A/N: Just a quick check-in to thank you all for your reviews and your patience with my typos! My betas are fabulous, but I'm a compulsive last-minute-editor (probably comes from writing poetry), so sometimes things slip through the cracks.
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Yuffie woke to someone, most likely Tseng, shaking her shoulder. She wondered at the politeness of his touch compared to the rage of the night before.
He loomed over her. Uncomfortable with this position already, Yuffie sat up and looked into his black eyes. He said, "Your father's funeral is in two hours. Would you like your handmaid's assistance dressing?"
She looked to the doorway, where her personal maid waited patiently for instructions. "No thanks, Asuka. Becoming queen didn't make me incapable of dressing myself."
She swung her feet over the edge of the bed as the maid departed and idly took note of the open collar of Tseng's robes. He shuffled through the clothes in the wardrobe, and sometimes a sneaky bit of skin peeked at her. Besides a few silvery scars, Tseng had a complexion Yuffie found herself jealous of. She wondered for a moment what it would be like to touch his skin, wondered how many women had followed the sparse trail of hair down his chest.
She hastily averted her eyes before a blush could overtake her.
This whole situation was... awkward. She tried to picture herself waking up to Reeve or even Vincent this way—well, Vincent. That was a little more familiar. But Reeve? At least Reeve would be trying to make conversation.
"Did you sleep okay?" she asked in an attempt to break the silence. Tseng looked over his shoulder at her. He seemed no closer to his goal of locating an ensemble. She tried for light humor. "Heh, the tailors went kind of crazy after they got your measurements for the wedding. We're going to have to wear this sort of crap until I can ease people into my style of dress."
"You plan to change it?" he asked.
"That stuff's not comfortable or good for defending yourself. It's like wearing ten bags all layered over top of each other."
"You foresee an occasion in which you will need to defend yourself? Even with such capable guards surrounding you?"
Yuffie could not decide whether the word capable had been infused with any sort of sarcasm. She frowned for a moment, then got out of the bed and put her feet on the cold stone floor, shivering. Voice smooth as silk, Tseng did not sound as though he had slept. Not like Yuffie—she felt groggy, waterlogged, as though she could hibernate for a thousand years.
"I just like my way better. People in Wutai want their ruler to be a decoration, but I want to be useful. Besides, it's a new age! Who says I can't wear short-shorts or snazzy white pantsuits if I want? Rufus does it, and everyone still takes him seriously."
She had reached the wardrobe now as well and stood shoulder to shoulder with him. The maids had apparently placed her funeral kimono in the wardrobe without her knowledge. It was at the front of the clothes, a set of all-white robes except for the forest green dragons curling over the collar and cuffs.
"Or armguards and tube tops?" Tseng commented, voice flippant and almost... humorous.
"So you do have a personality!" she exclaimed, as if discovering some long lost treasure. A half-second too late to stop herself, she felt like cutting out her own tongue with the Conformer.
He looked at her from the corner of his eye, pulling a black robe from a hanger. "At times."
Nonplussed, Yuffie felt herself slip into babble mode. "My dad used to complain about how itchy these things are, but he never did anything about it. And my mom, she always looked the part in this stuff. She was really beautiful with the classic long black hair and big eyes. I just look like a little boy who fell into a lady's closet sometimes. Maybe I should grow out my hair. You, though, you look pretty damn good in this stuff. With that hair and all, anyone would think you were born royalty."
Horrified at herself, she stopped abruptly. It seemed that, no matter how much she had managed to temper herself in public, being alone and nervous with Tseng had her reverting to old behaviors.
Tseng stepped behind her, and she kept her head turned as he changed clothes. He could, theoretically, change in the bathroom but the sheer number of layers made moving the garments and keeping them unwrinkled a chore. Note to self, get a screen in this room. Somehow. Without people talking.
"Thank you," he said, voice low. She rather liked his voice—soothing, lacking any sort of assumptions. It reminded her a little of Vincent, minus the doom-and-gloom-and-oh-Lucrecia aspect. He startled her by continuing. "Keep your hair. It suits you."
"Really? I didn't think this haircut would suit anyone."
"You are not a traditional ruler, so you shouldn't look traditional. The short cut speaks of your personality."
She blinked at the very personal compliment, surprised. "Hey, uh, I'm... sorry for last night."
