#scarfloor

[spacebeyonce]

Sea salt trio for the bingo? Separately, is easier

axel:

roxas:

xion:

[thebibliosphere]

Hello Joy, since you're talking tulips, may I suggest a cultivar? The Queen of Night, you'll find it's entirely on brand for you (also they're gorgeous). Whether or not you'll ever actually plant them, I think you might quite like them!

Tulips are actually a very low pollen flower and MCAS friendly so I am desperate to plant some, so thank you for this and oh god they’re beautiful

I wonder if you can get black daffodils...

[vinnie2757]

Cidshera, 21. Vacation. (give them that holiday they desperately need)

also here on ao3

from this post

A few months of bliss roll past in the aftermath of Meteorfall. Which is a horrible thing to say, considering what said almost-world-destruction cost them, but Cid has the positives to consider, and chooses to consider them. He’s in love, and his love is returned, and he thinks, as he watches Shera potter about in his t-shirt and her underwear with her hair knotted into a bun atop her head, that he’ll make good on that marriage proposal.

‘Let’s get away for a few days,’ he says, and she glances back at him, spoon halfway to her mouth.

She hums, and taps the steel against her chin for a moment. ‘Get away? Where would we go?’

He hadn’t thought that far ahead admittedly, but then she stretches to get something out of the cupboard and any thoughts he’d had up to that point fly out of his head.

When he’s able to get some thoughts in coherent sentences back into his head, he watches her brushing her teeth as he perches on the edge of the tub, his toothbrush loose in his fingers. She’s examining her hairline as she brushes, on her toes to press her nose to the mirror above the sink, and he’s very lucky to have her in his life. She’s no more grown up than she was when she arrived, barley a day over adulthood, and full of the quirks of a girl that grew up mostly alone.

‘You were talking about getting away,’ she offers around a mouthful of fluoride.

‘Yeah,’ he says, and finally gets to his feet to take over the space she vacates. ‘Yeah, I thought. Maybe we could take the Bronco, fly out to Costa? Take a few days in that swanky hotel of theirs, catch some sun, swim a bit.’

Get married, maybe.

‘I didn’t take you for the tourist trap kind of holiday-maker,’ she teases, bumping his hip to spit and rinse.

‘I’m not,’ he tells the back of her head, ‘but I ain’t gonna go to the fuckin’ Saucer for another year.’

He’d pondered taking her there for her birthday, of course, but fuck that. Twice is enough for him. Fucking chocobo racing, who’s idea was that? Cloud’s, obviously. And Yuffie had gone with it, and he’d had better things to do with his time than race jumped up little bastards, but he’d done it anyway. Fucking whatever. It’s not the point.

‘I just think it’d be nice,’ he shrugs. ‘We don’t gotta go.’

‘No, no,’ she smiles, all minty and fresh, and kisses his nose, careful to avoid the froth of his mouth. ‘I like the idea. When do we go?’

‘As soon as you’re packed,’ he shrugs.

And so it’s a half hour later that he’s helping her up into the backseat of the Bronco, their packed bag – one between them, because they know how to pack light, and Costa has a solid enough retail industry that they can pick anything they need up there – safely behind her feet, and they’re heading out on their way.

It’s been a long while since they’d taken the Bronco out, and Cid’s missed having her in the backseat, yelling over the wind and utterly unintelligible. He glances over his shoulder at her, helmet and goggles, and she’s adorable, and he’s so fucking in love with her.

‘I love you,’ he shouts, but it’s swallowed by the clouds around them.

Touching down in Costa, he’s not surprised that it’s busy. Meteor is quickly becoming a distant memory for everyone not in the Midgar area, and he wonders how long before people just forget how close they’d come.

‘Wow,’ Shera says, as he helps her down out of the Bronco, ‘swimsuits have gotten a lot smaller since I last wore one.’

‘If you want to call the thing you wore a swimsuit,’ he snorts, and hikes himself up to reach the bag, yanking it free. ‘It had sleeves and was longer than your shorts.’

