tseng "assigned service top at birth" ff7r (q♦) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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etrayalogs2024-03-29 06:22 pm
nonvoting) wrote in etrayalogs2024-03-29 06:22 pm
nonvoting) wrote in etrayalogs2024-03-29 06:22 pm
look at your life, who do you want to be before you die;
He hasn't quite decided how he feels about it, all told. On one hand, there's the ever-present question of how the automatons even know what to build to begin with, compounded by the secret he'd received as a part of the recent mission, the scrap of blueprint delineating the president's office with faded lines on colorless paper. On another, the headquarters in many ways still feels like his father's castle, a fortress that his conquering heir has yet to carve his name into. And on another still, it's...reassuring, somehow. It's familiar. It's home.
He's been away from home for a long time. It's hard to say whether an imitation will ever live up to the original.
(Hard to say whether a son will ever live up to his father, a low, haughty, smoke-deep voice taunts in the back of his mind. He brushes it away, like he always does; it never quite leaves, like it always doesn't.)
It's funny to think that in some ways, the building is more Tseng's than his. Oh, his Director of the Turks would never cosign it — not when everything Shinra is his and everything that isn't Shinra yet is soon to be — but it's been a long time since he personally spent any significant length of time there, his absence explained away by "business trips". For the Turks, the Department of General Affairs is their epicenter, the beating heart of their circulatory system. That feels strange, too — like the whole of it is a hand-me-down suit he's found himself waiting, made for someone else, as yet untailored to his own exacting specifications.
Not this one, though. This one is a recreation, as yet untouched by anyone but the robots. There's something appealing about that, too. The chance to put his fingerprints all over it without having to sterilize everything his father left behind.
That's the motive he'll tell Tseng, when he informs him that they're going to examine the building today. He'll say he wants to get away from the apartments, to examine the recreation the companion bots have done, to judge it through two sets of exacting eyes. What he won't say is the reason they're going today in particular, or how he knows that this is the only semblance of a gift he can possibly hope to offer because it's the only one that Tseng could ever even indirectly accept: something familiar, in this place of oppressive uncertainty. Something theirs, on a world they don't own where all they get is what they win.
There's an irony, maybe, that he's forcing Tseng to the office on his birthday. Mostly because he suspects Tseng wouldn't have it any other way.]
We're going out tonight.
[He says, almost from the moment he first lays eyes on Tseng after searching him out in the apartment. Certainly well before there's any chance to interject with a greeting at minimum.]
They've made progress on the tower. Let's go have a look.
FINALLY flings myself into this
at the very least, rufus seems to like the idea. tseng can understand, he thinks, not with the empathy of experience but with the depth of his knowledge of rufus: this is an iteration of the company that his father's touch has never sullied, a place that belongs entirely to him. the people here don't know that there was ever anything different. his will be the first warm body in the chair in the president's office; from this castle rufus can rule unimpeded by the life and legacy of someone who came before him.
there's comfort in that idea, despite tseng's apprehension over the building itself. it might not be exactly like the building they knew before, but it can still be theirs, regardless. the thought is a comfort and a welcome one at that. tseng has lived more than half his life in service to the shinra electric power company—now, at least for a time, he can live his life in service to rufus, which is one and the same, except in the ways it's not.
so when rufus finds him sitting in the living room and tells him they're going out to see the new construction, tseng welcomes the proposition. ]
Yes, sir. [ he looks up at rufus. ] Right now?
[ but even as he asks the question, tseng is already moving to re-holster his guns and fetch his jacket from where it's hanging over the back of a chair. it doesn't occur to him that this might be a gift rufus is giving him; in fact, it doesn't even occur to him, right now, that it's his birthday at all. ]
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[What he wouldn't give for a helicopter right about now, and Reno and Rude in its cockpit. What he wouldn't give for Darkstar at his side. What he wouldn't give for a lot of things, but at the end of the day they're still just conveniences and comforts. What he has right now is Tseng, and that's what matters. He's not alone to cope with all of this, and that's what matters.]
