( 5. )

A little over two years ago, Tseng had sat on the porch of the Seventh Heaven, smoking a clove cigarette and building and discarding plans until he'd found one he thought might have a chance of succeeding, and today -- tonight -- is the culmination and vindication of all those plans. And right now, all he really wants to do is go hide on the balcony, lest Rufus pull another surprise out of nowhere on him. (Or, possibly, throw Rufus off the balcony. Or himself. Or both, and Tifa can fend for herself.)

This is not how he expected any of this to go. (But then again, since when has Rufus done anything expected?)

He's still cranky from misplaced adrenaline, still grumpy about being led to think Tifa had finally heard enough to tip her over the line to declaring her war, still pissy about the way Rufus had chosen to correct his assumptions. (Still annoyed Rufus had been able to hear what Tifa had truly been saying, and he had not, when he is the one who has been Tifa's lover for nearly two years now and Rufus met her just under twenty-four hours prior. It has always been betting against the house to be annoyed at Rufus demonstrating skill at people, though; Rufus knows people like Tseng knows swordplay, bred down deep into his bones and honed by circumstance and necessity, and Rufus works as hard for his skill with people as Tseng worked for his skill with the blade.)

But Tifa is sitting next to him, warm and soft and relaxed, light of spirit in a way he has never seen her before. The weight lying on her shoulders for as long as he's known her has been -- Not lost. Never lost. But picked up and set aside, put somewhere else for the duration, and it's been replaced with a sharp eagerness and an almost-fanatical dedication. He's seen Tifa concentrate before, seen her devote herself wholly to a task, seen her throw herself into things both with reluctance and eagerness. None of those times has been like this. She is looking at Rufus like she believes him, believes in him, and Tseng is the one who told her, this morning, that she could, but he can't stop the superstitious part of him fearing (knowing) the whole world will change, now that Rufus has won her cooperation.

He's still not entirely sure how Rufus did. Ten minutes ago, Tifa had been unable to so much as bear his touch, the touch of someone tainted by Shinra's evils, after having heard of the truth of SOLDIER and Hojo's labs. Ten minutes ago, Tseng had been mortally certain Tifa was about to stalk out of the apartment -- and he and Rufus had given Reno orders not to prevent her from going, if she did -- and the next he'd see of her would be the day he came knocking on her door to redeem his word to her before having to arrange her death. Sometime between that moment and now, she has apparently decided that she and Rufus are on the same side, for now at least. And he knows Rufus has not spoken one word of untruth, has not so much as exaggerated, but sometime between that moment and now, the two of them have apparently declared war. Together. Not on each other.

He has seen Rufus accomplish a dozen incredible things before breakfast many times before, but this may be the first time Rufus has accomplished something Tseng would have called flat-out impossible.

Tifa is here, leaning back against him, relaxed and calm, and the emotion he can read from her skin against his is nothing more than quiet relief. "All right," she says, and even her voice has changed now. The past hour has been an exercise in agony for him, watching Tifa throw herself, over and over, against the shoals of memory, watching her shoulders (tight and taut) hunching over themselves and her voice remaining still and small and quiet like she was trying to hide from being discovered. (Being caught out, being hunted again.) Now, she sounds calm -- true calm, not the artificial overlay she was trying to hold over herself -- and resolute. "Let me get through this quickly. Interrupt me whenever you have questions, it's probably easier that way, rather than you trying to remember them and hold them for later."

And I won't have as much of a problem with being interrupted, now, she is saying, without actually saying it, and Tseng knows Rufus can hear it as well as he can. Rufus leans back in his chair, hooks one leg up and over the arm of the chair, braces his elbows further back on the arms of the chair, steeples his fingers in front of his mouth, and rests his chin on his thumbs. Tseng blinks. It's one of Rufus's relaxed-thinking positions, one he only adopts among intimates. In those jeans, it's about an inch and a half, and a few threads, shy of showing off parts of him only his intimates should see.

(He'd hoped Tifa and Rufus would find common ground, but this is a little beyond even his best expectations.)

"Before you start," Rufus says, thoughtfully, tapping his index fingers against his lips, "I'll take advantage of that. Let me back us up a bit. Did Seph ever say anything about why you couldn't spare the time to go looking for the other guard?"

Tifa shakes her head, swift and sure. "No. Never. I thought the other SOLDIER might object, but he didn't. We just kept going."

"Hm." Tap, tap, tap. Rufus glances over at Tseng again. "Tseng?"

Tseng knows precisely what Rufus is asking. "Nope. Not that I've been able to find, at least."

"And for the people in the room who don't have a direct connection into your brain?" Tifa says, sweetness layered over steel.

Rufus chokes back laughter, clears his throat. "Ah. Yes. Sorry; we've worked together for too long. I was asking him if the mission brief specified any sort of orders about what to do if there were injuries or casualties. It's not standard to abandon casualties in the field, unless the unit is taking heavy fire and recovering the fallen would be too much of a danger to those who remain. The only time units are given the abandon-casualties order is generally if a rescue operation would inherently compromise the mission itself. And I can't think of any reason why an eradicate-and-contain mission would have been operating under those parameters. Which means, since Tseng just told me they weren't, it was Seph's choice, not orders he received." He manages to make the explanation neutral, not at all condescending; anyone with experience with Shinra's policies would know, but of course Tifa is not one of them, and Rufus is excellent at imparting information. When he chooses to be.

Tifa nods, slowly; Tseng can feel the bumps and ridges of the braids he plaited into her hair this morning, rasping against his bicep. (He resists the urge to rest his chin on the crown of her head again, to curl his arm around her waist as she leans against him -- it would distract them from the conversation they're having -- but oh, he wants to. He has been given the precious gift of more time before he and Tifa must part ways, and he wants to savor every minute of it.)

"My turn to ask, then," she says, and her tone is slow and thoughtful. "Since from what you say, you knew him better than anyone else might have." Tseng can imagine what it costs her to ask, after having said just this morning she doesn't want to know Sephiroth as anything other than the monster that nearly ended her life -- but no; the slowness in her tone isn't reluctance. She's picking through something in her head, fitting fact against memory, trying to piece together some of the answers she's promised them. "Was that out of character for him? Leaving someone behind like that?"

Rufus's tapping fingers still, and he blinks twice, regarding her steadily. The expression on his face is one Tseng finds quite familiar; Tifa has managed to surprise him. "Yes," Rufus says, without hesitation. "That's what was bothering me about it when you said; I just didn't want to interrupt. I once pinned a medal on his chest that he was given for saving the lives of five NCOs who were in a convoy with him while it was bombed. He pried them out of the burning wreckage with his bare hands. Anyone who hadn't had the SOLDIER treatments would've lost the hands; as it was, he needed skin grafts and a week in Hojo's lab, after."

The noise Tifa makes is a thoughtful hum; she twists in place to look up at Tseng, her face sober. "I need to get up and pace," she says to him, and he thinks it's an apology. He nods (she is trying, in her own way, to make up for having had that one moment where she couldn't bear to let him touch her; they both know it) and her smile flashes, lightning-quick but no less beautiful, before she pushes herself up from the couch.

Pace she does, back and forth, ten steps in either direction; he's seen her do this dozens of times before when trying to work out the optimal solution to a problem she's facing. Tifa thinks best when she is in motion. (He doesn't doubt that if she thought they could afford the time, she would ask to go out running.) "I didn't recognize it then," she says, after a few about-faces, slowing but not stopping. "I don't think I had enough information to recognize it then." There's regret in her voice, lurking under the surface, and Tseng hopes she isn't tormenting herself with thoughts of what she could have done if she'd known then what she knows now; she couldn't have. "But what I saw of him, from the moment he entered Nibelheim's gates, is easily consistent with what happened -- later -- and it differs only in degree. I -- The man, the friend, you've both described to me is someone I never met. Never saw. Which means whatever happened to him, whatever started this whole thing, happened sometime in between his leaving Midgar and his arriving in Nibelheim."

"The beginning pieces of it, at least," Rufus says. His voice is just as thoughtful; Tseng looks over to notice his foot, the one swinging in mid-air, is jiggling slightly, and his fingers are tapping against his lips again in the way that usually means Rufus is craving a cigarette. (And that's another proof they've crossed some indescribable line; Rufus does not fidget in front of people he does not trust, in whole or in part, and Rufus trusts far too few people. It's Rufus's equivalent of Tseng's being willing to tie up his hair and bare the nape of his neck.) "If he were as bad as -- he was by the end --"

Tifa interrupts, with an impatient gesture. "Say it. I've been dancing around it because it still hurts too much. If you say it enough, sooner or later it will become just another fact."

Tseng doubts that, but Rufus only nods, showing no impatience for the interruption. "All right, then. If he were as bad as he was when he destroyed Nibelheim, at the beginning, he never would have made it up to the reactor at all. So whatever happened, it started before he got to Nibelheim, but it got worse once he got there." Pause: tap, tap, fidget, fidget. "Father called the board meeting to brief us on what happened on the ninth day after Sephiroth left Midgar. At that time of year, for that kind of mission, it would have been ground transport over the mountains to Junon, helicopter from Junon to Costa del Sol, ground transport from Costa del Sol across Corel and the Corel desert up to the mountains of Nibelheim. I make it ..."

He squints, looks off into the distance; Tseng can see him adding up the figures. Tseng's already done the math, though, a long time ago. "Two days, give or take," he says. Both Rufus and Tifa focus in on him. "Depending on when they left Midgar, and whether they overnighted in Junon or Costa del Sol. Or Corel. We've tried to backtrace it, and haven't been able to."

"They arrived late," Tifa says. Her eyes unfocus; she's doing math in her head too. "So, probably evening of the second day. One night in the inn, we went up to the reactor the next day --" Her voice wavers, just a tiny fraction. Tseng wonders if Rufus can hear it. "I wasn't allowed in, then. Just Sephiroth and the SOLDIER with him; he ordered the guard to stay outside with me. Shinra secrets, he said. I don't know what happened in there, and Shiva damn it, I wish I did, because when they came out again, General Sephiroth looked --" She takes a deep breath, blows it out, slowly. "He looked furious. Like whatever happened in there had -- had wrecked him, really, and the only way he could deal with it was to get angry."

She glances over at Rufus, waiting to see if he has any other questions, but Rufus only nods, slowly, making a negligent "go on" hand gesture; Rufus may have decided to take her at her word about allowing interruptions now as much as he had refrained previously, but Rufus has observed enough interrogations over the years to know that when a witness is talking freely, the best thing to do is to let them keep talking.

Tifa's pacing has spend up, slightly; she wraps her arms across her chest, hugging herself tightly, and changes her route from a simple back-and-forth to instead turning circuits around the room. "That was the third day," she says, and Tseng can tell she's using the questions of timelines to help distract her from the truth of what happened. "He didn't say a word to any of us on our way back. We had to detour pretty heavily, since the bridge was down, but I knew another route back from the reactor that didn't use the bridge, although we didn't use it often because it washed out every time it rained more than an inch --"

She stops herself -- both words and pacing -- suddenly, and Tseng turns to see why; she's standing right behind the couch, staring off at nothing. Remembering. "But he didn't need me there," she says, her eyes fixed on something across the room and across the years. "Any more than he'd needed me to get there, once we fell. I didn't notice it at the time, because --" She starts a little in place, bites her lip, and her eyes refocus back in on the here-and-now. "Well, to be honest, because it was late, I was tired, I was hungry, I was still aching from the tumble we'd taken off the side of the bridge, and I wanted to get home, get a good meal, a good night's sleep, and get some liniment on the shoulder I'd wrenched. And -- there was something about Sephiroth, right then, that scared the shit out of me. I didn't want to look at him too closely. I didn't look at him too closely. He ... he wasn't quite all there, really. But he was like a needle on a compass, straight back to town. I didn't notice, because I was on point most of the time and he was ... thinking about something, maybe? Hanging back. And I was trying really hard not to look at him, because he was creeping me the fuck out. But ..."

She's gone back to staring at nothing; as Tseng watches, she shivers again and resumes her pacing. "Stupid question --" she starts.

"No such thing," Rufus says. "You're the one who was there. You're the one who saw him. Anything you ask can only serve to give you more information to compare against, and anything might be the thing to jog your memory -- and give us the one thing we need."

"Yeah, okay," Tifa says. "You mentioned -- Those SOLDIER enhancements you were talking about. You said you don't know what they consist of, but -- did you ever see any kind of evidence that Sephiroth had a compass in his head? I've known some people who do, naturally --"

Tseng is one of those people; he's never been lost a moment in his life, a fact Rufus knows all too well. Being as such, he knows damn well what it looks like in others. "Sephiroth once got lost trying to get from HQ to here," Tseng says. "It's three stops on the train line and a straight shot on both ends."

