Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It is a cold evening towards the start of the year, and all of Shinra is celebrating the anniversary of the victory at Wutai, the end of the Wutai War. All of Shinra, that is, apart from First Class Soldier Sephiroth. First Class Soldier Sephiroth is in the company gym, mercifully alone.

The entire lobby had been full of people in their finest outfits, raising glasses and sharing canapés, laughing and making small talk like their losses weren‘t a thousand times greater than their gains. These were not people who had seen war. He had turned up for the start of the celebrations, shown face, done the rounds, taken the right photos and shaken the right hands, but he had made it clear from the start that he wouldn’t be staying, and after precisely thirty minutes he had excused himself. He shouldn’t have had to face it alone. There should’ve been a tall man, broad-shouldered and proud, standing on his right, a fiery redhead, scathing and quick-witted, providing cynical commentary on his left. They are the real people who understood what had happened in the West. They are the people he stood shoulder to shoulder with, facing down enemy hoards, the people he had bled with, fought with, lived with, won with.

It had only taken him ten minutes to head to his apartment several floors up, get changed from his formal attire into something more appropriate to train in, and head back down to the gym. He has no specific training in mind, but his mind is been racing and he has no clue what else to do about it - managing one’s psychological state hadn’t been high on the agenda for the SOLDIER program, after all. That used to be Angeal’s forte, but going to him for help isn’t an option anymore.

He steps onto a treadmill at the far end of the room, and begins to run.

It is nothing but their ghosts running with him tonight, just like it is nothing but ghosts that comfort him when he is unable to sleep at night, to remind him that he is in the lifeless but secure city of Midgar, no longer the scorched, volatile land of Wutai. A whole year has passed and he still has the occasional vision, hallucination, the phantom sound of screaming, begging, the ceaseless smell of a capital burning.

The treadmill is designed for regular employees, not people like him, so its top speed is hardly an adequate workout, but the pounding of his feet and beating of his heart are better distractions than none. He spots movement in his peripheral though, in the mirror in front of him, and he frowns as he sees someone walk nonchalantly into the gym. There shouldn’t be anyone here. They should all be downstairs, tens of floors below, clinking their glasses and smiling their false smiles.

The figure pauses just inside the door, clearly not expecting to see anyone either, and Sephiroth holds his stare in the mirror.

“Oh …“ the intruder says, caught off guard himself, “I didn’t mean to interrupt …”. It takes a second longer to recognise him than it normally would, devoid of his standard uniform black suit, but the figure at the door with hair tied up and the mark on his forehead is Tseng, unofficial second in command of the company’s Administrative Research Department - the Turks. Sephiroth has worked with him on occasion in the past, reconnaissance mostly, and their unique position in the company means that the Turks are some of the of the few people who knew the truth of the events of the past eighteen months, the reality of the War, of the SOLDIER desertion, of Genesis, Angeal. They knew enough to see through the glitz and glorification, the tragic spins Shinra’s media department had put on it all. Neither party has ever spoken about it though, no, rather forming an unspoken, silent kinship - everything is broken, warped beyond all repair, and no one else will ever know.

The Turk smells particularly nice, something that Sephiroth had never noticed before, a cologne he identifies as amber and vanilla, maybe an edge of leather. Without the suit now he is dressed appropriately for a workout. Sephiroth doesn’t break his stride, although the slight frown remains.

“It’s no interruption,” he says, shifting his eyes back to himself in the mirror, and he sees Tseng in his peripheral finally move into the room. The other man keeps to himself, which suits him nicely, but Sephiroth can’t keep his focus anymore. He lets the Turk finish his warm-up stretches before he next breaks the silence. “You’re not at the party,” he says, an observation, not a question. Tseng looks over to him as he crosses to a different area of the room, and he chuckles. The sound is hollow - Sephiroth supposes it is less than genuine.

“I find it all a bit tacky, if I’m honest with you,” the Turk says, and although he doesn‘t say it out loud Sephiroth couldn‘t agree more. Tseng chances a glance at him in the mirror; he holds it, watching his expression, finding it unreadable. “None of those people were involved in the War,” the Turk continues. He stretches out his shoulders, one at a time, before approaching a pull-up bar and looking up at it. He gives a one-sided shrug, maybe more to himself. “They could just be glad it’s over, I suppose,” he says, “For all intents and purposes.”

He jumps up and catches the bar, hangs there for a moment to stabilise his core, and begins a slow series of pull-ups. Sephiroth is captivated, not at the display of strength of course - he has seen this exercise performed hundreds of times by hundreds of people, can do it himself one-handed - but more at the individual displaying it. He knows the Turks to be competent at their jobs but he has never seen any indication that they are particularly strong, and he has never seen any of them out of their suits. He watches the other man execute the first ten reps with perfect form.

“I’m sure you can do much more than I ever could,” Tseng says, making Sephiroth realise how much he’s staring. Maybe he doesn’t like to be watched, he thinks. He is used to patrolling rows of recruits, watching their every move, checking every form. He is also used to training with Genesis, who relished any and every opportunity to show off. The Turk is neither a new recruit or an old friend, he reminds himself, and so may not fit either of these moulds. People are complicated, he has to remind himself frequently; Angeal isn’t there to remind him anymore.

“I’m a SOLDIER, we train very differently,” he says, averting his gaze and looking back into the mirror, still maintaining his stride. “I’m surprised you weren’t made to attend,” he says, bringing the conversation back to the formalities occurring floors below.

“I made how I felt very clear to Veld,” Tseng replies simply, not explaining any further. He hits twenty and reverses his grip on the bar, tucking his knees up to work his core now instead. “You not being there is more of a surprise,” he adds.

“I turned up and performed my duties as instructed,” Sephiroth replies curtly, watching himself again in the mirror rather than the other man, “Their parties do not feel particularly aligned with the reality of the war I remember.”

The bitterness in his voice carries across the room, and Tseng stills his movements. For a long moment, the only sound to be heard is the pounding of the Soldier’s feet on the treadmill, his barely elevated breathing. After a moment, Tseng completes three more exercises.

“People are quick to celebrate the wins,” he says, finally dropping from the bar, “Much more reluctant to acknowledge the losses.” He flexes his wrists, stretches his shoulders again, and Sephiroth can’t help but notice that he looks pensive. The Turk purses his lips before speaking:

“I’m sorry about your friends.”

Sephiroth doesn’t know how to respond, and it occurs to him that no one has ever extended sympathies to him before. Not even Zack. He doesn’t know what to do with it and so he remains silent, and continues to run.

The party continues downstairs.

The Turks are watching Zack. There’s nothing subtle about it, no cloak and daggers or subterfuge involved, just that wherever he goes one of them seems to follow. Zack had apparently asked the youngest Turk about it directly, and she had replied quite honestly that they had been tasked to follow him. Sephiroth isn’t immediately sure of why they are following Zack and not him, but it certainly makes him suspicious when he finds himself being sent on simple throwaway missions on the outskirts of Midgar with Tseng at his side. It’s all menial tasks, smoking out a stray pack of Kalm Fangs, disabling errant Sweepers, too physical to assign to a Turk alone but too simple to really justify enlisting a First Class Soldier to help. Lazard says it is in the name of strengthening the relationship between the Turks and SOLDIER, which does seem almost plausible - after all, SOLDIER had been the boots on the ground during Wutai but they wouldn’t have stood a chance without Turk intelligence on their side - but after their fourth mission out together Sephiroth takes a leaf from Zack’s book and tries the direct route himself.

“Why are the Turks watching Zack?” he asks abruptly, on the way out to investigate and eradicate a sudden spike in Prowler population on the outskirts of the city.

“They’ve been ordered to keep an eye on him,” Tseng answers simply, the apparent honesty suspicious in itself, “With Rhapsodos and Hewley deserting in such quick succession, you can understand that they don’t want to lose anyone else.”

“Genesis and Angeal,” Sephiroth corrects sharply before he can stop himself, and he rolls his eyes, shakes his head, mostly at himself, “And so can I assume that’s why you’re following me too?”

Tseng raises his eyebrows.

“I’ve been sent on missions with you,” he says pointedly, “Which I would consider different to following you. Unless you’re feeling particularly scrutinised by my presence?”

And he doesn’t, to be fair. He’s seen the way the Turks watch Zack, keep an eye on his every move but maintain a certain distance, they make no bones about it. Yet the times he’s been sent out with Tseng in recent weeks seem different, refreshing even - they feel comfortable. They had worked together on occasion in the past, and even when not working had shared many a morning coffee in amicable silence, both taking advantage of the quiet hour at the start of the day before their respective problematic redheads waltzed in to bring them hell. The Turk has a grounding energy Sephiroth hadn’t really noticed he had been enjoying until now; scrutinised is something he certainly hadn’t felt.

There has been a Genesis sighting.

Sephiroth’s stomach drops when he is told, summoned to Lazard’s office late in the evening, and it drops for reasons he doesn’t fully understand. His first thought is exactly what he expected to feel, a flutter of hope in his chest enough to make his breath catch, although he hides it well. But then rushing in immediately after the hope is the drop in his stomach, like he has fallen from the Plate with no backup plan. Because without even noticing it, he had …adapted.

When he first returned from the War he had been numb, because he had come back without his friends. Well, more specifically, they had left him, abandoned him. There had been no plan and there had been no discussion - for years they were a trio, at war a band of brothers, and then he was one, all over again. He had told himself there had to be a reason, there had to be a reason they had to leave, and so he made it his job to be ready for when he saw them again. They were still out there, somewhere, and he would see them, would find out what happened, maybe even …

… but then he did see them. He saw both of them, Genesis attacking civilians, Angeal flying, flying into the Tower. And there had been no room for him. Angeal died by Zack’s hand, Genesis by his own, and then there was nothing. And that nothing … was manageable. After everything, the years of training, the years on the battlefield, the excruciating, complicated years that followed, the sudden nothing was remarkably welcome. It had been nice to not care anymore.

And now he is standing in Lazard’s office, and he … he cares.

He is, however, not alone. Tseng had been called too, and the Turk stands opposite Sephiroth, looking no more informed than he does.

The weight in Lazard’s voice suggests he’s aware of the gravity of what he’s saying.

“Rhapsodos has been seen in Wutai,”

Sephiroth wasn’t prepared for the twist in his stomach, the bile that rises in his throat. He also wasn’t prepared for the quiet shift in the atmosphere around Tseng, the way the Turk’s breath catches, imperceptible to anyone else but quite plain for Sephiroth to see.

“And I’m sending you both after him.“

And if there had been any doubt in his mind that Tseng isn’t actually shadowing him, just like the other Turks are shadowing Zack, it is all washed away in how he sees the other man’s face fall.

Chapter Text

Growing up, he’d always thought Midgar was hell. As a child it was stark grey walls and captivity, and as an adult it was mercenary and soulless. But now, after several hours of travel, he watches the war torn island of Wutai loom on the horizon, and he knows Midgar was never hell at all.

Wutai was hell.

He was created for combat, he knows that much, years and years of merciless drills to break him down and mako baths to build him back up again, but he had never been prepared for the realities of war. He had enjoyed his first victory, blood arcing artfully through the air as his sword sang through its first real victim, and he enjoyed the rush of adrenaline that had come with leading a unit of his own into freshly won territory, their voices behind him raised in victory. He hadn’t enjoyed the first death on their side though, the first time he watched life blink out of eyes he had known vibrant and alive not five minutes before. He hadn’t enjoyed reconvening with each squad and counting fewer heads every time, figuring out who had been taken, who they had lost, who wouldn’t be going home with them this time. He hadn’t enjoyed the constant noise, explosions and raging fires, the mud caked under his nails and into his hair, the stench of ash and death that seemed to follow him everywhere, even at home, half a planet away.

No, he knows now - Wutai was hell.

It’s an hour until they land, by his estimation, and he turns his attention to the man sat opposite him in the chopper. Tseng had been virtually silent for the entire journey, and there are undeniable shadows under his eyes.

“It looks like you haven’t slept a wink,” Sephiroth says, and a lesser man would tremble at the annoyed glare he earns for his observation.

“Thanks for noticing,” Tseng replies, narrowing his eyes, but it is hard to maintain such a dangerous expression when trying to stifle a yawn. The annoyance on his face is short-lived, however, being replaced with a troubled frown, “There was a lot to catch up with in the files Lazard gave me,” he explains, “I suppose I was just preparing myself. It’s been a long time since I’ve been back.”

Lazard had briefed them on their mission the evening before, on the planned infil-exfil times, the area they had to cover, what exactly had and had not been seen of the errant Soldier and exactly what the plan was if they were to encounter him. The Director had a number of thin files under his arm as he spoke, and before dismissing them he had offered them to Tseng. “You’ll excuse me, Sephiroth,” he had said, looking up at the Soldier, “But we trust you are familiar enough with the landscape you’ll be flying into. Meanwhile I understand Tseng that quite a lot of time has passed since you were last on the continent,”. Tseng had taken the files uncertainly and Lazard had laid a hand on top of them, “Some information to help you know what to expect when you get there,” he had said, studying the Turk’s eyes as he spoke, “A whole war was started and finished since you came to us,” he had said, with a solemn tone to his voice, “… a lot has changed.”

Sephiroth had known nothing of the Turk’s background, although he had often wondered; it’s evident that he is of Wutaian descent, and while his language is fluent there is a crisp edge to his accent which had always suggested it was learned more than picked up. His demeanor though, along with his pressed suits and no-nonsense professionalism, had always screamed corporate Midgar. It had been impossible to tell if he had grown up in the city and was just particularly well-spoken or if he had been raised overseas, and if so, when did he travel over? The Soldier opens his mouth and pauses a second, thinking.

“When were you last in Wutai?” he asks finally. Tseng looks at him and narrows his eyes again, but this time in thought rather than any grievance. He appears to give it some thought

“Years ago,” he concludes eventually, a shrug on his shoulders, “Over half my life ago, actually. I came to Midgar when I was a child.”

“Family?” Sephiroth asks.

“No,” Tseng answers, “They stayed in Wutai.”

Sephiroth considers these answers. When he was a child, he thinks, and without his family. It feels like half a story, and he wants to challenge it, but he stops himself. After all, how often as a child had he dreamt of leaving, of running away to the other side of the world entirely alone, far from their hands and their eyes and their constant endless observations? He had done it, once, as a teenager, knowing that he was too strong and they were too scared to try to stop him. He gathered a training sword and two orbs of materia and left everything else behind, his room, the labs, the building, and even though they chased him they couldn’t stop him. For an hour he’d felt so powerful, so unstoppable, but then he reached the outskirts of the city and … he realised he could go no further. They didn’t have to physically restrain him to keep him trapped; they’d managed that in their years of systematic suppression. It was Angeal who ultimately came out to talk him down, to bring him back in; in retrospect, that was probably under Shinra’s orders too.

He wonders at Tseng’s story, but doesn’t press for any more details. The story is clearly incomplete, but perhaps it is also irrelevant.

The Turk’s arms are folded, and he is staring out of the window at the land they are approaching.

“We still have an hour before we land, maybe just under,” Sephiroth says, almost wanting to apologise for the reverie he has put the other man in, “You can get some sleep in before we get there.” And, inadvertently, this seems to bring some levity to the cabin. Tseng laughs.

“Oh, if only,” he remarks. Sephiroth tips his head slightly and the Turk smiles wryly, “I‘m not a Soldier, I can‘t just fall asleep wherever I want around people I don‘t even know. Nothing personal,” he adds, although he is still smiling with a degree of deprecation. “It’s nothing conscious,” he explains with a shrug, “Call it an occupational hazard.”

Sephiroth continues to watch him, both interest and amusement on his features. He thinks of long nights crammed into soldier barracks, or cold mornings huddled arguably too close with Angeal and Genesis. In SOLDIER they didn’t have the luxury of choosing when and how to sleep, they just had to grab every opportunity they got.

“Have you never had to work overnight before?” he asks curiously, waving a hand, “I don’t know the ins and outs of a Turk’s job. Surely there have been stake-outs, intel gathering …”

“Falling asleep in the office …” Tseng admits with a wry laugh, a flash of something honest before he becomes serious again, “But therein lies the difference. Reno, Rude, Cissnei … I know them. I trust them. It‘s different.” It’s incredibly telling that he doesn’t mention Veld, “No offence intended, of course.”

“None taken,” Sephiroth responds with a gesture, mirroring the Turk’s wry expression with a mixture of intrigue and amusement. Tseng looks out of the window again. He does look tired.

“We won’t be there for long,” the Turk says, “We depart again after nightfall and get back to Midgar by daybreak. I can sleep when we get back.”

There’s no need to do the maths outloud, Sephiroth thinks, because surely the other man knows how ludicrous his plan to stay awake is. Instead he nods, conceding, and averts his gaze too, and they continue the rest of their journey in silence.

He hasn’t missed Wutai. It has been a particularly dry season and the trodden earth is dense and dry beneath his boots, the air thick in his lungs. There are still Soldier camps out here, a base for them to land in, but he barely knows any of the remaining soldiers by name anymore. They all nod at him, salute out of respect or perhaps fear as he walks past and then muttering suspiciously when they see that he is travelling with a Turk in tow. It is interesting to see how the perceived rivalry between the two departments, the military and administrative research, seems to persist even on the other side of the world. “Why‘s there a suit on our turf?” is one of the comments he overhears as they cross through the central camp, one Sephiroth had been based at himself. “Sleep with one eye open tonight, boys,” another says, an obvious reference to the Turks‘ reputation; it is muttered quietly, but judging by the amused quirk on the corner of Tseng‘s lips it was loud enough for him to hear too. Sephiroth is pleased he seems to be taking the comments in his stride, as he himself isn‘t at all impressed by them.

“We’re not going to be joining you for the night,” he says bluntly, enjoying the look on the offending Soldier’s face when he realises he had been heard. “We’re here on reconnaissance in response to a report received at Midgar. We’ve been led to believe that Commander Rhapsodos has been seen near the area within the last twenty-four hours - can you confirm?”

The Soldier frowns, an honest expression, and shakes his head.

“I haven’t been told anything, Sir,” he says. A few other Soldiers seem to still at the mention of the Commander’s name, some with wide eyes full of hope, some looking more nervous, each one of them suddenly listening closely. Sephiroth looks across them all.

“Can anyone here shed any light on the report we received?” he asks, and a few mumbled “No Sir”s are joined with shaking heads, expressions of confusion. Anger begins to bubble in Sephiroth’s stomach, anger that they’ve been dropped into this hell-hole for no reason, anger that he’d let himself hope he was wrong. Why does he keep letting himself hope? “So you’re telling me,” he says, voice not leaving any room for misunderstanding, “That myself and my companion here have driven and flown from Midgar on a mission based on nothing?”

His tone has shaken any residual arrogance from the Second Class Soldier in front of him, who now looks positively terrified at the prospect of having to deal with the legendary Sephiroth’s rising temper. He stumbles over his own words.

“N-no, Sir,” he starts, “Not at all. We have patrols out ac-across various shift patterns throughout the day. If Commander Rhapsodos was seen in the last twenty-four hours it’s possible it was before my shift, or maybe it was one of the men out on patrol now who saw him, if you’re happy to wait here at camp we could call them back to report in and -”

“No,” Sephiroth cuts through, trying to temper his growing anger with resignation, “We’re not waiting here. If the Commander has been seen then every hour we spend not looking for him is an hour further away he gets. What’s your name, Soldier?”

“H-Hanver, Sir,” the man replies, saluting with a nervous hand, “Captain Hanver, Second Class, acting Commander.” Sephiroth nods.

“Well Captain Hanver, you have been entirely useless to me, and if I were you I’d be asking why reports have made their way to Midgar without going through me as acting Commander. You can trust I’ll be feeding this back to Director Lazard upon my return.”

Sephiroth turns on his heel, disregarding the slack-jawed expression and panicked choking sound coming from the Soldier behind him.

“No one saw him.”

Sephiroth is angry. He strides through the scattering soldiers and back to open terrain without a word, Tseng doing his best to keep up behind, and he only starts talking again when they’re at the tree-line on the edge of the camp. “There was never going to be any sign of him,” he says, knowing he can’t keep the irritation out of his voice. Tseng goes to speak up but Sephiroth speaks over him. “Genesis was melodramatic and he was an attention-seeker,” he says with venom that surprises even himself, “If he wanted to be seen he would’ve made himself seen, and if he didn’t, no one would’ve even seen a whisper. He - was never - here,” he says angrily, going as far as to kick up dust under his boot. Tseng appears conflicted, opening his mouth to try for a response a few times before settling on a reply.

“No one would make up a report like that,” he says finally, although there doesn’t seem to be much conviction behind his words, “Someone saw something and you know what Rhapsodos means to the Company …”

“Then whoever reported it must have confused him with someone else.”

Tseng sighs; it is clear his patience is being tried too.

“Rhapsodos was hardly subtle,” the Turk says, “He was easy to spot in a crowd, and you could identify him a mile off. Whoever saw him wouldn’t have confused him for someone else.”

“Well whoever saw him isn’t speaking up anymore, are they?” Sephiroth fires back, enough spite to silence the other again, “We have nothing to go on other than an eye-witness report from a ghost. Of a ghost.” His tone is defeated and final.

Tseng purses his lips, clearly not willing to respond, to continue poking the bear, and checks his watch.

“We’ve come all this way,” he says, voice deliberately neutral, “And we’ve got another six hours until we’re picked up again. We might as well check the route they gave us anyway. It‘s either that or indulge in some local tourism, and I don‘t know about you, but …” He lets the sentence trail off and pulls out a device which, at the touch of a few buttons, produces a vibrant green image showing their current location and the immediate topography, a miniature 3D map.

“It won’t take us six hours to sweep the area they‘ve given us,” Sephiroth says, “It’s tiny.”

“And that’s the voice of someone who’s never had to track someone before,” Tseng says, allowing himself a careful smile, watching Sephiroth’s expression closely to see if he can get away with the comment; Sephiroth doesn’t seem to care. “At least now we know why I’ve been sent with you,” Tseng says finally, before returning his attention to the map and orienting himself. Sephiroth watches him studying the map and watches how he seems to still suddenly, before a frown crosses his face. “Wait …”

“There’s no irregular terrain around here,” the Soldier says, assuming the other man to be pointing out some obstacle, some reason they can’t follow their prescribed route. Tseng shakes his head slightly with narrowed eyes.

“I know this route,” he murmurs, and then again, quietly to himself, “I know this route …”

“Didn’t you say it has been years?” Sephiroth asks, and Tseng nods.

“It has …” he says, voice now dipped to barely a whisper, and now Sephiroth narrows his eyes too, not at the route but at trying to decipher the Turk’s expression. He finds himself unable to.

"Is there a problem?" he is forced to ask eventually, seeing Tseng's frown deepen by the second, and the Turk only shakes his head.

"No," he says simply, too simply, "Let's go."

Their pick-up point is a large, flat plateau, roughly halfway up what Sephiroth would describe as somewhere between a big hill and a small mountain, a brutally steep climb but nothing he hasn’t done before - it had been considered one of their more pivotal victories when they claimed the area during the War as it was a brilliant vantage point with clear, unobscured views across from East to West. It normally wouldn’t take much effort to climb, and he has done it in a variety of conditions - dry, like this, loose rocks rolling beneath his boots, or rain coming down in sheets, rendering the earth sodden and slippery. What he is not used to, however, is trekking the route with someone who isn’t a Soldier. More specifically he isn’t used to trekking it with a Turk, who seems much more dedicated to their supposed mission than he is.

Tseng takes his time, moving carefully across the ground, over rocks, between trees, checking anything that could be even slightly out of place. “We’re outdoors,” Sephiroth wants to say, “Well above sea level, on a tree-covered mountain path. There is a relative breeze. You’ve not been here for over a decade, there is no way for you to know if that leaf isn’t exactly where it should be.”. But it’s when he notices him taking a longer time in one particular clearing without noting anything down, without double-checking the brief, the map, just standing and looking around, that it strikes him. He hasn’t been here for over a decade. He hasn’t been here since he was a child. And maybe it isn’t just “evidence” that he is looking for. Maybe it’s not just bootprints and feathers. Maybe there’s more to it than that. The Turk occasionally looks to the sky, casting his eyes across the thin clouds overhead, and Sephiroth is quite sure there is no evidence to be found up there. He is torn between allowing the man these moments and reminding him they’re out here for a reason, that they have a place to be and a time to be there by, but the Soldier in him takes solace in how the Turk occasionally checks his watch, keeping on top of his own time management. Sephiroth has to acknowledge that as slow as Tseng is forcing their pace between meticulousness and rumination he is at least keeping himself acutely aware of the time he is costing them, of the dwindling daylight, and the need to be at their pickup point before their assigned pilot comes and goes without them.

Sephiroth looks up to the sky too and, by his estimation, they have about an hour of full light left before it begins to get dark; once the sun begins to set it will set quickly.

“How are you holding up?” he asks, deliberately distracting the Turk from his latest reverie, “I appreciate you might not be accustomed to the terrain.”. Tseng’s head whips around, clearly entirely lost in his own thoughts, and it’s interesting how it takes a couple of seconds for him to shake it off.

“Fine,” he says instinctively, and then more lucidly, “Fine. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tiring a little,” he admits, and those shadows under his eyes are deepening. Sephiroth nods in acknowledgment and makes a leadership call.

“I’m going to take point and I‘m increasing our pace,” he says, tone leaving no room for protest. “And the sooner we get to our destination the sooner we can rest. We haven’t found any trace,” he says, “And to be frank I don’t think we are going to. I think someone’s had their fun with us.” He expects an argument and prepares himself for it; he doesn’t expect the Turk to watch him for a while, weigh up what he’s saying, and silently concede with a heavy, begrudging nod. “Think you can keep up?” he asks. Tseng takes a big breath, and cricks his neck in each direction.

“We’re going to find out,” he says in a tone Sephiroth can’t read. The Soldier waits for him to join him again at the side of the path and then sets a new pace for them.

He is taller, he is stronger and he is faster, and also he is well rested, so it is no surprise to him that he is pausing at two minute intervals to let the other man catch up. He has to admit to being impressed to a degree however, because although the Turk is slower he is damn persistent - he doesn’t take breaks each time he catches up, rather he keeps his head down and ploughs on ahead. Sephiroth keeps a close eye on him - force of habit left over from leading whole squads of fresh recruits into battle - but it doesn’t take long to start believing he can actually take care of himself. He does still stop from time to time, crouches down to investigate something that might just be a bootprint, a track, clearly not willing to throw the whole expedition in the air, but Sephiroth has resigned himself to the whole journey being pointless. The crushed flicker of hope, the pointless return to this god forsaken continent, weighs heavy on his shoulders.

“So …” Tseng says quite suddenly, breaking their mutual silence, Sephiroth‘s miserable thoughts, “Midgar,” he says, breathing heavily but still keeping up just a couple of feet behind. “Born and raised?”

Sephiroth can’t help the quizzical frown that crosses his face.

“For the most part,” he says, letting the confusion carry in his voice, possibly unintentionally. “Why do you ask?”

“If I have to be honest, I just need some distraction to get through this climb,” Tseng responds, and with impeccable timing he stumbles on a loose rock, sliding back a foot or two before regaining his balance and cursing under his breath. The terrain is definitely getting tougher, ground dusty and loose, and Sephiroth can see the other man beginning to struggle more and more with every step. Frustration crosses his face, which Sephiroth notes is particularly interesting; he’s never seen the other man lose his patience.

“I was just assuming you were gathering information for when you inevitably turn on me,” he says, “Turk.”

Tseng looks offended.

“And here I was thinking we were just starting to get on,” he says, and Sephiroth can’t help the small chuckle that escapes his lips. “We may have a reputation, but that doesn’t mean we’re all the same. How would you like it if I started judging you by your colleagues? Do I need to be prepared for you to start setting fire to people and vanishing without a trace too?”

The comment, while surely made in jest, burns more than Sephiroth was expecting, and any retort he might have had catches in his chest.

He is quite sure Tseng notices, judging by the slightly apologetic tone in his voice.

“Look,” the Turk says, stopping for just a moment with uncharacteristically slumped shoulders, “Turks aren’t made for hiking. I’m wearing a suit, Sephiroth.” He holds his arms out to illustrate his point, “I haven’t slept for nigh-on thirty hours, I’m trying to keep pace with a First Class Soldier, and I’m wearing a suit. I’m just trying to make conversation,” he admits honestly.

Sephiroth looks down at him appraisingly and wonders if the pace has been a little punishing. Not his problem, he decides, but he does humour him nonetheless.

“I’m surprised you need to ask,” he says, bringing the conversation back to the original question, turning to face the rest of their climb again, “Being a Turk, I mean. I’d assume you would’ve read right through my personnel files by now.”

Behind him Tseng chuckles, seemingly relieved that Sephiroth has decided to play along for now at least; his laugh is quiet and dry, and so low Sephiroth doubts anyone with regular hearing would even have heard it.

