For a minute or two, there's silence in the cockpit, just an aching, empty silence. Cid's not even sure they're breathing. Then Tifa gasps, and clambers her way over to him, over the chairs and into the gap, her eyes wide.

'We're in space,' she says.

'Yeah,' Cid replies, and he's – not sure what he should feel, not really.

On the one hand, he's in space. He's home in a way he didn't know he could feel like he belonged. There's nothing but stars in front of him, an ocean of endless black silk, twinkling with thousands, millions of lights. Fuck sake, it's beautiful. He's breathless, speechless. Absolutely taken away with it.

And all he can think is, fuck sake, I hope Shera made it. There's nothing coming over the speakers, no crackle of a connection to a lower radio. The only way to know would be to go down there and check.

'Let's – alright, let's look at the course.'

He needs to put his brain on, needs to actually think something more than nothing at all. He rubs his face with both hands, feels the chill of space on his bare arms, and takes a steadying breath. Then he presses a few buttons, and the stars disappear behind the display, and a blinking green line shows them loud and clear where they're headed.

'Yeah,' Cloud sighs. 'Straight to Meteor.'

'Fuck you sounding so pathetic for? You're young, you prick. Got your whole life ahead of you.' Cid snorts, and hits a few more buttons, before grunting and giving the control panel an enthusiastic bang with the side of his fist. 'Motherfucking piece of shit! Palmer's gone out of his pig-stinking way to lock the Auto-Pilot. It should have an automatic revert back to manual, but no. Fucking bitch.'

'So,' Cloud starts, and wrinkles his nose. 'So does that mean – that means we're – we're going to crash.'

Cid snorts and gestures, heads towards the far door, leading deeper into the rocket.

'You kids are going to turn me grey,' he says, 'come on, we've got an escape pod in for situations like these. Some ShinRa stipulation, you know how these fucking things are.'

Cloud and Tifa exchange a look, and then nod, follow him through to an ante-chamber just off the cockpit, and Tifa's breath is drawn out of her chest by the Huge Materia, glowing and shining so brightly that they almost don't need the lighting strips to illuminate the room.

'It's beautiful,' she breathes, and Cid shrugs.

'It's what it is,' he says, 'I think the code's four-four-eight-seven. Better get crackin' though, kid, we wanna be in that pod long before we need to eject.'

Cloud tries the code, which doesn't work, and Cid frowns, taps his chin and his foot, as an automated lady's voice informs them that unauthorised access has been detected and a three-minute shutdown has been initiated.

'Fuck, I thought that was the code. Or is that the original launch code? Fuck, uh. It definitely has two numbers the same together, all ShinRa codes have that. Uh, try – I'm sure it's four-four, uh. Shit, I dunno man, hit the numbers.'

Cloud tries several combinations, and Cid keeps wracking his brains. These codes were never his strong suit, it was small stuff he didn't sweat, he let Shera and Livas and people who had heads for that kind of shit deal with it. Shera put all the codes down on a piece of paper for him, but he has no idea where that is, or if the codes are even relevant anymore.

They have about twenty seconds left when he says, 'four-four-five-eight,' and it works.

The coupling separates and the housing opens, and Cid helps Cloud lever the Materia out. It's not as big as the other Materia, and Cloud manages to lift it by himself.

'My great advice saved the day,' Cid announces, because he knows damn well that that's not what happened, and Cloud just snorts and rolls his eyes.

'Sure thing, Cid,' he says, and Tifa touches the Materia with tentative, awed fingertips.

'It's so beautiful,' she says, 'we'd better hurry to the escape pod, we spent a lot of time here.'

So off they go, following Cid down a ladder – and fucking save him if he wasn't ready for Cloud to throw the fucking Huge Materia down the hatch to him – and there's an odd buzz, a rumble of electricity.

'Weird,' Cid says, eyes narrowing for a second as he listens. 'You hear that? I ain't heard that before.'

'What is it?' Tifa asks, and Cid juts a lip, shakes his head.

'Fuck knows. Might just be the rocket, never been in it going before.'

It is very much not the rocket itself, but Oxygen Tank Eight.

The blow takes him by surprise, and he's bastard lucky it didn't kill him. His ears are ringing, eyes buzzing, and it takes him a second to realise that he's not entirely unscathed.

