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"It's done." Elena hoped to gods her voice wasn't shaking. Tseng wouldn't be able to see how her grip faltered on the phone in her hand, at least. She rested her elbow on the window ledge of the car door to steady it but winced hard as pain shot through her arm and down into her fingers. She stared out of the windscreen at Healen's dark, moonlit cliffs. Focus. "Target eliminated."
"Good," he said. She'd underestimated just how much she'd wanted to hear his voice. There was a pause. "Anything I should know about?"
Her cheek smacked into exposed plaster as someone jumped her from behind, pinning her gun hand to the wall and striking the back of her elbow hard. Her fingers sprang apart and the weapon clattered to the floor.
Elena breathed out silently through pursed lips, blinking slow and hard, willing the rising pain back down. Her breath condensed in the biting air and she shivered, from pain or cold, or both. She couldn't lean back into the car seat because it hurt too much. Couldn't sit forward because that hurt too much. Everything just fucking hurt too gods damn much.
"No, sir."
Sometimes it was still weird calling him sir when it was just the two of them. And while her shift should have finished hours ago, the job had overrun and this was technically a preliminary debriefing. So they were technically on the clock. Sir it was.
She had to wrap this up before he could get suspicious. They might have been a thing now—'couple' was a word reserved for other people—but it had only been a few weeks. If she'd hated fucking up in front of him before, she hated it a hundred times more now. She couldn't let him think she was weak. Or incompetent. Or a screw up. Now more than ever when she had so much more to lose.
Never mind that falling into his arms right now would have been really, really good.
"I'll see you in the morning, sir."
"Elena?"
Shit.
"Mm?" Gods, ow.
"Nice work."
Well, he wouldn't be saying that tomorrow once he read her full report. It should have been a nice, clean and quiet bullet between the eyes. Instead, she'd ended up beating and choking the target to death with whatever homeware came to hand. Not to mention the two bodyguards who, according to their intel, were 'most definitely not going to be there'. Not going to be there, her arse.
But that to one side, she sensed something unsaid in Tseng's tone—that he was really saying something else but she couldn't put her finger on what. Beneath her body's incessant throbbing, there was a prickly, sinking feeling. He was so damn hard to read sometimes.
Another wave of raw pain speared through her gut. She gripped the freezing steering wheel with her free hand and closed her eyes.
An impossible weight slammed into the side of her head, knocking her sideways. She flew for a long time before her body collided with something and broke her fall. She tasted blood. Unable to really see, her hands frantically fumbled and grabbed for something, anything that could do damage. Rough hands dragged her up off the floor by the collar but still she didn't give up, her fingers snagging some kind of plastic cord from what was probably a side table. She tugged without a second thought, feeling a weight dangling from the cord—an old phone. Even as her target kneed her in the stomach, she managed to stretch the cord between both hands and get it around his neck.
Elena blinked back the memory. What had he just said? She'd fucked up and he was praising her on a job well done, that was it.
"Thank you, sir." She would save the fallout for tomorrow.
He was still on the line, quiet and listening to far more subtext than she wanted him to hear. "See you tomorrow," she repeated, and ended the call before he had a chance to hear the blood she could feel running down her face. Tseng had a knack for things like that.
She let her forehead come to rest on the steering wheel, guilt chiming in with all the other miserable sensations dominating her body. Ordinarily she'd have invited herself over to his place on the very edge of Healen. Nights were pretty much the only time they could steal together after maintaining a professional façade throughout the day. But she couldn't let him see her like this. Not that he hadn't seen her like this before, but she had an image to maintain and standards to uphold. She couldn't stand it if he came to think less of her as a partner—personally or professionally.
So she would take care of things like she always did.
Getting up to her apartment had been an expedition. Cliff Resort's stairs might as well have been sheerer than Mount Nibel for all the literal blood, sweat and tears it took to drag herself up them. Who was she kidding? These cliffs were sheerer than Mount Nibel. Gods damn Rufus Shinra and his smart ideas of setting up base in the arse end of nowhere.
There was a lift, to be fair, but just as she'd limped towards it, the doors had opened to reveal a canoodling couple, blissfully unaware that they weren't alone. The sight of them had only made her heart ache for Tseng's embrace that bit harder. And so she'd pulled herself up the three flights of stairs to her apartment instead, hands sticking to the icy railings.