“And I’m sure your files are just as accurate as mine,” the Turk responds, and when Sephiroth glances back at him his eyes are just as cynical as his smile, like he’s sharing an in-joke with someone who doesn’t yet realise he’s part of it. Sephiroth is taken in by the expression, but he doesn’t know how to respond. “So, I should only ask things that aren’t already public information, is that what you’re saying?”

Sephiroth rolls his eyes, unconsciously picks up the pace just slightly. “If you must ask anything at all,” he concedes.

“Favourite colour?”

“What?”

“It’s not in your personnel file,” Tseng says fairly, and there’s attitude in his voice Sephiroth had never heard before. He can’t tell if he finds it amusing or infuriating - it reminds him of Genesis. “So … what’s your favourite colour?”

“I don’t have one,” Sephiroth answers.

“Lucky number?”

“No.”

“Superstitions?”

“Definitely not.”

“Biggest fear?”

“Biggest-, what?”

Sephiroth turns again, confused and somewhat impatient frown on his face, and he is realising that maybe he didn’t miss the solitude after all. He goes to repeat the question, but before he can open his mouth a sudden flash of metal cleaves the air between them, sending them both stumbling back in shock. What-?

Tseng loses his footing and tumbles several feet back down the path they’ve taken, and Sephiroth manifests Masamune in his hand as he whirls around. The flash of metal, a heavy sickle, has landed embedded in a tree mere inches away from him, and he curses himself for not feeling the shift in the air, hearing its spinning trajectory sooner.

They’re surrounded.

The dark purple of the Crescent Unit surrounds them, interspersed among the trees, some with spinning sickles in hand and some with familiar blades, blades that don’t suit them, Shinra blades. Sephiroth’s stomach churns at the sight of their poached weapons, who they were poached from, fallen SOLDIER gear never safely retrieved. A fire of anger erupts in his gut at the thought alone, and he doesn’t spare them a second longer.

He doesn’t know how they managed to surround them like this, but it doesn’t matter. The Crescent Unit always put up a good fight against the Shinra Soldiers, but they were never anything against him.

Another heavy missile is aimed in his direction but he strikes it down in midair with the hilt of his sword as he charges them, and a single singing strike from Masamune cuts two of them down in one fluid movement. One gets close enough to lay hands around his throat from behind, and he elbows them hard enough to feel their ribs crack, can all but hear their spine snap with the force with which they hit the ground. He hears a struggle a short distance away and directs his attention to where Tseng had fallen, but can see that he is up on his feet too, two Crescents fallen around him, one currently toe to toe with him. He allows a moment to observe with interest at how the Turk handles himself, watches the efficiency with which he takes down the attacker’s guard, diverts his attention, swiftly steals his weapon and drives the stolen blade up through his skull with incredible precision, kicking the body away before it even hits the ground.

It’s impressive.

“Under control, Turk?” he calls as he spins again, slicing through the knee of an oncoming assailant before crushing the windpipe of another. Two left, by his count.

“Under control …” he hears Tseng reply, although it sounds through gritted teeth. Content that Tseng can take care of himself Sephiroth returns his attention to his own portion of the attackers, or what’s left of them. One of them charges him with bared teeth and twin daggers raised; Sephiroth side-steps them effortlessly, uses their momentum to throw them to the ground and makes no song and dance about snapping their neck right there in the dirt. The other makes a wild leap from slightly higher ground but even this move is reckless; Sephiroth wields his sword at just the right angle, turns with split second timing, and when the attacker lands their innards land strewn six foot away from them. He doesn’t remember it being this easy, unless maybe he and the other SOLDIERs were just so run down in the heat of war that their enemies seemed better than they were. He is angry at being caught off guard by the ambush, but somehow disappointed that they haven’t even been worth the time it took to dispatch them.

With no attackers immediately in front of him he turns fully to observe the Turk, who himself seems to be on clean-up duty. He is intact too, just like Sephiroth himself, although he does look like he might have taken a couple of hits, a few strands of hair fallen out of his hairband, suit muddied here and there. He is breathing heavily but definitely still victorious, judging by the bodies scattered around him too. There is, however, a tear in the sleeve of his suit; Sephiroth narrows his eyes and can see it goes through to the skin.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, casting one last wary look around the bodies fallen around him before moving back down the hill to join the other man. Tseng looks up to him with a frown before looking down to the torn sleeve, like he hadn’t even noticed the damage himself.

“I’m fine,” he murmurs, and when he catches Sephiroth scrutinising him more closely he rotates his arm, stretching and retracting it to demonstrate his statement, “They barely got me,” he says, and his expression is more annoyance than pain. Sephiroth takes his word for it, but before they can regroup entirely there is a rustle on the treeline that neither of them miss this time.

There is one more, mako-enhanced vision letting Sephiroth spot them crouched behind one of the trees, and can’t tell if they’re waiting for one more opportunistic ambush or if they’re just hiding in the hopes they can escape the botched attack. It doesn’t matter, as he’s not letting either happen. He begins to spin up a strong Gravity spell and at the sound of the magic being conjured his intended target begins to run, but he is so consumed in his own magic he fails to realise that he isn’t the only one casting - just seconds before his spell is strong enough to release Tseng launches one of his own; frozen bolts of Ice magic fly past Sephiroth’s shoulder before he has time to cancel his own Gravity spell.

He watches as the Turk’s Ice missile hits its target, shattering against the target’s back and spraying him with icy splinters, but the Gravity spell that lands just seconds after prevents the ice from flying too far. The vortex that builds around the Crescent fighter engulfs the ice too, and begins to speed the frozen splinters back towards their intended target. It isn’t long before the man is frozen, encased head to toe in ice crystals, but the superior Gravity spell doesn’t stop there. Sephiroth watches, rooted to the spot as the ice compresses further and further, packs tighter and tighter, nowhere to go in the grip of the gravity magic other than further in on itself. The man’s skin is pierced, split open, but the blood inside has nowhere to go, freezing solid with the man it is coming from. Finally the Gravity spell climaxes, and the pressure peaks, and with a crack that makes the Soldier himself jump, the once-man-turned-human-ice-sculpture shatters in front of them.

Pieces go flying, large blocks of ice, smaller chunks of densely packed frozen flesh. Sephiroth shields himself with a raised arm as frozen chunks of the man fly past; Tseng ducks down entirely. Bits of the target collide with trees, other bits settle on the ground, and almost as quickly as it happened everything becomes still again. It is virtually silent as the two remaining men cautiously uncoil and straighten up, and Sephiroth slowly approaches the epicentre of the icy explosion.

“Did you …” Tseng begins, climbing back up to meet him, sounding just as dumbfounded as Sephiroth feels, “… know that was going to happen ..?”

“Not at all …” Sephiroth responds. He is trying to figure out exactly how it had happened, why the Gravity spell didn‘t break the ice down first before simply stopping the man in his tracks. He can only conclude that it must have been the strength of the Ice spell that was used, the sheer volume and weight of the bolts that were fired, that drove them into the man‘s flesh before they could be crushed down. He wouldn‘t have expected any of the Turks to wield magic that strong, and while he is still confused he is also distantly impressed. He hears Tseng approach and steps aside, watching as the Turk crouches down and picks up a piece in a gloved hand. He seems to think nothing of holding it up and examining it as if it were nothing but a rock, a lump of mythril, not a chunk of intensely compressed human flesh, frozen solid, something that was part of a living, breathing human just sixty seconds ago. Sephiroth watches him, intrigued, because surely he should be horrified. Instead he just looks detached.

It takes a while for him to notice that Tseng is not even looking at the icy remains in his hand - his face is drawn, and his eyes are downcast. The Turk works his jaw before he speaks, clearly conscious he is being watched. “The first time I come back to the continent …” he says quietly, “And we get attacked.” There is enough bitterness in his voice to still the Soldier stood over him. Sephiroth waves it off.

“We‘re Shinra,” he says casually, “It was to be expected,”

“Well I had forgotten to expect it,” Tseng bites back. It is a far cry from the quietness at the start of their journey, or from the somewhat arrogant playfulness on their climb. It is an angry response, a snap, a break in the calm, confident veneer that he seems to instantly try to smooth over by looking away again,. He looks out to the horizon, taking an extra breath to calm whatever he is feeling. Sephiroth remains silent, gives him space, time to process whatever it is he needs to process; the Soldier himself has never been caught up in emotion, had never had cause to lash out, but he had seen it in more than enough of his soldiers, seen the mental toll the environment can take on them.

In time the Turk sighs deeply and slumps before rising to his feet. He doesn’t look up this time, or at his watch or his PHS, he just seems to know. “We should move,” he says, and without making eye contact he moves past Sephiroth, taking it upon himself to take point again. Sephiroth doesn’t complain or question it - where there was one ambush there could well be more, but now he is a little more alert he can be vigilant even from his position a couple of feet behind, can probably still see and hear further ahead than the other man.

There isn’t long left on their climb, and while it is steep it seems that the worst is behind them. The Turk stumbles a few times ahead of him but it would appear that exhaustion has kicked in to a point where he is beyond even cursing about it now. He doesn’t pause for a break, doesn’t stop to check the digital map or to scan their surroundings, just keeps his head down and climbs on. Sephiroth is still angry that this has been a whole waste of time, but it’s good to see that the other man has finally landed on the same page as him.

It is virtually dark by the time they reach their pick-up point in somber silence, a wide, mercifully flat plateau, perfectly placed to see over the surrounding land, or what is left of it. Sephiroth slows down as they approach, falls further back and keeps his distance as Tseng drags himself on tired legs across the dry ground, stopping in the middle of the clearing for a moment and catching his breath. Sephiroth checks his PHS as an excuse to give him space.

“Still over thirty minutes ‘til ETA,” he says. Tseng turns his head slightly, nods in acknowledgement, but doesn’t speak. He reaches up to re-tie his hair and winces as he does so. Sephiroth looks up to see him shrug his jacket off his shoulders; the white shirt underneath is now stained darkly across the arm, blood having blossomed across what had been pristine white. Not much blood, it’s worth noting, but blood none the less. The Turk studies his wounded arm, and Sephiroth approaches.

“Are you sure that doesn’t need attention?” he asks, gesturing to the torn shirt, to the wound underneath. It looks shallow, but still … “A Cure, a Potion?” Tseng frowns at him, possibly offended.

“It’s barely a wound,” he comments, and he angles his arm to offer the best view in the dying light. It had cut deeply enough to cut the skin, yes, but the Turk is right - it doesn’t look serious at all. In his defence, Sephiroth isn’t used to travelling with average people, knows nothing of their capacities - he had seen soldiers shrug off the most devastating blows, had himself endured the kind of injuries that he is quite sure would kill the average person. He looks at the wound on Tseng’s arm and knows he would barely notice it on himself, but he doesn’t know how to gauge that for someone else - for all he knows it could’ve been agony. “It’s kind of you to offer though,” the Turk says, although it sounds more dry than it does sincere. Sephiroth’s eyes snap back into focus.

“I’m a Soldier, not a monster,” he says, “I might not have a grasp of your pain tolerance, but there was nothing to indicate it might not be serious.”. Tseng pulls his jacket back on again, another wince.

“Not serious,” he says, and they fall silent again. Sephiroth watches as he turns and begins to pace across the dry plateau, walking to the edge, gazing out over their darkening surroundings. Sephiroth thinks back to what he said earlier, to his coming to Midgar alone, his family staying behind.

As if reading his mind, the Turk suddenly speaks.

“We used to come to the city a couple of times a year,” he says, “My mother and father, my sister and I. It‘s just an hour or two away from where I grew up.”

Sephiroth watches him, the dying light rendering him little more than a silhouette.

“Whenever we visited, we would hike up here, to this very plateau. We took an easier route,” he says, that deprecating curve flashing briefly on his lips again, “It hasn‘t changed in all these years. We would stop here, right here, and look out over the prefecture.”

Moving carefully, as light on his feet as he can, Sephiroth walks over to join him. He stays behind, leaving a foot or two of distance between them.

“You could see our home from here,” Tseng says, and his words hang in the air before them with all their implications. The darkness is damning and, looking out over the ledge they’re stood on, there’s barely anything for the naked eye to pick up on. Night is drawing in and the sky is moonless, and Sephiroth wishes he knew that was all there is to it. He doesn’t think about how you used to be able to see distant towns and villages from this very outcrop, when those towns and villages still stood. He doesn’t think about the buildings, the homes left abandoned, desolate and destroyed after the army raided through the streets. He doesn’t think of what the view is now by daylight, or how thankful he is for the dark.

Tseng frowns, narrows his eyes (as if it helps at this hour), looks discerningly across to the east, and nods his head.

“We were right over there,” he says, tipping his chin to direct the Soldier’s gaze. The direction he gestures in is just as dark as any of the rest of it. There is still a heavy weight in Sephiroth’s stomach though; he knows the area. He had been there before. Maybe there had been a power cut, that‘s why there were no lights to see. Maybe the whole town was asleep. Maybe there was just no one there because they had all fled, been chased out or slaughtered, survivors left no homes to return to.

He keeps his silence. A gentle wind breezes through his hair; Tseng’s too. The Turk purses his lips.

“It’s been a while,” he says quietly, still gazing into the darkness, and Sephiroth hasn’t learned to read him yet but his tone sounds like that might be where he wants to leave it.

Sephiroth breaks away silently and paces back towards the middle of the clearing. He chips a few small rocks out of the dusty ground with his boot and sits himself down, elbows on his knees. He is surprised when, just a few minutes later, Tseng joins him. The Turk sits alongside him but faces away, his back against the Soldier’s shoulder. They fall into a sombre silence - after a few quiet moments, Sephiroth speaks up.

“Being weak,” he says, quietly. He feels Tseng shift against his shoulder.

“Excuse me?”

“You asked about my biggest fear,” the Soldier says, “My fear is being weak. Or perhaps … not being strong enough.”

Tseng holds his silence, and Sephiroth looks at his hands, curling them into fists, relaxing them, turning to study the backs of them.

“Ever since I was a child,” he begins, “They always wanted to see how strong I was. They would do tests, and experiments, make me do all sorts of things … and they were always so impressed when I was stronger than they were expecting.”

He can still see their expressions in his memory, every one of their shocked, amazed faces, when he surpassed their expectations time and time again. Everything they did either hurt or made him sick, but earning their awe made him feel good again inside. For a few years anyway.

“When I got a bit older and started training, I met Angeal and Genesis, and they …” He laughs softly, “They were strong. They were just as good as I was. Or, I was just as good as they were.” A frown falls gently across his face. “I always worried that if I fell behind, if I didn’t keep up, they might lose interest in me. And I’d never had people I’d gotten on with before. I’d never had anyone … like that.”

Friends is what he thinks. Friends is what he cannot say outloud. The word sits unspoken on his tongue, and Tseng continues to stay quiet.

“And now,” Sephiroth says heavily, letting his hands hang loose, “I don’t know anymore. The labs don’t care how strong I am. Angeal and Genesis, well …” he sighs, purses his lips, lets the sentence go unfinished. “But I don’t know what I am without it. If I’m not the Silver General, First Class SOLDIER Sephiroth … what am I, to anyone?” A novelty. A puppet.

He shakes his head and laughs ruefully. “What am I even saying here?” he asks, suddenly feeling incredible embarrassment; the chill night air feels particularly cold as his cheeks heat up with self-consciousness. “Why am I even saying this?”

He doesn’t know what to expect from the disconcertingly quiet Turk, is afraid to look in case he sees scorn in his eyes, or ridicule, or even worse, sympathy. What he does see though is even more unexpected.

While leaning heavily against him, the Turk’s head has lolled forward to his chest, and his chest is rising and falling in a soft, easy rhythm. He is sound asleep.

There is a softness that overcomes Sephiroth that he is entirely unprepared for. He had punished Soldiers for falling asleep on the job, had teased Angeal for nodding off en route to a mission, had made the mistake himself of falling asleep in the vicinity of Genesis, but nothing scornful or teasing comes to mind as he watches the other man get the rest he had been resisting the entire day. It must have been a lot for a person, he thinks, reflecting back to the Turk’s comment on his history, his return “home”. He has never experienced a homecoming of his own - the thought alone leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

He can hear the chopper in the distance, a long time before it would ever wake the other man, and he gives the Turk the dignity of nudging him softly rather than jolt him awake; he can let him believe it is just his own movement that woke him up and nothing more deliberate. “Our pick-up is nearly here,” he says, and he pretends to be none the wiser as he watches the Turk sniff, nod, act like he has been awake the whole time.

It is one of Tseng’s fellow Turks piloting the chopper that picks them up, and Sephiroth watches with interest at how Tseng seems to fall into an entirely different character in his colleague’s presence.

“Any luck?” the red-haired pilot asks when they‘ve taken off, and Tseng waves a hand dismissively.

"Not in the slightest," he replies, and Sephiroth watches as he lies down across the cabin bench, “Waste of time,” he says, and with barely a glance in Sephiroth's direction, the Turk folds his arms across his chest and lets himself sleep, properly this time.

Chapter Text

“I’m assuming you’ll be in attendance tomorrow?”

The roar of a Gravity vortex -

“Unfortunately so. I got out of the last one, I can’t miss two in a row.”

- and the shattering of dozens of shards of ice.

“I can’t even drink my way through this one either.”

Two weeks have passed since Wutai, two weeks of hapless missions to clear out monsters on the edge of the city and to patrol the nearby grassland, devoid of any real threat. There have been no more Genesis sightings. There have been no more reasons to fly half-asleep to the other side of the Planet. Crucially, there have been no more occasions of perfectly-timed materia casting, but certainly not for lack of trying. Tseng of the Turks and SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth find themselves in the training room for the third time since the event in Wutai, the event that saw them freezing and subsequently shattering a human target with two expertly cast volleys of materia, yet despite their best efforts to recreate that moment of perfect synergy they have not had a shred of success. They take a break, long enough for Tseng to absorb another ether, ready for another round of spell casting.

The event Tseng is unable to drink through is President Shinra’s birthday, or rather The Annual Celebration of R.R.Shinra & Co. as it is formally known, a thinly veiled excuse for Shinra employees and their friends and families to gather around and celebrate the head of the Company, brag about his wealth and fortune. On one hand, Tseng supposes, it is less hypocritical and opulent than their celebration of the victory at Wutai. On the other hand he has no decent grounds on which he can refuse to attend, and as Veld is currently out of Midgar it has fallen to Tseng to represent the Administrative Research Department. He thought briefly of arguing that other Turks would be available, but then he remembered what had happened the year before - the details are hazy, but it had involved Reno, several bottles of wine, and a statue of the President that would never be the same again. Veld had to argue with Heidegger to let the young Turk keep his job the next day; Tseng himself had been pulled in as a character reference too.

Needless to say, it has to be Tseng this year. And he has to remain sober.

“You won’t be alone at least,” Sephiroth chips in; his materia requires more energy than Tseng’s but he is less dependant on the ethers, so while the Turk recovers he is free to pace the room, checking that none of the damage they’ve done will be permanent. “The Science Department monitors everything I do, do you honestly think they allow me to drink alcohol?”

Tseng frowns and looks up, genuinely confused. “I’ve seen you drink,” he observes, “At events like this, at least,”

“Oh of course, there’ll be a glass for photo opportunities,” the Soldier says, “But when that is gone it will be sparkling water for the rest of the night. All the monitoring keeps me in peak condition, I suppose,” he tries, attempting to inject some humour into the unexpectedly bleak topic, “But it really is everything. The Science Department controls my caloric intake, PR dictates the suits I wear … the War was unbearable, but at least I wasn’t having my speeches written for me while I was over there.”

Tseng grimaces.

“I would’ve snapped by now,” he says, and Sephiroth smiles.

“Having the option to snap would be a luxury.”

For another hour they try to synchronize their magic, but despite trying to pace himself imbibing so much ether in such a small space of time begins to take its toll on the Turk. Drained but determined he tries to muster one last Ice spell - it generates barely a flurry of snow in the air that lands all of two feet in front of him, and his breath fogs as he lets out a defeated laugh. He folds, resting his hands on his knees to try and re-centre himself, and Sephiroth pats him on the back as he walks past.

“I think we’ll call it a day,” he says decisively, beginning to gather up their discarded ether bottles. Tseng remains quiet for the most part, catching his breath and fighting the dizziness that comes with excessive magic use, and it is only when Sephiroth has picked up the last bottle that he finally speaks.

“Chocobos,” he says, quite abruptly. Sephiroth frowns, turns around to look at him, and he straightens up.

“Excuse me?”

“Chocobos,” Tseng repeats simply, “Everything about them. Their silly feathers, their razor-sharp beaks …”

Sephiroth is still none the wiser, and he opens his mouth to ask if the Turk is ok, but Tseng just smiles wryly. It could well be just the cold in the air from the Ice magic, but the tips of his ears are starting to turn red.

“In Wutai,” he says, “You were talking about your biggest fear.” He watches the cogs turning, suddenly frantic, behind Sephiroth’s eyes, “And now you know mine.

“Fucking chocobos.”

“Nice of you to turn up wearing whatever someone told you to wear,”

The evening is young but it is already dragging, and by the time Sephiroth breaks away from the press Tseng is already ready to call it a night. His expression is well trained but he makes sure to inject humour into his greeting, and Sephiroth cocks an eyebrow at him in return.

“Nice of you to wear exactly what you wear to work on a daily basis,” he responds, equally deadpan, and Tseng tips his head.

“You don’t think this counts as work?” he replies flatly, “And besides, it’s a different colour tie, if you don’t mind.”

“So it is.” Barely. Rather than the normal black tie he’d normally wear this one is a deep, rich blue, and when he turns just so, a delicate petal print catches the light. It matches the highlights of his suit perfectly, the same subtle embossed petals at his lapels, black on black, and at the cuffs of his sleeves too. The Soldier meanwhile is in deep, foresty green - Tseng can’t help notice how the colour sets off his eyes.

Sephiroth has come to him with two glasses in hand and he offers one to the Turk, who accepts it with a quirked eyebrow and a reluctant thanks.

“How long do you normally endure these things for?” he asks. He takes a sip of the drink and is pleased to find that it is not the same sparkling water Sephiroth is drinking, but rather a pleasingly sweet champagne. One can’t hurt. He surveys the crowd around them over his glass, seeing not a single soul he would voluntarily spend his time with, and Sephiroth chuckles.

“You’ve not done many of these before then?” he asks. He takes a short sip of his own drink and licks his lips. “I normally give it until I’m excused,” he says. When Tseng frowns at him, he clarifies, “There’s normally someone to express that they’re surprised I’m still here, something about discipline, how I must be ruining my schedule, and that is the cue I take to leave. That, mind you, is normally several hours into the night …” he pulls a displeased face which mirrors exactly how Tseng feels inside, the thought of spending the whole night here quite unbearable. The Turk spots Hojo eyeing him already and his skin begins to crawl, even across the room. He nods towards the glass in his hand.

“You’d best teach me how to make these last,” he says, considering another sip of his drink but instead sinking half of it in one mouthful, “Because I’m not sure how I’m going to manage without a top-up.”

They briefly go their separate ways and Tseng does his job as Veld’s deputy the best he can. He has pleasant enough conversation with Lazard, who is keen to know how the Turk-SOLDIER relations are going. He tolerates Scarlet, who he suspects is just as silently critical of everyone else as he is. He even finds himself enduring conversation with two young apprentices to the Science Department, who seem almost suspiciously eager to make his acquaintance. Despite his best intentions he clears two more glasses of champagne within an hour and finds himself wondering how Sephiroth can possibly manage a whole night on his mandated restrictions, and he in fact asks this when they reunite.

“Inebriation is a very difficult state to achieve,” the Soldier explains, “For myself, at least,” he adds, “So it really doesn’t matter if I’m drinking two or ten - nothing will take the edge of a scenario like this.”

“You’re acting like you’d rather face a Red Dragon than be forced to attend a work party,” Tseng says with a chuckle, and Sephiroth only raises an eyebrow, not meeting his eyes.

“It would take three hundred seconds to deal with a Red Dragon,” he answers, deadpan, “And yet we have been here since 8pm already. Do you see why that is a poor comparison?”

“I concede,” Tseng says with a nod, but he can’t quite erase the smile from his face. An idea crosses his mind, but while he tries to brush it away he can’t quite get rid of it. You are on duty, he tries to tell himself, you need to be seen in the right place at the right time, speaking to the right people about the right things.

But, he supposes, isn’t that what this is ..?

He glances over at Lazard, who is deep in conversation with Palmer. He looks over to Heidegger, who is thoroughly distracted by the President himself.

“Has it ever occurred to you that you’re just not drinking the right stuff?” he asks the Soldier, gesturing with his glass, and he suspects that Sephiroth can see the glint in his amber eyes.

“I made the mistake of catching Heidegger’s eye as we were leaving,” Sephiroth says “He often asks how I’ve been finding it, working with you …”

With Veld away and Reno and Rude off duty, Tseng had known the office would be the perfect place to escape to. It is cooler down here, and much quieter, and most importantly they keep some really good liquor in the cabinets, just in case. Sephiroth doesn’t think much of casually using an Ice spell to chill their drinks, and several glasses in he seems infinitely more relaxed than he had done at the party. He is sat at Tseng’s desk, reclining comfortably in his chair, jacket long since abandoned and tie loosened, top buttons open, much less restrictive. Tseng himself is sat on top of Veld’s desk, and while he is still fully dressed - much more accustomed to buttoned up shirt and tie than Sephiroth - he is enjoying a much nicer buzz from their liquor than he had been from the champagne. It feels strange, being in the Soldier’s vicinity but not being on a mission or in some kind of training. It feels strange, but not at all wrong.

“I should hope you only tell him the good bits,” he says, and Sephiroth frowns thoughtfully.

“There aren’t that many bad bits,” he answers fairly. He empties the rest of the bottle next to him into his glass, and Tseng feels distantly proud at what looks like a tiny act of rebellion against the prescriptive Science Department. “In turn I should hope you don’t feel pushed too hard working alongside me.” Tseng shrugs a shoulder.

“I wouldn’t expect an easy ride working alongside you,” he says, “But the fact that you don’t regularly try to set me on fire makes you the more preferable First Class to spend time with.”

He isn’t expecting it, but his words earn a laugh from the Soldier, not a polite chuckle but a real, genuine laugh. His eyes glitter with amusement, and his whole face appears to change with merriment. Tseng is reminded of how young he is, of everything that has been taken away from him, and he sinks the last of his drink to keep himself from dwelling on it. When he recovers, Sephiroth finishes his drink too.

“You remind me of him, you know,” he says, and Tseng frowns.

“Rhapsodos??”

“Genesis,” the SOLDIER corrects, mostly out of habit these days - there’s no real irritation in his voice anymore. Tseng doesn’t know whether to be honoured or offended by the comparison.

“How exactly do I remind you of him??“ he asks, and Sephiroth makes a vague gesture.

“He was a sarcastic bastard too,” he says, amusement glistening in his eyes, “And he was never afraid to target me with it. You’re not afraid either.” He turns those amused eyes on Tseng, who keeps his silence. “Most people are so careful around me, like they worry that if they say the wrong thing I will kill them, or at least maim them. But you … you joke just like he did. It’s … comfortable …”

Tseng watches him carefully, torn between coaxing more out of him and letting him get there himself.

“There were rumours about the two of you …” the Turk says eventually, carefully, tipping his head slightly, and Sephiroth snorts.

“Me and Genesis?” he asks. He goes to take another sip from his glass before realising it’s already empty, and there’s nothing left to top it up with. He looks into the empty vessel instead and shakes his head, an unpleasant smile on the corner of his lips. “You should know better than anyone how the rumour mill works around here.”

“We’re normally the ones who control it,” Tseng says with a wry smile, “But you should know that every rumour starts with a grain of truth. So ..?” He watches as Sephiroth rolls his eyes, shakes his head, continues to look into that empty glass. Tseng waits.

“It was nothing,” the SOLDIER says eventually. “It’s always nothing. Just look at me,” he says, and in an instant the last of the merriment that had been on his face just moments ago seems to drain away. His smile is bitter. “Who would even let me get close?”

And it strikes Tseng then exactly what’s going through the other man’s mind. As far as he’s concerned the man sat over from him is a true example of objective perfection - strong, towering build, skin like marble, that iconic gleaming long hair that he wears as proof he is untouchable. But maybe to him these things, this dominance, this prowess, this immortality, are only signs that he is less human than anyone else. Signs of a demon - signs of a monster.

Tseng narrows his eyes, and he speaks before he can let himself think.

“I would.”

Sephiroth is still slouched, that bitter smile still ghosting on the corner of his lips, but his eyes narrow. He tips his head, and looks across at Tseng.

“Would you now?” he asks, clearly amused, and Tseng can’t answer. He doesn’t want to answer. He doesn’t want his own words to betray him like they do all too often. So instead of answering, he just raises an eyebrow. An invitation. A challenge.

He had let himself be goaded into things before. Why shouldn’t it be his turn now?

Sephiroth’s eyes are still narrowed as if he’s trying to figure out the game, but the smile grows. He pushes himself to his feet, and cocks his head.

“And how close would you let me get, exactly?”