Shera huffs out a big breath, lips pursed, but there’s laughter in the creases of her eyes.

‘It was not,’ she protests, ‘just because I wasn’t flashing my – ‘ Here, she casts a glance about herself, looking at the people on the beach, pottering about on the dock, ‘ – flashing my tits,’ she finishes in a whisper.

Cid laughs at that, and bends to kiss her.

‘You’d have to be naked to flash ‘em,’ he teases, and she gives him an affronted yelp and a soft slap to the arm for his trouble.

‘Ha! And to think I bought a new one, just for you.’

He’s just about to walk away, but he glances back at her, eyebrow raised. She eyes him back, and he grins, hikes the bag onto his shoulder so he has a free hand to take hers with.

‘Fuckin’ adorable, you are,’ he tells her, and she wrinkles her nose with her smile.

 -0-0-0-

 The hotel has air-con and it’s priced over the odds, and Shera baulks at the receipt, but Cid shrugs it off, and leads her upstairs. The view is incredible, almost entirely the blue of the sea, and she makes some soft comment or another about how different it’s going to be, waking up to the sound of the waves.

‘Even at home,’ she says, and he comes to stand behind her, fingers working under the edge of her vest to rest warm and gentle against her hips, her belly, under the waistband of her shorts, ‘we couldn’t hear the water from our house.’

‘Have you been home?’ he asks her, presses a kiss to her neck.

She shakes her head, relaxes into him. ‘No, I keep meaning to write them a letter, but I never seem to get there.’

It’s Shera’s way, the meaning to do things but never quite getting there. She’s forgetful about the strangest of things, and remembers even stranger things than the things she forgets. There’s no real rhyme or reason to it, and not remembering to write to her parents is about right for her. He loves her so fucking much.

‘Do it later,’ he says, ‘I have an errand I need to run, so you’ll have time, then we can post it on our way to dinner.’

She turns her head, gets distracted by how close he is, and she’s fascinated by his eyes for several long moments, and fascinated by his mouth against hers for a few more still.

‘An errand?’ she asks, when he lets her go some half an hour later, to dress and fuss with her hair.

‘Mm,’ he nods, ‘it’s not that important, I just want to check on something I saw when I was here last time, with the kids.’

The kids. She thinks it’s hilarious that he refers to AVALANCHE as “the kids.” They aren’t kids any more than they are, but they’re so young. They’ve all been by once or twice, and Shera had never really felt old, or grown-up, or like an adult, until she’d met them. Then planet below she realised she was about to hit thirty and it just – it was a very strange feeling, and not one she’s keen to relive.

She pulls on her swimsuit, a red thing that fits her very nicely and is just as revealing as the other one had been, thank you very much, with its thin shoulder straps and high leg line, and a loose shirt to protect her shoulders. He eyeballs her, top to toe, and then grins, rakes his hands through his hair.

‘You’re beautiful, you know that?’

She laughs, and tosses a t-shirt at him.

‘Take me to the beach, Captain,’ she says.

 -0-0-0-

 He leaves her to return to the hotel a few hours later, sand between her toes and in her hair, and her sunglasses sticky with sun lotion. He refuses to tell her, no matter how she needles, where he’s got to go, and she gives up very quickly, which is more fool her than him, but he kisses her nose and pats her arse, and tells her he won’t be long. She tries to watch where he goes, but he disappears between buildings and she can’t see through them, so she has nothing to do except go to the hotel and wash and change and write to her parents, as he’d suggested she do.

She’s still chewing on her pen when he returns, her hair towel-dried and curling around her neck, in his t-shirt and her underwear, and he stops at the doorway to watch her. She’s so caught up in trying to find the words she wants that he doesn’t want to disturb her, but he’s booked them dinner, and she needs to get ready. They didn’t bring anything nice to wear, but that doesn’t matter, he doesn’t think. She’s stunning in everything she wears.

Finally she groans and tosses the pen down, and he takes it as his cue to enter properly.

‘You looked like you were having fun,’ he says, and she grunts, rolls her eyes.

