#cidshera

He’s leaning on the railing, watching a young woman practice walking with a book on her head and working his way through a cigarette when he hears the bathroom door click open. The young woman drops the book, curses, and stomps her foot, and he turns away from her. He’s intending to shower, because he’s been strip-washing in the river all week, but the thought goes out of his head.

Shera in shorts was dangerous enough, the conservatively loose t-shirt and understated ponytail a distraction from the expanse of her legs but fuck him if her naked wasn’t an entirely different experience. She’s still got the faint hint of tan lines, the top of her thighs and the loose curve of her decolletage, but she’s paler, hidden behind trousers and sweaters as she has been lately. His mouth goes very dry, and her cheeks go very pink.

‘Uh,’ she says, uselessly, and fumbles without looking for the robe hung on the peg.

‘No,’ he says, froggish, and steps inside the room, shuts the balcony doors and the quiet business of Kalm out.

‘No?’ she repeats, and he watches a droplet of water curl down her jaw, her neck, along her collar and to her breast.

He shucks his jacket, tosses it to a chair, and she follows the movement.

‘No,’ he repeats, and swallows.

He’s thirty-three now, nearly, he shouldn’t be so thrown by his naked girlfriend - she is his girlfriend, he thinks, though it feels very stupid to call her that when the truth is it’s only a technicality that means she’s not his wife - in front of him. But here he is, fingertips tingling and mouth bone-dry.

‘No,’ she agrees, though she doesn’t look convinced, still pink-cheeked and bright-eyed.

He crosses the room, stands in front of her, and he feels very overdressed. Because he is, he supposes, and she smells soft and clean and she looks at him like he’s both the most beautiful thing she’s seen and lost his mind.

‘Stay,’ he murmurs, and his fingers touch her face, stroke the line of her cheek, her jaw, the curve of her ear, her lip.

Her lashes flutter, she smiles, her fingers touch his waist, curl just enough to get purchase on his t-shirt, pull it out from his trousers, get underneath to touch the skin of his hips.

‘I’m going to stay,’ she whispers back, an assurance.

‘Like this,’ he explains, gentle, and draws her chin up to kiss her.

Her mouth is soft and sweet, and her lips pillow perfectly against his. Her fingers curl against his skin, and she collapses into him.

‘I love you,’ she breathes, giddy and holding his face between her hands, soft and her thumbs brushing the stubble on his lip.

He shudders, forehead against hers.

‘I love you,’ he breathes back, and his fingers brush down her back, along the line of her spine, the dimples, the curve of her arse, fitting perfectly in his palms. Fuck, he loves her arse in shorts, but it’s nothing compared to the skin of it.

‘Fuck,’ he sighs, rubs their noses together. ‘Shera, I.’

Her hands run down his neck, his shoulders, back under his t-shirt to push it up and over his head. She tosses it somewhere, he doesn’t know where and he doesn’t care, either.

‘I need a shower,’ he tells her, because he’s sure he stinks, even with a strip-wash, but her hands roam his chest and ribs anyway, trip over the muscles, fingertips against his nipples.

He shivers, and the feel of her skin against his, shit, he could die feeling like it wasn’t enough. He’ll never tire of it, he thinks, the feel of her breasts, pert and small enough to fit in his hands, against him, fuck, he loves it. His hand splays against her back, holds her close, his mouth moving to her jaw, her ear, her neck.

‘Fuck,’ he breathes, her nails scraping against his ribs as he finds a weak spot where her neck joins her shoulder.

Her moan goes straight to his cock, already half-hard just from the feel of her arse in his hands and he grabs a handful of with the hand not on her back, kneads his fingers just a little.

She hums in the back of her throat, presses up against him, her fingers dragging down to his belt.

"I don’t mind,’ she replies, belatedly, and he’s so focused on the warmth of her neck under his lips, her fingers on his belt, that it takes him a moment to realise what the fuck she’s on about.

He goes to reply, but she gets the belt open, the button and zip and fabric out of the way, and she hums happily against his jaw as she shoves them down, his boxers quick to follow.

‘I missed you,’ she tells him, apropos of nothing, as he steps out of his clothes and kicks them aside. He’s still in his socks, but the thought of letting go of her to rectify it is abhorrent and he wants no part in it.

