He knows he should tell her. It's the right thing to do.
He should tell everyone else, as well, that Rufus Shinra is currently boarding the Highwind in the hopes of reclaiming his sister and the terrorists that initially threw Midgar into chaos.
They all deserve to know, and they deserve to have a fighting chance, but Reeve knows that, if Sephiroth is waiting for them on the other side of the mountain, it's unlikely that any of them will walk away with their lives.
But part of him is still reluctant to involve Charlie in this. Rufus's threat had sounded plain and clear to him, and with the president slowly becoming more and more fragmented with each personal loss, Reeve wouldn't put it past Rufus to follow through with that threat. He's hurt Charlie before, and there's no doubt that he would do it again, if not worse this time around.
In the end, he resolves to tell Charlie before he tells anyone else. It might be that he could convince her to wait around for Rufus, and if she complies with her brother's wishes and if she returns to Midgar willingly, she might be spared a horrible punishment.
She would be her brother's prisoner, to be sure, but at least she would be alive and relatively safe, so long as she follows orders, and Charlie has never been particularly good at taking orders from anyone.
The only problem with his plan, however, is the fact that it's nearly impossible to find a moment alone with her.
After leaving Modeoheim, Charlie had clung to the pilot for the majority of their journey, clearly very ill and in no fit state to continue. She had slept throughout the entire day in Icicle Inn, and none of the clinic staff would allow additional visitors into her room, and once again, Charlie was left alone with another (former) Turk that she had somehow managed to wrap around her finger.
To his surprise, he had received a phone call from Elena that night, as the time was nearing two o'clock in the morning. With Tseng presumed dead, the last few Turks remain scattered, with Reno and Rude still collecting information abroad on Sephiroth's world-ending plans. Elena happened to be just touching down in Nibelheim for the night after a helicopter flight from Icicle Inn, she claimed in her phone call, her voice panicked and frantic.
"Director Tuesti, I don't know if I did the right thing, and I'm afraid that Reno will . . ."
He didn't understand how any of this was his responsibility, but he could understand why someone with doubts might express those doubts to him instead of someone who would report directly to the president, someone like her real boss, like Heidegger.
She had explained to him that she had found Charlie and Vincent in an abandoned home at the edge of the village, and how she had decided to walk away without calling in Charlie's location or at least attempting to bring her back to Midgar.
Assuring her that she had, indeed, done the right thing, Reeve was left to wonder what Charlie might have been doing in some old home so late at night, and how she had managed to sneak out of the clinic without anyone raising a fuss.
Upon leaving Icicle Inn (prematurely, he thought, for while the doctor had given Charlie a week's worth of medication for her journey, he also chided her for overexerting herself while her body was still recovering), Reeve hopes to pull her aside and explain the Rufus situation, but again, it's nearly impossible to get her alone, but that doesn't mean she's impossible to talk to.
In fact, as they begin their descent towards the cliffs that lead to the wild and uncharted northern territory, Charlie asks Cait Sith to linger behind the group with herself and Vincent, and he learns quickly enough exactly what the two of them were up to when Elena interrupted them only last night.
She still coughs hoarsely into her elbow every so often, and Reeve can see her shivering through his computer screen, despite wearing several warm layers of clothing, but she doesn't complain once, and he has to admire her tenacity.
Rufus would never survive an adventure such as this, and Reeve wonders if Charlie knows it.
Regardless, after putting a healthy amount of distance between the three of them and the fellow companions, Charlie tells him about the videos Vincent had found relating to the Cetra, Jenova, Professor Gast, Aerith's birth mother, and something called "Weapon" that Reeve can't recall ever hearing about before. Combined with the information Vincent has slowly given them over the last few weeks in regards to Sephiroth's own true mother, and with what Charlie had learned from Tseng's reports about the cruel experiments that had taken place in order to create the great war hero and his two SOLDIER friends, Reeve thinks they might be able to finally make sense of the entire situation.
