Archive of Our Own ^beta

It isn’t often a renegade gang can give Shinra a run for its money, but this is exactly what had happened for the past three months. Nearly twelve weeks of stolen goods, wasted man hours, and even attacks on troopers in training had eventually led Heidegger to forgo his normal security units and reluctantly turn to the Turks to get on the case, and even with the four of them working on it it had taken some time to get to the root of the issue.

No one can evade the Turks forever, though.

It had been a team effort, bringing them all down. Reno had gone solo to hunt a couple of them down at sunrise in Sector Five, while Rude had gone to pick off a trio of them hiding out in Sector Seven. Tseng and Elena had walked into the den of the beast itself, having used information the other two had gathered for them to finally pin down the gang's HQ. This “HQ”, as it turned out, was a run-down apartment complex on the outskirts of the sector, squalid, barely enough room to fire a gun let alone run a modest crime syndicate.

Not that that would stop them.

The information they had been given told them they had seven targets in the building, and the first three are quick to fall, essentially cannon fodder as the other four scatter in different directions. The two Turks stay together, which is for the best as they find three of the remaining thugs in the same room, hidden around corners to attempt a miniature ambush. Guns are fired, both Tseng and Elena’s, but a cry from his fellow Turk draws Tseng's attention the second his primary target is down. She is down on one knee, clearly in pain, but with her target so focused on her it is easy for Tseng to launch himself across the room and wrap an arm across his throat, snapping his neck in one vicious movement. He goes to help Elena to her feet and she is unstable, the assailant having sliced a kick into the inside of her ankle. The bastard, Tseng mutters. The dead bastard, Elena corrects with a quirk of the eyebrow. A quick body count shows them that six of the seven are down, but with Elena unable to walk comfortably Tseng takes the task of finding the last one by himself.

It doesn’t take long.

A clatter from the end of the corridor grabs his attention, and he makes it to the door just in time to see someone vanish around the corner. He takes chase, following the figure through various rooms as they try to throw things behind them to trip him up, but finally they make the mistake of turning one last corner into a straight corridor. A clear line of sight.

Tseng has four rounds left in his gun, and he fires four times.

The first two are terrible shots, both bullets going astray, but the third one catches the thug in the shoulder, throwing his weight forward as he continues to run. The fourth hits him in the back of the thigh, which is exactly the shot Tseng was looking for. The thug stumbles then, crashes into the room ahead, leaving Tseng to slow his pace and catch his breath. He holsters his gun, and approaches the man he has been chasing.

“Dead end,” he comments simply, looking at the room they’ve finished their chase in. Maybe it had been an old living space once; it is all but empty now, some broken, empty shelves the only decoration in the dingy room. An old bulb hangs from the ceiling, and there is a frayed carpet beneath them. “You’ve got nowhere left to run.”

The man he has chased down, thin but not at all malnourished, barks a rough laugh. He gets to his feet with a hobble, uninjured arm outstretched to lean against a filthy wall, unable to weight bear on the gunshot leg. Tseng narrows his eyes.

“Tell me your boss’s name,” he says. The man scoffs at him, breathing hard both from the running and from pain. “You think it has to end here, but I think you’re wrong,” Tseng continues. “Tell me your boss’s name, and I will let you walk out alive.”

The man snorts, still a slight smirk twisted on his face that Tseng doesn’t quite understand. The thug reaches up to a thin chain he is wearing around his neck and yanks it off, and he snaps off the glass jewel that hangs on the end.

He looks hard at the item in his hand for just a couple of seconds before he grits his teeth and locks eyes with Tseng.

“You’re not getting anything from me,” he sneers, and there is a curious mixture of expressions on his face; Tseng sees cockiness mixed with nervousness, arrogance mixed with fear, and it suddenly hits him that the glass item in his hand isn’t a jewel at all. Before the Turk can cross the room the man throws the item into his mouth and bites down, and the ampoule audibly crunches between his teeth. He sneers as he swallows the contents down, broken glass and all, and he holds his arms out like an invite.

“I win,” he says simply. Tseng, however, does not display the dismay he was clearly counting on.

It doesn’t take long for the contents of the suicide pill to start taking effect, and the man’s arrogant pose is quickly beset with violent shakes, judders that have his knees buckling and eventually send him collapsing to the floor. He begins to choke mere moments after, and tries to bring a shuddering hand to his throat. The convulsions escalate, his whole body wracked with spasms, snapping him from rigid to doubled over and then snapped straight again, and he begins to wheeze.

Tseng merely looks on.

An onlooker would assume he is barely interested, but in reality nothing could be further from the truth. His façade is cool, posture relaxed, but he is watching every twitch of the man’s convulsing body like a hawk, eyes narrowed in concentration. The man has not won, no matter what he thinks he has just done.

