Fully awake for the first time in weeks, Tseng lay on his mattress and watched the steel ceiling change colors in the coming day. He'd finally gotten a straight story out of Reno, Rude, and Elena after about an hour or so- and been reminded why he asked them to write individual reports, ye gods they liked to contradict each other- and was taking a few minutes after waking to let it all sink in. Sephiroth was dead. Meteor had fallen, and with it the Shinra building. The President was dead.

Something acidic and sore uncurled in his stomach, just beneath the sixty-eight stitches holding his belly together. There would be a similar wound from the ritual disembowelment he would have been required to perform had Shinra been a Wutain company. It wasn't a punishment, it was a gift to Wutain bodyguards because, as the saying went, a bodyguard without a body to guard was only guarding his own at the expense of another. They loved their nonsensical, rhythmic mantras in Wutai, and Tseng knew them all. This one was a perfect bullseye. For a bodyguard in Wutai, outliving your charge was a huge dishonor.

He hadn't been back home in years, but Tseng was Wutain from his callused heels (Wutain children went barefoot until age ten) to his third-eye tattoo (every mother inked their children to protect them from evil spirits), and Leviathan shun his soul if he denied his country when it asked for his life.

Tseng lay on the deck of his enemy's airship and thought about the past, the future, and wherever he was now.

Someone knocked briskly on the door, poked her head in, and entered timidly. Elena smiled apologetically, torso in a perpetual half-bow until she sat next to his mattress.

"Red XIII would like to look at your- wound, sir," she said quietly.

Speaking was too much work, so he nodded cursorily. Apparently Hojo's ex-specimen was acting as medic for AVALANCHE. Apparently Aeris had been killed shortly after escaping the Temple of the Ancients. Tseng cracked a few knuckles, caught himself, and stopped. He saw Elena glance at him before she opened the door to admit the red lion.

"Awake, I see," he growled at Tseng. Tseng nodded, a little uncomfortably. Over the last few weeks he'd come out of a drugged stupor countless midnights to find the beast pressed close against his side, reminding him painfully of his childhood dogs in shape and texture. A strange, emotional place, the wasteland between conciousness and coma.

"How is your stomach today?"

"Fine," Tseng rasped, pulling the sheet down to his waist to show the jagged wound centered in purple and red bruising that marred his abdomen. Behind Red XIII, Elena winced, letting a puff of air hiss out from behind her teeth. Tseng caught her eye, held it as Red XIII sniffed, prodded, and probed the wound and the skin around it for signs of infection. To her it probably looked painful and graphic, but, in truth, it was a lot less raw than it had been. Three weeks ago, Barret and Vincent had had to hold him down when Tifa put the stitches in. He had years of wounds in his memory, but a gut stab was the most painful by far.

The prodding stopped, and Tseng relaxed minutely.

"Coming along nicely," Red XIII said, giving the wound a final sniff. "You'll have quite a scar, but we can probably take the stitches out before the end of the week."

Tseng craned his neck to look down at his stomach, saw the shiny scar tissue forming around the edges of the thick black thread. Dark reddish-purple; this wouldn't be a nice clean white scar.

"Thank you," he heard Elena say to Red XIII's departing haunches.

"Thank you," he whispered, trying not to move his stomach at all.

The door shut behind the flaming tail and he and Elena were alone. She returned to kneel by his pillow.

"Do you need anything, sir?"

"No, thank you, I'm fine."

She smiled slightly, reached into a pocket. "I brought you a potion."

He smiled back, chagrined. Any Turk would know that when one of their own said 'I'm fine, just let me sleep' they really meant 'I'm in horrific pain, please cast Sleep on me and help me escape this godforsaken wasteland that my body has become.'

"Thank you," Tseng broke the capsule, sprinkled the potion over his stomach. With a wound this severe, a potion wouldn't do any significant repair, but it did loosen the muscles and numb the nerves.

"You're welcome, sir."

That little worm of despair uncurled again in his stomach. "Elena-"

"Hmm?" Pulling her uninjured knee to her chest, Elena pivoted to sit parallel to the mattress, wounded leg lying out beside him.

Tseng wet his lips. "You don't need to call me 'sir' anymore, Elena. Shinra is gone. I have no real rank."

"Yes si- Tseng. Okay, Tseng."

Tseng relaxed against the pillow. "You tore something in your knee, correct?"

Elena's eyes flickered to the rough pipe-and-tape splint she wore, then back to him. "Yes si- Yes."

"Reno's concussed. Rude broke fingers."

"Could've been a lot worse."

Anger needled through Tseng's skull. "The President is dead."

"Are you sure?" Elena's brow furrowed. "He could have escaped- Maybe he wasn't even in the building when-"

"The President is dead, Elena!" His exclamation echoed off the walls, sent a pulse of pain through Tseng's head. He clapped a hand over his stitches, feeling for fresh blood or torn thread. Nothing. When he opened his eyes, Elena's were wide, her mouth open like she wanted to call for help.

