Title: Something
Disclaimer: I'm not producing this to make a profit, it's simply for fun and this is only so people won't ream me for not putting one (You know who you are)
Summary: It wasn't that I enjoyed cheating on my wife. It was that she had something that I simply couldn't get enough of. I still haven't figured out what.
Dedication: To my iPod for letting me use it's 'Notes' app to write this when I didn't have computer access and my best friend Sune, who thinks I like my OC way too much.

There was something about the time I met her that changed everything I believed in. She was different. Puny, with short layered hair and bright green eyes.

She was eccentric, enthusiastic and sometimes annoying. But, I guess it's what was so attractive about her in the first place.

I met her at a bar in downtown. It was the first time I had ever been to a bar in the first place.-I wasn't legal till that day anyway- She was working there as a barmaid, and supplied my already drunk friends with more drinks upon request.

Though it was my first drinking experience and normal twenty one year olds would be all over the alcohol, I really wasn't in to it. Sure, I was drinking for the heck of it, but I definitely wasn't feeling as buzzed as my friends. She seemed to notice.

"Aren't you supposed to be as drunk as them?" She asked with a bright smile. I only grunted in response and she giggled lightly.

"I heard it's your birthday so, your drinks are on the house. But, those guys have to pay considering they've had a few too many and we have to make a profit some how." Her smile widened, "happy birthday." And just like that she slipped me the bill and left.

After that night I continued to visit that same little bar in downtown. After all, its' maid had left quite the impression on me.

Her name was Ariadne and she was only working there to pay off some student loans. She was older than me by two years, making her twenty three.

We talked a lot, even going as far as exchanging numbers to keep in touch. She was at school during the day, planning on becoming a chef, and at night she worked as a barmaid.

I only saw her on nights when she wasn't busy. Making our conversations short when I needed to rest before going back to work in the mornings. I always wondered how she did it. Going to Culinary School in the day and then working late on week nights. But, I remembered her saying that you can accomplish anything with a little hard work.

I was only a mechanic making minimum wage and she was following her dreams. But, one night everything changed between us.

I can still remember her soft touches and burning kisses. They made the adrenaline in my system pump faster making me hungry for more.

It was an accident, us sleeping together, but it felt so right. With her laying underneath me smiling that bright smile she had always saved for me, I felt at peace. Like all my financial issues and family problems disappeared. But, everything has a consequence and when we were making love, we never thought about what could happen.

She called me one winter night with sobs echoing through the phone. She apologized endlessly before I finally got what she was sorry about out of her. She was pregnant. About two months along she said and I felt my world coming down on me, again.

It was my fault she was pregnant anyways. Both figuratively and literally. I had ruined her dreams just like I had ruined my own.

I felt sick whenever I was helping her move her stuff into my apartment. We weren't even seeing each other and we were going to have a child together. It suddenly felt all wrong.

Ariadne wasn't one to share her sadness with others. So, while the months progressed slowly it became harder and harder to tell where the fake Ariadne ended and where the real one began. I tried my best to make her happy. Even going as far as putting a ring on her finger, because she didn't believe in raising a child out of wedlock. That was about the hardest thing I had ever done.

I didn't believe in marriage. I never had, thanks to what happened to my own parents' marriage. Leading me to conclude that all marriages end badly. But, I would do anything to get the old Ariadne back. The one that I had met in the bar on my birthday.

When our baby boy was born she was diagnosed with post partum depression and hadn't wanted anything to do with our son or me.

His name was Avery, Avery Cloud Strife, after my father. And he was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

He made me clean up my act. Made me get a second job so that I could give him anything and everything he ever wanted and needed. But, what he really needed was a mother and his wasn't around.

Ariadne had left one night to go to a job interview she had told me, but when the hours passed and she hadn't showed up, I realized she was never coming back. Our fling was over and she had left me to take care of our new born son.

After all the changes she went through in those few months of our marriage and weeks of Avery's birth, good or bad, she made me realize something. She helped me find out who I was.

I wasn't the man who had given up his dreams because of a few meager family problems. I wasn't the type to play things by ear. I always planned ahead and I never gave up on things I believed in.

So, when I'm in my old age and surrounded by my family with the woman I now called my wife. I would always thank the barmaid that I had met on my twenty first birthday party for giving me everything I needed to figure just where I was in life.

I never heard from Ariadne through out the years and I always wondered what had happened to her. Did she get married and have a family with a man she had actually loved? Did she ever think about Avery or me? But, those questions were to be left unanswered for the rest of my life until they slowly faded away. I never wondered anymore if she was still alive or whether she left to follow her dreams and became a famous chef somewhere.

But, they all came rushing back one night on Avery's tenth birthday. I had taken him an the rest of the family to the new restaurant that had recently opened. That's where I saw her again. And all the memories hit me like a punch to the gut. She hadn't noticed me at first but when she turned around and stared right at me, I noticed the tears that began to well up in her eyes.

She owned the restaurant I came to find out. She went back to Culinary School in another state when she left graduation shortly after. She wasn't married and still had the Strife name. But, what I was surprised to find out was that she regretted everything. Regretted leaving me and Avery and she admitted that it was the biggest mistake of her life. Because, even though she hadn't known me for very long before we were thrust into a relationship we never planned on having, she said she loved us. So, I started taking Avery to visit her every weekend. That turned out to be the second worst mistake in my life.

I had thought when she had came back that everything we had between us was over. That neither one of us had harbored feelings for the other any linger. But, how wrong was I.

With her, everything was accident prone, and I couldn't help myself. I had fallen for her charm and her wit just like I had before. There was just something about that night that I couldn't think straight. I couldn't make up whether I wanted her or if I had wanted Aqua, my wife.

We were only talking about how Avery's school was going when she had said somethings that seemed to put me over the edge. Her touch burned my skin and I thought back to the night we had unknowingly conceived our son.

I thought back to how it felt to long for something that wasn't yours and then things got out of control.

Without thinking I had pushed her up against the wall, moving her deep brown hair behind her ears before claiming her lips with my own. We continued till we found ourselves in her bedroom inside her two bedroom apartment. She smiled that smile, the smile that only she could muster and that's when I had lost my sensibility. We made love that night and I, sickeningly, never regretted it. I had cheated on the love of my life-or so I had thought-just as my father had with my mother. I was just like him now. The man who unintentionally taught me that all marriages end badly.

I had never told Aqua what I had done, or what I'm still doing. I don't want to lose her, even though I didn't deserve her or our kids.

But, there was something about Ariadne that I couldn't explain that kept me longing for more, needing more. I was a sick man, I knew that, but for some reason I learned to live with myself. And, I grew old with two families instead of one.

But, as I'm looking back on my life now, in my conscious state of mind, after living eighty five years. I wonder why I did it. Why I hadn't chosen one or the other. And, what that something was that kept me wanting more of that little pixie I had met in a bar one fateful night.