A/N: Because whether heads or tails, it's still the same coin…
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
Chapter 12 – Past the Point of No Return
"Sir… I can't die this way."
Tseng shifts to study her cracked, bleeding lips because the purple bruises on her face hurt his eyes. "Don't be such a pessimist, Elena." They are in a small cave, chained to the walls with iron cuffs, barely able to move because they have both been beaten so badly by Kadaj and his brothers.
"I'm not! It was a statement. I won't die this way. See the emphasis?" Her breath is labored, wheezing and heavy.
"I see."
"Can I ask a question, Tseng?"
"You don't need permission."
"What makes them different from Cloud? The Remnants, I mean. They said Cloud had betrayed their mother."
Tseng considers her question as he twists his hands against the cuffs. If he focuses, moves each muscle very precisely, he thinks he can slip himself free. He almost forgets to answer her, but finally has to concede with, "I don't know."
Her voice comes quietly, "I think I know."
He doesn't prod her, but she continues anyway.
"They were abandoned. Cloud never was."
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"What do ya think she's doing?" Reno's voice screams in Tseng's ear. Pursing his lips in irritation, Tseng lowers the volume on his earpiece. No matter how many times they try to explain to Reno that the ultra-sensitive microphones of their communications devices do not require raising one's voice, the man insists on yelling every over-annunciated syllable.
Reno is smirking as he walks past the bookshop window where Tseng is pretending to peruse the magazines. Tseng considers that Reno is well within the 25-foot blast range of his grenades, but he detaches emotion from that thought and lets it fall through his mind with all the weight of an unimportant fact. His expression is passive as he glances from Reno's retreating form to Tifa, standing across the street, leaning her back against the flowershop façade. Her body language says only that she is waiting, with no indication of what or of how urgent this thing she is waiting for is. Slumped back, hands in her pockets, head tilted back—she is the embodiment of casual boredom.
"Definitely a ten."
"Haha. What was that Rude ol' buddy?"
"Nothing."
"Hmm. I dunno. She's kind of a bit too muscular for me, yo. Seems to be the kind of girl that would take too much control. An eight."
"What?!"
"Wow Rude, I don't think I've ever heard you so… emotional."
"You should be quiet now."
Reno's amplified chuckling is downright excruciating in Tseng's ears. "These communication devices are supposed to be for work-related discussion. Besides, I doubt Rude still has feelings for Tifa after all these years."
"…"
"Well, well, Rude. Why are you so silent, yo?"
"Rude is usually silent, Reno. This is normal," Tseng comments mildly, hoping to cut the banter short.
"Yeah, well, it's not normal for me!"
"Um… sorry?" Rude says unenthusiastically.
Tseng interrupts before Reno can reply, "Work related, please." He remembers just in time to lower his voice, mostly because a woman across the aisle from him trying to read a romance novel is giving him dirty looks.
"It was work related. Before Rude got his boxers in a bunch. Heh. But the point is, why is she standing there? It's suspicious."
Tseng puts down his magazine on growing a better garden and decides to switch to something more fitting with his image. It's not likely that men typically come into this bookstore with a black trenchcoat, long hair in a ponytail, and high tech telecommunication equipment asking for information on how to grow a healthier tulip. He picks up Motorcycle Weekly and places Gargantuous Gardening! in the back of the rack. Then he says, "Rufus said she would be around. He said to expect Cloud too. Maybe she's waiting for him."
"Cloud is coming?" Reno asks.
"According to Rufus. He said if Tifa came, Cloud would no doubt come too." The woman across from Tseng clears her throat loudly. He doesn't bother to look at her. There is finally silence over the headset and Tseng figures it is because no one wants to admit out loud that they are relieved Cloud is on his way. It's almost dark.
They will come soon. Tseng knows somehow. He feels it, and the feeling makes him slide one hand over the pouch at his waist. Mako. Slave. Addict.
He doesn't want to think, so instead he focuses on his surroundings. It requires concentration, because while his senses are enhanced, sharper than they once were, the time it takes his mind to process what his body experiences takes longer. He turns a page of his magazine and examines the side streets and the shadowed alleys in his view through the store window. The world is darkening, potential hiding places increasing, and the streets have gotten busy with the rush of people going home from work.