He was a crushing weight on top of her, writhing and flailing and grunting and spitting blood as she pulled hard on the cord around his neck. Her own teeth were bared, her body singing in pain as she pushed her hips against his back to gain more purchase. Thick pain erupted in her gut as something—probably his elbow—thrust into it. Again. And again. She heard a feral yell and realised it was her own. Shiva, don't let the cord break. Don't let it break.
She didn't quite remember getting into the bathroom. But then it was always like this when it was time for this particular ritual. She'd fallen against the front door. The sensor had picked up her keycard in her pocket and unlocked, and she'd practically rolled into the apartment. She shouldered her way long the wall to the darkness of the kitchen. She'd probably got blood on the white paint. Two bags of ice from the bottom drawer of the freezer and now her fingers were fumbling with the buttons on her blouse as the bath filled, ice cubes floating on the surface.
He'd been still for a while now, his weight sagging down on top of her, his bowling-ball of a head resting on her heaving chest. But still she didn't let go. He needed to be dead. Very dead. As dead as dead could be. Then she could let go.
Pain surged through her as she bent to get her trousers off and she flung out a hand to catch the edge of the tub before she could take a nose-dive into it. Lifting her leg high enough to get into the bath was another snag she hadn't anticipated. Her knee made it to the edge of the tub and she cried out as her body shook.
Gods, this was a bad one.
Black dots skittered through her vision. Maybe she should have said something to Tseng. And oh how she wanted to. Maybe she should have stopped at Shinra's private clinic on the way into Healen. Something was wrong. She could feel it in the way her insides weighed and railed as she moved. Too late for that now, though. The ice bath would numb the pain. It always did.
The water's embrace was sudden and bracing as she half fell, half slipped into the bath. Her assaulted muscles went rigid all at once as coldness took her in a swathe of needles. For a moment it was too much as her lungs sucked in a deep, involuntary breath that pressed down into her stomach.
It's okay. It's okay. It's okay.
The mantra ran through her mind over and over as her eyes closed and her body quivered, ice cubes bobbing at her lips and then her forehead as she slid down until her feet touched the front of the tub, the smooth coldness of the base pressing at her back. And let go.
The adrenaline-fuelled strength leeched from her fingers and her grip on the cord eased. The plastic was embedded into the palms of her leather, fingerless gloves. The still solidness of the floor was strangely comforting against her back. She didn't know how long she lay there before she shifted under him and his head lolled. The top half of his ear was missing and the fingers on his left hand were skewed at nauseating, broken angles. Her eyes roved over the smashed glass coffee table and upturned leather sofa. Blood was still running down the back of it. No doubt the top of his ear was around there somewhere, among the debris of broken glass, overturned lamps, smashed ornaments and gods knew what else. She closed her eyes and breathed out. Mission accomplished.
*
Someone was shouting and banging in the distance. Something pulled at both her wrists and then her arms and then the world was turning. It hurt. Gods, it hurt.
"Elena! Damn it, Elena, come on!" Tseng. Louder than before; clearer, somehow. She'd recognise his voice anywhere. But he was angry and that was never a good thing. He hardly ever loosened the iron fist he kept on his temper.
She was tumbling—gods, the pain—and hands—they had to be hands—were patting her cheeks sending shockwaves right through her skull.
Get off. Her mouth wouldn't form the words. Rusty-tasting water dribbled from her lips and ran over her chin, a gloriously warm contrast against her cold skin. Why was it so fucking cold?
"Elena, wake up!"
She was awake. She was, really. Just resting her eyes. Something rubbed painfully hard over her chest, between her breasts and she wanted to pull away but—Shiva, she was naked.
Fingers pressed into the back of her neck and her head was lifted. Something warm and smooth brushed her lips, like glass. There was pressure on her cheeks, her lips parted and the sweet, distinctive taste of a potion hit her tongue. It caught the back of her throat and she coughed but it still slipped down.
Pain had been at the centre of her awareness for hours and hours, but it was only now that the heavy, thick weight of it in her gut eased that she realised just how much. Her eyes rolled open and she was blinded by blurry dots of light. The phone cord. The car. Tseng. The ice cubes floating in the bath.
Something soft, a towel, appeared over her shivering body and her torso was lifted away from the floor in an embrace so welcome it brought hot tears to her eyes.
"What in Odin's name did you think you were doing?" Tseng's voice was taught in her ear, the warmth of his cheek pressing into her own. He was rocking her gently, holding the towel tightly around her as he cradled her upper body in his arms.
