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thedeviljudges · 3 years ago

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yohan + physical tough + trauma response

disclaimer: this is based off of eps 1-7, and preview of ep 8; i wholeheartedly recognize that this post may become the worst meta ever depending on how the rest of the show goes. however, i do think there are still some interesting things to note about yohan. a lot of this is also me just talking shit out as i was sifting through all the eps again. i’m more than willing to change my mind or hear other thoughts.

also i kinda, sorta, unnecessarily included all of the moments of yohan and any physicality. a lot of them are not super important, but i do think they help draw a distinction in how he reactions when surprised, alone and around other people.

so, here’s a long ass post that is literally 99% me bullshitting, lmao.

so i wanted to delve more into yohan’s response to physical touch by way of trauma. while i know a lot of us have pieced it together, i think it’s pretty cool to lay it all out visually because i think there’s much more justification for his reactions; not to say it makes it right, but it does really flesh out a fundamental part of his characterization that i think is highly, highly important to understand.

yohan lives on the cusp for reckless behavior, almost as if he doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. the car chase, running through industrial buildings where safety isn’t a concern, etc.

episode one

the first time we see an instance of his disinterest in physical touch is when he first meets gaon. he actually offers him his hand, but the way he goes about it isn’t a handshake. he almost looks hesitant, and then he squeezes and does not shake. it’s truly a split second gesture out of formalities. granted, he’s just met someone he thinks looks like isaac, and might be in a little bit of… not shock, but certainly distracted.

later in the episode, yohan is in an abandoned building with homeless people. he’s checking people’s wrist, but he’s quick about leaving them alone. until, a homeless man comes up behind him and grabs him. in response, yohan swings his arm to knock him off. then, he punches him, steps on him and decides whether he’s worth the effort. again, granted, no one likes to be surprised in a creepy situation like this, so his response? kinda understandable at this point.

next is the scene where yohan catches gaon in his office, where he pushes him against the bookshelf and kinda, more or less, comes off as a bit luring. we know yohan knows gaon’s lying, but a couple of things here. yohan initiated the physical contact, and he did it because of the suspicious nature of gaon. yohan also knows how to use his power and charms to catch people off guard, and i think really, he was messing with gaon when he brushed his shirt and asked him if he lived alone. gay as fuck, lmao, but i also see it as an intimidation tactic, in a way.

i could also pose a couple of theories aside from intimidation if we wanted to squint:

yohan is still in a state of awe of gaon’s resemblance to isaac. he’s not heard his voice or been around the other man for at least 10 years, and now there’s tangibility at his fingertips.

if we want to look at it from the gay perspective, gaon is clearly intriguing to yohan, and as i’ll note further down in this post about yohan in relation to physical touch, i’m sure it could be assumed that this is one of the first people in a long time that yohan has an interest in making a connection with. however, because of his upbringing, it’s clear he does’t necessarily know how to connect with people (ie. ep 7 trying to connect with elijah, eps 1-6 with him trying to non-verbally tell gaon that he has bigger plans than what’s in front of his face. his admission in ep 5 about being monster). more or less, he knows his charms can be used, but when it comes to actually flirting and/or liking someone? it’s left to be addressed, but could be assumed he’s just as awkward about it as when we see him at home.

we also see a small instance of him letting someone dress him. there’s still touch involved, but it’s very clear what the intention is. he has control over the situation, and it’s not a surprise.

the next time he engages in physical touche, again, he initiates it because he’s in control, and it’s meant to be comforting, to an extent.

and then to round everything off, we actually see him reaching for isaac, who is actually gaon in the court scene, but you know storytelling and all that. he reaches for him both in the courtroom and within a flashback.

him reaching out for isaac seems to be a motif within the show as it happens later on, of which i’ll point out.

episode two

we see him initiate a handshake again. at first, to gaon, and then with jinjoo. controlled situation.

later on in the episode is when we see our first glimpses of batshit crazy yohan, an absolute delight and fav, lmao. he actually reaches out to the spoiled kid, and it’s clearly to legitimize intimidation and a position of power.

okay look, i’m not even gonna front, this was a cute scene. when jinjoo gets out of the car, he checks to make sure she’s okay, and they have this moment before they go onto the red carpet where they smile at each other. yohan is confirming she’s okay, and she agrees. again, controlled, and i don’t know for certain if yohan is more comfortable around women, or it’s just mere fact that he doesn’t always have a problem with touch when the situation is safe. he actually lets her take his arm further on in the scene, and yes, it is a public display of niceties, and he knows that.

so in the midst of this happening, we get the ‘devil child’ story. and i want to make note of the bird scene because i do think it’s important to note that people yohan cares for, he’s willing to go to the ends of the earth to protect them. yes, they’re children in school, but the girl next to him is the only one who showed him an ounce of kindness, and yohan is proven to remain loyal to those he loves or trusts in some capacity.

of course, he ends up pitting the rich and the poor kids against one another for their betrayal and making him an outcast. in yohan’s mind, what he did wasn’t necessarily wrong because his sense of justice is based on protection and when people wrong him or those he loves, it’s seeking justice on their behalf or making the situation better - not in the technically right way, but right to him. yohan comes across as a fixer and problem solver.

yohan has a very, very strong sense of trust and loyalty, and we can assume that stems from isaac, who clearly tried to protect yohan from his father, who went out of his way to do so as best as he could as a young kid. yohan values loyalty not because he necessarily wants lap dogs and people to do his bidding. it comes from a place of love and security he’s never really had.

anyway, back to the gala with jinjoo, he does shake the minister’s hand. again, controlled. there are cameras. he also puts his arm around her, and that’s mainly because it’s a battle of the wills, and she’s trying to reprimand him, lol, as if she could. he hugs her a little hard and a little enthusiastically, and you can clearly tell it’s for show.

and then he dances with both jinjoo and sunah. and there is a stark difference between these two scenes. yohan actually teaches jinjoo the proper placement for where she should rest her hands and how to move. he’s actually having a good time with her, and again, it’s actually really cute.

with sunah, he’s reluctant and definitely on guard. he can tell from her demeanor that her intent is with purpose trying to get close to him. at this point in the story, he probably sees it as sunah coming onto him and not because she’s actually the maid from when they were children. when sunah reaches up to whisper in his ear, you can really tell he doesn’t like her being that close to him at all especially because her words may not be overly threatening, but there is purpose behind them, which means yohan’s guards are up. he physically removes her hand and than blatantly turns her down: she tells him that enjoying things alone isn’t fun, and he counters it by saying he’s having a lot of fun.

so at this point to reduce on some screen caps, he meets the minister’s family, has handshakes with her husband and the kid he went after to essentially beat up his car with a mallet, lmao. the handshake is quite funny because they both know what happened. yohan is in control, and that kid is shaking in his boots.

then the explosion happens, and of course, it makes sense that yohan helps gaon after he’s hurt. gaon has never been a threat to yohan, and it’s clear yohan’s not heartless whatsoever, but it’s also poignant to note that gaon helped saved yohan’s life, thus starting yohan’s journey of loyalty to gaon. i think he’s always had his sight set on gaon to begin with, possibly long before he even became an associate judge, but if this was a test, gaon passed it with flying colors because if gaon can rescue a little girl, and he can help an old man who fell off his bike, would he really go the lengths to save yohan who has shown him time and time again his sense of justice is different?

episode three

yohan reacts negatively to soohyun and within good reason when she questions where gaon is. he turns away because for him, the conversation is over, but for her, it’s not. to get his attention, she grabs him when he’s not paying attention, and of course he has a very adverse reaction. at this point, it can be chalked up to disrespect given the fact that he’s a head judge and she’s just a mere cop, but hindsight is 20/20. he does throw her arm off by flicking out his arm. but instead of berating her, he just tells her to catch the culprits who harmed gaon and leaves it at that.

and then of course, everyone’s favorite scene and rightfully so. yohan caring for gaon? very sexy of him. gaon is injured, poses no threat, and as i said above about yohan finding some amount of loyalty in gaon means his physical boundaries aren’t jeopardized. and for that, we get these wonderful scenes of yohan helping gaon as he heals.

and then scenes of him messing around with gaon by hitting him. truth be told, i wonder if this was something him and isaac did as young kids. anyone with siblings know how that goes. fake picking on each other? fake bickering? yeah.

and then it slowly, but surely, it’s revealed that yohan didn’t have the same upbringing as isaac did. our first instance that something at home wasn’t right wasn’t just the conversation with ms. ji and gaon. it’s the flashback with yohan reading in his room when the door opens. he hastily pretends he’s asleep, and you can see he’s visibly shaking and breathing roughly until he realizes it’s isaac who’s there to give him books.

and that’s also when we get our first glance of what kind of abuse yohan suffered from at the hands of his father. it’s clear this isn’t the only incident, and there’s been many times that isaac wasn’t around to help defend him.

it’s also very clear in how yohan acts when he’s terrified and that his abuse has gone on long enough to be a routine pattern in the house. any time he hears heavy footsteps or thinks his father is around, he visibly shakes and gets panicky.

episode four

i include this scene because it’s been noted that a lot of books yohan reads are about humans, human nature, animals, animalistic tendencies, and he says random shit like this that directly points to what he thinks about humanity and humans themselves. we notice this most prominently at the dinner with gaon and jinjoo earlier on when he describes that he likes the feel of the chew and that he cannot taste. he always mentions hunting and prey, and i think this is one of those very clear instances where he actually reveals to gaon what he truly, truly thinks; no gimmicks. this also comes into play later on in ep 6 when elijah is worried about him being out all night. yohan clearly doesn’t trust people at all. he understands their intentions, their motives and how much pain they can cause other people for their own profit and their own gain. it makes sense that he wouldn’t leave his house, especially if he has a strong sense of loyalty to isaac (even after all these years) and caring for elijah.

this is also one of the very direct moments that yohan doesn’t understand family dynamics. when it comes to people, it’s a giant chess game. not only that, later on in the episode when they’re in the car and yohan talks about how people, no matter what, are always the same in front of greed, yohan is cynical, and he expects the bad every single time.

what he reads and the way he words things (here and the discussion of him being a monster, for example) is clearly an indication that he doesn’t trust; that he cannot trust, nor does he want to at this point. yohan doesn’t understand the concept of kindness being given freely (ep 7 when he berates elijah for being used by gaon, telling her she falls for kindness every time). and yet, later on in eps, it’s clear when he’s around the right people and the right mindset (uh, gaon?? lol), he’s constantly putting up a front.

after all in ep 7 when he tells gaon that confidence is key, it literally gives him away not just in the courtroom but in his personal life. there’s a reason he looks softer at home than when he’s not there (the hairstyle changes and clothing).

basically what i’m getting at is this behavior can be seen as a defense mechanism because of his abuse.

then it’s another gala event with gaon and yohan this time. another lovely favorite where yohan helps him get dressed and then proceeds to drag him around and safe him from the lion’s den.

tbh i dont even need to include these, but i’m doing it for the indulgence.

yohan does sorta physically throw gaon as well during the rich people party, but that’s mainly to get him to shut up because he’s trying to show gaon the truth at hand and how all of it’s pretty much a farce.

later on in the episode is when we first have gaon truly attacking yohan verbally, and that’s when yohan snaps. it’s clear that isaac is a trigger for yohan, especially from someone who speaks out of line on something they know nothing about. gaon, truth be told, had a stupid moment confronting yohan the way he did. i don’t know who waltzes up to a proposed murderer and just asks them, lmao.

but here’s the thing, thus far, gaon has not entirely posed a threat to yohan. whether that’s from yohan planting gaon and guiding him exactly where he wants him or gaon just not being as thorough as yohan would like, and he’s trying to tap into that talent, is anyone’s guess. but as i said above, the one thing yohan protects is the things he does care about the most, and he tries to talk himself out of his own feelings. he constantly compares himself to an animal (again, dinner scene with gaon and jinjoo) to justify his actions, and to possibly not feel anything; because that’s easier, isn’t it? not feeling. so on top of gaon calling him a monster and a killer, confronted with the possibility about being a villain in his own brother’s story, obviously sets him off. he beats down his emotions until he’s confronted with it - and this is what gaon also meant in ep 6 about how it’s ridiculous that yohan calls himself a monster over a victim because yohan can’t even see himself in that light. not because he truly believes victims are weak necessarily, but i wonder how much he realizes that what happened to him wasn’t his fault.

to me, and as i just said, yohan convinces himself he’s a monster to make it easier for himself to belief his actions (ep 5 telling gaon some humans are born monsters in relation to himself). it’s not that he inherently thinks he’s wrong, but i think his guidance for what’s right and wrong was misconstrued without a parent figure in his life, especially if he’d read crime and law books as the focus. yohan’s actions, at least quite a bit of them are, are based on a gut feeling of right and wrong. when you think about it and your own sense of justice, how would that differ without the checks and balances in place? what punishment do you think fits the crime if we weren’t bound by written law? yohan thinks any action to protect those he loves is, more or less, justifiable because it’s a means to an end. it’s making a worng right again.

i don’t think yohan is a monster. i think his feelings, and what he knows is love, is misconstrued in terms of how to express it. we see this in episode 7 with his and elijah’s conversation where she’s just trying to be a teen, but his version of love is protecting her without, once again, understanding family dynamics and the pain points of growing up, the learning she has to do on her own. yohan might technically be right; similar to being book-smart but not necessarily street smart. his theory of telling Elijah that she’s soft for kindness and being used was true, but his delivery and the idea that that’s how humans develop doesn’t work. he’s telling her text-book rules, but people don’t live through books. they live through real life. yohan reads to get a sense of fulfillment and to learn. he’s learned his way into adulthood, but that’s not normal.

so uh anyway, back to this familiar scene:

because we don’t know the actual story of isaac’s death, it’s hard to say what role yohan played in his death, but i don’t know that i believe he was the one who did it. the entirety of the devil judge is relying on unreliable narration, so it’s difficult to gauge (for now since we’re on ep 7) how this will turn out and what happened, but to me, it really comes across as yohan upset over the insinuation that he could be the one to cause the death of the one person he loved the most. plus, i think it says a lot that he cares/loves elijah, and she was part of isaac. gaon crossed a thine line. yohan essentially welcomed him in, and this is gaon toeing it. we can also look at this is not gaon being an outsider to their family, but now has become part of the family, and so it’s easier for yohan to be ‘abusive,’ if you will, rather than the perspective of gaon still on the sidelines and pushing too far. by this i mean, the accusations made by gaon threatens their formulating family dynamics.

and once again, the only person he ever actually reaches out for is isaac.

and then we have the aftermath of yohan’s nightmare, where he’s still caught in the dream as gaon comes in, and refuses to be touched after, even if gaon’s intention is to see if he’s okay. yohan makes it very clear to gaon not to touch him, and that’s when elijah comes in with a very accusatory ‘what are you two doing?’ in this moment, yohan is not just vulnerable, but he’s emotionally sensitive. i’ve no doubt he’s still dealing with a form of sensory overload from his dream.

and then, i don’t know that this was necessary? was it necessary?

the following set of scenes are the ones where gaon tells him he’s a victim and he hasn’t confronted his own emotions about his abuse. i think yohan realizes gaon is right to some degree, but it is convoluted, and it’s not so simple to face your own traumas. however, he does for a moment after gaon leaves, remember another instance of abuse he couldn’t stop but wishes he could, wishing a parental figure of sorts would’ve come in to save him like his older self is trying to save the kid version if only he could turn back time, if only he had the power to do what he wish someone else had done for him.

and then the kidnapping scene is just. fucked up in and of itself. it actually makes my skin crawl. not because sunah is scary necessarily, but the lack of autonomy yohan has - especially when we find out later more of sunah’s story. to do something like this after what she’s suffered through makes this scene even more disturbing.

you can see the moment yohan hears heels when sunah (not knowing it’s her yet) comes in. literally the minute he knows someone’s headed his way, he checks the fuck out. his whole face goes slack, especially when sunah reveals herself. and when she’s kissing him? blank as fuck, too. it’s the most dead-eyed stare i think we’ve seen from him.

episode six

so, we get this gem from elijah that i’d like to touch on later. it’s more speculation and just me running through ideas more than it is canon fact. but what it does let us know is that yohan doesn’t seek people out. he prefers to be at home and staying there.

after we get the maid story, and we do get yohan touching sunah’s cheek, and in some fucked up twisted way, this is his way of protecting one of the things isaac cherishes the most. the point of the gesture isn’t just intimidation but serves as an act of intent, of protection in the only way yohan knows how. he’s safeguarding isaac. you can tell he doesn’t actually like sunah at all as a kid, but uses that to his advantage. imagine yohan learning violence for ‘good�� things when his father used violence for ‘bad’ things. what a twisted way of looking at it? and the irony at hand.

additionally, the main reason i’ve included so many varying scenes of yohan touching people isn’t to establish that he’s okay with being touched given how many scenes there are of him randomly shaking people’s hand or touching them. it’s all about context and what the intent is for. most often than not, really way more often than not, yohan only reaches out for people when it’s socially acceptable to do so and because it’s manners. and yet, even in some of those cases, there is still intent behind the gesture.

the moments he acts out the most are when he’s not in front of an audience, when he’s more likely to be alone with his thoughts and is exceptionally more vulnerable to his own triggers.

and i think the scene after he’s back at his house from the kidnapping is noteworthy because it doesn’t just feel like he’s shaking off the effects of the drugs he was given. he seems to visibly trying to compose himself of the mental and physical play he just had to deal with.

the next scene is yohan angry with gaon for taking elijah out. which really, he does have every right to be angry, and one thing i didn’t note above during the ‘you killed your brother’ choke out scene before is that when yohan is backed into any kind of corner, he reacts like a caged animal.

because we’ve already established the scenes with his abuse, his father took his anger physically out on yohan. so how else was yohan supposed have developed the tools to express it? it’s easy to hurt the things you love the most; it’s easy to abuse the ones you know, and between gaon and himself, they both have an unhealthy dynamic because gaon is old enough, strong enough to take whatever yohan gives him. gaon is not family and so there’s still that clear divide and a distinction as to why he lays a hand on gaon but not elijah, for example. gaon can still pose a threat. elijah is family. then again, it can also be said that maybe yohan considers gaon family, and gaon betrayed elijah and therefore yohan, and you don’t do that. not with yohan’s understanding of family dynamics.

but with that said, it begs the question why yohan keeps gaon around, and i think some of that has to do with the fact that gaon surprises yohan. he might’ve set his sights on him long before he became an associate judge or maybe he took interest after gaon was chosen for the role (this is still up in the air), but deep down, yohan sees something in gaon despite his snooping, despite his righteousness. it could be the potential; it could be the fact that gaon could be better than yohan if he just allowed himself to loosen the ropes he’s tied himself with when it comes to the court of law and the justice system.

but here’s the thing that idk a lot of people have really picked up on. gaon is one side of the same coin underneath it all. he’s also provoked yohan with physicality when yohan brought up details about soohyun.

to be fair, we can say that yohan evokes a different type of anger in gaon, one that he hasn’t tapped into for years that allows him to open up to that more physical side of himself he learned to put behind him. gaon doesn’t really come across as the physically threatening type, but yohan does push his buttons and vice versa.

but then, of course, we have the big fight scene where gaon goes in on the attack, and that’s when yohan makes his threat not to attack him ever again. it’d be easy to say he says it based on the merit of him not actually attacking soohyun, but seriously speaking, the intent feels much more than that. more along the lines of asking gaon not to provoke him without warning again because next time might be bad. most of their other fights, especially the one above,have been in the midst of conversation. this time, it’s from a place of complete surprise, and you can tell yohan goes on the defensive when his first instinct is to not just throw gaon back but raise his fist to strike.

episode seven

the only physical contact yohan has with anyone is the president, and that’s when he turns on the live video of the two of them, and it’s clearly intended to be a lowkey threat. he keeps pulling the president back into his side to be on the live camera after the dude tried to come after yohan. i do think it’s hilarious that yohan manipulated the situation with a live component just as the president and the rest of the rich people thought they could turn a live court show into manipulating the public.

and then, of course, the jail scene. the part where he makes gaon stay. he also touches gaon’s shoulder later just before they leave.

episode eight

the most prominent scene in this ep is certainly the scene where sunah comes onto yohan, and you can tell she did it to get under his skin in some way. of course, he’s smart and knows she’s up to something, but i think it’s so interesting how he wraps his fists around hers, almost as if to tame her and prevent her from trying to further put her hands on him.

we also know yohan has no issue with using physical force regardless of who it is (obviously, his dialogue in this scene, too) when he feels caged or trapped. his intention is also to retrieve isaac’s necklace, and i like how he uses literally anything to his advantage. meaning, he’ll use physical touch, his mentality, etc to get what he wants or needs, even if it is marginally uncomfortable to some degree.

and i think that also says alot about him is that he’s able to displace what makes him uncomfortable in moments like this to achieve an end goal.

additional thoughts

i know this isn’t really common with a lot of the characters in general, and could be chalked up to a cultural component, but yohan’s definitely not a hugger.

the other thing i wanted to note is yohan’s seemingly adherence to touch unless it’s for good reason in relation to sex. the main reason i bring it up is because i’ve seen it discussed a bit, especially in regard to elijah’s comment about him not staying out overnight since the fire. there are a few plausible scenarios, maybe more, but for the sake of this, we’ll go for these.

yohan has had past relationships/experience or will in future episodes

day flings

he’s never had an interest in anyone before given his upbringing and abuse and therefore never sought out sex

inexperience could be from lack of interest in other people and sex itself

he’s never found anyone to really connect with and trust in such a way and has avoided it for that reason

and i bring this up mainly because i think it could be something to explore in fanon, but also because i’m kind of annoyed with how people have been talking about yohan being a virgin. i’m not quite sure what the joke is, but lack of sexual experience does not mean naive or that he doesn’t have a sense of humor when that’s clearly far from the truth:

i don’t know that people find it unbelievable because of his age, because of characterization of yohan being more dominant, but none of these things negate this being an option. i think it’s perfectly plausible of a situation (from what we know right now), and truthfully, it would make a whole lot of sense. i just don’t get the jokes about it that i’ve been seeing online (twitter) when there isn’t a mutual exclusiveness to any of it whatsoever.

yohan already has a hard time connecting with people, and i can imagine that level of physicality could be difficult. clearly he knows how to use a version of it to get what he wants. i’ve no doubt he’s used his charms in situations where he’s needed to. yohan knows he has that going for him, at the very least. but sexual appeal and jokes doesn’t mean having a body count any more than it could indicate there being one.

lastly, i also want to pull these paragraphs from @b612sunsets‘s post because i think they do a much better job than i ever could of explaining, short and sweet, a fundamental part of yohan’s characterization, and mainly what i was trying to get at with this long ass post.

“There's two things we already know about Yohan from the last 6 episodes: he hates being touched when he doesn't see it coming and doesn't have control over it because of the abuse he suffered (I assume). To name a few: Soohyun grabbing his elbow to stop him from leaving and get answers about Gaon, the beggar that touched him while he searched for the fireman, Gaon after punching him and Yohan clearly telling him to NEVER do it again. The impression it gave to us is that if there's a next time he might not be able to stop his instinctive reaction of defending himself and using violence back (something worse than choking or pushing Gaon and he doesn't want to do that with him).

“Unless it's a friendly/small/slow touch like in the breakfast scene when Gaon touches his arm when he gets up to offer them some fruits. When he had the nightmare with Isaac, his walls were up high so even if he could see Gaon's touch coming and it was friendly, he decided to stop it because he was too defensive and sensible to accept the gesture (it would be the first time Gaon started physical contact with him too, he wouldn't be ready for that in such a state).

“The second thing is that Yohan hates when people take what is his or mess with what is important to him. Again, to name a few: Sunah with the necklace when she was a maid, the fireman with Isaac's watch (Yohan made them fall from high places, not caring if they died or not), the guy that fabricated the small bombs that hurt Gaon (Yohan would have burnt his face if "K" hadn't stopped him) and Gaon taking Elijah out of the house to Soohyun without previous notice (a cop and someone he doesn't trust).”

yohan has a very, very large sense of self-preservation for himself and for those he cares about. it’s in his intention, actions, facial expressions, movements, the way he interacts with people. i find it fascinating how calculating he can be, but at home, he’s at his most vulnerable and almost socially unaware and awkward.

yohan is a bit of an irony. he understands people from an action-oriented, instinctual level, but he doesn’t necessarily understand their thoughts and emotions in the waves of nuances that people live through on the daily. like, he gets it to an extent and on a practical level, but he himself is a square trying to fit into a circle - he doesn’t always understand it for himself and has to actively work on social cues so as not to come across as the devil child he was once painted to be.

and let it not be unsaid, yohan really will go to the ends of the earth for family, even if it means stepping out of his comfort zone.

and so anyway, i doubt this offered any real insight, but i think this is my way of breaking all of this down for myself. so, tada!!! lmao

#x #the devil judge #the devil judge meta #*#*the devil judge

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insanehobbit · 4 years ago

Text

a twenty-five thousand word post about a twenty-three year old “debate”

As time goes on, I’m baffled that it remains a commonly held opinion that:

The LTD remains unresolved

SE is deliberately playing coy, and are (or have been) afraid to resolve it.

To me, the answer is as clear as day, and yet seeing so many people acting as if it’s a question that remains unanswered makes me wonder if I’m the crazy one.

So I am going to try to articulate my thought process here, not because I expect to change any hearts and minds, but more to get these thoughts out of my head and onto a page so I can finally read a book and/or watch reruns of Shark Tank in peace.

To start off, there are two categories of argument (that are among, if not the most widely used lines of argument) that I will try NOT to engage with:

1) Quotes from Ultimania or developer interviews - while they’re great for easter eggs and behind-the-scenes info, if a guidebook is required to understand key plot points, you have fundamentally failed as a storyteller. Now the question of which character wants to bone whom is often something that can be relegated to a guidebook, but in the case of FF7, you would be watching two very different stories play out depending on who Cloud ends up with.

Of course, the Ultimanias do spell this out clearly, but luckily for us, SE are competent enough storytellers that we can find the answer by looking at the text alone.

2) Arguments about character actions/motivations — specifically, I’m talking about stuff like “Cloud made this face in this scene, which means be must be [insert whatever here].”

Especially when it comes to the LTD, these tend to focus on individual actions, decontextualizing them from their role in the narrative as a whole. LTDers often try to put themselves in the character’s shoes to suss out what they may be thinking and feeling in those moments. These arguments will be colored by personal experiences, which will inevitably vary.

Let’s take for example Cloud’s behavior in Advent Children. One may argue that it makes total sense given that he’s dying and fears failing the ones he loves. Another may argue that there’s no way that he would run unless he was deeply unhappy and pining after a lost love. Well, you’ll probably just be talking over each other until the cows come home. Such is the problem with trying to play armchair therapist with a fictional character. It’s not like we can ask Cloud himself why he did what he did (and even if we could, he’s not the exactly the most reliable narrator in the world). Instead, in trying to understand his motivations, we are left with no choice but to draw comparisons with our own personal experiences, those of our friends, or other works of media we’ve consumed. Any interpretation would be inherently subjective and honestly, a futile subject for debate.

There’s nothing wrong with drawing personal connections with fictional characters of course. That is the purpose of art after all. They are vessels of empathy. But when we’re talking about what is canon, it doesn’t matter what we take away. What matters is the creators’ intent.

Cloud, Tifa and Aerith are not your friends Bob, Alice and Maude. They are characters created by Square Enix. Real people can behave in a variety of different ways if they found themselves in the situations faced by our dear trio; however, FF7 characters are not sentient creatures. Everything they do or say is dictated by the developers to serve the story they are trying to tell.

So what do we have left then? Am I asking you, dear reader, to just trust me, anonymous stranger on the Internet, when I tell you #clotiiscanon. Well, in a sense, yes, but more seriously, I’m going to try to suss out what the creator’s intent is based on what is, and more importantly, what isn’t, on screen.

Instead of putting ourselves in the shoes of the characters, let’s try putting ourselves in the shoes of the creators. So the question would then be, if the intent is X, then what purpose does character Y or scene Z serve?

The story of FF7 isn’t the immutable word of God etched in a stone tablet. For every scene that made it into the final game, there are dozens of alternatives that were tossed aside. Let us also not forget the crude economics of popular storytelling. Spending resources on one particular aspect of the game may mean something entirely unrelated will have to be cut for time. Thus, the absence of a particular character/scenario is an alternative in itself. So with all these options at their disposal, why is the scene we see before us the one that made it into the final cut? — Before we dive in, I also want to define two broad categories of narrative: messy and clean.

Messy narratives are ones I would define as stories that try to illuminate something about the human condition, but may not leave the audience feeling very good by the end of it. The protagonists, while not always anti-heroes, don’t always exhibit the kind of growth we’d like, don’t always learn their lessons, probably aren’t the best role models. The endings are often ambivalent, ambiguous, and leaves room for the audience to take away from it what they will. This is the category I would put art films and prestige cable dramas.

Clean narratives are where I would categorize most popular forms of entertainment. Not that these characters necessarily lack nuance, but whatever flaws are portrayed are something to be overcome by the end of story. The protagonists are characters you’re supposed to want to root for

Final Fantasy as a series would fall under the ‘clean’ category. Sure, many of the protagonists start out as jerks, but they grow through these flaws and become true heroes by the end of their journey. Hell, a lot of the time even the villains are redeemed. They want you to like the characters you’re spending a 40+ hr journey with. Their depictions can still be realistic, but they will become the most idealized versions of themselves by the end of their journeys.

This is important to establish, because we can then assume that it is not SE’s intent to make any of their main characters come off pathetic losers or unrepentant assholes. Now whether or not they succeed in that endeavor is another question entirely.

FF7 OG or The dumbest thought experiment in the world

With that one thousand word preamble out of the way, let’s finally take a look at the text. In lieu of going through the OG’s story beat by beat, let’s try this thought experiment:

Imagine it’s 1996, and you’re a development executive at what was then Squaresoft. The plucky, young development team has the first draft of what will become the game we know as Final Fantasy VII. Like the preceding entries in the series, it’s a world-spanning action adventure RPG, with a key subplot being the epic tragic romance between its hero and heroine, Cloud and Aerith.

They ask you for your notes.

(For the sake of your sanity and mine, let’s limit our hypothetical notes to the romantic subplot)

Disc 1 - everything seems to be on the right track. Nice meet-cute, lots of moments developing the relationship between our pair. Creating a love triangle with this Tifa character is an interesting choice, but she’s a comparatively minor character so she probably won’t be a real threat and will find her happiness elsewhere by the end of the game. You may note that they’re leaning a bit too much into Tifa and Cloud’s past. Especially the childhood promise flashback early in the game — cute scene, but a distraction from main story and main pairing — fodder for the chopping block. You may also bump on the fact that Aerith is initially attracted to Cloud because he reminds her of an ex, but this is supposed to be a more mature FF. That can be an obstacle they overcome as Aerith gets to know the real Cloud.

Aerith dies, but it is supposed to be a tragic romance after all. Death doesn’t have to be the end for this relationship, especially since Aerith is an Ancient after all.

It’s when Disc 2 starts that things go off the rails. First off, it feels like an awfully short time for Cloud to be grieving the love of his life, though it’s somewhat understandable. This story is not just a romance. There are other concerns after all, Cloud’s identity crisis for one. Though said identity crisis involves spending a lot of time developing his relationship with another woman. It’s one thing for Cloud and Tifa to be from the same hometown, but does she really need to play such an outsized role in his internal conflict? This might give the player the wrong impression.

You get to the Northern Crater, and it just feels all wrong. Cloud is more or less fine after the love of his life is murdered in front of his eyes but has a complete mental breakdown to the point that he’s temporarily removed as a playable character because Tifa loses faith in him??? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Oh, but it only gets worse from here. With Cloud gone, the POV switches to Tifa and her feelings for him and her desire to find him. The opening of the game is also recontextualized when you learn the only reason that Cloud was part of the first Reactor mission that starts the game is because Tifa found him and wanted to keep an eye on him.

Then you get to Mideel and the alarm bells are going off. Tifa drops everything, removing her from the party as well, to take care of Cloud while he’s a catatonic vegetable? Not good. Very not good. This level of selfless devotion is going to make Cloud look like a total asshole when he rejects her in favor of Aerith. Speaking of Aerith, she uh…hasn’t been mentioned for some time. In fact, her relationship with Cloud has remained completely static after Disc 1, practically nonexistent, while his with Tifa has been building and building. Developing a rival relationship that then needs to be dismantled rather than developing the endgame relationship doesn’t feel like a particularly valuable use of time and resources.

By the time you get to the Lifestream scene, you’re about ready to toss the script out of the window. Here’s the emotional climax of the entire game, where Cloud’s internal conflict is finally resolved, and it almost entirely revolves around Tifa? Rather than revisiting the many moments of mental anguish we experienced during the game itself — featuring other characters, including let’s say, Aerith — it’s about a hereto unknown past that only Tifa has access to? Not only that, but we learn that the reason Cloud wanted to join SOLDIER was to impress Tifa, and the reason he adopted his false persona was because he was so ashamed that he couldn’t live up to the person he thought Tifa wanted him to be? Here, we finally get a look into the inner life of one half of our epic couple and…it entirely revolves around another woman??

Cloud is finally his real self, and hey, it looks like he finally remembers Aerith, that’s at least a step in the right direction. Though still not great. With his emotional arc already resolved, any further romantic developments is going to feel extraneous and anticlimactic. It just doesn’t feel like there’s enough time to establish that:

Cloud’s romantic feelings for Tifa (which were strong enough to launch his hero’s journey) have transformed into something entirely platonic in the past few days/weeks

Cloud’s feelings for Aerith that he developed while he was pretending to be someone else (and not just any someone, but Aerith’s ex of all people) are real.

This isn’t a romantic melodrama after all. There’s still a villain to kill and a world to save.

Cloud does speak of Aerith wistfully, and even quite personally at times, yet every time he talks about her, he’s surrounded by the other party members. A scene or two where he can grapple with his feelings for her on his own would help. Her ghost appearing in the Sector 5 Church feels like a great opportunity for this to happen, but he doesn’t interact with it at all. What gives? Missed opportunity after missed opportunity.

