"To my dear Reese." She scrolled in a hand ever so elegant. It glided across the parchment, ornate golden pen in hand. She wrote of apologies and failures; love and hopes, but it all felt hollow. Her eyes rose from the paper for an instant and found the dusty old looking glass, and the woman within.

A woman... The thought felt an insult. An sarcastic title bestowed on the obviously unworthy. Her eyes traced the cracked and wrinkled monster that glared at her. The short strands of abyssal black that clung to it's scalp; the crows feet, viciously etched into her bloodshot eyes. She didn't feel so old as the monster in the mirror, but she looked much older. A life of murder and war tracked its way across her nose and down her cheek, her makeup was fading. She was alone, the child was out playing with friends and so she wiped away her concealing mask to reveal a vicious old scar splitting her face nearly in two.

She crumpled the paper and threw it away with all the rest. It rolled from the mound of other failures that toppled over the bin and across the dusty old shack floor.

"To my..." She began but quickly faltered. A heavy grunt rang from her lips as her head found the splintering old desktop.

"To my..." She mumbled. "Boy? Son?" It felt wrong. How could she still claim him? She hadn't seen him in years and he hadn't seen her in even longer... Apart from that night.

He was so damaged. How could he be so broken already? His little war hadn't even been three months in the making but his eyes already faded and cracked.

She put pen to paper.

You didn't see me, but I was there. I gave Serah a rose on her wedding day. I showed the little warrior how to hold her rifle... You saw me at the tower, but I didn't matter there; or maybe you were too hurt to see me.

She scrapped the sheet again and pulled yet another.

To...

I failed. You deserved better than me. I hope you can forgive me.

Akemi.

A tear welled, but didn't greet the day. She rose and paced the small shack. She remembered her home in Hypatia. Reese and his little gang coming up with mastermind heists in her living room while she drank a beer and smiled.

Of course, their plans were much more than the fancies of children. Often times they truly succeeded; other times it came down to her to bail them out of trouble.

Why had she left? She loved the boy and poured all she was into him. She loved her home and so did Yua. Would it have been so terrible to let her grow up around her brother?

Maybe if she had just retired and raised Yua in Hypatia, things would be better?

She looked to her hand, to the scarred knuckles and missing chunks of finger. She remembered giving Reese his own scars, and not just the marks on his flesh. She wasn't a mother when she met him. She was a soldier. She raised him as a soldier. Discipline and order; skill and precision. She taught him to sneak, to spy... To kill.

She should have taught him how to cook, how to talk with girls and other shit other mothers do. She hated herself and everything she was, but she made him the same. Did she hate him? Is that why she left? Did she hate him so much because he was so alike her?

Pen met paper.

You were perfect, and I destroyed you.

I made you into me. I made you into a killer.

I won't do the same to her. I swear it.

It was wrong again. Why were words so hard? Why couldn't she just write an apology?

I'm sorry.

Mum

There! That was it... Right? It's what he would want, isn't it?

The truth was harder than that, and she knew it.

"Mum!" A little voice squawked through little tears. She didn't have enough time to turn before the dozen pattering footfalls crossed the shack and dove against her leg.

"What's wrong?" She asked as she gently pried the girls head from her lap. She took the child's round little face into her hands and looked deeply into her watery eyes.

"My leg!" The girl cried. She hiked her dress above her shin where a fresh, and bleeding, scab appeared.

"Let me see." She said, her tone soft and motherly. She stood from her stool and took the girl into her arms, lifting her into the air and plopping her onto the mouldy old bed beside them.

The graze was minor, not worth even disinfecting. The part of motherhood that attacked other women; made them panic and coddle their child upon a single drop of blood being spilt never seemed to grasp her. The child was already eight years old, and crying over a graze?

Reese wouldn't have. She sent him on his first mission when he was eight and, though he ultimately failed, he had done better than most grown men could hope to.

The words she uttered had been well practiced. A false warmth and worry on a shaky voice. She had learnt it through observation rather than instinct. It helped her to blend in with the other mothers if she fussed and mauled. She stroked away the girls tears as she cleaned up the graze.

