Hello, everyone, it's Mengde again. First, I don't own FFVII (again). Second, I was wanting to write yesterday night and not sure what to write about, and then I watched a certain two-part Star Trek: TNG story... (anyone who can tell me which episodes afer reading this will get a cookie). Thus, I got the idea for this oneshot. After clearing it with my lovely beta, Pen Against Sword, I've put it up here for your reading enjoyment.
I'm rating this story T for some dark themes and sexuality (not between Nero and Tseng, though - if you're here for yaoi I apologize). That being said, if you like Nero, Tseng, tense situations in holding cells, or anything along those lines, I think there may be something here for you. Enjoy.
There are worse things than battle.
In combat, there are a myriad of terrible possibilities. Being outnumbered, being outgunned, being outmaneuvered and outsmarted, all of these situations can come to pass. Still, training and tactics can prepare for such eventualities. Determination can be a guiding light through the darkest hours before dawn.
Sometimes there is no dawn. Sometimes there are things that no training and no tactics can prepare for. Sometimes these things are faced alone, in a dark and locked cell, with no hope of rescue.
There are worse things than battle.
Black and White
A Final Fantasy VII Fan Fiction
Written by Mengde
"Good morning, Mr. Tseng."
Tseng cracked one eye open and blearily regarded the person addressing him. It was hard for him to focus, as his head hurt terribly. He was fairly sure that he had a concussion.
"This won't do. Make Mr. Tseng more comfortable." The voice was androgynous, commanding, and at its bidding Tseng felt two men take hold of his arms and drag him to his feet. His knees buckled when he tried to put weight on his feet, but the men held him upright and dragged him over to a plain metal chair.
They sat him down in it and his vision began to come into focus. He was in a small room, a cell, with four grey walls, all featureless with the exception of the one that held the only door. The ceiling was high, at least ten feet up, and the room was illuminated by a single, uncomfortably bright overhead light fixture. Tseng himself was not dressed in his normal attire; he had been given a sleeveless one-piece tunic – a rag, really – that covered his torso and lower body to mid-calf.
The only other things in the room were the chair he was sitting in and a small table with its own chair. The person giving the orders sat down in front of him and regarded him steadily, and he returned the gaze as best he could. He hadn't slept in days – just been knocked unconscious when they moved him from place to place.
His interrogator-to-be sat awkwardly, because it was a young man whose arms were bound up in what looked at first glance like a grey straitjacket. Tseng's fuzzy vision focused more and he saw the blue highlights running along what was actually a jumpsuit resplendent with leather straps. A pair of strange, winglike mechanical appendages splayed out from the man's back. His eyes stared balefully out of a pale face that was partially obscured by what seemed almost to be a muzzle.
It didn't seem to inhibit his ability to speak, though. "I should apologize for the conditions under which you were brought to us, Mr. Tseng. It was not the way I would have preferred it."
"Spare me your false sympathy," Tseng managed to mutter. "You're not going to fool a Turk with such an old interrogation technique, Nero the Sable."
Nero cocked his head. "But I was being sincere, Mr. Tseng. Quite sincere, as a matter of fact." One of his bizarre mechanical wings jerked and Tseng heard the Deepground soldiers behind him turn and leave the room, closing the door behind them. The Tsviet leaned closer and almost whispered, "I would have the conditions for your visit not exist. I would ordinarily rip what we want out of your head, but my darkness is not made for subtlety. It could tear up other things along with what I want to know and give us… misinformation."
"Misinformation," Tseng repeated.
"Well, incoherent screaming is technically a form of misinformation," Nero remarked casually. "So Brother has instructed me to be more discreet in my methods. You may recognize some of what will go on, Mr. Tseng." He gave a small, dark chuckle. "You may have performed some of it yourself."
His right-side wing appendage swung stiffly around and revealed that it had a grasping claw at the wing-joint. In the claw's grip was a syringe, full of a clear liquid. Tseng felt his eyes widen and he started to get out of the chair, but Nero moved with surprising quickness, stabbing the syringe's needle into Tseng's arm and injecting its contents with a swift press of the piston.
Nero withdrew the syringe and Tseng could see that the young man was smiling behind the thing he wore on his face. "Who are you?"
"You know the answer to that question," Tseng said.
The Tsviet gave a slow nod and then said, "Very good. Who are you?"
"I said you know that!" Tseng growled. He began to feel light-headed, and the room, which had seemed dull and grey, suddenly began to seem as though it was reflecting the shadows of colors, like a patch of sky on rippling water.
"Very good. Who are you?"
"Stop asking that," Tseng said. "I'm telling you. You should stop."
"Very good. Who are you?"
It seemed stupid to keep going. Tseng decided to oblige the Tsviet. "Tseng, head of the Turks."
