Author's Notes: I'm not quite sure what to say about this chapter. It's probably one of my favourites. A little bit more Veld-centric; in a way. I have to confess that it's a little bit delightful to look at a character using the first person pov of someone else.
Enjoy.
Sans: Responsabilité
We take the girl to a Shinra-sponsored hospital and notify her family as soon as we know that she's going to live.
A young girl in a hospital bed swamped by her two parents. Watching them, I can't decide what I feel. Veld stands with me by the door looking into her room.
"We're done here, Valentine," he says, not unkindly. I nod and he leads me away.
Twelve hours later, we stand in the President's office. He has a tendency to pace when he's annoyed.
This is not exactly what I had expected for our debriefing.
"Urquhart just handed me a letter of resignation, Dragoon. He's gone fucking soft and retired on me. Needs to take care of family business or something."
"His six year old daughter was raped and left for dead, sir."
The President gives Veld a long, dark look. Turks have a lot of leeway in the department … but not that much.
"Do you think I don't know that, Dragoon?"
"Not at all, sir. I'm simply saying that if the General has become unstable, his usefulness to the company is likely greatly reduced."
The President chortles and glances irately at a file on his desk. When he looks up, he glares at me instead of Veld.
"He's a damned cold fish, isn't he, your boss?"
I resist the urge I have to glance over at Veld. I clear my throat instead.
"He's an admirable Turk, sir."
"Aren't they fucking all."
The President slaps his heavy file back down on his desk and directs his attention back to Veld.
"If you two had done your job and rescued the damn girl, none of this would've happened."
"Sir, the man had been known to the police. He was a repeat offender. Apparently, he would abduct girls and abuse them –"
"I know exactly how it worked Dragoon! I'm not one of your underlings! I flat out will not tolerate you lecturing me!"
Veld doesn't move from his position in front of the President. I'm finding it harder and harder to keep looking straight ahead. The President is red-faced and livid. Nothing shows on Veld's face, that mask firmly in place and unshakable.
I'm not truly here, I think. These men have fought before; they will fight again. I'm only here in passing.
"Sir," Veld says, his tone soft but devoid of emotion. "The doctors estimate the damage to the girl's system –"
"Shut up, Dragoon."
"- likely occurred less than twenty-four hours ago. He raped her the moment he had her. There was never anything -"
"Dragoon!"
"- that we could do."
The President's hands clench at the edge of his desk, his eyes livid. Veld keeps the same, impassively cool face. After a moment, the President straightens and walks deliberately towards us. He stops when he's directly in front of Veld.
Faster than I would've been expected, he reaches forward and grabs the knot of Veld's tie, pulling his head down to his level. I see it tighten around his neck but Veld doesn't flinch.
My feet make me step out sideways to face the two men and my hand reaches under my jacket but it stops there. Veld doesn't glance in my direction.
"I own you, Veld Dragoon. When I give you an order, you follow it through. You should've just shot the damn kid and been done with it. Now you've cost me one of my best men. The Wutaians will be pissing themselves with laughter. I want you to go back out there and take care of both of them. I will not be made a laughing stock by some disgusting slums trash! If Urquhart can't work for me then he'll die. Do you understand me, Dragoon?"
Veld's eyes are icy but he manages to keep them from narrowing. I frown. I could've almost sworn that I saw Veld's hands tremble. He balls them into fists.
"Perfectly, sir."
The President lets go of Veld almost as quickly as he grabbed him. He moves back to his desk and lights a cigar viciously. He uses it to gesture at Veld.
"Any more mistakes and you'll find yourself out of a job, Dragoon. Permanently."
Veld nods once and salutes. Automatically, I turn to face the President and do the same. We both turn to leave but then the President calls out again.
"And Dragoon! Keep hold of that lapdog of yours. Next time he moves without my permission, I'll have him shot."
Veld stops in his tracks and waits a moment before turning to face the President one last time. The mask is still there but I can see violence creeping at the edge of it. People die when Veld looks like that. His voice is longer in coming than it normally is and his inflection is off.
"… Yes sir. It won't happen again."
The President nods sharply. I'm almost immune to the vertigo of his city backdrop now.
"Good," he says.
He doesn't stop us when we turn to leave again.
.o.o.o.o.o.o.
During the elevator ride, neither of us speaks. I watch Veld from the corner of my eye but he doesn't turn to speak to me. I can see his right hand clench and unclench. The motion is so slow and irregular that you wouldn't be able to notice the pattern if you weren't looking specifically for it. Clench, and unclench. Clench …
When the doors open to our main floor, I step off the elevator and turn to wait for him. Veld, however, lets the doors close in front of him, still without ever looking at me.
I frown, a sick feeling in the base of my stomach. I look up and watch the numbers. They stop at the parking level.
I swallow the bitter taste I suddenly feel in my mouth and lurch away from the elevator, heading towards our lounge. The entire floor's dark, Mikel and Lynne long gone for the night. After a moment's hesitation, I walk over to the kitchenette unit. I rifle in the overhead cupboards in the dark, the only light in the room coming from the city lights that leak through the room's window. The mako in my eyes compensates for the lack of lighting, tingeing everything in unnatural hues.
