Final Fantasy VII: Restorations II (Tseng; Tseng/Rufus, Turks, Everyone Else)
So, I'm kind of having an epic-shitty night; ergo some Restorations, even if it's far less large than it should be. \o
Restorations II
Rating: PG
Characters: Tseng, Rufus/Tseng, Reno, Elena, Rude.
Summary: And Shinra said, we are going to save the world, and then said, but let us start with restorations.
Warnings: Third part in the Restorations Arc. Post-Advent Children, with lots of... stuff.
Part I Interlude I
1614 words, and lots of the loyalty thing.
They followed him, like how lost city orphans followed any beacon, any sign.
Reno trailed him all the way down to the range the night before he was due to leave, hunching up against the triple-locked cabinets that served to hold the last of their basic weaponry stock. Tseng let him stay there all through his hour long cycle through blanks; each one of the paper men ending easily punctured - if only real people were so easy to convince, and if only words had that much impact.
'The president's on after crazy ideals again,' Reno said, finally, laziness cloaking his intonation. 'Edge I can understand him trying to "rule through charity", or something, but Wutai?' There was an exhalation. Tseng looked back in time to see Reno wave the smoke from his cigarette out of his face. 'Wutai's crazyland, Tseng. They never liked us before, they hate our guts out now, and they've got more than just crappy reactor statistics to prove how evil we are.'
'Yes,' Tseng agreed. 'An entire Planetary uprising does leave a bit of a black mark on Shinra's name.'
Reno snorted, grinding the stub of his smoke out with the heel of his foot. 'You're so cool. Everyone thinks Rude's a rock, but you're ice. You just gonna walk in there? Ask them to stop with their shit and get in line? The old man did it, sure. With an army.'
Tseng smiled. He wouldn't tell Reno that he found the concern touching, because it wasn't how they worked - but he smiled. Reno shot him a long, long look at that; part exasperation, part admiration, part the fear of a lonely man scared to lose. 'All Rufus wants to do is advise them, provide them with as much technology as he can and ensure that there's some form of sustainable energy to tide over Edge's industrial ambitions.'
'Meaning,' Reno interpreted, 'he wants them to get in line. Give us the good stuff, and stay on our terms. They'll take that as well as a house on fire.'
'It's an improvement over attempting to convince everyone that his guns are bigger than everyone else's,' Tseng quipped, wiping his firearm clean. He turned it over in his hand, the metal cool and familiar, once and then twice. Then he threw it at Reno. 'Keep that for me,' Tseng said.
'What?' Reno asked, startled, catching the gun reflexively and staring at it like it was a bomb. 'This is yours, boss. What am I supposed to - no, you know what, that's the wrong question. What are you supposed to do without it?'
'The same job that Rufus Shinra does without his father's company,' Tseng shrugged, and walked past Reno out of the door, and up the stairs towards the main Haelin area. It wasn't anywhere near safe for Rufus Shinra to sleep in the city of Edge, even if he worked in it.
Reno walked up behind him, shaking his head. 'Boss. Anyone ever told you you've got a real pair on you?'
Tseng was already shrugging out of his jacket. 'Not in this context, no.' They crossed the small courtyard that separated the operations building from the residential one; those three areas now the sum total of their playground. It was somewhat different from living as a shadow in a city of thousands. Tseng stopped at his door, jacket slung over one arm and his hand on the knob. 'The three of you will do fine,' he said.
Reno's grip on Tseng's gun was harder than it needed to have been. 'Elena's not a rookie anymore,' he agreed. 'And Rude's Rude. But the president's another thing altogether. I don't know what to do with changed men, boss, he keeps trying to do all this suicidal shit.'
'You do the same thing that you've always done,' Tseng said, cracking the door to his room open. 'Keep him from dying. Goodnight, Reno.'
'Goodnight, boss.'
Elena was there with him in the inventory at six the next morning as he packed to leave. Winter made the mornings grey with cold and dullness, but she stood by him nonetheless as he slid the relevant documents into a solid briefcase. She'd turned up a few minutes after he'd come in. Tseng suspected that she hadn't slept the night before.
Neither of them spoke, beyond the passing, requisite good morning.
'The President,' she started, half an hour into their shared silence. 'The President could've hired anyone to do this job.'