No reply met her ears, and she sighed as quietly as she could.
"Let's not talk about it," he said, stepping in front of her. She managed to contain her jump at the suddenness of his appearance. He could have been a ninja, had he been afforded the training.
Okay... But his words from the night before echoed in her ears as she tried some new maneuvers with her clothing and some new additions. If you wish to stay alive long enough to help this pit of a country, then you will not keep your plans from me in the future.
The question, to Yuffie, was whether or not could she follow that order and still keep herself safe.
"My turn," she said. He showed her his back, and she took the few moments of silence to scramble sloppily into her robes. "Um, would you mind helping me with this?"
He made quick work of her outfit, his darting hand straightening her collar with a quick, professional tug, tightening her obi, fitting the outfit to her body. He stepped back when he finished his work, tilting his head just a bit, eyes narrowed in study.
"What are you concealing underneath the kimono?" he finally said.
"Is it obvious?"
"Only I will notice."
"It's shorts and a tank top in case I need to move quickly," she admitted. "I hope I don't have to, but…"
"Good." She could not tear herself away from the hint of approval in his gaze until he blinked and severed their link.
"Well, I guess we better get a move on, then," she said uncertainly.
"Lead the way."
.
More people showed up to her father's funeral than Yuffie would have expected. Despite his failings, despite his inability to revive his country in the wake of the war and his wife's untimely death, many in Wutai had respected Lord Godo Kisaragi. Yuffie knew a lot of folks viewed of her father as a tragic figure—after all, the loss of a woman such as the late Lady Kisaragi must have shattered the man. Who wouldn't sympathize with that sort of grief?
At Lady Kasumi Kisaragi's funeral, so many people attended that they almost could not keep the crowd under control for the hysterical grieving. Her mother had been a beloved figure. Her father's funeral was full but not nearly to that extent.
Crowds almost overflowed the banks of the river, and law enforcement had to prevent people from disturbing the procession by toppling into the water below. Everyone wanted a last glimpse of their former ruler—either out of a sense of morbidity or to pay last respects. Yuffie occupied a reserved and guarded section on the ceremonial dock, and she watched as her attendants lowered her father's boat into the water with reverence and care.
The funeral singer, shamisen in hand, stepped forward when the boat touched the surface of the river. Ropes kept it from drifting away in the currents. As the attendants disengaged the restraints, the singer opened her mouth and let a mournful song spill from her lips. She sang of long battles, of long winters, of the great river of the afterlife.
As she sang, onlookers took turns releasing tiny paper boats into the water. After a few seconds, the river snagged the little boat housing Godo's body and pulled it downstream. A procession of hundreds, thousands of tiny boats followed the vessel—some with flowers, some colored brightly, some with words of peace inscribed upon them, all lovingly made.
Yuffie herself had no paper boat. Instead, the boat which housed her father's corpse served as her offering. She had it carved at his request a month ago, when it became clear his health was declining exponentially. The colors she had painted herself, splashing the sides with bright greens and yellows and reds. She had carved her name, her mother's name, and her father's name into a triangular shape beside a slithering, twisting depiction of Leviathan adorning the entire left side.
The singer hit a plaintive, heart-wrenching note as Yuffie felt something soft under her right hand and a pressure at her side.
"Yuffie," her feline friend rumbled. She had long ago schooled herself to seem indifferent to Nanaki's features actually making words come out of his mouth. But she would never, she thought, stop wondering at it. For every once in a great while, the surrealism of his existence and his actions would strike her, and she would take a firm grip on her awe and shove it down deep.
"Hey, Nan," she said under her breath. She knew his ultra-sensitive hearing would pick up on her voice where the people around her wouldn't.
She tasted the warm smell of his fur in the chilly air, the moisture from the river as he said, "I am sorry for your loss."
Then she felt the burn in her eyes. Nanaki, whose father stood as a statue forever, whose mother was long dead, whose surrogate parent had departed their world, knew her pain well. In his common, oft-uttered words, she heard real empathy and tried not to cry. She squeezed his mane between her fingertips.
As the river took her father, villages along the way would add their own offerings to the trail following him until he reached the sea. If he hit turbulence or other issues, tradition dictated that any person who saw a funeral barge floundering in the river was to help the boat along or else face the wrath of the gods for disrespecting the dead. Her people still followed this custom with diligence.
