Family

Tseng had sent Genesis, Kunzel, and Rufus away sometime during the night when they realized Neirine wasn't going to have a quick recovery, leaving him to sit in the Hospital Wing waiting room alone. Neirine had always come across as cautious to him, being careful to make sure she and those with her wouldn't get hurt if there was any way to avoid it, so her apparently breaking that habit wasn't something which made sense to him. No, she had never actually used the VR rooms the previous time through, but that shouldn't have changed her own desire for caution. Why had she done this? He was worried, and even though Genesis had told him not to, he was blaming himself.

While he was sitting there with his face in his hands, a familiar voice asked, "Any word on her health?"

"None yet. She's in surgery. Veld...Is this my fault, because I introduced her to the VR rooms?" Tseng asked quietly without lifting his head.

He felt more than heard the older man sit down beside him. "Tseng, think back to when you were in school, to when you were a Rookie. You pushed yourself to the point of collapse more than once while trying to improve your skills. Why were you doing it?"

"What does that have to do with what happened to Neirine?"

"Humor me."

"...Why did I...? Because I wanted...I guess I was seeking approval, trying to prove I was good enough to be with the Turks."

"What finally made you stop doing it?"

"What made...?" Tseng drew a blank at the question, trying to remember when it was that he'd stopped, trying to recall the reason for why. It took him a lot of searching through his memories to remember when that had been. "After Kariya killed Relan (1) and I woke up in the Hospital, you told me I had nothing I needed to prove. I don't have an answer more clear..." the younger man answered softly.

A hand rested on his shoulder before the older man asked, "Wasn't your reason just that you realized you didn't need to, your position was guaranteed?"

"Why would Neirine even think hers wasn't?"

"Because she's young and still insecure, still trying to prove herself. She was never as reckless as you, but you then gave her a new toy, and she probably found the tasks you were giving her generally easy, right?"

"...Some were easy, some she had to work at."

"You didn't take her into anything especially difficult, though, did you?"

"Other than the four-Turk scenario against the Death God of the Battlefield, no. She spent most of that one with Ansha, and I don't know that they ran into much trouble."

"So, what would her thought be?"

"...What?"

"If I hadn't actually given you a hard challenge, what would you think—whether it was true or not?"

"...I guess I'd have thought that...you didn't have any real faith in my abilities."

"So, didn't she have a reason to try to prove herself?"

For a few long moments, Tseng had to think about the question, but the only result his assessment produced was, "Then it really is my fault she did this." His shoulders shook as he struggled to hold back tears, and was only expressing as much emotion as he currently was because next to no one else was in the room.

"No, it isn't, Tseng," Veld said, his grip tightening on the younger man's shoulder. "You were doing what you were supposed to do as an instructor. She chose, entirely of her own will, to disregard your instruction and warnings about the dangers in VR scenarios. I'm only trying to help you grasp the logic she was using, not blame you for it, because you aren't to blame. Also, I suspect she was having fun playing and if everything had been relatively 'easy' in her mind up to the one where she was hurt, she'd have kept going for the entertainment value. The two of those in teenagers is usually a very bad combination and makes you youngsters try so hard you get hurt. Not because your seniors said, or even implied, they didn't think you were good enough, but because you perceived things that way."

"...If we 'kids' are so much trouble, why do you put up with us?" the Wutain asked softly, still trying to bring himself under control. "Especially in the Turks—you could just ban anyone under age twenty from being hired."

There was a long silence before Veld asked, "How long has this insecurity of yours been affecting your actions?"

"...What?" the younger man asked in confusion, slowly looking up at the Director of the Turks as he tried to work out what he was being asked.

Veld met his gaze evenly and said, "To some extent, I could grasp your sudden need for urgency, but something always seemed—off to me. I placed you on restriction because this isn't the first series of recent actions you've taken which gave me cause to worry about your well-being. Some of the actions I'm referring to pre-date your urgency. Tseng, I'm starting to feel like I'm looking at the ten-year-old I fished out of the ocean again. Where is this coming from? Where is it really coming from?"

Tseng buried his face in his hands again, not having any idea what the man meant, but somehow still feeling a familiarity about it. Aeris-as-Airmed was sleeping, so he couldn't ask her if she knew what the older Turk meant, but that left him lost and confused. He had no idea what he should say, but knew there had been a problem, and that Veld was probably right in saying not all of his recent actions were solely due to his sense of urgency. As much as he had denied it, his own actions did look like he was trying to get himself killed, and the only thing saving him was his life-preserving gift. It looked a lot like Neirine's behavior. He still had no answers.

