"You, uh . . . go through assistants pretty quick, don't you?"

Reeve glances at the empty desk outside of his office, closing the door and locking it with a swipe of his keycard. "I just hired another one tonight," he says to the Turk, and while it's only Reno, his presence still makes him wary.

"Oh? Pretty little thing?"

"The very opposite."

For some reason, this makes Reno laugh. "Charlie's just as jealous as her brother, isn't she?"

Reeve frowns. "Speaking of Charlie, shouldn't you be off keeping a irritatingly close eye on her?"

The Turk hardly looks abashed. "Oh, she told you about that, huh?"

With an impatient nod, Reeve tries to leave the relatively open corridor that leads to the elevators, but Reno seems intent on following him, seemingly at ease with himself and the world. "You're not exactly the most covert person in the world," Reeve grimaces, making Reno smile in earnest while offering a casual shrug in return. "If you really wanted to follow her without being noticed, it might do you some good to make an effort to fit in."

"Maybe I wanted her to notice me. She's a pretty girl. Can't keep them all to yourself. That last assistant of yours was a ten, you know?" Reno side-steps him, staying in front, blocking Reeve's way to the elevator. "A cat wouldn't go noticed though, would it?"

Reeve stops abruptly, blinking at the Turk. It feels as if the very words sent a jolt through his system, and he wishes he had left just ten minutes earlier. He might already be in bed by now, and Charlie might be there already, as well, sleeping off the long flight to Costa del Sol and back, smelling slightly of wine.

"Look, just need you to take that thing down into the Sector Seven slums and do some . . . scouting, y'know?" Reno continues pleasantly, his shirt unbuttoned to reveal much of his pale chest, an invitation to those who don't know any better. "You don't mind, do you? Isn't your latest project down there anyway? You can go have a look and see how it's doing."

Clearing his throat, Reeve shakes his head. "I don't do that anymore, Reno. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to be getting home."

Comprehension dawns on Reno's face. Reeve curses silently to himself; he hadn't expected Reno to catch on so easily. "She doesn't know, does she?" he asks with wide eyes, the grin never leaving his face. "Come on, man, you haven't even told your own girl?"

"No, and I don't intend for her to find out—"

"—that you go around spying for Shinra?"

"That I used to go around spying for Shinra."

"Same difference to her," Reno mutters, and the Turk at least moves aside, walking alongside Reeve towards the glass elevator.

He's absolutely right. Charlie wouldn't see a difference.

Reeve rather wishes he could make it to the lobby alone, without having to listen to Reno make passive threats (the thought of Charlie finding out about his involvement with the Turks and with Shinra's dirtier history makes his heart leap in his throat), but he doesn't actually believe Reno would ever say anything. Besides, Charlie hates Reno for reasons that are unclear to even himself, and surely she wouldn't take anything the Turk said at face value, especially where it concerned the man she was supposed to marry.

"Hey, I get it," Reno says again as they step together into the elevator. The very sound of his voice is grating, and Reeve rubs his throbbing temples with his thumbs, wishing again that he was home. "Missus finds out that you're a spy for the company she claims to hate so much, and then she wants nothing to do with you anymore. I get it. You can't just give that up, yeah? I mean . . . sleeping with the president's daughter isn't such a bad deal, is it? Got you a promotion, anyway."

Within seconds, Reno is shoved hard against the wall. Reeve holds the Turk's thin tie at his collar, causing a panicky look to cross over Reno's face. "Careful."

Holding up his hands in surrender, Reno chokes, "Easy, man. It was a joke. You ever heard a joke before?"

He lets Reno go reluctantly and brushes himself off, feeling slightly guilty. "It's complicated," Reeve lies, knowing that Reno has just about hit the nail on the head. "Look, I haven't used him in a long time, and I'm not about to bring him out of storage just because you asked relatively nicely."

"Don't lie to me, man, and don't act so high and mighty. I know you were using that thing shortly before you got engaged to Charlotte." Reno's smarmy little face looks almost eager for a good punching, but the elevator comes to a rest and the doors open, letting them out on the fifty-ninth floor. "You never did tell us exactly how that happened."

