Her face is near enough that he can feel her warm breath. Her fingers caressing his cheek with the softest touch. He immediately thinks it's because she's afraid that he will flinch and pull away from her. But that's wrong.

For her touch makes him feel alive.

It makes him feel like...Cloud.

A Cloud who isn't broken.

He stares deeply into her ruby eyes, an action that took so much strength to do because he's Cloud and he's broken and he feels like he was not worthy of even looking at this perfectly imperfect woman.

In her wine colored eyes, he sees the reflection of himself and he wonders just what she was thinking when she looks at him. So he gazes some more in hopes of looking into her.

Wanting to know how much of a broken man she sees in him.

He searches and searches and searches but he finds nothing.

Nothing but worry, affection, happiness and...

And...

And love.

This discovery shocks him so much that he freezes.

Then she speaks. She speaks with her gentle voice, soothing him. He barely realizes that he leaned into her touch because of it.

"I'm so proud of you, Cloud."

A pause and then silence.

It is at this moment that he breaks. He lets the tears flow freely from his eyes (a single trail at first but then the tears come down one after the other) as he pulls her into his arms, burying his face into her shoulders.

He breaks his facade and he breaks all of his barriers.

For her. (and only ever for her)

Because he knows she's telling the truth and he wants to let her all the way in. He doesn't want to push her away any longer. He wants her to stay inside him because she's all that he ever needed and those words are the words he wished to hear for the longest time.

It makes him undone. It makes him vulnerable (but when was he ever invulnerable). Because those words, her words, are what saved him.

He knows that she sees him, all of him.

The man who's broken.

The man who's recovering.

The man who's been wanting so much to be mended.

The imperfect man.

The imperfect him.

Yet in her eyes, she looks at him like he's the most beautiful person that she had ever known. The person that is great enough to be given every little bit of her love. With all of the flaws and other things.

And in the midst of slowly putting the pieces of him back together—if only for this moment (and maybe... maybe the moments after too)

It is enough to make him think the same.