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48. Cissnei: Reluctant

Cissnei's phone hadn't rung in a long time. Not that she'd have been able to answer if it had, since it was somewhere at the bottom of a ravine outside Junon. She'd been travelling light for so long that even that miniature piece of technology would now feel like a needless extravagance. When you might need to grab everything and run at a moment's notice in the middle of the night, you couldn't be fiddling around with anything that might help the enemy track you, corner you, capture you, kill you, or all of the above.

It actually seemed sort of weird now, how much she used to rely on a phone. Her PDA too. As a Turk in the field, especially when the field was Midgar, the ability to call for back-up was a must.

Not so much these days. She was the back-up if they got in trouble. Scout, first line of defence, back-up, cavalry, plus everything in between. She was guide, survivalist, map-reader, head hitchhiker, bodyguard, sentry, and whatever else she needed to be depending on the situation. About the only thing she didn't need to be was a medic, since Aerith had that covered. Cissnei was glad for that. She could get pretty banged up and appreciated the respite while someone else took charge, especially if it happened in a way that meant she didn't have to feel guilty or ashamed about giving up control for a while. It was damn tiring being responsible for more than just yourself.

Years down the line, and still Aerith stuck to her belief that Zack was alive. Cissnei wasn't so sure anymore. After seeing some of the weird shit Aerith could do, she had faith in the power of the Ancients, but … after seeing some of the less impressive shit, Cissnei was also convinced Aerith wasn't an all-powerful super-being. She was human – crushingly so – and humans made mistakes. They were good at avoiding the truth, and at substituting what they wanted to be true for reality. Humans could convince themselves of a great many things – like a single man being able to survive four years locked away with the best Evil Fuckers With Scalpels ™ Shinra could manufacture.

Rule of thumb for being more human than Cetra: If you wanted it enough, you could persuade yourself anything was possible, even when logic tried to convince you otherwise.

Cissnei, on the other hand, was on the other end of the human scale. She was achingly cynical. She'd been out of contact with the Turks for a long time, and had no idea whether Zack really was still alive, but she doubted it. Her belief in Zack wasn't as strong as Aerith's, much as it galled her to admit it. Her desire to believe he could still be out there somewhere, still alive and himself, instead of a slab of tenderised meat with a pulse and nominal brain activity, was overridden by the inability to truth to blind faith that had often kept her alive in Midgar.

Big surprise there.

Aerith still managed to surprise Cissnei sometimes. Not just the Lifestream stuff, either – though that was weird enough. You'd never known true creepiness until you'd been cowering in a cave, a platoon of Shinra infantrymen overhead, your leg busted all to hell, and suddenly a pair of hands touched it out of the gloom, followed by a pair of big green eyes that sparkled like there really was a light behind them. Aerith had saved Cissnei's life before, which was an interesting experience. Being rescued by a civilian? And thanking them for it? She could just imagine Helena's puckered brow and the remark she'd no doubt make about professionalism in the field.

No, Aerith's surprises came from more ordinary things. Cissnei, plucked from the orphanage as a kid, had grown up mean and strong, with the ability to hide both behind a deceptively innocent smile. Her female role models had been non-existent, and she'd been okay with that. Who wanted to be too ladylike, anyway? She'd learned at the orphanage that girls and effeminate boys were the ones predators came after. The bigger boys, the ones who knew how to fight, had always been left alone because they could take care of themselves. She'd longed for broad shoulders and biceps like ham-hocks, but instead grown up slender and delicate.

Demonstrating the cunning that had made Veld pick her out despite her age, she'd turned her femininity into a weapon. In practical footwear that made her even shorter, and straight seams that still showed just enough curve, she looked like a little girl playing dress-up even when she hit her twenties. Nobody expected her to be able to defend herself, and that supposition was always to her advantage. Even Zack had made that mistake when he first saw her. For Cissnei, being a woman was a cross between having an extra weapon and an inbuilt liability. She'd never been taught to respect women, let alone respect herself.

