on the falling plate

.

Cloud

This is important.

For me, it was seeing it. Believing it. It was reality shouting, as the Sector Seven pillar lit up all around. The gate was open. People were watching, wordless and silent and unmoving. All so pale under the rotting stench of city, the reflecting light, the gunfire.

Shit. Gunfire.

They were watching the fight. Just as we headed towards the gate, something was pushed – hit – it fell. Too long of a fall, slow motion and it hit the ground hard. It – he. He. Wedge, still filled with Tifa's cooking, rolly-polly and – shit –

"Wedge, you alright?" I ran fast and kneeled down next to him. I cared.

Blood coming up, hit hard, hurting. He smiled with missing teeth and a swollen red mouth. "Cloud. You remembered my name. Barret's up top… help him. An' – Cloud. Sorry I wasn' any help."

I couldn't say anything. Didn't. That was worse, I think. He hacked up snot and blood and yawned, and I turned to Aerith instead. She had healing hands. Good Restore materia.

"I'm going up. Aerith – look after Wedge."

Of course I remembered his name.

No more words. Time to go. Tifa went on to move people to different parts of the slums – get out of here, can't protect you, Cloud's a royal screw-up and cares and no, no thinking right now – I went up the tower, trying not to think, trying not to fear what I could find.

The grating was blue, rickety, old and rusting. Smoke up above contributed to the chaos, the havoc. It smelled like contamination, like city, like Shinra and Midgar and everything man wasn't meant to be. No time to think. Keep running.

I found Biggs. He was leaned over against the railing for support and nodded at me, one black eye glued shut with sticky blood and a bad head wound streaking red down his cheek.

"Cloud. So… you don't care what happens to the Planet…"

But he did. He believed in it - too much - believed in it with everything in him, probably. And here he was, paying in blood for it.

Yeah. It happens.

"You're wounded."

He grinned. Stained mouth like Wedge, full out smile like Wedge. He did his part. Did his best. Too young, deserved a rest, wanted a rest. Wanted to keep fighting. He wasn't younger than me, but I had been there. Swollen eye sealed shut, smiling. That's how I remember him, usually, and I wish I didn't.

"…Thanks, Cloud. Don't worry 'bout me. Barret's fighting up there… go help him."

That was what was important. Not him. A person's last thoughts and words say a lot about them, and Biggs was an AVALANCHER from his bone marrows out. Tifa started up the stairs and there was only time for one last salute. Couldn't open my mouth anymore for the life of me. I wasn't good with good-byes. I never had been.

Jessie had to be farther up, and I kept moving to find I was right. One right after another – but they held out. They had more courage than I ever did.

Later - when we would talk about it - the AVALANCHERs that hadn't known them liked to hear stories. Yuffie was too excitable – she liked hearing about the bombings, but she liked hearing about them, too, interested in how Jessie made the bombs, how Biggs could shoot milk out his eye, how they all got involved, in one way or another. Even Vincent. He liked hearing about it, too. I could never pinpoint a favorite with him, but he liked the stories, I think. A collective history. Look at what you missed. Hear it. Can't touch it. We screwed up. That's why.

"Cloud." She was sitting, slumped and awkward, smiling. "Glad I could talk to you one last time."

Her mouth was red, everywhere. Everything stained. I remember that.

But she was always friendly, always collected. Bloody arm, probably gunshot wounds. Bruised cheek, tied-back hair falling, smiling like Wedge and Biggs. They all smiled the same, like they knew something. All of them. Red-stained and they were smiling, dammit. I remember that, and it scared me.

I think I understand now.

"Don't say last," I told her. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to think – well, that was it, right there. I didn't know how to think. Time and experience had me trained to the notion that thinking in an emergency was careless, but I had to say something because I did care. That hurt more than anything else. For all of us - why Barret never eats Cosmo Canyon burritos, why Tifa keeps the sorriest picture of all of them in the best case she could find, why I never talk because they're right here, in my head. It was the feeling that did us in. I remember Tifa angry for the first time in years when Marlene and Denzel knocked the frame over. I heard her crying in her room later because the corner ripped off. It was the feeling that did us in.

"That's alright."