:Leviathan's Blessed Child,: a voice came to him clearly from within his own mind. He quickly turned his mind to it, tracing it—and found it going to that second core within him, to Minerva's core. :Your actions are due to your belief that you do not deserve what you have, what you have been given. You feel unworthy of having been given another chance, unworthy of the kindness and caring you have been given in this time. Even after so many years, you have not truly released your suffering and moved forward, and every new wound has become another weight holding you back. Tell him the whole truth. Allow him to assist you in moving forward, Leviathan's Blessed Child.:

Her words resonated in him so strongly that he released a small sob before he even realized he had—and the next thing he knew, he was being pulled tightly into strong arms as his head was drawn down by a gentle hand to rest on Veld's shoulder. One arm was much harder than the other, being Veld's cybernetic arm, but the other was flesh and bone, giving him warmth as well as comfort.

He had never been able to fix so many mental issues, even with Aeris' help. Most of them, he had lived his life ignoring, pretending they weren't there.

The reality was much more complex than he had wanted to admit, and denying his heritage had become his greatest vice to his own well-being.

The Wutain Turk struggled to restrain his tears, but quickly gave up on that and instead just tempered his volume as he wept mostly silently onto the older man's shoulder. It took him some time to calm down, but how long it had taken meant nothing to him—he just wanted to stay where he was right then.

It was only after he had stopped crying and Veld was still holding him that he actively became aware he had been forming much deeper bonds with those around him than he had realized back then. Both Veld and Kariya were the proof of that, with how close he was allowing them, how natural it felt to have them so close to him—his bonds, whether of friendship or family, had to have been there the whole time for him to accept them so easily in such close proximity. That had been both his strength and a source of pain as the old hands had died.

He had never been away from the same suffering which had nearly destroyed him when he'd been ten.

"Feeling better?" Veld asked gently after a few minutes more.

"...I don't know," Tseng sighed. "I...haven't been...completely honest with my heritage ever since that incident...when you fished me out of the ocean. Not with myself, and not with anyone else. Because I couldn't even face that, there ended up being a lot of things I never faced. Unfortunately, this isn't really the place to be discussing them."

"We'll discuss it later, then—once we know how Neirine is doing," the older man agreed, letting the younger man stay leaning against him. "You asked me why I 'put up' with you kids getting into trouble. Tseng, it's a very simple answer. The good outweighs the bad. I don't mean your skills or what kind of work I can get from you, I mean all the meaning and purpose you kids bring into my life. You're young, you have things to learn, and you won't learn them if no one teaches you about them. In families, there's always some good and some bad, but in the end—family is family and sticks together. Well, most families do. You're no less my son than Felicia was my daughter, Tseng, and in some ways, you're closer to me than she was. I want to help you become the best man, and the best person, you can be."

Tseng drew in a sharp breath at the words, then relaxed fully against the man who had, for all intents and purposes, become his father. His drive to save the man, even to falsify his death so Veld could escape, suddenly became clear to him—yes, his bonds with those around him had been much deeper than he had ever realized. For too long, he had been hiding from, denying, how deep those bonds ran, and Leviathan's Blessing was acting as a catalyst to force him to realize and accept them. It was forcing him to move forward. While he wasn't completely clear on exactly what the bonds he had were with some people (like Kariya), there was no denying there was one, and a deep one.

Then he sighed as he felt a headache coming on at the reminder of Felicia. "I wish we had been given more time, because there's one thing I wish I could have fixed for you which I can't. It's already done and over with."

"That is?" Veld asked quietly.

After a silence, Tseng gave another sigh and said softly, "This isn't the time or the place. We—have more than my heritage to discuss later, now."

"Very well," Veld agreed, his tone sounding amused. "We'll get to those later, then. It looks like the doctor is heading this way."

With a small nod against the older man's shoulder, Tseng reached up and rubbed his eyes, then sat back from him and looked around tiredly. The doctor had stopped near them, but hadn't spoken yet, apparently waiting for the Wutain to get control of himself again.

"How is Neirine?" Tseng asked quietly.

"She'll be fine," the doctor replied with a small smile. "She'll have a few scars—we couldn't spare her that completely—but otherwise, she'll make a full recovery. She was lucky it was just the VR scenario Nibel Wolves she fought, because if she'd been up against real ones and everything that could have gone wrong with that, it could easily have been much worse. Yes, the marks are in keeping with Nibel Wolf wounds, but she was largely able to protect her vital organs, and these ones can't leave behind things like diseases or infection sources. We'll have to keep her here for a few days while she finishes her recovery, but she seems—almost depressed."

"Is she awake right now or sleeping?" Veld asked that time.

"Awake. Tired, but awake. I don't think she'll sleep either until she can talk with you or she becomes so exhausted her body forces her to sleep," the doctor explained.

"Can't you use Sleep (2) on her?" Tseng asked with a small frown.

With a shake of his head, the man told them wryly, "You Turks frequently override our spellcasting with sheer will if you've got something on your minds. She's currently immune to it."