'Motherfucker!' he roars, because fuck him, it hurts!

'Cloud!' Tifa exclaims, grabbing his arm, 'I don't have a Cure!'

Cloud checks his arrangement and goes a little grey. 'Neither do I.'

'I left my spear in the gate,' Cid grunts, and looks at the bracer on his arm, where no green materia shine at him. 'Fuck!'

He's been injured before, he's had Demi3 cast on him, he's been poisoned and stabbed and had a pint glass smashed over the back of his head, but this – this is something else.

Tifa and Cloud haul at the debris, but it's not moving.

'Oh, for fuck sake – don't worry about me, get in that escape pod, 'fore we crash into Meteor!'

'I'm not leaving my friend behind,' Cloud says, pulling a face at him, and he gives Tifa a nod, two, three, and they heave, but the metal won't shift.

'Just leave me here,' Cid tells them, shoving ineffectually at the debris, 'fuck it, leave me here, get in the pod, go on. Fuckin' go.'

'I'm not leaving you here,' Cloud repeats, obstinate. 'I don't leave my friends behind.'

'Oh, fuck off,' Cid grunts, and gives the metal a half-hearted shove. 'Don't start that martyrdom bollocks again. Get going, you've got no time.'

It's then that he really looks at it, at the debris, and the space where the oxygen tank had been and he sees the stencilling on it.

'Tank number eight,' he says, mostly to himself, as Cloud and Tifa try to haul the metal off of his leg, which is throbbing now, and he's sure it's the bloodflow.

The oxygen tank was always wrong. There was always something wrong with it, and Shera had seen it, and she'd done her best to fix it, and she'd been willing to give her life to fix it long enough that Cid saw his dream. His dream had become her dream and it had nearly killed her.

'Oh, God,' he breathes, rubbing his face with a hand, sticky and damp with sweat and blood, 'she was fuckin' right. All this time, and I - Cloud, leave it, for fuck sake, just go. This is where I bow out.'

The door at the end of the corridor hisses and whistles open, and the smell of soap and clean linen wafts over to them, faint under the stink of Cid's blood.

'Don't say that, Captain,' Shera says, and Cid's sure the skipping of his heart is doing nothing for stemming the blood flow. 'We'll get you out of here.'

She comes over, and her eye looks awful from this distance, so close that he can count the number of galaxies shining in the shades of purple and blue and yellow.

'Shera,' he sighs, and he looks at the tension in her neck as she heaves at the metal. 'Woman, you ain't gonna lift it.'

She narrows her eyes at him for half a second, and then looks at the metal seriously.

'Woman, for fuck sake, you're a fucking idiot. Just leave me, you aren't going to lift it!'

'Physics,' she replies, as though it's that simple, and orders Cloud and Tifa to move around so that they can lever the metal off.

Cid curses up a storm as the weight levers into and then off his leg, and he says some things he's not entirely proud of.

Most importantly, though, when Shera cuts him a look for the language coming out of his mouth, he opens his and apologises.

'Sorry,' he says, and he means it for a lot of things.

Mostly for doubting her about the oxygen tank, but also for calling her a cunt. She just smiles at him, one of those side smiles where her eyebrow raises, and he's – he's in love with her.

Cid's leg is a mangled mess, all torn canvas but it's nothing a Cure3 can't fix, once they're clear enough for someone to equip the materia and cast it. For now, Cloud ducks under Cid's arm to help him hobble, and Tifa takes the Huge Materia, and they hobble after Shera into the escape pod. Cid swears the entire way, and Shera, absently, makes shushing, placating noises as she keys in the information for the escape pod, positive that she's looked over it enough for it to be right.

'I've been checking it regularly,' she tells them when Tifa asks about it, 'just to make sure it's all still functional.'

'If she says it's good, it's good,' Cid grunts, and they lower him into a seat. 'She was right about the oxygen tank.'

'Captain?' she asks, and goes pink.

'You were right,' he says, 'about the tank. It was fucked. You were right. I'm sorry.'

She smiles at him, a full, beautiful smile with her teeth and sparkling in her eyes, and hits the button to release them. The air gets swept from his lungs at the momentum, but then, it could have just been the way she looked at him.