"Listen," he rasped, mostly to keep her attention. The last thing he needed was all of AVALANCHE running in to find Elena screaming over his half-naked body and sixty-eight perfect stitches. "the President had a watch identical to the watches we're given when we become Turks. Its communicator function was linked to mine. He could signal me if he needed me… and he hasn't." Tseng bit off an extremely rude 'What does that suggest to you?' It wasn't her fault the President was dead.

The blonde woman's face fell. "I see. So… what now?"

Tseng closed his eyes, reached a hand up to shove the hair off his face. "Elena, when my stitches are out, your knee is healed, and Reno stops seeing twice as many fingers as we hold up, then we can talk about what now, okay?"

Elena's face fell. "Okay si- Tseng."

Tseng looked up at the steel ceiling, took a slow breath. He liked Elena, as a coworker, as a companion, as- something. He'd asked her out to dinner already, had wanted to start something with her before the world went to hell. He still wanted to. She was smart, kind, a great shot… Sometimes, though, her hell-or-high-water optimism, not to mention her naivete about some things any other Turk would intuit instantly, drove him absolutely insane. Sometimes he forgot, and spoke down to her. This conversation was a prime example. Of course, now her feelings were hurt, and Tseng had found hurting Elena's feelings was a prescription for a guilty conscience.

"Why were you cracking your knuckles earlier?"

The question startled him and he jumped, or at least lurched generally upwards. "I beg your pardon?"

Elena was staring directly into his face for the first time all morning. "Why were you cracking your knuckles earlier, Tseng?"

Apparently he had heard her correctly. "I- They were stiff."

"I've seen you crack them before. When you're remembering something. Usually something sad."

She was right, Tseng realized. He'd never noticed that particular habit before. He'd have to take care of that- Turks weren't supposed to have habits. Not that he was, technically, a Turk anymore. Shit.

"Sir?"

He shrugged. "I suppose so. Yes."

"What were you thinking of, s-Tseng?"

The ceiling was mottled gray, striped in silver and white.

"Tseng?"

Tseng cleared his throat. Aeris was dead.

"Aeris- I'd known her since we were both young. We were friends. I- I'll miss her."

"You two were-"

"We dated for a few months, when we were teenagers. But… we were too different. She was raised to serve the Planet."

"You were raised to serve your people," Elena pointed out when it was clear he wasn't going to go on. "Nothing wrong with that."

Tseng nodded. "I know."

"But now you wonder," Elena guessed. "if it could have ended differently."

Tseng nodded again, beginning to feel like a puppet. "You're a good guesser," he said, for want of anything intelligent.

Elena grinned, and it seemed to cast a glow comparable to the dawn sky. "I have a knack for empathy, I guess. I can read people."

Tseng's eyelids were growing heavy, despite the morning sun lighting the ceiling. "That's what-" he yawned hugely. "-Excuse me. That's what your personnel file said. That you relate to people."

The smile grew a little more chagrined. "Really? Bet they loved reading that."

"It wasn't that bad. The current captain mentioned something about feminine wiles, I think… There hadn't been a female Turk since I had joined. We decided we could use you in information-gathering missions…" another yawn. "Excuse me."

Elena rolled her eyes. "And by 'information-gathering missions' you mean snuggling up to politicians at black-tie dinners, flattering, giggling, and sleeping my way to the top. Yeah, that's what I joined the military for."

"Actually, the file mentioned that. It commended you for notoriously denying the more persistent of your… suitors."

"Oh yeah?" Elena's gaze dropped to the floor, a rueful smile shadowing her mouth. "Sometimes I wonder if they pick the most deprived SOLDIERs to instruct Turk basic training… 'Elena the Iceburg', they called me."

Tseng couldn't think of a name less appropriate, but didn't say anything. Sleep danced around the edge of his eyes, and he yawned again. "Excuse me."

Elena laughed, began pulling herself to her feet. "Okay, you've excused yourself three times, sir, and still not gone to sleep. Excuse me, but I'm going to let you get some rest."

Tseng shrugged, watched her go to one knee, prop herself up on her crutch, and use it to lever herself to her feet. Despite the slow awkwardness of her motions, there was something oddly graceful in them, rhythmic. Tseng thought of cranes, of otters climbing ashore. He slipped into memories of misty Wutai mornings on the coast, in the small, haphazard house of his childhood. Cranes would wade in the reeds, dipping down, then up, watching, always watching for something far in the noncommittal mist. What are you looking for? he wanted to ask Elena, but by then he was asleep.

He woke to an unfamiliar metallic sound that sent him lunging for his attacker, one hand groping under his pillow for his gun-

Spasms of red and yellow pain killed any hope of adequate defense, dropped him prone on the deck, body arching automatically away from the cold steel against his stitches.

"Gods, Tseng, please, relax-"

Small, sturdy hands grasped his shoulders, pulled him back over onto the mattress. He stared through the bars of red and black pain on his vision at the chocolatey brown head bent over him.

"Tseng. Look at me. You okay?"

He could feel his heartbeat in every stitch on his stomach. He nodded. For a moment there was a neat needlepoint laser picking its way down the wound, then Tifa sat back on her heels, withdrew her finger from under the thread.

"You didn't tear any stitches, and a good thing, too." She smiled to soften the tease. "I spent long enough putting them in."

