The End of the Rope


"I'm so sorry…" she whispered, almost choking on her words as I lay on the dirt-stone floor near the coffins, curled on my side and wallowing in my own self-pity as she pushed the red cloak under the door that Hojo locked to keep me in and to keep her out, "I never meant for any of this to happen."

I never replied to her though, choosing not to acknowledge her, what she'd turned me into, or what she was doing to herself as I stared into space and held onto the chain around my neck, not even wanting to look at what she'd put there. I failed. I failed everyone—myself and everything, and I was being punished for it.

My humanity was stripped away and I was being punished.


It was days later, maybe even weeks when I finally moved, ignoring the hunger pangs and the stiffness from lying still for so long. For all I knew I may have never moved if it wasn't for Hojo's voice on the other side, ordering his men to brick up the gap under the door.

"She's been bringing him food," he said as I finally focussed on what I already knew was there.

The older servings she'd brought had already turned, attracting the insects that fed on such things and my father's cloak was too close to it as well as it was to the door, and for some reason it was the only thing that mattered to me all the sudden.

It was also the first and last time that I moved since I put myself in that room as I grabbed the cloak, put it on, and climbed into an empty coffin to sleep the rest of eternity away, knowing that I should have been in a coffin anyway.


Fragments of reality and dream flash by, all of it feeding into the agony of not being able to be in control of myself at the moments I need it the most. But I don't think it would have mattered much, not as a part of me watches Tseng get reeled in by the web before a venomous stinger plunges into his back and he suppresses a scream with an impressive growl-sounding grunt after stiffening from the pain.

He tries to defend himself and does as good of a job as one could expect from someone in the situation that he's in. He's covered in a growing number of webs, he dropped his gun and pushed it farther away from himself when he went to grab it back in a blind panic the moment he was grabbed, and his cane was grabbed and angrily broken in half by something uncontrollable that lives within me.

I suppose I should be thankful that was all that Chaos did in response to his attempt to summon it though, and I suppose I should be wondering why it was all that Chaos did as a reaction, along with the fact that the first thing Chaos did after that was to try to protect him by attacking the creature that was attacking Tseng, almost like it wants to protect him.

But that's not the only thing that's confusing me right now, half-here and half-somewhere else. No matter how much the situation should be catching my attention, the only thing I can seem to focus on for the first time in over thirty years is… 'What was Lucrecia doing with my father's cloak?' and 'Why did she have it?'

It's not only that though. For some reason, each time I try to wash the thought away and focus on regaining any control that I might be able to, I wind up falling back into my past like a prison that I can never escape, and it's a prison that wants to close itself around me more than anything else at this moment.

Chaos…


"What's this?" I asked after she handed me a chain with a small orb attached to it.

"It's something that your… It was found at a dig near Bone Village," was her answer, and I'm suddenly regretting why I didn't ask her why she hesitated, "It's a small stone that the natives used to where. They believed it to alleviate burdens."

"Burdens..." I mused as she handed it to me and I rolled it around in my fingers, thinking of how my father was involved in an excavation near Bone Village several years before his disappearance, "You know, my fa—"

"Oh look!" she suddenly exclaimed, cutting me off while suddenly pointing at the dusky skies, "The first star of the night…"

Although I'll admit that the skies were inspiring that night, I couldn't help but get the feeling that she didn't like talking about my father, especially when I considered the manner in which she'd avoided every other topic involving him and the way that she reacted to me the first day that we met.


Imbecile… that's what Tseng would call me if he knew what was going through my head right now and it's what I wind up calling myself once I snap back to the present and the creature falls with a deafening shriek as a fowl and suffocating odour fills the air. Then I stand in a stunned sort of way as Tseng makes it to his knees, shaking and trembling as saliva runs from his mouth, almost like he's foaming and something is fired from what sounds like a silenced gun to hit me in the back of my shoulder. It's the unfortunate reminder that I must have forgotten about when the insect-like creature became the primary and immediate threat.

But unfortunately, those that entered the lab before Tseng was rudely defiled and attacked, never left. They must have stayed up there and watched, waiting for Chaos to remove the problem and then waiting for it to calm down.

