onepassingnight | Secret Report I: Junon, Meetings and Truth

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Secret Report I: Junon, Meetings and Truth

It had been a hurried few weeks since the fiasco with the Remnants, something that wasn't helped along by the fact that there were some wounds that even a full cure couldn't completely heal and the exceedingly strange dreams he'd been having lately.

Not to mention the apparent newfound telepathic link with people.

It had given Tseng a lot to think about while sorting through the mess things had become to see what could be salvaged and what needed to be disposed of. He'd taken a few days to travel to Junon, he'd needed to sleep in his own home and bed for once and had told Cloud during one of the telepathic episodes that he'd meet him there.

So he sat outside the small coffee shop on the corner of his street every day reading and waiting for him to show up. He's not in his suit, though his clothing choice has never varied far from the dark colors he so often inhabits. His sweater is a pale blue, zipped against the chilly sea wind and to help disguise the bulk of bandages. The one on his face is still present though, and it will likely leave a scar.

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It's a bit of a surprise. He's used to hearing those three voices in his head and having Tseng mention them too feels almost - relieving. Not that he hasn't enjoyed hearing Zack and Aerith - despite the circumstances - he just knows that his hold on sanity and control of himself was tenuous the last time and he doesn't want to lose himself again. It was a helpless, terrifying feeling that still makes him feel sick and clammy to his stomach even remembering it now. If Tseng is hearing the same voices though -

"Ami?" that's a surprise. For some reason he didn't equate her with the others. As if she was his own private voice. Apparently Tseng's heard her too?

He hadn't heard them so much as had decidedly strange memorable dreams with them. It was close enough for Tseng's tastes.

He nodded, leaning against the stove. "She isn't someone I'd ever met before, and I've yet to meet her."

Tseng had spent a lot of time thinking about the whys, even thinking back to what he'd been raised with what felt like a million years ago in the northern reaches of Wutai.

"The only thing I can think of is that we're being equipped for something the Planet knows is coming and can't stop itself." He admitted, dark eyes looking to Cloud. "Something worse than Meteor or geostigma."

"Ami's not from Gaia. She'd never been here." Cloud's asked. She's from somewhere else entirely and their two worlds don't mix. Tseng's next words however have him shutting his eyes and he doesn't sigh but it's only because he's got a mouthful of food.

damn it.

He loves Aerith and he loves the life on it but sometimes he really hates the Planet.

Still, this is what he wanted, why he's here now. He's a protector and he can't protect if he doesn't know what to fight. So he finishes his mouthful and opens his eyes to look at Tseng. He can have a one track mind sometimes.

"How does Sephiroth figure into it? I've dreamed him as a child and also before Nibelheim. I heard the second version of him in my head while I was fighting him at the Shinra Tower."

Tseng hummed, mulling over the possibilities. There were a frightening number of them, all things considered.

"He's shown up in two of mine, a... retirement party and another in Modeoheim. Both times I believe he was from before the events of Nibelheim." He admitted, "Time may be relative to whatever it is the planet is doing, considering we've gotten Ami in our collective heads now. You may not like it, but despite what he became Sephiroth was a brilliant strategist and can very easily be a secret weapon so to speak if things go as badly as I fear."

It wasn't an ideal situation to say the least, and it certainly didn't sit well with Tseng. He honestly didn't know how quickly time would slip by between the two timeframes.

"I've... been attempting to get him to discover the truth; Lucretia and Vincent's existence. If he already knows that Hojo lied to him about who they are and puts the puzzle pieces together... Lucretia was the only woman on the team and the only people who could arge with Hojo- Vincent and Professor Gast- were both taken out of the picture." He sighed, taking a few bites of his roll.

"Sephiroth is anything but stupid, if given the real facts he's less likely to go mad when the time comes. He may kill Hojo but that's not something I would honestly worry about."

"He cracked last time." Cloud's blunt about it. He can be blunt about it. Cloud cracked as well when he was confronted with Sephiroth's lies about his existence. Cloud hasn't slaughtered an entire town - but he had given the Black Materia, and the destruction of his world, over to the enemy. The difference was that Cloud had someone to pull him back from the edge. He'd had Tifa. He'd had his friends.

