“Mine.”

He thought it was adorable, really, he did.

It started as a whisper under the sheets, a pet name no stranger than the scientific terminology she and Hojo used for each other. She whispered it in stolen moments, when they touched needlessly in the hallway or when their hands caught as he handed her something.

But now she stood over him with the needle. Even though he knew he’d bleed to death shortly without help, any help, he wished desperately he had the strength to pull away.

“Mine.”

She frowned at someone he couldn’t see. The lab went dark.

Kain knows it wasn’t her.

At least, the rational part of his mind knows that it wasn’t, couldn’t have been her. He tried to stop it altogether, after the first shock, but looking at her, hearing her, fighting beside her, they all bring it back.

He settles for what he can manage – most of the time, he can look at her and feel nothing but concern for his teammate, respect for her skills, or curiosity for what she’ll do next.

But in battle sometimes she yells too loud when she attacks. And at night sometimes he strays too close when she shares her tent with Edge. Only by accident, of course. That’s what he tells himself when he freezes in place, her voice drifting on the wind as it trills over dirty words. He shivers, and sneaks away, and whispers to himself that it was only Golbez. In the daylight, he tells them he’s okay, and even he’s starting to believe it.

It was always Golbez, to start. At first Cecil’s replacement in Baron tried to use his own charm to take the dark knight’s place in Kain’s bed as well. The tricks were subtle, and Kain hardly noticed, and what he did notice he willingly ignored, preferring warm company and easy answers.

Eventually though, he tried to turn away from the choice he’d made, and Golbez drew him back more and more violently. It was physical first, and when Kain made it clear that wouldn’t cow him, it became emotional.

First Cecil came to him, pretending rescue, and then Rosa, pretending fulfillment. Kain knew them too well, though, and he saw through Golbez’s game.

When Rydia came, though, Kain wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“I have a new ally,” Golbez told him, with the smirk he always wore. “A young lady you might remember.”

She was all young curves and sharp looks when she walked in, and while the green hair looked familiar, Kain couldn’t place it.

“Rydia’s spent years in the Land of the Summons, learning to hate humans,” Golbez told him. “She’s grown into quite the young woman. But she remembers what you did to her village.”

Kain too remembered the Summoners’ village and the little girl who’d survived. He guessed how he’d feel in her situation. He could believe this, yes.

And as she crossed the room to where Golbez had left him spread-eagle and naked, tapping a whip against her hip, he could believe that yes, he deserved this.

When she finished with him, though, his struggle was not lessened. Yes, the pain of broken skin and salty sweat in his wounds was deserved. But the release, the pleasure he’d taken from her as she beat him… that seemed wrong, to enjoy it at all.

He confessed all this to Golbez at night, with cool sheets against hot wounds, and felt somehow as if he had been cheating on one seducer with the other. Golbez only smirked, and Kain wondered if he was still being played like a flute.

Then Golbez left him, and he waited for the man’s next trick. When he met Rydia again, for the first time, he wasn’t sure what to do. After she joined them, he thought about telling Cecil – warning him, or seeking reassurance – but the words wouldn’t come. And she was so different; she couldn’t be the person who had visited him.

So he told himself that Golbez had only played him again, and he keeps telling himself that. He believes it too.

Most of the time. And the rest of the time he pretends.

Beside the fire, Edge stared up at the stars while Kain faced away, alert for any movement. Behind them, the rest of the party slept.
“Kain?” Edge smiled, enjoying the dragoon’s bare chest outlined in firelight.
“Yes?”
“Do you think Rydia’s… you know. A virgin?”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate. Besides, she must be.”
“Why?”
“She’s been in the Land of the Summons until recently.”
“Well then I sure hope she’s a virgin.”
“…”
“Can you imagine having to follow up Bahamut in bed?”
“Shut up,” Kain murmured, grabbing his hair, “or I’ll have to put something back in your mouth.”

When Cloud entered the bedroom, Tifa was already in her bed, breathing softly. He lay down in the bed beside hers and shortly was asleep.

It was another twenty minutes before he was dreaming, twisting and murmuring. Tifa opened her eyes and stood beside him.

“Aeris… too far…” he whispered, his voice strained.

Tifa hesitated, but waited less than she had last time. “It’s okay, Cloud,” she said softly, pitching her voice higher.

He relaxed as she slipped an arm around him, and soon she was in the bed beside him.

“Love you, Aeris,” he murmured.

“Love you too, Cloud.”

“Headmaster!”

“Stop calling me that.” Zell pushed past Squall into the headmaster’s office. Zell dropped a box on his desk, knocking over documents. “Solstice is coming up.”

“Is that my present?” Squall asked, his voice dry.

