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Fire, Cloud decides, is an inefficient way to cast light into an enclosed room. The flames flicker on the candles that surround them, throwing shadows around, deepening them in corners like the one where he sits now in the little house they’re sharing in the small and strange Gongaga village. His eyes struggle to keep up with the way the darkness pools like water around him, weakening as someone walks past a candle in the main room and disturbs the flames with a small breeze. And once the disturbance is over, the tiny flames’ light grows steady again, only to be disturbed once more as another body brings along another draft.
The constant up and down of light in the room is starting to frustrate him. On the couch in the middle of the room, Aerith sits with her legs tucked underneath her, flipping through an old book she found. The candlelight on the little table before her flickers, light dancing onto the page. He can see the glow of her skin in the firelight.
“Can you see well?” he asks her.
She looks up at him. Shadows move by her nose and under her chin. Her eyes are extra striking in the flickering light. “Well enough. I’m not really reading, just killing time. Why, is this light bothering you?”
A breeze blows in from the propped open windows around them, cutting through the thick jungle air, disrupting the candlelight again. He waits until the flickering dies down before he answers. “Kinda. It’s hard to see.”
She sets her book down on her lap. “You know, this is how it will be. Eventually. A world without mako use, right? No more power.”
He doesn’t know how to feel about that. Since setting foot in the jungle, he has hoped that he would grow accustomed to the flickering firelight and the lack of air conditioning, the tepid water that pours from taps connected directly to rivers without filtration, all the little things he’s taken for granted in the various cities and towns powered by mako that he’s lived in or visited over the years. A future without mako. He can hardly imagine it. And yet here he is, fighting for it.
“Here,” she says, patting the space on the couch beside her. “Let’s try something.”
He gets to his feet. This small movement shifts the light around them. Slowly, he makes his way toward her. The way the candlelight dances on her face gives him pause. She’s sitting perfectly still but looks perpetually in motion, shadows shifting along her arms and legs. He realizes her jacket is folded neatly on her other side, and her shoulders are covered now with the orange glow of the tiny flames around them. He sits down, keeping his eyes on her knees, on the flimsy pink material her dress is made of.
“Okay, Cloud,” she says, clasping her hands together. “We’re going to the future. Are you ready?”
He frowns. “What?”
“I said, are you ready?”
She has that smile on her face, gently tugging at her lips, the one that signals something to come, some strange and profound thing that he will dwell on for weeks and months. He takes a slow breath to prepare himself and nods.
She takes his hands. Her fingers are soft. His own hands are always extra sensitive without his gloves on, as though saving up all feeling for moments like this. Goosebumps rise along his arms as she touches him, her fingers pressing down on his palms, wrapping around his hands, her thumbs gliding over his skin. When he looks up at her, the green of her eyes is almost glittering in the dim and moving candlelight, and the way her eyes fall on him is as physical as the touch of her hands on his.
He feels breathless. He tries to keep his breathing even. “Okay,” he says weakly. “Now what?”
“Now, we blow out these candles.” She closes her eyes. Her lips move but no sound comes out. One by one, the candles around the room go out, leaving a thin haze of smoke in their wake. When the candle on the table beside them goes out, the room is plunged into sudden, consistent darkness.
Cloud blinks, his eyes quickly adjusting to the dark. Her silhouette is barely visible one second, and in the next he makes out her face, her nose, the shape of her mouth. She moves a little closer to him, the sounds of her clothes against the cushion more conspicuous in the dark, as if the lack of sight is enhancing all his other senses. Her hands on his feel heavier suddenly. He holds tightly to her hands, his fingers pressing down on her skin, and as his palm skims hers, he thinks he feels her shiver just a little.
Slowly, the starlight from outside the open windows makes the inside more visible. He can see her hair, how it falls to perfectly frame her face. The pink bow that pokes out above her head. Her long twisty braid that falls over her shoulder. No candlelight flickering. No shifting shadows. His eyes take her in without disruption or interruption. He realizes he’s staring and can’t seem to stop.
“Now what?” he whispers into the thin, restless air between them.
“Now, you’re in the future,” she whispers back, sending another wave of goosebumps skittering over his skin. “Listen. It's so quiet. No reactors. No power. No danger. Can you hear the mako in its rightful place, churning beneath our feet? I can feel it.”
All he can feel is her hands on his, and the brush of her breath against his face as he speaks. He leans in to feel more, to hear her breathing better, to listen more closely to the inner workings of her, her mysterious mind and her beating heart. She leans in too, close enough that her breath touches his lips as she says, “What do you think of this future? Does it feel like something you want to be a part of?”
It's too late for second thoughts, this far into their mission. They’re both such a long way from home. But he listens to the silence around them. The way the brightness of the night sky outside filters in through the window and falls on her face makes him feel as though he could face her ideal future, no matter how inconvenient candlelight may be. Slowly, hesitantly, he brings her hand up to his mouth and touches his lips to her knuckles. The thudding of his heart as her skin glances across his mouth could power a city. Her thumb as it gently caresses his chin could light up a reactor. He thinks the future may be literally darker but the brightness of her eyes on his face could be enough, it could be everything.
“Yeah,” he tells her. Her hand lingers by his face, moving along his jaw as he speaks. “I wanna be there. I wanna be there with you.”