Those He Could Have Loved

Chapter One: Rain

Rain fell that night, a fine, whispering rain. It danced in the city streets, beating a soft staccato rhythm as it cleansed the filthy Midgar streets. A woman huddled beneath the awning of a darkened doorway, her copper hair plastered to her face. The mud and blood on her dark blue pants was starting to wash out. Her lips moved, singing fragments of a lullaby she barely remembered.

In the pocket of her suit jacket, her phone rang again, the noise shrill and abrasive against the muted streets. She absently reached up, pulling it out and glancing numbly at the screen. Tseng the display announced once more. She muted it, shoving it back towards her pocket. Her hands were trembling and it slipped, striking the ground and opening.

"Cissnei?" a tiny voice called. "Cissnei, where are you? Report."

She sank down, aware vaguely that she was now sitting in a doorway like a common vagabond. She picked the phone up, placing it to her ear. "Y-yes?" her voice was not steady.

"Where are you?" the speaker demanded, relief audible.

She murmured a line of the lullaby. – All that's dead and gone in the past . . . tonight –

"Cissnei!"

Her head snapped up, rain mingling with accidental tears. "I'm here." The rain's intensity increased, a fierce wind flinging it into her face like a thousand stinging needles. "Zack's dead – the army got him – so much blood. Blood everywhere. His eyes, Tseng, his eyes. All that light fading, fading, fading into nothing." - dead and gone in the past . . . swore I'd never leave your side . . . —

"Cissnei, it's okay. I'm coming to get you. Where are you?"

She pushed to her feet. "I couldn't find him. He's dead. Those letters . . . he'll never read them. His eyes . . . he didn't see me. He didn't see me." She hummed another line of the lullaby, then said, "Hojo did it. Ordered the army to kill him. Used him and then wasted him. I'm going to . . . get him." She dropped the phone, already too far from him to listen. Grief clouded her eyes, stopped her ears, numbed everything except the pit of impotent fury.

It wasn't supposed to hurt this bad.

The phone struck the street, screen cracking. On the other end, a man swore, snapping his own phone closed. He was dressed in an immaculate dark blue suit, his dark hair hanging loose for the first time since he was a child. He was the new Director of the Turks. All four of them. He couldn't afford to lose any of them.

He left the lights on in his new corner office, moving down the hallways to the elevator. His new keycard gives him access to every floor of the ShinRa building. He punched the number for the Science Department and rode the elevator. On the short ride he checked his gun several times, adjusted his tie, tightening it like a noose about his neck. No one liked the Science Department. No one liked Professor Hojo. Only a fool took either casually.

The elevator chimed with deceptive sweet tones as it slid open. Tseng stepped off without hesitation. He was a Turk and they do not show fear. They do not hesitate. They just do what has to be done. If that means they drink a bit too much hard liquor when "off duty," well, that's just the price they pay.

He showed nothing as he entered Hojo's laboratory. Hojo was there. The professor was reedy, with a paunchy stomach, and bird thin arms and legs. The man had a perpetual sneer on his face. He knew that he was brilliant and believed everyone else was inferior. One day Tseng prayed he'd be ordered to put a bullet in the scientist's head. It'd be fitting.

There was a metal table in the center of the room. It was shiny and looked cold as ice. The floor was shaped like a bowl made of bathroom tile with a large drain in the center and high powered hoses on the walls to wash away the blood.

There was a body on the table. Tseng pretended not to see it. He refused to recognize the spiky black hair, somehow already less than it was when the corpse was a person. The skin has the pallor of death. The blood coating it was already drying. Hojo leaned over him, ho-humming as he deftly desecrates his former experiment specimen's body.

Tseng cleared his throat.

Hojo looked at him and then started to laugh. The sound grated at Tseng's ears. Hojo held up a hand as if begging Tseng to stop telling a hilarious joke. Tseng forced his face to remain blank. Hojo finally calmed himself. "So the Turks manage to survive. Amazing how you simpletons linger. Good pets, the whole lot of you." He cackled a bit more, digging the medical knife into the corpse.

Tseng wanted to leave. He didn't want to see this. He only came to stop Cissnei. To make her see that it wasn't the place of the Turks to get revenge for fallen friends. He was going to tell her that Hojo was not to be touched. They were going to forgot that there was ever a member of SOLDIER that fought alongside them close enough to be a friend. No more brilliant blue eyes and endless energy. They would forget him. They would pretend not to know what made the SOLDIER's girlfriend cry. They would put the sealed box of letters into the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet and never pull it out again.