He's spent the better part of a decade looking at her slyly, catching glimpses of her where she can't possibly look at him in turn, but he looks at her now and finds that it's like he's looking at her for the first time. Sat across from him, her gaze out of the porthole at the stars tumbling around them as they head back to the planet, and fuck knows where they're going to crash-land, but he's not even really thinking about it. He's thinking about how he's never really noticed the roundness of her chin, the perfect straight line of her nose, the softness of her mouth, the way her hair falls against her temple, curling around the arm of her glasses, glimmering with the stars. She has a smudge of oil on her cheek, and a streak of his blood on her ear of all places, but she's – she's so fucking beautiful he thinks he might choke on it. Maybe he's going delirious with pain. It's easily as bad as that fucking Valron, all those years ago, and his eyes are buzzing like when he got glassed, and he wants to throw up.

'Shera,' he breathes, and she glances at him.

'Yes, Captain?'

But he doesn't know what to say, even though it's on the tip of his tongue. He's kind of forgotten that Cloud and Tifa are there, and almost leans across the gap to just – he doesn't know – kiss her maybe – when Cloud accidentally kicks the Huge Materia and the clatter it makes startles Cid out of the moment.

'Uh, thanks, for sticking around,' he says, which isn't what he wants to say at all, but he's suddenly hyperaware that Tifa is staring at him.

Shera laughs, breathy and uncertain, her eyes bright and confused. 'Sure, Captain. Let me look at your leg. We should be stable now, it won't take long to get back to the surface.'

Rubbing the back of his neck, he looks out over the blackness again, and tries to ignore the prickle he feels of Shera's fingers against his skin, carefully teasing the tattered edges of his trousers out of the way to look at the gash.

'So this is outer space,' he says, and his foot twitches, but Shera rests one hand on his ankle, fingertips so gentle that they feel like a concrete block. 'So long, Shinra Number Twenty-Six, you piece of shit.'

Shera snorts, and her thumb rubs, soothing, against his calf.

'You'll live,' she tells him, 'someone's got a Cure materia, right?'

Cloud nods, 'Barret has one. We didn't really think about our equipment when he got here.'

Shera smiles and shakes her head. 'It's fine, don't worry. He's made of some pretty solid stuff, the Captain. You know, a few years ago, he took a Valron's Demi3 straight to his chest?'

'Took a Grand Spark not an hour ago,' Cid grunts, half under his breath, and Shera returns to her seat.

He tries not to notice that her feet are braced against his, but the warmth of her is distracting, and he's trying so hard to focus on the stars, to pay attention to whatever nonsense Cloud and Tifa are saying.

Shera laughs at something, and he chokes on a breath, clutches his erratic heart.

'Captain!' she exclaims, and reaches across the space to take his hands. 'Are you alright?'

He chokes, nods, and casts a look at Tifa, who raises her eyebrows, smile on her mouth. Fucker.

Fuck her.

A beep from the console by the door, and Shera makes a little noise of surprise.

'Oh, we fell faster than I thought! Uh – you might want to brace yourself, it's looking like we're going to hit the ocean.'

It's agony to pull his leg back, getting his feet behind his knees, but he breathes his way through it and ducks his head, watches to make sure the others do it too. He's not being the sole survivor of this bullshit because he did as he was told. Though, it would make it one of the first times he'd done so.

Which would be enough to kill anyone out of shock, he supposes.

The landing is harder than the take-off, and they hit the water hard enough to break the surface and roll for a moment, completely submerged, before the pod rights itself and begins to float.

'Better call the Highwind for a lift,' he says, when the world stops spinning.

Why is it, he wonders, as Shera clambers over to the door to shove it open and get some air in, poking her head out to see where they are, that they take this kind of thing in their stride? Crash-landing an escape pod? Nothing. Fighting monsters? Easy. Being a large part of the destruction of the world? Simple.

But Shera? Acknowledging how he feels, and being able to – to open his mouth, and talk about it, and even now, even though he'd said it out loud to Tifa, and a weight had been lifted from his chest for it, even so. He can't get his thoughts in order, he can't breathe for the weight of it.

'Cid?' Cloud asks, 'hey man, don't go passing out on us. I don't know if I could get your fat ass out of here.'

'Fat,' Cid snorts, and blinks Cloud back into his line of sight. 'Nah, I ain't copping out. Just. Thinking about – Meteor.'

