Paper Tiger Burning

I respectfully credit all Original Creators, namely Squaresoft, which became SquareEnix,for these characters. In this way, I pay homage to my Fandom's Original Creator, and illustrate my Community's belief that Fan Fiction is "fair use". I do not claim to own these characters. I do not make money or gil from using these protected characters, nor do I wish to make money or gil from them. In other words, I am borrowing these characters to entertain the adult fanfiction community, but I am doing so with the highest degree of respect to the engineers, game designers, music makers, and voice actors.




I burned with restless ire.

Pacing, I watched the second stage recruits march around the compound, their exhausted faces mirroring the fatigue in my mind. I hadn’t slept well for two nights now. Many years ago it wouldn’t have bothered me; I could go weeks without sleep if I had to. Now I desperately wanted to close my eyes and rest for a few hours in sweet oblivion. I needed it. I needed a space of time in which I wasn’t thinking or doing something.

Strange how my life seemed so filled with two conflicting states. I either wallowed in boredom or frustration. Now frustration bored me as much as I found boredom frustrating.

I turned away from the window and looked at the clock. In several hours I would take Sheila to the opera. Perhaps she would tire me so awfully I could sleep tonight? No, Sheila wouldn’t weary me. She’d drive me mad.

My eyes slid shut. I heard the hum of Eldon’s computer, the sound of the electricity in the walls, and even the quiet splashing of the aquarium two halls down. Phantom sounds overlapped it all; the sound of a blade passing through flimsy cloth and flesh, the shocked, sharp, final inhale…

I opened my eyes quickly, banishing the noises with visual distraction. Eldon appeared in my range of sight. He didn’t look as if he’d rested either. His normally immaculate black hair stood every which way. A much chewed up pencil hovered in between his ear and his head. His bloodshot eyes regarded me with weary thoughtfulness. Suddenly, he stood up and went to the door, shutting it.

Without pausing, he went to his stereo and turned it on. The soft sound of piano music filled the room. He came to me. “They bugged your office yesterday,” he said quietly. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you.”

“Who?” I asked, feeling very real anger begin to burn deep inside. I didn’t like spies.

“Probably not administration,” he replied. “It seems like an outside job. Someone snuck in here and planted it, but it isn’t Shinra make. It’s of Wutai manufacture.” Eldon pushed back a potted plant to show me a small black object no bigger than the head of a pin. He let it go and looked at me soberly. “I check the office for bugs and cameras every morning.”

Startled, I returned his gaze. “Why do you do that, Eldon?” I asked softly.

“Because I’m paranoid,” Eldon replied earnestly. “I meant it when I said I can’t lose my job. A lot of people wanted this position, for reasons I’m sure you can guess.”

“It’s strategic,” I murmured. “Thank you for telling me.”

“It serves us both to be a team, I think,” he answered. “I need you to be my boss and you need someone you can trust.”

I looked at him a long time. I smelled no falsehood in his sentiment, and I was very good at sniffing out lies and dissembling. “Alright, Eldon,” I said at last. “You continue to be paranoid for us both and I’ll make sure you keep your job.”

Eldon’s tense face collapsed in relief. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

“Thank me by finding a car for me to drive to the opera tonight,” I said.

“I’ll rent you a limo,” he said promptly, going for his phone.

I retreated to my inner office, my mind whirling. Just because the bug was of Wutai manufacture didn’t mean that it came from a Wutainian. Anyone could want to spy on me, from Hojo to Rufus to Sheila to even AVALANCHE or similar dissidents. Too, the tap could be meant for Eldon, but I doubted it.

I hated knowing someone eavesdropped upon me. I needed to have my home searched immediately.

**************************************************************************

Sheila began her tiresome talking the moment I opened the door for her.

“Oh my,” she exclaimed, looking at me in my formal wear. “A tux really does you justice, Sephiroth.” Her eyes skimmed to my braid. “And you pulled your hair back for me!”

“The occasion requires it,” I answered, grabbing my cloak. “Are you ready?”

“Oh yes.” Sheila took my arm.

Once in the limo, which satisfied her very much, Sheila began to talk shop. I would ordinarily tune her out, but now I had to listen for clues as to whom I might pin as the potential ‘bugger’. She rattled on and on about how her brother didn’t seem to appreciate her work with the Turks, about how Reno and Rude made the liaisons tiresome. She launched into a diatribe about her personal groomers and how she’d fire them all if she couldn’t get a decent pedicure before the new year.