Her fingers tangle in his hair and drag his mouth to hers. He’s happy to oblige, and he wonders if he needs to give up smoking, if the taste of it on his tongue is bad. He considers asking her, but then her fingers are around his cock and all rational thought leaves his mind.

He chokes out a curse and she giggles, just a little, against his mouth. It’s more of a vibration, a sensation, than it is a noise, but he loves it. Loves knowing she’s happy. Fuck knows he’s made her miserable over the years.

‘Have you - fuck - have you been reading that magazine?’ he asks, and she laughs, a proper full laugh, and pushes his shoulder with her free hand.

He takes the hint, backs up toward the bed and fuck, he likes the view of her when he collapsed onto it, stood between his legs, naked and clean and his. She’s his and he can’t quite get over that.

‘I’ve read a few things,’ she hums, and her fingers are on his shoulders now, his neck, his jaw.

His eyes fall shut for a moment, just enjoying the warmth of her. Her weight shifts, moves into his lap, guiding him back until she’s nestled over him. His eyes snap open at the heat of her against his cock, her tits on his chest, her elbows at his shoulders and her fingers in his hair, each point of connection like fire. She kisses him and he grabs her thighs, her arse, drags her down as though she weren’t flush already.

Fuck he wants her.

She kisses him softly, so softly he wonders it’s not a moth’s wings, and rolls her hips once, twice, against his.

The noise that leaves him is not one he knew he could make, but it makes her laugh, so he doesn’t mind so much.

She sighs, hums, and rolls her hips in the opposite direction, dragging down his cock instead of up. He gasps a curse, thinks that he’d let her do anything she liked to him so long as she kept doing that.

A week at arm’s length from her is too long. He’s spent too long away from her already. Fuck him if he hasn’t lost some of the best years of his life to his hiding from his feelings. He never wants to be away from her again.

‘I love you,’ he gasps, desperate, clutching at her hips to bring her close.

She kisses his neck, just behind his ear, and he melts, feels himself give out beneath her. Surrender is not a word on his vocabulary, but he’ll wave a white flag for her if she wants it.

She nibbles at his neck, no doubt giving him a love bite he can’t hide, but it reminds him that he’s fucking starving, and what he’s starving for makes him laugh.

She hums, leaves his neck to kiss his jaw, his chin, look at him curiously.

‘What’s funny?’ she asks, and he looks at her, tries not to go cross eyed at the tingle in his toes from the grind of her hips.

‘I,’ he gasps, and finally grabs hold of her, braces one foot and flips them over.

She’d felt perfect over him, her weight perfect on his cock, but it’s a different perfection like this. Under him, naked and flushed and her hands by her head, palms open. Fingers bare. She needs rings on her fingers. She needs his ring. His name. His heart.

‘I made myself laugh,’ he hums, kisses her neck, draws lines up her arm to lace their fingertips.

She shudders, clutches his palms, nails in the back of his hands as he works down her collar, a nipple in his mouth. It’s warm and taut and the noise she makes when he presses his tongue to it makes his cock throb, his belly flip-flop. Fuck, he wants her.

‘Laugh?’ she echoes.

‘Mm,’ he agrees, moves to the other nipple and he delights in her gasp. ‘I thought to myself, fucking hell, I’m hungry.’

‘I knew I should have bought something for when you got back,’ she gasps, and her hips roll against his belly, though there’s no real purchase there.

‘No, no,’ he assures her, kisses between her breasts, down her sternum, his hands leaving hers as his weight shifts back into his knees. ‘Not that kind of hungry.’

‘Not?’ she starts, and then moans when he kisses between her legs, flat of his tongue against her clit. ‘Oh!’

Oh, indeed.

He holds her thighs, feels her nails dig into the back of his hands before she grabs handfuls of his hair. He can’t say he’s an expert at this, hasn’t done it before. But he saw the magazine, knows the theory. And she seems to be enjoying it, so he keeps it up.

‘Cid,’ she gasps, and he’ll never tire of hearing her say his name. Ten years of a title, and his name has him weak.

He hums, and her legs tremble. ‘Shera?’

‘Yes,’ she breathes, and her toes curl against his shoulder blades.

He massages her hips and tries to catch her gaze, but her head’s thrown back, her hips rolling against his mouth, and he wonders if he should let her take the lead, she knows what she wants. But the hum of frustration almost immediately tells him he’s wrong. She knows what she wants, but not how to get it.

