A/N: Funny little anecdote because it was so priceless...:
My roommate came home after a day at work, and she was saying she wanted something, but, like sometimes happens, the brain shuts down and she had to try three times to get it out.
What she ended up saying: "I want ships and dick."
My response: "...Does that mean you want to get into bed with a sailor?"
After we had a good laugh about that, she had to try four more times to finally get out what she ACTUALLY meant: "I want chips and dip!"
Now, after that hilarity, on with the story!
True Data
It was only a minute or so after silence had fallen that Kariya suddenly said, "We do still have one problem, though."
"That is?" Lucrecia blinked in surprise.
"We can't actually stop him from going through emotional upheaval, or even reduce the incidences, because it's produced by mundane things like telling him that kindness isn't dead yet. And 'not talking to him' isn't going to happen," the Turk told her evenly.
"I wasn't suggesting you do something like that," the doctor answered equally as evenly. "I meant that Auryn can practice certain techniques, meditative ones, to help bring that emotion back to manageable levels before it gets out of control in the first place. What you would need to do is pay attention to his behaviors and shut up while he gets a handle on himself again before going on with what you were saying."
Kariya frowned at the phrasing, but Tseng said, "There's a certain logic to that. On that same token, I'd like to help him learn the techniques, hopefully to foster trust between us. I've noticed he has stronger negative reactions to me than to many others, but if Kariya's suspicion is correct, that means he needs to get to know me, as I am right now, to overcome his fear and realize I may not be who he was trained to believe I am."
The woman's eyes went back to Kariya in questioning surprise as Auryn mused over the words, wondering what had prompted such an assessment. That it was Kariya who had figured—something—out didn't surprise him, as the man had been spending the most time with him up to that point, but the 'what' was the question.
Kariya agreed, "I'll give you a more detailed explanation of that once we see that Auryn is taken care of."
"Sephiroth, move him to the bed. For now, he needs to rest, first and foremost. Tseng, if you want to 'foster trust' with him, you'll need to become a fixture in his life, someone he can associate with a lack of suffering regardless of how long you're in his company. Since Kariya and I need to talk and Sephiroth has to go in the next five minutes to get to his flight for his next mission, you'll need to stay with him to monitor his state." The woman paused as Sephiroth rearranged Auryn to carry him to the bed, then she sighed and added, "For now, there's nothing else we can do. If his state, mental or physical, changes for the worst, I need you to call me immediately. To that end, I'll be in the building most of the day today."
"Very well," Tseng agreed as Sephiroth was putting Auryn down.
As Tseng tucked Auryn in, Sephiroth left the room, followed by Kariya and the doctor, leaving Auryn alone with the Wutain Turk. He closed his eyes tightly and tried to pretend it wasn't Tseng alone in the room with him, tried to stem the flashes of painful memories the other man's presence produced. It wasn't working well, and his breathing started to become harsher. His reactions to Tseng had become abhorrently strong, more than he was familiar with, though that could have come from what he'd done to him in the previous dimension he'd been in. That Tseng—had that even really been Tseng at all? It had been his name and face, but his behavior...
"You know, more than anything, your behavior tells me Kariya is right," the Wutain commented quietly, sadly.
"...Right about what?" Auryn asked softly, warily.
"Are you sure you're ready to face what they actually did to you?"
"If they've already done it to me, I've already 'faced' it to some degree."
"...Your captors have manipulated your mind to believe we—some of us at least—have hurt you personally. If he's right that most of the ones you react to that way are the newest Turks to join our ranks, they were planning to unleash you on us after most of the old hands and most skilled of us had died," Tseng said quietly. "I can't even begin to imagine how hard it would be to see someone behaving in a way completely opposite to the way you've been taught the person will behave."
Auryn's eyes opened wide at the words and turned to Tseng in shock, producing a faint smile as the older man said, "However long it takes, I'll prove to you we aren't what you thought we were—I was."
First, Auryn's mind just shut down completely and he stayed that way until sometime the next day. His immediate thought when he returned to awareness was: had Kariya really somehow—figured out some kind of past association? It shocked him to find it somehow hadn't mattered beyond producing one more problem in need of fixing. As if that wasn't shocking enough, there was Tseng's reaction...
Speaking of Tseng, the man was still sitting in the room with him, so going back to what the Turk had last said to him produced more of the same fearful puzzlement. "Why?" he asked softly in a strangled tone, drawing the other man's attention. The Wutain tipped his head to the side with a curious, confused expression. "Why would you even care enough about a stranger to bother taking so much time for something you don't even know will ever work?"
