Author's Note: illist keeps me writing these days. Say hello to him in the comments. We've been single-serving friends for years upon years now, and he's always stoked the coals when the evening starts to wear on.

Thank you, illist.

WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS

BY RENO SPIEGEL

- - - - -

She'd known enough to get in a boat, to ride it around the southwest shoreline and start there. She had only a vague notion of what she was going to do once she got there – she had a gun, but she wasn't sure that meant she was prepared or safe. She had learned to expect that the movement from point A to point B would have a few letters in-between, but she'd been out of practice long enough to forget what they were.

The company she was keeping in the first leg of her travels wasn't ideal by societal standards. She'd gone down into the docking area in Junon, knowing that only seasoned sailors would be in the waters with them acting as they were, and that she needed one of them. The docks had become a duality: on one hand, the general public was afraid to go to them because of both the waters and the types of men and women that could actually take anything less than a cargo ship into the waves; on the other, those same people were frighteningly skilled with their craft, and a few were at least mildly pleasant to the right kind of company.

Elena had read enough articles to know that some of these sailors had been ferrying people across the sea since Meteor had fallen, some friendly, some haggard, some asking for gil, some for silence, all of them just pushing back and forth and taking in the last natural space on the Planet.

Whether it was the suit or the way she held herself as she stood on the pier, a few sailors had backed away from the landing before the old man turned his motor her way. He was wearing shorts and a raincoat, despite how cold the harbor was, and there were grooves on the sides of the boat from where he'd used his oars over the years. She'd learned about sailors through her childhood playing in this very harbor, and had learned enough about unsavory people through ShinRa. Putting the two together, she'd spotted this man as her guide from almost half a mile out into the waves, and had to assume he was one of those that rarely set foot on the docks.

Elena had a flash of a mission they'd gone on, the Turks, when Tseng was still with them. Reno and Rude had gone undercover as potential business partners to a wealthy drug trafficker in Costa del Sol, saying they would do business with him, but only out on the water. She remembered his stomach rumbling as he laughed, leading them to his prized speedboat and rocketing out from shore with them. When they returned, Tseng was perched atop the villa with a long-barreled sniper rifle, and put a hotbullet through his throat. Elena was on binocular duty, mostly to make sure no one noticed the self-sealing wound appear on the target's neck, but she remembered that his eyes had looked so dim. He looked like he'd been at the controls of that boat forever, going in a straight line so long that he'd forgotten to appreciate where he was.

When Elena met her guide's eyes, they looked nearly the same. He kept his boat a fair distance from the dock and looked at her firmly. His hands were hardened by the salt water and he was missing a few fingers from who knew what. Glancing around the docks, she saw a handful of others that looked to be in the state he was, and numerous others that looked more healthy and less menacing, but she felt like a dog in a shelter and knew this man would take her home.

"What's your offer?" he called. His words were just one more noise on the busy docks, thumping with the footfalls of various boots.

Elena nudged the gas can at her feet. She had enough for a trip across the sea, she figured – and if she didn't, he was bound to have a reserve supply. "It's an advance," she replied. "This now, to get to Mideel. Once we're there, I'll get you enough to get you back here, and then some. And some bread, if the baker's open – do you eat bread?"

The old sailor paused a few seconds more and Elena watched him weigh the choice in his head – she knew that look as well as any other in the world. Slowly he paddled toward the dock, his solemn, silent affirmation that she would be his company for the trip, and she helped him tie the rope around the pole at the end. He stepped up only for a moment, to take the gas can back down, and she momentarily measured herself not much shorter than him. His raincoat was cracking in places from the sun, and his jeans were beginning to bleach themselves, but she doubted he thought much of it. She wondered how many fights he'd been in, as small and old as he was, because of some young sailor trying to monopolize the business.

She remembered Don Corneo and straps around her wrists. Her trigger finger twitched – she'd never been able to shake that habit after her first kill.