"Nor will I."

Of course he and Charlie had made up some romantic story that involved him stuffing her full of expensive food and champagne and him getting down on one knee to propose, but the reality had been very different.

He had intended to do things the proper way, truthfully. He had meant to propose to her, with President Shinra's blessing, on the balcony of Charlie's favorite restaurant in Sector Eight, but the question had slipped out of him one day early while they were rolling around in bed together. It had been his most embarrassing moment, said on a whim as her lips touched places no one else's had ever gone near, and he's sure his face had been bright red in the seconds that followed. But Charlie had laughed, smiled, smothered him with kisses and accepted his whispered proposal breathily while claiming he was the most romantic man she'd ever known.

That part he had believed. None of the men in her life have ever been very romantic—her brother, the pilot, her father.

"What are you expecting to find in Sector Seven?" Reeve asks, out of sheer curiosity as they enter another elevator to take them down to the lobby. It's already dark outside, but the stars are nearly invisible through all the smog. Charlie hates that, he knows.

"Word has it that Avalanche is hiding out somewhere down there. Have you heard?" Reno leans against the wall of the elevator, crossing his arms over his partially-exposed chest. "And, like you said, we Turks don't fit in well. That's why we need someone a little . . . smaller. A little more covert. If a Turk just wandered down there and started asking questions . . . might seem a little suspect, y'know?"

"Ask someone else, then," Reeve says in a low voice. "I have no interest in helping you."

"Ain't Charlotte going away to Rocket Town for a few days?"

He doesn't even bother asking how Reno knows that. He has to assume that's Rufus's doing. "That doesn't mean I'm going to resort back to espionage while she's gone."

"Yeah? And what if I told you, the last time she went to Rocket Town, she met up with that pilot of hers?"

Reeve feels his heart stop. Charlie, returning to Rocket Town to see that horribly crass, upjumped pilot? He hadn't even considered, for a moment, that Cid Highwind might still live there after all that had transpired, and he hadn't even considered that there might be some ulterior motive to Charlie's going away.

No, he tells himself. Charlie wouldn't do that. Charlie loves him, and Reeve knows it. His flighty, impulsive, passionate, capricious Charlie, always expressing her vehement dislike of the city, always daydreaming of her rocket and of space and the sky, always eager for adventure, for a thrill, something to excite her.

Was this what Rufus had in mind? Reeve doesn't want to think badly of his future brother-in-law, but it's hard not to. If Rufus wanted to meddle in his sister's relationship (not for the first time), wouldn't pushing her into the arms of some long lost love be the perfect way to do so? A love that would never last, that could never come to fruition.

Even four years ago, Charlie had known that there was no future with Cid for her. It was the only thing that kept Reeve from beating the bastard bloody at times.

She had come to him inexperienced, eager to please, eager for something to heal the break in her heart. If Cid had touched her, Reeve would have known.

Reno hums, only half-apologetic. "Looks like Charlie's keeping some secrets of her own, yeah?"

Reeve shakes his head, trying very hard not to look troubled by this surprising information.

As the elevator slows down, reaching the lobby level, he turns to Reno. "Stay away from Charlie," he snaps. "And stay the hell away from me."

Reno scoffs. "And here I thought you'd be grateful."

Charlie is fast asleep when Reeve slips into the bedroom a short while later, fumbling out of his clothes. His suit jacket slips off his shoulders to fall quietly to the floor, and his tie soon follows, as well as his belt, which lands heavily on the carpet, but doesn't cause her to stir. Cat sleeps curled up between her legs, tail swishing slowly from side to side, but when Reeve reaches over to scratch his head, he jumps off the bed and leaves him alone with Charlie.

She's facing him with her back to the wide window, her hair fanned out on the pillow, wavy and tangled at the ends, long eyelashes dark against her milky skin, lips slightly parted (the Shinra look, indeed). The moonlight streaming through the bedroom windows makes her skin look white as snow (how long has it been since he's actually seen snow?), her hair silver.