Tseng blinked as Veld chuckled and rose. "It looks like we have to go see to our baby Turk, yes, Tseng?" He offered a hand up to the younger man, and after a moment's hesitation, Tseng took it and let Veld pull him to his feet.

The two men followed the doctor to a small, single-bed room in the section of the Hospital Wing set aside for the Turks. There were ten rooms allocated to them, though at times, non-Turks were placed there for care, too. At this point, it was quiet in that part of the Wing, the lights turned low, and in Neirine's room, there was a bed-side lamp turned down low. The girl looked pale and drawn as she sat in the hospital bed, propped up against the raised back of it and staring down at her hands, her clothing the usual white cotton pants and shirt of the hospital patient garb. Only flight risks got the open-backed gown. One of her hands had a bandage wrapped around it from the wrist up to a point under the sleeve of her shirt, and the other showed a jagged, white scar.

"How are you doing, Neirine?" Tseng asked her gently.

Her eyes moved up to his in sorrow and fear as she said in a trembling voice, "I'm so sorry! Don't make me leave, please!"

Tseng blinked in surprise, but Veld moved over to the foot of the bed and asked, "Exactly what is it we're supposed to make you leave?"

"The Turks," she answered fearfully.

"And why do you think we would do so?" the older man asked of her curiously.

"Because I didn't obey orders, then I turned out to be crap at protecting myself, and I'm not good enough to be a Turk if—" Neirine began, clearly on the verge of tears.

"Neirine..." Tseng cut her off tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose as he felt the headache from earlier intensify. She silenced, so he asked, "How far through the system did you get, and what format were you doing it in?"

"I...Um, we only worked on F, G, and H ranked scenarios, so I started taking the first scenario in the registry for each rank from E up. B, C, D, and E were easy. B was actually a challenge, but it wasn't hard, so I went to A. That was when..." the younger girl explained miserably.

"Neirine, you do realize A and S ranked VR scenarios are partner scenarios and have no safeties, right?" the Wutain asked her, dropping his hand to meet her gaze. She blinked slowly. "The four-Turk scenario you joined us for would have ended in all our deaths if we'd had less than four—and there's a good chance we'd have been in a bad way if you and I hadn't managed to access the Death God's A.I. to have him hightail it rather than fight us at the end. You've never seen Kariya fight, and all you have is the abstract of what happened with him, Verde, and myself at the factory. Everything else you met was easy to handle, or Ansha was taking care of the truly strong opponents you met. Most Rookie Turks can only handle D-ranked scenarios, and they're all at least three years older than you and have more life experience, and here you're sitting here saying the first real challenge you found was at B-rank?"

The red haired girl slowly blinked again, then asked softly, "I'm not too weak to be a Turk?" She suddenly looked hopeful.

Tseng gave her an annoyed look and said, "You're currently more capable than I was when I joined, Neirine—I could only handle C-rank scenarios by the time I was a Rookie, and that was largely through familiarity. Your skills and place with us isn't in question and never has been. In this case, you found out for yourself why I told you not to test higher-ranked scenarios. The VR rooms aren't toys or playgrounds, Neirine, they're teaching tools, and as such, they can be dangerous without supervision.

"To clear something up about the ranks—H to E will shut down if you get anything more severe than a minor scratch, and from D to B, you can take serious damage, but nothing can kill you. It will shut down before the fatal damage happens. In A and S, all bets are off, and those can kill you. To be clear on this, at my current rank in the Turks, I'm not qualified to take S-rank scenarios unless I have someone at a much higher rank with me. You and I could only participate in the four-Turk one because both Ansha and Verde are at a high enough rank to qualify. It isn't designed to hold you back, it's designed to keep you alive until you're actually capable of doing them.

"As for not taking you into higher-ranked ones, part of the first day was training, then we had two SOLDIER Cadets with us who weren't a fraction as skilled as you are. Yesterday, we were training again. The purpose of training is to put you in scenarios which would force you to develop and hone skills, not to put your life in danger so you can get an adrenaline rush. We were using scenarios which were plenty difficult for you because you haven't had much active battle or honed your Sense and All for that purpose, and that was what we were working on improving. It was helping you learn a required skill for a Turk, regardless of the lack of danger it placed you in."

She looked confused as she asked, "I thought Turks had to fight, too?"

"We do, but we're primarily investigators," the Wutain replied in a dry tone. "Like I said, your combat skills aren't the issue—it's your ability to hone the data your combo gives you, something which will ultimately make your investigative ability far superior to nearly everyone in the department. Training doesn't mean putting you in danger, it means preparing you for what your job will entail."

Neirine looked between the two men for a minute, seeing how Tseng seemed—tired—and Veld seemed amused, but what Tseng was saying at least made sense. "But what about my disobeying orders?"

