Author's Notes: Started as an attempt to give Reeve a happy ending. You can decide if it's happy or not though. This, in no way, turned out how I expected it to. In no way. But I love it anyway. In fact, I think I personally need to go back and read it myself to try to find out how this happened.

Theme: And

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And They Lived Happily Ever After

As a kid he'd seen all those sappy fairy tales, mostly because he would read them to his little sister before she went to bed. Not that she was much smaller, there was only three years between them, but she always whined or cried when it wasn't him reading the stories. Their nanny said it was probably because she enjoyed his voice. He knew better. In her mind he was the charming prince that came to save the pretty girl from a horrible life or not being happy or something. Since he was her big brother, he wasn't going to tell her otherwise, especially since it was probably right. He did protect her. When she got to school and kids would pick on her he would rush to her defense. It would usually wind up with him hurt, but that didn't matter. She was the damsel and he was her prince. They were inseparable.

He knew better than her though. While she was still enjoying the fairy tale stories he would tell her before she was tucked into bed, her head resting against his chest, she always fell asleep just before he said the words 'and they lived happily ever after'. She didn't have to hear those words, and how wrong they sounded to him. If they lived happily ever after why didn't the book say how? Did the prince marry the princess, did they have kids and live in a beautiful castle with peace forever afterwards? What if one died? What if they didn't end up happy and went their separate ways? Apparently he was getting a little too big to read her these stories.

Before he knew it she didn't ask for him to read them anymore. She was eight and could read on her own, and he was forced to spend more time with their father, learning about the family business. They grew apart, and he missed how she would fall asleep as he read to her. But he watched her, even if she was pulling away from him. She looked every bit the fairy tale princess, with long hair the same color as his, brilliant green eyes, and a constant smile. That was the one thing that kept her from being one of those princesses she so wanted to be. Her life was perfect. She would never feel their suffering. She had no wicked step-mother or evil witch who envied her beauty. Instead their parents lavished their attention on her, while he sat away from the rest of the family studying things he didn't like, didn't care for, and didn't want to dedicate his life to. She was the princess but he was the one who had the hardship. But he couldn't hate her for that. He didn't want any harm to come to her.

By the time he's sixteen and she's reaching those awkward teen years at last, he's no longer the big brother she loved so much, her prince charming. Instead he's just a sibling that would take over the family business while she spent time with other girls and went to normal schools and looked at him as if he was weird. He couldn't blame her. He was sixteen and in college, a prodigy apparently, only because he thought that if he could just make her proud of him she'd let him be her savior again. But she won't let him close, and he throws himself into his studies, still working on things he doesn't care about but has no choice with. She's a little lady already, the perfect princess with her life still free from any pain. She's never known what it's like to be hungry, but he's seen it. He's traveled to the lower areas of their home city of Junon to study the supports that kept the city above the old fishing village stable. He's seen the people suffering with bad air and dirty water and trying so hard to keep their ways alive. But when he looks on her, that smile dazzling and the bright dresses contrasting beautifully with her dark hair, he doesn't for a minute wish to change anything for those people. It's just another mistake he makes.

When Midgar is made, and his name is that of the designer, they are so distant that she doesn't remember his name half of the time. He's not worthy of being her prince. It's then when he realizes the simple truth he'd been ignoring for so long. It wasn't her that was the star in this fairy tale. No, hers was a truly perfect life. He was the one in distress. He was the one suffering, he was the one who needed saved. But, unlike those stories, their wasn't any hope at all for him. No promise of a sleep to be broken by a kiss, or a person coming to rescue him from his pseudo-imprisonment. And somehow he can't find it in himself to break away on his own. Suddenly he's clinging to those stories like she used to, hoping for some reason that some outer force come to rescue him.

It only gets worse. The city is miserable. The people are miserable. The executives get rich off of that misery. He's alone on the board, the only one that still seems to be human, and concern is slowly melting into apathy. He doesn't want that. But it comes anyway. Everyday it gets harder to get up and listen to the misery, harder to swear he'll make it better. Yet just before all his will fades away the worst happens. His city is ruined. Reactors destroyed, a plate down, and a threat to the world in the form of a fallen SOLDIER looming over them all. He feels again, acting for once like he should have so long ago. His pet project sent out to spy, but a double agent in truth. The wrong side thinks he's loyal and the wrong side thinks he's a traitor. It doesn't end until the president is gone and his own life is risked in his attempts to protect the city. He has to watch it all through fake eyes from a jail cell then, but at that moment he's just a bit closer to that fairy tale ending.

They break him out, when all is said and done. They don't know they've done it at first, not exactly intending it with a certain action. But with the fall of the last two visages of Shin-Ra he becomes in charge, a leader like he always should have been. Again he's a prince, rushing to protect the people of what was always HIS city from death, while a man that is a true knight in no longer shining armor does his best to end it once and for all. And it happens. The threat is gone. Peace is restored in part, at first. Finally he's free from the pain, but for once he really cares about what he'd studied, and does his best to right it. The others help him, and for once, as Edge rises from the ashes, it feels like he's found that happy ending. Where it feels like you'll live happily ever after.

So he does something stupid. He calls. She answers, but doesn't recognize the voice. He goes home, but she doesn't recognize his face. She's married now, with her own little girl. It actually takes their mother's words to convince the still beautiful, still perfect, still untouched princess that this worn and weary man was once her prince. He's home, and his father is gone, and his mother tries but he'll never be that prince he was before, not in the eyes that matter. That died so long ago. So very long ago.

But still he tries, tries so hard. And despite the fact that he can't seem to win, he's sort of happy. Sure, he can't be a prince to his sister any more, the one she would go to every night to listen to those fairy tale stories where a beautiful princess was saved by a prince. Never again will she lean against him, listening to his voice and feeling him breath and being lulled into sleep by the comfort of her own prince before he can even say 'and they lived happily ever after'. So despite the joy at living, at finally getting to her say his name after so long, his ending isn't happy.

Until, that is, one long night with a storm raging above Junon, where the old story book is plopped down in his lap. It's worn and it's tattered, but it's the same. The hands holding it aren't. They aren't his sister's hands, but that of her daughter, his niece. The child doesn't even have to ask, he just moves the book slightly, lifts her into his lap and opens the cover, opens a world of magic mirrors and impossibly long hair and glass slippers. Before he can get to the ending though, the girl is asleep, her arms wrapped around him as best as they can be, with her head leaning against his chest to feel him breathing. He's a prince again, if only for a little while.

She comes back the next night with the same tattered book, and the night after that, and the night after that. Whenever they get to the last of the tales in it they start again from the beginning. He wonders why her father doesn't do this for her, but in the end it's obvious. Her mother is the perfect princess, never forced to do anything in her life, never able to handle responsibility. Her father is the perfect prince, with wealth and servants and unable to really handle something so young and pure. So here he is, the knight that would never be perfect enough for anything, with a sweet little princess safe in his arms, breathing gently as he mumbles that they lived happily ever after. For once the words don't sound empty.