AN: Thank you to everyone who reviewed Being Reno and Play With Me. I am working on both these stories I promise. But watching a film called Shinobi last night which was very romantic and Romeo and Juliet-y, (AND had a character of extreme gorgeousness who looked a lot like Tseng might if he was real...Sorry, drifted off there for a minute...) this Tseng story arrived in my head.

It's a love story, and there's not much graphic sex, and it's a bit tragic I'm afraid.

Anyway - enough rambling.

Please R&R

The Director's Tale

I wait beside the door while he sits with you; talks to you in a low voice I can't hear; bends to kiss your forehead, being careful not to disturb the oxygen mask. It's his right to be with you, of course, because everyone knows you're his lover, and you were injured – almost fatally – protecting him - taking a bullet in the chest that was meant for him – your heart in the space his occupied a moment earlier. You've always been lethally fast; now it might have proved lethal for you. The doctors can't say for sure when you'll wake up. If you'll wake up.

Rufus - who possibly claims to love you, although never in front of anyone else – wants to be with you when you wake. If…

But he's been here for two days now, and he needs sleep so badly that I have to intervene. His safety is my job, after all, just as it is yours. I approach the bed, and tell him that he has to leave. I tell him that I'll stay with you and promise to let him know the second anything changes.

Wearily Rufus nods, gives you one more kiss, and turns to go. I sit in the chair Rufus has vacated. When I'm sure he's gone, I take your hand.

I can claim to love you too – but I'll never tell you that. Not when you can hear me, anyway.

From the moment I brought you in off the streets of Midgar's slums – a defiant, clever, cocky kid, hiding your fear so well – I recognised the stirring of old feelings. Feelings I thought had gone forever a very long time ago.

There is so much about you that I love for your own sake, Reno. But something of what I feel – perhaps where these feelings began – is undoubtedly caused by your similarity to someone I used to love. You are so like him. Your fire, your passion, your reckless ability to take life full on and damn the consequences. And the way you look. Your hair is redder, of course, and your skin paler, but the colour of your eyes is almost identical – and the slant of them that makes me think there must be Wutaian heritage somewhere in your past…But perhaps that's just wishful thinking.

Let me talk to you, Reno. They say that can help sometimes, when people are in comas. Let me tell you things no-one else knows. Things that aren't in my files. You're happy with Rufus – aren't you? So even if I was brave enough to offer you my love, you wouldn't want it. Let me give you this, instead: the story I've told no-one. The story of my past, and why a man from Wutai would become a Turk and work for Shin-Ra.

I grew up in a wealthy family in Jenli, a small village in the far north of Wutai, not many miles from the capital. I had a much older sister, who married very well, and then my parents waited many years for another child. So when I arrived – their only son – you can imagine how happy they were, and how much they expected of me. I let them down, and they…Well. I'll tell you what they did.

I don't see my mother any more, since I killed her brother. And my father is dead – they said of a heart attack, but I think, of shame.

There were four relatively rich families in Jenli; the families that owned land, like mine. Everyone else worked for us, and had much less comfortable lives. My parents wanted the best for me, so they sent me to school in Wutai Town itself, and gave me lessons in the culture of the Eastern Continent, as well as that of Wutai. I learned to shoot guns alongside my training in the Wutaian Warrior's Way – a mix of martial arts and philosophy – and I learned to play the piano together with more traditional Wutaian instruments. My father always told me that he wanted the world to be open to me. It was only later that I came to realize that he meant he wanted a certain path through the world to be open to me – a path on which he'd already mapped out every step.

I worked hard, and did everything I could to make my family proud of me. My mother told me stories – traditional Wutaian tales – about good sons who brought great honour to their families.

When I was sixteen, the name of my cousin Jiao began to be spoken a lot, and to my utter horror it became clear to me that this was the girl I was expected to marry. I knew Jiao. She was two years older than me, and the eldest daughter of my mother's brother, my Uncle Hu, the wealthiest man in the village. She was also stunningly beautiful, clever and witty. I looked at her and felt nothing.

I talked to my best friend, Shen Lei, one evening. My parents didn't really approve of our friendship – Lei was poor, and they considered him uncouth, and to make matters worse, his grandmother had come from Junon, on the Eastern Continent. He was the only person in the village with what was frowned upon as foreign heritage – his hair was brown, but lighter than everyone else's, with reddish shades that became noticeable in bright sunlight. His eyes were almost turquoise – like the warm waters off the coast on a sunny day. He was often teased for his exotic looks, but I thought he was beautiful.