The night before the final battle, Cloud asks the entire party to find what they’re fighting for. This feels like a great (and perhaps the last) opportunity to establish that for Cloud, it’s in Aerith’s memory and out of his love for her. He could spend those hours alone in any number of locations associated with her — the Church, the Temple of the Ancients, the Forgotten City.

Instead — none of those happens. Instead, once again, it’s Cloud and Tifa in another scene where they’re the only two characters in the scene. You’re really going to have Cloud spend what could very well be the last night of his life with another woman? With a fade to black that strongly implies they slept together? In one fell swoop, you’re portraying Cloud as a guy who not only betrays the memory of his lost love, but is also incredibly callous towards the feelings of another woman by taking advantage of her vulnerability. Why are we rooting for him to succeed again?

Cloud and the gang finally defeat Sephiroth, and Aerith guides him back into the real world. Is he finally explicitly stating that he’s searching for her (though they’ve really waited until the last minute to do so), but again, why is Tifa in this scene? Shouldn’t it just be Cloud and Aerith alone? Why have Tifa be there at all? Why have her and her alone of all the party members be the one waiting for Cloud? Do you need to have Tifa there to be rejected while Cloud professes his unending love for Aerith? It just feels needlessly cruel and distracts from what should be the sole focus of the scene, the love between Cloud and Aerith.

What a mess.

You finish reading, and since it is probably too late in the development process to just fire everyone, you offer a few suggestions that will clarify the intended romance while the retaining the other plot points/general themes of the game.

Here they are, ordered by scale of change, from minor to drastic:

Option 1 would be to keep most of the story in tact, but rearrange the sequence of events so that the Lifestream sequence happens before Aerith’s death. That way, Cloud is his true self and fully aware of his feelings for both women before Aerith’s death. That way, his past with Tifa isn’t some ticking bomb waiting to go off in the second half of the game. That development will cease at the Lifestream scene. Cloud will realize the affection he held for her as a child is no longer the case. He is grateful for the past they shared, but his future is with Aerith. He makes a clear choice before that future is taken away from him with her death. The rest of the game will go on more or less the same (with the Highwind scene being eliminated, of course) making it clear, that avenging the death of his beloved is one of, if not the, primary motivation for him wanting to defeat Sephiroth.

The problem with this “fix” is that a big part of the reason that Aerith gets killed is because of Cloud’s identity crisis. If said crisis is resolved, the impact of her death will be diminished, because it would feel arbitrary rather than something that stems from the consequences of Cloud’s actions. More of the story will need to be reconceived so that this moment holds the same emotional weight.

Another problem is why the Lifestream scene needs to exist at all. Why spend all that time developing the backstory for a relationship that will be moot by the end of the game? It makes Tifa feel like less of a character and more of a plot device, who becomes irrelevant after she services the protagonist’s character development and then has none of her own. That’s no way to treat one of the main characters of your game.

Option 2 would be to re-imagine Tifa’s character entirely. You can keep some of her history with Cloud in tact, but expand her backstory so she is able to have a satisfactory character arc outside of her relationship with Cloud. You could explore the five years in her life since the Nibelheim incident. Maybe she wasn’t in Midgar the whole time. Maybe, like Barret, she has her own Corel, and maybe reconciling with her past there is the climax of her emotional arc as opposed to her past with Cloud. For Cloud too, her importance needs to be diminished. She can be one of the people who help him find his true self in the Lifestream, but not the only person. There’s no reason the other people he’s met on his journey can’t be there. Thus their relationship remains somewhat important, but their journeys are not so entwined that it distracts from Cloud and Aerith’s romance.

Option 3 would be to really lean into the doomed romance element of Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Have her death be the cause of his mental breakdown, and have Aerith be the one in the Lifestream who is able to put his mind back together and bring him back to the realm of consciousness. After he emerges, he has the dual goal of defeating Sephiroth and trying to reunite with Aerith. In the end, in order to do the former, he has to relinquish the latter. He makes selfless choice. He makes the choice that resonates the overall theme of the game. It’s a bittersweet but satisfying ending. Cloud chooses to honor her memory and her purpose over the chance to physically bring her back. In this version of the game, the love triangle serves no purpose. There’s no role for Tifa at all.

Okay, we can be done with this strained counterfactual. What I’ve hopefully illustrated is that while developers had countless opportunities to solidify Cloud/Aerith as the canon couple in Discs 2 and 3 of the game, they instead chose a different route each and every time. What should also be clear is that the biggest obstacle standing in their way is not Aerith’s death, but the fact that Tifa exists.

At least in the form she takes in the final game, as a playable character and at the very least, the 3rd most important character in game’s story. She is not just another recurring NPC or an antagonist. Her love for Cloud is not going to be treated like a mere trifle or obstacle. If Cloud/Aerith was supposed to be the endgame ship, there would be no need for a love triangle and no need to include Tifa in the game at all. Death is a big enough obstacle, developing Cloud’s relationship with Tifa would only distract from and diminish his romance with Aerith.

I think this is something the dead enders understand intuitively, even more so than many Cloti shippers. Which is why some of them try to dismiss Tifa’s importance in the story so that she becomes a minor supporting character at best, or denigrate her character to the point that she becomes an actual villain. The Seifer to a Squall, the Seymour to a Tidus, hell even a Quistis to a Rinoa, they know how to deal with, but a Tifa Lockhart? As she is actually depicted in Final Fantasy VII? They have no playbook for that, and thus they desperately try to squeeze her into one of these other roles.

Let’s try another thought experiment, and see what would to other FF romances if we inserted a Tifa Lockhart-esque character in the middle of them.

FFXV is a perfect example because it features the sort of tragic love beyond death romance that certain shippers want Cloud and Aerith to be. Now, did I think FFXV was a good game? No. Did I think Noctis/Luna was a particularly well-developed romance? Also no. Did I have any question in my mind whatsoever that they were the canon relationship? Absolutely not.

Is this because they kiss at the end? Well sure, that helps, but also it’s because the game doesn’t spend the chapters after Luna’s death developing Noctis’ relationship with another woman. If Noctis/Luna had the same sort of development as Cloud/Aerith, then after Luna dies, Iris would suddenly pop in and play a much more prominent role. The game would flashback to her past and her relationship with Noctis. And it would be through his relationship with Iris that Noctis understands his duty to become king or a crystal or whatever the fuck that game was about. Iris is by Noctis’ side through the final battle, and when he ascends the throne in that dreamworld or whatever. There, Luna finally shows up again. Iris is still in the frame when Noctis tells her something like ‘Oh sorry, girl, I’ve been in love with Luna all along,” before he kisses Luna and the game ends.

(a very real scene from a very good game)

Come on. It would be utterly ludicrous and an utter disservice to every character involved, yet that is essentially the argument Cloud/Aerith shippers are making. SE may have made some pretty questionable storytelling decisions in the past, but they aren’t that bad at this.

Or in FFVIII, it would be like reordering the sequence of events so that Squall remembers that he grew up in an orphanage with all the other kids after Rinoa falls into a coma. And while Rinoa is out of commission, instead of Quistis gracefully bowing out after realizing she had mistaken her feelings of sisterly affection for love, it becomes Quistis’ childhood relationship with Squall that allows him to remember his past and re-contextualizes the game we’ve played thus far, so that the player realizes that it was actually Quistis who was his motivation all along. Then after this brief emotional detour, his romance with Rinoa would continue as usual. Absolutely absurd.

The Final Fantasy games certainly have their fair share of plot holes, but they’ve never whiffed on a romance this badly.

A somewhat more serious character analysis of the OG

What then is Tifa’s actual role in the story of FFVII? Her character is intricately connected to Cloud’s. In fact, they practically have the same arc, though Tifa’s is rather understated compared to his. She doesn’t adopt a false persona after all. For both of them, the flaw that they must learn to overcome over the course of the game is their fear of confronting the truth of their past. Or to put it more crudely, if they’re not lying, they’re at the very least omitting the truth. Cloud does so to protect himself from his fear of being exposed as a failure. Tifa does so at the expense of herself, because she fears the truth will do more harm than good. They’re two sides of the same coin. Nonetheless, their lying has serious ramifications.

The past they’re both afraid to confront is of course the Nibelheim Incident from five years ago. Thus, the key points in their emotional journeys coincide with the three conflicting Nibelheim flashbacks depicted in the game: Cloud’s false memory in Kalm, Sephiroth’s false vision in the Northern Crater, and the truth in the Lifestream.

Before they enter the Lifestream, both Cloud and Tifa are at the lowest of their lows. Cloud has had a complete mental breakdown and is functionally a vegetable. Tifa has given up everything to take care of Cloud as she feels responsible for his condition. If he doesn’t recover, she may never find peace.

With nothing left to lose, they both try to face the past head on. For Cloud, it’s a bit harder. At the heart of all this confusion, is of course, the Nibelheim Incident. How does Cloud know all these things he shouldn’t if Tifa doesn’t remember seeing him there? The emotional climax for both Cloud and Tifa, and arguably the game as a whole, is the moment the Shinra grunt removes his helmet to reveal that Cloud was there all along.

Tifa is the only character who can play this role for Cloud. It’s not like she a found a videotape in the Lifestream labeled ‘Nibelheim Incident - REAL’ and voila, Cloud is fixed. No, she is the only one who can help him because she is the only person who lived through that moment. No one else could make Cloud believe it. You could have Aerith or anyone else trying to tell him what actually happened, but why would he believe it anymore than the story Sephiroth told him at the Northern Crater?

With Tifa, it’s different. Not only was she physically there, but she’s putting as much at risk in what the truth may reveal. She’s not just a plot device to facilitate Cloud’s character development. The Lifestream sequence is as much the culmination of her own character arc. If it goes the wrong way, “Cloud” may find out that he’s just a fake after all, and Tifa may learn that boy she thought she’d been on this journey with had died years ago. That there’s no one left from her past, that it was all in her head, that she’s all alone. Avoiding this truth is a comfort, but in this moment, they’re both putting themselves on the line. Being completely vulnerable in front of the person they’re most terrified of being vulnerable with.

The developers have structured Cloud and Tifa’s character arcs so that the crux is a moment where the other is literally the only person who could provide the answer they need. Without each other, as far as the story is concerned, Cloud and Tifa would remain incomplete.

Aerith’s character arc is a different beast entirely. She is the closest we have to the traditional Campbellian Hero. She is the Chosen One, the literal last of her kind, who has been resisting the call to adventure until she can no longer. The touchstones of her character arc are the moments she learns more about her Cetra past and comes to terms with her role in protecting the planet - namely Cosmo Canyon, the Temple of the Ancients and the Forgotten City.

How do hers and Cloud’s arcs intersect? When it comes to the Nibelheim incident, she is a merely a spectator (at least during the Kalm flashback, as for the other two, she is uh…deceased). Cloud attacking her at the Temple of the Ancients, which results in her running to the Forgotten City alone and getting killed by Sephiroth, certainly exacerbates his mental deterioration, but it is by no means a turning point in his arc the way the Northern Crater is.

As for Cloud’s role in Aerith’s arc, their meeting is quite important in that it sets forth the series of events that leads her to getting captured by Shinra and thus meeting “Sephiroth” and wanting to learn more about the Cetra. It’s the inciting incident if we’re going to be really pedantic about it, yet Aerith’s actual character development is not dependent on her relationship with Cloud. It is about her communion with her Cetra Ancestry and the planet.

To put it in other terms, all else being the same, Aerith could still have a satisfying character arc had Cloud not crashed down into her Church. Sure, the game would look pretty different, but there are other ways for her to transform from a flirty, at times frivolous girl to an almost Christ-like figure who accepts the burden of protecting the planet.

Such is not the case for Cloud and Tifa. Their character arcs are built around their shared past and their relationship with one another. Without Tifa, you would have to rewrite Cloud’s character entirely. What was his motivation for joining SOLDIER? How did he get on that AVALANCHE mission in the first place? Who can possibly know him well enough to put his mind back together after it falls apart? If the answer to all these questions is the same person, then congratulations, you’ve just reverse engineered Tifa Lockhart.

Tifa fares a little better. Without Cloud, she would be a sad, sweet character who never gets the opportunity to reconcile with the trauma of her past. Superficially, a lot would be the same, but she would ultimately be quite static and all the less interesting for it.

Let’s also take a brief gander at Tifa’s role after the Lifestream sequence. At this point in the game, both Tifa and Cloud’s emotional arcs are essentially complete. They are now the most idealized versions of themselves, characters the players are meant to admire and aspire to. However they are depicted going forward, it would not be the creator’s intent for their actions to be perceived in a negative light.

A few key moments standout, ones that would not be included if the game was intended to end with any other romantic pairing or with Cloud’s romantic interest left ambiguous:

The Highwind scene, which I’ve gone over above. It doesn’t matter if you get the Low Affection or High Affection version. It would not reflect well on either Cloud or Tifa if he chose to spend what could be his last night alive with a woman whose feelings he did not reciprocate.

Before the final battle with Sephiroth, the party members scream out the reasons they’re fighting. Barret specifically calls out AVALANCHE, Marlene and Dyne, Red XIII specifically calls out his Grandpa, and Tifa specifically calls out Cloud. You are not going to make one of Tifa’s last moments in the game be her pining after a guy who has no interest in her. Not when you could easily have her mention something like her past, her hometown or hell even AVALANCHE and Marlene like Barret. If Tifa’s feelings for Cloud are meant to be unrequited, then it would be a character flaw that would be dealt with long before the final battle (see: Quistis in FF8 or Eowyn in the Lord of the Rings). They would not still be on display at moment like this.

Tifa being the only one there when Cloud jumps into the Lifestream to fight Sephiroth for the last time, and Tifa being the only one there when he emerges. She is very much playing the traditional partner/spouse role here, when you could easily have the entire party present or no one there at all. There is clearly something special about her relationship with Cloud that sets her apart from the other party members.

Once again, let’s look at the “I think I can meet her there moment.” And let’s put side the translation (the Japanese is certainly more ambiguous, and it’s not like the game had any trouble having Cloud call Aerith by her name before this). If Cloud was really expressing his desire to reunite with Aerith, and thus his rejection of Tifa, then the penultimate scene of this game is one that involves the complete utter and humiliation of one of its main characters since Tifa’s reply would indicate she’s inviting herself to a romantic reunion she has no part in. Not only that, but to anyone who is not Cl*rith shipper, the protagonist of the game is going to come off as a callous asshole. That cannot possibly be the creator’s intention. They are competent enough to depict an act of love without drawing attention to the party hurt by that love.

What then could possibly be the meaning? Could it possibly be Cloud trying to comfort Tifa by trying to find a silver lining in what appears to be their impending death? That this means they may get to see their departed loved ones again, including their mutual friend, Aerith? (I will note that Tifa talks about Aerith as much, if not even more than Cloud, after her death). Seems pretty reasonable to me, this being an interpretation of the scene that aligns with the overall themes of the game, and casts every character in positive light during this bittersweet moment.

Luckily enough, we have an entire fucking Compilation to find out which is right.

But before we get there, I’m sure some of you (lol @ me thinking anyone is still reading this) are asking, if Cloti is canon, then why is there a love triangle at all? Why even hint at the possibility of a romance between Cloud and Aerith? Wouldn’t that also be a waste of time and resources if they weren’t meant to be canon?

Well, there are two very important reasons that have nothing to do with romance and everything to do with two of the game’s biggest twists:

Aerith initially being attracted to Cloud’s similarities to Zack/commenting on the uncanniness of said similarities is an organic way to introduce the man Cloud’s pretending to be. Without it, the reveal in the Lifestream would fall a bit flat. The man he’s been emulating all along would just be some sort of generic hero rather than a person whose history and deeds already encountered during the course of the game. Notably for this to work, the game only has to establish Aerith’s attraction to Cloud.

To build the player’s attachment to Aerith before her death/obscure the fact that she’s going to die. With the technological limitations of the day, the only way to get the player to interact with Aerith is through the player character (AKA Cloud), and adding an element of choice (AKA the Gold Saucer Date mechanic) makes the player even more invested. This then elevates Aerith’s relationship with Cloud over hers with any other character. At the same time, because her time in the game is limited, Cloud ends up interacting with Aerith more than any of the other characters, at least in Disc 1. The choice to make many of these interactions flirty/romantic also toys with player expectations. One does not expect the hero’s love interest to die halfway through the game. The game itself also spends a bit of time teasing the romance, albeit, largely in superficial ways like other characters commenting on their relationship or Cait Sith reading their love fortune at the Temple of the Ancients. Yet, despite the quantity of their personal interactions, Cloud and Aerith never display any moments of deep love or devotion that one associates with a Final Fantasy romance. They never have the time. What the game establishes then is the potential of a romance rather than the romance itself. Aerith’s death hurts because of all that lost potential. There so many things she wanted to do, so many places she wanted to see that will never happen because her life is cut short. Part of what is lost, of course, is the potential of her romance with Cloud.

This creative choice is a lot more controversial since it elevates subverting audience expectations over character, and understandably leads to some player confusion. What’s the point of all this set up if there’s not going to be a pay off? Well, that is kind of the point. Death is frustrating because of all the unknowns and what-ifs. But, I suppose some people just can’t accept that fact in a game like this.

One last note on the OG before we move on: Even though this from an Ultimania, since we’re talking about story development and creator intent, I thought it was relevant to include: the fact that Aerith was the sole heroine in early drafts of the game is not the LTD trump card so people think it is. Stories undergo radical changes through the development process. More often than not, there are too many characters, and characters are often combined or removed if their presence feels redundant or confusing.

In this case, the opposite happened. Tifa was added later in the development process as a second heroine. Let’s say that Aerith was the Last Ancient and the protagonist’s sole love interest in this early draft of Final Fantasy VII. In the game that was actually released, that role was split between two characters (and last I checked, Tifa is not the last of a dying race), and Aerith dies halfway through the game, so what does that suggest about how Aerith’s role may have changed in the final product? Again, if Aerith was intended to be Cloud’s love interest, Tifa simply would not exist.

A begrudging analysis of our favorite straight-to-DVD sequel

Let’s move onto the Compilation. And in doing so, completely forget about the word vomit that’s been written above. While it’s quite clear to me now that there’s no way in hell the developers would have intended the last scene in the game to be both a confirmation of Cloud’s love for Aerith and his rejection of Tifa, in my younger and more vulnerable years, I wasn’t so sure. In fact, this was the prevailing interpretation back in the pre-Compilation Dark Ages. Probably because of a dubious English translation of the game and a couple of ambiguous cameos in Final Fantasy Tactics and Kingdom Hearts were all we had to go on.

How then did the official sequel to Final Fantasy VII change those priors?

Two years after the events of the game, Cloud is living as a family with Tifa and two kids rather than scouring the planet for a way to be reunited with Aerith. Shouldn’t the debate be well and over with that? Obviously not, and it’s not just because people were being obstinate. Part of the confusion stems from Advent Children itself, but I would argue that did not come from an intent to play coy/keep Cloud’s romantic desires ambiguous, but rather a failure of execution of his character arc.

Now I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film when I first watched a bootlegged copy I downloaded off LimeWire in 2005, and I like it even less now, but I better understand its failures, given its unique position as a sequel to a beloved game and the cornerstone of launching the Compilation.

The original game didn’t have such constraints on its storytelling. Outside of including a few elements that make it recognizable as a Final Fantasy (Moogles, Chocobos, Summons, etc.) and being a good enough game to be a financial success, the developers pretty much had free rein in terms of what story they wanted to tell, what characters they would use to tell it, and how long it took for them to tell said story.

With Advent Children, telling a good story was not the sole or even primary goal. Instead, it had to:

Do some fanservice: The core audience is going to be the OG fanbase, who would be expecting to see modern, high-def depictions of all the memorable and beloved characters from the game, no matter if the natural end point of their stories is long over.

Set up the rest of the Compilation - Advent Children is the draw with the big stars, but also a way to showcase the lesser known characters from from the Compilation who are going to be leading their own spinoffs. It’s part feature film/part advertisement for the rest of the Compilation. Thus, the Turks, Vincent and Zack get larger roles in the film than one might expect to attract interest to the spinoffs they lead.

Show off its technical prowess: SE probably has enough self awareness to realize that what’s going to set it apart from other animated feature films is not its novel storytelling, but its graphical capabilities. Thus, to really show off those graphics, the film is going to be packed to the brim with big, complicated action scenes with lots of moving parts, as opposed to quieter character driven moments.

These considerations are not unique to Advent Children, but important to note nonetheless:

As a sequel, the stakes have to be just as high if not higher than those in the original work. Since the threat in the OG was the literal end of the world, in Advent Children, the world’s gotta end again

The OG was around 30-40 hours long. An average feature-length film is roughly two hours. Video games and films are two very different mediums. As many TV writers who have tried to make the transition to film (and vice-versa) can tell you, success in one medium does not translate to success in another.

With so much to do in so little time, is it any wonder then that it is again Sephiroth who is the villain trying to destroy the world and Aerith in the Lifestream the deus ex machina who saves the day?

All of this is just a long-winded way to say, certain choices in the Advent Children that may seem to exist only to perpetuate the LTD were made with many other storytelling considerations in mind.

When trying to understand the intended character arcs and relationship dynamics, you cannot treat the film as a collection of scenes devoid of context. You can’t just say - “well here’s a scene where Cloud seems to miss Aerith, and here’s another scene where Cloud and Tifa fight. Obviously, Cloud loves Aerith.” You have to look at what purpose these scenes serve in the grander narrative.

And what is this grander narrative? To put it in simplistic terms, Aerith is the obstacle, and Tifa is goal. Cloud must get over his guilt over Aerith’s death so that he can return to living with Tifa and the children in peace.

The scenes following the prologue are setting up the emotional stakes of film - the problem that will be resolved by the film’s end. The problem being depicted here is not Aerith’s absence from Cloud’s life, but Cloud’s absence from his family. We see Tifa walking through Seventh Heaven saying “he’s not here anymore,” we see Denzel in his sickbed asking for Cloud, we see a framed photo of the four of them on Cloud’s desk. We see Cloud letting Tifa’s call go to voicemail.

What we do not see is Aerith, who does not appear until almost halfway through the film.

Cloud spends the first of the film avoiding confrontation with the Remnants/dealing with the return of Sephiroth. It’s only when Tifa is injured, and Denzel and Marlene get kidnapped that he goes to face his problems head on.

Before the final battle, when Cloud has exorcised his emotional demons and is about to face his physical demons, what do we see? We see Cloud telling Marlene that it’s his turn to take care of her, Denzel and Tifa the way they’ve taken care of him. We see Cloud telling Tifa that he ‘feels lighter’ and tacitly confirming that she was correct when she called him out earlier in the film. We see Cloud confirming to Denzel that he’s going home after this is all over.

What we do not see is Cloud telepathically communicating with Aerith to say, “Hey boo, can’t wait to beat Sephiroth so I can finally reunite with you in the Promised Land. Xoxoxo.” Aerith doesn’t factor in at all. Returning to his family is his goal, and his fight with Bahamut/the Remnants/Sephiroth/whatever the fuck is the final obstacle he has to face before reaching this goal.

This is reiterated again when Cloud is shot by Yazoo and seemingly perishes in an explosion. What is at stake with his “death”? We see Tifa calling his name while looking out the airship. We see Denzel and Marlene waiting for him at Seventh Heaven. We do not see Aerith watching over him in the Lifestream.

Now, Aerith does play an important role in Cloud’s arc when she shows up at about the midpoint of the film. You could fairly argue that it’s the turning point in Cloud’s emotional journey, the moment when he finally decides to confront his problems. But even if it’s only Cloud and Aerith in the scene, it’s not really about their relationship at all.

Let’s consider the context before this scene happens. Denzel and Marlene have been kidnapped by the Remnants; Tifa was nearly killed in a fight with another. This is Cloud at his lowest point. It’s his worst fears come to pass. His guilt over Aerith’s death is directly addressed at this moment in the film because it is not so much about his feelings for Aerith as it is about how Cloud fears the failures of his past (one of the biggest being her death) would continue into the present. If it was just about Aerith, we could have seen Cloud asking for her forgiveness at any other time in the film. It occurs when it does because this when his guilt over Aerith’s death intersects with his actual conflict, his fear that he’ll fail the the ones he loves. She appears when he’s at the Forgotten City where he goes to save the children. The same location where he had failed two year before.

This connection is made explicit when Cloud has flashes of Zack and Aerith’s deaths before he saves Denzel and Tifa from Bahamut. Again, Cloud’s dwelling on the past is directly related to his fears of being unable to protect his present.

Aerith is a feminine figure who is associated with flowers. That combined with the players’ memory of her and her relationship with Cloud in the OG, I can see how their scenes can be construed as romantic, but I really do not think that it is the creators’ intent to portray any romantic longing on Cloud’s part.

If they wanted to suggest that Cloud was still in love with Aerith or even leave his romantic interest ambiguous, there is no way in hell they would have had Cloud living with Tifa and two kids prior to the film’s events. To say nothing of opening the film by showing the pain his absence brings.

A romantic reading of Cloud’s guilt over Aerith’s death would suggest that he entered into a relationship with Tifa and started raising two children with her while still holding a torch for Aerith and hoping for a way to be reunited with her. The implication would be that Tifa is his second choice, and he is settling. Now, is this a dynamic that occurs in real life? Absolutely. Is this something that is often depicted in some films and television? Sure - in fact this very premise is at the core of one my favorite films of the last decade - 45 Years — and spoiler alert — the guy does not come off well in this situation. But once again, Cloud is not a real person, and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is not a John Cassavettes film or an Ingmar Bergman chamber drama. It is a 2-hour long straight to DVD sequel for a video game made for teens. This kind of messy, if realistic, relationship dynamic is not what this particular work is trying to explore.

(one of these is a good film!)

By the end of Advent Children, Cloud is once again the idealized version of himself. A hero that the audience is supposed to like and admire. We are supposed to think that his actions in the first half of the movie (wallowing in his guilt and abandoning his family) were bad. These are the flaws that he must overcome through the course of the film, and by the end he does. If he really had been settling and treating his Seventh Heaven family as a second choice prior to the events of the film, that too would obviously be a character flaw that needs to be addressed before the end of the film. It isn’t because this is a dynamic that only exists in certain people’s imaginations.

If the creators wanted to leave the Cloud & Aerith relationship open to a romantic interpretation, they didn’t have to write themselves into such a corner. They wouldn’t have to change the final film much at all, merely adjust the chronology a bit. Instead of Cloud already living as a family with Tifa, Marlene and Denzel prior to the beginning of the film, you would show them on the precipice of becoming a family, but with Cloud being unable to take the final step without getting over his feelings for Aerith first. This would leave space for him to love both women without coming off as an opportunistic jerk.

This is essentially the dynamic with Locke/Rachel/Celes in FFVI. Locke is unable to move on with Celes or anyone else until he finally finds closure with Rachel. It’s a lovely scene that does not diminish his relationships with either woman. He loved Rachel. He will love Celes. What the game does not have him do is enter into a relationship into Celes first and then when the party arrives at the Phoenix Cave, have him suddenly remember ‘Oh shit, I’ve gotta deal with my baggage with Rachel before I can really move on.’ That would not paint him in a particularly positive light.

Speaking of other Final Fantasies, let’s take a look another sequel in the series set two years after the events of the original work, one that is clearly the story of its protagonist searching for their lost love. And guess what? Final Fantasy X-2 does not begin with Yuna shacked up and raising two kids with another dude. And it certainly doesn’t begin with his perspective of the whole situation when Yuna decides to search for Tidus.

Square Enix knows how to write these kind of stories when they want to, and it’s clearly not their intent for Cloud and Aerith. Again, the biggest obstacle in the way of a Cloud/Aerith endgame isn’t space and time or death, it’s the existence of Tifa Lockhart.

A reasonable question to ask would be, if SE is not trying to ignite debate over the love triangle, why make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith a part of Advent Children at all? Why invite that sort of confusion? Well, the answer here, like the answer in the OG, is that Aerith’s role in the sequel is much more than her relationship with Cloud.

In the OG, it wasn’t Cloud and the gang who managed to stop Sephiroth and Meteor in the end, it was Aerith from the Lifestream. In a two-hour long film, you do not have the time to set up a completely new villain who can believably end the world, and since you pretty much have to include Sephiroth, the main antagonist can really only be him. No one else in the party has been established to have any magical Cetra powers, and again, since that’s not something that can be effectively established in a two-hour long film, and since Aerith needs to appear somehow, it again needs to be her who will save the day.

Given the time constraints, this external conflict has to be connected with Cloud’s internal conflict. In the OG, Cloud’s emotional arc is in resolved in the Lifestream, and then we spend a few more hours hunting down the Huge Materia/remembering what Holy is before resolving the external conflict of stopping Meteor. In Advent Children, we do not have that luxury of time. These turning points have to be one and same. It is only after Aerith is “introduced” in the film when Cloud asks her for forgiveness that she is able to help in the fight against the Remnants. Thus the turning point for Cloud’s character arc and the external conflict are the same. It’s understandably economical storytelling, though I wouldn’t call it particularly good storytelling.

As much as Cloud feels guilt over both Zack and Aerith’s deaths, it’s only Aerith who can play this dual role in the film. Zack can appear to help resolve Cloud’s emotional arc, but since he has no special Cetra powers or anything, there’s little he can do to help in Cloud’s fight against the Remnants. More time would need to be spent contriving a reason why Cloud is able to defeat the Remnants now when he wasn’t before or explaining why Aerith can suddenly help from the Lifestream when she had been absent before. (I still don’t think the film does a particularly good job of explaining this part, but that is a conversation for another time).

Another reason why Zack could not play this role is because at the time of AC’s original release, all we knew of Cloud and Zack’s relationship was contained in an optional flashback at the Shinra mansion after Cloud returns from the Lifestream. If it was Zack who suddenly showed up at Cloud’s lowest point, most viewers, even many who played the original game, would probably have been confused, and the moment would have fallen flat. On the other hand, even the most casual fan would have been aware of Aerith and her connection to Cloud, with her death scene being among the most well-known gaming moments of all time. Moreover, Aerith’s death is directly connected to Sephiroth, who is once again the threat in AC, whereas Zack was killed by Shinra goons. Aerith serves multiple purposes in a way that Zack just cannot.

Despite all this, though Aerith is more important to the film as a whole, many efforts are made to suggest that Zack and Aerith are equally important to Cloud. One of the first scenes in the film is Cloud moping around Zack’s grave (And unlike the scene with Aerith in the Forgotten City, it isn’t directly connected with Cloud’s present storyline in any way). We have the aforementioned scene where Cloud has flashes of both Aerith’s and Zack’s deaths when he saves Tifa and Denzel. Cloud has a scene where he’s standing back to back with Zack, mirroring his scene with in the Forgotten City with Aerith, before the climax of his fight with Sephiroth. In the Lifestream, after Cloud “dies,” it’s both Aerith and Zack who are there to send him back. Before the film ends, Cloud sees both Aerith and Zack leaving the church.

Now, were all these Zack appearances a way to promote the upcoming spin-off game that he’s going to lead? Of course. But the creators surely would have known that having Zack play such a similar role in Cloud’s arc would make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith feel less special and thus complicating a romantic interpretation of said relationship. If they wanted to encourage a romantic reading of Cloud’s lingering feelings for Aerith, they would have given Zack his own distinct role in the film. Or rather, they wouldn’t have put Zack in the film at all, and they certainly wouldn’t have him lead his own game, but we’ll get to the Zack of it all later.

The funny thing is, in a way, Zack is portrayed as being more special to Cloud. Zack only exists in the film to interact with Cloud and encourage him. Meanwhile. Aerith also has brief interactions with Kadaj, the Geostigma children and even Tifa before the film’s end. Aerith is there to save the whole world. Zack is there just for Cloud. If it’s Cloud’s relationship with Aerith that’s meant to be romantic, shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Let’s take a look at Tifa Lockhart. What role did she have to play in the FF7 sequel film? If, like some, you believed FF7 to be the Cloud/Aerith/Sephiroth show, then Tifa could have easily had a Barret-sized cameo in Advent Children. And honestly, she’s just a great martial artist. She has no special powers that would make her indispensable in a fight against Sephiroth. You certainly would not expect her to be the 2nd billed character in the film. Though of course, if you actually played through the Original Game with your eyes open, you would realize that Tifa Lockhart is instrumental to any story about Cloud Strife.

Unlike Aerith’s appearances, almost none of the suggestive scenes and dynamics between Cloud and Tifa had to be included in the film. As in, they serve no other plot related purpose and could have easily been cut from the final film if the creators weren’t trying to encourage a romantic interpretation of their relationship.

It feels inevitable now, but no one was expecting Cloud and Tifa to be living together and raising two kids. In the general consciousness, FF7 is Cloud and Sephiroth and their big swords and Aerith’s death. At the time, in the eyes of most fans and casual observers, Cloud and Tifa being together wasn’t a necessary part of the FF7 equation the way say, an epic fight between Cloud and Sephiroth would be. In fact, I don’t think even the biggest Cloti fans at the time would have imagined Cloud and Tifa living together would be their canon outcome in the sequel film.

Now can two platonic friends live together and raise two children together? Absolutely, but again Cloud and Tifa are not real people. They are fictional characters. A reasonable person (let’s use the legal definition of the term) who does not have brainworms from arguing over one of the dumbest debates on the Internet for 23 years would probably assume that two characters who were shown to be attracted to each other in the OG and who are now living together and raising two kids are in a romantic relationship. This is a reasonable assumption to make, and if SE wanted to leave Cloud’s romantic inclinations ambiguous, they simply would not be depicting Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in this manner. Cloud’s disrupted peace could have been a number of different things. He could have been a wandering mercenary, he could have been searching for a way to be reunited with Aerith. It didn’t have to be the family he formed with Tifa, but, then again, if you were actually paying attention to the story the OG was trying to tell, of course he would be living with Tifa.

Let’s also look at the scene where Cloud finds Tifa in the church after her fight with Loz. All the plot related information (who attacked her, Marlene being taken) is conveyed in the brief conversation they have before Cloud falls unconscious from Geostigma. What purpose do all the lingering shots of Cloud and Tifa in the flower bed in a Yin-Yang/non-sexual 69ing position serve if not to be suggestive of the type of relationship they have? It’s beautifully rendered but ultimately irrelevant to both the external and internal conflicts of the film.

