Work Text:
“This mission is all hands on deck,” Veld says.
Audrey nods, doing her best to look serious. She’s a trainee as of four months ago so it’s not likely she’ll be tagging along, but the Turks might still have stuff they want her to keep an eye on. It can’t be paperwork; Audrey was on her own for years in the wilds outside Corel, and it didn’t do her reading and writing any favors.
“We shouldn’t be gone that long,” Veld continues. “If everything goes well - well enough - we’ll be back around dinner. But until then, you’re on deck.”
Okay. So there are two kids Veld wants her to keep an eye on.
“Got it.”
Audrey doesn’t quite get the kids the Turks have collectively adopted, but Tseng and Seth are pretty quiet. They read a lot, they know their stuff, and Tseng isn’t that much younger than her.
Veld makes sure that she knows where the backup funds are stashed, and how to call both the pizza place down the street and the emergency line, and tells her not to worry that much about her current assignment. “Being in charge of other people is no walk in the park-“
Cameron, who’s wandered into the room, snorts. “Says the guy in charge.”
“-So if your assignment doesn’t get done today, then that’s fine,” Veld continues, giving the other Turk a look.
“No, it’s okay,” Audrey says. “This one’s about making mission plans, not writing, so spelling doesn’t matter that much.” She grins. “I bet I can get it done early, even.”
“Well, I won’t hold you to that,” Veld says. “Do your best, try not to break anything, and we’ll see you when we get back.”
And then he and Balto and Cameron go to say goodbye to Tseng and Seth, and then they go out the door, leaving Audrey in an apartment with a fourteen-year-old, a twelve-year-old, and an unknown number of hours to fill.
She’s wrangled monsters by herself before. Taking care of a couple of kids can’t be that hard, right?
Right?
Seth has a plan.
Right now, he’s perched on a chair by one of the living room windows, looking out at the skies above and the streets below. But today, the people on their way to the park or the train station or just enjoying the mid-afternoon sun hold little interest for him, and he barely even bothers to note what new plants their neighbor is trying to keep alive on their balcony. Today, Seth is listening.
Audrey comes into the room. Seth has heard her poking around the house for the last few minutes, muttering to herself.
Now she stops in the middle of the living room and asks “Hey, have either of you seen that assignment I was working on earlier?”
Seth turns around, ignoring the way his heart wants to race. This is all according to plan. It’s going to be fine.
On the sofa, Tseng looks up from his book, frowning. “No. What’s the last place you remember seeing it?”
“Kitchen table. I already checked under the table and on all the chairs, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
And… now.
“Huh,” Seth says.
Audrey turns to him. “Oh?”
“I think I saw it in Veld’s office,” he answers. “I can show you, if you want.”
“What’s it…” Audrey trails off and shrugs. “Sure. Thanks Seth.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Seth says, sliding off his chair.
The thing is, like Audrey, Seth and Tseng also have assignments they need to do. Homework, except neither of them go to school like some of the characters in books describe. But they have homework, and they turn it in in boxes. At some point, Cameron suggested that they put locks on the boxes, and if Seth or Tseng finishes something late, then they have a day or so where they can pick the lock and turn it in without anyone the wiser, giving them an incentive to get better at lockpicking. Veld had laughed and agreed.
Another thing: these boxes are kept in Veld’s office.
And another: Audrey doesn’t have as much practice picking locks as either Tseng or Seth.
Audrey and Seth reach the office, and Seth points at his own locked homework box, sitting on a side table next to Tseng’s.
“I- what? What the hell??” Audrey splutters.
All according to plan. All according to plan.
Seth shrugs. “You said you were going to do it early.”
“I got distracted- and you weren’t ever there, how did you hear that?”
Seth doesn’t say anything.
Audrey waves a frustrated hand. “Fine, whatever, keep your secrets. Just unlock the damn box.”
This is Seth’s second experiment with pranks. The first was him replacing some of Tseng’s pen cartridges with ones from glitter pens. Tseng had snorted, half with amusement, half with frustration, figured out that Seth was the culprit, and asked for his pens back. Seth had given him the cartridges back, and they’d spent the next hour re-replacing them.