He wouldn’t be much good if he couldn’t provide, so he redoubles his efforts, finds that gentle sucks make her quiver, that two fingers make her gasp in the best sort of way. She’s wet, warm, tasting clean and earthy at once and he can’t get enough. Fuck he loves her, loves hearing her gasp his name.

Her thighs tighten, and she whines in the back of her throat, quiet and then she’s done, frozen for a moment before the trembling takes her, nearly shakes her apart.

‘Cid,’ she breathes, clutches at him.

He obliges, moves up to rub noses, kiss her. She accepts him greedily, sleepily, both hands on his face and her pussy is wet and hot against his cock as she grinds. She gasps, a hiccupping little moan and he gasps into her mouth as she catches herself on him, cockhead to clit and fuck! Fuck!

‘Shera,’ he whispers, begs.

‘In,’ she nods, hands back in his hair and legs moving to give him more space.

She’s not flexible enough to get them up to her ears, if that was even something he thought he wanted her to be able to do, but she can hook them over his hips, and she’s a glove when he slides in. He thinks about protection as he does, that he should have kept his head, but she smooths a hand over his cheek.

‘I’m on control,’ she assures him, and he nods, thrusts once.

She cries out, cuts herself off with nails in his shoulders.

‘Fuck me,’ she breathes, and the way she says it, the way she never swears, fucking planet below it nearly finishes him right there.

He swallows thickly, curls his toes and his fingers and rallies his spirit because otherwise this is going to last no time at all and fuck, he wants to make love to her for the rest of his life. An adjustment of her legs lets him shift his weight, work one arm underneath her to hold the back of her neck, the other nails digging tight into her hip. She sighs, shudders, curls her leg tighter around him.

He searches her face for a moment, and she searches his in return before closing the gap between them to kiss him. He hums into her mouth before rocking his hips, small, soft. Her breath hitches, and he hums, rocks again, harder this time.

It takes a wonderful minute to find a rhythm, and he pushes the leg not under his hip back, opens her out for a deeper thrust. She likes that, he thinks, her moan loud in his ear and her fingers tight in his hair.

She gasps out affirmations, assurances that she’s happy, and it spurs him on, deeper, faster, but never rough, never hard.

For a moment, two, the only sound is their flesh, their breath, the heavy weight of arousal, and then she cries out again, breaking a kiss he hadn’t known he was having to throw her head back, mails digging into his shoulders.

He tries to do what he did again, but he’s not sure what it was and is struggling with critical thinking to act on it appropriately.

He shifts his weight again, centres his knees and hooks hers over his elbows. She gasps, shudders, claws the back of his neck.

‘Yes,’ she begs, and meets his gaze. ‘Yes.’

So he fucks her then, bending her back just enough to get deep on every thrust, and she’s clawing with abandon at his neck, his shoulders, down the length of his back as she tries to fuck herself on him as much he’s trying to fuck himself in her.

He gasps out her name, a curse, a plea, and she nods hurriedly, yanks at his hair to find his mouth, kiss him hard. Fuck, he wants her, and he has her! She’s his! Years of dreaming about her, of watching her work and fantasizing about yanking her shorts down and fucking her silly, years of wanting to pull her aside and kiss her so gently it makes her wonder if she’s not floating away and shit! Shit, she’s his now!

He pulls his arms free of her knees, grabs her ass with one hand, the back of her neck with the other and kisses her, thrusts as hard as he can. She moans into his mouth, each thrust knocking a little cry of pleasure from her and he feels weak, bound so tight it’s like he’s going to shatter.

Her hands smooth across his shoulders, his neck, hold his jaw. He can feel himself sweating. She meets him thrust for thrust, a heel on his arse, and she finds his gaze.

‘Come for me,’ she breathes, so quiet he almost doesn’t hear it beneath his heart pounding in his ears.

He gasps.

‘Cid,’ she says, and her eyes are chemical fire, sunlight in the trees, ‘Cid, come now.’

He wants to laugh, to tell her it’s not that easy, that he can’t just come on command. But that would be a lie, because she’s not even said his name the second time before he’s done. It rips through him, and he collapses into her neck, shudders and he absolutely doesn’t whimper.

‘Fuck,’ he gasps, and realises, as he gathers himself, that she’d followed him, that she’s limp and sated and fuck, he loves her.