‘I never know what to say to them,’ she says, ‘it used to be so easy, but since I – since the – since the last time I saw them, I never really know what to say.’

‘You should have taken the Bronco,’ he shrugs, ‘and gone to see them.’

She shakes her head.

‘I don’t know how to fly it,’ she admits, and this surprises him; he’d always thought she’d known, considering she’d designed them at fifteen.

But then, he supposes with a shrug as he runs a hand along her head, smoothing her hair as he passes, that didn’t mean she flew them at all.

‘We’re going out for dinner,’ he tells her, and she looks at him, shocked. ‘I did tell you we would be.’

‘But so soon?’ she asks, and touches her hair. She’s never cared about her hair before, but then, he supposes he’s never really taken her out for dinner before.

‘No rush,’ he tells her, ‘you’ve got time to dry your hair.’

‘Is there a dress code?’

He flops back onto the bed, but raises up enough to give her an eyeball. Does she really think he’s going anywhere he needs to wear a suit? The last time he wore a suit, he nearly punched his boss and she lost an expensive pair of shoes. He’s not keen to repeat the experience, even if he doesn’t have a boss to punch. She watches him, waits for him to crack, but he just offers her half a smile and flops back onto the pillows, arm flung over his eyes.

‘You got time,’ he tells her again, ‘no rush.’

She goes into the en-suite and dries her hair nicely, examines her face in the mirror, thinks that her eyebrows will probably do for a few days, and when she emerges from the bathroom, it’s to find the Captain dozing. She’s grown very familiar with the differences in his dozing and his sleeping and his fully-awakes. For a moment, she lingers on the threshold and watches him, the rise and fall of his chest, the soft bob of his knee as he breathes, the plane of his arm, the bunch of muscle. He’s incredible, in ways she’d never thought a man could be.

Quietly, she goes and settles next to him, hands beneath her head, watching him dozing.

 -0-0-0-

 She wakes up to his lips on her shoulder. The sun’s moved, her skin’s warm, and Cid’s fingers are brushing up and down her arm gently.

‘We need to get ready,’ he hums, and his eyes are so very, very blue.

‘Yeah,’ she breathes, and gives a full body stretch and a yawn. ‘Yeah, okay.’

She dresses in her shorts and T-shirt, which is not very nice for dinner, but Cid’s not much better in cargo shorts and a vest that clings entirely too tightly to his shoulders.

‘I didn’t know you owned that,’ she says, gesturing, and he plucks at it.

‘Usually only wear it in winter,’ he says, ‘under my T-shirts, extra layer and that.’

She can feel the heat in her cheeks when she says, ‘it suits you.’

He snorts, and ushers her out.

Dinner is at one of the street-side restaurants on the promenade, quiet even with the people strolling past, taking in the last of the rays on the beach before the tide rolls in. There’s hustle and bustle at the dock, but Cid doesn’t look at it the way she’d expected him to; he’s firmly focused on the menu.

They order, and Cid gets antsy.

‘Are you alright?’ she asks, ‘did I order the wrong thing? I’m – ‘

‘Don’t even fucking say it,’ he tells her, hand cutting the words out of the air before they can leave her mouth. ‘It’s not that, I just – listen, right, listen, I got something I need to say, before you try and eat that fucking pasta and choke to death.’

Her eyebrows climb and she huffs out a breath that could be a laugh, but the desperate look in his eyes tells her it’s not a laughing matter.

‘Okay,’ she says, and reaches across the table to take his hands, but he yanks them back. ‘What is it?’

‘You know that I love you,’ he tells her, plaintive, desperate. ‘You know that, and I want to – I want – you know that I don’t want to lose you.’

‘Yes,’ she says, slowly, and feels her eyebrows draw together.

‘Well, I was thinking that night, after – after Aerith – when we got to Icicle Inn, afterward, everyone was tired. We were so tired, and I was sat there by the fire with Tifa, and Barret was asleep next to her, and she looked so sad, and I told her.’

‘You told her?’

‘That I want to marry you.’

