06 – Dual Trigger Extra: Mea Culpa

By Chronic Guardian

Written for Twelve Shots of Summer: Seventh Soul, Week 6 – Wading Through Garbage/Battle Against A True Hero

Sitting in his car, hands on the wheel, Jose watches the manufacturing plant's loading dock with an attentive professionalism that would make his brother proud.

He's not doing it for his brother, of course. Jean's standards are as severe as they are unforgiving, but there's no way he would know if Jose were to otherwise entertain himself until the signal comes through. The surrounding city is far from empty, certainly, but he doesn't keep his eyes forward for his brother or anyone else.

In the seat beside him, Henrietta follows his example with her hands gently resting on the violin case laying across her lap. She tries not to seem anxious, she knows he's occupied with something, but he can still sense an expectation from her. She wants the mission to start so she'll have a chance to prove herself. Or, more to the point, she wants her chance to do something for him.

Jose keeps his eyes ahead while his mind circles back to how nice a cigarette would be if the girl weren't there to watch him do it.

It's not the only disconnect between them, but that's more or less the name of the game. Each issue amounts to about the same petty depth. Henrietta herself isn't a huge burden on his mental stamina, but the cyborg assassin carries a plethora of peculiar issues and somehow or another they will always end up being his problem.

As her Handler, he knows he shouldn't mind—and often tries to pretend he doesn't—but that's then another small deduction against his emotional balance sheet. It's a small, almost imperceptible cost that has been slowly mounting over the past two years of quietly ignored questions. Every small unsettling question he promises himself he will sort out later is coming together as he kicks them down the road and into eachother.

But as long as he pretends there's nothing wrong, then she'll pretend along with him.

A moment later and his cell phone vibrates to life. The raid begins and they're allowed to go do the easy part of their job, the part they don't have to wonder too hard about. Jose let's himself out and only has to say his cyborg's name for her to follow.

"Henrietta."

He doesn't see more than a glimpse of her face as they head out into the street, but she looks relieved.

He promises himself to think about it later.

}§{

Office work in the Agency is a funny refuge from the normal pace of operations. Jose found it stifling at first, but now he takes it as a sort of reprieve. The status reports are bland, but not intrusive. Most of the support departments only ask how the implants are performing. Only Dr. Bianchi, the resident psychiatric health professional, wants anything more than skin deep.

Further up on Jose's desk, there is a half-read book on child psychology buried under sheaves of research on the Shinra Electric and Manufacturing group. One of the support staff lent it to him when he first started. Maybe one day once he's waded through the current swamp of Shinra's meddling he'll finish it.

He lets out a low breath and leans back in his chair. He needs a drink, but if he lets loose then Henrietta will know. Her cybernetically enhanced senses are meant for field work, but she smells alcohol just as well as gun powder. She might not say anything about it, but he knows it bothers her. Anything that happens to him is her fault, on the field and off. It doesn't matter if he's the one doing it.

The ironic part is that used to be Jean's job. Jean, who Henrietta privately fears and perhaps even despises. Jose didn't like it any better then, but his brother was at least explicit with what he wanted. With Jean, there was a list to be filled, but also a grudging freedom. So long as Jose kept up his end of things, Jean would allow for indiscretions provided he still came back the next morning. Eventually, though, Jean's expectations were blunted into dull exasperation. Henrietta, conversely, asks something of him with her very existence.

The worst of it comes when she realizes it and inevitably slips into self-reproach. She can't really help herself. To the best he can tell, it's more the conditioning than it is her, but her guilt doesn't make a distinction. All she knows is that something is broken in their partnership and it can't be him.

Jose knows she's wrong, that this is more his fault than it is hers, but when it comes to doing something about it they're in the same boat. The difference is that Henrietta hasn't given up yet.

Finishing up his paperwork for the day, he stays at his desk with a cold cup of coffee while everyone else goes home. Henrietta will be waiting for him when he walks out, but for now all his problems have been neatly filed away.

If only life were more like paperwork.

}§{

Henrietta took about a dozen bullets through the arm, but she isn't crying when he finds her. She is poking through the Camorra nest confirming kills.

"Ten," she tells him when he calls her name, straightening up from a body slumped in the corner. "I got all of them."

She hugs her gun to her chest and gives him an eager, expectant look. This is her job, and she has done it well. She killed the bad men so he wouldn't have to.

Jose quietly thanks her, but can't bring himself to smile as blood drips through her sleeve. When they get home, she'll have to go in for repairs. She can cry then, when the put her under and her body slowly processes what it has been used for.

