Ficlet Round-up
Username: mako_lies
Class: White Mage
Total Word Count: 1,307
Ratings: Nothing higher than PG-13
Tifa, tenacious
That first year, she dreams of Nibelheim every night. Fire flickers at the edge of her vision even when she wakes, and Midgar smells sharp enough of smog that she mistakes it for smoke.
Her father’s face returns whenever she shuts her eyes and she wants to go home, would go home in a second, except she can’t - has no money, no prospects and Midgar is all about money and prospects.
Working a few hours a night at a bar and a few hours during the day at a store gets her barely enough to afford a cheap place to live, not anything close to a means back to Nibelheim.
Tifa spends a lot of time looking up, at the grey metal plate, looking up at where a sky should be, and remembers asking a group of children (we’ve never saw the sky, lady), remembers losing her gil pouch and not quite caring; if they needed it so badly, they could have it. There was nothing else she could do for them, anyway.
It happens slowly, not overnight, but the dreams fade, to the lackluster grey and brown of Midgar, and that scares her more than her nightmares.
Tifa grimaces, sitting up from her cot, because it feels like surrender, loss of herself and her roots, and they say in Midgar, laughter grating like crow voices, “Ain’t no such thing as home in Midgar, even if you did have one.”
And, well, she’s never been one to back down when they say she can’t do something. But how do you make a home?
Really, it all starts there. The dream of a place for her, something to care for and own in this dead city filled with ghosts and broken dreams. And maybe her dreams broke - burned - in that fire that destroyed her city and her future and her past, but looking at a metal plate in a dying city teaches people to dream right quick, because there is nothing else.
Dreams make it more bearable, and, somehow, a bar becomes her dream, with gleaming counters and clean glasses, and that sharp smell of alcohol that can even mask the smog.
And like hell anything will stop her from getting what she wants.
Sazh and Lightning, relaxation (post-game AU)
Sometimes, it feels so easy, so real. Hope’ll be off at school, the only burden on his shoulders a backpack and Snow will be building a house for a new family and Sazh will be working with Maqui on some new gizmo and Lightning will be defending people from the various monsters on Gran Pulse.
People are scared but better than being crystal.
Emotion coils in her chest, makes her falter, and coffee spills onto the counter. She hears the footsteps, but doesn't register them until Sazh clasps her shoulder, skin too hot but not as hot as she remembers. When she puts the coffee pot down, her hands shake and she fumbles, opens a drawer, and pulls out a rag to mop up the mess, but Sazh relieves her of it, wipes the counter down.
(She almost resents him the task, but it’s not like he has a kid’s messes to clean up anymore, and oh - can’t think of that.)
With steady hands, he presses her coffee mug into her hands, and she takes a sharp sip, almost chokes on the heat but doesn’t, and he smiles and she pretends she can’t see the deep lines around his eyes.
It’s easier that way.
Maybe she was never one to do things the easy way, but, sometimes, she can’t take all the pain, and losing Serah was pain enough for a lifetime, and she shuts her eyes, tight, like she can shut them and wake up back in Bodhum, before the L’Cie crisis, before Cocoon fell, before Serah and Dajh were shattered (couldn’t do anything, couldn’t save them, and it wasn’t smoke and mirrors, was it?) except she doesn’t, and when she opens her eyes, all she sees is Sazh.
He takes her back to the living room, and they sit on the couch; he talks about flying and what him and Maqui are building, and she listens, because she can almost believe everything’s going to be okay.
And that’s enough.
Aeris and Tseng, growth
When she is five, she likes the feel of his hand in hers. She likes the way the killer’s callus feels against her dirty, slum-slicked hands, likes the way his nails are so clean and nice. His grip is soft, gentle, and she can’t imagine him ever using a gun on someone.
Pretty, she calls him, strokes his hand like it’s important, and she never notices the way he swallows and chokes on her deduction.
When she is nine, she likes to look up at the plate and pretend she sees clouds. Her head rests on the flat expanse of his stomach, and it calms her to hear the slow-fast-slow beat of his heart; her head moves with each jagged-sharp breath he takes.