From the age of seven Aerith had grown up in the same city, but in a totally different atmosphere. She loved hemlines, flowers and being girly. She knew a different way of being strong, and whenever that showed up Cissnei was surprised, like she'd stepped on a rake in tall grass. Aerith wore her femininity like a badge of honour, as if it was a good thing to be dainty in a city that ate that kind of weakness for breakfast. She revelled in pastels and quiet charm, with splashes of humour that created giggles, not the raucous belly-laughs that greeted lewd jokes like Reno's.

Reno. Cissnei narrowed her eyes against the sun. Tseng. Helena. Rod. She ran through the names of the Turks she'd known and worked with. Naifu. Richie. Rude. Tan. Sandan. Tama. Kakutou. Youhei. Wabi. Legend. She wondered whether any of them were still alive anymore. A long time ago she'd realised that if Veld could be killed, anybody was fair game, but she hoped the line-up still included those she's been closest to. Turks generally only befriended other Turks, which was why her friendship with Zack had been out of the ordinary.

She hadn't gone near Midgar in all their travels, for obvious reasons. Tseng would probably have called it 'preserving the objective', but Cissnei called it common sense. There was no point in taking all these precautions for so long, only to throw it all away by getting too close to Shinra's hometown and getting picked up by a border patrol. Likewise, getting too close to active Mako Reactors was a no-no, which had severely limited their options after a while.

Cissnei took care over planning each next move. She had a stake in what happened now, after all – one forged in blood, sweat, tears and time, plus as many blisters as there were chocobos on the plains. Strangely, she wouldn't want to give it up if forced to choose, but she still wondered about Midgar. Midgar was a cesspit amongst cities, but still, it was the cesspit that had spawned her and she still felt some connection to it. She'd seen much nicer places in the last four years, places she wouldn't have minded living and had actually stayed at for several months at a time, but Midgar was in her blood and it didn't let go easily.

She wondered if word would ever come that they could come out of hiding. She missed … something. She used to think it was the thrill of being a Turk, but she'd had enough thrills and spills in the last four years to last her a lifetime, so that wasn't it. Maybe it was Midgar itself. Maybe it was something in Midgar. Or maybe it was something that wasn't in Midgar but which haunted it like a ghost comprised of her own memories.

Probably that was how they'd ended up staying so long in Mideel. While it wasn't exactly a bustling metropolis on the scale of Midgar, it was a built up area, and Cissnei needed that kind of connection to her past after months on a chocobo ranch with no neighbours for sixty miles in every direction. Aerith, on the other hand, seemed to like Mideel for the Lifestream she could sense just below the ground. She said it was closer to the surface here than anywhere else they'd been, and for some reason the fact it pleased Aerith please Cissnei too. More than once she had woken to find Aerith missing, only to locate her in the middle of a field, or a street, or at the edge of town with her palms held wide like she was greeting the dawn.

"Once upon a time I would've run straight to my superior with news of how you're a human douser for mako."

"Once upon a time, I'm sure you would've."

The end of that exchange – But not anymore – had curled between them like a question mark, but remained unsaid. Maybe they were both a little afraid of the answer.

There were a lot of things they didn't talk about. After that initial blistering conversation about Zack, he had been discussed only a handful of times. Each occasion had started with Cissnei wanting to know whether or not Aerith thought he was still alive, and the most recent had ended with her scepticism and Aerith's stubbornness bringing them perilously close to an argument.

"You can't hold onto him forever, Aerith," Cissnei had said the last time as she curry-combed a chocobo rooster (her, on a chocobo! Reno would've laughed until he wet his pants), and staunchly refused to look up at the watching green eyes. Was she trying to convince the eyes or herself that it was finally time to let go?

"I already am holding onto part of him," Aerith had said. "I always will be."

"You know what I mean."

"And you know what I mean. I'm in too deep to swim ashore now, Cissnei."

"And I'm not?"

"I thought this was just another mission to you."

Maybe it had been, once. Maybe it still was. Worryingly, Cissnei wasn't sure anymore. Even more worryingly, she wasn't sure she cared. Midgar she missed – missed the grime and the noise and the people most of all – but she didn't miss the parts of being a Turk that made places in her brain itch with the linked memory of Aerith talking about killers and killing. Her life now, such as it was, could never be described as exciting all the time (mostly it was mundane chores cut through with infrequent periods of frantic action, which faded back to chores once the danger had passed. Who knew fleeing an evil corporation would involve so much trudging and worrying about where you were going to get groceries?) Still, it was … dare she even think it in the context of herself?

