Room 429, Late Afternoon

[raspberryturk]

"Permission to crawl under the bed and die, sir?" Phone calls. Phone calls were the worst idea that every freaking universe out there could possibly have come up with. Phone calls were going to be the death of Reno, one of these days. This phone call felt like it had the potential. Freaking phone calls.

Tseng smiled, faintly. "I take it you're back to yourself, then. Good. We need to speak, Reno."

What Reno wanted to say was "Fuck you you fucking fucker fuck fuck fuck."

What Reno did say was, "Yes, sir."

Tseng's smile disappeared, somewhat quickly. "Reno. I admit I took certain liberties with your condition. I imagine you're upset with me, and I can't say unfairly. However." The rest went unsaid. For now.

Deep breath. Right. Okay. Reno wasn't going to be able to fit through the receiver if he decided that he had to leap through to strangle his boss. Then again, this was Fandom... "However."

There was always a 'however,' wasn't there?

Tseng frowned. "However. I felt it was ... necessary, considering the lack of detail, in your recent reports." And certain omissions. That didn't need to be said, did it?

Reno closed his eyes. Right. That lurch in his gut there was totally normal. It was all good. He'd wash it down with something hard, after the phone call ended. "I can... Uh..." What? Explain? No, no, he probably couldn't.

Tseng waited a few seconds. He finally sighed. "Reno. I'm going to ask you for a full report. I understand you have a need for privacy. But I think the situation's changed. Has it not?"

Reno licked his lips. Shit, his mouth was dry. Maybe the boss wouldn't notice if he reached for that mouthful of Everclear he had left. Maybe. "... Yes, sir."

Tseng's voice softened, somewhat. "I trust you. Implicitly. You understand that."

"Yes, sir." Reno felt kind of like a busted record, here. Everything kept skipping. "She..." She was... "I'm not just tryin' to stay for her. This is still about the assignment, sir."

Tseng was still filing. "I believe you," he said. She. Reno went there first. Still taking notes, yes. "Can you start at the beginning? Your arrival. Friendships, allegiances. Anything you've omitted as being too ... fantastic to be believed."

Reno frowned. Oh. Oh shit. This was. Was going to take a while. And that meant that he wasn't getting a drink and he was going to be holding his breath for a long time. "Almost the whole damn place is too fantastic to be believed," he muttered. "I think only maybe about half the population of the island is even human. Place keeps throwing random crap at you when you don't expect it, gets to the point where you just shrug and go, 'oh, yeah. It's Fandom, yo." Talk about the place. The place was good. It wasn't... Wasn't telling Tseng about... The rest of it. That part that he almost touched on a moment before. Couldn't go there right now.

"I see." Tseng nodded. They could ease into this, sure. "By-product of the dimensional nexus, perhaps. Were you mentally affected this weekend, or were you really reverted to a child state in some manner?"

"I was freakin' five, sir." There was a good deal of frowning, here. The frowning was beyond epic. It was more of a scowl. "Kinda... me, but me at five, too. Was... weird."

Understatement of the day.

"And yet still yourself," Tseng mused. "You knew your identification number and the rest. I imagine Rude required some convincing, as well."

Rude. They were totally getting around to Rude, sooner or later.

Reno licked at his lips again. "Not much, sir."

Reno had a very unique level of annoying that Rude was able to pick up on. Rude was a pro at that sort of thing.

Tseng nodded. "Very well. You had a stalker-roommate - more oddities from the nexus, or the conventional variety? And a weekend where you said you weren't yourself at all. How did that differ from this?"

"Tamaki was just nuts, sir," Reno replied. ... Well, he was. "The weekend where I wasn't myself... I just wasn't. Was someone else, from somewhere else, never for a second thought some guy named Reno existed. This weekend, I was just me. But five."

"Were you someone else?" Tseng asked, carefully. "An imagined character, or someone that other people knew and might recognize? I suppose you may have no way of knowing."

