Regicide

I remember the first time vividly. I was sixteen, scared and confused. I was so young, just a child. He stole my soul from underneath a soft blanket of innocence and youth; then left me out in the cold.

I think I cried when it happened. But I’m not sure. It was late that day, Midgar had already started disappearing under the darkness when he entered my office.

Who the hell have their own office at sixteen?

Well, I did. But when he opened the door and walked in, leaving all formalities I had been brought up with far behind, it seemed to me that it was all his. The Tower, the office, me. All belonged to him. He locked the door.

I didn’t know him very well back then. Actually, I don’t remember ever really talking to him before that day. Still, I wouldn’t say that he was a stranger to me. I knew every line and curve of his face. I’d learned them by studying him in the board room, in my father’s office, in the helicopters, and once or twice in the gym. It was hard to get a good look at him though. His eyes were always on me and I never dared to watch him for too long just in case he’d notice. But I guess he knew all along.

His face was close to mine when he whispered my name. The hand was at the nape of my neck, holding me still as he leaned in and kissed me.

I tried to break free but he wouldn’t let go of me. His mouth was warm and desperate as it attacked mine. Why didn’t I bite down or something? I just parted my lips, as if greedily asking for more.

“Please, don’t.”

Did I say it? I think so. But I’m not sure. Maybe I just don’t like the idea of me giving in so easily.

Maybe I could have fought him off when we were standing there in the middle of the office, but I definitely didn’t have any chance once he’d pushed me down on the couch. The weight of him on top of me keeping me from going anywhere. My arms firmly pinned above my head. His mouth was on my neck now, lightly nipping at the skin. I turned my face a little, and I could smell his raven hair.

He was so much stronger than me. He only needed one hand to keep my arms trapped. The other impatiently worked my shirt open. To gain better access he shifted his weight, pressing down between my legs, making them part. His eyes were intently fixed on what his yearning fingers accomplished with my shirt buttons. I was ashamed of how much I longed for the feel of his lips over mine once more.

His hand skimmed over my chest, sending pleasant shivers through my body. Then the thumb brushed a nipple just before lips closed over it, and tongue replaced the teasing strokes of the thumb. I whimpered. It was a pathetic sound really. But it made him look up at me, that dark gaze resting on my face for a brief moment. I tried to raise my head, tilting it a little to the side. Without thinking I flicked out my tongue, he caught it by doing the same. His weight forced me back down into the soft couch. He pulled back, and laughed at me.

When I tried to reach out and touch him, my arms were firmly slammed into the hard edge. That was the first pain. When his hand let go of me I didn’t try to move my arms, I didn’t try to touch him again, I kept my hands where I knew he wanted them to be. He sat back, still between my legs. When my shoes and socks were off he reached for my belt buckle and undid it. My whole body heaved with every breath I took as I awaited his next move.

Gracefully he slid down on the floor, standing on his knees while he pulled my slacks off of me. His attention returned to my shirt then. Leaning over me he reached for my arms which I still kept above my head. He undid the cufflinks, golden ones I’d gotten for my birthday that year. I heard them drop to the floor.

One hand rested against my back, urging me to get up. I did. As soon as one of my arms was freed from the shirt I threw it around him for support. For a fleeting second I nuzzled my face into his neck, pretending this to be a loving and gentle encounter.

I was lowered down on the couch again. As he slipped my boxers off I felt a sudden need of covering myself up. Naked and exposed I twisted under his lascivious dark gaze. Then he turned me around and pulled me down onto the floor to him. I was forced into a kneeling position against the couch, my face buried as I heard him undress behind me. I shivered. Maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the fear, or maybe it was just the anticipation.

I kept my face buried, all my sounds muffled by the pillow. My hands clutched at whatever it was that they’d gotten a hold of. He moved silently behind me, surely I must have cried out into the pillow with every thrust he made. An eternity seemed to pass before I just gritted my teeth together and turned my face, desperate for air.

Suddenly a hand closed around my aching length. I had to bite my lip not to cry out loud as the hand started moving. It was getting harder to catch breath. What little air my lungs managed to take in escaped as moans again.