And then, from a side street to his left, he sees it. A hooded figure, emerging from the shadows, blending with the crowd. Tseng's eyes dart about, in search of Reno, but the other Turk is out of view on the far side of the ShinRa building.
"Reno, Rude, I think I have a mark. I'm pursing. Reno, back me up. Rude, keep watch." Tseng puts the magazine away abruptly, a little bell hanging from the door ringing as he walks outside. Hands in his pockets and head titled downward, he strolls down the sidewalk, his steps leisurely.
It isn't until he is just behind the hooded figure that Tseng sees Reno turn the corner, red hair making him easy to find. A few more seconds, and they'll have their target surrounded. But when he glances back at the hooded man he's suddenly staring at a pair of blue-green eyes glowing like they are filled with neon. A gun is already in Tseng's hand, hidden in the long sleeve of his coat and aimed at the man's stomach. He takes a step closer, pressing the weapon into his mark's gut, placing his other hand on the man's shoulder and whispering in his ear, "Do not move. I will kill you."
The SOLDIER opens his eyes wider, but there is no fear. With a tentative, awe-filled voice, the SOLDIER says, "You're like me."
Tseng leans back to examine the face in the hood's shadows. A rough beard covers a wide chin, the ruddy cheeks emphasizing the dark black of the hair that hangs around them. He doesn't look like a ruthless killer. He looks like an average middle-aged man in need of a shave and a shower. A smile twists the SOLDIER's lips. "You smell like Life's Blood," he adds.
Tseng cocks his head to the side and raises the gun a little higher. "Quiet. I am not like you." The lie tastes sour on his tongue.
"We've found the special one, the one who will deliver us, the one who will save the Empire. It's almost time." He nods his head with the words, his delirious excitement at odds with the weapon now pointed at his chest. There is no fear in his expression.
Chills raise the hairs on Tseng's neck, and he is surprised; he hasn't felt unnerved in years. The feeling makes him want to speak, to reaffirm his position. "I'm sorry I cannot allow that."
The SOLDIER's brows lower and a frown reshapes the jaw. "The ShinRa boy cannot be trusted anymore. We must save the Empire."
"Rufus ShinRa is the Empire."
"He has betrayed the Empire."
Tseng watches Reno over the man's shoulder without changing the direction of his gaze. Reno is close. Just a little longer. Tseng says, "That doesn't make sense."
The man laughs, a distorted sound, like there is a wall of water between his mouth and Tseng's ears. "We were avengers, and all that! You know how it is!" He stretches his arms out in front of him and cracks his knuckles, shrugging his shoulders as he does. It's a casual expression of youthful pride. "Girls loved us. I mean, we were top of the world and all that! Big strong SOLDIERS! It must have been the uniforms. Whatever it was, they just swooned." He rolls his eyes. "Kinda ridiculous, really."
Tseng is silent, letting the man continue his insane rant. Reno is only several store fronts away.
"Never really had a steady girlfriend though, but you know, I really liked this one girl. Kinda funny really."
Tseng plays along, trying to keep him occupied and calm. He estimates five seconds until Reno is close enough to attack the SOLDIER. "Why?"
"Don't tell me you're naïve, sir! She has a crush on you, Mr. Tseng!"
"I think you're mistaken," Tseng replies. Reno is there now, at the SOLDIER's back, raising his gun.
"I'm not mistaken!" And the man's face is suddenly contorted in anger. "If you do not fight with us, you're a traitor!" Then, low enough that only Tseng can hear, he growls, "We are the same."
With the last word still ringing through the air, the SOLDIER rolls across the ground in a flash of heavy fabric, so quickly and so unexpectedly that Tseng's equally fast reflexes are the only thing that keep him from firing a shot that would have hit Reno with the original target no longer between them.