Rufus nods, slowly. "It was a running joke in the army. Heidegger used to threaten to assign Seph an aide-de-camp whose sole duty would be to read the compass."

"Yeah." Tifa breathes in, slowly, shakily. "I was afraid of that." She is still pacing, but as Tseng watches, she rubs her hands up and down her arms, as though she's cold. (Tseng keeps it warm enough in here that visitors often complain of the heat.) "Put that on the list," she says, abruptly, to Tseng. "Because -- you don't get that overnight. You don't get that from having been in the mountains once, or from having gotten yourself to somewhere and thinking you remember the way back. There's a reason I made thousands of gil each year once the spring rains stopped. You can get lost in those mountains even if you've been there a thousand times before, even if you're not actually attempting the summit, even if you're just taking what you think are the well-worn paths, and they're deadly enough that if you don't know where you are or what you're doing, you're not going to make it back to town."

Tseng leans forward, picks up his notepad, and flips back to the list he's been keeping, of the questions Tifa's story raises and the things they will need to pursue. He brackets off a sidebar, starts noting down all the changes in Sephiroth's behavior between the man they'd known and the man Tifa's describing. "You think there was something ... drawing him?" Rufus asks, while Tseng is writing. "First to the reactor, and then back to town?"

Tifa nods. "I didn't notice it then. But looking back, now ... Yeah. Yeah, I do. Because we got back to town -- that was the night of the third day, if you're right about how long it took them to get there -- and I went straight home and into the bathtub like I'd promised myself, and the rest of them went back to the inn, except the next morning -- day four -- when I went in to help handle breakfast -- we were full up that week -- the other SOLDIER was there, but neither the surviving guard nor General Sephiroth was at breakfast. The guard was in and out -- I never did find out where he was going when he wasn't in the inn -- but Sephiroth wasn't anywhere to be found. We all expected them to leave that morning. The SOLDIER said they'd taken care of what was causing the monsters. But the next day came along, and the next, and they were still there, except nobody had seen General Sephiroth."

She stops her pacing in front of Tseng's tokonoma this time, staring up again at the flowers and the two scrolls that are the only examples of Tseng's calligraphy he allows himself to display, even in his private refuge. From this angle, he can't see her face, but the lines of her shoulders aren't quite as miserable as they were the last time she was using the flowers as a focus. "They were there for three days," she says, then stops herself. "No, wait. Four. From the morning of the fourth day, the day after we came back from the reactor -- it was a Tuesday that we went to the reactor, I remember, because Tuesdays were the days we always aired out mattresses in the unoccupied rooms, during the spring and summer, and I was so glad when I picked up the guide job, because it meant I would miss it."

She stops, thinks some more; Tseng watches her fingers twitch (thumb, index finger, middle finger, ring finger) and concludes she is counting days. He's deathly certain he knows what she's counting up to. "Four days," she repeats, finally, with a bit more confidence. "We -- Sephiroth didn't show his face once, during any of them. I think he was staying in the mansion the whole time. I don't know what he was doing up there. I don't know what brought him there. But he spent four days there, and on the third day, I -- I asked the SOLDIER how long he thought they'd be there, because I knew my father wouldn't say anything, not to Shinra, but we had a hunting party booked to use the rooms we'd put them in, and they'd be arriving the next Monday, and I wanted to know whether we were going to have to juggle around the reservations. He just laughed and said that they'd be staying as long as the General wanted to stay, and they didn't pay him enough to make the big decisions like that, and he was enjoying the vacation in the meantime."

Tseng numbers a quick timeline in the margins of his notebook, scribbles in the days and dates he knows and can extrapolate. "If you visited the reactor on Tuesday," he says -- thinking aloud, more than anything else -- "that would have been ..." He knows the dates involved, has calculated them endless times since the news of Nibelheim first broke, but it still takes him a few seconds; he covers by filling in dates, days, as he calculates. "Tuesday the 14th. Which actually gives us a way to say for certain how long it took for them to get out there; Heidegger sent out that mission on Sunday the 12th."

"I remember," Rufus says. "Seph bitched at me about it. 'It's not enough he has to try to humiliate me by sending me out on this mission in the first place; he has to kill the rest of my weekend on something that could damn well wait until Monday, too?'" He drops, as he always has, into his closest approximation of Sephiroth's voice; Rufus has always been an excellent mimic. Across the room, Tifa's head snaps up like she's heard a ghost. Rufus winces, realizing his mistake too late, but charges onward without apologizing, knowing she would be humiliated by his calling attention to her reaction. "Sunday and Monday in transit, arrive late Monday, reactor visit on Tuesday. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Seph's in the mansion, doing ... something. We'll try to figure it out when we get out there. If the cleanup crew hasn't destroyed all the evidence, of course." His voice turns bitter on the last sentence.

Tseng shakes his head. "We never entered the mansion," he says, realizing -- too late -- he'd decided the night before that Tifa shouldn't have to know he and the Turks were assigned to that mission. She only glances over at him, though, and the look on her face tells him she already figured that much out, so all he can do is keep going as though he intended the reveal. "There were too many of us; we camped out in the backyard. The mansion looked like it would fall down if we so much as breathed on it. We rode herd pretty hard on the rest of the workers, too; the old man gave us a tight deadline." He stops, though, and thinks. "Hojo might have," he's forced to add, reluctantly. "I can't account for all his time. Most of it -- we were watching him pretty closely, too --" He breaks into his own narrative, explains to Tifa: "Rufus managed to catch us after the board meeting, before we were sent out --"

"After I'd been given my marching orders," Rufus says, and his tone is flippant but there's anger underneath it, an anger that will take years to cool. "I was given a grand total of two hours to pack; I used one of them to set up what I could."

Tifa nods, slowly; Tseng thinks she's trying to imagine the scene inside Shinra, that night, and knows that whatever she imagines, she will fail to imbue it with the proper levels of distress and paranoia. That night is not one of his favorites to remember. He continues, "We -- the Turks and I -- knew we were being sent out with the reconstruction team by then, and we knew we were going to have to do everything we could to document anything we could get our hands on, for later analysis, as fast as we could. We also knew Hojo was going to be breathing down our necks the whole time."

"I told them to keep an eye on him," Rufus adds. "He'd already tripped my suspicious-bastard alarms."

Tifa is watching the byplay, her eyes flicking back and forth as both of them speak. Whatever reaction Tseng is expecting, it isn't the one he gets; she snorts at Rufus's words, her face flickering into amused for one brief second. "Somehow, I think those get a pretty constant workout," she says, as dry as the rice paper of Tseng's shōji screens.

Tseng transmutes his laughter into a cough. Rufus blinks, twice, as though he can't quite process what Tifa has just said; then he's laughing too, the short sharp bark of amusement he saves for laughing at sarcasm directed at him. (Tseng hears it a lot.) "Well. Yes. And particularly around Hojo. But ..." He trails off, makes a gesture of inarticulate frustration at his inability to properly convey just how fucking disturbing Hojo truly is. "I've known there's something off about him for years, but having him tapped to 'command' the reconstruction team? That just didn't fit."

"So we watched him," Tseng continues. "In shifts, as subtly as we could. Reno took most of it, actually." Tifa raises an eyebrow at that; Tseng flashes her a quick grin. He knows what she's thinking. "You've only seen him off duty. On duty, he's ... rather a lot like he is off duty, actually, only backed by competence. It puts people off guard. When I need someone under surveillance without them realizing they're under surveillance instead of just having company, I use Reno."

Tifa's eyes narrow. "Reno spends a lot of time down in the Seventh Heaven when you aren't there," she points out.

"He does," Tseng agrees, his voice the picture of innocence, and when her eyes narrow further, gives up all thoughts of teasing her more. "And no, I didn't tell him to. He says you're the only bartender in all of Midgar who's willing to give him credit and doesn't mind the broken furniture bill."

Rufus sits forward a little at that. "You give credit? To Reno?" Tseng can't quite decide if his tone is frankly admiring or implies she's daft.

The faintest of blushes creeps across Tifa's cheeks; Tseng watches it in fascination. "He always pays up eventually. With interest. And he's always very apologetic about the property damage once he sobers up, and he pays for that too, and we are getting completely off topic here and I'd like to sleep sometime this century."

Rufus clears his throat, but he's still smiling. "Right. Anyway. We'll put 'toss the mansion from top to bottom' on the do-list, see if we can figure out what Seph was doing there, in the hopes there'll be something still there. So. Four days?"

"Four days," Tifa agrees. Then -- all humor gone -- she hugs herself again, a little more tightly this time, and sighs deeply. "And here's where it starts to get into the part that I really, really don't want to talk about, and the part I warned you about, because I'm pretty sure about some of the rest of this but not all of it, and I can't pinpoint the moment it starts to go fuzzy."

Wordlessly, Tseng holds out a hand, his eyebrows quirked, offering without obligation. Tifa stares at his hand for a second as though she can't quite figure out what he means by it, before shaking herself and looking up at him. He's just ready to drop it, thinking she won't accept his offer, when she crosses the room on quiet feet, putting her hand into his. He intended only to give her the momentary comfort of touch; he is surprised when she uses his hand as support to climb onto his lap, the way he can sometimes tempt her to do when she is taking ten minutes to sit at his table in the middle of a shift.

Then, she always perches on his knees and wraps an arm around his neck for balance. Now, she tucks herself sideways into his embrace, shifting and settling until her back is against the arm of the couch and her feet are shoved into the crack between the two couch cushions, and Tseng is always surprised, every time he remembers how tiny she really is, but realizing she can curl herself up so her head fits under his chin while she's sitting on his lap is somehow even more shocking. He wraps his arm more firmly around her, curling it around her side and letting his hand spread wide over her chest, right over the point where her scar begins, telling her without words that he has her, he will hold her as long as she wishes to be held, and he wills strength into her with every inch of his touch.

"It was Sunday," she says, and Tseng looks down to see that her eyes are closed. Her breathing is even, her heart rate -- he can feel it under his hand -- only slightly elevated, but the fingers of her hand, which she has placed over his on her chest, are clenching and releasing, over and over, with just the hint of her fingernails digging in each time. The thought of watching her face through what he knows she is about to narrate feels incredibly invasive; he looks up instead, turning his head so that his cheek rests against the crown of her head. In that position, he can see Rufus watching him; he isn't sure what to expect (isn't sure how Rufus will react, seeing Tifa turn to him for comfort, seeing Tifa showing what Rufus might possibly interpret as a sign of weakness), but he certainly isn't expecting Rufus to be slumped even further in his chair, watching Tifa as well, with every line of his body and face radiating a fierce and ferocious protectiveness, as though all he wants to do is leap out of the chair and stand in between Tifa and the dragons of memory.

Tseng's face must give something away -- although he knows his body language doesn't change, or at least not enough for Tifa to tense up and reflect that change back at him -- because Rufus's eyes flick up to him. Rufus winces slightly -- an apology, in the shared shorthand they've developed over the years, and that makes Tseng even more resolved to question Rufus later, because the only reason for Rufus to react so strongly to the sight of Tifa's distress is that Rufus has placed her on the (very) short list of people for whom he would leap in front of dragons.

But now isn't the time. Tseng matches his breathing with Tifa's, then slows his a little further, hoping Tifa's body will follow his lead even if Tifa isn't consciously aware of it; she does, and he assigns one small part of his mind to holding that breath pattern as long as she is nestled against him.

"It was Sunday," Tifa repeats, and even her voice sounds younger, like the child she no-doubt was two years ago, before her baptism by fire, no matter that her calendar age at the time would have had her just out of her teens. "I woke up when I always do -- too damn early -- and went over to the inn. Skipped my run that morning. I still felt bruised and battered from that fall on Tuesday, and I'd made the mistake of doing my usual ten K the day before, instead of easing back into it, so when I woke up that morning and could barely move, all I felt like doing was saying 'fuck it' and going back to bed for the whole damn day."

She laughs a little, hollow and echoing. It's bitter, but at least it isn't desperate. "I've spent the last few years wondering how things would have been different if I had." Neither Tseng nor Rufus says anything, but silently, Tseng is glad she's capable of making jokes, as bleak as they might be. Another minute, while Tifa breathes. Tseng wonders what she is remembering, what she is seeing, and how much she is deciding to leave out.