I couldn’t extinct his thrusts from the caress of his hand anymore and started moving my hips not to lose this extraordinary new sensation. With a soft cry I surrendered and met up with his rhythm, letting him lead me, falling under his control.

When it was over he sagged over me for a moment. His breath warm on my cheek. I winced as he pulled out of me and I turned my face again to hide it.

It continued for about a year. I would hear the office door open and Tseng would come in unannounced. He would stand there for a moment, looking smooth and sophisticated as always, staring at me leeringly.

It was never again like it had been that first time. He took what he wanted and left. Or maybe that was just like the first time, I don’t know.

Perhaps this would have gone on even longer if I hadn’t been sent of to Junon to take up my studies. But probably not. Truth to tell Tseng stopped coming to my office long before that. I always wondered if it had got something to do with that redhead that joined the Turks about that time.

Two months passed without any sign of Tseng. I never saw him in the Tower at all. I thought about asking someone where he was; Rude I constantly ran into and he would have know for sure. But I never asked, certain that my motives for asking would be too obvious. It was the same weekend as my departure to Junon that I finally met him again.

The Shinra Building’s ballroom had been decorated and long tables stood parallel to the walls, all kinds of luxurious food put upon them. It was kind of a farewell party. For me.

I sat at the end of one of the tables, listening to some argument that had broken out between Scarlett and Reeve. Scarlett has got a pretty nasty bark, but contrary to what most people think, Reeve’s bite is much worse and it all ended with Scarlett throwing her drink in his face, storming out of the party in tears. Reeve calmly excused himself to me and got up to find a towel. Just as he rose from the chair he nodded to someone behind me.

“Fashionably late or just late, Tseng?” he asked.

“Neither,” I could hear him chuckle softly. “I was just awaiting the right moment to make my entrance.”

“Well, your timing is excellent, you just missed Scarlett.” Reeve nodded at me again. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Vice-President.” Tseng claimed Reeve’s vacant seat, he greeted the few people that were still at the table and not on the dancefloor yet.

I couldn’t help but noticed how handsome he looked in his black Wutan evening jacket. His hair falling gracefully over his shoulders, giving him that androgynous look that many found so attractive about him. It was hard to believe that such beauty could hide the cold soul of an assassin.

“Mr. Vice-President,” he said, “I just wanted to wish you a pleasant stay in Junon.”

This masquerade we always played in the presence of others; taking on reversed roles. But I guess we played them well, for no one ever suspected anything as far as I know.

I dared to look into his hazel eyes, summoning all my willpower to do so. “Thank you, Tseng.”

He left, melting in to the crowds of people that filled the ballroom until I could no longer distinguish his form.

*****

The months I spent in Junon went by slowly. It was easy meeting people, everyone seemed to want to be my friend. I don’t think I’ve spoken to any of them since I left school though. For more reasons than just gliding apart.

To begin with I enjoyed my new life. For the first time I was out of my father’s iron grip and got to stand on my own two legs. The days were spent studying and the nights with some beautiful stranger.

That’s how the first months went by. As I said, life was easy and I enjoyed myself.

I began to realize how different I was from people my own age. Almost two years before I’d just been a kid. But my time with Tseng had changed me, and I wasn’t sure if I ever could go back to what I’d once been. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.

I kept my distance from the ones who I had called my friends just weeks earlier. If they thought they would get anything from me then they were wrong. There were no longer any beautiful strangers, only soulless bodies; neither they held any attraction for me anymore.

I got a reputation for being cold and uncaring, it didn’t bother me though. I’d already realized that the divide between me and everyone else was too big to overcome. None of them could ever understand my obsession for Tseng. And I couldn’t really blame them since I couldn’t understand it myself.

I did feel lonely at times, still I didn’t seek the company of my former friends. Only Tseng could cure my loneliness, I was sure of it. It was usually thoughts of him that filled my solitary hours. Thoughts that were driving me mad. He was an obsession I didn’t want to share with anyone else.

Some nights I lay awake in my bed, staring unseeingly out into space, certain that I hated him. He was just like everybody else, he’d used me with absolutely no care for me or my feelings. At those times I felt more lonely than ever.

