She spent the rest of her day in a kind of daze. The Mighty Gods recognized her distraction and ended the day's session early, and she wandered the grounds for a full twenty minutes.

Maybe her attraction went a little deeper than looks with the head of the Turks. She had been avoiding this notion for some time now, out of self-preservation and simplicity's sake, but after the moment in their bed this morning, she brought it to the forefront of her mind and examined the possibilities. Did he have feelings for her as well? Some of his actions certainly seemed to indicate it.

After all, Tseng was a very private, deliberate man. Surely he would not touch her like this morning if he didn't have some attraction to her. She didn't really understand how someone like Tseng could find a pair of legs with a mouth attractive, but hey, there was no accounting for taste.

Truthfully, she had not thought the leader of the Turks would be so helpful. She had thought he might be an asset—the whole reason she had approached him in the first place—but his aid had been invaluable so far. Without him, she'd be dead more than a couple times over.

Now more than ever, though, Yuffie felt her mind straying to the safe in Tseng's office. And for some reason, their latest step forward had made her even more curious. She wanted to know him completely.

As long as he hid some things from her, Yuffie would not even be able to think about trusting him. First step: crack the code. She had to.

.

Tseng stopped in the doorway for just a moment. "Going somewhere?"

"Oh, hey, Tseng." She looked at him briefly, then returned to tying her belt. "Don't wait up for me tonight. Me and Chekhov are trying some new techniques. I may be a while."

"New techniques?" he asked idly, stripping the socks from his feet.

"You've never seen me do the All Creation before. Lucky you."

He lifted his eyebrows in question.

"Reno has, but that's because I was kicking his ass."

His mouth twitched. "I see."

"Anyway," she continued, flippancy outside, praying inside. Please, please don't question it. "We're gonna see if we can fine-tune it. She says I still don't do it as well as my Great Aunt Wu." Yuffie pulled a face.

This time, he smiled a bit.

"You sleep tight now, shnookums." She blew him a kiss. "Don't let the angry old Wuteng bed-bugs bite."

Her heart beat wildly at the flash of his teeth as she shut the door behind her.

When no one stopped her on the way to Tseng's office, she sighed with relief. Apparently, all she had to do was don her dojo uniform and no one questioned her motives. Not that anyone did normally, unless they wanted to be wedgied into oblivion.

Inside Tseng's office, she made quicker work of opening the safe than any previous attempts. Once she had deciphered the code on the dial, she carefully defused the initial alarm system and the backup alarm system. Tseng was nothing if not thorough, and Yuffie was nothing if not a world class snoop.

Tseng would be asleep, and all the guards would assume the office was locked and unoccupied. Yuffie had all the time in the world she needed. Getting past all the security measures to the contents within took her a little over an hour, which she didn't particularly like. With any luck, Tseng wouldn't question her alibi and would remain in bed, sleeping soundly while she defiled his privacy post haste.

Lying in the bottom of the safe, the simple manila folder looked unassuming and innocent enough. No labels or words indicated its contents or purpose. Carefully, she lifted it out. It felt heavier than she expected. She settled in the middle of the carpet, where she wouldn't move anything Tseng might notice. Flicking her eyes once more toward the door to check that she had locked it, she opened the folder.

At the sight of the first page, her mouth went instantly dry.

The first item in the folder was a full-page color print of herself as a baby in her mother's arms. The photograph depicted her mother from behind, with baby Yuffie giggling toward the camera, gazing over her mother's shoulder. The shot had been taken from a distance, but she recognized her father standing at her side. He smiled at his wife, his features crinkled in joy. The setting: a park, the sakura trees in riotous bloom around them.

Yuffie's chest squeezed. She might have cried at this perfect picture of her life's grief, had she not been so completely bulldozed by the discovery. Where had Tseng acquired this? How?

She flipped to the next picture: herself at age two, flanked by Staniv and Chekhov as her father spoke from behind a podium.

A photo documentary of Yuffie's entire life comprised the first half of the file. There were at least fifty snapshots of her, in chronological order, from that first baby picture to just a few months before her marriage to Tseng. The images varied in quality, some black and white and fuzzy, some crisp, in vibrant colors. She realized after some time that these were all paparazzi or press shots collected from gods-only-knew who or where.

A ringing started in her ears at seeing the second half of the folder.

The first twenty-five pages were a detailed biography of her life, down to the smallest details, set in a strict timeline. She realized as she read, rapt, that the author seemed to know her life better than she herself did. The writer of this even knew about her extreme night terrors as a small child.

She settled in to read the entire thing, her stomach clenching more and more as the pages stretched on. Her history with her family, Shake's infatuation with her, side information about her father, her mother, any man with whom she had ever dallied.