Reno swallowed. "I was someone real," he said. "Three kids from here knew the guy." He left that one hanging. Didn't want to go too far into detail about lighting the roof on fire.

"And while you were him, you had no memory of your own experiences and life, correct?" Tseng asked. Dimensional nexus. This was fascinating.

"None. Looked like him, thought like him, could do whatever he could do. Just... was him, zoto." This was stupid.

There were two points left, and Tseng was fully expecting Reno to be reluctant to discuss either. Tseng chewed his lip in silence for a few moments.

"The angels," he said, finally.

Reno grit his teeth. Right. The angels. Right. So. There were these statues.

"There were these statues. And... You got the report. I dunno. Couldn't just... leave it be." He couldn't. Tseng had to know that, right?

"Couldn't?" Tseng asked. Lightly. Carefully.

Maybe Tseng would hear Reno flinch, there. Reno hoped he wouldn't.

"Was them or me," he said. Which was... really a huge fucking lie. Tseng had to know that. Reno sighed and tried again. "Was them or... Look, they just. Freakin' took off with people. Whole place was a clusterfuck and there's no way you can stay outta that kinda shit."

"You expressly disobeyed a direct order," Tseng said. Calmly.

"Yes," Reno replied. "I did." And what was Tseng going to do about it? There was that edge in Reno's voice that asked just that. He did something that had to be done. 'Sit this round out and hide like a fuckin' pussy while your girlfriend's crying' wasn't an option. .... Oh.

"I'm familiar with how you work," Tseng said. Still calm. "You've gone against directives in the past. It usually ends up saving another Turk's life."

Reno relaxed slightly at that. Slightly.

"Weren't no other Turks involved," he stated.

"I know," Tseng said. "That was somewhat my point."

Reno hated it when Tseng made 'somewhat' points.

"Jus' get to the point, already," he said, trying his best not to hiss that phrase out and add a few colorful bits of the English language to it.

"There aren't any Turks on that island," Tseng said sharply. "There are damn few of you left. Your loyalties and allegiances lie here, first. Disobeying direct orders to keep underlings alive is one thing. Risking yourself for your neighbors is another."

"Rikku ain't just a fucking neighbor, Tseng, or Rom-" Reno winced again. Great. Drop more names to the boss. Freaking brilliant. Damn it damn it damn it. "Got a few people here worth disobeyin' orders for." Asshole.

Damn it.

"I see," Tseng said. Frowning. Audibly.

He waited. Usually if he waited, Reno would continue.

"Yeah, I bet you do." Reno was frowning back. Not nearly as audibly. Perhaps the middle finger that he was aiming somewhere toward the causeway would be more audible. "Trust me except when you don't, yo, Tseng? Had to get involved. And stayed out of it until there was no," well, not as much, "risk that it'd go sour."

And his girlfriend had put up her hand, too.

Reno had to recognize that loud exhale by now. That was Tseng keeping his temper, forcibly.

"I trust you, as far as I can. I trust you with the lives of our associates. When you begin putting yourself in danger for the sake of something not relevant to the mission, that upsets me."

"Not a hell of a lot of a mission if the whole island gets sent back to 1899," Reno shot back. "If I'm not gonna get up the balls to walk backward and blink, who the hell is? Gonna leave it until it's me keepin' my eyes open with tape while four statues all try to eat me at once, Tseng?"

"Then you call Rude, he picks you up, and you come home," Tseng said sharply. "No mission is worth us losing yet another Turk."

"Funny how I'm still here," Reno snarled into the phone. He was angry because Tseng was right. And wrong. And. And. "I'm still here and everyone who was taken is back. Pretty fucked up world I'm in, when the people who go missing actually come back."

"Did you know they would come back?" Tseng asked coolly. "Did you know there was no risk, to yourself?"