The air suddenly feels still, and Tseng’s heart is racing. This is ridiculous. Intimidation tactics is all this is, a game of chicken, and Tseng won’t be intimidated. This wasn’t what he had planned, no, but … he wants to see where it could go.

“Try me.”

Sephiroth takes two slow steps towards him, mako eyes never leaving amber, the bitterness in his smile replaced by something that might be curiosity, might be mischief. Tseng sees something else in him though, drawn into every line of his body, something he doubts anyone else in the world would notice:

There is uncertainty written into him.

And it is fascinating.

This isn’t a battlefield. This isn’t a mission on the outskirts of the city. Hell, this isn’t even the training room. As Tseng understands it, everything in SOLDIER is black and white, kill or be killed, victory or defeat. But Tseng isn’t someone to be killed, and he isn’t a victory to claim. So much of Sephiroth’s actions had been driven by necessity but there is no necessity here, only want; there is no certainty here, only a gamble to take.

The uncertainty in the Soldier emboldens Tseng, who, seeing the challenge in the other man’s eyes, merely raises his eyebrows. He paints on a smirk of his own. And ..? Is that as close as you’re going to get?

And once more, Sephiroth rises to the challenge.

With just another two steps the Soldier is standing in front of him, legs almost touching, and as Tseng remains sat on the desk the extra height Sephiroth has over him is emphasised; Tseng keeps his posture, but does now have to lean back just slightly, has to angle his head to look up. In closing the distance the sudden proximity changes everything - Tseng could read the other man‘s body language like a book, but up close there is so much he can‘t read, dancing in those mako-green eyes. Not knowing what he‘s truly thinking, behind the uncertainty, makes him so much more captivating.

Tseng’s pulse is hammering in his throat, and pinned by that glowing gaze he is forced to acknowledge that the tables have turned. He had coaxed the Soldier out of his seat, lured him across the room, but now, now, he is acutely aware of his heart pounding in his chest, and of the slight spin of giddyness in his vision.. This isn’t what he’d had planned, no, but what had he planned when he suggested they come down here anyway? His eyes fix on the smile that grows on the other man’s lips, the smile that says he has read the nervousness, has it in his sights, that there is no other way this is going to end. The space between them is palpable. The Soldier’s eyes narrow again like he is weighing up his next move, and that move comes before Tseng can even react.

He suddenly swoops in, hands on the desk on either side of the Turk’s legs, leaning over him so close that Tseng has to lean back and catch himself on his hands to keep just an inch between them. Silver hair touches his face.

“How close ..?” Sephiroth begins. His lips are still curved into that cocky, mischievous smile, and Tseng’s eyes are still fixed on them. The Turk looks up, just briefly, trying to find even a trace of the hesitation he saw earlier in those mako-green eyes.

Not a speck.

He’s been played.

He’s not going to take it lying down though.

He reaches up and grabs the other man’s tie and tugs him closer, sharply, violently, so close that the two words he replies with ghost over the Soldier’s lips like one final challenge.

“Try me.”

And he does.

Sephiroth’s lips crash against Tseng’s, almost too hard. It is graceless and aggressive, like they really have met on a battlefield, but for as inelegant as it is Tseng can’t deny how good it feels. It’s like he can’t breathe. For a moment it feels like he can’t move, and it is a feeling close to panic that brings his hand up to grip the other man’s hair, to fist in it tightly, to not let him move when he tries to pull away - no, Soldier, you‘re not backing away from this now. His heart is pounding and it isn’t just the alcohol anymore, it isn’t the champagne or the liquor but rather the taste of the other man, those cocksure, confident lips on his own that are making his head spin.

One of Sephiroth’s hands comes up to the side of his neck, thumb against his throat, and without breaking away he steps in even closer, looping an arm around the Turk’s back to keep him close even as he leans him back. In the Soldier’s strong grip Tseng no longer needs to support himself, and with his other hand now free he finishes pulling away the other man’s tie, letting it fall to the desk beside him and beginning to work on the buttons of his shirt. Sephiroth’s lips, insistent and needy, move from his own to his jaw, to the side of his neck, and Tseng tips his head back to give the Soldier better access. He tightens his legs unconsciously around the Soldier’s and Sephiroth breathes out hot against his skin, and he tugs the bottom of the Turk's shirt free, begins roaming a hand up his taut abdomen, across the metal clasp of his belt.

Tseng is trying desperately hard not to think about what they’re doing, tries just to enjoy the moment, but the sound of the clasp being undone forces him back to his senses.

“No, stop …” he utters, letting go of his hair and trying to push himself out of his grip. Sephiroth, possibly more breathless than Tseng has ever seen him before, looks at him wordlessly, eyes narrow, not knowing exactly why he’s been stopped so abruptly. Those fascinating pupils of his are fire, his features almost feral, and Tseng knows that if he weren’t so far gone he would be absolutely terrified. The contradiction is dizzying, and downright intoxicating.

Tseng, equally breathless, nods to the corner of the room. “Cameras,” he says, by way of explanation, directing his gaze towards a small black lens blinking near the ceiling. His lips tingle. All of him tingles. It feels good, but first -

“Cameras,” Sephiroth responds, deadpan. He doesn’t look impressed at being interrupted. Where’s that hesitation now? Tseng wonders, somehow proud.

“We monitor every inch of this building,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world, “I thought that would go without saying.” Sephiroth looks no less indignant, but now also confused.

“Even your own office?” he asks, and Tseng can only laugh.

“Even we don’t trust us all the time,” he answers with a chuckle. Sephiroth’s eyes don’t leave his lips, and Tseng can see his heartbeat hammering in his throat, just like he can feel his own.

Fuck it.

“I’ll wipe the footage in the morning,” he says decisively, but when Sephiroth leans in to kiss him again he pulls away sharply, “We’re not carrying on here though.”

“But we are carrying on …” Sephiroth murmurs, eyes finally flicking back up to Tseng’s. The Turk’s legs tighten again, feeling the Soldier shift against him; it’s impossible to ignore how Sephiroth wants this just as much as Tseng, whatever “this” may be.

“Oh we are,” Tseng confirms. Sephiroth’s apartment is in the tower, a great many floors above, and while Tseng might not know which floor it is exactly he can tell by the press of the Soldier’s body, hard against his, that he won’t take much convincing to get him to lead the way.

*

Sephiroth fumbles when they reach his door and it is a split second too long for Tseng’s already stretched patience. He has the Soldier pushed against the doorframe, hand in his hair again, and they stumble against the door as it finally opens.

It is barely a moment after they get in, lips barely brushed together, before they are interrupted by a buzz in Tseng’s pocket. Sephiroth pulls away and raises an amused eyebrow at him, but Tseng grits his teeth in frustration instead. He has to work hard not to ignore it (because oh, how he wants to ignore it), and a quiet growl escapes his lips as he pulls back and retrieves his phone from his pocket. He glances down at the screen and curses the name lit up on the display.

Heidegger.

He flips it open to read the message.

“You’ve been gone over an hour,” it reads, making Tseng scowl, “I want you back up here, now.”

He grinds his teeth, glare all but burning a hole into the device, and he decisively snaps it closed, returning his efforts instead to the Soldier in front of him who is more than happy to have him back. It is only mere seconds later however that the device still in his hand goes off again, and much to Sephiroth’s amusement the Turk groans out loud this time.

He doesn’t bother opening it this time, just sees Heidegger’s name on the front screen and assumes it will just be more badly-timed orders waiting for him. He remains pressed flush against the other man but his attention is truly divided now, and he can feel the moment slipping away second by second. He stares at the closed device for a long time - too long.

“You’re choosing Heidegger,” Sephiroth says plainly, quietly. There is a gentle curve on his surprisingly plush lips and there might be a tone of amusement in his voice, but Tseng doesn’t hear it for certain; his brain is doing a thousand different things all at the same time and all of it is amounting to nothing. He had been so determined not to think, not to overthink, to just go with the moment, but now he is so suddenly aware of his hammering heartbeat, of the gentle intoxicated spin of the world around him, of every inch of him pressed against the other man and just how long it’s been since he had something like this with anyone, let alone with someone like this ...

“This is a mistake …” he murmurs quietly, defeated. He closes his eyes, phone still in one hand, lengths of the Soldier’s long, silver hair still in the other.

“I have to agree,” Sephiroth says. Tseng opens his eyes again and there is a small smile is on the Soldier’s lips, and he doesn’t know how to process that response. Sephiroth isn‘t even trying to keep him there.

“You don’t …” he begins, but he lets it trail off with all its possible meanings. He lets go of the Soldier’s hair and puts his phone away, and takes just half a step back, shaking his head. He puts a hand on Sephiroth’s chest, so utterly torn between staying - he knows he wants to - and leaving - he knows he needs to. He still can’t look him in the eye. “I’m sorry.” he murmurs when he finally does. He can’t read those eyes, those unbelievable, glowing, alien eyes, but that curve of a smile still remains, effortlessly, obliviously arrogant at all times.

“It’s fine,” Sephiroth says, voice deeper than normal with the lust that has been ignited and now so abruptly rejected. “You’ve served your purpose, you got me out of the party, didn’t you? You can go now anyway.”

Tseng snorts at the attempt at humour and brushes his shirt down, straightens his belt. He swallows and nods, stepping back towards the door. He finally looks up fully, locks eyes with the Soldier, tries to act like there is more conviction in his decision than there really is.

“A … drunken mistake,” he says with another nod, like he's trying to convince himself more than the other man. Sephiroth merely raises his eyebrows and smirks.

“If that’s what you want to go with,” he says. He opens the door to let the Turk out. “Enjoy your time with Heidegger.”

Tseng shakes his head at him, and the regret as he leaves is palpable.

Enjoying his time with Heidegger is exactly what Tseng does not do, the dalliance he’s been cheated out of further ruining an event he never wanted to attend in the first place. Work, duty, reputation be damned, he is short and curt with the Director, opting to sink back drink after drink rather than answer any of his cursed, useless prying questions. Time seems to move faster when he no longer gives a damn, he discovers. He shouldn't have given a damn in the first place.

“I look forward to seeing you in the office tomorrow,” Heidegger says gloatingly as they leave at the end of the night, eyes lit up at how unprofessionally inebriated the Turk is. “I look forward to seeing you face down in a puddle,” Tseng thinks, but thankfully, somehow, manages not to say out loud.

By the time he makes it home he is no less inebriated and somehow only more angry, angry about duty and hierarchy, angry about work and expectation, angry at being torn away from the First Class Soldier at the very moment he realised what exactly he had within his grasp. It wasn’t a turn he had been expecting their relationship to take, not a turn he was aware of even wanting, but as soon as Sephiroth had taken those first steps towards him he realised he had no intention of disengaging. As soon as his fingers were on his throat, and his lips were against his neck, Tseng knew he wasn’t prepared to deny either of them; Sephiroth had clearly wanted it just as much as he did.

He gives the Soldier the respect of hesitating for just a moment, but it isn’t long before he buckles, thoughts of the other man leading his hand to his belt, already undone and redone once tonight. Thoughts of his glowing eyes, narrowed and focused, lead him to undo it again, pull it free, push his hand into his opened trousers and against his own hot skin. He wraps his hand around himself and groans shamelessly, a mixture of alcohol and frustration numbing inhibition, and he strokes himself thinking about the First Class Soldier. He thinks about it being his hand, strong and unyielding, thinks about those lips being curved into that slight, subtle, amused smile, and then thinks about those lips being curved around him, and it is this thought that pushes him over the edge.

He comes all too soon, too drunk and too pent up to even try to last, and exhaustion sinks into his bones in an instant. He tips his head back and stares vacantly at the ceiling for moments, long, long moments, before finally summoning the energy to clean himself up and drag himself into bed, still fully clothed.

This wasn‘t the plan, he thinks, drifting into a dizzy, broken sleep.

This was never the plan at all.

Chapter Text

“You’re late,”

Reno’s words instantly trigger Tseng to look first down to his watch and then to the clock on the wall. He frowns, openly confused - both times show it is five minutes until the start of his shift. Reno laughs at the expression, so seldom seen on the other man. “You’ve never been less than half an hour earlier than you need to be, this is late for you!” he explains.

“We were getting worried,” Rude adds from across the room. Tseng glowers at them both wordlessly and sets himself down at his desk. Reno very kindly sets a fresh cup of coffee down next to him; he does not offer any thanks.

His morning had been laden with regret. He had regretted falling asleep with his head so close to his alarm, leading him to feel like his entire skull was being pierced with every ring. He had regretted even attempting to make breakfast, the smell alone enough to turn his already nauseous stomach Mostly he regretted not taking some extra time to rest and rehydrate when he got back in the night before, rather than indulging his own pent-up impulse, because the world had still been spinning when he woke up. He had forced himself to shuffle towards the shower, wash the night off, even if he hadn‘t allowed his hair enough time to fully dry before getting into the office, hadn‘t even bothered to tie it up. He couldn’t remember a lot of the night before, patches missing here and there. He gets the impression though, judging by the flashes of mischievous green eyes, of delectably curved lips, that he remembers the good bits.

“So, have fun with the VIPs?” Reno asks, kicking back on his own desk, knowing already what the answer will be.

“I can assure you, Reno, I did not have fun with the VIPs,”. Tseng takes a sip of the coffee and it is vile, it really is. He adds it to the list of regrets. “I did not have fun at all. One of you can go next time. To hell with it, Veld can go himself.”

“Bold words,” Rude remarks.

“I mean it,” Tseng says. He is aware of their eyes on him, the amusement virtually radiating off Reno, because in their years together he has made a point of never drinking more than he can handle. He has let Reno stay on his couch on several occasions when the younger Turk had drunkenly forgotten where he lived, and they still joke about the occasion they had to talk Rude down from trying to start a fight with the wall outside his own apartment block, but Tseng himself had an untarnished reputation to uphold. He is not proud of his current state.

He turns the brightness of his monitor down, and picks up a file on his desk to read through, but it isn’t long before his attempt to work is interrupted.

“Uhhh, can we help?” he hears Reno say. He looks up, and at the door …

… is Sephiroth.

His stomach twists, and he is vaguely aware of his mouth hanging open. He tells himself to close it, but he is still staring. His brain does a thousand sluggish things all at the same time and he hates, hates, hates being hungover.

“Sephiroth,” is all he manages eventually, clumsily. He gets to his feet; he doesn’t know why.

“Tseng,” the Soldier responds with a nod, but Tseng can see a familiar smile floating on his lips, barely hidden. Reno raises an eyebrow, looking between the two of them, and Tseng is forced to remember how he is so much more astute than people would give him credit for. Shit.

“Can we …” Rude starts, before Sephiroth cuts him off.

“I think I left my tie here last night.”

Tseng wants to die. His tie? What would his tie be doing here?

An image flashes through his mind, the Soldier reclining, relaxed, at his desk, this very desk, collar open. Another follows it, the memory of his lips, his hand on his skin, Tseng himself undoing the other man’s tie and casting it aside …

“Oh, would this be yours?” Reno opens his own desk drawer and presents a length of silky material, a deep emerald green. Ah yes, that tie. Yes, Tseng remembers now.

“Reno, why ..?”

“It was on the desk when we got in this morning,” the redhead says deliberately nonchalantly, shrugging “We didn’t know whose it was. Lucky General Sephiroth here came down to claim it or we could’ve thrown it away!”

Tseng has to grit hit teeth at Reno’s faux-innocent, shit-eating expression. Sephiroth seems to be oblivious to just how shit-eating the expression is - rather, he takes the tie with a nod.

“Thank you,” he says curtly. He turns to leave, but glances at Tseng and double-takes. He narrows his eyes and tips his head curiously.

“You’re growing your hair out,” he says, and it occurs to Tseng that the other man has only ever seen it tied up before, “Not trying to outgrow mine, are you?”

What.

He doesn’t know how to respond. He desperately, desperately regrets drinking last night. He regrets everything about last night.

Mostly everything.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he utters finally, cursing the blush he can feel rising to his cheeks, “Why would I do such a thing?”

Sephiroth laughs and Reno and Rude just look on, dumbstruck. “Relax, Turk,” he says, “I’m teasing you.” He turns to leave, but just before reaching the door he turns back. “I like it, by the way.” he says.

And with that, he is gone.

The office is silent, until almost simultaneously, both Reno and Rude begin to laugh.

“So you did enjoy your night last night!” Reno says, triumphant even as he wipes away tears of laughter. Tseng is flustered.

“I don’t know what you …” he starts, but he rapidly realises there’s no point.

“He likes your hair though,” Rude says, and even he is wiping tears from his eyes, although he is attempting to keep more decorum than his counterpart.

“Tseng, don’t worry,” Reno says, “We ain’t gonna tell nobody, yo!”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Tseng tries (and he really, really does try), but he feels his blush betray him.

Reno gives him a hearty pat on the back.

“We’ve got ya, buddy,” he says, “Your secret’s safe with us.”

“It really is,” Rude adds.

“We deleted the security footage before you even got in.”

It is a week later and Tseng is on the rota to watch Aerith, and after the last few months of being accompanied for virtually every task it feels strange not having Sephiroth with him. The Soldier had of course been curious as to why he hadn’t been included on this particular mission. “Who could be so important they require such consistent monitoring?” he had asked, and “If I could tell you, you’d be able to come with me,” Tseng had answered. He enjoys these little games of evasion - he enjoys that Sephiroth enjoys them too, enjoys eliciting that amused little smile, that glimmer of challenge in his eyes.

They still haven’t spoken about what had happened in the office, what had nearly happened at Sephiroth’s apartment, and in truth, Tseng wasn’t sure he wanted to. Had he enjoyed it? Yes. Had he wanted it to go further? At the time, yes. Would it endanger the steady, safe rapport they’d been building over the last couple of months though? Absolutely, and that risk might not be worth it.

He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it though, hasn’t been able to shake the memory of his fingers wrapped in silver hair, of the Soldier’s skin, so flawless, impossibly toned, beneath his hands. Their encounter had been cut short, but he had lost several nights in the past week thinking about where it could have gone. The uncertainty in his initial approach had made Tseng wonder about his confidence off the battlefield, but the certainty of his touch, his hands against Tseng‘s skin - not to mention his rumoured history with Rhapsodos - would suggest otherwise. Whether he should encourage it or not (and he should not), Tseng wanted to see how far that confidence extended.

Aerith comments that he is particularly quiet this evening and he excuses himself, explains that there is a lot happening in work lately - not a lie - and implores her to continue.

She has been talking about Zack.

She asks how well Tseng knows him, and if he knows any other Firsts, and how Zack compares to them. She doesn’t trust anyone in Shinra - a fact he internally praises her for - and she confesses that despite her best efforts she can’t help but be afraid of the likes of Fair, of Sephiroth. It is this confession of hers that makes him realise he is not. “They’re Soldiers,” he finds himself saying chidingly before he can stop himself, amusement on his lips, “Not monsters.”.

“They’re not normal,” Aerith replies quietly, and Tseng has no comeback for that one.

It is mostly dark by the time Tseng sees Aerith home, sneered at as ever by the girl’s foster mother, and it is darker yet on the shortcuts he opts to use to speed up his journey back to the Plate. He is used to the sights, sounds and smells of the slums though, knows when to pay some heed and when to keep his head down and just keep walking, and the majority of the activity he walks past he disregards without a second thought.
.
He walks past drug deals made unsubtly on the corner, information he knows to listen in on but not interfere with - that’s Corneo’s turf, and the Turks don‘t get involved with them unless they need to. He pays no mind to punters being thrown out of the Honeybee in, knowing their proprietor to be more than capable enough of handling any trouble to be had there, and it’s a similar story at the massage parlour too, only a stone’s throw away - Tseng can rest assured that anything that might be of interest from Madame M’s customers will be offered to him eventually, for the right price of course.

Drunken scuffles usually fall into the category of sounds to be ignored, but he falls out of stride when a number of voices he hears from down an alley are undeniably familiar. Three people, it sounds like, engaged in some kind of fight, but one, two of them sound like someone he knows, some one …

He turns to check down the alley and his blood runs cold, because at the end, converged on one lone target …

Are two Genesis Copies.

It can’t be, Tseng thinks, staring on dumbstruck, but there’s no mistaking them, the undeniable red coats, the red hair, the sharp, wicked features that might as well belong to the man himself. But how ..? Were they remnants of the wave that had plagued them before, when Genesis first disappeared, stragglers that had never been taken out with the others? Or was this the start of something new, a new wave, different, transformed? He doesn’t want to think about it, because if they are newly created that means that the Soldier himself must still be around too, and that means …

He thinks back to the mission in Wutai, when Sephiroth had been so convinced they were chasing a ghost. Despite it all, had he really been out there?

The two Copies are merely toying with the third figure, a man who appears to be just a regular Midgarian. One of his arms is hanging at an angle it really shouldn’t be and half of his face is bloodied, scorch-marks on his coat suggesting fire has been involved at some point. He still stands though and he still fights, waves his free fist around aimlessly at least, until one of the Copies catches it in mid-air and crushes his fingers beneath their own. He lets out a wail and falls to one knee, and Tseng considers leaving them there, let them see this fight out themselves, because he’s not been spotted yet and it’s nothing at all to do with him after all. But he stops and he thinks ahead, He thinks about if no one else has seen them yet, if it’s just him, and what might happen if words gets back to the wrong people at HQ. He thinks about who needs to know, and how - and what - to tell them. He thinks about what might happen if word gets to Sephiroth …

He grits his teeth and inhales deeply, and begins to spin up some magic - he knows how to traverse the slums safely, but that doesn’t mean he’s arrogant enough to go unarmed.

A well-aimed Stop spell freezes one of the Copies mid-strike and allows Tseng enough time to launch a surprise attack on the other from behind, attempting to go for a choke-hold but thwarted as the creature turns at the sound of his approach. It’s not the same as fighting whoever they were against in Wutai, the Copies notably faster and much stronger, and Tseng is able to evade the majority of the attacks aimed at him but not all of them, a few blows landing hard against his raised forearms, one particularly swift kick catching the back of his head and sending him to the ground, dizzying him for a second. He grabs for the short knife in his holster and it is more by luck than skill that he manages to drive it deep into the creature’s lower leg; it screeches, a gruesome sound.

Nothing like Rhapsodos.

Tseng takes advantage of the opening. Getting back to his feet he curls a fist around a handful of its hair and, gritting his teeth, he slams its face into the alley wall once, twice for good effect. The body goes limp but only for a moment, and Tseng knows better than to take the moment for granted; he slams a heel into the back of the creature’s knee, and when it hits the ground he snaps its neck with an almighty tug.

He drops the limp body without dignity and turns to face the remaining Copy, but he has not been fast enough. The Stop spell has worn off before he can fully turn, and while he is quick enough to swerve the fist that comes swinging for the side of his head he can’t do anything about the other he sees all too late heading for his torso. The breath is driven out of him as the blow lands hard, cracking his ribs, sending him flying into the wall still smeared with what had been the face of the other one. He lands hard and for long moments can neither breathe nor see, but he shakes his head clear when the telltale whoosh of magic being cast triggers instant panic in his brain:

He knows first-hand not to get caught in the Fire spells these things can cast.

Acting almost on instinct he reaches for his own materia and thanks gods he doesn’t believe in that he can cast a Silence spell so quickly - the magic lands just in the nick of time, and the jarring halt throws the Copy for just a second, which is a second long enough. Still not seeing clearly and with what feels like a chest full of fire Tseng launches himself at the creature, working up his reliable Ice materia even as they both topple to the ground. The Copy is heavy and fights to throw him off, but Tseng plants a hand around its throat and bears the entirety of his weight down on it, manifesting the Ice magic directly into the creature beneath him. The thing rasps wordlessly, writhes beneath him, reaches up and grasps at his throat in turn, and it’s a dangerous position to be in but Tseng knows that he had the head start and he can’t back down from it now. He hears his own voice escape wordlessly with exertion as he bears down harder, flashing back to Wutai as every molecule of the Ice magic he summons compresses itself into the creature’s throat, and with one final shout he wrenches himself free, pushes himself up to his feet, and stamps down hard on the Copy’s neck.

It shatters beneath his boot, shards of ice scattering in every direction, the thing’s head separating cleanly, bloodlessly, from the body. It rolls two feet away, face lolling to the side.

It should be grotesque, Tseng thinks, but, panting shallowly to catch his breath, he is too distracted by the burning in his ribcage. There’s definitely something broken in there, he knows this pain. The one advantage is that it distracts him from the other more minor injuries he has received.

He looks around him, the Copy with the broken neck, the Copy now without a neck, and the original target slumped against the brick wall, pale, injured, but still alive. What is the plan here …

“Can you move?” Tseng asks, looking down at the man whose eyes are barely open. The man nods, doesn’t get to his feet but at least straightens his back against the wall, winces as he does so. He spits down to the pavement. “Who do you think they were?” Tseng asks, and he studies the man very carefully. His answer matters.

“They … they look like Rhapsodos … from SOLDIER …” the man replies. He knows how stupid his answer must be but it’s too obvious to not say it. He looks up fearfully at Tseng, who looks away, purses his lips, brow knitted together. Well that complicates things.

What a shame.

He turns quickly, as quickly as his broken ribs will let him anyway, and he pulls his gun out as he does, placing a bullet neatly between the man’s eyes. He doesn’t know what to do with this situation yet, he doesn’t know who needs telling what, if at all, but the last thing anyone needs is talk of Genesis being back on the scene again. No, this is a rumour that needs to kept buried. No one needs to know this yet.

The journey back to HQ feels longer than it ever has before, and Tseng doesn’t like to admit weakness but he is in fucking agony, various scrapes and bruises from the Copies not even registering against the searing pain of the right side of his ribcage. There is always a woman peddling Potions on the ground floor of the Tower and of course the one time he needs her she isn’t there, and he doesn’t take too kindly to the person manning the welcome desk telling him that her shift finished hours ago. He wracks his brains, although he isn’t thinking with half the clarity he normally would. He has Cure materia of his own, but that is at his own home and he can’t imagine anything worse than trailing back out in the state he’s in to retrieve it. It occurs to him that they have materia down in the office as well but they don’t keep a stockpile of restorative items down there, and he knows he doesn’t have the energy to cast any magic without sinking an ether first.

He thinks fleetingly of Sephiroth’s concern when one of the enemies in Wutai had caught his arm with a blade, and it occurs to him very briefly that he could be an option. “Good evening Sephiroth, I told you not to worry when my arm was cut open, but now several of my ribs are broken I could really use a hand.” is the message he definitely does not send, but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted. The thought does lead him to a much more realistic idea though.

The SOLDIER floor. The Training Room. They have vending machines in there, and those vending machines have Potions, and if he can just sink a couple of those he can get back to the office, complete the obligatory report from the day‘s surveillance, and start to get his head around the situation with the Copies. He could get a decent shower while he’s up there too. Yes, a plan starts to knit together in his head as he shuffles towards the elevator, glad for the late hour and for there being no one around to see him limping. Potion, shower, report, think - he repeats it as a mantra while the lift takes him forty-nine floors up.

The floor is empty when he steps out of the elevator, and even more crucially the training room is empty too, which means that once he has paid his gil and procured a Potion from the machine in the corner he doesn’t need to feign dignity when he slumps against the wall, tipping his pounding head back. The Potion goes down easily and he can feel it begin to work almost instantly, that hazy, distant coolness numbing his nerve-endings. He undoes his jacket with one hand and lets it fall to the floor, relieving a little pressure from the injuries on his arms and torso. His head feels better within minutes and he is able to forget about the bruises developing on his forearms, but nothing is dulling the searing in his ribs. It’s fine, it’s ok, it’s a multi-Potion injury, he rationalises, they’ve all had these before.

With a heavy exhalation he pushes himself away from the wall and returns to the machine, but the coin he puts in the slot falls straight out the bottom again. He frowns, and tries again. Same result. It takes another three rounds of increasing frustration until he notices the LED letters that flash on the front of the machine with his final attempt:

“ E M P T Y ”

… what.

But no, he is too exhausted to shout, or to rage, or to hit the damn thing. Instead he simply sighs and drops the empty Potion bottle in his hand, and he rests his forehead against the machine’s cool surface. His thoughts are racing and his ribs are still burning and he has no energy left, certainly not enough to entertain dragging himself home. He could sleep in the office overnight, he thinks, the Potion having numbed enough of the pain to make sleeping at his desk plausible. He could see if Rude is still awake, he lives closer to the Tower, maybe he could drive in and bring some supplies, or hell, just cut out the middle man and get him to a medical facility. He could …

“Tseng?”

His stomach drops. Not now …

He turns, slowly, and in the doorway stands the one and only First Class Sephiroth. His hair is tied up and twisted into a bun, the lengths now only reaching his middle back, and he is dressed for a workout - of course the middle of the night is prime time to work out without getting interrupted, they both know this better than anyone. Tseng had just been hoping that the Soldier would fancy a night off rather than decide to come in.

He raises his eyebrows in greeting and tries for a wry smile, but he is well aware of what he probably looks like at the moment. He watches Sephiroth’s eyes track down his body and back up again, clocking every scuff and mark on his suit.

“You have a habit of catching me when I’m really not at my best lately,” he says to break the unsure silence, but Sephiroth doesn’t smile.