To her horror, there were two entire pages on her brief relationship with Vincent. Who the fuck wrote this? She had never told a soul, not even Tifa, about their disastrous three-month fling. It had been comprised mostly of arguing and sex, but this report had two entire pages devoted to their time together.

When she had reached the end of her life story (which she had titled "Every Goddamn Thing You Need to Know About Yuffie Kisaragi, Fucking Ever" in her head), she realized it was only the first section. The last fifty pages were an expertly-compiled report on Wutai's economy, her plans for the future, and the projects she had recently enacted. Some of it even spanned back to her father's economic and political decisions.

Her vision tunneled to a pinpoint, her blood crowding close to the surface of her skin.

An entire file on her personal life? She hadn't exactly expected it, but he was a Turk. She had expected some strange habits. The detailed report on Wutai, however, took her from mere anger to blinding fury.

They had agreed. They had agreed Wutai would not be Rufus' business, and here he was, selling her secrets to the Shinra like there were no rules. He had broken the terms of their agreement under her nose and threatened her healing country's integrity. She had made it clear his loyalty was to her, not Rufus, and he had snuck around the order.

She didn't bother replacing the file or the notes. They fluttered from her lap as she stood abruptly, sifting over the ground as she strode toward the door.

She encountered two guards patrolling as she went from the business wing of the palace to the master wing where the ruler's rooms were housed. When they saw her expression, they quickly moved aside. She barely heard their whispers in her wake.

Tseng could hardly do anything but take notice when the door opened sharply.He did not initially seem to recognize her displeasure, however, as he asked, "How was practice?" He had settled with a book that looked heavy enough to club a baby Adamantoise to death. At seeing her expression, he frowned. "Are you all right?"

Yuffie leaned her back against the door, studying him. Just seeing his face right now turned her stomach. She wanted to shake him. Power surged in her, and she tamped down on it, trying not to lose control.

After a few moments, he said, "You should change into something more comfortable."

Trying to figure out a way to begin this conversation without losing her mind, she went to her side of the bed and sat on the edge of it. Her fingers dug into the duvet. Then Tseng touched her. Only surprise, as she recognized his attempts to massage her shoulders, kept her from attacking him.

She could not bring herself to move as she felt one hand trail up to her chin, angling her head toward her shoulder, and his breath puffed over her lips, warm and smelling of toothpaste. His eyes were closed, and he leaned closer. He wants to kiss me. She didn't move.

Yuffie vividly envisioned Tseng calling Rufus over the phone, smiling as he relayed all Wutai's secrets.

She fairly shoved him off her as she sprang away, glaring at him with narrowed eyes. Before she could stop herself, the words fell from her mouth like poison. "I know about the file."

To his credit as leader of the Turks, Yuffie found herself impressed at his almost complete lack of reaction. His fingers twitched just slightly, and he blinked twice. Then he said, "What file?" in a rather convincing tone.

She moved farther away from him, until she was on the other side of the bed entirely. "Cut the shit. I broke into the safe in your office and saw the contents of that fucked up little file you have on me."

His eyes flashed and he moved around to her side. "You went into my office." His voice was dangerous, and he loomed over her, making the room seem small.

"I figured I couldn't be a good little wife until I knew everything you were hiding from me." She would not allow him to intimidate her—no, he was in the wrong. They'd had an agreement.

"And yet still you hide from me," he accused, getting into her personal space. He was so close she could feel the warmth of his body, smell his aftershave. There was something awkward about him standing almost between her knees.

She wanted to push him away, but she didn't want to lose her cool and really start hurting him. "It's what you were hiding from me, Tseng! Does Rufus know everything in that file?"

He stiffened, looking down his nose at her with jaw clenched.

"Does he have copies of it?"

"No," he said through gritted teeth. "He does not."

"Don't lie to me. Does Rufus have—"

"I said he does not," Tseng barked.

"You agreed your loyalty was to me. You've betrayed me and this country!"

He took a step away from her, stood with his back ramrod straight and his expression somber. The way he stared at her, he seemed almost to regret his next words. "My loyalty is to the Turks."

Her gut clenched like it was a physical blow. "Did you and Rufus have a big laugh over sharing my secrets? You thought you really had me going, didn't you?"

He looked away, a muscle in his cheek jumping. Her hands shook. She did not feel whatever control kept him from lashing out at her. "You don't think the late president Shinra would have kept tabs on a country he wished to conquer? I helped Rufus with the most recent information.

"To me, the file was a tool." He met her eyes with challenge.

