♡

The fire cracks softly, a sound too gentle for the weight pressing against my chest. I sit with my knees pulled up to my chest on the worn rug as I stare into the flames. Heat laps at my face, almost stinging, but I let it.

The wood shifts, splits open with a quiet pop, and sparks leap like fireflies into the air before vanishing into nothing. They reminds me on mako motes—those pale green flecks that danced around me the night everything ended.

My throat tightens. I stare harder into the fire, as if I could burn the memory out of me. But it only brings it closer—my hatred.

And him. Always him. Standing in the ruins, sword dripping with blood that wasn’t his. The promise in his eyes breaking into pieces the second fate decided none of us were strong enough.

I drag my fingers over the rug, curling them until the fabric bites back and pains me. My pulse hammers in my ears, louder than the crackle. The room feels too warm, too close, like the fire’s crawling up my throat. It's this place. It's this whole place. I feel like I'm being asphyxiated. Staring into the fire is all I can do as I try to shove down every memory that flashes through my mind without permission, transfixing me with the reminder that they're nothing but ghosts at my side now. Sometimes I start to think I hate them too, for leaving me alone with him.

I feel like I'm being asphyxiated constantly in his presence.

I don’t notice the door until it clicks softly behind me. His boots on the floorboards—steady, unhurried. I don’t turn around to look at him.

Not before he wordlessly takes a seat near me. I look his way and gnaw on my cheek in my mouth as I watch him press a bag of frozen peas to his cheekbone. He winces at the bite of the cold, and I find it hard to look away from him again.

“Where did you get that?” I ask quietly, not quite knowing what else to say.

“Cissnei.” He hisses as he shifts the bag against his face. “Guess she felt sorry for me.”

His voice sounds gruff, but I know he’s musing. “Poor you.” I respond lowly—with no real bite to my words. I might have barked with laughter at the sight normally—but I don't think I know how to make the sound anymore.

He doesn’t respond. He just does the same thing I was doing, staring into the fire mindlessly. I finally shift my eyes back to the flames. Something is different in the air between us after that argument—I tell myself it must be that we're both exhausted after it. That we're too tired now to be mad at each other.

“I was thinking about Aerith.” It comes out so quietly, I’m unsure he even hears it.

I hear his breath catch in his throat when I bring her up like that. She died in his arms. And I think the one thing he’ll never forgive himself for is being just a little too late to save her. In the time I’ve known him, that was one of the only two times I’d seen him cry.

“.. What about her?” He asks—and he sounds afraid to hear my answer.

“She used to braid my hair.” I say simply.

“What?”

“She braided flowers into my hair—she would secretly collect them just for the sake of doing so. And she would say I was just like them.” I murmur, staring into the fire with a grim look in my eyes as I subconsciously run my hand through my hair. “I remember laughing at her for saying it. Like, ‘why? ‘cause I’ll wilt if I don’t get enough water?’ and she said something even dumber.”

I see him turn his head and fix his gaze back onto me as he waits for me to continue. I can feel it—his shock that something real is coming out of my mouth. And he doesn't dare say a single thing, thinking any sound he makes might have me retreating back into my usual, cold mask. Maybe yelling at him about all the things I hated about him put a crack in it—maybe I learned that it made me feel the smallest bit lighter to let myself come apart front of the only person in the world who might be able to shoulder, to fathom the weight of my grief. Or maybe I bring up a memory of Aerith with the purpose of torturing him.

“She said I was just like those lilies because they were strong and soft all at once. That they seemed delicate, but survived storms. They didn’t know they were beautiful, but everyone else did.” My voice starts to crumble and break as I recall the memory. I laugh weakly, bitterly. “To this day I don’t know where the hell she got that idea.”

I shift slightly and lean back on my hands, then stare up at the ceiling—as if I were speaking to Aerith and finally giving her a response to what she said to me all those months ago. “I’m nothing like them. They don’t fight to exist. They don’t bleed or break for anyone. All they have to do is bloom, and somehow that’s enough to make the world love them. She was like a flower more than anyone else was.”

My face stays still, carved from stone, even as tears pool stubbornly along my waterline. I bite down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste iron this time.

