A/N: A conversation toward the end of this chapter alludes to events in Before Crisis. Nothing spoilerific, though; I imagine we're all aware that there are only three Turks when the original FF7 game begins. ;) Some BC events will occasionally come up in future chapters, too, just FYI. (Not sure if such warnings are even needed here, but I guess it doesn't hurt to be on the safe side.)
I had thought it would be an isolated incident. I had hoped I would never see him again. Yet the following day, the red-haired devil rolled back into my sequestered part of the world in his wheelchair.
"Fitz, baby!"
I flinched when the loud, obnoxious voice tore right through my protective cocoon of disinterest and dumped a bucket of ice in my belly. I hadn't heard him approach; I had been too absorbed in my own world while a newscast on TV droned on in the background.
Reno wheeled himself into the patient lounge; without incident, somehow, despite constantly being on the verge of colliding with the environment. He grinned at me as if he was greeting an old friend. I, in turn, whipped my head around to stare at the TV screen, taking slow, deliberate breaths to keep a semblance of calm.
"Miss me?" he chuckled.
I pressed my lips together and kept my eyes aimed forward. The segment changed and the screen now presented a reporter in front of an aerial shot of Midgar, showing the smoking ruin of a demolished section of the city. It had been the talk of the town for the past few days, both on the news and among the staff of the ward. Some kind of a terrorist attack that had collapsed a part of the city upon itself.
I'd felt the floor quake when it happened, for the third time that week. The previous two times it had been reactors, according to the news. Had I been more interested in reality, the escalating attacks might have worried me. As it was, they barely registered in my dulled mind.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Reno grimace.
"Eugh. Shut it off, will ya? I'm sick of that crap."
He reached for the remote himself before giving me a chance to react and turned off the TV. Another feeling began to penetrate the comfortable haze I shrouded myself in: I was annoyed. My hands resting in my lap curled up into fists as the irritation bubbled over into anger; no, into inexplicable rage. I was furious at the way he just rolled in and acted as if he owned the place – owned me – but fear made me swallow my resentment.
Yes, I was still afraid of him, even when the man was confined to a goddamned wheelchair. I felt ridiculous, but I couldn't slow the rapid hammering of my heart.
He tossed the remote onto the couch next to me, and navigated himself within the edge of my field of vision. My ears picked up every muted squeak of the rubber tires, every rustle of fabric – soft sounds that seemed disproportionately loud in the absence of the TV's noise. Once I had gathered enough courage, I gave him a sideways glance. His right leg was in a cast, as were a couple of fingers on the left hand. Above the standard green pajama pants for patients, he wore a white dress shirt. It was in much the same state as the one he'd sported when he questioned me: wrinkled and haphazardly buttoned.
That was as high as my gaze would go. I didn't want to see his eyes.
A "Turk", Amanda had told me. One of Shinra's underhanded enforcers, unscrupulous and deadly. Not their official job description, of course, but according to my eager informant, everyone knew the Turks did all sorts of dirty work for their company. Well, I could confirm that part from firsthand experience.
Several of the top shirt buttons were undone, giving me a glimpse of more bandages wrapped over his torso. I suppose it would have been too much trouble for the injured man to don the rest of the Turk suit. Why he had bothered with just the shirt was a mystery to me.
"Like whatcha see, doll?"
My gaze snapped forward again while warmth flooded my cheeks. Obviously I hadn't been as stealthy as I thought. The darkened TV screen reflected a view of the room, revealing the grin on the man's face. An odd shape shadowing his forehead subverted my initial instinct to look elsewhere again. It took me a few seconds to realize it was his goggles. They had struck me as a strange choice to wear in the interrogation room; now, it was outright bizarre.
"Just can't keep your eyes off me, eh? No need to be shy, darlin'. The view's even better when you look straight at me, yo."
I pointedly turned my whole head away from him. He laughed.
"C'mon, don't be like that. I'm just messin' with ya."
I jumped when something small struck my jaw. Automatically, I spun my head around, only to find myself staring into a mischievous pair of pale blue-green eyes. I froze – half in surprise, half in panic – but another hit, this time on my forehead, brought me out of the dazed stupor.
"Hey!" I protested and raised a hand to shield myself.
The offensive projectiles had landed on the plush seat next to me and I gaped at them in disbelief. Paperclips. The bastard was throwing paperclips at me!
Reno laughed again.
"It lives! Was beginnin' to think I was talkin' to a zombie, yo."