Arriving to headquarters on foot. Now there's something new and unheard-of for you.
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in truth, though, it's strange for tseng too. he's much more used to being on foot on the job than rufus is in daily life, but the prospect of trekking across the city to see the construction of shinra tower does make him feel a phantom pain in the place where the turks and their helicopters used to be. in a thousand years tseng never would have guessed he'd miss reno's smart mouth so much. ]
It's been many years since I saw the ground-floor entrance. [ while rufus' modes of transportation are typically a little fancier than tseng's, he still tends to come and go from the helipad rather than through the front door. ] Perhaps the reminder will be refreshing.
[ although there's a wryness in his voice that suggests he's not entirely convinced.
at the very least, the walk isn't long, and the rain has let up briefly such that there's no need to carry an umbrella—although tseng still carries one, just in case. the building occupies a fairly large swath of land, essentially its own private island, and is somehow even more imposing approached on foot than it is approached by air. was that the intent? did the late president conceive of the company's headquarters as a monolith that would strike fear and awe into the hearts of those who saw it?
honestly, tseng wouldn't be surprised. the late president was, if nothing else, a man keenly aware of appearances; it would be more of a shock if he hadn't somehow accounted for the visual impression that the building would make from the street in front of it. he remembers days when the clouds and fog over midgar had made landings a challenge for the birds; from the street, the topmost levels of the building would have been swallowed up by clouds, much as it is now. ]
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And yet, as their walk brings them closer and closer to it, he can't help but feel something...lift, just a little, in his chest. For all that the tower might house a host of dour memories, there's still a part of it that will always be home. He may have hated the regime that ruled from within it, but Shinra Headquarters is the centerpiece of Midgar, the focus around which everything else revolves. He couldn't love Midgar without loving this building. The two are inextricable from each other.]
If it's a good rendition, we may have to put these companion bots on the payroll.
[It's a joke, however slight of one it might be. It also serves well to cover up the fact that, as they approach the foot of the building, there's a wholeass moment in which he genuinely can't remember where the street-level entrance is located. It can't possibly be that hard to find; tour groups and middle management do it every day of their lives. It's just — different, not to drop right in from the helipad and be exactly where he needs to. Different, to see it like a citizen would.]
...The signage is passable.
[He says, and means, over there by the sign, I spotted the fucking door.]
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in the end, it's rufus who points it out. once tseng notices it, he wonders how he ever missed it, the entryway under the sign that literally denotes the entrance to the shinra company headquarters. gods help them both, truly. ]
It is within your purview as president to update it, should you so desire.
[ he says, and means, please make it a little less obvious so we never have to have this embarrassing conversation again.
stepping inside the lobby of the building sends a shock through tseng's system for how perfect the rendition is. if it weren't for the fact that there are no salarymen or wide-eyed visitors milling about, he could be forgiven for thinking they had stepped through a portal straight back to midgar; it's an excellent, faithful replica, right down to the details, the way the lobby smelled in the mornings before anyone else had come to work.
tseng pauses, right in the center of the ground-floor carpeting, and looks over at rufus. ]
What do you think, sir?
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He doesn't let it interrupt his stride, but the thought lingers on his mind anyway as he and Tseng make their way into the lobby — the way it makes this all feel more tangible than before, that for all this building might only be a replica of the one they'd left behind in Midgar, he's still the only president of Shinra to ever have set foot in it.
It's not just his purview as president to update the signage. It's his purview to update everything. No board. No inertia. No shadow of his father's legacy casting over the office. This is his — every least bit of it, down to the last screw and switch, is his and only his.
Maybe that's why something seems to soften in him when they find themselves in the center of it all, swallowed up by the marble and glass and holograms as though they'd never left Gaia at all. He'd thought, in passing, that stepping inside here might feel like he was looking at the still-standing corpse of a once-living thing. But this building isn't a corpse; it's a sentinel, standing vigil until its errant prince found his way home.]