Tseng dredged up a half-smile.

"Who'd you think I was, Jenova come to harvest your organs?"

"Reflex."

"Oh. I brought you dinner."

He checked his watch, which glowed 2045 almost smugly. So late already… "Was I asleep?"

"Yeah. Don't look so surprised. Here- Let me help you." A hand under his shoulder and an arm to balance on, and Tifa helped him sit slowly upright. Tseng exhaled between his teeth, concentrating on how hungry he was. Tifa handed him the chopsticks and he took a careful clump of something yellow and brown that looked like it had once been rice-based.

"You have a long recovery coming, Tseng. Don't be ashamed to ask for help, trust me, you'll recover faster if you just take it easy."

It would probably be rude to smell it… Tseng took a tentative bite. Swallowed. "Wow," he managed a moment later. "Wow. Who made this?"

"Reno and Elena tried to… but I caught them. Kinda took over."

"It's excellent." There were peppers in it, he realized belatedly, and coughed. It hurt a lot, but the spice/butter/rice taste was more than enough to make up for it. "Spicy."

"Yeah, I figured it would be boring without- Oh. Tseng, uh, don't freak out or anything, but you've slipped a stitch."

He glanced down and yes, indeed, there was a thin trail of blood seeping out from between two abdominal muscles. Shit.

"Here, lie back down and I'll fix it." Rising, Tifa retrieved a first-aid kit from a tack trunk which, he assumed, had once held chocobo saddles. Tseng leaned back on his elbows, wincing as freshly-torn skin stretched. Tifa knelt beside him, a threaded needle in one hand.

"Looks like it's actually a couple… Want a local?"

"No, thank you."

"If you say so, you're welcome."

Tseng stared at the ceiling and doubled numbers in his head as the needle played sadistic connect-the-dots with his abdomen.

Tifa had just said something.

"I'm sorry?"

"I said, you're gonna have one hell of a scar."

He glanced down, then up at her furrowed brow. As though she felt his gaze, she looked up from tying the stitches off, smiled self-consciously. "But I guess it wouldn't be a first, then, would it? Your line of work and all."

He shook his head. "The first time I was injured this badly, my CO told me to think of scars as just proof I lived through it."

Tifa shrugged, cut the thread neatly. She wanted to say something, he could tell, but had no idea what.

"Turks must expect scars," she finally mumbled.

"To some extent, yes." To tell the truth, he'd never really thought about it. "Better than the alternative."

"What?" she laughed, and to Tseng's well-tuned ears it sounded bitter. "Not being wounded at all?"

"A scar in the line of duty is better than health and dishonor." He picked up his chopsticks again, found his appetite had waned. "I didn't expect this one, if that's what you meant."

"One from Sephiroth, I meant." Standing, Tifa stowed the first aid kit back in its place.

"It's almost amusing," he thought aloud. "that in all the time he was missing, we just assumed he was dead. That death was the only thing that could sever his loyalty to Shinra. Now I wonder if he was ever loyal at all, or if he was just using the company, playing all of us for fools…"

His voice drifted off to blend with the airship hum.

"I have a Sephiroth scar," Tifa said.

"I bet you do." He chuckled wanly. "You killed him, after all."

"No. I mean, yes, but not from then. An… unexpected scar."

He raised an eyebrow, and before he could ask she'd pulled the low collar of her shirt down an inch to reveal a shiny, dark-red seam starting above one breast and sliding down between them.

"How?" Tseng asked, trying not to choke on rice and proud of the approximate steadiness of his voice.

"The Nibelheim mako reactor. The day- the day he disappeared, I guess."

He turned that over in his mind. "You were in the reactor with him?"

Tifa let go of her collar, covering the scar again although her thumb lingered to trace its path under the fabric. "I got this," she said. "the day he killed my father. Burned my town. Ended my childhood."

Reaching down, Tseng covered his wound with one hand, brought it away red. "I got this the day he tried to kill me. Tried to kill my charge. Ended my life as an honorable man."

Tifa's eyes locked with his, dark and dark, and understanding flowed like water between them. Here, too, was a person whose life had been sacrificed by fortune's cold hand, who had had to bid farewell to every familiar sight and scent to live the life of the one left behind. Tifa, if no one else, understood how heavy were the memories you blamed yourself for, the memories no one else had.

He was shaken out of thought by Tifa's small, callused hand coming to rest on his own large, scarred one. He met her gaze again and it was full of understanding.

"This is the hardest part," she said quietly. "Remembering and deciding what you're going to do next."

I know what I'm going to do next, he wanted to say. I'm going to go home to Wutai and die with whatever honor I can salvage.

"It might seem like it now, but your life isn't over. There's plenty of need for a bodyguard in the world, from Costa Del Sol to the Gold Saucer. All you can do now is keep on going."

She didn't understand. Of course not- Tseng scolded himself for being disappointed. He cleared his throat, steepled his fingers over his tray.

"The most honor I can do the President," he said quietly. "is to end my li-"

The look of incredulity on Tifa's face was lit from below in electric blue. Tseng felt an odd vibration against his wrist, glanced down. His watch communicator was going off, flashing Rufus Shinra's personal color.