‘Ha,’ she gasps back, and her fingers trip moth-soft up and down the bumps of his spine, trace the curve of his shoulder blade, and he feels like her fingertips are matches, burning hot against his skin.

He gets himself onto his elbows, his hands, and blinks down at her, stupid and dazed. Her neck is red; he rubs his jaw with one hand, hears the rasp of his stubble.

‘I got you,’ he says, and she blinks, slow, hums.

‘Got me?’ she asks, and hisses when his fingers brush the red-raw skin of her neck. ‘It’s fine, Captain.’

Captain. He’s got nothing left, but his cock twitches. Captain means something entirely different in her mouth now, he thinks, and thinks he sees her eyes spark before she’s scrubbing her face with her hands and getting to her feet.

‘You were saying about a shower?’ she asks, pads to the bathroom. ‘You haven’t eaten, I bet. I’ll get something while you wash.’

He lies there for a moment, his limbs leaden, and he wriggles his toes, only to realise he still has his socks on. Fuck sake. Yanking them off, he forces himself upright and plods after her.

‘Say, Shera,’ he says, and passes her to climb over the edge of the tub, fiddling with the shower controls.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m – I’m lucky, that I have you. Thanks for – fuck, I don’t know. Waiting, I guess?’

She flushes a pretty shade of red, and ducks her gaze for a moment.

‘Thank you for not giving up on me,’ she replies. ‘You waited just as long.’

He rolls his eyes and makes a shooing gesture at her.

‘Absolute ballache, you are,’ he tells her.

‘I didn’t take you for the tourist trap kind of holiday-maker,’ she teases, bumping his hip to spit and rinse.

‘I’m not,’ he tells the back of her head, ‘but I ain’t gonna go to the fuckin’ Saucer for another year.’

He’d pondered taking her there for her birthday, of course, but fuck that. Twice is enough for him. Fucking chocobo racing, who’s idea was that? Cloud’s, obviously. And Yuffie had gone with it, and he’d had better things to do with his time than race jumped up little bastards, but he’d done it anyway. Fucking whatever. It’s not the point.

‘I just think it’d be nice,’ he shrugs. ‘We don’t gotta go.’

‘No, no,’ she smiles, all minty and fresh, and kisses his nose, careful to avoid the froth of his mouth. ‘I like the idea. When do we go?’

‘As soon as you’re packed,’ he shrugs.

And so it’s a half hour later that he’s helping her up into the backseat of the Bronco, their packed bag – one between them, because they know how to pack light, and Costa has a solid enough retail industry that they can pick anything they need up there – safely behind her feet, and they’re heading out on their way.

It’s been a long while since they’d taken the Bronco out, and Cid’s missed having her in the backseat, yelling over the wind and utterly unintelligible. He glances over his shoulder at her, helmet and goggles, and she’s adorable, and he’s so fucking in love with her.

‘I love you,’ he shouts, but it’s swallowed by the clouds around them.

Touching down in Costa, he’s not surprised that it’s busy. Meteor is quickly becoming a distant memory for everyone not in the Midgar area, and he wonders how long before people just forget how close they’d come.

‘Wow,’ Shera says, as he helps her down out of the Bronco, ‘swimsuits have gotten a lot smaller since I last wore one.’

‘If you want to call the thing you wore a swimsuit,’ he snorts, and hikes himself up to reach the bag, yanking it free. ‘It had sleeves and was longer than your shorts.’

Shera huffs out a big breath, lips pursed, but there’s laughter in the creases of her eyes.

‘It was not,’ she protests, ‘just because I wasn’t flashing my – ‘ Here, she casts a glance about herself, looking at the people on the beach, pottering about on the dock, ‘ – flashing my tits,’ she finishes in a whisper.

Cid laughs at that, and bends to kiss her.

‘You’d have to be naked to flash ‘em,’ he teases, and she gives him an affronted yelp and a soft slap to the arm for his trouble.

‘Ha! And to think I bought a new one, just for you.’

He’s just about to walk away, but he glances back at her, eyebrow raised. She eyes him back, and he grins, hikes the bag onto his shoulder so he has a free hand to take hers with.

‘Fuckin’ adorable, you are,’ he tells her, and she wrinkles her nose with her smile.

 -0-0-0-

 The hotel has air-con and it’s priced over the odds, and Shera baulks at the receipt, but Cid shrugs it off, and leads her upstairs. The view is incredible, almost entirely the blue of the sea, and she makes some soft comment or another about how different it’s going to be, waking up to the sound of the waves.