A funeral home built centuries ago and still managed to this day stood at the end of the river, where the waters met the sea. When her father's boat reached the end, they would set it on fire to allow his ashes to meet Leviathan.
When her father's boat finally vanished from sight and the last notes of the song died off, she let a few tears roll down her cheeks. Despite the evidence of her grief, Yuffie's face expression was fierce. The citizens of Wutai gazed upon her at the river bank, watched as a powerful wind swept through her hair and the mane of the great red beast at her side. Leviathan's presence was thunderous in their spirits.
They shivered, unable to identify the feeling.
.
Back in the gardens of the palace, cocooned in the aroma of wilting autumn flowers, Yuffie did not cry.
Her face stayed dry as Corel, but her mind's eye swirled with images of her father's lips slipping their last breath and her mother's face in her funeral vessel, decorated with sakura petals. She did not see the fat, brilliant koi in the pond at her feet. She did not feel the worn grain of the wooden bench beneath her. She only saw the pictures in her head.
Her eyes played blindly over the shadows of fish darting in the pond. She didn't notice Reeve's presence until he put his hand on her back.
Only Reeve saying, "This seat taken?" kept her from throwing him over her shoulder into the pond.
She had to relax each muscle in her body one at a time. "Don't ever sneak up on me like that."
"Sorry," he said, sidling up next to her. "The guards are watching your back, though. They're at every entrance to the gardens."
"I know," she said, voice low and trust in her guards even lower. If should could slip their grasp at the age of eight, she wasn't sure how much she could depend on them for protection against assassins.
Then again, she had been a pretty awesome eight-year-old. And she was Godo Kisaragi's daughter.
"Say, where's Tseng?" Reeve asked. A thread of his aftershave stole under the scent of dying flowers.
She shrugged. "Pretty sure he's back in my, uh—our rooms."
Reeve nodded. She saw the movement from the corner of her eye. Her gaze did not waver from the koi pond. After a pause, she felt Reeve move a bit, and he spoke. "I'm so sorry."
"For what?"
"About your father," he said, sounding slightly puzzled. "That you have to marry a man you don't even know. I wish—"
"You can't always be my hero, Reeve." She stood and slipped out of her geta. Bending at the waist, she peeled off her crisp white socks and tossed them aside, sifting her feet into the mud. She could feel the chill of autumn in her toes now, the snap of cold in her nostrils.
When she looked over her shoulder, she found him staring at her thoughtfully. Then, to her surprise, he bent and unlaced one shoe, then the other. His socks followed, leaving him barefoot. Three steps took him to her side, and the mud around her feet shifted as he dug his toes in.
He tried again. "I wish it could've been me."
Yuffie knew that Reeve had a bit of a crush on her. She could see his appeal. He had that "little boy up to something" smile and the exotic Wuteng twist to his features, as well as power and saving-the-world status. But Yuffie valued his friendship and their working relationship too much to put them in jeopardy, so she had never acted on any attraction she might have felt for him.
"I'm glad it's not."
"Is it because I snore too loud?"
The touch of his hand brought it all crashing down. The tears at the funeral had done nothing to relieve the grief crushing her inside. She bowed her head and choked out a sob. Hearing her distress, Reeve turned and enveloped her in his arms. The customized scent of his aftershave—which she associated with long nights in the office—hit her full force. Yuffie let loose in earnest, crying all over his expensive suit.
"That's right," he said, somewhat awkwardly, "let it all out."
They must have stood like that for a good five minutes, with Reeve stroking her back and muttering gentle, reassuring nonsense into her ears. When she tipped her head back, he was staring at her with unadulterated affection.
She wiped her nose on her tailored kimono sleeve. "Sorry about that." Her throat felt thick with crying, and her feet were stiff from the cold mud.
"You have nothing to be sorry for."
She stepped back, suddenly very aware of the fact that she had just been married and anyone could be watching. At least they had the garden walls to shield them. Recognizing the end of the moment, Reeve let her move.
"Hey, Reeve—" she began.
He held up a hand. "I'll see you at dinner?"
She smiled, even though she felt like doing anything but smiling. "Thanks."
He collected his discarded shoes and socks, leaving her with the silence of the gardens.
