[Closed]
Who: Zack Fair i_love_squats and Tseng fingersloophole
When: 3/13
Where: Prayer tree then… wherever it leads from there
Format: Paragraph.
What: Zack is mopey and Tseng...well, is Tseng.
Warnings: Copious amounts of booze and angst.
( You have only been gone ten days, but already I'm wasting away. )
When: 3/13
Where: Prayer tree then… wherever it leads from there
Format: Paragraph.
What: Zack is mopey and Tseng...well, is Tseng.
Warnings: Copious amounts of booze and angst.
( You have only been gone ten days, but already I'm wasting away. )
Or maybe not. But it seemed like it, so he didn’t venture a look at him; Zack wanted to believe that a Turk wasn’t locked into the underhanded violence brought about by years of training. He wanted to believe that things didn’t have to be as they were. He wanted to believe in change.
Hearing that his ribbon was at the family’s shrine -something Zack took a great deal of honor about-made him smile, less puppy-like, and more thoughtful, calm. Someone cared. Someone remembered him. Someone honored him. Wasn’t that what he always wanted? “Thank you. I mean it. Really, thank you.”
Zack accepted the ribbon, held it for a second with his thumb rubbing against the fraying edges of fabric, thinking. Remembering. Recalling flowercarts and slum thieves, pink hair accessories and the way the stained glass of the church windows illuminated her face. His heart hurt, but just for a second; Tseng was right, and she was damn impressive, both alive and after.
“You have no idea.”
He brought the ribbon to his lips, kissed it, and tied the ribbon. The bell was rung quietly this time, his prayer brief, more of a Hey, what’s going on rather than a tale of lonely woe. She was always with him, and he didn’t need to pine.
Drinking the alcohol, he handed the cup back to Tseng amid a bit of coughing. “Do you blame yourself for them?”
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"Elena is a different case. A different generation. A...hopeful generation." It wasn't a bad thing; he was just slow to change. "Who do I have to break kneecaps here for, Zack? Everything I did was for Rufus. He's not even here now." So he'd learned, but not because he found anything morally repelling about cornering someone in an alley to get something. Just because he didn't have a reason to do so.
He let Zack have his moment, but he didn't seem nearly so sad about Aerith. "I knew her since she was very young. When she was first at ShinRa." Yet he'd really known very little. People were not their files, he was coming to find out.
He waved off the gratitude. "My father suggested it, actually. What a noble warrior deserves and all of that. You'll forgive me if I made him cancel the parade he was planning." He might have been joking, but he took the cups and stacked them again.
Facing the tree, Tseng made a low bow, forehead touching hands, then stood up, offering a hand to Zack to help him to his feet. That question wasn't unexpected either. He'd been asked in the past, and always by someone wanting to bear blame themselves.
"Every day," Tseng answered quietly. "I wake up ten years later angry at myself for something trivial. For not teaching them better. For not going myself." He started to walk, intending now to take Zack to his own apartment where he wouldn't have to drag him through the streets shitfaced and vomiting in the gutters. "Logic says I couldn't have known. Emotion says I should have. It...gets easier once you balance the two."
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“Do you really need to break kneecaps for anyone back home? Isn’t there something else the Turks can do? Don’t the people in charge have better things to do other than to intimidate and threaten anyone who oppose them?” He looked up at the prayer tree, watching the ribbons flutter restlessly in a low breeze. “Haven’t you guys learned anything?”
Zack had a lot of time to come to terms with Aerith; a year and a half of this place, and he still heard stories of her heroism after death. Wasn’t that an effective grief counseling system? The other ones, the ones that just left, it was all so fresh, all so new and raw, and Angeal’s… that one always stung more than the others, that always had its own level of guilt.
He smiled a little, thumb playing at the ends of her ribbon where it was tied, knotted, before he took it down and retied it into a bow like the one in her hair. He just wished it was pink. “What was she like? As a kid? I mean, I imagine she was cute, cutest little girl the world’s seen, but… what else?”
Noble warrior. Had a nice ring to it. “Parades get messy, anyway. Some poor sucker always ends up having to clean up the confetti afterward, and it’s usually the guy who didn’t have his boots polished to perfection.” A fact he knows too well, since he’s had to do it a few times himself.
Taking the hand, he climbed to his feet, dusting off his pants. He paused long enough to touch each of the ribbons he placed, kissing Aerith’s and silently vowing to come back and replace hers with a pink one. Hurrying after Tseng, he listened quietly, nodding, thoughtful; guilt was something he still hadn’t mastered, didn’t know if he would even after a million years.
“But, do you think you could’ve done more? Honestly? If you trained them all at their max limit, shared with them everything you knew, what else could you do?”
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Tseng continued walking, pausing so Zack could make his brief goodbyes. He knew he'd be back, anyway. "I haven't broken kneecaps in a log time," He confessed, a bit amused. "It's better usually. Painful, takes a long time to heal, but doesn't cause permanent or fatal damage." He was just being stubborn now, knowing exactly what Zack meant.