Some days, he combs fingers through her hair and asks her what she sees in a tone entirely too sentimental for a Turk.
And Aeris smiles, and says, “I see flowers.”
When she is eleven, she likes wearing his jacket. She sits in her church, knees pulled to her chest, arms wrapped ‘round her legs, coat draped over her shoulders.
It is a simple matter to pretend he doesn’t watch her wear his jacket with distaste. Oh, she knows. It’s a symbol of his status as assassin, but it smells like him, and she asks him what it feels like to be alive. Tseng meets her eyes, and he blinks for a time, surprise the sudden twitch of fingers. “I don’t know,” he says, and rue is a blooming smile at her mouth.
“Of course not.”
His retreat is hindered only by his hasty grab of his jacket.
She lets him go.
When she is fifteen, she likes the way his fingertips feel against her cheekbones.
Tseng touches her face like she would tell him to stop, and she just smiles when he pulls his hand back, like he’s been burned. They’re watching the plate again, though she’s past pretending to see clouds, and he returns his hands to her hair.
It earns him a giggle, and she feels his breath catch in his chest. She shifts her head, to look at him, thinks about kissing him for a moment, then looks back up at the plate.
When she is eighteen, she likes the way his lips feel. Her fingers run over the shape of them, and he shivers under her touch, eyes shut at the sensation a know-nothing slum-rat gives him, and she allows herself a smile.
Without thinking about it first, she presses her mouth against his, and pulls back a second later, giggling at the way his eyes snap open.
“Aeris,” he says her name, sharp, hard, and she returns her fingers to his mouth.
When she is twenty, she does not like him. Friendship and attraction are nothing to a Turk, and she looks back at her childhood with him and feels sick.
Trust - he’d wanted her to trust him - is so easily broken, and she looks at the melted-warped handcuffs at her feet, and winces to know that, for her victory, he’d still run off with her Fire Materia and not nearly enough burns.
She knows better now, she thinks, lifts the melted still-warm metal, and thinks maybe she’ll have them made into bracelets using the gil she'd lifted off him.
All's fair, right?
Class: White Mage
Total Word Count: 1,307
Ratings: Nothing higher than PG-13
Tifa, tenacious
That first year, she dreams of Nibelheim every night. Fire flickers at the edge of her vision even when she wakes, and Midgar smells sharp enough of smog that she mistakes it for smoke.
Her father’s face returns whenever she shuts her eyes and she wants to go home, would go home in a second, except she can’t - has no money, no prospects and Midgar is all about money and prospects.
Working a few hours a night at a bar and a few hours during the day at a store gets her barely enough to afford a cheap place to live, not anything close to a means back to Nibelheim.
Tifa spends a lot of time looking up, at the grey metal plate, looking up at where a sky should be, and remembers asking a group of children (we’ve never saw the sky, lady), remembers losing her gil pouch and not quite caring; if they needed it so badly, they could have it. There was nothing else she could do for them, anyway.
It happens slowly, not overnight, but the dreams fade, to the lackluster grey and brown of Midgar, and that scares her more than her nightmares.
Tifa grimaces, sitting up from her cot, because it feels like surrender, loss of herself and her roots, and they say in Midgar, laughter grating like crow voices, “Ain’t no such thing as home in Midgar, even if you did have one.”
And, well, she’s never been one to back down when they say she can’t do something. But how do you make a home?
Really, it all starts there. The dream of a place for her, something to care for and own in this dead city filled with ghosts and broken dreams. And maybe her dreams broke - burned - in that fire that destroyed her city and her future and her past, but looking at a metal plate in a dying city teaches people to dream right quick, because there is nothing else.
Dreams make it more bearable, and, somehow, a bar becomes her dream, with gleaming counters and clean glasses, and that sharp smell of alcohol that can even mask the smog.
And like hell anything will stop her from getting what she wants.
Sazh and Lightning, relaxation (post-game AU)
Sometimes, it feels so easy, so real. Hope’ll be off at school, the only burden on his shoulders a backpack and Snow will be building a house for a new family and Sazh will be working with Maqui on some new gizmo and Lightning will be defending people from the various monsters on Gran Pulse.