Jessie was still down to earth and, in the end, she was only Jessie, who had brown hair like Aerith, all of it falling out of her snapped rubber band. "Because of our actions… many people died – this… probably… is our punishment," and she was smiling likes Biggs and Wedge.

She nodded upwards, bruised and bleeding. Still smiling. Time to go. Tifa caught up as I neared the top. Don't look back. Couldn't save her.

But I'd remember. Live through us. Live through me.

Story of my life.

I never was very good with goodbyes.

Barret

I didn't see the plate fall.

I couldn't move my damn head, is the real reason, because that was my home. Guess in a way it felt like it was almost mine. Something that didn't really belong to nobody, but I felt like I shared a bit of it. I saw it go bad to worse, I saw it all go to goddamn hell and I didn't see it smash and burn because I didn't want to throw Cloud off of my shoulders, didn't want to twist the rope we were swinging away with and accidentally hit the next pillar. Maybe Tifa saw. Maybe Cloud did. I didn't.

I felt like the biggest coward on the face of the Planet for it.

I couldn't even think. Marlene, my Marlene, my best friend's daughter, my daughter. My little girl. I had always promised to keep her safe for him. For her. Little Marlene Wallace, and my head couldn't really wrap round the idea that ten tons of steel and hate fell down on her head. Pretty little head, hair the color of Dyne's, coppery, real pretty. Just the prettiest bitty girl you'd ever see, you know, my girl. When I first picked her up I was afraid I was too big to hold such a tiny little thing, coulda held her in one palm if I'da wanted. Even then, though, she wasn't afraid of me, my big hands, big voice. Just smile, and she's the kinda girl that radiates a glow 'round her halo. There was the shriek of metal against the ground behind me and I couldn't think like my brain had been pulled out. I could only brace when the rope finally dropped us into an old playground, hard on the earth.

Shit, a playground. Too goddamn cruel.

We landed hard. Maybe the ground woke me up. I stumbled over to the wreckage and my body and my head throbbed like holy fire.

"Marlene – MARLENE! MAR-LE-NE!" What I really remember was metal everywhere, as far as the eye could see. It was steel on fire, and everything was burning. "Biggs! Wedge! Jessie!"

Not my guys. No. Hell no.

"…Dammit! Dammit all to hell!" Not my guys, they were too good for that. They deserved more than that! They were worth more! They were more – they – and Marlene, my little girl, my – she – I punched the metal, hard as I could, but nothing moved. Didn't hear nothing. Only silence. Punched harder, couldn't feel it in my right hand. Never could anymore. Don't remember if I felt it in the left. Right then, a wolf coulda bitten either off and I wouldn't have known unless I saw them on the ground bleedin my life away, and I'da kept on punching.

"What the hell's it all for?"

Hit the metal harder, didn't feel it. Not my baby. Not my guys, not my little girl. Hell no. Hell no.

"Barret, stop. Please stop…"

I fired on it all like it woulda done something. I didn't have any say, and it got to me bad. How does a man react to that? Power sucked outta you like everything that makes you up turned to jelly. My guys were some of the best men I'd known... no, hell, they were some of the best men that sorry city'd ever seen. Never really did nobody any wrong, but they were fighters and they believed what they believed hard and hot. And my little Marlene, the sweetest little thing the world ever had. I'd never thought much about how we'd keep going on, like that. Never had a plan besides just keep doing what we'd been doing to get the world a bit more time, so my little girl could grow up. Tifa says that's my problem, not seein' things on the through-and-through, but it was real hard to look at that when all I had on my mind was how good things were going and how things would go when Marlene was grown up. I was gonna get her some good schooling - she'd be real smart, like her pa. Strong like her ma. Eleanor, she was a tough little lady. Wouldn't hurt a fly if she could help it, but she was a miner's wife. Threat come along, she'd never cry, just smile and hold a steady aim with her shotgun.

Tifa pulled me back away, back to the dead playground. Set me on a moogle slide, old and rusted. Just like the rest of Midgar. Too cruel.

And all I could think was – all that was going through my head was—

I wonder if Marlene woulda liked a moogle doll?

Tifa

I liked to think that maybe we could make a difference.