Finally, she sighs again. "It was a quiet day. That was the worst, really. It was like every other day in the world. My father and I spent the afternoon airing out one of the suites we didn't usually put guests in -- the one he and my mother had lived in, before they moved into the house when I was born -- because the hunting party was going to be arriving Monday afternoon, and we were full up otherwise. It was hard work. Backbreaking work, really; nobody had stayed there in years, and we had to haul the mattress out into the backyard and beat the dust out of it. I hurt everywhere, and everything I did made it worse, and I remember being miserable, all day, and wishing Shinra and Sephiroth would just give up and go the fuck home."

Then she turns her head so her cheek presses against Tseng's chest, and her voice goes utterly, completely flat. "It was just past dinnertime when the first bells went up. We have -- had -- a volunteer fire brigade. Mostly the men -- I'd tried, a few times, to join them, but they never really wanted to believe I could do the work as well as they did. My father was part of it, though, even though he was getting older and really should have stopped. He got up to answer the bells, the same way he always did, and I got up to go with him, because usually they would at least let me haul some water from the well if it got bad enough. But he opened the front door, and it was like ..."

She trails off again. Breathes, deeply, slowly, and Tseng thinks she may be drawing upon the discipline of the Wutaian adept to keep her in a very light trance state. Certainly she sounds far too tranquil when she speaks again. "Nothing could have started the fire that fast except materia," she says. "The whole north side of the main square was ablaze already. And Sephiroth was standing in the center of the square, and he held out his hand, and another whole block went up. I could hear the people inside the houses --" She cuts herself off before she can finish the sentence.

Tseng knows damn well what she was going to say, though -- I could hear the people inside the houses, screaming as they burned alive -- and he bends every inch of his will on the task of not tensing up, not letting his breathing change. Across the room, Rufus has closed his eyes; Tseng can see the muscle in his jaw, standing out in sharp relief, as Rufus clenches it.

"Here's where I start to get confused," Tifa says, so very very quietly. "Because -- from that point on, everything felt like it was happening to somebody else. The minute I saw Sephiroth standing there, with his sword on his back and his hands outstretched to call the fire and his eyes -- glowing, I swear they were glowing, I swear to you it wasn't just reflected fire -- The minute I saw him there, I remember thinking, incredibly clearly, I am going to die. We are all going to die. And then it was like -- like someone else took over for me, and everything past that thought was her doing it, not me."

The weight of her body is cutting off circulation to Tseng's legs. He would rather lose those legs than shift right now. His fingers itch to write down the details -- glowing eyes mean SOLDIER, but even SOLDIERs' eyes don't glow strongly enough for a terrified girl to notice from halfway across a town square, and he can feel the itch in the back of his head telling him this is another clue. But he can't reach for his notepad without disturbing Tifa, and besides, he's certain he'll remember every word of her story for a long damn time.

"My father turned to me," Tifa continues, and Tseng has no earthly idea how she can manage to sound so calm; it isn't even the kind of calm presaging hysteria or the flat, affectless tone of the survivor. "The look on his face was -- He was scared, he was terrified, and that was the worst part, really, that my father, who could handle anything in the world, was terrified. He told me -- ordered me -- to grab the emergency hiking rescue gear and get out of town. Get up to higher ground. I must have hesitated, even though it only felt like half a second, because he slapped me. Hard. Straight across the face, and I just stared at him, and he told me, go. Before it's too late. Don't stop to save anyone, don't stop to rescue anyone, don't stop to help -- just go. And whoever was driving my body for me turned around without saying another word, without even telling him that I loved him, and she grabbed the emergency backpack and shoved it on her shoulders -- my shoulders -- and went out the back door without even stopping to think."

Another pause. "The house went up less than a minute later," she adds, her voice detached, almost clinical. "I couldn't help it; I stopped to listen. But I didn't hear my father screaming, and at that point, I still hoped that he might live through -- through whatever was going on."

Across the room, Rufus shifts, just enough to plunge both his hands into his hair and pull. Tifa doesn't notice, though. Tseng watches Rufus, because he can't bring himself to watch Tifa, and Rufus is in agony, listening to this story. Rufus has been wishing for someone to tell him the truth of Nibelheim for nearly three years now, and if there's one lesson Tseng has been trying to drum into him since the moment he assumed responsibility for Rufus's education, it is this: be careful what you wish for.

"I went," Tifa says. "I -- I won't say this is the worst part, they're all worst parts, but to this day I can't quite make myself believe that I really did go running straight out of town, without stopping to try to help anyone, but --" She laughs again, thin and hollow. "What could I have done? The people who weren't on fire were overcome by smoke inhalation. The people who weren't overcome by smoke inhalation were -- He drew his sword. A few people tried to rush him, to make him stop, in the hopes that enough of us could overcome even the Great General Sephiroth, but -- They didn't have a chance, really. We didn't have a chance. And the next thing I knew, the next time the whoever-it-was possessing me eased up and let me have a moment to think again, I was up in the mountains, on one of the cliffs that overlooked the town, and the town ..."

She trails off again. Shifts her weight a little, and it takes a minute for Tseng to realize what she's doing; he moves too late to be in perfect sync with her, half a heartbeat too slow. It's as though his awkward echo reminds her she's in his lap, that he isn't some form of particularly mobile couch cushions; she opens her eyes and draws back her head to look up at him, puzzled. He can practically hear her thoughts: what am I doing sitting in your lap?

Rufus, sensing the moment of her self-hypnosis has broken -- a little, at least -- leans forward, slowly enough that it shouldn't be enough to trip her subconscious sentries. "Is it all right if I come sit on the couch, too?" he asks, and his voice is as gentle as his rage, a moment ago, was not. "Or would space be better?"

The request makes Tseng blink -- he would not have expected it of Rufus, who learned how to keep himself aloof from the world at an age so early he'd already thoroughly internalized the lessons long before Tseng had met him -- but, studying Rufus, he thinks he knows what caused him to ask. Hearing Tifa's story has unsettled him nearly as much as the process of telling it has unsettled her, and although Rufus is capable of weathering any storm the universe (and his father) might throw at him, with aplomb and grace, when Rufus is among those few he trusts (Tseng, Reno, Rude -- Reeve, to an extent -- Sephiroth, before he'd died, before he'd gone off the deep end, and watching Rufus baffle Sephiroth had always been an endless source of amusement) and Rufus is upset by something, Rufus tends to cling. If they were listening to Tifa's story on a recording, just the two of them, Rufus would have been plastered against Tseng's side ten minutes ago.

Tifa draws her head back even further, looking at Rufus with wide eyes that are more than a little wild. Tseng is expecting her to protest, expecting the very request to snap her further out of whatever calm she's managed to find and incite another post-traumatic reaction, but she startles him (amazes him, astounds him); she meets Rufus's eyes for a long minute, then nods, once, more of a jerking of her head than anything else.

Rufus breathes out, short and sharp relief, and when he moves, it is as slowly and carefully as Tseng knows Rufus can manage. He is careful, so careful, to settle himself on the far end of the couch, far enough that he isn't touching Tifa at all. Tseng stretches his other hand along the back of the couch to rest it on Rufus's shoulder, knowing what Rufus is looking for -- what Rufus craves -- is a point of contact with him. Underneath the t-shirt he's wearing, Rufus's muscles are trembling, barely perceptible. They still at Tseng's touch, and Tseng knows this is what Rufus needed, and he would not have asked if that need were not urgent.

Then Tifa moves again, and what she does makes Tseng want to stop breathing. She lifts her feet from underneath the couch cushion where she'd tucked them, the couch cushion Rufus is now sitting on, and -- slowly, deliberately, moving as though she might change her mind at any moment -- she walks her toes across the tops of the cushions until she can tuck those toes beneath Rufus's thighs.

Rufus looks at her like he can't believe the evidence of his own body. Moving just as slowly, his eyes on hers the whole way and watching for some sign his touch would be unwelcome, he lifts one hand and -- as gently as though touching a masterwork of art -- curls it around Tifa's ankle. Completing the circuit. Tseng tries to remember if it's the first time he's seen Tifa touch Rufus, or Rufus touch Tifa, in any context other than their sparring contest this morning. He gives up when he can't remember, because there are other (more important) things to think about.

Tifa doesn't close her eyes again. She keeps her eyes locked on Rufus's, and when she speaks, her voice is so soft Tseng knows it would not carry past the couch. "It wasn't you," she says. Rufus's whole body tenses at her words. "It was him. Not you. It might be your responsibility, but it wasn't your fault."

That Tifa can think to offer comfort, even now -- to the man whom Tseng heard her vow not twenty-four hours gone never to trust, with anything -- makes Tseng's throat close over. "You don't know that," Rufus says. He sounds just as quiet, and just as controlled, and just as miserable. "Not for sure. I was the one who asked him to look into things when he got there. Whatever he found in that mansion --"

"Whatever he found in that mansion," Tifa says, "I think I've conclusively demonstrated that he was already ... not the man you knew ... by the time he got there. Whatever happened to him, it started before he arrived in Nibelheim." Her eyes are locked on Rufus's face, and Tseng knows -- knows -- he is missing so much, in being unable to read the volumes he can see passing between them. (He can read Tifa. He can read Rufus. Rufus and Tifa reading each other, a strange and unexpected informational channel he'd never expected to see made manifest, could be in ancient Illyrican for all he can understand.)

"It's still on me," Rufus says. From any other man, it might be an attempt to claim unearned drama, to wallow in self-pity and beat his breast in elaborate theatrics. From Rufus, it is simply a statement of fact.

Tifa nods, once, slowly. "Yes," she says, and Tseng can feel, underneath his hand on Rufus's shoulder, Rufus's flinch at her words. Then she takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly, and the hairs on the back of Tseng's neck stand up, the way they always do when he is present at a moment that is being witnessed by the gods. "Yes. It is. And -- I forgive you for it. Be free of it. Let it go."

In her voice, Tseng can hear blanket absolution, can hear that Tifa holds the full and knowing measure of every drop of the blood of her people on Rufus's hands, can hear that Tifa understands -- comprehends -- accepts everything Rufus has done and has not done, and has weighed and measured it in her heart with care and judiciousness. Tifa would not say those words lightly. Rufus knows that much.

Or, if he doesn't by now, after a day to learn Tifa's depths and breadths, he simply has not been paying attention. And Rufus always pays attention.

Rufus is staring at her. His face is blank, but it isn't the blankness of Rufus trying to control his reaction lest it be used against him; it's the blankness of Rufus not having any idea what comes next. Tseng's seen it a few times, over the years; somewhere along the way, Rufus trained himself into freezing when he's confronted with something he simply cannot integrate into his worldview, working to keep himself from giving too much away, and by now it's simply second nature. Watching him, Tseng thinks Rufus's mind, right now, is like a computer that has been fed too many contradictory inputs and is simply refusing to process any of them.

Tseng can relate. He sits there, his arm wrapped around Tifa, and watches her words begin to work their way through Rufus, from ears to mind to ... something. He can feel, underneath the hand still on Rufus's shoulder, the trembling start up again in Rufus's muscles, so tiny and minute he can't see it, can only feel. Tifa must feel it too: she reaches forward (straining from where she is sitting on Tseng's lap, and if she were any less in shape, her abs would be screaming at her from holding her up), bridging the distance between them, and -- telegraphing the movement, moving so slowly that Tseng knows she is giving Rufus every opportunity to protest -- rests her fingertips against his cheek, as light as a feather.

It's Tifa's gesture of comfort, of reassurance, and Rufus blinks -- once, twice -- and then brings his hand up as well, resting his against the back of hers, his eyes wide. "I --" he starts.

"I said," Tifa says, sounding sharper this time, "I forgive you. Don't throw that away."

Tseng feels like he can't even breathe. Rufus blinks again. He's lost the control over his face; as Tseng watches, his defenses crumble into nothingness, and behind them lies agony and relief in equal parts. A heartbeat, another, and then Rufus is burying his face in his hands (knocking Tifa's hand out of the way), breathing deeply and slowly, and by then the tremors have turned visible. The motion is enough to snap Tseng out of his reverie; he unwraps the arm he's been holding around Tifa and slides it down her back, stopping just above where her shirt (his shirt) is tied up, holding it there to help hold her up so she need no longer rely on her core strength alone to keep her in place. With the other hand, he squeezes Rufus's shoulder, digging his fingertips into Rufus's trapezius muscles, right where he knows they always ache.

"Right," Rufus says, muffled through his palms. Nonsense words, meant to delay the moment where he'll need to say something of substance. "I -- yeah." He rubs his hands sharply up his face, ending with them in his hair, pulling sharply. "Right. I --"

It's the most inarticulate Tseng has seen Rufus in years, but then again, this is perhaps the biggest surprise Rufus has gotten in years. He's just about to suggest a break, for them to pause and give everyone involved a moment to regain their composure (give Rufus a chance to regain his composure; Rufus hates letting anyone see him this unsettled) when Tifa beats him to it. He can't see her face, not with her leaning so far forward, but he can hear the rueful warmth in her voice. "We can tactfully pretend the last five minutes didn't happen, if it would help."

