Summer he's in Wutai, and you know because this time you find him on purpose. Yuffie has a tendency to leave long-winded messages on your phone which you listen to without really listening, only this time she mentions "that smarmy red-headed fuck" so many times it gets through, and without needing any elaboration you know who she means.

You arrive two days later and find him in the bar at dusk, speaking fluent Wutaian to a skinny dark-haired boy. He sees you over the boys head, and studies you for a few seconds, expressionless, before muttering a few more words which cause the boy to slip away.

You slide in across from him and pick up a menu, and he waits for you to speak first. The vinyl of the seat catches at your thighs – the bar is more crowded than usual and the night is stuffy. The window beside you is almost steamed up, and Reno's hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat.

"She kept us sane," you tell him suddenly, deciding that no preamble is required when there's no real relationship there to cushion.

His expression still doesn't change as he takes a swig from his drink and nods for you to go on.

"She was just, she controlled everything. "

He really has it down, the silent surveillance, giving nothing away.

"Well. I mean obviously not like that, but…" It occurs to you that you just spent two days travelling across three continents to get here, and wonder why you didn't rehearse this, or try to think through what you were going to say. You pause for a second, and start again. "She was just so damned confident."

Reno nods, blows into the top of his bottle, but is still silent. Maybe he can see that something's changed since the days when you tried to kill him for standing in her lake, or maybe he's still just a dick.

"Later, I guess, now I can see that she wasn't at all as in control and unaffected as she always pretended. But she never let things get to her. She tried to shield everyone, to protect us all and I tried to protect her, but… I couldn't."

"But why now?" Reno asked, leaning back in his seat and drawing his bottle over his forehead. "She died yonks ago, and all you did was pick up your sword and march off and kill Sephiroth and a hundred massive WEAPONS and the finest robots we could muster. You stole a submarine and an airship and went into space and skydived into Midgar and now suddenly you just mope around?"

"I was busy then," you tell him, "I didn't have time to think. And now I can, and I can't stop. I mean, every night, I dream about her. Not just her. All of them, all of them that got crushed by the plate, and all those faceless soldiers who once stood beside me, and Tifa's dad and my mum and even goddamn Rufus."

"Strife," he tells you, "I think you need to let go."

"I know. Only, I don't know how. It's like, she's tied to all of them but I can't let go of them and I can't let go of her. You know I barely even talk about her, they all think I'm over it but I can't help but feel like, if I'd just done it all differently..."

He sits up suddenly, but ignores everything you said. "Come on," he tells you, "I want to show you something. Wutai wants to teach you something."

"What?" you ask, but he's already out of his seat. He grabs another drink from the bar and you follow him outside. It's a shade cooler out than in, but you can tell instinctively that the sun isn't going go down fully until much later that night. There are crowds swarming everywhere, giddy children holding sticks spitting sparks into the air.

"It's the longest day of the year," he tells you, "There's going to be a festival."

"You came for a festival?" you ask him, and he shrugs.

"They know how to party over here." You think of Yuffie, think probably you should stay for the festivities, say hi. You know she isn't there yet, or rather, you know that you would know if she were.

The two of you walk toward the river, where the crowd thins a little, and sit down in silence for a while. You can see Da-Chao towering over the town, and suppose it's fitting that this is where you've sought him out, the first place the two of you were united, ever – well, at least ever since the Nibelheim incident. The first time in life take two.

Reno lights a cigarette. "This might be surprising, but I kind of have some experience with this shit. Not the ridiculous survivor guilt or whatever, but the letting go. The two people I cared about most in the world disappeared from my life one day. I didn't know if they were alive or not, and in the end I had to let them go because it was driving me crazy. And then they reappeared, and then one died and one just stayed disappeared and I had to try to let go of them all over again."

"How did you do it?" you ask him. At this point, with no sleep and no inter-personal skills left, you would take advice from Apps if he had it to offer.

"I don't know," he tells you honestly. "I just had to, so I did."

You sit in silence for a while. It was useless advice, but he offered you something and for some reason that means more than his words. You scan the crowd some more for Yuffie, but you can't hear her so that means she's at least a kilometre away.

"I want to let go of her," you tell him, softly, and he nods.

"That's probably a good choice."

You shake your head. "It's not. I need to get rid of her. I need to live."

He smiles at you, bright white teeth through the gathering dusk. "Well shit," he says, "Let's get started then."

You weren't asking for him to help you with it, but you're relieved that he is all the same. You don't know why you're doing this, let alone where to start, but he certainly seems to. He grinds out his cigarette, and you both stand. He's brushing the dirt off himself when you realise the crowd is gathering around you, tumbling down to the river. The children hold lamps in opulent red, green, orange, yellow, blue.

You're watching them hop about excitedly when Yuffie appears. She's dressed in a white robe thing, her own lantern the finest of all, shimmering gold and covered with red Wutaian symbols. She kneels at the water's edge, and the crowd goes abruptly silent. She speaks in rushed, raw Wutaian, and you hear the word "Godo" more than a handful of times. She places her lantern on the surface, and it slowly floats away, casting the water with its golden light. At a few more words the children and some adults surge forward and place their own lanterns on the water.

You stand beside Reno, watching them drift away, and glancing over the crowd notice many tearful faces.

"What does it mean?" you whisper to the Turk, who stands with one arm behind his back, watching your Wutaian princess who watches her lantern in silence.

"Goodbye," he says, "Sort of. It's to guide the lingering spirits away from here, forever."

"That's…" you're struck by the timing. Of the coincidence that you appeared here the very day of this festival, without realising- or maybe it isn't. You're here because Reno's here, and you guess he has his reasons to have come.

The lanterns drift out of sight and slowly the people walk back towards the centre of town, some merry and cheering, some grave, or crying.

"C'mon," he says. "Let's go and take care of this."

"Is the festival over?" you ask him.

"Nah, there's still the feast. But don't worry, it'll be here next year." The two of you skirt the crowd, heading for the town entrance. You can't see Yuffie anymore. "Maybe I'll bring you again, and you can make a pretty pink lantern," he says, laughing, and you walk along the river, overtaking the bright lanterns that continue to float seaward.