Final Fantasy VII: Lifestream - Book 2: Aftermath

TWENTY-TWO

As much as I wanted to just keep kissing Cloud and never stop, we had to come up for air before long. I was tired and weak and ached in a dozen places or more, but I was alive. I felt it in every breath I took and in the sight of those gorgeous baby blues that gazed softly back at me. I sank back into the pillows, moving as if I was made of glass, and Cloud adjusted them for me so I could sit up and be comfortable.

The beeping of the heart monitor I was hooked up to was the only sound in the room for a while, and as I lay there in bed, bandaged and with my right arm in a sling and wearing one of Aerith's nightdresses, I realized I was holding something. I didn't have the strength yet to turn my hand over and see, but I smiled as I felt the familiar curves of Sam's old gift. The baby chocobo feather in its glass case. I'd given it to Cloud outside Reactor 5 to keep him safe, and he'd given it back to me later in the pillar after he'd swooped in and saved me.

"Cloud, think you could...?" I asked, pointing at the baby chocobo feather with my good hand.

He nodded. "Sure, Jessie. Just a sec."

Cloud carefully reached under my right hand and slid the flattened glass cylinder out from under my fingers and put it in my left hand. I'd have gotten it myself, but moving around too much took a lot of effort in the sorry state I was in. I'd barely had enough strength to lift my arm to touch Cloud's face, nudge him toward me, and hold onto him while we kissed. My lips tingled for more, but for now, I just wanted to enjoy being with him again. And being alive.

As I looked at the baby chocobo feather, memories swirled around in my mind, thoughts of all I'd been through lately both out here in the real world and in that dark place between life and death that I'd been in since the pillar. A coma of some kind, by my guess. There was so much to process and unpack, so much to think about. Waking up and seeing Cloud there at my side, though, had to be one of the happiest moments I'd ever known. Especially now that I knew why he'd always seemed so familiar to me, why I'd felt like we'd met before.

Because a long time ago, we had.

It made my heart turn to mush just thinking about it. The day we'd truly met for the first time. Not when he'd saved me from the Vice gang that night two months ago. But five years before that, when I was still a shy, nerdy office girl at Shinra. The memory was so clear, and although I'd never really forgotten it, I hadn't understood the truth about it until I'd been trapped in that coma, reliving so many memories to figure out what had happened to me in the pillar.

I'd only been working at Shinra for about a year when Cloud and I first met—Marissa had still been Director of Systems Operation at the time—and although I was only seventeen back then, almost eighteen, I had also been Scarlet's assistant. She hated it when anyone was late and didn't hesitate to show it. I felt my cheeks sting a bit as I thought about how she'd slapped me that day. But the fear of getting that punishment was what ended up leading me to Cloud. Butterflies swirled around in my stomach as I thought of the memory.

I'd been downstairs on the third floor one day in the fall, admiring the Hardy HD-90 they had on display there, when I heard the elevators opening behind me. I'd been on break and had been about to head over there myself, but I waited first to see who'd come out. Nothing could've prepared me for what I saw, though. Two men had walked out. One of them was a typical Shinra trooper. But it was the second man who took my breath away and made me gasp in disbelief.

It was Sephiroth.

They'd been about to leave on a mission to someplace far away, and they were waiting on another trooper. I remember Sephiroth had been irritated about the delay. It had been then that I'd realized I'd only had a few minutes to rush back upstairs to avoid being late for my meeting. I did not wanna get bitch slapped by Scarlet.