I never thought I would feel like this about a girl...but now I do.

I never knew what my father was thinking by having the Turks do his security for him. I mean, the original Turks were a large bunch of highly experienced and capable men and women. But that has dwindled down to just the rag tag bunch of you four and sometimes I look at you and feel mind boggled over you.

Tseng, I respected and looked up to since I was a mere boy, he helped mold me into the man I became, he is probably why I haven't disbanded you and replaced you with a normal security outfit.

Tseng is just as guarded and holds whatever personal torments that motived him to become the man he is hidden beneath a calm exterior and behind dead eyes.

I'm sure my eyes are just as cold when you look at them now.

If I were to examine you all personally, I wouldn't trust any of you.

You are a cast of personalities that shouldn't work but somehow do; you have Tseng: a man who seems incapable of emotion.

His second-in-command, Reno, is a combination of class clown and maverick.

His partner, Rude, hides his sensitive tawny eyes behind sunglasses and is the dreamer who speaks little.

Then there is you, Elena; their cheerleader. You wear your heart on your sleeve and seem to have no filter on your mouth, anything that comes into your head is babbled out through your pouting mouth. Your looks are average as a cute girl with girlish features and your brown eyes are as warm as chocolate. A man could drown in those eyes and I almost did.

You are unsuitable as a Turk, you bumble about and are clumsy and you try my patience. Yet, there is something endearing about your mistakes that make me want to laugh and I know you've looked at me when you caught me struggling not to laugh.

Do you have a tendency towards cold men who bury all emotions behind a calm face? Would you be interested to know that I've never been in a relationship?

I'm not a virgin but any sexual encounters have been bought and paid and each of the beautiful escorts never saw my face as I was masked throughout. I cannot afford to let anyone see me that vulnerable. Secrecy is my way of life, it's how I survived this long. You were the first woman I've ever exposed myself to as a person as a lover, as my friend.

And now I have to let you go.

I didn't know how to thank you when you leapt in front of me and took the assassin's bullet meant for me into your own small body. I know you were just doing your job but I wasn't used to having people actually care about me. That shard of metal lodged in you changed both of our lives.

I didn't know what to do as your ragged crew took charge of you and gave you first aid, prying you from my grasp as your bleeding body stained my white suit with your life essences. I was helpless at such things. I hadn't had the care of another person in my life and allowed them to take charge and do what was needed until the ambulance came and your ashen body was whisked away in a professional manner. Yet, something about your face disturbed me. Your gray face was so still. You were always so animated with your "Sir" here and "Sir" there, when you would say the most outrageous things that defied all social class barriers. Now you were so still.

You recovered and I visited you in your hospital room and had sent you a huge mixed floral bouquet as was appropriate for an employer to an employee. It was before your fellow Turks I stiffly thanked you, I sounded cold even to my own ears as I blab blabbed about your value to the Turks and myself and how you would be on paid medical leave as long as you needed.

You said all the correct things and we parted with a slight nod from me when I wanted to know: why you risked your life for mine? That went beyond our professional relationship. This question niggled at my astute brain and kept me up at nights until I had myself driven over to your apartment where you convalesced and I knocked at your door unannounced.

To give you credit, you didn't seem surprised to see me and let me into your pink painted world with its girlishly floral furniture. I wonder if you like feminine pastels in defiance to wearing man's attire day in and day out?

I sat there awkwardly on your pink rose floral couch with you and drank tea. "Why?" I blurted out.

You paused and looked at me and for once, seemed to think before you spoke. "I've known you a while now, Sir. Duty dictated that I must do what I could to preserve your life but the fact is, I would have done the same for anyone I care about. To guard someone, to see them every day. To see them at their worst, to see them at their best, you start to care about someone whether you want to or not" she explained.

I was flabbergasted at this, I paid my Turks well because it was better to have the most dangerous people on the planet working for you. I demanded everything from them and their respect, but not that they care about me personally. "Is there something I can do to thank you?" I asked her, expected her to say she wanted some bauble or other.

"Could you take a walk with me? I get so bored on my own" she said and this floored me.

In public? I never went out in public if I could avoid it, certainly had never walked amongst the unwashed masses. My interaction with society was limited: to a few taped interviews I gave a year and attending a couple of balls with an obligatory society beauty on my arm to prove I wasn't a robot, like people suggested. The daughters of the royals have performed like consummated actors all their lives, like me, and would act out being my date with grace and style that our positions commanded. Yet they cared nothing about me.

"I don't think I can" I said after a brief hesitation.

"It will be fun" you said giving me a hopeful smile.

"I do not..." I added.

"I have an idea" you said and before I knew it, I was in something called a thrift shop and wearing another man's discarded clothes. I didn't know what to make of the black boots, worn jeans and a t-shirt you dressed me in. I have only ever worn clothes tailored to my measurements and handmade of the finest fabrics, so wasn't used to wearing fabrics that clung to me like a second skin. You smiled as you put the sunglasses on me to obscure my signature looks and I became just another man in a crowd for the first time. "Shall we go, Rick?" you asked me after you paid for my disguise as you insisted and offered me your arm and I took it after a brief hesitation.

Your arm was round and warm as I took it and I could feel the steel of your muscles beneath the softness and realized that was you to a T. You took me to a diner that was questionable in its hygienic practices and introduced me to burgers and fries for the first time.

Then we went for a walk in the park and you introduced me to your colourful world of the general public.

Never have I moved around so freely and no one really seemed to notice me but I did get some admiring stares as I had since my adolescence. I felt like I could do anything and go anywhere and this was exhalating to a reclusive shut-in like myself!

I felt nervous but calm as I strolled with you as Rick, your smile bolstered my confidence and I'm sure you couldn't see my nervousness. I'm far too good at guarding my emotions.