Sephiroth had no one.

"He doesn't have friends to support him and hold him together any more this time than he did then." If time was in flux at least. Or else this was a parallel time or universe or something like that. Ami had talked about those in her own world. "He doesn't have anyone to pull him back from the edge and he feels just as isolated and alone as he did before. Who's to say it was the facts and not the betrayal that broke him?"

He's not arguing with Tseng. He's even done some pushing of his own in entirely different areas with the Sephiroth they both seem to hear in their heads. He's pointing out an angle he's noticed to add it to what Tseng already has. What if they can save that Sephiroth? Will it change their world? Their present? Will what they know cease to be? Will Zack and Aerith still be alive?

There's a pause and then, low, Cloud adds what he hasn't mentioned to anyone else. Because this isn't the first time he's thought about trying to change the past. It's selfish but he says it anyway. "If Hojo dies, I never become me."

"He has Zack." Tseng pointed out, "Sleep deprivation and hunger may also have played a role in the incident. Reports said Sephiroth hadn't left the library for three days. I have no idea what in the world Zack was doing for those three days, but someone should have been checking on him regularly."

Mind you, the reports also said Sephiroth jumped in to the reactor's core.

Tseng was hoping that with Sephiroth not going crazy and trying to destroy the planet would keep those two alive. Things would work themselves out from there, he firmly believed that the planet would still find a way to save things.

He fixes Cloud with a look, somewhere between empathy and pity, and sighed. "Would you put yourself through those five years if you had a choice not to? If Nibelheim hadn't happend you certainly would have made SOLDIER within that time or advanced within the army itself, or even been approached by the Turks."

"Zack did check on him regularly. And every time it was 'leave me alone'. He was obsessed with what he read in those books. He didn't stop for anyone. His identity had been taken away and he was busy making a new one."

Cloud was personally familiar with that feeling. And he knows it's not a judgement on Zack but he can't help but respond to defend his friend. He remembers that part of his past with almost painful clarity. It's something his mind has decided to latch onto and hold fast. The dank smell of the passage outside the library, the dusty smell of the books, the restless townspeople - from his own town - outside. And, thanks to the memories stolen from Zack, he remembers the mad conversation as well.

He remembers over four years of torture and knows he's never going to be completely whole again because of it.

His blue eyes lift and there isn't even the hint of hesitation or doubt in them as he firmly says:

"Yeah. I'd go through it again. I couldn't protect the people that needed me before. I can now." The hard edge relaxes just a little bit. "And you don't have to lie, Tseng. I didn't have what it took. I'd still be a Shinra grunt." Thanks to his own time with the Sephiroth that was apparently in all of their heads, he's had time to think, really think, about what both he and Tseng have apparently been doing. Those long delivery trips give him plenty of time for it.

"Zack might not have left Shinra for anything short of those experiments on us considering all he'd already stayed through. Rufus' old man might still be alive and Shinra Electric, the old Shinra Electric, could still have an iron control over everything. The planet could be two years closer to dying." He shakes his head.

"I want them back. Both of them. Aerith and Zack... And - my mom. Nibelheim didn't deserve its murder." He lifts his eyes again to look at Tseng. "Maybe we make it better if we save Sephiroth. But maybe we just make it worse. My first loyalty is to the people who count on me now and their future. Not the past." He's had that lesson thumped into him pretty hard and as much as he wants Zack and Aerith back - as tempting as it is, as much as there's a part of him that would throw away everything to save them, gamble it all - if he has to choose, he knows which one they'd want him to choose.

"If we save him and it changes our world now, it's not worth it. If we save him and it changes his world than I'll help. Ami's the one that deals with alternate worlds of hers. Maybe she'd know at least what we're risking here."

They'd had a Turk in the area, Zack had been... tooling around town according to the reports, but Zack hadn't been the one they were keeping an eye on to be honest.

"Cloud, I don't make a habit of lying or breaking rules. Omitting information I don't see as necessary to pass on and skating through loopholes is a completely different matter." There was a tiny grin at that, diving through the gaps in the iron clad armor of ShinRa's fist was quite possibly the only reason he was actually still alive.