“I think about the things she said to me often. I used to shrug them off, like her words were just pretty nonsense. Now I tear them apart, over and over, trying to make sense out of every word she ever gave me.” I rasp. It feels wrong, to have the words leave my mouth and lift a bit of the weight off my chest.

He doesn’t speak. He lowers his hand to his lap, the movement quiet but heavy. Then, without warning, he says “I do the same thing too.”

Of course he does. I think Cloud cherished Aerith more than he cherished anything.

Does it make him suffer? I hope it does.

A low sound hums in my throat—something between acknowledgement and surrender as a familiar silence stretches between us for a while longer. My eyes eventually flit to the clock hanging above the door. Late. Too late. The kind of late that feels suffocating, where sleep isn't rest—but a trap. More torturous than being haunted in my waking hours. And I know what waits for me when I close my eyes. He doesn't move or flinch when I yawn, just another way my body betrays me—but I can feel him studying me intently, as if he were waiting for me to do something.

I stand up from my spot on the floor and wordlessly make for the bed. The air thickens between us. He knows. I know it. I'm scared to close my eyes.

But it doesn’t matter when my knees buckle right before I even reach the bed, the world tips sideways, and then there's the heavy sound of his boots on wood as he moves—fast, too fast—to catch me before I hit the ground. Like he knew I was going to fall. Like he planned for me to fall.

Drowsiness swallows me whole in one merciless gulp, stealing the strength from my limps. I'm helpless to do nothing but let him hold me, feel the strength in his arms as he eases me down onto the mattress like I'm something breakable. My mind protests, my body tries too—but I'm sluggish and too heavy to argue.

“Sleep.. materia?” I whisper languidly, blinking slow, trying to keep my eyes from fusing shut. I feel a flicker of anger, sharp and fleeting—because using sleep materia on someone is the kind of thing you do when you want to hurt them. But my anger melts and crumbles like ash, replaced by the cold, hard realization that I actually do trust him.

“You can kill me as soon as you wake up. As long as you sleep.” He says softly, apologetically—like he knew I would have fought him if he suggested doing what he did. I'm too somnolent to dwell on the thought that I’ve heard all kinds of new sounds leave his lips today.

Oh, I will kill him.

My head sinks into the pillow, and I'm gone before I can fight anymore. Maybe it's exhaustion. Maybe its magic. Maybe it's both. I'm dimly aware of the world thinning into black—but then I hear it. A thread of sound, fraying on his breath. A whisper I can hardly make sense of, a whisper I could easily have just imagined.

"And.. you're wrong."

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I’m running. Always running.

The ground splinters under my boots—black rocks veined with mako, shuddering like they're alive. The crimson sky above me writhes around what looks like a tear in the universe. A scream cuts through the dark, and I know that voice like my own heartbeat.

Tifa.

I see her ahead—bent low, fists bloodied, teeth bared in a way that always meant she would fight until the end. I surge forward, but my legs feel wrong. Too heavy. Too slow.

The blow comes before I can reach her. A gleam of steel, a sound like air being ripped apart—then silence. My heart stops as I watch her body jerk, her blood splattering hot and vivid against the broken earth. Her eyes flicker towards me—soft, brown, wide with something like an apology—then they go out.

“Tif!” Her name tears my throat open, but the earth splits before I can even touch her. My hands scrape air, and I fall, screaming, into green light.

I hit water. Freezing, endless—and Aerith is there.

Floating, perfect and still in the glow. Like the lake in the Forgotten Capital—like the moment that shattered everything. I don’t have a second to notice how peaceful and beautiful she looks, how radiant she is even in the clutches of death.

I thrash towards her, choking on mako, my arms burning. She doesn’t move, she doesn’t open her eyes. Her lips part, and I think I hear my name—but it’s nothing but a whisper in the wind. As fleeting as the time I knew her. Then she sinks, slipping away into the deep like she was never there at all.

“No. No, no, no—”

I plunge after her, lungs screaming, but my fingers close on empty water. And then I’m falling again—through liquid, through light, through nothing—until I slam into the ground so violently it knocks the breath out of me. I cough and writhe on the ground in pain, then I open my eyes, look up, and see him.