"Wakin' up every morning's got risk to it, zoto." Reno's own voice had gone equally cool. To that place with the dark edge. The one he probably shouldn't reserve for his boss. "You can't honestly think otherwise. We wake up every mornin', don't matter what we got planned for the day. I was fuckin' careful, Boss. Trust my partner with my life." And then, because he had to say it. Couldn't leave well enough alone. "Wasn't gonna end up like Cissnei and the others."

There was a long, cold silence.

"There is a difference," Tseng said, finally, "between the average risks we take, on missions, and you pig-headedly involving yourself in a rescue mission which I expressly forbade you from joining. There is a difference between dying on a mission and dying because you are too short-sighted to remember where your loyalties lie. There is a difference between Cissnei," and the name sounded harsher for the flinch that went with it, "and how we would have lost you. Had your partner not been as reliable as you're presuming."

"I trust her just as much as I trust any Turk," Reno hissed. "This ain't about questioning my loyalties. This is about doin' somethin' that had to be done. Got my fill of sortin' out my loyalties a year an' some change ago, Boss."

Another silence. A cold one, while Tseng kept himself from saying anything more than would be prudent.

"So this is about her," he said, finally.

Very suddenly, the anger that Reno had been swallowing back surged forward, feeling more like bile and nausea and puke. It felt like fucking puke.

"I'm still a Turk," he said, and the bottle that he'd been tempted to open was thrown across the room, because that was a better idea than throwing the phone. "I'm still a Turk and I'm still standin', and you wanna question my loyalty because of this, Tseng, then you go right the fuck ahead."

"Should I?" Tseng asked harshly. "A few people worth disobeying orders. Wasn't that what you said a minute ago? You're still a Turk. And now there are people who you'd rank higher than your own mission. Ones you never bothered to tell me about."

"You wanna tell me what to do some more, Tseng? I'll do it. I've followed orders from you. Followed orders from Verdot before you. Followed fucking orders from here to hell and back. You want to tell me to get my ass out there and press-gang some more dumb fucks into SOLDIER, an' I'll do it. You got someone you need dirt on? I'll get it. You want someone dead, Tseng? You got someone that's gotta die today? You wanna give me some more goddamn orders? I can do it! I do do it! You can tell me to go out there and drop another motherfucking plate--" Reno's voice cracked. He flinched. He took a breath. Shut his eyes and oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck he didn't want to take this here. He went quiet. Barely heard the words as he said them, himself. "... I'll do it. I'll drop another fucking plate for the Turks. But you can't ask me to let those people stay dead."

The plate. Tseng was pinching the bridge of his nose again. He didn't want to talk about the plate. Didn't want to remember that time. AVALANCHE back and the President gone mad, three Turks left, go kidnap that Ancient (Aerith, Aerith, she had a name, damn it) and while you're at it, bring the plate on down. That would show them.

Tseng had said yes, sir. As you wish, sir. Because that was what the Turks did.

Tseng hated this job some days. They all did.

Tseng exhaled. Slowly. "I see," he said.

"I'll fucking do it," Reno said again, and he believed it. Knew it. Was what he was. Wasn't anything else, was there? "I'll do it. You give me the orders. I do 'em. 'S... how this works, zoto."

The fight in Reno's voice was gone. Reno wanted to gather up the pieces of the bottle and maybe suck the Everclear from the carpet and curl up somewhere and he was better than that. Fucking better than that. He was a Turk. He was a Turk.

"But I ain't gonna let anything happen to the people here, either."

"I'll need dossiers," Tseng said. Calmly. "The important figures, on this island. Both public concern and any you might find to be relevant."

Translation: I want to know who runs the island. And I want to know about your friends.

Reno nodded. Slowly. Tseng probably couldn't hear his nod. Reno was barely aware that he was doing it. He had a voice, somewhere in there. Would just... take him a moment to find it, is all. Just take a moment. "Yes, sir."

Translation: I'm a Turk. We complete the mission no matter what. Because we're Turks.

Tseng nodded. Dammit. He didn't like this mission. Was liking it less as time went on. But he had orders, too.