The blanket doesn't quite cover her bare chest, which expands and contracts gently with each soft breath. Her skin is so soft and unblemished, porcelain, marble.

She is exquisite, and would be wasted on someone like Cid.

On a whim, looking at her body so illuminated, lit by the glow of the generous moon, Reeve quietly opens the top drawer of the nearest dresser, looking for paper, a pencil, a pencil, a pencil—

He sits gently on the bed, as close to her as he can without waking her. For a few minutes, the only sounds that are audible are the soft scratching of his pencil against the paper and her even softer breathing.

He must have hundreds of these little drawings hidden and stashed around their apartment, little drawings of her on scrap paper and lined notebook paper, on napkins and on the thin parchment he likes to sketch his drafts on, most of them half-finished, especially the ones where she had been sleeping.

The first time he had drawn her had been on her twentieth birthday, and the picture still hangs framed on the wall of her home office. He had promised to take her out for a nice dinner, but a series of important and impromptu meetings had held him up, and Charlie had swaggered into his office nearly two hours after he had agreed to pick her up, wearing a dress so lovely that he hardly registered the angry words that she had thrown at him.

"You think, just because you work in some fancy office now, you just can stand me up?"

She had looked so pretty in all of her rage, her cheeks pink and her eyes blazing, and once he apologized profusely and explained the situation, he had been able to calm her and she had been very happy to eat takeout in his office as he drew up plans for repairs to a collapsing part of the plate.

"Why'd you become an architect, anyway?" she had asked him, looking over his shoulder and down at his work.

It had been so long since someone had asked him that. "Because I liked to draw."

"Can you draw me?"

"What?" Reeve still remembers the smile she had given him. She had been serious, and incredibly excited about the prospect. "Well . . . sit down, then."

Charlie had been the perfect little model, posed on the sofa, her eyes never leaving him. It had been the first time he touched her so intimately, fingertips underneath her chin to gently lift her face, placing her hands just right, tucking her hair behind her ears, adjusting the fabric of her dress, fixing her necklace. And all the while, Charlie watching him, hardly blinking, never flinching at his touch.

Every time he had looked up from his paper, it had been to find her looking at him, smiling impishly. She was unabashed, confident, and so, so beautiful.

And after a while, she had come out with it and asked, "How come you don't have a girlfriend or something, a smart guy like you?"

She could be so exasperating sometimes, what with her childish innocence combined with her spoiled upbringing, feeling free to speak her mind in a rather brash way, almost arrogant. She wasn't afraid of him, and she wasn't afraid of needling him.

"Who says I don't already have one?"

"Does your girlfriend know you were supposed to take me out tonight? Or that you bought me diamond earrings?"

It had made him laugh, how quickly she called his bluff, how sweetly and innocently and teasingly she had smiled. He had been just as much to blame for spoiling her as her brother and father.

"Do you draw every girl you go on a date with?"

"Only when it's their birthday."

"Have you ever been in love before?"

"Have you always asked so many questions?" But she had wanted to know, and he owed her for missing such an important dinner. "I don't know."

"You don't know? I think you'd know if you'd been in love before," she had said, this girl who was so naive and so sweet, who had never known real love before from someone who wasn't related to her.

It had taken him nearly ten times to properly sketch her nose. "What do you think love feels like?"

She had thought for a moment, still as a statue. "Maybe . . . feeling like you want to be around someone all the time."

Reeve had been too afraid of confessing to the president's daughter that he wouldn't mind being around her all the time. All he could think to say was, "Maybe."

Charlie still claims that's the night she really knew she loved him, but part of him believes she only says that to make him feel less guilty about standing her up.

As he pushes a stray piece of hair out of her eyes, she hums very quietly, keeping her eyes closed, knowing better than to move while she hears his pencil hard at work. "Do I look that beautiful?"