Yuffie didn't know what else to say to him to express how intensely he had had betrayed her and her country. He wouldn't care. She defaulted to cruelty. "Did reading up on my sex life make you hot, Tseng?" He looked angry at this comment, but she went on. "You thought I'd just fall into your arms as soon as you were nice to me, as soon as you wanted to kiss me. The thing is," she said, this time making the move to get closer to him, to lean toward his face and yell, "I'm not an idiot!"

She was lying. Some part of her had warmed to him. What they had on a personal level was so fragile, but she had nursed it, watched it grow. He had crushed it.

Tseng simply stared at her.

"You got into my head," she whispered, almost blind with rage. The ringing in her ears started again.

He lifted a careful hand and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. She didn't take her eyes off his face. He was impassive, and the immensity of her emotions froze her. "My loyalty," he said, "is to the Turks."

Yuffie seized him by the collar and threw herself into him, knocking them both to the floor. Tseng twisted under her, almost cracking his skull in the process. She lost sight of everything but the anger, battering him with her fists. Tseng flipped her onto her back. When it seemed his greater weight would give him control of the situation again, she screamed and felt a foreign power take hold of her body.

Time seemed to slow. Yuffie felt like a spectator as she observed her own actions from a distance. She seemed to be outside herself, unable to stop what came next. A white-blue light exploded from her body, and some force knocked Tseng clear across the room and into the wall. He slid down into the nightstand, narrowly missing knocking that onto his lap as he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

After what seemed an eternity, Yuffie rose from her supine position and left the room. Tseng remained on the floor.

She ran.

.

One phone call had her in touch with Cid, a few more had her excuses put in to the Mighty Gods. A couple hours hiding on the roof before the pilot arrived, then Yuffie was going to Edge.

"So what's happenin' now?" Cid asked frankly as he escorted her to the Shera. The end of the toothpick protruding from his lips was chewed almost beyond recognition. He was hard at work on the other side as they spoke.

Instead of answering his question, Yuffie asked one of her own. "When's the last time you had a cigarette, old man?"

"Don't call me old man, and that ain't none of your business," he snapped, shooting her an annoyed look out of the side of his sharp blue eyes. "You and Tseng have a fight?"

"Why does it have to be that me and Tseng had a fight? Why can't I just want to visit my good friend Tifa and need a ride from my old pal Cid?" The toothpick jumped as his jaw clenched at the word "old."

"So you're tellin' me you just planned a trip to see Tifa at midnight."

Yuffie shrugged. "You know me. Impulsive." It annoyed her, the way he scratched his stubble and kept glancing at her face as if he expected to find something hidden there. "Besides. Me and Tseng don't have fights. We don't care enough to have fights."

"Uh huh," he said, not sounding convinced.

He preceded her up the metal staircase. The sight of his broad shoulders in the familiar flight jacket, the white clouds of his breath evanescing into the night—she stopped, struck by the immensity of her love for him, for all of her friends. One phone call had him out of bed on a cold night, when he should've been huddled up to his wife drifting off to dreamland, just to help get her to Edge. She knew she would have done the same for any of them had they asked.

Cid reached the top stair and turned around, frowning. "What's the matter, slow-ass?"

Yuffie shook herself from her reverie and followed him into the Shera.

When they entered the cockpit, Cid popped open a console on the main panel and rummaged around. "Here we go," he said after a moment, and tossed an object in her direction.

She caught the tranquilizer and began tearing open the packaging. "You got motion sickness I didn't know about?"

"I keep those around for you, dumbass," he grumbled. "Don't have time to be cleaning puke off the steering wheel."

As Cid fired up the Shera with the grace of an expert conductor with an orchestra, Yuffie watched. She would never not be impressed by how he handled the airship, as if it were some hulking metal attachment to his own body, as if he had been born tied to it. The lights came on with some clicks and whirs, and she studied his face as he worked.

Crows' feet lined his eyes, a mixture of smile and frown lines creeping around his mouth. Cid was starting to show his age; Yuffie supposed they all were in some way or another. AVALANCHE had not exactly had an easy time of it altogether. To think, eight years had passed since Aeris's death, since Sephiroth died the first time. The immensity of events since then made her head spin. Yuffie wondered if AVALANCHE would ever be allowed to settle down and stop saving the world.

"When are you and Shera going to have some kids?" she asked suddenly. Yuffie thought she shouldn't enjoy so much the way he sputtered and almost spat out his toothpick.

Shera shuddered and lifted into the air. Her stomach dropped, and in response, Yuffie popped the tranquilizer into her mouth. She didn't particularly enjoy spending her ride in a drugged up haze, but it was preferable to spending her ride re-examining the contents of her stomach. She dropped to the metal floor and assumed the lotus position, trying to calm her nerves.