It takes her a moment. At first, she’s not sure she heard him correctly. She almost asks him to repeat it, but the look on his face tells her that she heard him right the first time.

‘Marry?’ she echoes, stupidly.

‘Yes.’

He fusses for a moment, and then jerks to his feet, a box in his hand.

‘I saw this when we were in Costa,’ he says, and shoves it at her. ‘It said it wasn’t perfect, that the apprentice made it, and it wasn’t even really going to be for sale. And I said to myself, that if we survived, and things turned out – you know – okay, between us. That I’d come back and buy it, because it’s not perfect, but it is. If it hadn’t said it, I’d never have known, but I think it really – I hope it fits.’

Shera blinks at him, and then looks at the box he’s still shoving at her.

Tentatively, she takes it, and he touches his hands together for a moment, as if about to wring them, and then shoves them in his pockets. She glances at him, at the box, back at him, back at the box.

Opens it.

‘Cid,’ she says, breathes.

It’s not a fancy ring, but it was never going to be a fancy ring. It’s a little band of gold, and she supposes it was meant to be a string of flowers, but they’re crooked and misshapen and it looks, with the pinpricks of diamonds in the centre, like stars. Like a constellation. For a moment, she stares at it, and then she sees him shuffling in her periphery and she raises her gaze, finds it blurry.

‘Cid,’ she says again, and he touches her hands, drops to both knees, the heathen, tries to read her face, but it’s splotchy and teary and her lip’s wobbling.

‘Is that a yes?’ he asks, and she’s so off-guard, she doesn’t know what to do.

‘I think so!’ she squeaks, and he laughs, because of course she thinks so.

[theblanddcu2021]

Just a heads up, the death of the endless headcanon repeats the image of the one about Damian before that. (I might not be the first to tell you however)

Thank you.  It’s really fine.  I’d rather a bunch of people tell me than for the mistake to go unnoticed.

[sawadoot-moved]

Can we appreciate how NOT extra Yuugi is tho? like he's the least extra of them all, and bc he wished on the Puzzle (what the King of Extra himself inside) all his friends are so extra drama ? I love it. Yuugi also stays humble despite it all! He grows self-confident, not arrogant and i love him for it

BEST BOY.

He’s so nice like?? He caringly spares mercy on many occasions and I think that’s highly important because in the series they show varying degrees of caring. Atem is very caring but even so there are several examples of him letting his hurt have the best of him.

But Yugi is bullied?? And underestimated?? HIS GRANDFATHER IS KIDNAPPED?? And his soul is even taken in the filler arc of the anime yet he still remains that one piece of himself showing unconditional love and I think-

I think that’s amazing because imagine how hard it is and yet he goes and makes best friends with his bullies, rivals and forgives those who want to harm them all without sacrificing those he cares about that’s so incredible.

[ladykittenfair]

I don't know if this is the right place to do this, but I just wanted to thank you for all the work you put in To Be Human and the side stories. I've been lurking and reading them since I marathoned the (then) 70 published chapters in about three nights. Your characterisation is absolutely great, and every chapter leaves my heart racing (even the ones which you might indicate as filler). Next up I'll actually review the story itself, I just wanted to tell you like this now.

I... thank you. Thank you so much. I do have a sideblog just for fanworks @kittenfair where I’ll definitely reblog this, but here is a perfect place too because it is my personal, and this note means the world to me.

(I have to stop and commend you because damn, three days? Really? That was a lot of fic in three days!)

The feedback I’ve gotten has kept me writing more than anything else has, even my own desire to see the story through wanes now and then, but the sheer enthusiasm I’ve been greeted with guarantees that this story will be finished. I couldn’t do anything less.

I look forward to your reviews, as you have time. Know that you’ve really, truly made my day popping in here, taking the time out of your day to let me know how you feel. I appreciate it so, so much. <3

[spacebeyonce]

Happy birthday! You can find your gift in your paypal account! Sorry it's not much. Make it a great day xx

thank you so muuuuuch thank you loor!!!