He didn’t come to this den and take out six of seven people for nothing. He’s not going to give up at the last stand.

The choking and wheezing suddenly sounds wet, more gurgle than gasp, and that is when Tseng steps into action. The man on the floor manages a cough that streaks frothy red foam across the floor and the Turk steps forward, toeing the man onto his back and placing a foot on his chest. He can feel how violent the convulsions are through his boot, and he watches closely as the man tries to cough again but is now unable to clear his own airway, unable to roll to the side with the Tseng bearing down on him. The juddering begins to slow, the man’s breathing becoming more shallow hyperventilation.

Tseng kneels down calmly, and reaches a hand across to the left side of his chest, over his own heart; a single orb of green materia is set into his gun harness, and he moves his other hand to the twitching body in front of him. Taking a steady, focused breath in, he begins to cast. The timing has to be perfect.

The air shimmers around them, a gentle green glow that seems to envelop them both before being absorbed entirely into the body on the floor. Tseng stays entirely still, hand still on the other man’s chest, feeling the last of the convulsions from the poison leave his body. For a long moment there is no movement - his play really did demand precision timing after all, and maybe he had waited just a second too long - but just when he is about to give up the man on the floor jolts up, sending Tseng jumping backwards. The thug gasps loudly for breath as if he has just been saved from drowning, and his eyes are wide and frantic. For a moment he doesn’t seem to know where he is. He looks blindly at Tseng, who straightens up and dusts off his jacket.

“Feeling better?” the Turk asks nonchalantly. He steps backwards, giving the man space, adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves before rolling his shoulders back.

The man on the floor still looks clueless, but once he recognises Tseng everything seems to fall into place behind his eyes. He looks around the room and remembers where he is. Getting to his feet he clears his throat, spitting more red onto the floor and looking at it in confusion. He had been shot. He feels no pain.

He isn’t meant to be standing here now. He took the pill, crushed the thing between his teeth. He remembers the burning, the fire in his throat and his stomach and his veins that felt like acid boiling. He remembers his own blood rising up through his throat, choking him. He can still taste it, like battery acid at the back of his tongue. So why is he here now? And why does he feel so … good? His stomach still churns, still feels hot, but acidic taste and churning stomach aside he feels like he could go a round or two against the suit. What happened ..?

“What … what did you do?” he asks. There is still a rasp to his voice. Tseng smiles.

“Full Cure,” he says, by way of explanation, “After how long we’ve spent tracking you all down, you think I’m letting you take the coward’s way out?”

The man’s eyes widen, both in realisation and horror - realisation that he isn’t dead, that he has a chance of getting out of here after all, and horror then, that the only thing stopping him from getting out happens to be the man in front of him. He’s heard stories. Hell, his own gang has had enough run in with Shinra themselves. He‘d heard just this morning that a couple of them had been taken out that same day. Before he fled the main room at the front of the house not fifteen minutes ago he‘d seen three of them take bullets to the head.

"People make the mistake of assuming all healers are good people," Tseng says, dark humour in his voice, "And healing magic is what I do best. But I will give you this for free: I am not a good person. Right now, i am your worst nightmare.

“I want your boss’s name,” he says coolly, “Give me that, and I’ll let you go. You can of course try to fight me instead, if you’d rather,” he says with a quirk of an eyebrow, “But you saw what we did to the rest of your friends here. The choice is yours.”

It wasn’t all lost, not yet, the man realises, and Tseng can see him grind his teeth as he weighs up his chances. The thug rolls his shoulders, no pain from having been shot in one of them anymore, and although his stomach is still churning he realises that escape might not be impossible. He thinks of his fallen gang mates, spits one last volley of blood onto the floor, and yells as he dives forward with a fist raised to strike.

Tseng hums in amusement and meets the man’s loud aggression with tiny precise movements, side-stepping the assault easily and letting the man careen into the wall behind him. He shakes his hair out and steps back, giving the man room to recover. The thug’s breaths are more wheezes, which Tseng notices with interest, and the next attack he launches is just as off-balance as the first. Evading the blows becomes a game for him, and what should be a fight feels like more of a dance as Tseng leads the man to throw increasingly stupid attacks. He does end up paying for his arrogance though when, distracted by the thug’s laboured breathing, he fails to realise that the man has drawn a weapon. He clocks it with only a split second to react, the silver shine of a knife in the man’s hand, and even though he weaves away as fast as he can the blade still catches him, slices all too easily down his upper arm. Tseng bites back an angry snarl - angry at the thug for injuring him, angry at himself for not even noticing the man had anything on him - but wastes no time at all in striking back, two blows to the jaw and a knee to the chest, quick enough to wind him and disarm him and claim the weapon for himself. Too angry to temper himself Tseng doesn’t think twice before plunging the knife into the thug’s gut, the blade at a steep angle upward.