Cloud frowns, but Tifa's talking, and she's enthusiastic, and she's full of energy, and he turns his attention to that instead. For a moment, Cid has blissful, agonisingly blissful, peace, and then Shera's hand rests warm on his bare bicep, the other hand's fingertips on his cold cheek.

'Captain,' she murmurs, eyes so warm and seeking his out, 'the Highwind is on its way, just stay with us long enough to get out of the pod, and then we'll get you fixed up.'

'I'm fine,' he assures her, and the back of her fingers brush against the stubble on his jaw.

'I think,' she says then, to the other two, 'that you'd be best served staying in town tonight. I'm sure your friends have managed to – uh – handle the troops in town.'

Cid snorts, and Shera squeezes his shoulder, familiar and comforting, and pokes her head out of the door again. Cid turns his gaze to the porthole, watches the waves lapping at it, and lets his brain think of other things. Anything that's not Shera, because there's a lot of her in there, too much of her, and he can't stand it.

He's a little stiff on his leg now, but he's up and walking, and that's enough. The Highwind came and picked them up, and they didn't question orders to return to Rocket Town, even though their Captain was being held up by Cloud and Shera, green and grey more than anything, a bit vague around the eyes, and with the rolling stomach of someone swallowing vomit. Barret had been quick about casting a Cure3, and the jolt of his tibia smashing back into place and his skin knitting made him both scream through his teeth and throw up, and Shera just sort of sighed next to him, ran a hand over the back of his neck.

He can still feel that hand on the back of his neck, and rubs his face.

'Grow up,' he murmurs into his palm, and staggers down the gangway.

His house is – it's not quite right. Something's changed, and he doesn't know what it is at first. The others have been corralled by Reine into the Inn to shower and have something to eat, and he's – grateful, incredibly so – for the privacy this affords him.

Shera comes in behind him, humming at him stood there in the kitchen and staring at the wall.

'What is it?' she asks, and shucks her coat, hangs it up and shuts the door. 'Captain?'

'Shera, I – I'm really glad you're here.'

Her cheeks go a little bit pink, and a smile plays on her lips for a second, then she turns her eyes away, eases her fingers under her glasses to touch the bruising.

'We'd, uh,' she starts, licks her lips, and Cid licks his, reflexively. 'We'd better get you cleaned up. Do you think you'll be alright to shower, or would you rather a bath?'

He laughs in the back of his throat, a scoff more than a real laugh. 'A shower'll be fine, don't worry about me.'

'I'll get the kettle on while you shower,' she says, and then makes a gesture that could be a way of telling him to fuck off, or could be a nervous point of her finger as her blush darkens even more and she scurries to the back door. 'I'll just get you some clean clothes,' she throws over her shoulder.

He hasn't seen her blush like that since he lit a cigarette with a match, and he pats his trouser pockets down, his chest, but his jacket is fuck knows where, abandoned in the name of the rocket, and later he'll find it in the launch zone, somehow intact, and his spear's fucking gone, but that's besides the point. Right now, he doesn't have a lighter.

But he can't smoke in the shower, so he'll worry about it afterward.

Being clean feels fucking amazing, and he watches the blood and dirt and grime swirl between his feet as it flushes down the drain for the time it takes for the water to run clear, and he finds himself thinking about all sorts of things, things that don't matter. Things that do. The door creaks, and Shera's hand appears, a t-shirt and boxers and trousers in her grip. She blindly sets it down on the edge of the sink and retracts her hand again, door clicking shut.

He loves her. He loves her so fucking much, and it's going to get him killed, no doubt, because he's going to slip over in the shower in his haste to shout a thank you to her.

'You're welcome!' she calls back.

He makes sure he dries between his toes and under his arms and his hair is a static mess by the time he's finished scrubbing the towel through it, but he's trying his best. He looks in the mirror as he belts his trousers, and wonders if he should shave. He hasn't shaved in almost a week, but he doesn't think he looks bad for it.

And then he catches himself, and blows a raspberry.

'Behave,' he says, 'fuck sake. Grown ass man.'

Shera has two cups of tea nearly made when the door bangs open without warning. Cid grabs the nearest heavy object and tosses it, only to narrowly avoid hitting Yuffie in the face.

'Fucking brat!' he snaps, at the same time as she calls him something very impolite.