"Why would I care about anyone?" Tseng asked in reply. Auryn blinked. "It's not a matter of you being a stranger or an acquaintance or family. You've been fed a lot of lies, and I know of at least one sure-fire method they'd have been able to torture you using my appearance without you knowing any better. Not only is that something I can't abide because I loathe torture and being presented as a torturer sits completely wrong with me, but it's not healthy for you, either, to think something which isn't true about someone. I have no doubt someone tortured you, but that person wasn't me. Let's add to that the fact that everyone is a stranger when they first meet, and I have no reason not to help you."
After a long silence, Auryn asked, "Is there a situation where you would torture someone?" His gaze was hurt, accusing, as he asked the question.
The Wutain sighed and replied, "My personal experience has been that there are exceptionally few people incapable of causing suffering with the correct incentive. I loathe torture, but there remains a possibility something could cause me to snap and do so. What kind of behavior did the 'other me' display?"
Frowning, the blond wondered why the question was even relevant, but finally, he sighed, "It depended on the situation time-by-time." Could he get answers this way? Would Tseng humor him? Or...?
"What was the most common situation you were put in?" Tseng asked after blinking in surprise, moving to the edge of the bed rather than the chair he had been sitting in.
"...I want—I want answers I don't know you can give me, and telling you—unless it was all literally made up—might cause you to hate me..." Auryn whispered, eyes full of pain and fear as he looked at the black haired man sitting beside him.
With a sigh, the older man said quietly, "I won't be able to tell you that until I know what data you were given to work with. I can't give you a better answer."
Shaking his head slightly, Auryn thought about what he should say, how much information he should give—only to recall that a lot more people knew about Aeris than Tseng realized, they just weren't in a rush to get their hands on her. Yet.
"The most common was...There's a girl who lives in the Sector Five Slums and she visits the Church there to take care of the flowers. Her name is Aeris Gainsborough." He stopped as Tseng's eyes widened and his skin paled, but he motioned for Auryn to go on. "She escaped from the Shinra labs several years ago, and you were sent to technically retrieve her, but no one is actively making you do so. But, you're protective of her all the same and don't react well to strangers you find in her presence, especially not strange men. Because—because of the changes to my body, apparently she takes me as one of her people and a brother to her, but you—never took that well. Nearly every time you would find me with her, you'd wait until she or I left one another's company and torture me—to death. Many times, that was physical, but sometimes it went further, and much more painfully."
Tseng was pale as a sheet as he whispered, "I don't even know where to start with assessing how frightening—and how just plain wrong—that data is, right from the first thing you said." Auryn was surprised by the words, but he also realized Tseng wasn't referring to the 'truth' of the data when he'd said it was 'wrong'. "When you were shown Aeris, what did she look like to you?"
"She had Lifestream green eyes, earthy brown hair in a long ponytail, and normally wore a white and blue horizontally-striped dress," the blond answered quietly.
The Wutain dropped his head into one hand and muttered, "How could anyone know that...?"
There was a knock on the doorjamb, making both look up to see Vincent and Lady Shinra there. "What happened?" Vincent asked, gaze on Tseng. "You look like you're going to be sick, Tseng."
"Whoever had Auryn knows about my charge in the Slums—in detail far too frightening to ignore," Tseng answered. Both others' eyes widened in surprise. "This is a major security breach which would effectively mean we, as the Turks, are already backed into a corner. The only ways they could have gotten the data are from their own spy network or from the President handing them our data—and the Science Department's—in complete form."
From behind Vincent and Lady Shinra, Kariya commented, "That could explain what happened with Shelke, too. It would make sense if someone was giving them our records."
Tseng looked back at Auryn, who was watching him warily, then gave him a small smile. "I'm not going to do anything to you. If anything, I'd like to know if she really would take you as a brother—it would mean they know a great deal more about the intricacies of what they're doing than we assumed. By extension, they would have damaged your genes deliberately to get certain results, results they already knew they would get by doing it. She is our best and fastest way to verify that, if you'd like to meet the real person they were showing you?"
The blond blinked golden eyes in surprise, then whispered, "You're okay with that?"
"I am. I can't see why the version of me they showed you would have turned on you for being someone she liked, unless it was because that 'me' hadn't been as close to her as I am—that the version you saw didn't see her like a sister or trust her opinion of people she met. In that case, it would have been easy to think you were 'taking advantage' of her kindness, and if I had never been so close to her, I doubt I would be as sane as I am now on top of it. Because she's my sister in all but blood, I trust her, and if she trusts you, I have no doubt she's right. We won't have an answer unless you meet her. Though, I can safely say it won't happen today."
