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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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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."

"The other-me was wrong," she said, smiling a bit wistfully. "SOLDIER must have it a lot easier than we Turks do, in that case."

Zack just gave her a curious look, at that.

What he knew about the Turks at this point was... limited, at best.

"Easier?"

Elena was trying not to meet his eyes. "You know," she said. "You're doing good, for good's sake. We're doing ... whatever the company tells us, because the company tells us to. It doesn't have the same ring as 'dreams' and 'honor.'"

"We still have to complete the missions we get handed," Zack noted. "We're just the big guns. We get called in when it's something you guys can't do."

... He didn't mean that to sound disparaging or anything, really.

Elena allowed herself a cryptic smile at that. "You look better on the front pages than we do," she said. "Our missions fall more under 'plausible deniability' than anything the company would want to take credit for."

"Well, yeah." Pretty much anyone knew that the Turks lurked in the background for a reason, after all. "But the Turks aren't typically..."

Zack groped around for a word, and then just shrugged and flexed an arm.

He had one hell of a bicep, yes.

Elena was not meaning to snicker. Much.

"I got awards in martial arts, you know," she laughed. "But I'm glad you're around for bodyguard duties, if I need them."

Oh, the sadface, it was on.

"You guys get sent out on regular monster detail too, then? Griffons and Malboros and Behemoths, stuff like that?"

"Not usually," Elena said easily. "I mean, that's more your job. Good PR. Look how the company's protecting civilians, and so on."

Zack made a face, at that.

"I'm not protecting the civilians just so that the company looks good."

"No, no," Elena said, peeling a section of the lime and almost popping it into her mouth, before she remembered the rules and held it out for Zack, instead. "That's not why any of us do what we do. But they don't send out for routine monster-killing because they can send you, and then take publicity shots of how much they care about the civilians. The stuff we do, they blame on other people."

Oh, Zack was so going to regret asking this question. He was. So, so going to regret it. Yep.

"Like what?"

If she kept playing with the lime, it was going to end up a smushy, sticky mess all over her fingers.

"All evidence of misconduct must be destroyed," she said solemnly. "Not everyone falls in line so easily. We're the enforcers."

Zack considered that for a moment, and then he nodded. Okay. So the Turks were like some kind of undercover Security Department extension, or something. Laws were made to be kept. People had to be able to feel safe in their own neighborhoods. Things like that.

He held out his hand for the lime, smiling faintly.

She placed it in his hand, giving him a light smile. Okay. He was okay with it, then. That was helpful. They were sort of ... bonding, almost.

Wait, that was bad. Wasn't she supposed to be avoiding him? Shit. She should make some excuse, take off. Or maybe she should sit here, be nice, share her lime, and then get back to avoiding him.

Okay. That seemed like a plan.

Elena made really, really silly plans. Because once you were Zack's friend? There was no avoiding him. He was a wiggly little force of nature.

A wiggly little force of nature who was peeling the last of the rind from the lime slice, offering her a sudden, playful sort of grin, and then reaching forward to press it against her lips, yes.

Because he was a dork like that.

Elena giggled. He was, too. And then she nipped a bite from the lime-slice and tried to chew and swallow it without laughing so hard she choked.

"Do you miss monster-runs?" Elena asked.

"Like you wouldn't believe," Zack agreed, laughing along with her. "The vampires were closer to the monsters from home in that they disappear after you kill them. The only thing that's invaded here that we had to fight? They just left this nasty, nasty mess. It smelled."

He remembered the gator guts very vividly, yes. He'd been made to clean them up in detention that weekend.

Ew.

Behind the Dorms, Tuesday Afternoon

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