If Misery Loves Company

Chapter 23

Decision

By Kristen Gupton-Williams

I kept my place there at the controls of the ship for the entire flight home. It wasn't a terribly long trip to get to Rocket, probably only… a few hours. Hell, I'd lost all track of time and wasn't even really realizing the fact that I'd basically been up for over twenty four hours.

Vincent remained right close to me. I think he pretty much figured that at some point or another, I was gonna keel over again like I had before. The excitement of getting home to Shera, though, was coursing through my veins. That's surely all I was running on at that point. Not to mention, my wounds were moving into that really sore phase, the act of just standing there agonizing enough to keep me conscious.

When Rocket crested the horizon and I saw my town again, I couldn't help but light up a celebratory cigarette and smile. After having seen Midgar and Junon, my little city seemed a whole lot smaller. It was probably only nine or so when I made my approach to the house and then landed my bird.

Without being asked, Vincent put an arm around me and started to lead me from the ship. I'll admit that I was feeling so weak that I don't think I would have made the walk to the house under my own steam. I was really pushing myself, but my bed, and moreover, Shera, were just a few yards away, and if I was going to go anywhere, it was into my house.

He hauled my sorry ass all the way to my front door before finally letting go. I leaned against the doorframe and looked at Vincent for a second, figuring it would be a good long while before I saw the man again. "Hey, Vince… thanks… I really appreciate it."

Vincent nodded and turned his eyes elsewhere. "I would ask if you wanted me to take you inside, but I know that your pride will not allow it."

"Heh… yeah… An' you'd be right." I finished up my cigarette and flicked it out into the yard. "I need to… to go in there an' make things right with Shera. You go on an'… Wait… what are ya gonna do, Vince?"

"I don't know yet, but before you kill yourself by staying out here and running your mouth to me, Highwind, get inside," he said, and I could have sworn I almost heard humor in his voice. "You're procrastinating."

I'll be damned if I wasn't, and as I'd come to appreciate, Vincent was usually right. I gave him a nod and then pushed myself back up to standing before opening the door.

Vincent took it upon himself to close it behind me, I guess wanting to make sure that I didn't run away. As to where he went after that, I didn't have the slightest clue at the time.

Once inside the house, I walked forward toward the hallway. With as fucked up as I was, and exhausted to boot, I literally felt the very last bit of my strength fading with those final steps I took. Shera opened the bedroom door and looked at me, wide eyed and crying.

Seeing her alive and perfectly fine, something within me decided I'd gone far enough. My ears started to ring, my vision slowly faded, and I felt myself falling.

Somehow, that woman managed to catch me and keep me from hitting the floor too hard. I didn't completely lose consciousness, though.

"Cid?!" she gasped, now on the floor, cradling me to her, abject fear clear in her voice.

I looked up at her, relieved to be with the woman again. "Shera… I'm home…"

Part me thinks she'd thought I'd just dropped dead, but upon me responding, she hastily checked me out. Like I've said, Shera's smart, ain't nothing gets by her, and she seemed immediately aware of exactly how messed up I was. "Oh God, Cid…"

Despite it all, I wanted her to know that I was going to be okay. "I'm… jus' tired."

Tiny little thing she is, Shera still managed to pull me up and drag me back to my bed. I fell onto the mattress and closed my eyes. Bed had never felt so sweet in all my years. Shera wasn't done, though. No, she needed to see exactly what was wrong with me. Though I would have just been content to be left alone to sleep, she moved me around a little and got my coat off, and then went after my shirt.

I wanted to kind of joke with her about how anxiously she was stripping me now that I was home, but I'll be damned if I wasn't just too fucking tired to manage it.

"Cid… I need to call the doctor…" she said, after having a good look.

I, myself, hadn't seen what had been lurking under my clothes, and didn't fight her choice. My left side was laid wide open, and there was no way in hell I was going to get away with letting it heal on its own. It's a good thing, really, that I hadn't bothered to lift my shirt and have a look prior. Ignorance is bliss sometimes when it comes to knowing exactly how fucked up you are. Every breath was killing me, various snapped ribs grating against each other. I wasn't going to be able to brush off these wounds like I had so many others.