'Last time I give you the delight of my presence!' she exclaims, as imperious as the Empress she should have been able to become, and throws herself into a chair at the kitchen. 'The girl at the Inn wants to know if you're eating with us, or you're going to stay here in your little love nest.'

Cid wants to throttle her, but Shera's giggling behind her hand, and he hates that he melts at the sound, because it feels like another lifetime, the last time he made her laugh.

'We'll be there to eat, fuck sake, give a man half an hour to have a fucking cup of tea.'

Yuffie eyeballs him, and then looks at Shera, and looks at him again, and raises an eyebrow.

'Well, it's almost ready, so you'd better be sharp.'

And she backflips out of the chair, just be a fucking asshole, and slams the door behind her.

'She is always like this,' Cid tells Shera, who is still stood there with a hand over her mouth, though now her eyebrows are raised.

'Captain,' she says, and he just waves a hand.

'Just worry about the tea,' he says, collapsing into the chair Yuffie hadn't tucked back in, 'you know Reine will keep two plates warm.'

He yawns, rubbing his face with his hand, and watches her as she finishes putting the tea together, the way her hip moves just a breath as she stirs, the way she bounces on her heels just a little bit, deeming the job well-done, and then she places one mug in front of him, sitting on the opposite side of the table with her own. He watches her for a second, and then chances bracing his feet on her chair legs. She doesn't immediately draw her legs back, lets them brush against his for a moment, before tucking them neatly under her seat.

'Are they going to stay here, do you think?' she asks, and he takes a second to squint at her.

'What? Oh, that lot. No, Reine will make them stay in the Inn, you know what she's like. Be glad to have some decent company.'

'She's had ShinRa there all week,' Shera offers.

Cid chokes on a mouthful of tea, and laughs. 'Poor John. Changing the sheets was the worst part of the innkeeping business.'

'Sorry?'

'Stop saying sorry,' he replies, reflexively. 'Before I came out here to build the rockets, and before they moved out here, they had an inn in Midgar, they not tell you?'

'Yes, yes, I remember.'

'I used to help out,' he shrugs, 'do odd jobs and that.'

He frowns then, sure she knows this, and the look in her eyes when they meet, the surprise, but the smug little contentment. Oh, she knows, she just – he doesn't know what she wants out of it all. To listen to him talk, maybe. Fucking weird girl, is Shera, who knows what goes through her fucking head.

'Oh,' she says, and smiles. 'Better drink up, Captain, before Yuffie comes back with support.'

He gives her that, and downs his tea in three, halfway to the sink before he's finished the second gulp.

He shoves into his boots, which are still a little damp with blood, which is going to ruin the socks he's just put on, but whatever, laundry is as laundry does, and they head off towards the Inn.

Rocket Town looks strange now; thankfully, there's been very little property damage, though a few walls are riddled with bullet holes, and that could Barret or ShinRa, the way all of them shoot. Cid raises his hand to Ana, who's sweeping up some mess or another on the porch, and she waves back.

Reine is glad to see him, and he only objects a little to having her arms thrown around his neck.

'Reine, please,' he says, and she pats his cheeks, gestures at the table.

He obligingly takes a seat, and Shera takes the one left next to him. Even as Barret starts up with some recounting of everything that had happened while they were on the rocket, Cid is overcome with such an urge to just. Put his hand on Shera's leg, since it's right there. He's lounging in his chair with his hands in his pockets, so it's not like anyone would notice. Even if it's only for a moment, he feels like that's something he should do.

Dinner is nice, the way dinner as a group – as a family – is always nice. Reine has cobbled together some help-yourself bullshit, and bowls and serving spoons are passed around and requests for seasoning is shouted down the table around mouthfuls of bread rolls, and Cid just – he looks at Shera, and she meets his gaze, and they both know it. It's like the early days, like having the mechanics all hollering at each other, and the banter is a very different kind, because AVALANCHE have a very different kind of life experience, but the camaraderie is there.

If the world does end, Cid thinks that this will probably be the thing he misses most in the Lifestream. The real deep belly-laugh he gets from listening to Tifa ribbing Vincent over something innocuous like mashed potato, or the way Red gets gravy on his nose and Yuffie dabs it off for him (which, admittedly, brings a soft moment of grief, because that's what Aerith's role at the table was, when she was here to have a role at the table) and the way that Barret talked about his hopes and dreams for the Planet. Shit, Cid thinks he'll miss all of this.