Is it all an act? She wondered how much of the performance other women forced. Was it some kind of lowly politicking? An act to seem the greatest mother, and most complete woman. She loved the child, surely that was enough?

If I was enough, she needn't live in a shack.

The performance had to continue. Yua had to feel loved, normal.

Eight years old...

"Yua." She whispered. The girl wrapped her mother in her gaze, her pure eyes seemed to take up half of her little round face and the tear that silently drew down her face traced the chubby shape of her reddened cheeks down to her delicate chin.

Delicate. The word was a joke. No, an insult. Delicate spawn of Ito. Is this what her line would come to? A crying little girl, heir to naught but stories she would never be told and a bakery she could never truly own.

"Good." She thought. "Let my legacy be peace. Let my daughter be happy and small and... Delicate."

"Mum?" The girl urged. Akemi pulled herself from her thoughts and let a smile attach itself to her face.

"Yua." She repeated. "Kiddo, I love you."

The girl cocked an eyebrow as her pouty lip twisted into a somewhat confused smile.

"I love you, too!" She answered before attacking her mother with a grasping choke, her arms wrapped tightly around her neck. Akemi wanted to recoil, but couldn't. The girl needed love, to feel loved. She returned the attack in kind, wrapping the feeble bundle of bones and sinew in her arms and squeezing her tight.

She let the girl pull away first. She didn't know how quickly she ought to part, and delegated the decision to Yua. She slipped her arms back to her sides and Akemi did the same.

"Will you be strong enough to return to your play?" Akemi asked. She didn't mean to sound formal but forty-two years of habit were difficult to break.

"I-" The girl stammered as her eyes fell from Akemi's. "I don't really want to." She admitted.

"Why not?" Akemi asked, wrapping a hand around Yua's cheek.

"They're playing Monster Macks. It makes me sad. Can I just stay with you?" She pled.

"Why does it make you sad?"

"They keep talking about how Macks hurt people; it makes me think about dad." The girl's voice dropped nearly to a whisper and suddenly she seemed so small as her voice. Her shoulders hunched forwards and her nose scrunched slightly as her lips curled into a frown, she wasn't sad; she was angry or at least some thought in her mind was causing her great discomfort.

Her dad?

She tried desperately to recall all she had told her about her father, all she had lied about. She had told the child that he had died during a Mack raid when she was very young. Had he been a soldier or a victim in her stories?

"Kiddo, your father-" Akemi began but was quickly interrupted.

"I know what you're going to say!" The child grumbled. "He loved me very much and died quickly." She fell back onto the bed and put her back to Akemi, crossing her arms and curling into a little ball of tantruming fury. Akemi was caught off guard. She hadn't realised how angry the girl had grown, was this the fleeting anger of a child or a genuine grievance finally aired after many years of dwelling.

"He did, and he did." Akemi warmly whispered. She rose from her creaking knee and sat on the bed, bouncing Yua slightly. She lay down behind and held the girl close in a little cuddle.

"Talk to me, Yua." She quietly pled. The girl didn't speak but Akemi could feel the slight jerk of breath as each silent tear dropped.

"Okay." Akemi whispered again. She planted a kiss on Yua's little red cheek before nestling her head behind Yua's. "He was a good man." She said. "Do you remember anything about him?"

A moment of silence passed, interrupted only by the occasional sniffle before Yua responded in a voice so meek and frail it nearly brought Akemi to tears along with her. The thought brought some solace to Akemi, though. I'm changing. She was growing more... Human. The girl brought something out of her, some capacity for... Warmth?

"I remember a boy." Yua finally eked. "Dark hair and tall. We used to play together and he'd give me treats. But then I didn't see him anymore."

She obviously meant Reese. The boy loved and doted on her none stop, but if she knew about him she would ask questions; dangerous questions.

"A boy?" Akemi questioned. "What boy?"

"He was older and strong!" She said, turning to Akemi and showing off her own muscles. "Ryan? Remy?" She guessed.

"The was no boy." Akemi flatly denied with barely a trace of emotion.

