Tseng knows better than anyone that their situation is only temporary, this existence of inverted day and night, night and day. Tseng is used to living to the count of miliseconds, sleeping in the time it takes normal people to blink, skipping between continents as effortlessly as skipping rope, shuffling though decks of fake identification and leaving no trail, paper or human, behind him.
Be that as it may… Tseng had always been alone.
But Aerith is nothing if not determined, is she?
For now, they are in Icicle; Tseng cannot say for how long they will stay. Aerith lights candles to plant in the snow over her father’s grave - red and orange like Reno’s ridiculous hair dye of choice, and Tseng’s hand twitches unconsciously over the concealed bulk of his gun even as he smiles in fondness. When, he thinks, not if. Shinra’s bloodhounds never lose the scent - Tseng himself had made sure of that.
Aerith stands, brushes herself off and turns around. The snow makes a halo around the crown of her head and blurs the spaces between her lashes. There are minute crystals of ice on her lips when she kisses him, and in that moment - in all such moments - the doubts melt from his mind.
Tomorrow - or perhaps the day after - they will pack their meagre belongings and be one step ahead again.
Yes, he would think, I’d like to die now. Please.
In the twilight between wakefulness and drugged unconsciousness, the fantasy of suicide could consume him safely where he is too weak to act. His room, sometimes. Out field, sometimes, in between missions when the promise of death is as abstract as the promise of sleeping soundly. The closest to peace he had ever experiened was at the site of her water burial, physical wounds carved deep and numerous enough on him to have become inconsequential save in the way they acted as channels for mental pains.
He imagines the way the lake must have folded around her, like hands.
Yes, how he wants to give up this life. When dreams begin nipping at the barrier of his defences, the gravity of this guilty secret becomes almost ludicrously light. At a depth greater than all his repressed desires, she indulges the appetites of a score of bottom feeders, the blood unable to clot long since drained from her body. On the right dose of the right substance, he can swim through that cloud of sacred blood as it disperses, discolouring the clear water a murky pink.
They share the same scar, he knows. A sliver of silver, a shaft of light.
They would share the same fate, if he could only make it so. Yes, how he wishes for release. Her waterlogged corpse, his bloated carcass, drifting into the blue-black of an infinite slumber, flesh peeling from them, a chorus of fish stripping them to the soul. No more agendas. No more secrets, his bones bared to the judgement of eternity entwined within hers. No more fear and self-fed lies, just the water serenading forever, her skeleton arms around him, his skull locked against hers.
Yes, he would think, I’d like to join her now. Please. And the weight of his gun doubles every time he visits her resting place, until the heaviness forces him to take it out, and look - just look - consciousness crying cowardice in his ears until he steps back from the water’s edge.
One day, perhaps, even thoug his prayers are faithless. One day, they will be together again…
snowghoul
kaledo-art
germansingergirl