"Very well, then," he nodded. "Your next report is due Friday."

"Yes, sir." Reno nodded again. "Friday, you'll have a report, sir."

Unless I become a kid before the weekend, or turn into someone else, or get eaten by stone angels.

Tseng nodded. "Dismissed." And hung up his phone, and frowned at it for a very long time.

Cissnei. Aerith. Meteor falling. Sector seven, lying crushed under its plate. And all the Turks who never came home.

Finally he lifted it again. "Rude. Report to my office immediately."

Reno stared at the phone. Shut it. Stared at it some more.

Dropped it on the floor.

Walked over to his wastepaper basket.

And threw up.

He was fine.


[Preplayed with the astounding the_merriest, who continues to be an awesome Tseng. Similarly, the post is open only to the non-Tseng version of the same, if you please.]

Comments

[the_merriest]

"You knew," she said quietly. She was shaking, now, holding it all in. "You've known the whole time. H-how I feel. What they did to us. You lied to me. Didn't you?"

[raspberryturk]

"I'm not them," he said, feebly. "I didn't... do that. To your people."

...

Which didn't clear his conscience in the least.

"I've done a lot of things I can't take back. But what the Yevonites did to the Al Bhed, that ain't on my head."

[the_merriest]

"Did you, or didn't you?" she snapped. "Is that why you've never told me? Hey, it just never came up? You had no idea I'd react like this, you're so shocked! Except you don't look shocked at all. You look like someone just punched you."

Funny, because she felt the same way, herself.

[raspberryturk]

Trying to be numb. Trying to put his head in that place where his head had to be to do his missions. But this wasn't a mission. Wasn't a bunch of faceless nothings who he could drink away every night before trying to sleep. Wasn't AVALANCHE wasn't Sector Seven wasn't the end of the world only felt like it and numb...

Numb was so far gone that he'd just hurt himself more pretending he could reach it.

"Wanted to. Said... you wouldn't... wouldn't like it..."

Wasn't good enough! Wasn't fucking good enough!

[the_merriest]

"You lied to me," she said, again. "Because you knew, if I knew the truth, I'd be mad."

It felt like a knife wound. Felt like a slap in the face. Felt like felt like felt like --

"You must think I'm so stupid," she seethed. "You were just ... never gonna tell me? Not gonna stick around long enough for it to matter? You --"

-- like he'd never meant any of it, at all.

[raspberryturk]

"Wasn't that. Wasn't that. Isn't that. It's. I couldn't." Breathing wasn't supposed to be this hard. It wasn't supposed to feel like someone had a choke-hold on him, like someone had dug their hand into his chest, like he was standing on the ceiling upside-down so that his guts were filling his brain with rocks.

Where had his guts found rocks?

"I want to stay, want to not have this matter, zoto. Didn't want..."

So thirsty.

"I didn't want you to know. Because if you knew..."

I can't lose you.

[the_merriest]

Breathing. Was. This was a good time to sit down again. Sit down, and put her face in her hands, and breathe. Because. Because she had two things in front of her. Him. And. And everything he meant to her. Was starting to mean to her. And. Then, over here, all the rest of it. He'd. Lied. Knowing that if she ever found out, she'd ... hate him. Did that. Make it worse? Did that mean he. Wanted to tell her and. Couldn't? Could she believe any of it, now?

Putting her face in her hands meant that she could blink back the definitely-not-tears that were burning the corners of her eyes. Could clear her throat. Could sit. Could think. Could try to think.

"Why are you really here?" she said. That same numb, empty voice that didn't sound like her at all.

[raspberryturk]

He couldn't sit down. He couldn't move.

She'd asked him a question. He owed her at least an answer.

"ShinRa made a whole lotta... mistakes," he said, trying to speak clearly, not mumble, not choke on his words. Maybe he was doing alright at it, too. "Mako power wasn't the only thing they came up with that was hurtin' the planet. When it all went bad, when Midgar fell, it took most of ShinRa with it."