Jose contemplates the matter as he guides her back to his car. At least he'll have some time to himself.

}§{

For all his failings, Jose Croce at least has a sense of class. He came from a well-to-do family and knows the finer things in life. Once Henrietta's arm is back to a presentable state, he takes her out to lunch.

He doesn't know too much of her background before coming to the Agency—her parents supported three children and owned a house, albeit on the seedier side of Rome—but she has adapted well to his standards. Henrietta knows her etiquette as well as her gunplay. She sits quietly at the table and expertly maneuvers her utensils so as not to make a mess. The waitstaff compliment her and she positively glows at Jose when he graciously accepts them. She is his girl, his protege, and other people are recognizing their hard work.

On a street corner beyond them, a cleaning man shares a sack lunch with his daughter. Jose looks away once he realizes Henrietta is following his eyes.

They finish their meal in silence.

}§{

Work goes by in a haze. Bianchi sends him a report that something is wrong with Henrietta and Jose slides it between the pages of his child psychology book as a bookmark. Henrietta is fine. If she had just had a different Handler, he wouldn't have to argue that point.

Of course, it's meaningless to ask Henrietta at this point. The conditioning process has already decided for her that Jose is the only one she could ever work with. Even if they tried to overwrite that with reconditioning they wouldn't be able to take that out entirely. They already tried with Claes after her Handler went down; the best they could do was to repress the attachment.

Jose idly taps a pen on his cheek and stares off towards the gun ranges where the cyborgs are practicing. Hilshire and Valentine are running supervision today. One is a former Europol investigator and the other is former Section One. Henrietta is already operating higher than the first and likely will be largely ignored by the second. If she does any better or worse than usual, they won't know the difference.

Besides, when it comes down to it, he'll be with her and she'll deliver. Bianchi can keep his isolated lab interviews to himself.

}§{

"Jose?"
Henrietta asks the question while they're en route to another Shinra plant. After their last sting, the company seems to be reconsidering its operations in Italy, but the higher-ups still feel they could use an encouraging nudge out.

He gives her a glance before returning his attention to the road. "Yes, what is it?"

"Why did you choose me?"

Jose pauses for a moment, mouth slightly open in anticipated response as he passes a car, then replies, "What do you mean by that?"

It's a safe question, the best he can think to ask while he scrambles for traction in the conversation. That it comes out easy enough is a bonus.

"Handlers get to choose their assignments," Henrietta went on. "That's what Priscilla said."

Jose feels a tug at the corners of his mouth, but he's not sure if it's a wry smile or a tired frown. Priscilla, support staff member in more than just the professional sense. After Bianchi and the Handlers themselves, she is probably the next most constant conversational element in the cyborgs' lives. If she weren't good at her job, Jean would have fired her by now, but the woman has evidently earned her right to interpose on their trade.

Well, if Priscilla gets to put funny questions in the cyborgs' heads that skirt too close to uncomfortable truths, Jose can't be much worse off playing the same game.

"Would you rather I hadn't?" he asks with a congeniality warm and easy enough to fool Henrietta.

He doesn't put too much stock in the question and asks it mostly because he believes she can't answer. One of the conditioning's side effects is that it seems to curtail critical thinking once it starts wandering in the wrong sensitive directions.

"No, it's not that!" she quickly backpedals. "I was just... curious."

Jose debates with himself as to whether he should just leave it at that. She's lying, possibly for her own sake but just as much for his. But what would he tell her? That he was sorry for her? That he saw a broken shell of a girl and told himself he couldn't do worse than that?

He hadn't chosen her because he thought she'd be good for the job. All that really came down to was having a body and a functioning brain. The technicians filled in the rest. If anything, she'd gotten in on a whim.

He almost tells her not to worry about it when his throat tightens and some buried heartstring tugs back. For whatever reason, the words refuse to come this time. Jose takes the development with a dark humor: for all his lies to her, his body won't allow this one. She wasn't chosen by chance.

"Why don't we go somewhere once we're done?" he suggests, shifting the subject after softly clearing his throat. "There are some good sights in Pescara, even if most of it is rebuilt, and it's been a while since we just walked."

Henrietta brightens and the moment passes by. Like him, she's not eager to dwell on the past. Only when it gets in the way of the present.

}§{

They stay in the park until late. Jose almost considers looking for a hotel to stay for the evening, but he has already risked enough with the current excursion. Given the Agency's recent spike in activity, their enemies are all scrambling over eachother to paint targets and Shinra has already been more than generous in not tailing them after the latest sting. For both their sakes, it will be better to brave the Apennines.