Likewise, there is no reason why Cloud and Tifa needed to wake up in their children’s bedroom. No reason to show Cloud waking up with Tifa next to him in a way that almost makes you think they were in the same bed. And there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for a close-up of Tifa’s hand with the Wolf Ring on her ring finger while she is admonishing Cloud during what sounds like a domestic argument (This ring again comes into focus when Tifa leads Denzel to Cloud at the church at the end - there are dozens of ways this scene could have been rendered, but this is the one that was chosen.) If it wasn’t SE’s intent to emphasize the family dynamic and the intimate nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship, these scenes would not exist.

Let’s also take a look at Denzel, the only new character in the AC (give or take the Remnants). Again, given the film’s brief runtime, the fact that they’re not only adding a new character but giving him more screen time than almost every other AVALANCHE member must mean that he’s pretty important. While Denzel does have an arc of his own, especially in ACC, he is intricately connected to Cloud and Tifa and solidifies the family unit that they’ve been forming in Edge. Marlene still has Barret, but with the addition of Denzel, the family becomes something more real albeit even more tenuous given his Geostigma diagnosis. Without Denzel in the picture, it’s a bit easier to interpret Cloud’s distance from Tifa as romantic pining for another woman, but now it just seems absurd. The stakes are so much higher. Cloud and Tifa are at a completely different stage in their lives from the versions of these characters we met early on in the OG who were entangled in a frivolous love triangle. And yet some people are still stuck trying to fit these characters into a childish dynamic that died at the end of disc one along with a certain someone.

All this is there in the film, at least the director’s cut, if you really squint. But since SE preferred to spend its time on countless action sequences that have aged as well as whole milk in lieu of spending a few minutes showing Cloud’s family life before he got Geostigma to establish the emotional stakes, or a beat or two more on his reconciliation with Tifa and the kids, people may be understandably confused about Cloud’s arc. Has Cloud just been a moping around in misery for the two years post-OG? The answer is no, though that can only really be found in the accompanying novellas, specifically Case of Tifa.

Concerning the novellas, which we apparently must read to understand said DVD sequel

I really don’t know how you can read through CoT and still think there is anything ambiguous about the nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. The “Because I have you this time,” Cloud telling Tifa he’ll remind her how to be strong when they’re alone, Cloud confidently agreeing when Marlene adds him to their family. Not to mention Barret and Cid’s brief conversation about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in Case of Barret, after which Cid comments that “women wear the pants,” which Barret then follows by asking Cid about Shera. Again, a reasonable person would assume the couple in question are in a romantic relationship, and if this wasn’t the intent, these lines would not be present. Especially not in a novella about someone else.

Some try to argue that CoT just shows how incompatible Cloud and Tifa are because it features a few low points in their relationship. I don’t think that’s Nojima’s intent. Even if it was, it certainly wouldn’t be to prove that Cloud loves Aerith. This isn’t how you tell that story. Why waste all that time disproving a negative rather than proving a positive? We didn’t spend hours in FF8 watching Rinoa’s relationship with Seifer fall apart to understand how much better off she is with Squall. If Cloud and Aerith is meant to be a love story, then tell their love story. Why tell the story of how Cloud is incompatible with someone else?

Part of the confusion may be because CoT doesn’t tell a complete story in and of itself. The first half of the story (before Cloud has to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City) acts as a sort of epilogue to the OG, while the second half of the story is something of a prologue to Advent Children (or honestly its missing Act One). And to state the obvious, conflict is inherent to any story worth telling. It can’t just be all fluff, that’s what the fanfiction is for.

Tifa’s conflict is her fear that the fragile little family they’ve built in Edge is going to fall apart. Thus we see her fret about Cloud’s distance, the way this affects Marlene, and Denzel’s sickness. There are certainly some low moments here --- Tifa telling Cloud to drink in his room, asking if he loves her -- all ways for the threat to seem more real, the outcome more uncertain, yet there’s only one way this conflict can be resolved. One direction to which their relationship can move.

Again, by the end of this story, both characters are supposed to be the best versions of themselves, to find their “happy” endings so to speak. Tifa could certainly find happiness outside of a relationship with Cloud. She could decide that they’ve given it a shot, but they’re better off as friends. She’s grateful for this experience and she’s learned from this, but now she’s ready to make a life for herself on her own. It would be a fine character arc, though not something the Final Fantasy series has been wont to do. However, that’s obviously not the case here as there’s no indication whatsoever that Tifa considers this as an option for herself. Nojima hasn’t written this off ramp into her journey. For Tifa, they’ll either become a real family or they won’t. Since this is a story that is going to have a happy ending, so of course they will, even if there are a lot of bumps along the way.

Unfortunately, with the Compilation being the unwieldy beast that this is, this whole arc has to be pieced together across a number of different works:

Tifa asking herself if they’re a real family in CoT

Her greatest fear seemingly come to life when Cloud leaves at the end of CoT/beginning of AC

Tifa explicitly asking Cloud if the reason they can’t help each other is because they’re not a real family during their argument in AC. Notably, even though Cloud is at his lowest point, he doesn’t confirm her fear. Instead he says he that he can’t help anyone, not even his family. Instead, he indirectly confirms that yes he does think they’re a family, even if is a frustrating moment still in that he’s too scared to try to save it.

The ending of AC where we see a new photo of Cloud smiling surrounded by Tifa and the kids and the rest of the AVALANCHE, next to the earlier photo we had seen of the four of them where he was wearing a more dour expression.

The ending of The Kids Are All Right, where Cloud, Tifa, Denzel and Marlene meet with Evan, Kyrie and Vits - and Cloud offers, unsolicited, that even if they’re not related by blood, they’re a family.

The ending of DVD extra ‘Reminiscence of FFVII’ where Cloud takes the day off and asks Tifa to close the bar so they can spend time together as a family as Tifa had wanted to do early in CoT

Cloud fears he’ll fail his family. Tifa fears it’ll fall apart. Cloud retreats into himself, pushing others away. Tifa neglects herself, not being able to say what she needs to say. In Advent Children, Tifa finally voices her frustrations. It’s then that Cloud finally confronts his fears. Like in the OG, Cloud and Tifa’s conflicts and character arcs are two sides of the same coin, and it’s only by communicating with each other are they able to resolve it. Though with the Compilation being an inferior work, it’s much less satisfying this time around. Such is the problem when you’re writing towards a preordained outcome (Cloud and Sephiroth duking it once again) rather than letting the story develop organically.

Some may ask, why mention Aerith so much (Cloud growing distant after delivering flowers to the Forgotten City, Cloud finding Denzel at Aerith’s church) if they weren’t trying to perpetuate the LTD? Well, as explained above, Aerith had to be in Advent Children, and since CoT is the only place where we get any insight into Cloud’s psyche, it’s here where Nojima expands on that guilt.

Again, this is a story that requires conflict, and what better conflict than the specter of a love rival? Notably, despite us having access to Tifa’s thoughts and fears, she never explicitly associates Cloud’s behavior with him pining after Aerith. Though it’s fair to say this fear is implied, if unwarranted.

If Cloud had actually been pining after Aerith this whole time, we would not be seeing it all unfold through Tifa’s perspective. You can depict a romance without drawing attention to the injured third party. We’re seeing all of this from Tifa’s POV, because it’s about Tifa’s insecurities, not the great tragic romance between Cloud and Aerith. Honestly, another reason we see this from Tifa’s perspective is because it’s dramatically more interesting. Because she’s insecure, she (and we the reader) wonder if there’s something else going on. Meanwhile, from Cloud’s perspective it would be straightforward and redundant, given what we see in AC. He’s guilty over Aerith’s death and thinks he doesn’t deserve to be happy.

Not to mention, the first time we encounter Aerith in CoT, Tifa is the one breaking down at her grave while Cloud is the one comforting her. Are we supposed to believe that he just forgot he was in love with Aerith until he had to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City?

And Aerith doesn’t just serve as a romantic obstacle. She’s also a symbol of guilt and redemption for both Cloud and Tifa. Neither think they have the right to be happy after all that’s happened (Aerith’s death being a big part of this), and through Denzel, who Cloud finds at Aerith’s church, they both see a chance to atone.

I do want to address Case of Lifestream: White because it’s only time in the entire Compilation where I’ve asked myself — what are they trying to achieve here? Now, I’d rather drink bleach than start debating the translation of ‘koibito’ again, but I did think it was a strange choice to specify the romantic nature of Aerith’s love for Cloud. I suppose it could be a reference her obvious attraction to Cloud in the OG, though calling it love feels like a stretch.

But nothing else in CoLW really gives me pause. It might be a bit jarring to see how much of it is Aerith’s thoughts of Cloud, but it makes sense when you consider the context in which it’s meant to be consumed. Unlike Case of Tifa or Case of Denzel, CoLW isn’t meant to be read on its own. It’s a few scant paragraphs in direct conversation with Case of Lifestream: Black. In CoLB, Sephiroth talks about his plan to return and end the world or whatever, and how Cloud is instrumental to his plan. Each segment of CoLW mirrors the corresponding segment of CoLB. Thus, CoLW has to be about Aerith’s plan to stop Sephiroth and the role Cloud must play in that. In both of these stories, Cloud is the only named character. It doesn’t mean that thoughts of Cloud consume all of Aerith’s afterlife. Case of Lifestream is only a tiny sliver of the story, a halfassed way to explain why in Advent Children the world is ending again and why Cloud has to be at the center of it all.

Notably, there is absolutely nothing in CoLW about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith. Even if it’s just speculation on her part as we see Sephiroth speculate about Cloud’s reactions in CoLB. Aerith can see what’s going on in the real world, but she says nothing about Cloud’s actions. If Cloud is really pining after her, trying to find a way to be reunited with her, wouldn’t this be the ideal story to show such devotion?

But it’s not there, because not only does it not happen, but because this story is not about Aerith’s relationship with Cloud. It is about how Aerith needs to see and warn Cloud in order to stop Sephiroth. By the end of Advent Children, that goal is fulfilled. Cloud gets his forgiveness. Aerith gets to see him again and helps him stop Sephiroth. There’s no suggestion that either party wants more. We finally have the closure that the OG lacked, and at no point does it confirm that Cloud reciprocated Aerith’s romantic feelings, even though there were plenty of opportunities to do so.

I don’t really know what else people were expecting. Advent Children isn’t a romantic drama. There’s not going to be a moment where Cloud explicitly tells Tifa, ‘I’ve never loved Aerith. It’s only been you all along.” This is just simply not the kind of story it is.

Though one late scene practically serves this function. When Cloud “dies” and Aerith finds him in the Lifestream, if there were any lingering romantic feelings between the two of them, this would be a beautiful bittersweet reunion. Maybe something about how as much as they want to be together, it’s not his time yet. Instead, it’s almost played off as a joke. Cloud calls her ‘Mother’, and Zack is at Aerith’s side, joking about how Cloud has no place there. This would be the perfect opportunity to address the romantic connection between Cloud and Aerith, but instead, the film elides this completely. Instead, it’s a cute afterlife moment between Aerith and Zack, and functionally allows Cloud to go back to where he belongs, to Tifa and the kids. Whatever Cloud’s feelings for Aerith were before, it’s transformed into something else.

Crisis Core -- or how Aerith finally gets her love story

The other relevant part of the Compilation is Crisis Core, which I will now touch on briefly (or at least brief for me). In the OG, Zack Fair was more plot device than character. We knew he was important to Cloud — enough that Cloud would mistake Zack’s memories for his own -- we knew he was important to Aerith — enough that she is initially drawn to Cloud due to his similarities to Zack — yet the nature of these relationships is more ambiguous. Especially his relationship with Aerith. From the little we learn of their relationship, it could have been completely one-sided on her part, and Zack a total cad. At least that’s the implication she leaves us with in Gongaga. We get the sense that she might not be the most reliable narrator on this point (why bring up an ex so often, unsolicited, if it wasn’t anything serious?) but the OG never confirms this either way.

Crisis Core clears this up completely. Not only is Zack portrayed as the Capital H Hero of his own game, but his relationships with Cloud and Aerith are two of the most important in the game. In fact, they are the basis for his heroic sacrifice at the game’s end: he dies trying to save Cloud’s life; he dies trying to return to Aerith.

Zack’s relationship with Aerith is a major subplot of the game. Not only that, but the details of said relationship completely recontextualizes what we know about the Aerith we see in the OG. Many of Aerith’s most iconic traits (wearing pink, selling flowers) are a direct product of this relationship, and more importantly, so many of the hallmarks of her early relationship with Cloud (him falling through her church, one date as a reward, a conversation in the playground) are a direct echo of her relationship with Zack.

A casual fling this was not. Aerith’s relationship with Zack made a deep impact on the character we see in the OG and clearly colored her interactions with Cloud throughout.

Crisis Core is telling Zack’s story, and Tifa is a fairly minor supporting character, yet it still finds the time to expand upon Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. Through their interactions with Zack, we learn just how much they were on each others’ minds during this time, and how they were both too shy to own up to these feelings. We also get a brief expansion on the moment Cloud finds Tifa injured in the reactor.

Meanwhile, given the point we are in the story’s chronology, Cloud and Aerith are completely oblivious of each other’s existence.

One may try to argue that none of this matters since all of this is in the past. While this argument might hold water if we arguing about real lives in the real world, FF7 is a work of fiction. Its creators decided that these would be events we would see, and that Zack would be the lens through which we’d see them. Crisis Core is not the totality of these characters’ lives prior to the event of the OG. Rather, it consists of moments that enhance and expand upon our understanding of the original work. We learn the full extent of Hojo’s experimentation and the Jenova project; we learn that Sephiroth was actually a fairly normal guy before he was driven insane when he uncovers the circumstances of his birth. We learn that Aerith was a completely different person before she met Zack, and their relationship had a profound impact on her character.

A prequel is not made to contradict the original work, but what it can do is recontexualize the story we already know and add a layer of nuance that may have not been obvious before. Thus, Sephiroth is transformed from a scary villain into a tragic figure who could have been a hero were it not for Hojo’s experiments. Aerith’s behavior too invites reinterpretation. What once seemed flirty and perhaps overtly forward now looks like the tragic attempts of a woman trying to recapture a lost love.

If Cloud and Aerith were meant to be the official couple of the Compilation of FF7, you absolutely would not be spending so much time depicting two relationships that will be moot by the time we get to the original work. You especially would not depict Zack and Aerith’s relationship in a way that makes Aerith’s relationship with Cloud look like a copy of the moments she had with her ex.

Additionally, with Zack’s relationship with Angeal, we can see, that within the universe of FF7, a protagonist being devastated over the death of a beloved comrade isn’t something that’s inherently romantic. Neither is it romantic for said dead comrade to lend a helping hand from the beyond.

SE would also expect some people to play Crisis Core before the OG. If Cloud and Aerith are the intended endgame couple, then SE would be asking the player to root for a guy to pursue the girlfriend of the man who gave his life for him. The same man who died trying to reunite with her. This is to say nothing of Cloud’s treatment of Tifa in this scenario. How could this possibly be the intent for their most popular protagonist in the most popular entry of their most popular franchise?

What Crisis Core instead offers is something for fans of Aerith who may be disappointed that she was robbed of a great romance by her death. Well, she now gets that epic, tragic romance. Only it’s with Zack, not Cloud.

If SE intended for Cloud and Aerith to be the official couple of FF7, neither Zack nor Tifa would exist. They would not spend so much time developing Zack and Tifa into the multi-dimensional characters they are, only to be treated as nothing more than collateral damage in the wake of Cloud and Aerith’s great love. No, this is a Final Fantasy. SE want their main characters to have something of a happy ending after all of the tribulations they face. Cloud and Tifa find theirs in life. Zack and Aerith, as the ending of AC suggests, find theirs in death.

Cloud and Aerith’s relationship isn’t a threat to the Zack/Aerith and Cloud/Tifa endgame, nor is it a mere obstacle. Rather, it’s a relationship that actually deepens and strengthens the other two. Aerith is explicitly searching for her first love in Cloud, revealing just how deep her feelings for Zack ran. Cloud gets to live out his heroic SOLDIER fantasy with Aerith, a fantasy he created just to impress Tifa.

There are moments between Cloud and Aerith that may seem romantic when taken on its own, but viewed within the context of the whole narrative, ultimately reveal that they aren’t quite right for each other, and in each other, they’re actually searching for someone else.

This quadrangular dynamic reminds me a bit of one of my favorite classic films, The Philadelphia Story. (Spoilers for a film that came out in 1940 ahead) — The single most romantic scene in the film is between Jimmy Stewart’s and Katherine Hepburn’s characters, yet they’re not the ones who end up together. Even as their passions run, as the music swells, and we want them to end up together, we realize that they’re not quite right for each other. We know that it won’t work out.

More relevantly, we know this is true due to the existence of Cary Grant’s and Ruth Hussey’s characters, who are shown to carry a torch for Hepburn and Stewart, respectively. Grant and Hussey are well-developed and sympathetic characters. With the film being the top grossing film of the year, and made during the Code era, it’s about as “clean” of a narrative as you can get. There’s no way Grant and Hussey would be given such prominent roles just to be left heartbroken and in the cold by the film’s end.

Hepburn’s character (Tracy) pretty much sums it herself after some hijinks lead to a last minute proposal from Stewart’s character (Mike):

Mike: Will you marry me, Tracy?

Tracy: No, Mike. Thanks, but hmm-mm. Nope.

Mike: l've never asked a girl to marry me. l've avoided it. But you've got me all confused now. Why not?

Tracy: Because l don't think Liz [Hussey’s character] would like it...and l'm not sure you would...and l'm even a little doubtful about myself. But l am beholden to you, Mike. l'm most beholden.

Despite the fact that the film spends more time developing Hepburn and Stewart’s relationship than theirs with their endgame partners, it’s still such a satisfying ending. That’s because, even at the peak of their romance, we can see how Stewart needs someone like Hussey to ground his passionate impulses, and how Hepburn needs Grant, someone who won’t put her on a pedestal like everyone else. Hepburn and Stewart’s is a relationship that might feel right in the moment, but doesn’t quite work in the light of day.

I don’t think Cloud and Aerith share a moment that is nearly as romantic in FF7, but the same principle applies. What may seem romantic in the moment actually reveals how they’re right for someone else.

Even if Aerith lives and Cloud decides to pursue a relationship with her, it’s not going to be all puppies and roses ahead for them. Aerith would need to disentangle her feelings for Zack from her attraction to Cloud, and Cloud would still need to confront his feelings for Tifa, which were his main motivator for nearly half his life, before they can even start to build something real. This is messy work, good fodder for a prestige cable drama or an Oscar-baity indie film, but it has no place in a Final Fantasy. There simply isn’t the time. Not when the question on most players’ minds isn’t ‘Cloud does love?’ but ‘How the hell are they going to stop that madman and his Meteor that’s about to destroy the world?’

With Zerith’s depiction in Crisis Core, there’s a sort of bittersweet poetry in how the two relationships rhyme but can’t actually coexist. It is only because Zack is trying to return to Midgar to see Aerith that Cloud is able to reunite with Tifa, and the OG begins in earnest. In another world, Zack and Aerith would be the hero and heroine who saved the world and lived to tell the tale. They are much more the traditional archetypes - Zack the super-powered warrior who wants to be a Capital-H Hero, and Aerith, the last of her kind who reluctantly accepts her fate. Compared to these two, Cloud and Tifa aren’t nearly so special, nor their goals so lofty and noble. Cloud, after all, was too weak to even get into SOLDIER, and only wanted to be one, not for some greater good, but to impress the girl he liked. Tifa has no special abilities, merely learning martial arts when she grew wise enough to not wait around for a hero. On the surface, Cloud and Tifa are made of frailer stuff, and yet by luck or by fate, they’re the ones who cheat death time and time again, and manage to save the world, whereas the ones who should have the role, are prematurely struck down before they can finish the job. Cloud and Tifa fulfill the roles that they never asked for, that they may not be particularly suited for, in Zack and Aerith’s stead. There’s a burden and a beauty to it. Cloud and Tifa can live because Zack and Aerith did not.

All of this nuance is lost if you think Cloud and Aerith are meant to be the endgame couple. Instead, you have a pair succumbing to their basest desires, regardless of the selfless sacrifices their other potential paramours made for their sake. Zack and Tifa, and their respective relationships with Aerith and Cloud, are flattened into mere romantic obstacles. The heart wants what it wants, some may argue. While that may be true in real life, that is not necessarily the case in a work of fiction, especially not a Final Fantasy. The other canon Final Fantasy couples could certainly have had previous romantic relationships, but unless they have direct relevance to the their character arcs (e.g., Rachel to Locke), the games do not draw attention to them because they would be a distraction from the romance they are trying to tell. They’ve certainly never spent the amount of real estate FF7 spends in depicting Cloud/Tifa and Zack/Aerith’s relationships.

At last…the Remake, and somehow this essay isn’t even close to being over

Finally, we come to the Remake. With the technological advancements made in the last 23 years and the sheer amount of hours they’re devoting to just the Midgar section this time around, you can almost look at the OG as an outline and the Remake as the final draft. With the OG being overly reliant on text to do its storytelling, and the Remake having subtle facial expressions and a slew of cinematic techniques at its disposal, you might almost consider it an adaptation from a literary medium to a visual one. Our discussions are no longer limited to just what the characters are saying, but what they are doing, and even more importantly, how the game presents those actions. When does the game want us to pay attention? And what does it want us to pay attention to?

Unlike most outlines, which are read by a small handful of execs, SE has 23 years worth of reactions from the general public to gauge what works and what doesn’t work, what caused confusion, and what could be clarified. While FF7 is not a romance, the LTD remains a hot topic among a small but vocal part of the fanbase. It certainly is an area that could do with some clarifying in the Remake.

Since the Remake is not telling a new story, but rather retelling an existing story that has been in the public consciousness for over two decades, certain aspects that were treated as “twists” in the OG no longer have that same element of surprise, and would need to approached differently. For example, in the Midgar section of the OG, Shinra is treated as the main antagonist throughout. It’s only when we get to the top of the Shinra tower that Sephiroth is revealed as the real villain. Anyone with even a passing of knowledge of FF7 would be aware of Sephiroth so trying to play it off like a surprise in the Remake would be terribly anticlimactic. Thus, Sephiroth appears as early as Ch. 2 to haunt Cloud and the player throughout.

Likewise, many players who’ve never even touched the OG are probably aware that Aerith dies, thus her death can no longer be played for shock. While SE would still want the player to grow attached to Aerith so that her death has an emotional impact, there are diminishing returns to misdirecting the player about her fate, at least not in the same way it was done in the OG.

How do these considerations affect the how the LTD is depicted in the Remake? For the two of the biggest twists in the OG to land in the Remake — Aerith’s death and Cloud’s true identity in the Lifestream — the game needs to establish:

Aerith’s attraction to Cloud, specifically due to his similarities to Zack. This never needs to go past an initial attraction for the player to understand that the man whose memory Cloud was “borrowing” is Zack. Aerith’s feelings for Cloud can evolve into something platonic or even maternal by her end without the reveal in the Lifestream losing any impact.

Cloud’s love for Tifa. For the Lifestream sequence to land with an “Ooooh!” rather than a “Huh!?!?”, the Remake will need to establish that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to 1) motivate him to try to join SOLDIER in the first place 2) incentivize him to adopt a false persona because he fears that he isn’t the man she wants him to be 3) call him back to consciousness from Make poisoning twice 4) help him put his mind back together and find his true self. That’s a lot of story riding on one guy’s feelings!

The player’s love for Aerith so that her death will hurt. This can be done by making them invested in Aerith as a character by her own right, but also extends to the relationships she has with the other characters (not only Cloud).

What is not necessary is establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith. Now, would their doomed romance make her death hurt even more? Sure, but it could work just as well if Cloud if is losing a dear friend and ally, not a lover. Not to mention, her death also cuts short her relationships with Tifa, Barret, Red XII, etc. Bulking those relationships up prior to her death, would also make her loss more palpable. If anything, establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith would actually undermine the game’s other big twist. The game needs you to believe that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to drive his entire hero’s journey. If Cloud is shown falling in love with another woman in the span of weeks if not mere days, then the Lifestream scene would be much harder to swallow.

Cloud wavering between the two women made sense in the OG because the main way for the player to get to know Aerith was through her interactions with Cloud. That is no longer the case in the Remake. Cloud is still the protagonist, and the player character for the vast majority of the game, but there are natural ways for the player to get to know Aerith outside of her dialogue exchanges with Cloud. Unless SE considers the LTD an integral part of FF7’s DNA, then for the sake of story clarity, the LTD doesn’t need to exist.

How then does the Remake clarify things?

I’m not going go through every single change in the Remake — there are far too many of them, and they’ve been documented elsewhere. Most of the changes are expansions or adaptations (what might make sense for super-deformed chibis would look silly for realistic characters, e.g., Cloud rolling barrels in the Church has now become him climbing across the roof support). What is expanded and how it’s adapted can be telling, but what is more interesting are the additions and removals. Not just for what takes place in the scenes themselves, but how their addition or removal changes our understanding of the narrative as a whole vis-a-vis the story we know from the OG.

Notably, one of the features that is not expanded upon, but rather diminished, is player choice. In the OG, the player had a slew of dialogue options to choose from, especially during the Midgar portion of the game. Not only did it determine which character would go on a date with Cloud at the Gold Saucer, but it also made the player identify with Cloud since they’re largely determining his personality during this stage. Despite the technological advances that have made this level of optionality the norm in AAA games, the Remake gives the player far fewer non-gameplay related choices, and only really the illusion of choice as a nod to the OG, but they don’t affect the story of the game in any meaningful way. You get a slightly different conversation depending on the choice, but you have to buy the Flower, Tifa has to make you a drink.

So much of what fueled the LTD in the OG came from this mechanic, which is now largely absent in the Remake. Almost every instance where there was a dialogue branch in the OG has become a single, canon scenario in the Remake that favors Tifa (e.g., having the choice of giving the flower to Tifa or Marlene in the OG, to Cloud giving the flower to Tifa in the Remake). Similarly, for the only meaningful choice you make in the Remake — picking Tifa or Aerith in the sewers — Cloud is now equidistant to both girls, whereas in the OG, his starting point was much closer to Aerith. In the OG, player choice allowed you to largely determine Cloud’s personality, and the girl he favored — and seemingly encouraged you to choose Aerith in many instances. In the Remake, Cloud is now his own character, not who the player wants him to be. And this Cloud, well, he sure seems to have a thing for Tifa.

In fact, one of the first changes in the Remake is the addition of Jessie asking Cloud about his relationship with Tifa, and Cloud’s brief flashback to their childhood together. In the OG, Tifa isn’t mentioned at all during the first reactor mission, and we don’t see her until we get to Sector 7.

Not only does this scene reveal Tifa’s importance to Cloud much earlier on than in the OG, but it sets up a sort of frame of reference that colors Cloud’s subsequent interactions. Even as Jessie kind of flirts with him throughout the reactor mission, even with his chance meeting Aerith in Sector 8, in the back of your mind, you might be thinking — wait what about his relationship with this Tifa character? What if he’s already spoken for?

Think about how this plays out in the OG. Jessie is pretty much a non-entity, and Cloud has his meet-cute with the flower girl before we’re even aware that Tifa exists. It’s hard to get too invested in his interactions with Tifa, when you know he has to meet the flower girl again, and you’re waiting for that moment, because that’s when the game will start in earnest.

After chapter 1 of the Remake, a new player may be asking — who is this Tifa person, and, echoing Jessie’s question, what kind of relationship does she have with Cloud? It’s a question that’s repeated when Barret mentions her before they set the bomb, and again when Barret specifies Seventh Heaven is where Tifa works — and the game zooms in on Cloud’s face — when they arrive in Sector 7.

It’s when we finally meet her at Seventh Heaven in Ch. 3 that we feel, ah now, this game has finally begun.

It’s also interesting how inorganically this question is introduced in the Remake. Up until that moment, the dialogue and Cloud are all business. Then, as they’re waiting for the gate to open, Jessie asks about Tifa completely out of the blue, and Cloud, all of a sudden, is at a lost for words, and has the first of many flashbacks. That this moment is a bit incongruous shows the effort SE made to establish Tifa’s importance to the game and to Cloud early on.

One of the biggest changes in the Remake is the addition of the events in Ch. 3 and 4. Unlike what happens in Ch. 18, Ch. 3 and 4 feel like such a natural extension of the OG’s story that many players may not even realize that SE has added an whole day’s and night’s worth of events to the OG’s story. While not a drastic change, it does reshape our understanding of subsequent events in the story, namely Cloud’s time spent alone with Aerith.

In the OG, we rush from one reactor mission to the next, with no real time to explore Cloud’s character or his relationships with any of the other characters in between. When he crashes through the church, he gets a bit of a breather. We see a different side of him with Aerith. Since we have nothing else to compare it to, many might assume that his relationship with Aerith is special. That she brings something out of him that no one else can.

That is no longer the case in the Remake. While Cloud’s time in Sector 5 with Aerith remains largely unchanged though greatly expanded, it no longer feels “special.” So many of the beats that seemed exclusive to his relationship with Aerith in the OG, we’ve now already seen play out with both Tifa and the other members of AVALANCHE long before he meets Aerith.

Cloud tells the flowers to listen to Aerith; he’s told Tifa he’s listening if she wants to talk; told Bigg’s he wants to hear the story of Jessie’s dad. Cloud offers to walk Aerith back home; he offered the same to Wedge. Cloud smiles at Aerith; he’s already smiled at Tifa and AVALANCHE a number of times.

Now, I’m under no illusion that SE added these chapters solely to diminish Aerith’s importance to Cloud (other than the obvious goal of making the game longer, I imagine they wanted the player to spend more time in Sector 7 and more time with the other AVALANCHE members so that the collapse of the Pillar and their deaths have more weight), but they certainly must have realized that this would be one effect. If pushing Cloud/Aerith’s romance had been a goal with the Remake, this would be a scenario they would try to avoid. Notably, the other place where time has been added - the night in the Underground Shinra Lab, and the day helping other people out around the slums — are also periods of time when Aerith is absent.

Home Sweet Slums vs. Budding Bodyguard

Since most of the events in Ch. 3 were invented for the Remake, and thus we have nothing in the OG to compare it to (except to say that something is probably better than nothing), I thought it would be more interesting to compare it to Ch. 8. Structurally, they are nearly identical — Cloud doing sidequests around the Sectors with one of the girls as his guide. Extra bits of dialogue the more sidequests you complete, with an optional story event if you do them all. Do Cloud’s relationships with each girl progress the same way in both chapters? Is the Remake just Final Waifu Simulator 2020 or are they distinct, reflecting their respective roles in the story as a whole?

A lot of what the player takes away from these chapters is going to be pretty subjective (Is he annoyed with her or is he playing hard to get), yet the vibes of the two chapters are quite different. This is because in Ch. 3, the player is getting to know Tifa through her relationship with Cloud; in Ch. 8; the player is getting to know Aerith as a character on her own.

What do I mean by this? Let’s take Cloud’s initial introduction into each Sector. In Ch. 3, it’s a straight shot from Seventh Heaven to Stargazer Heights punctuated by a brief conversation where Tifa asks Cloud about the mission he was just on. We don’t learn anything new about Tifa’s character here. Instead we hear Cloud recount the mission we already saw play out in detail in Ch. 1 But it’s through this conversation that we get a glimpse of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship — unlike the reticent jerk he was with Avalanche, this Cloud is much more responsive and even tries to reassure her in his own stilted way. We also know that they have enough of a past together that Tifa can categorize him as “not a people person” — an assessment to which Cloud agrees. Slowly, we’re getting an answer to the question Jessie posed in Ch. 1 — just what kind of relationship does Cloud have with Tifa?

In Ch. 8, Aerith leads Cloud on a roundabout way through Sector 5, and stops, unprompted, to talk about her experiences helping at the restaurant, helping out the doctor, and helping with the orphans at the Leaf House. It’s not so much a conversation as a monologue. Cloud isn’t the one who inquires about these relationships, and more jarringly, he doesn’t respond until Aerith directly asks him a question (interestingly enough, it’s about the flower she gave him…which he then gave to Tifa). Here, the game is allowing the player to learn more about the kind of person Aerith is. Cloud is also learning about Aerith at the same time, but with his non-reaction, either the game itself is indifferent to Cloud’s feelings towards Aerith or it is deliberately trying to portray Cloud’s indifference to Aerith.

The optional story event you can see in each chapter after completing all the side quests is also telling. In Ch. 3, “Alone at Last” is almost explicitly about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. It’s bookended by two brief scenes between Marle and Cloud — the first in which she lectures him about how he should treat Tifa almost like an overprotective in-law, the second after they return downstairs and Marle awards Cloud with an accessory “imbued with the fervent desire to be by one’s side for eternity” after he makes Tifa smile. In between, Cloud and Tifa chat alone in her room. Tifa finally gets a chance to ask Cloud about his past and they plan a little date to celebrate their reunion. There is also at least the suggestion that Cloud was expecting something else when Tifa asked him to her room.

In Ch. 8’s “The Language of Flowers,” Cloud and Aerith’s relationship is certainly part of the story — unlike earlier in the chapter, Cloud actually asks Aerith about what she’s doing and even supports her by talking to the flowers too, but the other main objective of this much briefer scene is to show Aerith’s relationship with the flowers and of her mysterious Cetra powers (though we don’t know about her ancestry just yet). Like a lot of Aerith’s dialogue, there’s a lot of foreshadowing and foreboding in her words. If anything, it’s almost as if Cloud is playing the Marle role to the flowers, as an audience surrogate to ask Aerith about her relationship with the flowers so that she can explain. Also, there’s no in-game reward that suggests what the scene was really about.

If there’s any confusion about what’s going on here, just compare their titles “Alone At Last” vs. “The Language of Flowers.”

I’ll try not to bring my personal feelings into this, but there’s just something so much more satisfying about the construction of Ch. 3. This is some real storytelling 101 shit, but I think a lot of it due to just how much set up and payoff there is, and how almost all of said payoff deepens our understanding of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship:

Marle: Cloud meets Tifa’s overprotective landlady towards the beginning of the chapter. She is dubious of his character and his relationship with TIfa. This impression does not change the second time they meet even though Tifa herself is there to mediate. It’s only towards the end of the chapter, after all the sidequests are complete, that this tension is resolved. Marle gives Cloud a lecture about how he should be treating Tifa, which he seems to take to heart. And Cloud finally earns Marle’s begrudging approval after he emerges from their rooms with a chipper-looking Tifa in tow.