In return, Reeve does inform them about Professor Hojo's abrupt return to Shinra Incorporated, which surprises Vincent, but doesn't at all surprise Charlie.
"Hojo is nothing without Shinra," she says casually, brushing off Reeve's protest when he continues to tell her about Rufus's nonchalance about the situation. "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Allowing Hojo to run around unchecked . . . who knows what he might do?"
Reeve can't say he completely disagrees with that logic, but having Hojo around at all makes him, rightfully, a little wary. He doesn't argue with her any further about it, and conversation continues without pause.
Whenever they think they're beginning to get somewhere, there are more unanswered questions and missing information, but while Charlie and Vincent are able to map an entire timeline of events within their own heads and begin piecing seemingly irrelevant pieces of the puzzle together, Reeve struggles to keep up.
He supposes Charlie has spent so much time with Turks over her lifetime that it's almost second nature to understand their investigative way of thinking.
She seems to have been mulling all of this over for some time, because she understands a lot more than she sometimes pretends to. Out of everything, out of all of their theories, she is convinced of one certain fact that is based upon scattered bits of evidence that she's collected over the course of their journey.
She's wholeheartedly convinced that it's not Sephiroth they've been following, but Jenova, and she immediately launches into a full explanation, beginning with the night her father died to cite the way Sephiroth had appeared to phase through solid flooring and the mysterious disappearance of the Jenova specimen that same night.
Charlie certainly makes a compelling argument. She recalls that Jenova is clearly capable of some form of shape shifting, as Aerith's mother had explained in one of the videos she watched last night, but isn't able to answer Reeve's follow-up question as to why Jenova might choose to take on the form of a long-dead Shinra war hero.
She reminds them of the wriggling appendage that had been on the altar where Aerith died, left behind when Sephiroth disappeared, and while Vincent knows what Charlie is talking about, Reeve doesn't remember seeing anything of the sort, but does remember Cloud mentioning finding something similar aboard the cargo ship they rode from Junon to Costa del Sol, where they had also encountered Sephiroth.
Charlie tells them about a peculiar reaction she had elicited from Tseng before they had entered the Temple of the Ancients, after first mentioning it might not be Sephiroth they were chasing, after all.
She also tells them something that sends a chill down Reeve's spine, even in the comfort of his own office at the Shinra Building. What she describes sounds impossible, and she's very calm about describing her experience with Sephiroth's sword held to her neck, far calmer than he might have been, if it were him.
"I think he read my mind," Charlie confesses, though Vincent looks slightly skeptical. "It's like he knew exactly what I was thinking when he was looking at me. Or . . . he wanted to feel my reaction for himself and sort of . . . drew it out of me. He knew I wanted and expected to die. I can't describe it, but I think that's why he let me live. He knew I didn't think I would leave that room."
Reeve can't say he understands. He doesn't doubt that Charlie was very traumatized in the seconds and minutes that followed Tseng being mortally wounded, and it's only natural for her imagination to have expanded on that moment she had shared with Sephiroth before, what she thought would be, her death.
He doesn't tell her that, however.
She seems more like herself than he's seen her for a while, talking without hardly taking a breath, passionate and frenzied and so damn smart. He doesn't want to ruin whatever good mood she's in, even though Reeve can't think of any reason as to why her mood would spike so drastically, so he says nothing.
They still lack answers about the tattooed, black-cloaked men they've come across recently, how Sephiroth might have survived the freak accident that was reported to have killed him, and the cryptic hypothesis Professor Hojo mentioned to Charlie in Costa del Sol, but they understand a little more than they did yesterday, and it takes up much of their time.
In regards to Weapon, Reeve just hopes it remains dormant for the time being. He doesn't think he can handle any more surprises.
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize y'all scheduled a fuckin' Shinra board meeting for today. Hope we ain't interruptin' anything too important."
Charlie scowls at Barret from her place in between Cait Sith and Vincent.