“Are you ok?” he asks instead, voice laden with enough concern to make the Turk uncomfortable. Tseng goes for a casual shrug but even that goes wrong, the tug on his muscles causing him to grimace, swallow a wince. Sephiroth steps forward, and Tseng holds a hand up to wave the concern away.

“Unplanned encounter under the Plate,” he says, honest enough without having to give anything away. It doesn’t seem to put Sephiroth at all at ease. “I’m fine, honestly,” Tseng continues. He makes an effort to straighten up, to stop leaning on the machine, and he rolls his eyes at it instead. “Of all the days to be out of Potions ...”

Sephiroth takes stock of him once more before nodding slowly, picking up on the hints to let it go. His frown remains though.

“Whoever it is you’re running surveillance on every day,” he begins, “Maybe you need to tell them to go easier on you next time.” Tseng laughs, not used to hearing such casual humour from the other man, but the regret is instant. He clutches his side in pain as he doubles over, and Sephiroth steps closer again.

“You scolded me for being concerned in Wutai,” he says simply, “But you’re clearly in pain now. Are you injured?”. Tseng stays doubled over for a moment longer to catch his breath, but when he eventually straightens up he remains quiet. “Let me see.”

Tseng has options here. He could continue trying to brush off the severity of the injury, keep trying to throw the Soldier off, but clearly that strategy isn’t working. He could simply excuse himself, “You have a workout to be getting on with,”, but the mere thought of trying to limp away faster than Sephiroth could catch him is laughable. The third option is that, somehow, the Soldier might be able to help. He might have restoratives, would certainly have materia, and he only lives upstairs …

Grudgingly he starts unbuttoning his shirt, and he doesn’t have to let it fall too far open before a deep spread of dark purple bruising becomes visible on his right side. To be fair, it doesn’t look half as bad as it feels, and it does look bad. He sees Sephiroth narrow his eyes.

“They were unarmed,” Tseng says, trying to read through the other man’s expression, “All blunt force trauma, a few broken ribs, I think,” he continues, “No blood loss.”

Sephiroth scans him again, looking unconvinced.

“There’s blood in your hair,” he says.

“I am aware,” Tseng responds with a grimace, “But it’s probably not mine. I’m not looking forward to trying to wash it out, either way.”

“I can help with that,” Sephiroth says. Tseng’s eyebrows skyrocket at the forwardness, and it is only when the Soldier nods towards his ribs that he realises he had misinterpreted entirely. He laughs quietly to himself, part embarrassed, part relieved, maybe a little part something else, but falls silent as the other man approaches him. Tseng had known the Soldier would have materia in his apartment but hadn’t been expecting it to be on his person, and distantly he wonders exactly what kind of training he had been planning on conducting tonight as a green orb of Cure materia starts to glow softly when Sephiroth touches the fingers of his right hand against it. He reaches towards Tseng with his left and looks up just briefly. “May I?” he asks, and Tseng merely nods.

He was prepared to flinch at the thought of someone touching the injured area around his middle, deeply bruised as it already is, but Sephiroth’s touch is careful, feather light, everything he would’ve assumed it not to be. The Soldier traces above one rib, moves to the one above it, and the one above that, sometimes touching him, sometimes floating just a hair’s breadth from his skin. He moves slowly, carefully, looking almost as focused on the bruising as Tseng is on his expression.

Sephiroth steps in closer, bringing them almost toe to toe, and he gently lays his hand flat across the site of the injury.

“Breathe,” he says quietly, and this one word makes Tseng realise that he had not been doing that at all, having been so entranced by the concentration on the other man’s face. He inhales sharply but instantly regrets it, wincing and gritting his teeth against the stabbing pain that cuts through his chest as he does so, and reflexively he grabs Sephiroth’s wrist to brace himself against the pain. Despite this, there is a small lilt of humour in the Soldier’s voice as he murmurs “Don’t breathe that much,”, and Tseng has to stop himself from laughing out loud. That captivating look of concentration crosses Sephiroth’s features again and Tseng feels a gentle warmth emanating from the hand against his ribs, and the stabbing pain from his overzealous inhalation starts to slowly melt away. Sephiroth’s eyes follow his own hand as he trails that healing, soothing warmth higher up the Turk’s ribcage, and then slowly across to his solar plexus. Tseng can feel the healing travel through his body, from the places the Soldier touches right the way to his fingertips, and he lets his eyes fall closed, succumbing to the sensation of his nerve-endings relaxing, releasing the agony they‘re been holding onto since the encounter below the Plate. When Sephiroth finally stills, with his hand on the centre of his chest, it takes him a second to realise he has stopped breathing again. It feels like everything has stopped, the air around them so still, the Soldier himself not even raising his eyes when he finally breaks their silence.

“Tseng …“ he starts quietly, “We need to talk. Don’t you think?”

Tseng hadn’t realised it, but they are stood so close he can feel Sephiroth’s breath ghost over his skin as he speaks, even quietly.

“No,” he says simply, eventually. He has never felt so comfortable and he has never felt so relaxed, the pain that screamed through his body just minutes ago already a distant memory. Sephiroth doesn’t move in response to his answer, doesn’t lean in further or indeed pull away. He just stays there, close, that bare hand steady against his skin.

“What do you think?” he asks softly, and somewhere in his state of physical relaxation Tseng feels resentment for him even asking. Why do they have to be talking right now? Why does he have to think?

What I think is that things would’ve been simpler if I could’ve chosen you over Heidegger a week ago. What I think is that we shouldn’t have left your tie in the fucking office for Reno to find.

What I think is that I should tell you about the Genesis Copies I encountered, but if you know they’re back you’ll start thinking Genesis is back, and if you tell me you’re going after him … I can’t hear that from you today. Not right now.

Can things just be uncomplicated? Just this once ..?

“What I think …” he starts slowly. He finally opens his eyes and looks down pointedly at where Sephiroth’s hand still lays warm on his chest, “Is that you know just as well as I do that Cure materia doesn’t require physical contact to be effective.” He looks back up into those glowing eyes, fixated on his own, smouldering, and he sees exactly what he wants reflected back in them. “And I’m also starting to think …” he says, raising an eyebrow, “That maybe you could help me get that blood out after all.”

Sephiroth is taller than Tseng, broader than him, and pressed into the shower cubicle together he has the Turk boxed in with his arms on either side of him. The Soldier’s mouth is hungry and insistent on his own, barely granting him a breath. It’s intense and claustrophobic, the air heavy and almost suffocating with steam …

… and Tseng likes it a lot.

When Sephiroth finally pulls away Tseng reaches up and grabs a fistful of wet hair and pulls him right back in, pressing their bodies, naked and wet, together and groaning appreciatively against the other man’s mouth. Sephiroth brings a hand up the side of his neck, to cradle his jaw and tip his head back, and the exposure, the vulnerability, works better for Tseng than he ever would’ve thought. One hand still wrapped tightly in silver hair, he runs the other up the front of the Soldier’s body, up impossibly honed muscle, drawing a sudden gasp from the man as he runs a thumb over a hardened nipple. Sephiroth pulls away for a second, just long enough to see a wicked glint in the Turk’s eyes, and it triggers something deep within the Soldier - it is the game of chicken in the office again, Tseng realises, only this time they’ve skipped the warm-up round. When Sephiroth swoops in again it is with more fervour than before, and Tseng meets the aggression, tightens his grip on the Soldier’s hair, starts pressing harder against the man’s slick torso, thoughtlessly digging nails in that probably won’t even leave a mark. The aggression elicits a low growl from the Soldier, but not one of displeasure, one that only seems to egg him on. When he finally stops kissing him Tseng’s lips feel bitten, tingling, and he is slightly surprised to find himself so breathless, but as he tries to catch his breath it catches when he feels Sephiroth’s lips on the side of his neck, under his jaw, travelling down his throat, his chest.

The direction the Soldier is moving in is unmistakeable, and everything in Tseng knows he needs to stop this before it goes too far, he knows it … but his body doesn’t care. In truth, none of him cares, not really. He thinks about last week, pressed against the man’s door, and he thinks about Heidegger being so smug, so fucking unbearable …

No, he will not be stopping it this time, quite the opposite. Sephiroth continues to place hungry kisses down his body and eventually dips to his knees, lips exploring the Turk’s freshly healed ribs, his abdomen, and Tseng surprises himself by resting a hand on top of his head, keeping this going in exactly the direction he knows he wants it to. The steam, the hot water, the press of their bodies had already begun to make him hard.

This is wrong this is wrong this is wrong, the professional voice in his head says on loop. I don’t care anymore, is how he answers it, before giving himself over entirely.

One hand still on the other’s head he pushes his hips forward, using the wall behind as leverage, and Sephiroth seems to get the hint straight away. He wraps a hand around the base of Tseng’s cock and runs his tongue up the underside, just once, before ducking his head and taking him into his mouth.

Tseng groans and lets his head fall back, not caring for the impact it makes against the wall behind him. Sephiroth is not taking his time, the absolute lack of preamble making Tseng wonder if the other man has been just as pent up as he has been since their interruption a week ago, and he has no intention of slowing him down. He forces his eyes open and looks down, watching the Soldier at work, head bobbing up and down enthusiastically; he reaches down to sweep a stray fall of silver hair out of the way to better see those mischievous lips wrapped around him, cheeks hollowing. He is taken back to his fantasies of the other night, except it isn’t his own hand anymore, and also even in his fantasies he couldn’t have imagined the Soldier being so good with his tongue.

He doesn’t want to come so soon and he crushes his eyes closed again, grits his teeth, tightens his hand in the other man’s hair to try to ease him away, but Sephiroth clearly has other ideas; in response to Tseng trying to pull him back he instead reaches up, wraps his free hand around the Turk’s wrist and holds him in place, making it clear that he will not be simply eased away. With his back to the wall it’s not like Tseng can pull himself away, and he finds himself at the other man’s mercy, the strong grip on his wrist, the hot mouth on his cock.

He gives himself over, and god does it feel good.

“Sephiroth …” he utters, because he can feel how close he is, and the keen of his voice only drives the Soldier to take him deeper, curve the lips around him into a smile. Tseng’s grip on the man’s hair tightens, and the grip on his wrist tightens in turn, and buckling entirely he comes with a groan against the back of the other man’s throat. Weak at the knees he remains pinned between the wall and the Soldier, and he groans again as the other man strokes him, works him for every last drop of release. He finally pulls away and when he does he swallows, glowing eyes dark as he looks up at Tseng, whose entire body is wracked with ecstasy and overwhelm.

The Turk sinks to his knees, straddling the other man, and without even thinking he wraps a hand around the other man’s length.

“It wasn‘t a drunken mistake,” Sephiroth starts, “I wasn‘t drunk-”

“And I didn’t need help with my hair,” Tseng mutters in response, “Now shut up.”

Now isn’t the time to talk. Now is the time to indulge in blowjobs and to get First Class Sephiroth off with his own hands, and he has to do it now before the post-orgasmic clarity kicks in and he really thinks about just what they are doing, quite loudly and in a semi-public environment.

Sephiroth is much bigger than he had anticipated, heavy in his hand, and the Soldier keens as Tseng begins to work him in long strokes. Their combined body heat, the steam in the air, the fact that he just had a First Class Soldier on his knees all makes his head spin and he braces himself on the wall over Sephiroth’s shoulder, and his fingers curl against the tile as he feels the other man bury his face into the crook of his neck, panting against his throat. The Soldier’s hands begin to travel, one gripping hard on his thigh, the other flat against his back, pulling him closer while Tseng in turn pushes back, wanting to keep those inches of distance, that tiny space between them. The resistance is unexpected and it feels good, and while he should be focused on getting the other man off he instead finds himself thinking of pushing away further, of making Sephiroth work harder to keep him in his lap, to get what he wants.

He doesn’t even realise he’s smiling.

Sephiroth’s fingers dig into his leg and he feels the Soldier tighten beneath him, and he tightens his grip for a few last strokes before the man comes over his hand with a groan against his clavicle. The Soldier is holding on incredibly tight, tight enough to hurt, even, and Tseng wonders if he even realises it. He doesn’t complain though. He himself is still panting and he slouches forward somewhat, trying not to lean on the other man entirely but also succumbing to the ache in his supporting arm, and, unable to make eye contact, his eyes fall to the hand still idly stroking the Soldier’s length. Sephiroth wraps a hand around his wrist, and Tseng can’t read if it’s an instruction to keep going or to ease away.

“I … need to have a real shower now …” he says, the sense of reckless indulgence washing off him exactly as predicted, the weight of reality threaten to come crashing down, “… you were about to start training …”

Sephiroth laughs softly beneath him; Tseng can feel the vibration against his chest.

“And I think I can wash my own hair now.”

By the time Tseng steps out of the shower Sephiroth is already dressed again, even if his hair, still tied up, isn’t perfectly dry. He waits for Tseng to finish dressing before he speaks up

“We should go for a drink sometime,” he says, and for as confident a statement as it is his voice holds all of the uncertainty he had shown when Tseng had first challenged him in the office days ago, “Perhaps.”

Caught entirely off guard, Tseng is unable to stifle a laugh in time. He has to excuse himself when Sephiroth looks at him quizzically.

“I’m sorry,” the Turk says, waving his expression off, “Normally you’d go for drinks with someone before getting them off in the employee showers, that’s all I’m laughing at.”

It’s often easy to forget that Sephiroth was raised in the confines of the Tower and that social cues aren’t necessarily his forte, and Tseng can see him working overtime trying to read the tone of his comment, whether he should laugh it off too or take it personally, whether he should be amused or affronted. Tseng shakes his head.

“What I’m saying,” he begins, “Is that yes, we should go for a drink sometime.”

Sephiroth lowers his eyes and smiles, nods, and Tseng gets the impression he is mostly just relieved he doesn’t have to interpret the tone of conversation anymore.

Some things can be simple, he thinks. Just for once.

Chapter Text

Lab days never used to be like this. Lab days used to be fun. Labs days used to mean seeing how fast he could run on a treadmill, or seeing how many capparwires he could catch in an hour, all while feeling a buzz of pride at the faces of the adults around him lit up and impressed.

He is getting older now though, Hojo says, growing up, and that means that lab days are going to be changing. For the first of these new experiments he is taken to a new room in the Science Department, one he has never seen before, and he is told to take a seat in the big chair in the middle of the floor. He knows most of the people that work here by now and recognises the people busying around him, adjusting expensive-looking machinery, while Hojo stays with him in the centre of the room.

“Can you count to five for me, Sephiroth?” the Professor asks, and Sephiroth, although slightly confused, obliges. Hojo smiles approvingly. “Good, well done.” He sets about fixing cuffs over Sephiroth’s arms, not too tight, but keeping him very much in place on the chair. “We’re going to flip a switch and you’re probably going to feel a bit funny for five seconds,” Hojo explains, attaching strange clips to each of Sephiroth’s fingers, “But then you’ll feel normal again, and you have to tell us if it feels comfortable or not. If it gets too much, you tell us to stop. Does that sound ok to you?”. Sephiroth’s legs are restrained in a similar manner to his arms and he doesn’t fully understand what is being asked of him. It doesn’t feel safe.

“Is it going to hurt?” he asks, and the Professor’s smile seems more fixed than it did just a second ago.

“You’ll feel a bit funny for five seconds,” he repeats as if from a script, “But then you’ll feel normal again.” Sephiroth wriggles uncomfortably as a strange device is pulled down over his head, heavy and cold, and his stomach twists nervously as he looks for reassurance in Hojo’s eyes. Hojo pats his shoulder. “I’ll be right over there the whole time,” he says, gesturing towards a counter with many different coloured buttons, “And I’ll tell you what - if you behave in here I’ll give you an extra hour in the VR simulator tomorrow. How does that sound?”. The Professor paces away, and the labcoated adults around him move into position with clipboards and pens at the ready. A huge screen lights up in front of him with five red dots, and after an announcement from Hojo, a switch is flipped.

The first pulse that they put through him barely registers, and in fact it’s like he can hear it more than feel it, a low hum. He watches the team watching him and he isn’t sure what they’re expecting, so when the counter runs down, when the five dots become four, three, two, one and disappear with a bleep, he remains silent.

“How was that?” Hojo asks eventually, and Sephiroth just shrugs.

“I didn’t feel anything,” he says, and this seems to be the right answer; the team around him make notes on their clipboards and Hojo nods at him, and then at the person stood by the controls.

“Good,” he says, “Let’s proceed to the next level then.”

The five seconds are put back on the timer and the switch is pushed again, and Sephiroth hears the hum again. He definitely does feel something this time, but it doesn’t hurt - it feels like a very warm vibration at his temples and the tips of his fingers.

The counter runs down and bleeps. The team look at him and he shrugs again.

“Fine,” he says, before Hojo asks. So they go again.

Each test seems to go this way, and the only thing that really changes is the reaction of the scientists around him. They appear bored for the first five tests, but as time goes on and the vibrating sensation at his temples gets stronger, they start to appear quite impressed by him.

It isn’t long after this point that the sensation begins to change. What had begun as a gentle hum, a warm vibration against his skin, starts to feel prickly. It’s still fine, it’s still manageable, and motivated by the scientists’ impressed expressions he doesn’t voice any discomfort, but a couple of rounds after this the pain is getting sharper and sharper, starting to feel like whatever it is is shooting all the way through his head and down his arms. The low hum gets higher, and the sound makes his teeth itch. Hojo watches as his hands grip hold of the armrests.

“How is it?” he asks from across the room. Sephiroth doesn’t want to let anyone down.

“It’s ok,” he says, although his scrunched up face and tense posture would say otherwise. The scientists are divided now - some of them are still looking positive, excited even, and are taking faster observations on their clipboards. Some of them are starting to look concerned, looking between the boy and the professor. Hojo approaches him, reaches out and pats his shoulder.

“Remember, we can stop any time you want, ok?” he says, bending down to be eye-level with the child, “You just tell us when you’ve had enough. You’re in control here.” The reassurance makes Sephiroth feel better, and he nods. Hojo steps back again and the countdown is reset, and Sephiroth takes a sharp breath in. He braces himself.

It definitely feels worse now. A white-hot pain pierces through his head from one side to the other, and the sound that accompanies it screams like a hundred nails being dragged down a chalkboard, and he kicks, pulls against his restraints, but they don’t budge. The only sound that cuts through the cacophony in his head is the distant “bleep” of the countdown; after five the sound, the heat, both stop, and he slumps forward, heart racing.

None of the scientists are smiling this time. Hojo doesn’t even approach him.

“You’re doing really well,” he says, writing something down, looking up at the monitors that show numbers and colours the child doesn’t understand.

“I want to stop,” he says, fighting to get his breath back. He feels embarrassed and he feels defeated, but even when he shakes his head he can‘t stop his ears from ringing. Hojo looks up over his glasses.

“Was that too much?” he asks. Sephiroth nods, and he crushing guilt over letting the team down, but … he doesn’t want to do that again. He is done.

Hojo approaches, and he crouches down in front of the child. He puts a hand on his shoulder again, heavy. “I think you can handle one more,” he says. He looks into the child’s eyes, and even at his age Sephiroth knows that his comforting smile is insincere. “Do you think you can do one more for us?”

They’re always praising how strong he is, and how he always surpasses their expectations, but he can’t do it this time. He shakes his head and he feels his lip wobble, and embarrassment comes over him as tears fill his eyes. Hojo studies him for a long time, a long time, before pursing his lips and straightening up.

“Keep going,” he says curtly to the team, stepping away again, and none of them, not even the ones who had looked so concerned only two minutes ago, question it. The counter is reset, and the protest on Sephiroth‘s lips is drowned out by panic and helplessness. The switch is flipped before he can even brace himself again, and in a moment of searing agony, everything becomes white.

He doesn’t know how to keep track of dates, but the candle in his last birthday cake was a 7.

Very little has changed over the years, his capacity for pain, perhaps, and his understanding that his limits have never defined anything for anyone else. Painful experiments still happen, albeit less frequently now, and there are still entire days where he is left incapacitated with the fallout of whatever sensation has been forced upon him, whatever drug or mako concentration has been pushed through his veins.

Today is one of those days.

He had waited out the obligatory “observation period” in the labs where he was monitored closely for an hour post-experiment, and once it was deemed they hadn’t done anything fatal he was sent on his way to recover in the comfort of his own home. The idea that he was considered fit to leave is ludicrous of course, because he is left almost entirely incapacitated. Having been escorted back to his apartment he all but falls through the door and stumbles his way blindly to the long sofa sitting in the middle of the open plan living space, and it is here he lies for an hour at least while the remnants of several slow-release status effects run their course in his system. If his eyes are open the room shifts and distorts in front of him, the walls warp, the floor stretching and shrinking beneath him, yet the movement doesn’t stop when they’re closed either, rather he can feel the world spinning around him instead. He can hear himself breathing obscenely loud in his own head, but if he stops all he can hear is his own heartbeat. It feels like hell. Maybe it is hell.

All of his senses are artificially heightened and his head is already pounding, so when there is a sudden series of knocks at his door each one feels like a nail being driven through his skull. He winces, holds his hands over his head as if that might ease the sensation, and he wants to curse loudly at whoever made the sound but honestly he doesn’t think he has the strength to shout loud enough.

He ignores them, until they knock again. The second time he does curse, just under his breath.

He shifts gracelessly from the couch and takes a moment to reorient himself as best he can in a room that seems to spin every time he moves his eyes, before shuffling to the door. He braces himself against the wall and takes a breath before pulling it open.

The lighting in the corridor is so bright, why??? He has to squint against the light and it draws his face into a scowl as he tries to piece together the images his overworked eyes are giving him.

Tseng ..?

It occurs to him that it takes a moment longer to identify the man because he is dressed down, and he has never seen him in anything other than pressed suits or workout gear. The discrepancy is just another thing making his brain work overtime, and he isn’t grateful for it.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, not caring for how abrupt he might sound. He can only just make out Tseng’s expression as it swims in front of him, and it seems to shift from amused to curious to concerned.

“We were going for drinks …” the Turk answers slowly, uncertainty on his voice. He raises a bag held in his right hand, and the rustle of the plastic feels like barbed wire on Sephiroth’s brain. “I assumed you’d forgotten, so I took it upon myself to bring some over instead …” Sephiroth reflexively puts a hand to his head at the sound of the bottles he is referring to knocking together. “Are you ok?” Tseng asks after a long pause.

“I didn’t forget,” Sephiroth starts, voice a low murmur, all he can manage. He didn’t forget, he received a reminder from Hojo that it was a lab day and he’d messaged Angeal to inform Tseng, and -

- oh. No, he didn’t at all. Angeal is …

“Come in,” he says, shaking his head against the lapse in memory, against the black spots in the forefront of his mind. He doesn’t particularly want company but he steps aside to let the other man in, anything to enable him to shut the door and close the light out again.

He can feel Tseng watching him - physically feel the weight of his gaze - and it makes his head pound even harder. He hates lab days.

“Go and …” he starts, gesturing vaguely to the in the middle of the living space. “You can sit,” he says. He makes his way back there himself, planting himself gracelessly back in the corner seat and bringing his knees up. The world is still spinning, oh so slowly, even when he’s sat still; he closes his eyes against the motion, against the pressure of the other man watching him, and lets his head loll forward.

The bottles jingle as the bag is put down, and he feels the other man perch carefully at the other end of the couch.

“Is this … normal?” Tseng asks cautiously. Sephiroth knows how pitiful this must look. He knows he should feel shame, Shinra’s greatest soldier a defeated cripple in his own darkened home, but he can’t find the energy to care. Maybe it’s the feeling of the world spinning around him. Maybe it’s the churning in his stomach, the flood of whatever chemicals are still in his veins. Maybe it’s because it’s Tseng, an anomaly who he has always been able to relax with and get things wrong with, Tseng whose voice, somehow, isn’t as jarring as every other sound around him.

“It is,” he murmurs, nods before regretting the movement, “When Hojo’s involved … very normal.”

His heart is beating too fast, too hard, too loud. He uncurls and plants his feet on the floor, elbows on his knees, head hung. His hair falls about his face like blinkers, cutting off his peripheral vision. It makes the dizziness more manageable.

“How often ..?” Tseng asks. Sephiroth frowns at the question, the simple act of thinking straining his brain.

“Not very,” he answers with a grimace. “Every … couple of months, perhaps.” He opens his eyes, glares resentfully at the floor beneath his feet. “Depends on what he’s doing …”

“Why?” Tseng asks, “You’re saying this is all approved and above board?”

“I’m a … scientific phenomenon,” Sephiroth answers, and he tries to inject humour into his voice but god knows if it comes across.

He is fast, faster than any other soldier on the battlefield, and stronger than any man alive, that much is undeniable.

So how could they improve on perfection?

They had made strides studying his pain threshold, particularly when he was younger, and testing his limits, pushing them, breaking and remoulding them had been the focus of their work for many of his formative years, but while he had grown to absorb physical damage his magic resistance was still low, below par, “unsatisfactory” - tellingly it was never considered to be below par before he became more involved with Angeal and, more specifically, Genesis. So as the years went on the focus was taken away from physical endurance and placed instead on magic resistance. Genesis had the ability to get hit with Darkness and be able to shake it off within twenty seconds while Sephiroth would be relying on materia to dispel his own. A Slow spell would reduce him to the speed of an average SOLDIER - which is to say, still well above average - but he would be moving like that a long time after Genesis regained his own abilities. Despite their best efforts the labs had made little progress in fixing this imperfection in their specimen, and so they started to look at how to mitigate the risks of negative status effects instead, how to manipulate his senses to compensate. They used drugs to sharpen his vision, injected him with something to amplify his hearing, ran frequencies through his body that made his skin hypersensitive to stimulus, session after session something new and something terrible to try to reshape him. If they couldn’t fix his weaknesses they would just amplify his strengths instead.

And it worked, sometimes, temporarily, for the duration of their experiments but not much longer. It would result in lingering hours after their studies where everything was just too much - where he could see brushstrokes in the walls from the other end of the apartment, feel printed text on a page beneath his fingertips - but it didn’t matter as long as the powers that be got their figures to write on their clipboards for the day. He had endured every status ailment known to man, even some possibly unknown at the time, had suffered far more severe effects in the Shinra labs than he ever did in real action, all in the name of Hojo’s ego. It had occurred to him in the past that there was no purpose to it at all, that it was all some kind of psychological tool to keep him in line, to make sure he never forgot his place; if any of him does still believe that, he has pushed it far, far down out of necessity.

“Where do you keep your materia?”

The Turk’s voice cuts through his reverie; distantly Sephiroth is surprised to notice that the other man is keeping his voice deliberately low, quieter than normal. He is a Turk, he supposes. Astute.

“Cabinet …” he answers instinctively, gesturing vaguely, before he can even ask why. He feels more than hears Tseng get up and move across the room. “What are you ..?”

“If you keep materia here I’m assuming you have something to counteract these side-effects with,” the Turk explains pragmatically. Sephiroth can hear the sound of his hands on the cabinet in question, the creak of the panel opening. He nearly snorts at how naïve the suggestion is, before he reminds himself that the vast majority of people have never had the misfortune to be in this position before.

“This is all chemically induced,” he murmurs, voice low but as loud as he can manage without aggravating his stomach; he feels nauseous from the spinning around him, “Synthetic, not cast from materia. You can’t esuna this away, you think I wouldn’t have tried?”

There’s nothing to be gained from snapping at the Turk, but he shouldn’t have made such a ridiculous suggestion. He shouldn’t have come here in the first place, with his knock on the door, his rustling bag and loud, clinking bottles. Tseng’s fingers search across the materia and Sephiroth can hear even that. His senses are so amplified that, even through the haze of poison, silence, confusion, he can feel the Turk’s movements, trace him without even looking up. Maybe this is what they want in a First Class SOLDIER, this inhuman degree of heightened perception. He wonders if maybe this is something he could adjust to with time, these razor-sharp senses, the ability to follow the slightest movements of an individual across a room without even looking at them. He thinks then though of the battlefield, and of what this level of sensitivity would’ve been like in Wutai. It’s too much. He thinks about what it would feel like, tracking targets through the vibration in the earth. He imagines feeling a enemy’s advance in the air an hour before they even see them, hear them. He imagines what fire would feel like, and smoke in his lungs, and bubbling, twisting, melting …

It’s all. Too. Much.

He nearly trips as he rises from the sofa, running his hand across the wall for balance as muscle memory guides the way to the bathroom, where he promptly stumbles to the floor and heaves.

There’s nothing to bring up, nil by mouth for twelve hours before any experiments of course, but it doesn’t stop his stomach from protesting the chemicals in his system, the world spinning around him, the discrepancies between the speed he is moving at and the speed he’s seeing everything else moving at. He rests his head on his forearm, breathing heavily, and for just an instant he flashes back to the soundscape of Wutai, the gunfire, the thudding, pounding charge of soldiers on the ground, the omnipresent sound of fire raging from every direction. He can feel cold dirt beneath his hands and for a fleeting moment he panics because he doesn’t know where Genesis is and the two of them should never stray too far apart, and where have his feet taken him and why can’t he hear Angeal, why can’t he hear either of them?