When dinner is done, and they're stuffed full of dinner and dessert and Yuffie is falling asleep in her hand, Cid gets to his sore, aching feet, and bids them goodnight.

'You're not staying?' Tifa asks.

'I have my own bed,' Cid replies.

John, at the bar wiping down glasses, snorts. 'When was the last time you actually slept in a bed, Captain? Be honest, now.'

Cid doesn't flush, because Cid is a grown man. But he does heave a breath, point a finger, and accuse John of being rude.

'You know full well I sleep.'

John holds his hands up, though really it just looks like he's raising a glass and a towel. 'Yes, sir,' he snorts, and Cid sticks two fingers up.

'Eight sharp on the Highwind,' he announces to the group still sprawled over the table, 'else I'm leaving you all behind.'

'Gonna save the world by yourself?' Tifa asks.

'If I fuckin' have to, Tifa. If I fucking have to.'

He throws a hand up in goodnight, and Shera does the same, follows him out into the cold of the night.

'It's beautiful out here,' she says, and Cid looks up at the stars above them, the moon shining bright and silver.

Everything is tinted ever so slightly red, Meteor staining the horizon and half the sky. It's beautiful in a terrible sort of way, the way that poisonous flowers are often the prettiest, the way spiders have beautiful webs to trap insects.

'Yeah,' he says, and looks back at her. 'Yeah, it's pretty beautiful.'

Shera brushes her hair back, glances at him, and then breathes out a laugh.

'Captain, you're – you must be tired, come on. You have an early start tomorrow, and it's already late.'

He supposes she's right, the way she's usually right about these things.

He lets her into the house first, and shutting the door feels – feels – it feels like coming home, for the first real time.

He jolts awake after only an hour or so asleep. This is the way it usually is; the house is quiet, too quiet, no electronics buzzing, no hum of mechanisms whirring. He blinks back the flutter of a black coat, and hauls himself out of bed. Into his trousers, and tucking his T-shirt in, he picks up his cigarettes and off he plods downstairs.

Bit of fresh air, he reasons. Bit of fresh air and a bit of nicotine, and he'll be alright for another couple hours' sleep. He'll let the trainee take over flying tomorrow, hunker down behind one of the consoles and catch a couple hours there, too, which will no doubt be better sleep than anything he gets in his own bed. There's a reason he slept in a chair next to the fridge at the Inn.

The wood of the porch is cold beneath his feet, and the grass damp with midnight dew, but he's grateful for it. He understands, a little, why Shera takes her shoes off so often, why the ground beneath her feet feels so much better than the thickness of work-boot soles.

He lights the cigarette and takes a slow drag, watches his exhale spiral and dissipate, and picks his way across the grass to the far side of the house, figuring he'll actually take a look at the Bronco again, now that she's back in her spot.

He doesn't expect to see Shera outside either, arms around herself and staring up at Meteor.

'Hey,' he says, as gentle as he can to not startle her. 'What are you doing up?'

'Hm? Oh, it's you, Captain. I couldn't sleep.'

'I can see that,' he grins, and she offers him a smile, tightens her grip on her cardigan.

'You couldn't sleep?' she asks, and he shakes his head, comes to stand next to her.

'Listen, Shera,' he breathes, and rubs his thumb across the filter of his cigarette, tries to get the words onto his teeth so he can spit them out. 'I – I need to say that – I'm sorry. I've been – horrible.'

She blinks slow, smiles. 'No, Captain. You could have been horrible. You were merely – awful.'

The laugh comes out of him unbidden, and he chokes on it. Chuckling around a drag of his cigarette, he breathes out through his nose, and he rubs the back of his neck.

'You're something else,' he says, and flicks the cigarette into the nothingness. 'I mean it, though. I'm sorry. You were right about the oxygen tank, and I should have listened, but you – Shera, you could have died because of that fucking stunt! I'm still fucking cross about that!'

Shera's lips quirk, and she shrugs her shoulders a little. 'You needed oxygen to get to space, and it was my job to get you there.'

'The oxygen tanks weren't your job.'

'But I knew,' she says, 'and if I hadn't – who would have? I know you – you aborted the launch for me, and it cost you everything, and I'm sorry for that.'

