by Kate/Kaeda (kaeda@water-witch.net)
Pairing: sorta Elena/Tseng
Rating: PG-13
For some reason "On My Own" from Les Miserables reminds me of Elena. I'm not an Elena/Tseng fan too much but Elena strikes me as a unique character. She intrigues me. Go figure. Her tragic love of Tseng catches me. So I wrote. Enjoy. R and R please. Constructive criticism is welcome but if you flame me I'll laugh at how stupid you are. *shrug*
I haven't played the game in awhile. Forgive any indescrepancies or things that don't really flow with game-time. If it really bugs the bejeezus out of you, think of this as an AU.
::::::::DISCLAIMER:::::::
Final Fantasy 7 doesn't belong to me! Neither do Tseng, Elena, Reno, Rude, the Turks,
Shinra, or anything else mentioned in this fanfic (duh XP). I would, however, like a Rufus
Shinra if it's at all possible ^_^;. Please don't flame. This is just MY interpretation of
Elena because I've never found her portrayed the way I see her in a fanfic. This will
probably be a multi-part fic.
No real warnings. Maybe mild swearing. C'mon, they're Turks. They don't have the cleanest
language. Oh yes, and Reno and his "advice" later, which is mildly sexual. It's not
anything worse that you'll hear on the average show on TV x_X.
And now the monster author's notes are done! Fanfic! *points*
----My Own----
My suit was crisp and clean, perfectly pressed. The rules and regulations were firm
in my mind, and I could fire them off like there was no tomorrow if need be. And just in
case I forgot, despite all my military training and mental training on the side, there was a
crumbled piece of paper containing the most precious instructions I'd ever received. How to
be a Turk. All I had left to do was apply the small amount of blush and powder my lips,
making sure my hair fell neatly around my head in my usual even style as I finished up in
the bathroom. I couldn't mess up this morning. I was a Turk.
Nothing would stand in my way. I had finally bullied, charmed, and annoyed the
bejeezus out of everyone to get my way to where I was. I was unstoppable. The fact that I
was the only female Turk didn't stop me in the least; I knew I was good at what I did, and I
could take out any enemy of Shinra Inc just as fast as the males could, if not faster. I
was clever to a fault, and had a healthy dose of luck as well.
My own overconfidence, however, was fated to be my downfall, I'm afraid. My
feelings had been locked up in an empty shell of a woman who only wanted to succeed and be
looked at as any man's equal, and when feelings are locked up, sometimes they burst out at
the most inopportune times. They can turn the powerful into the weak, the emotionally sound
into a quivering mass of nerves.
I was finally ready. I grabbed my purse, which unlike most ladies', held a small
handheld weapon that I could use at a moment's notice hidden in the back, along with a vial
of poison should I need it, sleeping pills, and an assortment of other various items that
could come in handy, including a potion should I be caught unawares and some extra materia
that I had bought in Junon. I was ready for my first day, and as I walked along the crowded
streets of the upper plate of Midgar, in my perfect suit, perfect hair, and perfect
attitude, I knew that not one person would guess that I was joining Shinra's most feared
henchmen.
Henchmen is such a petty word. It sounds like a bunch of broad shouldered, bulky
men in muscle shirts who have nothing better to do than stand around with big machine guns
and try to look tough. And that was the exact opposite of the Turks. No, we were not
henchmen. We of the Turks were followers, yet leaders, assassins, yet protectors. We were
walking contradictions, and because of that, we scared the common people more than any
'henchmen' would. Plus, I am not a big burly man. Neither was Tseng. Or Reno, for that
matter. But Tseng was always willowy, with his ebony hair that framed his smooth face.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Right then and there I was doing my best
impression of ice woman, an impression that would not last long after the first day, I'm
afraid. I have always been innocent. Ambition does not wipe away innocence; it takes
death, duty, and destruction to kill the sparkle in one's eyes, to lose the bounce in the
step. It still has not taken its toll on me. You would think it would have, by now. Reno
and Rude still tell me I am too innocent, too cheerful, and too ready to accept the facts
for my own good.
Perhaps I was perfectly suited to be a Turk. I myself was also a walking
contradiction.
It was definitely my destiny. As I finally reached Shinra Tower, my nerves were
screaming in irritation. I was tense as could be. I wondered if I'd have to deal with
Heidegger right off, or if he'd defer me to the second in command of the Turks, the Turk who
actually lead. The beautiful Wutan. I'd seen him only once, while training. He himself
had been practicing with a Wutan sensei who had come down from Wutai during a lull in the
war to train recruits, and his grace, excellence, and intelligence had caught me at once.
Later I found out he was a Turk. From then on, I wanted no other job. I wanted to
be graceful. I wanted my enemies to admire my skill, beauty, and courage before I killed
them, before I washed the walls with their blood, and before I returned to Shinra with their
heads.
I've always been a bit bloodthirsty as well. I am innocent, yet deadly. No wonder
all of the workers at Shinra did not know what to make of me. Sometimes I don't even know
what to make of myself.