...
[What he thinks isn't fit for words; it doesn't require them. He simply looks at Tseng instead, and knows that the subtle tells in his expression will say everything he isn't voicing — the bright glimmer in his eyes that hasn't sparked since their arrival in Etraya, the enthralled eagerness masked behind the faintest upturn of the corner of his mouth. For a second, he doesn't look like a man tasked with all the responsibilities that dominion of this building demands; he looks like he did a decade and change ago when Verdot put a gun in his hands and vowed that he'd learn how to use it.]
See if the elevators work.
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they were too different to be friends, even if their stations had allowed for it. rufus was, and still is, a sunburst, a beacon, the flash of a lighthouse on the shore; tseng had been dark and too quiet, a storm, a starless night. but they had been similar in some ways, too, maybe even the ways that mattered. like tseng, rufus had a fire in his eyes that nothing could quench. like tseng, he had been halfway between boy and weapon, too beaten down to be tender but not yet hardened into the blade he would eventually become.
over time, the boys they had been had vanished into the men they are. more weapon than person by far, these days. rufus, the lever that will move the world; tseng, the fulcrum that supports him. no tenderness left, only the old scars of circumstance, of duty, of desperation.
but in this moment, rufus looks at tseng with a lightness in his gaze and a smile in the corner of his mouth, and tseng sees a flash of the boy he was, before the world was really able to sink its teeth into him. ]
Yes, sir, [ he says, and goes ahead to the elevators.
they work, as it turns out. and they're just as fast as tseng remembers them being, descending soundlessly from the upper floors in a matter of seconds before the doors slide open with a soft, pneumatic hiss. tseng steps back, making room for rufus to board first. ]
Your offices first?
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It's as he's considering it, though, that he notices a curiosity about the floor directory, and gestures to the panel with an idle flick of his gloved hand.]
Yours seem to have gotten a promotion.
[What could have motivated the companion bots to relocate General Affairs to the sixty-eighth floor? Questionable as it is, he's a little hard-pressed to say he minds it. Not least of which when it means his Turks have been positioned like a barricade between his domain and the rest of the building — between the executive floors and the labs, especially.]
Let's have a look at General Affairs.
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it's a good change, as far as tseng's concerned. would that he could always be such a buffer between rufus and hojo's corrupting influence. ]
I'm sure the view will be much improved. [ that's a joke. get it? because there's no view from the basement, ha ha.
tseng presses the button for the sixty-eighth floor and the elevator whirs to life, bearing them up at speed toward the topmost levels of the building. the view through the exterior glass is quite different than it would have been in midgar, but the thrum of the elevator machinery under their feet is reassuringly familiar. and when the carriage draws to a halt, letting them out into the familiar hallway leading to the general affairs auditing offices, tseng feels something similar relax in his own chest, a tightness around his lungs easing and allowing him to breathe.
home sweet home, he wants to say, but he swallows the words down. ]
It does seem to be a faithful recreation.
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[If his mood wasn't already buoyant, it would be now, on the heels of the discovery that even Tseng is willing to crack a joke at a time like this. That's a rare thing for this environment in particular — while Tseng might certainly loosen up enough to have a little fun on the range or in the field, at headquarters he's always correct to a fault, unless he's absolutely certain that he's someplace secured.
Under his father's regime, there were very few places that could truly be called secured. Not so, anymore. This building is his. This building is theirs.
And the 68th floor is Tseng's, enough so that Rufus doesn't seek to stride several steps ahead the way he might otherwise be tempted to lead; he keeps himself just a half-step in front, enough to pay lip service to the idea that Tseng is flanking him as always, but more than near enough that they're all but walking side by side, this time.]
If it's as faithful as the rest, there'll be a stack of it waiting for you on the corner of your desk, just like always.