People are scared but better than being crystal.
Emotion coils in her chest, makes her falter, and coffee spills onto the counter. She hears the footsteps, but doesn't register them until Sazh clasps her shoulder, skin too hot but not as hot as she remembers. When she puts the coffee pot down, her hands shake and she fumbles, opens a drawer, and pulls out a rag to mop up the mess, but Sazh relieves her of it, wipes the counter down.
(She almost resents him the task, but it’s not like he has a kid’s messes to clean up anymore, and oh - can’t think of that.)
With steady hands, he presses her coffee mug into her hands, and she takes a sharp sip, almost chokes on the heat but doesn’t, and he smiles and she pretends she can’t see the deep lines around his eyes.
It’s easier that way.
Maybe she was never one to do things the easy way, but, sometimes, she can’t take all the pain, and losing Serah was pain enough for a lifetime, and she shuts her eyes, tight, like she can shut them and wake up back in Bodhum, before the L’Cie crisis, before Cocoon fell, before Serah and Dajh were shattered (couldn’t do anything, couldn’t save them, and it wasn’t smoke and mirrors, was it?) except she doesn’t, and when she opens her eyes, all she sees is Sazh.
He takes her back to the living room, and they sit on the couch; he talks about flying and what him and Maqui are building, and she listens, because she can almost believe everything’s going to be okay.
And that’s enough.
Aeris and Tseng, growth
When she is five, she likes the feel of his hand in hers. She likes the way the killer’s callus feels against her dirty, slum-slicked hands, likes the way his nails are so clean and nice. His grip is soft, gentle, and she can’t imagine him ever using a gun on someone.
Pretty, she calls him, strokes his hand like it’s important, and she never notices the way he swallows and chokes on her deduction.
When she is nine, she likes to look up at the plate and pretend she sees clouds. Her head rests on the flat expanse of his stomach, and it calms her to hear the slow-fast-slow beat of his heart; her head moves with each jagged-sharp breath he takes.
Some days, he combs fingers through her hair and asks her what she sees in a tone entirely too sentimental for a Turk.
And Aeris smiles, and says, “I see flowers.”
When she is eleven, she likes wearing his jacket. She sits in her church, knees pulled to her chest, arms wrapped ‘round her legs, coat draped over her shoulders.
It is a simple matter to pretend he doesn’t watch her wear his jacket with distaste. Oh, she knows. It’s a symbol of his status as assassin, but it smells like him, and she asks him what it feels like to be alive. Tseng meets her eyes, and he blinks for a time, surprise the sudden twitch of fingers. “I don’t know,” he says, and rue is a blooming smile at her mouth.
“Of course not.”
His retreat is hindered only by his hasty grab of his jacket.
She lets him go.
When she is fifteen, she likes the way his fingertips feel against her cheekbones.
Tseng touches her face like she would tell him to stop, and she just smiles when he pulls his hand back, like he’s been burned. They’re watching the plate again, though she’s past pretending to see clouds, and he returns his hands to her hair.
It earns him a giggle, and she feels his breath catch in his chest. She shifts her head, to look at him, thinks about kissing him for a moment, then looks back up at the plate.
When she is eighteen, she likes the way his lips feel. Her fingers run over the shape of them, and he shivers under her touch, eyes shut at the sensation a know-nothing slum-rat gives him, and she allows herself a smile.
Without thinking about it first, she presses her mouth against his, and pulls back a second later, giggling at the way his eyes snap open.
“Aeris,” he says her name, sharp, hard, and she returns her fingers to his mouth.
When she is twenty, she does not like him. Friendship and attraction are nothing to a Turk, and she looks back at her childhood with him and feels sick.
Trust - he’d wanted her to trust him - is so easily broken, and she looks at the melted-warped handcuffs at her feet, and winces to know that, for her victory, he’d still run off with her Fire Materia and not nearly enough burns.
She knows better now, she thinks, lifts the melted still-warm metal, and thinks maybe she’ll have them made into bracelets using the gil she'd lifted off him.
All's fair, right?