chapter eight: responsibility
"You think I am being disruptive
But no, I'm running home, I'm running
I'm just trying to put the atom back together..."
--Dar Williams
The smell of gasoline burned a thin thread across the familiar tang of deep forest, an uncommon visitor. Zangan breathed in the air, tasted the acrid, oily trail like a delicate wine. Whatever the vehicle was -- and whomever it belonged to -- it was to the west. He dropped out of the tree he had been scanning the woods from, boots thumping softly on the fragrant carpet of pine needles and crumbling leaves that covered the bare dirt path. Better to investigate than be caught by surprise; no one should still be looking for him, but he'd made no friends back to the east, and Shinra did not take its enemies lightly.
The forest at dusk was a soothing place, ancient as the soil it grew in, dry with the faint breath of desert wind from the east. Really, he'd meant to head back to Cosmo Canyon once most of the panic had died down, and complete his martial and spiritual training as an instructor... but these woods made a compelling place, and relative safety was a seductive offer. Besides, Zangan liked woodsmanship. It was a very peaceful, engaging sort of life, and a favored skill of his.
He couldn't help but wonder, as he made his way toward the smell's source -- he could almost see it now, sliding soundlessly between the lenghtening shadows of trees, a faint wink of dying sunlight off distant metal -- who his visitor was. Very few people besides Shinra ever used this rough little road, but he supposed it wouldn't do to be paranoid... still, better to be on his guard, in case --
Then all thought abruptly stopped, as he heard the click of a gun being cocked behind him.
Shit -- on guard, indeed --
Zangan's muscles tensed, preparing to turn and evade his assailant as best he could, but he was halted again by a dry, brittle voice. "Don't move!" it said sharply -- and shakingly? was he imagining that? -- and then added, hesitantly, "Um. Please." Leaves crackled as the other -- a young man, by the sound -- approached him, somewhat clumsily. "Put your hands in the air," the voice demanded furether, and this time it was certain; he definitely sounded shaken, probably even faintly hysterical. Zangan's brain quickly added up hysteria plus firearms, didn't like the sum it got, and hastened to tell his arms to do as instructed. "Now turn around," the man behind him continued. "Slowly."
Zangan did. Slowly.
His attacker, he first noted, was indeed a young man -- perhaps twenty, probably younger; red hair flopped onto a high forehead that was both sickly pale and beaded with sweat, above thick glasses that were sliding steadily down his nose. His moderately businesslike attire was out of place and clearly both ill-chosen and ill-used, torn and stained already in a few places. The hands that held the gun in Zangan's general direction did so awkwardly, and were shaking badly. If Zangan had really wanted to, he probably could have plucked the gun away from him; but he decided, after a moment's deliberation, that this was probably not the time to tempt fate. And besides, this boy was obviously no bounty hunter, so who knew what might be amiss?
There was silence for a moment, as the two of them looked at each other, sizing each other up.
"I don't know who you are," the young man said at last, a touch uncertainly, "but you have to help me."
Zangan didn't bother to argue. It seemed remarkably pointless.
He was led -- or rather, pushed, the younger man hovering an uncertain few feet behind his back with the mute presence of the gun always between them -- quickly down through the trees, toward that bright spark of metal he'd seen earlier, stumbling over what seemed like most of the forest in his borrowed haste. The armed youth seemed beyond anxious, almost frantic, insisting on speed, and Zangan barely had time before they arrived to wonder what could be there to warrant such urgency...
...and whatever he had expected, it wasn't this.
The vehicle turned out to be an unmarked, nondescript white van with Shinra plates, canted at a slightly drunken angle up onto the mossy embankment at one side of the narrow dirt road, its front doors hanging open in a way that less suggested accident than hasty evacuation. On its lee side, lying in a pool of sunset shadow, on a makeshift stretcher of blanket, deadfall and rope, was a young woman of somewhere between his age and his enforced companion's, in obvious medical distress. She was actually tied to her support, he saw as they drew closer, and probably only to keep her from tumbling off it, not to keep her from escaping; from the weakness of her movements, she probably couldn't walk anyway. Faint, wordless cries escaped her from time to time, so faint Zangan couldn't even hear them until the two men were almost upon her, and she thrashed in place clearly not to free herself, but in the grip of what could only be terrified agony. Once she had probably been quite lovely, but she had no time for that anymore, burned down to essentials by sickness and lunacy. She was bathed in sweat and deathly pale, and when she opened her blank eyes Zangan saw with brief superstitious horror that they glowed in the shadows.