Hesitantly, I told him about Jiao, and tried to explain how I felt about the idea of marriage. It all seemed very complicated to me. "I don't feel like they say you're supposed to, in books and things," I told him. "She's very pretty – but I don't think I'll be able to fall in love with her." Lei just looked at me as if I were mad and smiled his dazzling smile. "'Course you won't!" he told me, as though it had always been obvious. "You're already in love, stupid!"

"Am I?" I wasn't being obtuse on purpose. I'd simply never allowed myself to acknowledge that such a thing was possible. But my body knew what my mind wouldn't admit. I knew I was blushing scarlet, and my heart was pounding as I asked, "Who with?"

"Me, of course," Lei said, with his usual brash confidence. Then, as so often, he thought about what he'd said after the words were out, and a vaguely anxious expression crossed his face. "...Aren't you?" he asked.

"Yes," I heard myself replying, realizing it was true.

"Good!" Lei said, smiling. "I was worried there, for a minute." Then he kissed me, and everything made sense.

Oh we were so young, and reckless, and hopelessly naïve. We had never heard of a love like ours before: in our village it was simply never spoken of as a possibility. Even Lei – a year older than me, and always more adventurous – had never heard of a boy loving another boy. That first day, as we lay together in the sunshine by the river kissing and touching each other for hours, not really knowing what else there was to do, we had a foolish conversation about how we would tell our parents, about the problems the differences in our social standing would cause, about how a marriage ceremony between two males might be conducted. Yes – we really were that innocent.

Lei picked the yellow flowers that grew along the riverbank, and wove them into my hair, and said, "You'll have to be the bride, Tseng-ai, because you're so beautiful." He laughed and told me, "You can't marry Jiao in any case! She'll be furious at the wedding when you look better than she does!" Lei was always good with words. I found it so much harder to tell him what was in my heart. That hasn't changed – even today, I can't express my feelings aloud. Not when anyone's listening. I wanted to tell Lei that he was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. I wanted to find words for the colour of his eyes, for the way he smiled, for those streaks of amber in his hair – the way they shone! But I had no words. All I could say was, "I love you!" and hope that he understood how much.

Lei and I learned almost all we knew about sex from each other. It was another subject that was not discussed in Jenli. Lei's married older brother had told him a few basic things. I had found a book badly hidden in my father's library – although, looking back, I think he may have left it for me to find – which detailed, in archaic Wutaian, 'the correct modes of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman'. There were hand-drawn illustrations in ink on vellum. It was a very beautiful book, written in the late fifteenth century – and almost useless for my purposes, except for one chapter at the end, about 'a man's natural desires'. It spoke of a woman's natural modesty, and the supposed 'fact' that well-brought-up women were not really interested in sex. "A man with a refined and modest wife will often find the need of recourse to a mistress, or to a House of Necessity" the author wrote. "Such things are necessary to the health of a virile man. A virtuous woman may not be sullied by acts such as the lower orders participate in, and should not use her hands or her mouth for the giving of satisfaction. The Houses of Necessity employ low women for such purposes. By their lower natures, these women are fitted for the relief of men's carnal urges."

Well – all that sounded fairly horrible, apart from the line about using the hands and mouth for the giving of satisfaction. When I read that I found myself growing hard, just as I did when Lei kissed me, and images came into my mind that made me ache with desire for him.

I thought about it all day at school, and as soon as I'd finished my homework and done my music practice and my chores, I ran down to the river to meet him. We virtually flew into each other's arms, like the star-crossed lovers in the films they showed every weekend at the village's one-screen cinema. It almost makes me laugh, now, remembering how ridiculously romantic we were. Almost.

I told Lei about the book I'd found, and, blushing, I said, "It made me want to do those things with you, Lei-ai. He smiled, and took my hand, and led me down to the place we'd found right by the water, where the trailing branches of an old weeping willow brushed the grassy bank and formed a natural screen. We lay down together, and undressed each other in between long kisses. The warm sunlight, filtered by the willow branches, dappled Lei's perfect skin with golden-green light and leaf-patterned shade. His beauty made my breath catch in my throat.

We took it in turns to touch and kiss and lick each other, gentle and careful at first, then, as desire ignited in us, more passionate, more frantic. We brought each other to the most intense, shattering climaxes, losing count of how many times, moaning each other's names. We were young, and inexperienced, but love made everything right between us, and that sun-lit evening remains the most perfect memory of my life.