He doesn't need to justify himself to Henrietta. She doesn't question the course of action and he doesn't mention that they wouldn't be late if they hadn't visited the city. They board the car and set off in a mutual understanding that enough has been said for today. They haven't actually settled anything, but the time they spent together feels real enough to make them forget the emptiness awhile.

He asks Henrietta to relax and about an hour into the drive she seems to finally nod off. Cool night air rushes through his hair, but she's to short to catch the brunt of it. Part of him wonders if he should have put the top up on his convertible, but it's probably better this way. After all, he doesn't want to be nodding off himself just yet.

The mountain roads wind through the Apennines, the spine of central Italy, but Jose is loathe to slow down. Even as his own eyes grow a little heavier, he tries to keep up their pace to get them home before midnight. To his exhausted mind, there is a kind of magic to it, a simplicity as the world melts away to just him and his machine.

As the flow washes over him, his mind wanders to memories usually left buried until he cracks them open with a few glasses of wine. The days before the Agency, the days before the incident, the things he had and wasted. For a moment, it's not Henrietta sitting next to him. He grips the steering wheel and breathes in as a light comes around the bend.

Somewhere at the back of his mind he knows what is happening, but the foremost bits of his consciousness put it together backwards. There is time to turn, but his arms won't move. His stomach constricts anticipating the impact and his body almost feels weightless. In delirious phantasm, he feels what he imagines his father felt in the car bombing that effectively truncated the Croce family legacy. In the oncoming headlights, he sees a single answer he has been quietly waiting for ever since the incident.

He is going to die.

But any fear is drowned out by resignation. This was the fate of his parents, the fate of his sister. The fate that should have been his. He won't run—

"Jose!"

His arms twist and he narrowly misses the other vehicle. The new trajectory almost sends them over the edge before he recorrects and brings them screeching back onto the road. His foot belatedly finds the brake and they jerk forward in their seats as they come to a halt in the middle of the highway.

"...Jose?"

Henrietta's voice is shaking. He is scaring her, but she's still reaching out to him like he'll have a rational explanation for her.

He just stares back at her, slowly reining back in his breathing from the heaving gasps he must have slipped into after escaping the collision.

In the moonlight, he sees her hand rise towards him, like a child trying to test a nightmare by feel. She still can't believe there is a side of him like this. It can't be the real Jose, not the one who watches over her and takes her away on private indulgences. She may have seen beneath the mask, but she doesn't want to believe it just yet. Surely the kind Jose is the truth and bitter one is the lie.

His eyes harden and he almost orders her to go back to sleep when her hand closes on his arm. Her grip is firm, nearly crushing, but even so he knows she could do worse if she wanted. Holding him there, she captures his eyes with hers.

"Th-thank you."

He can feel her shiver and it moves through him like an electric shock. Thank you? He doesn't even know what to pretend he's taking credit for in this situation.

"You saved us," she goes on. "I… I thought I was going to die."

Jose watches her for a long minute, trying to route out the manipulative deception in the statement. Bianchi's said Henrietta is becoming more shrewd later, and it's possible she's only saying it for his sake.

And yet, the longer he looks, the more he's certain she means it.

"...Come on," he reluctantly eases the car forward again, and Henrietta sinks back into her seat. His eyes return to the road ahead. "Let's get you home."

Author's Notes:
"This is what you want, isn't it?"

It's those awful words that I feel give the greatest terrifying depth to Jose Croce at the height of the New Turin arc. And while he manages to keep his skeletons mostly in his closet for main canon, Dual Trigger is my own little AU playground, so I feel justified in playing the angle a little more dramatically.

Of course, then there's the question of "What's even happening to Dual Trigger? Isn't that dead?" And the answer is, Yes and No. While most of Dual Trigger is being repurposed for my original project Auroran Underground, there's still enough vaguely GSG ideas and reference laden plot that I'm kicking around how best to go forward with Dual Trigger itself. Perhaps we will yet see the day that Kefka Palazzo terrorizes Italy with the Shinra Electric Power Company.

In the meantime, you could always just go and read other things. Maybe even other Twelve Shots of Summer (or "TSoS") stuff that has the [Twelve Shots of Summer] tag in the description. OR, if you're feeling really crazy, you could even write a story of your own! In the words of a great man: "All of you, all of you, all of you, write a fic!"

Thank you for indulging me,

-CG

[07-12-20]