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boldlyvoid · 3 years

Text

Hypothetically | Chapter 21-24

Summary: Reader and Spencer were friends in kindergarten, she watched him grow up and explore the world while she was still trying to catch up to him. now that they work together, they fall in love incredibly fast. friends to lovers, case of the week style story.

Warnings 18+: Murderers, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Blood, Guns, mentions of autopsy, Fluff, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, bed-sharing, Riding, Unprotected Sex, Virgin Reader, Case of the Week, original crimes, Food mention, Smut, Oral Sex, Light BDSM, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Talk, obgyn appointments and info, Home Invasion, Past Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Emotional Manipulation, Grooming, Pedophilia mention, non-con oral (male receiving), Pregnant Sex, Daddy Kink, Breeding Kink, Homophobia, conversion therapy

A/N; thee case in c21 is personal to me, like fictional revenge.

word count so far: 70K (chapter 1-25)

chapter 21

Having Spencer all to herself for 3 weeks straight was an experience she’ll never forget. They had the whole month of January off together, painting and re-decorating their home till it was exactly how they wanted it. It felt like home, it was theirs for real now.

Painting the bedroom green was the best idea she’s ever had. When the sun finally woke them up every morning, it wasn’t as blinding. It was paradise. The golden beams of light cast a beautiful glow around the room, it was like she was in a magic forest at the start of every day.

Spencer was laying on his back, his hair scattered on the pillow. He looked so peaceful, sleeping with his mouth wide open. Y/N was leaning on her elbow, looking down at the beautiful man she had the pleasure of spending the rest of her life with.

She brushed the hair off his face, watching his nose scrunch up as he felt her fingertips on his cheek. The sun on his face made him glow, he looked like a gift from god laying before her.

“Good morning baby,” she whispered softly. Dragging her finger along his jaw and down his neck, “we get to go to work today.”

Spencer stretched as he woke up, slipping an arm under her and pulling her into his chest. She held on tight, kissing his neck as she settled in. “Morning,” he replied. Raspy as ever.

“Wanna go get breakfast?” She asked softly.

He laughed against her skin, “gotta feed the baby.”

“And the wiiiife,” she teased.

“Not for another 11 weeks and 2 days,” he corrected her. “But yes, we should go get breakfast,” he whispered after a moment.

“Come on get up,” she replied with a big smile. He patted her ass as she peeled out of his grasp. Sitting up and stretching, taking a look down at the basketball protruding from her stomach. “Damn.”

“What?” Spencer asked.

She stood up beside the bed and pulled her shirt up, showing Spencer how big her stomach was. Turning sideways so he really got a good look at it. Spencer leaned over and kissed her right on her belly button that was beginning to pop.

“I know your ears are on in there, I love you, Matthew,” Spencer whispered against her skin.

She couldn’t stop smiling, taking a moment to rub her hands over the bump in amazement. “Hi Mr. Matty MaGoo, mommy also loves you.”

“Mr. Matty MaGoo?” Spencer laughed, looking at her with the biggest smile.

“Yes,” She laughed. “It just came to me, and it's going to stick.”

“Derek’s been calling him Mini G,” Spencer added.

“We should tell him it's Matthew, then he can be little Matty G,” Y/N swooned. “Seriously let’s go I miss everyone.”

“Okay, okay go get ready then,” he insisted, getting out of bed and dragging her to the bathroom.

—

Spencer drove, giving her a chance to look over her work emails before the day started. She was still CC’d on a bunch of VICAP things, being able to snoop on what was coming in and inspecting it.

Sometimes Mindy would CC her in just for an opinion.

Subject: Found Something. From; Mindy Patel To; SSA Y/N Y/L/N, Unit Chief SSA Aaron Hotchner, SSA-CL Jennifer Jareau

There’s been a child abduction in Arizona, I’ve pieced together some thing’s I’ve been working on in the background that might help the case if you are called in to assist. Even if you are not I believe you should take a look at this.

Mindy Patel, VICAP.

Attachment

Year: 1998 Victim 1: Emily Lawrence - 13. Kept till 16. Taken: August 3rd, 1998. Williams, AZ Found: June 10th, 2001. Camp Verde, AZ ME: decay has he placed at 48 hours postmortem when she was found - strangled, sexually assaulted long term, extensive throat damage. Never been pregnant. - COD: asphyxiation Info: good student, innocent shy girl. Followed the rules. Taken when walking home from school. Held for 3 years, assaulted and chained. Dumped without care.

Year: 2001 Victim 2: Olivia Tomms - 13. Kept till 16 Taken: August 3rd, 2001. Payson, AZ Found: June 23rd, 2004. Florence, AZ ME: decay has her at about 2 weeks postmortem. - strangled, sexually assaulted long term, extensive throat damage. Never been pregnant. - COD: asphyxiation Info: good student, innocent shy girl. Followed the rules. Taken when walking home from school. Held for 3 years, assaulted and chained. Dumped without care.

Year: 2004 Victim 3: Shelby Summers - 13. Kept till 16. Taken: August 3rd, 2004. Peach Springs, AZ Found: July 16th, 2007. Keams, AZ ME: decay has her at over a month postmortem. - strangled, sexually assaulted long term, extensive throat damage. Never been pregnant. - COD: asphyxiation Info: good student, innocent shy girl. Followed the rules. Taken when walking home from school. Held for 3 years, assaulted and chained. Dumped without care.