"Rewarding."

"Did you say something, Cissnei?"

"No."

Rewarding. The word tasted strange in her mouth. As did 'fulfilling', 'worthwhile' and 'meaningful' – all words she once upon a time associated with non-Turk things, but now associated with her own life. Who could have guessed that this long-term mission would turn out to be so … non-Turkish.

"Do you ever wish -?"

"No."

"You didn't even let me get the question out."

"No, I don't regret this assignment."

She did, however, regret not going after Zack, the way you regret things you know you can't change and probably never could've. She dreamed, sometimes, of finding wherever he was being kept these days (because no way would they not have moved him after all this time), storming the place and single-handedly rescuing him. Those dreams usually ended when she got to the part where she had to choose between returning him to Aerith, and bundling him onto the back of a motorcycle so she could ride off into the sunset and get her own happy ending. She knew she'd never do that to either of them, not after all these years of seeing Aerith wait for him with undimmed love in her eyes, but Cissnei's subconscious was just as selfish as it had ever been.

Other dreams were nightmares, as she imagined all the terrible things that could have happened to him in the past four years, or herself at one of Midgar's crematoriums as his corpse was reduced to ashes inside. Those dreams made her wake with a scream hovering on her lips, the way it used to when she got home from missions that had gone bad – where she'd ended up with more blood on her hands than even her flexible conscience could cope with.

Her only consolation was the promise Tseng had confessed to her about – the one Zack had extracted from him before he left for Nibelheim. Telling her had been more manipulation on Tseng's part, but on this occasion Cissnei hadn't minded. In a way it wasn't a promise to Zack at all, since Tseng had been looking out for Aerith for years before he even appeared on the scene, but articulating it had made it realer somehow – just like it had provided the final momentum behind her plans for how to go about accomplishing her new goal.

Was she going soft?

Probably.

Did she care?

A grey area.

The past four years had provided a peek into the kinds of lives she might have lived if she hadn't become a Turk. There had never been a more thorough version of 'looking at the roads left untraveled', since she'd travelled partway down a lot of them to keep Shinra from realising she and their prize were somewhere other than Midgar. Just because they hadn't realised Aerith was missing from the Sector Five slums didn't mean they couldn't figure it out if they saw her wandering around Junon, Rocket Town or Gongaga.

Yes, they'd been to Gongaga. The proximity to Gold Saucer had been an issue, but when they got closer the pull had been too much. The burned out Mako Reactor made the village low-priority to Shinra, so they had figured that as long as they didn't make it obvious who they were it wouldn't hurt to look in on the place. Naturally, nobody said why they wanted to go there; not even when they arrived and question the decision. Gongaga was a sad little town even though many years had passed since the disaster that decimated its population. Cissnei could see why Zack had wanted to leave. Old grief clung to the debris. Dreams died in Gongaga. They didn't start there.

Mideel was a place where life blossomed. Cissnei stood at the edge of town one night, even though Aerith hadn't gone wandering, and just looked at the stars. As a kid she hadn't even been able to see stars through the Plate.

She heard the footsteps, slow and measured. Someone was approaching and wanted her to know without startling her. She hadn't heard a chopper or a car, which meant this person had traipsed to town across the flatland outside. The tread was too heavy to be female, and the cough, when it came, was into a fist she remembered from sparring sessions many years ago.

"Hello, Cissnei."

She didn't lower her eyes from the sky. "Evening, Rude."

"You don't sound surprised to see me."

"Don't I?" She looked at him. "It is the middle of the night. Maybe I'm just too tired to sound surprised. I could pretend, if you like."

He hadn't changed a bit. Still bald. Still brooding. Still … she almost laughed.

"You're wearing sunglasses."

"Yes?"

"At night."

"And?" He didn't say it defiantly, but with puzzlement, as if he genuinely couldn't understand what was so funny.

Cissnei shook her head. "Where's Reno?"

"Not here."

