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timextoxhajima · 3 years

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Love Me A Little Less: Chapter 2 - Auction

LOVE ME A LITTLE LESS CHAPTER MASTERLIST

Member: (3rd person pov) arranged marriage au with Lee Juyeon

Genre: angsty wangsty

Taglist: @hyunvelies

“You no longer own me.”

The guppies in the tank that spans nearly half the space of the wall flush around, their brightly colored and flared tails gently wading in the water. Juyeon gently taps on the glass, the yellow guppy swimming towards him instead of away. The shelves are stacked with books on marine life and nature, posters of the Northern Lights dawn the walls if they weren’t covered in the latest Apple commercial poster.

He hears the hurried footsteps before he hears his assistant, who is huffing by the time she’s at the door of his office. “Anything urgent, Miss Young? Forgive me if I imagined I told you that I would be unavailable until after lunch.”

“Sir, I think you should see the news. I know why your parents aren’t in office today.”

“What?” Juyeon finally pulls away from the tank, worried eyes scanning his assistant. She’s well-dressed, has short hair and ruby cheeks. She looks like she belongs in high school. “Anything serious happen? An accident?”

“Um, no, it’s just--”

Ring ring

Lee Juyeon turns to the phone set on his table, then side-eyes Young Jin Seol, feet turning toward the device.

“No, sir! Wait, before you--”

“Hello?”

“Good morning, Mr Lee. We’re calling from The Board to request your availability tonight for a press conference regarding today’s updates.”

Juyeon scoffs gently, standing straight up and resting a hand on his hip. He turns to look at Jin Seol, eyes filled with caution, as if they meant to say I told you not to pick it up.

“I’m sorry but... what updates?”

“The change in ownership of HERA & ARTEMIS and the marriage.”

There’s a brooding uneasiness in his gut as he processes the heavy word. In the world of corporate under The Board, the word ‘marriage’ is nothing but a contract.

“Remind me who this concerns?”

“You, sir. The marriage between you and Kim Jang Won. The Board would like your presence during a press conference to address the marriage as well as the following change in ownership of HERA & ARTEMIS.”

It’s like Medusa has just stared him straight in the eye, for Juyeon fails to respond in any way possible.

“Uh... sir? Hello? Mr Lee Juyeon?”

Jin Seol rushes over, able to hear the voice on the other end calling out to him. She grabs the phone and presses it to her ear, eyes plastered to Juyeon, whose lips seemed to be whitening. “Hi, this is Young Jin Seol, Mr Lee’s assistant. He’s not feeling very well now, so I’ll get him to give you a call later regarding the press conference, if that’s alright.”

“Oh, um, of course. But we’d like to have details settled by 1pm later, Miss Young. If it’s not too troubling to relay the message to Mr Lee.”

“Rest assured, he’ll...” Jin Seol watches Juyeon trudge to the couches sitting before the tank, sinking into the soft cushion and pressing his fingers into his closed lids. “I’ll make sure he gets back to you by then.”

Juyeon can feel the skin on his chest stretch when he sucks in a deep breath. The nonsensical thoughts start to crowd his head in the most logical way possible, if that was even possible. Luckily, the only thing he could hear was the bubbling of the oxygen pump in the tank.

He hears Jin Seol return the phone back into the phone set before he finally opens his eyes, vision a little blurred from the pressure of his fingers.

“I could schedule them in straight away but I have a feeling you’d want to talk to your parents first, Mr Lee.”

Juyeon brings his palms down to his nose and mouth, lips perpendicular to his index finger and his thumbs under his chin as he focuses on the table before him. The white tulips in the vase have already started to brown.

“Schedule them for lunch at 11 and I’d like to be left alone from 12.30 to 1. I’ll call The Board myself afterwards,” Juyeon notes the coldness in his voice, an element he doesn’t even recognise much. “My parents and I have alot to talk about.”

The Director of Chang’s Funeral Services personally flips open the file, turning it and sliding it across the table to the siblings sitting opposite them. Mr Chang would’ve shat himself if Kim Jang Won had come alone - she doesn’t have the title ‘Hera’s Princess’ for nothing. It’s a good thing ‘The Prince of Artemis’ had come with her. But maybe that’s just it, isn’t it?

What if he pulled out a gun and shot me right now?

Younghoon’s eyes conscientiously process the printed words on the document, his sister a little too over the edge to be paying attention to anything.

“We-- Um, carried out an investigation and realised that the bodies were... well... mismatched.”

Younghoon listens, but his gaze is still on the carbon print. The file was labelled KIM JO-PIL but the papers in the folder belonged to someone else. Someone else’s body. A common city address.

“Have you excavated the body?”

“In progress, Mr Kim. They should be calling any time now for after identification.”

“I don’t suppose you have the documents for Kim Jo-Pil? The ones that were supposed to be in this folder?”

“The thing is... I remember seeing the documents. My colleagues have too. The people in charge of your father’s burial saw it too. But... if it’s not in this office then frankly, I’ve got no clue where it would be.”