'I'm not an engineer, I admit,' Tseng nodded, drumming his fingers on the top of the briefcase. 'Though I've done what reading I can.' Often while holed up with Rufus, the younger man processing data into information, information into knowledge; and all of it with a stunning swiftness that made Tseng believe, for the first time in the wake of a long anticipation, that the President was perhaps also turning knowledge into wisdom.
The last of the data files went in. Tseng snapped the briefcase shut, click click.
'But you're not the best man for this kind of job,' Elena pointed out, nervous about her own audacity but driven to words by necessity. 'And when does the President settle for anything less?'
'Maybe he's learned something about the value of conserving resources,' Tseng replied, leaving the briefcase where it was and turning to the small cabinets at the side of the inventory room. 'An engineer might be wasted on this mission.' His fingers snapped about a combination lock. One of the cabinet doors swung open neatly.
'Going a bit over packed, aren't you?' Elena murmured as she watched Tseng remove two pieces of materia; mastered, from their look of lustre and sheen.
Tseng slid them into a fitting bracer; it was non-combative, small and snapped neatly into a flat, slim box. He slipped it inside his jacket. 'What else,' he asked her, eyebrows raised, 'were you expecting a man from Shinra to walk into Wutai with?'
She cracked a smile, half-broken and half-true. 'Is one of them a cure, at least?' she asks.
'Should I have brought fire and ice instead?' Tseng parried back. 'That would seem to be Rufus' style, of old.'
She laughed, that time. 'Reparations,' she reminded him.
He put a hand on her shoulder, briefly but there, and said, 'Yes, reparations,' before he moved to leave, without turning back.
Rude was waiting, with one of their last helicopters, at the front of the lodge. Tseng cocked his head. 'I'm not flying to the station.'
Rude cleared his throat, and nodded.
'I know you're not. It's always been something of a habit for you to stay close to the ground.' Rufus' voice, from behind. Tseng turned. The President was there, in all his layers. 'But I am, seeing as how I'd rather not be shot while on public transport the way there.'
Tseng chuckled. 'You'll arrive far earlier than I will if you leave now. An exaggerated gesture just to see me off.'
'I'm not leaving now,' Rufus shook his head. 'Just that Rude wanted his own chance at final words.'
'Sir,' Rude said, hands held behind him and shades blocking out his eyes.
'Rude,' Tseng acknowledged, with a tip of his head.
Rude shifted, once onto the back of his heels, then twice, rocking forward and back to stability. 'Have a safe trip.'
Tseng motioned, briefly, at his tie, tied as black around his throat as Rude's, and as good as a salute.
He walked the three miles to the station on the edge of civilisation, and rode the first of Shinra's electric and gas powered trains inwards to Edge, smiling sharply at the irony as he looked on, and beyond.
Rufus was there in the first-class carriage sleeper that was booked for Tseng, hitting his palm lightly with the stub of his ticket. 'It's impressive,' he said to Tseng as the Turk entered. 'They rebuilt this line from practically nothing, and yet it runs, and more than just adequately.'
Tseng was unperturbed by the fact that Rufus had, by all accounts, seemingly purchased a ticket this expensive to do nothing more than sit in the privacy of the single room to say a few last words. He stowed the briefcase in the overhead, and laid his small bag on the floor. 'Rebuilding an entire city inspires motivation, Rufus.'
'It does, doesn't it,' Rufus said. Tseng sat. Rufus leaned his elbows on his knees. They sat there for a while, close and in close company. 'Are you afraid?' Rufus asked, eventually.
'Afraid?' Tseng echoed, some laughter in his voice. 'No, I'm not afraid.'
Rufus looked up at him. 'That was the wrong question,' the younger man said. 'Are you ashamed?' he asked instead, reaching out with one hand to lay his fingers across Tseng's tie, to feel the stiffness of good silk and to trace, briefly, the man's collar, his pulse, living skin.
Tseng's eyes were dark. 'Yes. I am.'
Rufus tightened his grip, and pulled Tseng in. They kissed rarely, these days; moments saved for need, not excess. When Rufus drew back, his eyes were a fierce blue, and his voice fiercer: 'So am I.'
'Good,' Tseng said, raising his hand to Rufus' face and ghosting his palm over where the man had once been, for a while, blind.
There was a sharp whistle; the last warning before departure. Rufus rose. Tseng could see, from the corner of his eye, Rude waiting on the platform below.
'Come back,' Rufus ordered.
'Maybe if your city heals enough to meet me halfway,' Tseng challenged.