She raised an eyebrow. Then a thought struck her. Did that mean Reno was dead?

Rude evidently read her expression. She must have lost a lot of her skill at masking her expression with nobody as perceptive as him around to keep her practised. "He's still alive, but he's guarding the president's son at the moment with Sandan. This was a solo mission."

Cissnei imagined what Sandan would have had to say about that detail. The daughter of a wealthy family, Sandan had fallen in love with hunting at a young age, rising to notoriety when she drove off several armed intruders, despite being bound and gagged, by firing a shotgun with her bare toes. She'd joined the Turks when her prowess with guns reached Veld's ears, though she sometimes got on his nerves with her love of showing off and her opinion that anything except the most dangerous missions was tedious time-killing and nothing more. Coupled with the fact that both she and Reno were about as serious as clowns in a custard pie factory when their personalities were allowed to bounce off each other's, wherever Rufus Shinra was right now, Cissnei was willing to bet chaos was a travelling companion.

"So Tseng sent you," Cissnei said, eyeballing Rude. They'd been in Mideel so long that she'd allowed her hair to grow out instead of constantly cutting it short, though she'd kept up the rest of her disguise's regalia. She looked terrible as a Goth, but at least it was a startling enough change from normal that an idle glance from the wrong person wouldn't give her away.

Rude just nodded an affirmative.

It struck Cissnei that she should be feeling more about being reunited with one of her old friends after so long. She couldn't expect Rude to be effusive, since that had never been his thing, but inside she felt curiously flat. She had a bad feeling about why he was here.

"How did you know where to find me?" she asked, playing for time.

"I didn't."

"So you've just been wandering from town to town on the off-chance I'd be there?"

He stared at her. Or at least he pointed his sunglasses in her direction. She assumed a stare accompanied it.

"I see you're as talkative as ever. You have your ways and you're not going to explain them to me, is that it?" She stuck her hands in her pockets and then realised a true Turk would never do that unless there was a weapon in there. All she had in her pockets were three boiled sweets and a pair of gloves. How very domestic. Rekka was folded into its travelling form and stored somewhere else. "Why are you here, Rude? You didn't make all this effort to find me just to gossip about old times."

Rude hadn't looked away at any point. "A test subject called Specimen Z broke out of a secret Shinra research facility near Mount Nibel. Specimen Z took another subject called Specimen C, subdued the guards, and escaped into the mountains. We had two operatives in the area prior to the breakout. They were acting outside orders, but some data they'd gathered prior to loss of contact was retrieved. It has since become relevant in light of the breakout, although Tseng is eager not to go public with the information for fear of the attention it would bring the department."

"Meaning his superiors don't know about it." Just like they didn't know what Cissnei had really been up to while 'deep undercover in AVALANCHE'. "I don't think I've ever heard you say that much at once before."

"Cissnei," Rude said gravely, "Specimen Z is believed to be the SOLDIER Zack Fair, previously thought deceased following the Nibelheim Incident. He is alive, armed, and on the loose. His current whereabouts are unknown, as are his motives and destination."

Sudden cold washed over Cissnei. Despite Aerith's assurances he was alive, and despite her own half-lidded hopes of the same, and subsequent rebukes that he had to be dead, just so the truth of where he was didn't hurt so much, to hear it confirmed so bluntly …

Her mouth felt like she'd eaten concrete. Now this was a proper emotional reaction. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Tseng ordered me to."

"Why?"

"You are to return to Midgar immediately."

Now the cold turned to ice. Her immediate reaction was to refuse. Almost immediately she realised what that meant. A Turk didn't refuse orders. For once she wished Rude was more expressive, so she could read his reactions and know how much of her feelings showed in her face. He could read her like a book, but unless he gave some kind of verbal indication, Rude was as open as a padlock.

"My mission isn't completed," Cissnei said slowly.

"You have new orders."

"So what happens to the objective of my current mission?"

"Tseng has made arrangements."

"Someone else is taking over in my place?" Why did that make her feel so put out? There was going soft, and then there was turning into a bloody doormat. "Who?"

