Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and its characters belong to Square Enix and many others. Sadly, I'm not one of them.
Revised and edited January 7, 2007.
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Metathesiophobia or, Moving Forward
By Lady Calliope
Part Fifteen: Phengophobia
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Her laugh melts with the sound of waves and his whole body feels full of air. He should look away from the sun glinting off her open-mouthed smile, turn his head so he can't see the water droplets possessively clinging to her skin and tracing paths along her topography. He shouldn't feel envious of the easy way she looks at the soldier(unleashing a splash on dry clothes), shouldn't feel his skin burn on contact with hers (every time she offers a hand to help him up in battle), shouldn't feel guilty when he remembers the woman waiting for him (he'll fight to look her in the eye even though she's the only he's ever touched).
He shouldn't feel walls closing in when wetness makes her shirt cling too tightly, her bare feet caked in sand and she throws her head back and spins on the beach of Costa del Sol almost as if she doesn't care that the world is going to end soon. He shouldn't feel anything when she asks him to join her with a grin in her voice.
He's always had problems when it comes to things he should and shouldn't do.
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"So you and Shera are…"
I shake my head to confirm what he already knows.
"And you're moonin' over a lady who's moonin' over someone else?"
Nod.
"And no one, not even her, knows where the hell this someone else is?"
Shake. Wait, no, nod? Nod.
"And she's knocked up with this someone else's kid?"
A slow nod. It sounds even more hopeless out loud. "Any advice?"
"Yeah. Say 'ahh', Cid, 'cuz I'm buyin' you a round. A strong round."
"Marlene—"
"Is with Tifa tonight, and she'll thank me for stayin' out late. She loves these girl nights."
I blink and a shot glass filled with something smooth and brown is in front of me. It's only halfway to my mouth when Barrett, drinking buddy turned confidante, stops me. "Before we start, any chance of you tellin' me the lady's name?"
I narrow my eyes and down the drink, slamming the glass back on the bar to politely indicate I'd like another, please.
"I thought not."
We order a bottle and finish it off before the place closes. The next morning I can barely move without wanting to break something and my problem's no closer to being solved, but the air doesn't seem quite so heavy. I decide to take it as a sign of something good—though I don't really know what that something is.
Time to greet the day, old man. It's one more chance you get not to fuck things up.
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There were nights when neither of us could sleep and we'd both sit in the chairs on the bridge and watch the stars. She'd tell me their stories and I'd listen while plotting out the next day's course. Eventually we'd both get tired but neither of us wanted to make the trek across cold metal to the ship's bunks. So we'd just stay in silence until we fell asleep reclining in the pilot and co-pilot chairs. I always made sure she fell asleep first—call me chivalrous, but it didn't feel right closing my eyes on her—and then I'd put my jacket over her before she could start to shiver from power-saving low temperatures. The next morning she'd never thank me for the warmth but she always handed me the jacket with a small, private smile before the rest of them came clamoring through the door.
Those nights it was easy to pretend we were the only two people left on the planet and we'd somehow managed to find each other despite the vastness. It was our own world: just us, the ship's breathing, and the glowing objects in space hundreds of light years away.