The younger man hurried to her side and knelt, mostly forgetting about the gun; Zangan dismissed earlier, skeptical thoughts of foul play completely when he saw the boy's manner. He was obviously the woman's doctor. So what in God's name --
"There's a black, oblong metal box under the passenger seat in the van," the young man interrupted tersely, brandishing the revolver again without a great deal of conviction. "Get it out and bring it to me. Hurry, there's no time."
Zangan did so obediently, and hurried; he had little interest in the gun anymore, really, but he would never have left any two in such trouble regardless. When he returned the young man had the woman's wrist and throat under his fingers, counting off heartbeats and cursing softly at her pulse as she writhed and moaned on the ground. He didn't even bother to glance up at Zangan.
"That kit's been idiot-proofed; there should be a clearly marked compartment for syringes and a row of bottles with colored dots on them," the young doctor snapped out. "Get a syringe and fill it from the bottle with a pale blue dot. Quickly." He seemed a bit less panicked now, more in control, still tapping his small finger on the woman's skin to keep track of the pulse; it was moving so fast it seemed he must be signalling in code. Zangan rushed to complete the new task, thanking the young man's lucky stars for him that he'd come upon a man of Zangan's temperament and varied skills, and handed over the syringe. The doctor took it briskly, commanding, "This is where I really need your help -- take her pulse, like I've been doing, and count off the beats to me. Do you know emergency respiratory procedures?" Zangan nodded mutely, already taking the other man's place and tapping the beats -- much, much too fast, like a bird's heart -- with his foot. The young man closed his eyes briefly in relief. "Good. Excellent. If she stops breathing, get her started again. I, joy of joys, am blessed with asthma, and I'm not carrying anything for it; helping her breathe without killing myself would be an adventure." As he spoke, the boy had readied the syringe and swabbed a patch on the woman's arm as best he could, and now paused to push the needle into her skin. Zangan thought faintly that he'd judged the youth's steadiness prematurely; his hand was still shaking rather badly despite its obvious skill, and he was babbling a little every time he spoke.
"What's wrong with her?" Zangan asked, speaking for the first time in the encounter, his voice sounding distantly shocked in his ears. The woman continued to convulse, seemingly unaffected; the young man shook his head, listening to Zangan echo her heartbeat.
"A prehistoric sentient virus has just metastasized in her bloodstream and is attempting to mutate most of her internal organs," he said matter-of-factly. "Give me another syringe, please. Actually, keep filling them until the bottle's empty." He looked up to see Zangan only gaping at him blankly, and snapped, "I don't have time to explain; she is dying! Just do it!"
Zangan did it.
The young man continued to empty needles into the woman's bloodstream, her cries the only sound between them; at last the medication -- whatever it was -- seemed to take some effect, as a little bit of color returned to her, pulsing veins retreating slowly back to her skin, and her heart began to slow -- a little. Zangan sat back, tossing the bottle aside and trying to remember how to breathe.
"What did you give her?" he asked at last. The other man glanced up again and gave him a little, rueful smile, one that might have been charming if it weren't so grim.
"Penicillin," he replied wryly. "It was the only thing I could think of. That's more than enough to kill a patient under ordinary circumstances, too... but the only thing these circumstances aren't is ordinary."
"So I gathered."
The young doctor snorted and started to make some reply to that -- but at that moment, the woman began to convulse again, hugely, her voice falling deathly silent. He leapt for her restraints, swearing blisteringly.
"Shit -- help me get the ropes off her and turn her over, she's having a seizure -- she'll choke -- "
They wrested the woman onto her stomach, the youth pressing her down to keep the convulsions from damaging her or them. He gestured at the box again with his only free hand, practically sitting on the patient to keep her still.
"I'm going to need another one -- "
"What color dot?"
"You're good at this. Green."
"Light green?"