Rufus spared him a victor's smile.
The train pulled out, and followed the hours through nightfall, headed West.
Restorations II
Rating: PG
Characters: Tseng, Rufus/Tseng, Reno, Elena, Rude.
Summary: And Shinra said, we are going to save the world, and then said, but let us start with restorations.
Warnings: Third part in the Restorations Arc. Post-Advent Children, with lots of... stuff.
Part I Interlude I
1614 words, and lots of the loyalty thing.
They followed him, like how lost city orphans followed any beacon, any sign.
Reno trailed him all the way down to the range the night before he was due to leave, hunching up against the triple-locked cabinets that served to hold the last of their basic weaponry stock. Tseng let him stay there all through his hour long cycle through blanks; each one of the paper men ending easily punctured - if only real people were so easy to convince, and if only words had that much impact.
'The president's on after crazy ideals again,' Reno said, finally, laziness cloaking his intonation. 'Edge I can understand him trying to "rule through charity", or something, but Wutai?' There was an exhalation. Tseng looked back in time to see Reno wave the smoke from his cigarette out of his face. 'Wutai's crazyland, Tseng. They never liked us before, they hate our guts out now, and they've got more than just crappy reactor statistics to prove how evil we are.'
'Yes,' Tseng agreed. 'An entire Planetary uprising does leave a bit of a black mark on Shinra's name.'
Reno snorted, grinding the stub of his smoke out with the heel of his foot. 'You're so cool. Everyone thinks Rude's a rock, but you're ice. You just gonna walk in there? Ask them to stop with their shit and get in line? The old man did it, sure. With an army.'
Tseng smiled. He wouldn't tell Reno that he found the concern touching, because it wasn't how they worked - but he smiled. Reno shot him a long, long look at that; part exasperation, part admiration, part the fear of a lonely man scared to lose. 'All Rufus wants to do is advise them, provide them with as much technology as he can and ensure that there's some form of sustainable energy to tide over Edge's industrial ambitions.'
'Meaning,' Reno interpreted, 'he wants them to get in line. Give us the good stuff, and stay on our terms. They'll take that as well as a house on fire.'
'It's an improvement over attempting to convince everyone that his guns are bigger than everyone else's,' Tseng quipped, wiping his firearm clean. He turned it over in his hand, the metal cool and familiar, once and then twice. Then he threw it at Reno. 'Keep that for me,' Tseng said.
'What?' Reno asked, startled, catching the gun reflexively and staring at it like it was a bomb. 'This is yours, boss. What am I supposed to - no, you know what, that's the wrong question. What are you supposed to do without it?'
'The same job that Rufus Shinra does without his father's company,' Tseng shrugged, and walked past Reno out of the door, and up the stairs towards the main Haelin area. It wasn't anywhere near safe for Rufus Shinra to sleep in the city of Edge, even if he worked in it.
Reno walked up behind him, shaking his head. 'Boss. Anyone ever told you you've got a real pair on you?'
Tseng was already shrugging out of his jacket. 'Not in this context, no.' They crossed the small courtyard that separated the operations building from the residential one; those three areas now the sum total of their playground. It was somewhat different from living as a shadow in a city of thousands. Tseng stopped at his door, jacket slung over one arm and his hand on the knob. 'The three of you will do fine,' he said.
Reno's grip on Tseng's gun was harder than it needed to have been. 'Elena's not a rookie anymore,' he agreed. 'And Rude's Rude. But the president's another thing altogether. I don't know what to do with changed men, boss, he keeps trying to do all this suicidal shit.'
'You do the same thing that you've always done,' Tseng said, cracking the door to his room open. 'Keep him from dying. Goodnight, Reno.'
'Goodnight, boss.'
Elena was there with him in the inventory at six the next morning as he packed to leave. Winter made the mornings grey with cold and dullness, but she stood by him nonetheless as he slid the relevant documents into a solid briefcase. She'd turned up a few minutes after he'd come in. Tseng suspected that she hadn't slept the night before.
Neither of them spoke, beyond the passing, requisite good morning.
'The President,' she started, half an hour into their shared silence. 'The President could've hired anyone to do this job.'
'I'm not an engineer, I admit,' Tseng nodded, drumming his fingers on the top of the briefcase. 'Though I've done what reading I can.' Often while holed up with Rufus, the younger man processing data into information, information into knowledge; and all of it with a stunning swiftness that made Tseng believe, for the first time in the wake of a long anticipation, that the President was perhaps also turning knowledge into wisdom.
