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Kurogane7: An excellent question. That remains to be seeen…thanks for the review! JukedSolid: I'm glad you liked, my audience-face-ramming isn't for everyone—you flatter me! Galneryus: Your reviews were so excellent and really kind! Thank you! run4life: I'm sorry I scared you—but I'm glad it worked. I love liberating rants! And yeah, Shinra's too smart. Neko Hoshi: Indeed, who knew all we had to do was throw him off a cliff to make him get a clue. vLuna: PRECISELY! You just put it in a nutshell, my dear. Darkhorse666: I know, darling, I'm just that good. cloudlover2989: It won't end for a while—but I apologize for taking so long about this update! kerapal bubbles: Bhah! Rufus could use a punch or two, probably—and thank you for sparing me the pitchforks. kitty materia princess: CPR! Someone perform CPR! TifaXCloud: Aww, thank you! You're so nice! Here, have some fluff. Ohsnapples: I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to take so long to update! Anonymous Banana: I'm glad you like my epic. And I'm sorry for scaring you. ken08002: Bhah. Hooray! Thanks for the review. Alpine-Dragon-Queen: Thanks for joining in, I'm glad you like the story! SorrowsFlower: My dear, you are a goddess. Your review blew my mind in sixteen different directions. I intend to go back and address all of your glorious points in a PM and THANK YOU for reviewing despite FFnet being a brat. You, my dear, rock.

WELCOME TO FAIR HELP CENTER

Chapter Thirty-Six: Time

There were no words spoken in that room.

There was a soft, bone-deep sort of relief in the way she clung to his fingers, one of the few parts of him not wrapped in clean white bandaging and plaster. There was a delicate sort of wonder in the way those fingers ghosted over her cheeks, the ends of her hair, the lids of her eyes. There was a tender kind of hope in the way they looked at each other, like children born anew and old ones who had seen too much; amazed and familiar, curious and knowing. The air in the room tasted of want fulfilled, hunger sated, thirst slaked, and a need that was no longer desperate, a desire no longer frantic, because there was no need to rush, take all the time you need, and they had all the time in the world.

Her smile was tender and his was wondrous and somewhere between them, time had stopped.

No need to rush.

They had all the time in the world.

Together.

…

Waking up was the hardest thing he had ever done.

He would remember that he had dreamed.

He had dreamed an eternity.

And all through the dreaming, tiny fingers curled through his kept him in place.

He would remember that he woke because they were gone.

"Yuffie," he slurred, sitting up blindly. Then there were hands—large hands, a man's hands—on his shoulders, gently keeping him down. Through the dense fog curled around his senses, he recognized the deep baritone of Reeve's voice.

"Easy now, Mr. Valentine, easy. You shouldn't be moving yet, sir. It's best if you go back to sleep."

"Yuffie," Vincent mumbled, the word emerging garbled and halfway unintelligible. "Where is Yuffie?"

"She's right here, Mr. Valentine. She's perfectly fine. Both of your surgeries were a complete success."

The long-awaited words, couched deep in Reeve's lowest, most gentle tone, soothed Vincent to calm for a moment, time enough for heavy, thick sleep to rise around him again. He shoved petulantly against the folds of unconsciousness, struggling to retain awareness enough to speak, huffing his frustration when words turned to mush on heavy tongue.

"What was that, Mr. Valentine?"

He lifted his right arm—his veins as weighty as lead, the limb dead and heavy, taking all his effort just to shift. Grasping pointlessly in the air, he moved his fingers helplessly and forced his mouth to form a single word:

"Hand."

And, as if that word had taken all his strength with it, he arm collapsed back to his side, blackness welling up around him, pulling him towards sleep once again. And panic rose in him with the exhaustion, the fear of being dragged alone in that that darkness; the fear of falling, unprotected, no safety net to catch him and no line to take hold of. The abyss was there to claim him, and he had no light of his own to break free of its darkness.

Then he heard the far-off rumble of thunder that was Reeve's chuckle, felt his lead arm lifted and his wrist turned and felt the perfect delicate weight of small fingers settling into his palm.

And when Vincent fell asleep, it was with the slightest of satisfied smirks tweaking at his lips, and his fingers curled tightly around Yuffie's.

…

"…Um…"

"You're not supposed to be talking."

"I know, you did say that, but…"

"Yes?"'

"It's just…well…why am I doing this?"

Shinra sighed, drumming his fingers against his arm impatiently, and glared frostily at Aerith. She shrugged sheepishly, and he shook his head in disappointment.

"Miss Gainsborough, I seem to recall you agreeing to follow my instructions unconditionally as long as I helped you." He reminded her tersely.

