Hello readers! MR here, and boy, do I have a fic for you. This was spawned off the Opposite Fic Thread, this really killer thread over at the Genesis Awards. As a rough summary, it's like Sephiroth without his conditioner or a thread where people challenge you to write the pairing you're most adversed to. Curse the fact that my beta took the opportunity to spring this one on me.
The challenge was to write a Tselena, with a relationship developed on the job, The story must be primarily told from Tseng's perspective, must end happily and must be an on-the-job action scene in which Tseng and Elena fight along side one another. Hope was good, devilishly good, but I managed to get this together to post as a worthy contender to my challenge for her.
Title: An Acquired Taste
By: Moiranne Rose
Summary: A table can't stand without a fourth leg. She could screw up missions, miss targets, but the Turks always needed a motherly figure to smack them for their less-than-desirable work ethics. Tselena.
Thankfully Beta-ed by: GoldenShinyWireofHope (who is an Evil Panda)
The first time he sees her, all he can think about is how much she is not like Cissnei.
They had always been a four, ever since the last of the other Turks had been pronounced "Missing, Presumed Dead". Now without their red-haired mother figure, it's just not right. It's been three weeks, but each one of them, Rude, Reno, himself, has been volatile, irritable and unstable. Like a table with only three legs.
When Elena walks into their office for the first time, the three men can't help but size her up.
Her hair is a neat bob of average lustre and her figure seems cut more for the navy man's suit she wears than the slinky dresses of others her age. Her eyes are a dark brown that looks almost doleful compared to the hard green of Reno's or the ones Rude conceals under his shades. She looks gentle, as if she would nurse a rabbit to health with the same hand with which she shakily holds her new gun.
She is new. He does not like new people.
They shoot too slow, run too quick, miss all the signs and let their feelings take over too fast. They don't have the calm control that comes from the years of active service. This girl, this Elena, is one of this sort. Why Rufus picked her is still a mystery to even him, head Turk, the person who knows practically everything necessary about everyone. He rubs his forehead. How he wishes for Cissnei to be back.
He mentally smacks himself. That isn't the right thing to think. Cissnei was a traitor, had fraternized with a vagabond SOLDIER and recruit, had allowed them to escape. He will not remember the girl who ended her life in a distant corner of ShinRa's vast empire. She'd been found and overpowered by the grunts that had trundled the lands for a year looking for the runaway Turk. She had brought her death upon herself, even though every now and then he does get a rush of pride thinking of how long she had stayed out of ShinRa's sight.
But then again, he made sure ShinRa had not put the Turks in charge of such a thing. They did know better than to try to force their paid hit men to kill one of their own. If there is anything a Turk knew, it's loyalty, this dogged patriotism that makes them cling to each other and hold the line for each other to rearm, reassess, reposition, because that is what makes a Turk.
This newbie, this rookie, is nothing of a Turk. Not yet. He looks outside to Reno, tugging her along to see her new work area and to shove a stack of customary paperwork to be filled in so her past could be obliterated to make way for her new life. Rude is appropriately silent but his eyes do a taciturn collection of little details: the way she tucks and re-tucks her hair behind her ear, the way she stands, how big her hands are, all these little things documented and filed away in the silent recesses of his mind.
Tseng smiled. The initiation process had only just begun.
Elimination
She misses all three shots, the first whistling past the ear of the man in front of her, the next he dodges easily – Go for the side you fool. The right side! -- and by the third, her hands shake so much the pistol tilts downwards slightly and the bullet pings off the pavement harmlessly. He has to push her out of the way and take his own handgun out. He shoots the target, once for the kill, twice for to make sure and the third...the third because he's just not thinking straight and he shoots it to make up for the one she so foolishly missed.
He crouches for a moment to pick up the six bullet coverings and her three wasted bullets, all the while as she apologizes. She says sorry for messing up, sorry for missing the shots, sorry for being careless, sorry for almost getting them killed. He merely straightens up and nods, leaving her to figure out what exactly he's affirming. Then he turns and walks away from the crumpled body and ignores her slipping and sliding on the pavement, trying to catch up.
Recruitment
The second mission is simpler. Recruitment.
The little kids that scurried amongst the dumpsters and rubble of the slums have turned into teenagers with baseball bats and handmade bombs made from discarded glass bottles. They are the street gangs that prowled the streets looking for prey of old women with jewelry dripping off every wrinkled inch of them. They are the ones who eventually shed the leather coats and makeshift weapons for the navy blue suits and patented weapons made to suit their fighting style.
They narrowed down the search to a pair of twins, infamous for taking down two SOLDIER grunts easily in a fight. Two armed SOLDIER grunts. The Turks were onto them in an instant, surfacing every minute scrap of information about them from their vast archives.
Elena has been tasked with this one, specifically. But as his position dictates, he must supervise her.
Her eyes glaze over once or twice, as she flicks through the files that stack high on her table. She sips her coffee from a chipped green mug she won't let anyone throw away, even though the white ShinRa mugs are always available. She drinks some more, reads some more, holds back tears some more, until he's so frustrated that nothing's getting done, that her hands tuck and re-tuck the fringe in just that way, that Cissnei would have finished this in an hour.