"What?"

"Maybe some boy gave you some sweets one time and your memory is just wrong?" Akemi suggested. The girl seemed to deflate, her cheeks a little less full.

"Oh." She sighed.

"So you don't remember your father?" Akemi asked, trying to change the subject. She knew what the girl's answer would be as her father had never met her.

"I... Don't think so?" Yua slowly answered, seemingly doubting her own mind for a moment.

"Are you sure? He was tall, and had a big bushy beard!" Akemi lied. "You don't remember him at all?"

"I- Maybe?" Yua doubted.

"He loved you more than he loved anything else in the whole wide world. He spent every waking second by your side." She lied again. Her voice took a strange tone, like a child explaining the wild imaginings of her half remembered dreams and near impossible futures. "Surely you remember something?"

Yua scoured her mind with an almost visible effort. "Maybe? I think so? He had grey hair and brown eyes?" Yua finally said.

"Yes!" Akemi emphatically lied. "You do remember him."

The girl seemed to try and recall memories of her invented father. If she had any, she didn't speak on them.

She seemed no happier for having been granted memories of her supposedly doting father. In fact, she seemed more deflated than ever. She pushed deeply into her mother's chest and the two lay abed together for some hours to come.

"She is good, Reese. Here, she can be good forever."

That was it. That was why she left.

----------------------------------------

The dawn broke and she awoke, the child did not. Akemi took her perfect little head from her chest and placed it atop the all too thin pillow before slinking away. She crossed the shack with little more sound made then the gentle breaths she drew and the hooting owls nested within the gaps in the sheet metal roof panels.

She lowered to her desktop and drew paper and pen. Her eyes came upon the dusty old looking glass and, again, saw the wrinkled monster that sat in her place. The creature that abandoned her son, that forced her daughter into a life of labour and poverty.

The mother without a better choice. She saw the tears that were denied her, and the tears she denied. She remembered the anguish her daughter would be heir to and the pain she had forced upon her son.

She remembered her decision, and why she had to make it.

Ink met paper as a tear stained the page.

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"My Bonk." Serah read aloud. Despite how heart wrenching the next words were destined to be, she had to stifle a laugh at hearing her brooding and dark husband being called 'Bonk.' Her supressed grin didn't escape him and, despite himself, he shone a warm smile as if to permit her laugh. She reluctantly slipped a teasing giggle but shame immediately filled her cheeks upon reading over the next few lines. Her eyes darted to Reese. His smile dropped as quickly as hers had.

"This is to be my final testament, my last goodbye. Come the morrow, or the next, I shall lie dead." She paused and looked back to Reese who simply sat atop of her desk, his face unreadable to most; but not her. She saw the twinge, the flicker in his eye. She saw him rub his missing palm and let his feet stay stark still. He didn't want to look effected so he refused to fidget, but in doing so he seemed unnaturally statuesque.

"I felt a monster for leaving. In truth, a monster I may well be. I suppose it is down to your judgment at this point. I seek not forgiveness, but understanding. Not reconciliation, but to give you some small solace after all is done."

"Sash." Reese interrupted in a half kind tone. "Just... Skip to the meat." He slowly said.

"You don't want to hear it all?" Serah asked.

He just scrunched his nose and puffed out his cheeks as if to say: "I'm not that interested." But it must have been a lie. She would not push him and quickly skimmed through the meandering apologies and explanations. She ignored a paragraph of good old memories and another paragraph of past regrets.

"...I was there when I could be." She read aloud after a moment more of skimming the letter. "I was there when you got married. It was foolish to marry so young, but it was a wise choice in bride. She was beautiful, and I managed to give her a blue rose without her seeing. I watched her walk the aisle and I watched you await her at the end. You were so handsome, so brilliant. I'd have wept in my hiding place had I not been so angry at you."

"Angry?" Reese questioned, surprise mixed with an anger of his own as an emotion finally found his face.