"No -- dark -- "
Another shot -- only one, this time -- and a few hellish moments where there was no change whatsoever... and then she quieted completely, fading into unconsciousness. Her young doctor felt for her pulse, heaved a shaky sigh of relief when he found it, and turned her back over, thumping back on the grass at her side with eyes glazed from exhaustion. Zangan surveyed the scene, tried to make sense of it, and failed; he reached over and touched the long-since-discarded gun, catching the younger man's eyes with faint amusement.
"Not going to shoot me now, are you?" he asked. The boy flushed a little, shaking his head.
"Quite all right; I'm just glad you found me, doctor... Doctor whom? You do have a name, I assume?"
A slightly embarrassed nod. "Ellis. Ellis Maseke. Well, Dr. Ellis Maseke, I suppose. And you?"
"Zangan. Pleased to meet you." They shook hands before the younger man realized he had offered his. He cocked his head curiously.
"That's all? No surname?"
Zangan shrugged affably; it could have been a challenge, but he knew it wasn't, and despite their unfortunate meeting he felt himself curiously inclined to like this young man. "I had one, but it got dropped somewhere on the north side of Mount Corel," he explained cryptically with what good humor he could muster, considering. "And her? Does she have a name?"
Ellis regarded his patient for a moment. "Not anymore," he said softly, at last. "I think it's been dropped, too." He looked back up at Zangan, back at the gun, and then picked it up with a tiny grimace, standing to ferry it back to the van; Zangan got up to follow.
"I really am sorry about the business with the gun," he apologized again, sheepishly. "I suppose I just panicked -- "
Zangan waved a hand, dismissing the subject. "I figured as much; don't worry about it," he reassured him, leaning thoughtfully on the side of the van. "Getting someone to use a gun for the first time usually involves something drastic."
Ellis frowned, glancing at the older man over his shoulder as he opened the van's glove compartment -- still a bit shakily. "How did you know I'd never used a gun before?" he asked.
The older man coughed. "Well, for one thing," he began tactfully, "one traditionally finds the weapon more effective if the safety is off."
Ellis considered this. He looked at the gun. He looked at Zangan. He looked at the gun again. He looked at the woman on the ground. He looked back at the gun.
Then the strain caught up to him all at once, and before Zangan could even react, his eyes had rolled up and he had slumped across the front seat of the van in a dead faint.
Zangan sighed, laid him carefully out on the grass by his patient, and started to build a fire.
*
Ellis recovered from his mild case of shock before very long, and the two of them brought the still-unconscious woman closer to the warmth of the fire. It didn't take much longer for Zangan to inquire, tentatively, where they had come from and what had happened, and Ellis, exhausted and dulled now that the adrenalin left over from his escape from these last hellish months had burned itself out, saw no reason not to tell him. He began at the beginning, with the Jenova Project and the arrival at the mansion, and, trying to omit and gloss as little as possible, he talked the sun down, and the stars into the sky. The fire crackled in soft counterpoint to his steady, almost monotonous voice, as he detailed the gruesome events of the early autumn, and Lucrecia's destruction at Hojo's hands. Only when he realized that he had no more to tell did he fall silent, looking expectantly at Zangan across the fire; the older man said nothing, only staring into the flames, tending their base reflectively with a long fallen branch.
"You don't believe me, do you," Ellis said finally, and shook his head a little, chuckling ghostily. "I don't think I would believe me either."
"I believe you," Zangan countered quietly, almost immediately, making him look up again. "I know Shinra too well." He paused, briefly, shifting the stones around the fire, thinking over his next words. "So what will you do now?"
Ellis frowned. "What do you mean?"
Zangan shrugged slightly, dropping the stick by the fire and dusting off his hands. "Just that. You've said you've left them, you won't go back; where will you go, then? What about her?"
Ellis spread his hands, shaking his head again. "I suppose I'll take her to the nearest town, treat her as best I can, and look for a hospital -- for both of us, her to stay and me to work. I don't know what else I can do."
Zangan leaned forward, hands on his knees; on the far side of the leaping fire, there was a glint in his eyes that wasn't just from the flames, a fanatical gleam that Ellis didn't much like. "You mean you aren't going to tell anyone?"