'Stop fucking apologising,' he says, and turns to look at her, but she's closer than he expected her to be, and he finds the next thing he wanted to say completely gone from his head.

She's so fucking beautiful. She clearly hasn't slept beyond the cursory half-hour's doze everyone ends up doing before their brain gets them back up. Her ponytail is scruffy, but her face is clean now, his blood gone from her ear, and he finds himself staring at her, studying her eye and the way her lips are slightly parted, the warmth of the gold in her eyes, the brightness of the green, a nebula contained in the body of a woman he fucking adores. Carefully, he brushes a fingertip across her cheekbone, just beneath the bruising, and she doesn't flinch, but her eyes do twitch. Her fingers come up, knot into his T-shirt, and she looks at him, studies his face as he studies hers. Her eyes slowly close, and he cups her face with his palm, his other hand coming up to rest around one of her wrists, feeling the pulse under his fingertips.

He lowers his head just enough that their foreheads bump, come to a rest, a soft, warm weight. He can feel her breath, as he's sure she can feel his – smell it, considering the cigarette – but she doesn't complain, doesn't comment. Just stands there with her hand splayed over his heart and the other tangled into his T-shirt.

'Captain, I,' she starts, but doesn't quite know what to say next. 'I'm sorry.'

'Shut the fuck up,' he whispers back, and hates that he sounds choked, hates that his eyes are closed but are burning, hates that his throat is itching. 'It's me that needs to apologise, Shera. I'm so fucking sorry.'

She nods, her hair rubbing against his forehead, and her cheek so soft against his fingertips. He daren't hold her any tighter than he is, because he's already holding too tight, this breathless little moth-wing grip he has on her is too much. He manages to blink his eyes open long enough to get a glimpse of her, her eyes closed and a smile on her mouth, and he loves her.

'Shera,' he chokes out, 'I – I – you know.'

She hums, soft, and her head tilts just enough to rub their noses together.

'Yes,' she breathes back, 'I know.'

He hopes she does, he hopes to the Lifestream and back that she knows. Her fingers curl against his heart, just a little, a press of the pads of her fingertips, and he tilts his head, rubs their noses again. She sighs, pleasantly, breath warm against his chin. For a long moment or two, they linger like that, just breathing in the other's presence, forehead and nose and fingertips, her pulse a soft, gentle throb of life in his grip, the flutter of butterflies, and it would be worth dying, he thinks. If this moment, this quiet little moment, if this is all he has, he'll die happy with it.

He's not sure who moves first, but her nose brushes his cheek, and then he kisses her. It can be called a kiss, he thinks, even though it's barely half a second long, and more their lips were in immediate proximity than actively seeking the other's out. But a kiss is a kiss, and he did it. Dazed, and not sure it really happened, he feels the flutter of his heart reflected in her pulse, and she doesn't open her eyes, so neither does he, and they stand there, brow-to-brow, for several more minutes. Her cheek is soft in his fingers, her jaw, her neck, the soft ends of her ponytail. The hand he's not holding to his chest untangles itself, moves to his waist, rests itself like it belongs on the jut of his hipbone, and he takes a steady breath, rests his hand in the warm space on the back of her neck, the shape of her vertebrae against his calluses.

They don't say anything for a long, long time.

When he finally opens his eyes, he finds her looking at him, her eyes so soft, so open, so – so full of –

'Shera,' he whispers, and she bumps their noses with a nod.

'I know,' she replies, and he hopes so.

They stand there for a moment or two longer, and then she slowly peels away. Not out of his reach, but far enough that she can see him without going cross-eyed.

'It's still early,' she says, turning her gaze to look out over the first shocks of pink coming in at the horizon. 'You have time to get another couple of hours in, before you need to leave.'

He looks at her, and wants to ask her to stay with him, to stay in his fingertips, but he slowly lets go of her nape, and of her wrist, stroking his hands down her arms, smooth and soft and pale under his worker's tan, and finally letting go of her entirely. His skin, where she's no longer touching him in turn, feels cold, bereft.

'I suppose so,' he says.

'You know I'll be here,' she tells him, gently, like she doesn't want to say something wrong. 'Whenever you want to come back, I'll be here.'

He wants to kiss her again, properly. Instead, he accepts the hand she runs across his forearm, placating, gentle and – dare he say it – loving, and goes back inside.