Another paperclip bounced off my arm. The redhead dug around in his shirt pocket with long fingers for a few moments, then frowned in disappointment.
"Aw damn, that was my last one. Hey, uh, mind givin' those back?"
With resolute movements, I grabbed the paperclips and hid them in my tightly balled fist, then stared straight ahead with narrowed eyes.
"Oh, c'mon!" he griped. "Dammit, you're as bad as those killjoys in the infirmary."
"Why are you here?" I finally dared to ask, grinding the words out through clenched teeth.
"Told ya. Messin' with ya."
Of course. Silly me, why had I even asked.
"Can't bother the nurses anymore. They just shoot me up with tranqs, the humorless old farts."
I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, although I could certainly understand the temptation. With no sedatives at my disposal, I chose to return to my apathy. Reno fidgeted for nearly a minute, then sighed with theatrical exasperation.
"Fine, be that way. Maybe you'll be less borin' next time, yo."
The Turk swerved the chair around in a precarious-looking move, then disappeared down the corridor with long, scarlet hair swaying in his wake. I watched him go, then let out a long, relieved exhale once he was out of view.
The relief was only brief, though, for his last words kept replaying in my head. Was he planning to return? An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. Slowly, I opened my hand and studied the paperclips resting on my palm. Now that the fury was draining away, a dull, hollow ache was replacing it in my chest.
I threw the tiny items at the wall, desperate to get them out of sight and mind before they lured more emotion to the surface, then fled to the comforting solitude of my room.
Unfortunately, the next day Reno returned, and once again, he took advantage of my daydreaming to sneak up on me unnoticed.
"Well, well. Fancy meetin' ya here again, eh?"
I jumped, startled by hearing his voice right behind me, then went perfectly still.
The greeting was followed by a throaty chuckle. "Sheesh, you're so jittery, Fitz."
And whose fault might that be? I couldn't believe the insensitive audacity of the man, but decided to remain silent. I didn't want to spur him on.
"Still givin' me the silent treatment, huh. Fair 'nuff, yo."
I could have fled to my room, but I didn't have the privilege of being able to lock the door. No other doors were lockable by patients either.
Reno positioned himself so that his chair was aligned with the couch, then flopped against the back rest with an exasperated sigh.
"Man, this fuckin' wheelchair's pissin' me off. Such a pain in the ass. Still, better than bein' stuck in a fuckin' hospital bed all day. Can't stand just lyin' around with nothin' to do, y'know?"
I couldn't see any members of the staff; most of them were relocated to the emergency and trauma units due to the fallout from the recent terrorist attacks, making the psych ward a quiet, desolate place between meal times. There was the option of alerting a nurse with the call button in my room, but I was sure the redheaded pest would follow if I tried to leave the patient lounge. Did I really want to let him know where I slept?
"Couldn't even smoke in my room. I swear, the nurses must've put a smoke detector in there or somethin'. Some nosy jerk showed up every time I tried to light up. A fuckin' nightmare, I tell ya."
I could have hid in the bathroom, I suppose, but that would just have been embarrassing.
"Fucked up knee, buncha broken bones, enough bullet holes in me to qualify as a freakin' sieve? A fuckin' walk in the park compared to havin' to go without a decent smoke for, like, at least three days."
A pack of cigarettes had appeared in the Turk's uninjured hand and he twirled it this way and that in his fingers as he spoke, occasionally pausing to crinkle the cellophane. If he lit up in here, then screw the tattered remains of my pride. I'd hole up in the bathroom.
"And just for the record, the fire was all their doin'. Bustin' into my room like that, screamin' their fuckin' heads off? 'Course I dropped my damn smoke! Ain't my fault some dumbass had chucked some kinda flammable shit in the trash can, yo."
Asking him to be quiet? Pointless. Reno didn't strike me as a person who listened to other people, much less obliged their requests.
"Oh, hey, that reminds me of this trip I took to Kalm once. Ever been to Kalm? No? Well, don't bother. It's a shithole, borin' as fuck. Anyway, me and Rude, we show up late at night, right before the weekend, and wanna get rooms for the night..."
Too dumbfounded to pay attention to his story, I sat still, muscles tense, fists balled tight in my lap and my face aimed forward while sending quick, wary glances at him from the corner of my eye. The man's languid drawl continued, emphasized by animated gesticulation and punctuated by intermittent interruptions in the form of laughter.
"What are you doing?" I blurted out after one of said breaks in the narrative, subtly scanning our surroundings for hidden cameras.