Her lips moved but no words would come out. Her arms hung uselessly by her sides under the towel. Emotion rose up through her chest and into her throat and a strangled sound, halfway between a sob and a groan, rolled from her mouth.
"I've got you," he muttered, the vibrations of his voice reassuring against her ear.
She was probably definitely getting his pristine suit wet. He'd be annoyed even more than he was already. But he continued to hold her as full consciousness returned and, if it wasn't for the fact that her body still felt very broken—even if a little less broken than earlier—she'd never have wanted the moment to end.
As the haze gradually lifted, he wordlessly helped her stand and guided her to sit on the edge of the bathtub. Which was now empty, barring a few stray ice cubes scattered over the watery pink, blood-tinged base.
Her attention must have wandered because the next thing she knew, he was wrapping a blanket over the towel. Where had he found it? She didn't really care. He crouched in front of her.
"I think you must have been bleeding internally." The potion must have taken care of that. Or at least, it felt like it had. She shifted her butt bones on the edge of the bath and was greeted with just about everything hurting all at once. It was optimistic to think the potion would have taken care of anything else; they targeted only the most severe injuries first.
"What the hell were you trying to do?" His dark eyes, deep and unyielding, locked onto hers. She tried to blink him into focus. Her muscles were starting to shiver uncontrollably.
"I—" How could she answer that? "This wouldn't be the f-first time." Damn her teeth for shaking more than the rest of her. "It's what I a-always do after something… l-like this."
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Maybe she shouldn't have let that slip but it was too late to take it back now.
"How did you know?" she asked.
"Did you think I couldn't hear it in your voice?" He was looking up at her once more, an elbow resting on his knee.
So she hadn't kept it together as well as she thought. It hit her then, harder than the ice bath itself, that he'd come in to find her probably half-drowning in the bath. Which was about a million times worse than if she'd just been honest in the first place.
This vulnerability thing was hard. Twice as hard as being the only woman in a unit of three men. But perhaps now was as good a time as any to give it a shot. She could always blame the potion later for making her delirious.
"I didn't… I didn't want you to think less of me."
"Think less of you?" He was incredulous.
"N-now we're together." Stop shaking, gods damn it. "I couldn't stand it if you thought—"
His hands rubbed gently at her upper arms, as if trying to warm her, or maybe comfort her, or both, but she flinched in pain as much she yearned for his touch. He inhaled like he was about to say something reproachful but visibly checked himself.
"Elena," he bowed his head for a moment before looking back up at her.
"I screwed up and I don't want you to think I'm weak." The words tumbled out quickly, in between one episode of shivering and another. Water was dripping from her hair and down her back beneath the towel.
"And if the same thing happened to me—or Reno, or Rude—as a result of poor intel, would you think we were weak?"
"N-no." She clenched her teeth together hard. Live waves of pain rippled through her jaw but she bit down harder. Wait, how did he know about Reno's intel being so wide of the mark that she had the bruises—and ruptured gods knew what—to show for it?
"You wouldn't be in this state if it wasn't." He must have read the question on her face. Which also meant… No. There was no way he had that much blind faith in her. Tseng wasn't a man of blind faith. He was logic and facts.
"How do you know I didn't just—"
"If Reno's intelligence had been on point, you would have just taken the shot." His tone was firm. Final. Shiva, maybe he really did have that much faith in her. Her stomach flipped a bitter-sweet somersault.
Tseng got to his feet and bent forwards over her, holding his face just a little higher than her own. She could see his eyes wandering over the parts of her face that felt particularly tight and swollen. The edge of her towel in his hand, he dabbed at her lip. It stung.
"Do you think I would be with you if I thought so little of you?" The backs of his fingers brushed her cheekbone lightly; fingers that were capable of such lethal violence, that had pulled so many triggers. They worked their way into her wet hair and tucked it behind her ear. He was looking at her intently, his breath warm on her lips, waiting.
"No," she managed. "I just… sometimes I have to remind myself that you feel that way about me. I spent so long thinking… and we spend so much time pretending—"
"Shall I remind you?" There was a curve to his mouth that set her stomach muscles quivering, and not from the cold.
His nose nudged hers as he leaned lower. She closed her eyes, felt his lips take hers, warm and gentle.
He broke the kiss slowly, lingering, savouring, and tilted his forehead against hers. He placed his hands, calloused but warm and expert, either side of her head. "You don't have to do this on your own any more. We're partners. Off the clock as well as on."
*