomach, and I was terrified of losing the baby.. But no, somehow he always managed to hit right where it would hurt the most without touching my stomach.
I was frantic, my pride would not allow me to suffer like this, but my condition.. His insults, slurs, and mental abuse kept me shivering like a child. I desperately hoped this bad spell would pass, that he would go back to normal and we could live our lives happily. I had been such a dreamer back then. I should have left as soon as he dared raise his hand. There is not a day I don't regret leaving then.
The abuse went on for some weeks, then when I took a vacation into Midgar, the tall tower that they had just recently completed, I met my salvation.
His name was General Cairbre, the head of the Peacekeeping division in my husband's company. We were not lovers, for all of Richard's insistence that I, was in fact, cheating. We were simply friends, and a more good nor honest man I have never met before in that hole that stank of corruption that was ShinRa Inc. Sadly to say, even more good and honest than Richard.
He treated his men fairly, and justly. He expected the best and got the best, and he was well respected by everybody. His rule was stern, but fair. Even Richard respected him, because Cairbre had been his teacher and the key to making the initial profits of selling weapons in ShinRa. Cairbre was an old, grizzly bear of a man, clean-shaven, you could see a labyrinth of scars on his face. Every single scar came from a different battle, and every single scar had it's own tale to tell. A true example of the old ways of business, warfare, and leadership, where things had been more honest, and more people had been willing to uphold virtue.
Occasionally, I would take my lunch with him and his second, a younger, albeit just as craggy man named Heidegger. I did not like Heidegger as well. He had not seen as much battle, or he would have respected the men under his command more for what they did. On several incidences, when he was in a temper, I had seen him box his underlings. Over a period of time, he slowly became more odious to me, until at last I asked Cairbre to luncheon with me alone in the cafeteria. Heidegger was not a person that could take stress well, or handle the responsibilities a leader had. I told Cairbre so.
Cairbre also gave me a reason to get out of that house that my husband hoarded me in, a reason to come out and be sociable. He told me many stories of the Great War, the one in which neither Richard nor myself had been alive to witness. Cairbre himself barely remembered it, it had been when he was but a boy of 14, and he told me, a rather stubborn 14 at that. He had taken up his injured father's katana, and dressed in his brother's best uniform, and snuck into the lines of the Midgarian Army. The other opposing sides were Wutai (then, much bigger and spanning several small islands and a part of the Western Continent), and the Gi.
Perhaps someday, I will get a chance to write about the Great War, and who had won between the three Armies, but this is not in my story.
My stomach grew bigger and bigger as the months went by, I felt like I was a walking watermellon. My term had been, miraculously free of any ill effects from the abuse, even the things women so often complain about were not as prominent as they would like to make out. I did have a close call, and prematurely, I gave birth to one of the most adorable little boys in the world. The boy was born with his head full of hair, which was a dull sort of red. When his hair dried, it turned into a lighter version of my own color, and I was pleased. Still, I had called him Rufus, and that's the name that would stay.
When I finally got the chance to take him home, I was in for another surprise.. My husband had hired an old woman to be a nanny to Rufus. I protested, saying I wanted to raise him myself. Every argument I could think of was shot down, beyond all reason, and in the end the terrible old biddy stayed.
She was an absolutely horrible harridan, and I was often wondering where Richard had gotten her. She was playing as much of a nanny to me as she was my child. She dictated what I was to do whenever Rufus started crying, she set a schedule for me and was horrible whenever I did not keep it. In essence, my home became my prison. The only thing that saved me from crying myself to death every night was my sweet Rufus and Cairbre's intervention. Now that I had no chance of going anywhere without the harridan's company, the only thing that could be done was put her to walk with Rufus and have Cairbre come to me. We often talked, myself more than him, while we played a game of chess. He always beat me 9 out of 10, and once I gave up, one day, in frustration, started teaching me the logical tactics of the game.
Cairbre became my confidant, and I rarely ever let myself think of him as a pawn of Richard's. If I had, I would have been lost. The suspicion came across my mind, but Cairbre's very docile domestic nature argued against all my doubts. In the end, he had indeed been my truest friend.
I made him promise, that if anything happened to me, to take Rufus under his wing and teach him the kinds of things that he needed to survive in the brutal sophistication of the world that was now ShinRa. He told me not to think like that, that it wouldn't be as bad as I feared, but he promised anyway.