I pushed open the glass doors and strode to the elevators. The SOLDIERs standing by
the door checked my security pass, then ushered me in and told me to report to the 66th
floor. Since the rebel group AVALANCHE had broken into the building a few weeks before, I
understood the high security, and pressed the button to the 66th floor. The elevator was
fast and got me to the top quickly, my stomach feeling like it had been left behind. But
then again, it had been feeling like that all day.
I realized then that I didn't know where to go from there. There was a hall with
more than a dozen offices branching off of it to one side and another, similar, hall with
more offices on the other. In the middle was a room that led to a giant conference room
that appeared to be empty. I shrugged and took a gamble, taking a right turn and looking at
the sign on the first door I came to.
"Tseng. Head of the Turks." It read. I was lucky indeed. Female instinct and all
that, I called it. I wondered how formal I needed to be as I knocked lightly on the door.
A smooth, silken voice called "enter" and I did so, pushing the ivory doorknob slightly so
that the paneled maple door swung open to reveal a lone figure sitting at a desk that was
far too large for him, the top of the desk covered with paperwork and a small computer. But
it was not the desk that caught my eye.
It was him. Tseng of the Turks. For he was everything I had remembered and more;
he was gorgeous, every woman's dream, a fantasy that had taken form in front of my very
eyes. Even the strange, foreign dot on his forehead didn't seem too strange with his exotic
looks. He seemed stoic; calm and collected, with no hint of a amusement or even curiosity
on his perfect features.
The man gave me a heart attack. I am not the type of woman who falls for every man
she sees; I am guarded and careful in my prospects. I have fallen in love, naively, before.
But never like this. Never had I felt the pull of attraction so strong. Never had I felt
an immediate spark towards a man as I did the moment I met Tseng.
It took me quite a while to figure out that Tseng never felt that spark back. No,
Tseng's heart was always another's, never mine, no matter how hard I tried to make it
otherwise.
He looked up, dark creamed chocolate eyes capturing mine immediately, and I felt
like a heroine in a movie, like I was going to swoon into the unwieldy hero's arms. But in
this world, I was not the heroine at all. I was the hero in all his facets. I had no hero
to swoon upon; I was the hero himself. But I had no heroine to swoon upon me, either. I
was both, and neither, and in this role I was doomed to be cast until the end of time. So I
was strong, and I kept my head level and my palms dry as I cleared my throat and tried as
professionally as I could to announce who I was.
"My name is E-Elena, sir." No last names. Shinra preferred it that way in the
Turks. It kept us anonymous, and it made us seem less human. I'm sure if Hojo had had any
say in it, they would have made us even go by numbers, but at least the leaders of Shinra
were human to a certain degree. Rufus Shinra had always been on our side more than anyone
else.
Ha. Cool, calm, collected, I told myself as Tseng gestured for me to take a seat.
I was officially a Turk. I wasn't even a recruit like most Turks-to-be were when they went
to see Tseng. Reno, the redhead with the temper, had declared me competent when I'd bested
him two out of three, and then bested the only member of the Turks who was truly deserving
of the title "henchman", Rude, two out of three as well. Rude was burly, big, and
impossible to get around. It took feminine intelligence to get past him.
I'd impressed them enough for them to let me in, hands down. They who had sneered
at a challenge from a woman had found themselves face down in my dust. And so I earned my
way to Turkdom.
"You're our new Turk," Tseng commented, swinging around in his chair so that he made
eye contact. I nodded, trying to keep up my aloof confidence while confronted by a man who
turned my insides into jello. My heart pounded loudly in my chest and I cursed it, sure
that Tseng could hear it from where he sat and that he would think I was weak, a child,
unsure of where I was, what I was doing, or what I was in for. And he would have been
right.
I could not let him know that.
"I bested Reno and Rude both," I said clearly, astonished at my brash attitude.
"They agreed if I could beat them, they'd petition you to see if I could join. You said you
were impressed and, while the Turks are normally an all male group of...individuals, you
would review my files and think about allowing me in. After three days, you decided that
you could use another member since Reno's been out on injuries sustained from the rebels for
the most part, and accepted me into the organization." He nodded, pulling a folder from his
desk and laying it out in front of me.
"Your successes are stunning. Your professionalism has been recommended by at least
five different sources within the Shinra military, and your level-headed attitude towards
fighting and battle has been praised greatly. I look forward to seeing what you can bring
to the Turks," he told me. His voice was perfect, like a musician and a finely tuned
instrument. His voice enchanted; it chilled and seduced, and without even meaning to he had
me in his spell.
"I except to be treated as an equal to Reno or Rude," I said before I lost the ounce
of bravado I'd gained. I didn't want them all tiptoeing around me because I was a woman.
Spying, fighting, even killing. That was my business, and I knew exactly what each took.
"You will be. We will not go easy on you because of your sex, Elena," Tseng
replied. His eyes grew stern and I felt myself flushing. As if I had ever expected
*anyone* to go easy on me because I was a woman! He seemed to sense this and smiled, the
first ghost of an emotion other than professionalism I'd gleaned from him. "You'll share
the office with Reno and Rude. I hope you can get along with them, because you'll be seeing
a lot of them. You're dismissed." I felt casually thrown off, like a towel or a discarded
tissue, but instead of letting my annoyance show, I stood, bowed to this god of a man, and
left quickly, finding my way down the hall to the Turks' main office.