‘Even at home,’ she says, and he comes to stand behind her, fingers working under the edge of her vest to rest warm and gentle against her hips, her belly, under the waistband of her shorts, ‘we couldn’t hear the water from our house.’

‘Have you been home?’ he asks her, presses a kiss to her neck.

She shakes her head, relaxes into him. ‘No, I keep meaning to write them a letter, but I never seem to get there.’

It’s Shera’s way, the meaning to do things but never quite getting there. She’s forgetful about the strangest of things, and remembers even stranger things than the things she forgets. There’s no real rhyme or reason to it, and not remembering to write to her parents is about right for her. He loves her so fucking much.

‘Do it later,’ he says, ‘I have an errand I need to run, so you’ll have time, then we can post it on our way to dinner.’

She turns her head, gets distracted by how close he is, and she’s fascinated by his eyes for several long moments, and fascinated by his mouth against hers for a few more still.

‘An errand?’ she asks, when he lets her go some half an hour later, to dress and fuss with her hair.

‘Mm,’ he nods, ‘it’s not that important, I just want to check on something I saw when I was here last time, with the kids.’

The kids. She thinks it’s hilarious that he refers to AVALANCHE as “the kids.” They aren’t kids any more than they are, but they’re so young. They’ve all been by once or twice, and Shera had never really felt old, or grown-up, or like an adult, until she’d met them. Then planet below she realised she was about to hit thirty and it just – it was a very strange feeling, and not one she’s keen to relive.

She pulls on her swimsuit, a red thing that fits her very nicely and is just as revealing as the other one had been, thank you very much, with its thin shoulder straps and high leg line, and a loose shirt to protect her shoulders. He eyeballs her, top to toe, and then grins, rakes his hands through his hair.

‘You’re beautiful, you know that?’

She laughs, and tosses a t-shirt at him.

‘Take me to the beach, Captain,’ she says.

 -0-0-0-

 He leaves her to return to the hotel a few hours later, sand between her toes and in her hair, and her sunglasses sticky with sun lotion. He refuses to tell her, no matter how she needles, where he’s got to go, and she gives up very quickly, which is more fool her than him, but he kisses her nose and pats her arse, and tells her he won’t be long. She tries to watch where he goes, but he disappears between buildings and she can’t see through them, so she has nothing to do except go to the hotel and wash and change and write to her parents, as he’d suggested she do.

She’s still chewing on her pen when he returns, her hair towel-dried and curling around her neck, in his t-shirt and her underwear, and he stops at the doorway to watch her. She’s so caught up in trying to find the words she wants that he doesn’t want to disturb her, but he’s booked them dinner, and she needs to get ready. They didn’t bring anything nice to wear, but that doesn’t matter, he doesn’t think. She’s stunning in everything she wears.

Finally she groans and tosses the pen down, and he takes it as his cue to enter properly.

‘You looked like you were having fun,’ he says, and she grunts, rolls her eyes.

‘I never know what to say to them,’ she says, ‘it used to be so easy, but since I – since the – since the last time I saw them, I never really know what to say.’

‘You should have taken the Bronco,’ he shrugs, ‘and gone to see them.’

She shakes her head.

‘I don’t know how to fly it,’ she admits, and this surprises him; he’d always thought she’d known, considering she’d designed them at fifteen.

But then, he supposes with a shrug as he runs a hand along her head, smoothing her hair as he passes, that didn’t mean she flew them at all.

‘We’re going out for dinner,’ he tells her, and she looks at him, shocked. ‘I did tell you we would be.’

‘But so soon?’ she asks, and touches her hair. She’s never cared about her hair before, but then, he supposes he’s never really taken her out for dinner before.

‘No rush,’ he tells her, ‘you’ve got time to dry your hair.’

‘Is there a dress code?’

He flops back onto the bed, but raises up enough to give her an eyeball. Does she really think he’s going anywhere he needs to wear a suit? The last time he wore a suit, he nearly punched his boss and she lost an expensive pair of shoes. He’s not keen to repeat the experience, even if he doesn’t have a boss to punch. She watches him, waits for him to crack, but he just offers her half a smile and flops back onto the pillows, arm flung over his eyes.

‘You got time,’ he tells her again, ‘no rush.’