But then abruptly he remembers, and he is brought back to Midgar, to his cold bathroom, where he is very sick and very, very alone. The Wutai dirt under his fingers is just floor tiling, and the roaring fire he can hear is just the blood rushing in his ears.

Wutai had been easier.

“Sephiroth ..?”

Of course. Not alone.

He thinks about responding, but the thought of speech turns his stomach again. He humours the idea of simply brushing it off, getting to his feet and walking back to the living space like nothing even happened - he does have a reputation to maintain after all -, but the mere notion of that is laughable. He tries to get to his feet at least, but when he tells his body to go right he falls heavily to the wall on his left instead. That will be the Confuse, then.

He concedes to remaining on the floor, resting his head heavily on the heels of his hands and sighing loudly; the sound is amplified in his head and it feels like a crashing wave inside his skull. He is angry and frustrated, vulnerable and … embarrassed. Because Genesis had seen him like this and had talked him through it, and Angeal had held him until it subsided, and they all knew what it was like because they had all been there themselves. His present company though, Tseng, the Turk, the man from Wutai … no, this is different.

Or is it?

There is a shift in the air, and he doesn’t know if he’s been in here for ten seconds or an hour but finally he has company again. He thinks about cracking an eye open, but the thought alone is nauseating.

“My apologies,” he murmurs, not looking up. Tseng is standing still in the doorway, he can feel that much in the air; credit to the man’s skill as a Turk, because even with his presently enhanced hearing Sephiroth hadn’t heard his approach.

“What can I do to help?” Tseng asks evenly. His voice is pragmatic, and Sephiroth searches but he can’t find any pity in there.

“Nothing,” he murmurs, but he kicks himself for how pathetic it sounds, “Nothing proactive,” he clarifies instead, “It’s all drugs, chemicals. I just have to wait it out. It will be fine.”

Tseng is quiet for a while, before quietly asking:

“Would you like me to stay with you?”

And Sephiroth wants to say no, he wants to get angry at the mere suggestion and he wants to push him away, but, vulnerable as he is, something in the offer pierces through his chest like a bolt. There is something grounding in the Turk’s presence, something calming in his deliberately low, quiet voice, that offers him something different to focus on. He had wondered if maybe the status effects are wearing off, but he realises that in the other man he just has something to distract him. And it’s … comforting.

“I would,” he admits quietly, “Yes.”

He stops short of please.

Tseng helps him up patiently, surprising strength in his smaller frame, and helps him back to the sofa. He had asked if the bed might be a better idea, if lying down would help at all, but when Sephiroth asks if he’d ever tried to fall asleep through a haze of status effects he can only respond with a quiet touche.

“I do have an idea though,” the Turk says when Sephiroth is settled again, hunched over again, and the space in the room shifts as he steps away.

“Don’t -” Sephiroth starts, before the effort of speech turns his stomach once more. “Don’t come back,” is what he had been trying for, because the shame of being seen like this burns stronger than any of his other mind-bending symptoms. He refuses to entertain the idea that it was very nearly “Don’t go,”. Everything instantly feels worse in his absence, the flashbacks to Wutai rushing back the instant he is no longer distracted. He thinks about their wasted mission, the supposed “Genesis sighting”, when the Turk had pointed out where he once lived. Sephiroth had known the area well. He also knows that no one lives there anymore - he had seen to that himself. He doesn’t know what the Turk’s family looked like, and even if he did it wouldn’t matter - there had been no time to look them all in the eye, and they had ensured there were no survivors as the towns burned.

A different kind of nausea hits when Tseng returns, and Sephiroth lifts his hand but lets it fall again when he realises he doesn’t know what he’s reaching for. He wants the Turk to say something, he wants him to speak again, wants the distraction of that grounding, level voice. He wants to know if he knows that the man he’s looking down on more than likely murdered his family in the name of Shinra Inc.. He wants to know what that changes.

“I’ve brought something to help, if you’ll let me,” Tseng says, “Not that you could stop me in your current state, to be fair,” he follows up. Sephiroth feels the room shift, hears movement, feels the slightest increase in temperature near him; the Turk has knelt down alongside him. He wants to talk about the war. He wants to talk about the towns he ravaged. He wants to confess, but he doesn’t want to be left alone. Not really.

“We did … terrible things … in Wutai …” he mutters eventually, and he is surprised by the readiness of Tseng‘s reply.

“So did they,” the Turk answers, quietly, but without missing a beat.

“They never wanted to be dragged into war …” Sephiroth presses, and Tseng replies:

“Neither did you.”

The short statement is a thousand things all at once, acknowledgement, admonishment, quiet, calm acceptance, a thousand things Sephiroth is not used to. The words sit on his chest, not crushing but grounding, not suffocating but anchoring, and Sephiroth doesn’t know how to respond.

He feels movement in the air, the telltale vibrations of materia being used, and while he is trained to respond instinctively to such threats there is nothing in him left to fire up. It might be resignation, a cold, desperate detachment, or it might even be peace - he’s forgotten what that one feels like.

Whatever it is softly melts into gratitude as his unconscious recognises the perceived threat to be Sleep magic and, with his resistance stripped away as it is, he is powerless to fight it. The spinning, the nausea, the flashbacks all melt away, and the last thing he remembers are those surprisingly strong hands catching him as he falls helplessly, mercifully, into an artificial slumber.

Chapter Text

Sephiroth hasn’t been speaking to him, hasn’t replied to a single message or even picked up the phone on the one occasion Tseng tried to call. He’s up and around, Tseng knows that much thanks to tracking activity on his security pass, just deliberately not up and around anywhere near him.

It has been a week since the incident, a week since they were meant to go for drinks and instead spent the evening learning what the comedown from a session with the Science Department looks like (although if he is understanding correctly he knows that Sephiroth was already somewhat experienced in this).

Tseng had seen a lot of things in his life already, especially as a Turk, but seeing Sephiroth that way had left him thrown. The legendary SOLDIER, unstoppable and infallible, had been reduced to a chaotic shadow, unsteady on his feet, wincing from the light. He had reassured Tseng that this was nothing new, that he was used to it, that it wasn’t of any concern, but Tseng couldn’t in his right mind just leave and walk away. He had always been raised to think holistically, and when Sephiroth had told him the status effects couldn’t be cured away he had immediately thought of which others could maybe cancel them out, and using a strong Sleep spell on the man in his own home (with his own orb of materia nonetheless) had felt like a violation but it had also felt like the only option. Unsure of what else he could possibly do, he had made the man comfy and had promptly left. It wasn’t an entirely selfless act - he could say that he wanted to give the Soldier space to wake up and come to at his own pace, maybe preserve a little of his dignity, but in reality he just didn’t want to be there when that happened. He just wanted to get out, to try to make sense of what he had seen.

It had all felt so private, like he was intruding, and spying is indeed in his job description, but this … this wasn’t the same. This was intimate, and unintentional. And it stayed with him.

He is the last one left in the office at the end of the shift, so there is no one to question him when he logs into their central admin computer and starts clicking through folders of personnel files. Staff records are one thing, easily accessible, containing the basic need-to-knows about each one of the hundreds of people employed under Shinra Inc., but it isn’t the staff records Tseng is interested in. With a borrowed key card and a series of stealthily lifted passwords he instead gets himself into the central collection of confidential files, records of the same employees but enhanced, in-depth, containing details not everyone needs to know (if anyone at all). Of course there are several he’d looked at before - his fellow Turks, to proofread, Scarlet’s, when she tried him once and seldom since - and they’d hardly contained anything new to him, but there is one he had never accessed for himself:

Sephiroth’s.

He had of course read the files Lazard had given him before Wutai, but those had been heavily edited, whole paragraphs, sometimes entire pages, removed and redacted. Even if the information had been whole and intact it had all mattered less back then, read at the time before they’d grown to know each other so well. Back then the notes he read could’ve been about anyone but now they are about someone, and now as the files load and he clicks through the pages those same notes turn his stomach.

Everything about the man’s life is documented meticulously, his date of birth to the minute, the location of his birth (which had been a surprise to Tseng the first time he read it), his parentage (which outright chilled the Turk’s blood), the dates and times of every time he was transported between his hometown and Midgar as an infant and who by. There are so many records it’s almost like he couldn’t breathe without it being documented; it makes Tseng realise how he could speak so casually about his nutrition being monitored and dictated, when it was apparent that that was just the tip of the iceberg.

He clicks through every scanned page, only glancing vaguely through the sections he doesn’t need until he finds what he wants. He is looking for details of the experiments Sephiroth had alluded to last week, the ones he said happen every eight weeks or so, the ones that leave him all but crippled in his own home. He wants to know what they are, what they’re for, how they can possibly be justified.

He reaches the correct section, dedicated to studies undertaken with him (where, Tseng notes with a grimace, every note printed or handwritten refers to him as “the specimen”). He’s not a scientist so the numbers written on the screen mean nothing to him, and the numerous formulas are entirely beyond his comprehension, but there are enough images to suggest what they are all referring to. Several pictures show the man - the boy, in some - submerged entirely in what Tseng can only assume to be some kind of mako solution, and a table accompanying the images indicates the varying durations of time he had spent in them with side-effects alongside listing (among others) nausea, burns and delirium. There is another section with a series of graphic images showing various stages of a wound healing process, different groups of photos documenting different wounds created and healed at different stages in the man’s life. Some of the images look recent, others far less so.

Tseng has long understood about himself that he might not be quite right, finds it all too easy to emotionally detach, to disconnect, but even he has to question the ethics of treating a child like this in the name of science.

He scans through every stomach-churning paragraph he can, but the information he is looking for is nowhere to be seen. Sephiroth had said these experiments happen on a semi-regular basis, and Tseng had seen for himself the fallout from the most recent one just a week ago, but according to these meticulous records the last tests had been taken a month ago, and just as part of a routine physical.

He is unsure what to make of this information - or specifically the lack of it - but he pockets the absence in his mind as he closes the file down. Curious, he wants to look at one more …

His own confidential records, he knows, are somewhat different from the others, because while their lives and histories are bared for all (with the correct access) to see, so much of his is still redacted, at both his and Veld’s request. His eyes instantly jump to the blocks of censored information, the surname he’d trained himself to forget blacked out, the date of birth - already forgotten -, blacked out. According to his staff file, and as far as any of his colleagues need to know, he is and always has been Tseng, “just Tseng”, and he always lets them celebrate the birthday he has on record too, the date they don’t need to know Veld picked randomly when they had first arrived at Midgar for processing. No meaning. No significance.

Maybe that is what is means to be a Turk, he thinks, clicking idly through other pages in the record, pages that document his progress in training, his prowess in the field, observations made by his superiors. He had always excelled in getting in and out of a job without being seen, and just like no one had really known how he had come to join Shinra, maybe no one would know how he’d leave it, should his time ever come. He thinks about some of his more recognisable colleagues, Reno, all lightning and explosions, Cissnei, swift and tenacious - would they be fated to disappear into obscurity too? Come in, do their job and vanish, never to be seen again? He thinks about Veld, about how long he’s been with the Company and how long he has left. He wonders how many others have simply vanished before them.

He had always welcomed the shadows, enjoyed the anonymity, but there is something about serving his duty and being left off the records that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

He closes the file, shuts the computer down, and takes a shower in the Basement Three facilities before heading upstairs.

Sephiroth is distracted. He has been for a week, to be fair, but it is particularly apparent after a session in the VR room which had been significantly beneath his usual efforts. He had been specifically working on his precision, on how to identify weaknesses, how to exploit them, how to be more graceful and deliberate with his destruction, but every strike he made just felt clumsy, and every spell he cast landed that little bit too hard. Where was his finesse? And where was his restraint? If Genesis had been with him he would have mocked his lack of elegance, and if Angeal was there he would have criticised his form. If Tseng had been there …

Ah. And there’s the distraction.

He had become so accustomed to the man’s presence, either in a meeting room or on their strange, small throwaway missions, that not interacting with him for even this short stretch of time had been noticeable. It had been deliberate though, and on his part, because after the last time they had been in each other’s presence Sephiroth wasn’t in any rush to see him again.

The procedures at the labs had been no different from normal, and the side-effects that followed had been all too familiar too, nothing at all he wasn’t used to. What he wasn’t used to though was someone else witnessing the aftermath, someone else seeing the fallout. A lifetime of poking and prodding means that he had long since forgotten what shame feels like, but that one night a week ago had been an unpleasant reminder. He remembers what shame feels like now. He had never wanted to feel it again.

And so he had avoided the Turk since. He had perfect alibis to get out of meetings, and a sound reason to turn down the one mission request they’d received, and he knows full well that the man knows his schedule so he’d even switched up his training routine. It hadn’t felt good returning to solitude this last week, he thinks, scanning his card to unlock the VIP elevator leading to his apartment, but maybe it’s how it should’ve been all along.

This is exactly why his stomach falls when, down the corridor, he sees none other than Tseng himself leaning back against his doorframe. His legs are crossed at the ankles, his arms are crossed in front of his body, and Sephiroth isn‘t sure if his unexpected appearance makes him angry or, somehow, quietly happy.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, not concerned about being polite.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Tseng responds, and it’s not even an answer to his question.

“You expect me to believe it’s a coincidence you turn up when you knew I’d be out?” he asks. “You just so happen to show up as I come back home?”

And Tseng responds:

“I was never going to pretend it was a coincidence.”

He isn’t in his uniform, the material he’s wearing instead looking light and soft, and Sephiroth doesn’t know why it catches his attention. He doesn’t know why anything about this man demands his attention, and yet here they are. The corridor is narrow, and quiet, and in front of the man who saw him so vulnerable just a week ago he feels uncomfortably exposed. The Turk hasn’t taken his eyes off him. He purses his lips and sighs.

“I suppose you want me to let you in, then.”

They enter, Sephiroth first, and he is surprised to note that Tseng takes his shoes off, toes them neatly beside the door without being asked - considering the only time he’s been here before was under very different circumstances, he appreciates the respect. It almost balances the lack of it shown in turning up entirely uninvited, he thinks, but bites the comment down.

“The drinks you brought with you the other night are still in the fridge,” he informs the other man, busying past him, dropping his training equipment in another room, “You know I can’t -“

“-I’m not here for the drinks, Sephiroth,” Tseng interjects, sounding put out at the mere suggestion. Sephiroth walks back in and is caught by the man’s expression - he expected to see some kind of petulance, some petty irritation driven by his lack of communication in the recent days, but he sees none of it. It’s what he would’ve seen in Genesis, he realises, and has to remind himself - as he often does - that they are two different people. It is Genesis who would’ve looked petulant - Tseng looks troubled instead, and pensive. Sephiroth narrows his eyes.

“What are you here for then?” he asks, but he is quite sure he already knows. There is clearly nothing casual and relaxed about this visit, neither of them making any motion towards the couch in the centre of the room, both instead standing opposite the other. Sephiroth already feels riled and on edge; he can’t seem will his shoulders to relax.

“I want to talk about that night,” Tseng says, “The experiments Hojo does, the state you were left in. I want to talk about that.”

Sephiroth doesn’t want to talk about that night. He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about that night for a single moment since. And it hadn’t just been the shame.

He remembers feeling grateful at the time, when the Turk had used his own Sleep materia to knock him out, to kindly, mercifully put him into an artificial slumber where the awful chemical status effects could not bother him. But while he remembers falling asleep, sat up in the other man’s presence, he had woken up lying down, a blanket over him, shoes to the side. He had done none of this himself.

“You want to know why I’m avoiding you?” he asks. He’d been knocked out a lot as a child, sedated in theatre only to be woken up in a recovery room, but that had all stopped when he became a teenager, a young man. The only times he had ever lost consciousness since then had been in the training room with Genesis and Angeal, where they had swiftly woken him up where he had fallen. He hadn’t even been knocked out on the field. For a man whose entire life had become about micromanagement and control, waking up in unfamiliar circumstances, in his own home, had been the closest he had come to fear in a long time. And fear, like shame, is a sensation he hadn’t missed. “Do you know what it’s like falling asleep and waking up in a way you don’t even remember?”

Tseng blinks, frowns, narrows his eyes, before:

“Yes,” he says coldly, “But I’ve never been given the dignity of a blanket.“

He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand.

“I took your shoes off and I made you comfortable,” Tseng continues, “It’s nothing I haven’t done for Reno a hundred times.”

Sephiroth cocks his head to the side.

“Well that might be appropriate for Reno, but you can’t treat me like I’m just another Turk.”

In his defensiveness that might have been a step too far.

“So I’m guessing that being treated like a Turk isn’t good enough for you then,” Tseng starts in response. His voice is sharp, but Sephiroth notices that even somewhat riled his frame doesn’t carry half the tension of his own. Or perhaps it’s hidden well. It makes him angrier. “Would you rather I was more SOLDIER? How about rather than building a friendship I just leave you in a war zone? Disappear without a trace?”

“They never left me,” Sephiroth says with gritted teeth, knowing exactly who he is referring to.

“Then where are they now?” Tseng asks. Sephiroth knows that the anger he is feeling is nothing but defensiveness, and he recognises it but he can’t do anything about it, put on the spot like this. “Where were they when you could barely stand last week? When you were collapsed on your bathroom floor?”

And Sephiroth doesn’t have an answer. He knows how many times Angeal has been there for him, he knows how many times Genesis has been too, and he wants more than anything else to raise his voice and defend them. But he can’t deny that they are not here.

They are not here, but Tseng is.

Left without a response he turns away, puts some space between himself and the Turk, secretly hoping that he might take the gesture as a sign to leave. But after a moment Tseng speaks.

“There’s nothing about it in your records,”

Sephiroth doesn’t face him again, but he does turn his head.

“What do you mean?”

“The tests, the experiments they do on you, like last week. They’re not in your records at all. I wouldn’t have expected to see them in your public files, but they should at least be in the confidential ones. But there’s nothing.” The implication that someone has been through his confidential files means nothing to him - who doesn’t know more about him than he does anyway? He can feel the Turk’s gaze on him as he continues. “You said that everything they do is all above board, but if it is … then why isn’t it all documented?”

Sephiroth is so quiet.

“Isn’t it your job to know what they’re up to behind the scenes?” he asks eventually, and Tseng nods curtly in his periphery.

“It is, yes. And that’s why I know that what they’re doing isn’t normal.”

Why would anything be normal?

The anger Sephiroth had been feeling begins to sink into sadness, the strange sadness that he tries so hard not to feel, to dwell on, to allow in, and he feels it stir in response to the Turk’s words. Why would it be normal?

At last his shoulders begin to drop, tension draining into something much more like resignation.

After a long pause Tseng asks “Don’t you care?”, and Sephiroth merely shrugs.

“Why would I?” is the answer, and that sadness stirs again. “Nothing to do with me has ever had anything to do with me.”

And it’s true. He’s a SOLDIER, and it’s part of any soldier’s job to do as they’re told, obey orders without question. The only difference is that he had grown up under Shinra’s thumb and had been used to obeying without question since childhood. He had asked what the experiments were for precisely twice in his life, once as a child and once as a teenager, and both times he had been met with the same answer - “That’s not for you to worry about”. So he had simply stopped. They take his blood, fill him with chemicals, and he never finds out what it’s for. And because he knows he’ll never know, he simply stopped caring.

“Why do you care?” he asks now though, because that’s what really has his defences up.

And he knows, he knows, that those defences don’t need to be up. But taking the last of them down again seems impossible. “You don’t know half the things I did in Wutai,” he fires off, the last line of defence.

“You don’t know half the things I do in Midgar.”

Again with those unthinkingly quick responses.

“But if you knew then you wouldn’t -”

“- I don’t care about Wutai.”

Finally Sephiroth turns, because he just doesn’t understand. He shakes his head, the sadness he tries to keep at bay sapping away at his resistance, his anger, his defensiveness. He doesn’t know what keeps the other man so invested in him when, in reality, he is hardly invested in himself.

“Then why do you care about me?” he asks, but this time it is open, and sincere. And Tseng’s answer in turn seems more honest too. The Turk’s shoulders fall an inch.

“… I don’t know,” he admits quietly. It’s interesting watching him become introspective. It makes Sephiroth soften slightly in turn; he barely notices how he leans in slightly, subconsciously, wanting to understand more. “I know the kind of things Shinra do - I do a lot of them for them -” Tseng continues, “but I’ve always thought that as long as you’re on the right side of it all they would be on your side too. I’m not so sure anymore. I’m not sure we’re not just disposable. My colleagues, myself. You.”

Sephiroth snorts mirthlessly.

“If you’re suddenly having a crisis of confidence why don’t you just leave?” And Tseng chuckles darkly too, just as hollow.

“You think you can just stop being a Turk?” he asks, “There’s no redefining who I am, I’ve known that for a long time.”

Sephiroth isn’t sure who Tseng is though, not really, and that provides endless intrigue for him. He has enjoyed trying to piece the man together though over the last few months, enjoyed learning about the straight lines of the suit and about the man beneath, both literally and figuratively. He had enjoyed having company again, that much he can’t deny; even this exchange here tonight, as brittle, defensive, now somewhat cynical as it has been, makes him realise how much he hadn’t enjoyed the man’s absence the week before.

“What’s your excuse though?” Tseng asks, and Sephiroth surprises himself with a laugh.

“Shinra raised me,” he says with a shrug, shaking his head, “I’ve never known anything else. I could no sooner leave SOLDIER than you could the Turks.”

Tseng shakes his head, and Sephiroth can tell already that this is just one more thing the other man doesn’t understand.

“You’re Sephiroth,” Tseng says quietly, “No one could stop you.”

Sephiroth chuckles again and it‘s a little more sincere this time, a little more comfortable. The space between them is thawing.

“Maybe they’d send you after me,” he says, raising an eyebrow, and Tseng frowns and purses his lips like the Soldier has said something stupid.

“They’d send all of us after you,” he corrects.

“I’d end up having to kill you.”

And Tseng snorts this time, and the expression lights something up in Sephiroth. He rarely gets this exchange of humour with anyone and he misses it. He had it with Angeal. He had it with Genesis. And now …

“I’d like to see you try.”

He smiles and goes for a smooth retort, but he pauses when, quite suddenly, Tseng’s hand rests gently on his cheek. He doesn’t know what has caused the shift but the Turk steps closer, and his expression is softer, and the smile on Sephiroth’s lips is mirrored on Tseng’s. “There have been a lot of near misses …” he says softly, and Sephiroth tries to resist leaning in - memories of the office, memories of the shower room - but he doesn’t need to. The next thing he knows Tseng’s lips are on his, and for just a moment he is too shocked to respond. The action is gentle, none of the aggressive heat or wanton release they’d known before, rather it is slow and reserved and so, so deliberate. After a heartbeat Sephiroth responds, kissing him back carefully, not wanting to chase him away with enthusiasm but not wanting to let the moment fade out either. It is Sephiroth who breaks it first though nonetheless, the smile on his lips turning cynical, a suspicious glint in his narrowed eyes.

“Is this some kind of pity thing?” he asks, and he can see something that looks like offence cross those amber eyes. It might even be pain, but how would Sephiroth know?

The fingers on his cheek flinch at the question.

“No,” Tseng replies, chagrined.

Yes, he thinks, Maybe. Tseng isn‘t too sure himself. It might be pity, it might be guilt, it might be that he doesn’t know why this all seems to hurt so much and he doesn’t know what else to do about it, what to say about it, but he just knows he needs to do something.

I’d end up having to kill you.

That’d be one way out, for sure.

His hand is still on Sephiroth’s cheek when the Soldier asks Then what is it?, and Tseng almost wants to get angry at him. He doesn’t want to think, he doesn’t want to rationalise this or justify this, he just wants …

“If we’re going to be stuck with Shinra …” he says, deliberately keeping his eyes on the other man’s mouth.

“… and if I’m going to end up having to kill you …“ Sephiroth continues, a slow smile spreading before the Turk’s eyes, “And I would, by the way …”

“ … then we might as well enjoy it while we’re here, right?“ Tseng reaches into his pocket and pulls out his PHS, and he makes a point of throwing it across the room where it bounces onto the sofa. “No interruptions this time.”

No Heidegger.

No Lazard, no Veld.

No duty.

No mission.

And like a spell has been broken all traces of softness are gone, everything slow and gentle chased out by the press of their bodies and the insistent searching of hands, fingers roaming over shoulders, under clothing, unhooking belts. One of Sephiroth’s hands reaches up to Tseng’s hair and he pulls it loose, threading his fingers through it before settling on the back of his head, the Turk melting in some surprising way at the feeling of control the gesture implies. He needs this release. He needs it from Sephiroth too, needs to know the Soldier wants it just as much, and judging by the low growl in his throat when Tseng pulls him closer by the belt, pulling them flush together, he does indeed want this too.

It is late, but floor to ceiling windows paired with light pollution from the city far below mean that neither man wastes time hitting the light switch in the bedroom, focusing more on each other instead. By the time they make it to the bedroom both of them are shirtless, and Tseng is already halfway out of his trousers. He pushes Sephiroth back to the foot of the bed and the Soldier’s hands come automatically to his hips as he kneels astride him, pulling the last of his own clothing off. Eager lips start exploring his skin and he weaves his fingers into that iconic silver hair, and flashbacks to the shower, to the Soldier being on his knees in front of him, fill his mind and travel directly down his body. He wants that again. He wants that again, but he wants so much more. With everything Shinra have taken from him, he wants Sephiroth to have so much more too.

“Stop …” he says, failing to mask a laugh as the Soldier‘s mouth travels across his abdomen; he doesn’t really mean it, and feeling the curve of the mouth against his stomach he knows Sephiroth knows he doesn’t mean it too, but the Soldier does concede. With hands on his shoulders Tseng pushes him down, shimmying down his body and stripping the last of his clothing too. He runs his hands up his legs, those powerful thighs, exploring the impossible musculature of the man’s body, lit only by the green glow of Midgar below; when he crawls back up he grinds their bodies together deliberately, wantonly, indulgently; there is something powerful in feeling Sephiroth - First Class SOLDIER Sephiroth - being coaxed to hardness beneath him, against him, skin to skin, and the thought goes to Tseng’s cock too, hardening with the other man.

Sephiroth’s hands come to Tseng’s thighs first before he reaches up to take his hair and pull him forward, meeting in another meltingly hot kiss. His hips start moving up against Tseng’s and as Tseng starts planting those hot kisses down the column of his neck, against his collarbone, he can see the Soldier’s throat work to choke back vocalisations.

“You can relax, you know …” he murmurs, and he is rewarded with a quiet chuckle that he feels vibrate against him. He rolls his hips particularly close, particularly slow, and that draws a low groan from the Soldier, eyes crushing closed, back arching just slightly. That’s the kind of enjoyment Tseng wants to hear and the pleasure in the sounds runs through him; he can feel the man’s heartbeat against his chest, can see sweat begin to bead on his heating-up skin, feels the swell beneath him where their bodies, their hips, grind together. He frees himself from the grip in his hair and sits back up to his knees, and he considers the Soldier’s hard cock, bigger than he remembers (and he thought he remembered well), crowned with precum. He starts to work him in his hand, using that precum to slick him up, watching the other man’s expression the whole time. True pleasure is written across his face, real, easy enjoyment, and that makes it easier for Tseng, easy to tell that he wasn’t taking this in directions it was never meant to go. He nearly chokes on a gasp as Sephiroth’s hand finds his cock too and heat floods the Turk as they stroke each other in time, Tseng’s position on his knees enabling him to rock them both into a rhythm. He looks down, Sephiroth in his hand, he in the Soldier’s, and the pleasure is too much. Where was that more he was looking for?

“Do you have any …” Tseng starts, and Sephiroth frowns up at him.

“Any ..?”

“Lube, Sephiroth,” is the deadpan answer. Sephiroth scans Tseng’s eyes and travel back down to his lips again.

“Are we ..?”

Tseng doesn’t bother replying verbally this time, just raises one eyebrow down at him, and the Soldier takes the hint. Tseng shifts to allow him to move up the bed, and he retrieves a red tube from the drawer, handing it over. It’s the self-warming brand Tseng’s not a fan of, and he has suspicions it wouldn’t be Sephiroth’s first choice either, but if it’s all they’ve got to work with then so be it.

He drips a generous amount onto his hand and drops the tube back to the bed, and he shuffles up from the man’s hips to astride his waist instead, a little higher. Steadying himself against the Soldier’s chest, watching his expression for one more moment, he reaches behind himself and begins to run slick fingers over his own entrance. He lets his eyes fall shut as he begins to tease himself, allowing himself to relax into his own touch before beginning to slide a finger in, slowly. He feels Sephiroth move his hands to his thighs, run them up to his waist, holding him as he rocks gently, finding an angle that works for him and gasping a little when he gets that angle just right. The heating lube isn’t too bad after all and he goes to introduce a second finger, when Sephiroth speaks up beneath him.

“What are you ..?” he starts, and Tseng opens his eyes to see what he’s referring to. The Soldier’s gaze is focused, transfixed, on where their bodies meet, where Tseng is sat astride him, opening himself up at his own leisure, and Tseng narrows his eyes.

