Written for Meiko for the FFEX. org exchange (her prompt was Terra/Celes - an awkward first kiss). Thanks to Ovo for betaing this fic.
It was late. Celes didn't know how long she'd been dozing in front of the fireplace, nursing wounds and thoughts, before Terra came to sit beside her. It seemed like Terra had been a flitting presence behind her for the past . . . hours, now, coming and going, telling children to settle, carrying water and shooing the fearful and sleepless back where they belonged, opening and closing doors, getting on with a life that she'd just offered to abandon to return to the fight.
Terra dropped into a nearby chair, without a sigh or an admission of tiredness; perhaps her half-Esper body gave her an ability to endure more than mere humans. Perhaps not; perhaps she was simply used to this life. She reached a hand to Celes's knee, as if to gauge her wakefulness.
Celes stirred at her friend's touch. It could have been a year ago; they could have been at any inn, any campfire in a forest clearing. But here they were in a ramshackle orphanage in a strange and shattered world that Celes had only woken into a short time ago, where she still felt like a complete foreigner. There was a hard lump of nostalgia in her throat from Terra's touch, from the familiarity of sitting beside her, the knowledge that - whatever they needed to say - they'd talk as they always did, and their ongoing conversation would simply be resuming after yet another short interruption; a year gone, the way between them blocked by reshaped lands and seas, these were little things to Terra. Speaking with Terra would never change. There was an eternal part, an Esper-part, to their friendship. Old and unknowable.
From somewhere behind them, she heard the faint sound of a child's footsteps. "Go to bed," Terra called over her shoulder.
Celes detected a hasty retreat.
"You know," she said, "I never realised you were so . . . maternal."
Terra laughed softly. "I don't think I did either." It was her halfness that misled - one would assume a half-human would be as sterile as a mule, but that spoke nothing of the heart or the will. "But there's - some days - a simple joy I've found in this house." Terra folded her hands, looking down at them. The fire was low, but Celes imagined she saw the wear-and-tear of domesticity, the small kitchen-burns and pin-scratches, and purple monster blood stuck in her knuckles. A mother's hands, now drawing away from the hearthside. You could tell someone's story from their hands.
This is what she wanted. This is what she's been doing this last year. A year was a long time; long enough that Celes could maybe say of her, this is what she is.
"And what have you been doing?" asked Terra.
It was, Celes thought, like the awkward re-meeting of two soldiers who'd been on different tours of duty; what rank are you now, what beasts have you killed? The comparing of meaningless honours. What deeds have you done? You bragged of your accomplishments, belittled your wounds.
"I slept," she said. "For a year."
Terra looked concerned. "You must have been very ill."
"Or very tired." That she had slept too long, through all the alarums her mutated body should have heeded, was an unspoken shame, but she could not turn the tide back and awake sooner, any more than anyone could undo what had happened to their world. "And you, you must have been -"
"They needed me," Terra said quickly.
"You needed them," said Celes.
"Yes, yes, I did." The fight had suddenly returned to her words. "I was awake in this broken world and I couldn't find anyone I'd ever known, I couldn't find you, and there was nothing I could do to help me or anyone else. And then I came across this place. Where I could do something to keep this world alive. And they needed me. Do you know what it was like here, last winter?" Celes tried to speak, but couldn't. "No you don't, you were asleep. And it was cold and hard and there wasn't enough to eat every day. But we survived -" The flow of words abruptly stopped. "I . . . I think they can survive without me now. They've learned a lot this last year. We all have."
Except you, Celes. You were asleep.
In the silence that followed, Terra added; "I'm not angry." She looked flushed and hurt and lonely. "You came back when I needed you most. But it's been so hard, and I missed you. I missed everyone."
Where were you when I needed you? That was what Celes heard. She realised that she felt like she was a little girl who'd been playing truant from school, and moreover, that she'd felt like that ever since she'd woken up. She had no place to question Terra's reluctance to fight. For a year, she'd fought nothing but her own half-recalled nightmares; what good have you done?
