"I know you're there."
The corners of Tseng's mouth twitched into a vague smile as she spoke. She had come a long way since he had first started spying on her. Aeris still had her back to him and was crouching down at the flowers in the middle of the church. She did not get up or turn around.
In truth, he had wanted her to notice his presence at the rear of the church to save him having to introduce himself. But he did not doubt that she already knew what he had come to tell her. She was an Ancient, after all. For once, he was not there to spy on her or to ask her yet again to accompany him back to the Headquarters. His employers, in fact, had nothing to do with him being there.
"There is something I have to tell you," he said, stopping a short distance behind her. "About Zack." Aeris stopped what she was doing and let out a deflated sigh. Finally, she stood up and turned around to face him. Tseng was certain she knew as the girl studied his face, apparently questioning his motives. From her expression, he concluded that she still did not trust him. The day that she did start to trust him was the day that his intrigue into her would dwindle. It wasn't as if he even trusted himself to protect her as Zack had asked. His allegiances lay with Shinra and it went without saying that he would act on the President's whim, even regarding the Ancient that he was so taken with.
"The report that said he was killed in action nearly five years ago was a lie, wasn't it?" she said. Tseng held her gaze for a few moments. He knew before he had come here that the second he opened his mouth he would be in breach of company security. But, for once, that did not change the fact that he decided she ought to know at least some of the truth.
"Yes," he replied, bowing his head briefly. "It was. But, yesterday, some truth was added to it."
She nodded and turned around once more. "I…know. I just…know that he's returned to the planet." After another few moments, she spoke again. "But you knew I would know – so why have you come here?"
Although her voice was steady, Tseng could tell that she was struggling to hold it together. He took a step towards her, so quietly that Aeris did not notice.
"He's dead, Aeris. I believe it is only fair that somebody told you." Aeris shrunk a little as she felt his breath on the back of her neck. She had always made a point of seeming unfazed around him but, after finally realising that there was no hope of ever seeing Zack again, it was not so easily done. She was tempted to ask him how but knew that Tseng would never answer that question – at least not truthfully. "He went missing five years ago on a mission," he added, as if reading her mind. "A body was never recovered and it was eventually publicised that he was dead."
"Because Shinra doesn't like answering awkward questions?" she turned to him, suddenly realising that he was standing closer than before. Her eyes tripped up on the knot of his silk black tie before daring to drift upwards to his chin and finally his eyes. They were looking straight back at her but, rather unusually, those dark pools were not boring holes into her. She caught his aftershave as she inhaled and it was like nothing she had ever smelled before; soft, luxurious, inherently dangerous, and not to mention expensive. Aeris found herself wondering if he wore it just to cause a distraction long enough for him to gain the upper hand over anyone who came near him. Then again, he could probably have done that without the aftershave. "Of course they don't," she sighed in answer to her own question. "Otherwise they wouldn't employ you."
Tseng grimaced; it was true. Part of the Turks' job was to cover up anything even potentially damaging to Shinra. The Nibelheim incident was just one in a long line.
"Do you know…how he died?" Aeris asked. Tseng's expression remained unchanged and for a moment Aeris wondered if he was simply going to ignore her.
"He was shot. Several times." Aeris' face fell and she seemed to be about to bless him with another view of her back when he suddenly reached out and held onto the tops of her arms. It was so unlike him that Aeris took a moment to react, and when she did it was not to move away. She edged forward towards him a little, her gaze falling on his chest. It had been a while since she had felt so safe, or so threatened. "But his death was not completely in vain," he muttered. "He saved the life of a young Shinra trooper." Inwardly, he despised himself for painting this in such a way that portrayed Shinra as being behind Zack, not the ones who killed him and were still looking for the trooper in order to kill him, too. But he had no other option, since betraying the company in any way, shape, or form was never an option to him.
"At least he got his dream," Aeris mumbled to the floor, not wanting him to see the tears escaping her eyes. "To die a hero."
Memories of him came flooding back to her, as though the five years that had passed since she had last seen him were nothing more than a blink of an eye. His slow but easy smile, those laughing blue eyes, the touch of his warm hands on her cheeks. Zack was so different to Tseng but if she closed her eyes for long enough and sunk into those memories, it was possible to imagine that it was Zack standing before her, hands laid comfortingly on her upper arms. She longed to tell him she was proud of him, that she missed him… that she loved him. Something, more of a feeling than anything else, reassured her that he knew.
A tentative, almost caring brush of soft skin across her cheek brought Aeris back to the church. She blinked, looking up at Tseng who had wiped the tear from her face with his thumb. It was unusual to see a Turk, let alone Tseng, behaving with so much as a hint of compassion. But then Aeris had always suspected Tseng had a heart, even if most of the time its temperature was subzero. Despite his usual emotionless demeanour, people as complex as he seemed to be were usually not as emotionally vacuous as they seemed.
Still wanting nothing more than to feel Zack's arms around her, Aeris allowed herself to sink forwards into Tseng, tentatively resting her face against his chest. Somehow, though, the steady beating of Tseng's heart that was only just audible reminded her that he wasn't Zack, and never would be. She would never feel for him what she felt for Zack, even if there was something deeply attractive about the Wutain Turk.
