Chapter Four; The way we were then

Doctors Amanda Lorraine, Enoch Helena and Nathaniel Divine sat in a rough triangle around a circular table in the break room. Cold, damp air curled from steel grates in the rough walls, twisting invisible fingers to liquid visibilitythrough the steam rising from three mismatched mugs.Lorraine stared into her black coffee and sighed, the swell of her cheek reflected to impossible smoothness in the rippled stuff. Helena clicked the plastic spoon he was using to stir his tea down on the table and spoke;

'I'd never seen him on the rounds before. I didn't know he and Rude worked together.'

Divine shrugged his slender shoulders and took a gulp of whatever it was he was drinking, given his reputation, it was likely to be able to burn a sizeable hole in the tabletop. His elbows rested together on the scuffed plastic coating of the table, unnaturally white coat sleeves folded and pooled around the joints of his bent arms, his overly-long fingers curled around the grey-green mug to lift it to his aquiline face, giving him the air of an unusually languid young child drinking from a cup too big for them.

'Think he was new?' Lorraine warmed her hands on the scratched white mug and stole a glance at the expressionless faces of her colleagues. For the first time since he had given curt orders in the operating theatre, Divine spoke in a measured tone;

'Probably. Hard to tell, really, with people like them.'

Helena rested his stubbled chin in his hand, brown eyes carefully avoiding the blank tired stares of his compatriots as he spoke, darkly flicking from the middle-distance to Divine's face that twisted into a not unpleasant sneer, under half-closed lids.

' You don't think they're…you know…that the rumours are true, do you?' Divine grimaced;

'With the number of enemies Shinra has, and the Turks being such a closely-knit group, do you not think that some malicious rumours would have sprung up?'

Helena shrugged dismissively, apparently satisfied.

'Suppose it's none of our business, really.' He paused and searched for a new subject.'He seemed young, anyway. If he wasn't a new recruit, then they're taking 'em on way too soon.' He glanced at Divine, who waved his hand uncertainly;

'Looks are deceiving. He wouldn't have been breaking any child labor laws. Still," Divine's shoulders startled shortly with a short laugh'he's just young enough to die, I suppose.'

Lorraine remained still, not sure in her half-dazed torpor what Divine had meant to prove by this last. Her eyes were darkened by the shade of her eyelids as they stared down into the darker pool of her drink. She ran her tongue under the sharp tips of her front teeth to taste the bitter after-taste of the stuff before she spoke.

'I suppose we shouldn't worry. It's lucky we still have blood donors in this city, otherwise we'd have been in trouble.' The doctors nodded contemplatively.

Rude leant against the white-plastered wall of the tiny single room and looked. He could hardly take his eyes off the still form in the bed. It was plastered with so much white gauze that very little of its skin could be seen. Thegreyish sheets, coarse fibres visible even in the gloom cast by the shuttered windows, were turned down with iron rigidity to reveal slivers of ice-white, translucent skin between the whiter strips of bandages, soft shadows under protruding ribs shifting and becoming sharper with shallow breaths. Arms with little of the saving grace of muscle dissapeared below the rough sheets, a long blue vein stood out from the inside ofone stringy limb, a motorway map-line connecting his hand and his heart. His passive face overshadowed by a long bandage covering his forehead, a fitting substitute for goggles, given the circumstances, Rude thought, and wrapped around his skull.

Rude pulled a plastic chair from its resting-place beside the bank of machienery, grimacing as it screeched against the smooth linoleum floor. His shoes had left slight rippled marks on the floor, he noticed,sitting as close as her dared to the bed, watching the monitor count out the meagre shift and pitch of blood that let his friend live, in stark greenish jolts. He rested his elbows on his knees. He had nothing to do until Tseng arrived. He knew thathe should have been doing something, anything, reporting back to Shinra, perhaps. Or maybe just going on a pub crawl. Something to take his mind of things. Things shouldn't really have been on his mind, anyway; he was only here because he felt the unfamilliar empty burn of guilt nagging at him. If Tseng had deigned to replace Reno just for this one mission, he wouldn't have to be here. Tseng was too elevated to run the rounds with the likes of him though, he seemed to be stuck with picking up Reno's pieces for the forseeable future. And Reno broke so very easily.