Like the first prank, this one is going as hypothesized.
Seth doesn’t know what possesses him to try to push a little further and see what happens.
“Ask politely.”
“Really? You stole my assignment and you want me to say ‘please’?”
He folds his hands behind his back so Audrey can’t see him fidgeting with his ponytail. It’s dyed because bright, silver-white hair is too noticeable, another layer to stop people from realizing that Seth the Turks’ kid and Hojo’s lost prized specimen Sephiroth are one and the same. It was black at first, but then he discovered that he could dye it colors, and Veld, Cameron, and Balto had no objections to getting colored dye instead. (They’d helped him at first, but he can do it himself now.) Currently his hair is magenta, and the strands feel good as he rubs them with his fingers.
But he still has to think of something to say.
“And?” Seth isn’t quite sure what he’s doing, but it seems to be going okay so far.
“Fuck that,” Audrey snaps, “just give it back already.”
“I guess you’re not getting it then,” Seth says. He looks at Audrey’s face and realizes he’s pushed too far.
Panic takes over, and he makes a break for it.
Tseng was reading a rather interesting book about ballistics. He’s still reading now, but mostly he’s listening. Of course, if he’d really wanted to know what was going on he should’ve gotten up and followed them, but he was in the middle of a paragraph and the impulse didn’t quite get put into action.
Tseng’s first clue that something’s happened is the sound of running feet. It’s immediately followed by another set of thumps and Audrey yelling “Seth- get back here you little-“
Tseng barely has time to wince at her volume before a streak of eye-searing magenta flashes through his peripheral vision as Seth sprints into the room, Audrey hot on his heels. Tseng looks up from his book to witness Audrey grabbing Seth by the back of his shirt, nearly yanking him off his feet. Seth pries that hand off of him in time for Audrey to get a grip on his shoulder. Seth kicks her in the shin, and so the grappling escalates until Audrey manages to get him in a headlock.
Fairly sure that at this point words are useless, Tseng steps in to try and separate them. He gets a hand on Audrey’s arm and another on her shoulder to start prying open the headlock, and that’s when everything goes wrong.
Looking back, Tseng is pretty sure that Seth thought he was surrounded, panicked, and he and Audrey lost their balance in the resulting flailing.
At the time, all he knows is that suddenly they’re all falling sideways very, very fast. Pain radiates up his side as they smack into the surface of the coffee table, accompanied by the crack of snapping wood.
Oh shit.
Seth is the first to get up, wriggling out from between Tseng and Audrey and curling up on the floor next to the wreckage. The two teenagers sit up at the same time, rubbing their sides.
“Is anyone hurt?” Tseng asks. “More than bruises, I mean.”
Audrey prods at her ribs before shaking her head. Seth shakes his head too, but the motion looks frantic. He’s hunched over, knees pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. So, okay physically, but less so emotionally.
He probably just needs time to calm down from… whatever just happened. And some space too.
“It’s my fault,” Seth blurts, “I was trying a prank so I took Audrey’s assignment, and I was going to give it back after a bit, I had a plan, I did, but then I, I decided to push farther-“
“Remember to breathe,” Tseng tells him, the way the adults do sometimes.
Seth pauses to gulp down a few lungfuls of air before continuing. It seems to help.
“I don’t know why I did that. I’m sorry, Audrey. Really.”
Audrey shrugs in a way that makes Tseng wonder if she’s uncomfortable. “Don’t worry about it, kid.” She looks down, brushing splinters off her skirt. “I, uh, probably shouldn’t‘ve come at you like that either.” She’s back to her usual confidence by the time she looks up. “Still, you’re a bold little shit sometimes, and I can respect that.”
Tseng snorts, thinks about when he would’ve described Seth as ‘a bold little shit’ before, (never, with the exception of his choices in hair color), and thinks some more. “Seth, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing for you to… practice audacity, from time to time.”