"There isn't a Turk alive who hasn't done so at some point or another," Veld answered dryly. "That's not grounds to have you removed from the Turks unless you commit an act of treason in the process. Grounds for treason aren't very wide-spread. In that, you're no different from the rest of us, but you picked the wrong order to disobey for your own safety. Tell me, from this point on, if someone tells you not to do something because it's dangerous, will you listen and abide it, or will you do it anyway?"

She stared at him for a moment, then looked down at her hands again and said, "Listen, probably. I don't want to be in the hospital again for something I didn't have to be..."

"If you were officially registered as a Turk, you'd have disciplinary duty for awhile for what you did," Veld informed the girl, who looked up worriedly. "For the moment, you aren't on our rosters yet, and we can't give you such a discipline for experimenting. Even if we did, we wouldn't be able to hold you to it. Shall we call you nearly losing your life punishment enough for disobedience?"

The girl gave a small sigh, then looked at Tseng again—and asked quietly, "Are you feeling all right, Sir? Um, Tseng?"

His gaze lifted to her as he gave a ghost of a smile and said, "I'm fine. I'm not the one laying in a hospital bed right now."

"But you're still blaming yourself for Neirine's actions," Veld replied with a small sigh. "What will it take to make you realize you aren't to blame?"

"Wait, why would Tseng blame himself because I didn't listen?" Neirine asked in pure confusion.

"I was responsible for you, but I didn't anticipate you doing any such thing, and because of my oversight, you were badly injured," Tseng replied quietly, his gaze sad. "This shouldn't have happened, and if I'd been paying more attention to you..."

Veld gave a small sigh as Neirine stared at him blankly for a few moments—before announcing, "That's just stupid."

The Wutain blinked at her in confusion. "But—"

"I chose to go ahead and do it after I was back in my room last night, and I never told you. How could you have known I would do it?" she asked. "And you warned me more than once—even Ansha warned me—not to take A's and S's by myself because I could get hurt or die. I'm the one who chose not to believe you, or let you know I wanted to try...I really just thought it would be easy and you were all being protective adults because I'm 'the baby' of the family. That's not your fault, stupid big brother." It was her turn to look annoyed with the older man, who was staring at her in shock. Then she realized how she'd just talked to her senior and blushed as she began, "Uh—"

Veld cut her off with a small laugh and faced Tseng to ask, "How's that for being put in your place by a thirteen-year-old?"

Tseng, on the other hand, was less focused on what she had said and more on what she'd called him, so just gave his head a small shake and asked softly, "Brother?"

Neirine blinked at him, then gave the Wutain a small smile. "Turks are family, right? And all of you keep checking up on me, but you're the only one who actually taught me new things so far. Since I was an orphan anyway, I would always have had an adoptive family, and that makes you my brother. You even act like one!"

His lips quirked into a small smile as he said, "I suppose there's quite a bit of truth to that." The Wutain then released a small sigh and told her, "I keep...running into situations where I can't protect my younger siblings. Or my older ones, even. I—watched my brother and sisters by blood die, and I couldn't do anything for them, so when I saw you covered in blood and badly injured, I started having flashbacks to that time." She stared at him in shock as Veld's brow quirked, but Tseng finished by telling her, "Whether you chose those actions rather than them being forced on you, it hasn't made things easier for me, little sister. I never want to see you laying in a hospital bed again."

"...Oh," she replied quietly. "I really am sorry I didn't listen to all of you." Suddenly, she yawned and murmured, "Sleepy..."

With a soft chuckle, Tseng told her, "Then get some rest so you can recover. I'll be back to visit you tomorrow."

"M'Kay..." the girl murmured before slipping quietly into sleep.

After a moment of silence, Veld commented, "You were surprisingly open with her about your past."

"Lately, everything is coming back to my past in some way or another," the Wutain replied, slowly pushing himself up, then reaching up to rub his head tiredly. "And even when you keep me locked up in the building, I still can't seem to get a decent rest..."

"This isn't your fault or due to you deliberately over-reaching yourself, though," Veld pointed out. "Come on. It's time for you to get some rest, too. We'll likely talk more about these issues tomorrow sometime."

With a small nod, Tseng let Veld guide him from the room—and all the way back to his own apartment. It wasn't until he'd seen the younger man inside that the older Turk left to go to his own apartment not too far away.

Notes:

(1) Relan is dead (obviously a former Turk), and there's limited application for calling up the name of Tseng's first mentor before Veld ended up doing it personally, so you don't have to remember it.

(2) I think earlier in the story, while Cloud was sorting his Materia, this was called 'Sleepel', which was the original FFVII name for it. My brain blanked at some point between the two chapters, and I've decided to go with the simple obvious from now on, so it's now just going to be called Sleep, regardless of what it had been earlier. I may also go back and fix the earlier use/s of it at some point, but not now.