For the first time in 3 hours, Jang Won actually looks somewhat understanding, sympathetic, empathetic. Younghoon shuts the file and slides it over to Jang Won when she sits up in her seat.

“If you don’t mind, we’ll take the file and contact the deceased’s family. When’s that body identification phone call coming in?” Then the 3-hour streak is lost, and Younghoon sighs exasperatedly, out of her peripheral vision. “Taking mighty long for a simply body identification, no?”

Flustered, Mr Chang fumbles for the phone set sitting in the corner of his desk, hurriedly dialing a number.

“Where do you think he ran to for 2 years?” Jang Won squints at the deceased’s information. “Why 2 years?”

Younghoon runs a hand through his hair, probably worth about half a million Korean Won. “You ask me as if I know any more than you do.”

Mr Chang is finally talking to someone. Jang Won’s focus fixates on something familiar at the bottom of the page.

“That’s because maybe you do,” Lifting the file, she points to the bottommost section.

LAST OCCUPATION:

PHOTOGRAPHER FOR ARTEMIS ENTERTAINMENT GROUP

“It’s your company and subsidiary. I’m surprised you don’t recognise the name.”

“I might own Artemis but I don’t personally know all 278 employees. If he’s a photographer and I don’t recognise him, that means he’s in another department. Women, or children or product. I’m only listed as a model under the ‘Males’ department.”

There’s a silence in the air that allowed Younghoon to hear the gears churning in Jang Won’s head. The appearance of Kim Jo-Pil, 2 years after his supposed death, has just dragged both his children and everybody else related into a mess of a puzzle. But Younghoon has no doubt his sister can find all the pieces, much less draw the connections.

There’s a reason why she could build HERA & ARTEMIS from the ground up.

Mr Chang finally hangs up, sighing heavily as he looks at the powerful siblings over the rim of his glasses. “They’ve confirmed. The body in the coffin you saw your father in belongs to the man in the document.”

Younghoon chortles in disbelief. “Right then. So our father did die, but someone managed to swap the bodies before it was lowered, and then proceeded to keep him alive for the next 2 years.”

Jang Won flips and finds a portrait of the dead man. “Question is... who?”

Younghoon stands up first, thanking Mr Chang and tapping Jang Won as he turns for the exit of the office. The Director doesn’t even get a chance to bid his goodbye when Jang Won leaves, behind Younghoon.

Escorted by four bodyguards, the siblings walk side by side with her heels clicking against the floor. Upon reaching the first floor, the lift doors ding open into an array of reporters hustling outside the entrance.

“Get them out of my face before I ruin their lives!”

The guards rush before them, hurriedly trying to disperse the crowd. Jang Won pulls out her sunglasses, covering her eyes.

“Time-wasting assholes.”

The shouted questions are loud and intrusive. The short distance of a few tens of metres feel like a mile from all the shoving and yelling. The flashes refuse to cease, but they’ve been in the spotlight for so long, it just gets annoying.

BREAKING: KIM YOUNGHOON AND KIM JANG WON SPOTTED AT CHANG’S FUNERAL SERVICES - KIM JO-PIL CONFIRMED TO HAVE BEEN SWAPPED OUT BEFORE BURIAL TWO YEARS AGO

Juyeon turns into the private room the restaurant manager has led him to, leaving him at the door whilst his parents gawk at the headlines blasting on the screen mounted to the wall. There’s a picture of Kim Jang Won and her brother getting into a car right below the headlines.

“Quite a mess, isn’t it?”

Both of them whip around to see the young man standing by the door, pushing himself off the frame and strutting into the private room. The whole fit he was wearing could buy a short vacation. His father reaches for the remote and shuts off the television.

“I expect nothing less from Kim Jo-Pil, given the history of HERA & ARTEMIS. It was just a matter of time before his daughter took over and turned it into a multi-billion name,” His mother sings, fingers around the base of a glass of wine and carefully swirling the blood-red liquid.

Juyeon sits, and a waiter comes by to fill his glass with wine. The gentle whir of the air-conditioning in the room is the only source of noise, other than the waiter taking his leave. Juyeon picks up the glass, raising a brow as he brings it to his lips. “I expect nothing less from my own parents when they are about to put me up for a certain type of contract,” He pauses, the glass in mid-air. “Say... a marriage.”

His lips meet the curve of the glass and he takes a sip.

“We wanted to tell you before we agreed, but--”

“But the money’s more worth?” He winces from the alcohol in the wine, frowning and offering a sarcastic purse of his lips. “I can imagine. All that stuff you have at home... you know, grand piano worth five million, a kitchen big enough for a herd of horses-- oh, not to mention the actual stable of horses... Yeah, I guess... I guess I could empathise with how you needed more than those. Planning a re-deco? I might know some great architects.”

“Juyeon...”

“No, no,” Placing down the glass, he waves his hand. “Let me put things into perspective for you. After all, gotta make the homework I did on my way here worth it right? See if it’s correct.”