Cid scoffs quietly to himself and turns away from her, facing forward again, holding his hands out over the flame at the end of Nanaki's tail. He doesn't feel shit through the thick padding of his gloves, and when Nanaki catches sight of his tail being used, he loves ahead to walk with Cloud, Barret, and Tifa, leaving poor ol' Cid alone with Yuffie.
"That's like, the millionth time you've looked back at her now," Yuffie snorts, looking ridiculous underneath her layers of winter clothing. "Bet she'd let you lick the snow off her boots if you asked."
"The fuck are you tryin' to say?" Cid snaps at the kid.
Yuffie raises her eyebrows and sticks her tongue out at him before pursing her lips together and making obnoxious kissing sounds, treating him like a fucking dog.
"Get the hell out of here."
She obliges him, racing ahead to annoy her other friends and leaving Cid alone to his thoughts.
He can't stop thinking about last night.
He can't stop thinking about the way Charlie had kissed him, so soft and so sweet and so shy, turning back into the young girl he once hoped would love him without reservation, the young girl who had worked alongside him on the construction of his airship and his rocket.
He can't stop thinking about the way Charlie had offered to relieve him of the painful erection that just kissing her had given him, the warmth of her hand seeping through the thin fabric of his pants, rubbing just the right way to get him to sigh involuntarily, wanting only to make him happy with no regard as to how she felt.
It had been equally as painful to deny himself the very thing he's wanting since first meeting her all those years ago, but he knew that sleeping with the vice president of Shinra Electric Power Company would be a mistake just waiting to happen.
That thought is further affirmed every time that he looks back at Charlie, always deep in conversation with Cait Sith and Vincent, all three of them conspiring together.
Barret likes to joke around sometimes, calling Vincent "a man of few words".
Seeing him with Charlie, Cid doesn't quite think that's the case. Vincent always seems to have plenty to say around Charlie, but he's also noticed that she puts forth a little more effort than anyone else when it comes to cracking the former Turk.
But Vincent is the further fucking thing from his mind right now. Cid is still stuck on the confession Charlie had made last night in regards to kissing her own brother, and his imagination gives him horrible thoughts that he'll never have the courage to ask her about.
He's heard the rumors from Barret, of course, who had lived in the slums of Midgar for some time and never shied away from joining into the discourse regarding Shinra.
'Brotherfucker', some called her, while others preferred something simple like, 'whore' or 'slut' or 'abomination'. Truthfully, Cid hadn't taken much stock in such filthy fucking gossip, because Charlie would surely understand the consequences of doing something so goddamn heinous with her pain-in-the-ass brother.
He doesn't want to believe it was anything more than a lonely kiss shared by two kids. That's normal, isn't it? Kids looking to experiment with someone they trust, like family?
But the way she had looked afterwards . . . no one should be so fucking scared and ashamed of an innocent kiss . . . unless it hadn't been innocent at all, unless it hadn't just been a kiss.
By late afternoon, and thanks to Lottie's exceptional map-reading skills, they come upon a lone cabin at the base of the cliffs, who talks for nearly thirty-five minutes about his life as a former climber, regaling them all with details about his old partners and the twenty years that he's lived in nearly complete isolation.
It all sounds very sad, but Charlie had squeezed herself beside him on the sofa in order to listen, so Cid doesn't really mind that the old man goes on and on. When he lifts his arm to drape it around the back of the couch, barely touching the very tops of her shoulders, she doesn't push him away, but his fingers end up brushing against Tifa sometimes, which makes things slightly awkward with the amount of shifting and apologizing he's forced to do, especially when Tifa catches on to his plan of trying to put the fucking moves on Charlie.
It sounds like what they're all looking for is on the other side of the cliffs, a giant crater where something had once fallen many, many years ago and changed the landscape of the entire area. Holzoff impresses very seriously upon them the harsh landscape and climate, and warns them of several precautions they will need to take before he settles his gaze on Charlie, who has remained silent the entire while.