She shifted uncomfortably on the rocky ground, fingers toying with the end of her braid. "I did, yes, it's just…I just don't see how sitting at the bottom of a mining shaft in a cave in a mountain in the middle of nowhere is going to help anything at all."

Shinra artfully arched a single eyebrow at her outburst. "If you'd prefer we speed up the process, I could trying throwing you down from the top, like I did to Strife. Of course, I can't guarantee your survival of such an endeavor…" When Aerith gave him a cold look in response, Shinra slumped wearily against the rock wall of the shaft. "Listen, Miss Gainsborough. If this process is going to work at all, I am going to require your absolute faith. Not everything will make sense to you, but I need you to trust me, and believe that my intentions will all become clear in the end."

Their eyes met through the darkness, lit only by a single electric lantern he had brought to the bottom of the shaft. Steel blue and bottomless emerald, she could almost taste the sincerity in him, for all that his voice was flat and toneless, his eyes empty and flat and without a spark of emotion.

She swallowed and whispered a final, tiny thought: "I just don't see why Zack couldn't be here."

His resulting snort was bitter and black, humorless. "Because," Shinra snapped, rising from his seat against the wall, "What we are doing here needs time, and copious amounts of silence. Your darling Fair can't keep his mouth shut for more than five minutes without exploding."

Aerith chuckled quietly, not even bothering to deny it. Zack would have admitted as much himself.

"Now quiet," Shinra purred, voice deepening and softening, his tone shifting until the words were hummed out of his chest, vibrating inside her ears, low and thrumming and soft. He paced up behind her, fingertips passing delicately over her eyelids, carefully urging them shut. "Close your eyes," he whispered, the hum of his voice filling the darkness of the mining shaft. "And listen. Not just with these ears," his hands slipped back to cover the shells of her ears. "But with the ones here, as well." He pressed softly against her temples, humming a wordless deterrent to her questioning noise. "Just breathe…and listen…" he ordered softly, and then his hands fell away from her, and Aerith was alone in the dark.

Her immediate, instinctive reaction was panic. Little light as the lantern had given, light is had been, and now she was robbed of the sense she relied upon most. The logical, human reaction was fear, an instantaneous fight-or-flight response to whatever horrors lurked in the dark.

But this blackness concealed only Shinra, silent and still as always, steel and dangerous and expecting her to follow his command.

So she refused to open her eyes, refused to disobey instruction that was intended only to help her; she believed that.

The panic came and went, and the darkness, the stillness, the silence remained.

Then she began to hear.

First was the rattle of her own breath, drawn unsteadily, scraping through her throat and into her chest, gasping quietly in her lungs.

Then came Shinra's breath, deep and low and steady, full and without impediment, without stress or excitement.

For a span of time that she would never know the length of, she sat in the dark and listened to them breathe.

And then she heard her own heartbeat.

A fast-paced beat of a drum, pounding against the inside of her ribcage and lungs; steady, swift; lub-dup.

Then there was Shinra's—out of time with her own, much slower, much calmer, but just as steady, just as constant, just as clear; lub-dup.

For a span of time that she would always swear was aeons upon aeons, she sat in the dark and listened to their hearts beat.

Lub-dup.

Lub-dup.

DUM.

The sound of her own gasp was thunderous.

Dimly, she heard Shinra's heartbeat begin to race, his breathing grow shallow and fast with excitement, anticipation. But his heartbeat, so clear, so constant, was no longer what she sought. She scrambled to move from her seat, her legs long gone numb and dead under her, but she only had to get them out from underneath her and she could fling herself flat down on the rock, could grind her ear into the unforgiving stone and hold breath and still heart and wait and pray for the noise, once more.

Silence.

Then.

DUM.

DUM.

DUM.

A bell tolling, a gong struck, a drum beat and beat and beat a green pulse on the inside of her mind.

A heartbeat.

She sat up in shock, eyes green and glowing brighter than the lantern in the darkness, and she turned them and cast her light on Shinra, who stood unflinching before her and drew her brilliance in.

"Mother of all," she breathed. "She's here!"

Then Rufus's laugh shattered the magic, broke the dream, drowned out that elusive heartbeat in a cacophony of noise, and the sound left an empty aching hole inside of Aerith, longing to hear that heartbeat again.

"Close, but not quite right," Shinra chuckled, moving to help pull her off the ground. "Not Her, but the next-best thing."

Aerith took his hand unsteadily, her feet unsure beneath her. Shinra caught her when she stumbled, and she pressed her face, suddenly too hot and feverish, against his cold throat.