I remember thinking how different his hand felt. Ever since I was little I’d know those hands as the hands of the man who I looked up to and who raised me. He used to pick me up and spin me around in the air when I was happy; when I was sad he always brushed away my tears with his big hands, when I’d done well in school he patted me on the head. When I’d done something that annoyed my mother he used to ruffle my hair and whisper; well done. My mother would scowl at the two of us then laugh.

I guess I blamed him for her death. There were times when I wished I could love him again. But I just couldn’t. Her death changed him, she’d always been the strong one. The pressure of running the company without her support became too much for him and he turned into the cold-hearted bastard who cared for nothing but Shinra Inc. I didn’t even cry when he died. By that time he held little more meaning to me than being the man I would one day succeed.

Whatever he said that day I arrived from Junon I can’t remember. Tseng had appeared among the other people that were out on the pad to welcome me back.

“Tseng,” I said, acknowledging him with a slight nod.

I met his eyes, and I could see that lascivious need burn there, just as I had seen it years before, that first time he came to me. Somehow we were suddenly alone, in my office. He’d escorted me there when the others had left after telling me how glad they were to have me back.

I could hear him breathe, I could smell his cologne, I could see his long lashes framing those dark eyes. I watched my hands rise as if by their own will to touch him. He pulled me into his embrace, kissing me forcefully.

I was almost as tall as him now, I didn’t have to reach up anymore to be able to kiss him back. I flung my arms around him, not caring that he might push me away for doing so. I just wanted to hold him in my arms, just once.

But he didn’t push me away. When he finally broke off our fierce kissing I wouldn’t let go of him, clinging on to him as if he was my last lifeline. But he didn’t let go either, he still held me pressed close to him.

But I’d never longed for it as much as I did this night. When I finally heard the door open I half-rose in my bed and soon he stepped into my bedroom.

At first he just stood there, not saying anything, watching me. Then he walked over to the bed, sat down on the edge of it and leaned down to kiss me. I helped him undress, then pushed the thin blanket away so that he could creep in under it. His warm skin touched mine and I raised an arm to pull him down on top of me. He towered over me, our faces just a hairbreadth away from each other. Softly his lips touched mine.

*****

When it was over and we lay exhausted by each other’s side, I was afraid that he would get up and leave.

There was so much I wanted to tell him, that I needed to tell him. I didn’t know how to keep all those feelings pent up in me anymore. “Tseng?”

He opened his eyes and looked at me. “Mm?”

“I love you,” my voice was barely above a whisper. “I’m in love with you. I think I’ve been for... I don’t know... always.”

He stared at me as if I was speaking in some ancient language or something. After what seemed like an eternity he rolled over to his side and draped an arm over my back. A swift kiss was placed on my lips, then he buried his face in my hair and mumbled something intelligible. I didn’t ask what he’d said; afraid that it might not have been what I wished..

He laid his head on my pillow, and I could see that he was smiling. It wasn’t one of those devious smirks I’d been so accustomed to over the years; it was a sincere and loving smile.

“Hold me then,” I said and nuzzled up in his arms.

He held me all night, and we talked. I told him about how I’d almost gone mad in Junon thinking about him. He told me that he’d been over in Junon once, on a mission, and he’d gone over to my school and watched me from a distance. I smiled when he said that.

He whispered that he was sorry for everything that he’d done to me. I said that it didn’t matter. That I’d always wanted him, no matter what. He had to leave before the sun came up; we couldn’t risk being seen together. I walked with him to the door and we kissed one last time. He said that we’d be together again that night.

And we were. There was not one night that summer that we spent in separate rooms.

Sometimes I would stay over in his apartment which was located outside the Shinra Building, out in Upper Midgar. On those occasions we would always stay in at night, watching a film. We would lie in his comfortably soft couch, his arms wrapped around me. He would tell me to be silent when I started making stupid comments about the characters, the dialogue, the plot, whatever there was to make stupid comments about. Then I would say something really silly and he would laugh, kiss me.

I don’t think we ever saw the end of any of those movies.