I couldn't stand to look at anything in the dark for weeks after my trip to the labs. None of the others commented about it. I wonder if it's a common occurrence
Mikel has a bottle of scotch hidden in the third cupboard and Lynne keeps her whiskey in the back. If Veld has liquor on the floor then it's probably in his office because I've never seen it. Like so many other aspects of the man's life, he keeps it hidden.
I don't quite sigh when my hand circles around the neck of the bottle that I've sequestered away in the fourth cupboard. It's all just pretence, I realize. We know that we all have the same weaknesses. Sometimes we're deliberate in them and pull out our bottles together.
But pretence is pretence and perhaps the semblance of stability is necessary in all parts of life.
I unscrew the cap with a fluid motion and take a long swing, rubbing the back of my mouth with my sleeve. Without hesitation I take a second and a third. I cough on the fourth and need to catch myself on the counter, the room swimming suddenly.
I walk over to the chair closest to me and sit down in it heavily. If I were honest, perhaps I would admit that there's a girl's voice in the back of my head that I need to drown away.
Stories and stories below me, motorists drive on oblivious. Somewhere out there there's a man who isn't me, finishing a task that could've easily been mine.
If I run out of vodka, I think that I'll start on Lynne's whiskey. I can always buy her a new bottle.
.o.o.o.o.o.o.
It's close to four in the morning when Veld finally walks back onto the floor. I stand automatically. My eyes may be dry and scratchy but I haven't slept a moment.
It's difficult to sleep on nights like this but that's to be expected.
Veld pauses at the entrance of the lounge for a moment, his profile the only thing facing me. Then, he turns and walks inside. Without speaking to me, he sits in the chair opposite of me and I sit down with him.
Perhaps I understand what he's asking. I pass him the half-empty bottle of vodka and he acknowledges me without looking directly at me.
He takes three shots without hesitation. On the fourth, he coughs and hands the bottle back to me.
"…Thanks."
There's silence for a moment and I can almost imagine that I hear the constant distant murmur of traffic below us. There's only the silence, of course.
"Did you kill them?" I ask because I want to know. I'd heard Veld when he spoke to that girl. I don't want to believe that he's two different people.
Veld shakes his head slowly. He hesitates a moment before holding up a hand to me. I hand him the bottle again without taking my eyes from his face. He ignores me and takes a long swing. When he's done he rests his hands on his knees, still holding the bottle.
He looks out the window when he speaks.
"I was never going to. Urquhart knew what was coming. He opened the damn door for me. The man thought I was going to shoot him with his wife standing right there. Gods above me."
He pauses a moment and takes another swing.
"I got them fake documentation. Chocobo riders will get them out of the city. If they make it all the way, they'll set sail to Wutai from Junon. Urquhart's a broken man. He won't make any trouble for Shinra there."
"If they're caught, you'll be killed," I say, my voice toneless in the night. Veld's smile is vicious as he looks out at the city.
"They won't be. Urquhart's smart and a good man. Besides, better a life in exile then a bullet between the eyes."
I hold out my hand for the bottle and Veld passes it to me without looking away from the window. I think for a moment.
"… If you've miscalculated and Urquhart decides to give into bitterness and go over to the Wutaians, we could all die."
Finally Veld turns to face me, his eyes vicious.
"Then you can kill him, Valentine. I've had enough for one day."
He gets up in a rush and turns.
"Veld!" I say his name with more forcefulness than I intend. I get to my feet and meet his eyes. I don't want him to misunderstand me. Not tonight.
"I'm glad that you didn't kill them," I say carefully and deliberately. The words echo strangely in the empty room but I know that he can hear them just fine. He looks at me a moment longer before nodding and turning to leave the room.
"Thank me in four months if we're still alive. By then, we should know."
"Veld," I say again. Yes, I know that I'm pushing our boundary. I don't know why I'm speaking. I don't know why I'm waiting for him to talk. It doesn't matter; the girl lived. As much as we pretend otherwise, we occasionally like to appease our consciences.
The line isn't always so easy to draw between different kinds of animal. The taxonomy is difficult.
He turns and smirks like it's a secret. Perhaps it is and we're all intrinsically involved. The problem with secrets is that they're always spoken out loud eventually. The worse ones leave dead cities in their wake.
After a moment, I grin back.
.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.
We never did hear from Urquhart or his family again. Of course, all that meant was that he hadn't been intercepted by SOLDIERs or Shinra personnel as they fled the continent. For all we know, they could've died on the rocks of the island.
But that wouldn't have been our responsibility.
In truth, there is a grave in the Slums that I only ever visited once. I imagine that it's been disturbed since then. Those places shed their skins like animals. Some scavenger has likely robbed the girl's bones by now.
Still… if I have come to understand anything in this life it's that people do terrible things to each other. I cannot help but feel grateful that I don't have two gravesites to stand over.