Their past: For their first in-game interaction, Cloud casually brings up that fact that it’s been “Five years” since they’ve last, which seem to throw Tifa off a bit. As they’re replacing filters, Cloud asks Tifa what she’s been up to in the time since they’ve been apart, and Tifa quickly changes the subject. Tifa tries to ask Cloud about his life “after he left the village,” at the Neighborhood Watch HQ, and this time he’s the one who seems to be avoiding the subject. It’s only after all the Ch. 3 sidequests are complete, and they're alone in her room that Tifa finally gets the chance to ask her question. A question which Cloud still doesn’t entirely answer. This question remains unresolved, and anyone’s played the OG will know that it will remain unresolved for some time yet, as it is THE question of Cloud’s story as a whole.

The lessons: Tifa starts spouting off some lessons for life in the slums as she brings Cloud around the town, though it’s unclear if Cloud is paying attention or taking them to heart. After completing the first sidequest, Cloud repeats one of these sayings back to her, confirming that he’s been listening all along. By the end of the chapter, Cloud is repeating these lessons to himself, even when Tifa isn’t around. These lessons extend beyond this chapter, with Cloud being a real teacher’s pet, asking Tifa “Is this a lesson” in Ch. 10 once they reunite.

The drink: When Cloud first arrives at Seventh Heaven, Tifa plays hostess and asks him if he wants anything, but it seems he’s only interested in his money. After exploring the sector a bit, Tifa again tries to play the role of cheery bartender, offering to make him a cocktail at the bar, but Cloud sees through this facade, and they carry on. Finally, after the day’s work is done, to tide Cloud over while she’s meeting with AVALANCHE, Tifa finally gets the chance to make him a drink. No matter, which dialogue option the player chooses, Tifa and Cloud fall into the roles of flirty bartender and patron quite easily. Who would have thought this was possible from the guy we met in Ch. 1?

This dynamic is largely absent in Ch. 8, except perhaps exploring Aerith’s relationship with the flowers, which “pays off” in the “Language of Flowers” event, but again, that scene is primarily about Aerith’s character rather than her relationship with Cloud. The orphans and the Leaf House are a throughline of the chapter, but they are merely present. There’s no clear progression here as was the case with in Ch. 3. Sure, the kids admire Cloud quite a bit after he saves them, but it’s not like they were dubious of his presence before. They barely paid attention to him. In terms of the impact the kids have on Cloud’s relationship with Aerith, there isn’t much at all. Certainly nothing like the role Marle plays in developing his relationship with Tifa.

The thing is, there are plenty of moments that could have been set ups, only there’s no real follow through. Aerith introduces Cloud around town as her bodyguard, and some people like the Doctor express dubiousness of his ability to do the job, but even after we spend a whole day fighting off monsters, and defeating Rude, there’s no payoff. Not even a throwaway “Wow, great job bodyguarding” comment. Same with the whole “one date” reward. Other than a quick reference on the way to Sector 5, and Aerith threatening to reveal the deal to cajole Cloud into helping her gather flowers, it’s never brought up again, in this chapter, or the rest of the game.

Aerith also makes a big stink about Cloud taking the time to enjoy Elmyra’s cooking. This is after Cloud is excluded from AVALANCHE’s celebration in Seventh Heaven and after he misses out on Jessie’s mom’s “Midgar Special” with Biggs and Wedge. So this could have been have been the set up to Cloud finally getting to experience a nice, domestic moment where he feels like he’s part of a family. And this dinner does happen! Only…the Remake skips over it entirely. Which is quite a strange choice considering that almost every other waking moment of Cloud’s time in Midgar has been depicted in excruciating detail. SE has decided that either whatever happened in this dinner between these three characters is irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell, or they’ve deliberately excluded this scene from the game so that the player wouldn’t get any wrong ideas from it (e.g., that Cloud is starting to feel at home with Aerith).

Speaking of home, the Odd Jobs in Ch. 3 feel a bit more meaningful outside of just the gameplay-related rewards because they’re a way for Cloud to improve his reputation as he considers building a life for himself in Sector 7. This intent is implicit as Tifa imparts upon him the life lessons for surviving the slums, and then explicit, when Tifa asks him if he’s going to “stick around a little longer” outside of Seventh Heaven and he answers maybe. (It is later confirmed when Cloud and Tifa converse in his room in Ch. 4 after he remembers their promise).

Despite Aerith’s endeavors to extend their time together, there’s no indication that Cloud is planning to put down roots in Sector 5, or even return. Not even after doing all the Odd Jobs. If anything, it’s just the opposite — after 3 Odd Jobs, Aerith, kind of jokingly tells Cloud “don’t think you can rely on me forever.” This is a line that has a deeper meaning for anyone who knows Aerith’s fate in the OG, but Cloud seems totally fine with the outcome. Similarly, at the end of the Chapter 8, Elmyra asks Cloud to leave and never speak to Aerith again — a request to which he readily agrees.

Adding to the different vibes of the Chapters are the musical themes that play in the background. In Ch. 3, it’s the “Main Theme of VII”, followed by “On Our Way” — two tracks that instantly recall the OG. While the Main Theme is a bit melancholy, it's also familiar. It feels like home. In Ch. 8, we have an instrumental version of ‘Hollow’ - the new theme written for the Remake. While, it’s a lovely piece, it’s unfamiliar and honestly as a bit anxiety inducing (as is the intent).

(A quick aside to address the argument that this proves ‘Hollow’ is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith:

Which of course doesn’t make any damn sense because he hasn’t even lost Aerith at this point the story. Even if you want to argue that there is so timey-wimey stuff going on and the whole purpose of the Remake is to rewrite the timeline so that Cloud doesn’t lose Aerith around — shouldn’t there be evidence of this desire outside of just the background music? Perhaps, in Cloud’s actions during the Chapter which the song plays — shouldn’t he dread being parted from her, shouldn’t he be the one trying to extend their time together? Instead, he’s willing to let her go quite easily.

The more likely explanation as to why “Hollow” plays in Ch. 8 is that since the “Main Theme of FFVII” already plays in Ch. 3, the other “main theme” written for the Remake is going to play in the other chapter with a pseudo-open world vibe. If you’re going to say “Hollow” is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith then you’d have to accept that the Main Theme of the entire series is about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa, which would actually make a bit more sense given that is practically Cloud’s entire character arc.)

Both chapters contain a scripted battle that must be completed before the chapter can end. They both contain a shot where Cloud fights side by side with each of the girls.

Here, Cloud and Tifa are both in focus during the entirety of this shot.

Here, the focus pulls away from Cloud the moment Aerith enters the frame.

I doubt the developers expected most players to notice this particular technique, but it reflects the subtle differences in the way these two relationships are portrayed. By the end of Ch. 3, Cloud and Tifa are acting as one unit. By the end of Ch. 8, even when they’re together, Cloud and Aerith are still apart.

A brief (lol) overview of some meaningful changes from the OG

One of the most significant changes in the Sector 7 chapters is how The Promise flashback is depicted. In the OG, Tifa is the one who has to remind Cloud of the Promise, in a rather pushy way, and whether Cloud chooses to join the next mission to fulfill his promise to her or because Barret is giving him a raise feels a bit more ambiguous.

In the Remake, the Promise has it’s own little mini-arc. It’s first brought up at the end of Ch. 3 when Cloud talks to Tifa about her anxieties about the upcoming mission. Tifa subtly references the Promise by mentioning that she’s “in a pitch” — a reference that goes over Cloud’s head. It’s only in Ch. 4, in the middle of a mission with Biggs and Wedge, where Tifa is no where in sight, that a random building fan reminds him of the Nibelheim water tower and the Promise he made to Tifa there. There’s also another brief flashback to that earlier moment in the bar when Tifa mentions she’s in a “pinch.” Again, the placement of this particular flashback at this particular moment feels almost jarring. And the flashback to the scene in the bar — a flashback to a scene we’ve already seen play out in-game — is the only one of its kind in the Remake. SE went out of the way to show that this particular moment is very important to Cloud and the game as whole. It’s when Cloud returns to his room, and Tifa asks him if he’s planning to stay in Midgar, that this mini-arc is finally complete. He brings up the Promise on his own, and makes it explicit that the reason he’s staying is for her. It’s to fulfill his Promise to her, not for money or for AVALANCHE — at this point, he’s not even supposed to be going on the next mission.

The Reactor 5 chapters are greatly expanded, but there aren’t really any substantive changes other than the addition of the rather intimate train roll scene between and Cloud and Tifa, which adds nothing to the story except to establish how horny they are for each other. We know this is the case, of course, because if you go out of your way to make Cloud look like an incompetent idiot and let the timer run out, you can avoid this scene altogether. But even in that alternate scene, Cloud’s concern for Tifa is crystal clear.

Ch. 8 also plays out quite similarly to the OG for the most part, though Cloud’s banter with Aerith on the rooftops doesn’t feel all that special since we’ve already seen him do the same with Tifa, Barret and the rest of AVALANCHE. The rooftops is the first place Cloud laughs in the OG. In the Remake, while Cloud might not have straight out laughed before, he’s certainly smiled quite a bit in the preceding chapters. Also, with the addition of voice acting and realistic facial expressions, that “laughter” in the Remake comes off much more sarcastic than genuine.

It’s also notable that in the Remake, Cloud vocally protests almost every time Aerith tries to extend their time together. In the OG, Cloud says nothing in these moments, which the player could reasonably interpret as assent.

One major change in the Remake is how Aerith learns of Tifa’s existence. In the OG, Cloud mentions that he wants to go back to Tifa’s bar, prompting Aerith to ask him about his relationship with her. In the Remake, Cloud calls Tifa’s name after having a random flashback of Child Tifa as he’s walking along with some kids. Again the insertion of said flashback is a bit jarring, prompting Aerith to understandably ask Cloud about just who this Tifa is. In the OG, this exchange served to show Aerith’s jealousy and her interest in Cloud. In the Remake, it’s all about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa and his inability to articulate them. As for Aerith, I suppose you can still read her reaction as jealous, though simple curiosity is a perfectly reasonable way to read it too. It plays out quite similarly to Aerith asking Cloud about who he gave the flower to. Her follow ups seem indicate that she’s merely curious about who this recipient might be rather than showing that she’s upset/jealous of the fact that said person exists.

For the collapsed tunnel segment, the Remake adds the recurring bit of Aerith and Cloud trying to successfully complete a high-five. While this is certainly a way to show them getting closer, it’s about least intimate way that SE could have done so. Just think about the alternatives — you could have Cloud and Aerith sharing brief tidbits of their lives after each mechanical arm, you could have them trying to reach for each other’s hand. Instead, SE chose an action that is we’ve seen performed between a number of different platonic buddies, and an action that Aerith immediately performs with Tifa upon meeting her. Not to mention, even while they are technically getting closer, Cloud still rejects (or at least tries to) Aerith’s invitations to extend their time together twice — at the fire and at the playground.

One aspect from these two Chapters that does has plenty of set up and a satisfying payoff is Aerith’s interest in Cloud’s SOLDIER background. You have the weirdness of Aerith already knowing that Cloud was in SOLDIER without him mentioning it first, followed by Elmyra’s antipathy towards SOLDIERs in general, not to mention Aerith actively fishing for information about Cloud’s time in SOLDIER. (For players who’ve played Crisis Core, the reason for her behavior is even more obvious, with her “one date” gesture mirroring Zack’s, and her line to Cloud in front of the tunnel a near duplicate of what she says to Zack — at least in the original Japanese).

Finally, at the playground, it’s revealed that the reason for all this weirdness is because Aerith’s first love was also a SOLDIER who was the same rank as Cloud. Unlike in the OG, Cloud does not exhibit any potential jealousy by asking about the nature of her relationship, and Aerith doesn’t try to play it off by dismissing the seriousness. In fact, with the emotional nuance we can now see on her face, we can understand the depth of her feelings even if she cannot articulate them.

This is the first scene in the Remake where Cloud and Aerith have a genuine conversation. Thus, finally, Cloud expresses some hesitation before he leaves her — and as far as he knows, this could be the last time they see each other. You can interpret this hesitation as romantic longing or it could just as easily be Cloud being a bit sad to part from a new friend. Regardless, it’s notable that scene is preceded by one where Aerith is talking about her first love who she clearly isn’t over, and followed by a scene where Cloud sprints across the screen, without a backwards glance at Aerith, after seeing a glimpse of Tifa through a tiny window in a Chocobo cart that’s about a hundred yards away.

The Wall Market segment in the Remake is quite explicitly about Cloud’s desire to save Tifa. In the OG, Aerith has no trouble getting into Corneo’s mansion on her own, so I can see how someone could misinterpret Cloud going through all the effort to dress as a woman to protect Aerith from the Don’s wiles (though of course, you would need to ask, why they trying to infiltrate the mansion in the first place?). In the Remake, Cloud has to go through herculean efforts to even get Aerith in front of the Don. Everyone who is aware of Cloud’s cause, from Sam to Leslie to Johnny to Andrea to Aerith herself, comments on how hard he’s working to save Tifa and how important she must be to him for him to do so. In case there’s any confusion, the Remake also includes a scene where Cloud is prepared to bust into the mansion on his own, leaving Aerith to fend for herself, after Johnny comes with news that Tifa is in trouble.

Both Cloud and Aerith get big dress reveals in the Remake. If you get Aerith’s best dress, Cloud’s reaction can certainly be read as one of attraction, but since the game continues on the same regardless of which dress you get, it’s not meant to mark a shift in Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Rather, it’s a reward for the player for completing however many side quests in Ch. 8, especially since the Remake incentives the player to get every dress and thus see all of Cloud’s reactions by making it a Trophy and including it in the play log.

A significant and very welcome change from the OG to the Remake is Tifa and Aerith’s relationship dynamic. In the OG, the girls’ first meeting in Corneo’s mansion starts with them fighting over Cloud (by pretending not to fight over Cloud). In the Remake, the sequence of events is reversed so that it starts off with Cloud’s reunion with Tifa (again emphasizing that the whole purpose of the infiltration is because Cloud wants to save Tifa). Then when Aerith wakes, she’s absolutely thrilled to make Tifa’s acquaintance, hardly acknowledging Cloud at all. Tifa is understandably more wary at first, but once they start working together, they become fast friends.

Also interesting is that from the moment Aerith and Tifa meet, almost every instance where Cloud could be shown worrying about Aerith or trying to comfort Aerith is given to Tifa instead. In the OG, it’s Cloud who frets about Aerith getting involved in the plot to question the Don, and regrets getting her mixed up in everything once they land in the sewers. In the Remake, those very same reservations are expressed by Tifa instead. Tifa is the one who saves Aerith when the platform collapses in the sewer. Tifa is the one who emotionally comforts Aerith after they’re separated in the train graveyard. (Cloud might be the one who physically saves her, but he doesn’t even so much give her a second glance to check on her well-being before he runs off to face Eligor. He leaves that job for Tifa). It almost feels like the Remake is going out of its way to avoid any moments between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic. In fact, after Corneo’s mansion, unless you get Aerith’s resolution, there are almost no one-on-one interactions at all between Cloud and Aerith. Such is not the case with Cloud and Tifa. In fact, right after defeating Abzu in the sewers, Cloud runs after Tifa, and asks her if what she’s saying is one of those slum lessons — continuing right where they left off.

Ch. 11 feels like a wink-wink nudge-nudge way to acknowledge the LTD. You have the infamous shot of the two girls on each of Cloud’s arms, and two scenes where Cloud appears as if he’s unable to choose between them when he asks them if they’re okay. Of course, in this same Chapter, you have a scene during the boss fight with the Phantom where Cloud actually pulls Tifa away from Aerith, leaving Aerith to defend herself, for an extended sequence where he tries to keep Tifa safe. This is not something SE would include if their intention is to keep Cloud’s romantic interest ambiguous or if Aerith is meant to be the one he loves. Of course, Ch. 11 is not the first we see of this trio’s dynamic. We start with Ch. 10, which is all about Aerith and Tifa’s friendship. Ch. 11 is a nod to the LTD dynamic in the OG, but it’s just that, a nod, not an indication the Remake is following the same path. Halfway through Ch. 11, the dynamic completely disappears.

Ch. 12 changes things up a bit from the OG. Instead of Cloud and Tifa ascending the pillar together, Cloud goes up first. Seemingly just so that we can have the dramatic slow-mo handgrab scene between the two of them when Tifa decides to run after Cloud — right after Aerith tells her to follow her heart.

The Remake also shows us what happens when Aerith goes to find Marlene at Seventh Heaven — including the moment when Aerith sees the flower she gave Cloud by the bar register, and Aerith is finally able to connect the dots. After seeing Cloud be so cagey about who he gave the flower to, and weird about his relationship with Tifa, and after seeing how Cloud and Tifa act around each other. It finally makes sense. She’s figured it out before they have. It’s a beautiful payoff to all that set up. Any other interpretation of Aerith’s reaction doesn’t make a lick of sense, because if it’s to indict she’s jealous of Tifa, where is all the set up for that? Why did the Remake eliminate all the moments from the OG where she had been noticeably jealous before? Without this, that interpretation makes about as much sense as someone arguing Aerith is smiling because she’s thinking about a great sandwich she had the night before. In case anyone is confused, the scene is preceded by a moment where Aerith tells Tifa to follow her heart before she goes after Cloud, and followed by the moment where Cloud catches Tifa via slow-motion handgrab.

On the pillar itself, there are so many added moments of Cloud showing his concern for Tifa’s physical and emotional well-being. Even when they find Jessie, as sad as Cloud is over Jessie’s death, the game actually spends more time showing us Cloud’s reaction to Tifa crying over Jessie’s death, and Cloud’s inability to comfort her. Since so much of this is physical rather than verbal, this couldn’t have effectively been shown in the OG with its technological limitations.

After the pillar collapses, we start off with a couple of other moments showing Cloud’s concern over Tifa — watching over her as she wakes, his dramatic fist clench while he watches Barret comfort Tifa in a way he cannot. There is also a subtle but important change in the dialogue. In the OG, Tifa is the one who tells Barret that Marlene is safe because she was with Aerith. Cloud is also on his way to Sector 5, but it’s for the explicit purpose of trying to save Aerith, which we know because Tifa asks. In the Remake, Tifa is too emotionally devastated to comfort Barret about Marlene. Cloud, trying to help in the only way he can, is now the one to tell Barret about Marlene. Leading them to Sector 5 is no longer about him trying to help Aerith, but about him reuniting Barret with his daughter. Again, another moment where Cloud shows concern about Aerith in the OG is eliminated from the Remake.

Rather than going straight from Aerith’s house to trying to figure out a way into the Shinra building to find Aerith, the group takes a detour to check out the ruins of Sector 7 and rescue Wedge from Shinra’s underground lab. It’s only upon seeing the evidence of Shinra’s inhumane experimentation firsthand that Cloud articulates to Elmyra the need to rescue Aerith. In the OG, they never sought out Elmyra’s permission, and Tifa explicitly asks to join Cloud on his quest. Rescuing Aerith is framed as primarily Cloud’s goal, Tifa and Barret are just along for the ride.

In the Remake, all three wait until Elymra gives them her blessing, and it’s framed (quite literally) as the group’s collective goal as opposed to just Cloud’s.

In the aptly named Ch. 14 resolutions, each marks the culmination of the character’s arc for the Part 1 of Remake. While their arcs are by no means complete, they do offer a nice preview of what their ultimate resolutions will be.

With the exception of Tifa’s, these resolutions are primarily about the character themselves. Their relationships with Cloud are secondary. Each resolution marks a change in the character themselves, but not necessarily a change in Cloud’s relationship with said character. Barret recommits to AVALANCHE’s mission and his role as a leader despite the deep personal costs. Aerith’s is full of foreshadowing as she accept her fate and impending death and decides to make the most of the time she has left. After trying to put aside her own feelings for the sake of others the whole time, Tifa finally allows herself to feel the full devastation of losing her home for the second time. Like her ultimate resolution in the Lifestream that we’ll see in about 25 years, Cloud is the only person she can share this sentiment with because he was the only person who was there.

Barret does not grow closer to Cloud through his resolution. Cloud has already proved himself to him by helping out on the pillar and reuniting him with Marlene. Barret resolution merely reveals that Barret is now comfortable enough with Cloud to share his past.

Similarly, Cloud starts off Aerith’s resolution with an intent to go rescue her, and ends with that intent still intact. Aerith is more open about her feelings here than before, it being a dream and all, but these feelings aren’t something that developed during this scene.

The only difference is during Tifa’s resolution. Cloud has been unable to emotionally comfort Tifa up until this point. It’s only when Tifa starts crying and rests her head upon his shoulder that he is able to make a change, to make a choice and hug her. Halfway through Tifa’s resolution, the scene shifts its focus to Cloud, his inaction and eventual action. Notably, the only time we have a close-up of any character during all three resolutions (I’ll define close-up here as a shot where a character’s face takes up half or more of the shot), are three shots of Cloud when he’s hugging/trying to hug Tifa. Tifa’s resolution is the only one where Cloud arcs.

What of the whole “You can’t fall in love with me” line in Aerith’s resolution? Why would SE include that if not to foreshadow Cloud falling in love with Aerith? Or indicate that he has already? Well, you can’t just take the dialogue on its own, you how to look at how these lines are framed. Notably, when she says “you can’t fall in love with me,” Aerith is framed at the center of the shot, and almost looks like she’s directly addressing the player. It’s as much a warning for the player as it is for Cloud, which makes sense if you know her fate in the OG.

This is followed directly by her saying “Even if you think you have…it’s not real.” In this shot, it’s back to a standard shot/reverse shot where she is the left third of the frame. She is addressing Cloud here, which, again if you’ve played the OG, is another bit of heavy foreshadowing. The reason Clould would think he might be in love with Aerith is because he’s falsely assuming of the memories of a man who did love Aerith — Zack.

For Cloud’s response (”Do I get a say in all this?”/ “That’s very one-sided” depending on the translation), rather than showing a shot of his face, the Remake shows him with his back turned.

Whatever Cloud’s feelings may be for Aerith, the game seems rather indifferent to them.

What is more telling is the choice to include a bit with Cloud getting jealous over a guy trying to give Tifa flowers in Barret’s resolution. Barret also mentions both Jessie and Aerith in their conversation, but nothing else gets such a reaction from Cloud.

It also should go without saying that if Aerith’s resolution is meant to establish Cloud and Aerith’s romance, there should have been plenty of set-up beforehand and plenty of follow-through afterward. That obviously is not the case, because again, the Remake has gone out of its way to avoid moments where Cloud’s actions towards Aerith could be interpreted romantically.

Case in point, at around this time in the OG, Marlene tells Cloud that she thinks Aerith likes him and the player has the option to have Cloud express his hope that she does. This scene is completely eliminated from the Remake and replaced with a much more appropriate scene of father-daughter affection between Marlene and Barret while Tifa and Cloud are standing together outside.

The method by which they get up the plate is completely different in the Remake. Leslie is the one who helps them this time around, and though his quest to reunite with his fiance directly parallels with the trio’s desire to save Aerith, Leslie himself draws a comparison to earlier when Cloud was trying to rescue Tifa. Finally, when Abzu is defeated again, it is Barret who draws the parallel of their search for Aerith to Leslie’s search for his fiance, making it crystal clear that saving Aerith is a group effort rather than only Cloud’s.

Speaking of Barret, in the OG, he seems to reassess his opinion of Cloud in the Shinra HQ stairs when he sees Cloud working so hard to save Aerith and realizes he might actually care about other people. In the Remake, that reevaluation occurs after you complete all the Ch. 14 sidequests and help a bunch of NPCs. Arguably, this moment occurs even earlier in the Remake for Barret, after the Airbuster, when he realizes that Cloud is more concerned for his and Tifa’s safety than his own.

Overall, the entire Aerith rescue feels so anticlimactic in the Remake. In the OG, Cloud gets his big hero moment in the Shinra Building. He’s the one who runs up to Aerith when the glass shatters and they finally reunite. In the Remake, it’s unclear what the emotional stakes are for Cloud here. At their big reunion, all we get from him is a “Yep.” In fact, when you look at how this scene plays out, Aerith is positioned equally between Cloud and Tifa at the moment of her rescue. Cloud’s answer is again with his back turned to the camera. It’s Tifa who gets her own shot with her response.

Another instance of the Remake being completely indifferent to Cloud’s feelings for Aerith, and actually priotizing Tifa’s relationship with Aerith instead.

It is also Tifa who runs to reunite with Aerith after the group of enemies is defeated. Another moment that could have easily been Cloud’s that the Remake gives to Tifa.

Also completely eliminated in the Remake, is the “I’m your bodyguard. / The deal was for one date” exchange in the jail cells. In the Remake, after Ch. 8, the date isn’t brought up again at all; “the bodyguard” reference only comes up briefly in Ch. 11 and then never again.

In the Remake, the jail scene is replaced by the scene in Aerith’s childhood room. Despite the fact that this is Aerith’s room, it is Tifa’s face that Cloud first sees when he wakes. What purpose does this moment serve other than to showcase Cloud and Tifa’s intimacy and the other characters’ tacit acknowledgment of said intimacy?

(This is the second time where Cloud wakes up and Tifa is the first thing he sees. The other was at Corneo’s mansion. He comes to three times in the Remake, but in Ch. 8, even though Aerith is right in front of him, we start off with a few seconds of Cloud gazing around the church before settling on the person in front of him. Again, while not something that most players would notice, this feels like a deliberate choice.)

Especially since this scene itself is all about Aerith. She begins a sad story about her past, and Cloud, rather than trying to comfort her in any way, asks her to give us some exposition about the Ancients. When the Whispers surround her, even though Cloud is literally right there, it's Tifa who pulls her out of it and comforts her. Another moment that could have been Cloud that was given to Tifa, and honestly, this one feels almost bizarre.

Throughout the entire Shinra HQ episode, Cloud and Aerith haven’t had a single moment alone to themselves. The Drums scenario is completely invented for the Remake. The devs could have contrived a way for Cloud and Aerith to have some one-on-one time here and work through the feelings they expressed during Aerith’s resolution if they wanted. Instead, with the mandatory party configurations during this stage - Cloud & Barret on one side; Tifa & Aerith on the others, with Cloud & Tifa being the respective team leaders communicating over PHS, the Remake minimizes the amount of interaction Cloud and Aerith have with each other in this chapter.

On the rooftop, before Cloud’s solo fight with Rufus, even though Cloud is ostensibly doing all this so that they can bring Aerith to safety, the Remake doesn’t include a single shot that focuses on Aerith’s face and her reaction to his actions. The game has decided, whatever Aerith’s feelings are in this moment, they’re irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell. Instead we get shots focusing solely on Barret and Tifa. While the Remake couldn’t find any time to develop Cloud and Aerith’s relationship at the Shinra Tower (even though the OG certainly did), it did find time to add a new scene where Tifa saves Cloud from certain death, while referencing their Promise.

A lot of weird shit happens after this, but it’s pretty much all plot and no character. We do get one more moment where Cloud saves Tifa (and Tifa alone) from the Red Whisper even though Aerith is literally right next to her. The Remake isn’t playing coy at all about where Cloud’s preferences lie.

The party order for the Sephiroth battle varies depending on how you fought the Whispers. All the other character entrances (whoever the 3rd party member is, then the 4th and Red) are essentially the exact same shots, with the characters replaced. It’s the first character entrance (which can only be Aerith or Tifa) that you have two distinct options.

If Aerith is first, the camera pans from Cloud over to Aerith. It then cuts back to Cloud’s reaction, in a separate shot, as Aerith walks to join him (offscreen). It’s only when the player regains control of the characters that Cloud and Aerith ever share the frame.

On the other hand, if Tifa is first, we see Tifa land from Cloud’s POV. Cloud then walks over to join Tifa and they immediately share a frame, facing Sephiroth together.

Again, this is not something SE would expect the player to notice the first or even second time around. Honestly, I doubt anyone would notice at all unless they watched all these variations back to back. That is telling in itself, that SE would go through all this effort (making these scenes unique rather than copy and pasting certainly takes more time and effort) to ensure that the depictions of Cloud’s relationships with these two women are distinct despite the fact that hardly anyone would notice. Even in the very last chapter of the game, they want us to see Cloud and Tifa as a pair and Cloud and Aerith as individuals.

Which isn’t to say that Aerith is being neglected in the Remake. Quite the opposite, in fact, when she has essentially become the main protagonist and the group’s spirtual leader in Ch. 18. Rather, her relationship with Cloud is no longer an essential part of her character. Not to mention, one of the very last shots of the Remake is about Aerith sensing Zack’s presence. Again, not the kind of thing you want to bring up if the game is supposed to show her being in love with Cloud.

What does it all mean????

Phew — now let’s step back and look and how the totality of these changes have reshaped our understanding of the story as a whole. Looking solely at the Midgar section of the OG, and ignoring everything that comes after it, it seems to tell a pretty straightforward story: Cloud is a cold-hearted jerk who doesn’t care about anyone else until he meets Aerith. It is through his relationship with Aerith that he begins to soften up and starts giving a damn about something other than himself. This culminates when he risks it all to rescue Aerith from the clutches of the game’s Big Bad itself, The Shinra Electric Company.

This was honestly the reason why I was dreading the Remake when I learned that it would only cover the Midgar segment. A game that’s merely an expansion of the Midgar section of the OG is probably going to leave a lot of people believing that Cloud & Aerith were the intended couple, and I didn’t want to wait years and perhaps decades for vindication after the Remake’s Lifestream Scene.

I imagine this very scenario is what motivated SE to make so many of these changes. In the OG, they could get away with misdirecting the audience for the first few hours of the game since the rest of the story and the reveals were already completed. The player merely had to pop in the next disc to get the real story. Such is not the case with the Remake. Had the the Remake followed the OG’s beats more closely, many players, including some who’ve never played the OG, would finish the Remake thinking that Cloud and Aerith were the intended couple. It would be years until they got the rest of the story, and at that point, the truth would feel much more like a betrayal. Like they’ve been cruelly strung along.

While they’ve gone out of their way to adapt most elements from the OG into the Remake, they’ve straight up eliminated many scenes that could be interpreted as Cloud’s romantic interest in Aerith. Instead, he seems much more interested in her knowledge as an Ancient than in her romantic affections. This is the path the Remake could be taking. Instead of Cloud being under the illusion of falling in love with Aerith, he’s under the illusion that the answer to his identity dilemma lies in Aerith’s Cetra heritage, when, of course, the answer was with Tifa all along.

Hiding Sephiroth’s existence during the Midgar arc isn’t necessary to telling the story of FF7, thus it’s been eliminated in the Remake. Similarly, pretending that Cloud and Aerith are going to end up together also isn’t necessary and would only confuse the player. Thus the LTD is no longer a part of the Remake.

If Aerith’s impact on Cloud has been diminished, what then is his arc in the Remake? Is it essentially just the same without the catalyst of Aerith? A cold guy at the start who eventually learns to care about others through the course of the game? Kind of, though arguably, this is who Remake!Cloud is all along, not just Cloud at the end of the Remake. Cloud is a guy who pretends to be a selfish jerk, but he deep down he really does care. He just doesn’t show this side of himself around people he’s unfamiliar with. So part of his arc in the Remake is opening up to the others, Barret, AVALANCHE and Aerith included, but these all span a chapter or two at most. They don’t straddle the entire game.

What is the throughline then? What is an area in which he exhibits continuous growth?

It’s Tifa. It’s his desire to fulfill his Promise to Tifa. Not just to protect her physically, but to be there for her emotionally, something that’s much harder to do. There’s the big moments like when he remembers the Promise in Ch. 4., his dramatic fist clench when he can’t stop Tifa from crying in Ch. 12, and in Ch. 13 when he watches Barret comfort Tifa. It’s all the flashbacks he has of her and the times he’s felt like he failed her. It’s the smaller moments where he can sense her nervousness and unease but the only thing he knows how to do is call her name. It’s all those times during battle, where Tifa can probably take care of herself, but Cloud has to save her because he can’t fail her again. All of this culminates in Tifa’s Resolution, where Tifa is in desperate need of comfort, and is specifically seeking Cloud’s comfort, and Cloud has no idea what to do. He hesitates because he’s clueless, because he doesn’t want to fuck it up, but finally, he makes the choice, he takes the risk, and he hugs her….and he kind of fucks it up. He hugs her too hard. Which is a great thing, because this arc isn’t anywhere close to being over. There’s still so much more to come. So many places this relationship will go.

We get a little preview of this when Tifa saves Cloud on the roof. Everything we thought we knew about their relationship has been flipped on its head. Tifa is the one saving Cloud here, near the end of this part of the Remake. Just as she will save Cloud in the Lifestream just before the end of the FF7 story as a whole. What does Tifa mean to Cloud? It’s one of the first questions posed in the Remake, and by the end, it remains unanswered.

Cloud’s character arc throughout the entire FF7 story is about his reconciling with his identity issues. This continues to develop through the Shinra Tower Chapters, but it certainly isn’t going to be resolved in Part 1 of the Remake. His character arc in the Remake — caring more about others/finding a way to finally comfort Tifa — is resolved in Ch. 14, well before rescuing Aerith, which is what makes her rescue feel so anticlimactic. The resolution of this external conflict isn’t tied to the protagonist’s emotional arc. This was not the case in the OG. I’m certainly not complaining about the change, but the Remake probably would have felt more satisfying as a whole if they hewed to the structure of the OG. Instead, it seems that SE has prioritized the clarity of the Remake series as a whole (leaving no doubt about where Cloud’s affections lie) over the effectiveness of the “climax” in the first entry of the Remake.

This is all clear if you only focus on the “story” of the Remake -- i.e., what the characters are saying and doing. If you extend your lens to the presentation of said story, and here I’m talking about who the game chooses to focus on during the scenes, how long they hold on these shots, which characters share the frame, which do not, etc --- it really could not be more obvious.

Does the camera need to linger for over 5 seconds on Cloud staring at the door after wishing Tifa goodnight? Does it need to find Cloud almost every time Tifa says or does anything so that we’re always aware of his watchfulness and the nature of his care? The answer is no until you realize this dynamic is integral to telling the story of Final Fantasy VII.