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The view of the paperwork in natural light, of course.
[ there is a certain lightness about this place that he'd never felt at the real headquarters back in midgar. an absence of certain influences, perhaps—or an absence of certain ghosts haunting the space. it makes it easier to release some tension from his shoulders. they're the only two who have ever made their mark here. it isn't secure, not until tseng has had a chance to get to work on whatever the companion bots have cooked up as a cctv and security system, but it's more secure than the tower back home had ever been.
flanking rufus half a step behind and to the right, tseng looks around the space as they enter it. it's a familiar room: large screens, long table, expansive desk behind which tseng can do as much paperwork as his heart desires. even the potted plants are the same. still alive, despite the fact that tseng knows for a fact not a one of the turks ever watered them. ]
Will you expect them on your desk by end of day or end of week?
[ there is actually not any paperwork on the desk, which is somehow both surprising and exactly what tseng expected. he still doesn't understand how the companion bots knew what to build at all, but it wouldn't have entirely shocked him if they'd been able to replicate the forms in triplicate. ]
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[The real problem with this room's original location, Rufus reflects as he takes his own glance around the interior, had been that he'd rarely had an excuse to visit the basement floors to begin with. Had they been on the way to the conference rooms or along a convenient route from the helipad, a quick detour here and there would've been more than easy to facilitate. But for all that it isn't precisely familiar, there's still something of a nostalgia to it — and it's almost laughably easy to feed off of Tseng's pleasure vicariously and enjoy it for himself.
This is probably the most pristine Tseng's desk has ever been, right now, and probably the most it ever will be again. Reno would make an innuendo about things that might be expected on desks, if he were here right now; he can almost hear the way Rude would cover a note of fluster behind a feigned cough.]
I do want your observations on some of our fellow residents. Some are interesting. Some are useful. A few might just be both.
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Yes, sir. I've taken preliminary notes already. I'll collate and have them to you shortly.
[ as soon as he started meeting people here, tseng started taking notes on them, so it won't be too much work to get those notes assembled into some kind of order for rufus' perusal. after this, though—they still have floors to explore. ]
Shall we go up, sir?
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Let's.
[His own office — the president's office — is the next logical choice, of course. But that reinforcement of their roles is still lingering on his mind, and it's guaranteed to only escalate once they're back in the room from which the head of Shinra rules the world. Call him selfish, but —]
The next floor up. Let's see if they managed to make the suite more habitable than the apartments.
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"more habitable than the apartments" is... ] An unambitious metric of success, sir.
[ like, no offense to etraya's extremely mid apartment situation, but also, the bar is low. for tseng himself, he doesn't care—the apartment he kept in midgar before he moved full-time into the turk housing in hq was far worse than the one they're occupying now in the complex. but for rufus, who has never known a life outside the luxurious appointments of shinra tower... tseng can imagine how it's chafed.
back at the elevator, a press of the button has the door swinging open, and tseng steps back to allow rufus to board first. up to the sixty-ninth floor they go, then. nice. ]
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(Abruptly, he remembers that Tseng has the edge on him in that, now — in days in their godsdamned lives. He's pulled out ahead for the four months and three days it'll take for him to catch up. That feels backwards, somehow — being born before the person you've sworn the whole of your existence to. It's also very like Tseng to get there first and make sure he's laid all the groundwork in advance.)
The ride to the sixty-ninth floor is uneventful — again, the voice that lingers in the back of his mind and sounds conspicuously like Reno offers a remark not fit for corporate consumption — but as they step into the corridor, it's his turn to feel an abrupt rush of nostalgia. More deeply-rooted than any other floor of the building, this one is home — his old bedroom a small carved-out niche of relative security in an ecosystem dominated by his father.
A pity they're not going there. Those are the rooms of the prospective heir; the king sleeps elsewhere, now.]
