#ff7 x

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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The world is quiet after the storm—so quiet that I can’t help but wonder if what just happened made me deaf. The air is heavy with rain that hasn’t yet fallen, not from the skies, but from our eyes. Cloud and I stand in a small grove outside of the Forgotten Capital, staring down at the crude markers lining the ground, marking where our friends now rest. Cloud sits in front of them, his buster sword stuck in the dirt beside him. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t cry—just an empty husk of a person staring down at his fallen friends, trying to ascertain whether this is just some nightmare he'll eventually wake up from. I stand a few feet behind him, my arms slack at my sides as I stare down at the fresh mounds with a jaw so tight it could crack.

I watch Cloud’s back, watching the way his head moves as he glances back and forth between the mounds, murmuring to himself as though he still had someone to talk to. Or maybe he’s doing some bullshit like praying—I don't know. Lot of good that’d do. I scoff quietly, the sound sharp as it cuts through the silence. The peace of this grove bothers me. This place is quiet, still, and I want to burn it all to the ground.

He twists his head around, fixing me with a cold, unyielding gaze. “What?” He manages.

“Nothing.” I answer, pressing my lips into a line as I look down at him.

His eyebrows knit together. “If you have something to say, then say it.” He demands, narrowing his gaze at me—subconsciously fiddling with the empty materia Aerith gave him in one hand.

I step forward, my voice breaking with anger as I breathe. “Stop it. Stop talking to them like they’re sitting right in front of you. Stop making this look noble, ceremonious, or okay.”

My words bring him pause, and he hardens his gaze at me—somehow growing colder. “.. What the hell is that supposed to mean?” 

“You. Sitting there like some tragic hero.” My hands form fists at my sides. “You killed them just as much as Sephiroth did.” I growl, the look on my face betraying a seething rage—an unending resentment.

Cloud slowly stands up from the ground, his own hands curling into fists—and the sound of leather crunching fills the air. “You think I wanted this? You think I—”

“You led us here. You gave the orders—and now they’re dead.” I interrupt tersely, shakily— as though it throwing it into the air makes it feel impossibly more real than it did before.

He bristles at my nerve and the absence of tact or sensitivity in me, and his voice grows dangerously low. “You followed them without question. You agreed with me when it was easy for you. Now everything's my fault? From where I’m standing, it’s just as easy to blame you.”

“The only thing I’m to blame for—” I step closer again, my gaze burning into him, my voice a dagger sheathed in silk and venom. “Is trusting you.”

A muscle ticks in his jaw. “Watch it.” He warns, seeming just as grief-stricken as I am—neither of us knows the right thing to say now, the right thing to do. Neither of us cried when burying them, neither of us said a word; but now that we’re talking, only resentment leaves us—like the only thing we know how to do is point fingers at each other. The air between us feels thick with the kind of tension that makes you feel like you’d stop breathing.

“I’d trade places with any one of them in a heartbeat if it meant I wouldn’t have to stand here and look at the man who all but sent them to their deaths.” I snarl, my face twisting as I fight the urge to finally cry, to scream, to hit him. “You.. you killed them, Cloud..!” I grit out, placing my palms on his chest and shoving him back as my chest heaves.

“Juna, stop—” He stumbles back when I shove him, but he doesn’t fight back.

“Aerith will never grow another flower again, Tifa will never make another drink, Marlene will never see her dad again, Nanaki will never become a Watcher of the Vale, and Yuffie will never go back to Wutai—” I continue shoving him spitefully, my voice rising and breaking with every word until he’s had enough.

He roughly grabs both my wrists before I can shove him again, and he looks down at me with such a complicated and angry gaze. The wind picks up, and it feels like Aerith telling us to stop fighting. But I don’t want to stop—he’s the only one I can blame anymore. The man who physically stopped their hearts is dead and gone, and I’m left with the one who led us there.

“Stop.” He says gruffly, but I can hear the desperation in his voice. It pleases some twisted part of me that wants him to feel desperate for a forgiveness he’ll never get. One I swear I’ll never give him.

“I wish it had been you. Or me. I wish there had been any other outcome different from the one where I’m left with you.” Sobs leave me; quiet, broken, and empty sobs. I try to rip my wrists from his grasp but he holds firm. Every word that leaves my lips tastes like a grudge I don't know how to swallow.

He leans down dangerously close to me with the same anger and hatred burning in his eyes that does in mine—squeezing my wrists tighter. He's hurting me—and I wonder if he knows it. “How funny. I was just thinking the same about you.” He says lowly, his voice scarily controlled.

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