Or to be more accurate, they were probably waiting for the opportune moment to sedate me and grab Tseng by a handful of his hair near the crown of his head to force him to stand, despite that he can barely even kneel at this moment.

Obviously he's not seen as a threat anymore and although I'm concerned about how quickly the poison he was injected with is going to spread as he makes a weakened attempt to fight and loses, I still can't stop thinking about where Lucrecia got my father's cloak from.


"You doing all right, son…? You look a little cold."

"S-Sorry, Father…"

"Hm-hm… You're always apologizing… Here… Wear my cloak…"


Dreams come and go.

They range from when I was a child to the time I was assigned to work in the Nibelheim lab. There's no meaningful order, only random interludes, fragments that seem to have no affect on the current situation and I wind up almost fighting to snap out of whatever slumber I was unwillingly sent to while a small twinge of relief fills up an empty place inside of me when I hear the sound of Tseng's voice and thank whatever mercies that he's still alive.

"I told you, I don't know."

His voice sounds weak though, almost like he's struggling to breathe as I hear him being roughly handled by his interrogator and what sounds like he's being backhanded across the face. Part of me is almost afraid to open my eyes for fear of seeing that he might be in worse condition than he was to begin with. But part of me knows there's no way for me to avoid what we've managed to get ourselves into as I open my eyes and all remnants of blame wash away.

"And I told you, I'm growing impatient with your bullshit!"

The only problem is that when I open my eyes, it's not Tseng or the expected surroundings that I see even though I think I can hear them.

"We know Rufus has been sending you guys out to collect that mistake you made all those years ago, and we also know it has something to do with what your second-in-command is using to power that blasted EMR of his! But what we don't know is where THE HELL IS RUFUS?"

Instead, I see Lucrecia as I last saw her in the cave near the waterfall outside of Nibelheim, encased in a mako prison with her arms folded over her chest, thankful that I told her Sephiroth was laid to rest. Or more accurately, I don't think she ever knew that I lied to her about it.

"Well, if you know so damned much than you should already know where Rufus is," Tseng answers, raspy and laboured, almost like he's clenching his teeth before I hear the sound of another smack and a weak snicker coming from Tseng.

Then I hear the echoing sound of Lucrecia's voice asking me to forgive her before she starts to fade away and I try to call her back.


"Lucrecia!" I call, trying to reach out to her to hang onto her only to realize that when I try to reach out that my hands are tied to the chair that I'm sitting in and that I didn't only call her name in my dreams. I called it out to the room for all to hear as her last fading words echo through my skull from a distance that doesn't seem real.

"I forgive you, Vincent," is the last thing I hear her say, fading smile, before the image slips and all I can see is a room full of old lab supplies, cobwebs, six—maybe seven men, some neatly dressed and others looking more like thugs. In the midst of it all is a well-beaten Turk, looking ill and glaring at me like the asshole that I'm sure he's thinking I am for calling out Lucrecia's name again.

"I don't think she can help you," says the man standing in front of Tseng. He's gripping the front of the Turk's hair to keep his head up and snickering at the situation he's got us both in. Then he kneels in front of the Turk and grips his fingers into his swollen jaw before quietly asking him, "Don't you get tired of that?"

Tseng's only response is to try to kick him, making me wonder if he's forgotten that his legs are excessively bound along with the rest of him as if his captors didn't want to take any chances with him.

Then he snickers back at him and answers, "It's starting to grow on me… I think I might name my next child that."

"Funny," the man answers even though I doubt he's amused. Then he breathes out, "Only you would come up with something that cold," as if he's bored while he stands and smacks Tseng's bruised and tender-looking cheek with the palm of his hand.

After that, he says, "I doubt if I lost my daughter the way that you did that I'd be making such light of it at a time like this… and your wife too…"

The words sting somewhere deep inside of him as those eyes return to the burning charcoal that I often see in him, like a nerve has been deliberately struck and he knows he walked himself into it. And if I know Tseng as well as I think I do, he's probably angrier at himself for leaving himself open than he is at anyone else right now, despite my own ignorant outburst involving Lucrecia's name.