"I'm sorry," she said. "I know that doesn't change anything. But . . . we fought together today, and we'll leave here tomorrow and we'll keep on fighting, and I promise I won't leave you standing alone again." She felt shame reddening her cheeks, but she was determined in this. She meant what she said. This is what I'll do. This is who I will be.
Terra smiled, and Celes felt her heart catch in her mouth. She'd needed Terra's friendship more than she ever knew. Without it, she'd felt like a cold wind blew at her from all sides; with it, she had shelter. "Okay," said Terra. Rough, warm hands found her own. "Do you think we'll come back here sometime?"
"If you want to." If that is who she is. "I suppose . . ." In some unthinkable afterwards, a world without Kefka or anyone else to fight, a world awakened from ruin, "This is what you want, isn't it? This, or something like it. Children to care for. And a husband -"
Terra looked away awkwardly. "I don't know about that, I - I'm only nineteen - I've never even kissed anyone -"
"There'll be time for that." There's time, always, time to fight, and to sleep, and to come home. "I suppose it's too soon to think of the future." Even if we are to have one. There's time to stop acting the all-knowing, all-worldly soldier. "And I've never kissed anyone either."
"But . . . You've always seemed like you've done everything. You're a general," Terra said, disbelieving.
"Yes." Celes sighed. "And I've never had time to be anything else." That was the story of her hands, harsh things that smelt of Magitek and steel polish and death. She'd never touched anyone lovingly.
There'll be time for that.
"Right now, it's time to fight," she said.
"It's time to sleep."
"I've done enough of that already, don't you think?"
Terra grinned. "I guess you have."
Celes felt warmed by her eyes and her touch, warmed and tentatively forgiven. And awake. Definitely awake. Perhaps Terra's Esper half never slept, and had the strength to rouse those around her. Terra's hands drew back, dry fingertips running along the backs of Celes's hands, then curling down to her palms. Where her touch had been, it left a tingling - infused Magitek rising to seek an Esper, or a friend's need for a friend, or a cold and sleeping beast yearning to get up and run - it was all of these things.
The touch moved up to her wrists, then along the muscles of her forearms. Everyone had stories in their hands and their arms; this one fights, and this one cooks, and this one sews, and this one holds a child. She knew her own were smooth and hard - a story that lacked for mercy. She'd lacked a lot of things.
She had a lot of lost time to make up for. She found herself reaching for her friend's arms, hands clumsy in a way they never were when she held a weapon. She didn't know what she was doing. Terra leaned close, sliding partway off her own chair, pressing their legs together as if she needed more contact - as if magic or gravity demanded it.
Their eyes met from mere inches apart. "Would you kiss me?" asked Terra, soft words running together like water.
Lips had never mattered like hands did. Stories words told were never so real as the things people did with their hands - words couldn't make or ruin a world, couldn't change anything. But this could, if Terra allowed it.
Celes moved her head to close the tiny gap between them, shaping a silent yes, and put her lips to Terra's. She froze there, not knowing what Terra wanted or even what she wanted, barely daring to twitch. She felt hands on her shoulders, and then on the sides of her head, and Terra's mouth opened around her own.
It had been easy for her to not need kisses, to put such things aside. Easy not to miss something when you'd never known what it was. Easy not to need when you'd never had someone to give you what you needed.
She pulled Terra close with stiff, uncertain arms until they were sharing the same seat, legs folded over each other's, Terra's hands tilting her face upward and pressing it close against hers, moving gentle lips against her own, drawing them open. Terra tasted of fresh bread and a faint Ether-aftertaste - and even knowing what she tasted like was something strange and new, a level of human contact Celes hadn't known she'd ever have.
Terra allowed their faces to part by an inch. She looked flushed again. "I'm sorry, I got carried away -"
"No - we both did." Celes felt she had a whole new list of things to need; things for her hands to do.