A/N: For prompt #15 – Dream. Young!LxA is awkward in this lovely way.

Augh, while some of this really kills me, it wound up kind of writing itself. And wouldn't let me sleep until it had finished. -.-

4 - Oversight

Listen.

The house is so small; sound carries through the walls at night. Close your eyes and listen—you can hear them dreaming.

Yuffie dreams in fireworks, twisting the bedclothes until they constrict, panic and euphoria exploding behind her eyelids in colors so vivid you hear them ringing in your ears. Cid mutters in his sleep, so unceasingly and with such force at times that you're certain he must be haunted by some face, some name, some voice of which you have only the slightest inkling.

But from the room nearest your own, you find nothing. Not a sound, no matter how much you strain. You hear them all the time, you don't even have to try, but never him. Why?

Minutes pass—but you have no real way of knowing, so they might be less or more—and perplexity sends you sliding out of bed, crawling forward until you can put your ear to the wall. Still nothing—he could be awake, restless and listening, as you are. You never know; you wouldn't put it past him, either. He always stays awake until he's certain no one else is.

For a moment, you want to call out softly, just to ask, just to see, but you don't.

Instead you rise up, all long and slender fifteen years of you, and move out into the hall. Just close your door, open the one on the right—it's unlocked, it always is—enough to slip inside through the crack. And while the pit of your stomach sinks as though to tell you this isn't okay, not really, not anymore, you pay it no attention.

You just need to see him, that's all.

The room is dark, all dark—the curtains have been drawn so that the moon can cast no shadows. A half-second of cold lightning flashes down your spine. You can't even hear him breathe until you draw nearer; he lies so still.

His hair has fallen into his face, dark and unkempt and longer than you remember, and as you lower yourself to the floor by his bedside you cannot but close the gap of mere inches and brush it away. He feels you, he stirs, mumbles something you don't catch…

You're dreaming.

…but doesn't wake. Only his hand reaches forward, closing fast around your wrist with strength a boy his age isn't supposed to have, grips it so hard the knuckles go bloodless. You bite down on your lip to force the sudden cry back down into your chest.

"You…" you hear him whisper. "I…"

"Shh." You lean close and murmur in his ear, but you don't touch him again. You can't. Maybe you shouldn't. "You're dreaming. You're only dreaming."

You linger, frozen, until the hand finally relaxes, dropping from around your arm. Then you slip away across the floor faster than any shadow. You don't leave the door ajar, you don't look back one final time as it closes behind you, because all of a sudden there's something strange burning you up from the inside—something so terrible and captivating that there can be no name for it.

You make it back to the hall before your knees buckle and you sink back down, your arm cradled close to your chest. The ache you feel is something altogether separate—your heart flutters once, wildly, then drops like a stone.

You just wanted to see him. That was all. But then he reached out in his sleep, and the outline of five long fingers tattooed itself in white against the white of your skin.

It almost seemed he'd been dreaming of you.