"You're not looking so good, Tseng," the man says before he pulls the Turk's handkerchief from his breast pocket and wipes the saliva from the corners of his mouth while tauntingly musing, "I wonder how long it will take for that poison to kill a fighter like you…"

Then he snickers, places the handkerchief on Tseng's lap and turns his attention over to me.

"I suppose I should introduce myself to the infamous ex-Turk. Vincent Valentine… It's such a pity everyone thought you were dead…"

He smiles crookedly then, showing a mouth full of misaligned teeth with a satisfaction over the wheezing cough from behind him before Tseng's small cough turns into an all-out hacking. Then he spits something green onto the floor in front of him and sighs with a heavy wheeze while turning his attention to the ceiling like he doesn't want to deal with his condition right now.

The man takes a moment to look like he's bathing in the sound, as glorious to him as it is worrying to me. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath as if he's standing in a fresh meadow and then he snaps his attention to me with eyes so hazel that they almost look golden.

"Don't worry about him," he says before smiling and walking up to me like he's got a secret to share, "that old bastard will probably find some way to outlive us all."

Then he snickers to emphasize the mockery of his words and takes a Heal Materia from a concealed armlet around his wrist and adds, "Especially if I wind up feeling like rewarding him for doing the right thing and telling us where his psychotic boss is."

"And if he doesn't?" I mindlessly ask, already knowing that they'll kill him or both of us either way and focussing on how foreign my own voice sounds to me at this moment.

"We believe that he may run out of time," he answers before he snickers again, toys with the Materia in front of me, tilts his head so that his shoulder-length brown hair falls to the side and steps closer to me.

"That is of course, if he isn't already running out of time. But because I'm an optimistic man there is the off-chance that you might answer the question for me."

"Why would I do that?" I defensively ask, regretting it the moment the words leave my mouth and wanting some way to lash out at him when he adjusts my headscarf to move my bangs from obstructing my eyes as much as they are.

"I have no idea," he answers, "but I'm willing to bet that there's some kind of connection between the two of you since every time we've managed to locate our obscure little friend over there that the two of you have been bickering like a married couple…"

He hangs onto the words for a moment as if he's beginning to wonder just how close or far apart we are before he finishes with a thoughtless shrug, "Not to mention that you've not only protected him from my men but you've also managed to give some fairly lethal blows to my men as well, leaving some of them for dead."

For a confused moment, Tseng turns his ailing attention over to me and stares at me with unfocussed eyes as if he's silently questioning whether I've killed in his name, and knowing Chaos and my memory lapses, I'm afraid that both of us fear the answer is 'yes.'

"I must admit I'm curious though. Because I could have sworn that one of my men reported that they saw you attack the redhead as well…" he muses before one of his other men confirms it as if he'd been watching us at the time.

"So I guess you could say I'm a little confused about what exactly is going on between you and my ex-boss."

He takes a look around then and slowly studies Hojo's old lab, buried in the bowels of the Nibelheim mansion where screams are never heard from the outside, and then he returns his attention over to Tseng who's suddenly coughing again, only this time, blood runs from the corner of his mouth along with the green telltale signs of internal infection. With a small satisfaction that almost makes him look serene, he returns his attention to me and takes another moment to silently contemplate something.

"Would I be correct in assuming that this has something to do with why Tseng is still alive?"

"What?

"Oh how rude of me," he says while smiling at my confused question, "I almost forgot to introduce myself… It seems only fitting since I know who both of you are."

"I don't care about your name," I growl, unable to hide my agitation at what he meant and the fact that he danced over it like it was meant to needle at me and it worked.

"Well, if there's one thing that Tseng taught me that I actually stuck to, it was the point that he stressed about being polite. Although I must admit that I rarely saw him practice what he preached… Anyway, the name's Koerin," he says and holds out his hand as if he means for us to shake before laughing like it was silly of him to forget that I'm tied up, probably just as securely as Tseng.

"Well…" he says, with a shrug, almost like his mood changes to the beat of a drum and he's back to being less playful and more serious—business oriented, "I feel I have a couple of cards to play here.