.
When Yuffie entered her room, Tseng had something black and bulky in hand. It emitted a crackling noise as he swept it back and forth over the surrounding objects.
"Uh..." she said, possessing enough sense to ease the door shut behind her. "What are you doing?"
Tseng glanced at her briefly, not missing a beat in his strange process. "Sweeping the room for bugs."
"And... where did you get that thing?"
"Reno brought it."
"Oh." After a few long moments of watching him thoroughly scan the wardrobe, all the clothing inside, and her vanity table, she cleared her throat and sat on the bed. "So... are you finding anything?"
"There's something here, I'm almost certain." He paused, tilting his head a fraction as the crackling sharpened to a high-pitched whine. He lifted an eyebrow and reswept the offending area, following the increase in pitch and sound to the source. "Ah."
"Ah?" She leaned over, interested. "What does 'ah' mean?"
He opened a drawer on her vanity table and began removing the contents with methodical precision. She winced when he glanced briefly at a pair of balled up fishnets and some cheap-looking jewelry (you never knew when you would need a quick disguise!) without batting an eye. In the past, Yuffie's answer to the question, "What kind of superpower would you have, if you could have any?" was always "The power of no motion sickness." Now she thought it had changed to mind-reading. It would make her new life much, much easier.
Tseng paused, examining a necklace with beads the size of ripe grapes. He picked through bauble after bauble in turn, his nimble fingers questing for something. As he lit on one bead that looked just like any of the other red beads, he made a small sound in the back of his throat, and then he snapped the string on the costume jewelry. She almost yelped a protest, but he shot a quelling glance in her direction.
Tseng glanced over her vanity table and removed a ball-point pen from a stack of papers there. He clicked the point out of the end and fiddled with the bead as Yuffie watched, fascinated. After a few moments of intense concentration, the bead fell apart in his hands. She moved closer to get a better look.
"What is that?"
"It's a bug," Tseng said. He tilted his hand to reveal the tiny wires inside the halves of the bead. Yuffie couldn't make heads or tails of it, but Tseng seemed sure. "Someone put a listening device in your room."
"How long...?"
"No telling," he said. "When did you get this necklace?"
"Uh... I don't know. A couple years ago, maybe? I wore it to sneak into the city without being recognized a few times. Along with those fishnets."
He lifted his eyebrows at the tights, then dropped the bead on the floor and crushed it under his sandal. He ground them into the wood and bent over and scooped the pieces up, dropping them into the wastebasket by the wardrobe.
Tseng resumed his sweep of the room as Yuffie picked up the broken necklace, careful not to let the beads scatter from the ends of the snapped string. She examined it, turning with a frown to Tseng. "This isn't my necklace."
"Hm?"
"This isn't the same one. It has a different clasp."
"You're sure?" he said, eyes narrowed in calculation. She nodded. "Someone replaced it, then. Probably while the entire palace attended the funeral."
"You don't think they did before that?"
"It's possible, but there is more reason now than ever to listen in on your plans."
Yuffie sighed. "I just can't catch a break."
Tseng flipped a switch on his black device, and it stopped crackling. "If there were anything else, I would have found it."
"I don't know who they think they're trying to fool. I married a Turk," she muttered.
Yuffie opened her wardrobe and wished really hard for shorts and a tank top to appear on the racks. When they didn't, she ran a hand through her hair, sighed, and turned around prepared to tell Tseng it was time for dinner. She caught him staring at her, his arms stationary at his sides, his gaze thoughtful.
She blinked. "Uh... yes?"
"I believe it's time for dinner," he said finally.
.
Yuffie had expected all of AVALANCHE and all of the Turks to be there, yes, but upon entering the sumptuous dining room and seeing the two groups plus Rufus kneeling at the huge table, she couldn't help but stop in the doorway and stare. She did so until Barret waved her over to sit in the empty place next to him. Tseng sat to her right, and to his right was Reno, then Rufus, and Elena.
She wondered who would speak first, then Reno and Cid opened their mouths at the same time.
Reno said, "You should wear that getup around the office, Boss."
Cid said, "No one said the goddamn Turks would be here."
Shera frowned with disapproval at Cid, and Yuffie flicked a glance at Tseng. "Thank you, Reno," he said. Judging by his tone and the way his fist clenched on his knee, he wasn't very thankful.