Reno was marble, Tseng was steel. Reno cracked, Reno got angry, Reno failed. Tseng never fractured, Tseng never let on what he felt or thought, if anything, Tseng was unbreakable. Reno, with his flashes of childish joy and nights of drinking and rages as unpredictable as summer lightning. Tseng, with his contemptuous glares and his too-thin praise and his addiction to duty. Marble could never beat steel. Not really. It would be a perfunctory victory, one that would crack marble more than it dented steel.

He dragged his thoughts back to Tseng. Perhaps it had been that fight…no, it had been earlier than that, maybe a day or so after they had joined. He hardly knew Reno, but he was wary of him, in his own silent way, he recognised that there was something unnacountably off about him, something that made him almost beleive the swarm of rumours that followed the boy's every movement. He was ashamed to say that he had looked down on him; despite the relatively amiable nature of their first encounters, he certainly would have laughed if he was told that skinny little sarcasm machine would be leading him into battle in just a few short months. If he thought about it, he really, truly hadn't liked him. He was too loud, too brash, too forward. And too foolish.

Tseng, Tseng. He had to clear his thoughts before he got here. Yes, just afterthe kid hadjoined, Tseng had tested the newest wave of recruitsfor no apparant reason. They were reluctant, to say the least; Tseng had achieved a small cult following, even then, even when he was still looked down on by the various executives of Shinra, the company's nefarious exploits were inevitably linked back to Verd, and to a lesser extent Tseng, in the public eye. the sheer weight of rumours that surrounded him were far more imposing than he himself. One by one, they had been called up, and one by one they had found themselves with the rough matting of the platform against their backs. He remembered wondering why this display of empty movement required his presence; the indea of the exercise was alien to him, pointless to publically beat down every single initiate in turn. Perhaps it had some psychological value. He had remained silent as he returned to his position beside the slouching redhead, careful to make his face blank.

Rude rested his chin in his hand, briefly pulled out of his reverie. He remembered the next few minutes still, and he was still ashamed of the twinge of jealousy that he had felt at the time.

Reno had been called up, the langour in his eyes that had seemed aggravatingly affected to Rude giving way to an effervescent resolution when Tseng spoke. He'd strode on to the platform raised in the centre of the airy room, and, grinning like a madman below eyes crooked with viciously childish mirth, stood in a loose-limbed, straight-backed stance that Rude had never seen before. It had made Tseng angry. Rude, for all his impervious demeanour, knew hidden emotions when he…didn't see them…for all of Tseng's black hole being, he could see that this child didn't know what was about to happen to him. He'd frowned. Tseng had bowed curtly. Reno's smile had faded to a merely snake-like appearance. It had seemed to go on for hours, Tseng impassively reaching out in offence, Reno evading him with what Rude had noticed was mounting effort and anger. Marble never attacked; steel never gave him a chance. Finally Reno's frustration had seemed to overcome his rational thoughts, and he'd struck out with a wild jab of the leg. Tseng ihad mmediately caught his foot mid-air and spun him around, crushing him to the matted floor with a cold, expressionless flick of the wrist. Reno had lain there for a time, the breath knocked out of him. Rude had watched, his eyes flicking nervously between the two masks; one a calm teacher's, the other barely concealing a vicious pain and anger. Surely, the thought had briefly drifed across his mind, the boy hadn't expected to win. He'd considered the arrogance of this, and his sense of dislike had deepened then and there. Tseng had offered him a hand. Reno'dflipped himself to his feet. Tseng had spoken a few inaudible words as the other moved past him. The redhead hadstopped, turned his head a fraction, and spat a word back, eyebrows furrowed. Tseng had smiled.