“You think I’m doing this without any preparation?” he asks, deadpan. Sephiroth’s brow furrows, just slightly, and the implication of his question hits like a punch to the gut: either has never done this properly before, really taken his time to enjoy someone, for them to enjoy him, or he has never done it before at all. From where he is now, driven not just by lust but by the need to convince the other man that he is on his side, that he is safe, Tseng doesn’t know which would be worse. Like so, so many other things, he wilfully pushes the thought away.

“Here,” he says, voice quiet. He pulls his hand away from behind himself and reaches for the lube again, this time taking one of the Soldier’s hands in his own. He shuffles forward again on his knees; the Soldier’s chest is so broad that he can’t sit quite as high as he’d like, but this will definitely do. He liberally drips the thick lube across the man’s fingers and spreads it with his own, bundling the Soldier’s digits together and stroking them in his own hand like they are something else entirely. Just like before he finds himself unconsciously rocking into the motion, and he watches Sephiroth’s eyes watching his hand. Unseen by the Soldier, he lets a small smirk slip onto his lips. He’s good.

After another few strokes, another few moments of wanton teasing, he takes the man’s freshly coated fingers back behind himself, leaning forward slightly and arching his back, opening himself up.

“Start with one,” he says, angling his hips a little to make it easier, and he lets his eyes flutter closed again as Sephiroth does exactly that, pushing tentatively inside him.

His hands are bigger, stronger than Tseng’s own, and the angle is better, and even just starting out slowly Tseng has to take a shaky exhale, nervous because he’s never done this with someone like Sephiroth, excited because he’s never done this with someone like Sephiroth. His own slick hand makes its way to his cock and he starts himself a very slow rhythm, rocking his hips forward into his own hand, back down onto Sephiroth’s. God alive does it feel good. “Add another,” he instructs, head tipped back, and Sephiroth is happy to oblige, sliding the first digit out and gently pushing it back in with a second. Tseng gasps softly and Sephiroth takes the sound as encouragement, starts moving his fingers more, crooks them, adds a slight twist he imagines he would enjoy, and in return he earns a more vocal exhalation as Tseng grinds back against him.

Tseng ducks his head, letting his hair fall forward, and he opens his eyes again at last, watching Sephiroth watch him. He takes his hand off his cock and reaches forward, plants both hands on the Soldier’s chest and pinches his nipples between his fingers, relishing how it makes him arch up in surprise. Smiling to himself he does it again, harder this time and for just a second longer, and he can feel the reaction both under him and right up to the fingers buried inside of him. Head still bowed he considers how his hardening length is resting right in the middle of the man’s chest, and how with every slight shift he gets the delicious friction of skin on skin; for a fleeting moment he considers how he could just ride the other man right here, fuck himself on the digits buried inside him and finish on the Soldier’s face, debauch that flawless skin, turn those keen, sharp features into something less War Hero and more Basement Three.

The visual alone is almost too much and he curls his hands instead, digs his nails into the man’s chest and closes his eyes again. “A third …” he breathes, pushing his hips back. He inhales instinctively when Sephiroth obliges, and he forces himself to relax when a third finger joins the first two, slower this time. He can feel the hesitation and takes control himself, grinds back, lets a sound escape on a breath as he feels himself being stretched further, filled further. As much as he knows he came here for Sephiroth, to pick a side, to provide reassurance, he has to admit: this feels so good. It has been a long time since he has taken this much time, even with just himself, and even as the lube starts to warm up and tingle inside him, on his hand, on his cock, he enjoys the feeling of everything else clouding his brain just melting away. He enjoys being able to not think, just for these few moments. He wants to enjoy letting go.

He slides his hands up from Sephiroth’s chest to his shoulders instead and bears his weight down. Pushing him into the mattress he feels the resistance as the Soldier fights his instinct to meet aggression with aggression; feeling that resistance, weathering it, forcing it into submission is delectable. He can’t take his eyes off the other man’s lips as he asks:

“Do you want to fuck me?”

He feels Sephiroth’s fingers inside him shift, sliding out, pushing back in again; it sends a tiny shock of pleasure through his spine. He has to ask because he needs to know, he just wants to hear it spoken.

“I very much do, yes,” Sephiroth replies, and above him, Tseng nods.

He pulls himself away from that hand, those fingers, leaving him empty as he shifts to the side and onto his back, and Sephiroth is over him before he can even catch his breath. A wave of intimidation threatens to cut through the lust as the Soldier leans over him because the man is so big, his height, the breadth of his shoulders blocking the light of the room so the only thing Tseng can really see is the man himself. Tseng takes it upon himself to hook a leg around the man’s body to pull himself closer, and with a hand on the inside of his thigh Sephiroth pushes the other down to the mattress.

“Lube first, for yourself,” Tseng instructs, and he watches the Soldier follow his orders before settling himself, pressing himself at the Turk’s entrance and looking up, just to make sure he’s ready. “Slowly …” Tseng advises, knowing the size of the man, “Not … not all at once …“, and Sephiroth nods.

Oh it is torture as the Soldier slides into him, the build of anticipation tempered by the discomfort of the stretch, and Tseng has to remind himself to breathe so as not to become overwhelmed by either. Sephiroth slides in by inches and groans as he does so, eyes lowered and watching himself disappear into the Turk’s body. He does stop part way as instructed and looks up, and Tseng nods breathlessly at him.

Tseng feels him pull back and slide forward again a couple of times, build a tentative rhythm, and he revels in the low groan of pleasure he hears whenever the Soldier thrusts himself slowly back in again. As intense as the stretch is he starts to relax into it, starts to enjoy it, the pressure, exactly who they are and what it is that they’re doing. It feels like a huge fuck you to Shinra, who are so protective over their last remaining special SOLDIER, their Silver General, their Demon of Wutai.

Relaxing into their rhythm as well and still not pushing too deep, Sephiroth moves the hand pinning Tseng’s thigh down to his cock instead, doesn’t stroke him fully but instead holds him and rubs his thumb up the underside instead, slow, deliberate, a devastating tease that draws a long and low groan from Tseng’s throat. He throws his head back as the Soldier does it again, and he digs long red lines into Sephiroth’s thigh before finding purchase, other hand sinking into a handful of sheets. He writhes beneath the other man, and even though he’s only just becoming comfortable with this he finds himself needing more.

“Sephiroth …” he tries to say, and he feels the vibration as Sephiroth laughs at the failed exclamation. The Soldier lets go of his cock and explores his flat stomach, across his chest, before resting his weight down on his forearm past Tseng’s head. Now fully over him his presence, his weight, is all-encompassing, almost suffocating, claustrophobic. Tseng loves it. “I need …” he starts, gritting his teeth as the Soldier moves his hips again, and Sephiroth rests his forehead against Tseng’s.

“What was that?” he asks on a breath, in a voice that only emphasises the intimacy and claustrophobia. Their lips brush as he speaks. Tseng initiated this, made the first move, pushed him down onto his own bed, and he doesn’t know exactly when the power shifted. But it shifted.

“I need more …” Tseng manages, and, knowing exactly what he means, Sephiroth nods against him.

Tseng shifts, lets go of the handful of sheets he was clinging onto and instead reaches up to grip Sephiroth’s sweat-slicked bicep, and he grits his teeth as Sephiroth pulls out slightly before sliding the rest of the way back into him, slowly, surely, a long, drawn out gasp of pleasure coming from the Soldier. He can’t stifle a groan himself as the Soldier fully seats himself, and Sephiroth looks down at him.

His pupils, so alien, are blown.

“Are you ok?” he asks, somewhat breathless, and Tseng gives himself a moment just to breathe.

“Yes,” he replies eventually. “Just … move …”

And Sephiroth does.

Each slide of skin is almost too much, the fullness overwhelming, but when Tseng gives himself over to it his nerve-endings light up, the pain partnered with an electric crackle of pleasure that drives every last thought out of his mind. Sephiroth’s hair, still in its band, has fallen over his shoulder, and Tseng winds the incredible silver lengths around his wrist before gripping it tightly; they’re both sweating and he himself is breathless, folded beneath the other man’s grip as he is, and above him even Sephiroth is breathing harder, eyes crushed closed as he sinks fully into the Turk, deeper with every heated motion.

The discomfort Tseng feels is tempered by how tightly they are pressed together, his own hard length trapped between them, and he knows he can‘t come like this but the delicious friction against his skin with every move they make keeps him close to the edge. He may not be able to come like this but he can feel how close Sephiroth is now he is fully seated, the strain in his arm, the crushing grip on his leg, and he lets out a sound somewhere between a sob and a moan as the Soldier starts thrusting harder into him, faster, no rhythm. The angle of his hips means that every few thrusts hits something just right, a spot so sweet it makes him cry out, see stars behind his crushed-closed eyelids. Sephiroth is getting louder too, nearly drowning out the pounding of flesh on flesh, and Tseng can feel every one of his muscles coiling tighter over him. He drops his hand from Sephiroth’s arm and grabs that fistful of the sheets again instead, and Sephiroth comes with a shameless cry, pushing even deeper than Tseng could’ve thought possible, spilling hot inside him. He melts down and Tseng can feel the Soldier’s heartbeat hammering against his own chest, pounding at a speed that would mark the end of any normal human being. He feels the man’s cock twitch again, still inside him, gasps as Sephiroth’s hips rock against his just a few more times.

He’s fucking close too.

Sephiroth pulls out of him, drawing an unintended groan as he does so, and Tseng finds the Soldier’s lips pressed into the crook of his neck. The heat of his mouth, his tongue, as he places burning kisses down his chest, is almost too much.

“Sephiroth, don’t …” is what tumbles out of his mouth, because he is just so over stimulated he doesn’t even know if it feels good anymore. But Sephiroth persists, that wilful tongue now grazing over his nipple, and the Soldier lowers a hand to Tseng’s neglected cock.

“Here …” Sephiroth murmurs against his skin, and Tseng all but cries out at the other man starts stroking him, not hard, not fast, but with just the perfect degree of pressure. He twists the handful of sheets he already has in his hand, and he throws his head back, uses his free hand to grab at more sheets behind him as his back arches and his hips push into the Soldier’s touch. Sephiroth hums in approval at the display of lost inhibition and that vibration, that validation, is all it takes to push Tseng over the edge at last; the Turk comes over his own stomach, over the Soldier’s hand, and for merciful moments every last thought is driven away, just the heavy rise and fall of his chest and the electricity firing into his nerve-endings keeping him occupied. Sephiroth’s hand cradles the back of his head again, fingers weaving into his dark hair, and the delicate pressure of his hand against his scalp is nearly enough to send him into a post-orgasmic freefall.

But no. He jumps, a sudden shock of stimulus as Sephiroth grazes teeth against his nipple, and the Soldier chuckles quietly as he sits up. “Thank you …” is what Tseng is sure he hears, but then there are fingers on his stomach, sliding across the come on his skin, and his mind whites out again.

He is spent.

He feels Sephiroth get up and leave the room, hears the turn of a tap, the running of water, and he can’t bring himself to move, boneless and heavy and unready for the rush of reality to come in and ruin the moment. It’s never allowed to be so simple, is it.

When Sephiroth returns he loiters in the doorway for a moment. Tseng doesn’t face him directly, eyes unfocused towards the ceiling above. The Soldier asks, quietly:

“Are you staying here tonight?”

And Tseng wants to laugh, because he feels so sunken, melted (pushed, pinned) into the mattress that he doubts even the legendary Soldier could lift him off it. He wants to say a lot of things. Instead all he can do is quirk an eyebrow as he lets his eyes fall shut.

“It’s easier to get to work from here,” is his answer, and he leaves it for Sephiroth to interpret himself because he isn’t even sure what he means by it, and he certainly doesn’t have the energy to figure it out. And after a moment’s contemplation, Sephiroth quietly replies:

“… good.”

And with that Sephiroth joins him again, tentatively. He lays the abandoned top sheet over the Turk before sitting down alongside him at first, then lying down too, and Tseng remains mostly unmoving throughout, just lets the other man work himself around him as he likes. The Soldier eventually settles on his side, back to Tseng, but close enough for the Turk to still know he’s there, and as he stills beside him the thoughts of the moment all come back in.

This has gone far enough now, he thinks, feeling his heart rate come back down, his breathing return to normal. There has been an unpleasant sensation inside him, subtle but not easy to ignore, since the Soldier came inside him, a reminder of the figures he’d read, the sheer concentration of mako experimentally pumped into the Soldier, a reminder of everything the Company has done.

He’ll talk to Veld in the morning.

His eyelids are heavy, and he can’t do this anymore.

“I don’t care how you do it. We’ll fabricate missions for you to go on together. Work with him, train with him, do whatever you need to do to get him to trust you. Then tell us everything.”

Tseng looks between the two, his boss and his boss’s boss.

“I just don’t know why you’re asking me. We’ve got nothing to do with each other.”

“You wanted a challenge, didn’t you?” Heidegger says. Next to him, Veld nods.

“Then this is your chance.”

Chapter Text

It had been lonely growing up as a scientific phenomenon, moved between pillar and post and socialising only with faceless lab coats, too many to grow attached to. The storybooks he had read when he was a child always referred to the importance of friendship; of course there was always the hero, the main character, the one who saved the day, but they never did it alone. On several occasions he had asked if that would ever happen to him. One scientist, taking the time to read with him in Nibelheim, cast soft brown eyes over him. You’ll make friends, she had said, voice gentle and reassuring if somewhat sad. Another, however, in the labs of Midgar, merely scoffed. Kid, you’re not the same as the people in the books he had said, ruffling his fine, silver hair like he’d said something funny, You’re not gonna need friends.

He starts seeing another child around the labs in Midgar, a girl a little younger than him perhaps, and he instantly feels a kinship with her based on nothing more than together they are not them. She is there with her mother, and when he tells her he doesn’t have one of those she laughs, and she tells him Everyone has a mother! He doesn’t think much on her words but rather it’s her expressiveness that stays with him, the ease of her giggle, and the light in her eyes. He doesn’t know if he has those things, but he wants them. She has a huge drawing on her bedroom wall and she lets him draw on it too when he gets upset by the experiments; he plays silly tricks with materia to distract her when she gets scared. She never tells him her name, says she’s not allowed, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

He wonders if maybe this is friendship.

He cares about her like he’s read friends do, and she cares for him too, and he misses her dearly when quite suddenly she stops appearing in the building. He overhears that she and her mother had escaped, and while he feels a whole spectrum of things - sadness, bitterness, that loneliness again - the overwhelming feeling is a strange sort of happiness. He is happy for her that she got away, and he wonders if one day they might be able to see each other again.

And so he is once more alone, and he begins to think that maybe the second scientist was right the whole time. It had been nice, having a friend, but maybe he’s not meant to have them. Maybe he won’t need them, like he had been told.

But then two boys from Banora are brought into his life, and every aspect of it lights up like a beautiful flame.

The girl in the labs had been like him, small and no way of hiding it, scared but not allowed to show it, and the boys from Banora are like him too but in such radically different ways. They are bold and they are brave, strong and fast in ways that no other children had been other than Sephiroth, up until now. They have a brightness in their eyes not like the girl’s but just like his. One of them has the stoicism and serenity he had trained into himself after years of attention-seeking gone ignored, and the other has the attitude and fire he had always felt the need to push down inside himself. Together they are forces of nature, and while Sephiroth doesn’t quite know how he’s expected to interact with them they are both only too keen to bring him into their fold.

These children aren’t ‘normal’ either, Sephiroth thinks, watching one of them wield a sword twice his weight like a butter knife, the other weaving magic between his fingers without an orb of materia in sight. And they’re all different from each other, but maybe, just maybe, they can be different together. They grow together, learn together, train, fight, kill together. They argue and they make up (more often than not), they learn about the world, they learn about each other. And despite his initial misgivings, his hesitation and uncertainty, Sephiroth finally feels like part of it all. The camaraderie undoes the years of absolute solitude he had endured when he was younger.

And then Genesis leaves in a ball of flame, and Angeal leaves after him, and Sephiroth learns that their leaving together was no coincidence. And he waits and waits for them to come back to him, to tell him what has happened and why they had to go and that they need him to go with them too, but that … doesn’t happen. Even when Angeal returns, just fleetingly, Sephiroth learns that he doesn’t need him anymore. All of a sudden he is eight again, and all alone, with nothing but bitterness and embarrassment in him, embarrassment that he fell for it, and embarrassment that it had felt so right at the time. He can’t stomach Loveless anymore. They were not three friends - they were two friends and one other. He has always been the other.

And so the world closes in tightly once again, no other else to think about, no one else to expend energy on.

And then there is the Turk who walks into his poor, resentment-driven excuse of a workout.

And then there is Tseng.

And this feels very different, because Tseng by his nature isn’t different at all. Tseng’s eyes don’t glow like he knows some secret of the stars or like he’s spent his childhood in an agony of mako baths, and he doesn’t wield weapons that the average man couldn’t even lift, and he is good with magic but only providing he has the right materia with him. He fatigues climbing mountains and his wounds leave scars and he is so utterly and fascinatingly human in a way Sephiroth has never really experienced before. Everyone around him always had expectations, even those he had considered friends; the scientists always demanded results, always needed to test something, provoke something, prove something; the girl in the labs was always watching him so closely, looking for signs of something he was never sure of; he even had to work hard to appease Genesis and Angeal, to be strong enough to stay one of them, tough enough to stay one of them. Tseng however has none of this. There seems to be a patience to the man that Sephiroth has seldom experienced before, a patience and a lack of demand, which is alien to him but certainly appreciated.

While the introduction of Genesis and Angeal had lit a fire within him, in knowing Tseng he feels a certain stability begin to settle in, a strange, quiet confidence. Despite being wildly unmatched he concedes to training together, tells himself at least that it’s an opportunity to experience a combat style he is unlikely to encounter on the field. When training together he tries new sequences of moves, new striking patterns, knowing that the Turk won’t mock him for failing the way that Angeal would have. He even feels relaxed enough to try dropping the occasional joke into their conversations, without having the fear of mockery that Genesis inspired hovering over his shoulder. So undemanding is his presence that Sephiroth had hardly noticed them growing closer.

Their relationship somehow becomes physical, and that is entirely different too, not least because before now Sephiroth had never had a sexual experience he had enjoyed, at least not in the ways he was told he was meant to. He had seen cruelty on a man’s face and remembers the pain that had come with it, and he had seen anger, disappointment in another’s, but with Tseng he sees pleasure etched into every one of his features, the way his eyes crush closed, the way his mouth falls open, lips wet. As a Soldier Sephiroth was raised for violence, but when he lies with Tseng, hears the breathless sounds that tumble from his lips, he thinks this is surely anything but.

What they have isn’t love, he knows that. He isn’t quite sure what love is, but this isn’t it. What this is though is a sense of worth - worth not as a Soldier but as a human, not as a scientific commodity but as a person who lives, breathes, gasps and comes undone beneath the hands of another.

Their strange missions - more like errands - seem to drop off as suddenly as they began, and they abruptly stop receiving orders together, but with their newly developed closeness this isn’t a problem. When Tseng is working at HQ his office hours frequently have him finishing late and starting early, which means that he actually starts spending more time at Sephiroth’s, the excuse of his apartment being closer to the office (by virtue of it being in the same building) coming in rather handy. And while yes, it turns out that the sex is thoroughly enjoyable, the vast majority of the Turk’s visits are just spent in companionable quiet, decompression from their respective roles. There is a spirit Tseng imports from Icicle Inn and a bottle has now found its home on Sephiroth’s worktop, along with two lowball glasses, and much like a ritual Sephiroth only drinks it when the other man is around. They only share a bed when they have sex, Tseng otherwise opting to sleep on the couch, and even that somehow doesn’t feel wrong. There is a mutual respect for the others’ autonomy, only getting involved when they have to, and for Sephiroth it feels like a freedom he is rarely afforded anywhere else.

Neither of them have the luxury of slow, lazy mornings, but Sephiroth has found himself enjoying the moments when the Turk isn’t quite so quick to stir as he is. There is nothing soft and gentle about the physical aspect of their relationship, bodies driven by need and release, and while Sephiroth is certainly more comfortable with such a relationship it means he rarely gets a chance to appreciate the figure he lies with at his own leisure.

The earliest parts of his life had been dictated by the labs, by latex gloves and lab coats, needles and pressure cuffs, things that grasped and held and hurt. When he grew up he moved from the labs to the battlefield, where the things that grasped became things that stabbed, and things that held became things that sliced. There was rarely a moment to slow down and stop, because every moment was dedicated to either dodging pain or creating it. This extended too to leave, to times off the field that were still dedicated to training, or boisterous play fighting, or whatever the play fighting inevitably became.

It is times like this now, when the sun breaking through the morning mako haze wakes him before his new bedfellow, he realises how different things have become.

He had been trained to identify and exploit weak points in a man’s combat form; he had never learned how pleasing the subtle shift of surprisingly honed muscle under sweat-slicked skin could feel. He had been trained a dozen ways to break bones to enable him to escape out of a hold; he had never learned that not all holds have to be broken.

He knows that the Turk will start to stir soon too and so takes advantage of the remaining moments of stillness, casts his eyes leisurely across the figure beside him. Even asleep there is something so ready, so dangerous about him, something that he never recognised in Angeal or Genesis when they were at rest. Angeal and Genesis, like Sephiroth himself, also never scarred, and there are imperfections written across the Turk’s body that tell of skirmishes, missions gone wrong, stories preserved on him never to be forgotten; as the legendary SOLDIER he is, Sephiroth will watch even the worst of his wounds heal over a matter of days and then fade into nothingness, feeding into the narrative that they could pull him off the field, scrub him down, and send him back again like nothing had ever happened. The wound Tseng had received in Wutai, as innocuous as it had looked at the time, can still be seen on his forearm.

There are other marks written into him now, marks that hadn’t been there the day before, the long, reddened drag of nails down his back as Sephiroth had failed to gain purchase on his heated skin the night before. The action hadn’t as much as drawn blood but the marks look tender and raised, and it takes conscious effort not to touch them. He has no grasp of a normal person’s pain threshold.

“You’re staring.”

Tseng’s voice almost makes Sephiroth jump; the other man is turned away from him, and had given no indication that he is in fact awake.

“Your breathing told me you’re not asleep anymore,” the Turk continues, as if reading Sephiroth’s thoughts, “And I can tell the angle you’re at by the pressure on the bed. And if you’re wondering - and I know you are -,” he adds, “Yes, they do sting.”

Sephiroth feels as amused as he does caught out, and he can’t hide a small chuckle. “My apologies,” he offers, “For both the observation and any pain caused. It wasn’t intentional.”

“Observe all you like, it’s flattering,” is the Turk’s deadpan reply, although Sephiroth is quite sure he doesn’t actually mean it, watching him reach for clothing to put on just to stand out of bed with. He remains shirtless at least, and Sephiroth watches with fascination the way the scars move on his skin as he stretches.

“I’ve not had much opportunity to simply look at people,“ he says, but quickly realises how strange it sounds, “My role is normally just to eliminate them,“ he tries, but that is probably stranger. He sees the subtle expression on Tseng’s face, the slight curve on his lips suggesting amusement, and decides the attempt at explanation is enough; he knows the other man knows what he means. He often does. “I can’t imagine being forced to remember every time I received an injury like that,” Sephiroth continues at last, nodding towards one of the deeper scars on the Turk‘s shoulder. He’s quite sure Tseng is older than him but not by much, and yet his body carries so many more stories. Sephiroth can only imagine what he himself would look like if his wounds didn’t heal like they did. He would look like a monster.

“Plenty of space if you want to leave something to remember you by,” Tseng says over his shoulder, no eye contact but the slightest hint of a smirk. Sephiroth catches himself laughing, so easily; this has been happening lately, these easy laughs, these casual jokes. It’s new to him, and so comfortable.

“I’d like to imagine I’m already unforgettable,” he responds, risking humour or perhaps even flirtation, and the quiet chuckle that he catches on Tseng’s lips is confirmation his answer landed.

It is an early shift for Tseng but Sephiroth himself has a meeting not that long after he leaves, and he spends the time between tidying the apartment. Do Shinra provide him with a cleaner? Of course they do, and they come in three times a week every week to make sure he doesn’t have to lift a finger or expend energy on anything not even remotely work-related. Does he rely on said cleaner though? Of course not, because there is precious little in this world he has control over, and if straightening his own sheets and polishing his own mirror is what it takes for him to feel even some degree of autonomy then so be it.

He draws the line however at garbage disposal.

The meeting he has to attend is a mission briefing, and he can’t help but think how long its been since he’s been to a real one of these; his errands with Tseng had merely required them to collect information from Heidegger – or previously Lazard – and report back verbally after. Today he sits in a room with Zack and two other soldiers - he sees so many on a daily basis he doesn't know if he recognises them or not anymore – and a small group of engineers talking among themselves, shooting furtive glances at himself and Zack when they think they’re not looking. Of course Heidegger heads up the meeting, standing at the front of the room with a projector and a pointer and an expression that clearly says he believes himself to be far and away better than anyone else present.

Tseng isn’t the only person Sephiroth has been growing closer to as he learns to warm, learns to relax, and one of the unexpected effects of his developing relationship with the Turk is a slowly growing closeness to Zack. He had been reluctant at first, had held back for so long, simply because he couldn’t look at the other man without seeing Angeal in him, echoes of his best friend drawn into his frame, his form, the dedication he carries himself with. Given time though Sephiroth had come to see him as a fellow First in his own right, not a copy or a clone but a man with his own purpose, and a man who, like Sephiroth, had seen too much befall their friends before their very eyes. Angeal never came back for Sephiroth, no, but he hadn’t come back for Zack either.

There are shadows beneath his fellow First’s eyes that get deeper every week. He looks forward to heading out on a real mission with him again after so long – he suspects the break away from Midgar will be relished. Perhaps, away from it all, they can talk.

They are briefed on the mission parameters, the timeframes they are expected to operate within, the modes of transport they’ll be taking. The projector lights up first with 3D images of the mountain routes they’ll be navigating (with a guide of course, or, as Sephiroth thinks, an additional burden), then with labelled schematics the engineers talk them through in slightly over-invested detail. The two troopers in the room take notes fervently while Zack looks on with a mild frown, distracted by something undoubtedly more significant than a four day trip to the other continent. Sephiroth easily commits every piece of information to memory in his stead.

He has every intention of catching the other First on his way out but, as they file out of the room at the end of the meeting, Heidegger’s voice calls through.

“A word, Sephiroth,”

Sephiroth sets his jaw, grinds his teeth just briefly before turning around, veneer of professionalism falling effortlessly into place. Heidegger is a smug man, a gloat, and it is evident how he takes great delight in imposing over people, looking down at them. Sephiroth is quietly pleased that while Heidegger is certainly of above average height he himself is taller, and is thus one of the few people he can’t look down on.

He waits for the last of the engineers to leave the room and for the door to slide closed behind them before tipping his head, inviting the Director to talk.

“The Science Department aren’t best pleased with your behaviour lately. Care to explain yourself?”

One of the unexpected side-effects of spending more time with Tseng is that Sephiroth now finds himself eating different food, drinking different drinks, consuming things not strictly counted and pre-portioned by the Science Department, and it’s something he never could’ve imagined happening. Fuck them were Tseng’s exact words when Sephiroth had tried half-heartedly to explain why the scientists needed to monitor every gram of his nutritional intake, and the Turk’s casual rebellion had lit up something in him long forgotten - it had taken him back to sneaking out for late night battles in the VR room with Angeal and Genesis, or slipping away to drink with them on some rooftop high above the streets of Midgar. What had struck Sephiroth the most is that Tseng’s attitude seemed to be borne less of disdain for the Science Department and more out of care for the Soldier himself, which had been something else entirely new to him.

Standing opposite him now is the absolute parallel. Heidegger has never for a second cared about him. What Heidegger cares about is keeping up appearances.

“Why is my relationship with the Science Department any of your concern?” he asks coolly, because he wants to see the angle the Director will try and spin it. To his credit he has never seen the man look flustered, or ruffled, which are often the expressions Sephiroth is met with when he challenges people.

Heidegger narrows his eyes and cocks his head, shuffling boldly half a step closer and squaring off with him.

“It is my concern, Sephiroth,” he begins, voice dripping with condescension, “Because dare I remind you that in Lazard’s absence I am responsible for the SOLDIER project, and by extension for you. And if anyone has an issue with you, then protocol states that has to come through me first. And I’m telling you now, General, they certainly have an issue with you.”

Sephiroth is well aware that he has fallen out of favour with the scientists, and he can’t muster an ounce of guilt to feel about it. Several blood tests and lab studies over the last few months had been rendered null and void by his behaviour no longer being traceable to the second, to the gram, and rather than remorse he had instead begun to feel a slight sense of victory every time he successfully lets them down.

The thought amuses him, the thought of disgruntled lab coats complaining to a disgruntled Director about their not-sufficiently-disgruntled lab rat, and he becomes aware of the slight quirk that has made its way unconsciously to the corner of his lips. Before now strength had been measured in endurance, in pain tolerance, in bodies left strewn on the ground. Now he is finding it in something new and rebellious, something hopeful. It has been a long time since he had felt that.