Servers entered carrying platters heaping with food. Wonderful smells wafted from them, and Yuffie's mouth watered, even despite the stress she had faced today. Her stomach rumbled.
"This looks great," she said, and dug in. The others were not far behind.
Her hand brushed Tseng's as they reached for the same dish, and she tried very hard to conceal her reactionary flinch. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, then gestured for her to go first.
"Thanks," she murmured.
"Of course, Empress," he said, and she winced. Nevertheless, the spareribs and black beans called to her, and she sighed with anticipation as she lifted a bite. She could see Tifa further down the table ladling saucy noodles onto her own plate, and Cloud looked rather engrossed in his shrimp rolls. Vincent, for his part, served himself food and tried at least a few bites. After years of knowing him, she was grateful for his token effort to eat even though he never seemed to consume much. Now that the food had arrived, the Turks seemed involved as well.
A few minutes passed in which everyone satiated nature's call for sustenance, until Yuffie looked up from her plate and into Rufus's eyes. He wiped his mouth with a napkin, then said in a low but clear voice, "My sincerest condolences for your loss, Lady Kisaragi. Thank you for allowing us to remain in your beautiful home for the duration of the services."
Startled, Yuffie made very sure not to let Rufus know that she was, in fact, touched almost by his sincerity. In her head, she identified Rufus by the words slimy, cunning, and beautiful, but sometimes he truly surprised her. This was one of those moments—the other being when she discovered through some well-placed snooping that he was the primary source of funding for most of the WRO's ventures.
"Thank you, Rufus." She gave him a close-lipped smile.
"And congratulations on your marriage," he continued, "even though it is surrounded by such tragedy."
"I'm sure you two'll be really happy together." Reno smirked and slurped his soup in clear appreciation of the dish. Elena cocked her elbow in preparation, Cid and Barret looked murderous, and Vincent and Cloud stared unnervingly.
Luckily, Tifa intervened. "I'm sure," she said, pointedly shooting Reno the kind of look only someone meant to be a mother knows, "that Yuffie and Tseng will be very successful."
"I'm sure they will," Reeve agreed, abandoning his attempts at chopsticks in favor of the more Easterner-friendly forks the maids had had the foresight to set out for them. Clearly attempting to change the subject, he met Yuffie's gaze. "So, Yuffie, how has your evening been?"
She smiled cheerily at him, lacing her chopsticks with low mein. "Oh, fine. Besides my dad's funeral being a huge success, Tseng found a bug in my room."
As one, all eyes turned to her.
"Where did you find it?" Nanaki asked, pausing in lapping up his meaty soup. To his credit, Nanaki was always a very graceful eater. Sometimes Yuffie thought he outdid even her royal table manners. Actually, Nanaki's manners pretty much outdo me all the time.
Yuffie turned to Tseng. "You can tell them if you want."
His chopsticks, which he wielded like a professional, came to rest on the side of his plate. He finished chewing, swallowed, and nodded. "It seems, at some point undetermined, persons unknown placed a necklace in Lady Kisaragi's room which contained a listening device."
"You gotta get them guards workin' overtime," Barret rumbled. "Or get better guards." His brows were severe as he looked down on her. Unable to resist the comfort of physical contact, Yuffie patted his enormous thigh.
"Is there anything we can do?" Cloud asked in his quiet voice. Yuffie enjoyed the way Cloud's voice invariably commanded people's attention. He said so little that when he did speak, people tuned in.
Yuffie shook her head. "I don't think so. Tseng?"
"No," he said shortly. "The sooner Lady Kisaragi demonstrates that she is in full control of her country and confident in her abilities, the sooner these sorts of attempts will die off."
That seemed to satisfy them. Yuffie was glad. She loved AVALANCHE, but they had their own lives to get back to, and she didn't want to be a burden on any of them. Her father had had help, yes, but he had run the country by his own hands, not with eight different advisers who all meant well but had their own methods and ways of doing things. The minute she made a decision one of them didn't like, it would be a disaster. She already had enough to contend with concerning the Mighty Gods. She didn't need Cid cursing out every board meeting or Barret standing guard at her door when she and Tseng slept in their bed.
Yuffie tried not to grimace. Their bed.