Afterwards we lay in each other's arms, and promised to love each other forever, as children do. Night had fallen, moonlight rippling silver lines on the dark river, like watered silk. At last we dressed and walked together to the place where the path forked; my way leading up the hill to my parents' large house; his, down into the village. There was no-one on the moonlit track, and we kissed goodnight without words. I'd never known such perfect happiness – before, or since.

A year passed, and we were lucky that no-one suspected what we had become to one another, because neither of us had the wit to be especially careful. The only person who guessed was Lei's mother. Once I saw her frowning a little as Lei and I sat together at their kitchen table, reading something Lei was studying at the village school. Lei reached up, smiling, and brushed aside a strand of dark hair that had fallen across my eyes, and I caught the flash of alarm in his mother's eyes at the intimacy of the gesture. That was my first warning that anyone might consider our feelings to be wrong, but even then I thought her concern was because of the difference in our social status.

Then she caught us kissing, and our fools' paradise imploded.

It was an ordinary day. I ran up the path to Lei's house, and he rushed out to greet me with his usual energy. His blue-green eyes were sparkling, and I couldn't resist touching his cheek. He caught my wrist, and pulled me close, kissing me softly on the lips. I pressed my body against his, seized with the longing that always overwhelmed me when we were together, and the kiss deepened, his tongue thrusting into my mouth eagerly – when his mother yelled at him to get inside. He looked round, startled, but not really worried, and kept hold of my wrist, clearly expecting me to go with him. But I saw the look of horror and fury - and worse than those things – terror – on his mother's face. Reluctantly, I followed Lei, because I loved him and could do nothing else, but his mother dragged him inside, wrenched my hand away from his, and slammed the door in my face, with a shouted, "Go home!"

I didn't go home. I waited, hidden among the trees, for hours. It was twilight when Lei emerged from the house, not by the door, but slipping quietly through his bedroom window and dropping to the ground with agile grace. He passed my hiding place and I whispered, "Lei-ai!" He gestured further along the path, and I kept to the trees until we had rounded the corner out of sight and sound of his house. He came to me, then, and took me in his arms but didn't kiss me. He whispered, "Tseng…" and I realised he was crying. I reached up to kiss away his tears, and he didn't stop me. "I love you," I told him. "Nothing can change that."

"I know."

We walked away from his house, away from the path, until we came to a place by the river where the water splashed down over rocks - a miniature waterfall.

"What did she say?" I asked.

"She said…hah! What didn't she say?" That note of bitterness in Lei's voice was new. I hated it. He continued, "She said that what we are doing is a sin against the gods. She said that if anyone found out, we could both be executed. She said that I was stupid to fool around with the son of a nobleman, and that if your father found out he'd have me killed. I'm supposed to stay away from you, until…after the wedding. She told me that you're going to marry Jiao on your eighteenth birthday, because it's auspicious, or some such crap! Is…is that true, Tseng? Why didn't you tell me?"

"It's not true! I will never marry Jiao, or any other woman – you know that."

"Well the whole village thinks it. Jiao, too, apparently."

"It's not true," I told him, again. "If my father and my uncle have arranged something, they haven't told me about it, and I won't do it!"

But it wasn't that part of Lei's mother's words that bothered me. I could decide whether to marry Jiao or not. But I had no control over people's beliefs – or the perceived will of the gods. Tentatively, I asked, "Did she really say it's a sin?"

"Yes." Lei looked at me, then laughed incredulously. "Tseng! You don't believe that do you?"

"I…"

I wasn't sure. I'd been brought up to believe in the gods – the gods of the village, and the ancestor gods. But how could love be a sin?

I knew Lei had a temper – the superstitious villagers said it came from the red streaks in his hair – but I'd never known it directed at me. I hardly recognized him as he turned on me, furious, eyes blazing. "Don't say it, Tseng! Don't even think it! Oh, how could you!" Lei's eyes were full of tears again. Feeling helpless I said, "Don't! I don't believe it. It's just…if everyone believes that…"

"Then they're all wrong! Doesn't it mean anything to you – what we feel? I thought you loved me!"

However much confusion I was experiencing at that moment, one thing I was quite sure of. "I do love you. Always."