Heidegger scowls at him, bares his teeth.

“I don’t know if you know what it’s like having to deal with their department, their snivelling, their sneering,” the Director continues, leaving Sephiroth unsure if he is being ironic or just obtuse, “But let me tell you this: I do not like having them at my door every other day.”

Sephiroth doesn’t feel bad for him, and he tries to keep as straight a face as possible, but that is difficult when suddenly all he can hear in his head are various scathing comebacks Tseng would have for him, that he almost certainly wouldn’t hesitate to say.

He forces himself to wipe the smirk away, or as much of it as he can anyway, and in response he just nods curtly.

“Duly noted, Director,” he says, tone as sincere as he can manage, trying to hide how little he intends to take his comments onboard. With a nonchalant roll of his shoulders he sidesteps the other man and makes it to the door, but before he can touch the panel to open it Heidegger speaks again.

“Let me remind you Sephiroth that in Veld’s absence I am also currently in charge of the Turks,” he says, voice cutting through the room, “And there are rumours spreading around the whole building about the two of you.”

Sephiroth pauses, blinks, narrows his eyes slightly, but he does not turn around. Of course he’s heard the rumours and he couldn’t possibly care less about them, but he doesn’t know what any of it has to do with Heidegger. He hears other man turn to speak to him, just to his back. There is a smile on the Director’s face, he can hear it.

“Just because we haven’t got him watching your every step anymore, don’t think we don’t still have eyes on you everywhere you go.”

What was that?

He tries not to react, knows Heidegger knows exactly what he’s saying.

But … what was that?

He turns, hating himself a little as he does, and fixes the other man with narrowed eyes. “What exactly are you trying to imply, Director?” he asks, head cocked, and Heidegger’s face becomes, if possible, only more smug.

“I’m not trying to imply anything at all, Sephiroth,” he says, “Merely a suggestion to start cooperating again. Don’t give me a reason to make your life any harder. Or his.”

Sephiroth looks him up and down, disgust written all over his face, hoping it masks the churn of his stomach and the iciness of his blood. There is nothing redeemable about Heidegger; as far as Sephiroth is concerned he is the scum beneath the already tarnished boot of the company.

He turns to leave again, no gestures or platitudes this time, and Heidegger’s final words follow him out:

“Might I also suggest speaking to that Turk of yours before you set off tomorrow - I wouldn’t want to see you distracted on the job now.”

The majority of the upper echelon of Shinra Inc. are vile people, Sephiroth is aware of this, but they all have some kind of trait he can grudgingly admire. Scarlet is too young for her role, scathing and ruthless, but she has ambition, and that can always be respected. Palmer is a bumbling idiot who can’t see ten steps in front of his own face but there’s business acumen in there just beneath the surface. As much as it pains him to admit it, Hojo, for all his inhumanity, is fascinatingly single-minded, more dedicated than anyone he’s ever known.

And then there is Heidegger.

Heidegger is cruel, and he is malicious, and in his time working in his vicinity Sephiroth has been unable to find a single redeeming trait about him. He is not an unintelligent man though, far from it, and Sephiroth knows without a doubt that he chose his words deliberately to stick, to pierce through him and sow seeds of doubt in the one thing he had been starting to believe in.

And it had worked.

Just because we haven’t got him watching your every step anymore …

There is only one person the comment could have been in reference to. What did he mean by watching him, and what especially did he mean by not anymore?

He had asked if he was being watched, back in the early days, back when they were going on their useless missions. He had asked, and Tseng had denied it. He’d denied it. Hadn’t he?

He takes a left, starts sweeping through another faceless corridor. He has no destination in mind, can’t slow his mind down enough to rationally think of one. He realises distantly that he is in fight or flight mode, which is something he has only ever experienced on the battlefield or in the labs, never without immediate threat in front of him.

Fight makes him want to return to the briefing room and crush Heidegger’s lapels in his hands, lift him from the floor and throw him into the wall, demand to be told what he means and why he said it and what he wants from him. And flight makes him want to disappear, to outrun his thoughts, to sprout wings and fly away from the building and Midgar and Shinra and everything.

Genesis and Angeal were probably right. He stops in his tracks to try and gather his restless thoughts, and he thinks of the golden rule of SOLDIER that Angeal had always tried to impress upon Zack:

Never trust a Turk.

But this has been different. This is so different. Isn’t it?

It can’t always be the same. It can‘t.

The girl in the labs had left before he could say goodbye, and while he had been happy for her he had spent years wondering why he couldn’t have gone too. Genesis and Angeal had left him with no reason at all as well, and he had never had a chance to ask either party why. Why was he not good enough to stay around for; why was he not good enough to take with them? What was it about him that made him so inhuman they couldn’t bear to help him escape like they had escaped themselves?

What was it about him that meant everyone had to lie?

It occurs to him that Heidegger himself could in fact be lying, and that isn’t actually unlikely. After all, Tseng had been unflinchingly honest in saying that they were watching Zack, and there would be nothing to gain from being honest about monitoring one but dishonest about the other.

He thinks about being seduced at the Presidential ball, about being pulled away so the two of them could be away from the sham and charade of company niceties and could instead unwind alone.

He thinks about seeing Heidegger’s name on Tseng’s phone, interrupting their first physical encounter. But all he can think about is the expression on Tseng’s face when he saw the name, the disgust that matched his own. Tseng hates the Director just as much as he does; he couldn’t have been working for him.

It is incredibly likely Heidegger is lying, Sephiroth knows this, and he tries to act like the assumption is enough. His feet take him back to his apartment where he shrugs off his coat and sets about idly straightening furniture, nudging the table an inch out of alignment so he can straighten it again, picking up a cushion and dropping it at the wrong angle so he can subsequently correct it. There isn’t much in the fridge but he empties it anyway, and refills it with the same items on the same shelves in the same order; they had already been in the most efficient layout, he acknowledges.

Tseng would often ask about his relationship with Genesis, with Angeal, ask what it was like growing up together and what it’s like without them now, if he misses them. No one else would speak to him about it; he certainly couldn’t discuss it with Zack. No one had ever really paid any interest to his feelings before, but it wasn’t as hard as he thought it might be opening up. Something about the Turk just made it easy.

The only things on the counter are the Icicle Inn bottle and twin glasses, and each one he turns thoughtlessly by fractions before lining them up again, neat, the same patterns in the same direction.

He thinks back to the plateau in Wutai, to feeling comfortable enough to speak his thoughts to the Turk for the first time, to Tseng feeling comfortable enough to fall asleep on his shoulder.

He also thinks about the Turk making references to the things Sephiroth had said that night when he was apparently asleep.

He should be above this. After all he had endured in the labs, on the battlefield, he should be immune to the manipulative words of a self-aggrandized executive. And yet here he is, doubting everything he had come to truly enjoy in the last six months.

If Heidegger is lying to him he needs to make Tseng aware, because Sephiroth might not be the only one he’s trying to manipulate. And if Tseng is lying to him … he needs to know why. He’s not about to let someone treat him as less than human again without a reason. Not this time.

Only one person can tell him.

Having moved and precisely replaced virtually every item in his living space, he might as well have never even been there. He slides his coat on again, and he heads for Basement Three.

He has never knocked when walking into the Turks‘ office, never did before he knew them more personally and certainly doesn’t now, and he only absently registers that the room is largely empty. Tseng’s desk in the back corner is the only one occupied, and the Turk looks up briefly as Sephiroth sweeps through the room.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon,” Tseng says by way of greeting, eyes back on his screen in an instant, focused on his work like nothing at all is wrong, “They’re taking lunch, if you’re wondering. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He doesn’t seem to care. He looks like he doesn’t have a clue how tightly Sephiroth‘s stomach has twisted. Regular people can’t identify accelerated heart rates from across a room, Sephiroth supposes. By nature of their respective characters they have never wasted time on small talk, so doesn’t beat around the bush.

“Why did they start sending us on missions together last year?”

He watches Tseng closely, so closely, ready to call him out on the tiniest expression. He’s seen liars, he knows liars. He also knows that lying is a huge part of the other man’s job and he just so happens to be good at it. Still, he watches.

Tseng doesn’t as much as flinch at the abrupt question. Instead he frowns, narrows his eyes for a moment as he tries to multitask work and conversation, like the Soldier‘s need for an answer is just an irritating distraction.

“I think the official line is that they wanted to strengthen the relationship between Administrative Research and SOLDIER,” he eventually answers, focus clearly divided as he finishes typing something up on his keyboard before finally looking up, a remarkably dirty, knowing glint in his eye, “And if that was their goal, then …”

Sephiroth doesn’t even register the suggestion. He isn’t looking for humorous commentary. His expression remains flat.

“And the unofficial line?” he asks, and Tseng answers with ease again.

“Unofficially, I suspect they’re starting to doubt just how well I can take care of myself in the field,” he says, and Sephiroth narrows his eyes, “The boat, the helicopter …” he continues with a gesture, listing just a couple of his better-known narrow escapes. After a moment he chuckles to himself and looks up. “I seem to have a reputation for nearly getting myself killed.”

He makes eye contact easily and the chuckle is relaxed, natural. His whole posture is at ease, shoulders relaxed, breathing level. It’s exactly what honesty should look like, and he knows it.

Sephiroth knows that he knows it.

He inhales sharply but pauses, pauses because once he presses for this answer there’s no going back. Tseng will either lie to him and break what fragile trust they had forever, or he will tell him the truth (the truth that Sephiroth knows, he knows) and shatter that trust into a thousand pieces anyway.

It’s lose-lose. But, outside of the battlefield, when had Sephiroth ever won anyway?

Tseng has turned back to his screen by the time he speaks again, voice cutting through the air like a blade through Wutai flesh.

“I just had a conversation with Heidegger,” he says. There is no going back now. “He had something particularly interesting to say. Namely about my being watched. By a Turk.”

Tseng wears gloves, even in the office, like they’re part of his uniform. When he comes up to see him at the end of a shift they’re still on, and they’re pulled on again when he steps out the door the next morning. Sephiroth knows what his hands feel like beneath the leather, knows their skill, their dexterity, their surprising, dominating strength. They do not hurt, like hands normally do.

The hands, in their gloves, float over the keyboard Tseng is typing at. A finger on the left hand hits a wrong key. The Turk does not correct it.

“With that in mind,” Sephiroth continues, watching so, so carefully, “I’m going to ask again, one more time. And I’d like you to think carefully before you respond this time.

“Why did they send us on missions together?”

He waits, and he watches, and every second that passes feels like an eternity. Every second that passes feels a step closer to confirmation, confirmation that Heidegger wasn’t lying, and that he has been played (again), and that none of the last year had meant anything to anyone else. He needs Tseng to speak, to say something, to make the next move, because he doesn’t know how to from here.

Finally the Turk speaks.

“What did he tell you?”

His voice normally so velvet, so confident, is suddenly quiet and subdued, and Sephiroth’s stomach drops. The question is a confession, and he is suddenly nauseous. He repeats what Heidegger had said, word for word, exactly how the lines had been spinning around his head since they were first uttered, and Tseng seems unmoved. Sephiroth watches as he remains silent, like he’s mulling over the quoted words, trying to find a way through them, around them, a way out of the spotlight he is now finding himself under.

Sephiroth doesn’t want him to find a way out. He doesn’t want bullshit excuses. He doesn’t want to be left unknowing again. Not this time.

“My whole life,” he starts, speaking as the other man seems unwilling to, “People have lied to me, and hidden things from me. If any of our friendship has been real to you, if even one moment of it was genuine, you owe me the respect of an honest answer. Just once.

“Tell me you’ve been just the same as everyone else.”

He continues to watch the Turk, seemingly frozen in his seat, until eventually he lets out a slow exhalation, seeming to deflate, sink down into his desk. Straight lines and perfect posture fall away as his shoulders sink and he sets his jaw. He closes his eyes.

“They lost Rhapsodos,” he begins quietly, at last, “And they never saw it coming. And with Rhapsodos went Hewley, and then you were all they had left.”

In reality Sephiroth barely hears what he’s saying. In reality he heard “They”, and that alone was a simple reminder of who Tseng is, and who he works for, and whose side he would always truly be on, was always on from the start. They couldn’t afford to lose you too is what Tseng says and Sephiroth knows it to be true, they couldn’t, but why did they think he would’ve followed the others ..?

How could they not know how much they’d crushed him down already? How could they not know, with their deliberate cruelty, how unbreakable his shackles are?

“So what does any of this have to do with you?” he asks, not that he really cares now, not that it really matters. He doesn’t even bother with eye contact, choosing instead to rest his gaze on the floor while his mind spins. He isn’t sure he wants to hear the answer but he stays to hear the Turk talk anyway. He hears him sigh, sees him on the periphery of his sight shake his head, posture heavy. He sounds resigned; if this conversation was under any other circumstance Sephiroth might’ve felt bad for him. As it stands, he feels nothing.

“They wanted someone to get close,” the Turk says with a shrug, and Sephiroth’s eyes close reflexively, the twist in his stomach unbidden. “They wanted someone to be a friend, so that you would talk to them, and trust them, and then they could feed anything useful back to them. So they could intervene in time, like they couldn’t with the other two.”

It’s ludicrous enough to break through the devastating spiral he finds himself in, just for a second. He snorts at the thought.

“Like they could stop me,” he says, voice so calm, so delicate and dangerous. ‘You’re Sephiroth’ he remembers the Turk saying, remembering that tone of awe and incomprehension.

Tseng echoes quietly:

“Like they could stop you.”

The silence between them is heavy, and every second seems to stretch on for an eternity, for which Sephiroth is actually rather glad. It creates space for him to try to catch his thoughts from midair, to try to make sense of the chaos that is being created faster than he can control it. He wants to flee; he wants to fly away and never come back. He wants to manifest masamune and run the Turk through with it, and the rest of them when they come back, and then everyone else floor by floor until no one can play him anymore. He wants to go back to that easy time between Angeal leaving and Tseng showing up, where he thought he was happier alone.

But he hadn’t been. He had never been happier or more comfortable in his life than he has these last months. And yes he wants to run and yes he wants to kill, but he can’t bring himself to storm out from the room containing the one person who had enabled this new comfort. He wants to hold onto it, just for a second longer.

He thinks about the first time Tseng had come to him, avoiding duty and alone, to offer condolences for the loss of his friends, something no one else had ever done for him. He thinks of when they were sent to Wutai, the Turk asleep on his shoulder, when for him at least everything had begun to change. He thinks about how foolish he had been, because all of it had felt real, just like the girl in the labs and just like the boys from Banora.

It hurts, and it has no right to. It hurts, and it’s his fault for falling for it again. It is shameful, it is embarrassing, and it hurts.

“So what did you tell them?” he asks, because, pathetically, he can’t bring himself to just leave it there. He doesn’t know what information the Turk could possibly have passed on, and Tseng shrugs openly again, shakes his head again.

“There was nothing to tell, was there?” is the answer, slightly more abrasive than it could be. “You never said anything that was of any concern, nothing of any interest to them anyway. It got to the point where they started suspecting me of keeping things from them.”

“Ironic,”

Tseng purses his lips, successfully shut down, and a spiteful streak in Sephiroth wishes he could say anything, anything at all, to hammer home just how he feels. But he knows it would be ineffective. He doubts, at this point, the other man would even care at all.

He hears a voice, sometimes, a voice Angeal and Genesis had always told him to ignore but a voice that had only gotten louder with time, and this is exactly what she had always warned him about. He never should‘ve trusted other people; he has never needed other people.

“How far was it meant to go?” he asks in a voice quieter and more vulnerable than he had intended.

“Well sleeping with you wasn’t on the mission brief, if that‘s what you‘re suggesting,” Tseng snaps defensively, and Sephiroth in turn gets riled at the tone of the reply. You’re not the one allowed to get angry here is what he wants to say. Amber eyes meet his at last, at last, and he narrows his own, knowing that there is enough venom in his glare to shut the sudden attitude down. The Turk tips his head, rarely one to step down from a confrontation, but he seems to know that of all occasions this is certainly one in which he should concede. He lowers his eyes first in subjugation. “That was …” he starts, searching for words, “That wasn’t part of the mission. That wasn’t part of the plan.”

He almost believes him. He wants to believe him. But there’s always a mission, and there’s always a plan, there’s always something going on in the shadows. You’d be welcome there is what the voice in his head says. For the first time, Perhaps you’re right is what he thinks in response.

Never as a child in the labs, or growing up in the battlefields of Wutai, has he felt so hollow. He looks at the Turk, with his hands that can touch without hurting, with his mouth that can lie without flinching, and in years of victory he feels nothing but defeat.

“When we were sent to Wutai,” he begins, “… Genesis was never there, was he?”

There is a weight in Tseng’s eyes, Sephiroth sees it, a weight and a sadness too that he tries not to fall for. He looks as dejected as Sephiroth feels, and Sephiroth doesn’t know what to do with that. It hurts to see. But it’s not allowed to hurt anymore.

“Probably not,” Tseng answers, pursing his lips, and it occurs to Sephiroth that maybe he wasn’t the only one being played. Not that it matters. “I don’t know,” he continues, “Truly. I was still playing their game then, but it doesn’t mean I was one of them,” - Yes it does - “They had their fun with me too.”

He remembers the Turk’s reaction, clearly visible, when they were told their destination. Maybe that was acting as well though.

There is no coming back from this. But he just needs to know.

“When we were over there,” he begins, looking, searching, desperate for anything in Tseng’s expression to make this ok again, “If I had said to you there and then that I would leave with Genesis, would you have told them?”

And there is an uncomfortable reaction in the Turk that Sephiroth is somewhat pleased to see, because he can see he has touched a nerve. A spiteful part of him needs to make sure he is not the only one suffering. Tseng has the gall to look affronted, like he’s just been accused of something ludicrous, and Sephiroth keeps his eyes steady on him.

“That was so long ago, Sephiroth,” the Turk protests to ears that don‘t want to hear it, “Everything was different then -”

“Answer me.”

No games anymore.

Tseng slumps, resting his forehead on his hands. He rolls his eyes, shakes his head.

“Yes I would’ve told them,” he says, then with that harder edge in his voice again, “Because it was my job.”

“And what about now?”

“Sephiroth-” Tseng instantly responds with that affronted look again, but Sephiroth is beyond caring.

“No,” he cuts through firmly, feeling more bold than he has since he walked into the office. He straightens up, squares his shoulders again and locks eyes with the Turk, utterly unflinching because he has to know. “If I walked into this office today,” he continues, “And told you I was going to leave and never come back … would you tell them now?”

And to his credit, Tseng doesn’t look away this time. “No,“ he says firmly, and with a lifetime‘s worth of conviction, and for just a moment it is enough.

Sephiroth believes him.

But he then reminds himself that he has believed everything this man has said for the last year, and it had all led to this.

He smiles, slowly, empty, shakes his head before finally freeing the other man’s gaze and turning to leave, nothing more to say. He is done here. He hears Tseng rise from his seat behind him.

He just wants to leave.

“Sephiroth,”

It is ingrained in him to stop at the sound of his name, especially spoken with such authority, and he resents feeling himself stop and straighten almost to attention. “Why do you think you’re not being watched anymore?”

“Because I don’t have anything you need,” he says scathingly, turning to face the Turk one more time, tired now and fractious.

“Because I told them I was done,“ It is clear how hard Tseng is fighting to hold Sephiroth’s gaze, to not look away. “I saw what they were doing to you, what they were really doing to you, and I saw my place in that. And I didn’t want to do it anymore. I picked my side, and it wasn’t theirs.”

He is referring to what he saw after the labs, and Sephiroth still feels shame at the recollection of the other man being witness to his compromised state. He shakes his head to clear the memory.

“That was months ago. If I was no longer your mission why did you continue to keep my company?”

“Because I enjoyed it,” Tseng ventures, with a measure of vulnerability that causes Sephiroth, even his current state, to take pause, “Because you never should’ve been a mission.” There is quiet desperation in his voice, or something Sephiroth hasn’t heard in it before anyway, and the words land on him in a way he knows he has to resist. “Please,” Tseng says, still sounding sincere, “I’m working late this evening, but maybe I can come up to yours later and we can talk, about this, about everything -”

“I leave for the other continent tomorrow,” Sephiroth says shortly, brushing down his coat, shaking off the weight of the conversation so he can leave and not have to look back, not get sucked back in again, “I’ll be finishing preparations tonight.” He makes sure to leave no room for negotiations.

“Then when you return,” Tseng proposes instead, “Get back to Midgar, debrief, and send me a message. I’ll come to you, wherever you want to meet.” Sephiroth can’t suppress a laugh.

“When I get back …” he echoes with a snort. What an assumption. What a hilarious, ridiculous, ultimately guaranteed assumption. Because even now, even after this, there is no alternative for him. This is his life now. Always has been. Just now he needs to stop pretending otherwise.

He hears footsteps coming down the corridor, long seconds before Tseng will, recognises the footfalls of the other Turks. Without so much as a gesture to the other man he touches the door release panel, but stops just before he leaves the office. It all feels very final. The Turk wants to meet when he gets back to Midgar, sure, but Sephiroth isn’t sure he wants to. He just wants to walk away and never be seen again. He wants, more than anything else, to never have to deal with any of this again.

“I was never going to go after them,” he says quietly, softly, just because he needs the other man to hear it. “You know that, don’t you?”

And behind him, after a long pause, the Turk’s voice is quiet too:

“I do.”

The journey back to his apartment is hazy, feels simultaneously too long and too short. He doesn’t think about where he’s going, muscle memory meaning he could take every stair and corner blindfolded by now. Every Soldier he passes salutes him as he walks, even if he doesn’t acknowledge them, even if he has never worked with them before - it’s just what they do because of who he is. It’s just what he has earned with his status, his title, his legend. They don’t care for the man behind the accolades. There might as well not be one; just another asset, just another mission.

What does stress relief look like, he finds himself wondering, his mind a blur, his chest aching in ways he doesn’t understand.

Genesis would riot if he was him, he thinks, as he calmly closes the apartment door behind him. Angeal would get to work, start training, he thinks, as he surveys the too-quiet living space in front of him. Tseng would have a drink or perhaps vent his frustrations through sex, he knows these things to be true from experience, knowing (and perhaps secretly relishing) the effects an impromptu meeting with Heidegger would have on the other man.

… curse Heidegger.

His apartment is so empty, mostly by choice in the name of practicality, but it isn’t helpful when he is in desperate need of distraction.

His eyes fall to the twin glasses on the counter, the half-empty bottle of spirits that he never would’ve thought of drinking barely six months ago, that keeps them company as they while away evenings until sleep claims them, or something more carnal. He takes one of the glasses in his hand and considers it, turning it mindlessly as too many thoughts run through his head. He wants to smash it but he knows it won’t achieve anything other than making a mess for the cleaner the next morning. He thinks of crushing it in his palm, of letting the glass sink into his skin and letting himself bleed onto the vinyl, stain the floor, the walls, some kind of immutable reminder of rebellion. If he is going to spend the rest of his life here anyway he might as well leave something of himself they can’t get rid of even when they’re done with him.

No one else could stick it out. Everyone else had gone, been chased away, hunted down by delusion, desire, by damned duty. But not him. Because he … has no where else to go.

Why couldn’t he have kept hold of them? Why wasn’t he strong enough? He couldn’t stop Genesis, he couldn’t save Angeal, and Tseng? Well, it turns out Tseng was never his in the first place.

Taking himself by surprise, and with a shout of frustration, he throws the glass into the far wall, feeling a sudden release as it explodes into a thousand pieces. Before he even knows what he’s doing he sweeps the second glass from the counter too in the opposite direction, and finally he seizes the bottle itself, relishing how the contents scatter themselves across the floor, the windows, the furniture as he sends that careening into a wall as well. It feels good.

He wants to destroy it all, the apartment, the building, the entirety of Shinra itself.

He wants to burn it all down.

He could.

After the flurry of impulse, of violent explosion, the room feels very still again; he becomes overly aware of the rise and fall of his chest, the sound of his own breathing as he tries to force himself back to some degree of composure. This effort, this mental scramble for peace is punctuated by a message ringing out on his PHS. For a moment he considers not reading it – why should he, exactly? – but the same sense of duty that straightens his back when he is addressed also forces his hand to answer the device.

He wants it to be Angeal. Hell, he’d even take seeing Genesis’s name right now. He doesn’t want it to be Tseng.

He looks down, and it is Zack’s name instead. He flips the device open.

”Hey Sephiroth, how’s it going?” Sephiroth can hear the message in the man’s cheerful tone - ”I’m all done with prep for tomorrow, so me and Cloud are gonna hit the training room for a few hours then call it an early night. He’s really excited to work with you. I’ve told him to be on his best behaviour. See you in the morning – we can talk properly en route.

“PS: Don’t forget to pack extra layers – Cloud says it’s cold in Nibelheim!”

He closes the device quietly, calm once more. Of course, Nibelheim. The reactor. SOLDIER. Their mission.

He will never escape.

He takes a quiet breath and, slowly, starts to clean up the chaos he had created across the room. He picks up the glass with his bare hands, does not feel the need to crush it into his skin anymore. He just wants the apartment to be tidy again.

He shouldn’t be anyone else’s problem.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“I don’t care how you do it. We’ll fabricate missions for you to go on together. Work with him, train with him, do whatever you need to do to get him to trust you. Then tell us everything.”

The turn of the new year that year had marked the point where Tseng had officially spent more of his life in Midgar than in Wutai, more time under the care of Shinra Inc. than with his real family. He had barely spoken a word of the Eastern language before coming here and now it comes to him more naturally than his mother tongue, and he had never smelled mako in the air before but now he barely recognises the outdoors without it; he had never killed a man before leaving Wutai, and now it comes to him like breathing. There had been no adjustment period to that last item in particular, and quiet concerns had been raised when, as just a young teenager, he wasn’t fazed by the sight of a stranger’s blood through a pistol sight; in a quiet moment he had confessed to Veld that maybe his mind was a little broken, that maybe he had been missing the part of him that was meant to make him care. He had recognised sadness in the man’s features then though, and the disparity between his sad expression and bolstering words: “I think that broken mind could get you far though, kid.”

And it had gotten him far. It had gotten him top marks in the academy which opened the door for him to officially become a Turk (something Veld had fought against for the longest time), it had enabled him to make important snap decisions on the field where others had hesitated, and it had allowed him to push through the most ludicrous injuries and get back to work without losing time to cautiousness, doubt or hesitation. It had allowed him to keep a careful line between work and fun, and to oh so subtly keep a barrier between himself and his fellow Turks, a distance from which he could observe and study. He preferred operating from a distance, watching through a sniper’s scope, which is why the new order to get close to someone had felt so misplaced on his shoulders.

“You wanted a challenge, didn’t you?” Heidegger had said, “Then this is your chance.”

He had wanted a challenge, yes, he had wanted something to push him to engage more, to be more human, but ideally he wanted that challenge to come in the form of someone he could simply shoot in the head and dispose of if it started to go wrong. War hero and military legend SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth was absolutely not that person

He had enjoyed the Soldier’s company in the past for how decidedly uncomplicated it was. The man was very similar to himself in that he was almost all efficiency and practicality, and that any degree of regular humanity within him was clearly boxed away far far beneath the surface (either pushed away or deliberately forgotten, the difference is important). They passed each other in corridors and sharply nodded acknowledgement, they swiftly took notes from each others reports during meetings, asked questions on important data and trusted the answers enough not to challenge them. They shared a table for coffee on multiple occasions and silently understood the pressures the other was under, never pushing, never placating. And it had never needed to be anything more than that.

But now it has to be something more than that.

It is suggested by a man who has no clue what he is doing that the Victory At Wutai celebration will be the best place to make his first approach, his first meaningful contact, and, stood finely suited and booted in the shadows, Tseng couldn’t disagree more. He watches the Soldier deliver a speech clearly written for him, and he continues to watch as he stands in the crowd, barely able to take three steps before there is another hand to shake, another photo to pose for. Approaching him now would be the least appropriate opportunity. Instead he waits, knowing that the man isn’t known for staying at these events for long, and he exits shortly after in a different direction.

From a monitor in Basement Three he watches the man’s security card ping, first the elevator, then again several floors high up above, and then once more into his own accommodation. Tseng will not follow him there. The night is young, and he is proven right in his assumption that the apartment is not the man’s final stop; not ten minutes later the card pings again as he leaves, and one elevator journey yet it is used to access the company gym. That makes sense to him.

The Turks’ office has doubled up as accommodation for all of them at various points in time - some points more comedic than others - which means that they are always prepared for a variety of possibilities. Cissnei has several more relaxed items of clothing for when she needs to go under the radar, in contrast Reno has a dress shirt for when he needs to look like a more respectable member of society, and they all have at least one spare uniform suit, cleaned and pressed at all times. Tseng and Rude both have several outfits for training in, and it is one of these that Tseng dons now. He briefly thinks of stopping to shower off the cologne he had applied for the Victory celebration but realises he’s probably over thinking, and doubts the Soldier would even question it.

