When she awoke, the first thing she noticed was that she was lying on something soft rather than on hard stone floor. The second thing she noticed was that the pain had decreased from screaming to muttering. Her burned thigh still ached, as did a number of other places where she'd been injured in ways she couldn't even totally remember, and it'd take a while for her arm muscles to forgive her, but it was all bearable. Ignorable.

She opened her eyes to a wooden slat ceiling, crudely made, and sat up. And regretted it. She didn't hurt as badly as she had before, but there was only so much a Restore materia could do. Every movement awakened a litany of complaints from all over her body.

The next thing she realized was that she was wearing a large man's shirt, which was a major improvement from the tatters of her clothing that she'd had when she was rescued. That meant that Valentine must have undressed her, but given that she was bandaged and cleaned of blood and her ears weren't ringing any longer, that seemed a fair tradeoff. Plus there wasn't much to worry about given that as far as she could tell Valentine had no sexual impulses, unless you counted mooning over crazy dead scientist chicks a sex act, which she personally did not.

(While she waited for her clamoring aches to settle down enough to move again, she considered the shirt. Was it one of Valentine's undershirts? Did Valentine wear undershirts under all that black leather and random buckles? Strange thought, The Vampire Gunman At Home.)

Anyway, he was tall and she was short, so the shirt was plenty for modesty. She padded out of the room and into the next room, which appeared to be the only other room. Some kind of cabin, then, verging on shack.

Valentine was poking at the fire. "There isn't any running water here," he said, "but there's a bowl and pitcher in the corner if you want to wash your face, and the outhouse is around back. Would you like coffee?"

"No running water, but you get coffee beans out here?"

"Priorities," Valentine said, with a dry smile, and handed her a mug with a small smile. "I apologize for the clothes. I don't have any pants that would fit you."

"No, I guess not."

"You seem better. You've been asleep for some time."

"How long?" she asked, wrapping her hands around the mug and enjoying the warmth.

"Twelve hours."

"Twelve hours? We have to get to Midgar! We need to report back to—"

"You need to rest, or the remnants will finish what they've done."

"But—"

"It was Tseng's idea." Valentine gave her an entirely blank look. "Go argue with him."

Tseng stood on the porch that bordered the cabin, sipping a cup of coffee. He was wearing what must have been borrowed pants and a shirt, though, to Elena's disappointment, neither pants nor shirt were made of leather. He was patched up, too, with proper white bandages around his head instead of Vincent's red scarf. And even bruised and bandaged and holding himself carefully, in borrowed clothes that didn't fit quite right, he still looked fantastic.

Great.

Elena tasted her coffee and nearly spat it out: it was the sour, boiled stuff called Corel Coffee except when it was called Total Crap. But it was caffeinated, so Elena persisted through a few swallows. Then she put the mug down on the porch rail and said, "Valentine says you don't think we should go to Midgar."

"Good morning to you, too." Tseng smiled a little. "I'm glad to see you moving around."

"We have to go. The President doesn't know what the remnants want. They'll find him—"

"We'll do him more good if we're not hobbling like ninety-year-old women," Tseng said with infuriating calm reason, setting down his own coffee cup. He'd managed to drink more of the foul brew. "Another day's rest and more time for the healing magic to take hold, and then we can go and actually do something useful, rather than being captured again. Or killed."

"We can't just wait here in Valentine's . . . bizarre little country home."

"We're no use to anyone like this, Elena."

"We can do something," she said, agitated, and turned away. "We can—"

"Do you even remember what happened yesterday?" Tseng asked, and there was a frisson of tension in his voice.

"I remember saying a lot of stupid things, if that's what you mean."

"Elena, you nearly died before we got you back here." And for a moment, she could see something hovering behind Tseng's eyes.

"Well, I thought you died, what, at least twice? Once after the Temple and once when Midgar fell in." She had meant it to be light, a joke, to lay to rest the look in his eyes. But it came out harder than she'd meant, accusatory.

"But not through recklessness."

"Recklessness?"

"You lied to Valentine about how badly injured you were."

"I lied because I thought he would leave you behind if he knew!" She heard the strain in her own voice, but for once it was almost matched by Tseng's tone. "Turks may not be unnecessarily reckless, but we also don't leave each other behind."

Tseng was holding very still. She could see when he finally breathed, once, twice, as though he was holding something carefully inside his chest. Then he said, "No. That's true." And then, "Elena, I know you don't need protection anymore. I'm not trying to protect you. But you don't need to get yourself killed to prove yourself anymore, either."

"I'm not trying to—" Elena began, and then stopped. Was she?

"Reno still gives you a hard time, but there isn't a one of us who doesn't think of you as a comrade, or an equal. You don't have to keep throwing yourself in danger to prove to us we can handle it. We know."

Now it was Elena's turn to hold very still, as her mind turned this thought over and over. Had she gotten so used to trying to prove that she wasn't a delicate girl or a green rookie that she hadn't noticed that no one else thought of her that way? "Really?"

"Yes." A brief moment, and then, very softly, Tseng added, "And it would do my heart good not to keep seeing you risk your life just to prove a point that you don't need to prove."

And then, just like that, it was like a switch had flipped and the energy changed. No longer the prickly static of a fight between them, she felt a pull as strong as gravity, so that she took a step toward him and found that he had done the same, and he stood close enough, now, that she thought she could feel the heat of his body, the solidity of his presence.