Cloud. Standing in the ruins of the temple, Masamune plunged straight through his chest and out the other end. I watch the way the blood drips and pools on the ground in front of him. His eyes, blue and glassy, lock onto mine for a second that feels like forever.

Then his knees buckle.

“No.” I breathe, my voice broken. I stumble towards him, limbs numb, vision blurring. “Cloud.”

He drops his sword, and it clatters on the stone and echoes like a gunshot.

I crash to my knees before I can realize it, grabbing his arm, his shoulder—anything I can hold. My fingers press into flesh, and for one blissful second, I think I have him. I think I can save him.

Then his skin gives away like sand, crumbling in my hands as he returns to the lifestream. My scream chokes in my throat as he scatters into dust and green particles, slipping through my fingers like smoke. I claw at the air where he was, trying to piece him back together, but he’s gone. Gone like everyone else—and I’m all alone.

The earth yawns open beneath me again, swallowing the last of the light, and I fall—endless, breathless—into black.

—

I jerk awake with a violent grasp, fists clenched so hard my nails carve crescents into my palms—like I’d been ripped out of the sky. My heart batters against my ribs like it wants to leave my broken body. The darkness feels wrong. Too close, too much—like the void I was falling into hasn’t let me go.

My throat burns with his name before I even know I’m saying it.

“Cloud—”

It rips out, raw and broken.

There’s a creak from beside me. Blankets shift. A pause that stretches a little too long before his voice breaks through—rough, low, like it were crawling out of sleep. I watch him slowly sit up in my peripheral vision, then whip towards him. He rubs his face with one hand—and his hair falls forward, hiding his eyes for a second before the moonlight streaming through the window catches them.

“Nightmare?”

I swallow hard and shut my eyes tight, choking on air that feels too thick. “Nothing.” I bite out. It sounds brittle even to me. “It was—it was nothing.”

Another pause. “You sounded..” His jaw tightens, and whatever he was about to say dies on his tongue, leaving something unsaid between us.

I look away, gnawing on my cheek and waiting for the lingering feeling of my nightmare to go away—hating the way my stomach churns, fighting the urge to vomit.

“You were calling my name.”

The words slam into me, and I’m falling again—watching his body turn to dust in my hands, feeling mako burn into my skin like acid. I force a laugh, but it splinters in the middle. “.. Yeah. You’re definitely going mad.”

His hand moves, just a fraction—but he catches himself, and pulls it back. His weight shifts, slow and deliberate—like he were considering getting up.

My stomach knots. I can’t let him. Not when the echo of his name still tries to claw its way back up my throat. Not when I can still feel him crumbling in my hands. I lost everyone else already, I watched them die and I buried them. I didn’t feel anything I hadn’t felt before—not until I fell and watched him slip through my fingers, thinking I lost the only person I now had left in the world too.

“I said I’m fine.” I snap, harsher than I meant to be. The lie hangs in the air like smoke.

For a long moment, neither of us moves—then the bed creaks again.

“Fine.” He responds, voice flat—but not cold. “Try to sleep. You’re noisy.”

I listen to the sound of him settling back down, to the silence stretching thin between us. I pull my knees up to my chest and close my eyes, trying to will away the feeling of them burning, the sob that threatens to leave me. My pulse hammers, his name still burning in my throat. I listen to him breathe. It’s steady now, maybe too steady. Like he wants me to think he’s asleep.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter. That none of this matters. This is my life now and I just have to live with it—I need to tell myself it’s nothing, and that I’m fine because this is the only way I know how to survive. I hold my pendant in my fist, hoping and praying it’ll give me some strength.

I inhale shakily, burying my face in my knees, knowing sleep won’t come for me at all. Even if it tried, I think I’d push it away out of fear it would make me relive something like that again.

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A few days later, we've ended up on Mt. Nibel—trying to cross the mountain to get to Nibelheim, Cloud and Tifa’s hometown. We’ve been sleeping on grass, dirt, rock—and, fuck, am I desperate for a bed. The mountain air bites at my skin, sharp and thin. A bridge stretches ahead of us—a weathered skeleton of wood and rope swaying over a chasm so deep it makes my stomach churn to look down. Wind howls through the gaps like a warning, but my desperation to return to civilization outweighs any fear I might’ve had of falling.

