Shiny Golden Wire (FFVII, AVALANCHE)
Title: Shiny Golden Wire
Fandom: FFVII
Characters/Pairings:Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aeris, Nanaki
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers up until you leave Midgar
Summary: AVALANCHE, and not giving up (Quintuple drabble).
When Cloud looks up through the smog and steam of Wall Market, he can see the rift in the plate above him, the twisted wreck and the dark beyond. Collateral damage. That's all it is. Shinra's never shied away from a bit of collateral damage.
When he promised himself earlier that he wouldn't care about this, back in Seventh Heaven's run-down barroom with the jukebox playing tinny jazz and Tifa scrubbing glasses with a lost look in her eyes, it hadn't seemed like much of a promise. He hadn't cared.
He remembers other, older casualties, and wonders when that changed.
*
Barret's never regretted the gun graft, doesn't think he ever will, but trying to lift your own weight arm over arm's no easy task when your right arm is amputated just below the joint. He loops his elbow around a listing girder, checks weight and balance, swings his good arm up to grasp for a handhold and doesn't look down.
Not much to hold onto up here. Just a wire, just a fucking tenuous thread and the chasm beneath - but Marlene is safe, and he ain't dead yet. And neither is AVALANCHE.
His hand closes around metal, and he climbs.
*
There is no wind down here, not like up the mountain - no black jagged rock or thin air, no storms. Just corroding iron and fraying cables beneath her hands, making her thankful for her gloves and her instincts, and ground that shifts unexpectedly underfoot. She'd grown up climbing, and never thought she might need to use those skills to scale a mountain of debris. Never occurred to her why she might need to.
A golden wire of hope, she thinks, hauling herself over the final ledge, looking up and up. We'll get you back, Aeris. And then we'll make them bleed.
*
She's been here before.
She won't be back, though, after she leaves again. She doesn't know how she knows that, but she does: this is the last time. Doesn't make it easier now, with these white walls closing in.
The beast in the cell beside her lashes his tail, agitated, growling low. A dangerous-looking creature, red coat marked by scars, fangs bared in warning - but it's fear, she thinks, not rage. Aeris understands fear. And she moves closer, presses her hands to the steel mesh that separates them.
"Shh," she whispers, "be patient. I promise I'll get you out."
*
Nanaki has long ceased pacing the confines of his prison. He knows the dimensions of this cell, the stale scent of filtered air and the acrid sting of mako that circulates now in his veins. He has begun to wonder on bad days if that is all he has ever known, and all he ever will.
But in dreams he sees canyons that stretch for miles, air that wavers in the heat and sun that burns the red earth clean. He remembers these things. Surely that means they must be real.
Be patient. All things must someday end.
Or change.
Quick note - there doesn't seem to be a prompt #61 tag yet, although I might just be missing it.
Fandom: FFVII
Characters/Pairings:Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aeris, Nanaki
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers up until you leave Midgar
Summary: AVALANCHE, and not giving up (Quintuple drabble).
When Cloud looks up through the smog and steam of Wall Market, he can see the rift in the plate above him, the twisted wreck and the dark beyond. Collateral damage. That's all it is. Shinra's never shied away from a bit of collateral damage.
When he promised himself earlier that he wouldn't care about this, back in Seventh Heaven's run-down barroom with the jukebox playing tinny jazz and Tifa scrubbing glasses with a lost look in her eyes, it hadn't seemed like much of a promise. He hadn't cared.
He remembers other, older casualties, and wonders when that changed.
*
Barret's never regretted the gun graft, doesn't think he ever will, but trying to lift your own weight arm over arm's no easy task when your right arm is amputated just below the joint. He loops his elbow around a listing girder, checks weight and balance, swings his good arm up to grasp for a handhold and doesn't look down.
Not much to hold onto up here. Just a wire, just a fucking tenuous thread and the chasm beneath - but Marlene is safe, and he ain't dead yet. And neither is AVALANCHE.
His hand closes around metal, and he climbs.
*
There is no wind down here, not like up the mountain - no black jagged rock or thin air, no storms. Just corroding iron and fraying cables beneath her hands, making her thankful for her gloves and her instincts, and ground that shifts unexpectedly underfoot. She'd grown up climbing, and never thought she might need to use those skills to scale a mountain of debris. Never occurred to her why she might need to.
A golden wire of hope, she thinks, hauling herself over the final ledge, looking up and up. We'll get you back, Aeris. And then we'll make them bleed.
*
She's been here before.
She won't be back, though, after she leaves again. She doesn't know how she knows that, but she does: this is the last time. Doesn't make it easier now, with these white walls closing in.
The beast in the cell beside her lashes his tail, agitated, growling low. A dangerous-looking creature, red coat marked by scars, fangs bared in warning - but it's fear, she thinks, not rage. Aeris understands fear. And she moves closer, presses her hands to the steel mesh that separates them.
"Shh," she whispers, "be patient. I promise I'll get you out."
*
Nanaki has long ceased pacing the confines of his prison. He knows the dimensions of this cell, the stale scent of filtered air and the acrid sting of mako that circulates now in his veins. He has begun to wonder on bad days if that is all he has ever known, and all he ever will.
But in dreams he sees canyons that stretch for miles, air that wavers in the heat and sun that burns the red earth clean. He remembers these things. Surely that means they must be real.
Be patient. All things must someday end.
Or change.
Quick note - there doesn't seem to be a prompt #61 tag yet, although I might just be missing it.