Shera picked up the phone and called the doctor, and then she left the room for the time being.

Alone, I just laid there and was instantly overcome with my exhaustion, despite the pain. My proverbial fuel tank was on 'E'.

When she did come back, it was with the doctor. The sound of them talking woke me, and I can't really say I was all too pleased to be up again. I made no move to fight as I felt my pants being cut away.

"Ms. Sakamoto, I'm going to have to give the captain multiple sutures for these wounds. You may wish to leave," he said.

Damn him for having to say that, because the last thing I wanted to do in my state was to be fucked around with and sewn up, as badly as I knew I needed it. And while I could face what I went through to get these wounds with a fair amount of bravery, I had none left to spare. I opened my eyes and begged. "Shera… don't. Stay…"

Bless her heart, she came right over to the bed and climbed on the side of me opposite the doctor. She took my hand and I held on for all I was worth.

I closed my eyes and tried to cope with the needle sticks from the doctor as he dosed me up with local anesthetic. That actually really did help, since I couldn't feel the cuts all over me for the time being. Still, as he worked and got me patched up, my busted ribs would stab at me now and again.

It seemed like forever that he was fussing over me. I'm sure that I wavered in and out of consciousness throughout the whole ordeal, but Shera never left my side, and every time I'd come back, I'd feel her gripping my hand and stroking my arm lightly.

In a way… Well… it's hard to explain how I could be inwardly as happy as I really was at that time, despite being in more pain than I could ever recall. If Shera hadn't been there for me, I might just have given up and gone ahead and died. She was there, though, and I was more than happy to keep right on going.

The doc seemed to get finished up after God knows how long, and I felt him move away.

"…i…is he going to be all right?" Shera asked.

Though I wasn't looking, I could hear him set something on the nightstand. "As long as he takes those antibiotics for three weeks and doesn't over do it, he'll be right as rain. Those other pills are for pain, but I know what kind of a proud man he is, and I suppose he won't take them."

"That's Goddamned right…." I managed to growl out. Doc Simon had been the only doctor in town when I was a kid. The man knew me pretty well, as it should come as no surprised that as a kid, I had to get sutured up a good number of times.

Shera got up to see him out and I just laid there, hearing him go after he gave Shera a bunch of instructions for taking care of me. I wasn't supposed to get the bandages wet or take a shower until my sutures were out, and a bunch of other shit.

Like hell I wasn't going to have a shower after all I'd been through as soon as I was good enough to stand again. I can't imagine that I was exactly smelling like a bed of roses at the time.

Poor Shera… heh… Not that she ever would have complained.

She came back in and picked up a tea cup from my nightstand she'd brought in earlier. I found it in me to muster up enough strength to grab her arm and stop her. "Where're ya takin'… that…?"

She looked at me, a little surprised. "It's cold, Cid."

I was so thirsty that it could have been made with drain cleaner and I would have wanted it. "Cold tea sounds real good right now, though…"

Not arguing, she sat on the edge of the bed and helped me sit up enough to drink.

I took down as much as I could while I was able to stand the act of sitting. Finally, though, I gave up and she laid me back down.

Shera got up again and closed the curtains, casting the room into darkness. I'd gotten a headache from all the bullshit I'd been through and the dimmer light suited me. I tried to thank her for that but just managed to snort, before finally getting something word like to come out, and I reached toward her. "C'mere…"

The bed moved a little as she crawled onto it, laying at my side and taking the hand I'd held toward her. "I'm so glad you're all right."

Though I hadn't drank much of that tea, I'd gotten enough to wet my throat. "Saved the world… All of us… We did it… That fuckin' thing is gone… Ain't gonna hit the planet after all."

"I knew you'd do it," Shera whispered, moving a little closer.

I smiled, tightening my hold on her hand. "Well, it's what I had to do to get me to this."

Shera was just sort of quiet for a moment.

I turned my head on the pillow and forced my eyes open to have a look at her. Part of me needed to share the resolution that I'd come up with, even with as tired as I was. "I wasn't put on this planet to ride that rocket into space… nor to save the damn world… None of that crossed my mind. Not a damn bit of it. All I could think of durin' the whole fuckin' fight was gettin' home to my Shera…"

"Cid… all I thought of was you getting home…" she replied, getting all teary eyed again.