I endured it all with a sense of self-abandonment. I deserved this mind-numbing chatter, I felt sure. She’d already said more during the short drive to the opera house than I’d probably spoken during my entire life. Perhaps if I endured more I could catch up on my karmic imbalance.

Yes. Sheila as a road to penance… It had merit but lacked practical application. Unless she followed me to the pit and nagged me as demons stretched me on the rack, her ultimate usefulness was only as a temporary hair shirt.

“I got a call from your doctor,” Sheila said before taking out a tube of lipstick from her purse.

I tensed. “Hojo called you?”

“He did. He said he might have a solution to our little sex problem.” Sheila winked at me. Now I understood her high spirits and chatty behavior. She thought she’d hooked me.

“I wasn’t aware we had a sex problem,” I responded slowly, carefully.

“I was referring to your inability to have sex with me because of your strength,” Sheila said, frowning. She quickly applied her lipstick and shoved it back in her bag. “Although, I have to admit, I don’t see what the problem is anyway. Surely you can control how your hips move if you’re a famed swordsman. I mean, that takes control, like being a professional athlete.”

Trust Sheila not to know men enjoyed getting off too. Certainly I could control my hips; I could slam at her all night long at the same rhythm if my cock wasn’t part of the action. The problem came in with simple enjoyment. Eventually I wanted to have an orgasm. Perhaps if I’d had a procession of regular partners in my past I could have learned some control, but I’d refused to fuck a fellow soldier. As a result I had a lot of practice helping a woman achieve orgasm with my lips and hands, but not much action myself. I’d tried sex with a few women and always had to stop halfway through because of tears or injury.

“Sheila,” I said as the limo stopped outside the opera house. “I’m not going to drug myself.”

“Fine,” she answered shortly. “I’ll think of something else.”

Unable to pursue the argument as we entered a public building, I escorted her inside. I really, really wanted to strangle her pampered, egocentric self. She had never known any sort of hardship, not hunger or poverty, or neglect, and it showed with every word that came out of her mouth.

We swept inside, instantly drawing the attention of photographers and society page people. I blocked direct flashes from cameras with my hand, wishing I could just grab the offending devices and smash them. But Sheila beamed, nodding to people as if a queen in her royal procession. So many women became like her once they decorated my arm. I’d endured it many years ago during my first stint as Shinra’s golden boy.

With the Masamune I could empty the opera house of the living in less than three minutes, I felt sure. Then, I could set it on fire and burn the corpses. It warmed me to think about it.

We loitered in the champagne room long enough for Sheila to drink three glasses of the most expensive bubbly on the market at twelve hundred gil a glass. Not liking the taste of alcohol, I merely stood and acted the dutiful date. She didn’t even notice; her attention seemed permanently focused on the crowd. She wanted everyone to see she’d snagged me for this affair.

Bitch.

Finally, the crowd began to move to their seats. We had a very nice box, rivaled only by Rufus himself. I noticed his date looked particularly bored. The red head put her viewing glass up to spy on the orchestra, her expression waxen. I wished I had taken her instead of Sheila. At least with the red head I’d have silence.

The opera made me squirm. I appreciated music in nearly all forms, but I’d never gained a taste for overly loud music with people singing in ancient Gherstanian. I followed the story well enough by watching the exaggerated movements of the portly actors, though. It appeared, like all good opera, we watched a tragedy. Tragedy I grasped. It was a tragedy for me to be here and for my date to be Sheila Shinra.

Finally, after an eternity of music that made my ears want to bleed, we had a brief intermission. Sheila tugged me back out for more champagne. I excused myself for some fresh air, pleading a headache. My date pressed her red lips together in distaste, but said nothing. I made my way to the street and stood under a light, pathetically grateful for a few moments of cool silence.

“Would you like to buy a flower, sir?”

I looked down to see a little urchin. She couldn’t have been older than seven or eight. Her dirt-smeared face peered up at me hopefully, large blue eyes wide. Her clothes fit her badly, were patched and faded from years of use. I suspected she was at least the third child to wear the dress. In her crude basket she held dozens of white roses.

Her image overlapped with that of another’s, and I felt my heart begin to beat harder.

“How much?” I asked. Roses might go a long way to placating Sheila.

“Three for a gil,” the little girl answered promptly, anticipation making her grimy face shine.

A power beyond my reckoning seized me. Feeling compelled, I reached into my coat and brought out my wallet. Taking out a hundred gil note, I folded it carefully. “Do you live far away?” I asked.

“Two blocks,” the girl lied. She lived in the slums, I knew. The slums were more than a mile away. But people from the slums didn’t admit to living there.