It still —
[He cuts off the thought, as they walk past his old room and head for the one that part of him still stubbornly thinks of as his father's. He doesn't need to finish it, to have betrayed where his thought process was going. It doesn't feel natural yet, but it will soon enough.]
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there's no need to hear how rufus would have ended that sentence. tseng knows. it still feels like someone else's home, someone else's space, but the only cure for that is time, and time is a resource they still have, at least for now.
something else that doesn't need to be said aloud is that tseng will enter first to clear the room. he steps neatly around rufus with a familiarity born of practice and lets himself quietly in through the closed double doors, sharp gaze casting around the darkened suite. there's enough ambient light outside to cast furniture in dramatic shadow, but the initial glance suggests no danger; it's just as tseng is turning to tell rufus that the rooms are clear when he hears it.
a sharp draw of breath, in the darkness. the rattle of metal on metal, a chain. tseng has one hand on rufus' chest and the other on his gun well before his mind catches up to realize that these are sounds he knows. ]
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It takes less than a second for Tseng to clock the noise as foreign and get a protective hand onto him, already poised to deal with an imminent threat. And while neither of them may have recognized it within that span of less than a second, it's the fact that the origins of those noises was able to recognize them that keeps Tseng from losing a limb or worse — because he is, perhaps, the only person that this particular intruder would allow to put a hand on him without instantly attacking outright.
Because he knows what made those sounds. He knows that whuffle. He knows that chain. He knows exactly the movement that made them, because he's heard those sounds go in tandem with Tseng's approach countless times before — the sounds that signal a rather large guard beast has just gone from lounging contentedly to propped upright in anticipation of a newly-arrived visitor.
He knows those sounds, but it doesn't seem possible. The companion bots, Aurora, Echo — they already produced this building for him. To go even further seems like there has to be a trick, or a catch, or a trade-off.
He ought to know better.
He doesn't care.]
D...?!
[Everything happens in less than a second: Tseng's reaction, the noises, his uncertain and disbelieving remark. By the time the next one arrives, there's a massive shadow moving sinuous through the dark, chain collar jingling and carpet creaking beneath its mass until at last the glow of its familiar red eyes becomes visible.
And he's not careless enough or overemotional enough to do something nonsensical like dropping to his knees or rushing to her side, but he does hear his breath waver as he sucks it sharply in, watching as Darkstar comes into view, regards them both, and sits obediently without being told, with only the slightest of wiggles like she's smothering a wag of her tail beneath her impeccable behavior. There are some who would call her a monster, who would look at her face and see nothing but the fangs and the malice; he knows better how to read the subtle tells of her expressions, knows that the look she's giving them both is one of approval-seeking eagerness.
Gods. Gods, what in the hell is she doing here?
Of course he'd missed her. The thing is, he hadn't realized how much he'd missed her until this very moment, hadn't realized the depths of the emptiness her absence had carved out of him until abruptly it's been filled in again.]
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which means that either darkstar has been brought here only now by the same means that brought tseng and rufus themselves, or that the companion bots have somehow built a version of her to go along with their version of shinra tower. either option presents its own branching challenges, but between them tseng thinks he prefers the former.
his mind runs along these rails in a handful of seconds at most. meanwhile, his hand is already dropping from rufus' chest, his other hand already leaving its place on his sidearm. he straightens slightly, leaving his protective posture, and steps to the side from where he'd moved to put his own body between rufus and any potential threat. ]
It seems she was waiting for you. [ he keeps his gaze on darkstar, affording rufus his moment of emotion unobserved. tseng knows better than to think that rufus would ever be given to a dramatic display, but perhaps for that reason, the sharp inhalation of breath from him is nearly the same as a lesser man bursting into tears. ] Good girl.
[ this last point is directed to darkstar, who whuffs, her ears twitching. tseng rewards her with a smile, brief but real. ]
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And in fact, he gets his answer — or what he thinks is his answer, at least — when Tseng praises her, when he sees how she responds to it. If the companion bots were working off of copied information, then they would have created a Darkstar who behaved the way she was always supposed to on paper: one who cared only for him, loyal only to him, invested in nothing but defending him.