Reno blinked a couple of times, then cocked his head and sent me a quizzical look.
"Huh? Are ya dense or somethin'? I'm tellin' ya a funny story, darlin'. Try to keep up, will ya? Anyway, as I was sayin'..."
The man droned on in a jovial tone that felt thoroughly out of place. He was in far too good a mood for a person recovering from the severe injuries he had listed. Was he high? That might explain why he thought it'd be a good idea to regale one of his victims with tales of comical misadventure in some backwater town.
The sound of voices drawing near in the corridor outside brought the one-sided conversation to an end. Reno tilted his head and listened for a second, then sent me a wry smile.
"Guess that's my cue. See ya when I see ya, babe."
I didn't look back as he wheeled himself out of the lounge, not even when the unseen owners of the approaching voices let out yells of agitated surprise.
Jokes, easygoing chitchat, lively grins and laughter free of derision. Was Reno the interrogator the evil twin of this wheelchair-bound rascal? Was the man schizophrenic? Or, indeed, on something more potent than mere pain relief? The easygoing manner was so vastly different from the cold, frightening man I had faced before.
The confusion made my retreat into peaceful torpor an outdrawn struggle that lasted for most of the afternoon. More than once, I caught myself peeking over my shoulder, half-expecting another unwanted visitation.
As I feared, the second visit wasn't the end of it. Now that the red-haired Turk knew where to find me, he spent far too much of his time haunting my ward. He would show up unannounced, several times per day, and always when the staff was occupied elsewhere. I tried staying hidden in my room, but he soon figured out which one it was. I turned up the volume on the TV to drown him out, but he just raised his voice until the combined cacophony gave me a headache. I hit the call button once or twice, but the man tactically evaporated, only to reappear two minutes after the nurse's departure.
Deciding it best not to cry wolf too often and unwilling to fight, I just gave up instead, falling back on the strategy of detached passivity. With my eyes turned down I sat meekly, obediently, while the red wolf himself chattered and pestered me, hoping he would grow bored and go away.
His visits served no obvious practical purpose. Despite being my former interrogator, the Turk never asked any questions about my origins. It was mystifying. Against my will, I found myself getting more and more intrigued. A couple of times I mustered up the courage to ask him if he had nothing better to do. Both times the answer was the same: a shrug and a "nah", followed by steering the topic onto something else. Once I wanted to know how he'd been injured, but he nimbly dodged that question. Reno remained a persistent, bothersome enigma.
The kindled curiosity paved the way for other, less benign feelings. My docile appearance belied the ever intensifying imbalance within, and it became harder and harder to keep it all inside.
"You read that lovey-dovey crap?" Reno asked with a laugh, a few days after his first appearance, when he saw me reading one of Amanda's books. "Bahamut's balls, sweetie, I would've thought you got better taste than that, yo."
"In case you haven't noticed, my options are rather limited at the moment," was my frosty reply.
He leaned his head to the side and idly scratched the back of his neck.
"So you don't like 'em? Why the hell are ya readin' the damn thing?"
"It's better than the current company."
As soon as the snide comment had left my lips, I regretted my lack of self-control. I stiffened and held my breath, keeping my gaze locked on the book in my hands.
"Ouch," Reno said with a snicker. "Was beginnin' to think you'd lost that bite of yours, Fitz."
The physical retaliation I half-expected never came, nor did it manifest in verbal form. It actually unnerved me; it didn't fit my impression of the man. The ever-present smirk didn't match the one I remembered, either. It may still have been smug, but it wasn't the cold sneer he'd worn before. I wondered when the cheerful veneer would crack to show the heartless brute I knew.
Fortunately, the man never tried to lay a hand on me during any of the encounters. Instead, his mouth did twice the work. The Turk had mastered the art of talking without saying anything of consequence. He spoke of all sorts of topics, from types of explosives, to the best hard-to-find food joints under the plate, to chocobo breeding. I made the mistake of asking what a chocobo was and ended up sitting through a lengthy, though rather rambling monologue on the subject. I now knew more than I'd ever wanted to know about giant, flightless birds.
I kept commenting to a minimum, though. The redhead babbled on, unbothered by such a reluctant audience. I recalled his silent partner; perhaps Reno was used to it. From time to time he would make some offhand remark about it my reticence, usually after making a joke I deliberately ignored.
"You're on my shit list, Mr. Turk," I informed him at one such occasion. "Right at the very top of it."