"What's wrong?" He bites back the "now". It's only her second mission, he reminds himself. Even though she messed up the first.
She sniffs in that pathetic little way he doesn't particularly care for.
"They're just boys. Just 15. We're going to cut short their childhood for what? Another two rookies? It's just not fair."
A single forlorn tear spills from her eyes. He follows it all the way down her cheek, mildly disgusted. Turks did not cry. Sure, Turks were humans, had human emotions, had human needs, desires and the mental clock that they needed to get down to the bar at 10 PM to be reacquainted with the joys of drunkenness. But they pretend not to be, to spare themselves agonising guilt over what they do every day.
Or something like that. He hasn't felt guilt in a long time.
She will ruin this mission. She will blow her cover, break down, be overpowered; his mind lists all the possible consequences, each more dire than the last. He looks again at her, bent low over the file, trying her best to absorb every bit of information. If he were to let her carry out this mission, her uncertainty would render her an easy obstacle to overcome. They are already low on manpower, to jeopardize any of his Turks or any recruitment mission would spell disaster.
His mind made up, he sweeps up all the files under his arm, including the one she still holds in her hands and crosses the room. Stopping at Reno's table, he dumps them all onto it surreptitiously. The sleeping redhead, slumped over his work, does not awaken. He turns back to her, expecting an embarrassed, apologetic face. He instead sees her eyes gleaming and her coffee mug raised halfway to her mouth, which moves as two words barely escape it.
"Thank you."
He doesn't know why those little words render him speechless for a few awkward moments.
"Re – Reno needs a workout anyway."
He composes himself immediately and, turning on his heel, leaves without another word.
Espionage
He is teaching her how to survive, she is teaching him how to live.
It has been three months since he relegated her to doing paperwork and training in the range and finally, today will be her third mission. They have gotten to be friends, somewhat, but more like colleagues, people working for the same organization, people struggling against the same organization. He appreciates her company and has trouble (sometimes) convincing himself that she's still as expendable as Reno's laugh and Rude's silence. This unsettles him, and rightly so.
The Slums are stirring with anti-ShinRa propaganda, probably spawned from AVALANCHE. Elena, the only one whose name and face has not yet been connected with the Turks, must 'infiltrate the ranks' and find out as much as possible as to who the troublemaker is.
"Mingle, you mean," she says, with a hint of laughter in her voice. "No problem."
She moves through the marketplace, blending in flawlessly, a plainclothes executive in a pale blue shirt and slacks. She rattles off in an unnamed dialect, a cross between Wutaiinese and the Slum-tinted Midgarian, to an apparent acquaintance. Her companion nods empathetically and mutters something about 'that corporation' and 'someone lurking in the shadows'. She glances to the alley he is monitoring her from and catches his eye. She gives him a discreet wink and follows her friend between the fruit stall and the butcher's, disappearing into the small crowd of morning market-goers.
The next morning, she comes into his office with two cups of chai, one white, one green, and a list of names, grinning victoriously.
Holding the Turks together
It's not often that Reno manages to get back home after a night at the pub. But Elena always manages to find him wherever he is and get him to work on time.
It's not often that Rude will talk. But with Elena, rambling on about her own stories, he finds his own voice still works.
It's not often he lets himself sit down and share a glass of chai with anyone, let alone the rookie-who-is-no-longer-a-rookie. But with her, it comes naturally.
There is no paperwork for this mission, but Tseng is fairly sure she aces this part.
Encouraging the Rumours
"So, you like old Tseng eh?"
Reno's distinct swagger brings him to Elena's desk. He bears down on her as if he thinks that by making his lanky frame look bigger, he can intimidate her. She flashes him an unfathomable grin, something she's learnt from Tseng a while ago.
"He's not that old and yes, yes I do." She passes it off like it's nothing. And to her, it isn't really. Reno gapes at her, but Tseng has taught her, also, not to be too caring of what Reno thinks. She laughs and pushes her way past the redhead.
Elena smiles as she comes in, two cups of steaming chai in her hands. She leans over his table and signs them both off duty. She pecks him on the cheek, earning a momentary spasm that she has learned is a smile. She settles down in her usual sprawling position on his couch and complains about how it's too firm for her liking and why doesn't he go for actual leather since he can afford it and...
He doesn't know when she managed to surface his desensitized heart from his chest and melt it till it was red, bloody and functioning. All he knows is that, between her babbling and tucking-of-hair and compassion and inability to shoot off-target, he has grown to look forward to her coming every day, filling the silence of his office with wordswordswords. That some time between her fumblings in her early missions and her new efficacy, he has learned to enjoy her relentless complaining about his couch, his "stuffiness" and Reno. That at some point, in the middle of her endless chatter, he has begun to like this lady who hid her steel underneath layers of white and navy-blue.
Lifting the cup to his lips, he hides a smile behind the black mug (a gift from Elena for his last birthday). She's not Cissnei, but she'll do.
A/N: Hardest oneshot to write by far. Blame my incessant love for TsengReno. Review?
Love and Cookies,
MR