Several years passed, and my Rufus was six years old when the next big change in my life came. I had finally managed to get rid of that woman, on the basis that I didn't need as much “help” now that he was so much older, and the “harder” parts were over. The abuse that started when I was pregnant, continued, but at a lesser rate and gentler blows than before.
The next thing that hit me was tutors. Richard insisted I co-operate with a tutor in Rufus' education, totally usurping my plans to send him to a normal school with normal children. I gave him argument after argument to get him to change his mind, and on some points I had to agree with him. Rufus would indeed be tormented and made fun of because of his status in a normal school, but only if he was weaker than the other children. I made arguments to the point that I was willing to teach him my skills so the other children would leave him alone. Richard eventually won again, but I insisted that Rufus have friends his age. It was a normal part of growing up, and I wanted Rufus to stay his normal sweet self. Loneliness was a cause of a great many problems in an older child, even up to an adult.
The tutor came, but my ambitions were not to be denied. After Richard left for the day to his office, I took my child out to the playground before the tutor came, and again once the tutor left. I made the servants swear on a dubious pain of torment in the future to not say a word to my husband. Several of the maids were sympathizers, but most of the butlers were not. I had to stoop to a low I did not like, seeing as my husband practiced the art of blackmail often. I had the maids find out as much dirt on the butlers as I could, and used it against them. It made me sick to my stomach, but my Rufus was all important in my life.
Rufus started accompanying me to the tower to visit with Cairbre, and Cairbre included him in the strategic lessons. Rufus took to it like butter on bread, and after about two years, started beating Cairbre more often than I was.
The months passed, and life got worse. I tried to hide the fact I was being beaten daily from Rufus, but a curious child sees more than you expect. He often asked me where that big purple mark came from, and more often, hugged me so fiercely to get my spirits up it squeezed the air out of me. He was a charming child, and I was desperate for him to stay so. Unfortunately, I was realizing, at about that time, what my husband had been planning.
He was planning on training my beloved, innocent little son into a ruthless, calculating tyrant. Just like himself, as if Rufus was no more than a canvas to paint, or a drop of clay to mold into an exact copy of himself.
The summer of that year saw me planning in secret, at first by myself, then finally, after Cairbre asked me repeatedly what was wrong, having noticed my game faltered, confided it to him.
To my astonishment, he completely agreed. He thought about it for a few days, then called me back. He told me that I had to leave Richard, and Rufus with him.
You are far too important to Rufus, you cannot have something terrible happen to you. It would destroy him. Disappearing, while still traumatic, wouldn't be as so. He would wonder if you were alive. You can't take him with you, because Richard would send me after you, and it would break my heart. It's the one thing I can't do, because you're worth far more than the rubies to me.
That is what he said. I was horrified that he would say a thing like that, but after thinking it through, realized it was true. A sudden morbid premonition developed in my senses. Richard was going to dispose of me. It might not happen within a couple years, but just soon enough so that Rufus would still be impressionable. And co-operative.
Cairbre said I should immediately plan my escape, much to my protest. I said I'd never leave my child, and he countered.. “If someday, you want to undo the damage Richard will do to Rufus, you must be alive, mustn't you?”
I knew he was right, there was no hope for it. I hated the very idea. There were so many things that could go wrong, Rufus not remembering me being the very least. I cried for a day and a night inside. I could do nothing. But, truth was Cairbre's words. If I were to even try to help Rufus, I must leave and he must stay. If, when the time came for me to return, I was unable or dead, I wrote a letter, and sealed it inside one of my diary sets.
This particular set of diaries was the one I had been writing in since my wedding. It was a good 600 pages long each book, and more than two pages per entry. There were twelve books. It was as much a part of me as my hand that wrote it was. It was all that would be left of me if fate condemned me to die. I had litterally, poured my soul into the books. I sealed the books into a package, and put that package into the ShinRa's lock boxes. It would stay there, until Cairbre realized I wasn't coming back, and then would give Rufus the key. My husband would not suspect I had placed something so valuable as that right under his nose. At least that is what I hoped.
Cairbre staged a conflict, hiring some local thugs (who did know about the setup), to threaten an rather important building outside of ShinRa. It wasn't important enough to have much security, but it was close enough to the headquarters that it was a threat. Cairbre promised them an free escape with any loot they found. It was a situation the President himself had to oversee.
As it stood, the distraction went without much of a hitch (the hitch being a thug got accidentally shot in the leg and was taken in).