“Not even close. Decorations. Selphie insisted.”

“Whatever.” Squall ignored him as he worked, refusing to acknowledge the box long enough to move it.

“That’s sufficiently jolly,” Zell finally declared. “Oh! I almost forgot.”

“Forgot what?” Squall asked, regretting it.

Zell pointed up, where mistletoe dangled.

“No.”

“Rinoa’s request,” Zell held up his hands innocently. “But as long as I’m the one who caught you…”

It seemed too good to be true when the fliers went up underplate: free homes out in the country. He rushed to the cramped apartment he shared with his girlfriend. Too good or not, they had to try.

It was everything Shinra promised and more. They settled in, talked about raising a family.

Then he woke up just before dawn to the smell of fire. He shook her awake and they searched the house, then went outside. Their neighbors were wandering outside too, looking, wondering, but they didn’t see anything burning.

And the wind carried laughter…

Don’t think about it, Kain told himself. He tried to enjoy Rydia’s attention. She was beautiful, smart, and watching her drive Edge insane always brightened his day.

And yet…

Every time she got close, or smiled with grown-up eyes, he saw her as a crying, mourning child again. Maybe she’d had years in the Land of Summons to let the fire go out, but Kain hadn’t.

When she touched him, he heard Golbez laughing. Maybe, he hoped, if he went along with her, it would fade. He let her hug him, kiss him, and waited for the crying to fade.

This drabble first appeared in Phoenix Down Monthly.

Ellone watched the moon over the Garden and wondered how to get her brother back.

She’d watched, worrying over him during her years in hiding, and been crushed when Ultimecia overtook Matron Edea. When she finally found her brother, another sorceress was there.

She knew him better than Rinoa could. She’d spent years with him in the orphanage, when he cried and held her hand tightly. She’d been inside his head, after all.

An idea: fight a sorceress with magic. Show Squall something, make him love her. Her mind unfolded.

Oh yes, Ellone loved her brother. And he’d love her.

This drabble first appeared in Phoenix Down Monthly.

I was sweeping dirt and pine needles off the walk when the stranger opened the gate and stepped inside with a flourish.

“Don’t worry, young man, I’ve come for the Sorceress. You’ll be free soon.”

I just stared at him for a minute. “What?”

“I’ve heard rumors that a Sorceress lives here. I’ve come to kill her.”

“Why?”

“Because Sorceresses are evil? Look, you’re obviously under some kind of spell so I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you don’t get out of my way.”

“She hasn’t harmed anyone, and I won’t let you hurt her.”

The man drew a sword and frowned at me. “I don’t think you can stop me.”

I stood between him and the door, holding the broom as menacingly as I could manage. I think he was trying not to snicker, but only because it would make him less intimidating if he did.

He swung at me without much force, probably thinking he could scare me off. I spun the broom handle, parrying his blow. He took aim again, harder this time, and again I knocked him away.

He stepped back and looked at me, first with confusion and then with narrowed eyes. “You must be a knight.”

I smiled at him. “You have me, sir.”

“I can’t go easy on you, then.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to.” Before he could reply, I swept forward with the broom, hitting him in the side with all the force I could muster. It was more than he’d expected, and he lost his footing and stumbled. I brought the broom up, scratching at his face with the bristles, then followed by cracking the other end against the back of his hand. The blow knocked his hand open and his sword fell to the walk.

He scrabbled for it, his eyes wide, and seemed to be debating what to do. I waited, trying not to let any emotion show on my face. It still surprised me, the way my body moved almost without my control.

Behind me, I heard the door open. “Cidney, is there a problem?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered without taking my eyes from the intruder.

“That’s the Sorceress?” he asked. Edea was eighteen, but looked young for her age, all slim curves and big eyes. I nodded.

“I think- I was misinformed,” he said, recovering his bravado. I couldn’t read his motives behind it, but as long as he was leaving, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

He turned to leave, then spun and brought the sword down at me. I raised the broom handle to meet it, but in a blink he was gone.

I looked at Edea. “I could have handled him.”

“Handling him is not your job,” she said, and then her voice was softer. “I’d rather not take the chance.”

I smiled at her. “Well, we probably would have had to get a new broom anyway, so you saved me that trouble.” She smiled back. “What happened to him?”

Edea shrugged. “I’m sure he won’t mind the walk from Deling. I hear it’s scenic this time of year.”

“Remind me never to argue with you,” I said as I finished sweeping the sidewalk.

“Never. Where would the fun be in that?” she asked, walking over to me. “It might be time to move again, though.”

“You just finished unpacking,” I sputtered. “I just finished unpacking. All my books…”

She ruffled my hair. “If you like. You might have to keep more fairy-tale heroes away from me, though.”

