The rule had always been that once you were a Turk, you were always a Turk. There was no leaving the team. If you left, you usually had about 48 hours before one of Shinra's elite assassins – the ones no one spoke of – came after you to take you out.

Unless you were particularly good at hiding.

Mike Reynolds had been living around the shipping docks all his life, if you listened to his story. His mother was handicapped and never left the house – she lived up by Da Chao, in one of the pagodas near the temple. He had to work at the docks to provide for the two of them, since she couldn't. No one really asked, since Mike...well, he wasn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. The fewer questions you asked him, usually the better.

Toby always had been the best of them for imitating other people.

Christmas in Wutai always made him think of the days before they'd all split up. Days like when they first joined Shinra, and helped to start the Turks, days when they travelled to Wutai for the first time and Jaren met Kana, the day Tseng was born...the day Kana died.

Happier days.

Days back at the Turk apartment, celebrating birthdays and Christmas and New Year's...

All good things, hm?

Once you were in the Turks, you weren't getting back out. As as time went on, in-office politics got stronger and Heidegger got jealous of Jaren's skills and ambition. The missions got harder, and it became more and more evident that one of these days they were going to go on a mission that they didn't come back from. When Toby and the rest of the team had come home one day to find Tseng in hysterics because his father had left on a mission on his own, and before he'd left he'd given the child sentiments of emotion that Jaren never said to anyone – they knew. This was the mission.

And yet he still promised the boy they'd come home.

In the end, he'd tried his best to live up to his promise. Yes, the mission was clearly intended to kill off the Turks. Bodies were found, burnt beyond recognition but with small items on their person to indicate who they were – Jaren's EMR, Toby's goggles, that sort of thing. But what had really happened was they had run – each in a different direction, with the final order hovering over their heads to never come after each other. Two Turks in one place were too easy for Shinra to find.

But what happened when Shinra falls?

Toby had still never gone after any of his teammates. He didn't know where to begin. Orders be damned, he knew Adam and Anna would have stayed together. With any luck at all, they were out there living the happy life they'd always dreamed of: white picket fence, 2.5 kids, the whole shebang. After all, with the old Mako treatments that all of the fighters who would become SOLDIER and the Turks got back then, they literally weren't getting any older. Josh and Martin could almost be anywhere, and especially during times like this one Toby regretted not being closer to either of them. It was amazing how close a team could be and still not really have each of its members be the same.

And then there was Jaren.

If Jaren was anywhere, he was here in Wutai with Toby. The second-in-command would be the firs to admit it; it was one of the reasons he'd chose to run here. But if Jaren was around, he'd done a fine job of hiding himself because not even Toby had seen him around.

But damn it, if he was, he knew Toby was here. He'd never been able to hide from Jaren.

It was ironic, really. He'd been keeping tabs on Tseng ever since the team had been forced into hiding, so he'd seen the boy rise through the ranks with all the swiftness he'd expected of Jaren's father. The Sinclair boy had effectively vanished from his radar when he left the orphanage (the people there having refused to tell Toby who had taken the boy), but when all of a sudden a boy wearing a very familiar pair of goggles showed up under Veld in the Turks, he immediately saw the familial resemblance. It pleased Toby an irrational amount to see the two finally together. He'd hoped they could grow up together. Now maybe they could grow old that way.

I wonder what happened to them after the company collapsed. Of course, he'd heard about the resurfacing of the Shinra boy, and the Turks had turned into bodyguards essentially, and then read in the newspaper about their work fighting off the Sephiroth remnants. There's a fight I'm not sorry I wasn't in the Turks for. But after that...he hadn't heard much. It had been almost three years.

Like so much else, it would probably turn into one of those unsolved mysteries that his life seemed to be full of.

"One of these days, I'll come and find you, you know?" Toby whispered to himself. "The company's gone; they can't do anything to us. So one of these days I'll be the one to break that last order and come and find you. We're all still around, and all still friends. It's stupid living our lives apart. Not when we're running out of life to live.

"So Merry Christmas, boss – wherever you are. And a Happy New Year."


Thank you again to my reviewers; you allow me to continue breathing. :)

Happy New Year to everyone - I hope this chapter helps to clear up a bit more of what happened back in the Palm Springs chapter. Again, if you have more questions, go ahead and write me a note or say so in the review. I want you to understand! Really I do! Hope you enjoy this chapter~