"On one hand, I have a dying Turk that will hopefully last long enough for me to get some value from his pathetically worthless life. I have someone that I feel I can safely call his friend or at the very least, an important colleague of sorts where I'm guessing that the life of the other is important. Or if I'm as lucky as I'd like to think I am, I have someone that is his enemy, only pretending to be his friend and that you'll turn on him at the first given moment of opportunity… much like his old roommate that stabbed him in the back did at the Temple."

He laughs then and places the Heal Materia on a shelf close enough that I could reach if I wasn't bound before turning his attention back to Tseng and muttering out "DeSpell" to make any effort I might think I have to cast the spell to remove the poison from Tseng's body rendered useless.

"I have to admit… I like games," he says and turns his attention back to me.

"Now… I've spent the last…" for a moment of pause he looks at his watch and silently counts on his fingers as if he's figuring a mathematical equation in his head, "Two hours watching our friend grow weaker by the moment and trying to get him to tell me something other than the fact that he'd expected better from me than to hang out with thugs, and I have to admit I've grown a little tired of it."

"So now that you're awake, I'm going to try something else and I'll start with what I know in hopes that you'll feel like adding to it."

"He doesn't know anything, Koerin…"

"Tseng… I'll listen to what you have to say when I address you."

"Fine," Tseng mutters as if he really doesn't care or is too sick to really give a damn at this moment, "waste as much time as you need."

"I believe I will," Koerin mutters before he pulls out his gun and empties all but one bullet, "but first, I want to see how close the two of you are."

"You won't get anywhere by killing him."

"That depends. I happen to know that when it gets right down to it that you'll do whatever it takes to ensure that those you care about are spared. I also know that you like to cover it up with that hard-ass façade of yours by pretending that you only do it to show how much more superior you are to them."

"You don't know me very well then."

"I know you better than you think I do, Tseng… Anyway, Mr. Valentine, are you aware of the latest mess that the Turks have gotten themselves into? I'm sure you'll find it interesting."

"You're not going to find out where Rufus is by telling him that."

"No. But I will have a little fun evaluating my theory," Koerin says right before he pulls the trigger at me and Tseng jumps at the sound of the empty chamber, almost like he was concerned that it wasn't. "Interesting, Tseng… it appears that you do care."

Whatever Tseng mutters out next is too illegible for anyone to fully understand. It's a combination of bitter-sounding Wutian dialect and dizzy slurring while he adjusts himself beneath the ropes and looks over at the lab equipment covered in dust-sheets with a lack of any real interest as if to avoid the situation by pretending it isn't happening, withdrawing.

All the while, Koerin keeps his eyes turned to the side and his attention peeked to what Tseng's doing, regardless of the fact that he keeps his back to him the entire time.

"Insulting your acquaintance won't convince me of anything," Koerin mutters, concluding that whatever Tseng said had something to do with degrading me like he usually does as he spins the chamber on the gun and smirks.

"Now where was I…?"

"Oh yes, Mr. Valentine… Did Tseng ever tell you what they did when the Geostigma was infecting the people?"

He kneels in front of me then and taps the barrel of his gun against his chin while looking up at me like he thinks I'll get a real kick out of what he has to say.

Then he smirks and tells me in a wry-sounding tone, "In a blind panic, Rufus ordered them—us—to flood the remaining mako in their refineries with a chemical that the company used to solidify it because it was believed that the mako from the refineries was tainted and that it might have been the root to the Geostigma that Rufus was suffering from.

"Now I know that doesn't sound very interesting and in their defence, they did it because once the refineries were shut down, the maintenance went downhill and leaks that couldn't be controlled had been discovered, spurring their suspicions. And Rufus—given his sudden change of heart towards the world—feared that if we didn't stop it that it would leak into the pure streams that run their natural course and infect them to a state worse than what we were already in, furthering the devastation brought onto us by the Geostigma.

"Of course you're probably wondering what the big deal is… right?" he asks before he stands again and snickers while my attention fixes more onto Tseng when he starts to cough again and I notice a small hint of red veins in a web-like pattern running up the side of his neck, barely visible above his collar.