"Very good. Who are you?"
Maybe Nero hadn't heard him. Tseng repeated himself, extra-loud this time to ensure clarity. Nero nodded and said the same thing again, and Tseng told him who he was again. It seemed strange that Nero would find it this hard to hear Tseng, but each time he asked it seemed to become more and more reasonable to just keep responding.
Eventually Nero started asking different questions. Tseng told him what he wanted to know, or that he didn't know the answer to the question, and actually began to enjoy the whole process. After a while, Nero stopped asking questions and just watched him. Tseng watched him back for what seemed like hours, a slowly rising sense of panic mounting in his gut, until he blinked and realized that there was nobody sitting in front of him.
"Good morning, Mr. Tseng."
Tseng gave a start and raised his head off of the table where it had fallen. He blinked cobwebs out of his eyes and saw that Nero was seating himself behind the table again.
He was thirsty, and hungry, and still dead tired.
"Is it really?" Tseng asked.
Nero blinked. "Is it really what?"
"Morning."
"You're awake, aren't you? It's morning when you've gone to sleep and are just waking up."
"I'm not 'just waking up,'" Tseng said. He had a tangy, coppery taste in his mouth. "I'm just now coming out of a severe downer caused by an overdose on truth serum. I wasn't asleep, just immobile."
"You didn't seem to mind the overdose when you were going through it. You were very helpful." Nero's left wing-attachment brought a clipboard down in front of his face and he perused whatever was on it that Tseng couldn't see. "You confirmed that you were indeed Tseng of the Turks – thirty-seven times, as a matter of fact. Your favorite color is black, your former superior was Verdot, and your associate Elena's favorite sexual position is the cowgirl."
Tseng felt his face burn and he fought down the urge to snatch at the clipboard. "Is that all?"
"I could read the rest, but it's mostly dry, boring details that were hardly of any use to us. Honestly, for the leader of the Turks, you aren't particularly well-informed as to their activities."
"Since the dissolution of Shin-Ra and our incorporation into the WRO, we've been given more autonomy," Tseng rasped. "The problem with an organization like ours is that the left hand doesn't know what the right might be doing, and the head… gets left in the dark."
"Quite an apt analogy," Nero said, putting the clipboard down on the table as though daring Tseng to try to read it. "Because that is indeed where you are, Mr. Tseng. Alone in the dark."
Tseng managed a bitter smile. "Is that supposed to frighten me? I've been through worse."
"I'm sure you have." Nero stood and began to pace around the table, circling Tseng. "I'm sure that you have gone through extensive training to resist torture, Mr. Tseng. I was once a SOLDIER myself, you know. Some of the things I was put through were not too dissimilar to your regimen."
He stopped pacing and stood behind Tseng, his wing appendages ratcheting around until their grasping claws rested on the Turk's shoulders. "I also know that there are better ways to damage a man than to make him bleed."
The claws latched onto each side of Tseng's head and forced his gaze down to the clipboard resting on the table. Now that he had to look at it, Tseng realized that Nero had not been reading anything off of it – nothing was written on the piece of paper it held. Instead, there was a single large blot of ink on the paper.
"Mr. Tseng," Nero said softly, "what do you see?"
"This is ridiculous," Tseng said.
The claws tightened against his head and caused a sudden spear of pain. "Answer the question and avoid further unpleasantness, please."
"A stain."
"Be descriptive, Mr. Tseng."
"Fine. A black ink stain on a white piece of paper."
Nero gave a small "hmm" and moved Tseng to the side so he could lean in to look at the paper himself. "You shouldn't lie to me, Mr. Tseng. That is white ink on black paper."
"That's ridiculous. It's black ink on white paper."
The Tsviet released Tseng and walked back around to the other side of the table. "I imagine you've been trained to resist pain, Mr. Tseng. I imagine you've been trained very, very well, too." He sat and stared into Tseng's eyes. "I also imagine you've never felt the kind of pain that I can inflict."
There was a writhing darkness behind Tseng's eyes, his mind was on fire, he couldn't see, every part of his body felt like it was burning and freezing at the same time while being stabbed and crushed –
"That is a sample," Nero said, and suddenly the pain was gone, leaving Tseng gasping and twitching. "You could convince yourself it's not real, Mr. Tseng. I'm sure that would be easy for someone who can convince himself that this is not a white stain on black paper."
"But it's not!" Tseng bit out, wanting to clutch at himself but forcing his arms to his sides. "What's your point with this, Nero? I don't have any useful information, so now you intend to make me go insane? I'm not going to crack as easily as this."
