A/N: This chapter remains largely unchanged. Some different wording here and there. I also added some people fleeing Sector 7, since it didn't make a whole lot of sense that Aeris and Marlene should be alone in escaping the threatened sector. Enjoy!
Tifa's bar was easy enough to find. The broad structure squatted among a smattering of stalls and little shops. The walls of 7th Heaven were a motley of brick and concrete blocks, thicker than those of any structure Aeris passed on her hectic dash through the slum. Still, the chatter of gunfire pierced the inelegant structure, drawing the patrons outside. Aeris found them clustered about the entrance, staring towards the pillar and muttering to one another.
"Hey!" she shouted as she approached. "You all have to get out of here! The plate's coming down! You have to get out of the sector!" She looked at each of them in turn, their blank expressions, their distant eyes. She suddenly remembered that she was still wearing the silk dress she'd had fitted in Sector 6. In the same moment, she became aware that every person standing before her was a drunk man. Aeris was no child; she knew what happened to young women alone in the slums. All the same, she stopped herself from drawing the telescoping baton taped to the inside of her thigh. Men could be dangerous, but these had done nothing to threaten her. "You'll all be crushed!" she insisted, putting as much force into her words as she could. "Get out right now!" They stood fast, solidly blocking the bar's entrance as the seconds rolled by. Aeris' hand strayed down to the slash in her dress. Then a short, squat man with a cap pulled low over his eyes, turned and lurched off. As one, the rest broke and scattered in every direction. "Wait!" she yelled after them. "Tell anyone you meet! Don't leave anyone behind!" She wished she could have gone door-to-door, warning people and evacuating them properly, but there just wasn't time. She mounted the front steps and burst into the bar.
"Is anyone there?" she called. "Hello? I'm here to help!"
"Who are you?" A girl of eight or nine years poked her head out from beneath a table. Her pale face was framed by dirty yellow hair, and her blue eyes were wide and round.
"I'm Aeris, Tifa's friend." Aeris stepped forward and held out her hand. "Are you Marlene? We have to go, sweetie. Right now."
"Daddy says I'm not supposed to leave the bar without him," Marlene protested. "Is someone shooting? Is that why everyone went outside?"
"Yes, and we have to go, too. Come on, we don't have a lot of time."
Marlene sniffled. "But Daddy won't know where I am."
"We'll meet up with him soon, I promise." She prayed it wouldn't be an empty promise.
The girl looked at her for seconds that crawled by like minutes. "Ok," she said at last.
"All right," Aeris sighed. "Follow me." Without looking back, Aeris left the bar and made for Sector 6 as fast as she could without leaving the girl behind. Light, rapid footsteps behind told her that Marlene was following. They passed a man with a screaming toddler in his arms, then a group of old women dragging behind them a rotting palette laden with their possessions. Soon the road was thick with people, all fleeing towards Sector 6.
"Aeris!" She looked towards the cry, but Marlene was lost among the crowd. She tried to push through the press, but it was no good. The tide of refugees was sweeping her inexorably towards the sector wall. Suddenly, small arms threw themselves around her waist and Marlene was with her again. Aeris seized the girl by her wrist and forged ahead. The gunfire from the pillar had slowed, but with each pop Aeris found herself nervously looking up. She longed for the gunfire to stop, but when it did the quiet was worse.
"Where are we going?" Marlene cried breathlessly.
"My house," Aeris called over her shoulder. "Behind the pillar in Sector 5. We're almost out, now. Just a little bit more." In all her life, Aeris had never seen the gates between the sectors stand open. Travel between the sectors was tightly regulated by Shinra, but slum-dwellers had their own paths. Loose structures thrown up against the wall hid gaps in the concrete, and a few even covered secret tunnels. But today, the massive steel gates were open wide to accommodate a river of fleeing souls. In another minute, they were through. Aeris drew Marlene off to one side as the herd of panicking slum-dwellers thundered past. She stopped and doubled over, planting her hands on her knees and gasping for breath.
"That was fun," Marlene exclaimed. Her face was flushed but she grinned widely. "I've never run that fast before. Are we safe now?"
"Yeah, honey," Aeris' lungs burned and she tasted blood in her throat. "We're safe."
"Don't be so sure," said a quiet voice laced with the accent of the Northern Continent. Aeris looked up and saw a man standing nearby. His shining black hair was tied back behind his head to reveal a small round mark in the center of his high forehead. His eyes were ice and he wore a sky-blue SOLDIER uniform.
"Oh, by the Mother," Aeris cursed. "Don't you people ever give up?"
"Not usually. Rude, get the child." Aeris whirled around to see a large bald man emerge from the shadows. She remembered him from the church, and she was suddenly filled with a frenzied terror.