I don’t see how anyone who compares the Remake to the OG could come away from it thinking that the Remake series is going to reverse all of the work done in the OG and Compilation by having Cloud end up with Aerith.

Just because the ending seems to indicate that the events of the OG might not be set in stone, it doesn’t mean that the Remake will end with Aerith surviving and living happily ever after with Cloud. Even if Aerith does live (which again seems unlikely given the heavy foreshadowing of her death in the Remake), how do you come away from the Remake thinking that Cloud is going to choose Aerith over Tifa when SE has gone out of its way to remove scenes between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic? And gone out of its way to shove Cloud’s feelings for Tifa in the player’s face? The sequels would have to spend an obscene amount of time not only building Cloud and Aerith’s relationship from scratch, but also dismantling Cloud’s relationship with Tifa. It would be an absolute waste of time and resources, and there’s really no way to do so without making the characters look like assholes in the process.

Now could this happen? Sure, in the sense that literally anything could happen in the future. But in terms of outcomes that would make sense based on what’s come before, this particular scenario is about as plausible as Cloud deciding to relinquish his quest to find Sephiroth so that he can pursue his real dream of becoming at sandwich artist at Panera Bread.

It’s over! I promise!

Like you, I too cannot believe the number of words I’ve wasted on this subject. What is there left to say? The LTD doesn’t exist outside of the first disc of the OG. You'll only find evidence of SE perpetuating the LTD if you go into these stories with the assumption that 1) The LTD exists 2) it remains unanswered. But it’s not. We know that Cloud ends up with Tifa.

What the LTD has become is dissecting individual scenes and lines of dialogue, without considering the context of said things, and pretending as if the outcome is unknown and unknowable. If you took this tact to other aspects of FF7’s story, then it would be someone arguing that because there a number of scenes in the OG that seem to suggest that Meteor will successfully destroy the planet, this means that the question of whether or not our heroes save the world in the end is left ambiguous. No one does that because that would be utterly absurd. Individual moments in a story may suggest alternate outcomes to build tension, to keep us on our toes, but that doesn’t change the ending from being the ending. Our heroes stop Meteor. Cloud loves Tifa. Arguments against either should be treated with the same level of credulity (i.e., none).

It’s frustrating that the LTD, and insecurities about whether or not Cloud really loves Tifa, takes up so much oxygen in any discussion about these characters. And it’s a damn shame, because Cloud and Tifa’s relationship is so rich and expansive, and the so-called “LTD” is such a tiny sliver of that relationship, and one of the least interesting aspects. They’re wonderful because they’re just so damn normal. Unlike other Final Fantasy couples, what keeps them apart is not space and time and death, but the most human and painfully relatable emotion of all, fear. Fear that they can’t live up to the other’s expectations; fear that they might say the wrong thing. The fear that keeps them from admitting their feelings at the Water Tower, they’re finally able to overcome 7 years later in the Lifestream. They’re childhood friends but in a way they’re also strangers. Like other FF couples, we’re able to watch their entire relationship grow and unfold before our eyes. But they have such a history too, a history that we unravel with them at the same time. Every moment of their lives that SE has found worth depicting, they’ve been there for each other, even if they didn’t know it at the time. Theirs is a story that begins and ends with each other. Their is the story that makes Final Fantasy VII what it is.

If you’ve made it this far, many thanks for reading. I truly have no idea how to use this platform, so please direct any and all hatemail to my DMs at TLS, which I will then direct to the trash. (In all seriousness, I’d be happy to answer any specific questions you may have, but I feel like I’ve more than said my piece here.)

If there’s one thing you take away from this, I hope it’s to learn to ignore all the ridiculous arguments out there, and just enjoy the story that’s actually being told. It’s a good one.

#cloti

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tiny-maus-boots · 3 years ago

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Queen of Hearts pt 14

A/N: thank you as always to @chloes-yellow-cup for being my bestie and still doing all the things i hate to do. and a big thanks to @kimmania for your constant encouragement and supply of Legos. i love you awesome nerds.

14.

“Hit me with your best shot…”

Aubrey’s long arm stretched out along the back of the dark leather of the modern style sofa she was settled on. For the most part she could tune out the dry croak from the desk, but…

“Why don’t you hit me with your best shot.”

This was the sixth time in an hour that she was hearing the song. She was going to have to remind Lilly to remove it from the jukebox after tonight.

“Hit me with your best shot…”

The rough warble across from her died down and she thought for a moment that the singer had finally drifted off asleep. Aubrey’s head turned to the screen that showed a live feed of the cameras around The Dirty Bird. Movement flickered though them as Stacie and the Doc walked between the tables and around the bar toward the back office. She turned her head to check on the figure standing but slumped over her desk only to find dark blue eyes watching and waiting for her attention. The small woman raised herself to her elbows from her slouch and belted out just as the door opened.

“FIRE AWAAAAYYYYY!!! Pew pew pew.”

Aubrey sighed as Detective Mitchell’s finger guns gave out on the click of her tongue and she collapsed back over the desk to cradle a half empty bottle of grappa, ass up where she stood. Stacie’s wide eyes panned slowly toward her, body bouncing lightly with barely restrained glee.

“Oh my God….” Chloe took one look at the Detective and pinned Aubrey with a glare. “How drunk is she?”

The blonde raised a shoulder as she considered. “She’s been worse.”

“Doc. Doooooocccc….I hurt. Right. Here.” Beca raised a hand and brought it back to point at her butt. Her finger wavered as she tried to locate the exact spot which caused the most pain and then pointed for emphasis with a little too much enthusiasm. “Right. OW. Here. OWIE.”

Stacie eased onto the sofa and settled in comfortably in Aubrey’s lap to watch Doc Beale work. The redhead moved behind Beca and settled her bag on the desk. She took a great steadying breath before wrestling away the grappa from the prone detective and snapping on a pair of gloves. Aubrey admired the way Doc Beale efficiently and deftly managed to get Beca’s jeans over her hips and halfway down her legs with practiced ease. Beca seemed to admire it too because she stirred enough to look blearily over her shoulder with a smile.

“If you wanted to check out my assetsssss Doc, you didn’t have to wait til I got stabbeded in it. Right. There. Ow.”

“Yes, I see. Please stop poking the wound in your ass cheek. How even….?”

“I was tailing my guy. My big fish. Fishy fishy fishy. That’s a fun word to say.” Chloe muttered something Aubrey couldn’t hear over Stacie’s soft chuckling. “I heard that! Plenty of people would be DE-FUCKING-lighted to spend their date night starin’ at a little of this action.”

Aubrey bit her lip to keep the laugh from breaking free as the detective wiggled her ass unmindful of the tight skinny jeans trapping her legs and toppled into a slide nearly off the desk before Chloe managed to grab and right her teetering form.

“Head down, ass up. Now tell me again how you managed to get stabbed in the butt cheek with glass?”

“You said that like you’re used to giving that order. I might be down for that, just be gentle with me.”

Beca gave her a leer that the doctor promptly ignored as she prepped her tools.

“Detective, remember that I have some very sharp instruments here that I am excellent with.”

Beca gave her a dubious look but obediently turned and bent over the desk again so the other woman could examine the wound. Chloe was utterly focused on the task of cleaning and debriding the punctures in a circular pattern. Aubrey had been sure it was going to require at least a few stitches from what she saw before she called for real medical help.

“I told you. I was following the big fish.”

“And you followed him into a bar I’m guessing.”

“Right, rule numero dos of detectivering. Don’t stick out like a sore thumb.”

Chloe blinked and looked up from her work to focus on Beca. “What’s numero uno?”

“That’s not a real number, Doc.”

“Solid rebuttal.”

“Did…did you just make pun of my rump? Oh my God I’m in love. I’d get down on one knee right now and propose. Except you’re feeling up my butt right now and that’s kinda nice.”

The doctor’s bright blue eyes narrowed and she jabbed the needle into the hunk of flesh she had just grabbed in preparation for the injection. She depressed the plunger quickly as her patient yelped and attempted to squirm away.

“HEATHEN! Oh God. I’m dying. Help. I’m dying, Dr. Kevorkian is killing me….my vision…I can’t see.”

“Open your eyes, idiot. That was just an antibiotic booster. Have you had a tetanus shot recently?”

“Pretend I said whatever answer will prevent you from being a literal pain in my ass.”

It was too much for Stacie and she turned her head to bury her laughter in Aubrey’s neck. The blonde tightened her grip on her fiancée and enjoyed a satisfying laugh at the detective’s expense. She hadn’t known what she’d find when she had gotten Beca’s distress call. They had all been on high alert since coming back to Los Angeles, trying to close ranks as best they could without being obvious about it. She had been waiting for an attack to come and her first thought when she had gotten the call was that it had finally begun. Each moment waiting in her office while Lilly retrieved the Detective from her hiding place in an abandoned warehouse building down at the port had been like a stone on her chest. She had needed this humor to ease the cold grip of fear on her heart.

Aubrey’s line of business didn’t lend itself to close relationships with members of law enforcement, at least not for long. What she and the Detective had was something altogether different than any of the other criminal-cop business agreements she had formed during her career. Beca was someone she trusted at her side, more…trusted at her back. The idea that someone would try to take her out was sobering and her laughter faded. Stacie sensed the change in her and cupped Aubrey’s face gently to bring their foreheads together. Words weren’t necessary for Stacie to understand what she was thinking and feeling. The blonde took a deep breath and straightened her spine. One hand came up to adjust and smooth her tie. If it had started…she wanted to know who was coming for her people.

“So, who’s the fish?”

Beca lifted her head from the desk and struggled to focus on Aubrey. It took her a few seconds to process the question. She seemed to have forgotten the conversation while Chloe worked silently to finish working on her wound.

“A security guard. He’s got bad taste in bars and also what I would loosely refer to as ladies.”

She couldn’t imagine where a security guard would fit in with Alice’s plans and frowned. Maybe this wasn’t about her. Beca had other cases she was working, maybe this was just another Tuesday night for the cop.

“A security guard? Sounds kind of small time for you.”

Denim blue eyes flashed to hers, some of the haze of alcohol burned away by intensity of her drive. The small brunette’s lips quirked into a smirk. Aubrey was suddenly very sure that nothing Beca did was small time or without a very good reason.

“It only takes a small stone in the right place to make a rockslide.”

Chloe slowed her movements as she finished her work. Something about what Beca said must have been interesting to the doctor because she kept her attention on the detective while she cleaned up the trash and peeled her gloves off to toss in the black plastic trash bag left there for that purpose. Aubrey guessed she was re-evaluating her previous estimations of the foul mouthed, perpetually smug, woman.

“You’re not wrong, Bec. So, what’s this small stone guarding?”

“Not what. Where. Dude works at the port.” She grunted and stood gingerly with a backward glance at her own butt. “Hm. Nice, think chicks will dig the scar?”

If Chloe had been considering there may be more to Beca than outrageous flirtation it was only a brief passing fantasy. She sighed and rolled her eyes then glared at Aubrey.

“18, Aubrey.” It was almost enough to make her face split into a grin and she had to turn her chuckle into a soft cough. Chloe tied up the bag and dropped it in the trashcan sure that it would be disposed of carefully. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to patch one of them up, they knew the drill by now. “You owe me so big.”

“I’m good for it. So, Detective, what about this dock rat?”

Beca stopped checking herself out long enough to pull her pants up and wink at Chloe before answering. Doc pretended not to notice but Aubrey could see her watching Beca from the corner of her eye while she played around with the tools in her bag.

“When I figure how he connects to Richie Rich, I’ll let you know.”

Stacie’s body tensed in her arms and Aubrey glanced at her curiously. Her girl chewed her lower lip in thought, a habit that Aubrey found adorable. “Something on your mind, Stace?”

“It’s probably nothing. Just something Edith said about someone I went to prom with. His dad got him a job down at the docks.” Stacie shrugged it off but Aubrey could tell she was still chewing on it. “Probably just coincidence.”

Aubrey and Beca exchanged a look. After a lifetime of double crosses and plot twists, neither of them believed in coincidences. The detective dug around in her pocket for her phone. She wasn’t quite sober yet but a hell of a lot steadier than a few moments ago. Aubrey snatched the phone easily out of the air when it was tossed her way and glanced at the screen.

It was a video and she angled it so Stacie could see too. Her fiancée pressed play and sighed. Beca could be heard in the background giving a lot of very specific direction to the two women practically fucking on a pool table in a disgusting looking rathole of a bar. Aubrey was pretty sure the women were hookers and the corner of her mouth quirked in amusement. Stacie took the phone out of her hand turned it to face back to the detective.

“Really Beca?”

“I thought it was pretty good for my directorial debut. But your gutter brain is making you miss the real show.”

Aubrey took the phone back and focused on the whole scene. Behind the women in a shadowed booth two men were clearly having an animated discussion. One was further into the shadow than the other but his gestures were strong and decisive. She watched as the other, younger seeming, man’s gestures became conciliatory and submissive the longer the conversation went on. In the foreground a flurry of noise and activity caused the camera to shake and wildly as if it were being swung around. There were glimpses of rough faces and snatches of shouts and curses. At one point there was a good stretch of scuffed flooring where she assumed Beca had been crawling away from the obvious brawl happening around her.

The camera came up again in time to catch the men leaving their booth in a hurry. Each of them caught in the neon blue glow from beer signs on the walls. Stacie snatched the phone out of her hand and hit pause. Long legs dropped down to the floor from the sofa and she stood in shock.

“Bree…this is Senator Grant. The guy he’s with is his son Kodie, we went to high school...Jesus Christ…”

“You know him?”

“Weston stole his money.”

They looked at each other then turned twin green-eyed gazes on Detective Mitchell. The small woman’s brow was furrowed in thought, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she worried it.

“The kid is on the videos.”

Mitchell didn’t have to say which videos, they all knew. Even Doc Beale. Stacie looked away from them, uncomfortable with the knowledge that she had been in some of those videos. Aubrey let out a long settling breath and stood. She gently took the phone from Stacie’s shaking hand and brought it to lips to brush a soft kiss over Stacie’s wrist. It gave her a wan smile but it was something. Stacie would be okay. Aubrey looked down at the phone and watched the video again. And again. And once more. She studied every gesture, every twitch of posture, every unconscious expression she could make out.

“I want the kid. He’s the weak link.”

Beca grunted and limped around the desk to grab her keys and helmet, ready to go back to work with a hole in her ass nearly as big as the one in her pants. It wasn’t going to happen that way and Aubrey reached out to snag both items from the sidebar and hand them to Stacie who easily placed them on a shelf far too high for Detective Mitchell to reach without finding a stand on.

“White she devil.”

“Sorry, Bec. Can’t have you half-assing anything.”

She didn’t like it and Aubrey could tell but Beca sighed and grunted. “Solid burn.”

Aubrey gave her a quick grin then turned to eye the Doctor who was watching them all curiously. Her gaze met Aubrey’s and a brow went up. Honestly, she almost felt a little bad about needing to have the Doc take Beca somewhere safe. She didn’t ask, she didn’t need to. Chloe knew what she was thinking and started to shake her head no until Beca tried to drag a chair over to the get her stuff.

“I really hate you, Aubrey Posen.”

“No, you don’t, Doc.”

“You WILL be making a very large donation to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.”

“Absolutely.”

“And vacation for my office girls. Two weeks!”

“I’ll buy the plane tickets myself.”

“And if she pisses me off just once I will trank her and leave her on a park bench.”

The last was a bluff but Aubrey treated the threat seriously. “Understood. Anything else?”

“….I’ll think of something!” Aubrey bit back another grin and nodded seriously. She slipped her hands into her pockets as the doctor steeled herself mentally to take on Beca. “Come one Detective, as much as this pains me to say…you’re coming home with me.”

Beca dropped the helmet she had finally just retrieved on the ground and left it like discarded trash to limp over to Chloe. “Okay.”

“God…you’re so easy.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing, Doc.”

Chloe gave her a final glare and slung the detective’s arms over her shoulder to help her limp out of the office. Stacie settled the length of her body along Aubrey’s back, hands coming up to finger the buttons of her vest.

“How well do you know this Kodie, joker?”

Stacie hmmm thoughtfully. “Not as well as I did in high school. Edith told me he got caught up in some trouble recently. I think I know how we can get to him though.”

“How?”

“He likes cocaine and paying for his um let’s call them dates. I had Happy make some calls for you.”

The smile came to her face easily and she leaned into Stacie’s embrace. This wasn’t anything like what her mom and dad had. Her mother had never been this involved in what her father did for work. She had kept as distant from it as she could, turning her nose up at the family that protected them, running from the darkness of the business. Stacie would never do that to her. She knew it all way down to the bottom of soul. Aubrey turned in her arms and brought their heads together.

“You got more cards up your sleeve than a Vegas croupier, you know that?”

“Hmm. I learned from the best.”

Aubrey closed the distance, her brushing softly over Stacie’s. There were a lot of words she could say about how she felt about the woman in her arms. She could probably write pages on it, but words didn’t matter half as much as action did. She was going to marry this woman and spend her life giving her the best of everything. They were going to be happy and she didn’t care who she had to kill to make it happen.

“Let me take you home?”

“Aubrey…in your arms? I’m already there.”

#queen of hearts #staubrey #pitch perfect au #the debt collector series

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thebomb-thebird-andtheburntbitch · 4 years ago

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A World-- Certain

dabi / f.reader

genre: real world to parallel world au? (is that an au? it’ll make sense dw), angst, romance, pinning, fools to lovers? (or dabi is stubborn/scared as all get out), longing/yearning (teehee)

warning(s): uhh, dabi hits a point where he’s determined to find a way back home or burn the city to the ground trying (is that a warning?), cursing, violence (or dabi punches one cop and sets another on fire- as he should), touya spoilers included? (like kinda minor ones, but you know, just in case), guns/dabi gets shot, sickly-sweet ending don’t worry, tiny mention of death

w.count: 9.8k

synopsis: the last thing he remembers, dabi had stepped in to join a rather nasty bar brawl that erupted at your pub one night. he along with a group of other villains who sided with you against a group of villains who weren’t exactly fans of your unground work. when he woke up, he wasn’t in the medical basement like he expected, nor was he at his apartment or yours. he was in a room he hadn’t seen before. when he leaves to your pub to get some answers, you’re not there. in fact, the entire building was abandoned and rotting. just what the fuck happened and where was he exactly, because this wasn’t exactly the city he knew anymore.

a/n: this is the second part to my two parter series, A World--, so be sure to read the first part A World-- Unsure, or else this really won’t make sense LOL. The concept can be kinda confusing already, but trust me- it’ll make sense aldfkasd. Enjoy!

also! since @lildockel asked to be tagged when part two went up, here is it!!

After seeing his white hair, and feeling how healthy the strands felt between his fingers, instead of the damaged, overly dyed black mess it all used to be, Dabi raced back into the bar. Rushing up the steps into the abandoned apartment as he looked around. Rushing to a mirror still hanging just barely on a nail, he used the sleeve of his jacket to wipe it of dust and cobwebs before ripping off his jacket entirely and tossing it to his feet.

He hadn’t realized it before since he never kept a habit of looking at his scarred and damaged body, but now as he stood in front of the mirror in the shirt he woke up in, he noticed the scars that he knew crawled over almost every inch of his body had changed.

The scars didn’t run up his whole right arm and stopped just at his elbow. His entire left side wasn’t engulfed in purple and staples, but instead ran up his forearm and then just around his shoulder and a patch on his neck. He reached up over his head and behind his shoulders to grab the back of his shirt and pulled it over his head and off to join his jacket on the floor before he looked at his chest. The scars that wrapped around his chest before weren’t nearly as bad and turning around to his back, he could see more skin than scars now.

He could feel the draft of the empty apartment on his skin, something he hadn’t been able to do in a long time.

He knew that each time he over used his quirk he would cause himself harm. His tolerance to the cold took a harsh toll on him since his quirk was heat based- he wasn’t built to handle heat as well as he should be with a quirk like his father’s.

He brushed his hand through his hair again as he stumbled around, head spinning to keep up with what the hell could be happening. The world was almost the same, but everything just felt different because of things that weren’t supposed to be. He snatched his phone from the pocket of his discarded jacket, trying again to call your number. It was there, clearly imputed with his information and call history, but just as before he was met with an automated message.

Your apartment wasn’t here, your bar wasn’t either and your phone number was nonexistent. It was like you didn’t exist at all.

Dabi moved back to sit against the wall that was across the room from the mirror, just so he could keep an eye on his reflection to help process exactly what was happening. He was no fool, and he could figure out that the world he knew was different from this one.

He sat on the ground as he thought. His hand came to rest over his neck, thinking back to the dart that was shot into him back at the bar. It was too convenient that he got shot with it then woke up in some weird- what he can only assume is- parallel world. A world exactly like the other, with just a few things altered.

Rather, the longer he sat in thought, the longer he thought that maybe it wasn’t a parallel world he was in, but actually a dream. The last thing he remembered was passing out covering you, so maybe the needle he was shot with put him into a dream.

He tested out his quirk, letting his hand be engulfed in fire before diminishing it, finding it worked exactly like it had before; so, he was in a world where quirks still existed at the very least. He wondered if the him he had become was still a villain, and if he was, then was he with the league? What was the actual year he woke up in? Was it parallel to the original timeline, or was it ahead? Delayed maybe?

The date on his phone lined up to the next day after the bar fight, but his phone also still had your number in it that didn’t seem to exist, so he didn’t trust his phone as much as he wanted to be able to.

Thumbing through his phone’s contacts, he wondered if he should try calling a different number. There was always a league member, but which one. He wouldn’t be caught dead calling Twice for answers and he didn’t really trust Toga’s tendency to go off on a tangent to get a straight answer out of her. Spinner wouldn’t have been a bad idea since he kept shit short, but he didn’t answer his phone for fuck. Maybe Magne? Though, he didn’t really want to call her, felt like if he did, he’d be imposing on her ‘me’ time.

By the end of his mental checklist, he was stuck between Shigaraki or Compress. He didn’t think Kurogiri even owned a phone, or else he’d dial him first. Sighing, he pushed his thumb against Compress’s contact. He didn’t want to deal with Shigaraki if he could avoid it- at least not yet.

The line rang out loud when Dabi put the phone on speaker and with a few more rings, the line picked up. It was a strange wave of relief when he heard the man with a thing for theatrics address Dabi by name when he picked up.

“Oh, thank fuck,” he sighed. There was an air of silence before Dabi spoke again, hearing Compress on the other line clear his throat in anticipation. “Okay, this may sound like complete bullshit, but hear me out for a second.”

Dabi unloaded the entire situation he suddenly found himself in to Compress as well as asked any questions he felt he needed to know the answers to, to get up to speed on exactly what kind of dream he ended up in. He was on the phone with the masked villain for almost an hour before the call ended with Dabi understanding things just a bit more.

In this world, he was still indeed a villain, but his face was kept under wraps. Dabi wasn’t presumed dead as Touya Todoroki, but rather disregarded his birth name for the alias just because he wanted to. His real name wasn’t a secret like it was in reality, that was why he didn’t have black hair- because if his identity wasn’t a secret, there was no point in dying it to stay hidden. But, he wasn’t as flashy a villain here, so no one really know who he was anyway.

In this dreamscape, Touya Todoroki never died, but ran from his home and betrayed his family after finally having enough of his father. Working now as a criminal, he stayed on the downlow side of society.

Things were more or less still the same otherwise. It was just his background and you that was truly different. Dabi sat and stared at his reflection wondering if you really existed here- and if you didn’t he wondered if that was partially his fault.

When he was at the bar, he had previously resolved himself into drifting away from you and the feelings you had towards him. Was it his stubbornness to get away from you what caused you to not be here? Or were you here in this world, but as someone completely different than the Y/n he knew? Could you exist with a whole different personality? Were you a hero? A villain? Or maybe still just a regular citizen?

Dabi immediately wanted to start looking for you, but with everything linked to you not even existing, he didn’t know where to start. Typing your name into his phone’s searching engine did nothing to help as nothing about you was listed anywhere. Okay, so you weren’t famous, or infamous in any sense so you had to be just a regular, everyday person? Right?

Sighing, he dropped his head back and closed his eyes, trying to think. He could always ask one of his connections to start looking for you in his stead. Then, his eyes opened again as he scowled- once again growing irritated. Why was he putting your whereabouts above trying to figure out how to get back- or wake up? He had unconsciously put you above how to get out of this dream.

Bringing a curled fist to rest against the side of his head, he hissed through his teeth.

“God dammit.”

-x-x-x-

It was Dabi’s second day in this dreamscape he started calling it. It was a strange feeling, being inside of a dream yet still having the ability to fall asleep and wake up again. He sat on his bed of his apartment he owned in this dreamscape and sighed. It was a far cry from his place in reality, tucked and hidden away from main streets and curious eyes. This place was just off a busy street and when he hung out the window to smoke, people were walking two stories below- just minding their day.

Puffing out a plume of cigarette smoke, he heard his phone ping from inside on the desk sat in the bedroom. He would always mentally correct himself into saying ‘his’ instead of acting like this place was some random hole in the wall. It was his- as far as he knew. He left his cigarette perched on the window sill, going to his phone and yanking it off the charger to see a text from Shigaraki.

Compress had blabbed to the leader of this dream’s League of Villains about Dabi’s little breakdown of what he believed was a dream. Seeing the text of ‘you still high, or you coming to work or not?’ made his lips twitch. He wasn’t high and he hadn’t been high; then again, it wouldn’t be any version of Shigaraki unless he was mocking Dabi for something. In this case, it was Dabi’s die hard claim of this dreamscape being a false reality.

When Dabi stopped to think about it, he could understand where everyone was coming from. For all he knew, this body- the body of Touya- was a completely different person in this reality and Dabi’s personality just manifested into it. He ran his fingers through his white hair and groaned, annoyed at the situation.

“Fucking parallel universes and their stupid ass rules.”

He sent a reply back to the leader- well, it was just a middle finger emoji- and abandoned his phone to go finish his cigarette before it burned away on its own, unattended.

Once he burned through the toxic stick, he snuffed it out on a glass ashtray he kept on the small balcony just outside the window and retreated back inside his room. Reaching up and over his head behind him, he gripped the back of his shirt and tugged it off, shaking his already messy hair out before he started to change.

It was odd seeing a full closet of clothes instead of like the five whole outfits he would interchange on a day-to-day basis before cleaning them and repeating the process. In reality, he had no use for everyday clothes since he was always wearing his villain gear or lounging around in close to nothing at his apartment. Though, he did remember that you had bought him clothes to keep at your place, so he did have more- just never wore them because he thought it was weird you were buying clothes for him.

You claimed it was so he would stop walking around in nothing but boxers or tank tops in your house, but he didn’t buy that excuse. He saw it as something to intimate; too close to a bond he was too afraid to acknowledge.

Pulling on a grey shirt and black pants- him being the most comfortable in his safe feeling monochromatic wardrobe- he tugged on a jacket and flipped the hood up. At this point it was a habit to try and conceal himself now- even if he probably didn’t need to in this dreamscape reality.

Leaving the room and soon the apartment, he was soon pulling his phone from his jacket pocket and seeing an incoming call from the hand-freak himself. Groaning, he contemplated denying the call, but if this Shigaraki was anything like the one he knew, he'd just blow up his phone in retaliation. So, reluctantly, he picked up.

“What?”

“Don’t ‘what’ me. Where are you?” His tone was impatient and gruff. “You need to get to the bar, we have work to do, dammit.”

“I’m workin’ on it, calm the hell down.” The low murmurs of the daily street this early in the morning with people making their daily commute to wherever the hell they were on their way too was just enough to make Dabi’s scarred skin crawl. He always tried to avoid crowded areas in the past for numerous reasons, not just for the sake of his identity.

However, it was easy to navigate the streets since they were exactly the same as he remembered from his reality. The more he was here, the more he came to the realization that everything was the same besides him and you- or lack thereof.

Hearing Shigaraki bitch and moan on the other end of the line, Dabi sighed and pulled the phone from his ear and promptly hung up the call before he shoved his phone back into his pocket- but not before putting it on ‘do not disturb’, so even if the annoyance he calls a boss calls him back, he wouldn’t know.

Not too long later, the pyro was walking into the bar, seeing the leader annoyingly tapping his fingers on the bar one at a time in succession as he seemed to be calming down from a temper tantrum. A temper tantrum that Dabi was most certainly the cause of.

“It’s about time,” the leader hissed as Dabi promptly ignored him, only giving him a tut in response to his neediness. Flipping off his hood and messing around his hair to feel less matted from the hood’s previous pressure, he moved to the back of the bar and plopped himself down into a booth. “I said we need to get to work,” Shigaraki started complaining, “not take a breather because you couldn’t show up on time.”

“Spare me the bitching, oh-so-fearsome-leader,” Dabi waved off lazily with his hand flopping back and forth on his wrist. If Shigaraki hadn’t had his father’s hand on his face, Dabi probably would have seen the scowl painted beneath it.

It was silent for a beat, with the two of them and Kurogiri only being present in the bar at the moment.

“Is your attitude still shitty because you’re convinced this is one big fever dream? Because, if you’re stoned or drunk, I’d really rather you not mess up our jobs and go away.”

“If this is your form of concern, you’re shitty at it,” Dabi rebutted. “I already told you, I’m as sober as a rock, so hop off. If you were in my place, you wouldn’t be slap-happy either.”

All day long, Dabi had to deal with orders being barked at him before he eventually went out on his own to look for possible new villains to recruit for the cause. He was hardly being mindful, low-level thugs weren’t cut out to join the ranks and anyone else just annoyed him. When he finally had enough and called Shigaraki that he was finishing up for the day, he just hung up without getting a proper ‘okay’ and stared at himself in the reflection of a window in an alleyway.

He raised his lip in annoyance as his reflection that he wasn’t familiar with anymore. Who he was looking at wasn’t Dabi, but Touya. The Touya who was dead until he decided otherwise, the Touya who looked too much like his parents. His previous red hair that faded to match his mother and his eyes that were copies of his fathers.

On his way back to the apartment he stopped by a general store and picked up two boxes of hair dye. That evening, when he finished showering, he ran his hand across the width of his steam fogged mirror and looked at his new reflection. He let an awkward smile breach his face as he looked at his pitch-dyed hair.

“That’s better,” he mused, walking out of the bathroom to just put on a pair of boxers, lay in bed and think. Think more about how he could leave this dreamscape all before he passed out, closing his eyes on his second day in a dream. Maybe he’d ask the league members to keep their eyes and ears out tomorrow for you, since the sooner he can figure out what’s happened with you in this place, the sooner he’ll be to a solution… probably?

-x-x-x-

Day after day passed and Dabi found himself less and less sure of anything. When he first came here, he was aware that everything was fabricated and fake- nothing was truly real since he distinctly remembered his life before all this happened.

Now, a month has passed and everyday when he wakes up, he feels more fussy than the day before. His mind and memories feel like their blurring and he started waking up and writing down small memos on post-it notes just to try and get a semblance of reality again. He wondered if one day he’d wake up and see all his notes, just to throw them away because they would have no meaning to that ‘him’.

The thought irked him. He was himself, Dabi knew that, but he felt like he was losing it.

He had woken up today with his head pounding. Leaning over the side of his bed, he held his forehead in his palms as he squeezed his eyes shut. Pushing the heels of his palm into his eyes, he could see the splotches of darkness coat his closed eyes from the presssure. He groaned, head even more hazier than the day before.

Dabi felt like he was forgetting something.

Getting up, he threw on whatever was hanging on the back of his chair in his room and flipped on the hood of whatever jacket he grabbed and left. He wasn’t called to the league just yet, so who knows if he even needed to go today, but maybe being at the bar would jog his memory. Just maybe it would clear his mind- somehow.

When he walked into the bar, he immediately made a beeline to the booth in the back as he laid down, sprawling out across the red velvet booth and covered his eyes with his forearm. One of his legs propped up on the booth while the old hung lazily to the floor, his other arm rest on his chest, feeling his stomach rise and fall with each breath.

If he just lay here long enough, something was bound to spark something in him, right? After all, he was in a bar.

A bar? What does a bar have to do with anything?

He grit his teeth when he heard the door to the bar open, someone walking in. Whoever it was, they had decided to waltz over to Dab and sit themselves on the short coffee table in front of the booth.

“The fuck do you want?” He growled, a small whistle and the smell of smoke greeted him in the form of a hearty chuckle, one that made him irk.

“My, someone’s grumpy today, isn’t he?” Hearing Giran’s smoke laden voice first thing after laying down really wasn’t how Dabi wanted to start his day. Moving his arm just enough to peer over his arm with a glare, the villain broker raised his hands in mock surrender, a half smoked cigarette between his lips. “Easy there, I’m not looking for a scuffle this early in the morning.”

“Yeah? Then leave me alone or else I’m going to set you on fire.” With another chuckle from the broker and no movement of him leaving his place on the table, Dabi groaned. Moving his arm, he ran his hand over his face before he reluctantly sat up and rubbed the back of his head, his tangles of unbrushed black hair snagging between his fingers. He glared at the tooth-gapped man with a smoking habit worse than his own. “What?” He growled.

Giran dug around in the inside pocket of his tacky blazer before he presented Dabi with a pocketbook. The scarred pyro looked at the blank book before looking back up to Giran’s face, his brows turned up in questioning.

“The fuck is that for?”

“That, my dear Touya,” hearing the broker sing-song Dabi’s real name made him bark at him in warning to never do it again, one that Giran promptly ignored, “is everything I could dig up on that little lady you asked me about a couple weeks ago.”

“Lady?” Dabi’s brows furrowed, his headache spiking again.

“I gotta say, I’m not usually one for such slow work, but with the villain count spiking, I’m a busy man. I got a lot on my plate, so I had to put your little search on the back burner.” Tossing the pocketbook onto Dabi’s lap, one of his scarred hands immediately held it to his leg to keep it from bouncing off his leg onto the floor. Giran then stood, stuffing his hands into his equally tacky trousers. “A man as busy as me has things to do, so I’ve gotta bounce. Talk to me again if you need anything else.” Giran turned but stopped short, swiveling to look at Dabi once more. ”Oh and as for that woman’s whereabouts, don’t be so bummed when you read about it.”

