[FF7-AC] All the Oceans of Time
[FF7-AC] All the Oceans of Time
FF7AC – PG – Oneshot, complete
Warnings: BC spoilers. Angst. (If this doesn’t make someone cry, I haven’t done my job.)
Pairings: Rufus/Tseng
For ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
turk_elena
Word count: 1,812
Characters: Veld, Rufus, Tseng.
Summary: After Meteorfall, Veld returns to Midgar in response to a summons by Rufus.
For turk_elena, on occasion of the drabble prompt for ‘Veld’ and ‘Liquid’. I took a very, very non-literal interpretation of ‘liquid’, I’m afraid. And, and, and…
Don’t ask me how Rufus/Tseng ended up in there. I am very, very sorry. *bows, scrapes* My Muse ran away with me. I’ll write you another one where he doesn’t star? (Seriously, every time I wrote this, even after forgetting the Rufus/Tseng element, it came back to the same thing. *begs pardon*)
General A/N:
Every now and then, I write a fic I'm actually proud of.
He watches the waves as they fall behind, sparkling blue under the summer sun. He watches them stream past, the bow of the ship cutting a clean swath across the leagues that separate him from the mainland. And he smiles.
Time isn’t like a river, he reflects. Time is like the sea, so vast and unimaginable. You could drown in it, lose yourself forever in it. It is a barrier that one without resources can never hope to surmount. It flows too, but no one knows where the currents go, when the treacherous undertow could drag you down to the deeps.
And you can never go back over it.
You can cross the ocean once. Again. Turn around in circles upon it. But each journey is a new one, each ocean is a new one, under a new day, a new sky, a new sun. Upon the distant banks, the very world has changed, and the Midgar he sees rising upon the far horizon is not the Midgar he left.
There is no one to welcome him on the dock when he disembarks. No Shinra uniformed personnel saluting, no dark suited Turks waiting to usher him to the waiting car or helicopter. The docks are quiet, empty, a handful of tugs and small vessels by the pier, and everywhere the signs of the damage that the Weapons wrought.
He misses, especially, a face he got used to seeing every time he returned to Junon. A young face, an enthusiastic one, delicate Wutainese features setting him apart from the rest of the crowd. But he left Tseng behind when he crossed this ocean, a lifetime ago.
He wonders where the currents have taken him.
Because time, like any sea is a force that erodes, destroys, takes away. The years have been long, the trials that faced them countless, and it was months before he received the communiqué that the reports had been wrong and that they had, indeed, survived Meteorfall.
They had all survived Meteorfall. The relief that had swept through him had almost driven him to his knees.
Someone waves at him, cutting through his dilemma of how to get to ruined Midgar from here. He hurries closer, and the breath catches in his throat. For a moment he thinks that, he has, somehow, traversed this ocean back through time, for here is a figure out of the distant past staring at him—
--no.
The reflection that stares back at him is reflected from brown eyes, not blue, though everything else might as well be the same…
“You must be Elena,” he says. “Rosalind’s sister.”
Her smile is soft, wistful. “It’s an honour to meet you, sir.”
It feels like a flight through time – the helicopter cutting through the air as the afternoon turns golden and flows towards evening. The sight of the cockpit sends a familiar jolt of nostalgia through him, and for a moment he can almost imagine…
…But ruined Midgar comes into view, and he closes his eyes in a moment of reverence. He might not have believed in everything that Shinra stood for, but old loyalties die hard.
“What does Rufus want to see me for?” he asks, when Midgar is behind them, and the new city of Edge is coming up.
“I don’t know,” Elena confesses. “Perhaps he wants to recruit you?”
He wonders. Rufus was barely more than a boy when he left, sliding his way across treachery and disaster. He wonders if he has found his feet in the shifting sands of power, but now everything has been snatched away. There isn’t a Company left to recruit him.
It is not a boy that greets him, rising unsteadily from his chair, black streaming down the back of one hand. It is a man who has stood directly in the path of the roaring tide, and pity stirs in him as he notes the scars, the weakness that time has inflicted upon the other. But the gaze that meets his is diamond hard, stronger than it ever was before, and he wonders at that.
“It is good to see you, Rufus.”
“Director.” Rufus inclines his head towards a chair, and resumes his own. “Would you care for a drink? Coffee, perhaps?” His lips quirk in a smile. “I assure you that it will not be decaffeinated.”
He chuckles lightly, recalling a prank, a small act of vengeance wrecked upon his coffee supply by a young Vice President. “That would be most welcomed.”
Rufus sends off a note over the intercom, and leans back.
Where is Tseng? he wonders. He had expected his former protégé to be here, standing at the President’s shoulder. But although he paused to exchange brief words with Reno and Rude in the foyer, the one he wishes to see the most is copiously absent.