Seth uncurls enough to give him a look. Audrey grins. “Heh. As long as his ‘practice’ doesn’t mean stealing my stuff, sure, why not?” She turns to Seth. “So. What do you say we just… agree to call this a mutual fuck-up and never speak of it again?”
She offers him a hand, and Seth hesitantly reaches out and shakes it. “Okay. Agreed.”
“Dope.” Audrey grins, but her face falls as she looks at the chips of coffee table scattered across the floor. “The never speaking of it again part miiiight be hard though.”
The first thing that happened was that Tseng sent Seth to grab his cure materia so he could deal with the bruises. Then they all stood around trying to figure out what to do with the table.
“You think we can fix it?” Audrey asks.
“Do you know how?” Tseng counters, “because I don’t, and I don’t think Seth does either.”
Seth shakes his head in agreement.
“We could get rid of the evidence…” Audrey muses.
“Like hiding a break in?” Tseng says. “Hide any signs of entry, deny all involvement, that kind of thing?”
Audrey nods. “Yeah! We can do that.”
“We’ll have to sweep the floor,” Seth says. They’re making plans now, so the part where it still feels like it’s his fault doesn’t matter as much. “And make sure to get rid of all the wood splinters without putting them in the trash.”
“Agreed.” Tseng nods, looking like his mind is somewhere else. “We’d have to dispose of all the evidence somewhere, a dumpster? Like the ones in the alley behind the bakery-”
He and Audrey start shaking their heads at the same time. “Nah,” she cuts in, “farther than that. Another sector of Midgar maybe? There are lots of junkyards in the Undercity- no, we’d never get it off the Plate.”
Seth watches as she pulls a knife from the sleeve of her jacket and spins it between her fingers. Under the jacket she’s wearing a T-shirt that says ‘knife to meet you’ on it. She gravitates towards shirts like that the way he beelines for new colors of hair dye, no matter how on the nose they are.
She’s gotten a lot better at making knives appear. He’s having trouble tracking the movements now.
Audrey makes the sleeve knife disappear and pulls another one from the waist of her skirt. “We need somewhere the adults will never look. Or if they do see it, they’ll never make the connection.”
“And also somewhere we can feasibly bring two halves of a coffee table,” Tseng adds.
“And somewhere we can feasibly bring the coffee table.”
Seth starts thinking about all the places he’s seen dumpsters. Alleyways, parking lots, the Shinra Corporate Headquarters where Veld and Cameron and Balto work, and where Hojo’s lab is. Where Seth grew up. He’s gone back into the building since Veld got him out of there, but never the upper floors, and never alone. Only seeing it through the contacts that give his eyes brown irises and round pupils. Which is fine by him.
“All the big departments in Shinra have their own dumpsters,” he says finally. “Well, Science does. I don’t know about the others.”
Tseng’s face lights up. “Seth, that’s perfect!”
Really?
All thoughts of dumpsters are replaced with a giddy joy. Two years with the Turks has been long enough for him to get used to real compliments (now that he has something to compare Hojo’s praise to, he wonders if it was ever about him), but not enough for the shine to wear off.
“They’ll never look in the Science dumpster!” Tseng continues, still animated. “They avoid the whole department like the plague, and you and I don’t have clearance to go there anyway. But-“ He gestures with a flourish. “-Audrey does.”
“Ooookay.” Audrey sounds like she’s trying out the word. “Okay. Great! I can do that.”
Tseng claps his hands together. “Excellent. So now all we have to do is clean up this and make sure we’re ready to lie to the adults when they get home.”
Audrey points a finger in the air. “And order pizza!”
“Right.”
“With mushrooms,” Seth puts in.
“Right.”
They get to it.
It’s late by the time the Turks get back. Cameron is tired and his ears have barely stopped ringing from a grenade he didn’t manage to throw quite far enough. But he’s used to worse. And Balto and Veld aren’t doing any better. (Balto has lost his jacket again, but that’s such a common occurrence that he’s started wearing a vest or waistcoat or whatever the fancy suit word is underneath it. So that’s probably not something Cam can hold over the man’s head.)