"It won't," Lady Shinra agreed. "But you have a valid point, and I think you should make arrangements for such a meeting. In the meantime, Tseng, I need you to show me something while Kariya takes up his watch again."
Drawing in a few deep breaths, Tseng nodded and rose to step out of the room with Lady Shinra and Vincent, even as the orange haired man moved over to sit in the place Tseng had previously occupied. Rather than talking with him, Kariya stared into the distance for a bit, just being company without paying special attention to Auryn.
"Do all of you...think I can't protect myself?" the blond asked after a pause.
Kariya turned to look at him, expression amused. "Tseng and Verde have reason to believe you'll be at least as strong as Sephiroth, if not stronger, but being physically able to protect yourself and being mentally capable of doing so are two different things. That's besides the fact that you're mentally wounded and need time to heal. Between the two, we know you're able, but also that you don't have the will to do so, something you've more than demonstrated at least three times since we've met you. After all, if you had the will, chances are Verde and Tseng would have come back badly injured, but instead, you went limp and would have let them torture you without resistance."
Auryn had to flinch at the words before rolling over onto his side to face away from the man. He had a shockingly good point, and it was really true he'd been tortured so many times he'd literally stopped fighting back. If it was one of the Hounds, someone like Balto, who was actually likely to really harm him, he'd pretty much give them a free pass to do whatever they wanted to him, not because he was in any way willing, but because he didn't have the will to stop them. The reason for his current living situation hit home as he actively realized he was truly so mentally damaged he'd just let something like that happen to him.
"I was one of the ones you recognized, so what is it about me that allows you this much trust in me?" Kariya asked after a pause, resting his hand on Auryn's back.
"...Not everyone they—introduced to me was someone who tortured me," the blond sighed softly. "Cissnei—never tortured me, either, like you never did, just to start. And some people sometimes did while sometimes didn't. The scenarios kept changing. I could have sworn so many times that I'd died, but then I'd wake up and was right back where I'd started, but with a different scenario playing out. There was even one where Doctor Crescent tried to kill me and one where Hojo helped me, saved my life, even though he was usually presented as a sadistic torturer."
"...Cissnei is a Hound. Are you saying you'd give her more trust than you'd give Eonna or Verde?"
"Don't bring in people I didn't recognize to start with. I'm only sane in the first place because I had Verde to focus on—someone I didn't know—while I was having a panic attack on the mountain. I'd trust Cissnei—or even Sirra—more than I'd trust Alvis or Balto, and Sirra's a—let's just say that if the personality I knew her by is even a fraction of her real one, she's not a nice person who doesn't give a damn about anyone but herself. She only helped to torture me once in those scenarios because all the rest of the time, 'she wasn't getting anything out of torturing me'."
After a silence at Auryn's cross words, Kariya gave a small chuckle and admitted, "It's true Sirra has that kind of personality. And I'll admit Cissnei's a gentle soul at heart. Does that mean you're aware the 'scenarios' may not have been true?"
For several long moments, Auryn thought of how he should explain his thoughts on the matter, then sighed and said, "To me, they were all real, I lived through them all. It may not have been so bad if the first one hadn't first established all those people as allies, friends, and family before turning around and making them my torturers. How many times can someone live through that before they believe it, whether it was real or not?"
No, he wasn't questioning the reality of the dimensions he'd lived through, not after so many times, but the explanation Kariya had come up with for him was actually very useful for explaining it with only slight modification. It really made his life a lot easier suddenly.
At the sharp breath Kariya drew in at the question, Auryn knew the man had realized where he was coming from. His following words affirmed the thought, "In that case, I can't fault you for your reactions, or for taking people you don't know far better than the ones you do. How—different is this reality from the ones you were given?"
Auryn had to snort at the question, but Lady Shinra's voice came from the door as she commented, "I'd like an answer to that as well."
"So would I," Vincent added.
For a moment, the blond hesitated, then sighed softly again. "Let's just start with the fact that the Turks always had only one faction in every scenario, and it was led by Verdot. Vincent was dead and a walking corpse with an entity called Chaos attached to him—in every one of them. Lady Shinra had been dead for years, and Doctor Crescent was crystallized in the stagnant Mako pool's cave. That's just a few basics which were true in all but a few of them, where the only deviation came from Doctor Crescent not necessarily being in that cave. Is that enough?"
Silence followed for a minute, then Vincent said, "That would have been President Shinra's ideal scenario. We already suspect that the people who nearly killed our Turks to take Shelke were acting on President Shinra's orders—this would fall in line with that thought. I think we have a bigger problem than we realized. Auryn, do you have names for those who tortured you?"