She goes into the en-suite and dries her hair nicely, examines her face in the mirror, thinks that her eyebrows will probably do for a few days, and when she emerges from the bathroom, it’s to find the Captain dozing. She’s grown very familiar with the differences in his dozing and his sleeping and his fully-awakes. For a moment, she lingers on the threshold and watches him, the rise and fall of his chest, the soft bob of his knee as he breathes, the plane of his arm, the bunch of muscle. He’s incredible, in ways she’d never thought a man could be.

Quietly, she goes and settles next to him, hands beneath her head, watching him dozing.

 -0-0-0-

 She wakes up to his lips on her shoulder. The sun’s moved, her skin’s warm, and Cid’s fingers are brushing up and down her arm gently.

‘We need to get ready,’ he hums, and his eyes are so very, very blue.

‘Yeah,’ she breathes, and gives a full body stretch and a yawn. ‘Yeah, okay.’

She dresses in her shorts and T-shirt, which is not very nice for dinner, but Cid’s not much better in cargo shorts and a vest that clings entirely too tightly to his shoulders.

‘I didn’t know you owned that,’ she says, gesturing, and he plucks at it.

‘Usually only wear it in winter,’ he says, ‘under my T-shirts, extra layer and that.’

She can feel the heat in her cheeks when she says, ‘it suits you.’

He snorts, and ushers her out.

Dinner is at one of the street-side restaurants on the promenade, quiet even with the people strolling past, taking in the last of the rays on the beach before the tide rolls in. There’s hustle and bustle at the dock, but Cid doesn’t look at it the way she’d expected him to; he’s firmly focused on the menu.

They order, and Cid gets antsy.

‘Are you alright?’ she asks, ‘did I order the wrong thing? I’m – ‘

‘Don’t even fucking say it,’ he tells her, hand cutting the words out of the air before they can leave her mouth. ‘It’s not that, I just – listen, right, listen, I got something I need to say, before you try and eat that fucking pasta and choke to death.’

Her eyebrows climb and she huffs out a breath that could be a laugh, but the desperate look in his eyes tells her it’s not a laughing matter.

‘Okay,’ she says, and reaches across the table to take his hands, but he yanks them back. ‘What is it?’

‘You know that I love you,’ he tells her, plaintive, desperate. ‘You know that, and I want to – I want – you know that I don’t want to lose you.’

‘Yes,’ she says, slowly, and feels her eyebrows draw together.

‘Well, I was thinking that night, after – after Aerith – when we got to Icicle Inn, afterward, everyone was tired. We were so tired, and I was sat there by the fire with Tifa, and Barret was asleep next to her, and she looked so sad, and I told her.’

‘You told her?’

‘That I want to marry you.’

It takes her a moment. At first, she’s not sure she heard him correctly. She almost asks him to repeat it, but the look on his face tells her that she heard him right the first time.

‘Marry?’ she echoes, stupidly.

‘Yes.’

He fusses for a moment, and then jerks to his feet, a box in his hand.

‘I saw this when we were in Costa,’ he says, and shoves it at her. ‘It said it wasn’t perfect, that the apprentice made it, and it wasn’t even really going to be for sale. And I said to myself, that if we survived, and things turned out – you know – okay, between us. That I’d come back and buy it, because it’s not perfect, but it is. If it hadn’t said it, I’d never have known, but I think it really – I hope it fits.’

Shera blinks at him, and then looks at the box he’s still shoving at her.

Tentatively, she takes it, and he touches his hands together for a moment, as if about to wring them, and then shoves them in his pockets. She glances at him, at the box, back at him, back at the box.

Opens it.

‘Cid,’ she says, breathes.

It’s not a fancy ring, but it was never going to be a fancy ring. It’s a little band of gold, and she supposes it was meant to be a string of flowers, but they’re crooked and misshapen and it looks, with the pinpricks of diamonds in the centre, like stars. Like a constellation. For a moment, she stares at it, and then she sees him shuffling in her periphery and she raises her gaze, finds it blurry.

‘Cid,’ she says again, and he touches her hands, drops to both knees, the heathen, tries to read her face, but it’s splotchy and teary and her lip’s wobbling.

‘Is that a yes?’ he asks, and she’s so off-guard, she doesn’t know what to do.

Okay, sure, once she’d designed the aircraft, someone else had put the guns in, but it didn’t change that it was her ship, her design, her engineering.

