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Behind the Dorms, Tuesday Afternoon

Leto had actually made some plans for this meeting, in case Arthur and Zack would still be asleep, although if they had been, there would certainly have been a lot fewer people showing up.

Those plans were now pointless, however. There was no way he would put people through defining the goals of defensive tactics today. Clearly those who had spend their weekend in another reality were a little too emotional to deal with that now. Leto knew that from experience; he had spent the previous day being bitched at (hello Arthur!) or hugged and cried on. It was obvious that people needed some kind of emotional outlet today.

Also, it seemed like some people had trust issues after having run into alternate vampire versions of themselves. That could prove dangerous in a fighting situation.

"Good afternoon," he greeted everyone gathered. "Today we will work on what I believe is referred to in this time as team-building. Without loyalty and trust - both of leaders and of fellow warriors - a military unit is nothing. Where that trust is strong and army may rise about their actual level of fighting skill."

"Often this loyalty has been nurtured by shared pain and suffering. A guerilla group might have faced persecution together for a long time. Many forms of military training forces the warriors to endure severe hardships together in order to achieve something similar."

Leto smiled. "Today, I decided for a more playful and gentle approach. We will start with a shared meal. Eating together is a sign of friendship in many cultures. First, you need to divide the food." He gestured at a blanket on the ground with a large fruit bowl in the middle. "It needs to be divided equally, but for every fruit you take, you need to tell the group something significant about yourself."

"When the food has been divided, you may eat, but you may not feed yourself, only other people."

He watched the people gathered. "Any questions?"

[~~Wait for OCD!~~ OCD is up!]

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"Flowers, fresh air...."

Awww, a lime! She was too kind! And it was sour. It practically made his teeth buzz. Zack wasn't complaining, of course.

"You... did, huh? Anything in particular?"

"Flowers are cheap, here," she said, shaking her head. "I still can't understand that. I could go to that flowershop and spend a pocketful of change and walk out with fresh-cut flowers. It's ridiculous."

One of these days, she was going to remember to stop there, and buy fresh bouquets for her room. Just because she could.

"I ..." She frowned, wondering how to go on. She reached over and plucked some of the strawberries out of his hand, first. "They're mine now," she declared, "so I'm giving some to you. These shouldn't be missed."

Stalling was easier with fresh fruit.

"It's the same way in Gongaga, really. I mean, the reactor there isn't really the greatest, but if you wander out into the jungle past the outskirts, everything is still so alive. I'd bring home wildflowers for my mom, whenever I could sneak out. She didn't want me in the woods alone, though. Never know what might jump out at you."

Griffons, Gagighandis, Grand Horns, Grangalans and ... other assorted things whose names might or might not have started with the letter G.

He smiled a careful little smile as he accepted one of the strawberries. He knew when someone was stalling when he saw it, yeah. He was chipper, not stupid. But, considering the past week, if this was about what he figured it was about, she could stall all she wanted to.

Edited 2009-08-04 22:06 (UTC)

"I would have though a member of SOLDIER could handle himself," she teased gently. "But Moms are usually the protective type, from what I've heard."

She used her fingernails to separate more slices of the lime. "I ... don't know if I owe you an apology or not," Elena said, finally. "I said some things, but it wasn't me, I just ... saw it happening, in a dream. And you might not even know what I'm talking about, which makes this particularly ridiculous. But I feel like I do."

Enough to overcome her uncertainty at approaching him at all. Still Zack. Still someone she shouldn't get close to. Right.

"Turks and SOLIDER?" Zack wasn't frowning now just because he wasn't going to let himself frown. That conversation that he'd never been a part of had been eating at him since he'd dreamed of it. "You're right, it wasn't you. I mean, not you. You can't apologize for something that isn't your fault."

He studied a strawberry very, very intently for a moment, and then held it out to her.

"And if anyone owes anyone the apology, it's the guy who was trying to snag a meal."

"Not necessarily," she said, leaning forward to nibble at the strawberry. "The guy trying to snag a meal was just ... hungry. I ... she, whoever it was ... said some pretty harsh things."

She glanced up, to be sure she had his eyes. "Words can be very effective weapons, when you've found a chink in someone's armor. They don't have to be true; they just have to sting. Distract long enough to let you regroup."

"She got away alive," Zack pointed out. And there he was, tired all over again.

Of course, shooting him at point-blank range had probably helped with that escape of hers, too.

"She did," Elena agreed, her own voice curiously flat. She'd had no such handy defense against the blonde girl she'd encountered on Saturday. Stupid.

"I didn't mean to ... upset you. I mean, she meant to, but ... it wasn't anything you should dwell on. You're not him."

"And you're still not her," Zack pointed out. "So, really. Nothing to worry about."

Zack didn't tend to do well in these 'I'm sorry,' 'No, I'm sorry,' situations. Especially when there was no way to really make up for any of it.