[vinnie2757]

another prompt for you; Persimmon- bury me amid nature’s beauty - FFVII, anyone

You knew what you were doing, don’t look at me like that. [Tifa, immediately post-game, 1600 words]

A few days go by. Marlene has nightmares, Cloud doesn’t sleep, Barret snores, but wakes the moment Marlene so much as hitches a breath. They’re all on edge. Tifa gives up sleeping after the second time she wakes, so most nights, she’s up before dawn. She helps the innkeeper, so desperately pleased to have the world’s saviours staying in his inn, to set up for the morning. They talk, in-between washing sheets and kneading bread, about the bar, about the slums, about the journey. He doesn’t ask her what happened out there, in the big wide world, the scary things that they saw, that they had to deal with. He hears the screams, he knows enough to know not to ask. And she’s grateful for that.

One morning, which is not so much morning as it is middle of the night, she comes down, and he’s sat nursing a drink.

‘I heard about your friend,’ he says, and she nods.

‘She was nice,’ Tifa nods. ‘She did – it was what she had to do.’

‘The good ones always go first,’ he nods, and then gestures at the bag on her shoulder. ‘You goin’?’

‘Just for the day,’ she says, ‘I want to – I need to see if the – some parts of Midgar are still standing, so I want to see if the – the church is still there.’

The innkeeper nods. ‘Couldn’t say,’ he says, and then ferrets in his pocket. ‘Save yourself a walk, take my truck.’

He tosses a set of keys over to her, and she catches them more on reflex than anything.

‘Thank you,’ she says, and looks at the tag; it was a ShinRa tag, once upon a time, because everyone got their vehicles from the company, but he’s scratched through the plating, and torn part of it off.

Good man.

‘Don’t worry about being back by any specific time,’ he says, ‘I ain’t gonna need it for a couple days.’

She nods, and thanks him again. ‘Let the boys know I’m alright for me, could you?’

‘Of course. I hope you find what you’re looking for.’

She takes her leave. The truck is old, a rusty hunk of junk, but it starts first time, and she hasn’t been behind a wheel in months, not since they – they escaped ShinRa tower, and Aerith’s whoop of delight when Tifa had just floored it to the window and made what should have been an impossible jump in the piece of shit they’d commandeered, considering the weight she’d had in the truck bed, it goes through her.

‘You were a firestarter,’ she tells the empty air in the passenger seat. ‘You know that? Absolute trouble. And they all thought it was me.’

She doesn’t get an answer, but she doesn’t expect one.

The makeshift streets on the plains are quiet, empty, and the truck rumbles along, as quickly as she dares, to try and avoid waking anybody. It’s been a long few days, what with the beginnings of organising a new city to be built in Midgar’s wake, and keeping everyone safe, and the relief effort and everything else. There’s been a lot going on, she wants to let them sleep. They were innocent in all this, even the people who’d worked in ShinRa’s offices. For the most part, they were doing their job to feed their family, bullied into cruelty by the higher ups. But that’s always the way, Tifa supposes. And she’s not so sure, after an hour's drive, whether they’re that innocent. Could she have walked away, if it meant starving her children? Losing her home? She likes to think she would have, but then, she’d been lucky enough to have the bar, to have Barret, and the others.

She parks up in Sector Five, and stares at the church, intact, for the most part. It’s no worse than it had been, by the looks of it, and she feels a laugh bubble in her throat. Of course it’s safe.

‘Are you there?’ she asks it, but not even a molecule of dust shifts in reply.

Locking the truck and picking her way over rubble, she goes to the doors, and waits. She can’t hear anything inside, andshe shuts her eyes, imagines footsteps on the floorboards, the low hum of asong.

Slowly, she pushes the door open, and in the shard of light beginning to peek through the holes in the roof – Cloud’s doing, mostly, from the stories she’d heard – she thinks she sees Aerith, bent over the flowers. She opens her mouth to call out, but the rush of breath disturbs the image, and she’s gone again.

The first tears catch her off-guard.