"That's not your concer-"

"It damn well is my concern." Cissnei forced her voice back down to a normal level and thanked Gaia nobody else was around. Mideel went to bed with the sun and slept deeply. Once upon a time she would've hated that, but now it was comfortingly simplistic. "I've spent close to four years of my life on this mission. You have no idea what I've had to do to keep things ticking over – the things I've sacrificed, and the things I've had to do that are completely absent from the Turk job description. You do not then get to tell me it's none of my concern when I get replaced, and without even a good reason."

Some people intimidated others by looming, shouting, or getting very quiet. Rude didn't bother with any of that needless effort. He just kept up his usual stare behind tinted lenses and waited for their own nerves to do the rest. It helped that he was over six feet of pure muscle and more testosterone than an entire football team.

Cissnei stared right back at him.

"Is the nature of your relationship with the Ancient sexual?"

She nearly choked on her own tongue. "What?"

"Or is there some other reason why you seem to be so emotionally invested in the safety and wellbeing of your-"

"Four. Years." You could have carved your initials in solid steel with the tone of Cissnei's voice. "Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Four consecutive years. That's how long I've had this detail. That is more than enough time to become 'emotionally invested' – without sleeping with Aerith." Was Rude always this … well, rude? She remembered that as more Reno's role. Maybe part of his personality had rubbed off on his taciturn partner since she saw them last. As she well knew, four years was an extremely long time. Or maybe he'd always been this way and her memory was getting faulty with age. "Now just tell me why the hell Tseng wants me back now, of all times, and who's going to take my place here? Is it you? Is that the reason you were picked for this; to send me back and fill in for me here?" Rude wasn't exactly the type of guy who could pass unnoticed in a crowd, and subterfuge was key when it came to protecting Aerith.

"You're very hostile," Rude said after a moment.

"No, really?"

"And sarcastic."

"Shock! Horror! Someone call the presses. It's front-page news that'll knock your socks off!"

"Tseng wants you to track Zack Fair and bring him in. Kakutou will be relieving you here."

"Tseng wants me to …" The words registered and immediately her features scrunched into a petulant scowl. She searched for words that would relay her anger without coming out as an outright refusal.

"Kakutou will arrive the morning after I make my report of this conversation."

"So he'll be here tomorrow." A feeling went through Cissnei that defied description. She felt inexplicably torn between the knowledge that Zack was finally free, and having to leave Aerith because of it. There was an irony there she didn't appreciate. No-win choices had never been her forte, especially when they'd already been made for her. No doubt Tseng had his reasons, and they'd be obvious as soon as she thought about it, but right now her response was still one of incredulity, relief and resentment.

Rude nodded. "You can debrief him on how best to proceed with this mission. He has the basic facts from Tseng. You will be expected to bring him up to speed before returning to Midgar."

"And Shinra," she added absently.

"Of course." Again, the barest hint of puzzlement entered Rude's monotone, as if he was thinking: Where else?

She was a Turk. Of course she had to return to Shinra. Where else could Turks possibly go when not on missions?

"Well, at least I'll get to see everybody again. And I can finally wash out this ridiculous hair dye. Black hair suits Naifu far better than it suits me. I can just imagine what Helena would say if she could see me in this get-up. She'd probably have a heart attack at how non-conformist I've become." Cissnei tried to lighten the mood – more to mask her own internal tumult than because she felt like making small-talk. It was like trying to move a tonne of bricks by tickling it with a feather.

Rude's expression was too stony to be coincidental.

"What is it?"

"We've lost operatives since you left."

Her heart sank. A Turk isn't supposed to feel grief too hard. Don't cling, don't linger, just accept loss and move on; that's what Veld taught you. Grief slows you down and gets you killed. She swallowed. Veld himself had been a casualty. Tseng had told them that the man several of them thought of like a father was dead alongside his psychotic biological daughter, and he had said it all without a flicker of emotion. Tseng, the super student, Veld's protégé. Of course he'd learned his teacher's lessons well.

"Who?" Cissnei asked.

"Helena and Richie were apparently leaking information to an outside source. They were the operatives lost at the Nibelheim facility. Their information has been useful, since it allowed us to identify Specimens Z and C, but we're still locating who, exactly, it was being leaked to, and for what purpose. The most obvious answer based on currently known facts is that Helena and Richie were in the process of defecting and their trip to Nibelheim was some kind of loyalty test."