Dabi watched Giran leave the bar about as quickly as he came in, the smell of smoke the only lingering thing indicating that he was even there to begin with Well, that and the pocketbook Dabi held in his hands. He eyed it with narrow eyes and knit brows.

“Lady? What lady was I-?” He cut himself off as he just shut his eyes and tossed the book onto the coffee table where Giran had previously sat.

All morning, Dabi kept to himself on his booth, just lounging and laying around. Every time someone went towards him he’d growl at them, not like it did anything to deter them away regardless. However, if someone even though about touching the pocketbook, he’d sit up and snatch it away and stuff it under his legs or his back or his head- just away from their grabby hands. Whatever info was in there, they didn’t need to pry into his business.

It was well into the afternoon when Dabi had his fill of the noise that only got louder over time in the bar and dismissed himself, leaving as he heard Toga calling out behind him before going back to whatever the hell she had been doing.

The pocketbook was in his hands folded to rest against the inside of his wrist as he walked around the streets, not wanting to go home, but not wanting to be nowhere. His desire to be somewhere, along with his annoyance accompanying that desire- but, not having any idea on where to be- unconsciously lead him down roads and through alleys to a run down, abandoned building.

“A bar?” He questioned himself out loud, not knowing why this place seemed familiar to him. He felt like he should know this place, but it felt like the way it was right now- run down and in shambles- was wrong. His head ached and he found himself climbing through a busted window to get inside.

Dust plumed under his boots when he landed inside the place. He began to wander around, dragging his hands along walls, kicking rubble with the toes of his boots, scanning the falling apart shelves that barely hung on the walls. Moving to the back room past the vacant kitchen covered in dust and smelling like the inside of a mechanical pencil, he placed his hand on a wall next to a staircase that led upwards away from the other empty rooms.

“This wall,” his eyes narrowed in both pain from his pounding head and his fuzzy recollection, “shouldn’t be here. Isn’t there supposed to be a door?” His palm that was flat against the wall curled into a fist, his knuckles pushing against the cold stone. “A door? Why would I-”

Dabi silenced himself as he snatched his hand away from the wall as if the structure was suddenly covered in some sort of burning acid.

“Fuck this,” he growled. He turned his back to the wall, ready to leave and clear his head, but stopped as soon as he went to take a step out. He glanced up the stairs before his feet started taking him up them, entering the would-be apartment through the rotting, crooked door.

He stood in the middle of the space that would be a small living room, his headache dulling, but just faintly. The feeling in the pit of his stomach clawed and deep in his head screamed that he was forgetting something; something important.

He pushed the pad of his thumb into the crease of his forehead, between his furrowed brows. Something was missing, wrong, just not fucking right here. Pushing his thumb harder against his skull, he tried blocking everything out and picking at every corner of his brain he could to think for a moment.

‘You keep doing that, you’ll put a dent in your head’

Dabi’s eyes shot open, breath catching in his throat as he swallowed back a cough from the sudden intake of breath. His hands dropped from his head to hover in front of him, elbows tucked by his sides. His senses were alert as he whipped around, looking around the empty apartment space.

“Who’s there?!” He shouted, his echoing voice bouncing back to him as he listened for any sounds to give away who he may have heard.

He heard someone- a woman- as clear as day. It seemed to echo- but given the empty room, it wouldn’t be shocking for voices to carry and bounce like that, after all his did. Standing in silence, he heard absolutely nothing. No breathing, no sounds of movement, no more voices. Just silence surrounded him- and a slight ringing in his ears.

The moment he started to settle down, thinking it was all in his head- which thrilled him- again, the same voice echoed around the room.

‘Don’t just take up space you- actually, take up as much space as you want if you heat the place up. My heater just went out, so come on Space-Heater, hop to it’

He started to think a league member was toying with him. Did someone from the bar follow him? Was this a quirk to dick him around for a lark? Then, he remembered the pocketbook.

It had been in his free hand the whole time, but he had forgotten about it. He quickly flipped it open and inside were small clippings and photos of a woman taped inside. Like some cryptid profile in a recluses dairy; much like Giran’s shady, handiwork to be expected.

The more he flipped through the pages and read, the more his head pounded.

‘Dabi’

The voice called him by name as he dropped the pocketbook. Spinning around with a waft of blue fire coming out of his arm in sheer instinct to protect himself from whatever may be around him. The voice ignited his fight or flight and Dabi was never one to run, ever a fighter. Fleeing wasn’t in his nature- not even when he was a child.

‘Was it too trouble to keep remembering?’

“Who the fuck are you? Where are you hiding?!”

‘You rejected me to this extent? That you forgot me entirely? Is this really your dream?’

… Dream?

His eyes widened before he looked back down to the open pocketbook at his feet. It lay pages facing up, open on a page he hadn’t yet read. His fire simmered and he starred down at the open spread. Slowly kneeling, he gently ran his fingers over the clippings and the single picture on the opposing page.

It was a photo of a gravestone.

The date of death wasn’t that far back; rather, it was pretty damn recent. This person, this woman, was dead?

Dabi felt small flames lick at the scars under his eyes as he stared down unblinking.

“Y/n?”

It all hit him like a bus. The memories he had slowly forgotten about came back to him and it knocked the breath from his chest. He stood to his feet and rushed downstairs, leaving the pocketbook in the empty apartment he finally remembered was supposed to be yours. On the way down to the bar, he nearly tripped on the stairs before he stood behind the bar top and looked out into the room.

Was it always this hard to breath?

Was all this his fault?

He remembered the emotions he used to push all the way down into his gut. Did his want to put distance between the two of you kill you in this dreamscape? This fake reality?

For a time, he forgot about time itself as he sat on the floors of the once lively bar he remembered. He ran you- your name, your face, your voice, your stupidly good heart, everything- on repeat in his head to ensure his memory wouldn’t slip away from him again. He was just a breathing corpse, or so he felt like. He didn’t even feel like smoking for once, even if his stress was through the roof.

His eyes flicked up when the rusted, busted doors of the trashed building opened to see two figures enter. The sun had long since set and the only light in the room now was two bright flashlights searching and finding his slouched body under the bar, facing the door.

From the shadows casted by the flashlights and the figures outlines, he could see two policemen in front of him. His eyes traveled away from them down to his palms, irritation flooding his head at their intrudance to his safe space.

“Hey!” One cop called to him, making their way towards his floor-slumped body, careful not to trip.

Was it his fault?

“This is private property.”

Did you end up a dead stranger because he kept pushing you away?

“Sir, you need to leave immediately.”

Why was this bothering him so fucking much?

“Can you hear me?”

He was brought out of his self pity when the cop who now stood next to him had gripped his arm and hauled him to his feet. Dabi’s body was still slack, not putting in too much effort to keep himself upright. He felt his back dig into the bar behind him, the only thing beside the cop tightly gripping his arm, holding him up.

Had he ever felt his miserable before, beside back when-

“Sir!” Dabi winced when the cop damn near shouted in his ear. He wasn’t some old man. He could hear perfectly fine. His scarring on his ears hadn’t made him deaf.

“-off me,” Dabi muttered. The cop not hearing him, asked him to repeat himself. Dabi’s lethargic face tensed in fury as he ripped his arm out of the policeman’s grasp and brought his other arm up to knock his fist into the cop’s jaw. “Get the fuck off me!” He yelled.

The cop dropped his flashlight as he fell to the ground, half out of it from the way Dabi punched his jaw- nearly knocking him completely out. The other was quick to draw his gun and point it at the villain, but it wasn’t quick enough.

Dabi was no fool. The moment he knocked the first cop on his ass, he knew the second would act. Grabbing the wrist of the second one as he tried pointing his gun towards him, Dabi twisted the policeman's wrist, disarming him and shoving his head through the small window in the front entrance.

He didn’t need light to see that the cop he held against the door, head just barely through a window, was bleeding. Dabi had turned him around, keeping one of his hands on one of the cop’s arms behind his back and the other on his head, keeping him uncomfortably pushed against the glass frame, nou doubt cutting up his skin further.

“You think you scumbags can just waltz in here and disrupt me? I happened to be in the middle of fuckin’ something.”

“B-but,” the cop he held captive began to try and argue, “this is private property!” He gasped.

Dabi’s eyes rolled in annoyance. “I don’t give a shit,” he seethed before his palms ignited. The policeman’s head was soon engulfed in blue fire as well as his wrist before his clothes ignited as well and the entire man was on the ground, a dead, burning mess.

The smell was familiar to him- the first familiar thing he’s felt in a while. He left the bar behind him, the space being intruded by law enforcement made it feel different. It wasn’t his space anymore. As he made his way down the street at the dead of night, he soon heard sirens and screeching of tires making their way down streets. Looking behind him, in the dark, clouded night sky, he saw outlines of smoke and fire in the distance.

“Looks like the building is gonna burn down,” he spoke to himself before he made his way further down the street. Passing a random building he didn’t even know, he reached his hand out and ignited it, setting drapes and signs on fire.

As he made his way down roads, he set building after building, house after house on fire. Soon, he stood at the end of the main street, blue on either side of the road and screaming from inside the buildings. People scrambling to get into the open, the panic of being in the middle of a blazing area with no idea on how the fire started.

It was pure hysteria.

People ran past him standing still on the sidewalk. Everyone was terrified and panicked as he didn’t seem at all bothered by anything happening. He stared blankly, uninterested with his hands in his pockets as he just gazed at his flames that ate everything it touched and spread like a plague.

As he stared, losing track of time once more, he felt something push against the back of his neck. He smiled, knowing the feel of a gun all too well.

“I guess not knocking you out worked in your favor, huh?” He knew it was the cop he clocked in the jaw at your bar.

By the time the firey lump of his coworker started eating the building, he probably regained enough sense to leave the building and chase him down. Not in time to spare the buildings and homes being eaten alive by his fire, but in time to threaten him just when he was ready to start enjoying the show.

“Sorry about your pal,” Dabi chided, “but he said a lot of shit that just pissed me off? I mean, private property? Come on.” The villain didn’t turn to look at the cop, just felt the man push the gun’s tip against his scarred neck further. “Don’t tell me you’re gun shy? Come on, pull the trigger.”

His self-destructive words were absolutely insane, urging the man with a gun at his neck to shoot him? It wasn’t like Dabi expected the cop to not have the balls, he knew cops and they didn’t care what they had to do to keep villains at bay. Dabi had just set fire to everything, the entire world in his vision burning as he spoke- that only was enough proof to the cop he was indeed a villainous man.

“It’s not my place to judge-”

“The fuck it isn’t!” Dabi laughed, whirling around and taking hold of the front of the gun and pushing it against his chest. “Pull the trigger you pathetic excess of a protector of the public!”

Maybe it was his words, his temptation to espcae this fake reality oozing out, his insane smile that pulled at the staples across his face or maybe it was just the policeman’s sudden decision- but the trigger was pulled and Dabi, felt for just a moment, a bullet tear through his chest.

-x-x-x-

Dabi’s eyes cracked open, vision blurry as he stared at a ceiling. His mind was fuzzy and his head pounded with a headache he immediately took to noticing, even if he had just opened his eyes moments ago.

He felt something behind his head, something covering his body and heard noises of machines humming besides where he was laying. Annoyed he was on his back, he groaned, but found his throat drier than desert sand and grumbled to clear it. His body felt heavy and weak as he started to slowly move around on the bed he rested on.

His knees lifted, feet moving as his heels dug into the mattress to push his weak feeling legs up and his arms moved to brace into the mattress to try and lever his body up. After a bit of a fight with his own body, he managed to sit up and his eyes finally focused from their blurriness.

He looked around seeing equipment attached to his arm and patches on his chest that linked to a machine that showed his heartbeat. His chest was bare as he wasn’t wearing his normal jeans, but grey sweats that he didn’t remember actually owning before.

He groaned, his hand coming to push against his head. The headache combined with his confusion was making him feel nauseous. What happened? Had he been somewhere before this? Where was he?

Looking around the small room he was in by himself again, he started to slowly remember. He remembered the dream- his dream- and the dream he had forgotten wasn’t actual reality. Dabi remembered being shot. His heartbeat started to quicken when he started to finally take in the familiarity of the room and it’s concrete walls.

Pulling the patches off his chest, he fumbled with whatever was in his arm and took it out. The scars he was familiar with ran across his body in large proportions and the bangs that hung in front of his eyes were a dark, dyed black.

He felt around his staples on the back of his hands and felt around his stomach and chest, tracing the large scars he knew were the real ones. He pushed his hand through his hair and felt the strands just as he truly remembered.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, moving to swing his legs over the bed and lean into his knees, hunching over as he brought his hands to his forehead- relieved. “I’m back.”

He sat in his own silence and relief to be in a world that finally felt right as he tried regaining himself. He remembered the dream he was stuck in and remembered the lack of your presence- your death in that place. His eyes widened as he stared at the ground before he lifted his head up.

You.

He stood to his feet quickly, but immediately teetered and fell to his ass on the floor. He hissed, angry at how weak his legs felt. He must’ve been sleeping for way too long if his damn legs didn’t want to work.

Dabi growled as he used the bed to get back to his feet and took more cautious steps towards the door to leave the room he was in. The open basement waiting area was empty and dim, not currently being in use.

Using the wall, he ambled the perimeter of the room to come to the stairs that lead to the bar- the bar he was sure was there. The bar that he missed and that bar that didn’t exist in his previous dream without you.

It took Dabi far longer than he’d like to admit to get his legs to climb the stairs, even if they were starting to gather more strength the longer he was awake and the longer he forced them to move and do as he commanded. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as hard as when he originally woke up.

Getting up to the door, he unlocked it before he practically fell through the frame when it opened. Stumbling in, he shut it behind him and leaned his back against it to catch his breath. He stopped and stood still, seeing the doorway into the bar’s kitchen and beyond it. He had to make sure, he had to confirm this was real.

Ambling his way through the space he knew so well, he came out of the back and smirked when he leaned against the doorframe and looked out into your bar. The tables were empty and polished, chairs pushed in neatly and booths clean. He saw the rec room beyond its own doorway and sighed.

“It’s here,” laughed weakly to himself. “It’s all back.” His legs felt tired as he moved around the bar to slide into the barstool he always sat in. Letting his legs rest, he rested his elbow on the bar top and pushed one hand into his hair to hold his head and the other arm stayed on the bar. He began to replay all the memories he had here that he almost completely forgot in his dream.

What would happen if he let that dream consume him? What if he eventually accepted that dream as reality? Would he have forgotten about you like he almost did? would he had died or just slept until he was old and grey? He didn’t know and he didn’t honestly want to think about it.

He missed the polished scent of your pub instead of the dusty, rotten one of the abandoned building in his dream. He felt his shoulder tense when he heard the pub entrance open behind his back. Swiveling just a bit to view the door under his hand that partially covered his vision and his black bangs, his eyes widened at seeing you enter.

You were carrying bags in your arms, head down as you worked on shutting the door and relocking it. You hadn’t even seen him yet, eyes focusing on other things and the task of shutting your door and relieving your arms of the weight of whatever you had just gone out and bought.

He heard you sigh and he mimicked the sound silently. It felt like it had been so long since he heard you. You dropped the bags to your feet, rotating your shoulders to give your arms a break from how long you were carrying them. Dabi could tell from the way you stretched and rolled your neck that you were tired.

His breath stuttered when you turned and your chin came up, eyes finally finding the body sitting at your bar. It took you just a beat to realize that it wasn’t just some stranger who had broken into your closed pub in broad daylight.

You were about as frozen as he was as your jaw dropped, making your mouth go slightly agape. He couldn’t blame you, he guessed. He lifted his head from his hand and gave you a weak, tired smirk.

“Cat got your tongue, sweetheart?”

You were soon tripping over your bags and rushing to his place at the bar, your hands grabbing his shoulders and pushing him from his slouched position into one that was straighter. You twisted his stool and made him face you as you leaned him back to rest on the bar and inspected him.

Dabi inspected you in the same manner.

He watched as you silently, but frantically pushed your hands across his body. His bare chest was warm and every touch of your fingers made him feel hot. it was like you were confirming that he was real and not some delusion you had made up from stress. He would do that same after the you-less dream he had been succumbed to for fuck-knows how long now, but your warm touch was too comforting- too real to be a just another dream.

Dabi could see your eyes slick over as you just kept trying to silently convince yourself he was in front of you. He furrowed his brows- you hadn’t looked at his face since you saw him and you weren’t saying anything. It irritated him.

The pyro snatched your roaming wrists in his hands as you jolted and went completely still.

“Fuckin’ look at me,” he demanded, his impatience getting the best of him. Slowly, your head lifted and you did. He could see the tears brimming your eyes and he briefly wondered if you could even see him clearly with all those tears in the way of your vision. “Now, talk to me.”

Your mouth fell open, but snapped shut again. Only small sounds coming out. What could you say? You had no idea how to form words in the given situation. What should you say? Ask him how he feels, ask him how he woke up and if he was okay? Ask him why the hell the first thing he did was get up out of bed and come to the bar?

“Let me make this easy,” he told you, a scowl still on his scarred face. He brought one of his hands up to the cup under your jaw, his thumb and fingers pushing your cheeks to make your lips purse , your chin rest in his palm. “Can’t talk? Fine; then just say my name, it should be easy.”

You swallowed. One word, just two short syllables long, that’s it. It really should be easy. Opening your mouth, you did your best to force your locked up voice out.

“Dabi?” You questioned, your brows quirking up as he chuckled, smirking down at you.

“Atta girl,” he whispered before he brought his lips down onto the ones he had pushed out so invitingly to himself. You found your head spinning when Dabi’s hand that held your cheeks and under your jaw, pulled your mouth open so he could push his tongue inside to tangle around yours.

The entire time he roamed your mouth, his eyes stayed open and on yours. Your small huffs of shock dwindled as your wide eyes started to narrow and drop to a lid as your tense body finally slackened.

This is what woke him up- what had him remember, not being shot. His want to be around you, to taste you for the first time and to smell your scene again. Drawing his tongue out of your mouth, he peppered your flushed cheeks and the corner of your lips with small pecks, before greedily taking your lips again. Every time you tried pulling away from him- to get some answers no doubt- he didn’t let you get far as he kept chasing after your lips.

Your taste was so fuckin’ addicting, he almost growled.

Lifting himself up from his barstool, he had forgotten that his legs were weak and he found himself immediately releasing your lips and losing his balance. Grabbing your shoulder and arm to try and keep his balance, you squawked, not ready to hold his weight and you both tumbled to the tile.

You groaned as the man lay on top of you, his arms laying outstretched on either side of your head with his chin next to your neck. When he didn’t move, you brought one of your hands to his back and tapped him gently.

“Uh, Dabi?” You felt his breathing against your own as he just hummed signally that he didn’t just pass out.. “Think you can get off me?” Your voice was weak and without even looking at you, Dabi could imagine the flush that most definitely painted your cheeks a vibrant red.

“No, I don’t think I can,” he chuckled. He felt you fight under him, your arms pushing against his side before you lifted him just a bit before pushing him and sliding yourself out from under him. He groaned. “Fuck, you should treat a patient with more care.”

“Oh, sorry,” you panicked as you were soon grabbing his arm and throwing it over your shoulder and heaving him up. You looked back to your bags of groceries before deeming Dabi’s overall health top priority. You were ready to take him back downstairs to the basement when he stopped you, his free hand shooting out to grab a door frame and keep you from proceeding.

“No,” he denied. “Upstairs. I want to be in your place instead.”

“What? But, Dabi, you’re-”

“I’m fine,” he bit. He couldn’t just outright say that he missed your apartment, especially right to your face. “Just, take me up there instead.” In the end, that stupidly good heart of yours relented and obeyed his request.

Dabi felt like he just reached nirvana when you helped sit him down on your couch. His arms lifted to the back of the couch instinctive and he dropped his head back and shut his eyes, taking in the newfound comfort. He could feel you stand in front of him before he felt the cushion next to him dip, informing him that you had just sat next to him. He could feel your concerned eyes burn into the side of his face.

“You don’t need to stare.”

“Well, you still need to answer some questions.”

Dabi peeled his eyes open, as he tilted his head that still rested back on the cushions to look at you. “Ask away.”

“Okay,” you breathed, not expecting him to be as cooperative. “Well, how do you feel?”

“Better than ever,” your pointed look at his legs made him clear his throat with a chuckle. “Better than ever with a bit of a balance problem.”

“And your neck? Does that hurt?”

“Nope.”

“What about your head, any headaches or eye strain?”

“Had a headache when I woke up, pretty much gone now.”

You ran him back and forth about questions of if he was in pain or any discomfort, and while he normally would have found the entire process annoying, he couldn't help but smile through it. Listening to you talk so much made him feel remarkably better.

“Alright, now for unprofessional questions,” you told him. “Why the hell did you think it was a good idea to go up to the bar as soon as you woke up? I was gone no more than 20 minutes and you somehow climbed your way up there. What if you fell back down the stairs or something?”

“I don’t know about you, sweetheart, but when I wake up in a basement, I’d like to get out of it,” he joked. “I wanted to see the bar anyway.”

“It’s the same as it’s always been.”

“Not to me.”

“What?” Your twisted face that had been chewing him out the past several minutes had softened at his tone. His joking smirk fell as he looked back at the ceiling and his mouth pressed into a line. Just remembering that awful dream really pissed him off.

“What was the quirk I was under?”

“You,” you started, “you knew you were under the effects of a quirk?”

“Of course I did, I’m not stupid.”

“Well, the guy with the needle fingertips is the one who got you in the neck during that brawl, remember?” Dabi nodded. “His needles contain a type of sedative that sends the affected body to sleep and their mind into a created reality of their dreams. I guess you had a dream, huh?”

“Yeah. A fucking stupid dream where everything was the same expect the important stuff.”

“Important stuff? Like what exactly?”

Glancing at you from the corner of his eye, he decided not to tell you about his identity. To you he was still just plain Dabi- the Dabi who took Stain’s words to heart and hated this hero-praised society. If he told you who he really was, what if you looked at him differently? So, he kept it to himself.

“You weren’t there.” You were silent at his side, his gaze moving to focus back on the light fixtures that were turned off above him since the sun was bright enough through the windows to light the living room up. “When I woke up in that dream, you weren’t there. The bar wasn’t there either, it was just some run down building owned by the city. You didn’t know me in that dream, and you died as a stranger to me in that dream too.” His eyes lidded as a grim shadow cast over his face.

“I died? But how-”

“I really don’t want to get into the details.”

“Oh,” you pushed yourself. “That makes sense. Sorry for prying.” It was silent for a beat. You looked away from Dabi, glancing around your living room as he watched you from the corner of his vision. You had stood up from the couch, making him twitch. “I’m going to get you something to drink, you’re probably thirsty. Since you’re recovering though, I’m gonna make you drink a lot of water.”

He was content on letting you do what you wanted, but the thought of you leaving his sight for just a moment made his skin crawl. If you went to the kitchen, you’d be going around a corner and behind a wall, he couldn’t see through walls.

You got one step from the couch when he snatched your wrist and yanked you over. Falling back on the cushions, your back was against Dabi’s side where he had snaked his arm around you, keeping you hostage.

“What are you-?!” Your voice stopped when he dropped his forehead to your shoulder and squeezed you.

“Don’t leave my sight yet.”

“Did my disappearance in your dream really bother you that much?” He cursed you for being so perceptive on why he was suddenly so handsy with you. In the past, he tried to be as mindful of your feelings as possible. He didn’t want to take advantage of your emotions back then, but now it wasn’t quite like before.

“Yeah, it did.” His honesty shocked you. There was no joking undertone and no sound of a smirk on his lips. It was sincere and it was sad.

You relaxed against him, raising one of your hands to push through his hair that tickled your neck and cheek. You wished you had a book or your phone to keep you busy at the very least, but you didn’t. You just traced the design of your apartment’s wallpaper with your eyes, sitting in silence for a while.

“Hey,” you softly called after a while to test if he had fallen asleep. You heard him hum behind you. “Is the reason you did what you did in the bar, because I didn’t exist in your dream?”

Oh fuck.

He had nearly forgotten that he practically shoved his tongue down your throat not that long ago. In the past, maybe he would’ve felt bad about doing that; to you in particular- you being his best friend and the same friend who patched him up on the regular and the friend who got rejected by him. But now, he didn’t feel any regret looking back on the deed.

In fact, the only regret he felt int his moment was the memory of his rejection.

“Can I take it back?”

“The kiss?” You croak? “Well, of course you can. I-”

“Not that, you idiot.”

“What?”

“That time I told you that I didn’t do relationships, when I rejected you. Can I take that back?” Your silence made his stomach churn. God, this is why he hated relationships, why he hated fuckin’ feelings. This is the sole reason he squashed what he felt towards you down into the pit of his stomach. Now it’s all coming back up to burn his throat like a case horrible heartburn.

“Dabi, this isn’t a joke to me.”

“I know, I’m not that much of a prick.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Not to you, I’m not.” The moment you opened your mouth to argue against him again, he bit into your neck, making you squawk and kick your legs out before bopping the top of his head with your hand that had been previously brushing through his hair. Which didn’t help your case, since all it did was knock his teeth into your skin more before he unlatched from you. “Hey,” he spoke as he moved to push his cheek against the top of your head so there was no way you could even get a glance at his face. “If you think you still like me, then I think I like you too.”

Dabi felt you start laughing before he heard it. He felt like he was going to burst into flames as you squirmed around in his arms, laughing like he just told the world's worst dad joke. He pinched into your sides, making you yelp between laughs. When you settled down, you just rested against him willingly and hummed.

“That’s not how you ask a someone out, Dabi.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.”

“Neither is that.”

“That’s it,” he finalized with himself as he planted his chin on top of your head with enough force to make you whine in dull pain. “Just for that, I’m not taking you on any good dates. It’s just concrete basements and empty fridges for you.”

Yu gasp. “That is not how you treat your girlfriend!”

“I don’t remember asking you to be that to me?”

“You son of a-”

He pushed a hand over your mouth, muffling you as he felt you smile against his palm. Tiling your head back to look up and back at him, he pulled his hand away from your lips and pushed a finger in front of his own, shushing you.

“You sure you want me?” He asked. “Last chance to back out of it.”

“Well,” you answered, “do really you want me?”

Dabi rolled his eyes. Like he would flake out after all this, you should know better than to ask him something like that. He was meticulous, he wouldn’t be so certain of something like this if he hadn’t thought it over first. He’s had his time without you and now he’s gonna make certain that it never happens again.

“Oh, baby, I only want you.” Your face flushed and he kissed the end of your nose- since your lips were too far away from this angle to reach. “Now turn around dammit, I want to kiss you properly.”

That stupidly good heart of yours never fails to listen.

-END-

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ring-a-ding-dumbass · 4 years ago

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Companions as Hallmark Christmas Movie Love Interests

Happy Holidays!! I’ve been watching a LOT of bad Christmas Movies, so here are the companions as Hallmark movie love interests! (I’ve left out Codsworth, Dogmeat, Strong, and DLC companions.) [disclaimer: I know most jobs listed in these do not work in the way that I will imply, but that’s pretty standard for these kinds of films, so I’m rolling with it. Also, most of these are based off of SOME movie I’ve seen this Christmas, so obviously it’s not going to be super original. They’re Hallmark movies; they’re not supposed to be ‘good.’]

Note: I’d love to expand these into a fic, but I really don’t have the free time right now. If anyone is interested in taking one of these ideas and running with it, please do!! Just tag me when you’re done so I can read it!!

Cait- Cait owns a bar and she has a strict “No Christmas” policy. No Christmas music. No singing Christmas carols. No decorations. She hates the holidays because she thinks that all of the happiness and love that they inspire is a bunch of BS. She say’s it’s all fake for the sake of Christmas cards and holiday specials. One day, you’re the last patrion in her bar, and Cait slips on some ice while she’s locking up. You take her to the hospital and she has *gasp* AMNESIA. You let Cait stay with you because you can’t find any friends or family of hers, and the hospital can’t keep her. To your surprise, this Cait actually seems to like Christmas. She treats everything like she’s learning about it for the very first time. She’s not all soft and lovey-dovey, sure, but she doesn’t mind the peppermint bark and ice skating and snowball fights and eggnog. As she begins to get her memory back, she gets colder, and she opens up to you that the reason she hates Christmas is because Christmas never meant anything to her as a child. Her parents were mean to her 24/7, and that didn’t stop around the holidays, which is why Cait was always so certain that Christmas cheer was a hoax. Cait regains her full memories, but because of your re-introduction to the holiday, she doesn’t mind it as much anymore. She’s no santa claus, but she does stock up on peppermint vodka and candy canes for the bar, and wears a mistletoe headband during December, which you always manage to take advantage of.

Curie- Curie is the owner of a flower shop in North Pole, Alaska. Every year, more people move out of town, and Curie has to try to sell more items during Christmas, which is her most profitable season. You’re a character actor who works as an elf for a mall santa agency, and this year, you’re sent to the Fairbanks/North Pole region. One day, you go to see the sights in North Pole and meet Curie while she’s working in her shop. She’s running around like a chicken with her head cut off. You ask if she’s busy, and she mentions that she just lost her only employee to the local Build-a-Bear. She charms you, and you apply on the spot. After she hires you, you realize that there’s a well dressed real estate executive that comes in at least once a week to hit on Curie. She explains that he’s been offering to help her business in exchange for a date, but she won’t do it. As you and Curie ready up for the Holidays, you realize that you’re really compatible. You have fights with the fake snow used for window displays, you help organize flowers in the walk in freezer together and bring hot chocolate in when it gets too cold, and you start sneaking kisses to one another when you have to retrieve an order from the back. One day, the business man comes in and tells you that he’s buying the land that your shop is built on unless you can afford to pay an astronomical hike in rent. Curie begins to worry that she’ll have to sell her shop, but you promise her that it won’t happen. Together, you come up with the idea to sell Christmas packages online, so families who live far away from each other can send a little piece of christmas to other family members for the holidays. The idea takes off. Not only are you able to sustain the hike in rent, but you’re able to pay for your own land to move the shop, so Curie will never have to worry about rent again. You never go back to the mall santa place, and you run your shop with Curie for years, making a comfortable living in a cozy town.

Danse- Oh, Paladin Danse-- He’s the son of the president, and one of the best generals in the country, and he’s getting married. You are the baker for his wedding. One day, when you’re trying to haul a prototype cake to the other end of the capitol building to put on display to show Danse and his future spouse, you turn a corner and run into Danse, covering the both of you in cake. You don’t recognize him, and he doesn’t introduce himself, but offers to help you in any way he can to rebuild the cake. He insists on helping, so you let him, which sparks a friendship between you. Once the cake is ready, you bring it back upstairs, to find Danse and his spouse ready to look at the cake. Danse and you start speaking when you run into each other in the halls, and one day, he asks you on a walk around the grounds, where he confesses to you that he doesn’t personally feel attracted to his spouse, but it must be done for the good of the country. Just before his wedding, you confess your feelings and Danse runs off. The wedding comes to a halt and nobody knows why until Danse shows up to tell his future spouse that he can’t go through with this because he is in love with someone else. He approaches you as you’re cleaning up the confectionary table and tells you that he has to be true to himself, and that means being true to you.

Deacon- You’re a server working at a diner in a moderately large town. Deacon comes in one day and introduces himself as the new hire. You train him, and he’s kind of terrible, but he makes you laugh. You slip him your number after a week or so of light flirting and banter, but he turns you down. You leave to let Deacon close, but realize that you left your phone at the diner in an embarrassed hurry. You head back to the restaurant and find Deacon snooping through the boss’s files! After you catch him, he confesses that he’s an undercover spy, sent to keep an eye on your boss, who is suspected of using the diner to launder money. Now that you know, Deacon brings you on as his partner, and swears you to secrecy. You two go on a cute stakeout, have researching sessions together, and slowly fall in love over the course of December. At the end of the month, you come in for a shift to see your boss being arrested, and Deacon isn’t there. It isn’t until Christmas eve that you get a knock on your door. Deacon is there with takeout. He explains that his boss decided to go in without asking him, and they forced him back to the office, barring any outside contact until he could provide a full report. He confesses that he has fallen in love with you, but has also lost his job because of it, because he confessed to breaking cover. You reunite with a warm kiss and warm takeout, and, now that you’re both jobless, you start a P.I. agency together.

Hancock- Oh. Oh. Oh. BAD BOY CELEBRITY gets in trouble with his publicist over general bad-boy-scandalous behavior. YOU are a choir director for a low income rec center in a small town and you are putting on a Christmas Pageant. You don’t have the funds, but eventually the publicist finds out about your little operation, and she is ALL over it. She brings Hancock in to work with the kids and she brings an entire media team with him. He’s arrogant at first, and doesn’t even remember your name for the first few days, but you notice a change in him as you begin to work together. As skeptical as you are, Hancock really connects with the kids, and really seems to care about the Christmas Pageant. While you’re there, the kids start teasing you two, and implying that you have crushes on each other. In the end, The publicist scores him a comeback story and interview on a national morning talk show, but it would mean missing the pageant. While it seems like he’s chosen to go to the talk show, he changes his mind and arrives just before the pageant with flowers to apologize. After you accept his apology, the kids push you two under some construction paper and white puffball mistletoe.

MacCready- RJ is a single father who is still getting over the death of his wife. He has yet to move on in part due to his son’s illness. You are an heiress to a rather large fortune, but you’re told that you have a year to get a job and learn about good old fashioned hard work before you’re allowed to have access to the fortune. You start out with no discernible skills, so you become a babysitter for RJ. He goes to work in the evening as a security guard and you take care of Duncan at home. Duncan confesses to you that things haven’t been the same since his mother died. One night, you decide to ask Duncan what he wants for Christmas, and he tells you that he told the Santa Claus at the mall that he wants his dad to be okay. One night, RJ comes home and confesses that with the holidays coming up, he doesn’t know if he can afford to keep paying you to watch him every night, to which you reply that you’d gladly work for half salary. One night, you two stay up until Duncan has to get up for school, just talking about your lives. MacCready starts inviting you on outings with him and Duncan. One day, after RJ loses his job and can no longer to afford medicine for Duncan, you confess to him that you’ve been rich the entire time, and that you can pay for it yourself. MacCready accuses you of lying to him this entire time about who you are, and he asks if he can ever trust you again. You tell him that omitting to your fortune was a lie, but your feelings for him never were. You two make up, move into a house together, and Duncan thanks you for granting him his wish.