"Just... Hang on!" Serah said as she pointed to the paper. "Serah was beyond beauty, heavily concealed and stitched together as she may have been, but you? You wore sandshoes to your wedding!" Serah recited.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"I... What?" Reese grunted as the confusion overtook his anger. "She was angry... cos' I wore sandshoes?" He said in disbelief. "She didn't even show her face, and she complains about my outfit?" His anger flared again.

A part of Serah didn't understand why it was an issue that Akemi had made mention of his shoes. She had chose to read that part aloud in hopes that it would make him laugh. The thought of the little woman skulking in some hidden corner, absolutely seething with rage over the groom's choice of footwear was almost funny to her. Again, she ignored the feeling to take up an empathetic tone. Her husband deserved better than mockery in that moment.

"Do you want me to go on?" Serah asked.

"Sure." He threw his arm out in frustration before collapsing backwards onto the desk and letting his eyes gaze pointlessly at the rooftiles. He didn't look angry to her. For the first time, he looked sad. She had never seen it before, not in him. He'd always mask sorrow, be it with rage or humour, but right now - right here - she thought he may even cry.

She rose. She soared. She lay beside him. Her eyes trapped his as he brushed the hair from her face. His callused and scarred hand came to rest on her gentle cheek for a lingering moment before he cruelly pulled it back.

Serah brought the letter back into her view but stayed on her side, facing him. He let his focus return to the roof despite still gripping her wrapped attention. Her lips fell apart as her her eyes flickered through the page.

"You're a killer, because I'm a killer, because I made you a killer. How often did I push you to be worse? The life I offered you was pain and agony. Take the life offered in your new family, this war is more than you know and it will destroy you. There are truths you will learn in the end that you cannot handle. Truths I cannot reveal. Take Serah, the little warrior and Desh. Run. Be more than me."

"I don't want to hear any of this." Reese finally said. His spoke softly, quietly. It was as if he couldn't speak any louder. That the words written would kill any words spoken. He washed a hand over his face with something he pretended was a yawn before resting his arm behind his head. His elbow poked above Serah's head and she pushed herself into it slightly, with so little force it could have been unconsciously done. It wasn't. She was probing him, testing to see if he wanted her closed. When he didn't flinch away, she grew more bold and inched closer in, passing by his elbow and nestled just below his arm before she pulled back the letter.

"You want me to stop?" She asked. Her hair tumbled as she propped herself up on her arm to interrupt his gaze.

"No..." He finally sighed. A flicker of a smile caught him as his eyes met hers again, though they didn't linger long.

She saw the deep dark brown drift far down. She saw him linger a moment on her lips, then lower, before he regained himself and focused back on the roof with neither sign of embarrassment nor interest.

"Just, skip to the explanation." He told her. Serah sighed and collapsed back down beside him. She made sure to land her head on his arm as she moved yet closer to him. She slid her face along him, closer to him, under the guise of finding a comfortable spot. He didn't seem to mind.

"These fucking games. I'm like a teenager. He's your husband; just kiss him, or take your shirt off or something." She thought but she didn't act. With a slight huff, she pulled the paper back again. It blocked her view of him but she hoped it would make him more comfortable if he felt unobserved.

"Yua can't be like you. She can't be like me. She's eight and she still cries when she steps on bugs." An ancient droplet stained and obscured a few words but the rest was still legible. "The truth is, I didn't leave you; I kept her from our life. Call it a mother's duty, one that I should have learnt the day we met. If I had told you where I was, he would have found me. Simply because I didn't say goodbye, I have managed these near four years of peace in which to raise her. I had hoped for many more, and one day - when Yua was older and safer - I wanted to find you again. Hear how you hated me, how you thought - or wished - that I had died. Alas, dreams lie too often when dreamers lie too long. I heard they captured Serah, and that she was pregnant. If I had been quicker, if I had heard sooner; maybe I could have done more." Serah paused. The next words choked her breath and strained her will.

"Go on." Reese warmly said. He turned to her and placed his face inches from her own before he stole a tear from her with the gentle smile held in his eyes.