Deep breath. History lesson. Everyone in Gaia knew. This wasn't ... It didn't... Matter. If he told anyone. Her. Told her.

It did matter. Just.

"What's left now is the president, and four Turks. A planet lookin' for some kind of way to create electricity that ain't gonna kill it. A disease that's killin' most of the youth that was in Midgar at the time. And no solutions."

Another deep breath.

"I'm just here lookin' for solutions."

[the_merriest]

"Solutions," she repeated. That same flat, empty tone. Gray. Like an overcast day that never actually bothered to rain, already, just hung in the sky glowering at you.

"You're here for research. They sent you, the merc, the one with a weapon who can fly a chopper. So it's ... you know. Solutions, and cutting up anybody who gets in the way of you finding them. Right?"

She looked up, her head feeling as heavy and dead as the clouds outside.

[raspberryturk]

"There isn't anyone else left alive to send," he replied.

Numb. He was still reaching for numb. Still couldn't find it. And the more he tried, the more he felt the rest of it. Like whenever he looked toward it, it ran away and just left him with that nauseous pit and the overwhelming urge to curl up and stop and to not act like a Turk at all.

"Came here as a student. Cutting people up would just... be..." He didn't want to say this. "Counterproductive."

[the_merriest]

"But you would," she said, carefully, her stomach twisting in slow circles. "If it wasn't. If. If someone was holding the one thing you were sent here for. And refused to hand it over. Cut them up and catch the next flight home. Right?"

Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me Gaia isn't like Spira, that your government cares about people and is full of fluffy bunnies. And that's why they have a covert ops squad and lots of missions you can't talk about, and why you were throwing up in your wastebasket.

[raspberryturk]

"If that person had the cure for geostigma? Or if they knew some way to just... wave a hand and bring back the planet?"

He was trying to justify this, he realized.

There wasn't any way to justify this. Any of it. What he had done. What he would do. Except that was what he did. What he was told. Write up dossiers. Murder thousands with a push of a button and a countdown. All that stuff that they didn't advertise when they asked if you wanted the job you couldn't leave.

Wouldn't leave if you wanted to.

Wouldn't be anything at all if you did.

"Yes. I would."

[the_merriest]

"You've killed for less." It wasn't a question. "People that were ... inconvenient. People the government just wanted to get rid of. They're loud, they're messy, they're traitors, so this Tseng sends you and they 'disappear.' Is that about right?"

Why was she asking questions she didn't want the answers to?

... because she couldn't let it go. Not this.

[raspberryturk]

"That's right." He was answering now without consent of his brain. Because if he let his head get involved with what his mouth was saying, then his chest would stop working entirely and he'd suffocate and die while his heart exploded and why did it feel like that? What the fuck was this?

"Been a lotta people 'disappeared' like that, yoto."

[the_merriest]

There were icy claws digging into her chest. Freeze your lungs, so you can't breathe. Tear into your heart, just a quick rip and then the sharp jab, so deep it's almost numb.

Rip it down. Rip it all down. Burn it. Just like ...

"Would you have?" she asked. The ground. The ground was so fascinating. The carpet. Where most of her guts were anyway. "You're not them. You didn't ... d-do that, to us. You didn't storm in, with fiends, set fire to everything that wasn't metal, leave my friends lying on the stairs, bloody and broken and I have to hope they were dead, before it fell, because I didn't stop to grab them, there was no time, the alarm was sounding and my Home was burning and Yunie was gone and the sanctum was ripped open and there was ..."

Bile. She swallowed it down. Hard.

"You ... would have said no. Told them there are lines, somewhere. Or. They wouldn't ... ask you. To do that. Or. Something. Would you? You ..."

Please. Please. Give her something. Anything.

[raspberryturk]

Gunfire and screaming, no point waiting for the chopper for the pickup countdown's over just run there's the edge of the platform going to die anyhow and jump, caught, alive, and twisting, tearing metal grinding on metal and so much sound filling his head his eyes his everything.