He stood uncomfortably for a moment, one hand on her shoulder and the other patting her shoulder awkwardly. For three of her shuddering breaths, he held her carefully, supporting her slim frame with his own. Then she pushed her away, patted her shoulder once more, and nodded to the rope ladder rolled down the side of the shaft. "Can you climb?" When she nodded mutely, he tapped her chin upwards with his knuckles and smiled soothingly at her.

"Take the lantern," he ordered, handing the small electric light to her. "And go on up. Give your boyfriend a hug, do whatever. You'll want to stick close to Cloud and Tifa for a while; it'll help your mood." He pinched her cheek patronizingly, just to make her scowl at him. "Today was a good start."

Aerith nodded carefully, drawing in a slow, deep breath before giving Shinra her best grin. Taking the lantern from his hands, she paused at the bottom of the ladder, glancing at him over her shoulder. "Aren't you coming?"

"In a moment," he assured her, turning away. "I need to have a brief look about first."

Aerith shrugged one shoulder skeptically, but obligingly began to climb the ladder, the light hooked over her elbow as she carefully ascended the rope rungs.

As the glow of the lantern slowly moved up the tunnel, leaving Rufus in the dark, he fumbled furiously in his pocket. His fingers shook almost too terribly for him to grasp what he sought, but he finally retrieved his wallet from his pants, and had just enough control left to shove it into his mouth before the seizure took him.

And he fell to the ground, every muscle jerking beyond control, teeth clamping down into the leather between them, the thin wallet all that kept him from biting out his own tongue. Saliva dripped unchecked from the corner of his open mouth, his hands twisted into claws, and he kicked at the unflinching stone of the ground, gone beyond control.

It seemed an eternity before the episode was over, before he had enough strength to stop his shaking and slowly climb to his hands and knees. He spat out the wallet, then turned his head just enough to vomit on the ground instead of on his hundred-dollar leather wallet.

He regained his feet numbly, stubbing the ends of his finely shined shoes when he couldn't feel his feet well enough to tell where they were. For a few minutes, he leaned against the wall of the shaft, until he had enough sensation in his extremities to feel confident climbing in the dark.

When he reached the top of the shaft, there was light waiting for him there.

"If you needed to look around," Aerith asked, not looking at him. "Then why did you let me take the light?"

…

She rested her cheek on the cast around his leg and watched him.

He stared at her, fingers playing with the ends of her hair, lifting it and letting it fall through his fingers and repeating the process again, just to feel the glide of silk against his fingertips.

They let the silence wear on until the question that was eating at her could no longer be borne.

But she couldn't ask it—and when she spoke, it was a different question that fell from her lips.

"Everything's going to be different now, isn't it?"

His fingertips plied against the softness of her cheek, the contact like small bolts of electricity striking her skin.

"Yes," was all he said.

Then she looked away from him, and she almost couldn't stand to do it, to break his gaze, to ask the question that she just had to know the answer to—

"Do you…still need me?"

The question was met with silence, thick and heavy and she could taste his thoughts in the air: how can you ask me that?

Then he spoke:

"No."

And her head whipped around, her eyes tore to meet his, because she couldn't believe what she had just heard, could not comprehend it to be true after all that they had just experienced, could not mentally take another instance of "I don't love you, Tifa…"

When she looked he was sitting up—and how had he done that without help, and he'd probably rip the stitches on his back if he didn't lie down again—and both arms, one encased in a cast and the other immobilized with bandages, rose up to catch her, to trap her in his eyes and he held her there as if he would never ever let her go.

His voice was low and rough at the edges, as if the words were torn from the deepest part of him, just three syllables:

"I want you."

Then he pulled her down and tilted her head just far enough and pressed his lips to her brow, soft and gentle and warm, held there long enough to brand her with his heat, and then he let her go and flopped back down on his bed.

Tifa blinked, dazed, and lifted a hand to the warm, wet mark on her forehead, and before her brain could quite catch up with her mouth she blurted—"Wait, that's all?"

A smirk the likes of which she'd never seen tweaked Cloud's lips, and he burrowed into his pillows and closed his eyes with two final words.

"For now."

They had all the time in the world.

Together.

…XxX…

A/N

Well, this isn't obscenely late at all.

Sorry about that—I'm not dead, just had a load of drama going down in my house with finals and other manner of mess. Then I somehow lost the thread of this and took ages to get back into a writing mood…anyway, I'm back now, apologize for my long break, and bid you all a good day!

I hope you enjoyed this pure-fluffiness chapter. Aside from Shinra. But he's Shinra, he lacks the ability to fluff.

It's possible that you might not be able to review this chapter, since I deleted the character studies chapter and now everything's dropped down a number; if you feel the need to yell at me about the delay, feel free to shoot me a PM, or just review in spirit, because I'll love you anyway.