It makes Rufus laugh, which makes Tseng glad to see. "No, I'm -- I just -- I have no earthly idea what to possibly say to that. Except -- thank you." Another pause, and just when Tseng thinks Rufus has finished speaking, he adds, "I will do everything I possibly can to be worthy of it."

Tifa tilts her head to one side, and Tseng can imagine the expression on her face, that thoughtful consideration she so excels at. "If I didn't believe that," she says, "I wouldn't have said it in the first place."

Then the moment is passing; Tifa slides her feet out from under Rufus's thighs and eases herself off Tseng's lap, so smoothly it takes Tseng a second to realize what she's doing. He fumbles, just an instant too late, to help her up, but of course she doesn't need the assistance. Once standing, she picks up the whiskey Rufus had poured her to replace the one she'd dropped, takes a healthy gulp, and follows it by drinking half her bottle of water, all at once. She has her back to them while she does, which Tseng thinks might be a tactful offering to Rufus of a few moments to compose himself.

Rufus, when Tseng looks over at him, is still looking shell-shocked. He looks at Tseng, and Tseng has no trouble reading the expression on his face: part of Rufus can't believe Tifa means what she just said, part of Rufus knows (already) Tifa doesn't say things she doesn't mean, and the part of Rufus that will always and eternally be eleven years old and looking for validation (vindication, affection, attention) is still in shock at hearing the words. (It will take a long time, and possibly several repetitions of the same core theme, before that part of Rufus begins to believe.)

Tseng squeezes his shoulder again -- it's all right; she means it; let it go -- and clears his throat. "Maybe a break for dinner?" he offers, as gently as he can. "If you wouldn't rather get the last of this over with."

"No," Tifa says, her back still to them, playing with the label on the water bottle. "No, I think -- A break might be a good idea. The rest of it is ... difficult."

Tseng isn't sure if she truly means she'd like a break, but he knows "difficult" is an understatement, and he isn't sure which of them she's trying to protect. (Both, probably. If she'd only meant it would be difficult on her, she would have said 'difficult to say', or something much like; if she'd meant otherwise, she would have said 'difficult to hear'. The tactful elision speaks volumes.) "All right," he says. "Do you have any preferences? For dinner, I mean."

Tifa does turn at that, looking more than a little startled. "I -- I guess I'd assumed --" She waves a hand towards the rest of the apartment, vaguely. "I mean, I could cook. I'm used to it."

"You could cook if there were any food in this place to cook," Rufus says, dryly, and Tseng feels a surge of relief that Rufus has recovered his composure enough to joke. (That it's true doesn't make it any less of a joke.) "He has every place that delivers to this address on speed-dial."

"Not true," Tseng protests, mildly enough that Rufus will hear it as the relief it truly is. "Only the ones that don't suck." He pushes himself up to standing, after giving Rufus's shoulder one last squeeze. "I'll get the menus. Tifa, you're welcome to choose."

Tifa's brows draw together, and the look on her face says Tseng has stumbled over an unmarked landmine. "I --" She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. "Just pick something. I don't care what it is."

He looks at Rufus; Rufus looks at him. Rufus's face is a question; Tseng shrugs his answer. He doesn't have a clue what Tifa could possibly be thinking, or what might be bothering her. (That something is bothering her is clear.) Rufus moves into the silence, though, with the ease he always displays in defusing awkward situations. "What's the name of that Wutaian place you keep ordering from?" Rufus asks. "Why don't you call them up and tell them to send whatever, for four. If they know it's for you, they'll pull out all the stops."

It's a good enough suggestion; Saotome-san is one of the very few of Tseng's fellow countrymen living in Midgar who don't consider Tseng a traitor to all they hold dear, and every time Tseng is feeling homesick for familiar cuisine, he heads over there, or calls them up, and tells Saotome-san to use his discretion. (The food he gets is always utterly unlike what passes for "Wutaian" food here in Midgar, and utterly unlike what Saotome-san serves to his other customers.) Tseng glances at Tifa for approval of the plan; she shrugs, one shoulder rising and falling, and Tseng takes that as answer enough. He unpins his hair and goes to make the call.

When he comes back -- after a stop in the hallway to order Reno down to the lobby to wait for the delivery -- neither Rufus nor Tifa is in the sitting room. Tseng beats down the instinctive surge of worry -- he knows the building is as secure as any in Midgar, but not finding Rufus where he left him always unfurls a tiny thread of panic, and probably will for the rest of his natural life. But a second later, he hears the voices drifting in from the balcony outside, sees the slight gap in the shōji screen where it was imperfectly closed. A wisp of smoke drifts in, as confirmation.

He's debating with himself whether he should join them (he could use a cigarette himself) or leave them be when he hears the raised-spike irritation of Tifa's voice, and that seals it. He isn't above a little eavesdropping (all right, a lot of eavesdropping) when the opportunity presents. He moves a little closer, careful not to get in between the light and the screens to cast shadows, just in time to catch the tail end of what she's saying: "-- work with you. That doesn't mean you get rights to everything I'm thinking."

Tseng would be more worried, if he didn't know the tones of her voice well enough to say this isn't her true anger; that's much colder. This is Tifa peeved, Tifa annoyed, but not the sort of anger to require him to intervene before someone gets pitched off the edge of the balcony. Rufus's voice, answering, confirms his suspicions; he knows Rufus's cadences far better than he knows Tifa's, and Rufus is just as irked but not angry at all, not beyond the sort of anger Rufus always covers with when he is truly disconcerted. "If it's something that will affect our working relationship, then yes, I do have the right to know. Especially if you're serious about wanting to accompany us to Nibelheim."

Tifa's frown is audible. "You know I am. Or rather, I thought you knew --"

"Yeah," Rufus agrees. "I know. And I know why. But in order to make that happen, I'm going to have to pull more than a few strings and arrange a few things in ways that you probably won't want to know about, and you're going to have to play along and pretend, and if whatever was bothering you so much in there is going to cause problems with that, I need to know. Now. Before I get too far along in planning." Pause, and then Rufus's voice softens, smooths out from his commander-of-everything tone to the more intimate voice he uses among his true friends. "You don't have to tell me everything --"

"It's nothing," Tifa says, and her voice is calming, too; Rufus must have bent his body language to the problem of easing out her snappishness. "It's stupid. It's just --"

She trails off, going silent, and Tseng is just about to go join them after all, thinking his presence might make her more willing to talk, when Rufus says, more gently than Tseng would have given him credit for being able to manage, "It's the contrast between Below and Above, getting to you, isn't it."

Of course. Of course; Tseng should have been able to intuit that answer himself (and he's a little surprised Rufus could, but then again, Rufus and Tifa have demonstrated a rather startling ability to read each other so far). Tifa's voice, when she speaks, sounds rueful. "That obvious, is it?"

Rufus chuckles, softly. "Tseng missed it, if that's any consolation. But I saw your face this morning, when you came back from the market, and when you were explaining your problems with getting supplies, and it was enough like your face just now that I guessed. Look, I told you this morning, and I meant it: I'm going to fix that."

"You're going to try," Tifa corrects, as swiftly as though she'd been waiting for Rufus to say that very thing. "And you've told me, both in words and in what you aren't saying, that you don't have the ability to fix everything, and you don't even see everything that needs to be fixed --"

"So help me," Rufus says, and his voice is like the snap of a serpent striking. "You're right; I don't have any idea what life in the slums is like. So tell me. Show me what needs to change, and I will change it."

There's an intensity in Rufus's voice that worries Tseng. Rufus, when roused to knowledge of a problem, will move heaven and earth to fix it, and Tseng has seen him, in the past day, becoming slowly aware of just how much life in the slums is a problem. And Rufus is good, and Rufus is used to maneuvering under the radar, and Rufus has been playing corporate games of precedence and negotiation for at least as long as Tseng has known him, and the last thing Rufus needs right now, while they're in the middle of trying to figure out the answers of Nibelheim, is to become embroiled in an extended battle against his father over the economic policies of Midgar. It's a one-way ticket back to Junon. Or worse. Overturning these rocks may be danger enough; Rufus does not need more.

When Tifa sighs this time, it's loudly enough for Tseng to hear it, drifting in on the wind along with Rufus's cigarette smoke. "I believe you will try," she says, her voice having the sound of someone picking carefully through a field of unexploded bombs. "And I believe you'll probably succeed, at least to some extent. Eventually. But ..." She trails off again, and Tseng wonders what volumes are passing between them, in looks and in body language, that he cannot see from his vantage point inside. "I've spent at least two years of my life despising Shinra with everything I have in me," she says, finally. "And -- I said last night that I would never trust you, could never trust you, but you -- we --"

Another pause. Tseng thinks, from the way the shadows move against the backdrop of Midgar by night, that she's pacing. "I think I may have been wrong about that," she says, abruptly, and Tseng stops breathing. "I think you're doing the best you can, and playing out the hand you were dealt, which is a way shittier hand than I ever would have thought, but that doesn't mean I have to like the fact my entire world has been picked up and shaken around in the last day. And I don't. Like it, I mean. If we -- if you really can change things the way you say you want to, it will be worth it. Even if you can't change everything. But if you're going to expect me to be all smiles, if you're going to expect me to never have a moment when I want to wring your neck, you're going to damn well be disappointed. If I can't snarl inside my head at one of you expecting to be able to pick up the phone and have a banquet for four brought to your doorstep like it's your fucking right or something, when there are children starving right underneath your feet, this alliance is doomed before it even gets off the ground."

There's silence for another minute or two. Tseng can hear the click of Rufus's lighter, opening and closing, a sign Rufus is thinking; Rufus only chain-smokes when he is either at his desk or working through a problem in his head. "Fair enough," Rufus finally says. The lighter clicks, clicks, clicks, and Tseng can imagine Rufus leaning over, elbows on the railing, cigarette in one hand and lighter in the other, fiddling. "I told you this morning you'd probably want to strangle me more than once. But for Ramuh's sake, don't take it out on Tseng. He's doing the best he can."

Eavesdroppers rarely hear anything about themselves they like, and Tseng knows he should make himself back away, go back to sitting on the couch (or go prepare the dining room table for when their dinner gets here) before Tifa can answer. He doesn't. Mostly because Tifa starts speaking, hard on Rufus's heels, before he can do anything. "Don't you bring him into this," she says, heavy and vicious. "He has nothing to do with this. At all."

The lighter clicks. "Ah," Rufus says. Tseng knows that sound. It's what Rufus sounds like when he's had a cherished theory confirmed. "So. You do love him, then. I'd wondered."

Tseng can hear Tifa growling, softly enough to be more a barely leashed hum than anything Tseng can truly hear. Or maybe that's just due to the rushing of his blood singing in his ears. Whatever Tifa might say, whatever Rufus might answer, is lost in the sound of heavy banging: Reno, kicking at the door, his hands too full of the delivery bags to reach the keycard Tseng left him. Tseng swears (silently, internally) and beats it to open the door before Rufus or Tifa can come looking for the source of the noise and spot him eavesdropping. (Oh, Leviathan, he wishes Reno had showed up two minutes earlier or two minutes later.)

"Pizza delivery," Reno sings out when Tseng opens the door. He's laden with packages, plastic containers stored in paper bags wrapped around with plastic bags for the handles, and Tseng sees the tableau with eyes sensitized by Tifa's complaint and realizes for the first time in a long time how conspicuous Midgar's conspicuous consumption truly is. (Once upon a time, he would've noticed without needing to be prompted. When he was fresh-come to Midgar, he'd spent days with eyes wide, when no one could see him, at every last bit of Midgar's excess. He's not sure when it became simply second nature to him.)

But Reno is staring at him, good humor slowly leeching away, to be replaced with Reno's version of concern, and Tseng realizes he's missed his cue. "If it's pizza delivery, you've got the wrong apartment," he says, thirty seconds too late.

It's enough for Reno to crane his neck to look around, looking for evidence of what's going on. "You okay, boss?" he asks, voice low. (Dammit. Reno has always seen far too much, and while it's useful when applied to an object of surveillance, it is simply infuriating when applied to him.)

"Everything's fine," Tseng says, in the short, clipped tone that will tell Reno without having to be so crass as to deliver actual orders that Tseng doesn't want to talk about it. "Give me those. Rufus and Tifa are out on the balcony --"

"Rufus and Tifa are right behind you," Rufus says, from over his shoulder, and Tseng most carefully does not jump.

