Convergence
When Tseng still had a desk, he kept flowers on it year-round, no matter the season. It was a comfort, even if the shapes and colors of the varieties he purchased were not at first familiar. It was a reminder, at least, of the natural life so hard to come by in Midgar, so hard to find through any means excluding wares of flower girls. Tseng never thinks of flower girls, now.
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Vincent remembers the sweet-smelling grass of summer, the pink-and-yellow-dotted flowers hanging heavy from the stems that sprouted there, in fields, in droves. How—back when he was really alive—he'd meticulously gather them for his mother, handfuls of the things until he had too much to carry, buds spilling from the armful he'd hold out to her. Vincent remembers his thirteenth summer, how proud he was on the day he caught his first fish writhing countless silver flashes on the hook, and Vincent held it out to his father with a triumphant smile. All of this so long before: before anything else, before they left his mother there to receive money sent back from something better, before they changed their names from something Vincent can't remember.
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Tseng has a last name, though no one aside from him knows it. Often he can't quite care to remember it himself; it's not as if the word, the sound, the useless syllables could ever attach him back to anything of meaning, not as if they could find a legacy beyond what he's made for himself here, now, in the present day.
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Vincent pictures acres of graves bearing his surname, marked with ribbons in the old custom, now nameless and lost. Anyone he may have known is doubtlessly gone now; descendants of extended family surely embittered by dealings with the ties Vincent has made and cut and tied once again. Vincent imagines them, those children of distant relatives, working in travel agencies and gift shops and fancy restaurants catering to the taste of young tourists who do not know the meaning of it all. Vincent imagines how they would react even if they did believe him, knowing you were on their side, you worked for them, didn't you, imagines satisfaction in their eyes at what Vincent is, at the punishment wrought upon him. The thought cuts deeper than any scalpel, than any woman's smile.
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Tseng remembers many smiles; rows of white teeth piled in the dark of his memory. Mostly fake, mostly political, sneering. Rufus' smile, cold and crazed, when he learned of his father's death. Reno's as he lie in a hospital bed, pretending to be fine; Veld when he spoke about Elfe; Aeris, always. Tseng's mother, when she'd tuck him in to bed at night and he'd look out his window and see nothing but grass, fields, mountains and stars plain and simple as they should be. No metal, no city. No towering reactors. Tseng's own smile in the mirror is tight, joyless, cold. White. The color of the suit that Rufus still wears, despite it all, anyway.
xxxx
The first time Vincent saw a Mako reactor, all he could think of was Da Chao and how this was nothing like it but sort of, in a way; this towering thing like nothing he'd ever seen, majestic but not quite the same because it wasn't beautiful, no, not beautiful at all. As if Midgar itself hadn't been shocking enough, with its people and lights and neon and noise and the lack, complete lack of grass, flowers and trees. But to Vincent it signified power; it signified a future and a new life for the planet, and he curses himself now for doubting the significance of mountains.
xxxx
Tseng has a painting of flowers, a pink-and-yellow-spotted variety he believes to be extinct now, after urban planning, zoning, bulldozing, Mako. The painting used to hang on the wall in his office at the Shinra building, back in those days. It would often garner comments—what are those?—as it never matched the living plants he kept on his desk. Tseng never offered an answer, would only offer the slightest twitch of a cold grin, say: pretty, aren't they.
xxxx
Each summer the clouds looked to Vincent like thick brush strokes of white paint on a powdery blue canvas, almost unreal. He'd lie there in the grass, look for shapes. Sometimes they'd remind him of old images, daguerreotypes and paintings of family, the shape of a face, the reminder of a pose, of himself; all awkward teenage limbs and dreams, and sometimes he'd see cities there, as well.
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Sometimes Tseng lies awake at night, holds photographs that no one else will ever see up to his face, faded things sepia and dull, looking at the faces he left behind, faces he can't return to. Photos of himself as a child, all smiles and happiness, clutching pink-and-yellow-spotted handfuls of color and life. Tseng, mostly a solitary creature, spends most nights alone so as to allow himself elusive vulnerability, passing the time until he falls asleep by reading books or counting, once more, the twenty-seven cracks in the wall. Sometimes he'll smoke a cigarette and disregard the photos, instead focus on the painting, the pink-and-yellow-spotted flowers flooding vision, memory.
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Vincent comes here often now to think, because a forest is a forest regardless of what or whom it houses. There's not much color but the air is calm and still and water moves and glistens in a lake, and sometimes it's all he needs. Sometimes it helps to get away, from craters and girders, from buildings and their remnants, the sad faces of children.
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Tseng thinks of flower girls and metal city grids; his President alone now, charcoal-smudge of Geostigma brushed away from skin; the silver hair of Remnants and the cost of so many outcomes. Tseng thinks that's what we all are, now. Remnants.
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Tseng's hair is pooled around him on the ground, a flared black shadow outlining his face, his body. Vincent is above him, one hand on Tseng's throat, and Tseng's hand is in Vincent's hair, his fingers stiff as the suit he still wears, starched and pressed and immaculate. Stiff—but gentle, gliding through Vincent's hair, and when Tseng closes his eyes the feeling is almost like that of tall grass, smooth and cool and soft.
Vincent's breath is like the quiet hum of an insect, like the buzzing of a bumblebee close to Tseng's ear. Vincent's soft exhalations on Tseng's face are cold, and Tseng smells almost like summer to Vincent, Tseng's face pale as feathered clouds in a blue sky—that is, if clouds had scars, fine lines, evidence of breakage.
Vincent loosens pressure when Tseng shifts, and after Tseng takes deep breaths—inhales, exhales, calms—Vincent tightens his grip again, leaning into the body below him, knowing that this is the only control Tseng will relinquish. Tseng feels Vincent's mouth close to his and Vincent's breath, a bit too ragged with arousal, comes hinged with voice so close to Tseng's mouth that Tseng feels the soft touch of Vincent's lips for but a second as he speaks. And when Vincent asks that one word, enough? Tseng looks up at him, into eyes red and still, proudly resisting the urge to press hips up to the firm heat he'd no doubt find. Tseng is on the edge now, the expansion in his head of too much pressure, the images coming closer to the forefront of his minds eye, and here, now, there is really only one answer.