I made my escape, packing all that was necessary, and nothing else. I allowed myself one small sock of Rufus', that had missed it's mate for a long time, as a memento of what I was leaving behind me. My precious little baby... I almost stopped right then, and stayed with him. Cairbre's words came back to haunt me, along with the premonition, and I stole away softly, the last thing I heard of my son was his gentle snores.
I was free, but I paid a price.
*
This is my story, short as it is, and most of the emotion I felt hasn't even been expressed here. I hope this last letter reaches you, to let you know what has happened since the end of the diaries and the first letter I gave you. If these contacts are to be trusted, it should be in your hands within a few days.
If you should ever want to see me again, after abandoning you like that, I will be North, in the land where snow never melts.
I have missed you terribly, and there is not a day I regret leaving you behind.
I await whatever fate hands me now. It is all that I can do.
- Love
Aurelia Shinra
- - -
Rufus crushed the paper in one hand, his eyes and hands trembling until everything was a blur. Quickly gaining control of himself, he read the strange letter one more time.
She had left him on purpose.
Grim hatred and loathing descended down on him, and he stared at the letter, then slowly started to shred it.
The last bit of goodness in him died with the smoldering remains.
He would never forgive her.
My new husband's company was doing well, and was soon to launch a space program that had everybody talking. My, what a wonder! People, for the first time in history, would get to see the planet from the stars. Maybe, people were saying, we could go to the moon someday. After that? Who knows.
The sales of weapons were dwindling, but fortunately, or so it seemed at the time, my husband had invested in a group of scientists that had come up with a theory called Mako Energy.
I know this is very short and to the point, but this is not my story. At least, not a very big part.
It all started the day I started throwing up. I had been feeling quite sick in the mornings as of late, and this had thrown up an red flag in my mind. I checked my diary for the past few days. It seemed I was a little overdue on my period, and the sickness didn't help any. I felt a little giddy and light headed. Maybe I was pregnant.
Perhaps I should take a moment to explain about my diary. I have, since the first day I could write a single letter, kept a log of every single day of my life. If I had managed to miss a day, I always backdated. There was not a page left empty in my previous diaries. It was useful in finding out trends of what I was doing, or my interests, and always helped to keep a diary of symptoms.
The pregnancy had topped the cream in my life with a cherry. I had always loved children, even as a child I was helping out with the littler ones. They loved me too, and by the time I was grown, I had helped out with enough children in my lifetime to have been a mom three times already. Now I was expecting my very own, and my joy knew no bounds. I was also quite sure my husband would be as thrilled as I was.
I was rather shocked, when after I had taken a pregnancy test (which only proved positive), that he took it somewhat.. matter-of-factly. I had no idea at the time, but he was counting on it.
He smiled, said something I thought was sweet at the time, and went about the day as if nothing extra ordinary was happening. I was a little disappointed, but at least he had not been upset, like some men seem to get when babies are mentioned.
After several more months, my life changed, drastically. My husband had taken a great risk in an venture, and lost a lot of money. I started seeing the blunt end of things. Nothing doing for simple smacks and slaps on the face, he abused me in the truest sense of the word. There was not a day that my arms weren't purple, or my back. I had started to get quite fat and stiff in the middle by this time, and it was pure agony. I was always fearful he would hit me in the stomach, and I was terrified of losing the baby.. But no, somehow he always managed to hit right where it would hurt the most without touching my stomach.
I was frantic, my pride would not allow me to suffer like this, but my condition.. His insults, slurs, and mental abuse kept me shivering like a child. I desperately hoped this bad spell would pass, that he would go back to normal and we could live our lives happily. I had been such a dreamer back then. I should have left as soon as he dared raise his hand. There is not a day I don't regret leaving then.
The abuse went on for some weeks, then when I took a vacation into Midgar, the tall tower that they had just recently completed, I met my salvation.
His name was General Cairbre, the head of the Peacekeeping division in my husband's company. We were not lovers, for all of Richard's insistence that I, was in fact, cheating. We were simply friends, and a more good nor honest man I have never met before in that hole that stank of corruption that was ShinRa Inc. Sadly to say, even more good and honest than Richard.
He treated his men fairly, and justly. He expected the best and got the best, and he was well respected by everybody. His rule was stern, but fair. Even Richard respected him, because Cairbre had been his teacher and the key to making the initial profits of selling weapons in ShinRa. Cairbre was an old, grizzly bear of a man, clean-shaven, you could see a labyrinth of scars on his face. Every single scar came from a different battle, and every single scar had it's own tale to tell. A true example of the old ways of business, warfare, and leadership, where things had been more honest, and more people had been willing to uphold virtue.