"No!" she screamed. "Please, she's just a girl! She doesn't have anything to do with this!"
"Aeris…" Marlene whimpered, wrapping her arms around her leg. The bald man stepped forward, slow and implacable.
Aeris turned back to the northerner. He was inching closer as well. "Please," she begged. "You can't do this. She doesn't know anything."
"Maybe so," the man said, taking another step. "But we have orders. You fit the description, and she's with you. You both come with us." He was close now, another step and he could reach out and grab her. She crouched and put one arm around Marlene. The other arm slipped up and inside her thigh. Her hand closed around cold metal, but the man suddenly stopped and frowned. "Do I know you?" he asked softly.
A loud groan echoed from Sector 7 and his head whipped around. Smoke was rising from the pillar, and even as they watched the massive structure crumbled.
"Marlene, run!" Aeris hissed. At the same time she stood, tore the baton off her leg and pressed the button on the side. The northerner's head turned towards the quiet snap, but she was already swinging. The baton smashed into his head and she turned towards Rude. She swung again, but the bald man was ready. He caught the baton, but she let go and threw her shoulder into him as Marlene darted into the labyrinth of the slums. He staggered back, and Aeris took off in the opposite direction. She thought she heard the SOLDIER shout something, but it was drowned out but the deafening screech of twisting metal. A breeze played on her face, growing stronger with each step she took. She'd never felt wind in the slums before. A rushing sound filled her ears. She tried to run faster, but her legs felt like lead, and the soles of her feet felt slashed to ribbons. Each breath came harder than the one before. She realized with an odd detachment that she'd been running since Don Corneo's mansion. How long had it been since then? An hour? A day? Something heavy slammed into her back, driving the air out of her. The ground rose to meet her and the world went dark.
She woke on a stiff mattress, staring at a dull gray ceiling. She sat up and immediately regretted it; pain stabbed suddenly through her head. Wincing, she looked around. She was in a small room with four drab metal walls. The only furniture was the creaking bed and a shining silver toilet. The room had only one exit, a solid steel door set into the opposite wall. A camera watched her from one corner of the room, a red light shining steadily on its side. She was in a cell.
Aeris took a deep breath and tried to think. What would Zack do? She guessed he'd try to escape, but she didn't see how that was possible. Just to be sure, she stepped over to the door. The camera whirred faintly as it followed, but she ignored it. The door had no handle, and the lock seemed to be magnetic. She was wearing a blue shirt and matching pair of slacks, nothing that could be used to her advantage. Even the ribbon in her hair was gone, and that realization cut deep as grief. She padded around the cell, discovering the feel of cold metal under bare feet. It wasn't the same as walking through the hard-packed earth of the slums, or on the smooth worn wood of the church floorboards, but she enjoyed it all the same.
A quiet beep, made loud by the silence, pulled her attention back to the camera. The red light was blinking evenly, and when she crossed the room, the camera didn't track her movement. She was still puzzling over the camera when the door hissed open behind her. She turned to see the SOLDIER from Sector 6 carrying a covered tray. Now was her chance.
She sprang forward, hoping to knock him off-balance, but he leaned casually to one side and stuck out a leg. Aeris tripped over his leg and pitched forward through the door. She landed hard on the floor outside the cell. She scrambled to her feet just in time to feel his hand seize the back of her shirt and throw her bodily back through the door. She landed just as hard back inside. The door slid shut. He hadn't even dropped the tray.
"Well," he said amiably. "I suppose I can't blame you for trying. But I am not so easily surprised as Rude. Speaking of which," he leaned against the wall casually, "how is your head? Rude is strong and fast, but he can be…overzealous."
"It's fine," Aeris sneered defiantly. "How's yours?"
The man laughed aloud. "As whole as ever. We SOLDIER members are tougher than we look. I could heal you if you like…" He stepped towards her and Aeris shrank back. "I see," he said sadly. "You do not trust me. I can't blame you for that, either. Still, trust must start somewhere. I am Tseng."
He paused, as though waiting for Aeris to tell him her name. But she wasn't about to give him the satisfaction. He could talk about trust all he liked, he was still an enemy. Again she tried to imagine what Zack would do. She had very little to go on; Zack made a point of keeping his life with her separate from his work. He'd never talked to her about SOLDIER, or fighting, or tactics, and she thought he probably didn't talk about her to Shinra. She tried to think like a SOLDIER anyway and decided that she should take any advantage she could.
With this in mind, she asked, "Why are you here?"
"My commander was…injured during our mission. It has yet to be determined if she will reclaim my unit when she wakes, or if another will take her place. In the meantime, I am on vacation. So I thought I'd come up to the holding level and have a little chat."
