Aging

She is nine and sticky fingered and mourning for her mother as best she can. Her mother who died weeping and begging and choking on her own blood to save he. So she wears her hair short (in remembrance, but Sh! Don't tell Daddy!) and smiles extra wide and tries to pack enough emotion in her life for two people (because she should have died too, not just mama).

He is fifty and asleep in a coffin, dreaming of blood and sin and a beautiful woman (who didn't want him back). He lived when he should have died (just like her) but instead of living he tries to kill himself the best he can, now that he's immortal.

She is ten and being carted around the world by Shinra as they show off their pet Emperor. Rufus is relegated to babysitter and she pulls his hair and steals his wallet and hides in the laundry chute of the hotel and pretends she isn't scared to the bones of the silver haired man she keeps seeing (mama mama don't go please! please please ple-). She has to relocate when a barrel of dirty laundry dislodges her and the women doing the laundry laugh and laugh because she looks like a drowned rat after being knocked into a tub of soapy water.

He is fifty-one and moaning in his sleep as he relives being shot and tortured a million times.

She is eleven and all elbows and knees and love for Wutai and her father is having secret meetings he thinks she doesn't know about. She hides in the room above and listens with an overturned glass. Then she goes to her house (her father can't look her in the face anymore, let alone live with her) and sits in the corner of her bedroom, surrounded by cats and cries for what her country is becoming.

He is fifty-two and Hojo's torture doesn't compare in the slightest to what he does to himself.

She is twelve and newly on a mission, leaving her beloved country to save it. She flits from city to city, stealing everything she can and gives it all to her father, newly scarred arms trembling. "Here," she says. "Take it. Make Wutai great again." And he shakes his head and smiles a little. "It isn't that easy. It isn't enough." So she cuts herself open and bleeds for Wutai, spilling herself on it's sands as an offering and heads back out.

He is fifty-three and no closer to salvation than when he entered the coffin twenty-five years ago.

She is thirteen and all of Wutai rests on her shoulders. She is bruised and broken and has stolen and killed and every month she visits her father and every month her says, "More."

He is fifty-four and dead inside. The demons press against his mind but even they have trouble matching his self-inflicted wounds.

She is fourteen and far too young to seduce men before she knocks them out and robs them blind but she does it anyway. Her methods are clumsy and she is obviously too young but she still succeeds. She feels dirty afterwards and washes herself until her skin is red and raw.

He is fifty-five and he hears the word, "Sorry" repeated like a litany. Sorry for what, he wonders.

She is fifteen and she stops robbing from people in cities and towns because she's starting to get famous. Instead she camps in forests and attacks travelers, ignoring that even if she doesn't kill them the monsters will.

He is fifty-six and what he can feel of the world around him (not much, just a pressure on the back of his mind) makes him dream of spiders covering his skin, thousands of them. He wakes up briefly and stares at the lid of his coffin before going back to sleep.

She is sixteen and isn't alone anymore and she dances through the halls of Shinra Manor because she is The Great Ninja Yuffie and has her lovely back ups Chocobo Head, and Boobs, and the flower girl (sweet, sweet Aeris, why did you have to-) and all the others.

He is fifty-seven and blinking in the light. The blue-eyed man tells him of Sephiroth, of his sins come back to haunt him even though he's atoned. He sees the gray eyed girl draped over the pink one's shoulders and her whole body is smoldering with barely suppressed movement and energy.

She is only half as old as the time he spent asleep in his coffin but she has lived twice as much as he has. And he hates her, irrationally, for what she is able to do and who she is able to be and her ability to not only live but to thrive. And she hates him, irrationally, for being such a selfish lazy-bones and his ability to shut himself off (away) completely, which sometimes when she's really, really tired and has bled herself dry for her needy, needy country she kinda-sorta wished she could do the same, but she never ever tells anyone that.

And she's sixteen and panting and trembling with joy because they did it they did it they won and finally, finally she has given enough! Shinra is no more, Wutai can be great agin and she is blessedly, beautifully alive and gawd isn't that the greatest!

And he is fifty-seven and he's atoned, hasn't he? He's destroyed the mutant child he couldn't keep from being born and he'll find a new sin soon enough, but for now, for now he is free and guiltless and alive for the first time in thirty years and gods, does it feel good.