"You don't look very well," Holzoff tells her, looking her up and down and frowning. "Going against the cliffs unprepared, or ill, will surely be a death sentence."
"I'll be fine," Charlie assures him, immediately coughing into her arm like she's going to cough up a lung. Maybe it was a bad idea to bring her along. They're only going to make it worse, dragging her through a subzero wasteland.
Cloud sighs, rubbing the back of his neck, sprawled out in an armchair by the fireplace. "Okay, we'll go in groups. Tifa, Barret, and I will secure the route. Once we're ready for the rest of you, we'll send up a flare." He turns his gaze on the old man. "Is it all right if the rest of our party waits here?"
"Certainly," Holzoff replies with a nod, leaving them to their own devices after ensuring they have all the required equipment to scale the cliffs.
Yuffie groans in disgust, crossing her arms and pouting from the floor, her hair soaking wet from the snow. "How is that fair?"
"I think it's pretty fair," Barret replies, satisfied with the way Cloud has split them up.
"Well, you're not the one who has to be stuck with a Shinra."
"Hey," Cid snaps, earning himself a scowl from Yuffie. "Take it easy, okay? Lottie's just as much part of the team as anyone else here, and she just dragged her fuckin' ass through all those goddamn snowfields to be here with us, having walked out of a clinic just this mornin'."
"Sorry, I didn't realize that you were the new spokesperson for the vice president." Yuffie gets to her feet, strutting back and forth across the cramped room, leaning down in front of Cid and scrunching her nose at him. "What'd she promise you, Cid? A shiny new airplane? Materia? A kiss?"
Cid flushes, growing angry now. He retracts his arm from around Charlie's shoulders, prepared to throttle the damn teenager in front of him, but Charlie's hand comes to rest on his forearm and prevents him from saying something he doesn't mean.
"Yuffie, I have more reason than you to be here," Charlie tells her flatly, and the lack of frustration and anger in her voice tells Cid just how exhausted she really is. "It shouldn't matter my own personal reasons for being here at all, so long as our own end-goals are the same."
"Don't try to put me in the same category at you—"
"I'm not doing anything of the sort."
"Gods, you think you're so much better than everyone, don't you? With your fancy clothes and your fancy hair and your fancy way of talkin'. It makes me sick!"
"My fancy way of talking?" Charlie repeats, growing angry now. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You've got that city accent. That money accent. And you know that showin' off your tits and sleepin' around with everyone here isn't gonna get you anywhere, right?"
There's a collective "whoa, whoa, whoa" as everyone starts to insert themselves into the conversation that's suddenly taken a turn for the worse. Even Barret leans forward from his chair, holding a hand out to stop Yuffie before she says something really stupid.
Cid jumps to his feet. "Careful, Yuffie," he growls, but once again, Charlie stops him, blushing heatedly, taking hold of his wrist and pulling him back down onto the couch.
"Excuse me?" she scoffs.
"Don't be stupid, Charlie, I think we all know about those dirty magazines you're always in. We know what you're like, and we've all seen you goin' off into the woods with Vince every chance you get, and if you want to pretend that you didn't sleep with Cid last night when he snuck up to your room—"
"Okay, I think we're done here," Cait Sith snaps, sitting comfortably atop his moogle and leaning against the wall. "Yuffie, you're being—"
"Cid and I didn't sleep together—"
"It's true," he supplies, starting to think it's a bad look to be pressed up against her right now, not helping her case in the slightest. It's really only half the truth. They had slept in the same bed, but he's not just going to announce to all these random people that he and Charlie were kissing like horny teenagers in her hospital bed last night.
"And Vincent was only teaching me how to shoot a gun—"
"Then you must really suck, because you should have learned by now," Yuffie counters, looking to have absolutely no intentions of slowing down. "I can't believe you all are okay with this! Once we save the world or whatever, she's just gonna use that to turn a profit like her daddy did before her."