“This is the fastest way.” I furrow my brows and point towards the bridge. “Crossing this bridge will cut like half a day off our trek.”

Cloud plants his feet at the edge, hand on the hilt of his sword on his back. His gaze drifts down the drop, then back at him—stone cold.

“No.”

I narrow my eyes and grit my teeth. “No? That’s it? Just ‘no’?”

“It’s not stable.” His words come out flat, final. “We take the ridge trail.”

“Who’s “we”? The ridge trail adds hours to this trek.” I scoff, throwing my hands in the air and turning my back on him—pacing back and forth. Damn it all, I want to get to Nibelheim before dark—not just to finally sleep in a bed, but to eat. We’re running out of supplies—the Temple of the Ancients is so far removed from where the rest of humanity dwells. I’ve never gone so long just walking—no chocobo, no truck, no amphibian aircraft. I wasn’t cut out for this shit.

Cloud’s expression doesn’t move. He just watches me pace back and forth, unblinking. “If you want to cross that bridge—and fall and die like a dumbass, be my guest.” He crosses his arms over his chest.

“Got it. You’re scared.” I laugh wryly, holding my arms out like I’ve just come to some crazy revelation.

His jaw tightens, teeth grinding ever so slightly. “You think this is about being scared?”

“The legendary SOLDIER turned mercenary, terrified of a little rope and wood. Maybe that’s why everyone’s dead! You second-guess yourself like it’s some sort of pastime—too afraid to do what needs to be done.” My expression falls flat—my voice wry and venomous. I shrug at him sardonically. “Coward.”

That word land like dagger in his heart, hitting a place where he wears no armor. I see the way his face changes—something raw flashing before he buries it under stone again. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and dangerous.

“Fuck you.” He steps into my space, and I find my own reflection in the steel-blue of his gaze. Heat prickles under my skin. We’ve been having the same argument over and over again ever since we left the grove.

My voice rises, fury spilling over. “You were supposed to protect them. You were supposed to lead us out—and you failed. You. Not me.” I grit out, clenching my fists at my sides.

The wind roars louder—like another plea from Aerith for us to stop fighting—but it’s nothing compared to the tense silence between us now. He cranes his neck towards me, stopping when there’s barely a breath between us. His glare feels like ice, and I figure that must be what sends the shiver down my spine.

“This is not about fear.” He says lowly—his eyes a blade dragging across my skin. “Do you honestly believe that I don’t know I failed? I don't plan on failing again.” He doesn’t move away from me for a second, staring at me intently to make sure I hear every word he says—searching for an understanding in my face.

I open my mouth, ready to spit more venom—but I can’t. Because he has that look on his face—the one that shows me he’s shattering inside. Something I recognize in myself.

It makes me want to scream.

So I shove him, hard—but he doesn’t fall, he doesn’t even stumble. He only stares at me in disbelief.

“Screw this.” I snap, whirling towards the bridge. “I’m going myself.”

“Don’t—” His voice cuts through the air, and the hint of desperation in it becomes more than that in a second.

The wind whips into my face as I grab onto the rope. It feels like ice against my palms. Behind me, I hear him curse under his breath—low, vicious—before his footsteps pound towards me.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Juna!”

The bridge groans as I put my weight on it, boards creaking beneath my boots. One step. Two. I glance back just in time to see him do the same after me, his jaw clenched so hard I think it might crack.

I hiss. “What the hell are you doing? I thought you—”

“I’m keeping your dumbass alive.” His voice is like gravel ground to dust, sounding a lot like a warning.

I whirl to snap back, but my heart drops and my breath catches in my throat as a plank splinters underneath my foot. My stomach plummets when my leg plunges through the gap. I gasp, reaching for the rope rail and missing by a hair’s width—my fingers grazing the roughness of the rope rail.

“Shit—” My other foot slips, wood snapping loose—the whole bridge shudders.

But he’s there in a second. His hand like an iron against my wrist, holding onto me in a vice grip before I can fall completely. My heart slams against my ribs like it wants to escape. For one frozen second, all I can hear is wind screaming through the chasm, his ragged, panicked breathing—and I find his gaze, watching the way absolute fear etches itself onto his face.