"I did as I was ordered. I did what was necessary for ShinRa. Not for the old man...for Rufus. For what Rufus would inherit and for who Rufus could become and for what Rufus could do to the world." Rufus had survived to adulthood, taken the presidency. Started to see a difference in what ShinRa could do.
The question made him think. Back to being a rookie Turk. Back to drawing the short straw and having to guard the labs. "She was...very sweet. Very different from Sephiroth who was the only other child in the labs. She never wanted for love. She was clever because people had cared for her enough to develop it, not because she was made that way as a fetus. Not..." Not like he had been. And Tseng still carried guilt on that as well.
He checked his hair tie. He'd sworn to wear his hair down but it was best to have it out of the way. "I didn't teach them all I knew. I didn't max out their skills. The need for them was too great and the time we had was...very short."
Necessary sacrifice. Required sacrifice. What his entire life had been about. "Surely you joined SOLDIER for a reason? You believed in it. Believed in something. And if you hadn't been injured in Nibelheim, wouldn't you have continued on your path?"
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The conversation was dark, and he knew he shouldn’t be surprised; it’s not like the Turks were the paragon of joyful interludes. And, Shiva, he hadn’t been lately either, with people missing or…dead. He guessed this was appropriate, given the situation, but that didn’t stop him from slamming his hands into his pockets and kicking a rock across the way. Maybe drinking hadn’t been a bad idea.
He rolled his eyes, almost made to ruffle Tseng’s hair (habits from other people, he assures you), but keeps his hands to himself. “Ha. Ha. Ha. When you go home, though, you’re going to, aren’t you? Fall back into old habits. Old orders.” He shook his head, the black hair swaying. “Why did you want him to inherit it all, if it’s just going to be the same as his dad? Where you can’t just talk things out, and have to go muscle and kidnap and threaten instead? How’s it different?” And trust him, Tseng, because there’s no accusation in his voice, just the quiet curiosity. He missed all this, he didn’t know, he didn’t see what things could and would become.
Never wanted for love, huh? Sweet. Yeah, it all sounded about right, sounded how things would happen later on, too. “She’s got a light around her. You can’t help but feel it, you know, and when you do, well, it’s like everything’s just going to be fine. Feels like coming home.”
The Blame Game. Dammit, Tseng, you should know better. “You did the best you could with what you had around you. If you had a very short amount of time, you can’t make days appear where you don’t have them. It doesn’t work like that. You’re not to blame. You didn’t shoot them yourself. They looked up to you for a reason. Can’t you trust them?”
Oh, sure, turn the question back on him. Blue eyes blinked as he looked away, a little sigh collecting in his lungs. “Yeah. Yeah, I probably would’ve. But-But I would’ve tried to make changes. I would’ve done everything I could’ve to stop what happened. I wouldn’t want…more people to get hurt. Or wind up like the things I saw.”
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Would he go back to it? He looked up at the sky briefly. "I will do what is necessary, so that the new Turks do not have to do so. I will do what it takes to protect Rufus and let him build his empire." Dark eyes drifted back to Zack. "However, no. We don't do those types of things as frequently. If someone offers to bite Rufus, we bite them first. But it isn't how it was."
Not how it had been in Zack's time, or even how it had been when the old man still lived. "ShinRa will never be the hero of the story. But we'll try." He was contented with that. He was content that the lives of his people wouldn't needlessly be thrown away for greed.
"Listen to yourself," He said amusedly as Zack told him it wasn't his fault. "And then tell those same things to your mind. You did all you could. You were not to blame for disappearances or deaths." Not that Zack would believe it. Not yet.
He guided Zack into Elena's apartment building, into his unit. It was still rather spartan, but he liked not having to take charity from Zack and from...Angeal. He brought out the liquor he could find, and some snack foods because taking care of a drunk Zack he assumed was a lot like taking care of a teenage Rufus.
"I believe in this as you believed in SOLDIER. We change things. We build them into what we hope them to be. And those we lose...we blame ourselves for." He sighed softly. "Cissnei came to me...after everything. I didn't want to speak with her. I didn't want to know that she was a person who had emotions and who could be hurt because of my decisions." It was odd to think about. He'd almost been hoping to encounter her again. "She disappeared. The last information I got was that she was in a little backwater village building a life. I didn't follow up. I didn't want to know."
He took a pretzel and snapped a few edges off, staring at it, then going to get glasses so they could at least drink like civilized people. "I hate it when people become people to me instead of files," He admitted and sat down, mixing a drink for Zack. "What do you hate? What do you fear? Losing them or losing yourself?"
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“As much as a bully as his father. But still a bully, right?” Even if he was putting it together like one would with a puzzle with odd pieces: by cutting and jamming even the incorrect ones together. But Zack didn’t know, couldn’t, so he simply nodded and looked off. “I hope he can do it. I hope he can make everything right after everything’s been wrong for so long.”