He stops for a moment, letting his eyes wash over her figure for a moment, or what the blanket reveals of her (gentle slope of her hips, the curve of her exposed breast, the collar bone protruding against her skin), his hand hesitating above the paper.

"Yes," he whispers, almost forgetting about what he and Reno had spoken of not long ago. "Stay still, my love."

Charlie opens her eyes, smiling stiffly at him, but obliging his request. "What time is it?"

"Almost midnight," Reeve murmurs, lowering his eyes back down to the paper, rounding off the place on the paper where the crook of her neck is. "When did you get back?"

"About an hour and a half ago," she whispers slowly. "I almost thought Rufus wasn't going to let me go this time."

Of course, he thinks, her first coherent sentence is about Rufus.

"Lift your chin for me," he commands her gently, to which she obliges him again. Once his eyes sweep over her again, glancing at the hand on the mattress to examine the elegant tapering of her wrist, he falters. "Why aren't you wearing your ring?" he asks quickly, and the strain in his voice is evident. He isn't quite sure why this little detail makes him panic, but she seems to be amused by whatever is troubling him, a small little smile forming on her face. "Charlotte, what have you done with your ring?"

"Am I allowed to move?"

Reeve looks down at his sketch, a lightly drawn and crude-looking body, the outline of a blanket bunched up around her waist.

"Yes," he tells her, setting his paper and pencil on the nightstand, resolving to finish the next one, no matter how beautiful she looks.

Charlie rolls onto her back to reach the nightstand, opening the drawer. From within, she pulls out her engagement ring and holds it up in his face, still smiling at him. He softens upon looking at the sparkling ring held between her slender thumb and forefinger.

"I never sleep with my ring on. Not after it scratched me that first night," she smiles, kissing his cheek before putting her ring back. "You know that."

He does know that (how had he forgotten?). She had scratched herself in the face the first night she had worn it, and her pretty little cheek had been bright pink the next morning. After that, Charlie never slept with her ring, not even when she had been drinking.

Charlie's smile fades, her eyebrows slowly coming together in concern. "What are you getting so worked up for? Are you all right?"

"I—" He hesitates, touching her face and sighing, propping himself onto an elbow to hover over her. He allows his fingertips to skate over the smooth skin of her stomach, and Charlie pushes his hair out of his face. "Why didn't you tell me about the pilot? Why didn't you tell me you met with him?"

"Met with him?" Charlie sits up against the headboard, her smile growing. His heart gives a painful twinge. "I went into the rocket, and he happened to find me there a little while later." She kisses Reeve softly upon the face, every inch of skin she can before continuing. "We spoke for about three minutes total, and you do remember that he hates me, don't you?"

"Does he?"

It takes her a moment to answer. "I took everything from him," she replies. "And if it makes you feel better, he's living with the woman who took everything away from me."

He's never been particularly good at catching her in a lie. She has not a single tell that he's aware of, but Rufus could probably sniff out a lie a million miles away. Perhaps it has something to do with her career—she is, in the most basic sense, a professional liar. She has to sell those lies to the people of Midgar, and she does it damn well, to her credit.

"Look at me," Charlie breathes, waiting for his eyes to settle back on her face again, having been completely lost in thought. "It's been four years."

Reeve clenches his jaw, looking down at her. "I fired my assistant for you—"

"She was interested in you."

"All right, fine," he admits begrudgingly. "Yes, perhaps she was interested in me—" Charlie's nostrils flare; the wretched woman had hardly set her things on that desk before she was batting those uneven lashes at him, smiling with slightly crooked teeth—"but you laugh when I show concern about your trip to Rocket Town."

"Rocket Town is the best place to see the stars. I've told you that before," she explains patiently. "I plan on working this next week, you know. It's not all a vacation."

"Well, what's wrong with Kalm? Or Junon?"

Charlie giggles. "My rocket isn't at Kalm or Junon." She kisses him again, and this time, he responds slightly more eagerly. "If you want so badly to come with me, then come, but you'll be bored."