"Whatever. You'll warm up to me, baby," was the cocky reply. "You'll see, yo."
Wheelchair-bound cripple or no, I nearly slapped him. Familiarity breeds contempt, they say. In this case, it seemed to breed a growing lack of fearful cowering. Even Amanda noticed it.
"You're different, Teresa," she remarked one morning. "Suddenly you've really perked up. There's some actual life in you. Did Dr. Maxwell put you on happy pills?"
Strangely, the injured Turk didn't seem to mind this development. In fact, sometimes I could've sworn he riled me up on purpose just to encourage it.
No matter how skilled Reno proved to be at evasive maneuvers, I suppose it was inevitable that he would run into the staff sooner or later. One evening, only moments after he had vacated the room, high-pitched, irate shouting was heard from the corridor, making it clear he had run afoul of the ward's blonde guardian. When Amanda appeared in the patient lounge, an uncharacteristic scowl shadowed her round face.
"I saw that red-haired man try to sneak out of here. Did he come to bother you again?"
He was not supposed to leave the trauma ward, the friendly nurse had told me when I mentioned my frequent and uninvited visitor, but the staff still had too much on their hands with the aftermath of the collapsed sector to keep a constant watch on one unruly patient out of dozens. They were able to restrict him to the medical wing, but within it, the willful Turk came and went as he pleased.
"Yes," I sighed. "He's nothing if not persistent."
Her frown deepened and she placed her hands on the back of the couch, leaning closer.
"Be careful around him, Teresa," she warned.
I cringed inwardly at the bastardization of my name. Early on, Amanda had decided her version of my name sounded prettier and had used it since. In my complacent state I hadn't cared, but now it had begun to grate on my nerves. In my opinion, "Teresa" was an old woman's name.
I didn't complain, though. Lately, I'd been called worse on a daily basis; such as "doll" and "babe". Besides, Amanda was the closest to a friend I had in this place, and right now, her concern was obvious.
"He's with the investigation sector, remember?" the blonde nurse continued in a hushed tone. "They may not be the same anymore, but the Turks are still bad news."
I stifled a snort. She was definitely right about that. I hadn't told anyone about my interrogation, but thanks to the Shinra employee rumor machine, the nurse was already convinced that all Turk business was shady business.
Her phrasing caught my attention.
"Not the same? What do you mean?"
"Well," Amanda said, drawing out the word as she glanced around, then rounded the sofa to sit down next to me. "It's all pretty hush-hush, but as I hear it, the Turks did something to royally piss off old President Shinra some months ago."
Some months ago? I must have been locked away in this ward at the time. Suddenly, I was curious. Did it have something to do with why I had been forgotten here? In the first week, I'd been convinced the questioning would continue once I'd recovered, and had become more and more puzzled when no sinister men in suits came for me.
I wanted to ask for a more detailed timeframe, but that might have alerted the blonde's instincts for gossip. I had no desire to start rumors that might draw more unwanted attention to me. Having to put up with Reno's brand of it was bad enough.
"What did they do?" I asked instead.
Amanda seemed pleased to have an eager ear for once and leaned closer to speak in a low, conspiratorial voice.
"No one seems to know, or at least they don't dare talk about it. Whatever it was, it had to be pretty bad. The President and the board disbanded them!"
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. The Turks worked as a sector within one of Shinra's departments, Amanda had mentioned once, although I couldn't remember the long and convoluted name for it. I wasn't too familiar with the Shinra hierarchy, but disbanding a whole sector sounded like a drastic move.
"Really? But Reno is still a Turk, isn't he?"
"Yes, they were reinstated, but now there's only three of them left, if you don't count the new girl." The woman glanced around again, then continued in a stage whisper. "It's all very creepy, if you ask me. No one knows what happened to the rest, but they haven't been seen since. That's like a dozen people, just gone. Makes you wonder what the three that came back did to get their jobs back."
Even without the knowing look, her implication was clear: the Turks themselves had gotten rid of their wayward colleagues. A chill ran down my spine. While I suspected Amanda viewed the workplace gossip more as fanciful entertainment than fact, I could all too easily imagine my ruthless interrogators as corporate hit men, snapping necks and slicing throats.
The more I heard and saw about the inner workings of the Shinra company, the less it sounded like one of the business entities I was familiar with from Earth, and more like some kind of twisted, autocratic megacorporation that ruled the city of Midgar and much of its surroundings with an iron fist, untouchable by law.
And I was firmly in its clutches, trapped right in the middle of its headquarters.