“I–” I swallowed. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t want to put you in danger.”

“I’m always in danger,” Edea answered. “And I doubt you’d go down easy. Besides, you’re right, I just planted my garden. We’ll stay.” She took the broom out of my hand and lead me inside for dinner. I followed her, smiling, but I checked the locks twice as I closed the door behind us.

“Don’t be such an old man!”

“Yuffie, I am an old man.”

She wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out at me. “You don’t look it. I don’t know why you have to act it.”

“I don’t feel like acting it.”

“It can’t be that hard, can it? Just – cheer up. Get laid or something.”

I turned my best withering glare on her, but she didn’t flinch. “I don’t need to get laid,” I said finally, when it was apparent that she was waiting for an actual answer.

“Okay, so you’re not up to that. Fine. That doesn’t rule out ‘or something’.”

I tried a disdainfully-raised eyebrow. Still no reaction. “Such as?”

“Let’s go out,” she said, and my jaw must have dropped because she quickly followed it up with, “to a bar or something. You can sit in the corner nursing a beer if you want. At least you’ll be doing it with other people.”

“Why would I want to sit alone with other people?”

She leaned over conspiratorially and whispered, “It’s less pathetic.”

“I’m not pathetic. I’m brooding.” I said it louder than I intended and winced as I heard it come out.

“Brooding,” Yuffie repeated, and it sounded ridiculous in her mouth. She was clearly not impressed.

“Yes,” I said, trying to recover some dignity. There had to be some around here somewhere.

“Relax,” she smiled at me and laughed. “You’re not really dead, you know. You don’t have to act like it.”

“I am officially dead.”

“Just one more thing Shinra’s wrong about.”

“Shinra isn’t right or wrong, just rich.” It was something I’d heard Veld say more than once, and it made me blink to feel the sound of it in my own mouth. I probably sounded too much like him, lately. He’d always been old before his time, a common personality defect in Turks who made it past twenty five or so.

Maybe Yuffie – god forbid – had a point.

“Okay, what bar did you have in mind?”

She wouldn’t tell me until we got there. That was probably a good thing, since I would have recognized the name of the bar.

“Oh hell no, I’m not going in there. Pick another bar,” I told Yuffie as soon as I saw the name. The Beaver Pelt was one of many dives located just far enough under plate to be unregulated, and just close enough to civilization to get patrons with enough cash to pay their tabs. A bar said a lot about the area of Midgar proper it was closest to.

The Beaver Pelt happened to be the bar closest to the Shinra building. If there was a Turk, technician, or random under-secretary looking to forget the details about the company they worked for, they probably ended up in here. If you’d asked me, I would have guessed it was destroyed in some kind of bar fight long before the world ended, or at least that the destruction of the company would have cut into the traffic.

I would have been wrong. The place was not full, but there were a lot of butts and most of them were in chairs. I recognized too many of them.

“Best karaoke in town, Vincent. Come on,” she said, dragging me inside. I thought about digging the pointy toes of my boots into the street to slow her down, but she seemed determined. Best to get it over with.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of these movies – Cloud looked at me blankly when I asked him, but for all his good traits, cultured isn’t one of them – but when I was a kid I used to go to the movies on the weekend for a double feature. My favorites were the Westerns set in old Corel, when the coal mining industry was just getting started and it was wild out there. And there was always that scene where the hero’s just blown into town and he walks into the bar for the first time, and everybody gets real quiet and looks at him like they know the main character’s arrived and that means the trouble’s getting started.

I didn’t think that happened in real life, but damn if those kids didn’t prove me wrong.

“… What?” I asked the bar, silent except for the cheesy remix of some song I didn’t know continuing tinnily from the speakers. There was another beat, and then Yuffie marched up to the karaoke stage and started arguing with the DJ and suddenly everyone was talking again, exactly as if I hadn’t come in at all.

The young man with the microphone never quite recovered his groove, and in a minute Yuffie was starting a cheesy pop ballad. I could have guessed the lyrics without seeing them on the screen. I wondered how distracted she was, and briefly considered sneaking out while she was singing.

I told myself it wasn’t worth it, she’d just drag me back in. Besides, it was kind of interesting to see how much the place had changed in the last thirty years.

Odin’s balls, thirty years! It still hadn’t really sunk in. I felt older than these kids, but not that much older, not really. Just like Veld’s old-fashioned patter and disapproving coughs, it was as much a facade as it was any real expression of how I felt.

I sat at the bar and ordered a beer, turning around on the stool to watch as Yuffie finished her song and was replaced by an obviously-sloshed couple singing a duet.