Occasionally, I would take my lunch with him and his second, a younger, albeit just as craggy man named Heidegger. I did not like Heidegger as well. He had not seen as much battle, or he would have respected the men under his command more for what they did. On several incidences, when he was in a temper, I had seen him box his underlings. Over a period of time, he slowly became more odious to me, until at last I asked Cairbre to luncheon with me alone in the cafeteria. Heidegger was not a person that could take stress well, or handle the responsibilities a leader had. I told Cairbre so.
Cairbre also gave me a reason to get out of that house that my husband hoarded me in, a reason to come out and be sociable. He told me many stories of the Great War, the one in which neither Richard nor myself had been alive to witness. Cairbre himself barely remembered it, it had been when he was but a boy of 14, and he told me, a rather stubborn 14 at that. He had taken up his injured father's katana, and dressed in his brother's best uniform, and snuck into the lines of the Midgarian Army. The other opposing sides were Wutai (then, much bigger and spanning several small islands and a part of the Western Continent), and the Gi.
Perhaps someday, I will get a chance to write about the Great War, and who had won between the three Armies, but this is not in my story.
My stomach grew bigger and bigger as the months went by, I felt like I was a walking watermellon. My term had been, miraculously free of any ill effects from the abuse, even the things women so often complain about were not as prominent as they would like to make out. I did have a close call, and prematurely, I gave birth to one of the most adorable little boys in the world. The boy was born with his head full of hair, which was a dull sort of red. When his hair dried, it turned into a lighter version of my own color, and I was pleased. Still, I had called him Rufus, and that's the name that would stay.
When I finally got the chance to take him home, I was in for another surprise.. My husband had hired an old woman to be a nanny to Rufus. I protested, saying I wanted to raise him myself. Every argument I could think of was shot down, beyond all reason, and in the end the terrible old biddy stayed.
She was an absolutely horrible harridan, and I was often wondering where Richard had gotten her. She was playing as much of a nanny to me as she was my child. She dictated what I was to do whenever Rufus started crying, she set a schedule for me and was horrible whenever I did not keep it. In essence, my home became my prison. The only thing that saved me from crying myself to death every night was my sweet Rufus and Cairbre's intervention. Now that I had no chance of going anywhere without the harridan's company, the only thing that could be done was put her to walk with Rufus and have Cairbre come to me. We often talked, myself more than him, while we played a game of chess. He always beat me 9 out of 10, and once I gave up, one day, in frustration, started teaching me the logical tactics of the game.
Cairbre became my confidant, and I rarely ever let myself think of him as a pawn of Richard's. If I had, I would have been lost. The suspicion came across my mind, but Cairbre's very docile domestic nature argued against all my doubts. In the end, he had indeed been my truest friend.
I made him promise, that if anything happened to me, to take Rufus under his wing and teach him the kinds of things that he needed to survive in the brutal sophistication of the world that was now ShinRa. He told me not to think like that, that it wouldn't be as bad as I feared, but he promised anyway.
Several years passed, and my Rufus was six years old when the next big change in my life came. I had finally managed to get rid of that woman, on the basis that I didn't need as much “help” now that he was so much older, and the “harder” parts were over. The abuse that started when I was pregnant, continued, but at a lesser rate and gentler blows than before.
The next thing that hit me was tutors. Richard insisted I co-operate with a tutor in Rufus' education, totally usurping my plans to send him to a normal school with normal children. I gave him argument after argument to get him to change his mind, and on some points I had to agree with him. Rufus would indeed be tormented and made fun of because of his status in a normal school, but only if he was weaker than the other children. I made arguments to the point that I was willing to teach him my skills so the other children would leave him alone. Richard eventually won again, but I insisted that Rufus have friends his age. It was a normal part of growing up, and I wanted Rufus to stay his normal sweet self. Loneliness was a cause of a great many problems in an older child, even up to an adult.
The tutor came, but my ambitions were not to be denied. After Richard left for the day to his office, I took my child out to the playground before the tutor came, and again once the tutor left. I made the servants swear on a dubious pain of torment in the future to not say a word to my husband. Several of the maids were sympathizers, but most of the butlers were not. I had to stoop to a low I did not like, seeing as my husband practiced the art of blackmail often. I had the maids find out as much dirt on the butlers as I could, and used it against them. It made me sick to my stomach, but my Rufus was all important in my life.