Her breath shakes, and her mouth is salty, and then she’s clutching the door to stay upright. Sobbing enough to feel nauseas, she sinks to her knees and buries her face in her hands and weeps. She weeps and she weeps and she weeps, until her lungs can’t get any more air, and her stomach churns with the weight of her sobs, and eventually, she stops.

She stops, and she breathes, and feels a hand on the back of her neck.

‘I’m alright,’ she says, ‘I’m okay.’

The hand squeezes, and fades.

She breathes, and she breathes, and she breathes.

She wipes her eyes on her arm, breathe some more. Sniffs, swallows, exhales.

‘I’m alright,’ she repeats, mostly to herself.

The thing had been, after Cloud had – had – buried her, Tifa hadn’t had time to grieve. They’d had Yuffie, who’d been so young, and Cloud had been, well, Cloud had been Cloud. And then Sephiroth, and the crater, and all the rest had happened. She’d had so much to worry about, and so many things she’d had to do, and oh hadn’t she shouted at Cid and Barret, as grown-ass adult men who needed to stop sleeping and fucking around and she couldn’t do this by herself. She’d tried her fucking hardest, but she’d been tired. She’d been tortured and imprisoned and she’d had so much to fucking contend with! She hadn’t had five seconds to herself to just.

To just cry, and grieve, and say goodbye.

She’d said goodbye, of course, they all had. But she hadn’t said goodbye. She hadn’t made her peace with it. She doesn’t know if she ever will. Yuffie had been angry, and had called Aerith all the names under the sun, had kicked Cid in the shins and been rude to Barret and she’d told Tifa she wished she’d been the one to die instead of Aerith, and you just have totake that kind of thing on the chin. But she’d called Aerith a liar, and Tifa, under the quiet, placating, mother-henning she’d found herself doing to try and stop this little family of theirs falling apart, she’d agreed.

Aerith had been a stinking liar, and it was unfair.

‘You knew,’ she tells the flowers, ‘didn’t you? You knew what was going to happen.’

She imagines Aerith’s smile, cocksure and not at all guilty as charged, and she hates it.

She hates it and for a second, she hates Aerith. She doesn’t, not really.

‘I miss you,’ she says instead, which is more the truth than hatred.

Her body is still in the temple, she knows. She could cajole Cid into taking her up there, but what would it achieve? Pick up a waterlogged, six-month gone rotting body and bring it back, for what? What would that do, besides traumatise everyone?

Aerith had never spoken about death. Had never told people what she wanted them to do with her body if she died. Cid wanted to be burnt, Yuffie and Barret and Red wanted to be left for nature to reclaim them, give themselves back to the planet. Tifa herself wanted to be buried, traditionally, but have no marker on her grave. Cloud had been quiet, but he’d said he wanted to be buried, nothing more, nothing less.

Aerith had – Tifa wants to bury her amid nature’s beauty.

That’s where Aerith should be. In a marked grave, with flowers hiding the upturned dirt, a whole field of them. Trees, and flowers, and a place for animals to rest. She thinks that’s where Aerith should be.

But all they have are these flowers, in the slums, growing despite everything that’s been happening.

Tifa goes and sits amongst them, in a patch flattened by Cloud, no doubt. She sits there, and she picks one of the flowers, and she holds it to her nose, and tries not to cry some more.

She stays there most of the day. Nobody comes by, nobody even comes into the slums; they’re using Sectors 3 and 4 for material, so she’s undisturbed.

The sun shifts to the other side of the church, and she supposes she’d better go home. It’s been a long day to not do anything for anyone.

It’s been a long day to not be involved. There are a few clouds gathering, so she needs to make sure people have a hot meal for the night.

As she leaves the slums, truck rumbling away under her feet, she looks in the rear-view at the church, and makes a promise to herself that she’ll come back. Once or twice a month, as she needs to. She’ll come and she’ll say hello, and she’ll tell Aerith all the goings-on.

‘I’m sure you’re watching us, though, aren’t you?’ she asks.

‘You’re going to be keeping an eye on him for me too, right?’

A distant rumble of thunder, and then it starts to rain.