At least the knee-breaking wasn’t as frequent. That… that was a plus, right? And if they were just protecting Rufus, that’s not so bad, at least, not unless he knew what bite meant. Was it people who threatened the president’s power? Or was it physical? Was it a strict bodyguard detail? Shiva, his head was going to explode if he thought on it too hard, questioning and requestioning everything based on past fears and unsure futures. “Empire. Sounds a bit ominous, don’t you think? But… but knowing you guys want to do right by everything, I can’t complain. It’s nice, knowing that some things have changed for the better.” He just wished he could see them for himself.
Zack’s eyes rolled like shot marbles, his hand brushing against the door he walked through. “Yeah, but… I had a feeling Angeal was going to do something, and I didn’t stop it. I should’ve been there. I shouldn’t have let him go alone. He wrote a Will, you know. A Will. And I knew about it and still wasn’t with him at the end.”
Finding someplace to sit, he made himself as comfortable as he could, trying to will the few bits of alcohol in his system to surge up and make him tingle, make him feel its presence. Being a SOLDIER had its drawbacks; he wasn’t a cheap date, that’s for sure.
He looked up at Tseng, listening to him talk of Cissnei, telling him she was okay, before he took some pretzels of his own. She was alive at least, made it out and on, had a life when he thought for sure she didn’t. It made him smile amid the salty snacks in his mouth, and it laid to rest one of his questioning, nagging worry.
“Yeah, but maybe that’s your problem: you don’t want to know these things, but they’re still out there. Contrary to popular belief, you can’t avoid them forever. They’re all people, and they all have lives, and it’s not going to change just because you want it to. Even if you hate it, it’s still there, and it’s something you have to deal with.” Crunch. Crunch.. Swallow. Drink. “I bet she would’ve liked you to know. I bet she would’ve liked you to have followed up. It’s never too late, you know.”
What did he hate? What did he fear? He thought hard, his brow wrinkling, his eyes far away. “Letting them down. Letting everyone down. If I do that, then I lose them and myself, right?”
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"Rufus's father wasn't kind to him. Imagine that since you were a child." He was protective of the blond, and with good reason. Rufus didn't need emotional protection but he could at least keep him physically safe. "Ominous," Tseng echoed. "But necessary."
He knew how Zack felt, in a way. But Zack had always been passionate and never as practical as Turks were when they came to him. "I have a will," Tseng pointed out. "If I die tomorrow does that mean that you should have anticipated it? Angeal knew what he was facing, Zack. Angeal chose very clearly to leave you out of it and that isn't your fault."
That was going to be his mantra forever. It wasn't his fault. The same way he comforted Turks. "Drink more," He advised finally. It was all he could offer by means of physical pain relief at the moment.
He knew it was replaying in Zack's mind. Having to kill Angeal there and letting him die here. Losing people he cared about there and here. Being unable to protect them.
He poured himself a drink, milder than what he was allowing Zack to have. A brief smile was on his lips. "I've dealt with it. That they were people and not files. That they died horribly because of what I did. But that they were grown. That they knew what they risked and they died for a reason even if it was known only to them."
It was just as he thought with Zack and he awkwardly put a hand out to pat Zack's shoulder and rub his upper back carefully. "You did what you could and I'm certain they wouldn't want you to blame yourself for what happened."
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But he did turn quiet at the request to imagine a life with a father like the president. A bully. Someone who loved and lived for power. How different would he be, would any of them be, from himself to Tseng to someone like Cloud or Aerith? His own family was made up simple country folk; anything else, and he might’ve… “Tch.” He looked away. “Necessary. I don’t believe that. I think we can all get out of our containers, you know. Our patterns. There’s always room for change, no matter how we were brought up.”
Of course Tseng had a will; Zack compared it to Tseng telling him that the sky was blue or the moon only rose at night. “You guys have to have one when you start up, don’t you? It’s part of your application?” He wasn’t exactly sure on that, but they were quite the pessimistic bunch. “It was different with Angeal. It just had a different feel, and I knew it, and I should’ve tried harder, you know? If I had, he might still be here. If he had…”
Maybe the past would stop repeating.
He didn’t need coaxing for the drinks; he took it easily, quickly, bitterly. His nose wrinkled, and he finally started to feel it, the bright tingling in his finger tips, the looseness in his neck, the way his eyes tickled and his throat burned. It felt… good. Here. Now.
“So, if that’s true, why do you still blame yourself? Knowing that they knew, knowing what happened, how is it your fault? They… they were aware, right? They trained. You didn’t tell people to kill them. You didn’t send them to their deaths; you sent them to their missions. That’s all. It’s not… it’s not your fault.” And this was a circle, a constant circle they would go around again and again and again, no matter how drunk, how sad, how happy they got. Pity.
Blue eyes flickered to the hand, but he didn’t shrug it off. Hell, he kinda liked it, having that reassuring friend at his side, telling him things he knew weren’t true, but sounded good on paper. “I know they wouldn’t, but it’s easier said than done, right?”
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