Juyeon clears his throat and cracks his knuckles, knowing that his parents are offering him the most miserable looks they’ve ever given him in his life.

“The Board announces Kim Jo-Pil’s return. HERA & ARTEMIS goes back under his belt, leaving Kim Jang Won, current owner and might I say, the very reason why HERA & ARTEMIS is as good as it is today, jobless and absolutely helpless in a ditch. The Board then passes a rule, one which I have never heard before in my life, maybe because it’s never happened before, but... in order for Kim Jang Won to re-obtain some kind of ownership or at least some part of HERA & ARTEMIS, she must marry a name attached to The Board. And the two of you, seeing how rich and successful Kim Jang Won has made HERA & ARTEMIS, snatched the offer up first and put me on the stage... for auction.”

“Auction...!”

“Correct me, will you? Because that’s exactly what I think you did. What, becoming the next director of Apple-Korea isn’t enough for you? Owning the Korean branch of one of the largest tech companies in the world isn’t enough-- you must have a fashion-retail company?!”

The entire room falls into heavy silence. The waiters knock before entering with some seafood appetizer. Juyeon sucks his lips between his teeth, nibbling anxiously on his bottom one.

“Juyeon...” His father waits for the waiter to leave. “We... we just wanted the best for you. You know how powerful the Kim family is. Any remote connection to them will do us good. It’ll do you good.”

He scoffs and rubs his forehead with his index and middle finger. “I really have no clue what’s going on in those heads of yours sometimes.”

“I don’t know why you’re so against this, Juyeon. It’ll be helpful to you in your future!”

“As opposed to what? Wanting to be a marine biologist? Wanting to study the waters and nature? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Thinking that his father would hush his mother, Juyeon is surprised when he doesn’t.

“Wow, really? Nothing?”

Silence.

His mother picks up a fork.

“Very nice to know that you’re treating me like a piece of property instead of your son.”

Juyeon pulls the napkin off his lap and stands.

“Oh, and uh... Don’t wait for a wedding invitation. You’re not getting one.”

“Juyeon!” His parents collectively exclaim in disdain, eyes widening as he struts towards the exit and out of the room.

“What? You auctioned me off! You no longer own me, right?!”

Juyeon huffs angrily, hands running through his hair and ruining his own efforts of waxing his hair. He enters the lift, multiple staff members looking at him stride into the metallic box, confused. His fingers search for his phone in the pocket of his blazer, the device buzzing non-stop from the headlines and messages and emails from broadcasting companies and companies he couldn’t give two shits about.

But when the lift doors open and he sees the Kim Jang Won standing right outside with the same suit and sunglasses he had previously seen her on TV with, his eyes widen with a mix of surprise and distaste.

“Well, if it isn’t Kim Jang Won... or might I say, my fiancé?”

“My dad couldn’t have done this on his own. I have a theory, and multiple plans to fix this mess of a shitshow, so I’m here to figure out if you wanna be in on it.”

Juyeon scoffs and shoves his hands into his pockets, stepping out of the lift and staring down straight at her. He attempts to search for her eyes through the chocolate-brown shade of her sunglasses, but fails.

A tiny smirk crawls unto her lips as she pulls it off, her bright, sparkling, manipulative eyes ignite some flame in Juyeon.

Because that’s just how smart and cunning Kim Jang Won is.

“I know you don’t give a shit, Lee Juyeon. About The Board, about the marriage, about Apple.”

He chuckles, teeth wiping his canine teeth as he pulls his shoulders back. “So you Googled me. Should I be impressed?”

Then his phone buzzes and he pulls it out in a bid to display some kind of disinterest.

Young Jin Seol [12.13pm]: The tulips are here! [photo]

He blinks, eyes travelling from the screen to the most powerful figure of his generation under The Board.

“If I could find this out from Google, I think you should revisit your privacy logistics,” Kim Jang Won squints one eye and raises her brow. “I’m not here to confuse you or piss you off, Lee Juyeon. I’m here with an offer, to save both our asses. I want HERA & ARTEMIS back but I cannot do it if I have no link to it.”

“What’s in it for me then? It’s not like you can buy me a degree in marine biology.”

“I can’t but you could have the freedom to do so. I’ll pay for you to start your own company. Whoever said you needed a degree to do what you wanted to do? In this world... all you need is money and a little bit of brain... but!” She points to him her sunglasses. “You don’t have to worry about either because I’ve got that covered. All I need you to do is get down on one knee -- willingly -- for the whole world to see... and I’ll give you your freedom.”

Juyeon sucks in a deep breath so hard that he wheezes and Kim Jang Won could not be any more satisfied with herself.