Tseng slowly closed his arms around her slight form, resting his chin briefly on top of her head. In some ways he had always yearned to be close to her; Aeris was unlike anyone else he knew. Even as a child she had struck him as wiser than people twice her age, yet at the same time she retained a sort of purity, a child-like innocence. Sometimes he had the feeling that when she looked at him, she was in fact looking into his soul. In his time as a Turk, Tseng had been faced with several difficult decisions; decisions that had often gone against his better judgement, but that he had made out of an almost unquestioning loyalty to Shinra. The order to take care of Code C and Code Z was certainly amongst the more challenging, and the case of the Ancient had gradually proved itself to be more and more of a dilemma. And now here she was, standing there in his arms, crying. At that moment, and for that moment only, the guilt seemed about enough to break him.
Aeris drew back slowly, turning away from him. She was suddenly aware of how intimate they had just been and found it too difficult to process. She had known Tseng a long time and in an odd sort of way, trusted him. She trusted him to be a Turk, to follow his orders, but he was also a constant in her life. Always there, always watching over her.
"Did you know him?" she asked, glancing at Tseng only briefly. Conversation was a good way of lightening the mood, she thought. Things seemed a little too intense for her liking, even if she had stopped feeling threatened by Tseng a long time ago. "Zack, I mean," she added.
"Not really," Tseng answered, pacing away from her and then coming to a halt. "We worked together briefly a few times." Tseng hesitated, remembering the time Zack had told him he was the only one he could depend on to take care of Aeris. And he wanted to. Tseng wasn't usually someone who found himself torn between his duty to Shinra and his own scruples, but the Nibelheim affair had found him faltering. Inwardly he had hoped Zack and Cloud would escape Shinra's clutches, that the orders he found himself giving out would never be fulfilled. And yet they were, and it made him feel sick.
"What's on your mind?" Aeris asked, staring at him intently. Tseng was not a transparent man, but then he wasn't usually so troubled. Or so wracked with guilt. He had liked Zack, and it had hurt to be a pawn in a dirty cover up for Hojo.
"Zack trusted me to keep an eye on you," Tseng replied eventually, the well-trained mask slipping back into its usual place.
"Well, you shouldn't have a problem with that. You've been practising ever since I was a child," she smiled. Tseng snorted quietly, unable to help a smile as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Yes," he nodded, still chuckling. "It seems I have." Their gaze met for a few moments, Aeris unable to help feeling that Tseng knew an awful lot more than he ever could – or would – let on. She decided she would find out one day, and if not from Tseng then in some other way. "I should be going," he said suddenly, looking at his watch. As he turned to leave, it was as though the closeness they had just shared was nothing more than a dream, or some distant memory.
"Tseng," Aeris said, watching as he faced her once more. "Thank you for… coming to tell me. I appreciate that you bothered when you didn't have to."
Tseng blinked slowly, dipping his head briefly. Then, he straightened his tie, turned on his heel and left without another word, the sounds of his hard-soled shoes on the stone floor echoing around the church. Aeris sighed, her eyes following him until he disappeared outside, the heavy door falling closed after him. The touch of his hands on her arms, of his thumb on her cheek, still resonated on her skin; his aftershave still lingered in the air.
Tseng placed his cup of coffee gently down on his desk, his eyes drifting almost involuntarily over to the open file still lying on his desk from yesterday's operation. Zack's smiling picture gazed up at him.
"I mean geez, you sure don't wanna land slap dab in the middle of any secret operations Shinra's got going – which let's face it, there are a shitload of those. I mean just think, Rude, you've probably waltzed those size elevens of yours through half a dozen delicate operations by now without having a clue. It's only a matter of time before we und up like Vincent Valentine, or worse, Zack Fair. Or you could pull the even shorter straw and just end up barmy like that what's his face, Sephiroth," Reno swatted a hand. He was sitting in one of the two chairs opposite Tseng's desk, right ankle resting on his left knee with his head leaning against his hand. "Or," he added, sitting up suddenly, "you could just end up a great blob of goo in Hojo's lab. You could sit there all day just forced to look at him and not be able to say one word, or even pull a face at him."
"If only you were this imaginative when it came to your work, Reno," Tseng muttered, snapping the file closed and walking over to his filing cabinet. Rude, in contrast, sat rather statue-like in the chair beside Reno's. Reno simply shrugged and settled back into his slouched position, one hand fumbling inside his blazer for a cigarette.
Tseng's PHS rang suddenly. "Tseng," he answered flatly, pacing back over to his desk.
"I need you to do something for me," came the President's voice. The sound of operatic music drifted from the background. "We're taking a new initiative on finding the Promised Land. I'll be explaining all of this in more detail over the next few days, but I want you to make sure that Ancient in the slums doesn't go disappearing. It seems she might be the key to all of this – Hojo's not sure yet. He'll probably need to talk to her shortly, so I want you ready to bring her in."
"Of course, sir," Tseng replied, closing his eyes, seeing Aeris' face as he did so. "You need only say the word."