DISCLAIMER: Characters/setting/etc not mine liek whoa. Square pwns your souls.
25. Peace
Years of training has me waking up most unceremoniously. One moment I am asleep, and the next, wide awake. There is no transition period where I can lie in bed and collect my thoughts, or try to catch the remaining traces of a fleeting dream.
Today is just another such day, no different from the rest. My eyes open and I look at the ceiling, which is barely visible in the dim light filtering in from the window. I take a deep breath and turn to look at the clock sitting on the small table between our beds; the faintly glowing numbers display an unholy hour of the morning. Tifa shifts slightly but goes on sleeping. I throw back my covers and slip from the room, padding silently down the hall and stairs to the lower level.
I make a little more noise in the kitchen, away from the rest of the sleepers in the house, and smile a little ruefully to the coffee-maker. I try to be considerate of them while they sleep, and at 4:30 AM, I am no happier to be awake than they would be if I were to wake them.
The morning routine is always the same - put on a pot of coffee, putter around the kitchen a little (Tifa likes to leave some dishes soaking overnight; I think she does it just to keep me from showering until a little later, as the pipes are a little clanky first thing in the morning), get the makings of breakfast ready, retrieve the newspaper, and finally sit down with a cup of coffee.
Today is a little different than the rest. As I'm sitting there at the table, the newspaper in front of me and a cup of coffee in one hand, dressed only in my underwear, I suddenly take note of the kids' schoolwork on the table, awaiting two young children to pick it up on their way out the door. Marlene is in our care for Barrett, and I think of Denzel more as the little brother I never had, and I couldn't imagine looking after two otherwise displaced children with anyone except Tifa. She has stuck by me and put up with more of my moodiness and solitary nature and habits than anyone else I can think of. I owe her a lot.
I turn my gaze down at the cup of coffee in my hand, and realize that I still hate the taste of it. I'm the only one who drinks it, and now I don't know why. Probably because Zack loved it, and there were many mornings I spent with him where he simply could not function until he'd had a cup of coffee, and of course I had to drink some too or else it was a waste of perfectly good coffee and company, he used to say.
I hope you're at peace now, Zack, I think to myself, as I do pretty much every day. I like to think that I have found peace as well.
And if peace can be measured in coffee, I have enough to last me a lifetime.