"I'll just have to tell my so-far useless guards to keep a better watch on things."
Tseng and Rufus looked at each other, then away in what seemed a very natural motion. However, Yuffie felt certain they had communicated in some way.
As dinner progressed, the tension eased, and the Turks were even making conversation with some of AVALANCHE. Yuffie was actually kind of glad they were there. Her friends seemed to be distracted from her with the presence of Rufus and his guards.
Toward the end of the courses, Yuffie found Vincent staring at her. He tipped his head to motion toward the door, and Yuffie had half-risen before she remembered she should probably at least acknowledge Tseng. He looked expectantly at her when their eyes met. "I'll be right back."
She felt his eyes on her as she stepped into the hallway with Vincent gliding along behind her. The doors to the dining hall shut behind them, and she checked to make sure no one was listening before they began their conversation. "Hey, Vince. What's up?"
He towered over her in his reds and blacks, his ghostly pale skin luminous in the dim hallway. "Are you sure about this marriage?"
Despite her mental resolve to remain calm, she bristled. "Don't you think you should've said something about this marriage two days ago?"
Vincent crossed his arms, his red eyes glowing in the dimly lit hall. She had almost forgotten they did that. Almost.
"I don't think you know what you're doing," he said.
That just cranked her up further. "Excuse me? Where was all this when it would've freaking mattered?" she hissed. Her gestures were getting big and jagged with anger.
"I mean, I don't think you know what you're doing marrying a Turk."
She narrowed her eyes so much she almost could not see him. "You know what, I don't need this. I'm going to go back inside to my wonderful husband and finish my dessert, thanks."
As she pivoted, he grabbed her arm and held her in place, gentle but firm. "Yuffie, wait." And this time, he sounded vulnerable. There it was.
"What's the real reason you want to talk to me, Vincent?" she demanded, pinning him with her eyes. "Yeah, sure, you may want to warn me about marrying a Turk, but there's more to it than that."
After a long, long moment, in which he stared without blinking over her shoulder, his eyes met hers, and she realized he looked pained. "I didn't protect you."
Yuffie sagged. "Oh, Vinnie," she whispered. "You big idiot."
"I'm sorry this happened to you," he echoed Reeve's words from earlier.
"I'm sorry too, but it's not all that bad. He's been... agreeable."
Eyes sharp, he put his good hand on her shoulder. "Watch him, Yuffie. Tseng is a Turk, which means he will have his own agenda."
"I know," she said slowly. "I wasn't born yesterday."
He tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, surprisingly intimate for Vincent. He almost never touched her or anyone else. When he did, she always got the impression he was afraid they would shatter. "You looked beautiful today."
Tears stung her eyes. "Thanks."
An awkward silence descended upon them, not entirely uncomfortable but borne from not knowing exactly what to say to each other. So Yuffie smiled at him—only it came out more as a weird grimace through the tears. She wiped her face on her sleeve, ignoring the way her makeup smeared on the white gown.
She opened the door and gestured for Vinent to re-enter before her. He went ahead, but Yuffie was suddenly exhausted, by all of it. By the questions, the ceremony. Instead of following Vincent, she closed the door behind him and made a quick decision.
Maybe if I get a head-start, they won't find me.
Tearing her hair clips out, throwing the expensive combs aside, she let her hair fall around her ears. After that, the outer kimono and her many layers followed, the obi a snake trailing across the elaborate rugs and carpets, until she was down to her simple shorts and a tank top. She followed hallways she'd known since she was old enough to run away on adventures of her own devising.
Yuffie knew a place where they wouldn't find her—at least for a little while. She darted through the hallways until she reached a particular alcove which contained a tall, dark blue vase. Carefully, she pulled the vase forward, revealing a door which she had to crouch to enter. Once inside, she scaled the ladder in the small chamber and came out a trap door on the roof.
Here the sky stretched far and wide above her, disappearing beyond the body of Da Chao in one direction and obscured by trees and rooftops in the other The Pagoda loomed to her right, its shadow cast long by the full moon. She thought of nights from her childhood spent creeping through the shadow of that tower. She thought of her father.
"Dad," she whispered to the sky, to one bright star in particular, "why would anyone want you dead?"
Nothing answered her, not even the roll of Leviathan. The last chirping frogs and insects of summer fell away and left her, alone under the brutal stars.