The streets were crowded and full of people dressed like myself with questionable body odors as I walked you home.

"Thank you" you said and pressed your lips against my cheek and darted inside with your own cheeks glowing and closed the door. You didn't see where I touched my cheek where the warm feeling of your lips lingered.

I took to visiting you and my wardrobe as Rick expanded and I learned much about common life from you. I had only ever experienced the food prepared cautiously by the same chef or at boarding school, yet you introduced me to a myriad of tastes that I never knew existed and I greedily consumed each new one.

I didn't know that food could be bought and not delivered from a hidden kitchen until you took me shopping at a grocery store and introduced me to coupons that you sourced online.

You showed me your favourite places to go and Rick became a real person as you explained my social awkwardness as being an accountant and tinted glasses replaced the sunglasses to mask my signature cold eyes. Rufus was cold and reserved, Rick was far more outgoing and had recently gotten into a relationship with Elena, the airship stewardess. We both lived in lies as you liberated me from the one thing I was: being me.

You were cute and impulsive and I never knew where you would take Rick next, you made me laugh out loud, something I wasn't used to and I welcomed each change you caused in me. It was like being reborn as my sense of isolation and constantly loneliness was filled by your off-duty hours. I was free with you.

You teased me about never doing anything impulsive and I shocked you by seizing you and kissing you in the street until I was breathless.

Would you be interested to know that that was my first kiss?

The mask I wore during my paid for conquests was a full leather mask obscuring my features down to my neck. This had been a gift from my father when he paid for my first woman to initiate me into manhood was I was fifteen. He had made it so it could be laced up to fit as I aged.

I stood beside him in my dressing gown as nervous as all hell and he his eyes were dead as he handed me his gift. He had no words of compassion for a nervous boy.

"Cover your face, boy. No person should know about your base instincts but your future wife and even that should be delicately approached" he advised me.

"How can I kiss anyone in this?" I asked him, memories of the fairytale stories my nanny used to read me in my mind where the tender loving kiss of devotion claims the princess's heart.

"You kiss your future wife, you don't want to kiss nasty disease-ridden whores. Don't you go getting romantic ideas; you pay for sex in or out of your marriage bed in our social standing position. Either way, you get a pretty body but you still have to pay. Now that woman in that room isn't cheap and you have to go in there and do the Shinra name proud. You must learn from her in order to satisfy your future wife" he instructed me as he laced me into the mask.

I shudder to think what he would have done to me had I been born a daughter, rather than a son. But I digress, that would never have been allowed to happen.

I wore that mask ever since during the embarrassing times that my libido couldn't be controlled and I pounded my frustrations into an expensive body and got nothing from the encounter but an almost clinical release. I would put on my robe and they would leave without comment as they assumed their own. I wanted nothing of them once I ejaculated into the condom.

However, with you, once I kissed you, I hungered for your kisses and couldn't get enough of them.

You became no longer a pretty-plain girl to me and I noticed a new glow about you when you gazed at me with eyes as gentle as a fawn. How had I ever thought you rather plain with your chubby baby cheeks? You were beautiful through and through and I couldn't stop looking at you, kissing you. It was like I was no longer in stasis but delightfully alive when with you.

You introduced me to your friends as I managed to convince them of my devotion to you. I had become more outgrowing because of you and allowed my sense of humour to show.

Some people were more astute then others and would remark on the resemblance between Rufus Shinra and myself and you would bite your lip each time I dryly responded, "I get that a lot, but no. He's definitely far handsomer then myself."

Speaking of astute, I'm sure your fellow Turks knew about us, (at least they had better have) but even the brash Reno seemed to know when to keep his mouth shut for once as I lived a double life with you and returned to my own sterile world devoid of any mirth or companionship but servants, who have served me since I was born.

You were Rick's mentor in his new life and a lifeline I clung to and this allowed me to make you a woman on the cheap mattress of your pink sheeted bed and wore no disguise with a woman for the first time. I was rendered completely bare before you in every way and you accepted me for what I was.

Something you didn't know about me was, that there are a group of old men who controlled my fortune, who controlled certain aspects of my personal life. There is a clause in each will of the predecessor that insists that his son must marry on his twenty-fifth birthday to maintain his social status and rank...I am no exception. And I am turning twenty-five this year. It is not just a matter of marriage, there is a short list of acceptable families, who have the same acceptable pedigreed as myself and you, my dear, aren't from one of them.

Those same powerful men found out about you and told me that I must get rid of you...and so I must.

I will marry a pretty woman as cold as the blue blood that runs in her veins and shall sire an heir upon her and medical science shall intervene to ensure the child born of us is a male. All of this was planned before I was born, that wast ture my father and my grandfather and great-grandfather. You get the picture as I explain this all to you.

My own father and mother married out of obligation and went on to be indifferent to each other once I was conceived and maintained separate lives, until my mother's death. She died in a car accident with her current paramour. You already know of my father's demise.

My future wife and I shall be the same, I imagine.

You argue with me to give up being as I was, to marry you instead and we shall live a common life together and you will give me a child.

The life you offer me is attractive but I can't give up being what I am. It's not a question of losing my fortune, I'm a Shinra to my very bone, though I like to think I've improved our reputation and mended some fences with the common people along the way.

I shall marry as dictated and sire my heir and hope that I give him the loving father I was denied.

You taught me how to love and I'll always be grateful for that.

I'm sorry, but you and I are through and my brief holiday is through but, I'll never forget us I coldly explain as your expressive eyes fill with tears. My own heart is heavy as I turn from you and exit your life as easily as I entered it.

"Adieu, my dearest Elena" I whisper when I'm out of earshot and brush away the single tear from my crystalline blue eye that I shall allow myself in my grief.

From now on, I shall coat my heart with the hardest tempered steel.