Disclaimer: I do not own FFVII or any of the characters.
A/N: So, one day I was wondering what the relationship between Tseng and Yuffie would be. I mean, he's a Wutain Turk and she's a Wutain princess so obviously there would be tension. However, I'm not all that interested in Tseng otherwise and this is my first and likely last time writing him. Please tell me if I got his character right!
The Spirit of Wutai
He rejected his country years and years and years ago for a lord with a better paycheck and more respect, but he's still Wutain in the corners of his soul. So when he saw (princess, avatar, Leviathan) Yuffie running around with AVALANCHE he was torn.
Should he have been proud because a Wutian (so much more than just that) was saving the world or dismayed because it was his duty to stop her?
And her clothes shocked him to the core. He was progressive enough, had to be, working in Midgar, but it went so far against custom, tradition for the heir to run around in short shorts and a midriff baring turtle neck that if he still consciously considered himself Wutain he would have had an apoplexy.
Seeing Reno hit on his future empress, and her flirting back, was no good for his health either.
He talked to her, once, long after the defeat of Sephiroth and was surprised at the hardness in her eyes even as she made ribald jokes and cat called her friends. That was when he realized that as much as he considered her a presumptuous brat, she considered him a traitor of the highest order.
They kept their distance from one another until one day she called him out of the blue (how did she even get his number anyway?) and said, "You're helping me light the candles."
He said, "It's been a long time since I last did that. I don't remember all the lines."
A harsh laugh tore out of her throat. "Neither do I. You're still helping me."
Surprisingly enough, he did. They lit the candles for their dead (a veritable sea of light, covering the floor of her basement) and chanted the prayers, mumbling some bits. Then they drank the ceremonial wine before pouring it on the ground outside her house as a libation to the spirits of the departed. As Tseng watched the (blood) red wine (is everything around them the color of blood?) soak into the dirt he also watched the small woman-child next to him. He face was uncharacteristically somber as the wine seeped away.
Then she turned to him, a wide smile across her face (her teeth flashed like knifes in the twilight), and said, "You weren't too bad at the whole thing. Same time next year?"
He nodded slowly and she bounced back inside to watch the sea of light burn down.
Tseng walked away slowly, hands in his pockets. He thought of his dead, and his living and the woman-child that was due to take the throne and the way she never been able to escape from the dead and dying all her life (her choice of consort just proved that. Tseng had not yet met a man less alive than Vincent Valentine). Maybe she didn't want to.
He stopped at a flower seller's stall (not wearing pink, thank God, but a ghastly shade of yellow) and reached for his wallet, pointing at a bundle of irises. Elena liked irises. He didn't feel anything in his pocket. He searched more frantically, patting all his pockets before cursing and turning back.
The bitch had stolen his wallet!
