The gray and black of Midgar flashed past him. He felt tired, like the city was draining him of some vital force. He wanted to get back home, even though the sight of the twisted rocket, still perched on its launchpad, nauseated him. This place... It crept under his defenses and infected him with its dull malaise. He wanted to rise above its billowing malevolence and climb into the clean blue sky, into the icy, rational nothingness of outer space. Humanity bothered him more than he cared to admit, and Midgar was humanity in all its glory. The city was cancer.
If only he had been allowed to get into his spaceship and leave all of this behind. He could have looked back at this blue planet spinning in space and decided for himself if he ever wanted to come back or not.
When the train reached his stop, he hesitated a moment before plunging off. He left a nest of cigarette butts behind him.
"Those things are going to kill you one of these days."
Cid gave the other man a flat stare and deliberately blew out a stream of blue smoke. "Yeah? Why the hell do you think I smoke 'em?"
President Shinra irritably growled in the back of his throat and reached for a brown folder on top of his desk. He flipped through it for a minute, and Cid Highwind felt a irrational spark of optimism flare in his soul. He beat that down, of course - the Space Program was dead. Something heavy and red lurched in his soul when he thought of it, but his mind was clear and cold. The Space Program was dead. There had been signs that the end was coming and the launch - well, the launch had just been the last straw.
They had kept him waiting for two hours. Cid was not the sensitive sort but he could sense a calculated insult. And President Shinra had elected to deal with him personally, which was never a good sign. Shinra allowed flunkies to handle good news, but he always elected to deliver the bad when he was face-to-face with you. Cid supposed that the old bastard got off on crushing other people like so many crunchy insects.
Cid pulled out his current cigarette and examined it critically; it was nearly down to its filter. He reached inside his jacket to grab another cigarette, which he lit via the stump of the old one. He thoughtfully ground the stump into the arm of his chair and looked up to see President Shinra grimly watching him.
"So..." Shinra said after a pause, "It says here that you issued the command to abort..." The man glanced at the document for a moment, "...because of a perceived malfunction?"
A sudden twitch in his right arm disturbed Cid's calm repose, but he was able to steadily look into Shinra's eyes. "Yeah. One of the oxygen tanks," -and there was a sudden rise of bile in the back of his throat that he fought to keep back- "One of the oxygen tanks was faulty."
President Shinra pursed his lips and stared at him. Cid exhaled blue and stared back at him. There was a long moment of silence. Both men knew how this would end; they had known since the beginning of this meeting, they had known since two days ago, when the countdown had stopped and the rocket had twisted around its supports on the launchpad. Cid bit the inside of his lip and felt a light pinprick of copper against his tongue.
Shinra finally broke the silence. "We are aware, Highwind", the president said, linking his sausage fingers together on the desk in a parody of sincerity, "that you have served this company well throughout the years. It would be uncharitable of us to focus on this...regrettable accident while ignoring your years of faithful diligence. However..."
The first stage of grief is shock. At the time, all he had been able to think about was the smell of fried electrical wires and the smoke and oh god oh god oh god.
"However, the board of directors believe that the interests of this company would best be served in other areas. After all, money has been poured into this project for nearly five years - and what has the result been? One aborted mission and countless damage costs."
The second stage of grief is denial. He had curled up in bed that night and stared at the wall and thought, "This is all a dream. None of this happened. Soon, I'm going to wake up, and it will be time for my mission, and I'll go up into outer space.
"The ultimate goals of the space exploration department were always nebulous. The defense advantages have become less pressing with the decrease in hostilities worldwide. The commercial gains have always been uncertain. While we believe that scientific advancement should be nurtured and supported, we do not think that funneling endless money into projects of arguable importance is the best policy."
The third stage is bargaining. He had woken up in the morning and realized that he had made a choice. It had been an exchange. A sacrifice. The space program, all his dreams, all his hard work had been offered up for...for... It wasn't fair. Surely the universe realized that if he had to do it over again, he'd choose differently?
"We believe that the space exploration department should be...streamlined. A re-designation of priorities, if you will. While this company remains committed to scientific research, it must also focus on its economic wellbeing and structural soundness."
The fourth stage of grief is anger. The only reason he hadn't killed her yesterday was that the rest of his crew had deliberately removed her from his realm of control. "She's in the clinic," they had said without looking him in the eye. "Some superficial burns."
"Your continued presence in this company is important to all of us, Highwind. Would you be interested in heading up the reorganization committee?"
The fifth stage...
Cid took a drag from his cigarette and released the smoke in a long sigh. "Actually...nope. I'm afraid that the idea of gutting my own department holds no attraction for me."