"We, the Turks, had been keeping an eye on you since the Modeoheim incident. Why do you think you kept being put on missions we were involved with, or ones that seemed all but hand picked for your particular skillsets? I can dig out our copy of your file if you'd like to read it sometime, it's a bit... thicker than the one the rest of the company had clearance for.

"Believe me when I tell you that you wouldn't have stayed an infantryman for long. The Turks recruit at seventeen, barring special circumstances."

He chuckled a little at the mention of the deceased President. "You missed a lot, Cloud. If President Shinra had lived much longer the company wouldn't have, it was crumbling into it's own rot. I'm sure Reeve could tell you stories of board meetings that were just idle posturing and I'm not exaggerating when I say that Clod Prod was the best of Scarlet's machines. SOLDIER was also...lacking, nearly half it's members that survived Wutai deserted with Genesis and the others were at the ends of their ropes as well.

"If Sephiroth leaves ShinRa, SOLDIER will follow it and the Turks wouldn't stand in his way. Especially if he's particularly good at timing, Heidigger's a moron who couldn't lead himself out of a wet paper bag, let alone an army."

He chewed as he listened intently to Tseng. There was a lot he'd missed, both as an infantryman, as a teen with only his own focus in mind and as a result of the mako muddling what little he had caught in his time there. The mention of anyone at all noticing him though had him frowning. If Tseng said it that way, he was inclined to believe the man but - thinking back he didn't remember doing anything of particular worth, though he did remember an embarrassing incident or two. Tseng had a point though - he'd never given any thought at all as to why he ended up on the missions he did. The rest of the information about what was going on inside, things he had been too low ranking and frankly to self-centered to be aware of, he slowly digested, working it over in his head as he worked his way through his second roll. He hadn't realized it was that fragile. Shinra had seemed like the entire world when he'd been there.

He had 'sat' in on one of those meetings though and the memory of Barret crammed into an air vent brought the small smile to his lips. It had been a lot of posturing, he remembered that part easily despite the fact he'd been much more distracted by saving Aerith.

"That was a stupid name for a machine." Cloud wasn't going to argue about the merit of either of the executives he'd pasted in it. Another pause and he nodded, just a duck of his chin. "And yeah - thanks. I'd like to see that file on me."

He wasn't looking for confirmation or an ego boost but he was curious as to what they knew about him from that time period. Maybe it would jog his own muddled memory.

It still brought them back to the question of:

"Are we risking our present by changing the past with Sephiroth?"

ShinRa had been the entire world back then, but when your job was to keep it from falling apart from the inside you began to see how very fragile it was.

"I don't believe so, seeing as 'our' Reno has had no reaction when I've interrupted the one we've met in our dreams when she's not paying attention in meetings." He admitted, "I haven't had a chance to try it with Rufus however, but I'm willing to presume that he's from our version of things as there's nothing different about him."

"Hn."

It sounds sensible but Cloud's not entirely reassured. They're speculating, no matter how good Tseng is at getting the facts and doing that well and -

And Cloud doesn't want to lose his life. He's just gotten it back, he's just gotten it to the point where he's going to fix it and do it right this time and... and it feels like there's a future if he's fast enough and careful enough to grab it. If things change - if things change he loses all of that. Maybe they would change for the better but - maybe they wouldn't. And they're not just risking themselves but everyone that's alive right now. For all he knows, Sephiroth is already changing their world and he's just not aware of it because his memories are being rewritten as the past changes. It wouldn't be the first time he hasn't been able to trust his own mind.

He can't seem to not try to prod Sephiroth to freedom in their shared dreams though. He knows what being a puppet feels like and he's starting to understand that that's all Sephiroth has ever been even if it's not the same as Cloud's own experience. Still -

"Different worlds then. Like Ami's universe has." It's reassuring though if it wasn't for Ami there would take a bit more to wrap his head around it. "Maybe the Sephiroth we dream about can change his." Save Aerith and Zack. "Do you think the threat to the Planet's future is so huge it stretches to different worlds and places?"

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Secret Report I: Junon, Meetings and Truth

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