Nick Valentine- Did someone say GHOST ROMANCE? Yes, I did. You inherit a small farmhouse from an old relative that you haven’t seen in years. You go to get a good look at to see if it’s even salvageable, and you find that not only is it relatively well kept, but things move when you’re not looking. You spend the night and are woken up in the middle of the night by someone rummaging around in the attic. You find Nick, and you threaten to call the police. He’s polite, and promises it’s not what it looks like, but tells you not to call the police. When you do, they show up to find nothing in your house. Once they leave, you turn back, and Nick is in your house again. He explains that he’s a ghost, and for some reason, he can only be seen by the deed holder of the house, which is why your relative hasn’t been to the house in years. Nick explains that he died in this house a few decades ago, but he doesn’t know how it happened. Determined to figure it out in hopes that it can help him pass on, he was looking in the attic to see if it might have any proof of how he died and if foul play was involved. Over the course of your investigations, you two become good friends, and as much as you want it to be more, you tell yourself that it could never happen. Together, you slowly piece together that Nick was murdered just before proposing to the daughter of someone who used to own the house. As you and Nick celebrate this information, you realize that Nick hasn’t passed on. Nick explains that ghosts can’t pass on until they feel they have nothing to leave behind. He explains that he has grown attached to you, and doesn’t want to leave you behind. You move into the Farmhouse with Nick where you two live until your spirits can both pass on together.

Piper- Piper is a journalist who has been tasked with writing a weekly features column about Christmas, but she has found herself disillusioned with the holidays. She thought she’d be getting a Christmas bonus that she could use to buy Nat something special, but there was never a bonus, and money is really really tight. You’re quite literally the child of Santa Claus who has been sent out into the world to be with the people and really learn what the true meaning of Christmas is before you start your apprenticeship with your father to be the next in line. You meet Piper at charity event where you’re gathering toys to send to low income communities. After Piper interviews you, you start asking her questions, and upon seeing that the cold world has turned such a warm heart into a Christmas cynic, you decide to give her the Christmas of a lifetime. I’m talking ice skating, light shows, snow on christmas, and Nat getting a few extra presents. On Christmas eve, you’re called back to the North Pole. Your dad wants you to start your apprenticeship with him on Christmas by seeing how it’s done. You tell him that you can’t, because you have your own duties this Christmas, and he’s proud of you for that. You tell Piper about your dad, and she doesn’t believe you at first, but after bringing her and Nat to the North Pole to see it all happen, she apologizes for not believing you. You kiss, and agree to split time between the North Pole and Piper’s hometown, because you would never make her give up what she loves.

Preston- You grew up in a small town, but moved to the city to get a job at an ad agency. Around the holidays, your agency notes that they’re looking for something more down-to-earth and rustic for their new ‘winter campaign,’ so they send you to your hometown for Christmas. They’re expecting a campaign plan by new years, but while you’re trying to do your job, you find Preston, selling Christmas trees at the local Christmas tree farm and greenhouse. He teaches you to slow down, and to appreciate a christmas built on family, camaraderie, and love. You use your ad/social media experience to save his dying christmas tree farm. At the end of the year, you decide to quit your job and stay with Preston, who brings you on as a partner in the business and in life.

X6-88- X6 is a loan company executive who has been sent to audit the inn that you have been taking care of since your spouse passed away years ago. He’s quite serious and no-nonsense, which clashes with the capacity for compassion that you clearly possess. He thinks such traits are inefficient and pointless. Despite that, you include him in all of the Christmas dinners and events that you have planned, even if he’s not enthused about them. Through the Christmastime events that you plan for the inn throughout the Christmas season, X6 realizes that you’re not just all heart and no head. You have great ideas, and you’re inclusive of him even when he’s pessimistic. He uses his own knowledge of your loan plan to outsmart his own company and save your inn for the time being. He decides to leave his job in the city to live with you at the inn so he can handle the business and finances.

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deusluxuria · 3 years ago

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Headcanon: Jotaro Kujo: Hey Jupiter

(Warning: Stone Ocean spoilers, long-ass long post, serious as hell, eating disorder mention, smoking mention, child abuse implied, parent death)

(HC: Jotaro's wife's name: Kelly -- because i hate calling her just 'jotaro's wife' lol)

Jotaro & Kelly got along so well that people were shocked when they got divorced.

They seemed so comfortable with each other, were constantly joking around, and were excellent parents. All that despite both of them having previously thought they'd never find anyone who understood and respected them. They were both misfits.

They separated for Jolyne's sake, and they didn't get over the divorce for quite a while. It was extremely sad. Though, people who didn't know them very well made all kinds of horrible assumptions about why they got divorced. Which made it so much more painful.

Jolyne and her dad were close when Jolyne was a child. Jotaro had been looking forward to being a father one day, ever since he was a teenager. He had felt that was his purpose. He was prepared to be fully committed.

And when Jolyne came along, she was everything; the most important thing in the world. Jotaro finally understood everything his mother had felt for him and everything she'd endured for his sake. How emotional she would always get over every little thing Jotaro did.

But, eventually, Jotaro's gradually increasing distance from his family left Jolyne so hurt and angry that she never wanted any contact with him and she felt she could never forgive him. She felt she had lost her father long before he was actually separated from the family. She mourned the emotional loss of him.

Jotaro had made the mistake, from the very beginning, of constantly lying to Kelly and Jolyne, and being cagey about why he sometimes had to disappear -- he hadn't told them about Stands and how unavoidably dangerous it was to have one.

But no attacks or dangerous incidents had happened between the death of Dio, until the appearance of Kira Yoshikage.

So Jotaro never quite found out what he was in for, until after he had already gotten married and had Jolyne.

Kelly would ask him what was going on and where he kept running off to. Jotaro continued to reply, "I can't tell you."

Kelly knew Jotaro as well as she could, and was completely sure it wasn't something like an affair, or anything immoral like an involvement with the mafia. Not that it made her feel any better that it wasn't anything like that.

During Jolyne's preteen years (after she had gotten arrested at fourteen, and Jotaro couldn't be there), one day, Kelly and Jotaro mutually decided they couldn't go on like that and have that kind of tension in the house, especially with no one except Jotaro knowing what was going on.

Kelly had reminded him several times during their marriage, "I hate it when you don't talk to me."

Jotaro agreed that he wasn't going to put her and their daughter through that anymore.

Jotaro and Kelly remained friends, but not without an unbearable stretch of finding it too painful to spend time with each other. When they did hang out again, before saying goodbye, they would hug for a while in a manner as if they'd die if they let go. So many things reminded them of each other. If they had left something at one another's homes, they'd cling to that object.

Kelly had been the first person Jotaro had slept with who hadn't made him uncomfortable. (Before he met her, it took him a few awful experiences to learn that, to him, sex without love was a nightmare.) And she was the first to be open to understanding his approach to intimacy in general.

She was one of the few people who hadn't judged him as cold or emotionless because of the way he looked. She didn't make hasty assumptions.

And Jotaro had already been so tired of the closed-minded way people usually treated him. He believed that, if things didn't work out with Kelly and him, he'd finally give up at letting people in.

When they were together, Jotaro had done most of the housework, being the one who relies on a daily routine and who has the strongest need for things to be in order. But once he was on his own again, he had trouble finding a reason to keep his living space up to standard or to cook anything or pay attention to a schedule.

Shortly after the divorce, Holly died.

Kelly had already warned Jotaro that, of the two of them, he would suffer the most from their separation. Because he didn't connect with people very well. But he would've never expected himself to fall nearly as hard as he did, even if his mom hadn't died.

People at work who usually never even gave him a "how's your day going," started asking him if he was okay.

His meltdowns became different & more frequent from the ones he usually had (i.e. from Autistic sensory-overload). He would blurt out disturbingly honest things, only to regret it so badly later that he'd shut himself in the nearest isolated place and start sobbing.

He'd struggled with an eating disorder since he was a kid, but he had mostly survived it with his mom's cooking as the only thing he could always eat and keep down. As a teenager, smoking was added as another coping mechanism.

But, the emotional hell he was going through because of his separation from his family caused a particularly bad relapse. And Holly wasn't there to save him anymore. He lost an appalling amount of weight.

Holly's funeral was a nightmare, mostly at the fault of Jotaro's dad, who made a spectacle of it. Inviting his celebrity friends and turning it into a selfish exploitation that required his security guards to be in attendance.

Jotaro secretly established a small, quiet area behind the building for everyone else. Jolyne and Kelly were there.

Jotaro left many times just to sit in his car and smoke with trembling hands -- he had successfully quit smoking back when he and Kelly had decided to have a child (causing a heightened number of eating disorder relapses), but had skyrocketed to a pack a day after his mom died.

Something broke in him that day. He could feel it. Like a canyon suddenly formed in his soul.

The last time he went back to the funeral, he went inside the building, walked up to his dad, and started waling on him. People screamed. Jotaro got a few punches into his dad's face before Kelly stopped him, holding onto him from behind and leading him away.

Jotaro had told her a few things about his father before. But not everything.

Abdul was the only person Jotaro had told. And after that conversation, Mohammed was silent for a while, and then said, "If you ever need anything, anything at all, I'm a phone call away."

After Mohammed had died, Jotaro not only couldn't muster the energy to explain the situation to anyone else, but he didn't know anyone else he trusted that deeply. Mohammed had experienced similar trauma, and knew that depth of hopelessness. He was not only the other parent that Jotaro had always needed, but he had some of Holly's likeness, with his open heart and boundless compassion.

And there was Kakyoin as well. The only friend he'd ever had that he actually felt close to. The only friend he could say "I love you" to without it feeling strange. They'd had their misunderstandings and their peeves about each other, but they were absolutely best friends.

He never connected with people at quite that level again. His friends in Egypt had been more than family. Soulmates, in a sense. Though Jotaro did find love and friendship afterwards, something about it still felt trite in comparison.

Jotaro never really recovered from his crisis with his divorce and with Holly's death. A few months after Holly died, Jotaro got a gastrostomy tube for eating disorder recovery and got the color back in his face. He at least looked like he was doing better. And he had found at least some meaning again in his cherishing of Josuke, another family member he would die for in a heartbeat.

But the depth of his loneliness; the realization of just how alone he was, awakened a suffocating dread that gnawed at him.

(Title: "Hey Jupiter" is a soul-crushing breakup song by Tori Amos)

#this b/c i never ever finish fanfiction jfc #stone ocean #jotaro kujo #jolyne kujo #jolyne cujoh #jotaro's wife #headcanon #autistic!jotaro #holly kujo #stardust crusaders #jojo's bizarre adventure #jjba #demipan!jotaro

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knifewieldingenby · 4 years ago

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ace week! yayyy!! Coming at you with some demisexual Aiden and Lamden! Inspired by @jaskierswolf ‘s amazing ace fics!

Of all the romantic places they could have met, they met at a bar. Lambert was only there to hang out with his brothers and play ping pong while Jaskier, Triss, and Yen were in the other room doing karaoke. He’d met a few people at the bar, slept with strangers for whom he’d never see again (if he was lucky). It wasn’t anything new. And then Aiden stepped up to the ping pong table and, with a shit-eating grin and a glint in his eyes, challenged him.

And he kicked Lambert’s ass.

Despite being annoyed that his streak had run out and he was no longer the best player in the house, Aiden’s smile made him feel warm and light on his feet, and after an hour of semi-drunken flirting he’d secured himself a date. Just at the bar the following week, just the two of them in a secluded corner with their choice of alcohol and a pile of wings between them. Aiden was just as flirty as that first night, his eyes roaming over Lambert’s face like he wanted to memorize every little feature, and Lambert was sure they would end up going home together at the end of the night.

They didn’t, and that felt...weird. Lambert was used to dating people who just wanted a quick fuck and left him in the dust come morning, but Aiden didn’t seem to be like that. He’d asked Lambert to dinner the following week. After that they went to an amusement park and, instead of the cliche first kiss at the top of the ferris wheel, Aiden had grabbed Lambert by the collar at the top of the highest roller coaster and pressed their lips firmly together. The shout from the sharp drop died in his throat, all his attention on how soft and warm Aiden was against him. He’d gotten another kiss during the ride, a soft peck on the cheek, and when they got off and went through the tunnel Lambert blushed to see that kiss on camera. He paid for two prints and kept his copy on the fridge. He was absolutely certain that they’d end up in bed that night.

They didn’t, and this time he was perfectly comfortable with it. Aiden seemed happy to take things slow, though his lips found Lambert’s more and more over the coming months, his hands wrapping around Lambert’s chest and pulling him close when they were tipsy and giggling at the bar, his head in Lambert’s lap when they watched movies together at his house. Despite how physically affectionate and flirtatious he was, he didn’t seem very interested in progressing further than that. For the first time in Lambert’s dating history there was no rush.

Six months into the relationship, Lambert felt, after having exchanged the L word months ago, that they should at least talk about sex, about what they both wanted out of the relationship. He didn’t think it was an unreasonable conversation, but when he brought it up one movie night as the credits were rolling Aiden stiffened in his lap and made to pull away.

“I’m sorry,” Lambert started, concerned by the sudden furrow in Aiden’s brow. “I just thought - we’ve been together a while and I thought we should, I don’t know, just talk about it? I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like thi-”

“No, it’s okay,” Aiden said, his voice soft but slightly strained. “You’re right. We should...talk about this.” He ran his fingers through long brown hair anxiously and gestured to Lambert. “But you go first. Please.”

“Okay…” Lambert was decidedly a lot less comfortable with the conversation now. Something about Aiden’s behavior made him worry that his words would just upset the man. “I just...I don’t know how to say this. I guess I’m just used to having sex a little earlier in the relationship? To be honest, most of my relationships start with sex and go from there. This is kind of a first for me.”

The furrow in his lover’s brow tightened, his mouth turning down into a deep frown, and Lambert rushed on to explain.

“Not that that’s a bad thing! Actually it’s been kind of nice. To build a relationship with you that isn’t based on sex. It makes me happy. I just thought we should talk about what we both want as far as sex goes.”

Aiden nodded slowly. He took a deep breath, opened his mouth, closed it again. Lambert could practically feel the nervous energy pouring out of him.

“Hey,” he gently reached out and placed his hand on Aiden’s cheek, his thumb rubbing soft circles into smooth skin. “Please don’t be nervous. There’s no pressure here, I don’t expect anything from you. I just want us to talk.”

“What if you don’t like what I have to say,” Aiden asked. His usually boisterous voice was so small, it made Lambert’s heart ache.

“Do you still love me?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay,” Lambert smiled. “That’s all that matters. Anything else I can handle. Just try me.”

Aiden took a deep breath, his mouth opened, but this time he managed to get words out. “I-I’m demisexual.”

Lambert cocked his head to the side. “I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar with the term, kitten.”

“Not surprised,” Aiden laughed softly. “It’s not...common knowledge. It means that I don’t experience sexual attraction unless I have a very deep emotional connection with someone. And that isn’t to say that I don’t with you, it’s just...I seem to have a threshold, if that makes sense? I don’t know if it’s more time my body is waiting for, but I don’t feel ready yet.” He grabbed Lambert’s hands between his own and squeezed. “I want to have sex with you someday. I want to share that connection. Just...not yet. Not for a while, I think.”

“And here I thought you were ready to dump me,” Lambert laughed, mostly to ease his own tension. “I can see why you’d be worried to tell me. Our society is shit when it comes to sexual expectations. But you have nothing to worry about from me, kitten. I’ll wait as long as you want.”

“Even if it’s years from now?” Aiden smiled but there was truth to his words.

“Yes, even then. Even if you decide you never want to have sex with me, I’ll still be here. I’ll be here until you kick my ass to the curb.”

“That’ll never happen,” Aiden smiled, and this time it was easy and real. He brought Lambert’s hands up to his face and kissed along his fingers softly, and Lambert knew he was the luckiest man alive. This certainly wasn’t what he’d expected to get out of this conversation but he was grateful nonetheless for Aiden’s honesty and willingness to open up to him.

“Thank you for trusting me.”

A little under six months later they did end up having sex after all, and it was everything Lambert had hoped it would be, but he and Aiden both agreed that their favorite part was just cuddling afterward, bodies pressed together from head to toe, skin on skin. Aiden’s desire for sex didn’t change much after that; it happened when it happened, sometimes a month apart, sometimes longer. The naked cuddling, on the other hand, happened much more often. There was nothing sexual about it, and in many ways Lambert prefered it that way. As long as he got to be intimate with his boyfriend, however Aiden would have him, he was happy.

just gonna tag a few people: @honeysuckletook @nimnimsblog @she-who-drank-vodka-with-cats @vaire-gwir (I wasn’t sure if I should tag other people doing ace week so I didn’t cuz anxiety lol)

#witcher aiden #witcher lambert #aiden x lambert #lambert x aiden #lamden #my writing

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silvysartfulness · 4 years ago

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xiao xingchen's mental state is So Terrible

Request: Can we see Xiao Xingchen’s thoughts on near suicide? Abandonment? Betrayal? He’s defined himself by other people for most of his life - his master, his totally-not-soulmate Song Lan, and his murder-soulmate Xue Yang. To be left by one person and then to be betrayed by another must be … a lot. Does Xingchen think he betrayed Song Lan because Xue Yang killed Song Lan’s people? He hasn’t had any time to deal with it, because he’s been playing babysitter… and then saving his pet murderer, too. Because I’ve put a lot of thought into this, but my writing skills are about 0, and you are so good at angst.

Okay! I’ll just… stream of consciousness on this. Because there is a lot to say about Xiao Xingchen’s mental state, his sacrifices, his losses and his choices.

There’s definitely a lot of touching on these issues currently in Heaven Has A Road. The callback to Xiao Xingchen’s suicide, and the way both Xue Yang and Song Lan fear the worst when he takes off on his own.

The kicker is that Xiao Xingchen himself doesn’t realize. Doesn’t realize that they worry about that, or why they would. He may still be very much prone to self-sacrificial and reckless decisions for the sake of others, but he’s not actively suicidal or seeking to self-harm now, at least not in such a direct and physical way.

But of course it’s a theme very much hanging in the air.

To look back at canon; Xiao Xingchen is, I think, naive even by Celestial Mountain standards. The previous two of Baoshan Sanren’s disciples who left the mountain either went dark (it’s just vaguely hinted at, but clearly it Was Not Pretty) or was a rather mischievous trickster (shaving off Lan Qiren’s beard for being a rule-obsessed square).

There is a spiritual concept of “going into the world” or “leaving the world” respectively - leaving is what Baoshan Sanren did, letting go of attachment to worldly matters to retreat to her unnamed mountain and cultivate immortality. What Xiao Xingchen does is the opposite - he chooses to “enter the world”, to leave that detached existence behind to get involved in earthly matters - beautifully alluded to by the “chen” in his name, meaning (worldly) dust. (That choice is what Xue Yang curses him for during their confrontation that last day - “If you don’t understand the world, you shouldn’t have come! Why didn’t you stay on your mountain?!” )

But he makes that choice. He wants to help people, make a difference, and so he leaves his family behind, makes that sacrifice even knowing that it means he won’t ever see his home again, and descends into the world.

Xiao Xingchen is described as gentle but determined, not only physically fighting and vanquishing evil, but helping people with any ”difficult matter” they bring before him, never refusing anyone. He wants to do good; what’s good for any humble person, not just the mighty few. And for all that he is naive, Xiao Xingchen is also self-assured and uncompromising. He knows what he is striving for, and he doesn’t hesitate when it comes to putting thought into action.

And down in the world, he finds someone else who puts those ideals over the blood ties of the mighty clans - Song Lan. Zichen. They grow close, they talk about starting a sect together – between the lines that means spending the rest of their lives together, living for those shared ideals. They grow so close, people always mention them together.

And then Xue Yang happens. Something so corrupted and grisly, it shakes even this extremely powerful young cultivator.

Whether you go by novel or series canon, the way the rest of the world handles the aftermath of the Chang massacre, it clearly dents Xiao Xingchen’s trust in the sects, in society and its concept of ”justice” quite badly.

And then Baixue happens, as a direct consequence of them capturing and making enemies with Xue Yang. Xue Yang specifically tells Song Lan, ”Tell Xiao Xingchen this is a gift for him!”

So yes, I think Xiao Xingchen takes the full blame of the Baixue massacre upon himself, because Xue Yang was out to hurt him. But because he and his immortal master were out of reach, Baixue paid the price. Song Lan paid the price.

So he broke his vow never to return home, and he gave up his eyes, in a hopeless bid to repair some modicum of the damage he’d caused, to at least give Song Lan his sight back, if not his home, his family, his ideals and beliefs and and hope.

At some point in that aftermath, Song Lan did blame Xiao Xingchen and told him they should never meet again, and he took that to heart, too. Of course Song Lan wouldn’t want to see him again – what is he now, but a reminder of those losses? The losses his own hubris caused?

So he wrapped up Shuanghua and went nameless into the world, avoiding attachments, described as wandering aimlessly from place to place to offer help and then move on, to make sure no one else would be hurt because of him. (That Xue Yang wouldn’t hurt anyone else because of him.)

I wrote a passage about him thinking back on this in an upcoming chapter;

I tried being no one, he thought, unbecomingly bitter and hurting. To make sure people wouldn’t get hurt because of me again. I thought I succeeded, but I ended up hurting people, killing people with my own hands instead.

He studiously tried tuning out the somewhat uneven footfalls behind them, focused wholly on the hand in his.

I tried being nothing, after that, after learning the truth.

But people had died because of him all the same, even then, even with him gone. The last survivors of the Chang, the people of Yi City, all those nameless victims whose blood had paid for the spells to drag him back into the world of the living… A-Qing.

I won’t hide away again, he thought, setting his jaw. I have to try… Try to be something. To do something. To leave a legacy better than this. To make it all worth it, make sure all this suffering wasn’t for nothing.

It was a bitterness that his hopes of doing that, the chance to realize the purpose he so desperately clung to… came at the hands of the man whose shadow had haunted him into nameless exile and caused all that grief and death in the first place.

How much time Xiao Xingchen had to think about all this varies wildly between CQL-canon and MDZS-canon – in the novel, not a whole lot of time passes between the Baixue massacre and Xiao Xingchen meeting a-Qing and eventually Xue Yang. But in CQL, the Baixue massacre takes place before Sunshot, before Yiling Laozu claims the Burial Mounds, before Nightless City and Wei Wuxian’s death… it’s been years of wandering alone before Xiao Xingchen meets a-Qing, and then Xue Yang. I’m not sure if it’s stated how long the Sunshot war is in CQL-canon, but even only going by the things we do know – Yanli having a child, Wei Wuxian having been dead for 16 years at the end of the Yi City arc where the main events took place 10 years ago, it’s anywhere between seven to some ten years.

So I think he has had a lot of time to reflect on all that grief from the past, but that it’s really just been spirals of hopelessness, never really processing or moving on from it. Shuanghua is still wrapped up when he meets a-Qing. He doesn’t introduce himself by name. It’s her shameless happiness, her choice to seek out his company – oh, how he’s ached for connection! - that finally gets him smiling again.

And once he makes friends with the odd stranger whose life he saves… He smiles. He laughs. They all build a home together. Shuanghua is no longer hidden. At the market, the stranger casually calls him by his name.

I think it’s only once they settle down in Yi City that he really begins healing from the horrors of the past. Dares start to build something new, in a tiny little backwater at the very edge of the map. Surely Xue Yang’s shadow won’t reach him, and this humble little existence he’s building here?

So of course it utterly breaks him when the truth comes out. Not just one, but awful truth after awful truth, tearing apart everything he’s built, everything he thought he had – everything he’s done.

A-Qing lied to him about being blind. His ”friend” was Xue Yang all along. He’s been tricked into killing people. He was tricked into killing Song Lan.

The character songs of the Yi City arc lean very heavily into Buddhist rather than Daoist themes – which is super interesting! - but especially the concept of karmic justice. No matter how unaware Xiao Xingchen was of it, he has killed. Not only did he turn away from cultivating immortality a long time ago – his soul is tainted forever. Gu Cheng speaks of ”debts” that can’t be repaid, falling into karmic sin. This isn’t just about tricking him into doing nasty things which leaves him horrified – he has been spiritually destroyed, and he didn’t even know.

The line of Gu Cheng that cuts the deepest is perhaps ”it was not your fault”/ ”The guilt doesn’t lie with you.”

Because that, I think, is at the core of things when Xiao Xingchen reaches for Shuanghua that day in Yi City - that he feels that it does. That it’s all his fault.

He has lost everything. He let down and/or was betrayed by everyone he knew. Killed his beloved soulmate. He himself is tainted and ruined beyond all salvation, because of what he’s done. And so he doesn’t just kill himself, he destroys himself, kills his body and shatters his soul, beyond all hope for reincarnation and rebirth. He utterly and completely ends himself, ends everything that is and was Xiao Xingchen.

Which is heartbreaking beyond words, and also why Heaven Has A Road clearly needed to happen. D:

…

I hope this was at least in the ballpark of the kind of rambling you were hoping for. XD

#untamed artfulness #meta #xiao xingchen #the happy songxuexiao roadtrip story #asksilvy #submission #cw:suicide

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iridescent-petrichor · 4 years ago

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we’ll meet again, chapter five

Pairing: Peter Maximoff x Reader

Warnings: i dont think so?

Words: 1.7K

Previous Chapter - Next Chapter

You’d never been on the run from the cops before, and you hated every second of it. It had been only a week since the incident, but you couldn’t take any more of it.

You collapsed in an alley, exhaustion overtaking you. It was a dangerous place to sleep, but you were too tired to care. You were so tired that you almost didn’t hear the footsteps approaching you. Blinking a couple times, you looked up and saw two men walking towards you. Sitting up straighter, you furrowed your brows together. They didn’t seem like threats.

They stopped a couple feet in front of you.

“Hello. My name is Charles Xavier. I understand that you’ve caused a bit of a fire recently.” The man in a wheelchair extended his hand for you to shake. You didn’t take it.

“How did you find me?” They must be cops, or maybe they’re higher up. Government agents maybe? What if you get sent to the Pentagon just like-

“We’re not cops.” You blinked, focusing back on the men in front of you. “I found you through Cerebro – a device Hank designed that helps me connect to other mutants in the world.” He gestures to the man – Hank – who was standing next to him.

“Other… mutants?” Your mind instantly went to Peter. If they found you, they could’ve tracked him down too considering how careless he is with his powers.

“I can help you control your powers. You seem like you need it.” He glanced down, and only then did you notice the fire leaking out of your palms. You jumped, standing stiffly as the fire instantly disappearing before you looked back up at the men.

“You promise?” He nodded, extending his hand once more. You shook it, making the decision final.

He turned in his wheelchair, heading out of the alley and down the street. Hank gave you one last look to make sure you were following before he joined Charles Xavier.

They stopped at a car, motioning for you to get in. You hesitated for a moment, briefly thinking about how stupid of an idea this was if these two were scammers of some kind, before you climbed in the backseat.

Fuck it.

The school was massive to say the least. Giant strings of ivy fell from the roof down the building. It was one of the most beautiful things you’d ever seen. You stepped out of the car, unable to contain the shock on your face.

“Welcome to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.” Hank smiled, appearing next to you.

“Wow.” You muttered, smiling wide.

“Come, let’s show you the inside.” Charles was already heading towards the entrance. You glanced between him and Hank before following him inside.

The inside was just as grand as the outside, and just as devoid of people. You looked from the chandelier to the giant staircase, and finally back to Hank.

“Didn’t you say this was a school?”

He nodded. “It used to be.”

“What happened to everyone?”

He looked to the ground, not responding. When you glanced at Charles, you realized that you likely wouldn’t be getting an answer out of either of them for a while.

“Want the grand tour?” Hank asked, changing the subject, smiling when you nodded enthusiastically.

Maybe being a mutant wasn’t so bad after all.

The news of the fire had been eating away at Peter for the next couple weeks, every possibility of what could’ve happened to her stewing in his mind.

Finally, he gave in to his impulse, wishing his mom a quick goodbye before speeding off to the location of where the fire had been. He knew she wouldn’t be there, but it was the only lead on her that he had.

It didn’t take long for him to arrive in New York, and he contemplated trying to find that guy that helped his dad break out of the Pentagon for a moment.

No, I have to stay focused.

He glanced around the crowd on the off chance she’d be nearby. No such luck. He sighed, leaning against a wall for a moment to gather his thoughts.

How are you gonna find one girl in a massive city like this?

“Are you sure you’ll be able to get the school back up and running?” You asked, watching Charles wheel over to Cerebro with Hank by your side.

You were wearing sleek gloves made from a mixture of materials Hank had been working with. The three of you quickly acknowledged that before you got your powers under control, you would need to keep them from surfacing at the wrong moment, and after quite a few tests, he determined that your power often came from your hands. They were comforting; it made you feel like you had more control already.

“Yes.” He said simply, now placing the helmet over his head. Hank left your side to join Charles, messing with the controls that you knew better than to even try to understand.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” You asked after a moment of silence. You felt so useless standing there off to the side.

They paused, looking between each other for a moment. “You could… get groceries? Hank suggested lamely.

Awesome.

“Unfortunately there is nothing for you to do in here, maybe it is best that you get out of the mansion for some time today.” Charles said, not looking towards you. He certainly explained it better than Hank would’ve.

You sighed, nodding. “Okay fine, but I’m taking your wallet.” Charles laughed as you turned on your heel and walked from the room.

Peter had been in New York for a couple days, calling his mom using spare change at some phone booths around the city to let her know he won’t be home for a while. He managed to call every day, but he could tell she was getting increasingly frustrated whenever he said he wasn’t going home yet.

Today, though, he promised her that he would head home. It was a stupid idea anyway, looking for you here.

When he hung up, he let out a long sigh, leaning against the phone booth. All of the hope that he brought to New York had dwindled out painfully. That’s when he could’ve sworn he saw a glimpse of you walking down the street.

It jolted him back into reality, barely refraining from using his powers to run over there in case it wasn’t actually you.

Then, weaving through the crowd, he saw you. You was walking on the opposite side of the street, facing away from him, but it was unmistakably you. He broke out in a grin, running to you as fast as he could.

In their defense, it was a nice day outside.

You took a deep breath, keeping your bag of groceries close to yourself as you weaved between people to get back home.

Home.

Smiling to yourself, you thought about how welcoming Charles and Hank were. The idea of restarting the mutant school excited you, giving you a small skip in your step.

You were so lost in your thoughts you didn’t notice the person run in front of you until you knocked into them.

“Oh!” You backed up. “I’m so…” You apology died on your tongue when you saw who it was.

“Hey.” In an instant, you were closer to the building, out of the way of the impatient crowd.

“Peter.” You brought your hand up to his face as if to make sure he was actually there. “What are you-”

“I saw the news. Quite the fire you started, Y/N.” He was grinning from ear to ear, and it was so contagious.

“Hey, at least I didn’t break a ‘dangerous mutant’ out of the Pentagon.” You matched his smile, unable to contain your happiness from seeing him.

“How’d you even know that was me? I’m sure there’s plenty of very attractive silver-haired mutants out there.” You laughed loudly. God, it was nice just being in his presence again.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“So, where you headed?” He asked, moving away from you to walk in the direction you were originally heading.

“I’ve actually been staying with some mutants,” you had to jog to catch up to him, smiling when you noticed he slowed down to match your pace.

“That’s cool.” He nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets. The conversation was easy; it was always so easy with Peter.

“You should stay with us.” You looked up at him, frowning when he laughed shortly.

“I was actually gonna ask you that.” You tilted your head in confusion. “When I saw the news, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. After a while I figured what the hell, I should check on my best friend. Make sure she has a place to stay. And if you didn’t I would’ve let you stay at my place – well my mom’s place. But she’d probably be fine if you holed up in the basement with me, y’know? You were always there all the time anyway, so-”

“Pete.” You spoke, cutting off his rambling. He paused for a moment, before speaking again.

“I was just worried.”

“I get it. But I’m fine. Trust me.” You grabbed his hand, giving it a squeeze before letting go.

“You sure?” He finally looked up from the ground, staring at you. “Cause I can’t protect you all the time if I’m all the way in DC.”

“I promise.” You said, giving him a smile as one final reassurance. He seemed to relax a bit, leaning closer to you.

“Okay, good, cause I kinda have to get home.”

“What?”

“I know, I’m sorry.” He groaned, putting an arm around your shoulder and pulling you into him. “I’ve kinda been here for more than a couple of days and my mom is getting more upset by the day and I kinda just promised her that I would be heading home like, now, so…”

“Will we ever get to actually hang out again?” You frowned, laying your head on his shoulder.

“I’m sure we’ll find a way.” You nodded, pulling him into a hug before the two of you said your goodbyes.

As quick as he came, he was gone. You bit your lip, holding back tears that threatened to spill down your face. Saying goodbye to him was always the hardest part.

When you got back to the mansion you set the groceries down in the kitchen, cursing to yourself when you realized you forgot entirely to mention to Peter where you’d been staying.

You marched up the stairs to your bedroom, not bothering to tell the boys you were home. Charles could find out easily, anyway.

#peter maximoff imagine #peter maximoff x reader

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whump-town · 4 years ago

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See, How The Most Dangerous Thing Is Love

Where you go I'm going So jump and I'm jumping Since there is no me without you

She can’t stop running and, like an idiot, he keeps chasing.

warnings: i don’t think there is anything to warn against which seems odd... considering... but I did use some weird fucking metaphors and I don’t know if they make any sense...

Hotchniss

If the tension between Aaron Hotchner and Emily Prentiss wasn’t apparent upon their reunion following Elle’s leave, it was painfully clear after Tobias. Eggshells be damned. He inquires around her compartmentalization, tone dark, and judging where JJ had just meant to build a bridge. He had aimed to tear one down. To remind her just how out of place she is in this unit.

There can only be one lone wolf in the pack.

“You came off of a desk job--”

She narrows her eyes, feet shifting. He’d come out of nowhere, as she’s finding he often does, and that just aggravates her even more. She’s a trained spy and Interpol agent, he shouldn’t be able to sneak up on her. The shield she throws between them does nothing when he already has his own firm in place. Feet planted in preparation for her attack.

Her revenge is sweet.