Ellis just stared for a moment, then let out a disbelieving, cynical little chuckle. "Like whom? Do you suggest I robe myself in black, grow a beard, and run amok in the streets telling all to 'ware of the Shinra, they're of the devil?"
Unsmiling, Zangan replied only, "You could probably omit the beard."
The younger man looked at him hard, for another long moment. At last, he shook his head again, slightly, meeting Zangan's eyes. "While I do appreciate your help -- "
"I'm still trying to help you," Zangan cut him off impatiently. "The rest of the world, too... Do you have the slightest idea what you're sitting on right now? Shinra doesn't know you're gone. And you have proof of what they're doing to people, real people, like this woman. Do you know what I would have given for something like that when I was doing my battles? I was trying to argue this kind of case in Corel just a few months back; they called the bastards in and ran me out of town; I've known what they are for a long time, what they've done to me and mine... Do you know what this means?"
"I have an idea," Ellis replied quietly. "I do appreciate your help, and your advice. But I have this woman's welfare to think of; it's my responsibility -- "
"She'll be cared for," Zangan argued earnestly, leaning forward again. "She needn't even travel much... Just let me help, help both of you. Just take her at least to the Canyon; it's not far, a few days if you -- if we -- hurry, and they've no love for the Shinra there. They can treat her somewhat, I'm sure of it, and meanwhile we could spread the word of what happened to her -- if they would help us document it, and they surely would, and you yourself are ex-Shinra, you're testimony that this is on their heads -- we could have it out across the continent before they could so much as know to put a stop to it!"
Young Ellis shook his head obstinately, pushing up his already-thick glasses above a tight-lipped frown. "It isn't that I'm not interested, or tempted -- Zangan?" The older man nodded in affirmation. "I just don't believe it's in her best interests."
"But it's in a great many other people's best interests without doubt," Zangan cut in irritably. "If we can break Shinra's hold even in a few places, it could save hundreds of lives, lives just like hers. You have to admit, she hasn't much of a life left, and if she could use what remains to help others, shouldn't --"
"That isn't my decision to make," Ellis interrupted him, in a low, urgent tone. "If she had her consciousness, and her wits, and this were what she wanted to do, then that might be another tale. But as it stands, my responsibility is to her, and she will not benefit from another bumpy ride, into a barely-settled desert --"
"Still, others will! How can you, in good conscience, withhold --"
"How can I not in good conscience?" Ellis snapped back, not allowing the other man to finish what Ellis already knew he would say. "I not only stood by and watched, I had a hand -- intentionally or unintentionally -- in what was done to this woman, and I will not deal her another blow. I am a doctor, Zangan, and if Shinra has forgotten what my responsibilities thusly are, I haven't. And the very first of them is to never induce any injury in the person of a patient, and since she was entrusted to my care, this woman is my patient, and I will not load her back in that van tomorrow morning to take advantage of her, no matter whom it might save or what grudges it might settle."
He met Zangan's eyes steadily. "And that's really what it's about, isn't it," Ellis stated grimly. "Not about saving lives, but about exacting revenge. And don't you think that to do a good with dark motives at heart is worse -- far worse -- than to perhaps err in the hopes of doing good? And that to do the former could bring us low -- lower than the Shinra?"
Zangan, who had begun to look more and more stricken as this speech progressed, only held still for a moment -- and then closed his eyes, dropping his chin onto tented fingers. "Yes," he said heavily, at length. "Yes, it is, and yes, it would." He rubbed his temples. "I apologize, Ellis. You're a good man, with a good point. You know -- I think I know a place, perhaps a day's walk from here, where you could put her up if you liked. I would tend her while you make a getaway -- call it a favor; you can owe me for it -- and if I can get her awake and somewhat coherent sometime soon, I can probably see to it that she's able to care for herself when I go. Would that suit you?"
Ellis's thin but genuine smile was all the answer he needed.
*
The next morning, they said goodbyes and parted ways, not to meet again for some thirty years. Zangan went with Lucrecia to the place he spoke of, a cave by a lake in the nearby northern mountains, and Ellis kept driving. With no better place to go, he headed for the one place he, a fugitive, would never be expected to flee; the place he had been told to go by those who would seek him, and a place he had spoken of with another young intern, eight months that were a lifetime before.
He headed for Midgar.