Leaving

Chapter One

She's awake, but he thinks she's sleeping. He slips from her bed quickly, figuring that if he tries to go slow he'll just end up waking her. And he doesn't want to wake her. More than anything, he wishes he could take the whole night back. The candlelit dinner. The dancing. The romantic stroll down Loveless Avenue, holding hands. The arrival at her apartment. The first kiss, tentative, his lips brushing hers. The uncertainty on her face. His stupid reassurances that she's beautiful and everything will be great, wonderful, perfect.

She is beautiful, his Cissnei. He really likes her a lot.

But he doesn't love her.

His mako bright eyes let him find his clothes in the darkness of her room. He dresses silently, steals one last look at her sleeping form. A reedy light flitters through the curtains, illuminating the scars decorating her slender form. Only hours earlier, he'd traced those scars, even daring to ask where a few of the more unique ones came from. Her eyes had gotten that emotionless, Turk-look she wears so often and she'd whispered, "Work." The guarded look dissuaded him from asking more questions.

Maybe it was that guarded look that laid his doubts about her to rest. She was a Turk. That probably did stuff to a person. Changed them. He didn't know everything a Turk did, but from Tseng, he knew it wasn't all sunshine and flowers. A lot of it was distasteful.

That type of shit changed people, mostly for the worst.

Hell, he was starting to see that in SOLDIER too. The youthful exuberance he once felt was slipping through his fingers like sand. Ever since Angeal left, he'd come to realize that SOLDIER wasn't what he'd dreamed it was.

Cissnei must have been damaged and disillusioned a long-time before she met him. Her expression was always closed, her feelings tucked away. Well, almost always. It was those brief moments of life that he liked best about her. When she'd smile at him without meaning to. Or when she'd laugh at something he said or did.

Those infrequent moments when she drops her guard.

He bites his bottom lip, trying to pinpoint when in the evening he'd know he didn't love her. Could he have stopped this sooner? Was it when her fingertips brushed across his hips, calloused and rough with the aftereffects off too much training? Was when she body arched toward him, his name on her lips, reminding him who he was even as he was thinking about someone else.

Shit. He doesn't know.

He feels stupid, like scum. His mother would be so ashamed of him. Angeal would be ashamed. But he still leaves. He closes the door to her room, exhaling slowly. His mother will never know about this. Angeal is gone, dead. Degraded and discarded by ShinRa. Killed by his own sword at Zack's hands.

Maybe that's why he can't love her. Because he's lost faith in ShinRa and the Turks are an embodiment of the darkest part of ShinRa.

Yeah. That's gotta be it. You can't exactly trust ShinRa to be what they claim to be. And for better or worse, Cissnei is part of ShinRa. He's part of ShinRa too, but he can't help that. He's not going to desert like some people. But he's going to have more than a ShinRa life. He's going to get out properly. Just as soon as he finishes this last mission to Nibelhiem.

So he hurries out the door, locking it behind him and then slipping her key under the cracks.

He pulls out his PHS, flicking through his contacts quickly. It is 3:42 AM. Hardly normal calling hours, but he needs to hear her voice – even if just on her voicemail. He starts down the street as the phone rings, humming to himself some ditty he'd picked up in Wutai.

To his surprise, she answers with a sleepy, "Hello?"

He stops walking, forgetting where he is. Forgetting the open window. Forgetting Cissnei. "Aeris!" he exclaims, his voice carrying down the deserted Midgar streets. "Sorry! I hope I didn't wake you. Aww, who am I kidding? Of course I woke you."

She laughs, the sound ever cheerful, completely open. "I'm pretty mad at you," she says, but he can tell she isn't serious.

"I'm sorry," he says. Just talking to her is lifting his spirits. "Hey, I got an idea. How about I make it up to you."

"You'll have to beg pretty hard," she says. He imagines her green eyes sparkling, her struggle to keep an angry face.

"Two dates?" he offers. "No, wait. Three. And we'll go dancing. And I'll make you that flower wagon."

He keeps talking, trading light banter with the flower girl for almost fifteen minutes. Then, with a solemn promise to call again soon, he hangs up. For a second he's completely silent, then he tells the PHS what he hasn't worked the courage up to say to Aeris. "I love you."

Lying in bed, pretending everything is okay, pretending to be sleeping, pretending to not hurt, Cissnei feels the tears start seeping from the corners of her eyes.

Then Zack is leaving, and she can hear the bounce in his step as he leaves her.