"Whisper: Night"
-2008-
The corridors of the Shinra Building's Executive wing were silent and empty in the hours past midnight. The hallways of the Investigation Sector of the General Affairs department were doubly so. The only thing audible was the soft rush of the air circulators, and even that sound was swallowed up by the lush carpet and expensive furniture. It was something that had always bothered Reno. He struggled to hear his own footfalls as the sound was instantly absorbed by the hush of this place.
The fluorescent overheads had been turned off for the night, the only light being provided came from a pair of miniscule desk lamps. They offered up a dim, warm, greasy light that barely cut through the shadows, underlighting everything.
Moreover, the light was unnecessary. His bleary eyes had found their way to Tseng's office in the dark more times than he cared to remember, even before the department had been graced with desk lamps. He left the last of their light behind as he turned the down the hall to Tseng's office.
Tseng's door stood half open, but the lights were off. Reno frowned. He could swear that he saw Tseng come back here. Not feeling the need to knock, he pushed open the door and poked his head in.
The room was not as dark as the hallway, the tall, narrow windows admitting the sterile, numb light from the city far below. Tseng was not at his desk, and his monitor had switched over to standby, meaning he hadn't been there for a while. Reno was just about to turn and leave when he heard the soft clink of ice against glass. He spotted his boss even before the wild thrum of the helicopter sailed past the windows, outlining the aquiline profile in the blinding searchlight.
Tseng was seated on the leather couch against the wall, long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. In his right hand he balanced a glass of scotch on his thigh, his other hand was pressed to his temple, propping his elbow on the armrest.
Reno took in the details quickly: the boss's jacket was tossed loosely on the couch beside him, the tie around his neck was just a little too slack, and a few tell-tale strands of the long, delicate hair had escaped the neat and efficient topknot at the back of his head.
Boss was in a bad way.
He felt Tseng's piercing eyes on him, and struggled to find his voice, shifting uncomfortably.
"I, uh," he spoke, barely above a whisper, but almost deafening in the silence of this place, "I finished that last report on the Sister Ray construction that you wanted."
With a glance and a barely perceptible head-nod, Reno understood that he was to put the manila folder on Tseng's desk.
Atop the pile of other manila folders. Tseng wouldn't get to sleep for hours yet.
"Unless you need anything else, I'm gonna turn in for the night."
A pause, and then a headshake so minute Reno thought he might have imagined it. He disappeared back into the hallway.
-.-
Tseng watched the redhead slide out of the room and down the hallway. He wished he could do the same, but the stack of folders on his desk needed to be reviewed, processed, and analyzed before his meeting with Rufus. There was no clock in this room, on purpose, but by his guess, that meeting was less than six hours away.
He sucked in a deep breath, and let it out slowly, trying to calm the stinging ache and pressure that had taken up residence in the back of his head these past few days. He guessed that this wasn't due to the injuries he had sustained at the Temple of the Ancients, which were healing rather nicely, but rather due to the fact that he couldn't precisely recall the last time he had slept for more than two consecutive hours.
Hojo's powerful mix of pain killers and stimulants kept him running, but all of the information being fed to his brain by his five senses had that jangly, shaky quality to it that was the familiar buzz of sleep deprivation. Now that he was thinking about it, he probably shouldn't have been mixing the whiskey with Hojo's House Blend, but knocked it back neatly anyway.
We'll all be gone in a couple weeks, anyway, he thought, eyeing the dim, pulsing red light that tinted the sky outside his window.
Meteor.
He had no idea what Cloud and his crew were up to at this point, but he didn't care as long as they stayed out of Shinra's way. Supposedly AVALANCHE was betting on the Ancient and something called "Holy," but the report on that particular subject was still sitting on his desk, waiting to be read.
Thinking back to the manila folder containing the confrontation between Shinra and AVALANCHE at the Northern Crater, the day the Weapons were released, he wondered if he had been the only person to notice the Ancient's absence from the group. Hojo was too preoccupied with his cursed Reunion Theory, and Rufus and the others were too obsessed with Sephiroth and the alleged Promised Land. Aeris wasn't mentioned anywhere in the report.
He figured that as close as she was to Cloud, she would have been pinned to his side.
It bothered him that her absence bothered him.
He set his glass on the side table, walking over to his desk in the quiet dark, trying to settle his nerves and chemically hurried heart rate. The memory of their turbulent acquaintance washed over him. He remembered meeting her at Shinra labs when he was a boy, as his father was already grooming him for service with the Turks.
Tseng had received a beating for receiving a poor mark on one of his aptitude tests, and he fled to the holding area to nurse his wounded flesh and wounded pride away from anyone that would matter.
Then she spoke to him.
Her voice was gentle and kind, despite the fact that she spoke through the holding cell bars. The voice, quiet enough to not wake her mother, pried its way through his thirteen-year-old defenses, and actually made him feel better. There was no agenda in her consolation, either. She hoped neither for favor or reciprocation. She genuinely just wanted to help.
He had figured at the time that it was just because he was the closest person to her age that she had seen in a long time. He was almost six years her senior, but more of a peer to her than the adults she was forced to spend her days with. The next time his father beat him, Tseng arranged for his father's security card to go missing in retribution.
