The Bark On The Tree

At what point was the balance irrevocably shifted?

He was keeping it in check. Even his laughably reduced budget was bringing great improvements, saving lives. He could just wait, let things stabilize. In the long run, more people would live.

There wouldn't be reactor deaths, no more lost in terrorist bombings. The night shift wouldn't be reduced to an even further skeleton crew as the lower tier employees were picked off. They were people who were making their way up, all of them had been able to move out from under the plate because of their Shinra job, all of them had been working hard because of family.

So many would be lost, but perhaps they terrorists would warn the residents? It had been slipped out, to the very people who claimed they were trying to protect the Planet. Not with enough time to stop it, but enough time to warn the inhabitants.

Most of them.

Some of them.

He was saving lives.

Breathing deeply, filling his lungs with filtered and conditioned air, he closed his eyes. What was he? The veneer or the infrastructure? It could be he was only dressing darkness in sincere lies, charming the public while the bowels of the company twisted and festered. Did any of his endeavors matter? Did he support the whole tree, nurturing what was worthwhile despite the corruption? Was he only deluding himself? Should he be girdling the trunk to bring down the entire rotting behemoth?

It would be done soon anyway. He could pick up the pieces.

He could let them die.

Because he didn't want to lose his job.

They could be suffocated. They could be crushed. He would let them run and not make it to the edge, futilely dragging small children and aging parents, or abandoning. Making a bid for solitary survival and hearing shocked sobs, feeling the burn of your own depravity before dying anyway.

Because he didn't want to walk into the shadow of a blue suited Turk and hear the cool finality of, "your services are no longer required."

There hadn't been an official clearing of even Shinra personnel from the topside of Sector Seven. It wasn't coincidence that several of those residents had butted heads with the president over procedural issues and slowed several projects the company head had wanted passed. Not all of them, though. Two of them had won employee awards.

Shivering in his tailored suit, he stared at the polished surface of his imported desk. When had this become his existence? What had he become a part of?

Back then, when all this had just been a breathtaking possibility, his mother had been hesitant. He'd been impatiently eager, and his mother, for reasons he understood better now, had cautioned against impulsivity. He'd grasped both her hands and looked in her face with the earnest youth that seemed so far from him now, "I don't want to look back and think what if. To know that I had a chance to do this much good, and that I wasn't willing to get help so I could help others. To know I could have and didn't."

"What if, Reeve?" he spoke to himself, bitterly noticing that his voice slid into the unbroken cadence of the boardroom. Not a crack, not a quiver of emotion. "You selfish, heartless coward."

Tseng swayed, his balance tilting with the Shinra helicopter as they whirled away from the support pillar of Sector Seven. Rude directed their flight with stoic firmness, Reno co-piloted beside him with affected indifference. No words passed between them. The objectives had already been detailed; Turks saw the mission through to completion, no matter the personal or public cost.

He centered himself on the hot fire of loyalty that had survived the opposition of outside forces, and his own conscience. One eye was kept on a bundle of pink. Making sure she didn't attempt a diving escape into open air, or an ending apart from Shinra. Her eyes were fixed downward, covering the ramshackle hovels and occasional warehouses that made up the slums beneath the plate.

She was waiting, watching. His attention was mainly on the line between Sectors Seven and Six, because the destruction of the pillar supporting the plate should have already started. The roar of the chopper blades and the rush of wind were drowning his ears, but he would still be able to hear it when Sector Seven finally fell.

"It isn't dropping."

The statement wasn't really directed toward him, but he shifted over anyway. Her face was tilted down. He could see the red imprint of his hand against her pale, sun-starved skin. There was emotion in her eyes that, for a moment, changed the six thousand four hundred and eighty nine above the plate and the estimated nineteen thousand below it from statistics to individual lives.

He couldn't feel any relief. There could have been a miscommunication or misfire somewhere along the line, some delay was understandable. By this point, though, there should be some sign of the support system's liquidation. If not they would have to go back, make the sure the company's will was carried out - Unless...

Echoing the words of moments ago, feeling the cracks in the structure he served, he murmured, "Only an executive can disarm the Emergency Plate Release System."

A/N: I like Reeve, but ever since I realized he was one of the executives who could have countermanded the plate drop, I've been more than a little irritated that he took so long to grow a spine. This ended up having a lot more Turks than I originally intended, but I think they transition the events well, or as well as I could conceive anyway. This entry was completed with motivation from the Twelve Shots of Summer Challenge in response to the "Through the Window" and "Black and White" prompts. My next goal is for the subsequent entry to be posted without needing an outside catalyst.