"Shit!" Reno yells, skidding against the concrete as he turns sharply to chase the SOLDIER through the thin crowd. Tseng is a step ahead of him, focused on the flaring of brown robes, raising his gun and squinting along the barrel. He can shoot while running. And he won't miss.
We are the same.
There is a mother holding a baby in her arms between him and his target. He shoves her out of the way as he pushes past, apologizing purely from habit. The SOLDIER darts into an alleyway and Tseng is only a few paces away.
If he shoots, he will not miss.
A held breath. The warmth of the trigger against his fingertip. The sound of gunpowder igniting. And then the glint of metal as the robe suddenly shreds to pieces.
Tseng skids to a halt, Reno slamming into his back. The SOLDIER is facing them, a large sword held broadside in front of him. The deflected bullet spins on the ground in the space between them.
"He blocked it…" Reno breathes.
The SOLDIER's eyes are wild, and he shakes his head of matted hair. "Why? Why do you fight us. WE ARE THE SAME!" He sounds like a child throwing a temper tantrum.
"We are not," Tseng responds, leveling his gun again. He hears the clink of metal behind him and knows that Reno is pulling out a grenade. "Your mind is damaged."
"Strength has a price."
Tseng recognizes the words as something the SOLDIERs were always told to prepare them for the effects of their first mako treatments. The process was by no means painless. "My mind is still in tact. I take other drugs to counter the side effects of mako."
"Other drugs?" The man looks perplexed.
"Drugs not offered to you." He says it to underscore the difference. He says it to remind himself that he is a sane man. He says it to remind himself that he is a privileged prisoner held in handcuffs and not some common thief behind the forgotten bars of a jail in the cellar.
The SOLDIER's eyes widen and then narrow angrily, but before he can retort, before he can attack with that giant sword, before he can even sort through his convoluted thoughts to remind himself of where he is, Reno throws the grenade.
Twenty-five feet. They are more than that distance away before the ball of explosive detonates and are already blending quickly into the frantic pedestrians screaming for help. The woman with the baby is standing a short distance away, out of harm, a stunned look on her face. Her child is crying.
Reno splits from Tseng without a word, putting a block between himself and the explosion by the time the stunned pedestrians start to crowd a loose perimeter around the smoking alleyway entrance. His voice comes over the headset. "That went well, I think."
"Someone will have to go back and check for a body."
"Do you think he survived?" This time it is Rude's voice.
"No chance. We got him, yo," Reno replies cockily.
"We are Turks," Tseng says, smiling calmly at Tifa as he walks past the flower shop. She blinks past him, obviously distracted by the explosion a block away. "We're careful."
He walks around the block once to make sure he isn't being followed before entering a coffee shop, different from the one he'd been in earlier. He sits down at an empty table and pretends to read a menu.
But he can't focus on the words. He can't even focus on keeping a lookout through the large picture windows next to his strategically chosen seat. He fingers the pouch at his belt with the mako in it and wonders where the nearest bathroom is.
Mako. Slave. Addict.
We are the same.
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She's standing in the shadow of a building, scanning the passerby wandering the streets around the ShinRa tower. Her hands are in the pockets of her black faded jeans, pulling up the hem of her long green shirt that hugs her thighs like a mini-skirt. She has combat boots on and her long hair is tied back in a tight ponytail, the shorter lengths in the front falling around her face. She bites her lip in concern despite her solid, strong stance. It is so familiar, so Tifa. One hand comes to her collar bone, rubbing her shoulder, and he mimics the movement, bringing his fingers to his neck and feeling his pulse under his skin. He remembers:
"Cloud, do you think we can match heartbeats?"
"Dunno."
"Wanna try it?"
"Sure… But mine is slower than yours…"
"Oh, I can fix that…"
"…"
"Cloud? What's wrong?"
"I was just thinking… That's what you do."
"What?"
"Fix me. You always fix me when I'm broken."
She spots him, and her hand drops to her side as she gives him the best smile she can through the worry crinkling her face. He doesn't want to approach her, not right now. He wants to admire her from afar, unseen, unknown, unaccountable to her. Now that she's waving him over, all he wants to do is run back to his bike and speed away with a sword in each hand, wandering the streets until he finds what he's looking for.