Cid eyed her warily. "You gonna puke?" His left hand seemed to be tilting the gearshift almost unconsciously.

"Urk—no. Don't dodge the question, you old fart." Yuffie abandoned lotus position and opted for putting her head between her knees. She viewed Cid through the small window between her legs.

He seemed to be thinking for a moment, chewing pensively on the now almost-destroyed toothpick. "I don't know," he finally said.

The ship swayed a bit as they settled into a steady pace. Yuffie frowned. "What do you mean you don't know?"

A shadow flitted over his face as he flicked some switches and set the ship to cruise. "There. Few hours and we'll be in Edge." Surprising Yuffie, Cid crossed the cockpit and settled next to her on the ground, his back to a console. "I think I'm too old for kids."

"Cid," she said with an exasperation meant to hide how sad this made her, "you're only forty-one." She didn't think he would take to heart all her ribbing about his age. A thought struck her. "Unless you mean you can't get it up."

One thing Yuffie loved about her relationship with Cid was her ability to make him blush like no one else. She thought it might have to do with her being a small slip of a Wuteng lady. When Barret said things like that to Cid, he barely batted an eye. When Yuffie did, he lit up like a campfire.

"No!" he barked, sitting ramrod straight. "That ain't what I fuckin' meant."

She sobered, realizing she was seeing a tender part of Cid that almost never made an appearance. "You're not old, old man."

He couldn't seem to look at her, studying his hands curled in his lap. "What happens when the kid grows up, and I'm too old to protect 'em from whatever bullshit comes next?"

"What bullshit?"

"C'mon, Yuffie," he scoffed. Apparently he had had enough of his mutilated toothpick, for he spat it out onto the floor next to them. She grimaced. "There's always something on this fuckin' Planet."

She wanted to protest, but the thought quickly died when an image of her father on his deathbed came to mind. It was hard to disagree with Cid when she reviewed her current situation. Was it just that AVALANCHE attracted trouble? Were they destined to just keep saving the world over and over? She didn't know.

"That's we're here, dummy," she said, shooting him a wobbly smile between her knees.

"We?" He had shifted his gaze from his hands to the windows, where the full moon lit the huge windows.

"Your friends, Cid. When you're old and disgusting, I'll still be spry and beautiful and amazi—"

She was cut off by a spot of turbulence that set her stomach gurgling. She felt Cid's hand on her arm, and she looked up into his luminous blue eyes.

"Thanks, brat," he said with no small measure of sincerity. Her heart ached for him, but she knew his insecurities about getting older were just ones he'd have to work through. "But since we're having touchy-feely time, maybe you could tell me what's going on with you and the Turk."

She groaned. "Do I have to?"

"Course you don't fuckin' have to, but I ain't goin' to lie. You've looked better, and I want to know in case I have to whoop his ass." Cid crossed his arms. From a pocket, he procured another toothpick and stuck it in his mouth.

"Okay, not that I'm complaining, but where are your cigarettes?"

"I said that ain't none of your business already," he growled. "But you already asked when I'm goin' to have kids."

Her eyes widened. "Cid! You don't mean—"

He held up a hand. "Don't jump the gun. Not yet. I just figured I'd better start kickin' the habit early. Now stop dodgin' the damn subject, kid."

"I don't really want to talk about it," she admitted. "It's just... it's all so fucked up."

"You know, me and Shera don't fight much anymore," he said, and she wondered where he was going with this, "mainly 'cause I ain't as much of an asshole as I used to be."

"Arguable," she muttered.

He scowled but ignored her. "Sometimes I still have to sleep on the couch, but it all blows over eventually."

"What's your point?"

"My point," he said with irritation, "is y'all are married. It'll blow over for you too, even if you have to sleep on the—does the palace have a couch?"

She rolled her eyes. "It's not that simple. You're putting this in terms of a real marriage."

"The way I see it, you're married now, and that's all there is to it. So figure out what the problem is, and get it fixed."

"What if the problem is him?" she said in a soft voice, partly lost by the cushion of her own legs against her mouth.

"Then you fix that motherfucker too," he said, grinning.

"I thought you didn't even like Tseng," she groused.

"I ain't gotta like him to know he's doin' a good job protecting you. And that's what matters. If he's keeping you safe, he's doing it right." He looked at her with such openness, as if what he said was just a simple truth. He narrowed his eyes at her suddenly. "You feeling okay?"

"I think," she slurred, "the tranq is kicking in."

"Let's get you somewhere to sit. We got a long ride ahead of us."