#juyeon #tbz #the boyz #the boyz juyeon #juyeon fanfic #juyeon scenario #juyeon scenarios #lee juyeon #lee juyeon scenario #lee juyeon fanfic #the boyz lee juyeon #tbz juyeon #love me a little less

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whetstonefires · 4 years

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director's cut top guide? I don't have a section in specific pick your favorite I guess I love the whole thing

Awwwww thank you. 💗😊 For the compliment, the interest, and the guidance. Additionally thanks because I just discovered I didn’t update this fic in October like I thought I did! It’s still in the status it had in July. So uh. I’ll be getting right on that. ˋ( ° ▽、° )

I think I’m gonna go with a passage back near the start, in the first half of chapter 4, the one where Tifa’s getting Vincent out of his coffin. I like how it came out and it’s pretty important, and if I’ve rambled about it at all, it wasn’t recently.

There’s a push-pull effect fundamental to this scene–first physically, with Tifa moving and destroying actual barriers, and Vincent repeatedly attempting to withdraw. But also on the level of Tifa attempting a series of verbal sallies, which Vincent initially rebuffs and then ignores by vampirically pulling the covers over his head and generally putting the passive in passive-aggressive.

But after telling her to go ahead and set the building on fire with him in it, Vincent gets his lid on and settles on being inert, and Tifa gets to do a monologue.

There are a lot of speeches in this fic, honestly, because of the precedent set by canon/the kinds of characters I’m working with, but most of them are nowhere near this long, and even though Tifa’s trying to achieve a specific rhetorical objective here, they’re generally not quite this honest.

“It’s easy to decide to die,” she told him, at length. “It’s easy to stop fighting when there doesn’t seem to be any hope. I know.

“But you’ll always regret it. You know that. If you’d been brave enough to choose Lucrecia over the Turks before Hojo got his grubby claws into her, maybe none of this would ever have happened. If she’d been brave enough to choose you sooner, it might have been okay. Not choosing is almost always a bad choice. If you come out of hiding, more things will happen—things that can’t unhappen. I know that’s frightening. But things happen without you, too. When you’re not there. When you do nothing.”

Tifa rocked back on her heels. “You can’t make the world go back to the way it was before, get back the same happiness or hope from your memories…not even if you could wind back time.”

Here Tifa is combining her intimate knowledge of Vincent’s circumstances with her own situation to create a sort of…weaponized empathy.

She can’t afford for Vincent to not listen to her, because she refuses to either give up on her mission or kill him, so when the normal approach fails she falls back on contingency and proceeds to run absolutely roughshod over all his personal boundaries.

Now, being able to wield future information against people this way is one of the major features of this general genre of time travel story, particularly when (like Tifa here) the traveler had level-ups, but didn’t get to carry them into New Game Plus. Tifa later uses it against Tseng with no artfulness whatsoever.

But that kind of blunt, bludgeoning use of intimate knowledge is a power game; it’s not how you treat a friend. So Tifa spends a lot of this speech, especially the opening, drawing connections between her experience and Vincent’s, exposing herself emotionally as much as can reasonably be managed without going off on any Tifa-centric tangents.

Being displaced in time and separated from everything you cared about is relevant, here. And she’s also able to bring her personal experience with feeling helpless and trapped–not by the sort of clear antagonistic obstacle you can batter down with your fists but by the certainty that every possible course of action is Terrible and Wrong and so you can’t act, because you can’t choose–she specifically frames it in terms of having to decide between binary options, because that’s how we’ve seen her experience it wrt i.e. ‘talking to Cloud about how his brain is weird.’

The experience is similar enough to Vincent’s, especially his not-initiating of important relationship conversations with Lucretia at the beginning, for these terms to work for communication purposes, but it’s very definitely Tifa’s experience being mapped onto Vincent’s here, and proffered to ameliorate the inherent violence of what she’s doing.

Her coping mechanism for that trapped feeling, though, is to distract herself with Doing Something Constructive that allows her to avoid the issue without feeling like she’s stuck.

There’s a certain extent to which allowing time to process or grieve is important, and Tifa is bad at allowing it, largely I think because she’s very aware of the danger of getting mired in paralysis and ruminating on the bad thing until it’s all that exists. Vincent more than anyone else in the cast is defined by his choice to identify with his trauma, and while Aerith is the one most defined by trying not to do that, Tifa’s far enough to that end to create a conflict in viewpoint even when nothing vitally important is at stake.

I also included a dialogue ping to the place where she talks about this in the Advent Children movie, though if you’ve been following my opinions on ffvii any time at all you probably know I have so many problems with thedecisions made with Tifa in that film. Even the parts that areconsonant with her established characterization require her to have rolled back mostof her development from the OG.

The part where she doesn’t come with Cloud on the rescue mission shebullies him into is so utterly backward and the opposite of her establishedbehavior and values and just basic logic that I have to sort of write around it,because I can’t accept that it happened. But if we ignore that bit, and the amount of self-centeredness in the harangue, some elementsof the interaction have potential.

Because if nothing else it’s the most explicit verbal treatment in the Compilation of the recurring theme of people being ‘stuck.’ Not by bars and walls and certain death, but by the prisons inside their heads.