But he can't just abandon her. He turned his back on that option the day he came home with her and the kids from the geostigma healing at Aeris' church. Before then, he hadn't been sure, but that day he decided. He looked up at her, water forming a ring of coolness around his waist, children splashing and yelling around him, and she'd smiled in a way that was shyly proud. He realized how much he liked that—making her proud—and his returning smile was more than just a gesture of mirth. It was a promise. He isn't sure if she knew that then or if she does now, but it doesn't matter. It was a promise.
So he walks toward her stiffly, boots scraping against the concrete and the wolf's amulet thumbing gently against his chest. That too represents a promise, a promise to never forget Zack or the things he's taught him.
"Cloud! I'm so glad you're back!" She throws her arms around his neck as she closes the gap between them. He smells sharp citrus on her skin and thinks of the speed and power locked in the body under his arms. It's the perfume she wears when she's ready for a fight. It wasn't until they were married and he got more intimate with her morning routine that he realized she chooses her scents based on her mood. Vanilla means sad, flowers mean all different shades of happy, strawberry means angry, and cinnamon means vulnerable.
He rubs his hands up and down her back and presses his face into her hair, shaking his head back and forth to feel the soft strands tangling in the stubble on his chin and in his eyelashes. Then he remembers the weight in his pocket and the decision he made. He pushes her away.
Holding her at arm's length with a hand on either shoulder, he meets the questions in her eyes with one of his own, "Any sign of Denzel or the SOLDIERs?"
She shakes her head. Loose hairs get caught in the corner of her down-turned mouth. "There was one. The Turks cornered him on the other side of the ShinRa building. They used a grenade. I'm pretty sure he's dead."
"The Turks?"
"They have the area under surveillance. Reno is wandering around, I saw Tseng go into that bookstore and then the coffee shop over there," she waves her hand in the appropriate direction, "and I'm not sure where Rude is, but I figure he's around somewhere."
He nods once and glances away. "Rufus is being careful."
"Something's not right."
"What?"
"Something's not right… with you…" She squints at him, lips tight with intensity.
"No," is all he says.
"Cloud?"
"How far will you go to save Denzel?" he asks suddenly, gaze following the rising stairs of the rusty fire escape next to them.
With a tone firm and serious, she answers, "As far as I have to."
He looks back at her then, willing her burgundy eyes of fine evening wine and hot chocolate mornings to understand the things he doesn't know how to say.
Her hands come to rest on his, holding them against her shoulders. "You've got something planned, but it's something bad…" she says, voice open with realization.
Gaze falling down the line of her neck, he gets caught in the glint of her gold wedding band against his. He focuses on the image, burning it into his mind. He'll need it later, need it to remember…
"What is it?" she asks. "What is it that's so horrible? She presses her left palm against his chest, over his heart. "You're scared. Why are you scared? For Denzel? Of the SOLDIERs?"
"Yes and no." He tries to think of a clearer way to answer. Then, wordlessly, he slips his hands off of her shoulders and reaches into his pocket to pull out one of the vials of mako. Holding out his closed fist in front of her, he slowly uncurls his fingers.
She tenses. "Cloud! Where did you get that?"
"Holding Hands. This is the stuff Ren used on Denzel."
Her eyes flicker back and forth from the mako to his face. "You don't mean to—you can't—Cloud, you aren't going to use that?!"
Not meeting her gaze, he nods once.
"That's crazy. You know what that will do to you. What good is losing yourself again?" She sounds a little out of breath and frantic. It startles him into examining her expression. It's one of unguarded terror. She was the one to piece him together the last time mako poisoning made him forget who he was.
Which is why he's here with her now, holding out a glowing green vial, rather than already tracking down the SOLDIERs with the strength of a mako high.
"You'll bring me back. Like you did last time."
"How do you know I can?"
He looks at her steadily and brushes dark hair from her cheeks. "You can."
"But why? Why do that?"