"When I saw you there, and you looked through me. It hurts to say, but for the first time; I felt I made the right decision. You were drenched in blood, your own and everyone else's. I saw the mounds of the hundred, hundred bodies left in your wake... And I saw you smile. How could you smile? I saw your wife on her knees, cradling the corpse of her unborn daughter. I saw your blood sodden ward aside her. A child, forced to aid in a complete miscarriage. Yet, when you entered, you smiled? I knew then that you were broken, truly and beyond what I had allowed myself to..." Serah stopped herself from reading and shot up straight.

"I'm not reading this!" She insisted. "Reese, I know you admired her and everything... But fuck the old cunt!" She continued in a clear rage. "She is not your mother, and she never was. These are not the words of a woman capable of love. Don't listen to any of this. You didn't smile cos' you didn't care; you smiled cos' you wanted me to feel safe." She'd have continued on for hours. A thousand words, none of them kind, would have flung at a woman ten years dead... had Reese not looked up at her with those big brown eyes.

She didn't know if he had ever cried before. Obviously at birth, he must have; but after that?

He did not cry for Anna, he did not cry for Desh. Not for Max or Dax. Not for his own arm. He had certainly never cried before her, never been even allowed for some small weakness before her. So what could the single tiny shard of liquid crystal falling from his cheek and tangling in his beard have been?

"Read." He whispered, or did he beg?

She didn't let her eyes beam overlong at him. She did not allow herself to trace the droplet along his cheekbones and through his overgrown stubble. She locked herself to the page, blinking away the well of tears that had spawned at the sight of him. She choked through a single word before her voice failed completely.

"...I knew then that you were broken, truly and beyond what I had allowed myself to..." Her quivering voice gave away yet again, but she persisted. "...myself to imagine. It's my fault, but I can't let the same happen to Yua. She is... pure, and I suppose in some small way, perfect."

"She was." Reese whispered, now behind Serah. She had been so focused on the page that he had managed to pull himself within a meter of her without her notice.

"You'll understand one day, when you have a son or daughter. Maybe you already do, with the little warrior. Maybe you regret bringing her into our lives like I do you." She struggled onwards. "She rouses now, and my time has grown small. When I came to the tower, I knew he would have spies watching her. I knew that no matter how hard I tried to lose them, they would follow me. I believe they will kill me soon, surely within the week. I have preparations in the making, thought they are not yet complete. Should I pass, Akyama Hosun will find her and this note soon after. As such, I speak directly to him now." Serah stopped and turned to face the daunting man. No trace of tear remained as he seemed to stand a foot taller than he had in the moments past. "Do I need to go on?" She asked in a small voice, cracking with pain.

"Yes." He simply replied.

"Hosun, my old friend. I am afraid I must call in a final favour. In honour of all we were, of all I have done for you. Please, find my son. Bring Yua to him. Let him show her love, and let her heal his heart. If he is dead, all I ask is that you keep her from my life and my past. Let her live as a house maid or some such easy and content life. Tell her how much I love her, and tell him how sorry I am." She finished. "That's it."

"That's all? It seems a thousand words short, and two-thousand too long." He forced a laugh.

"She asked Hosun to give you Yua?" Serah questioned, her face buried in the paper.

"He must have thought us dead." Reese glibly suggested.

"Then why did he save the letter?"

"Honestly... I don't care."

"But... There's other things. She talks about someone, a man. ' I knew he would have spies watching' who's he? And why was he watching me?"

"It was the rebellion, Serah. Everyone was watching you."

"You don't care that whoever this is killed her?"

He paused for a moment. Serah realised her words may have been harsh, or spoken too angrily. "I didn't..." She stammered.

"It's okay." He warmly interrupted. "It's like you said, she's not my mother. Not really. In her own words: she loved Yua, and felt sorry for me." His tone was wrong, not relaxed but relieved.

"He's shutting down again." She realised. She wouldn't let him. She had enough of the back and forth, the childish games she had to play. She wrapped her hand around his face and forced him to look directly into her eyes. He didn't resist her in the slightest but his big dark eyes pierced hers and threatened to make her look away. An easy smile came to his lips and he looked as though some quip was rearing to escape them.