Rufus started accompanying me to the tower to visit with Cairbre, and Cairbre included him in the strategic lessons. Rufus took to it like butter on bread, and after about two years, started beating Cairbre more often than I was.
The months passed, and life got worse. I tried to hide the fact I was being beaten daily from Rufus, but a curious child sees more than you expect. He often asked me where that big purple mark came from, and more often, hugged me so fiercely to get my spirits up it squeezed the air out of me. He was a charming child, and I was desperate for him to stay so. Unfortunately, I was realizing, at about that time, what my husband had been planning.
He was planning on training my beloved, innocent little son into a ruthless, calculating tyrant. Just like himself, as if Rufus was no more than a canvas to paint, or a drop of clay to mold into an exact copy of himself.
The summer of that year saw me planning in secret, at first by myself, then finally, after Cairbre asked me repeatedly what was wrong, having noticed my game faltered, confided it to him.
To my astonishment, he completely agreed. He thought about it for a few days, then called me back. He told me that I had to leave Richard, and Rufus with him.
You are far too important to Rufus, you cannot have something terrible happen to you. It would destroy him. Disappearing, while still traumatic, wouldn't be as so. He would wonder if you were alive. You can't take him with you, because Richard would send me after you, and it would break my heart. It's the one thing I can't do, because you're worth far more than the rubies to me.
That is what he said. I was horrified that he would say a thing like that, but after thinking it through, realized it was true. A sudden morbid premonition developed in my senses. Richard was going to dispose of me. It might not happen within a couple years, but just soon enough so that Rufus would still be impressionable. And co-operative.
Cairbre said I should immediately plan my escape, much to my protest. I said I'd never leave my child, and he countered.. “If someday, you want to undo the damage Richard will do to Rufus, you must be alive, mustn't you?”
I knew he was right, there was no hope for it. I hated the very idea. There were so many things that could go wrong, Rufus not remembering me being the very least. I cried for a day and a night inside. I could do nothing. But, truth was Cairbre's words. If I were to even try to help Rufus, I must leave and he must stay. If, when the time came for me to return, I was unable or dead, I wrote a letter, and sealed it inside one of my diary sets.
This particular set of diaries was the one I had been writing in since my wedding. It was a good 600 pages long each book, and more than two pages per entry. There were twelve books. It was as much a part of me as my hand that wrote it was. It was all that would be left of me if fate condemned me to die. I had litterally, poured my soul into the books. I sealed the books into a package, and put that package into the ShinRa's lock boxes. It would stay there, until Cairbre realized I wasn't coming back, and then would give Rufus the key. My husband would not suspect I had placed something so valuable as that right under his nose. At least that is what I hoped.
Cairbre staged a conflict, hiring some local thugs (who did know about the setup), to threaten an rather important building outside of ShinRa. It wasn't important enough to have much security, but it was close enough to the headquarters that it was a threat. Cairbre promised them an free escape with any loot they found. It was a situation the President himself had to oversee.
As it stood, the distraction went without much of a hitch (the hitch being a thug got accidentally shot in the leg and was taken in).
I made my escape, packing all that was necessary, and nothing else. I allowed myself one small sock of Rufus', that had missed it's mate for a long time, as a memento of what I was leaving behind me. My precious little baby... I almost stopped right then, and stayed with him. Cairbre's words came back to haunt me, along with the premonition, and I stole away softly, the last thing I heard of my son was his gentle snores.
I was free, but I paid a price.
*
This is my story, short as it is, and most of the emotion I felt hasn't even been expressed here. I hope this last letter reaches you, to let you know what has happened since the end of the diaries and the first letter I gave you. If these contacts are to be trusted, it should be in your hands within a few days.
If you should ever want to see me again, after abandoning you like that, I will be North, in the land where snow never melts.
I have missed you terribly, and there is not a day I regret leaving you behind.
I await whatever fate hands me now. It is all that I can do.
- Love
Aurelia Shinra
- - -
Rufus crushed the paper in one hand, his eyes and hands trembling until everything was a blur. Quickly gaining control of himself, he read the strange letter one more time.
She had left him on purpose.
Grim hatred and loathing descended down on him, and he stared at the letter, then slowly started to shred it.
The last bit of goodness in him died with the smoldering remains.
He would never forgive her.
Log in to rate and review this story