"Because I can find Denzel this way. I'll be able to feel him." He's told her some of the effects of mako before. She should know about the temporary psychic link. "You said he has Jenova cells like me. That should make it easier. Jenova cells enhance mako, which is why every SOLDIER has a few. But I got an extra dose, and I'm guessing Denzel did too…" He hates the images that rise up in his mind of a young Denzel in one of Hojo's test tubes. He pushes them away, and says, "It's a double edged sword. It makes us stronger, but also makes us much more prone to mako poisoning."
"But then you should stay away from mako, not inject yourself with it."
"I think I can control the effects for a little bit. It's not immediate… just quick. Long enough. I can hold out long enough to find out where he is, to tell you…" He doesn't finish the sentence. She must already know he's going to go after Denzel himself. "I've already decided," he says gently. "You can't change my mind."
"Sacrificing yourself won't solve anything… Cloud, even if you find him… That boy needs you, you can't—" Her voice breaks and her chest heaves with the effort to hold her emotions in control.
It hurts him to watch, so he looks down at the concrete ground with its abandoned wrappers and empty soda cans and says quietly, "I have to. Denzel… to me he's…" He holds his hands out to his sides helplessly, palms up. "He's my son. I don't know how to just watch." Shaking his head and crinkling his brows, he finishes, "I don't know how to just watch my family be broken."
"Cloud, please…" Her voice is small and high, pleading.
He tries to shake the sound of it away. "I have to do whatever it takes. That's how far I'll go to save him. All the way."
"Please…" she says again. There are tears on her cheeks.
But he's decided already, and he knows she can't change his mind. "Sorry," he whispers, and he remembers then, the one other object he's collected today and placed in one of his pockets. He pulls out the blue flower from Nibelheim, the petals flattened but intact. He's always marveled at how resilient these flowers are, how unwilling to wilt or give up pieces of themselves. "Do you remember the last time I gave you one of these?" he asks, holding it out to her in the hand not clutching his mako injection.
She blinks down and nods. "The day you proposed to me." A choked sound presses through her lips and he's not sure if it's a laugh or a sob. "You were so delirious. I was bandaging up a gash on your leg and you held one of these flowers out to me and told me I was pretty with a big smile on your face. I think you were close to passing out, but you seemed as happy as a chocobo."
"I love you, Tifa Strife," he says, pushing the stem of the flower behind her ear to hold it in her hair.
And then, before she can ask any questions, he wraps his arms around her trembling body, leans down, and kisses her.
He pours everything he can into the meeting of their lips, all the love, all the fear, all the pain and the hope. He presses her against himself tightly enough that she gasps and he focuses on every detail. The feel of her warmth, the touch of bone and flesh and muscle under his fingertips. The taste of her lips, salty from the tears. The sound of her breath mixing with his. The scent that is her, naked and bare under the blanket of her shampoo and citrus perfume. He focuses on everything he can. Remember this. Remember this moment. Don't forget.
And then, as her fingers tangle themselves in his hair, he repositions the mako shot he's been palming and flutters his eyes just enough to see the pale line of her cheek before jabbing the needle into his forearm behind her back. Pulling away enough to whisper, "I love you" again, he presses the plunger and feels cold liquid rushing into his veins.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
Tseng remembers that one of the first things he learned as a Turk was not to look into the eyes of a mark before killing them unless absolutely necessary. He remembers that because he can't forget the gaze of that SOLDIER. We are the same.
Tseng has never had the mind of a minion. He has been loyal to ShinRa, but there hasn't been a mission he's taken where he hasn't actively chosen to cooperate. He doesn't leap blindly. He's made mistakes before, and these days he is much more careful. So even now, he is evaluating his mission.
Watching Cloud and Tifa talk in the alleyway beside the flower shop through the window of the small cafe, he pulls out his cell phone and dials Elena's number.
"Tseng?" she question. "Is everything okay?"
"Yes. We caught a SOLDIER. He was across the street from headquarters."
"What happened?"
"He's dead."
She doesn't respond for a moment, but then she says, "Good work," with enthusiasm he knows is false.
