revivalproject | June-July and Calibrations

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June-July and Calibrations

WHO: Reeve Tuesti, OTA
WHERE: Arriving In Tunnel, Calibrations Waiting Room, Reeve’s Calibration Room
WHAT: The lead up to and time around Calibrations
WHEN: June 2nd to July 10th
WARNINGS: CW: Reeve’s Calibration room may contain references to kidnapping and confinement, including of children

Man and Cat OTA
When they arrive it’s near the end of the thirty-six hour period. There had been much to do for preparation, things to pack, and honestly, he wanted to see the storm as it brewed up. It wasn’t like he’d seen it the first time, having arrived just days after the last blew itself away. But that means the man arrives with quite a bundle in his arms. Packs and papers and the few kits and tools he’s gotten himself from the replicator.

And at his side, a foot and a half tall stuffed animal of a black and white, tuxedo-cat, its own arms wrapped around coiled up papers. Was it possible for a stuffed animal to look proud of itself? Perhaps it should, because it’s got a very smart looking, dark green cape tied around its neck and a whole load of responsibility, so why wouldn’t it be happy?

“Does anyone know how long these storms typically last?” Reeve asks of anyone who comes near. And Mini stops every few steps to readjust the papers. It’s a lot harder to carry things when you don’t have fingers.

Calibrations Waiting Room

here

Calibrations [CW: Referenced (nothing explicitly depicted) kidnapping and confinement, including of children]

It’s not a bedroom, it’s an office. A rather dark one at that, most of the light coming either from the scattering of monitors, some recessed lighting high above, or two lights pointed at the rather oversized Shinra corporate logo behind the desk. The desk itself is cluttered, covered with files and papers and reports. This is clearly the desk of someone far too busy with their life. Someone who isn’t fully organized.

On it there are a few things of notable interest, like architectural reports and diagrams, a few reports on small hinges with one bearing a sticky note of ‘but why would you want them’, and there’s even a box filled with several glowing green and blue orbs. Materia. Further along, in a corner, is a framed picture of a couple that look vaguely like Reeve, his parents no doubt, and Reeve as a boy, all of them smiling in front of what looks like a farm house. The computer monitors scroll through a number of images of Midgar in various stages of being built.

Of course most of that only matters if you didn’t sit in the very comfortable office chair. Hope you like boring board meetings.

Reeve himself lounges on one of the couches in the room, looking tired. Very tired. Like he wishes he could just sleep in peace. But, if engaged, he will indeed talk.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Nothing yet. I've... been trying to learn it on my own," Reeve admits, and he feels like he should learn it just for Cloud.

All he's gained is an ill-fated crush on another man. Again

"Trying?" He wondered if Reeve intended that to sound dubious or if that was Vincent's projection. Vincent hasn't chosen between the data points himself. Though, he was leaning toward a few of them.

"I was considering communications or medicine."

"Well, there's only so much that can be done, so much that can be learned," Reeve muses as he looks up at his friend. "Cloud has engineering, I will likely take whichever you don't."

Between the three of them, they could cover more information and focus on the different division points of knowledge. Would doing this somehow benefit them more in the end? If so, how?

"Take medicine." Vincent decided he would try communications. "Though, it doesn't matter.. Does it?" He looked over Reeve. "We'll be experts in whatever we choose."

Well, this was going to be interesting. Reeve had never thought himself a doctor.

"And now I truly wish I'd come with my Full-Cure materia. Alas, it's not so. I'll take the datapoint when we win free of these tunnels. Though I do not know if we will be 'experts' so much as merely competent enough to not shoot our own feet off, so to speak."

Vincent doesn't particularly care one way or another. He didn't know any better, and he assumed Reeve's knowledge about the level of competence that came to the datapoints. Vincent looked around the room. "Why this room, do you think?" Of all the places Reeve could dream of, why did it have to be his Shinra office?

Why this room? Oh dear, he doesn't even know. Reeve looks around, and sighs.

"Perhaps because of how much of my life I've lived here. How the ruins of Temba remind me of Midgar. Because this was where I was when I realized I was not innocent in the face of the end of the world?"

Vincent silently listened as Reeve expressed his reasoning for the room. They both seemed to share a weight of guilt for their culpability in Gaia's torment. Reeve's place of sin was his office in the Shinra building. Reeve didn't have to express his remorse, yet doing so brought Vincent to avert his eyes. He had no right to sit in judgment of Reeve's guilt, despite Reeve sharing it with him. In any case, they absolved their sins by helping save the world they cherished.

"I..."

The silence doesn't help. It wears him out a little.

"We all have things we need to redeem ourselves for."

"Not to me, you don't." Vincent offered, though he didn't think it mattered what he said. What he wanted to convey at that moment was that Reeve didn't have to explain anything to him. Whatever reasoning or justifications Reeve had for his time at Shinra was on him, and as Reeve said, they all were guilty of something.

Not to him? Reeve almost wants to laugh. Had he not helped build the facilities that Deep Ground used without even thinking to ask why? He had bought the line that it was a shelter with no hesitation. And did he not put Vincent in a position to be in the line of fire in Kalm? Other times as well?

However it's clear the man doesn't agree, so why bother arguing.

"And do you owe me redemption? Am I a weight on your conscious? I pray not."

It might be too early to tell. Despite Reeve's declaration of events, Vincent has yet to determine whether he is in debt to Reeve on Gaia. Nor has he come to understand his role in this world entirely. Was he brought here as a harbinger of Chaos? Or was Vincent here to fulfill a less ominous purpose?

"I haven't decided."

Interesting, that he hasn't decided. But Reeve shakes his head.

"Well, in my mind, your sins are more than paid for in saving the world."

At least knew where he stood with Reeve. Although they both stood in a new world together, a world in which even their dreams were penetrable. Vincent thought about what Reeve would find were he to have come into his dreams if Reeve would have felt the same as he did now.

Or would Reeve be disgusted with the horrors locked inside his mind?

Of course he would. They were friends.

"Take the time you need to decide. For now, though, I will do my best to help you pass the time."

"The time here.. does it make it more difficult to pass or have you found it the same as our world?" Vincent wasn't sure he would find it too different from what it was like on Gaia, after all that time he spent idling.

"Different. Sixty hour days. It's... draining."

More than two days to one day, and it was brutal on trying to have a normal sleep schedule.

Even though the days were sixty-hours long, Vincent was sure that Reeve would have the same sleeping patterns as in need to sleep within sixteen to twenty hours intervals of consciousness. Or so he wagered. Vincent, on the other hand, had a very different relationship with sleep and what his body requires. The situation was different in this cave, however, and Vincent slept consecutively.

He was sleeping now, lest he forgets, and he nearly had.

"You'll find it easier I suppose," Reeve sighs, fingers rubbing at his temples as a door finally appears. "It seems our time is passing."

Vincent took a moment to watch Reeve before he stepped toward the door. He hesitated before he turned to face the other. "Will you come with me?"

"I don't know if I can leave," Reeve admits, looking nervously at the door. He does look at it longingly. He wants to go. He hates being here.

"Come with me." Vincent settled with, either way, it would be good to find out what would happen if Reeve walked through the door.

Well, how could he refuse. If it was anyone else, he would. But Vincent? He nods and moves to join him by the door.

Vincent nodded to Reeve. The curious part of him was eager to find out what would happen to both of them once they walked through the door. Would they wake up, would they disperse into separate rooms? Would Reeve remain here, waiting for his next visitor?

Vincent hesitated a moment before he stepped through the door.