I opened the door to find redheaded Reno, sunglasses in his hair and shirt
unbuttoned to his mid-chest, eating a donut and explaining to Rude exactly why Shinra should
start us later in the day, while Rude drank a glass of orange juice and grunted in agreement
every once in awhile.
This was going to be a long day.
I don't know when Reno first figured it out. The boyish, flirty Turk was the first
person who truly became my friend at Shinra, and it took even him awhile to realize that I
carried a torch for Tseng. The leader of our pack didn't socialize much with us during the
first week of my job. He was busy dealing with rebel groups and the like, the biggest of
which had fled Midgar and was currently running across the continent leaving all hell behind
it. They were the same who'd infiltrated Shinra Tower and been there for the assassination
of the late President Shinra by Sephiroth. They were keeping the Shinra execs very busy.
You would think, with all the paperwork and spy work Tseng was doing, the rest of us
would be bogged down as well, but we weren't. Not a bit. I had come to the conclusion that
being a Turk was rather boring. So much for the glamour. It was more like being a lackey
of some sort. I had no desire to see how much of Shinra's computer system I could hack like
Rude did, or see how long it would take me to piss off Rude by making fun of his bald head
like Reno did. I wanted to work, I wanted to get a job done, and I wanted to see Tseng.
I got my wish, all right.
Tseng burst in at the end of the week, just as Reno was getting ready to launch his
fifteenth paper airplane that day out the window. He didn't even bat an eyelash at Reno's
antics, which didn't surprise me all that much. I looked up from the magazine I was reading
and felt myself blushing as he entered. Standing, I could see that he also had a great body
to go along with his gorgeous looks. I quickly averted my eyes before I gave myself away,
but Reno caught me at that moment and smirked. Rude was ready and we all waited for Tseng
to get around to telling us whatever he had to say.
"Rude, Elena, we're going to the Mythril Mines," he said suddenly. Reno's look got
pouty but Tseng ignored it. "Reno, you'll be staying here for recon. Plus, I think
Heidegger wants a chance to beat on you while the rest of us aren't around." He smiled
briefly. "Elena, this'll be your first assignment. Think of it as a really belated trial.
Even though you're almost definitely in, I want to see how you perform in a combat
situation." I nodded briskly. I would not botch this up!
I watched Tseng leave, admiring the way he walked and how his hair swished perfectly
around his face, and was so caught up in my own daydreams that I didn't even notice Reno
come up behind me until he was right next to me.
"You've got the hots for our stoic leader," he teased, grinning from ear to ear. I
blushed immediately.
"I-I do not!" I stuttered. "I don't know what you're talking about. Tseng is a
very good leader. He knows what he's doing and he's very p-professional." I coughed to
hide my loss of words and felt much like a little kid who could not lie his way out of
trouble. Reno had a gleam in his eye that I'd seen before. He was up to something.
"Leave her alone, Reno," Rude grunted, the most he'd said all day, before going back
to his laptop. As usual, Reno completely ignored Rude and continued to pester me.
"Tseng's all business, no pleasure," Reno continued. "It'd probably do him some
good to get laid." I blushed even more. Tseng's sex life was none of my business, and Reno
knew it! The redhead was not finished, however. "You should give it a try."
"Tseng is our LEADER!" I burst out. "I wouldn't think such a thing. He's a good
man, and yes he's rather attractive, but I will not jeopardize my job by having it get out
that I'm sleeping with my boss." No matter how tempting it sounded. Ever since Reno
planted that little idea into my head, however, I couldn't get it out. My heart pounded and
my face flushed, but it would not go away. And Reno wasn't even done yet.
"I can set you up," he went on as if I hadn't said anything. " A nice candlelit
dinner...then a hotel room, and presto, Tseng gets the pole out of his ass and you're on
cloud nine."
"In other words, you could get away with murder," I snapped, whapping him on the
head lightly with my magazine. "No, I think I'll pass on that one." Tempted. Yes, I was
sorely tempted. Tseng was probably the type of man who would think nothing of sleeping one
night with a woman. But I believed in true love, no matter how silly it sounded to a
professional assassin, and I would not accept being a "one night stand" to anyone.
Plus, Reno got away with enough when Tseng was in a *bad* mood. I shuddered to
think of how much he'd get away with if Tseng was even somewhat distracted.
No. For the good of the Turks, I would not crack. This strange...desire...would
stay pent up inside me. Tseng would never know, as long as Reno didn't blab, and it would
all go well. And maybe, in the future, after Shinra settled down, removed the rebel groups,
and got everything back to the point where a Turk's job was boring...maybe then, Tseng and I
would have a chance.
Now was not the time to ponder this. We had some AVALANCHE hunting to do.
...to be continued...
Next time! It gets a bit more angsty as Elena realizes that her attraction to Tseng is not just a feminine crush, but something a bit...more. Reno causes more trouble. Rude ".........."'s a lot. The infamous first run in with AVALANCHE in the Mythril Mines. R and R! ^_^