It's been a day.

"Dining room," Tseng says. "All of you. Before I start shooting."

It probably gives away too much -- he's pretty sure Rufus, at least, will be able to intuit Tseng was listening to them, but then again, Rufus likely would have believed from the very beginning. (It's always been safer for them both to assume the other, if even slightly within earshot, will be listening.) He can hear Rufus's chuckle, behind him, receding slightly; at least Rufus has decided to obey with grace. Or as close to it as Rufus gets.

Reno, still lingering in the doorway, casts a look over his shoulder; Tseng can see him chewing on his lip, likely evaluating the way Rufus and Tifa are within each other's orbits without bloodshed. Or possibly looking for evidence of prior bloodshed. "So I'm eating in the hallway, yeah?" he says. Unspoken, his willingness to do so, should Tseng but say the word.

Tseng closes his eyes and counts to ten. In Wutaian. "Come on," he says. "Just keep your mouth shut."

Reno looks wounded. "Aw, c'mon, boss, I'm housebroken."

"Get your ass in here, Reno," Rufus calls, from the direction of the dining room and kitchen. Tseng can hear plates clacking as Rufus takes them down from the cabinets; apparently they're going to be formal tonight. (More formal than they usually are when eating takeout, at least.) He wonders, suddenly, if Tifa can use chopsticks. (Tseng taught Rufus, years before. Reno eats sushi, both nigiri and maki, with his fingers; Tseng has long since despaired of ever teaching him manners.)

Reno raises an eyebrow to hear Rufus's order, looks to Tseng before moving. It's always interesting to see, how Reno confirms orders -- even Rufus's -- with Tseng first. But Tseng nods, and Reno shuts the door behind him, and together they head into the dining room.

Tifa's already sitting at the table. Like everything else in this apartment, Tseng's dining table is Wutaian-style (his Shinra employee apartment is done in soulless Midgar fashion, and is where he brings anyone who isn't among his circle of trusted intimates, with the exception of those whose noses he wishes to rub in his heritage). Tifa doesn't seem to be at all disconcerted by the unfamiliar furniture, though; she's kneeling on the cushion, almost in proper pose, rather than sitting cross-legged the way a westerner would. Her face doesn't show anything of the conversation Tseng overheard. Rufus is just coming out of the kitchen, hands piled high with plates and bowls; Tseng notes he has opted to bring four pairs of chopsticks, even though he knows Reno won't be using them, and thinks (not for the first time) that Rufus's sense of manners is impeccable. (He has no doubt Rufus will wait to see if Tifa reaches for chopsticks or not, and if she doesn't, he will eat with his hands as well.)

"Heya, Tif'," Reno says, dropping down to sit cross-legged on the cushions across the table from her. The genial greeting doesn't hide Reno giving her his closest inspection, although Tseng thinks he might be the only one who can see it. "Chief, you wanna grab me a bottle of beer, while you're up, yeah?"

"What, did someone shoot you in the knee in between the door and here?" Rufus asks, even as he's putting the dishes down on the table and turning around to fetch the drinks. (Tseng knows precisely what Reno's doing, and he's pretty sure Rufus does, too, or will if he thinks about it a little: Reno wants a minute to get a look at Tifa without the distortion of her reactions to Rufus being next to her, and possibly wants to show Tifa that Rufus is not as distant and unapproachable as most people think he is, in case Tifa hasn't realized yet. It's almost sweet, in a very Reno way.)

"Yeah, yeah," Reno calls after Rufus. "My legs are still asleep from sitting on my ass in the hallway. I was injured in your service, so you can damn well fetch me a damn beer."

"Your wish, my etcetera," Rufus calls back, dry like deserts. "Anybody else?"

"Water for me," Tseng says -- the last thing he needs at this very moment is to be drinking -- and kneels on the cushion in between Tifa and Reno, taking the spot with his back to the door. (It's his own home; his shoulderblades won't itch too badly, and he knows Rufus will grumble at him if he puts Rufus in that spot.) He begins opening the bags and taking out the platters of food. As expected, Saotome-san has outdone himself.

"I'm fine with water, too," Tifa says. She sounds perfectly normal. Tseng doesn't quite let himself look too closely at her, to see what her face might say.

As it turns out, Tifa can use chopsticks, although she fumbles once or twice at first, and Tseng thinks it might be the first time, or the first time in a while, that she's used them, when he catches her watching the way he holds his out of the corner of her eyes. (If it is, she's a fast learner.) Conversation for the first half of the meal is light, mostly due to Reno seizing the topic of discussion and holding onto it with both hands. He manages to keep going with tales of some of his and Rude's funniest disasters all the way through the soup and tsukemono and halfway through the sushi, and both Tifa and Rufus laugh in all the right places.

Still, Tseng is waiting for the other shoe to drop, and sure enough it does; Rufus interrupts as Reno finishes one story and is about to launch into the next. "Reno," is all he says.

Reno stops, knowing as well as Tseng does what that tone in Rufus's voice means. He dips his head and stares at his sushi. "Yeah, chief?"

"We're going to need a chopper and a pilot," Rufus says. "Tomorrow. First thing -- say, nine AM. Extra fuel, for the long haul."

Reno flicks his eyes over to Tseng; he knows damn well, or can intuit, that 'the long haul' refers to Nibelheim. "Yeah?" he says, finally. "How many people am I calculating weight ratios for?"

"Four, including you." Rufus manages to make it sound like an order, and to include the "and don't give me any backtalk" as part of it, hidden between his words. "I don't know how long we'll be gone. I'll arrange things with Heidegger. I think we'll be going to Cosmo Canyon to check something; it's far enough the fuel usage won't be suspect if anyone bothers looking, and we can jettison the difference on our way back."

Tseng can only see Reno's tiny wince because he's looking for it. "Yeah, okay," he says, sneaking another glance at Tseng to make sure Tseng won't object. "Ah, am I picking you up here, or ..."

There's no helipad on the roof of this building; Tseng chose quite deliberately, and partly for that reason. If they're bringing Tifa with them, Reno will have to either land on the street -- and Heidegger will hear about that -- or they're going to have to bring Tifa up to one of the Shinra buildings. Neither is a very good option.

Rufus's lips twist. He glances at Tifa; Tifa looks back at him, and Tseng knows she can tell there's something wrong. "It's up to you," he says, quietly. "This buiding doesn't have a helipad. We can arrange for pickup outside, but it'll involve shutting down the street for at least twenty minutes or so, and that'll be conspicuous. We can go for the park down the street, which means witnesses. Or, we pick up the chopper on the roof of the building I live in, which means you and Tseng meeting me at the Shinra residential tower."

Tifa chews on her lower lip; Tseng can see her thinking. "If it were just the two of you, you'd get picked up there, wouldn't you," she says. It's not a question.

Rufus inclines his head. "Yes. But we can work with either of the other options; I did agree to the conditions you set."

Tifa purses her lips. The expression is not a happy one. "That's what you meant when you said I was going to have to play along, isn't it," she says. That, too, isn't a question. "Assuming I say yes, which I am not yet: what's my story?"

"Either my new personal assistant, or Tseng's new recruit for the Turks," Rufus says, so quickly Tseng knows he's been thinking up a cover for Tifa since the moment she first said she wanted to join them on their trip to Nibelheim. "Either one works. I've been auditioning PAs for the past four months after my last one quit; I can't find one who'll stick for more than two weeks." (Which is true; Rufus is an incredibly demanding boss. Tseng sees Tifa's lips quirk, ever-so-slightly, and remembers the troubles she's been having with finding and keeping help, too.) "And the Turks are understaffed, and have been for a while, because Tseng's picky about hiring, so they're always on the lookout for new recruits. The PA cover is more solid; the new-recruit cover would give you more respect among the rest of the company. Again, your choice."

The table falls quiet for a few moments; Tseng can see Reno very deliberately not asking, although he's fidgeting as though he wants to say something. (Tseng would kick him if they were sitting at a Midgar-style table, but he's kneeling right now; it would be too conspicuous.) Tifa is thinking it over, carefully picking through her options. "When you say 'more solid', you mean --"

"He means Heidegger would expect to've at least met you already, if you were gonna be one of us," Reno says, quietly, as serious as Reno ever gets. Tifa turns her look on him; he looks back at her, and Tifa blinks a few times, seeing Reno's professional face again. "The boss gets to do his own hiring, and we'd backdate the paper trail, make it so that the forms were buried on Heidegger's desk somewhere he'd believe he'd just lost 'em in the pile, but you'd have to deal with him at least once when you got back, probably, depends on how long you were gonna need the cover. We'd say you couldn't hack it when you were ready to go back."

Tifa winces, ever so slightly. "And the other?"

Rufus shrugs. "Nobody would look twice. My last PA walked out on me on Wednesday; it usually takes me two days or so to comb through the files and get another candidate from HR. I haven't, yet; somehow I got a little distracted." That wrings a tiny smile out of Tifa. "Using that cover would give you an excuse for being wherever I am, for as long as we needed. When we wind up back in Midgar, and if we think you might still need access to the Shinra building, which we probably will, you'll have to spend at least a day or two in the office with me. I'll do my best to keep from being too much of an overbearing asshole, but I'm not easy on my PAs and I couldn't be too easy on you without it being suspicious." He anticipates Tifa's next question, or reads it from her face: "Filing, paperwork, running errands, calling people and arranging appointments, keeping my calendar. It's not difficult work, it's just tedious. I have a secretary -- administrative assistant -- to handle a lot of it, but despite being able to do the work of three people, she can't do everything, and she keeps threatening to quit if I go through another PA and the work winds up back on her desk."

Something makes Tifa wince again. "If it involves computer work, that's probably out," she says. "I've never used one before."

"I'd teach you," Tseng says, quietly. (Of the two potential covers, it's the better option, by a long shot. He does not want to think about what Heidegger would do or say to her, especially if Heidegger thought Tseng had done an end-run around him to hire a new Turk; it's been years since they've had a woman on the team, and Heidegger is most of the reason why. He could make the story work -- Rufus is right, they are understaffed and have been for a long damn time, but it takes time to find people with the right attitudes -- but the deception would be difficult, and probably quite hard on her.) "You're fast enough; you could learn enough to fake it in a day or so."

Rufus nods. "I usually hire for PAs out of the secretarial pool, but not always. It wouldn't be too out of character to have a new PA who didn't know everything right up front; the system we use is different enough from the system at the university that people are usually lost at first anyway."

Tifa stares at them both for a long moment. Then she sets her chopsticks down (sticking them into the rice bowl, Tseng notices, and winces; he hopes it isn't an omen) and gets up from the table without saying another word, striding out of the room. A minute later, Tseng hears the screen door to the balcony closing behind her.

"Well, that went well," Rufus mutters.

Reno leans over. "Give her a second, yeah, chief?" he says, and Tseng can hear Reno's own edged brand of compassion in it. "You can't expect her to be jumping for joy over this immediately."

"Let me go talk to her," Tseng says, quietly. Rufus casts him an annoyed glance; Tseng tries to look calm. He pushes himself up from the table. "Don't eat all the inari before I get back."

When he slides open the door to the balcony, knocking softly on its edge to herald his arrival, Tifa has both of her hands clenched around the balcony railing and is resting her forehead between them. She straightens up when he comes to stand beside her and looks out over Midgar by night, but he doesn't think she's truly seeing the view. He doesn't say anything, just rests his hand at the small of her back; she holds herself stiff for a long, worrisome minute before relaxing into the touch.

"I hate this," she says, finally. "I hate this so much."

"I know you do," Tseng says, trying as hard as he can to keep any sort of sympathy out of his voice; he knows that anything that could be mistaken as being in even the same neighborhood as pity will go over right now like a lead balloon. "Too many choices, and none of them good ones."

That makes Tifa laugh, hollow and aching. "No, if none of them were good ones, that would be easier," she says, and her voice is wild. "The problem is, there is a good choice. It's just the one I least want to do."

Tseng winces. Too much to hope she wouldn't see that, yes. "He wasn't lying," he says. "We truly could make any of the options work." (If they try hard enough. If they get lucky.)

"Don't lie to me, Tseng," Tifa says, sharply. "You know as well as I do there's a best option out of all of the ones on the table. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times: don't assume I'm stupid."

Her anger stings, even though he knows the reason for it: she is angry about so many things right now, and he's a safe target to displace her anger upon. "I have never assumed you are stupid," he says, keeping his voice as calm as possible. "And I have never lied to you. You know that as well as I do. I will refuse to answer, I will refuse to volunteer information, I will flat out tell you I can't tell you, but I have never lied to you directly."