“But…there are still possibilities. Still things you can do to make the world better. Her choices…they weren’t your fault. But whatever you’re blaming yourself for right now…lying here until you die won’t make it better. The biggest sin of all, to me, is not trying to make things better.

“You aren’t a monster, Vincent. Nothing Hojo did to your body, nothing Lucrecia did to bring you back, could make you one. As long as you have your mind, you decide. And it’s what you decide to do that makes the difference between a human and anything else.”

She’s hitting hard, here: call to action, absolution, extremely targeted personal affirmation, clarification that she really does know what’s up with him, new information that Lucrecia was involved with his current status, and finally, optimistic conceptual framework imposed on the situation, since Vincent certainly isn’t capable of that himself.

This treatment of Vincent’s situation vis-a-vis humanity is, of course, also very relevant to the ensuing plot-central question of what Sephiroth is, and whether he has the power to make good life choices. Which Tifa is not nearly as sure of as with Vincent, since while she stands by the principle that it’s a matter of choice she knows for a fact that Vincent can make good ones, but has certainly never seen evidence with Sephiroth.

And then of course there’s Genesis, who would love to get everyone to accept that his sins are a function of what rather than who he is, and drag down with him anyone he can reach, and who by his very effort to sell the idea makes it seem less likely.

I’ve excerpted only Tifa’s dialogue and some of the tags from the rest of the passage, because her narration gets lengthier and isn’t what I’m focusing on for this commentary.

She waited. But the man in the box didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. “Lucrecia is still alive,” she told him. “Preserved in crystal. Hidden away. You two really are a pair, aren’t you? And maybe you’re both right to be concerned—she’s got Jenova in her, and you’ve got those things that replaced your Limit Breaks. But they don’t control you.”

[…]

“They don’t control you,” she repeated. “Hojo doesn’t control you. You can choose to do nothing for the rest of your long life if that’s what you really want. But it’s not your destiny. And it’s not what’s right.”

‘It’s not what’s right’ is an interesting line in retrospect, because Tifa’s saying it within a framework of denying Vincent’s reasoning that there’s something somehow virtuous about closing himself off from the world, so he can’t do any more harm. Specifically in the context of assuring him that he has control over his actions, and his Limit Break things don’t.

But in the overall argument, about how his power of self-determination relates to responsibility to the world, it can also be read as a moral condemnation, the suggestion that there is a specific thing that’s right, and Vincent isn’t doing it.

“Sephiroth is an adult now,” she said [….] “They put him in the Shinra military. Made him a General.”

[…] “If Hojo and Jenova have their way, he’ll become a monster soon,” she confided in the coffin. “Maybe there’s no way to change that. Maybe it’s too late for him. Maybe it’s his destiny. But it’s not too late for the rest of the world, not yet. I know that much. Everyone who has the power to fight him has a responsibility to try.”

That’s where her speech winds up–rather abrupt return to her earlier, blown-off argument about Sephiroth imminently killing everybody and how Vincent should help. He doesn’t do anything. He continues to be a box.

So then she punches her way into the coffin.

“What are you?”

She knew it wasn’t her feat of strength that had impressed him, though he probably appreciated the rhetorical force of it.

I really like this line. Describing ‘punching open the box someone’s hiding in at the climax of an inspirational speech’ as a rhetorical device is the kind of thing I find very funny, and I got characterization of both of them and story advancement into the sentence too.

“Tifa,” she said. “Tifa Lockhart.” She held out her right hand. “Get up, Vincent Valentine. The world isn’t done with you yet.”

He let her pull him up onto his feet.

Some obvious symbolism there, fitted into the very important fact that this worked.

Getting Vincent out of his coffin has been the only thing Tifa’s attempted so far in the story that has turned out more or less exactly as planned. Not entirely easily, and not following a step-by-step plot because that’s not Tifa, but without random factors interceding and requiring her to recalculate wildly, make decisions entirely on the fly, and draw up a new set of plans in the aftermath, either.

In a way, the Vincent recruitment section microcosms the fight Tifa’s having with the universe throughout the fic, in her efforts to make things line up so she can get a better outcome to this nightmare scenario she’s been pitched back into: direct, physical actions are persistently vital and necessary, but her real success must always hinge on her particular knowledge, and ability to apply it.

Apply it specifically, thus far, mostly to getting people to take her seriously and do as she says. Because she’s been placed in a position where as useful and important as her personal power is, it’s not the right tool to rely on for her central task. That has to be tackled via community building, in a context that intensely disinclines her to attempt such overtures.

Which in turn invokes one of the several great dichotomies of Tifa’s in-game characterization–the periodic tension between her social impulses, to bind and soothe and promote bonding, and her…reactive impulses, to seize the world in both hands and find something to fight and do and change, so she doesn’t feel helpless in the face of all that is evil.

The parts of her character arc in the game that aren’t actively about Cloud seem to center around being forced to face that both these behavior patterns (especially in their role as coping mechanisms) are capable of being not only inadequate but actively, harmfully inappropriate to particular situations.

