Chapter 21: Another Meeting

March 5, 0008

An awkward atmosphere between the three filled the kitchen as the two parties continued to glare at each other. The house, several miles from Rocket Town, had four rooms on the first floor, and three on the second. It was once home to a family, but now, that family was broken. At this moment, the pieces were hovering around each other, as if they were thinking about putting themselves back together.

One of them was Larry, a man in his mid to late forties. He had brown hair and a pair of glasses. He was of average height. He was healthy, but he looked quite aged and bitter.

The other party had two people, a man and a woman. Despite their borderline May-December age gap, they were indeed a couple.

"You came here unannounced," Larry sighed.

"I wore a skirt," Shera weakly defended.

"The skirt's the least of my worries," Larry continued.

Cid sat next to her, awkwardly silent. Shera had instructed him beforehand to let her do most of the talking.

Larry glared at Cid.

"How old is he?" Larry demanded.

"Thirty-three," Shera replied.

"And how old are you?" Larry continued.

"I'm eighteen," Shera answered.

"Need I say more?" Larry grunted. "How would you feel if your daughter had a boyfriend twelve years older that her?"

"He's fifteen years older than me, dad," Shera corrected.

"And you're friends with Tifa Strife," Larry continued.

"Yes," Shera replied, "I am."

"That broad is down in the polls," her father pointed out. "She lost that debate badly. It's 61% to 39% now. It would take a miracle you don't believe in to get her ahead again."

"Miracles do happen," Shera insisted. "Not necessarily in the supernatural sense, but if seen things work out in extraordinary ways."

"Whatever," sighed Larry. "You've both abandoned your duties as women to keep your homes."

Cid clenched his fist; Shera had warned him ahead of time that he was just as conservative as the Downings, if not more so.

It was the reason Shera had run away from home when she had barely hit the double digits.

"How long can you all possibly support this lifestyle?" Cid finally asked.

Shera gave him a surprised look.

She had asked him to let her do most of the talking.

But there were some things that had to be said.

"I beg your pardon?" replied Larry, half-curious and half-scornfully.

"The modern economy demands that both parents work," Cid pointed out.

"Nonsense," Larry dismissed. "We simply made sacrifices. Often, I was working two jobs."

"That's dying out," Cid repeated. "Sooner or later even the Downings are going to abandon it and-"

"I will never abandon it!" Larry snapped. "Mark my words, you can take it from my bullet-riddled corpse."

Shera turned to Cid.

"This is why he disowned me," she explained. "Because I wanted to have a life outside the kitchen."

"I would repudiate any daughter who thinks it's more fulfilling to wear pants and clock in and out everyday than submit to her destiny!" Larry insisted.

"Wait a minute," Cid interjected. "You want all women walking around cartoon animal style?"

"Skirts and dresses!" Larry corrected. "We should be wearing the pants, not literally and figuratively."

"That's right," Cid realized. "All the Downing women wear skirts and dresses. But then, why do you just have one daughter instead of a full hour like them?"

"Because my wife died after Shera was born!" Larry angrily replied. "Otherwise, I would have had a full house!"

"Tell him what you told me about mom," Shera demanded.

"She died in childbirth," Larry sighed.

"And what actually happened to mom?" Shera pried.

"She hanged herself in the basement," Larry admitted.

"When I was two weeks old," added Shera.

Any why did she hang herself?"

"I don't know," Larry insisted.

"Because of the life you forced on her!" Shera exclaimed. "You killed her! You killed mom!"

"You lying little whore!" Larry exclaimed.

That finally did it.

Cid pushed the table over, stood up, and drove his fist into Larry's face.

Larry fell motionless to the floor.

Blood was oozing from both his nose and his mouth.

"He's not dead, is he?" Shera asked, in a rather casual tone of voice.

Cid checked his pulse.

"No," he replied. "But I think we should get the hell out of here before he recovers."

"Good call," Shera agreed.

THAT NIGHT…

"I probably should have told you the truth about my family," Shera said.

"It's alright," Cid assured her. "I kind of figured something was up when I met you eight years ago."

"It's not everyday you see a ten-year-old without her parents," she admitted.

They were back home, on the living-room sofa in their pajamas.

"We don't have to go back there," Shera continued. "I've caused you enough trouble already."

"I wouldn't think so," Cid assured her.

"What about the rocket incident?" Shera asked.

"I'm well over that," he said.

"You sure you can forgive me for crushing your dreams of coming into space?"

"I may be the asshole of the year, but I wouldn't incinerate a thirteen-year-old girl," he replied.

This was a reference to the time Cid was supposed to go into space, but aborted the flight because Shera was still inspecting the oxygen tanks. He would have burned her to the point she would have been vaporized if he did otherwise, and, shortly afterward, the Shinra pulled the plug on their space program. What he failed to mention here, though, is that he did get to go into space eventually.

"I can't forgive my father," Shera continued. "I was hoping he would change, but you know what they say about zebras and their stripes."

"I don't think I'm that different," Cid muttered.

"You're different," Shera insisted. "You're pissed off a lot, but at least you respect my dreams. I don't care that you're an asshole."

"Thanks," Cid said sarcastically.

"We're pretty dead to each other," she sighed. "My dad and I."

Cid was silent; she was obviously building to something.

"Which is why….I'd like you to be my family instead."

Cid was silent at first; anyone over the age of twelve knew what that meant.

"You're saying you want to…get married?" Cid asked, even though he already knew the answer.

"Yes, I would," Shera admitted. "I mean, I know we haven't been dating long, but we've known each other for eight years now."

"Good point," Cid admitted. "Well, I guess we'll take this foreword then."

I know, Cid didn't seem very emotional here, but he never is, at least not in a good way. I think he was also married before, so it wasn't like he never went through it.

"You'll have to propose to me," Shera reminded him.

"That would be customary," Cid admitted.

"But we also need to date a bit longer," Shera continued. "That's also customary."

They had only really been dating since the Meteor crisis.

"Proposals often happen around holidays," Cid said. "Maybe Christmas?"

"Then it's settled," Shera said. "Christmas of 0008, we get engaged. It takes a while to plan a wedding, so probably 0011 would be a good bet."

"You won't feel too young?" Cid asked.

"I'll be twenty or twenty-one," Shera replied. "Tifa was twenty when she got married.

That was true, unless you count her memories from the now-gone timeline, which would make her closer to thirty.

"Where should we get married?" Cid asked.

"How about a destination wedding?" Shera suddenly suggested. "In Eros Nova?"

"The prude side, I assume?" Cid asked.

Remember, that island has a prude side and a nude side.

"Of course," she said. "Otherwise, Tifa probably won't come."

She then got up, straddled him, and kissed him.

She no longer cared about her father, whom she obviously wasn't inviting. She had Cid.

"Speaking of Tifa," she suddenly said. "The third debate is right here in Rocket Town."

"Her campaign's shot," Cid lamented.

"Don't be a downer," Shera reprimanded. "It's not time for the election day yet. There's still the debate in Cosmo Canyon. Then this one. Besides, the first debate was fixed. It'll probably be fixed here, too. Which is why I was thinking we could even things up."

"I'm not smart enough to even things up," Cid dismissed.

"Fortunately," Shera said, "you have a girlfriend who is."