My involvement in AVALANCHE was because of this, I think. After – after it all – after Nibelheim, I mean… I didn't really know what to do, where to go. Everything was gone to the flames and the pain. Starting over, after something like that? I started bar-tending, training harder, and eventually the thought of opening my own bar was the only thing that kept me going for a while, because it was a concrete, steady goal. When I did end up going to Midgar, when I opened Seventh Heaven and met them all and got to know them and learned about what AVALANCHE wanted, I wanted to help. I wanted to think we could make a difference.

Sometimes I really believed it, you know?

But other times – a lot of times – I didn't believe it at all, and couldn't help but thinking I was still just a little girl for believing anything like it. When we started picking up and pushing for it, though, I believed it. I didn't always agree with our methods, our decisions. I never really did, on the bombings, but it was realizing we were between a rock and a glacier. Shinra didn't care, and they never had, and I went along because we didn't know what else to do. It was desperation, hot and hurting, and we didn't have anything else. Did that make it right? I've always been too close to be able to answer that - to be honestly unafraid of answering that. They were close to me and it was a part of me, no matter how cruel it was.

Through the deafening grinding of the steel, the crashing and the roaring and the snatches of screams, I heard the sound of our hearts breaking.

That's how I remember the plate falling, most days.

Other times, I remember Biggs hand in mine – they were so big, but slender, because I always told him that he should be a pianist, and I promised I'd teach him one day. When I had enough money to buy a piano. There weren't many instruments in the slums, and something as lovely as a piano was nearly impossible to come by, but there was one I had my eye on. It was held up in a storage room in a nearby store, and I had a secret stash, tucked away in the toes of my only pair of dress shoes. I'd match extra money gil for gil in each toe, the left shoe for emergency and the right for myself, and I was going to buy that piano. I was going to teach him, because he had pianist hands. They were sweaty and bleeding, then. I clasped his hand hard and mine came away slick; I tried not to think about it as I kept running, wondering if I was doing the right thing to not drag him down the other way. And all he did – the only thing he did was just smile at me. Like he was sharing a little joke and I wasn't getting it, but he thought it was funny so it was alright.

He said he was sorry, because he'd never see me play piano.

Jessie didn't even say anything, just leaned forward to press her hot cheek to mine for the longest second of my life, and then push me away to keep moving.

I remember their smiles to the sound of my heart cracking.

That's how I remember it. It was hard to talk about, at first, but once in a while, someone would ask. Aerith, Yuffie and I sat in our little room, the three of us, set in bed and Aerith asked who the names that Barret mentioned had belonged to. I told them about how Biggs could shoot milk out of his eye and how it hit Wedge right in the ear, once, and it was such a silly story we all couldn't help but laugh. I think I laughed until I cried, because I remembered Jessie and Marlene banning Biggs from milk ever again and he just picked Marlene up and blew a giant raspberry into her hair and she shrieked and giggled, and then two pairs of arms were holding me and just rocked me, so soft and quiet.

I didn't really realize that Jessie wouldn't trip over the pinball machine again until later, though. I didn't really realize that Wedge wasn't going to just waltz in and smile that big, goofy grin – oh, Wedge, and he would eat anything and said that it was the best in the world, even when I – when I would forget to put in something stupid, like garlic powder or salt – he'd just smile, and they all smiled. They all smiled, so much. I bought a piano for the bar and I didn't really realize until right then that I can't play it because my hands feel so slick and sweaty, like phantom pain, because I would remember Biggs slipping me a tip for a drink I hadn't charged him for anyway with a wink because he knew. And I realized, and I wondered how we could've rushed that. How we couldn't have seen how much we had to lose. In the end, maybe we really were too desperate, and too tired, and too scared.

And that's alright. It's okay. But we needed to move on. It was time to move on.

They were gone, and nothing could hurt us because we had lost so much that we thought we were invincible, but that doesn't make it okay. Moving on should never have been the plate dropping, and it wasn't right and had never been right. It never will be. Biggs, Wedge, Jessie: I'm sorry. I really, really am. I started crying when Cloud told me how much you loved my cooking when we were around the fire for dinner and almost everyone was asleep except for us and Barret and Vincent, and it was Cosmo Canyon and the fact that you weren't there was the loneliest thought of my life.

It still hurts, sometimes. I think it will always be a very tender spot, and I think that it's a good thing. I would be afraid of myself if it wasn't.

It's time to move on.

Fin