The summer went by all too quickly.

Whenever we met during office hours we pretended to be the vice-president and the Turk, nothing more. I didn’t want my father to find out, I was afraid that he would send Tseng away if he did. I’m not sure how he’d would have reacted if he’d know I was involved with another man. But I didn’t want to risk it.

I was surprised when Tseng told me that he’d told Reno and Rude about us. The thought about them telling someone else scared me but he assured me that they would never do such a thing, that he completely trusted them.

I did too, once I’d gotten to know them properly. We spent a lot of time with them. They usually came over to Tseng’s place at the weekends and we would have some drinks and sit around talking. They were always a good laugh. I liked them.

It was obvious though that Tseng had better control over them than I did, and I often wondered how I would have been able to manage them when I became President if I hadn’t had Tseng.

Reno used to call me ‘kid’ even though he was only two years older than me. Tseng always laughed at me when I complained about it to him. We were all standing in Tseng’s kitchen once, clearing away all the glasses and bottles we’d gone through during the evening. When we were done Tseng slid his arms around my waist and pulled me back against him as he leaned against the sink. He kissed my neck, my hair, then I turned my face to let him touch his lips to mine.

It never felt strange doing things like that around Reno and Rude. They would just grin and tell us how cute we were together. Tseng scowled at them and quickly they would shut up. But the next time we broke away from our kissing they would sit there, with big silly grins on their faces.

As I said, the summer went by all too fast and it was time for me to go back to Junon again. It was then that I realized how much I really needed Tseng. How insufferable it would be to spend another year without him.

We spent the last night in my room. Clinging on to each other. Loving with a bittersweet lust sprung from despair. I cried as he held me that night. And I took some satisfaction in his tears. I’d never seen him cry before. I knew that what we had wouldn’t end just because we spent a year apart.

We would talk on the phone every day he assured me when I had no more tears to spill and all that come out of me was empty sobs, muffled into his shoulder. He would take every mission in Junon that there was. Then he could come over to visit me.

He had a lot of vacation time left that he’d never used, he would take it out and come and stay with me in Junon for a while. It wasn’t that far from Midgar to Junon, he could come over whenever he had two days in a row off.

I could come home on all of my vacations. We didn’t have to wait until summer. Surely no one would say anything if I wanted to come home from time to time.

We did all those things we’d talked about that night.

Tseng came over within a week to Junon for his first stay at my place there, an off campus apartment. It was only for a night but after being apart, even if it was only for a week, we treasured every second. It continued like that. He came over almost twice a month to stay with me. We talked on the phone constantly. Sometimes I couldn’t sleep and I would call him up and we would talk until dawn, then he would point out that time passes much faster when you’re asleep. I’d laugh, tell him how much I loved him, then spend the rest of the morning pretending he was lying next to me, holding me in his arms again.

At Christmas we spent two wonderful weeks up at Icicle Village in a lodge that belonged to my family

*****

It was the same year that I was supposed to graduate from Junon University that my father died and I became President. As I’ve already told you, I didn’t cry.

They’d sent someone to Junon to bring me over to Midgar. When we landed at the Tower the scene that met us was quite different from what I’d expected. I must admit that I was shocked. The floors were being scrubbed, the expensive carpets were ripped out since the bloodstains would never come off. I had been told that my father had been killed by Sephiroth but not that everyone that had been in the building at the time were also dead.

For a moment my heart stopped as the thought occurred to me that Tseng might have been in the Tower. Of course no one would have thought of informing me if it were so. They all believed he was just a Turk to me.

Then I saw him standing inside my father’s office, my office, with the other department heads as well as some other people, not all of them familiar to me.

The new Turk that stood by Rude’s side looked as if she was about to cry. We all knew she had a crush on Tseng, he’d spent endless hours on the phone once, assuring me that the only blue-eyed blond with pouty lips he adored was me. Of course I had always known he’d no interest in her, I just liked hearing him go on about how wonderful I was.

*****

Tseng moved into my apartment the next day already. Rude and Reno helped move his stuff over, or rather, as Tseng said, they helped sorting out all the things that he, in their opinion, wouldn’t need and made sure that they got good homes; their homes.

