Your mother had you as a teenager and then spent the rest of her life pretending she didn’t have you at all. To Rufus, you couldn’t be more different than Scarlet, soft where she is stern, kind where she is cruel. He imagines it must be exhausting to have a woman like that for a mother, but you made it through, much like he did with his own awful father.

Following Rufus’s triumphant return as the new president of the Shinra Company, he’s been more overt about your shared childhood. Many of his long nights while exiled to Junon comprised phone calls with you. Now, you’re free to visit his office without knocking, and he’s found himself looking forward to it.

Tonight, Rufus glances at you when you arrive, propping his chin up with his hand. A bottle of wine sits unopened on his desk, a gift from your mother as another thinly veiled attempt at flirting with him. Rufus smirks as he picks it up, rolling the neck of the bottle between his fingers. “Your mother left this for me,” he says in bemusement. “But I’d rather share it with you. Shall we?”