Aeris set her jaw against the fear that crept into her stomach as her eyes were drawn to the tray. He was a torturer, then. She should have known by the cold eyes, eyes that had seen more than their share of pain. Stubbornly, she pushed the fear away. It was only pain, and she'd felt pain before. She'd die before she told this man anything.
Tseng set the tray on the bed and removed the cover with a proud flourish. A pair of sandwiches and a tall glass of pale amber liquid sat on the gleaming silver.
"I made them myself," he said proudly. "Cockatrice, lettuce, and tomato. I wasn't sure if you liked mayonnaise, so I left it off. The juice is Banora White, from my own private store." Aeris looked dubiously at the meal. "Ah, trust, of course." Tseng held out the tray. "You pick one, I will eat the other. We will share the juice."
Aeris thought carefully. It could easily be a trap. SOLDIER men were artificially enhanced, and their upgrades left them resistant to most drugs and poisons. He could have poisoned both sandwiches and counted on his own resistance. But why go to all the trouble? He'd already shown that he could toss her around like a rag doll. If he really wanted to drug her, why not walk in with nothing but a syringe and his strength? Besides, she couldn't refuse food forever. Like Tseng said, trust had to start somewhere.
She picked up a sandwich and took a tentative bite. It was good. Tseng took the other and began to eat. With a smile and a nod, he took a big gulp of the juice before offering the glass to Aeris. The drink was sweet and light, with a hint of spice unlike any apple juice she'd tasted before.
"What did you say this was?"
"Banora White, sometimes called dumbapples. One of my first missions as a new recruit was in Banora, and I made sure to stock up while I was there. A good thing, too. The whole village is gone now. According to Shinra, it never even existed in the first place." His tone grew bitter. "The Shinra do love their secrets."
"But you don't," Aeris pointed out. "In fact, you seem to enjoy giving them up. Why are you here, Tseng? Somehow I doubt it was just to chat."
Tseng said nothing. Instead he popped the rest of his sandwich into his mouth, drained the last of the juice and gathered up the tray. "I look forward to speaking with you again tomorrow." He left the cell, and a moment later the red light on the camera shone brightly again.
Over the next few days, Tseng would visit her in her cell with lunch. Aeris never talked about herself, but he seemed to enjoy her company anyway. He spoke of Bone Village, the town where he'd grown up. It was a small town on the Northern Continent, right on the edge of the Ancient Forest.
"The town supports itself by catering to archaeologists," he told her. "Before humans, the Cetra lived in the North, and their structures and tools remain there for those who know how to look. Some try to brave the Ancient Forest, but all of them come out with nothing. Many of them insist they never turned around, but rather walked straight ahead, marking the trees as they went, only to arrive where they had begun. In the North we remember things southerners have forgotten, but even we cannot cross the forest. The trees guard their secrets well."
On the fourth day, Tseng had a gift for her. When he took the lid of his tray, a battered pendant sat beside the food, adorned with a plain white marble.
"I found it in the evidence locker," he explained. "It didn't belong there. It belongs with you. In the North we remember."
"Tseng," she sighed, lifting the familiar pendant over her head, and settling it into its accustomed place. "You've been a friend to me in here, and my mother always told me never to pull a gift chocobo's feathers, but… You're SOLDIER, and I'm a prisoner of the Shinra. Why are you helping me?"
For a long time, Tseng was silent. When at last he spoke, his voice was so quiet she had to strain to listen. "When I was very young, a boy of four, a woman came out of the Ancient Forest. My father's house stands first by the path, and so she came in. I had never seen her before, and I have not seen her since, but I will never forget her. Her voice sang like the rain, or like the wind in the trees." Aeris' heart dropped into her stomach. Take him home, the woman had said. When the time comes, bring him home. "She didn't stay long. She was running from something, or someone, and wanted money for passage across the Sapphire Sea. It was more than my father could afford, but he gave it to her anyway. In the North we remember." He looked up at her suddenly, and she almost flinched away. His normally cold eyes burned with zeal. "She had a daughter," he said simply. "A baby girl with eyes of golden hazel, like sunlight filtering through the forest." Aeris' heart pounded in her chest. "I'm helping you because in the North, we remember."
They sat there in silence. He couldn't be saying what she thought he was. There had to be some mistake, she was just a flower girl from the slums. A loud beep erupted suddenly from Tseng's waist. He snatched a cell phone from his waist and looked at it, frowning.
"What is it?" Aeris asked.
"Stay here," he replied. She was about to point out that she didn't really have a choice, but he seemed to realize what he'd said. "No matter what," he said fiercely. "Stay. Here." And then he was gone, leaving Aeris alone in a cloud of confusion.