The sound of her hand slapping his cheek echoed through the office.

"Ow." He jokingly moaned before receiving another.

"Cry." Serah sternly ordered.

"What?"

Another, gentler slap thundered.

"Our daughter is dead and you blame yourself; cry." She ordered.

"Serah, I-" He tried to protest, but she quickly silenced him with a short - almost chaste - kiss.

"You killed a man when you were eight years old, and you've killed countless more since; cry." She continued. Her words seemed devoid of warmth.

"I don't-" He attempted to say, before another kiss stunned him again.

"Your adoptive mother - who abandoned you - wrote you a letter where she tells you she didn't love you... AND that she thinks you're a monster! Cry!" Serah persisted.

"We started a war that may very well be the reason Lara dies young, you lost your arm fighting for your life, the only family you've ever know is either dead; vegetative or a monster. Your wife lies alone every night wondering if you've either drank yourself to death or just straight up swallowed a bullet yet. So please... Just fucking cry!" She begged or pled or demanded or whatever other word could possibly encapsulate the feelings of a woman stood within a single breath of the love of her life, and yet is so completely alone.

Twenty-one years since they met in that little shit hole, and she had never once asked more of him than he was comfortable with. Yet here she was, drowning in two decades of tears before the man she loved.

How could it be love if it made her feel so terrible all the time. How could he love her, and still make her feel like this? Was it even worth it anymore? The thought could not come to her in words but the back of her mind screamed: "Love me, or leave me. This is the end, or it isn't. Just cry for me once. Not just a single tear. Break. Break with me, my love. Please."

"I..." He whispered ashamed. "I don't know how, Sash. I'm sorry."

"Fuck you." She spat. "I happen to be very well practiced." She laughed through her tears. She threw her balled fist weakly against his chest and her head followed soon after. He wrapped his arms greedily around her, and squoze tight.

"I can't do this anymore." She whispered from within his embrace. He knew what was to come but didn't let her go.

"Don't..." He begged again.

"You aren't him anymore, Reese. You're cold, and cruel. I don't think you love me, I think you feel you owe me."

He didn't reply, only squeezing her harder to which she gladly sunk deeper into him.

"I don't know how..." He uttered again. He sunk his face into her hair and she felt him breathe her in deeply.

"You promised me Reese. You said we'd read the letter, you'd break and we could put you back together." She pulled away with a powerful effort. He didn't force her in, but he may as well have for how hard it was to part from him.

A final plan formed, a hope beyond hopes. She looked him in the eyes and knew the only way to finally help him, to finally break him.

"Goodbye, Reese." She whispered.

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A war raged outside, men died by the thousand as shuttles evacuated by the dozen. It didn't matter.

They had lost Apotheosis, they had lost Archi, they had lost Elysium. It didn't matter.

The incomprehensible armadas that awaited beyond the shielded sky that stained the stars sanguine. It didn't matter for an instant. All stopped and all was at an end. The horizon crashed in and the sun burst as she took the first steps away from him.

Her arm shook as it reached for the door handle and her knees nearly buckled with each step she took. Her vision glazed behind tears. Then there was a pressure on her hip, and she was spinning until a black mass towered over her. Though her eyes were too welled to see him, her face felt his gentle rains. He got closer, until the two were less than a few centimetres apart and then he stopped.

She blinked away the wall of water masking her vision to see him... Broken at last.

"I'm sorry... It's my fault Anna died." He cried, not a single tear nor a brooding fall of emotion. It was a simple mess of sorrow. A flood of pain and regret. He held nothing back and flooded ten times harder than he did the moment before. It was no manly display of inner strength, it was a human being in pain wanting to be consoled. The effort of the tears brought him to a knee and then knocked him flat, where Serah followed him down. She matched him tear for tear, though hers more of joy and relief than pain.