So she feels it too. And why not? She knows more about his addiction than anyone. She's watched him change into whatever he is now. He was different when she first met him, before Sephiroth nearly killed him. He feels stripped by the years, reduced to the essentials. We are the same.
But he knows her. He knows she still has compassion left. She might be the only one of them to have compassion left. So he asks her: "Is it better to kill a broken man or to try to fix him?"
"What is this about?"
"Please, I'm trying to understand."
He imagines her running a hand through her short blond hair, shifting her weight on her feet and thrusting a hip outward like she always does when she's thinking. "Do you wish you had died, Tseng?"
"That's not the point."
"It sure seems like it to me. I mean, I'm not trying to be insulting or anything, but—" She stops just short of mentioning the unmentionable thing.
His forehead creases. "I'm not sure."
He hears her shaky breath over the phone's speaker, and then: "Well I am. I'm glad you're alive, Tseng."
He nods once. "Thank you, Elena."
"I'll be there soon, with Ren and—"
But Tseng doesn't get to hear the rest, because that's when Tifa Strife starts screaming.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
Fear first. Just like he remembers. Even after all those injections in Hojo's lab, and the years since then, it is still the same. He panics as he watches memories spiral free from the wrappings of his mind, grasping at the strings of himself with desperate urgency. His senses become too overwhelmed with the past to continue monitoring the present, and Tifa's face fades into the chaos of recollection.
--Eyes the darkness of the Nibelheim mountain at night as she parts swollen lips. "I love you too."—
--"Back then, back then you only got skinned knees."—
--"That was a doozy, wasn't it?" Cloud bends over the bloody knee of the frazzled boy. His son. Denzel."—
--The orange starburst glint of the setting sun on the buster sword. Zack holds it proudly. "The power to protect…"—
--Standing with his calloused thumbs hooked into the pockets of his combat-style pants, Zack says, "I'm gonna tell you this now so you're ready when the time comes, Cloud."
"Tell me what?" Cloud places the weapons manual he is reading on the table in front of him. It's late evening, all his barrack-mates are out at the local bars, and as usual, he's here alone. Or he was alone, before Zack came barreling through the door. Why Zack isn't out partying with everyone else on a Friday night, Cloud has no clue.
"What to do when you get your first mako injection. You're good with a sword an' those higher-up types are gonna notice eventually. I bet they'll make you a SOLDIER pretty soon."
"You think so?" Cloud blushes because he is embarrassed by the childish excitement in his voice.
"Sure, but you gotta be ready for it. Now listen carefully, okay?"
"…"
"Are you listing, Cloud?"
"Yep."
"Then you didn't you say so?"
Blinking in frazzled confusion, he says, "Um… because I was listening!"
Zack chuckles. "Okay, okay. Here's the deal. When you first get injected, you're gonna feel like you're falling apart and the pieces of yourself are scattering everywhere and you're gonna panic. But here's the secret. Let go. Stop worrying about yourself and let go, and you'll feel everything around you like you never have before. But you have to let go first."
Let go. Had he ever really done that before? "But… what if I can't?"
"Listen Cloud, if your hands are full, you can't grab anything else, right?"
"Yeah…"
"Then you gotta let go to really experience anything around you. That's how the psychic link works."
"But what about the things I let go of? The pieces of myself?"
Zack shrugs, expression nonchalant, but he stares at the wall to the side of Cloud's head when he answers. "You lose a few. That's the price of power. It's all a question of how far you'll go. So Cloud, how far will you go?" It's a challenge. And a warning.
Cloud takes the challenge and ignores the warning.
Let go. He does.
And as his mind, back in the present, explodes, the blast cloud separating the debris of the person he once was, he ignores the fear and the panic and the confusion. He lets only one thought remain clenched to his heart. Find Denzel…
He breathes deeply, imagining that he is riding on the exhale of his breath, spreading himself through all of Midgar, searching for what he needs, for the one thing that matters now.
"Please don't leave me," a tiny voice screams into his brain. It's the voice of a child and it's a voice strangled by fear. Denzel. It's Denzel. His boy, his son—
Cloud blinks, light and shapes and color flooding into his awareness from the physical world around him. There's something touching his arm. He looks down at the ovular joints of the fingers pressed against the slight tan of his skin. He stares at it, squinting, trying to understand what the lines of the sharply raised tendons mean.