She deflates a little at his words, her shoulders slumping over. "I know," she whispers. "I know. I'm sorry." She breathes in, long and slow. "You know what I have to say, don't you."

"I do," he says. He rubs one thumb along the line of her waist, where her shirt is riding up. Her skin is warm, even in the cool air of night, despite the sweet breeze that's one of his favorite things about this location. "And I meant it. I will help you as much as I can. And so will he."

"Yeah." She leans over again, rests her forehead back on the railing. "Okay. Okay. This had better be worth it, dammit."

"I hope it will be," Tseng says, quietly, as Tifa straightens up and marches back into the apartment.

Rufus and Reno break off their conversation as Tifa strides in. She doesn't give either of them a chance to react, just points straight at Rufus. "Do whatever you need to do to make the personal assistant thing happen," she says. Orders. "And if you piss me off too much, I will kill you at your desk."

Rufus spins his chopsticks in his hand, sets them down on the table next to his plate. He inclines his head, once, gracious as ever in victory. "Thank you," he says, softly.

Tifa rubs a hand over her face. Tseng thinks he's never seen her looking quite so defeated. "Don't make me regret it," she says.

Reno pushes himself up to standing, shaking out his legs as he goes (he always bitches they fall asleep whenever he's stuck sitting at Tseng's table). "C'mere, Tif'," he says, and when Tifa turns a startled look at him, he smiles. (Reno is so very good with skittish things when he wants to be.) "You're gonna need to dress the part. I'll run out and take care of it; I just need to know your sizes."

The corner of Tifa's mouth twitches up a bit. Tseng can't decide if it's irritation or amusement. "If this is just a cheap excuse to cop a feel --"

Reno puts his hand over his heart and affects an innocent look. "Would I do that? Don't answer that. Seriously, I'm good at sizing, I got three sisters, I just need to get a good look at you in good light, get some approximate measurements. Without the shirt and skirt on, you're willing, but you're not, I can deal, yeah?"

Tifa closes her eyes and takes a deep breath; Tseng sees her lips moving, can't quite tell what she's saying to herself. "Yeah," she agrees. "Don't make me have to break a kneecap."

"Expense everything," Tseng tells Reno. "And be sure to get things she can move in." Things she can fight in, if she has to, he means, and he knows Reno will know what he isn't saying.

"Yeah, I ain't stupid," Reno says, easily. He gestures Tifa into the living room with a sweeping bow, even though Tseng thinks Tifa would be perfectly willing to strip down right here. Reno is fiercely protective of others' privacy, though; Tseng thinks it's because he didn't get a lot of his own, before Tseng hired him.

Left alone with Rufus again, Tseng drops back down onto the cushion like a puppet with its strings cut, reaching for Reno's beer. (It's empty, dammit.) "This has not been the best day in the history of the world," he says, weary beyond all measure.

"Cheer up," Rufus says. "It'll get even worse after dinner when she finishes her story."

"I'm going to drop you off the balcony," Tseng says. "After I finish eating."

"I cannot measure the depths of the joy I am filled with that I now apparently have two people in my life willing to rise to the task of threatening my life in every conversation," Rufus says, and picks his chopsticks back up.

Tifa comes back five minutes later, looking less mutinous than Tseng would've guessed; she's dressed (again?) but has left her shirt (Tseng's shirt) back in the living room, and Tseng tries not to look disappointed. (He hadn't expected to find the sight of her in his clothes so ... comforting, really.) "Four hours!" Reno hollers, a second before the door slams behind him. (Reno has never met a door he was willing to close gently.)

"Should I fear what he's going to bring back for me?" Tifa asks, hovering awkwardly in the doorway. Her eyes sweep over the table; Rufus and Tseng have carefully left one of each of the pieces of sushi assortment for her, but she doesn't seem interested in sitting back down again. "And was he lying about having sisters?"

"No, he really does have three," Tseng says. "He generally won't admit it to anybody but another one of us, since Turks' families are a typical target when someone wants to try to make us ... cooperate, but he does have sisters. Their mother died when Reno was in his early teens; he mostly raised them." He doesn't elaborate on what Reno's life was like, back then. It's Reno's business if he wants to tell Tifa or not. (He hopes Reno will; his story might help reassure Tifa, or provide her with an ally. Make her believe she has an ally, he should say; Tifa has already won alliance from every person in this room.)

"Huh," Tifa says. Her eyes are a little distant; Tseng thinks she might be trying to assimilate that knowledge into her picture of Reno.

"There's still some sushi," Rufus says, careful to make it an invitation to sit back down and not an attempt to obligate her to. "Would you like to sit down and finish eating, or are you done?"

"Hm?" Tifa looks at Rufus, still a bit unfocused, then shakes herself slightly and focuses in sharply on him. "Oh. No. No, that's okay. I'm not as hungry as I thought I was." Tseng wonders if Reno said something to her while they were in the other room. (No, he knows Reno would've said something to her. He wonders what Reno said, to make her so distracted.) "Reno said he'd leave the packages in the hallway when he got back and text you to say they were there," she says, to Tseng. "So he didn't interrupt."

Tseng only nods; that's standard procedure. "And no, you don't need to worry about what he's going to find you," he says. "He only dresses like that himself because he likes it when people underestimate him. He's fairly good at figuring out what'll look good on someone, and he knows where is open at this time of night." Too late, he realizes this is probably another example of the conspicuous consumption Tifa was protesting earlier, but she doesn't seem to object. (He really must ask Reno what he said to her.)

"I'll put the rest of the sushi in the fridge," Rufus says, unobtrusively stacking plates (he has the server's skill of balancing plates and containers halfway up his arms; Tseng notices Tifa noticing, but she doesn't say anything) and withdrawing into the kitchen.

Left alone, Tseng rises from the table and goes back to Tifa's side. "Are you all right?" he asks, quietly enough that Rufus won't hear. "Did Reno say something?"

She focuses in on him again. "Hm? Oh. No, nothing, really. Or, I mean, nothing more than asking me questions about what colors I like and what kind of reach I need in the pants. I'm sorry. I just -- It's been a long day, and I'm very tired, and we still have a lot of things to go over. And Reno was staring at -- at the scarring, and he didn't say anything, but I could feel him wanting to, and ..." She makes a little hand gesture. "You know. It got me thinking. About what I still haven't told you."

Tseng winces lightly. "Ah. Yes." He strokes a hand lightly down her arm, and when he gets to her wrist, she turns her hand and takes his. The simple, unthinking touch goes a long way towards easing his fears. "Can I get you anything?" he offers. He knows she probably won't say yes, but he has to make the offer anyway.

But Tifa surprises him. "Actually, you can give me five minutes. If you don't mind. I'd like to ..." She trails off, sighs again. "I'd like to get out of these clothes and into something more comfortable. I have a feeling that once I'm done, I'm going to want to go straight to bed, and I'm not going to want to change."

Unspoken, the knowledge hanging between them, the thought that she likely isn't going to be good for much once she finishes telling them the truth of what happened to her. "Of course," Tseng says softly, squeezing her hand. "Let me get your bag. You can have your choice of the spare bedroom or my bedroom."

"Your bedroom," she says, before he can barely finish speaking, and he's grateful once again that her response to adversity is not to push him away, but to cling to him. "If -- If you don't mind, I mean."

"I never mind," he says, softly, and lifts his other hand to brush his fingertips against her lips, using her own gesture in the hopes it will show her how much he really means it. "Down that hall, on your left. I'll be in in a minute with your bag."

When she comes out a few minutes later to rejoin them in the sitting room, she's changed into the pair of navy sweatpants hacked off at the knee he's seen her wearing to sleep in on particularly chilly winter nights (usually she wears nothing to bed unless there's someone else in the building, secure in her status as child of a mountainous village that has much harsher winters than Midgar ever sees, but there were a few days last winter where even she loosened up enough to turn up the heat and wear clothes to sleep in, under extra blankets piled high) and a dove-grey tank top that clings to her curves in all the right places. Tseng can't help but look at Rufus, who has returned to sitting in the same freestanding chair he'd chosen earlier, before he'd moved to the couch; Rufus never leers at women (never has, and Tseng has never had to teach him not to) but he's never failed to at least appreciate them, especially ones that look like Tifa. Rufus doesn't let that appreciation show anywhere Tseng can see it this time, though.

Moving like a sleepwalker, Tifa comes to a stop next to where Tseng has settled on the couch, where he'd been sitting before dinner, and looks at Rufus. "You're probably going to want to be over here for this," she informs him. Her tone is plain, blank, matter-of-fact; it takes Rufus a long few seconds to realize what she's said.

"That good, huh," Rufus says, in an undertone, but he's getting up anyway, sitting down on the other end of the couch. Tseng stretches out one hand to pull him a little bit closer, resting his palm on the nape of Rufus's neck the way he does when he's trying to offer the most comfort, like he's trying to reach in through Rufus's spine and silence the thoughts buzzing in Rufus's head. Rufus closes his eyes and leans back into the touch, eyes slitting shut.

Tifa watches the whole interchange without saying a word; Tseng can't read her face. He holds his other hand out to her, expecting her to take up her position on his lap again. She surprises him; she comes over on silent feet, then settles down on the floor in between him and Rufus and pulls his hand down until it rests on her shoulder. There's a knot beneath his thumb (there always is; Tifa's shoulders are rock, and not only due to how muscular they are; it's where she holds most of her tension) and he digs his thumb into it automatically. She leans her head back and rests it on his thigh, and the sound she makes is halfway on the way to being a moan.

"Okay," Tifa says, drawing her knees up to her chest, splaying her feet so one of them rests against Tseng's and one rests against Rufus's for balance. "I think ... We're really, really close to the end of the useful information I can give you. I know I said that before, but ... here's where it gets really bad."

Rufus looks over at Tseng, his face saying, plain as day, it wasn't bad before? But it's a different kind of bad, and Rufus well knows it. "Understood," Rufus says, quietly. His hand twitches, where it's resting on his thigh, and Tseng thinks he's fighting back the impulse to rest it on Tifa's other shoulder.

"Yeah," Tifa says, nonsense syllables to ease her back into the habit of talking. She closes her eyes -- Tseng can just see her face, from where she is sitting against him, and he thinks she doesn't realize that he can, or she would move -- and she looks like she's focusing on controlling her breathing again. Tseng makes himself match her breaths, in and out, in the hopes the sound of his breathing will help to give her body a focus. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Rufus doing the same; he was the one to teach Rufus all those subtle small tricks to control an interaction or to set another person at ease, but sometimes he thinks Rufus was only humoring him by pretending he didn't already know.

There's silence for a long minute, Tifa's chest rising and falling underneath the clinging grey fabric, as they all breathe together. From here, Tseng can see a few inches of the scar along her chest. He wonders if she chose that tank top, rather than the more high-necked ones he knows she owns, to make a point, or to underscore her story.

"I was -- it was sort of like being in a daze," she finally says. "I came out of it -- I don't know how much longer. I was standing on the overlook over the town, and if S-Sephiroth had looked up, at any point, he would have seen me. He didn't look up. He was concentrating on setting the whole town on fire, block by block, house by house, and he didn't stop until everything was burning. Everything except the mansion on the outskirts of town. He'd have to stop every few minutes, to kill another person who was trying to rush him with whatever weapon they could find. And once it all was on fire, he looked at it all, and even from up there I could see that his face was just ... blank. Like there was nothing there. It ... I want to say that it didn't look human, except I don't know if I was projecting that onto him, because I didn't want to believe that any human being could do that."

"Did he say anything?" Rufus asks, quietly.

Tifa shivers, once, one small tremor Tseng can feel against his leg. "When it was all done, he -- He cried out for his mother. It was loud enough for me to hear from up there. He sounded... I can't even think of a word for how he sounded."

Rufus hisses, one indrawn breath. Tseng looks over at him; Rufus shakes his head, quickly. Not now, he's saying, clear as day.

Tifa's voice is calm, almost meditative. Tseng thinks the long pause before she began speaking again was for her to find that place of silence and calm inside of her, something to cling to through the rest of what she has to say; Tseng has no idea what that something might be, but whatever it is, clearly it's necessary, because her face is telling him the next pieces are even worse than the parts that have already come. "He turned around, then. Finished looking around him, like he was evaluating a scene to see how well he'd done, and when he was satisfied -- he stopped to throw another fire spell at a block that wasn't burning fast enough to suit him -- he walked straight through the flames and out of the gates. I thought --"

She breaks her even breathing, takes a deep shuddering breath. "I thought he was coming for me. I really did. But he just kept going, into the mountains, and it was the same sort of being drawn that he'd had the other day. He went straight for the reactor. And I --" Another of those heaving breaths, and another, and Tseng rubs reassuring circles against her shoulder. "That's when I started running, too," she finally says, and the eerie calmness her voice is overlaid with starts to crack. "Because there was someone running after him, and it was my father."