Interestingly, there is blood in the man’s mouth before Tseng even strikes him.

The thug tries to cry out, but the sound is wet and choked out by the obstruction in his throat, just like earlier. His body begins to shudder again and, knife still held tight, Tseng lowers him to the floor, propped up against the wall.

“What hurts more,” he asks, watching that pink-red foam rise to the man’s lips again, “The knife in your gut or the poison in your body?”. He twists the knife in situ, just for good measure, and feels a warped sense of satisfaction run through him as the man makes a choked sound. The victim’s judders are just as severe as last time, and he is fading much faster now - the stab wound is probably speeding up the process, to be fair.

Tseng dips his head to look into the other man’s eyes, although they are rolling in his head so much the Turk doubts he can even see him.

“Tell me your boss’s name,” he says, slowly and steadily. The man, spasming and breathless, doesn’t say a word.

It is just like before. Tseng lets the worst of the spasms pass, and then when the time is right, he brings his free hand to the green materia. It takes its toll, using spells this strong, but seeing the result in front of him, feeling ruined flesh heal around the knife he is still holding stabbed into the other man’s belly, makes it worth it.

Another gentle veil of shimmering green settles around the both of them, coming to envelop the man on the floor again before disappearing entirely. Tseng cracks his neck, and waits.

Just like last time the man jolts back to his senses, gasping again for breath. His eyes are wide and afraid, and his first reaction is naturally to grapple with the man sat astride him, but the shock of pain in his abdomen seizes him up almost instantly. He fixes Tseng’s wrist with a vice-like grip, but the Turk merely raises an eyebrow.

“Welcome back again,“ he says casually, “I’d think twice if I were you,” he adds, looking from the man’s terrified eyes down to the knife, “Because if you knock this too much, it’s really going to hurt.”

He can see the cogs working behind the man’s eyes, sees the temptation to fight, and thankfully sees him come to the sensible conclusion to not resist while they are in this position.

“I …” the thug begins, and even though he has only just been fully healed he is breathing heavily again already, the discombobulation, the feeling of being backed into a corner, the acrid taste in his throat that isn’t going away again, all already too much. “I ain’t telling you shit,” he spits out. Tseng exhales through his nose. The man is wearing another chain on his neck, and Tseng fishes it out from under his shirt. There are dog tags on it.

“Lucaz …” he reads aloud, “Is this you?“ He looks up for confirmation, raising his eyebrows. The man doesn’t say anything otherwise. Tseng lets the chain drop to his chest again.

“There‘s no one left, Lucaz,” he says simply, “No one is coming to your rescue. What that means is that there’s no one to come hunting you down if you give me the information I need. You give me a name,” he says, leaning in close, “And I let you go.” This close, he can smell the poison on the man’s rancid breath. “Or I can at least make it easy for you.”

The thug - Lucaz - feels nauseous; the sensation of having a blade buried in his body without the immediate pain of a stab wound is, unsurprisingly, entirely alien to him. The nausea is of course mixed with a different kind of pain though, the burning that is beginning to run through his body again. What is happening to him?

He grasps at stomach again, cries out when it jolts the steel sat in his gut, and begins to panic. Tseng watches his breathing escalate. He does not move. He is surprised at the quick turnaround this time, though.

“Not … again …” the man utters through gritted teeth. His legs begin to shake first, and then his arms, “What are you … doing to me??”

Tseng raises his eyebrows.

“Me?” he asks innocently, and then drops the façade in favour of a laugh, “Oh no Lucaz, you did this to yourself. You chose to swallow that poison.” The man’s body begins the cycle again, seizing and going limp, and this time the man shakes his head frantically as if he can shake it off. “Full Cure doesn’t fix status ailments,” Tseng explains simply, as if reading from a text book, “You want that poison gone, that would be different magic. And if you want me to use that, well then I’m going to need some answers.” He suddenly switches, choosing aggression now instead, and pushes in to the juddering man beneath him. His supporting hand pushes the man’s shoulder into the wall he is propped up against, and the hand steady on the knife gives it a twist. The man tries to gasp, but chokes on rising blood. There is pain, and then there is this. Tseng grits his teeth, and says in a low voice:

“Give. Me. His. Name.”

And the man bites back. It loses its venom as his has to try to inhale between each word, but to his credit at least he tries. He locks eyes with the Turk, and through his convulsions manages to utter:

“Fuck. You.”