"Then come away with me. Now. Tonight. If we stay here, they won't let us be together. They'll make you marry that girl. We can go to Junon – where my grandmother came from. My mother said that's where it comes from – the way I am – the way we are. She says that on the eastern continent people have no - what she calls morals, and they allow love like ours. We could be together there. We wouldn't have to hide."

I still wish, more than anything, that I'd done what my heart told me to do, and said yes.

Instead I thought about the things I'd been raised to put first – family. Honour. Duty.

"I can't leave my parents alone," I said. "I'm their only son."

"If they knew what you are they'd disown you," Lei said. "My mother told me that she'll disown me if anyone ever finds out."

"They wouldn't do that," I said. I think I believed what I was saying, at the time. "They might be shocked, but they're educated – they'd come to understand. I'm sure they want my happiness."

"Don't trust education to dispel ingrained prejudice," Lei said. "They wouldn't believe that this kind of love could bring happiness. They think it's evil. They'd rather see you dead than with me."

"No!"

"Then – what shall we do?" Lei's eyes were dark with sorrow. Looking back now, I understand that he – always the sharp one – could already see what was coming. I was hopelessly optimistic. A child.

"We'll stay here. I'll talk to my parents – make them understand. I'll go and talk to them now. It will be all right – you'll see."

"They'll never understand."

"They will! I'll make them. Lei…"

"Yes?"

"Please let me try. Don't leave. Don't go to Junon without me."

Shen Lei smiled sadly. "Oh Tseng! I will never leave you. How could I? Only death…"

"Don't! I love you. It will be all right."

He sighed, and kissed me, and I could taste the tears on his skin. Then I turned and walked away, full of determination, and stupid, childish self-belief.

When I got home I went to my father's study and asked to speak to him. I thought I was behaving appropriately and with maturity. I had no idea of the fury I was about to loose upon myself – upon Lei.

"Sir," I began, respectfully, "I have heard a rumour in the village that I am to be married to my cousin Jiao when I'm eighteen, in the fall. Is it true?"

My father cleared his throat in the rather self-important way he had, and answered, "Well – I'd prefer you not to listen to village gossip, but, yes, it's true. It will be a great match, uniting our two families even more closely, and joining our lands. Your Uncle Hu had considered a match with one of the important families in Wutai Town for Jiao, because rumours of her great beauty have reached even there, but with your mother's help we persuaded him otherwise. And, it seems, Jiao is quite taken with your appearance too. You could hardly ask for a more fitting bride."

I lowered my gaze, finding this suddenly a lot harder than I'd expected to. I'd never even considered Jiao's feelings in the matter, and I felt guilty about that, but I had to tell the truth.

I'm truly sorry, father, and I can't express how honoured I am that you made this match for me, but I cannot marry Hu Jiao."

My father looked at me as though I'd suddenly started speaking in a foreign language. After a moment of stunned silence he said, "Do you know something against her honour?"

"No! Not at all. But I…I am in love with someone else."

My father laughed. I'd expected arguments, or anger – never laughter.

"I'm serious!" I told him. He still laughed. "In love with someone else! Oh Tseng! I'm sure you are – a boy your age. Some pretty little village girl, is she? But all young men love in that way. And if she has a child – it's no disgrace to her, to bear a side-shoot child of our family. This has nothing to do with marriage!"

"Not a girl," I told him. "A man."

That stopped the laughter. My father's eyes narrowed, and his face darkened, like the purple thunderclouds gathering over Mount Feng-Yu. "This joke is not funny, Tseng," he growled. "We do not speak of such perversions."

"It's not a joke. And it's not a…a perversion! I love him: he loves me. I can't marry anyone else. You have to understand."

"What is the name of this dog who has corrupted you? Tell me, and I will strangle him with my own hands."

I knew then that Lei had been right. He would never understand. The very idea of a love like the one I shared with Lei was anathema to him. I couldn't give him Lei's name. I had no idea what to do. I stared at him – this man who was my father, and who was looking at me with utter contempt and disgust written plain on his face. But I couldn't let his accusation stand. "No-one has corrupted me," I told him. "I am speaking about love – not corruption."

His face relaxed a little. "So – this is infatuation. Or – hero-worship? You have not…lain with this man?"

I was technically a virgin, I suppose, as the world names these things, but I was too innocent to know about such distinctions, and, it seems to me, they are artificial anyway. The love I felt for Lei was as much a commitment as the most celebrated marriage in the land.

"I have lain with him," I said. "And it was a pure thing, and not corruption."