They may have lasted hours, or only a few minutes, but once all was said and done and they realised they had fallen to a cuddle - with Serah's head in her designated spot on his chest and her arms wrapped around him - and they laughed. It was a good laugh, the best they had ever had. They laughed through tears and apologies. They laughed through salty kisses and sputtering coughs. She laughed when she realised her makeup had ran all over his face, and he laughed when he realised her hair had tangled around his carry vest and he was forced to delicately unwrap it through water logged vision.

"I'm sorry for slapping you." Serah finally said once the laughing passed.

"Don't be, you've hit me much harder than that." He answered. She looked up at him and decided to move. She wrapped one leg over him as she straddled him. She rubbed her hand against the newly red mark on his cheek.

"That's different." She finally answered. "That was training. This was emotional. Angry."

"I can take it." He laughed as he rubbed his metal hand against hers. His real hand, however, seemed to wander elsewhere.

"You shouldn't have to take it. I shouldn't hit you like that, no matter how emotional I get. Even if you are twice my size."

"It's okay." He insisted. "I'm sure you can... Make it up to me somehow." His hand shifted again, and the coy attitude of the games they had previously been playing quickly drained from her.

"How about..." She pretended to ponder as she took his wandering hand into hers. Her face dropped, and all trace of her coy smile disappeared as she leaned next to his ear. "I let you make up for all those nights I had to lie alone in bed."

She pressed herself against him, hard, and he did the same. He pulled her wrists together in one of his hands before rolling her over onto the ground, using his free hand to cushion her head from the floorboards.

He pulled the clip at his shoulder and allowed his carrier to fall to the side before he pulled his shirt over head. Her hands ran down his chest and traced each scar line to line, shape to shape. She remembered each he had bore the last time he held her, and she found each one she had stitched since then. From the circle above his collar bone where he caught a bullet on her behalf, her finger lowered. It skirted a curved line across his pectoral where a fragment had tore through him. She lowered still to his abdomen where she found the divot he had earned on their honeymoon and the score of smaller scars that traced him like freckles. Her finger finally found the leather of his belt, and the steel of it's buckle.

----------------------------------------

"Its time to go!" A voice called from the doorway. An agonising screech came seconds later. "Ah! No that's not okay!" She called.

Reese threw his shirt over Serah before turning to the doorway. She could barely see who stood there past his shoulders but the voice was unmistakable.

"Hey, Sparks." Serah meekly answered, acutely aware she lay shirtless on the floor amongst a thousand sheets of scattered papers. She peered past Reese and saw the young woman shielding her eyes with her back turned to them.

"Don't 'hey sparks' me!" She shuddered. "It's like walking in on your sister fucking your brother." She restrained a retch before shifting further from the door.

"Get dressed. Our shuttle's ready." She told them before storming away. Serah thought she heard her grumbling something beneath her breath but couldn't quite make it out.

"Great." Reese laughed. He collapsed forwards into her and his forehead landed gently on her chest. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight into herself.

"Cockblocked by war. Story of my life." Serah groaned as she ran a hand through the thick mass of hair on his head.

"Lets get going then." He whispered. He placed his arms to her sides and started to push himself up. She wrapped her legs around his waist and restrained his head to her chest.

"No." She moaned with a wisp of a laugh. He continued to push up, carrying her along with him until he was stood straight with her clinging around him like a koala to a tree. He laughed and moved his head aside, kissing at her shoulder. He moved along and found her neck then her jaw and finally, her lips. They kissed deeply. His tongue found hers. It was sweet, even through the salty shed tears and still leaking makeup. It was the first time they had kissed and it felt like a first kiss. All kisses before had felt like a last; passion brought from inevitable separation. This was different. A promise of the thousand, thousand kisses to come and everything else to come afterwards.

When he tore his lips from hers, she tried to follow him deeper but he denied her. The mission called him, even now, but it didn't consume him. She did. His eyes and hers mixed in an embrace tighter than even the squeeze of his muscled arms. It was energy, and heat. Flames and inferno. They danced a waltz amongst landmines. They span and floated between bullets and knew the world would never end so long as they stood in this moment, and every moment to come together.

She released him and feathered onto the ground, parting a single step backwards but never breaking her eyes from his.

"Okay. Lets go." She finally said.