Kiss meme: 22. Cid @ Vincent
❛ 22 . a kiss on the forehead .
Life has moved on, the planet itself has begun to heal with the concentrated efforts of all its citizens, Cid Highwind and Vincent Valentine included. They haven’t time to pine or to lament, though both sometimes do, looking up at the same sky wherever their journeys have taken them. Rarely to their paths converge, and never on purpose. It is not avoidance, so much as acceptance of facts.
Cid had learned long ago that Vincent would never age, that he would retain his youth and beauty long after he had shriveled, withered, and his ashes had been scattered in the stratosphere (it is his request and he thinks that his friends will probably honor it). He had thought, at the time—it was the Gold Saucer, when they shared a room and much else—that he could handle it, that it would be okay. Thinking about it now, he wonders how he could have been so selfish.
Doesn’t matter if I can, he thinks bitterly, lifting a few crates of heirloom seeds in fertile soil, bound for Gongaga or some remote village, into the cargo hold of a transport shuttle he had designed. Ain’t askin’ him to bear that. He’s lost enough already.
Shera calls from the front of the shuttle, signaling that all is green on her end as Cid pats the back end of it and shoots a vigorous thumbs-up. Stepping back, the thing begins to lift off, rising into the cerulean sky. The day is perfect for flying and the WRO has organized an all-day rally to supply far-flung towns and villages with means to regrow crops lost during Meterofall and subsequent disasters. It has been years, but the people are still recovering.
Shielding his eyes, then, he notes a lone figure in the distance, conversing with a quadrupedal being who can only be Red XIII—Nanaki, that is. The extremely intelligent beast nods and shakes his head in turns as he converses with the tall, slender, red-wrapped figure of Vincent Valentine. The sunlight glints once off that fearful gauntlet-arm of his and Cid catches a whiff of nostalgia. He shakes his head and turns away, moving to check the gauges on his own shuttle, which will soon be following that of his wife.
He remembers the conversation well—the one which had ended whatever had begun to blossom between them. It was not an easy one to have, he recalls, but necessary. Cid might pine forever over someone so beautiful, someone with whom he thought he could confidently spend the rest of his days.
And he could have, except that he would one day leave Vincent, to a place the man could not follow then, now, or ever. Cruelty incarnate had been their brief, solid, steady romance, if only because its end had come with soft, warm, red lips pressed to Cid’s tawny, sweaty forehead and murmured words of genuine regret—not for what they had done, but for what could not and cannot be.
Kiss meme