I instinctually writhe in his grip, my body convulsing with the fear of falling and dying in this fucking canyon—where even Cloud wouldn’t be able to find my body. My struggle only makes the bridge sway harder, and another board drops into the void below, echoing forever.

“Stop. Fucking. Moving!” His voice slices through the chaos, raw with fury and terror. His grip on my wrist tightens impossibly harder as he tries to steady me from struggling while I dangle in the air. “You’ll kill us both!”

The ropes groan. Another plank snaps. My throat feels like it’s closing as I cling to his arm for my actual life. I shut my eyes tight, trying to get a hold of myself.

“You happy now?” He snarls loudly—unable to wipe that expression from his face. I look up at him with an intense desperation and fear in my own eyes. His eyebrows twitch. “This your shortcut? Your genius idea?”

“Shut the hell up and pull me up, Cloud!” I try to shout angrily, but my voice quivers and completely betrays the fact that I don’t really want to die at all.

With a guttural sound, he does—hauling me up in one brutal motion until I’m on solid boards again, pressed against his chest. The bridge lurches under our combined weight, but it holds. Barely.

We freeze there, his arms locked around me, my hands gripping his shirt like a lifeline. My pulse is everywhere—my throat, my ears, my chest. And for a fraction of a second, I’m close enough to hear the thundering rhythm of his heart. His breath fans against my temple, and it sends a jolt through my body. I push him off of me abruptly, hard enough to get him away from me—but gentle enough to keep him from stumbling on this shaky bridge. His hand stays on my arm.

“Remember what I said about touching me?” I grumble, biting my cheek in my mouth and looking away—holding onto the rope railing with trembling hands.

Thank you.

His head tilts down, eyes like shattered glass, mouth curled in a snarl—like he wanted me to say something else but expected nothing different.

“Fine.” He lets go of me like he were dropping something worthless. But for that split second before he did, I think about the way he didn’t hesitate. No calculation, no cold detachment—just pure instinct to catch me.

Stupidly, I wish he did hesitate. I hate the tiny voice inside my head that tells me I’m thankful he was there, that he moved without a thought—that he saved me, and looked at me like he was terrified to lose me. I wish he hadn’t done something I couldn’t hate him for. 

“You could’ve just let me die.” I mutter, something like an apology flickering in my eyes.

“I’ll keep that in mind for next time.” He says, going on ahead without looking back at me.

We don’t speak after that, we just move—wanting to get off this rickety bridge. One board after the other, every step creaks beneath our boots as the ropes sway and the wind screams through the canyon. When we finally make it across, I don’t dare let out a breath of relief. I just keep walking like if I stop, I’ll feel his arms around me again.

I hate that I can feel them anyway.

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“You’re shaking.” He states.

“So?”

“So should you really be tinkering with your gun right now?”

“Scared I’m gonna shoot you?” I laugh weakly, slamming the cylinder back into place before snapping my head up to leer at him.

He doesn’t laugh—and I realize he must not think I’m kidding. My heart twists violently in my chest when I realize that I’m not sure if I’m kidding. I stand up from my spot by the fire and walk over to him. His eyebrows knit together as his head slowly moves, his eyes following my path towards him intently. I stand over him and point the barrel of my gun right between his eyes. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t flinch. He only blinks up at me, either completely unfazed or resigned to his fate. I want to see if I truly want or have it in me to end it all right here, I want to see if he’ll fight for his life—or try to convince me it’s worth living.

I tilt my head from side to side, studying his expression in silence. Our silhouettes form shadows that writhe in the dark, and nothing can be heard save for the crackle and pop of the campfire, the insects in the forest, the slight bristling of the trees. The warm light illuminates his face in a way that makes all his features sharper and softer all at once, enhancing the straight slope of his nose, the light freckles on his face—the slight crinkle of his brow. I press my gun firmer against his head, gently pushing his head back—trying to goad something, anything out of him. But he shows absolutely no fear—or any reaction at all.