The last of the data files went in. Tseng snapped the briefcase shut, click click.
'But you're not the best man for this kind of job,' Elena pointed out, nervous about her own audacity but driven to words by necessity. 'And when does the President settle for anything less?'
'Maybe he's learned something about the value of conserving resources,' Tseng replied, leaving the briefcase where it was and turning to the small cabinets at the side of the inventory room. 'An engineer might be wasted on this mission.' His fingers snapped about a combination lock. One of the cabinet doors swung open neatly.
'Going a bit over packed, aren't you?' Elena murmured as she watched Tseng remove two pieces of materia; mastered, from their look of lustre and sheen.
Tseng slid them into a fitting bracer; it was non-combative, small and snapped neatly into a flat, slim box. He slipped it inside his jacket. 'What else,' he asked her, eyebrows raised, 'were you expecting a man from Shinra to walk into Wutai with?'
She cracked a smile, half-broken and half-true. 'Is one of them a cure, at least?' she asks.
'Should I have brought fire and ice instead?' Tseng parried back. 'That would seem to be Rufus' style, of old.'
She laughed, that time. 'Reparations,' she reminded him.
He put a hand on her shoulder, briefly but there, and said, 'Yes, reparations,' before he moved to leave, without turning back.
Rude was waiting, with one of their last helicopters, at the front of the lodge. Tseng cocked his head. 'I'm not flying to the station.'
Rude cleared his throat, and nodded.
'I know you're not. It's always been something of a habit for you to stay close to the ground.' Rufus' voice, from behind. Tseng turned. The President was there, in all his layers. 'But I am, seeing as how I'd rather not be shot while on public transport the way there.'
Tseng chuckled. 'You'll arrive far earlier than I will if you leave now. An exaggerated gesture just to see me off.'
'I'm not leaving now,' Rufus shook his head. 'Just that Rude wanted his own chance at final words.'
'Sir,' Rude said, hands held behind him and shades blocking out his eyes.
'Rude,' Tseng acknowledged, with a tip of his head.
Rude shifted, once onto the back of his heels, then twice, rocking forward and back to stability. 'Have a safe trip.'
Tseng motioned, briefly, at his tie, tied as black around his throat as Rude's, and as good as a salute.
He walked the three miles to the station on the edge of civilisation, and rode the first of Shinra's electric and gas powered trains inwards to Edge, smiling sharply at the irony as he looked on, and beyond.
Rufus was there in the first-class carriage sleeper that was booked for Tseng, hitting his palm lightly with the stub of his ticket. 'It's impressive,' he said to Tseng as the Turk entered. 'They rebuilt this line from practically nothing, and yet it runs, and more than just adequately.'
Tseng was unperturbed by the fact that Rufus had, by all accounts, seemingly purchased a ticket this expensive to do nothing more than sit in the privacy of the single room to say a few last words. He stowed the briefcase in the overhead, and laid his small bag on the floor. 'Rebuilding an entire city inspires motivation, Rufus.'
'It does, doesn't it,' Rufus said. Tseng sat. Rufus leaned his elbows on his knees. They sat there for a while, close and in close company. 'Are you afraid?' Rufus asked, eventually.
'Afraid?' Tseng echoed, some laughter in his voice. 'No, I'm not afraid.'
Rufus looked up at him. 'That was the wrong question,' the younger man said. 'Are you ashamed?' he asked instead, reaching out with one hand to lay his fingers across Tseng's tie, to feel the stiffness of good silk and to trace, briefly, the man's collar, his pulse, living skin.
Tseng's eyes were dark. 'Yes. I am.'
Rufus tightened his grip, and pulled Tseng in. They kissed rarely, these days; moments saved for need, not excess. When Rufus drew back, his eyes were a fierce blue, and his voice fiercer: 'So am I.'
'Good,' Tseng said, raising his hand to Rufus' face and ghosting his palm over where the man had once been, for a while, blind.
There was a sharp whistle; the last warning before departure. Rufus rose. Tseng could see, from the corner of his eye, Rude waiting on the platform below.
'Come back,' Rufus ordered.
'Maybe if your city heals enough to meet me halfway,' Tseng challenged.
Rufus spared him a victor's smile.
The train pulled out, and followed the hours through nightfall, headed West.