"Don't leave me. Please!"
He follows the curve of a wrist up the slope of a forearm—the slope of the valley in spring when the white lilies bloom or winter when the snow falls and coats it in soft drifts of cotton— Shoulder. He's arrived at the shoulder.
"I don't want to be alone…"
Next the neck. And now the face. A woman's face. A face he knows somehow. Lips. The lips are moving. They are saying, "Cloud! Cloud! Listen to me!"
"Please don't leave me alone."
"I won't," he responds aloud.
"Cloud!" the lips say again. "You stubborn brute. You have to listen to me. It's Tifa! Focus. You are Cloud Strife. And you have to—"
"Find Denzel," he says, and the words hang suspended in the air before him, coating her face, the wine in her eyes bleeding into them, bleeding into him…
"Why did you go? We should have stayed together! Why did you go back?" The voice is growing more desperate in his mind.
He closes his eyes and sees red. Shades of red and black. Skeletons of buildings reaching up from a pool of rubble and a putrid smell of burning metal and acrid mako.
"Why did you go back? You were supposed to leave. Why didn't you leave Sector Seven like you were supposed to?"
And he feels a dark emptiness forming within him, a black hole that sucks at him, leaving him feeling bruised and worn.
He hears words. He opens his eyes and sees the face again, fading into his vision. He knows this face, this woman. He loves this face, this woman. The lips are moving. The eyes are bleeding. "Cloud? Can you hear me?"
"I'm coming," he answers.
"Cloud?"
"I won't leave. I'm coming."
"Where are you going?"
"Sector Seven. To get Denzel." He turns and the hand tightens on his arm. He looks back.
"Cloud…"
He reaches toward a strand of her hair swept up by the wind and brushes it down against her scalp. He doesn't know why he does it, but as his fingers run lightly down her cheek, her name finally comes to him. "Tifa… I have to go."
With a deep, shaky breath and a solemn nod, she releases his arm.
And he is gone.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
The door to the coffee shop practically flies off its hinges as Tseng slams through it, sprinting toward Tifa and Cloud. She's yelling Cloud's name over and over, begging him to respond. An empty syringe is on the ground next to them, a drop of green glittering on the pavement below the needle. Did he…
And Tseng knows why Tifa is screaming.
He loses sight of her anguished expression behind Cloud's back as he approaches, and Tseng rests a hand on the holster of his gun. The yelling stops and for a moment he wonders if Cloud may have… He pulls the gun from the holster, hiding it in his sleeve, focused on the space below Cloud's left shoulder blade. He doesn't know who he'll find when he reaches Cloud Strife. A first-class SOLDIER? A Sephiroth clone? A simple delivery boy from Midgar?
Tseng scoffs at that last possibility. Cloud has never been anything simple or straight-forward.
"Reno, Rude, be on alert," Tseng yells.
"Got it boss-man."
"Ready."
Cloud turns suddenly and sprints off down the block. For a moment Tseng is torn, but he sees the dazed look in Tifa's eyes as she stands with one fist clenched to her chest and the other hand pressed to her cheek and he yells into the microphone. "Reno, follow Cloud. Rude, keep watch of Headquarters."
"I see him," Reno replies. "Wow, he's fast, yo. He's gotta have rockets in his shoes or something, man."
"No," Tseng says. "He's got mako in his veins. It looks like he just took an injection. Be careful."
Reno laughs once, darkly. "Looks like golden-boy finally snapped."
Tseng skids to a halt in front of Tifa. An empty gaze gives way to wine-red fire as she focuses on him, flicking hair out of her eyes with a quick shake of her head. A blue flower that had been behind her ear falls free but she catches it swiftly before it can drop past her waist, weaving it through her belt loops. "Tseng, were you watching?"
Her voice is jarringly calm. He remembers that she isn't new to tragedy or fighting. He can tell she is readying herself, tying down her emotions to prepare for battle. She raises one hand, pulling the leather glove tighter against her wrist. It screeches as the fingers flex.