He gives Sephiroth a head start, doesn’t want to be so obvious as to turn up at the same time and same place as the other man, chooses to save the coincidence card for use later down the line. He feigns surprise when he walks in, surprise that someone else is here and not celebrating a victory that had nothing to do with them. The cynicism he deploys to demonstrate that they’re on the same page doesn’t need to be faked; that is something he knows without a shadow of a doubt they share already, he can be open about that.

He thinks of how he would normally get information out of a target - threats are normally quite good for that, although he doubts his chances making any kind of threat to a man three times as fast and five times as strong as himself. If he wants to get someone to lower their guard and trust him then seduction is always an option, he supposes, although once again he’s not entirely sure if the charms at his disposal are of any appeal at all to a First Class Soldier. He mulls it over in his head and settles for an approach he has never really tried before, a move born of both strategy and, perhaps, curiosity.

“I’m sorry about your friends,” he says, and honesty feels alien on his lips.

The missions set up for them are pitiful, and so thinly veiled it is a miracle Sephiroth doesn’t ask questions sooner than he does. Tseng asks about Angeal and Genesis, when he met them both, what their relationships were like. Sephiroth asks questions about why the Turks are watching Zack, why they’re not watching him, and are they watching him? It doesn’t take much effort to give answers that are both honest and yet keep the Soldier onside, and Tseng is quite sure that many other people would feel guilty at the ease of deception. It doesn’t make him think twice; it is part of his job, after all, part and parcel of being with Shinra.

At the end of each week he writes up a report and delivers it verbally to Heidegger and Veld. First connection has been made, he reports, and he has no information for them yet. Progress is being made on their relationship, he reports, but he has no information for them yet. The missions they’re being given are hardly forcing them to get to know each other, he reports, but Sephiroth is definitely warming to him. But he has no information for them yet. Veld nods each time, seems comfortable, exactly the pace he would expect from a task like this. Heidegger, on the other hand, looks thoroughly unimpressed. 'Ignore him,' Veld says, as they leave another meeting together, 'He doesn’t know how these things work. But I know you know what you're doing.'

But Veld is just supervising. Veld isn’t giving the orders. And when Tseng is called into a meeting with Sephiroth and Lazard, he knows that Heidegger is punishing him.

They’re going to Wutai.

Lazard hands him a stack of files under the guise of updating him on the conditions of the area they’re landing in, and when he gets back home that evening he learns that while there is indeed an itinerary included the bulk of the files are in fact heavily redacted copies of Sephiroth’s personnel documents. He is offended to think that they - Lazard, Heidegger, Veld even? - don’t think he would’ve done his research on the man he has been tasked to get close to. He has read exactly this file before, and he can’t find anything extra that had been slipped in there to justify handing it over. He still reads through it again nonetheless, pouring himself a drink to accompany.

The redactions play on his mind, which works in his favour really, because the more time he spends thinking about Sephiroth the less time he has to think about Wutai. He is surprised to learn that the man wasn’t born in Midgar at all but rather in Nibelheim, though he is not surprised to see that the names of his biological parents are both redacted. The file confirms his birth date and blood type, size and weight at birth, no birthing complications, but then a lot of information in the immediate aftermath is blocked out. There are several pages of documented lab studies, with the dates and times of the studies recorded but the purpose and outcomes of course redacted. There are several whole pages edited out.

Tseng has to wonder if there is any information about Angeal or Genesis in the redacted segments, because they are curiously absent from the rest of the file. With how little Sephiroth seems to talk about them, they might as well have been absent from his life altogether.

It is late by the time he has finished combing through the document for a third time, his glass refilled three times over and his eyelids becoming heavier with each read through. He knows he is putting off settling down for the night, because he knows there is too much chasing itself around his mind to let him settle.

He is of course correct.

It is an hour later by the time he has steeped a herbal tea, prepared a light bag for the journey tomorrow, and finally settled himself down to rest. His apartment is cold and he is cold, and that is what he tells himself is to blame for his not being able to sleep. It is the cold keeping him awake, not the blocks of redacted information he is trying to fill in. It is the cold keeping him awake, not the uncomfortable recognition that 80% of the Soldier’s file has been written not by Heidegger or Lazard but by Professor Hojo. It is the cold keeping him awake, not the thoughts of returning to Wutai and everything that comes with it. He doesn’t believe that they are being sent there for any legitimate reason. He doesn’t believe that Genesis has been seen there at all, and he doesn‘t believe that this is anything more than one of their ridiculous fabricated missions designed to push them together. He is still awake when the sun comes up, and he is still cold.

He hasn’t been back for half his life, not since he was a child, and it doesn’t surprise him that he barely recognises it. It is a relief that he barely recognises it. It only comes back to him when he looks up the digital route they have been sent, and their destination hits him like a punch to the gut. He had been there so many times with his family. He had been there with his sister, with his parents, and he had been there with Veld. And yes it’s a large, flat, open space perfect for a helicopter to land. But surely there are so many others of those to choose from.

They speak to the soldiers on the ground who had apparently sent in the report, and exactly as he had suspected they know absolutely nothing. He doesn’t know if Sephiroth picks up as readily as he does that the whole thing has been a ruse but he does know how angry the other man is, and it is everything he can do to keep his own cool for both of them, to try to lead and control the rest of their time here. They have an itinerary to keep after all, with a clearly noted checkpoint to reach before their ultimate pickup point.

Sephiroth moves at speed, which isn’t ideal when they have a schedule to stick to and that schedule says they need to be significantly slower than they are. Luckily Tseng doesn’t have to try too hard to keep them on track, as between physical exhaustion from lack of sleep and distraction from the million bitter and resentful thoughts racing through his head he is just not able to keep up all that well. Forgetting his previous life, shutting down all the doubts and questions and what-ifs, had taken years of deliberate effort, very real discipline. Looking around the landscape now he has to try, has to pour real effort into not remembering what it was like to be here. He looks across the sky and wonders what life would’ve been like if he had stayed; he looks down to his watch, reminds himself of his life now, and that he has a timed mission to complete.

He strikes up conversation with Sephiroth but it is utterly half-hearted, almost entirely uninterested. All he can really think about is how stitched up they’ve been, and how vindictive and cruel it was to continue the charade to the other side of the world, to here of all places. He tells Sephiroth that his exhaustion is born of lack of sleep, of inappropriate climbing gear, and like everything else he says it is not untrue - it is just not the truth in its entirety.

He looks for red leather. He looks for boot prints. He looks for either, knowing that neither exist. They make it to the halfway checkpoint almost exactly on time, and a heavy, sharpened sickle nearly decapitates him.

He hadn’t been expecting to have to defend himself, but even as he pushes one of the Crescent Unit’s own knives into its owner’s skull he can’t shake how their prescribed itinerary said they had to be here and now, in this exact spot. He sustains a few heavy blows, only narrowly blocks a blade to the gut, and with gritted teeth he tries to push the chaos in his mind away and focus instead on taking down the rest of his assailants, but what he sees when the visored helmet rolls of one of their heads as they fall all but confirms his suspicion, twists his stomach and chills his blood to ice.

This fallen assailant doesn’t look like any Wutaian he’s ever met. No, this fallen assailant, with his Shinra weapons, looks like any native Midgarian he would encounter at HQ. He quickly scans the other bodies, what he can see of their faces beneath the visors anyway, and they all look like they could’ve just been plucked out of Midgar. He swallows back the bile that rises in his throat as he processes the implications of the planned ambush. Because that’s what this is, it is planned, it has to be, but why ..?

Sephiroth calls down to him, checks in on the knife injury he had been thoroughly distracted from, but he is barely done flexing and testing the wound before there is more movement near the Soldier. Several thoughts flash through his mind in an instant, but none as strong as the desperate need to keep the grim discovery away from Sephiroth; he is realising now just how badly they’ve been set up but the Soldier still has no reason to suspect it, and how on earth he would react to learning they’ve been jumped by their own men Tseng can’t even guess. He will want to capture one of them alive, will want to interrogate them, find out what the hell is going on, but it isn’t worth the risk. No, he can’t let that happen.

He throws everything he can into the strongest spell he can muster, no room for error or survival, and he remains transfixed as his magic clashes, collides and combines with a spell of Sephiroth‘s own. In front of their very eyes their target freezes, condenses, and quite literally explodes into icy chunks of something once human, something once Midgarian soldier in Wutaian clothing. It is unnecessarily violent and wholly unexpected, and the silence that follows is filled by the whirring of infinite thoughts in Tseng’s head; for the first time in a long time, he finds himself overwhelmed. The thoughts all collide into one cacophonous nothing, and it is all he can do not to spill his thoughts and confusion and grim suspicions to Sephiroth. In lieu of being able to be honest with him he snaps at him instead, and in his shame and confusion, exhaustion, all he can think to do is to get back to their itinerary. They’re being picked up, after all, and he needs to be back in Midgar. He needs to be back … home.

He is so tired by the time they reach their pick-up point, that dry, flat plateau that he’d departed from with Veld over a decade ago now. He’s so tired he catches himself speaking openly, unguarded, only remembering almost too late to monitor his own words. He tries to justify it to himself by thinking that if he opens up then Sephiroth will too, and this is how they will form the bond that will enable him to turn the Soldier in some day before he defects like the other Firsts did before him. The truth of it though is that he doesn’t have the energy to care. Each soft, whimsical sentence he speaks is punctuated by images of redacted information, of dead Shinra soldiers in their enemy’s uniform, of a heavy silver sickle buried into a tree only inches from his face, and he is used to being the one playing others but he is not used to being played himself. He doesn’t understand.

He tries to bear his mission in mind and he quietens himself, lets the silence invite the Soldier to speak instead, and he does. Tseng leans against him and lets him talk, feigns sleep as not to interrupt the curious thoughts he is sharing. He barely stays awake, but still listens as intently as he can.

They debrief with Heidegger and Lazard the morning after they return, and Tseng stays after Sephiroth has left to complete his own report. Veld joins them but Tseng doesn’t make eye contact; there is only one thing on his mind.

“You had us ambushed,” he says frankly, not even an accusation but a statement, undeniable. In his peripheral vision he sees Lazard straighten, sees Veld react, but his eyes are fixed angrily on Heidegger. The Director brushes the statement off with a careless gesture, a snort.

“I very much doubt they posed much threat to your life,” he responds, an expression that might pass for a smile on his face if it weren’t so smug. He meets Tseng’s angry stare and doesn’t stand for the challenge in it. He turns to face him directly, the smug smile turning down at the corners. “Your progress has been inexcusably slow,” he says, using every inch of height he has over the Turk for intimidation, “You have brought us nothing of Sephiroth‘s intentions. It was felt that a little bit of pressure could accelerate the process for you.”

“Pressure??” Tseng fires back, anger twisting his stomach, “That makes no sense, you’re excusing sending your own men to attack us as applying pressure??”

“They knew what they were getting themselves into,” Heidegger responds, utterly blasé.

“I bet they didn’t.”

“They were rookies,” Heidegger continues, and the gloat is back, “They hadn’t made names for themselves yet,” Tseng grits his teeth, closes his hands into fists at his sides as the Director continues “They were nameless; they were expendable.”

“Their families got their cheques before you’d even killed the first one.”

“You promised me I’d never go back to Wutai,”

“Wait, this is what you’re angry about??”

“You promised me.”

Veld purses his lips, biting back impatience.

“I didn’t write the mission, Tseng. I didn’t issue the order.”

“But you didn’t stop it either, did you?”

Tseng isn’t surprised that his comment goes unanswered. He still feels nauseous with anger.

"At least military families get pay-outs.”

Would killing a whole room of attendees count as applying pressure? he finds himself thinking two weeks later, straightening a new tie neatly at the collar. Would assassinating the President at his own celebration count as applying pressure? For the last fortnight he has found himself questioning the line between innocent and expendable, and wondering where exactly that line blurs. The legendary First Class Soldiers had all been essentially children when they were sent to war, had they been expendable? The small group of rookie soldiers sent to ‘apply pressure’ to himself and Sephiroth, what had made them expendable? He thinks about how readily he would be replaced should his time come too soon, backfilled with another suit in waiting. Sephiroth is different, he supposes, but even then he wonders how far it goes.

Regardless of how much Tseng resents him, Heidegger had made his point clear by sending them to Wutai. Tseng is a Turk after all, and he doesn’t get to choose sides, even if he thinks one is more reprehensible than the other. He has a job to do, and if that job involves fabricating a friendship so the company can further tighten the leash already choking their most prized pet then so be it.

His dislike for formal events like these had been true, hadn’t required any exaggerating, but learning that Sephiroth felt the same had made the task even easier. It hadn’t taken much to persuade the Soldier to leave with him, to coerce him away from everyone else and downstairs, into the office, somewhere quiet for them to talk and open up. They share a bottle of liquor and talk they do. And then it all goes wrong.

He kisses him.

Well it isn’t strictly wrong, and it isn’t strictly off-plan - Tseng had been willing to go as far as he needed to to cement their bond (truly established by the unique act of freezing and blowing up a human target together, of course) - but then there is a hand on his chest and on his stomach and every plan goes out the window. A small part of him is angry because he knows this isn’t the course to take and he should know where to draw the line, but really … he just doesn’t want to. He lets himself get caught up in those hands, in those lips, in those fascinating alien eyes, and he leaves ‘work’ right there on the desk with his tie.

“You’ve been gone an hour, I want you back up here.”

Heidegger tests his resolve, his resolve not to give a shit, his resolve to throw it all away and just have this moment, and he is nearly able to hold onto that resolve, but when a second message comes through immediately after he just can’t enjoy what they’re doing anymore. It isn’t guilt that stops him, no kind of conflict, crisis in confidence, no. The plan had gone awry and he had just wanted to let it, just wanted to get carried away and have a good time. And just like everything else, Heidegger had to interfere. Shinra had to interfere.

You’re choosing Heidegger is what Sephiroth says, and he doesn’t know just how his words land. He doesn’t know the half of it, and Tseng tries to say as much but he stops himself part way. He rarely dalliances with emotions as trivial as regret, but it weighs down his footfalls with every step away he takes.

He checks the second message in the elevator on the way up. “I want to know everything he says“ it reads, and Tseng in his inebriation curses under his breath. We weren’t talking work, he thinks spitefully, I was pressing him up against his own apartment fucking wall.

He tells Heidegger nothing that night, just out of pure spite, and when Sephiroth goes down on him three days later it feels like a huge fuck you to the lot of them.

It is late by the time he leaves the bar they agreed to meet at, assuming that an hour is long enough to have waited, but he knows the Soldier’s workload and doesn’t take it personally. With a bag of bottles to go he instead makes his way back to the Tower, and up to Sephiroth’s floor.

He is utterly unprepared for what he sees that evening. I’m a SOLDIER, not a monster is what Sephiroth had said to him back in Wutai, and it had felt like such a casual thing to say at the time but it had stayed in his mind nonetheless.

He’s not a monster. Hojo is a monster, and Tseng had always known this, but he had never seen the true extent of it for himself before.

Hojo is a fucking monster.

The first time they have sex it is because he doesn’t know what else to do. He gives himself over, lets Sephiroth fuck him, because that’s all he has to give. The Soldier has guilt over the things he did in Wutai and Tseng can’t admonish his sins for him, just like he can’t confess his own sins to the man who has been falling for them. I’m sorry for the things they did to you. I’m sorry for the things they made you do. I’m sorry I’ve been doing them too. There is no undoing the things he’s done, so he gives himself in penance.

There’s no undoing the things he’s done, but he can certainly stop doing them.

He has known for a while now that he has to choose a side, and here and now, staring spent at the mako green ceiling, is when he chooses it. God does it feel good. To hell with the rest of them.

He tells Heidegger as much the very next morning, not about the sex of course, and certainly not about his belief that if Sephiroth did decide to leave then he would probably just let him, would even consider going as well, but that he won’t be playing the act anymore. He is done.

“What’s this?” Heidegger asks, cruel, gloating smirk on his lips, “The man who left his family in the middle of the night, starting to develop a conscience?”

And this is the true cruelty of the man. He hadn’t left his family and Heidegger knows it. And he certainly hadn’t been a man at the time - he had barely been ten.

He stands his ground even as the Director, six inches taller and twice as wide, berates him, and he refuses to look away. When he is dismissed, Veld goes with him.

“Going to tell me what you’re playing at?” his boss asks as they stride through the corridors, not even waiting to get back to the office, “You’re just deciding what missions you take on for yourself now?”

Tseng works his jaw.

“Everyone in this building,” he starts, knowing he should slow his pace, “Everyone. Has fucked him over. I’m not going to carry on being a part of that. He has nothing to give us.”

“We’re Turks,” Veld presses firmly, “We look after our own, but if we have to fuck someone else over that’s just part of the job.”

Tseng finally stops in his tracks.

“Wasn’t Vincent one of our own?” he asks. He turns to look Veld directly in the eye, knowing exactly the nerve he’s pinching and viciously sinking his nails into it anyway. “Did you ever find out what happened to him? Who fucked him over?”

He watches a thousand waves of anger come over the other man, watches the colour rise in him, watches as he curls a hand into a fist and bites back everything he’s ever wanted to say. Veld has never lost his temper at Tseng - snapped at him, sure, been somewhat impatient with him, particularly when he was an obstinate adolescent - but he has never truly flown off the rails. Tseng stares him down and wills it to happen, right there in the corridor.

It doesn’t.

“I wish you’d spoken to me first,” Veld says at last, voice tightly controlled, trying to keep the peace Tseng wants to desperately for him to break, “We could’ve talked this out. But Heidegger? He will bring this down on your head.”

Tseng doesn’t heed him. In that moment he is not his boss - he is just a coward.

He finds Sephiroth that night and fucks him, and while the night before had been all for the Soldier this night it is entirely for himself. He doesn’t feel bad about it - judging by the exhausted, spent laughter that tumbles from Sephiroth’s lips after, Tseng is quite sure he couldn’t even tell.

“So you got something goin’ on with Sephiroth, huh?”

“No I do not have something going on with Sephiroth.”

“You sure? ‘cause there’s rumours goin’ round that you guys are, you know …”

“Oh, do you mean are we having sex? Then yes. But there’s nothing more to it than that.”

He genuinely believes it too, that there’s nothing more to it than that, even though the nights they spend together slowly start to outnumber the nights they don’t. Something he doesn’t see coming is just how easy it is being honest in the Soldier’s company, and it is the absolute antithesis of how he lives the rest of his life. When he is at work he doesn’t spare even a word of his mother tongue; with Sephiroth he often finds himself being called upon to correct his Wutaian reading or pronunciation, which he does with ease. He had been encouraged to forget everything he could about his homeland when he first arrived in Midgar; there are a couple of nights now where instead he reminisces to Sephiroth about places he used to visit with his family before he left. ‘We went there too, early on,’ Sephiroth says when Tseng references an idyllic port town he recognises, and he frowns thoughtfully, ‘I remember them having particularly unusual accents …’, and Tseng catches himself by surprise by laughing outloud.

“They have the worst accents …” he agrees, relishing in being able to share this silly, irrelevant knowledge with someone. Veld has never seen much of Wutai. Rude has never been outside the capital, and as far as he is aware Reno and Cissnei have never been to the continent at all. He’ll be damned if he is going to start up a conversation with Hojo about his time in the motherland.

He tells himself that he is only so honest with the Soldier out of penance, out of a lingering guilt, because he got them into this pseudo-relationship under false pretences and now he owes him something real to make up for it, but the reality is that it is comfortable and it is easy, and nothing else is ever easy. Even when he had been tasked to worm his way in, to dig up some information, he had never really told a lie, merely been creative with his choice of words.

Apart from the chocobos. He has never had a problem with chocobos.

What they have is not born of affection, and it is nothing of romance either, even as they share soft laughter on a quiet night in the Tower or when Sephiroth passes him his discarded shirt on another morning after. Rather, as far as Tseng is concerned, it is something wholly and uniquely his own. It gives him a quiet confidence, a sense of identity; the Turks have a bond, that is undeniable, but if he were to be killed on the job he would be replaced within a month, backfilled with another black suit. To Sephiroth, though - to Shinra’s finest, a man who could watch the whole world burn - he means something.

To Sephiroth, he is not expendable.

But nothing easy remains easy, and all good things must come to an end, and oh, end it does.

It is a midweek lunchtime and for the first time since it all began Sephiroth asks why they were paired up. Tseng answers on autopilot, a response rehearsed a million times in a million different voices, but he notices that Sephiroth does not look impressed with him. His expression barely changes at all. The Soldier takes a breath and speaks again, and Tseng knows in an instant - knows like he’s never known anything before - that the game is up.

“I just had a conversation with Heidegger,” Sephiroth says, and Tseng doesn’t hear what he says after that.

‘He will bring this down on your head.’

Veld had been right.

He feels hollow, empty, even as his mind whirls too fast for him to keep up. He feels like a spider trying to spin a web with failing thread; every possible answer, response, strategy is a strand that snaps before it can connect, and each time he has to scramble back to where it all started he loses more and more ground. He is only too aware of his own enduring silence. Normally he would just smile at being caught out, laugh, perhaps, that it took the other person so long to figure him out. But there is nothing to laugh about now. He feels … stranded.

“Tell me you’ve been just the same as everyone else.”

He pictures the President‘s birthday celebration, the champagne and the bullshit. He pictures uncensored personnel files.

I didn’t think I was ...

He pictures the hazy glow of mako on silver hair, on bare, porcelain skin, juxtaposed in its softness.

… the same …

Everyone else would lie. To anyone else he would lie. But he exhales, closes his eyes, and tells him everything. Because it’s all he can do.

Every word feels like ash in his mouth, while he numbly plays his part in a conversation that he knows will only go one way. He knew this would end, that this would be taken away from him, he knew he had been on borrowed time, and he was never quite sure what the plan was long-term. Sephiroth was always going to find out. He was always going to have to make this confession. Even as he spills the truth, the whole truth, his mind is whirling rapidly trying to find a way to patch everything up. It is futile, he knows it, and with every word he speaks the irreparable damage he has caused becomes clearer and clearer, but it doesn’t stop part of him from desperately searching for a fix, a solution. A bandage, perhaps, a blindfold. Mastered Manipulate materia.

He had desperately enjoyed being part of something real, even if it was only for a few hours in the evening, perhaps a relaxed weekend if he was lucky, and that’s why it feels like such an affront when Sephiroth challenges the genuineness of their relationship. I became involved with you under false pretences, he thinks angrily, honestly, And I admit that. But everything from that start point on was nothing to do with them. How dare you doubt that …

There are a million reasons for him to doubt that, but Tseng doesn’t care about them.

Sephiroth asks him if Genesis was ever in Wutai when they went together, and he tells him Probably not, because even he isn’t sure but they could safely assume it was just part of the ruse and now is not the time to lie. He asks him if he would’ve reported any talk of desertion back then to Heidegger, to Veld, and he tells him Yes, because now is not the time to lie. He asks him if he would report it now and the question feels like a punch to the stomach, almost physically hurts, and he tells him an emphatic No. Because now is not the time to lie.

I wouldn’t tell them, he thinks angrily, Because I know now you don’t deserve any of this. You never deserved any of this. And neither did I.

What he doesn’t say is that if Sephiroth leaves he will be alone. What he doesn’t say is that if Sephiroth leaves then he will be just another Turk again, just another black suit with good aim and a reckless disinterest in his own wellbeing. If Sephiroth leaves then he will be destined to be just be another Vincent, or maybe just another Veld. He doesn’t know which is worse.

“I picked my side,” he says, hearing desperation in his own voice but not shying away from it, because if ever there was a time to bare it all then it is now, “You never should have been a mission.” And maybe this works, because Sephiroth seems to take pause. Tseng capitalises, doesn’t waste a moment, proposes that they meet after work, and as soon as Sephiroth uses the excuse of mission prep to get out of it Tseng suggests when he gets back instead. He has no plan here, he has no idea what he’s meant to say or how they’re going to talk this through, but he knows he can’t let the other man go. ‘When I get back,’ Sephiroth concedes, and while he doesn’t sound even slightly convinced Tseng holds onto the confirmation with everything he’s got. It means he has a chance. He nods, bolstered, even though Sephiroth is turned away from him.

“I was never going to go after them. You know that, don’t you?”

The words pierce him, sink in like venom. Tseng knows. He knows because, as far as the Soldier is concerned, he would never stand a chance if he tried. He knows because he sees them now, the invisible shackles that keep him bound to this company, these people and this place, and he had never seen them before. But Tseng has seen incredible changes in this man in just the last few months alone, has seen the tiny, quiet rebellions, and he knows that shackles can be broken. He knows it.

“I do,” he says, because Sephiroth needs to hear it. The Soldier leaves and Tseng remains, heavy as a rock, stood at his desk. Barely a moment passes before Reno and Rude return, clumsily filling the space Sephiroth had left behind, and Reno raises an eyebrow at him.

“Trouble in paradise, huh?” he asks. Tseng doesn’t have time for his shit.

“Fuck off, Reno,” he says. He pinches the bridge of his nose, and turns away.

The days that follow become long and lonely as he spends endless hours trying to think of what to say when Sephiroth returns.

He dreams one night that his phone goes off but that he doesn’t know how to answer it. In the dream he can’t read the name on the screen. In the dream he watches it ring and ring and ring until it stops, falls silent, screen blank again.

He wakes up to a missed call from Zack. Zack doesn’t answer when he calls him back.

He doesn't believe the email that circulates the company employees, because "Killed In Action" isn't something that happens to legendary Soldiers in Nibelheim. He believes it even less when Zack is named too. The final nail in the fabricated coffin is when he finds out that the Soldier's apartment is being cleared out, and that the task hasn't been given to the Turks to do themselves.

Nothing adds up about it. Nothing ever did from the get-go, he thinks bitterly, right from the fucking start.

He may never have believed the story, but something in him stirs when he heard about the clear-out. He thinks about a faceless cleanup crew gutting the place, sterilising it, leaving no trace of who was there before, and it makes his head hurt.

The night before they're due, he lets himself in. His card has the relevant permissions, after all.

The place feels hollow, lights off, curtains still open. He is familiar with the apartment of course but has never been in there alone, and it feels lonelier than he anticipated. He wants to salvage whatever he can from the place, but there is nothing to save. The man never cooked for himself, so the fridge is entirely empty. There are several books on shelves but all clearly read just the once, no dog-eared favourites, no bookmarks to come back to. Even the glasses they’d drink from together are missing from their spot on the counter. A cursory glance through drawers reveal no trinkets or keepsakes or momentos, no photos, no letters, nothing to tie him to a place or a person.

Anyone could have lived here, Tseng thinks, standing in the middle of the large living space. There is no trace of quiet laughter left, there is no peaceful stillness, no mischievous mako-green gaze glinting across the room. He feels cold, and he feels ... empty.

The last room he checks is the bathroom where, unthinking and on autopilot, he casually strips out of his suit and steps into the shower, turning the temperature up, just to feel something, anything, in this empty place. The heat sinks through his skin and something in him begins to buckle, long-denied reality sinking in as the scent of familiar shampoo fills the room. He scrubs his hair for longer than he needs to. He stays under the scalding water for longer has he needs to. And when he steps out, helping himself to a towel left on the side, he stands in the empty room for longer than he needs to.

There is nothing to salvage.

Hours pass before he can bring himself to leave, so many that his hair has dried naturally. He leaves empty-handed, locking the door quietly on his way out.

Lazard has gone. Veld has gone. There is no ceremony for either of them; the machine still ticks on.

Heidegger had gloated when he placed Tseng in charge of Rufus’s supervision, comfortable in the knowledge that after being put in his place the Turk wouldn’t be so stupid as to choose the wrong side again.

Foolish, foolish man.

Tseng sees the rebellion in the Vice President’s eyes, the arrogance on his lips, instantly identifies that there is danger written all over him. He has made many mistakes in his life, but he will never make the same one twice.

This time, he chooses his side instantly.

The sword he pushes through the President’s chest is for two men who will never know it was him, and who will never know it was for them.

It is two hours before they leave for the Temple of the Ancients and Elena strides in, not even thinking to knock. She stops in her tracks when she sees how still Tseng is, stood at the end of the empty office, open personnel file in hand. His eyes are settled on a particular page, a portrait shot, taken before the incident seven years ago. She feels like she has intruded.

She quietly approaches, laying a hand gently on his shoulder.

“You know it’s not him,” she says gently, not even using the normal ‘sir’ to speak to him. He blinks, but the file remains open. “Whatever we find in there, whoever we find in there … no matter what it looks like, it won’t be him.”

She expects him to snap the file closed, irritated and embarrassed to be caught in a vulnerable moment, so she is surprised that he still hasn’t moved. With a soft breath she carefully takes the file from him and closes it softly before handing it back. He lets her.

“The legendary Sephiroth,” she says, keeping his gaze, “Not the hero, not the SOLDIER, but the man you knew … he has to stay in your memory now.”

He touches the scar on his forearm. It’s the closest thing he has to a momento, and it wasn’t even from him.

’I‘d like to imagine I‘m already unforgettable.’

He moves to tie his hair up but thinks twice. He leaves it long instead.