Tseng bites his lip. He doesn't want to interrupt, but he wants to do something, something to let her know she isn't alone, that she doesn't have to push herself this hard. (But she does. She has information they need, and she knows it, and she has vowed to give it to them, and it doesn't matter how hard it is on her to tell the story; she has given her word, and Tseng knows how much that means to her.) Rufus must see it; his hand twitches again, and then he reaches up to where Tseng's other hand is resting on the nape of his neck, picking it up and moving it to two inches over Tifa's shoulder.

The instruction is as clear as though Rufus shouted it; Tseng lets his hand fall, switching to kneading her shoulders with both hands, and Tifa makes another of those bitten-back half-moans; this one sounds more pained than pleasurable, but when he stops, fearing he's hurting her, she knocks her shoulder back against him in clear instruction, so he goes back to working at the knots there.

"Where I was," she finally says, "it took me fifteen minutes -- even at a full run -- to get to a point where I could get on the path up to the reactor. And then -- and fuck, I'm still fucking kicking myself for this, even today --" It must be bad; Tseng can count the number of times he's heard Tifa use language like that on one hand. "Do you believe, I forgot that the bridge was out? I'd been on the fucking thing when it went, and I still forgot." She's laughing, then, dark and bitter. "So that lost me another ten minutes. I -- I think I made up for it in speed, a little. I don't know how fast I was running, and it was mostly dark out -- only a quarter moon -- I'm still surprised I didn't go down and snap an ankle or a leg bone. I guess I really did know the mountains as well as I thought."

Or the reflected light from the town on fire helped, Tseng thinks, but doesn't say.

"The door to the reactor was open when I got there," Tifa says, and Tseng isn't imagining it; her breathing is speeding up. He squeezes her shoulders, sweeps his hands over the lines of her muscles, works at them with as much tenderness as he can. "And my father was lying on the floor, just inside, in some kind of -- entryway, or vestibule, or something, and he was lying in a pool of his own blood, and he was dead. His body was still warm, and the blood had started clotting, but it hadn't started separating yet. Five minutes. I missed by five minutes, tops." (Tseng wonders how she knows what blood does, once it is no longer inside the body.) "There was -- there was a sword lying next to him. Sephiroth's sword. Like he'd -- killed -- killed my father and then just f-forgot to p-pick it back up again --"

Oh, Leviathan, his heart is breaking for her. Next to him, Rufus is looking like he wants to stop her, like he wants to tell her it's all right, stop there, you don't have to --

But she does, and all three of them know it.

Tifa stops before her voice cracks entirely. She breathes. Tseng breathes with her. (Right now, he'd breathe for her if he could.) Her hands twine together, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees; he thinks it's to keep her from clutching at her scar.

When she speaks again, she's found her self-control, and her voice is all but dead. Tseng wonders what this is costing her. Whatever it is, it's a debt he can never repay. "So I picked up the sword," she says, and both Tseng and Rufus twitch to hear her say it, because they both know full well Sephiroth was the only person in the world who had the strength to wield Masamune, and for Tifa to be able to have so much as picked it up speaks volumes about how much adrenaline she must have been riding at that point. "I couldn't -- I couldn't hold it very well, especially since it was about a foot and a half taller than I am, but at that point, I would've used anything. And that's -- Here's where I lose it. Here's where I really lose it. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry --"

"It's all right," Rufus says, so softly it takes a moment for Tseng to realize he's spoken. "You can stop there --"

Tifa shakes her head, roughly, sharply, and Tseng can see a few tears tracking their way down her face; he doesn't know if she knows they're there. "No. No, I can't. Because -- I don't know if this is real, but if it is real, you need to know it. I thought I was hallucinating it. I thought -- But with what you told me before dinner, it has to be real, doesn't it?" She breathes, deep and aching, and Tseng watches as she lets her hands untwine for just long enough to dash away the tears. (The motion is brisk, impatient. She is, he thinks, the only person in this room judging her for shedding them.) "Because I ran into the reactor, after Sephiroth, and there were -- I didn't see much. But there were some sort of -- pods, or cocoons, or coffins or something, arranged in tiers, and at the top of the steps leading up in the center of the tiers, there was a big thick door, and Sephiroth was standing in front of the door with his hands splayed out on it and his forehead leaning on it like he was trying to fucking commune with it, and there was something written over the door, and it was the word 'Jenova'."

Tseng stops breathing. He remembers Tifa's reaction, last night (was it really only last night?) when Rufus had been giving his version of this speech: all Hojo would tell him was that his mother's name was Jenova, and she died giving birth to him, and Tifa had been terrified and refused to say why, and if this is the reason, is it any wonder?

But Tifa is still talking, and she's lost the calm entirely; she's getting louder and louder, her voice speeding up, and all Tseng can do is hold on to her shoulders and try to tell her with every line of his body that he will find what is at the root of all of this and end it for her. "I shouted at him -- I don't even remember what it was -- and I -- I picked up the sword and I -- I ran at him, all the way up the stairs, and -- I'd forgotten everything I'd ever known about proper form, or how to fight, and I just -- I wanted him dead, I wanted him dead like my father was dead, like my town was dead, like everyone I'd ever known was dead, and I just charged straight at him, and he -- he took the sword away from me, like you take something sharp away from a baby, and he --"

She makes a gesture, one that's unmistakeable, even one-handed, as Sephiroth's favored overhand strike. Even now, she can't say the words. Her shoulders are quivering, hunched in upon themselves, her body trying to draw itself into as small a target as possible. Tseng watches as she gives in to the impulse, letting her knees fall into a cross-legged pose and wrapping her arms around her stomach, leaning over until she's curled into a miserable little ball, her forehead resting against her feet and against the floor.

So. Now he knows the details of where her scars came from.

Next to him, Rufus is quivering, as though it's all he can do to keep himself from launching off the couch and going to hurt something. He looks at Tseng; the anguish is plainly written across his face. Tseng shakes his head, not knowing any more than Rufus knows what either of them can do to help. (There isn't anything. There can't be. Not for this.)

A long minute passes, and Tseng is just about to reach for her, to slide off the couch and position himself next to her to take her into his arms, when Tifa sits up, gasping wetly for air, and pulls the hem of her tank top up to scrub over her face. "It was stupid," she says, picking straight up where she left off, her voice full of viciousness directed inward. "It's the stupidest thing I've ever done. I knew it wasn't going to do any good. I knew even while I was doing it. But I -- There wasn't anything else I could do. I had to. I had to try."

She's right; it was stupid. It's also the bravest, most gallant thing Tseng has ever heard. Oh so very carefully, Tseng puts his hands back on her shoulders. She falls back against his thigh as though his touch was the thing to remind her she'd been holding herself up, and having been reminded, she found she couldn't do it anymore. He slides one hand up her neck, around her jawline, and cups her cheek. Her skin is wet, and a second later, another tear hits Tseng's knuckles.

Quietly, moving as soundlessly as Tseng has ever seen him, Rufus slides off the couch and disappears through the door into the rest of the apartment. He comes back no more than a minute later, the box of tissues from the bathroom in his hands, and he is so very careful to keep his eyes fixed on the tatami mats and not on her as he places them in front of Tifa's feet before sitting back down on the couch.

Tifa takes a deep breath and a handful of tissues, then lets out the one and applies the other to her face, scrubbing so hard Tseng winces in sympathy as he moves his hand out of the way to give her access. She blows her nose, twice, then drops the sodden mass next to her. "Shiva damn it," she says, more under her breath than out loud. "I swore I wasn't going to do this in front of you again --"

"If anyone in the world questions your right to weep," Rufus says -- and oh, his voice is steel and death -- "I will break their neck with my own hands."

Tifa takes another breath at that, and when she lets it out, she's actually laughing. Not much, and not out of anything more than what Tseng thinks is a fairly understandable case of hysteria, all things told, but it's laughter, damp and wheezing. "That doesn't mean I have to like it," she says.

"No," Rufus agrees. "No, you find it humiliating. That much I know." His hand twitches again, and this time, he gives in to the impulse: he stretches that hand out and rests its fingertips against her bicep, a touch so light Tseng knows he's simply waiting for her to pull away. She doesn't; she doesn't quite lean into it, either, but Tseng thinks it's only because she's saving her strength for what few scraps of self-control she's managed to pull back together. "You're afraid we'll judge you for it, and for what you did, and I can tell you this: I do. I judge you very highly for it."

Tifa hiccups. It is, perhaps, the most pathetic sound Tseng has ever heard her make, and that includes the time he helped nurse her through last season's flu strain. "Just let me finish telling it," she says, instead of responding to Rufus's words. She sounds exhausted, worn through, having nearly burned through the last of her prodigious strength and only clinging to the final bits of it with bloodied fingernails. "I -- It didn't hurt at first. That was the strangest part. The sword -- stuck -- in my -- The doctor said, later, it went straight through my breastbone, one lung, five ribs, and the edge of my liver and stomach. He -- It's how I knew he had gone insane. Later. When I could think about it again. Anyone who's had the training that Se -- that he had knows not to hit that hard. You pull your strike, or your sword gets stuck in bone, and he had to have known. And he just didn't care. Because his sword did get stuck, and he yanked it out, and he pushed, and I went flying back down the stairs and I hit my head against the concrete and I knew I was dying and I --"

She gulps for air again, and Tseng imagines what it must have felt like, lying there on the floor of the reactor, one lung slowly filling with blood, dying and knowing she wouldn't die quickly enough for it to be a mercy. Rufus's hand shifts on her arm; Tseng can see the skin whitening, the sign Rufus is gripping hard enough she may very well have bruises in the morning, and it isn't until he looks down at his own hands that he realizes he's gripping her shoulders just as hard. He concentrates on his fingers, forces them to relax. Tifa isn't feeling it right now, he knows, but she may complain of the marks, later.

"It hurt, then," she says, and her voice is the sound of the child she must have been, once upon a time, stating that simple fact as though asking someone, anyone, to kiss it better. "It wasn't until after I landed that it started to hurt. I thought, oh, and I thought, he just killed me, and then -- it was like I was on fire, everywhere, and I couldn't breathe and when I did it sounded wrong and --"

She stops, and she must have realized her breathing has gotten high and tight and dangerous, because Tseng can feel her shuddering under his hands as she bends her force of will onto making her body realize it is here and not bleeding out on the floor of that reactor halfway across the world: her shoulders go down and her chest stills, forcing her breath back down into her belly where it belongs. "That's when I definitely started hallucinating," she says, after a long, long moment. "Because I was lying there, and I thought I heard the door open, and I thought I heard footsteps -- two sets of footsteps -- and a few minutes later, that boy I was telling you about -- Cloud -- he was kneeling over me, and I thought, oh. You came. I needed you, and you came. And he went away again, and there were more noises, like someone was fighting, and then --"

She shakes her head. "I don't know," she says. "I don't know. I keep trying to see it, I keep dreaming it, and it's different every time. Sometimes it's him. Sometimes it's the SOLDIER who was there on the mission. Sometimes it's someone I didn't meet until I was brought here. Sometimes it's the man who taught me the fighting arts. Sometimes it's my mother, even. All I know is someone had a mastered Restore, and someone carried me out of the reactor, and someone got me to Midgar -- somehow -- I don't know how, I don't remember any of it, I don't even know why Midgar --"

Tifa's voice is rising again, and Tseng reaches his hand up to cradle her cheek again, stroking his thumb over her jaw as gently as he can. "It's all right," he says, softly, putting as much reassurance as he can into his words. "Nobody expects you to be able to remember." (It would be helpful if she did. It would answer at least a few of the questions about what happened in that reactor, and possibly why Hojo wouldn't let any of the reconstruction team get anywhere near it. But he will be fucked if he gives her one hint, in word or in deed, that he blames her for the actions her mind took to protect itself when she thought she was dying.)

Tifa takes another deep breath, her chest heaving, her body shuddering. "You're hurting me," she says, to Rufus, in an undertone.

Rufus releases her like her skin is a stove that has just burned him. "Ramuh," he says. "I am so sorry --"

She shakes her head, slowly. "It's all right. I understand why." She takes another handful of tissues, scrubbing her face with them again, and drops them to join the first bunch. "The next thing I know, I was waking up, and it was a month later, and I was in Midgar, and all the doctor would tell me was that someone had brought me in to him -- he wouldn't tell me who, no matter how much I asked -- he said the person who brought me in broke a hell of a lot of Shinra's regulations to do it --"

"Unconditional pardon," Rufus says. He looks over at Tseng. "Find out who it was so I can issue it."