Silence. Helicopter blades. Tseng looking like he was going to be sick and the ancient screaming and numb.

He was a Turk.

It was so fucking quiet.

He wasn't hiding his shaking hands. Didn't occur to him that they were shaking. Everything was so far away now, it was just her words and his and the whole thing was exactly the same and he had said that he didn't. Said that he hadn't done that to her Home and he was the same damn thing.

"Sector Seven," he said, so empty now that maybe they were just words that didn't mean anything anymore. "The plate. Above the Sector Seven slums. Had to go down."

[the_merriest]

If she pressed her eyes hard enough, with the heels of her hands, then she wouldn't cry. This seemed like a good theory to try out. Because she was a single breath a hiccup a blink away from losing it entirely and if she started crying now she'd be a sobbing wreck here on his floor, shrieking and screaming and hitting him and she was pretty sure she would lose her mind.

If she pressed hard enough, and didn't cry, none of this would be happening, and tomorrow she would tell him about that crazy dream she had brought on by too much toddler-ingested sugar.

Dreams never felt like this. That sick taste in the back of her mouth and her eyes itching and. And. And.

"And the people under it," she said. Maybe he couldn't hear her, over how loud the silence was.

They didn't matter. Just the slums. Just the heathens. Just the worthless filthy nobodies over there. Not like it was anyone that mattered, right?

[raspberryturk]

Reno hadn't felt this tired in a very long while. Hadn't ever paused to pull it together and just face it, and here it was, right in front of him, staring him down, calling him out, ripping him apart. Justice, maybe. Couldn't be above the law forever without something coming back to shoot you in the ass.

Was aiming too low. His heart was higher. His head was a little above that. Or it could shoot him in the guts and let him die slow, and miserable, and thirsty.

Or it could leave him standing there, in his room, watching as he ripped out her heart with the truth. That was so much worse.

"...Didn't see it comin' until they started screamin' and tryin' to get out from under it."

Didn't stand a chance.

[the_merriest]

A whole city under a plate. Where he grew up. The slums. Never seeing the sky.

She could still see him holding that notebook up in class, explaining it. We call that the plate. Up there's the minority, yo. The people who kiss enough ass or whatever to be able to warrant livin' on top. Down here's everyone else. Under the plate, zoto.

The plate, untied from whatever was holding it up where the sky should be. Smashing down, fast, on the city and people underneath. Metal and screams and ...

Isn't that dangerous? she'd asked. He'd shrugged. It's a risk you take when you choose to live under a giant piece of metal.

Just one question left.

"Why?"

Couldn't change anything. Wouldn't bring it back. She just had to know.

[raspberryturk]

Revenge.

Closure.

He'd been so tired and they'd taken everything and it had all gone to hell, and they were a bunch of psycho fucks blowing up reactors and cities with them and trying to take out the whole damn world and if they'd really come back...

"They told me to."

The bile was still there. The new stinging that he felt in his eyes was far worse. Blink it back. Swallow it down.

"It had to go."

[the_merriest]

And there was nothing behind it. Nothing to cling to, among the shadows. Just emptiness.

She stood up, somehow. Her knees worked even if there was nothing left of her.

Had to say something. Couldn't just ... wanted so badly to run, to the door, before all of this came out, swirling and ugly, rage and hurt and pain and she owed him something, before she turned on her heel for that. She.

"I can't do this."

It wasn't coming, it was here, but maybe she'd turned fast enough that he didn't see the tears, he didn't get to see her tears, they were hers and she was leaving and his door was blurry but the knob still turned in her hand and like that, she was gone.

[raspberryturk]

It was quiet again.

The plate had dropped.

The screaming was done.

It was all silence, now, in Reno's head.

Except for the sobbing sounds that were spilling out of him as he hit his knees to the floor.

Except for that, it was quiet again.