The old man helped her into the boat and pointed at her seat, different from the rest of the boat by way of a flattened pillow tied around the bench. Something told her that it was the best he could afford his passengers. There was a jug of fresh water next to the gas can, and various dried fruits. Chocobo feathers lined the underside of the lip around the boat – Elena reflected upon her childhood once again and remembered the superstition that the luck to find enough Chocobo feathers to ring one's boat in was luck enough to travel in any waters. Superstition or no, she was oddly comforted.

She asked how long the trip usually took and he answered, "Two days." He hesitated in untying the rope around the dock and glanced over his shoulder, but she set her eyes the same intensity as his, telling him just as silently that she was sure she wanted to go.

He pushed out from the docks and sat down at his own post, hooking up the new tank of gas and starting the engine. Looking into the dark skies over the sea, the sun setting off to the right of the horizon, he pulled his hood over his old head and gently spurred them against the waves.

The night was long and she knew she nodded off a few times, but each time she awoke she could just barely see the outline of her aged caretaker, and it looked like he had barely flinched. She didn't bother to check her watch, despite the fact it had a light – what would it get her? He'd said two days and he certainly knew the route better than most of the sailors they'd left behind, so she'd wait the two days and then she'd set foot on land again. She'd become much more fatalistic after the breakup of the organization. The sleep wasn't refreshing, but it helped to pass the time, and she didn't imagine he felt a loss of comraderie. She imagined he was used to people sleeping the trip away.

The waves tossed his craft up and down in great bounds, but the air was nice and his experience kept them from too much turbulence. At some point the rain came, and he made a short humming noise to see that she was awake before tossing her another raincoat. She fingered the stitching on the inside and realized he must've sewn a new lining into it – slipping it on, she felt it was heavy and the inside was made of some sort of down to keep her warm as well as dry. The air was nice enough, but what coverage it did provide was appreciated. She thanked him quietly, nothing was said, and when she opened her eyes again, the sun was rising over the same sea it had put to bed.

Reexamining the boat, he had drunk only a bit of his water over the evening, had shed his coat for his bare skin and left it lying in a heap next to him, but was still looking over the sea with those dull eyes. His skin was tanned by the sun, slightly warped from what must've been threads of post-Meteor chemicals still carried on the wind, but his constant awareness and occasional rowing had kept his body in prime shape. Age would catch him before sickness ever did.

It was still raining – it would rain all the way to the shore, she imagined – so she kept the coat, only sort of wondering why he'd gotten rid of his. The answer came a while later, in one of her moments between sleep. She opened her eyes, the world having turned from sharp and salty to bleary and full of post-sleep aftertaste, to see the old man standing on the back of the boat, next to the motor. His toes were curled over the sides and a hand rested on the engine, which had been killed at some point during her nap, and it looked like a moment of divine presence that kept him perched where he was.

She wondered if he ever thought about jumping in and swimming until his arms gave out – relieving himself of his self-prescribed duty and joining the Lifestream. Elena wondered if she ever felt the same, but the gun at her hip and the business card in her inside pocket said she was still following orders – and she preferred that structure.

Had it been anyone else, she would have called out, asked him to get them moving again. But she spied a knife at the back of the boat and figured it was best to let him have his moment. They should all be so lucky as to have a moment of connection with anyone, these days.

That night she awoke to the sound of soft plucking at the bottom of the boat. She imagined that a school of fish – whatever fish ShinRa had released on the Planet so long ago – was nudging the craft because it had passed over some sort of reef. However she barely heard the old man say "Hang on" before the boat gave a giant heave to her left, nearly flipping her off her seat and into the water. She heard her guide grunting and scrambling as they settled again, but the knocking continued and she must've jumped a few inches when his gun went off. The first shot was the only startling one, though, and each one lit his scarred wrist in the darkness. Three, four shots later, she could hear his labored breathing over the sea, but not much else. Their attacker was clearly sinking to the depths.

