#jae.

Sector One has, over time, become a place of safe harbor for the many immigrants and refugees flowing through the open sprawl of the slums. A constant stream of anonymous faces looking for places to work. Many find work in restaurant kitchens, seedy massage parlors, shady sweatshops or assembly lines, cashing in on monster bounties, black market trading; forms of labor which do not rely on a common language for. All for petty pay rates. Because those who hold the reins of power can and because immigrants ought to fight amongst themselves for scraps rather than compete with the native grounders who resent their presence.

Whatever it takes to raise gil. To not burden Aerith and Elmyra, the latter of whom was already viscerally displeased by his reappearance, and to bring in enough money to recompense Elmyra for looking after Cloud. The challenging part of that entire equation is finding work without raising suspicion about the active presence of at least one of two escaped test subjects.

Staying with Aerith was completely out of the question. Not like there weren’t plenty of nooks and crannies to squat out in, whether in abandoned districts or boarded up sections of the collapsed expressway connecting Sector Five and Six.

After clearing out the monsters and thugs, of course. Only, Aerith wasn’t having that either.

That left…the church. Perfectly serviceable, if a bit drafty as night fell and the chill chipped away at the timeworn stone and any of its gathered warmth during the day.

“Okay, all I’m saying is, if you want to move ground behemoth horn– call it magical sex-enhancing monster powder or beast mode aphrodisiac, I don’t care– you’ll want some muscle to make sure it doesn’t get stolen!”

He’s been trying, for the better part of the last ten minutes, to convince a particularly skeptical traditional medicine seller that they really ought to protect their illicit drugs better. Zack leans his weight on the counter, halfway into launching into a new argument when a suited figure moving in his peripheral view catches his attention.

His first instinct is to hunch away, hide his face and blend back into the crowd, except…He knows this particular Turk.

Their eyes meet, and Zack’s mako-blue irises are a flashing storm of pure fury with the pull of lips over the gleam of bared teeth.

I remember you. I remember what you did in Nibelheim.

The apothecary is summarily forgotten as Zack backs away from the reinforced glass display counter and moves, baleful and raven swift in Jae’s direction. Fast, too fast to escape before Zack catches up and grabs him from behind with enough momentum to slam the Turk face first straight into the ground. Zack sucks in a breath through his teeth as he drives downward, chest to back, he locks his left arm up under Jae’s armpit to viciously pull and twist the limb back while his right hand pins the remaining shoulder against the dirt. Zack leans down by Jae’s ear, hot breath against skin and a barely reined-in quiver of rage in his voice.

“That depends. Do you want it to be?” His eyes are narrowed, vaguely annoyed that Jae has managed to find an excuse to start shit in the middle of a mission. “I don’t care about your sadistic urges. We complete the mission and that’s it. No maiming the idiot because you think it’s the right thing to do for the Company or because you imagine the boss is going to pat you on the head for it and call you a good little boy.”

There’s a middle aged man cowering and sobbing between them, his tweed brown suit soiled in some places and dark with sweat in others. Marco Laurier, an unremarkable creature as far as rats go. He had been in Shinra’s employ for some time, nearly sixteen years of unwavering service within the accounting and payroll department and an almost flawless attendance record. 

So what changed?

Reviewing Marco's genealogical chart revealed interesting details, once they knew that the sellout they were looking for was embedded somewhere with intimate access to Shinra’s balance sheets.

As it turns out, long term care for rare, terminal diseases with low survival odds are beyond expensive. Unaffordable and unmanageable for the average, middle-class family to afford. An aggressive, degenerative musculoskeletal disease would eventually take away Marco’s ability to provide for his family and leave him little more than a drooling vegetable in a forgettable, white hospital room that hardly more than a handful of people would ever know the existence of.

Balto glances at the man curled up on the ground with his hand cradled against his chest. One of Marco’s fingers is bent at an unnatural angle from where Jae took the heel of a perfectly polished shoe and ground the man’s hand into the cemented floor.

jae jae.

jae jae jae: jae jae jae jae, jae jae! jae jae jae? jae jae jae jae jae jae jae. jae jae jae jae jae jae. jae jae jae jae jae jae jae,,,., jae..,.,,, jae - jae.

jae jae “jae jae jae jae” jae jae jae jae. jae ‘jae’ jae jae jae! jae jae jae jae jae.

                     he’s downed a few too many shots of whatever they’ve been serving up at skylar’s house--  and, as expected, the liquid courage has sent him on a mission to find jaeseong  &  attach himself to the other for the night.  it’s easier, he thinks, to wrap himself up in someone that’s familiar;  someone that’s never shut him out with rejection before. he smiles when he finds them,  “  jae !  baby, sweetie--  there you are !  ”  the pet names roll off of his tongue easily,  “  i’ve missed you, have i told you that ?  because i totally have ... missed kissing you, too.  it’s been a while, hasn’t it ?  ”  he pauses, pout forming as he noses along the other’s jaw,  “  ------don’t you ever think about me ?  ”