"Helena defected?" Cissnei said incredulously. Logical, devoted, fanatical Helena, who had practically salivated when invited to join the Turks, had turned traitor? Surely not. It was impossible. It was …

Four years. Four friggin' years. A person could change a lot in four years. Maybe Richie finally broke through her shell, eroded her stiff-necked pride and she … became a completely different person? No. it couldn't be true. And what was with Richie turning on the Turks as well? He loved his job! He'd given up everything in order to be a Turk!

"We're still looking into it," Rude said cryptically. Though he didn't raise his hand, Cissnei imagined him checking off on his fingers as he went on. "Naifu was killed subduing a rogue street gang under the Plate. Rod died prior to the same incident while fighting members of the biker group he abandoned to join Shinra. Tama and Juu were involved in a helicopter crash that also killed several Shinra executives and may have links to a resurging AVALANCHE."

Cissnei dropped her head. Her fists clenched reflexively. "Fuck," she muttered. All those deaths, and she'd known nothing about them. She had fought alongside those people. They were her colleagues and friends. And while they were dying, she was dying her hair, playing nursemaid and getting misty-eyed over a SOLDIER who might as well have been dead, for all the chance she'd had at ever seeing him again. The other Turks should have meant more to her than Zack, but who had occupied more of her thoughts since she'd been gone? Nobody who wore the suit.

Rude wasn't finished. "Wabi is currently AWOL. Suspected defection. We're not entirely sure why or who to. Yet. It's possible his desertion is linked to Helena and Richie, but that theory remains unconfirmed. It's more likely his actions are unrelated, since he wasn't disclosing confidential information to unauthorised persons before he abandoned his post."

Cissnei could understand Wabi running off more than Helena or Richie. Wabi had been coerced into joining the Turks when they were desperate to flesh out their ranks during the AVALANCHE crisis. It had been a choice between rotting in prison and accepting the job offer, and he hadn't much fancied life behind bars. His relationship with the Turks had always been somewhat cool – perhaps because he knew he'd be escaping as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Even so, news that he'd gone hit Cissnei hard after hearing about the deaths of her other comrades.

"Legend?" She hated that her voice came out as a croak.

Rude didn't acknowledge the hoarseness. "Costa del Sol."

"Again?" The last time Legend had been relegated there was when he refused to rescue a kidnapped arms dealer for Shinra and was put under house arrest. He'd been reinstated as a full Turk during the AVALANCHE insurgency, and his manic enjoyment of his work indicated no desire to go back into retirement. "What did he do to get put under house arrest again?"

"He isn't under house arrest. He's on compassionate leave."

"He … what?" Was that even possible? The concept was so alien is might as well have had antennae and a spaceship. There were only a few ways to leave the Turks, after all, and quitting wasn't one of them – but as Rude's next words proved, Legend had lived up to his nickname and tried to pull off the impossible. Even more impressive, Shinra had almost let him. Their leniency bespoke their respect of Legend's skills and also how he'd come to lose his old name and be known to all only as 'The Legendary Turk'.

"His skills were considered too valuable to lose when he submitted his resignation. Shinra felt a sabbatical would be more advisable, with the intention he return to work when suitably recovered."

"So basically they didn't want to just get rid of him because he might be useful in the future, but he knows too much for them to let him be a loose cannon, so they've put him out to pasture where they can keep an eye on him." Cissnei frowned. "Wait, recovered? From what?"

"He reacted badly to Naifu's death. Suffered a breakdown. Held himself responsible. Apparently they had a relationship." It was typical Rude-style brevity, which told Cissnei there was way more to the story than she was getting.

"Legend and Naifu?" The contrast was startling, although … Naifu, despite childhood tragedy, had a playful side that probably fitted quite well with Legend's carefree ways, without letting them get too out of hand. He was a womaniser, Cissnei remembered, but it was possible that rejoining the Turks after his last 'incarceration' on the Costa del Sol had sparked a desire for more than just a meaningless fling. His reaction to Naifu's death would seem to indicate his feelings ran deeper than Cissnei might ever have expected. Stranger things had happened, and stranger couples, too.

