Running to try and catch up with him, Elena, Reno, and Rude met Tseng in the hall, on the way back to his cabin. "Tseng," called out Rude, and he stopped, turned on his heel, and looked at them.

"Hey," he said. "What've you all been up to?"

Elena just stared at him. After a moment, she asked, "What have we been up to?" She licked her lips contemplatively, glancing around at her comrades before continuing. "Rude told us you were with Scarlet. That's she's on the ship."

Tseng nodded, indifferent. "Sure is. Fancy meeting her here, yeah? After all these years…it's a small planet after all." He unlocked the door, and opened it, holding it for the rest of them to enter, which they did, slowly, almost grudgingly, until they were all lined up against the wall across from Tseng's bed. Tseng himself slumped on to the bed, folding his arms behind his head and gazing at the ceiling.

Reno shook his head. "We gotta get off of this ship," he muttered. "Not such great disguises if they're finding us already." Elena glanced at him in surprise, and Reno shrugged. "You know, you've got a point, about the stealth, and how we're trying to stay undercover. Gotta keep low, you know?" He looked to Tseng for confirmation.

Tseng shook his head. "She's one of us," he insisted. "A drifter, like we were. What's the worst than can happen? Scarlet never sent the thugs; she's not the one burning the cities to the ground." He paused, looked at their unconvinced faces, and rolled his eyes. "You're gonna stand there and tell me that Shinra's responsible for everything that's happened lately, for all of the attacks and the arson? I thought you all knew your own Company."

"I'm not trying to tell you that she's the one after us," Elena tried again, "I'm trying to say that just because she isn't an immediate threat doesn't mean she's our ally. Every man for itself, Tseng, you've said it to us time after time."

"Yeah?" Tseng snorted. "A lot of good we're doing following that adage. Look at us, would you? We traveled the planet to find each other, why?" He shook his head. "Because we were lonely. Because we couldn't deal with solitude, with sitting in silence and listening to our own thoughts anymore." He glowered at the floor, biting his lip in a self-revulsion that was visible to everyone in the room. "On our own, we'd each have struck out for ourselves, and we'd each have been all right. We'd never have had to spend any time taking care of the others. It's what we've learned all along, just like Elena said."

There was silence in the room for a few moments, and then Elena stepped towards Tseng, who turned his face away from her angrily. She couldn't tell if he was furious with her, or with himself, for breaking their solitude, or for desiring to keep it. Carefully, she raised on hand in front of her, as if to ward off his protests before they began.

"And yet, we got us this far." She waited, and then added," us, not each one of us," before he could interrupt her. "We made a decision, and now we have to stick by it. And that means we have to look out for the four of us."

"And that means," added Tseng, his face still to the ground, "That we have to look out for all of us, everyone in the Company who might be under fire." It was a strange comment for him to make, considering the way he'd so vehemently fought against their togetherness in the first place, and the way he'd so violently defended solitude only moments before. Ignoring this discrepancy, Elena nodded.

"Then all of us it is, right?" She turned to the others, and Rude looked away from her. Reno stared between her and Tseng, then nodded slowly, with a little noise of affirmation in his throat. Elena took Rude's silence as a lack of interest in the decision, or a lack of desire to comment, and, turning back to Tseng, she shrugged, and repeated, "Then all of us it is."

Tseng rose abruptly from the bed, and stalked across the room to the door. "Great," he muttered. "Fantastic." Then, with a final curt nod at his assembled companions, he opened the door with a creak and left the room, apparently to go lose himself in those solitary thoughts that he'd alluded to them all being afraid of. Elena watched him go with a little frustrated exhalation, and Reno stepped to her side.

"Gallant speech," he murmured, with a wink. "All for one and one for all, yeah?" Elena turned around to glare at him, but found him smiling at her with no malice, and no mockery in his face. He looped one arm through hers, and reached out for Rude with the other, walking them down the wooden cabin floor towards the door. "Cheer up, guys," he insisted, "We're almost to the home stretch. And you and Tseng both have a point – who wants to be lonely? Then there's no one to congratulate you when you win!"

"Or console you when you lose," Elena muttered, but Reno wasn't having it. He wagged a finger at her, taking her arm and arm all the way to the door, and then dropping her arms to pull it open for her.

"Go get some sleep," He suggested, ignoring the disgruntled face Elena made at him. "You didn't get any last night, and trust me, if you keep me awake for one more night like you did, I'm going to getugly."

"You can get uglier?" Elena asked, but there was little malice in the jibe. With resignation, she nodded, and slipped out the door to head back to her own cabin, with Rude following shortly behind. They left Reno alone to sit on Tseng's bed and stare at the wall across the way. When he felt it was clear, that Elena and Rude had long gone to their own room, he frowned, and muttered to himself unintelligibly as he tried to think through all of the ramifications of what had just taken place.

Reno knew perfectly well that in Tseng's absence, Elena and Rude had looked up to him as the leader. When Tseng had returned, and everything had returned to normal, he'd been relieved to resume his place as the jokester and laid-back, yet battle-ready powerhouse. Thinking of himself in those terms made him smile – Reno was far from loathe to compliment himself. But he saw everything Elena did, and he knew that she had a point. He thought to himself about exactly how close Scarlet and Tseng had been at the Company, and allowed himself to briefly entertain the notion that this could all be some planned conspiracy, for good or ill, on both their parts.

But he knew Tseng too well, despite the fact that the older man hated to think that anyone really knew him. Reno had a knack for determining character, and though it had taken him years, he liked to think he understood the nuances of what enervated his boss. Tseng was a passionate person, who hated being wrong, and who wanted to prove something. God only knew what it was he wanted to prove, though, and Reno desperately wanted to give him the chance to relax.

As he pondered, Reno's foot came in contact with a metal disk on the floor, and he glanced down to see something round, metallic, and flashing lying right next to the edge of the bed. Picking it up cautiously, Reno examined it.

"Huh," he muttered to himself, "must have fallen out of one of the cases." Rising, he slipped it back in to the nearest travel bag, Rude's, and then lay himself out on Tseng's bed to close his eyes for a little while.

Note: I have proofread these to the best of my ability. Unfortunately, I have no one at the moment who is willing to proofread my stuff for me, and my visual issues cause there to be the occasional grievous grammatical error. Please, if you see one, let me know where it is and I'll correct it, it'd be a great help. :)

Memslle