And then coping with this fact, and continuing to inhabit these parts of her identity in ways that turn out constructive. E.g., choose caring for Cloud over leading party to do anti-Shinra things that have only the vaguest prospect of actually averting the apocalypse; successfully retrieve his mind from the Lifestream. Help punch Sephiroth to death and stop him from holding back Holy; world saved.

If you try really hard to get a personal moral for Tifa out of the OG that isn’t pretty sexist, it might come down to something like: realize that you might be acting wrongly; then, act. Stay afraid, but do it anyway.

And, optimistically: perhaps you do not have to choose between your faces. Perhaps they are both allowed. Perhaps all of you is allowed. Perhaps you are enough.

One of the things Tifa and Cloud share is needing so desperately to be enough.

In a way that’s a feeling that unites the entire party, in their various ways, except maybe Aerith, depending on how you interpret her relationship to the obligations of being the Last Ancient. But Tifa and Cloud are about the same age and come from the same context and share a major trauma, so it looks particularly similar in them.

And of course there are also ways it looks especially similar between Tifa and Vincent, because they’re the most hopeless romantics in the party. 😆

#this is too long #but i'm tired of trying to cut it down #it is what it is #ask meme #director's commentary #my fic #ffvii #meta #tifa lockhart #vincent valentine #top guide #hoc est meum #a nonny mouse #ask

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iwasnthere622 · 7 years

Text

I Promise

AO3 Link

Zack’s mom is dying.

Zack laid in bed with his mother, one arm wrapped around her and his other hand petting gently through her hair. He was still crying, but silently, now, the tears sluggishly trailing down his face to drip to his shirt, staining his face.

He knew what he had to do, knew his mother was right, but it just... it wasn't fair...

Kissing her forehead gently, he forced himself up, moving carefully and quickly wiping at his face when he realized he'd woken her.

Mrs. Taylor's eyes took long moments to focus once she'd blinked them open, heart breaking all over again at seeing Zack so distraught. "I love you," she said softly, reaching for him.

Zack hurried to meet her reach, using his own arm to hold hers up to his face, lending her his strength. "I love you," he whispered back, choking down more tears.

"My Zack," she sighed, letting him lower her arm carefully, fighting to hold on, to stay with him as long as she could.

"Rest," Zack soothed. "I'm here. I'm not leaving."

He waited until she settled, spending too many minutes watching her chest rise and fall as she breathed, before forcing himself up. He could do this -- he had to. For his mom.

Gathering his strength, he moved to her small dresser and picked up her mirror, holding it with trembling fingers. He left her room as quietly as he could, leaving her door open so that he could hear her better.

He moved to his own room, grabbing his small hand mirror, and then went to the bathroom, frowning at the mirrored front of the medicine cabinet. He studied the hinges and avoided meeting his own eyes in the reflective surface, taking the two hand mirrors out for now and placing them by the door.

Zack then dug around in the cabinets in the kitchen, eventually finding the small toolkit that they had for household repairs and pulling out a screwdriver. Tool in hand, he went back to the bathroom. He was sorely tempted to just smash the mirror and be done with it, but he knew that would disappoint his mother -- he had to do this right.

So, he spent a frustrating 40 minutes carefully unscrewing the mirrored door off its hinges, saving the plates and screws. He looked in on his mother sleeping, loathe to leave her but holding on to her promise that she wouldn't leave until this was done. He was sorely tempted to push that promise by not doing anything, to try to force her to stay forever, but he knew if he did he would only hurt them both.

So instead of screaming and crying and begging like he had the past hour with her, he sucked it up, gathered up the three mirrors, and left the trailer.

He moved quickly, dumping the mirrors in the trailer park dumpster and heading to town. He kept his pace quick, not enough to draw suspicion but otherwise as fast as he could, checking his phone as he moved. His heart constricted at the messages from his friends, checking in on him, asking if he was okay.

He pocketed the phone again for now, unable to deal with them, because if he typed it or said it then it would be real and he was still clinging like a child to a small but stubborn hope that he was dreaming.

Zack made it into town and headed straight for the reconstruction area, walking with purpose to the section of supplies left out for residents to take and use to rebuild. He didn't feel an ounce of guilt in digging around in the piles of wood -- he'd saved this town, they fucking owed him -- making sure to take enough and grabbing a saw as well. Hammer and nails he had at home.

He didn't care that some people were looking at him funny, didn't care that he was really carrying too much at once to be quite believable, he just took what he needed and left, walking away as fast as he dared.

Despite his aching need to go home to his mom, he headed up the mountain instead, to the train car that he'd claimed ages ago, because he didn't need anyone watching him do this, they wouldn't understand.

Leaving his materials in the car, he ran home, grabbing the hammer and nails and just standing in the doorway to his mother's room and listening to her breathing. His thoughts frayed, losing time as he just stood there until his phone vibrating jolted him, checking his phone and realizing school was out now and his friends were starting to worry since he hadn't been at school or answered them all day.