But that was easier to do outside of Hojo's presence. It was different with a corpse on the table. It was different with the brilliant red of blood falling in a slow, steady drip to the sterile tile floor.

Tseng didn't know when he stepped forward, but suddenly he was right by the body. It didn't look the same: death a pale imitation of the living, breathing too vibrant SOLDIER. He touched Hojo's shoulder. No. He seized the professor's shoulder, spinning him.

"Hn?" Hojo sneered. "What is it?"

Tseng's voice was amazingly calm. "He was a friend."

"And now he's dead. Get your hands off me. I have research to conduct. Things so important that you could never even imagine."

Tseng's grip tightened instead. He could feel the tendons in the professor's shoulder start to pop. Hojo's eyes bulged. He was so arrogant. He could hardly believe that a Turk was attempting to mishandle him again. "Learn your place," he snapped. "The President won't like you interfering."

Tseng released him, turning away. His breath was coming a bit faster than he would like. In the distance the elevator chimed sweetly. He closed his eyes, taking a calming breath. He was a Turk. They didn't do this. He meant to apologize and then leave – find Cissnei and hold her until she could get her tears and emotions under control.

But when he faced Hojo again, he learned something new about the scientist. The man was insane. He was holding a handgun – a standard issue pistol – and it was aimed directly at Tseng's head. Hojo didn't even look concerned. His finger was tightening down on the trigger.

Staring down the barrel of a gun, Tseng felt his mouth go dry. It wasn't a particularly big gun, but at this range that would not matter. The opening seemed to widen, swallowing his entire world within the confines of that circle.

He could hear, like a cannon fired at close range, the first click of the gun as the trigger was tightened. The second click would result in an explosion. And in his death. Then that barrel spun away from him. He heard the gun explode as Hojo's finger finished its pull.

The bullet struck Cissnei in the chest, just a little higher than her heart. She fell back, droplets of rainwater flying from her body. The white of her dress shirt was suddenly red.

Her head struck the ground hard. She was dead before that though. He could see it in her eyes as her body crumbled. Nothing. No light. No soft surprise. He couldn't even see the grief he heard in her voice over the phone.

He remembered the first time he met her. She was young for a Turk, barely fifteen when she was first assigned to his unit. Her face was sweet and innocent nothing like the cold and calloused look most female Turks wore. Her first codename was Shuriken, after the large red weapon she chose to wield. Tseng had suggested a different name: Angel of Death. Because she looked like an angel to him. She didn't trust them at first, but the longer they were together, the more she did.

One night, after a particularly distasteful mission, she'd sat on the barstool between Reno and him. "One of these days, I'll tell you my real name," she promised. "When I know that I can trust you completely."

Reno had been offended and kept pressing her until she said her name was 'Cissnei.' That's how she'd lost the codename of Shuriken. She was part of his family, a real member of the Turks. Tseng's Turks were fucked up mentally, but they had each other and that was enough.

But before she went to find Zack, she'd said something that he'd never expected Cissnei to say. She wanted to find Zack because she hadn't told him her real name . . . Her real name wasn't Cissnei. He'd never known that. He'd planned on finding out. Eventually she would trust him enough, they would be close enough for the lies to fall like blood to the floor.

But not now.

He took the gun from Hojo's surprised fingers. "Get out," he said, voice low and dangerous. "Now." He wanted to kill Hojo, but he couldn't. If he did, Reno and Rude would suffer. Both stayed with ShinRa because of him. If he was careless, they would suffer.

Hojo whimpered, then fled. Tseng knelt beside Cissnei, closing her empty eyes.

To this day, he doesn't know what happened there. He'd gone there to save Cissnei and instead faced his own mortality. She still died. He doesn't know why. Because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember why Hojo turned and shot her instead of him. Had she said something? Did she see him in danger and take the bullet with his name written on it? Had she seen him at all? Or was it just the ex-SOLDIER on the table?

He knew she loved Zack. It never bothered him until that moment. Had she died for him? Did she take that bullet because she loved him? Or was it simply because she didn't want to live without Zack?

He carried her body to the elevator, rode it to the lobby. He could hear a hush descend when he emerged, carrying his fallen co-worker like a new bride out into the city streets.

He buried her outside the city, someplace with a clear view of the night sky. He said no words to mark her passing because, without her name, the words had no meaning. He laid a single white rose on her unmarked grave and never went back.

Author's Note: Update is to fix some tense problems and a few misspellings that I thought I caught the first time through. Also, for those who are curious, the lullaby Cissnei was mumbling is called Safe and Sound and is from the Hunger Games. uTube it if you're interested.

Special thanks to DreamsOfArchades for pointing out the tense changes =)