He gave another snort and turned to look at the man, again seeing all the differences. He noted how Lady Shinra was leaning against the wall next to the door into Kariya's room and Tseng and Doctor Crescent were both standing in the doorway with Vincent. "I know a few random names which may not be true. I don't know if they're part of any one group in particular because I never saw anything of the facility I was in—I escaped because they underestimated the result of what skills I could develop in the time I was running through all those different lifetimes. What I know for a fact, because it was also true in every lifetime I lived, is that the group after a girl called Shelke Rui, or Shelke the Transparent if she reached their hands, was called Deepground, which was the President's private army he was building in secrecy. They were nearly all insane or psychotic as well, though a small number of them could be salvaged."
The others stared at him in something like horror, and Auryn blinked at how much he'd just blurted out, then instinctively recoiled, winding himself into the blanket and sheets, meager protection though that would be. The panic took him more forcefully than he'd been expecting, though he vaguely heard a woman curse, then felt the sharp, sudden pain of a needle in his arm. Within moments, he began calming, becoming aware enough to realize his arm had been yanked out from the blankets, then more recently pushed away from his face so Lucrecia could see his eyes. She gave a nod and sigh of relief, then gave his shoulder a pat and rose to move back to the door.
The silence which followed was lengthy before Kariya cleared his throat and said, "Well, they seem to have embedded a great deal of valid data into you. At the same time, I'm not sure Deepground directly would have done such a thing, as that would have given you too much data we could use to work against them. That would leave a third party with far too much data on things they shouldn't know. But to verify it, that meeting you and Tseng were talking about would have to be arranged, and with the number of Hounds here right now, it may have to wait awhile."
"There's a faster one you can try. Two, actually," the blond answered haltingly. "Assuming you won't try to kill me just for suggesting it..."
Several sighs answered him before Vincent said, "Great Shiva...! No one is going to try to kill you for helping us verify how true the data you have is. What's your idea?"
Shivering, Auryn had to wonder if that would really be true. Finally, he asked, "In SOLDIER, there's a red haired First known as Commander Genesis Rhapsodos, right?"
"There is," Lucrecia verified.
"He's Sheridan Rui, Kariya's supposedly dead son. You should find that in a blood test. You'll also find that his base genetics are deteriorating, the cells randomly dying off—he's basically rotting from the inside out—so is Commander Angeal Hewley. A transfusion from Sephiroth should fix that," Auryn forcibly blurted out, struggling against all his instincts to just not say it. It was shockingly hard to be so open with these people. Of course, it was likely less about it being 'them' and more about it being the fact that he'd learned so well not to share because it just earned him suffering.
Shocked silence followed the words, until Lucrecia said, "I'm going to go see Hollander for the regular records checks Hojo and I run on the Department staff. Auryn is right to say we can validate that data, and we can do it now. At this point, we need to let him rest and just not have these ups and downs for awhile—the only reason he hasn't already gone back into full panic mode yet is because of the drug in his system, but I also can't give him another dose for several hours. Kariya, I'm going to take your file with me and return later with the results of my findings."
"That's fine," Kariya answered, still sounding winded. It wasn't really surprising, as what Auryn had just told him was effectively blindsiding him with something he'd been shocked enough by when Genesis himself had found the data in the first dimension. While he would have wanted to interact more with them, see their expressions, all of his instincts were screaming at him to 'stay hidden', and he didn't have the strength to uncurl from his blanket cocoon.
Another, shorter silence followed, then Vincent said, "This is—unexpected. If it turns out to be true and we get a matching result from Tseng's friend in the Slums, we can safely say Auryn is a walking encyclopedia of amalgamated hidden data. On that premise—whoever tortured him this way can't possibly be a group of 'just humans' to know all these things. Or to share them. What logic is there to sharing that knowledge? No group out to take power would gain from making these things public knowledge through Auryn. They would also not be wanting something like world destruction, since these would all be things we could use to prevent negative outcomes."
"Sir, you're forgetting that he said he was never intended to escape," Tseng put in dryly. "We were never meant to find him or to gain any of this knowledge, it was all intended to make him despise us and our way of handling things in our world. Honestly, if he had the will to fight, I wouldn't want to go up against him as his enemy."
"While all of that is valid, we shouldn't be having this discussion here and now," Lady Shinra cut them off. "Tseng, please stay with him to monitor him as the Doctor requested, and the rest of us should leave so he's able to rest. And no further discussions, Tseng. As enlightening as it proved, it isn't helping to stabilize him."
"Very well," the Wutain Turk agreed, even as everyone shuffled around or left the room.
With only Tseng in the room, Auryn's 'rest' was fitful at best.