Zack looked from the phone to his mom and back, sending a quick message before he could talk himself out of it: meet at the train car.

As soon as the message sent his stomach tightened and his eyes burned. He forced himself to take a deep breath and to pocket his phone before he crushed it. With a lingering last look at his mom, he left again and ran to the train car, not quite knowing where or how to start but knowing he had to do this. He had to do this for her.

He laid out the pieces, in order of best quality to least, and stood surveying them, trying to mentally picture what he needed and how it would work. He was still standing there, staring down at the wood, when he heard an engine rumbling closer.

He cursed in Mandarin under his breath, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes and turning his back to where he knew his friends would be coming from, trying to compose himself. Fuck, what time even was it, he was wasting so much time when he didn't have that much left...!

"Zack?" Trini said, worry in her voice, the small chatter of their group cutting off at the sight of their friend.

"What's all this?" Jason asked, looking at the wood laid out, the saw and hammer.

Zack took a deep breath and turned around to face them, watching them all stop short in front of him. "This is for my mom," he said, voice cracking.

"Zack?" Trini repeated, heart pounding, tears springing to her eyes. No, oh no...

"It's tradition," Zack said, unable to look at Trini, to look at any of them, staring up at the sky instead. "In my mom's culture, it's tradition. To buy the..." He paused, eyes welling, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "To buy the casket," he continued, "when your relative is on their deathbed. But we can't -- I can't -- so I'm making one."

Trini put a hand to her mouth, crying silently. Kim and Billy were both crying, too, and Jason was barely hanging on himself. "Zack..."

"When it... when it happens," Zack continued, needing to say this, "I'll, uh, I'll text you the invitation to the rites. It's... you guys gotta wear black, okay? Or blue, but no red or yellow. And no white, that's for... that's for me."

"How long?" Jason asked, voice cracking. How long until...?

"Any day," Zack whispered, finally looking at them and seeing them all crying for him, for his mom, he lost it. "Fuck. Fuck!" he yelled, spinning away, shoulders curling in, body shaking.

Trini launched herself at her friend, hugging him tight from behind, the rest of the team barely a second behind her until they were all tangled together with Zack at the center.

Zack couldn't hold himself together, collapsing into their arms and sobbing his heart out, hands griping at them, feeling like if they left go he would fly apart into a million pieces, feeling like his soul was being ripped out.

"B-breathe, Zack," Jason said, feeling the teen beginning to hyperventilate, squeezing them all in tighter. "We're here, breathe."

"We'll help," Trini said, voice hoarse.

"Whatever you need," Kim promised right after her, sniffling, mascara smudged on her cheeks.

Zack caught his breath slowly, out of tears again for the moment, bitter anger filling him instead. "It's not fair. It's not fair." He slammed his fist into the ground -- when had they collapsed to the ground? -- squeezing his eyes tight. "It's not fair!"

"No it's not," Jason said, and Zack opened his eyes to find some of the anger he held reflected back at him in Jason's eyes.

"Let's build this," Billy said, pulling back slowly and wiping at his face. "Let us help you build this."

Everyone separated from each other, but they all stayed close. Zack nodded once, and Billy squeezed his shoulder.

"Did you have a plan?" the blue ranger asked softly.

Zack half-shrugged. "I have no idea what I'm doing," he answered, honest and raw and vulnerable.

Kim pressed into him. "We'll help," she promised, Trini squeezing his hand and not letting go, nodding.

"Okay," Zack said, forcing himself up. "Okay," he repeated, staring back down at the wood.

"I bet I can find a plan online," Billy said, pulling out his phone to check.

"Where'd you get the wood?" Jason asked.

"Reconstruction," Zack answered, looking up at their leader and expecting to be chastised but Jason just nodded. "I'll grab more if we need it."

It sucked, doing this really, really sucked, but having his friends with him helped him focus enough to at least get it done. Zack and Jason settled on the ground with Billy, following his careful instructions to cut and piece things together.

"What about a marker?" Kim asked, watching the boys work.

"Haven't gotten that far," Zack admitted, throat closing all over again.

Trini pushed forward to hug him. "We'll do it," she offered. "Kim and me, while you guys work on this, we'll make something."

Zack hugged his best friend tight, silently nodding his okay.

Trini nodded back, moving to Kim to grab a scrap piece of wood they could carve into for the marker.

"Where are you going to bury her?" Jason asked softly, holding the frame steadily for Billy -- three sides of the coffin constructed.

Zack sucked in a sharp breath. "I was thinking, in the woods up along the mountain. She used to love to go to the park, sit and smell nature, I think she'll like it there."

"And we can visit her there," Kim said, sharing a look with Jason. "Every day."

"Yeah," Zack said, having to clear his throat. "Yeah."

They fell silent after that, working to finish up, Billy asking a soft question now and then to make sure the dimensions would be big enough, but otherwise everyone focused on their task.

When it was done, Zack was exhausted and on the verge of tears again, but the coffin was ready.