I remembered her saying years and years before that she wondered why fate had brought her to Rocket. I felt I had the answer for her, or at least, I'd hoped I did. "So, I guess that means y'all weren't brought to Rocket to jus' work on the damned space program after all, ne?"

She gave the best possible response to that I could have ever hoped for. "I've… hoped for a long time that maybe I was brought to Rocket just to be with you."

I inwardly cheered for joy, but was quickly losing my fight to stay awake again. "Well… I think that's fair enough to say at this point. Now, I'm fuckin' tired an' no offense, but you look purdy Goddamned spent, too."

"I am…" she confessed.

That was the end of that conversation and before I knew it, I was out again.

It was a long time later when I was woken up by the feeling of her getting out of bed. I didn't make any move until she was out of the room, because I needed to do things that I didn't really want her to accompany me for. I steeled my nerves and sat up, instantly breaking out in a cold sweat. Still, I pressed on and hauled myself out of the bed and into the bathroom. The beer I'd had on the ship God knows how long before had left me needing to piss like a race horse. I made as quick a job of it as I could, not shutting the door because I kept myself up by holding the doorframe.

Feeling at least a little better for having taken care of that, I went back and got back into the bed, trying to make it look like I'd not moved at all for when she returned.

Oblivious, Shera returned and got the lamp on. I made a good show of playing possum, pretending to wake up only then. Arranging myself to lean back against the headboard, I readily took the soup she'd made for me. Sitting hurt, but I was starved after all I'd been through and Shera always had made a mean bowl of soup.

The whole time she just sat watching me, as though she was keeping me alive strictly by her own will power. When I passed the emptied bowl back to her, she took it away and then returned to hand me my antibiotics and a cup of tea. I was willing to take those, since an infection was the last thing I need, but when she moved to pick up the pain medication, I forced myself back up and into the bathroom for round two of beer and tea download. Shera seemed to take the hint and set them back down without any argument, and she didn't even insist on going with me into the bathroom.

I know it seems foolish to some of you that I wouldn't take them. I figured, though, that my body hurt for a damn good reason, and that reason was to keep me from moving in certain ways. I didn't intend to move much at all. Besides, I didn't want to take something that was going to knock me for a loop or keep me in bed for a week. I had shit to do.

Once out of the bathroom, I went back and got into bed. Shera watched me for a while, but soon I was sleeping again. After all that had happened, my mind continued to fire even though I was out. This didn't make for an incredibly restful sleep.

At sometime after midnight, I woke up again, my heart racing in my chest as I'd been reliving the fight in a dream. In the darkness, I looked over to see that Shera had come back to sleep with me at some point. I watched her for a good long while, then turned my thoughts to the wedding rings I'd hidden away in my dresser five years before.

Without waking her, I slid out of the bed, feeling a little less like I was going to die. I went to the dresser and pulled open the bottom drawer silently. Groping around in the darkness for a moment, I found the two small boxes and pulled them out. With them in hand, I went to my closet, entered it, and then shut the door. Only then did I turn on the light.

I opened the little boxes and pulled the rings out, just staring at them as they lay in my hand. It occurred to me that the last five years had all kind of been a waste in certain ways. I was now going to do what I had planned to do after the launch, just… very, very late. Then again, I'd learned a lot in those years. Namely, that Shera must have loved me all along otherwise, there would have been no reason for her to stay. Not after what I'd put her through. No fucking way.

I then looked around and spotted my old military dress uniform hanging at the end of the rack. After looking it over to make sure that it looked fine, I slipped the rings into a pocket of the uniform jacket. That done, I turned off the light, and went back to the bed. I set my alarm clock and then cuddled right up to Shera before sleeping again.

The next day was going to be pretty damn important.

(A/N – All right, I reckon there's one more to go. Oh, and for the record, never drink a beer, sit and write for two hours, finishing with a scene about someone needing to pee, get up to take your dog out to pee when it's 9 degrees outside, and then stand there for ten minutes waiting for said dog. You'll realize really quickly that you need to run into the house and do that very thing for yourself! Also, never tell people those kinds of things. Yikes.)