Her offer makes him feel slightly better, but certainly no less guilty. He almost considers telling the truth now, before Reno has the chance to fill her in, but Reeve can't quite determine how best to explain his situation. Not only will he run the risk of igniting the fury and resentment she so often feels towards her father's company (though, if she were next in line for the presidency, he feels she would resent Shinra Electric Power Company far less), but his flighty little Charlotte might not come back from Rocket a Town for weeks if she left immediately after hearing his confession.

"No," he says. He doesn't have the time to take a vacation to Rocket Town. "Just promise that you'll call me."

Charlie wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him to her. Her skin smells of wine and ocean salt, and her hair smells like flowers. "Of course I will."

He believes her, and he loves her, and the only thing he can think about is the way her soft lips feel pressed against his own, the way the silky skin of her throat feels beneath his fingertips, the way her pulse beats against his index finger, fast, faster, faster, warm and soft and his as he slides into her.

"Please don't leave," she whispers to him, almost whining, pleading, in a voice that's most unlike her, and her cheeks feel wet when he kisses them, "please don't leave me."

"Never, Charlotte," he promises her, "never."

Charlie slips out of bed just as dawn is breaking, wanting to get a head start on her journey to Rocket Town.

As he sleeps, one well-muscled arm is still underneath her pillow, his free hand resting against his chest. She smiles down at him, picking up the picture he had begun last night, the rough sketch of her. He hadn't filled in her face at all, but there's a fair amount of detail at her hands and neck, one of her breasts drawn nearly to completion (though that's her own assessment—Reeve might need to fix it fifty more times before he considers it finished).

The first night he had drawn her (ignoring the stack of work piling up on his desk to make up for the fact that he had stood her up), Charlie had examined his face for hours, watching the way his eyes swept over her, flicking between the paper and her face and body, the way his wrist moved and flexed with each stroke of his pencil, the way his eyebrows knitted together in concentration.

By the time she's ready to leave, Reeve is still fast asleep, but she kisses his forehead before leaving. "I love you," she tells him, but she has to give him a slight shake to get him to stir so she can say good-bye.

With all of her things already packed up on the plane she plans to fly to Rocket Town, Charlie heads to the hangar straight away, Headquarters still relatively empty save for some custodians and a few bleary-eyes receptionists opening for the day (one of them being Reeve's replaced assistant, who shoots Charlie a cool look).

The hangar is seemingly empty at first glance, too, but when she approaches the plane, she's startled at the presence of someone sitting in the cockpit.

"Father," she says, looking up through the open door. "What are you doing here so early?"

President Shinra gestures for his daughter to join him in the cockpit. She does, glad that he's forgone his cigar this time. "What's all this about a trip to Rocket Town, Char?" he asks exasperatedly, heaving a deep sigh.

Charlie leans back against the seat, staring out the windshield. "I thought I might do some research. Reeve bought me a brand new telescope, and I haven't been able to properly try it out yet."

Her father hums in a rather amused sort of way. "Smart boy."

She can't help but smile weakly at President Shinra's sharp profile. "Yes, he is."

"I hope Cid Highwind's presence in Rocket Town has had no influence on your recent decision to travel."

Just as quickly as it had come on, her smile disappears. "I've just been thinking a lot about my rocket," she confesses, too tired to have some passive aggressive conversation with her father. She doesn't want to push his apparently good mood.

Her father turns to face her, looking out of place within the cockpit of an airplane. "You think I don't understand," he says plainly. "You think I've always been serious, that I've never known anything other than ambition. Is that it?"

Charlie doesn't answer, afraid of giving a wrong answer. All she can do is look at him, wondering what he might have been like as a young man around her age, or Rufus's age, wondering what their mother had seen in him, if he was handsome and smart or if he was able to make her laugh. It's hard to picture her father as a young man, though, partially because the image of him as a stern, serious, and ruthless president is burned into her brain.

And then, perhaps the most surprising thing of all, President Shinra smiles. "You don't believe me," he chortles, making Charlie smile weakly, as well. It's all going too well, just like she's imagined for so long. "Fair enough." His eyes scan her features, as if trying to pick out which ones belong to him. "Your pilot, Char . . . he's fun, he's exciting, and in a few months, his inability to grow up and become a professional will be a blot, a curse, on your very existence."