Like me and Zack.

Cissnei thrust that thought away so hard she nearly fell over. She already knew about Reno, and if Tseng had sent Rude then he was obviously still alive. Tan was lost years ago, tracking the deserter Genesis Rhapsodos, while she was still in Midgar. That just left …

"What about Youhei?"

The beautiful martial arts expert was the toughest of all the female Turks – even tougher than the gifted Helena. As a former mercenary, Youhei was used to keeping herself distant from the nastier aspects of their work without alienating her colleagues. She was too competent and experienced to not still be alive.

Right?

"Youhei is currently on a mission in Wutai," Rude said simply. Cissnei's heart rose out of her lower bowel until he added, "Tracking Wabi."

Don't cling, don't linger, she reminded herself. Just accept the losses and move on. Don't think about them. They're not thinking about you anymore. They … oh fuck it.

"So basically what you're telling me is that the only Turks left in Midgar right now are Tseng and Kakutou?"

"Correct."

"That was the point where you were supposed to tell me the names of the young upstarts you've been training as replacements for everyone who's been lost. You mean there aren't any replacements? The department's been decimated!"

"Hence your recall."

"That doesn't make any sense. Recalling me won't increase our numbers; it's just exchanging one warm body for another. What the hell is Tseng up to, not replacing people?"

"He has been searching for suitable replacements," Rude said, a trifle defensively. "The results have not been favourable."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"There have been some shifts in the hierarchy in the last four years. Heidegger has a more prominent role in the day-to-day running of the department now. His methods for recruitment are … more linear than Veld or Tseng's."

Cissnei fixed Rude was what she hoped was an inscrutable look. Heidegger was an imbecile who shouldn't have been allowed within five miles of a delicate operation. Veld wasn't above recruiting Turks from all walks of life if the situation demanded it, and they had useful skills to bring to the table. Heidegger wouldn't dream of combing prisons and orphanages, or employing criminals, rich kids and mercenaries. Admittedly, considering what had happened with Helena, Richie and Wabi, Veld wasn't always on the mark with his choices, but he'd at least he'd scored a bull's-eye with people like Tseng. Heidegger wasn't even hitting the board.

"All right," Cissnei said. "I'll concede that one. I've been out of the loop for a while."

"Are you declining your orders to return, Cissnei?"

"I … no." Her fists were bunching again. She forced her hands to unclench. "No, I'm not. I'll accept a new mission." She poured everything she had into her best persuasive glare. "But I want to meet Kakutou in the morning and go over a few things with him."

"Naturally. He will arrive at 0700 hours." Obviously considering the exchange to be finished, Rude turned on his heel and began to walk away.

"Hey, Rude!" Cissnei yelled suddenly, forcing him to turn to look at her. "What about you?"

"Me?"

"Anything new with you in the last four years that I should know about?"

"That you should know?" Rude echoed. "No. That you would want to know …" He left the sentence hanging and Cissnei's jaw the same way.

Did Rude just make a joke?

Still feeling like the world had started spinning in the other direction, Cissnei made her way home. Or … not home anymore. Not home in the first place, really; just a shared living space. She wasn't surprised to find Aerith waiting on the front step when she arrived.

Cissnei regarded her for a moment before saying, "He's free."

"I know," Aerith whispered. "I felt it." She shivered, and Cissnei got the feeling it wasn't really anything to do with the temperature. "He's not in pain anymore," she sighed, her relief and happiness so obvious they were almost touchable. "He's finally going to come back. He's finally coming back to us, Cissnei." When Aerith looked up, her eyes were shining with that thing Cissnei herself had always had such problems holding onto: hope.

"Yeah," she said without any passion, considering this was the guy they'd both invested so much time in. In a roundabout way, if it hadn't been for Zack, this mission wouldn't have even existed, and Aerith and Cissnei would never have met. Not properly, anyway, with introductions and everything. Cissnei's tone made Aerith's head snap up in alarm, ready to be told the news of Tseng's orders and the brand spanking new bodyguard he was sending. "He's finally coming back."