Shinra's black piggy eyes did not blink. "And what role do you envision for yourself, then?"
Cid smiled. "Why, the goddamn role you hired me for. I'll be the head of your space program. And you can throw us occasional crumbs, and you can cut us off completely and whine about 're-designation', but I'll still be the head of your space program." He stood up. "And if you don't mind, Mister President - I think I've been away from my department's headquarters for too long. I need to supervise the damn repairs, you know."
Shinra glowered up at him. "You will be abandoning any voice in your department's fate by doing this."
The fifth stage...
The other man shrugged.
On his way out, he absently dropped his cigarette next to the elevator and ground it under his heel.
He took the trains back to his hotel and climbed the stairs two at a time. His room was at the end of the hall. One hand was on the door knob and the other was fishing in his pocket for the keys before he registered the dark shadow hesitantly rising from the corner.
Shera said nothing; whatever carefully prepared speech she had planned had fled in the shock of the immediate moment. Cid said nothing; his jaw was wired shut. His first impulse was to strangle her but his hand appeared to have been affixed to the knob by some force heavier than gravity. So they both stood motionless, white-faced and silent.
Cid was the first to move: he made a choked sound like a scream in the back of his throat and unlocked his door with unnecessary force. He threw the door open and strode into his room. His fists were knotted. Halfway across the room, he picked up a faded gray suitcase and threw it on a bed that hadn't been slept in. He opened it and furiously began repacking.
Shera nervously peered into the room. A white bandage wound its way around her knuckles, but other than that she looked as she always did: all haphazard brown hair and askew glasses. She emanated meekness, and this bothered Cid more than anything else.
"Why are you here?" he growled without looking at her.
"Ah? Well, ah..." Shera nervously crossed the threshold. "This morning, we discovered you were gone, so we figured that you had gone to Midgar in order to report to...your superiors in person. Since I had, ah, since I was...well, I thought, since I was at fault..."
The rage abruptly disappeared from Cid's chest and he felt merely hollow and cold. Would it have made a difference if he dragged Shera along to Shinra's office, blamed her, fired her, killed her? "It doesn't matter. They're scrapping the program."
Shera made a sound of horrified surprise. "But...Captain! They can't do that!"
"Yeah? What's gonna stop them?" Cid closed his suitcase and locked it. He picked it up and looked at Shera.
"What...what will you do now?"
There's a pistol in my closet at home, he could have told her. One shot to the back of the mouth and everything will be black and rational. Or I could go swimming one day and the town wouldn't find me until three days later when my body washes ashore. Or I could get into my little plane and climb higher and higher until my instruments freeze over and there's no oxygen. Maybe I'll fall back to earth and burn. Maybe I'll reach space.
"I dunno," he said. "I think I'll go back to Rocket Town and work on the rocket. Maybe there's a way to salvage it, and maybe we can find funding from someone other than Shinra."
We?
She looked down and clasped her hands together. "I'm...I'm so sorry, sir. Everything you've worked for...it was all my fault..."
Cid snorted. "Now that's sure as hell not going to solve anything."
She looked up at him, wide brown eyes magnified by glass. "I'll make it up to you, Captain. If...if you ever need anything done..."
Cid pushed past her, into the hall. "Oh, fantastic. That's what my life really needs - you in it." He strode down the hall. Shera persistently followed.
She followed him down the stairs, she followed him to the train station, and Cid found her sitting next to him as the train began to move.
"You're like a goddamn puppy." He lit another cigarette.
"I...appreciate what you did, captain." She looked away. "I'm not sure if I would have done the same thing, if I had been in your position."
He looked down at her, at her mousy hair falling in front of gleaming glasses and a down-turned mouth, and he felt a strange heaviness in his chest, like a wet, white tumor was slowly ripening within his ribcage.
"Sure you would 'ave. It's the human thing to do."
He watched the gray and black of Midgar flash past them and breathed in the smoke.
Note: This story is dedicated to the wonderful C. Adia, who kept asking for it [insert maniacal laughter here].
Would Cid be smoking filtered cigarettes? My gut instinct says no, my gut instinct says, "He rolls his own!". However, the story would have had some pacing problems if I stopped every paragraph to detail Cid rolling another cigarette, so necessity required pre-rolled cigs. For plot plausibility purposes - he went out to Midgar in a hurry and didn't carry a lot of stuff with him, much less an endless supply of tobacco and paper. So, to feed his nicotine habit, he just purchased filtered cigarettes in Midgar. Um. Yes?
This story was written while the author was listening to a combination of David Bowie's "Space Oddity", Burning Airlines' "The Deluxe War Baby", and Howard Jones' "What is Love", and the story was inevitably tainted by association.
May, 2002