Elena had been called a lot of thing during the time that she worked with the Shin-Ra. Hard-working. Determined. A whore. Pretty. Pathetic. Clumsy. A slut. All these rude comments, however, had long sense ceased to bother Elena. She'd heard it all before. After all, men weren't really that creative when it came to name calling and insults. Elena had been called a whore so many times that she no longer cared. If sleeping around was the only for Elena to create a permanent position among the Turks, then she would do it. Gladly.
That wasn't to say that she didn't like Tseng. When she had first met him, Elena had been head over heels in love with the man. What girl wouldn't have been? Tseng came across as politely aloof, but underneath that, he had a much warmer personality. Elena, more than anyone else, knew this to be true.
Elena had first joined the Turks in hopes of surpassing her older sister; a dream most younger siblings universally share. However, Elena had no idea what she was getting into when she joined the Turks. Her older sister had never told her, probably because she believed Elena would never want to do the same thing as she. Then again, there were times when Elena suspected her older sister didn't tell her about went on as a way to protect her young sister. Who knew? Elena would never know for certain, that much was obvious. Anyway, if you were a woman, it didn't matter how smart or strong you were. It didn't matter if you were a healer or a fighter. It didn't matter if you fought with your body or with an assortment of weapons. Nothing matter except how good you were in bed. Elena found this out within her first week of working with Shin-Ra.
At first, she had been shocked at this knowledge. How unfair! How unjust! After all, Midgar considered itself to be a liberated city; with equal rights for everyone. Why should Elena have to put up with something so stupid? She was a woman, and could best any man she knew when it came to martial arts. For a while, Elena toyed with the idea of telling the President, or announcing it to the public. Surely the President would be outraged. Surely the public would be shocked. Surely things would change!
Sadly, it didn't take Elena long to figure out that all this happened because she was a woman, and things weren't likely to change. There was one reason, and only one reason. The only reason Elena was asked to sleep with her co-workers was because Elena had what most of her male co-workers wanted. Most. That wasn't to say that there weren't the few and rare homosexual (or bisexual) men working within the ranks of Shin-Ra, but again, they were few and rare. So for the most part, this arrangement suited everyone. The men liked it, and the women didn't complain. Why change a system that had worked for countless years? After all, what was the problem? It wasn't like the Shin-Ra Company was the only company to do things this way. As time passed, Elena became more and more certain that all big name companies treated women like this. And that was just the way things went.
Elena was lucky...in a sick sort of sense. She certainly hadn't been the first to fall for Tseng, but she was without a doubt the first one he had fallen for in return. So it didn't take long for them to reach a deal. Elena would act as Tseng's own little mistress, and Elena would get the promotions she so desperately longed for. It was a good arrangement, in fact, the deal Elena and Tseng reached was a wonderful arrangement. If (and when) Elena agreed, she wouldn't have anything to lose. And almost everything to gain.
Soon Elena's life fell into a comfortable pattern. She worked, she was paid, she enjoyed life. A few times a week, she met up with Tseng, and gave him what he asked for. At times, Elena wondered if this set-up made her a prostitute of sorts, but she soon learned to ignore this thought. After all, what did it matter? She had what she wanted, and it did make her, to a certain degree, happy. After all, there wasn't anything wrong with Tseng. If she had to be a mistress for anyone in the world, she still would have picked Tseng.
Still, there were times, either late at night in her own room, laying in her own bed, or dragging a drunken Reno out of Seventh Heaven (and trying not to be too obviously jealous of Tifa) that Elena wondered if maybe there had been a different choice for her. If she had been born a man, would things have been different? If Elena had been male, would she have been given promotions based on her skill in battle, not in bed? For the most part, Elena believed this to be true. That if she had been a man, things would have been different.
But there was always that nagging doubt. Being female, Elena would never know what went through the mind of a man. In the daytime, it was easy to dismiss her theories as crazy. At night, staring up at the moon...that's when it got hard to dismiss her theories in the same manner that she did during the day. At night, it became very easy to believe that the same thing happen with the young boys when they first joined Shin-Ra. After all, there were people (like Reno) who Elena would never, for the life of her, be able to figure out which way they swung, and didn't care who ended up in their bed at night.
Still, even if that was true, Elena knew that, being female, she had been given the short end of the stick. Such was the curse to be born a woman. But it was also a blessing. After all, all this had made Elena strong. Everything she had every learned or put up with made Elena the strong, determined, beautiful woman that she was today.
Everyone thought that it was the men who were given the hard jobs. It was the men who had to be strong. Shin-Ra was built on the ideas and dreams of one man. Men could not show weakness. Men were the only ones worth pitying.
Elena was one of the few who knew this was not true. Women were the ones who could not cry, even when their hearts were breaking. Women were the ones who had to hide suffering behind a mask of indifference. Women were the ones who gave birth for the love of God! And women were the ones that history always ignored.
Elena believed that a man's life might be difficult. But she knew a woman's life was harder by far.
Given the chance, Elena gladly would have done the men's work.
But she was a girl, a woman, a female. And life just didn't work like that.