"I am nothing like my father, you little brat," Charlie spits, causing everyone to fall into an uncomfortable silence, even Yuffie, whose expression flickers briefly. "For you to even suggest something so cruel and unfounded reflects very greatly on you, Yuffie."
"Oh, shit . . ." Barret mutters, looking ready for something big to happen, trying to shrink into his small armchair as if hoping to remove himself from the situation completely.
Even Cid starts to feel mildly uncomfortable, looking everywhere except at Charlie and Yuffie.
"I am so tired of you all pretending that you know anything about me," she continues, not quite shouting, but Cid knows that she's mad. "I'm tired of everyone walking all over me, of telling me who I am instead of bothering to ask. And Yuffie, you, of all people, should know what it's like to be reduced to nothing but someone's daughter." Charlie looks around at everyone, blushing.
Yuffie lowers her eyes, looking ashamed, as she should. Charlie rises from the couch, chewing on her lower lip for a moment as everyone listens.
"I am . . . smart, and . . . I'm a genius, and I know people throw that word around, but I'm really a genius, and I finished school early and I . . . Cid and I built a rocket." She looks desperately at him, looking close to tears. "We built a rocket and I was twenty-two. And I was head of the space department and I was really good at my job. I was really good. And when I was nineteen, I helped build an airship. But none of you even care about that. No one has ever cared about that. They only ever cared about what I said when I was half-naked."
Everyone averts their eyes quickly, distracting themselves with the wall or their fingernails or their weapons. Cid thinks he may be watching Charlie have a mental breakdown.
"When the Turks took me from Gongaga, did you even think about coming back for me?" she asks, wrapping her arms around herself protectively, completely dejected when no one answers. "I would have gone back for any of you, but you just left me there. I was in a cell for over a week, and you guys didn't even think of me. I would have gone back for any of you without hesitation."
This is getting too much for him. If it were anyone but Lottie, he'd walk out. Even Cait Sith has his head down to avoid looking her in the face.
"And when Tseng died, you didn't even care. None of you, except for Cid, even asked if I was all right. It's like you think I don't even have feelings." Sighing deeply, she continues. "I'm human, you know. I hurt, too. I hurt just like the rest of you."
"Charlie . . ." Tifa begins awkwardly, trailing off when it's clear she has nothing to say.
"I feel like I've done a lot to prove to you that I'm different, but . . . if you want to send me back to Midgar, then fine, but I will turn around tomorrow with the entirety of Shinra Incorporated behind my back in the hopes of defeating Sephiroth and putting an end to his plans."
Cid smiles weakly at her back. He loves her, and he's always loved her, but he thinks he loves her more now.
He thinks she might be done now, and she looks slightly horrified with what she's just said, but she has one more thing to say, it seems. "Also, I worked really hard to have a hot body, and I'd like to see all of you build up the confidence to pose naked for the entire world to see."
Sliding her coat on over her shoulders and pulling a knit hat down over her eyes, Charlie leaves them all, walking back out into the windy snowfield and slamming the front door shut behind her so hard that it rattles on its hinges.
It's quiet between them all for a moment, the tension so thick that it's suffocating. Everyone's eyes are lowered, but Cait Sith breaks the silence with a loud sigh. "Kinda wish she'd just yelled at us," he says plainly. "That was so much worse than being yelled at."
"She's yelled at you before?" Cloud asks.
"Well . . ." the cat stammers for a moment, waving a flippant hand, "y'know . . ."
"I don't think I've ever heard her talk so much," Nanaki says with a huff through his dry nose.
Barret gives Yuffie an exasperated look, one that he might give his own daughter. "Yuffie, why'd you have to piss off the vice president of Shinra?"
"What!" Yuffie shrieks, whirling to face Barret with her hands curled into fists at her sides. "You do it all the time!"
"That's different," Barret retorts, shrugging his broad shoulders. "She knows I'm only bein' half-serious."