"You will never speak of this again," my father said. "You will marry Jiao, and bring honour to this family. You will never see this man again."

"I can't marry Jiao," I said. "It would be a lie. If you attempt to make me, I will tell her the truth. And her father – and the whole village!"

My father's rage was white heat – livid flame that shook his body and made me tremble. It burned in his eyes, and I tensed, expecting thunder, but when he spoke his voice was calm. "Go to your room, and think about this, Tseng," he said. "I will ask you again, in the morning, what you wish to do. If you agree to marry Jiao, we will never speak of this conversation again. If not, you will no longer be my son."

Lei had been right about everything. I turned to leave – intending to go to Lei, to tell him that we would go to Junon. But as I reached the door it was flung open and my mother strode into the room looking as furious as my father. She had clearly heard everything. "There's only one person he spends time with," she told my father, her voice cold. She looked at me, and her face was a stranger's. "Your lover is Shen Lei," she said. It wasn't a question. "You have betrayed your family's honour to make yourself the whore of a filthy peasant half-breed."

I had never heard such language in my life, and it shocked me so much falling from the mouth of my well-bred, respected mother that I hardly understood the words. Before I could think how to respond to such an accusation, my father's hands were on my shoulders shaking me hard, and his face was inches from my own as he yelled, "Shen Lei? Shen Lei? The son of a peasant farmer, with foreign blood in his veins? This is the man you claim to love?"

I ignored him, and looked at my mother. "It's not him," I lied. She laughed in my face. "Always together," she spat. "Never interested in the girls. Well – Shen Lei is being dealt with."

"What do you mean?" my father and I asked together.

"My brother arrived just after Tseng did," my mother said with a sneer that made her beautiful face ugly. "He was with me in the hall, overhearing your conversation. I told him your lover's name. He's gone to find Shen Lei."

"No!" cried my father and I together. I ran for the door, and my father yelled, "We need to keep this quiet!"

"Too late!" snarled my mother. "Do you think my brother would pollute his family with a creature like that? No – Jiao will marry into one of those Wutai Town families, and take her fortune with her…"

I heard no more as I tore out of the house and down the hill into the village.

I was too late. Lei was lying on the path near his house, my uncle's ceremonial dagger buried in his heart. My uncle stood beside him, looking at what he'd done, his face expressionless. I fell to my knees, my hands against the wound trying to stop the bleeding – but there was very little bleeding. He must have died almost instantly. I was calling his name over and over and my mind had stopped functioning properly. I heard a woman screaming. Lei's mother. I looked up at my uncle's face. "How can you not even care?" I asked.

He looked at me with nothing but scorn. "You don't care when you put down a sick dog," he replied.

I snatched the dagger from Lei's body, and stabbed it into my uncle's chest. Pulling it free, barely registering the sound when my uncle's body thudded to the ground, I turned the point of the blade to rest against my own heart, but before I could kill myself the dagger was knocked away, and a man's voice said, "Enough killing." It was Lei's father.

I don't know exactly what I said or did then. I remember begging to be allowed to die. I remember kissing Lei's cold lips until someone pulled me away. I remember sobbing until I couldn't breath.

Some time later Lei's father walked beside me on the road to Wutai Town. Eventually a farmer passed in a truck, and offered us a lift.

"From Wutai Town you can get transport to the coast, and then take ship for Junon or Midgar," Lei's father said.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because Lei would want you to live."

"Why would I want to?"

"Because not all the world is like our little backwater. Lei would have wanted to see it. You have to see it for him now. Promise me that."

It was all I could do.

I promised.

I came to Midgar in the end, and Veld employed me because of my skill with weapons and my knowledge of Wutaian. Part of the reason I wanted to work for Shin-Ra was because it opposed Wutai. Shin-Ra stood for technology, advances in human understanding, the future. I thought then, that Wutai stood for nothing but reactionary values and a pathetic adherence to outmoded traditions and values.

Shin-Ra taught me to be an efficient killer. It taught me the value of power.

I don't think those were the values I was looking for.

When Lei died, I cared for nothing for years. But since you joined us, I've begun to feel differently.

So. That's my story. Gaia, Reno, I've been talking half the night!

Reno, I love you. There – I've said it. I know you can't hear it, but I wanted to say it once. Please come back to us. We need you. Rude, Elena, me…and Rufus.

Wait! Was that…?

Reno!

"Hold on. I'll fetch Rufus for you."