Do you really not want to be here? A voice whispers in the back of my mind. My nose twitches frustratedly as I wait for fear, or doubt—but he still gives me nothing and it pisses me off. I don’t know what irritates me more; that he thinks I won’t kill him, or that he won’t bother to fight for his life? All he does is look up at me with that empty stare—doubting that I’ll ever hurt him, and I notice the way his eyes resemble the sky I watched for an answer. Eyes that Aerith loved, that Tifa loved. Eyes I am loathe to admit even I can’t help but think are beautiful.

“Do you want to die?” My hand trembles even harder as I cock my gun, switching off the safety. I probably should not be handling my gun right now, I probably shouldn’t even be looking at it. Everything I feel, I feel too intensely—and that's completely transparent through the tells I offer him.

Still, no reaction. “Do you want to kill me?” He should sound unsure. He should sound like he asked because he didn’t know the answer, but he doesn’t sound that way at all.

I inhale sharply as my fingers slightly press against the trigger—and at that, I hear his breath catch in his throat, finally the tiniest indication of fear. I pause, and my arm falls back down to my side—switching the safety back on as I pull my gun away from his head. I know I told him I wanted him gone—but my chest weighs heavy with guilt when I finally understand that I would never hurt him, no matter how much I hated him. And it weighs even heavier when I realize that for a fleeting second—he really thought I would.

“.. If I did want to kill you, were you really just going to let me put a hole in your head?” I hold his gaze like a blade against his throat, searching for a truth etched in his face. He’s truly mastered the art of stoicism, I’ve never met a person harder to read. If he was scared, he hardly showed it—and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was like me, and that he actually wanted to die too.

“I knew you wouldn’t do it.”

Is that right?

“I knew you wouldn’t do it because you’re selfish.”

I grimace at his words as though they physically stung me. Selfish? I am selfish. I’m selfish, I’m unfair, I’m angry, I’m cruel—and I don’t know how to be different right now. Maybe I never did—but I don't know how to stop. Not with him. Not when everything I've lost is sitting in front of me wearing his face.

He stands, shadow swallowing me whole, and then his fingers are on my jaw again—tilting me upwards, commanding my gaze as if dragging me through fire—a punishment. His eyes comb through mine like they'll uncover what I've decided to hide away, but when I look back at him—all I see are ghosts. Faces I can't forget, a flash of fleeting memories. I writhe and wriggle in his grasp, trying to escape the weight of it.

“Don’t touch m—”

“Do you not get it?” He says sharply, his eyes.. he’s present again.

I fight the scowl that almost forms on my face at the way my heart picks up when it touches me. Burns. It burns and reminds me that I'm still alive. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m all you have now. Same goes for me.” His words escape through gritted teeth, and I swear I can see him subconsciously leaning closer to me, or pulling my face towards his. My jaw clenches in his grip, and I feel his hand tighten around my face. “I know it’s all my fucking fault. So blame me, hate me, curse me if it helps you find a way to live, Juna—I won’t tell you otherwise. Just stop acting like either of us is going anywhere. You’re not gonna kill me—so save yourself the energy of pretending you would.”

Fuck you. The words ring in my head without missing a beat—but I know there’s no use in saying them anymore. Not now.

I swallow, and his eyes follow the motion like he's tracing something fragile. My face twists, betraying me, because I can't tell him he's wrong. And I hate that—hate him for it, but I hate myself more. I want him far from me, and I need him close enough to breathe my air. I want to share the weight of this grief—even shoulder his too, because it feels just like mine. His touch burns, but even though I writhe and wriggle, part of me clings to the flame because it reminds me that I still exist. My lips part, close again—hollow motions for words that don't come. I don't want to need him—not when every glimpse of him is a memory I wish was still whole.

Finally, I speak. “You think I wouldn’t kill you?” I grit my teeth and let out a wry laugh. “Let go of me.” I demand, drawing out every syllable. I’d sooner jump into one of those graves than admit out loud that I really, really needed him too.

He complies and his arm falls limp at his side—but his eyes don't let me go. And I can't bring myself to look away this time.

One step back, and my gaze nails him where he stands. There's nothing I can say that won't unravel me— so I do what I suspect will become something very easy for me from now on—push him away and lie.

“If you touch me like that again, I’ll prove you wrong.

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