“What did you wish to see me about?” he asks, when Rufus fails to take the initiative. “What was so important that you needed me to come in person? Surely you don’t want to give me my own job back.”
Rufus raises an eyebrow – the one not obscured by the bandage across his face. “And if I did?”
“I would hardly be in a position to accept.”
“Come now. Your expertise would be an invaluable addition to the Company.”
“Perhaps,” he says flatly, “The Company should have remembered that when it fired me.”
Rufus’ smile is lazy. “Ah, but I didn’t have a deciding vote then. I do now.”
He shakes his head. “Is Tseng not doing a good enough job? I thought I trained him better than that.”
The other is silent for a moment. The shadows have lengthened as they spoke, and night is creeping up upon them. The silence grates upon his nerves, bringing with it the first whispers of anxiety. If anything has happened to him…
...Rufus would inform me.
Fear turns to ice in his gut. “Rufus…”
The other blinks, recalling his mind from wherever he allowed it to wander. Sees the concern in his eyes and shakes his head to dispel it. “Fear not. Tseng is well. And indeed, doing an excellent job. But there is something that he cannot do.”
“And what would that be?” There is a pang of relief at Rufus’ words, but this still brings him no closer to the purpose of this visit…
Rufus reaches absently across his desk for a cloth, which he presses to the back of his hand. It comes away black. “Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodies,” he murmurs. “Who guards the guardians. Or, to put a spin on it, who protects the protectors?”
The Company, he thinks, but the Company has betrayed them once, and it is gone now, reduced to Rufus himself, who...
Rufus chucks the towel aside, and Veld’s eyes follow it, as the implications finally sink in. As he recognises the sickness for what it is. “Is there a cure?” he asks.
“No.” Rufus’ admission of his mortality is short, unadorned, and accepting. “I have a favour to ask of you, Director.”
“I am no longer...”
“To them, you are, and will always be. And I have a great favour to ask of you.” He exhales softly. “Please hear me out.”
“Speak your mind.”
Rufus’ gaze catches his, and the statement he utters is as simple in words as it is complicated in implication.
“...Please look after them when I am gone.”
The words catch him like a knife to the heart, twisting in deep.
“Tseng will... be most distressed, I believe,” Rufus continues. “And there are perhaps few he would be able to trust in these troubled times. Few enough who will be able to give him the support that he will need. I would not leave him to face those times alone.”
There is little room for emotion, for pity, for condolences and false reassurances in those words. Little room to shy away from the truth of the matter. He wants to say something to smooth away the brutality that is reality, wants to smother it behind denial and soft words and lies...
...but that would be an insult to the strength that Rufus is exhibiting. And he feels moved, at last, to admiration.
“I will do my best.”
“Thank you.” Rufus glances sharply away, and shuffles paper, wrestling silently for control. “Tseng will be appointed the executor of my, and the Company’s, estate. There will be a sum set up to be held in trust for the Department... as well as its alumnus. As a benefactor under the scheme, I charge you with ensuring that Tseng does not do anything stupid like give it all away.” His fingers still on the documents, but still he does not look up. “I wanted... no, how presumptuous. But...” he sighs. “They deserve to be happy. And there is only so much that money can do.”
“Rufus...”
When the President raises his gaze from his desk, his eye is clear, and his gaze sharp. “Build a world for them, Director. A world where they can know joy.”
There is no way he can say no. He dips his head. “I will. Rest assured, mister President.”
*
The coffee arrives, and with it, Tseng. Rufus’ face lights up, and Veld does not miss the way their gazes linger on each other, the warmth enfolded within. And even as Tseng turns to him with a delighted smile, stoicism exchanged for polite but eager queries as to how he has been, he notes how the Turk still hovers by the President’s side. As he deflects the questions, he watches Tseng’s hand coming to rest on Rufus’ shoulder, fingers curling in protectively.
And at last he realises... accepts... in his heart of hearts, that this ocean he has crossed is definitely not the one he crossed, another life time ago. That the ones he left behind have been swept up by their own tides, for better or worse. That the world he left is gone forever, and a new one has risen in its place.
And what a world. Rufus brushes Tseng’s hand off, choosing to entwine their fingers instead, even as they bicker over the coffee and Tseng’s coffee making skills, and Veld’s smile as he watches them is sad.
Time, he thinks, can never be a mere river. It meanders, not just in one direction, but in every possible way. It opens up horizons you never thought possible. It takes you away, and it takes you back again. It shores up, it refines. It carves, it builds. And then, it tears down, destroys, and smoothes all away.
But for a little while, that which it creates is beautiful.
Give them time. The thought sounds unbidden in his heart, as he sees all that he has lost and gained in that instant. For they have only just started to cross their own ocean.
END