Reno was jumping around on crutches, after the incident up on the pillar in Sector 7.

The last conversation I had with my father was on the phone, just a couple of days earlier, yelling at him for sending Reno out on a suicide mission. I’d told him to go to hell and he’d hung up on me.

I don’t feel bad about it really though. I guess that’s why people say that I’m cold, because I can turn my feelings off and on like that We never cared what people thought about us, me and Tseng. It would never be a secret that we were in love. By unspoken agreement we always kept things modest though, when we were attending some social event or were directly in the public eye.

There were however some pictures of us; Tseng with his arm around my waist; us standing outside a limo, talking with out heads close together. Too close for what seemed proper for a President and a bodyguard. The tabloids were all fighting to get the pictures first, paying ridiculously high sums just to get their hands on a picture of the two of us.

There is this one photo I really like. It appeared in one of the more serious magazines. The article wasn’t so bad either, quite nice actually compared to most of the stuff we got to read at the time.

It felt strange with people suddenly criticising our love. We had after all been together for several years, even though no one had known before, what right did they have saying what we felt was wrong?

I fought Weapon, hoping that it would be my death. But I must be cursed or something because I survived both Weapon’s attack and Meteor.

When my office was blown to pieces everyone thought I died. I got hurt pretty badly but I didn’t die. I was hoping that I would though, laying there in the middle of all destruction. I calmly awaited my death but only unconsciousness came.

When I woke up Reno and Rude where by my side. They had gotten me out of Midgar and to some provisional hospital in Mideel. To my disappointment I was still alive.

As soon as I was fairly recovered I packed up the few things I now owned. The pictures of me and Tseng that I had desperately roamed through every old magazine and newspaper to collect after his death. Tseng’s watch; I’d been wearing it at the time of Weapon’s attack and that was the only reason it wasn’t destroyed like all the other things that I had that once had belonged to him.

I ended up in Icicle Village. Maybe it was just a coincident or maybe that had been my plan all along. I don’t know. I seemed to be wandering around aimlessly for two weeks before I finally reached the cold continent.

“You know you never need a reason for that, Tseng,” I teased and kissed him passionately to prove my point.

“Let’s get you warm again then,” Tseng said and led me over to the bed we’d been sharing for the last couple of days. I jumped in under the heavy duvet as soon as I was undressed. Tseng followed, pulling me into his embrace, offering his warmth which I gladly accepted.

He reached for his watch. “It’s past twelve,” he whispered. “Merry Christmas, I love you, Rufus.” We kissed.

“Love you too.”

Tseng puts two fingers under my chin, tilting my head up, claiming my lips for a tender kiss. “You know I love you too, Rufus,” he says.

I know that he’s not really there. That I’m just pretending. But it’s so much easier than thinking of him as dead. Who knows, maybe one day I won’t come back from the dreamworld, where I still can feel the touch of his lips against mine.

He’s dead, I have to go on without him, alone. I’m still alive. But I will never love again.

So maybe I won’t really live. Maybe I’ll just slip into the world my mind has created for the two of us and stay there for good, eternally in his embrace.

The End

Embryonic Rendezvous

Let us swin inside your walls
We’re all sterilized and pure
So innocent and clean
Please, let us stay

Let us hide here in your cave
In this quiet golden age
In the love of your embrace
Where we belong

Let us cling to the time where we are half alive
Let us cling to the time of our lives
Let us stay where we are
Where we won’t do no harm
Let us stay in the light of your love

Let us come and drift away
In your ocean we will sway
We will float here in the waves
Where we belong

Shut them out don’t let them in
Let us stay beneath your skin
Let us stay here in the dim
Where we belong

Let us cling to the time where we are half alive
Let us cling to the time of our lives
Let us stay where we are
Where we won’t do no harm
Let us stay in the light of your love

The Soundtrack of Our Lives

Author's Note and Disclaimer: FFVII belongs to Squaresoft. This is all non-profit.
The song Embryonic Rendezvous belongs to The Soundtrack of Our Lives.

My FFVII site: www.floatingcity.cjb.net