They wouldn't know the liberties she permits Tseng to take, and which ones she doesn't. How could anyone possibly know that, save the three of them? There's no blueprint for it, no repository of observations of it. But he knows. He knows, and it's more than enough to convince him.]
Release.
[He says it softly, granting the permission he knows she's waiting for with a word and the slightest flick of his fingers. It's the command that means they're not at work for a little while at least — permission for her to take the first step and bound over and push her sleek perfect head right into his waiting hands.
Everyone at Shinra knows that what goes on in the president's private chambers stays there. It's a rule that covered up his father's numerous affairs; it can be just as applicable to the way he scratches enthusiastically behind his dog's ears and cradles her muzzle in both hands, unwilling to break contact for even an instant as though he's half-afraid she'll vanish again if he does.]
Aren't you lucky. You might actually get a night off once in a while, now that D's here to relieve you.
[If he weren't so preoccupied with Darkstar, he might've remembered to hide his smile, might've trimmed it down to nothing more than a carefully-suppressed twitch of his lip. He doesn't, and so it beams wide instead, just for a moment — a flash of white teeth, a gleam of blue eyes. One more secret that will never leave this room, otherwise.]
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perhaps predictably, the prospect of a night off makes tseng shift almost imperceptibly in his stance, his hands moving to their customary position clasped at the small of his back. there's a reason that back home, tseng has something like 2,000 hours of paid time off banked unused. "nights off" are not exactly in his wheelhouse. ]
Is that an order, sir?
[ does he gotta.......... ]
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But it's not difficult to imagine other pursuits, too — an upscale bar instead of an exclusive club, a jacket removed, a collar unbuttoned and a tie loosened and shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. Maybe he'd pull his hair up into a full tail to keep it from spilling over his shoulders and into the way of the drink. Maybe someone would seek to bum a cigarette off of him, and he'd fish out his lighter as he gave it; maybe Tseng spends his leisure evenings being as little of a Turk as he can be.
He could make up all sorts of visions about it. That comes with the territory of being a visionary — vivid dreams, no matter the subject or object.]
I doubt even I could order you to relax and enjoy yourself.
[It's funny because he can order Tseng to do anything, without question. But the joke is a necessary one, so that the humor can carefully provide cover for what's coming next.]
The closest I'd get is doing it myself and taking you along with me.
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the train of conversation makes tseng pause to think: which would actually be more relaxing? being ordered to take a night off, or going along with rufus while he takes a night off? neither seems restful, although each in their own way. an order would keep him home, but he would spend the entire night thinking about all the things he ought to be doing instead; going out with rufus would keep him on the job, but might be less stressful for his paperwork-oriented nerves.
what he lands on, eventually, is: ] Are you familiar with the phrase, "better the devil you know than the devil you don't"?
[ said lightly, with a quirk at the corner of his mouth that's very nearly a smile. it's almost certain that going anywhere with rufus would be preferable to being ordered to stay in alone, without anything productive to do. how do people relax, actually? ]
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[The remark gives Rufus an opportunity to preen a little, though, which is beneficial in more ways that one. It's easy to turn a phrase like "the devil you know" into a sort of smirking variation on praise and approval. It's useful because it makes it easier to hide the thing he's really pleased about — the implicit validation that Tseng is enjoying himself right now, that he'd rather be here in a facsimile of Shinra Tower with a devil all in white than taking a night off to himself.
It's because it means his plan worked, and Tseng's birthday is proving to be a satisfying one. That's definitely why it matters that he's given a preference for being here, and not somewhere else.]
Shall we go up to the office?
[That's subtle, too — the fact that he phrases it as a question rather than as a direction. It's not as though he really expects Tseng to say anything other than yes, sir about it, but. Still, it matters, maybe, that he asked.]
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