The following day, Aeris and her mother had vanished from the holding cell, with his father's ID card in the security logs.
Tseng's father lost his job. Nobody suspected the frail, pretty boy as the culprit behind the missing ID card and the disappearing Ancients, and Tseng had never told anyone. It would have ruined his own opportunities at Shinra.
But the Company had seemed so different then: so cutting-edge, so brilliant and revolutionary.
It had taken him a long time to be able to admit this to himself, but recently he couldn't fully approve of the direction in which Shinra was headed. The job had never been about good business ethics; corporate espionage was his specialty. However, Shinra began spending less time on growing the business, and instead was spending it pursuing ever more mystical and disturbing initiatives, usually pulled out of some ancient tome found in a disused library.
And what had it all led to? All of this searching for the "Promised Land"?
Meteor.
It was all going down anyway.
You wouldn't rather lead a different life? It doesn't have to be like this, you know…,
The voice from the green-eyed flower girl, echoing across the years, seemingly a lifetime ago. The question mattered little then, and less now.
He resisted the urge to scratch at the wounds underneath the thick bandages on his torso. They were mostly scabbed over by now, and most of the stitches were ready to be taken out, but they still hampered his mobility by throbbing mercilessly whenever he tried to move too quickly.
Glancing down at the city below, and its outstretched carpet of twinkling, challenging lights, he thought that perhaps things might have been different. If only he had been a different person.
Aeris understood none of what he had to go through growing up, and there were times when he loathed her unrelenting positivism, and yet the mere thought of her name was enough to send a surprisingly melancholy twinge through his heart.
He blamed the whiskey for making him feel this way.
Turning away from the window, he took a look at the stack of reports on his desk. He had been finding it difficult to stay motivated under the shifting, nauseating glow of Meteor. The company that had given him everything (and taken everything from him) was sitting under the ominous light of the Ultimate Black Magic.
Tseng heard the flower girl speak in his mind again, her voice haunting him like a bad reputation.
I know you owe the Company a lot, Tseng, but you still have a choice… just be sure that you are the one making it.
Her face was burned into his memory then, just on the other side of the fence, her eyes inches from his, burning into his core. He could still hear his breathing, ragged and fast. She had held him with her eyes another moment before turning from him and disappearing into the crowd that bustled by, just before his reinforcements showed up.
At the time, he had faked a sprain in his ankle, and convinced the Shinra med staff that he should stay off it for a couple days, but really, there was no reason why he couldn't have vaulted over that fence and pursued her. Lies were told to Shinra to cover the lies that he told to himself.
And Shinra? They never bothered to question the unshakable Tseng.
Tseng whose reports were always impeccable and precise, and whose field performance was second to none.
Yet there was nothing that he could hide from her. Even after countless pursuits down dark alleyways, and near-arrests, she always eluded him. She was the only person that really knew him. Perhaps that's how she always managed to slip away at the last second…
Because you let her…
That was his own voice now, which made it so much more difficult to hear. His career was his life. He could see no way that the Company could survive Meteor. Even at this point, Shinra's efforts were focused solely on Sephiroth, and not on finding a way to divert the eventual cataclysm. The Sister Ray had finished construction, and was undergoing final testing before firing the massive cannon at the Northern Crater.
Tseng's company, the one he had dedicated his life to, was blind.
He left the window and walked down the hall towards the Turks' main offices. On the way there, he took a corridor to the right, silently sliding open a thickly armored and soundproofed door, and then closing it behind him. He walked down this smaller corridor, stopping at the first door on his right.
Looking in, he saw Reno, still in his suit, lying in his bunk. His arm was propped behind his head, and his breathing was slow and even. Tseng knew better than to think that the battle comedian was sleeping. Sure enough, after a moment, Reno cracked open an eye and peered directly at Tseng through the darkness.
Tseng looked at him and this time it was his turn to shift restlessly under Reno's stare.
Reno, in turn, hoping to raise his supervisor's spirits, gave the boss a conspiratorial wink.
Tseng nodded slowly once, paused, and left the doorway, continuing down the hall. Rude's door was closed, but he could hear the heavy snoring even through the soundproof door. He allowed himself a small smile despite the problems that Rude's snoring had caused in the past.
The third door was open a crack, and he could see the dim outline of Elena asleep in her bunk. She was turned away from him, facedown on the bed. The covers were half thrown off of her, and he could see the delicate line of her neck and shoulders, even tracing the curve of her spine through her nightshirt. She shifted slightly, and mumbled something in her sleep. He couldn't make up his mind if he was thinking of her as a friend and potential lover, or as a stern and disciplined employer.
He thought about going in and watching over her; she hadn't been sleeping well lately, either. Ultimately, though, Tseng's professionalism won out. He continued down the hall to his own room, to gather a few personal belongings. This was as much of a goodbye as he was going to get to the only family he had ever really known.
-.-
Beside the empty loading docks of the Shinra Building, a tiny red LED suddenly flashed green accompanied by a metallic click as the security door opened. A well-groomed man strolled out with a knapsack slung over one shoulder.
He vanished into the hours shortly before dawn without once looking back.