Epilogue Three

Elena

Elena sat at the table, a completely calm expression on her face, blanked of all emotions. She wouldn't let her feelings show. She wouldn't. Not after all this. She had to keep it all buried, had to hide it from the world, not let anyone know what was going on in her head.

"Elena?" Reno asked, staring at her from the other side of the table. "You good?"

"Yeah," she said.

"You better be," he said, "because I'm sportin' three jacks!"

The Turk slapped his hand of cards down on the table, so much so that the chips in the pot clattered about and fell from their neat little stacks. Yuffie groaned, and Reeve made a disgusted noise. Both laid down their hands to reveal only a pair of aces from the Wutaian princess and two pair from the newly restored Shinra executive.

Elena smirked, and slowly spread her hand out in front of her. Four Queens revealed, she gave a squawk of victory and pulled all the chips in the pot towards her.

"Well, fuck," Reno said. "You know, I don't get to kill Trask. I don't get to kill Hojo. I find out there was a godamn war going on that I didn't get to kill anyone in while I was trying to get you," he pointed an accusing finger at Reeve, "back into your body, which I didn't even do, and to top it all off, the godamn rookie is cleaning house at my poker table. Where's the damn justice?"

"Oh please," Yuffie said. "You're happy and you know it. Any word from the taxidermist?"

"Yeah. Apparently he's gonna charge me extra for preserving a human head. I tried to explain to him that Trask was an evil son of a snake, but he wouldn't take that. Oh well. I'm still putting his damn head on my wall. But that's not the damn point. I'm offended that Elena beat me all night long at poker!"

"She's got one hell of a poker face," Reeve said.

"More like a poker gut," Reno said. "Have you seen how much food she's been taking into her room recently?"

"Let's just say I'm good at hiding what I'm thinking and feeling," Elena said, ignoring Reno's comment and gathering up her chips. She smiled wistfully. "I'm done for the night. I think I'll go to bed now."

"Oh come on!" Reno said, "Me and Yuffs were going to head to the movies, figured you could join us."

"Thanks," Elena said, "but I wouldn't want to get in the way of your date."

The redhead made a gagging noise at the word 'date', and Yuffie softly blushed, but Elena waved a little, exiting the roomwith a small bag of chips in tow.

"I'll see you to your room," Reeve offered as he joined her.

Elena's heart jumped for just a moment, but she let it settle, and tried not to think about it. The two walked in silence down the hall outside of the Turk offices towards the barracks where her, Reno and Yuffie were currently staying. They normally operated out of an apartment complex in Midgar, but with that city destroyed…

"How're you holding up?" Reeve asked.

She sighed. She knew the question would come. 'How do you feel after you had to kill Tseng?' Everyone knew how she felt about him. Mostly because Reno didn't know when to keep his mouth shut. But just like with the poker table, she didn't let how she felt or what she was thinking show, even as the memories slipped through her.

Tseng had fallen, and she'd been partly responsible. For one moment of clarity, he'd become who he was for just one second. And in that second, he'd let go and tumbled to his doom, thereby saving the blonde Turk from her own death.

As Elena climbed down the rock face, still bloodied from her fight, looking for the body, she mused at the selfishness of her quest. Up above, Reno could be fighting Trask and dying for all she knew, but for the moment, Elena didn't care. Reno wasn't important, Trask wasn't important, Hojo wasn't important. None of it was. Just Tseng.

An explosion racked the air from what she would later learn was the Highwind exploding. She stumbled, fell down the rocky face, and barely managed to recover. And as she did, there, on the beach below, she saw him…

"I'm okay," she lied.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Of course I'm sure!" she growled, a little more harshly than she intended. Reeve flinched, but nodded.

The two continued on in silence until they finally stopped at her door, and Reeve said, "I guess this is your stop."

"It is. Good night, Reeve."

"Good night, Elena," he said. He grabbed her hand, lifted it, and kissed her on a knuckle. It took all that was in her not to jerk away. Not in revulsion, but more out of fear of hurting Reeve in the long run. But he didn't know. He could never know. No one could.

He turned away, and she pulled her keys from her pocket, slid them into the lock, and opened the door. As soon as it opened, she hurriedly jumped inside, shut the door behind her, and slapped the lock back into place, followed by the deadbolt, and lastly the chain. She'd just had the chain and deadbolt installed, and not out of fear of thieves, but out of fear of her friends. Not that those would stop them in they really wanted into her quarters, but it would deter them.

She moved about her quarters, turning on lights as she did, and was thankful that there were no windows so no one would be able to see in. She moved to her bed, and then pulled out a med pack she'd stolen from the infirmary earlier that day. She would have ordered one, but it would have looked suspicious. Why would she need one? She'd only sustained minimal injuries.

She moved around the pile of suits and shoes that had once been inside of her walk-in closet. She'd needed the room for something more important. Opening up the door to the closet, she entered, and sighed.

He still had the same dead expression in his eyes, but his wounds were healing. Whatever Hojo had done to him made him able to regenerate unbelievably fast. She'd had to tie him down with chains, but he never made any attempt to escape or resist. Merely sat there and watched her as she tended his wounds and fed him.

"Oh Tseng," she said. "What am I going to do?"