They’ve had dinner, so all Cam really wants is to make sure the kids are fine and haven’t set anything on fire, get a little something to drink or maybe have a smoke on the balcony, and go to bed.
All three kids are in the living room. Tseng sitting on one end of the couch, Seth curled up on the other, and Audrey in one of the chairs scattered around.
Also, the coffee table is nowhere in sight.
Cam’s glance at the other Turks to check that Veld and Balto have seen it too is mostly a formality. He knows they’re no slouches. But still.
He hides a smile. It’s about time the kids have gotten up to some actual craziness.
Veldy can take the lead on this one. But I’ll help if he needs it.
“Audrey. Tseng. Seth,” Veld says. The kids straighten up in turn as he says their names. It’s kinda cute. “Where’s the coffee table?”
All three make confused faces.
“Huh?” Audrey says.
“We have one of those?” Tseng asks. “Are you sure?”
Cameron is caught between the impulses of Awwww, they’re growing up so fast!, and Oh FUCK, they’re turning out like us.
“You made a very good effort,” Balto says. His face is mildly exasperated when Cam looks.
“I don’t know what you’re-“
“We really don’t have-“
“But-“
All three kids start talking at once, but they stop when Veld holds up a hand. “As Balto said, good effort. Really. Now, which dumpster?”
They exchange glances.
“I… don’t really think it’s salvageable,” Tseng mutters finally.
“We’ll be the judge of that,” Veld says gently. “Which dumpster?”
There’s another pause.
Really, where could they have possibly-
“The one in Science.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Cameron says, losing what filters he has. (More than Veld thinks he has, but less than the other two Turks do.) Seth winces at his outburst. “I- you kids really went for the nuclear option, huh?”
“It was my idea,” Seth whispers, and aw shit, Cam made the kid think he's mad, didn’t he? That’s… not something he’s the best at handling.
“I thought it was good, and decided we should do it,” Tseng jumps in. He’s always doing that, trying to look out for all the people he cares about. Cam wonders how long it will take for him to count Audrey. He also wonders what years of working for Shinra will turn that fierce protectiveness into, if Tseng goes through with his plan of joining the Turks once he’s old enough. Gaia knows Cam’s a terrible role model, and Veld and Balto aren’t much better.
“And if your goal was to make sure we’d never go near the coffee table, you’ve succeeded,” Veld says, snapping Cam out of his thoughts. He has the expression of someone who’s seen what goes into the Science Department’s trash. “It’s too much of a biohazard now.”
Audrey whistles. Seth starts to look a little less like he’s bracing for someone to yell at him. Cameron considers blowing up Hojo’s lab with the fucker inside and tries not to let that show on his face.
“So how did you manage to break the coffee table?” Balto asks, fidgeting with his hands as usual. “It was old, and not the best quality, but it had served us well for years, and showed no signs of fragility.”
“I got into a fight with Seth,” Audrey says, like that doesn’t raise more questions than it answers.
“I stole her assignment and put it in my homework box,” Seth says, nervous again, and Cam snorts a laugh.
“Nice one, kiddo.” He remembers the conversation right before they left. “And if she’d done it early like she said she would, you taking it wouldn’t’ve mattered.”
Audrey looks sheepish and mumbles something about distractions.
“Seth, was this another one of your experiments with pranks?” Veld asks.
Seth nods. “Yeah. I pushed it too far this time, but… I don’t know why I did that, really.”
“He was practicing audacity,” Tseng says, like he’s been trying out the phrase in his head.
“Yeah, apparently being a bold little shit is a learned skill,” Audrey chimes in. “I’m cool with it as long as he doesn’t steal my stuff again.”
“Boldness is a skill worth learning,” Balto says, and Veld doesn’t need more convincing.
Good.
Cameron watches as the last of the tension drains from Seth shoulders (they’re all looking out for each other, it’s not just Tseng anymore), and thinks that maybe, if the adults don’t fuck everything up worse, that the kids are gonna be okay.