"You don't believe that you have any useful information," Nero said. "You believe it so strongly that you don't even know you've been deceiving yourself. I would call it autohypnosis, but that would be inaccurate – all it is, all you are, is pure dogged stubbornness and will."
"If I had known an answer to a single one of your important questions, I wouldn't have been able to stop myself from giving it to you!" Tseng insisted. "I can't make myself believe that I know nothing if I have information. I'm not that in control."
Another blinding wave of pain hit him and he would have vomited if there had been anything in his stomach, it was so intense. It cut off as abruptly as it had begun and Nero said, "You should stop being stubborn, Mr. Tseng. It won't get you anywhere." He picked up the clipboard with one of his wings and held it up to Tseng's face. "White and black, Mr. Tseng. Not black and white. White and black."
"That's a lie," Tseng hissed.
"Reality is what we make of it, Mr. Tseng. I say that this is white and black, just as you say you know nothing of importance. Ordinarily one would think that one of us must be wrong, but I know I am right, as surely as you know that you have no useful information."
"That's a sophism."
Nero held up the clipboard for another long moment before he put it back down on the table and another blinding wave of pain struck Tseng for a split second, just enough to make him give a quick, harsh scream. "I was afraid I wouldn't have to resort to this, Mr. Tseng, but you leave me no choice." He made a motion with one of his wings and the door to the cell opened.
Two Deepground soldiers – possibly the same ones as before – entered, dragging behind them a chair quite like the one that Tseng was sitting in, but modified. One of them pulled Tseng up and kicked the old chair aside while the other put the new chair into position, and then they forced him into it.
His wrists and ankles were secured with metal bands that were on the chair's arms and legs. Rising from the chair's back was an elaborate mechanism that snapped around Tseng's head, keeping him from moving it in any direction. On the mechanism were also two small speakers, positioned near his ears.
They adjusted the mechanism so Tseng's head was bent down and he was forced to look at the table on which the clipboard with the paper lay.
"By tomorrow morning I hope you'll be in a more receptive mood," Nero said. "Goodbye for now, Mr. Tseng."
He and the soldiers swept out of the room, leaving Tseng alone in the chair, staring at the clipboard and its piece of paper. Immediately Tseng closed his eyes, determined not to look.
Not fifteen seconds later, when he was beginning to feel exhaustion try to take him into sleep, an earsplitting blast of noise erupted from the speakers on either side of his head. He started awake to hear the speakers admonish him, "White and black, Mr. Tseng, not black and white."
It happened the next time he closed his eyes. And the next time, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next…
"Good morning, Mr. Tseng."
"Buh…bullshit," Tseng murmured. He still sat in the chair, staring for lack of anything else to do at the clipboard and its piece of paper. If he closed his eyes for more than ten or so seconds, he was bombarded with noise and that horrible admonishment. "It can't… it can't have been more than eight or nine hours."
"Perhaps it can't have, or perhaps it has been and your sense of time has been distorted," Nero said. He adjusted the mechanism on the chair to make Tseng face forward instead of down, then seated himself opposite once more.
"Who are you?"
"I've already answered all of these questions," Tseng muttered. He felt his lower lip crack and start to bleed, and he licked at it in vain. "You know who I am."
"Do I?" Nero asked. "I'm not so sure at this point, Mr. Tseng. Perhaps I've got you figured wrong. Perhaps you aren't Mr. Tseng at all. After all, I was asking you to confirm this, but if you can so strongly believe that you know nothing, well, perhaps you can also strongly believe that you are Tseng of the Turks." The Tsviet arched an eyebrow and leaned forward a bit. "Isn't that a possibility?"
"Nuh-no it's not," Tseng said, stuttering from fatigue. "I'm Tseng. That's who I am. I've been Tseng all my life."
"Mm. So you think. I'm not entirely convinced that you are who you say you are. I think I can't call you Mr. Tseng any longer." Nero shook his head slowly. "I think I'll just have to call you 'prisoner.' After all, there can't be any disputation of that being what you are, yes?"
"I am… I am Tseng of the Turks," Tseng insisted. "I am."
More pain wracked him and he couldn't even curl up into a ball. "Who is Tseng?" Nero insisted. "Where was he born? How did he join the Turks? What are his dreams, his secret fears, his hopes?" He paused and then added, "What does he know about the role the Turks will play in the upcoming WRO invasion of Deepground?"
"Nothing," Tseng said. "He doesn't know anything about that. There are… there are no plans regarding the Turks and the invasion that he knows about."
"Are you sure, prisoner?" Nero asked. "Are you entirely sure that he knows nothing? I suppose that it seems logical for that information to be withheld from him, especially if he were to be assigned a dangerous infiltration mission where capture was a possibility, but are you absolutely positive?"
"I'm sure," Tseng said, spots appearing in front of his vision. "He doesn't know anything."