Yuffie lost track of time. The slight chill in the night air numbed her fingertips and her toes, and now she regretted having shed her ceremonial robes. If she hadn't, she probably wouldn't have been able to scale the palace like a monkey, but now she was starting to get chilly. Her breath clouded the air as she exhaled.
"Your friends are worried about you."
She tried not to tense. She'd known he was approaching—there was no way to get on the roof without making some sort of noise. Well, not unless you were Yuffie, but she'd been doing this for years.
"You come here often?" The well-rehearsed line dropped from her lips without mirth.
Tseng settled next to her, deep folds of his kimono pooling around him and touching one of her crossed knees. "Do you?" he retorted.
She smiled, just a little. "I'm not the only Kisaragi who liked to get away. My mother showed me this place."
"My lady—"
She held up a hand. "I told you to call me Yuffie."
"Yuffie." He handled her name with ease, but somehow the word sounded strange coming from his mouth. "Who poisoned your father?"
"I don't know," she said. "I damn sure wouldn't be sitting here if I did." Her fist clenched, nails scraping her palms.
"Have you given any thought to who it might be?" he murmured. He eyes flicked briefly to a point beyond her shoulder. He knew something.
"I haven't come up with anything, but I'm guessing you have," she said, leaning closer to him. "Tseng. What do you know?"
He shook his head. "I don't know anything yet. But I feel something larger at stake here."
"Something… 'larger'? What're you talking about?"
She couldn't help but look into the shadowy gardens beyond the roof, a shiver sneaking up her spine as he said, "Someone wanted your father dead, and that same someone may have wanted you to become Empress."
"Bet they didn't expect you," she muttered.
He looked up toward the moon, expression thoughtful. "Maybe. Maybe not."
She felt a curious heat behind her blood that she only associated with Aeris's death at the hands of a silver-haired madman and children dying of Geostigma in Wutai. Someone was going to pay.
His gaze was intent on her. Despite the wide open sky above them and the roof sloping away, she felt too close. "In the past three days, two attempts on your life have been made. I suspect that the perpetrators and your father's murderer are one in the same. Do you know of anyone who would want the Kisaragi family dead?"
Yuffie cast her thoughts far and wide, searching her memories and her knowledge of Wutai hard and fast.
"No," she said. "The people of Wutai loved my mother, and they forgave my father because they couldn't imagine losing a wife like Kasumi."
"You can think of no reason why someone might want you and your father dead?" He seemed to be untying the knot on his robes. She eyed him with curiosity.
"I mean, besides the fact that I've never been very popular, for all kinds of different reasons, no, I can't."
He lifted an eyebrow. "I was not aware. Why is it that you're not very popular with the people of Wutai?"
"Tseng," she scoffed, "you don't have to play stupid."
"Excuse me?" He was busy removing his outer robe. She noticed his feet were bare as he shifted.
She rolled her eyes. "You're the leader of the Turks, Tseng. I'm sure you already know a lot about me."
He stopped fiddling with his outer robe and graced her with a very small smile. She pinned him with a glare then, leaning toward him in her intensity. They were just a few inches apart.
"So tell me—why do you think I'm unpopular?" she asked, the challenge apparent.
"Wutai has never liked a lady who doesn't follow their traditional decorum, who wears... what you wear," he said, eyeing her up and down and making her scowl, "who disrespects her grieving father—"
Hands fisted in her hair, she spat, "Of course! It's not like he was a total prick after Mom died or anything, no, I'm the disrespectful one."
" —who runs off for years on end—"
"Defending the goddamn planet."
Tseng held up two placating hands. She hadn't ever seen him this expressive. "What Wutai thinks of you is not necessarily what I think of you."
"Then what do you think of me, Tseng?"
He paused for a moment, studying her. She tensed when he opened his mouth to speak, but he simply said, "You look cold."
He leaned forward and draped his outer robe around her shoulders. As she felt his warmth in it, she realized the firey need for revenge had abated, leaving her with a cold and yawning emptiness she couldn't seem to shake.
He stood. Even in bare feet, on the uneven rooftop, he appeared graceful. He headed toward the edge of the roof, and only after he had thrown her one last thoughtful look and disappeared over the edge did she remember he hadn't answered her question.