If she was one to swear, she’d swear up a storm of disbelief at her own ignorance.

So death has been a big part of her life, from her childhood, to her teens, to her adulthood, where her mortality stares her in the face, and one morning she wakes up acutely aware that she’s now older than her sister.

Reine asks her if she’s okay when she goes down to breakfast in the morning.

‘Yeah,’ Shera sighs, sitting at the table as Reine potters about with the kettle and a bag of oats, ‘yeah, I think so. I didn’t sleep too well.’

Reine rests a hand on the girl’s head for a moment, and then chucks her chin and goes to make her a cup of tea. Shera stays sat at the table, fiddling with her fingers and staring at the wall, and flinches when Reine places the mug down in front of her.

She’s still all out of sorts when the Captain comes banging in, door swinging on its hinges and his presence too loud in the still quietness of her contemplation. Reine manages to catch him before his baritone breaks the last vestiges of her composure, and drags him aside. Shera cannot hear what they say, but their whispers are harried, confused, concerned.

‘The fuck does that mean?’ the Captain bursts out, and she can imagine him shaking his head.

His boots thud, thud, thud on the floorboards, and the chair creaks when he throws himself into it.

‘Here, four-eyes,’ he says, and shoves a blueprint at her. ‘Take a look at this, I made some improvements.’

She looks at it, and frowns over the calculations, pulling a pen from her ponytail, where pens just seem to migrate, and picks apart his sums. Reine sets a bowl of oats down in front of them both, and Shera half-heartedly spoons it into her mouth as she scribbles with the other hand.

‘I didn’t think they were that off,’ the Captain says, and Shera shrugs one shoulder.

‘Just checking,’ she replies, and when she’s done, she shoves them back across the table.

One side of the blueprint has shifted little more than a millimetre. It will make all the difference. The Captain examines her version of the sums as he eats his bowl of oats, and hums around a mouthful.

‘Thanks,’ he says, ‘didn’t carry the one.’

She offers him a smile, bleak and without humour, and he frowns at her.

‘What’s eating you?’ he asks, ‘pretty sure you’re meant to eat your breakfast, not the other way around.’

It doesn’t get the reaction he was obviously hoping for. She shrugs. He frowns some more, looks back at his bowl.

‘Listen,’ he says, ‘if you want to go home.’

‘No,’ she interrupts. ‘No, it’s fine. I don’t need to go home. I just. I slept badly.’

He studies her face, and she’d blush, on any other day. He never really looks at her, and on any other day, she’d be fighting the urge to fuss with her hair, her glasses, try to make herself pretty under his scrutiny, to pass some kind of test she can’t identify. She wants to be pretty for him, to get his attention, to be viable. But today is not that day, and she doesn’t care. She’s older than her sister, and no matter what, said sister will never be able to meet any partner she has, anyone she might bring home, or to her house, or whatever. She’ll never be able to get her sister’s opinion. So it doesn’t matter.

The Captain leaves her to it after he’s finished his breakfast, unable to work out what it is that’s wrong, and thereby, how to ignore it until it goes away. Shera herself cannot really tell him what’s wrong, because how do you put the nihilistic realisation that you don’t care for your own mortality into words he’d understand?

Reine tiptoes around her for the rest of the morning, so Shera abandons her tea – which will only cause more concern – and goes to get herself ready for the day.

In a few days, the awareness of her mortality will pass, at least the sharpness of it will dull, and she’ll be herself again. But for now, she wallows in it, she revels in the emptiness it leaves her with, and that is too positive a spin, but she’s trying her hardest. She knows she’s wallowing, but she finds it hard to care, and harder still to change the pattern. The Captain, to his credit, does not pussyfoot about; he’s as loud and as brash as ever, insulting her work and calling her names, and she appreciates that he doesn’t know how to change to make her better, so he just sticks with what he knows and hopes it’s enough.

She’ll die for him, this she knows in that moment, as he looks at her over dinner and judges a poorly timed joke before making it anyway. She’ll die for him, because he has a dream, he has something that he’s found to make him feel alive, and he’s holding on with both hands, and he’s not going to let go of that, and Shera envies it. She envies it, and she knows that he’ll probably die in pursuit of it. If he doesn’t, she will. She’s fine with that. It’s just the way these things are, and she’s okay with it.