It starts with the way her back draws tight as a bow.

“No, stop. Stop. All right everybody right now-- what’s my worst quality?”

The flip of her dark hair, drawing the limp branch of a tree towards her chest. Poised ready to strike out towards him and the tight coil of childish glee derived from mischief in her chest. Her words the fiery snap of its release, the edge catches his cheek to leave an open, jagged wound. “You don’t trust women as much as men.” The room’s attention lays in the silence of that lashing. Their eyes watching the dark crimson of his blood trickle down his cheek.

And he wipes it away. Unflinching as he powers on. He can see it in their eyes, the way they keep looking back at the wound on his cheek. Thinking about the words and their implications. How they each drew back and laid into him with their strikes.

He can see it in Emily, the way she awaits her second chance. She’ll draw that branch back again. There are more branches, he suspects, in her forest of mistrust and impatience with him. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t have a few branches of his own he’d like to hit her with.

It is only in the most fundamental way that they trust one another.

“Don’t get me wrong, Johnny.”

A drop of sweat runs along his hairline and down the back of his neck. The heat of Alabama in August is worse than Virginia and even stripped of his suit jacket, the weather is insufferable. The rickety old pisshole of a house groans under the weight of the four adults standing in the attic. With no draft and dust covering every visible surface, it smells like something’s crawled up here and died. He suspects, if he were to look hard enough, he’d find that to be true.

Johnny and Mark Wrights have been murdering and raping teenage girls from the local high school. Grown men covered in grim and old denim-- the epitome of the white trash that comes to mind when they set out to solve these kinds of cases. It makes Hotch feel a deep shame for being raised anywhere near the south. Now, as he stands pinned to Johnny’s chest, the heavy scent of pig shit and sweat covering the man, he feels deep condemnation for the south.

He wants to get as far from this town as possible.

Prentiss’ gun is steady. As far as agents to come to have his back, he’s lucky that it’s her. Her brows raise a fraction when she steps into the room, surprised that it’s him. It takes him off guard that she’s choosing empathy with these men. She repeats her earlier statement. “Don’t get me wrong, boys,” she shakes her head and her eyes flicker to Hotch. “That’s my boss you have there.”

Johnny digs the barrel of his gun into Hotch’s face, the metal biting his flesh. He’s antsy. Emily must see that… surely, she must know that she won’t be able to talk her way out of this.

“Now,” she smirks. Her inflection has risen to nonchalance as if talking to a friend. Her shrug of indifference makes his chest feel dangerously tight. “He’s a dick,” she informs them. “Makes my life a living hell.” His eyes glued to her index finger. She’s talking and moving and if she’s distracted him with her words then she’s distracted the Unsubs too. “He’s got a little boy at home though,” her eyes flick to him.

He’s hit with a sudden understanding.

“So…” he watches her back once again. A bow, bending to snap. He ducks, this time, when her branch comes flying back at his face. Throwing his weight to the side, he takes Johnny by surprise, and before he can blink there are two quick shots that ring the end.

For a stunned moment, he’s laid out on his back. His eyes are on the ceiling just breathing and shaking.

She comes to stand at his side, offering him a hand up.

He takes it.

“Don’t,” she says before he can thank her. Her eyes are dark. She’s displeased. Not only with him and the stupidity that got them in this mess, to begin with, but for the girls. Emily had wanted to bring those girls justice. To sit at Johnny and Mark’s court hearings. To drink herself numb and to see them thrown in jail so they’d never see the light of day ever again.

Executed in the attack of some rickety old house just isn’t the same.

He nods his head.

They part ways.

But he can see her back.

And she sees his hands.

She lashes out and he pulls scabs apart. He agitates old wounds. His thumb works across his finger, picking at a scab, and then he draws blood and she watches as he dumbly looks down at his hands. As if he’s confused at why it would bleed.

A serial arson typically leaves little room for emotional collateral but, of course, he makes an exception. He digs his thumb into his finger, rubbing back and forth, voice breaking, and attention split as he makes connections that no one else sees. Gideon steps to his side, calming Hotch and stopping the trickle of blood over his callused hands. Holds his own hands over the wounds.

She sees that day, the scars that litter his ledger. The scabs… Aaron Hotchner is an open wound. He can’t let anything go. Won’t let the wounds heal. He needs the pain the way she needs the bows. She hates that she’s starting to understand this man that she hates so passionately.

Hearing him shout, the pain in his voice as he tears viciously after Evan Abby makes her falter. There he goes again, picking at wounds that should have healed. Who exactly is he saving? It’s not Abby. The man is a walking corpse, riddled with cancer. Watching as Hotch sinks into Morgan’s arms, his dread and hopelessness bringing him to his knees.

The blood falls down his hands.

But he picks at a wound that makes her bow and all is right, once again, in their little world.

“I want you on that plane with me.”

She finds him on a bender a few days later. The case is solved but that doesn’t mean she feels any better about the way that they left things. A boy swept up in their carnage-- “the boy brought me this last one. Didn’t even ask him to.” She sits down one barstool away from him and wonders if he’s thinking about that too.

But he’s scratching. Not at his hands but at the tumbler he twirls lazily around, mesmerized by the amber liquid in it. He throws what little is left into his mouth and grimaces, not at the taste but at the scab he’s just pulled free. She watches the blood fall.

He gets good at stopping her attacks.

“There’s nothing we could have done,” he breathes, the hurt in his voice the only reason she doesn’t shoot him down with a scowl. For some reason, he takes the seat across from her and pushes a coffee to her. She looks at the mug and then at him. His head dipped, eyes on the sludge he’s calling a peace treaty.

She wraps her hands around the mug. The effect of the warmth is immediate. “I know,” she admits, sipping at the liquid. God, that pisses her off. He always makes the coffee perfect. She can’t even make her coffee the way she likes.

He hums, shaking his head. “I think…” he glances at her and looks out the window. “I think I’m still trying to convince myself that.” The soft admission is so… unlike him. Where is the gruff push? The fire in his eyes. She finds only hard truth. Standing rooted where he is, he frowns with something he can’t convince himself isn’t worry.

Where does she go? Tonight, he will go home and find it empty. Which is fine because he can’t be around Haley and Jack on a night like this. He is no husband. No father. He needs to remind himself of the emptiness that is Aaron Hotchner. The pain and the torture. He’s not meant to be a father and he pushes his father’s legacy a little harder each day he pretends his marriage is a happy one.

If she can not get lost in these faux realities… What does she do?

Him. She does him.

For a month he convinces himself that he can fix the little pieces of his marriage but finds his hands covered in the jagged wounds of the glass carnage. As it turns out, some things simply refuse to go back together. He bleeds and bleeds and Emily, of all people, comes to mend his aches. Moving him away from the fragments, forcing him to let go.

The sex is harsh. He’s rough and she lets him. Urging him on with the roll of her own hips, his hair gripped tightly in her hand. They’ve hurt one another gravely and to know his weaknesses makes her that much better at drowning out his pleasure. She’s surprised to find that his mouth isn’t just good for smart ass remarks.

It sparks something deep within them both.

“Garcia thought she heard…” JJ tightens her mouth, forcing her smile down. She glances over at Garcia, the two sharing smiles that can’t be hidden. For the first time in a while, Garcia came with them on a case. Meaning their usual splitting of the rooms didn’t work so Emily, instead of rooming with JJ, roomed with Hotch.

Garcia smirks at Emily, “I just heard someone up last night.”

Emily knows exactly what they heard. She feigns innocence none-the-less. “Late?” she asks. “I was in bed as soon as we got back.” Which is true because she had Hotch pinned to the wall with a hand down his trousers before the door could swing completely shut behind them. It didn’t take long for him to flip the script and have her on the bed. “I doubt it was anyone from the team, weren’t you all exhausted?”

Garcia accepts that as an answer. For now, that’s reasonable enough. It’s rather silly, is it not, to assume something is going on between Hotch and Emily, of all people. They really sell their pitch with the heated, just under their breath, argument that they have only an hour later. Though it isn’t to save face but because he’s an asshole sleep-deprived and she’s, truly, exhausted for the same reason. JJ and Garcia both feel rather stupid for having thought the commotion the night before could be them.

Six months later, it happens again.

“We were arguing,” Emily offers with hefty-sigh. She’s not just selling her role. Lately, they’ve had to repeatedly come to a heated, uncomfortable debate. Their relationship, what it is and what is really isn’t, is being questioned. Are they enough to power through the last year? Should they be something that makes it through the next?

She rubs at her eyes, careful to keep her hair brushed over her neck. While she’d checked and double checked this morning for any marks on her neck, Hotch has been rather nippy (in all sense of that word) and the last thing she needs is explaining some rogue hickey he’s placed. Unlike him, she doesn’t have a high collar to hide behind.

JJ raises an eyebrow but says nothing. The two of them are going through something, the whole team has noticed. Though, if they’re honest, they don’t suspect the rocks and tumbles of a relationship getting onto its feet. They’re waiting for one of them to snap. Whether it be Emily, who will likely pack up her belongings and leave. Regardless of her love for the team. Hotch… well, he’s losing his grip on his so solidly built and reinforced shields. His pain and discontent are slipping through his armor.

“Arguing?”

Emily sighs, nodding. “He’s an asshole,” she mumbles. “What do you want me to say?” Her tone, tense and defensive, raises a little more attention than she meant it to. Lowering her head, she digs her fingers into her temples. She’s not sure if it’s better or worse that Hotch notices immediately as he walks into the room. There’s a tense moment, the two of them just staring at each other, before he clears his throat and jumps right back into the problem at hand.

The case always comes first. Their relationship after every other conceivable thing.

It makes sense, for them, until it doesn’t.

“This isn’t what you signed up for.”

Up until that moment, he’d considered himself hiding fairly well behind his scowl. Aaron is safely nestled where Hotch can’t hurt him and, what scares him even more, is how protected he is from Prentiss. Because Emily might have tears streaming down her face right now but he knows he’s looking at Prentiss. From the steel in her dark eyes to the conviction that feels, and is, so misplaced.

He swallows around the stupidity that tries to come fumbling out of his mouth. Something sentimental, foolish. “I don’t understand,” he manages. It has taken him his entire adult life to admit to that. To find the courage to say when he doesn’t follow and all for what? To sit here, at her hospital bedside, and grit out the confession. He can’t fucking say I love you but he can consume the poison of letting go.

To succumb where he should fight.

“Please,” she whispers, softly. But she hadn’t been the other half watching. Unable to do a damn thing while her screams, the muffled sounds of her body hitting the walls, had filled his head. He’d listened as Cyrus beat her. In a way, no he didn't sign up for this. No one in a relationship wants every thought about their partner to be about the end. Will it come soon? Leaving one partner to grieve the other longer than they knew each other? To answer to that mourning call-- what is left when all you are is taken? What parts of him are really her?

“If it’s what you want.” he rasps.

She turns her head, barring to him the sight of the bruise that takes up the right side of her jaw. That’s answer enough.

Dave takes her home from the hospital that evening, wondering what exactly it is that’s happened. He noticed the two of them today. He’s not stupid. “How are you feeling?” he asks, looking over at her on his passenger seat. Getting hurt happens but this is the first time she’s ever had to call someone to pick her up. Dave knows, in that way a parent knows that the silence of their children spells encroaching doom, who was supposed to drive her home tonight. One might call it, also, parental intuition.

She doesn’t lift her head from the window. Doesn’t even look at him. “Fine.”

Dave knows Hotch will answer with the same answer Monday when they return from the office.

Calling the two of them tense is an understatement.

Emily returns to work and they steer clear of her. The whispers follow her weary body around like a cloak. That she can manage. That is nothing.

It’s his absence that she feels.

Her coffee tastes odd. She’s grown used to the way that he makes it. Too strong and with no creamer but no matter what she does it just doesn’t taste the same. He’s even ruined tea. His mouth always tasted of Earl Grey or the bitter remnants of his coffee. Now, even smelling Earl Grey twists a knife within her. One she buried herself.

He’s fucking everywhere.

It’s driving her mad.

The worst part is that he’s not there.

In her bed, she rolls over. Throwing a leg over where his hips would usually be. She finds nothing but soft, used cotton. Not even the pillow carries the lingering scent of him.

His sweater hangs over a chair in her room but it’s absent of his warmth. She’s worn it too often and now she can’t even bring it to her face to pretend he’s here.

Nightmares plague her sleep and she wonders if this is penance for breaking his heart or if he’d just kept them away.

She watches, one night, as her nightmares crawl out of her ears sneer right back at her.

“Where’s Hotch?” Emily falls into step with JJ.

The blonde shrugs, “I called him twice. He’ll just have to meet us here when he wakes up.”

Though she falters, body stiffening and pausing, she tries to carry on unbothered. Seemingly unbothered by this progression. Hotch never lets his phone go to voicemail.

She’s the one that finds him four hours later. Lying supine, unresponsive in a hospital bed. The doctor’s words roll right off her, she takes in only that he will, eventually, be okay. And she wonders what it would have been like to really lose him. Not to just yearn for him but to not even avoid his eye in the hall. To hover with her finger over his contact and for there to be no possibility that he’ll answer.

Dead.

He could have died.

Stupidly, foolishly, she takes his hand. His eyes crack open and she pretends she doesn’t see his immediate relief followed far too closely by the pain. Physically brought on by the wounds of both her hands and Foyet’s. “I almost lost you,” she says.

He closes his eyes when she kisses him but when they pull apart he grimaces. Consciousness is painful, miserable. Her hand clutched by his, he manages a few weak breaths. Each one builds the strength to speak. “You can’t lose what you never had,” he answers, a moment later. By the time the cruelness of his truth has hit her, he’s slipped back under the drugs. His hand limp and clammy.

He’s right, though.

They both knew where he was coming in. The ins and outs of his embrace. That he’d pull her in and push her away in the same breath. Afraid, too afraid, to try at this again and, yet, he’d tried. He might not have had the strength to manage love but he’d held her through the nights. He knew her favorite foods and was never shy about tearing her apartment apart for missing the heating pad if she needed.

And what had she done for him?

She’d tricked him. Lured him in with the lies that she could do this. But she’s still drawn tightly. A bow that lashes out. Hurting others before they have a chance to hurt her and, as a result, she’s killed him more than Foyet could have dreamed.

Mostly, what he means is that she never allowed herself to have him. She never had him and, yet, she misses him every step of the way.

They have one another one last time.

She settles her hips over his and looks everywhere but the agitated, raised scars across his chest. He’s not cleared for strenuous activity but if he can’t have her, can’t feel her lips moving up his jaw and her fingers snaking up his side he’s certain that will kill him far sooner than any strain to his body. He’d rather die by her hand anyhow.

After that, there is no more, but it lingers thickly in the air.

She’s still Emily when her name comes out of his mouth. She still watches his lips, wondering if she were to capture them with her own if they would still taste the same. He looks for her first when things get dangerous and it’s his name she wakes up crying.

Haley dies. Emily puts distance between them but he still looks for her first.

“Please,” she places her hands on his chest. Forcing his body away even though just the feeling of her palms pressed to his chest sends yearning straight down her spine. “Aaron,” his name comes choked. “Please, if you knew me, if you had any idea of the things that I have done you’d run. I need you to run, don’t you understand that?”

He looks down at her, mouth open. Can she not see him? That he is a man made up of scars and scabs. A wound that bleeds. He picks and pokes and he bleeds all over everything. “I don’t run,” he says. He hadn’t run from the carnage of his marriage. Can’t she remember picking him up after that whole affair. Digging the glass from his hands where he’d stabbed and ripped himself to shreds to catch the falling debris of a life he thought he still had.

She deflates, sinking into the realization that her love is the worst thing for him right now. It’s a drug to him and she’s given him far too much. “I know,” she says, a tear slipping down her cheek. “Because you never know what’s good for you.”

His fingers ghost over her cheek and holds her face in his hand. “You let me decide what’s good for me,” he whispers. “I can protect myself, Emily.”

Not against this, she thinks. Not against her. He’s never known when to pull away and when to fight harder. It’s going to get him killed.

But it’s her laying on the ground, impaled, gasping for breath.

Hotch sees her blood all over Morgan’s hands. The hitch in the younger man’s choked breath as he recounts what happened. Attempting and failing to keep the details straight as he tells Hotch, in great detail, what happened. The way she’d lost reality for glimpses. Asked for him. Called out for Aaron, not Hotch, but Aaron. And Hotch doesn’t know what to say when Morgan rises to his feet and challenges-- “What the fuck was that about? What did you two do?”

But it’s fine because JJ comes out and places Morgan right back into his chair, silencing him with seven words. All hitting a little harder, too solidly across his shoulders. “She never made it off the table.”

Emily Prentiss never let herself love Aaron Hotchner but that never stopped him. And, in the end, she’d been there. Through Foyet, she’d been there. Where was he when she needed him?

He sends her to London with JJ, his goodbye rushed, and guilt.

She’s in London. He goes to Afghanistan. Neither make it home entirely alive.

She should have known.

Admittedly, she is a little wine drunk. Tipsy, really. Inhibitions lowered in the warmth of Dave’s living room. She’s missed them all so terribly that the ache of their absence being lifted has left her exhausted. She’d been in a near daze when she’d taken her wine and moved to the couch. Leaning into Dave’s side when he’d taken the seat beside her. While Jack and Henry recount the events of every day she’s missed according to their greatest accuracy.

Their silly little stories are well worth the soft laughter it draws from the others.

“Where are you going?”

So now, as she stands and leaves Dave’s side cold-- she’s not sure what she was expecting to find in the depths of his eyes but the fear is startling. “Water,” she says, holding up her empty glass. “Water and to pee, I’ve had way too much wine.” She tips the glass and winks at Jack. Trying her best to lighten the mood she hadn’t realized she’d tank just by standing.

Garcia peels herself from the chair she’s sharing with Morgan, ignoring the way he seems to startle at the aspect of losing her pressed into his side. “I’ll join you on the bathroom run, pumpkin,” she says, collecting her glass and Morgan’s from the table at their side. “Another drink, my chunky hunky?”

Morgan smirks but shakes his head, “no thanks, Baby Girl. Someone has to be sober for the drive home.”

As good as that plan sounds, Hotch still grunts. The room’s attention shifting to their leader. He’s been startlingly silent, even for him, all afternoon. Seemingly tucked away from every encounter they’ve had amongst themselves. “You’ve all had too much to drink to drive home,” he says. “You should… calls cabs.” The strength of his interjection leaves his voice as Emily meets his eyes. He lowers his gaze and with it, the point of his statement.

Dave does not fail to notice this. Clearing his throat, he agrees. “I’ll go call your cabs.” He stands, rubbing a hand down his face. Fingers working into the creases of his lips. “Aaron,” he nods his old friend over. “Give me a hand?”

That sets about the motion of the room.

Emily’s making her way down the hall when Garcia catches her. “What is it,” Emily asks, playfully. She waits for Garcia to catch up to her, holding out her hand for what she’s expecting to be a trip full of the secrets of her and Derek’s relationship. Something good. A win.

“Can you make him stay?”

Emily desperately wants to pull from Garcia’s hold. Her grip is intense, desperate. She tries to pull away from Garcia’s hold. “What?” she asks softly, looking over her shoulder for some help. “Who? Who needs to stay?”

The desperation in Garcia’s eyes is unsettling. She lowers her voice even more pulling them closer. Her voice breaks as she says it. Tears swelling and running against the mascara over her eyelashes-- “Hotch.” She clenches her teeth, showing the most self-restraint Emily’s seen since they stepped foot in this hall. “He left us,” she breathes, sadly. “A month after you were gone. I went to his office--” her eyes dart as she speaks. “I started bringing him coffee every morning to cheer him up.”

Emily swallows thickly around the guilt that creeps up. Her death had broken them. She’d known that, of course. She just hadn’t considered Hotch. Brave and strong and it’s so hard to tell when he’s hurting. Then to bare her lie? Another cross on his back. More weight on his shoulders.

“I went in--” the tears fall as Garcia’s voice shakes. “He wasn’t there. He’d cleaned his office up and you know how he is.” That big oak desk is always littered with paperwork. One side to the other. He stacks it everywhere. Leaving pens from one end of the room to the other. You can’t even sit on that old couch of his without getting stabbed in the ass by a pen he’s lost. “Clean,” Garcia whispers. “He just left, in the middle of the night. By the time we came in, by the time we could find him he was already over there. Afghanistan.”

The word makes Emily’s chest tighten. What the hell could he be doing over there? That station is always looking for profilers but it’s a death trap. Hotch had said it himself, warning her when they’d sent her the special request. They’ve been operational for five years and gone through seven profilers. All of which have died. No one makes it out of that station alive.

And he’d gone.

“Why would--” she doesn’t even want to finish the question. Doesn't want to put the truth into action. Admit that she knows exactly why he did it.

At least over there he’d die a hero. Leave his son a flag and another parent to bury.

It’s faster than anything he could swallow over here.

Garcia squeezes Emily’s arm, bringing her back to the present moment. To the thing in question. “Can you bring him back,” she whispers frantically. “Can you make him stay?”

Emily doesn’t honestly know. Has she ever been able to make him do anything? “Garcia, I--” Her mouth snaps shut as the man in question steps into the hall. His eyes dart between them and Emily feels rather like a mouse caught in a trap.

He clears his throat and scratches uncertainly at the beard he’s let grow back in. “I was just…” he looks at Garcia and then back at Emily. Clearly caught off guard. “Dave-- I… You’re, ah, the hotel is close to me. I thought I’d save you the cab fare if you wanted to ride back--”

“Yes.” Emily nods, far too quickly. “Thanks,” she says, looking anywhere but at him. “I’d, ugh, I’d appreciate that.”

Hotch looks between Garcia and Emily, before nodding and ducking his head. He leaves the hall, with a slightly awkward nod and steps out. Hands going to his pocket. Hiding.

“Will you try,” Garcia whispers.

Emily watches him walk away. The apprehension in his hesitant movements. His hand scratching at the back of his head until he can hide behind the shield of Jack’s eager talking. Sinking down beside the boy on the couch and hiding himself there. “I don’t know,” she admits, honestly.

The only person that can pull him from the ledge is Hotch and she’s seen him toe it once before.

Packing things up is simple enough.

Hotch stands towards the edge of the hall, Jack slowly falling asleep in his arms.

“Sleepy,” Emily asks Jack, running her fingers through his soft brown hair. Jack shakes his head but doesn’t raise it from Hotch’s shoulder. Hotch has wrapped him in his jacket rather than choosing to fight the boy into it. It’s more a blanket. She pulls it up around him a little better. “You’re not tired,” she asks. “I am. I can’t wait to get to bed.”

Jack smiles but doesn’t admit to the exhaustion weighing his little bones down. “Are you gonna sleep with us?” he asks. He looks down at her with the soft of his father’s. Same impossible depth is hidden behind light brown iris’. It breaks her heart to see the turmoil within him.

Emily frowns but she’s not forced to tell the little boy no. Instead, Hotch’s hand comes to the back of his head. Cupping his neck as Hotch turns to face her. “You don’t have to do anything,” he clarifies with an all too familiar look in his eyes. Mischief. A plan. “We do have the guest room. With clean sheets. You could come home with us.”

Home.

To a real bed.

“I…” she can’t force out the polite no her mother has solidified in her mind the answer to be. No because that’s not fair or right or-- she really wants to sleep in a normal bed.

He bumps her shoulder, “just say yes.”

She looks at him and then at Jack. It’s not a hard thing to want to go home with the two of them. After Foyet, she’d spent many nights camped out on their couch. Waiting for father or son to wake in a panic. He’d done the same in the hospital after Doyle, sleeping on an uncomfortable little cot just so the first thing she saw each time she woke up was someone she knew.

Now it’s different. The dynamic has changed. While he might not know the course of the night has changed, she does.

She just doesn’t know it’s a futile battle.

There is no use fighting over stupid things like sleeping. He tucks Jack into his bed and meets her in his room. She’s already pulled on his shirts over her head. Refraining, forcing herself from burying her face in the material.

It doesn’t stop her from curling into bed beside him. Pressing her face into his shoulder and focusing solely on his hand slipping under her shirt. “You tired…” he asks. She shakes her head. He hums as he thinks. Dragging his thumb over her hip bone, stroking the soft skin. “First crush,” he whispers, ghosting his lips over her neck.

She laughs at that, twisting in his grip to tilt her hips across his. Settling closer to his chest. Drawing her hand up she draws against his skin. “This girl named…” she taps at his chest as she fails to remember the girl’s name. “I can’t remember her name,” she admits, faintly. Blushing. “Does that surprise you?”

Hotch’s eyes have slipped shut, his face turned into her hair. He hums, scrunching his eyebrows. “Surprised about what,” he asks softly. “That you can’t remember her name or that it’s a she?” He pulls her closer, wrapping an arm around her hips.

Emily just… looks at him. He hasn’t even opened his eyes. He’s not even going to comment? She bites her lip and lowers her head back down. “What about you?”

“None. It’s… I’ve only ever--” he blushes, averting his eyes. “Only Haley and you.” He clears his throat… “That’s why I always tried,” he whispers. “Why I tried so hard…”

“It’s not like I didn’t try,” she defends, pulling away from his embrace. “I was trying to protect you from this whole mess. You’re the one who didn’t know when to stop.”

“I don’t know where you get off blaming me,” he says, pulling himself away. He sits up in the bed, turning himself so she can sit and stare at the wall of his back. Little scars marking up his back as he places his arms on his knees. “You ran, Emily. Every single time, you run. Not me.”

Neither look at the other.

“I’m sleeping on the couch,” he announces. “Stay. Don’t make me explain to Jack why you’re not here in the morning.”

She stays where she is. She turns this over in her mind. His words are an open palm slap to the face. She sleeps in his bed, holding onto his pillow and burying her face into the scent. She doesn’t leave but only because she doesn’t want to have to walk past him. This feels like winning so she stays. She eats breakfast with them in the morning, playing and laughing with Jack like she always has.

Like she always does.

“I leave Thursday, if you care.”

She says nothing which is perfect because he’s not sure he can handle anything she might think of.

She knows, without having to be told, that they blame her for not being to keep him here. And, maybe it’s her fault, because she didn’t really try, did she? She did what also does, she hurt him. Now she’s sitting here all alone, wondering what she could have done differently.

Everything.

“We’ll see you when you get home.”

She stands at the back of the group, watching the other’s pull him into hugs. Dave holds Hotch for a long moment, speaking softly so only the two of them can hear what’s being exchanged. Hotch pulls away from that hug with tears falling down his cheeks. “Don’t make me bury another son, Aaron. Please be careful.” And that’s when he sees her.

Derek pushes her forward and she feels all of them watching as she makes her way to him.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he confesses. He doesn’t care that the others are watching. They know enough. They’ve always known.

She feels guilty and she should. “You told me goodbye,” she reminds him. He’d kissed her right before they sent her to London with a packet of new names and passports. To be someone other than Emily. For a second chance. “It--” she looks away. She’s running, again, she knows. And she has to stop running. “It was the only thing that kept me alive, Aaron. I couldn’t let you leave without having told you the truth--”’

He glances up and back to her. Just for a moment, he wonders if the others should be hearing all this but--maybe they’re past all that. Pretending is how people get killed, they learned that with Emily, and he really doesn’t feel like being their repeat.

“I love you,” she confesses. “I know you love me, you always have. I’m sorry that I keep--” fucking it up. “I love you and I need you to come home, okay? So I can stop running.”

He doesn’t believe her. He wants to believe her but everything about Emily Prentiss always hurts and he knows it’s stupid to trust her. “Okay,” he says, afraid anything more will send her for the hills before he can even leave the country. And like an idiot, he bends his neck into her touch. Letting her rise up on her toes to kiss him. “I promise,” he whispers.

Jessica gets the call at midnight. The Bachelor finale had ended hours ago but she’d been sucked into some History channel rerun about ancient Mesopotamia. It’s the haze of the light hour, the warmth of the undertones of sand, the steady deep voice narrating, and the blanket curled around her shoulders that puts her to sleep. She doesn’t stand a chance after the day she’s had.

The call comes at 12:34 and the urgent ringing of her cell-phone makes her heart kick painfully at her chest. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes with one hand, she accepts the call without looking to see who it is. Not that her tired eyes would have recognized the caller anyway.

Not serving as a soldier, the process for notifying the family of any health changes requires a different take. For Aaron Hotchner, it’s put into the FBI’s hand. He’s their tool after all, not the US Army’s.

“I’m sorry to wake you, ma’am,” the voice offers.

Jessica scowls at the formality, sitting up on the couch and desperately searching for the remote. She kills the screen and the room is bathed in silence, aiding her ability to understand and think about what’s going on. “Ugh, can I help you?” She pushes her hair up out of her face, searching the ground and coffee table for a spare hair tie.

“I’m calling in regards to Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner. I understand this number is supposed to be the personal line of Jessica Brookes? You’re his emergency contact--”

He deployed in October. Giving her only a week’s heads-up. He’d had the decency to look ashamed of himself, of the state of being he’s caused for them all. She’d understood his situation. Losing his friend had broken him irreparably and he’d wanted to talk about that even less than he had Haley. At least he’d warned her, she knows he hadn’t extended his team the same courtesy.

The man on the line goes on. Something about moving bases and a promise to get back to her as soon as possible.

“Thank you for your service,” the man concludes.

Jessica blinks, frowning at the phrasing. Aaron wasn’t serving. He was punishing himself. This was penance.

“Goodnight.”

She sits back on the couch, eyes vacantly taking in the wall in front of her. He’s on his way home. That’s good but she can’t help but… he’s hurt. Hurt enough for them to discard him back here. How bad is it?

Emily can’t deny her horror.

His eyes move to the blanket. To the empty space of where his limb once was. “It’s… It’s just a leg,” he whispers. He blinks heavily once, twice, and sighs softly as he fails to keep his eyes open. Humming, he parts his chapped lips but can’t find any more words. He’s too tired. “Could be…” his voice slurs and he exhales a heavy breath. “...worse.”

Emily wants to hit him but she’s done being defensive. She’s tired of being the first one to pull away. For once, she just needs to be the one that holds onto a hug a little longer. That lingers. “You could have died,” she whispers thickly. Gently, hesitantly she touches his hand. To her surprise he is the one to move, intertwining their fingers. She sits by his side, eyes glued the empty part of the bed. The nothing of where his leg is supposed to be. Does it really matter that much, though? A single leg?

Not to her. She’s had months to pretend. Every night she has escaped to a new reality with him. Come up with every variety of reality that might occur. What she’d do if he’d come perfectly fine and how they’d have kids and he’d never wake in the middle of the night with nightmares because she’d kill his monsters. How she would cope if he came home horribly disfigured or entirely different. Would it matter? They’d still be Aaron and Emily.

“I’ll never walk again,” he informs her. His head is tilted into the pillows, casually watching his news wash over her. He wants to know if she’ll stay if he can’t go. If all these years were about the chase, would she stay if he can no longer follow?

She sits down in the chair pulled up to the side of the bed. People have been in and out all afternoon but she’s the first one to receive this news. The other’s don’t really matter because he knows the script, can imagine how each of them react. Garcia will cry. JJ will too but not until she’s leaving. Dave will take it well but he’ll utter something strangely sentimental and sober with the realization that walking was never the priority of Hotch coming home. Morgan and Reid are his wild cards and he doesn’t want to tell them at all. But that’s just not how this works.

“At least you won’t go running off on me.”

He knows what she means, the implication and the diversion. With a huff he raises an eyebrow, “I’ve never been a runner, Emily.”

Emily.

No, she supposes, he never has. “If you can’t run,” she says, heart skipping around in her chest. She feels it pulsing in her throat, tossing itself around in her stomach. “If you can’t run then I won’t run.” She stands, swallowing thickly around the swell of fear in her throat. He watches her, looking up at her as she hovers for just a moment. When she kisses him there are no sparks. Something cold, icy runs it’s fingers into the grooves of her spine but she’s not gripped by any startling realizations.

It’s too late for that.

But he tastes like Aaron and to a girl who’s never had a home in one place, she’s only ever running. Here, against him, she knows what people mean they say a person can be a home. Because she wants to curl into him and forget the edges of Emily. Aaron. It’s always been Aaron.

It surprises him that she stays. She waited until things got hard.

“I’m going to have to go to physical therapy every week.”

She shrugs, “I’ve got a library of books waiting for me to read them. I’ll tackle my reading list.”

“I can’t walk,” he reminds her.

She raises an eyebrow, “so? I didn’t love you before because of your ability to walk.”

“Emily--” he needs her to understand this isn’t as easy as she’s making it. Using the bathroom, showering, sex isn’t even going to be easy. She can’t just brush it off like it’s not going to bother her. It’s bothering him! “Emily, I can’t hold your hand when we go downtown. I’m going to need your help taking a shower and getting to the bathroom. I’m going to have to look for a new apartment because the one I have, there’s no way I can work a wheelchair around in it. It’s-- I’m not the same! We’re not the same!”

She knows. Yesterday she asked Morgan to rig up something in the bathroom. She spent hours with Morgan trying to put a handle or a rail in beside the toilet without ruining the wall. Ordered a shower chair last week that Morgan is probably putting together right now. Garcia and JJ are looking for apartments with larger floor plans because she doesn’t want to be presumptuous and assume he’d want to move into a house with her. But she’s waiting for the right time to bring it up.

“Maybe that’s for the best,” she says. “That we’re not the same. I’m different too.” Does she need to create her own list? Dedicating it all to words for him to comb over. She can’t sleep through the night. Even though it had been a wooden stake that had “killed” she can’t hold a knife. Her hands tremble, this weakness she can’t explain. Her abdomen is just scars, riddled with ugly skin hardened by trauma. Is he prepared to see that?

“Look at me,” she says, squeezing his hand. “It’s been me and you for years. You’re the only thing I really know. So, I’ll take you as you come. However you come. You loved me when I ran, I can love you with a little baggage.”

He frowns, trying to find an out. Not or himself but for her. But she’s unwavering. “Baggage,” he finally caves. He smirks, shaking his head. “Of all the words in the language you know and you pick baggage?”

She cringes, shrugging, “I didn’t really think about it. It just came out.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

She smiles, “you love it.”

He hesitates for a moment but nods, “I do.”

#criminal minds #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss #criminal minds fanfiction #hotchniss

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