Tifa laughs at that, silently, or at least Tseng thinks that's what the ripple running through her shoulders is. "Yeah. Good luck in getting him to talk. I couldn't, not in the entire time I was there, and I somehow don't think he'll be any more eager to tell you. Anyway. I was recovering for about three months, total. It would've been slower if I hadn't been treated with materia first -- hell, I'd be dead if I hadn't been treated with materia first -- but because I was, it will never heal completely. I'm -- the doctor said I'm lucky to have gotten back all the function that I have. He didn't think I would. And when I was ready to get up and get moving again, he was the one who found Kyle for me, and got me the job there, and that's when I met you --" She twists in place to look up at Tseng; Tseng is glad to see her face looks calmer, at least -- her eyes are still red, but the tears have stopped coming. "And six months after that, Kyle was transfering title to the bar into my name and retiring for real this time, and you know the rest of the story."

Tseng knows he doesn't know all the rest of the story, but he knows enough, at least, and the parts she's glossing over aren't the parts that have any bearing on what happened in Nibelheim. He puts his hands back on her shoulders, working his thumbs as gently as he can into the knots there, mindful of the places where he can see the reddened skin of incipient bruising from where he was holding on. "Thank you," he says, because all the other things he wants to tell her are in Wutaian, in the highest mode possible, and he doesn't think she's up to the task of translating in her head right now.

She just looks at him, worn out and weary. "Tell me it was worth it," she says, and she isn't referring to what happened; she's referring to having told the story, having dragged that horrible night out of memory and spread it out for them so vividly. "Tell me it will help."

"It will help," Rufus says, slow and contemplative. "Jenova. You said -- The name over the door Sephiroth was trying to get into was Jenova. You're sure of it."

It isn't a question. Tifa turns to look at him. Whatever passes between them is more of that silent communication Tseng has been marveling at all night. "I thought I might have dreamed it," she says. "Until last night, you said the name. And I knew I hadn't."

"No," Rufus agrees. He looks at Tseng. "Nibelheim first. And then, depending on what we find there? We're going to go have a little talk with Hojo."

Tseng looks back. He flicks his eyes down to the back of Tifa's head, back up to Rufus. The corners of Rufus's eyes twitch, just a little, enough to let Tseng know his message has been received, and Rufus agrees: if Hojo is the one behind all of this, and it is becoming increasingly likely he is, they have both just agreed Tifa will be given the right of first refusal to be the one to kill him. (Tseng isn't sure if she'll take it or not; that is something he can't predict. Perhaps one of the only pieces of her behavior he can't. He could make a case for either option.)

But Tifa is sagging back against Tseng's knees, now, and he can feel the tremors running through her, minute and endless, like she's finally used the last scrap of her strength and Rufus's reassurance that her courage has helped was the sign she could stand down. "Good," she says, and oh, she sounds drunk. "I think -- I think I need to go collapse now --"

"Yes," Tseng agrees. He slides out from behind her, reaches both hands down to her; she looks up at them for a long minute, then seems to realize what they're for and puts her hands in his. "Come on. I'll bring you to bed." He flicks his eyes over to Rufus again, and Rufus nods, knowing Tseng is saying without words he'll come back once Tifa is asleep, for them to go over everything Tifa has said. Tifa misses it; she's too busy hauling herself to her feet, and once she's standing, it takes her a long minute of swaying in place before she's steady enough to let go of his hands.

He gets her into the bedroom with one arm around her waist, supporting her the whole way. It's awkward -- the height difference makes it hard for him to pace her steps -- but he's hauled Reno home drunk enough times that he has plenty of experience at manhandling semi-conscious bodies, at least. He sits her down on the side of the bed, remembering to unpin and unbraid her hair and comb it out with his fingers, and she's shaking the whole way. That, more than anything, is what decides him. "Will you let me give you some painkillers, and something to help you sleep?" he asks. The last thing he wants is for her to wake in the middle of the night.

She opens her eyes and looks up at him, and her eyes are two blank, endless pools. "When I dream, I want to be able to wake up from the nightmares," she says.

Oh, Leviathan, sometimes he thinks he would wreck worlds for this woman. "The stuff I have in mind shuts off dreaming for a night," he says. "It's dangerous to use for too long, because the brain needs to dream to stay sane, but -- Sometimes there are nights when dreaming would be worse than not dreaming. I think this is one of them."

He knows this is one of them, for her at least -- knows it well enough to be willing to give her one of Shinra's experimental drugs, although this one has been in use for nearly thirty years with no reported side effects except the ones that happen when people decide to abuse it, and he's been taking it, on and off, for at least a decade. (Of course, his sanity is debatable, but still; he's willing to give it to her for one night.) She considers, watching him, and he's just about ready to mention that he takes it himself -- she's slow enough, and dazed enough, that he thinks she might not pick up the implicit statement he'd just made -- when she nods. "All right," she says. "But -- only tonight. No matter what happens tomorrow."

Tseng combs his fingers through her hair one last time and nods. "All right," he agrees, and goes to fetch the drugs and a glass of water from his bathroom.

She's still sitting up when he returns, but the glassy look in her eyes, matched with the way she's swaying slightly, tells him if he'd taken so much as thirty seconds longer, she wouldn't have been. He stops in front of her. She squints at him for a minute, then seems to remember what he'd gone for and holds out a hand. He puts the two pills into it. "Potion, in gelcap form," he says. "Two of them is one dose." She nods, slowly -- her every motion coming like it's underwater -- and puts them in her mouth. He holds out the glass of water, but she's already swallowed them; she takes the glass and drinks anyway.

Once she's finished, he takes the cap off the tiny vial of purple-tinged syrup and hands it to her, carefully, making sure she has a tight enough grip on it before he lets go. "Drink it quickly," he warns, "and have the water ready. It's foul." She nods again, then knocks it back like she's drinking whiskey neat; she barely even shudders, but she's quick with the water anyway.

Thus finished, she hands the glass of water back to him -- he puts it on the bedside table -- and slides back until she can start to wrestle her way under the covers. She pauses halfway through, though, and he thinks she might be about to ask him for something, until he catches the way she's biting her lip, indecision written in her every line. He's about to ask when she moves and answers his question for him; she pulls off the tank top, wriggles out of her cut-off shorts, and Tseng can't decide if that means she knows Rufus isn't staying the night, if it's because she doesn't care and is willing to be naked even if Rufus stays the night, or because she hates sleeping in clothes, only does it when she feels she absolutely has to, and just can't face the feel of fabric choking her in her sleep tonight of all nights.

She holds out the clothes to him, like a little girl might. He takes both pieces, folds each neatly, and places them on the bedside table on the side she always sleeps on, knowing it will be the first place she looks in the morning, out of habit. She's so wiped she probably wouldn't remember it if he put them elsewhere and told her where to look, and Tseng knows the don't-dream hits hard and fast. When he turns back, she's already spread out under the covers, curled up on her side, and he'd be worried that the position was near-fetal if he hadn't seen her sleeping alone in a bed before and knows this is how she sleeps when she's not draped over him. It tells him, without her actually telling him, that she knows he's not coming to bed himself right now, but he sits down on the edge of the bed anyway, stroking her hair the way he might pet a cat to offer her as much comfort as possible.

"Sleep," he says, softly. "I'll be here in the morning. It will all look different in the morning." (He doesn't promise better; nothing will have changed by then, tomorrow will not be appreciably better than today, and it may very well be worse. But it will be different.)

After a few minutes, her breathing evens out into sleep. Tseng counts three hundred seconds off in his head, making absolutely sure she's under, before he gets up and heads back into the sitting room.

Rufus isn't there, but Tseng wasn't really expecting him to be; after hearing Tifa's story, and knowing the reasons why her lungs will be sensitive for the rest of her life, Tseng thinks -- knows -- neither of them will ever again smoke inside a place where she is staying, even if she isn't in the room. Sure enough, the sliding screen to the balcony is partway open, Rufus's usual cue for where he is; the glass of whiskey Rufus poured and Tifa barely touched is missing, and Tseng knows it has joined Rufus outside.

Tseng picks up the glass he'd been drinking from, refills it -- he could really use a drink right now, now the worst is mostly over -- and then, reconsidering, just brings the bottle with him. "Give me one of those," he says, finding Rufus precisely where he knew he would, cigarette in one hand and nearly-empty glass in the other, staring out blankly over the city.

When Rufus doesn't move, Tseng sighs and takes Rufus's cigarette from him, taking a deep drag off it and feeling the smoke warm his lungs. That, as he suspected, is enough to shake Rufus from his reverie; usually stealing Rufus's cigarette gets him punched, or at least scowled at, but this time all Rufus does is pull the slightly battered pack from his back pocket and light another one for himself.

"Ramuh and Ifrit," Rufus says, finally, after a good five minutes of smoking and drinking and silence. "Holy Alexander and his sacred band of knights. I -- I just --" He looks down at the drink in his hand and brings it to his lips, realizing too late it's empty; Tseng picks up the bottle from where he set it at his feet and wordlessly pours a refill, with a generous hand. Rufus stares at it for another minute or two before drinking.

"I am going to find out who is behind all of this, and I am going to erase them," Rufus finally says. It is an oath more solemn than any Tseng has ever heard him make on his honor or his name.

"I rather think you'll have to fight her for the privilege," Tseng says. He burns his lips on the last drag of the cigarette, down to filter, and flicks it over the side of the balcony. Rufus holds out the pack for him to take another; when he does, Rufus flicks open the lighter, holding it out for Tseng the way he always does, and Tseng gathers his hair back out of the way and leans in.

The familiar routine complete, Rufus goes back to staring out over the city. (His city. It always has been.) There's something going on, in the depths of that prodigious mind, but Tseng doesn't probe for it. Rufus will tell him when Rufus is done thinking and not a moment before, and if Tseng pushes too soon, all it will get him will be a snarl and a harsh word.

"The question isn't whether or not Hojo's behind all this," Rufus says, finally. And: yes. There's no doubt. Hearing Tifa's description of what was in that reactor, Tseng is certain, beyond any reasonable standard of doubt, Hojo's fingerprints are all over those pods in there, whether literal or metaphorical. "The question is, who else is in on it."

"The question is, how much does your father know," Tseng says, softly enough to be nothing more than a breath.

Rufus brings his cigarette to his lips and leaves it there, freeing up one hand to drag it through his hair. "Yeah," he finally says, taking the cigarette back and staring at it like he can't quite figure out how it got there. "Or -- no. Because we both know that my father wouldn't let something like this happen without knowing enough about it to be satisfied. The question is, what does he think Hojo is doing." He stares off at nothing (at his city) again, and it's only the experience of long practice that lets Tseng know he's not finished. "And the answer to that question," he finally says, "is going to determine whether or not I have to kill him."

The sentence lingers between them as though the wind is holding it there. It isn't the first time Rufus has threatened his father's life in Tseng's hearing, but it is the first time the threat has been anything approaching realistic, rather than the blowing off of steam.

Tseng transfers his cigarette into the hand holding his whiskey glass, then reaches out and takes Rufus's chin in his hand, turning Rufus's head gently until Rufus meets his eyes. "Whatever you decide," he says, putting all his sincerity into both his tone and his eyes; "wherever your honor leads you, whatever you find it necessary to do, I will be at your side. In this, and in all things."

"I know," Rufus says. His defenses all lie in waste and wreckage, written across his face; Tseng can see, in that look, that Rufus has always relied on that one simple fact, Tseng's loyalty (always, eternally) part of the framework Rufus has built his entire adult life upon. "And I will do whatever I need to, to be worthy of it." (The same words he'd used to Tifa, earlier this night. They fit.)

The moment lingers between them, raw and aching, the first time they have ever (ever had to) put it into words. (The first time they've ever dared to.)

Then Rufus closes his eyes, and a second later, Rufus is laughing. When he opens his eyes again, they're very nearly merry. "So," he says. He finishes his cigarette and tosses it over the balcony's edge, and this time he doesn't light another. "I guess we've got a company to overthrow, don't we."

And Tseng laughs too, startled into it by how normal Rufus sounds, the way he'd make any statement of purpose from I guess we've got a bar to visit to I guess we've got a world to save. "I guess we do," he says, and clinks his glass against Rufus's. "You get the napalm. I'll get the C4."

And once they're done laughing, they go inside, and they start to plan.

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