1979
-irishais-
Galbadia in 1979 is a riotous wonderland, a parade, a protest- get out of Timber, out of Esthar, chanting rhymes for freedom, love, justice down the barrels of Deling City's finest guns. There's a war brewing, conflict under Adel in Esthar.
But that is another country, another continent entirely.
They live in a tiny one-bedroom flat on the lower east end of the city, a warren of apartments housing mostly students from the university, there and back again so often it suddenly becomes home. Edea is lighting candles when he comes in, bearing dinner in the form of a pizza from down the block. All the lights are off, here, and for as far as Cid can see, an entire grid gone out. It had made his travel home precarious, only for the fact that there was a loose chunk of concrete on the front steps of their building, and he'd had to avoid tripping over it by sense of feel alone.
He drops his keys into the pottery-spun bowl by the door, twisting the lock behind him out of habit.
Edea looks ethereal in the glow of the candles, highlighting her angular profile, the hair twisted up in a bun at the top of her head. There's a pencil stuck in there, holding it all up, he knows, or possibly a paintbrush. Her canvas had been streaked with great broad strokes of color, glimmering with the stardust of her magic woven into the paint.
"Was that you?"
"Maybe."
Her smile plays like a secret on her lips; Cid sets the greasy box down on the counter, and she meets him midway, arms around his neck, his hands coming to her hips. She tastes like magic, residual power that slips beneath his skin and welcomes him back.
"I didn't mean to, this time. I may have accidentally overloaded something."
"At least twelve city blocks worth of something," he murmurs against her lips, stealing a further handful of kisses. Cid doesn't think he'll ever grow tired of doing this, of the way she feels wrapped up in his arms. The gift she carries bears a name, sorceress; he isn't frightened by it (in awe of it, maybe), he will never be frightened of her. "You deserve an A on that painting alone, if it inspired that power."
"Whoops," Edea laughs, tangling her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck.
"You're not sorry at all, are you?"
She declines to answer, instead pulling him back toward the counter. He sets her on it, right next to dinner, and they forget about the pizza entirely for a while. It is still good cold around midnight, when they untwine themselves from each other, and the power is back on. They are twenty and twenty-one, in love with life and the world and each other, in this little apartment in the city center.
They have their whole lives ahead of them. An eternity.
xx
"I was thinking about enlisting," she says over breakfast the next morning (late, late, late morning, more brunch.) Her hands are wrapped around the big yellow coffee mug she favors, sunshine bright. "They're looking for researchers with magic specialties."
"Isn't that dangerous, though? You'd be in Esthar-"
"Only for a little bit; I think they're only requiring a six-month commitment. I need to do something, Cid. I can't just sit here and watch- not when I can help. Not when I might be able to offer something that could-"
He reaches across the table, lays his hand on her wrist. Sorceress, they would call her in a voice dripping with venom, the enemy now, if Adel's fury is to be believed. But he has seen Edea hunched in front of the tiny television in their apartment, weeping into her hands- this is not magic, this is not how it's supposed to be-
She wants to prove to the world that sorceresses aren't evil, inherently. That Adel's violence is not the rule.
"If you go, I'll go," he says, when she stops speaking abruptly, words dying in the morning air. It isn't even a question, nor a demand, nor a condition. It is just how it is. If she goes, he follows.
(the red string between them sparks and shines with devotion, with love.)
Edea looks at him hard for a long moment, scrutinizing him like she hadn't expected him to agree so quickly. Cid meets her gaze with his own; he isn't afraid. With her by his side, he is fearless.
"Okay."
He lets go of her wrist, picking up a triangle of toast smeared with blackberry jam. "Okay."
Six months is what they sign up for, six months.
xx
War is hell. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
He does things he would like to forget, sees things he would like to erase from his brain permanently, hears people scream and panic and die around him. Six months, six months, five, four, three, two-
He can only protect Edea so much, and relies on that red string between them more than he would like to admit, feels her confusion, her concern, her fear at the sight of Adel, feels the way blood is drained from her arm, a row of neat tubes set in a rack, sealed and stickered.
There are times where he thinks it might be over, tenuous serenity hanging on the edge of chaos- they are assigned a sterile apartment on the edge of Esthar's city center, and spend almost no time there. When they do, it is eight hours of rack time, a pot of coffee split between them, hasty frantic couplings that could be the last time they see each other. He memorizes her in these moments, the way her arms feel around him, the way her feet press against his calves.
The red string mutates into a rope, a chain, a connection that cannot be unbroken.
They have three weeks left, when a rebellion goes wrong, his gun heavy in his hands, his boots heavy on his feet. The explosion is instantaneous.
He is blown halfway across a city block, and comes to with Edea's face an inch from his, the smell of stardust in his nose, the blue glow of a barrier spell between them and the gunfire. It leaves him with a mess of scars down his left side; he limps with a cane to his honorable discharge.
Cid buys a ring in a vintage store that has survived the war, a beautiful opal in an ornate setting. He proposes to her in the middle of their sparse apartment, and apologizes for not being able to kneel, but-
All they have is now.
xx
She's standing there in a white dress, with flowers in her hair, and all he can do is stare and stare and stare. Her mouth opens, his name slips out but is caught by a breeze, drifts away on the wind.
He remembers himself abruptly, reaching for her hands, slim, long fingers like a pianist's, so deft and gentle. They twine with his; her smile is beatific. So is his. (If they can stay like this forever, in this small ceremony in Esthar at the dawn of peacetime, he would give up everything else for this moment.)
xx
There's a war on, and then there's not. They rejoin society by buying a house in Centra, a beautiful rambling stone-faced home by the sea, hang up crisp uniforms for good. There are children in their lives, an endless procession that start as a pair of fostered twins, brother and sister, wards of the Centran state.
It fills their days, fills their lives.
He sees it in her eyes, one morning when she comes in from walking in the garden, and Cid sets down the newspaper he's been trying to glance through as a passel of kids run rampant through the living room. Seifer throws a stuffed lion at Squall; he directs the boys outside. "What is it?"
"-I." Her mouth opens, shuts again. It comes out in a tumble, a torrent- a boy, a man. One of their children. Squall Leonhart- Garden.
He gets up, crosses the living room in a few strides. Her heart is pounding; her eyes vacillate between green and gold.
"Tell me what you need me to do."
xx
It is 1979; he wraps his arms around her on the verge of sleep, and murmurs I love you into her ear.