"You're very tired, prisoner," Nero said, lowering his voice in what sounded to Tseng like sympathy. "I can tell. Your eyes are bloodshot. Your responses are slow and your speech is slurred. Would you like to sleep?"
"I would," Tseng got out. "I would like to sleep."
Nero nodded slowly. "I can make it so you can sleep, prisoner. It is within my power to get you out of that chair, and give you a warm, soft bed, and there you can sleep to your heart's content. Would you like that?"
"Yesssss," Tseng moaned. "I would like that."
"You just need to answer one more question, prisoner," Nero said. He picked up the clipboard and showed the paper on it to Tseng again. "Black ink on white paper or white ink on black paper? Which is it, prisoner? If you admit to me that this is the latter, I'll give you your bed."
Tseng stared blearily at the paper on the clipboard and opened his mouth to answer.
The door slammed open and Azul the Cerulean squeezed his massive frame through. "Nero!" he growled. "There's no more time for you to play with Tseng. The enemy is at our gates. Weiss-sama has indulged your whims long enough; the truth serum revealed that he obviously does not have the information we want and the point is now moot at any rate. You must come to aid the defense!"
Nero tore his gaze away from Tseng and turned it on Azul, and the much bigger man instinctively backed away in fear at the look he received. "Noted," Nero finally hissed. "Get out. I will be there shortly." Azul nodded and shuffled out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
Slowly, Nero the Sable returned his eyes to Tseng's. "Now then, prisoner," he said. "Where were we? Ah, yes. Black and white or white and black?"
Tseng stared back at him, his jaw working. Nero's eyes widened in mad anticipation as moment after moment of silence went by, until…
Until the sound of Tseng spitting contemptuously on the paper sounded loudly in the cell.
"I'm not 'prisoner,'" Tseng growled hoarsely. "I am Tseng of the Turks. And that is a black stain on white paper. Just like you."
Nero held Tseng's gaze for a long moment before letting his wing-appendage drop the clipboard onto the table and giving a shrug. "Ah, well. Azul is right. Weiss-sama has indeed been generous, indulging my using you as a plaything. It's time I got back to work." He stood and brushed by Tseng, pausing at the door. "Goodbye, Mr. Tseng. In your current state there's very little you can do to stop us, and the Turks will undoubtedly be looking to rescue you and not participate in the general assault, so leaving you alive to be found does not hurt. Have a good day. It may be your last." There was the sound of darkness leaking into the light, if such a thing has a sound, and then he was gone.
Tseng stared at the far wall and continued to do so, fixed in place by the chair, the speakers keeping him awake, for the next two and a half hours until Reno and Rude found him.
"Good morning, Tseng."
Tseng looked up from his desk and saw Elena entering his office. He gave her a brief smile and returned the greeting before looking back at the forms in front of him.
"You said you wanted to talk?"
"I did," Tseng replied. "Please sit down."
"About your… experience with Nero the Sable, right?" Elena sat across from Tseng and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, one of her nervous tics. "I've read your report, Tseng. As far as we're all concerned, you're fit to return to duty."
Tseng signed one of the papers, his pen scratching black ink across the white surface. "I know." It reminded him of Elena's skin the night before, caught by a stray moonbeam and lighting up in the darkness of predawn as he lay awake next to her, unable to sleep despite there being no impediments to it, no speakers blaring in his ears.
"I didn't include everything in my report," he said after a moment's silence. He put down his pen and looked at Elena. "I would have mentioned this last night, but you weren't in the mood to talk."
Elena turned a pretty shade of pink and tucked her hair behind her ear again before frowning and asking, "What did you leave out of your report?"
Tseng drew a deep breath and steepled his fingers together. "At the end, I suppose it wasn't unexpected for Nero to have me in a state where I'd start to lose control of my faculties and start talking in the third person. I hadn't slept properly in days, I was extremely dehydrated and starved, I still had drugs in my system…" He swallowed and continued. "But in the end, what I didn't include in my report was that I thought he was right."
"You thought that you weren't really you?"
"I was losing myself, yes, but it was more than that." Tseng reached down, opened one of his desk drawers, and withdrew something. "At the end, when he offered me a bed and told me I could sleep if I admitted it was a white stain on a black piece of paper… I really could see it." He held up the clipboard and its piece of paper for Elena to see. "It was a white stain on black paper, Elena. He was right."
Elena frowned. "It's black and white, Tseng. Not white and black."
Tseng shrugged and let the clipboard fall to his desk. "It looks that way now, yes. But right then, I would have told him anything. Black was white. White was black. It was interchangeable, Elena. Whatever would let me sleep."
He looked down at the paper, and remembered, and did not say anything more.