His hand settled on her cheek. She wasn't a big person physically; his hand easily cupped the side of her face, the top of his thumb resting against the lower curve of her orbital bone, just beneath her eye. It was a startlingly intimate touch. He could feel her every blink.

"You know how I feel," she said, and then stumbled on with, "about you. I've always talked too much."

"Not so much these days," Tseng said. "You didn't say anything to the remnants."

She made a noise, low, harsh. "Don't pretend you can't read me like a book. You're pretty perceptive and I'm—not subtle."

"I can't, always," Tseng said. He was looking at her with such intensity that she wanted to look away, but she couldn't, because that would be cowardice. "You surprise me more frequently than I would have ever guessed. And every time I have to look again at you, and see you in a new light."

"Tseng," she began, and then didn't know what else she wanted to say. His other hand came up, not to her cheek but to the back of her neck, his fingers warm on the nape beneath her hair in a way that chased a shudder through her body.

But she was the one to lean forward and close the distance, and kiss him.

His mouth . . . his mouth was smooth and strong and tasted of Valentine's terrible coffee, and though she had begun the kiss he was the one to deepen it. He licked her lower lip and she gasped, opened to him, and then there was the first tentative touch of her tongue to his that sent heat shuddering straight down all the way to her knees and then back up to kindle a long-burning coal to full flame.

She wound her arms not around his neck but around his chest, gingerly to keep from disturbing the wounds still there but so that she could feel his spine and the long smooth muscles of his back under her hands, and as he tucked his arm down around her waist, his chest and his heartbeat against hers. And maybe he was doing the same, the light touch of his fingertips on her cheekbone, the wrist of his other hand drawing circles on the small of her back.

Which made her abruptly aware, first, that she was wearing nothing but a man's undershirt, and though it came all the way to her knees, that fact was making the embrace quite a bit more . . . . intimate than it would otherwise be. And second, that every muscle she had was stiff and she ached all over.

She pulled back a little, broke the kiss, the heat and taste of his mouth still lingering with her like a physical presence. Without thinking she blurted, "Fuck, I wish we weren't so beat up. I can't just, just jump you when I'm like this."

And for a moment she wanted to cover her face with her hands in embarrassment at the return of the rookie who couldn't keep her mouth shut. But Tseng laughed, warm and affectionate, and kissed her again, though more lightly. A tease. And as she moved to deepen it, he pulled back. "Valentine might object if we commandeered his only bedroom for that."

He tugged at her waist and she leaned forward, her head on his shoulder, and felt him rest his cheek against her temple. He was leaning into her, just a little. They were a pair, she thought: both practically in pieces, and they both had to keep shifting because pretty much any position hurt. Everything hurt.

But she wasn't ready to let go just yet. They could prop up like this for a few minutes, leaning on each other, and it was almost okay.

"Since when? For you, I mean?" she asked. She felt him lift his head to look at her, but she didn't look back, keeping her forehead against his shoulder. "Come on, I don't believe you didn't know I had a thing for you from almost day one."

"It's true I knew you had a crush, at first."

"I think there were people on the moon who knew I had a crush, at first." It was embarrassing, sometimes, to remember how young she'd been, how green, just two years prior. And how much she still was, some days.

Tseng gave her a hint of a smile, and added, "But I didn't like to assume it was anything more than that."

"Hmm," she said. Then: "Answer the question."

"I noticed you were attractive from, as you put it, day one, because you are." Elena was glad her face was hidden in his shoulder because she knew the smile that crossed her face was a big, stupid one. "As for the rest . . . if I had to pinpoint a moment that I realized, it was the time you jumped off that bridge in Junon and landed on the train, although I imagine it had already been developing for some time. Given the . . . intensity of the feeling."

"Really?" She lifted her head then to look at him. "You said that was 'an ill-advised move.'"

"It certainly wasn't the way I would have done it," Tseng said drily, which made her laugh. "But it was the moment that I really knew that you needed no looking after. That you were as competent as any Turk I'd ever known." His thumb traced a circle on the nape of her neck, making her whole body come to attention, making her wish she had a free bed and a working body. "From there," he finished, "it was just a matter of figuring things out. And determining if you still felt the same. By the time we were captured, I knew for certain."

She couldn't help herself: she pulled him down for another kiss. Slower, this time, less urgent but no less electric: the heat between them enough, for just a moment, to allow her to forget how much her whole body hurt, to allow her to forget they still had a mission to do despite aching everywhere. His mouth against her, his hand on the skin of her neck, his chest beneath her palms rising and falling with his breaths, and above and with and through it all the awareness of how far they'd come to get here, and how right it was that they'd arrived.

When they pulled apart again, Elena said, "But we still need to get back to Midgar to keep the President from doing something stupid. And I need some pants. Ideally my suit, but at least some pants."

And Tseng smiled at her and said, "Sounds like an excellent plan."

If Rufus noticed that Tseng and Elena were standing that little bit closer, he said nothing. He was acting very . . . Rufus, and very pleased with himself. (Leave it to him to throw himself off a building and just assume that his Turks had it covered. Of course, he was right: they had.)

But it wasn't until the rain came down and turned his stigmata to the bright color of Lifestream, and then to nothing at all, that she could really relax.

On his feet, now, unsteady but unwounded, he pushed the bandages away from his eye. No more gray welts crept down his face, no more rot infested his eye. He didn't smile, because he was Rufus, and he was far too controlled for that. But Elena did, because that was the kind of Turk she was.

"Now," Rufus said, "we can begin to go to work."