Just inches from his face, Tseng laughs. “Fair,” he responds with a nod, and in one vicious tug he wrenches the knife from the man’s gut, earning a searing cry from the man and causing a hell of a lot of blood to spill across his lap. He straightens up, stepping away from the twitching wreck of convulsions and blood loss on the ground, and takes himself a deep breath. He touches the materia on his chest.

“You’re lucky I’ve only got one more of these left in me,” he says, although he can’t be sure if the other man can even hear him at this point. It’s true - this kind of magic, strong enough to bring someone back from the very brink of death, isn’t easy on the body. Tseng knows he will be sleeping well tonight. He prepares the materia one last time. “Who is it you think of, every time I let you get close to death?” he asks, looking down into the other man’s rolling eyes. “A partner, perhaps? A child, a brother, a sister? Who is it you say your goodbyes to when you think you’re about to go? Whose forgiveness is it you ask?”

He waits again, just like the time before, and the time before that. He waits for the worst of the spasms to stop, and for the man to spit up as much pink foam as he can, before he begins to cast again.

The thug doesn’t panic when he comes to this time, doesn’t even try to struggle, any resistance having left his body already. When the green shimmer in the air has dissipated and his lungs have cleared again, he stays where he is on the floor. Magic can heal the wounds on his body, that much is true, and physically he knows he could get on his feet and try to fight, try to win, try to break free. But his mind, his psyche, is shattered. He is exhausted. He doesn’t know what to do. He wants it to end.

“Just kill me …” he utters, eyes still wide but gazing far into something Tseng can’t even see. "Just kill me, this time ..."

“Sit up,” Tseng says. 

“Let me die …”

The Turk crosses back to him and grabs him by the front of the shirt, propping him back upright against the wall. He tips his head, and considers him a while.

“Loyal until the end,” he says, and there is something between amusement and genuine admiration in his voice, “It’s a shame,” he says, “You could have made a good Turk.” The man in front of him has clearly given up. He coughs weakly; the poison must have wrecked his throat over and over by now. It will do again shortly.

Tseng reaches into the inside of his jacket and retrieves a series of polaroids. He looks at them fondly before dropping them onto the man’s blood-stained lap. The thug slowly picks one up, and his eyes widen in recognition. Realisation kicks in.

“All I wanted was his name,” Tseng says. The photographs are of the same person, the same body, just from different angles. Whatever they had done to him, the Turks had left him intact and identifiable, and the man recognises his boss’s face instantly. “I told you,” Tseng says once he is satisfied the man knows who he’s looking at, “You’re the last man standing. We dealt with your boss this morning and let me tell you, he sold the rest of you out in an instant. I’m a man of my word, Lucaz. I would have let you go if you just gave me the answer I wanted.

"This whole time, you’ve been protecting nothing.”

He sees the man’s hand go to his stomach, and suspects it’s the churn of that poison again. He narrows his eyes.

“You sick bastard …” the thug mutters. Tseng smiles, despite himself. “If you’re done with me … just let me die …”

“Eventually,” the Turk responds. He touches a different green materia, one on the holster of his gun this time, and stands back as the very air in the room seems to distort around the man on the floor. The man’s dismayed “What are you ..?” is drowned out by the sudden loud ticking of an invisible clock, which seems to slow down in its final ticks.

“I’ve seen how fast that poison acts,” Tseng says, the Slow spell using up the last of his expendable energy. The man chokes out a sob. “You couldn’t save your boss, you couldn’t save yourself, you couldn’t kill yourself and you couldn’t even fight back when given another chance. You don’t deserve for it to be quick.” There is a hard edge to his voice now, now that he has no more energy for casting and that the time for fun and games is over.

“Please …” the man says, although his voice is distorted by the Slow spell. As if moving through invisible treacle his hand comes to clutch at his throat - Tseng suspects the acidity is starting to burn again. “Give me … one more … chance …” he grinds out in slow motion. Tseng stops and considers him for just a moment longer, and comes to a conclusion. He tips his head, and nods. Pacing back over to him he takes his gun from its holster and lays it on the ground beside the man’s hand. Reconsidering just briefly, he toes it a little further away from him, an extra two foot across the floor. There’s no point if he’s not going to work for it.

“You took that poison yourself,” he says, looking down at the man who is falling to his side in slow motion. “Whatever you choose to do in the next ten minutes changes nothing. You will die a coward.”

Vicious tremors start to wrack the man’s body in slow motion, even as he tries to reach for the gun, and Tseng leaves the room, closing the door behind him. There’s no need to lock it - no one is going to go looking for him, and Tseng can come back for the cleanup later. Leaving the gun behind serves only to perpetuate the illusion of choice, and to be a reminder of just what the man had put himself through, for no justifiable reason. There are no easy outs as far as the Turks are concerned.

He had four bullets, and he fired four times, after all.