“You’re not even in the corner!” she announced as she came and sat beside me.

“I’m not,” I acknowledged. Even if I was somehow not minding this, I certainly wasn’t going to admit it to her.

“Good. It’ll do you some good to get some light on that pale skin.”

I looked up at the dim, flickering fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling, then at Yuffie, but I didn’t say anything. Didn’t seem worth it. I sipped my beer and watched the crowd while Yuffie chattered beside me.

She’d been coming here pretty much since the city opened back up, almost two months ago now. Oh, it wasn’t officially open, of course, but the sort of people who were here weren’t the ones who could run off to vacation homes. She pointed out this lady who used to take notes for Reeve and always hated the way Rufus hit on her, that young man who’d just been promoted to lead technician in his weapons division before the whole thing came down. How did Yuffie know so much about everyone?

“I talk to them,” she answered me, rolling her eyes. “You know, that thing normal people do.”

“I know what talking is. I’m just out of practice.” I took another sip.

“How about singing?”

I spit the mouthful of beer back into the glass and wondered, briefly, if choking to death would cause one of the monsters to wake up. “No, Yuffie.”

“You’re no fun,” she pouted, then pounded back a shot I hadn’t heard her order and wandered off into the crowd. A few minutes later she was up on the stage again, this time singing something in Wutaian. It was a surprisingly sweet ballad, from what I could make out of the lyrics. The bartender refilled my glass, and I drained it again by the time she was done.

“You have a nice voice,” I conceded as she sat down. It was the closest I intended to come to saying she was right.

“Thanks.”

I turned back around as the bartender was refilling my glass again, and noticed that the wall behind him had a lot more photos than it used to. “You guys move them around, or did you get rid of the old ones?” I asked him as he handed me another beer.

He shrugged. “I’ve never seen ‘em moved, and I’ve been here five years.”

I winced a little. “Where are the oldest ones?”

“Over there, by the john,” he pointed. I got up and walked over, confident that Yuffie would be too curious not to follow. I didn’t know whether I wanted to get my hopes up or not.

The older pictures were black and white, slowly fading to a brownish-grey, glossy 8×10s. The original owner of the bar had been a photography buff, and he liked to put up photos of his regulars getting into crazy shit. I wondered if he was retired or…

That was a depressing line of thought I wasn’t in the mood for, so I focused on looking at the pictures. It looked like they were all still here, but out of order, so it took me a minute to find the one I was looking for.

“This one,” I said, pointing to it.

Yuffie leaned in and squinted. “Some drunk kids on a table. So?”

“That one,” I moved my finger over, “was my old-time partner, when I was a turk.”

“Really? Huh.” She took a closer look. “Who’s the cute girl kissing him?”

I sighed. “That’s me, Yuffie.”

“You were a girl?” I couldn’t tell if she was kidding. I hoped she was kidding.

“No.”

She leaned even further in, her face nearly against the wall. “Huh. You look like a girl.”

“I had short hair and I was wearing pants.”

“I think Elena’s over by the back door.” It took me a minute to take her point.

“Okay, fine. You know, they didn’t take girls back in the day? All we had to hit on were the ladies in the secretarial pool.”

Yuffie smirked. “Your partner doesn’t look like secretary pool material.”

“Ha.” I turned away from her and looked over the crowd again. Different kids, different brands of beer, but something about it felt the same anyway. I seriously considered actually thanking Yuffie for dragging me in here.

Then Reno climbed up on stage. Actually, I shouldn’t really say “climbed” – more like he fell up the three metal stairs and managed to hold himself up by the microphone stand.

“Ladiesh and gentlemen,” he slurred. “I would like to perform a classhic, dedicated to tall, dark and shpooky back there.”

It took me a minute to realize he meant me, and my first instinct was to kill him.

I took a deep breath as the opening strains of the song started. It really was a classic – old enough that I knew all the words because I’d played the damn thing on the jukebox until Veld threatened to shoot it.

He was nowhere near key and wouldn’t know pitch if you hit him upside the head with one. I wondered how much of that was natural talent and how much was the alcohol.

By the time he hit the first chorus, I was on the stage. To his credit, he didn’t flinch – I certainly thought I was going to hit him when I went up there. He handed me the microphone, though, and I found myself looking at the crowd and Reno’s stupid smirk as the second verse started up on the video screen.

Why not?

Maybe Yuffie’s right, and I am too young to feel this damn old. At the very least, I was grateful enough to pretend I didn’t see Reno sidle up to her later, considerably more sober than he’d been on stage, while a flirt and a twenty gil note changed hands.

After all, as I told Veld more than once, what’s a little drunken willy-nilly between friends?