She looks away from him. It's equal parts irritating and astonishing that her father knows her far better than she thinks.

"Your mother was fun and exciting," he finishes. "But your mother refused to grow up. She was incapable of running the company at my side, incapable of following orders, unwilling to be the shining beacon that you are becoming." His voice is softer, but no less intimidating when he adds, "I will not let you make the same mistake that I did. You haven't forgotten what that pilot did to you?"

She feels tears spring to her eyes, and not because of her rocket. The memories she has of her mother are still painful, and she remembers night after night listening to her parents argue, screaming matches, and she would sneak into Rufus's bed tearfully, hiding underneath the heavy blanket with him, and their mother would carry her back to bed long after Charlie fell asleep.

"You have a good boy, Charlotte, who has high hopes of marrying you without any expectations of running the company or inheriting whatever fortune I will leave for you. A good boy who does good work for the company. Loyal and charming and wealthy and educated. All of the things your pilot is not. You're better than that, and you've proven it these past four years." His fat fingers hover over the many switches and buttons in the cockpit, not committing to pressing any of them, even though the plane is off. "Any child by the two of you will be a genius, no doubt, and certainly fit to inherit the company when the time comes."

"Papa," she whispers, wanting to reach out and see what it feels like to have a father touch their daughter affectionately, lovingly, to wrap thick arms around her and hug her. On a whim, Charlie reaches out to touch his hand, to cover it lightly with her own, and he doesn't pull away, letting her hand stay there for a few seconds.

"Are you passing information to Avalanche?"

With her hand still touching her father's, she looks him in the eyes. "No," she lies.

"Is it your damn fool brother?"

"I don't know."

And then, President Shinra clears his throat, putting an end to the conversation and shifting towards the open door of the cockpit, pulling his hand away from his daughter's. "Now, I want you to go and see that you've missed out on nothing these past four years, and when you return, we'll talk about this wedding of yours. I already told Reeve I would pay for the entirety of it, no matter the cost."

He steps out of the airplane, and Charlie slides over to the side where he was sitting, watching him brush himself off.

"And when you finally marry," he says, adjusting his suit and checking his watch, "we'll talk about making you Vice President."

The thought makes her heart leap up into her throat, choking her, but she knows better than to take her father at his word. Her hands tremble as she starts the plane, slipping a headset over her head to command someone to open the hangar doors, to chart her course. With the minimal security around Headquarters so early in the morning, it takes a little longer than she'd like, but she has an entire week to spend in Rocket Town, so she's able to douse the rage that threatens to burn within her.

Truthfully, to be Vice President would be sweet, and to be President after her father would be even sweeter. It's what she's secretly wanted ever since it was clear Rufus was the one being groomed for it.

But to live a life so constricted . . . so boring and so dull. If her father had been telling the truth, his command over his company has sucked all the fun and life and laughter from him, and Charlie can't quite imagine a life without any of those things.

She's long abandoned whatever pipe dream about space she harbored, knowing that President Shinra will not be so foolish as to get her involved with another launch. But if she were President, she could do whatever she wanted, fund whatever she wanted, and no one could tell her otherwise. She could fire all the people she hates and rehire people who are good, people like Reeve, people who aren't greedy, malicious, puppets.

As the hangar doors buzz, beginning their slow opening, Charlie reaches into her canvas bag tossed on the other side of the seat, digging around for her phone. Quickly dialing the number from memory (the same number for ten years), she holds the phone up to her ear, listening to it ring several times before—

"Charlotte?"

At the sound of Reeve's voice, she can feel the lump form in her throat, constricting her speech. "Oh," she sighs, "I'm sorry. I just wanted to hear your voice again."

He laughs from the other end, tired laughter. "What should I say?"

Charlie smiles, dragging a hand down her face. "Just tell me you love me," she says, "and tell me how much time is left until I'm not a Shinra anymore."