"Yes. We've been paying extra attention since Cloud came."
She nods, then bends to tighten the laces on her boots. "He's gone to find Denzel. Cloud thinks he's at the remains of Sector Seven. I'm going after him."
"If Denzel is there, the SOLDIERs probably are too."
"Then you're coming?" She stands again.
"Yes."
"Let's hurry." She's already brushing past him and running down the block.
He follows. "Rude, stay here," he commands into the microphone of his headset and his long legs leap across the sidewalk. "I'm following Tifa to the old Sector Seven. Reno?"
"You ever see those science fiction shows with those floating hover boards that have those turbo jets in 'em? Next time you tell me to chase a mako-high maniac, I want one. This is friggin' ridiculous."
"Where are you?"
"Almost there, but I'm losing him, yo! Wait… yeah… I just lost him."
"Continue to Sector Seven and wait for us there."
"Roger."
Tseng stops speaking to concentrate on where he is going. It's easy to catch up with Tifa, keeping pace beside her as they dodge people on the streets. He takes the lead, using every short cut possible. His pulse is drumming in his ears, sweat stinging his eyes. He turns sharply down a small side street, crashing through rows of laundry hung out to dry on clotheslines that crisscross the space between the buildings. "Are you still with me, Tifa?"
Her voice is punctuated by pants of breath. "Just keep moving. I can keep up."
They're almost there. The buildings are getting shabbier, uninhabited derelicts left over from old Midgar marring the blocks. Sector Seven is on the outskirts of the present-day city, and though it was cleaned up in the restoration projects that followed Sephiroth's defeat, a skeletal structure of the old reactor and upper plate was left behind as a sort of memorial.
Tseng slows, holding a hand up for Tifa to do the same. He pulls out his gun again, raising it to eyelevel, aiming at the shadows that are lengthening with the dusk of oncoming night. "We're close," he says. "Another block." Her breathing quiets behind him as he scans the faces of the buildings, mostly three-story apartments colored with rust. There aren't any people, at least not visibly, but he knows that the kinds of people that live here are not ones that will show themselves either to the light or to outsiders like himself and Tifa. He's sure the residents are watching them, and he purposely points his gun at the gaping black holes of several random windows to scare anyone from approaching.
At the end of the block the street simply ends. Beyond it, the floor turns into the metal slab of the huge upper plate of Sector Seven. Everything below the plate was pulverized by the force of its collapse. This place is a graveyard of unrecoverable victims. From its surface rise the twisted limbs of destroyed buildings that somehow managed to keep their structural cores standing after they fell from heaven to earth.
He wonders if he should feel anything seeing this, knowing he played a part in it. But it's been so long and he's seen this so many times before throughout the years. He feels nothing.
But he does think of the SOLDIERs that might be hiding there, many of which he personally recruited. He does think of the mako shot he took earlier that is no different than the ones they take, save for a few extra ingredients that mark the line between his sanity and their madness. He does think of the eyes of that SOLDIER, bright blue and sincere, as he said, "We are the same." And he thinks of Elena's words. He should have died once, but he didn't. Is it better to fix a broken man?
Shaking his thoughts away, he whispers, "Reno?" into the emptiness.
"Right here, yo." Reno steps out of the shadows along one of the buildings, swinging his own gun around to scan the street as he makes his way to Tseng's side.
"Did you see where Cloud went?"
"No."
It is unnaturally silent. Tseng walks toward the end of the sidewalk, his boots against the pavement the only noise until Reno speaks.
"It's gotten dark, boss."
"Yes."
Tifa clears her throat gently from behind him. "What does that mean?"
He doesn't look back at her. He takes a slow deep breath of the sour-smelling air that he can taste like rotten milk on his tongue. "It means—"
But he never gets to finish, because that's when the SOLDIERs attack.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
A/N: I think this is my favorite chapter so far, just because I've been waiting so long to get into the climax.
And because cliff-hangers are fun.
Next chapter: the battle.