But Koerin seems uninterested in Tseng's condition and continues to tell me that, "The big deal is that Hojo in his last moment of questionable glory got the bright idea to contaminate the solution that Shinra used and to make things more interesting, no one has been able to identify what the hell he contaminated it with."

"On the bright side though, Shinra has discovered that even a small particle of their newest concoction delivers enough energy to support an entire continent. But… and this is a big but… Shinra has no idea what the hell this stuff will do in the long run even though they are using it, and the fact that Hojo created it… well… need I say more?"

He smiles then, satisfied with himself as I watch Tseng turn farther away from me and wonder if the anger over Shinra's idiocy shows in my face. The blame isn't passed to him though. The only blame I pass is the blame that I put on myself for following him so blindly, never asking what he was up to and never concerning myself with Shinra's dealings.

Instead, I only ever saw something that captivated me for reasons I couldn't seem to reason out.

It would be preferable to say that the only thing I'm feeling in regard to him is disgust at this moment. Or at the very least, it's what I'd like to convince myself of as Koerin turns the gun to Tseng, pulls the trigger, and snickers when Tseng grunts and I yell out his name as if I can use it to turn back the clock to save his life.

But there's no need as Koerin walks over to the Turk and picks something up from the floor near him and says, "It looks like I found myself a winner," and turns to me with the dud in his hand and adds, "do you honestly think I would risk killing the prize…? Only a fool would put real bullets in his gun during an interrogation."

He snickers again and hits the back of his hand to Tseng's shoulder where the dud hit him and adds with a lighter tone when Tseng hisses, "Hurts like a son of a bitch though… doesn't it?"

"I should have left you for dead."

"But you didn't… and I'm indebted to you for that, which is why I'm being nice to you right now… Sir."

After that he turns his attention back to me, winks, orders his men to remove the sheets from the lab equipment and tells me that he believes I'm a fool to care about Tseng after knowing everything that he thinks I should know about him. Then he tells me that Tseng has always had an infliction toward experiments and that he's managed to hide it exceptionally well in regard to his job.

"Of course anyone that's mentored him as closely as I have would tell you that he's downright disturbed by the mere thought of experimentation on living beings."

But he feels it's important to tell me that before he decides to tell us both that Hojo had an experiment planned that he never got to start, and that he even had a subject selected and that the subject in question was the very same Turk that was a roommate with Hojo's greatest masterpiece, and his name is 'Tseng.'

How much of it is true though, I don't know, even though I wonder as Tseng's ailing attention focuses on Koerin with a mixture of confusion and something resembling irrational concern as Koerin's men are ordered to untie the Turk and to place him in the vessel that Hojo set up for him over a decade ago.

"You've gone mad!" is the best that Tseng can blurt out as he attempts to defend himself in hopes that he can summon enough strength to stop them from dragging him across the floor, and he resorts to literally digging his nails into the crumbling stone, breaking them after one of the men loses his hold on him and he falls to the ground and tries to crawl away, telling them that, "You can't do this…! What makes you think you'll ever find out where Rufus is by doing this?"

And as if to answer his question, the moment the vessel is opened and they manage to get one of Tseng's struggling legs inside while trying to keep a hold on his body as he twists and writhes to get free, I find myself urgently growling out with a burning urgency as if I think it will help him, "I know where Rufus is!"

Whether I'd thought it out well enough though, I don't really know, and all the while I try hard to avoid Tseng's betrayed eyes, questioning and judging as he heavily pants, wheezing heavier than before, and Koerin smiles. Then his men ease up on the Turk and start to return Tseng to the chair before he passes out, probably from the combination of the excitement and the poison running through his veins even quicker than it was before from his blood pumping faster.

"I knew I could break one of you," Koerin smugly says before he changes his mind and orders his men to fasten Tseng to the examination table instead of returning him to the chair, flushed cheeks, soaked hair, and out cold while Koerin's men strap him down and Koerin injects something unknown into the Turk's neck.

"But as insurance, Mr. Valentine, I want to ensure that you're not going to lie to me…

"Now…

"Where. Exactly. Is Rufus?"