"I love you," he replies immediately, "and it's five and a half months until you're no longer a Shinra." When she doesn't answer right away, he asks, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, now." She's temporarily blinded by the sunlight that streams in through the hangar doors. "Call me when you get out of your lunch meeting. I should already be in Rocket Town by then."

"Of course. Get going then, before you change your mind."

"I love you," she tells him quickly, feeling as if a week is a very long time. They've been apart for longer, but it had never seemed so daunting before. "I'll see you next week, all right? Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"There's nothing that you wouldn't do," he says teasingly. "I love you, too."

The moment the plane takes off from the smooth runway, Charlie feels adrenaline coursing through her, hands glued to the yoke as she climbs higher and higher. It's a perfect day once she clears the Midgar area, the sky turning a bit bluer, the clouds disappearing, untroubled by much headwind.

She hardly ever has the chance to fly by herself. Reeve claims that flying in a tiny airplane makes him nauseous (she doesn't blame him for it; the same thing had made her sick at first, before she had done it a hundred times), and Rufus only flies when he absolutely has to. Usually, when she does have to travel, another pilot is brought along to take over.

She listens quietly to the chatter from Midgar's control tower, speaking only when necessary to confirm she's on route, to confirm she's cruising at the proper altitude, high above the mountaintops.

Glancing over her shoulder, Charlie makes sure her things are still tucked away in the back of the plane. She had packed up her telescope, celestial charts, research notes, her personal computer, everything that she would need to conduct proper research for the first time in . . . how long has it been?

Years, she thinks. Reeve had only bought her the telescope after she'd returned home from Costa del Sol, a few days after the scene they had caused at the Gold Saucer. He had meant it as an apology, and it had been such a sweet and welcome one, especially when paired with the kisses and murmured words of affection he had given her that same night, too.

And once she exhausts herself with thoughts of the man she'd left behind in her bed (their bed now), her mind grasps at images of her father, and her hand covering his, and the way he had spoken of her mother.

Charlie knows that sentiment is not something that President Shinra treasures, but she knows that she may have just witnessed the closest thing to sentiment he's ever shown. She doesn't think she should be all that surprised. Her parents had been married for over ten years before splitting, and her father surely loved her mother at least for a little while.

She wonders if she dares ask about her mother more, now that her father has mentioned her twice so close together. Maybe he knows where she is in the world, and then Charlie can go track her down to ask her questions.

Rufus thinks she's dead. He's told Charlie so probably fifty times since their mother left Midgar, but Charlie doesn't quite believe it. Their mother had been smart and resourceful and strong-willed, and a woman like that doesn't just die in some gutter like Rufus claims.

She's able to take the headset off once her plane reaches the ocean, unable to be reached, and it's afternoon by the time she reaches Rocket Town and finds a field to land her plane in. It's a rough and bumpy landing, but there's a reason she didn't pilot a massive thing all the way here, and she didn't want to draw anymore attention than necessary. The less people who know that she's here, the better.

The moment she steps off the plane, the first thing she sees is the distant silhouette of her rocket, looming over the rooftops and treeline, right in Cid's backyard.

The air smells fresh, crisp, lacking the sulfuric smell of mako, and the sky isn't choked with gray smog and man-made clouds. The grass is green, turning brown with the changing of the seasons, but it's a natural brown, a natural change compared to the dry and barren wasteland that surrounds Midgar.

For a moment, she wonders what Reeve might say if she suggested they move away from the city after getting married. He would balk, she knows, and deep in her heart, she would miss the city too much, as well. Their entire lives are there, their work and their families and their home.

Cat would like it here, at least. He might like some space of his own to spend time basking in the warm sunshine. But Cat's preference won't have much of an influence on Reeve's decision.

As she makes for Rocket Town with plans to rent a truck in order to drive her things back to town as opposed to dragging them, Charlie is resigned to one simple fact that weighs heavy on her heart.

She'll never leave Midgar, and if she's unlucky, she'll die there, too.