That's why he'd bought all those cookies yesterday.

The thing was, he wasn't that other Zack, but that didn't mean that the situation would have changed if he'd been the one to get turned and stranded in another world, did it?

"Right. Nothing," Elena said dryly, sucking some of the juice from her fingertips. "That's why I wanted to apologize, and you look like someone kicked your puppy."

Sigh. Right. There was no pulling the wool over the eyes of a Turk, was there?

"Most of the stuff that's bothering me about that? Is stuff that that vampire said, not you. Other-you. Whichever. Stuff about monsters. Things like that."

"He was a liar," she said easily. "He was a soulless killer who felt insecure about all the lives he ruined, so he told himself lies to make it seem all better. It wasn't working very well."

"Yeah, but he sure seemed to believe it." Zack shrugged and idly picked the stem off a strawberry. "And he had some... pretty good points, I guess. If you look at them a little sideways."

SOLDIER's aggression and their thrill of the hunt. A vampire's thirst. One of the two of them was just out to keep fed.

"He thought Angeal was a mindless killer," Elena reminded him. She hadn't known Angeal, but he'd been a mentor of Zack's, from what she could remember. Before he'd ... well. That was hardly relevant. "And that dreams and honor didn't matter. Maybe he was just trying to justify things to himself."

"I have to wonder, if Angeal had been there, would he have been able to keep him on the right course even as a vampire?"

Look, Zack had great faith in his mentor.

A lot.

"I've never met Angeal." Elena had only barely stopped herself from saying that she had never known him; too obvious from that that he was deceased. "Turks and SOLDIER, we run in different circles. But if all of this was weighing on him, maybe someone could have gotten through."

She didn't honestly believe it, but it didn't hurt to say.

Edited 2009-08-05 04:20 (UTC)

Zack... didn't really believe it, either. But it was something to cling to.

Dreams and honor possibly being stronger than the monster. He had been the monster.

"He was... Hurt. I guess. Because nobody came for him."

Elena nodded. Ouch. Okay. Tread carefully. She'd started this; she needed to fix it. Even if that hadn't really been her. Or him, either.

"I can understand that," she said, slowly. "But you don't know that they didn't try. The things she said about SOLDIER ... not mattering, that was just ... because she knew it would hurt you. Not because she thought it was true."

And another strawberry lost its stem to Zack's idle fidgeting.

"It felt true, at the time. I mean, maybe it was just that he'd been alone for so long, it was easy to believe. That she'd confirmed doubts that were already there."

"That was why she did it," Elena said softly. "She was ... analyzing you. Assessing. Looking for weak spots, and ways to exploit them. It kept her alive. It wasn't ... those words weren't for you."

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.

"Maybe ... they tried sending someone, but the island was closed off," she suggested. "Or maybe it was a time loop. She -- the other Elena? She was sent a few weeks after Reno went missing, but it was months later, for him. Maybe, back in Midgar, they're giving that Zack a few more days to call home before they send out the rescue team."

They wouldn't. ShinRa would have written him off as too much trouble to go after. ShinRa didn't give a damn about any of them. But Zack didn't need to hear that.

"They sent out the announcement that he was dead, Elena."

He. That other Zack. Himself? But not him. Him, if he'd been forced to abandon his dreams and his honor and then he'd had to eat people.

"That sounds like a write-off, to me."

She'd started this conversation. Zack wasn't going to ever say that. He was going to just swallow it and let it fester until he decided it didn't matter anymore, or until he forgot.

He probably wouldn't forget.

Elena narrowed her eyes at him. "So be pissed at them," she said. "ShinRa's a company, Zack, not a humanitarian organization. They don't operate for puppies and kittens and that warm, fuzzy feeling that you get when you help someone. They're a company, with a bottom line, and a President who likes making money. Maybe Angeal wanted to come for you, and couldn't. Maybe the rest of SOLDIER was upset. I mean, I wasn't sent after Reno because the President gave a damn. That was Tseng's doing. The company would have written him off, too. And probably did."

"I'm not angry," Zack said, raising an eyebrow at her for a moment, and then shrugging and picking the top off of yet another strawberry before holding it out to her. "I guess it just... puts some things in perspective, is all. If the company doesn't put any worth on the lives of the people within it, someone has to."

And it was decided, right there and then, that Zack was going to be the one who cared. Easy decision, really!

Elena was fiddling with her lime, now. It had a rind. That was handy for fiddling.

"All the things you mentioned ... dreams, and honor? Those don't change just because the company itself writes people off. That's just ... what they do. They also protect people, some times. I mean, they might be doing it for power, or for other bad reasons, but they're still doing good for bad reasons. I don't know how that balances out."

"If they were doing bad," Zack noted, "I wouldn't have joined SOLDIER. Dreams, honor... I'll do good for good reasons. Plenty of SOLDIERs do. Maybe that helps with the balancing, some."

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