"I can't believe you! I thought you hated Shinra—"
"I do hate Shinra, goddamnit!" Barret slams a fist down on the arm of his chair, nearly breaking it. "But she didn't have to come back, and she could'a told her brother all about us, but she didn't. She's got more fuckin' integrity than Mr. Shinra Spy, at least."
"Oh, come on," Cait Sith replies, standing up atop the stuffed animal he rides and frowning. "I thought we were past that!"
"Barret, you were terrible to her," Nanaki reminds him, sounding incredulous. "You hardly gave her enough money sometimes for a meal."
"But did she starve?" Barret asks, holding his arms out like that proves his point—whatever fucking point he's trying to make.
Tifa shakes her head. "I told you we should have gone back for her when we left Gongaga."
Barret scoffs. "She wasn't a priority at the time."
One large argument breaks out amongst them all after that, save for himself and Vincent, all snapping at each other for petty things that don't matter, for things their imaginations have cooked up in regards to others. Everyone is tired and hungry and stressed, and Cid feels that way, too, but he's really got nothing to argue about and would rather not get involved.
No one really notices when he slips out the front door.
Charlie is sitting on the bottom step leading to the front door, hunched over to protect her face from the wind as a particularly strong gust of it picks up the fresh snow and blows it in their direction. Once it dies back down, she lifts her head again, and Cid sits down beside her. He doesn't bother lighting a cigarette—the wind will only blow the smoke right into Charlie's face.
She doesn't even acknowledge him, staring down at the ground.
"Y'know . . ." he begins, clearing his throat. "I know you're smart, and . . . I think it's what I like most about you. Even more than"
Charlie doesn't answer, holding her head in her hands.
"C'mon, Lottie, you're gonna freeze to death out here."
Still, she doesn't answer. He's not used to Charlie being so fucking quiet. He used to hate when she would run her goddamn mouth, but now that she isn't, he kind of misses it.
"That was so humiliating," she moans into her palms. "I can never go back in there."
"You don't wanna right now anyway. They're all fightin' with each other." Cid lifts a hand to rub her back, wanting to pull her close. He's not even sure she feels his touch through her coat. "You know, honey . . . I think Yuffie's just jealous of you."
"If she wants my life, she's welcome to it." Charlie sighs very heavily. When she lifts her head again, it's to ask him, "Do you still think I'm hot?"
That makes him chuckle, nodding his head. "Yeah, I still think you're hot."
She turns to look at him, smiling very softly. It makes his cold, frozen heart melt. "I really like you, Cid."
His chest tightens painfully and he can't think of a single thing to say. His entire mind has gone blank, and he feels like a boy with his pants down, but then a horrible realization strikes him that negates the feeling of elation almost immediately.
"You ain't just sayin' that 'cause you don't plan on comin' back from whatever's on the other side of those cliffs, are you?"
She looks apologetic, and that seems, to him, confirmation of his worst fears. "I have nothing left for me in Midgar," she answers with a small shrug, looking away from him again. "If I go back now . . ."
"Then don't go back to Midgar." Cid swats her arm, raising his eyebrows. "You and me, we can fix up the Tiny Bronco and go anywhere in the world. I'll hide you from the company. Anywhere you wanna go, baby."
"I can't run away forever." She looks surprised at his proposal. He's only half-serious. "Is that the life you want to live? A life on the run with the world's biggest traitor?"
"What's the alternative? You're just gonna give up?"
"I would rather die knowing I was doing something good."
"How noble of you."
"Don't patronize me, Cid."
He holds his hands up in defense. "I'm not gonna let you walk to your death. You know I can't do that."
Charlie considers him for a long time. It feels like she can see right through him, and he fully expects her to tear him a new one. She's got enough bottled up anger in her, and he wouldn't even mind taking the brunt of it if it meant she felt better afterwards.
But instead, she smiles weakly, slipping her hands around his bicep and resting her head on his shoulder. "I know."
Cid looks down at her, wondering how it came to this. He's okay with it, he thinks. He presses a kiss to her forehead, happy for the moment.