She was surprised that he said anything, but he did: "You okay?" His voice was startling against the silence, perhaps because his breathing was heavy, and perhaps because he sounded so much younger than when they'd first set out.

"I am," she responded. "Are you?"

He was still standing at the side of the boat – she hadn't heard him move, anyway, and the Turks had given her acute enough hearing to know movement in any weather. "Water Zoloms," he replied. "'bout five years ago, Zoloms took to salt water – not just swampers anymore. They got these weird kinda hands now, too; 'tap the boat a few times, feeling for heat, then give it a good heave to shake the captain loose. That's the only way we keep the boats afloat when one of 'em hits – give a good heave back the other way and go for the gun."

Elena was looking at the stars, like they might help him tell the story. "I appreciate it. I didn't even see you had a gun."

"Shame," he murmured, "'cause I saw yours."

She stayed awake the rest of the night, but nothing else was said. For all the corporate training in the world, she understood that her guide knew a lot more about staying alive than she ever would. When the sun came up again, the lowlight of land was in the haze in the distance, and his long-barreled revolver was on the floor of the boat next to him. She tried to meet his eyes, but he just stared where the bow pointed.

She still had no idea what she might do once she made it to Mideel. She knew people there, of course, but what would she say to them? Would she show them the card, let it speak for itself, or would she try to explain it in her own words? Was Tseng enough to speak for her anymore – was anyone even going to listen to what he was saying, especially eighteen years later?

She pulled the old man's raincoat tighter about herself, feeling the boat ride the waves. Suddenly she wasn't sure she wanted to be here at all, on the way to somewhere. She thought she might live forever in this boat with the old man; when he died, certainly somewhere in the middle of the sea, she might just close his eyes, lift him off the starboard side, take up the oars, and row for years to come. She had some strange respect for him and the way he lived, constantly going back and forth and trying to help in his gruff, silent way.

Once there had been a fire during one of their raids. The entire house had almost gone up in flames, and Reno was still inside, because he'd tripped down the stairs and neither Elena nor Rude had noticed. A beam of the roof fell in, however, snapping them enough out of their trance outside the house to notice that one of them was missing. Rude had turned just as fast as he'd come out, diving through a window shoulder-first because the doorway was clogged with flame. A few minutes later he'd come out with his redheaded best friend over his shoulders, slogged to his knees, and crumpled under the weight. When the three of them were being treated for smoke inhalation not long after, Rude's sunglasses still perched on his nose despite the soot, Elena saw his ring finger twitching ever so slightly and she knew how scared he had really been, whether it was that he was in a burning house or that he might not get Reno out of it. She had had so much respect for him, too, in that moment – being able to look past the guise of a Turk and actually feel something, even if it didn't mean saying it.

In the present, too, she was knocked out of her trance. The old man was surprising her once again, saying, "When did people stop telling stories?" She didn't respond – she was certain he wasn't talking to her. "Grow up, and it's stories, stories, stories. Stories teach us the Planet. Stories teach us the way we are." He took a long pause, then actually did look her in the eyes. "Shame," he echoed the night, "that some people don't get to tell stories anymore, let alone hear 'em."

When she set foot on land again, leaving the coat with the old man, he was as silent as ever as he untied the rope from around this new dock, staring back out to sea.

Elena called out, saying, "I promised you bread. From the baker."

"That's why I took you," he said, not looking back. "The baker closed ten years ago. Clearly, there's something you need here."

He turned his boat sideways and she saw a number of small dents in the side, probably from Water Zolom attacks. Elena's gun felt heavy against her uncertain leg, and she stood watching until the old man disappeared back into the perpetual rain over the sea. In two days, she imagined, he'd be pulling up to a dock in Junon, probably looking down the bow of the boat to someone else that needed a ferryman, and he'd sail back into the night on another story.

She nodded toward the water, turned on the dock, and started the walk toward Mideel.