Final Fantasy VII (Turks)
Title: One For All
Author/Artist: GuiltyRed
Beta: YohjiDeranged
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Word count: 905
Summary: The Turks contemplate their future in the shadow of Midgar.
Prompt: July 22 - #16. Final Fantasy VII, Reno/Rude/Tseng/Elena: Strengthening bonds through touch - the ruins of Midgar: dust, concrete, rats, and a cold wind blowing
“Here.” I folded Elena’s fingers around the paper cup. Their chill soaked through my gloves.
She smiled a refugee’s half-smile at the coffee: a gesture of gratitude, not joy. Her fair hair and skin bore a dusting of gray, aging her as surely as her assignment had done. Grime clung to her suit where the wind had painted it: the dead city’s own graffiti.
She braced herself with a sip of the coffee - double cream, no sugar, as always. “There’s nothing more to be done,” she whispered. “Midgar is history.”
“And the people?” Tseng asked, voice solemn.
Reno answered for her. “Moving on, and taking whatever’s not nailed down, yo.” He wiped the back of his hand over his eyes, trying to remove the grit but only succeeding in laying a charcoal stripe from cheek to cheek. “Not that we’re gonna stop ‘em, right, boss?”
Tseng sighed over his own coffee, breath casting curls of steam on its surface. “No. We’re not.”
Silence filled the small room like fog, rising against further discussion.
Reno tipped his right foot up on the toe of his boot and began tapping his baton against the heel.
I removed my sunglasses and scowled at the thickly etched dust, then tossed them in the garbage. “It gets in everything.”
“Do you think that’s what’s causing it?” Elena asked, voicing the question none of us wanted to think about. “The rot?”
“I sure as hell hope not,” I grumbled. “If it is, we’re all in for a world of hurt.”
“Every time we go out there we’re breathin’ in reactor sludge and meteor bits, all powdered up like a party favor,” Reno observed. “That can’t be good, yo.”
“The President wasn’t directly exposed to the debris,” Tseng stated. “He’s had the finest medical care, in a controlled environment. It’s still spreading.”
“We’ve been exposed,” Reno growled, “and we’ve been in to check on him. How do you know we’re not making him worse? For that matter, how do you know we’re not all walking dead men - except Elena, yo, ‘cause she’s a woman.”
“They don’t think it’s contagious.” Tseng paused to drink some of his coffee - black, no sugar, strong as conviction. “Some say it’s caused by the planet herself, payback for our sins.”
“What sins, yo?” Reno asked facetiously. “Acting like it’s our playground to trash anytime we want to? Yeah, I can see that.”
“We did a pretty good job of that in Midgar,” Elena murmured.
Reno half-raised his baton as he turned toward her. “Couldn’t be helped! We did what we had to do!”
“So did Avalanche.”
We all turned to stare at Tseng, who seemed to be studying his coffee as though it held the secrets of the Ancients. Without looking up, he continued, “Shinra did what it had to do, SOLDIER played its part, and now we are washed up on the shores of our own mass hubris. ‘Improving the breed,’ ‘seeking the Promised Land,’ ‘building the perfect warrior’ - insanity, all of it. But humanity may still have a chance to redeem itself.”
“Okay, now, you’re scaring me,” Reno said with a brittle laugh. “You’re starting to sound like some kind of preacher, yo.”
“We aspire to angels, without comprehending what they are,” Tseng mused. “In the texts I have read, they are generally portrayed in one of two ways: guardians, or slayers of men. Shinra tried for the second, and we are left in ruins.” He paused again, sipped his cooling coffee.
Elena frowned, the question clear on her brow.
I motioned her to silence.
When Tseng spoke again, his tone told us all to pay close attention. “The young President has chosen to try the other road.”
Reno eyed him critically. “Does that mean we’re out of work?”
“No.” Tseng raised his head and fixed each of us with a sharp, meaningful look. “Humanity is fighting a war for its survival. We lost Midgar, but the fight is not over. We must each decide whether we will be ready to step up when the time comes. As for me…” He drained his cup and crushed it. “I made my decision long ago.”
Guardian angels - Turks?
Why the hell not.
I closed the small distance between myself and my commander. Slowly, deliberately, I removed my right glove and placed my hand over Tseng’s. “I’m with you.”
A small pale hand joined the clasp. “I’m in,” Elena stated, her voice firm. “Whatever it takes.”
Reno watched as we made our uncharacteristically solemn vow. If Tseng was right and we stood in a calm moment between battles in a greater war, we could all be consigning ourselves to death, or worse, and we all knew it. War meant slaughter or capture. War meant that of the four of us, any one would be lucky to escape unscathed.
If we banded together under the rebel flag of a repentant Rufus Shinra, there was a damn good chance none of us would make it out alive.
With a cockeyed smirk, Reno holstered his baton, then sauntered the few steps to my side. His expression turning serious, he set his right hand atop Elena’s and squeezed gently but strongly enough that we all felt it. “I don’t feel like sealing this pact in blood, yo. Not today.” He saluted with his cup, then poured the remainder of his coffee over the bond. “I think that’ll come all on its own.”