"Here," Kim said, offering Zack the marker she and Trini had made. They'd carved "Loving Mother" onto the bottom portion, but left the top space blank for Zack to write in her name.

"Thanks," Zack said, looking around at all of them, knowing this was a shitty thing he'd asked them to do, so grateful to them for doing it. "I should get home," he said, realizing how late it'd gotten.

"What about this?" Jason asked, gesturing to the coffin.

Zack nodded. "I have to take it with me."

Billy frowned. "People will definitely stare at you if you just carry it home..."

"We can take my truck," Jason offered, looking to Zack for his okay.

"Yeah, okay," Zack agreed, moving to pick up the coffin, lid, and marker. His friends didn't move to help and he was grateful they seemed to know he had to do this.

They all walked to Jason's truck silently -- they'd all ridden together right after school when Zack had texted. Zack climbed into the back and set everything down, the rest getting inside the truck.

It took Jason only a few minutes to get them off the mountain trail and into the mobile home park, pulling as close to Zack's trailer as he could.

"Can we come in?" Trini asked Zack, wanting to see his mother, promise her that they'd all look after Zack for her.

Zack's eyes stung, but he nodded. "Yeah. But you gotta lose the beanie, and Jason, take off your shirt."

"Are red and yellow superstitious colors?" Billy questioned, remembering Zack's comment about those colors earlier.

Zack nodded, and Trini pulled off the beanie and tossed it into the truck, Jason not hesitating to follow suit with his shirt.

"Gimme a minute," Zack said, leaving them waiting and heading inside, grabbing one of his shirts for Jason and heading to his mom's room, relief washing over him at her steady breathing.

"Mom?" he whispered, sitting at the edge of her bed and pushing hair out of her face, loathe to wake her but knowing she'd want to say goodbye to his friends.

Mrs. Taylor stirred slowly, listening to Zack say that his friends wanted to see her, nodding that she was strong enough yet for this, to let them in, to offer them food and drink.

Zack nodded, moving to the kitchen and dumping a sleeve of crackers out on a plate, pouring out four cups of cold tea and setting them in the microwave to warm. He waited until they were done to move the food and drink into his mom's room before heading back out to his friends.

He tossed the shirt at Jason, who pulled it on gratefully. "Okay, let's get this into her room. She's awake right now, so you guys can say hi," he said, being strong for his mother.

He needed help maneuvering the coffin into the trailer, walking backwards and directing its placement on the floor alongside his mother's bed, letting his friends hover in her room.

Zack smiled at his mother, gentle hands helping her when she reached for him, shifting her up slowly and carefully so she could sit up. "Mom, my friends are here," he said gently.

"Offer them food and drink," his mother ordered, making Zack smile a bit because she was so strong, still fighting, still present and here with them.

"Please have tea, and there's crackers," Zack translated for his friends.

"We're good," Kim said, but Zack shook his head. "It's a cultural thing, she has to be a good host. Please."

They all shared a look and then slowly moved forward, picking up the mismatched mugs.

"Thank you," Trini said, the others murmuring their thanks as well.

"You welcome," Mrs. Taylor said, offering a weary smile.

"Mrs. Taylor," Jason said, setting his cup down gently and moving forward to stand right next to her and Zack. "I promise you, we'll take care of your son."

"We will," Trini echoed, new tears in her eyes.

"All of us," Kim nodded.

"He's one of us," Billy reaffirmed.

"Guys..." Zack said, throat tight.

"I promise," Jason repeated, taking her hand carefully, very conscious of his strength and how weak she was.

Mrs. Taylor looked at Zack, not understanding every word but knowing enough, listening to her son translate and the fresh grief in his eyes as he did so.

"Zack is a good boy," she said slowly, looking at his friends, at the tears in their eyes for a woman none of them knew, all because of their connection to her son. "You are good boys and girls. You take care of each other."

"We will," Jason said, tears burning his eyes. "I promise, we will." He squeezed her hand, moving back to squeeze Zack's shoulder and shift so Trini could move forward.

"Zack is my best friend," Trini said, fighting the tears in her voice. "We won't let you down." She leaned down to hug Zack's mom gently, Zack reaching out to squeeze her hand and pull her to him, holding her with one arm while Kim and then Billy made their promises to his mother to watch out for him in her place.

"C'mon, guys, let's let them rest," Jason said softly, knowing Zack must want as much time with his mom as possible, not wanting to rob him of that.

"You can text me, anytime," Trini said, Billy adding, "All of us."

Zack nodded, standing to give each of them a tight hug, throat too full of emotion to speak, watching silently as they left.

He tried to get his mom to eat some crackers while she was upright, but she hardly had the strength to chew and swallow them, settling for letting her sip at some tea until she was too tired to sit, carefully laying her back down.

He settled on her floor with her marker, taking careful hours to carve her full name in Mandarin into the wood. Once done, he climbed into her bed right behind her once more, laying with her and listening to her breathing and cursing the world for the unfairness of it all.

[read the rest on AO3 here]

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