Rude's head twitched to one side, damp impression made by his bare palm stinging cold in the chilled air. No, that wasn't the time. It had been the night after that. He hadn't even tried to go back to his flat, feeling strangely awake even at the unholy hour that had brought the flush of morning behind half-hidden stars to the sky as he had crept down to the gym, reasoning that if he couldn't sleep, he might as well make the most of his consciousness. He had been about to push the double doors open when what he liked to think of as incipient instinct for not getting killed made him stop and listen. He'd sighed inwardly as he heard faint sounds coming from inside the hall. Either one of his colleagues was having an illicit liaison with the cheaper denizens of Midgar, or someone other than him was suffering from insomnia. At that time, before he'd stopped caring about people altogether, he'd abhorred training in front of others. Although he was, had been rather,one of the hundred and eight students, he had duly noted that the other recruits were fast, moving with a skill learned from martial arts, rather than fist-fighting. But, he conceded, even if he couldn't climb walls or jump eight feet into the air, he didn't need a weapon. The others had seemed as though they couldn't fight properly without a firearm. As if they needed its reassurance when and if things went wrong. He had shrugged and pushed open the door, fervently hoping primarily that it would be one person inside, and that it wouldn't be anyone he hated.A blinding flash of light had made him stagger back, made him think for a split-second that anyone else who was awake would be sure to gravitate to him now. No chance of a quiet run or something tonight. He'd checked himself perfunctorily, calmly; no damage, so whatever that had been, it wasn't immediately dangerous, or was at least a bad enough shot not to be. He'd crept forward as stealthily as he could, shoes tapping on the wooden floor despite his efforts to soften his steps. He hadpeered tentatively around a stack of chairs and saw…a figure. Crouched in the middle of the floor, crumpled in on itself like a dead spider. Strange, pale thing cast in a half-silhouette by the slatted blind on the long windows. It was too dark to determine what the nature of the apparition was, and he reallyhadn't wanted to investigate. Just as he was about to move to the multi-junction lightswitch at the opposite end of the room, the thing spoke, said something half-curse half-complaint.It had been a human voice. A voice he had recognised with a lurch of memory that had made him want to turn around and leave in a hurry. It spoke again.

'Man, gotta stop trying so hard. 'Kay…let's think…'

The had thing moved its scarecrow limbs, whirling what appeared to be a glorified stick off its shoulder to rest in front of it. It had moved its left arm in an elbow-less motion and clicked its outstretched finders.

'Turk light!'

It was little more than a whisper, but the voice carried a commanding burst of light that crackled down the rod and burst, fizzing and sparking, in jagged tendrils of flame. Rude winced as they earthed themselves on a nearby punchbag. A flashy little spell, pointlesslyextravagant in motion with little real effect. Thunder without lightning. Exactly what he'd expected.

'Better.'

The figure sighed and grasped both ends of the stick.

'Much better.'

A new voice this time. From the shadows at the back of the expansive hall. Both Rude and the other had jumped at the sudden interruption.

'You just can't train without destroying something, can you kid?'

The youth had straightened. Tensed. Rude had sworn in his mind.

'First, I hardly see how that concerns you. Second, why are you down here?'

Tseng had shaken his head. His voice had carried a mild amusement, a not unkind tone that was nevertheless undercut by a distinctly icy edge.

'Disrespect again?First you refuse to honour the code of conduct in the ring, and now you show your insolence yet again. You know, maybe you were too young to get into all this. You won't go far in this company with an attitude like that, I can freely tell you.'

Reno had laughed softly and brushed a hand through his comet-tail of hair, setting Rude's teeth on edge at that attitude, moving softly towards the shadowed figure.

'I don't have a choice about that. I have to respect you, you're the boss, after all. I just don't know you that well. And what I don't know, I wanna…test. You know, "the best defence is a good offence", that kind of thing.' He had been rambling, Rude thought, perhaps covering for the fact that the truth of Tseng's statement had only just dawned on him.

'Hardly.' Came the calm reply 'it is that kind of thinking that lost you that match. And will continue to push you down,more than likelykill you.'

Reno had actually laughed at this. Rude's hand had moved halfway to his brow in exasperation. Here, he had thought crouching in perfect darkness behind a tangle of shadow-barred equipment, was someone who didn't know his place.

'I can't just wait for whoever I'm killing to get tired!'

It was a joke, it had to be. Rude had been able to see that, even if he had though it was misplaced. But Tseng…

'Then you shouldn't be here.' Tseng's voice had pitched down from its level tone. Reno had moved almost imperceivably, whipping his hand around in a flat arc faster than the snap of a bowstring. Tseng's arm had moved a fraction of a second too late to catch the hand, and it managed to clip him, which, Rude considered, was certainly something. Reno's voice had been hissed from behind clenched teeth and he didn't even try to break Tseng's hold on him;

'You recruited me. You got me here, you gave me a big freakin' bruise back there, and now you decide to tell me I'm not good enough to do what the dregs at the bottom of Three do for a couple of gil a go? If you don't like how I do things, that's too bad, if I'm wrong, I'll…recant when I get shot. Either way, if you really don't think I'm good enough, you're paying for my train ticket back under the plate.'

For once, Tseng had been without words.