“Would you take your shoe off for me?” I asked. “I want to buy all of your roses.”

The little girl frowned. “You aren’t going to steal my shoes, are you? They won’t fit you.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “No,” I answered. “You don’t have good pockets and I don’t want you to lose your money. I’m going to put the gil in your shoe and then you’re going to put it back on. That way you won’t lose it if someone tries to rob you; they probably won’t look there.”

The girl smiled brightly. “That’s a good idea,” she said. Her eyes fell on the gil note. “That’s a lot of money,” she said in a trembling voice. “What do you want besides my flowers?”

“Nothing,” I said. She thought I wanted to buy her, sick as it was. “Do you have a mother and father at home?”

“Just a father.”

I nodded. “Take this straight to your father, then,” I said.

The little girl put her shoe back on and handed me the roses. “They match your hair,” she said in a tone of wonder. “Are you an angel? Papa says angels are beautiful.”

“If I’m an angel, small one, I’m an angel of the pit,” I answered. “Tell me something. Where did you get these roses?”

“Sector Five,” she said, forgetting herself. “They grow in the prettiest church. There are lilies too. But it’s hard to find the church if you don’t know your way around; the plate fell and smashed nearly everything.”

I knew from being inside of Strife’s mind that the Cetra had lived in the Sector Five slums. Unbelievable, but I was probably buying flowers the Ancient had planted decades ago. “Go home quickly,” I bade the girl. “You shouldn’t be out here this late at night by yourself.”

“Ok.” The child smiled at me. Hugging her empty basket to her thin chest, she ran down the nearest alley.

I stood with two dozen white roses in my arms. Feeling confident I’d happened upon a lucky purchase for a very finicky woman, I went inside the opera house once more.

Sheila was easy to find. I approached her with the flowers, watching her face carefully. She enthused over them as someone refilled her glass, asking me why I’d waited so long to give them to her.

“I just purchased them,” I said. “There was a small child selling them outside the opera house.”

Sheila looked at me oddly. “You bought them from a vendor?”

“Yes, an urchin, actually,” I said.

Sheila thrust the flowers back into my arms. “You hold them,” she said. “Being a super soldier you probably won’t come down with some disease.”

Many things had happened to me in my life, many surprising things, but this made my mind draw a total blank. “What?”

“You heard me,” Sheila said, her face drawn in displeasure. “I can’t believe you would put me at risk, buying flowers from a dirty, disease-ridden slum-bum.” She emptied her glass as she stared at me hatefully.

She had already drunk six thousand gil in alcohol.

“Honestly, Sephiroth,” she went on, scolding me as if I were a child. “You don’t give flowers to a woman halfway through the date anyway, and certainly not white roses, which mean chastity. I intend to be more to you than that.”

A hard knot formed in my belly. Her chastisement didn’t hurt my feelings, it enflamed them. I closed my eyes to embrace the sensation of fury, remembering that once upon a time I’d been called the Noble One, known for my cold, impersonal charity. Yes, I’d been generous, but not because of goodness of the heart or for pity. I’d been charitable because nothing held any value to me. I had no trouble giving away worthless things. Even money had been worthless.

But what a contrast… The little girl in the street had probably never had a warm bed or clean clothes. She wouldn’t go to school. She wouldn’t have the money for birth control and would probably be pregnant as soon as puberty stole her innocence. Hunger would dominate her entire life, if not for food then for comfort. And I stood before a woman who’d managed to drink half a year’s pay for a recruit in a mere two hours.

“What does a beast know about flowers?” I asked her, opening my eyes. “You can’t have it both ways, Sheila. A beast doesn’t know about the language of plants or the etiquette of giving them.” I tucked the fragrant blossoms under my arm. “Good night. The limo will pick you up without me.”

I turned to go but she clamped down upon my arm. “Where do you think you’re going?” she hissed. “You can’t leave me here alone, embarrass me like this!”

“A beast doesn’t know anything about opera, either,” I replied, shaking her off. “Make any excuse you like for my absence. I won’t deny anything you come up with. Right now I can’t bear your company. In fact, I’m as likely to slit your throat as I am to open a car door for you.”

I left her standing at the refreshment table.

It began to rain as I walked home. I lingered in it, content to let the cold water dampen my anger. By the time I reached my apartment I dripped, but the rain kept the roses fresh. I put them in my empty soy milk container, my eyes taking in their purity.

No, I didn’t know the language of flowers, but I knew the language of hardship.