Year: 2007 Victim 4: Beth Green - 11. Kept till 13 Taken: August 3rd, 2007. Saint John, AZ Found: January 13th, 2010. @ flagstaff hospital. ME: COD complications from a miscarriage. Massive blood loss. - well taken care of. Throat damage. Signs of being detained long term. Info:good student, innocent shy girl. Followed the rules. Taken when walking home from school. Held for 3 years, assaulted and chained. Dumped with remorse like he didn’t want her to die, and he felt sorry because he loved her.

Newest abduction: Name: Sally Irvine - 12 Taken: February 3rd, 3pm. Middle School pick-up (missing 13 hours now) Witness Report: Italian/greek man. Early 30’s. Claimed to be her parents assistant. Sally was used to going home with random people from her parents' work. Handsome man, very charming and convincing. He wore a suit and drove a Silver Honda Civic. Rust at the back, partial plate HC8.

“Fuck,” Y/N cried silently as she scrolled through all the information, even in a compact form.

“What’s wrong?” Spencer asked, looking over at her with concern.

“Um,” she didn’t really know why she was reacting like this at first. Then it hit her. “Mindy sent me a case and it’s hitting a little too close to home.”

“Would you like to explain it yet? It’s okay if you want to process it alone,” Spencer comforted her easily like it was his second nature.

She let out a deep breath. “There’s a serial killer in Arizona that is kidnapping girls between 11 and 13, only keeping them 3 years. Every ME report says they have extensive internal throat damage, and 3 of the 4 found were never pregnant. This unsub is forcing them into oral for 3 years straight.”

“Fuck,” Spencer agreed. “I think we should take this one, if you can’t I would fully understand.”

“I think the unsub is my rapist.”

Spencer pulled over onto the side of the road. Putting the car in park and flashing the 4-ways. He turned to her softly and looked at her with a blank face.

“Walk me through it.”

“What?”

“If I’m going to go in there with you and tell Hotch that this is the same guy who hurt you, then you’re going to need to explain it to him and the team,” Spencer explained softly. “You’ve never even told me the full story, I don’t know anything about that summer other than the fact something happened. The first time you repeat this in front of me is going to be hard, and I don’t want you to have to do that in front of all of them.”

She couldn’t help herself from letting out a small sob, “okay.”

She took a few minutes to collect her thoughts, and calm down enough to get full words out of her mouth.

“When I was 12,” she started. “My mom went back to work, and she didn’t trust me to watch my brothers because they were rowdy and never listened to me. Like you said, they were more like my older brothers.

“My dad’s best friend, Jimmy, his wife had MS so she was home all the time. They had 3 older children and a few foster boys, she was used to lots of kids being there. And she had a pool to keep us occupied,” she bit her lip before she explained anymore.

“My mom’s birthday is June 8th. That’s when victim 1 was murdered,” was the first fact she explained that related to the case. She handed Spencer her phone so he could read and follow along.

“My dad is a Mason with the Masonic Lodge in Los Vegas, and he was becoming the master of his division on my mom's birthday that year, so we rented a hall and had a big party. Jimmy’s foster son was there, you remember Christopher Torsey? He was a freshman and I was in grade 6, about to enter grade 7, that was when the grooming started. He took me into the back room and asked if anyone had ever kissed me, I said no. He leaned in and kissed me in the dark and I was a giggly mess.

“My parents and his were really friends and he would come over all the time, our dads would drink in the backyard with our mothers till 1 in the morning most weekends. So I spent long periods of time with this boy for a few years, trusting him like a friend before he started anything. That summer he would always find a way to wander off with me, at first it was just kissing in different places where we could be alone together. Then he would touch my boobs, and he had me take my shirt off a few times.”

Spencer looked calm, but the redness in his face and the pulse in his neck told a different story. Her breathing got heavier as she had to recall it all, and she didn’t want him to be so upset.

“We worked at a local church camp together that July, we’d do crafts and sing songs and after all the kids left and we had to clean up, he’d find a way to take me to the room where they held the nativity scene out of season. He’d start kissing and touching me like normal, and then Kendra walked in once and saw and suddenly he went from obsessed with me, to disgusted, saying I came on to him and that it was all me. He was disgusted by me when we were in public, but he loved me apparently behind closed doors.”

“On August 3rd,” a tear slipped down her cheek. “The day the girls go missing. That was the first time he took me back to the shed and said ‘when two people are in love, they do things, and I love you. So you have to,’ He took his, you know, and I’d never seen one before. It was scary and I didn’t want to, I wanted to leave, but he pushed me against the wall and down to my knees.” She had to stop to take a breath, Spencer was crying silently as he watched her explain it all.

“He kept me trapped there while he did it,” she explained. “The worst part is that his parents were hosting a wedding that night, so no one could hear me basically screaming no over the music. He knew that. And so, when I complained about the sore throat the next day, my parents thought it was from all the singing.”

Spencer let out a shaky breath, he looked at her with so much love and sadness, she knew he loved her. She reached across the centre console and wiped the tears off his face, pecking his lips softly before sitting back to continue.

“The dates match up, he was Italian, they’re all 11-13 with throat damage,” she ran it down. “It’s him.”

Spencer licked his lips, wiping the tears off his face before taking a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go tell Hotch.”

Aaron stood up from his desk after Y/N explained the situation, walking up close to her with a sad smile on his face, “this was a very hard thing to come forward with. How would you like to participate in the investigation?” He was soft with her for the first time, it was surreal.

“Um, I’d like to come with you to Arizona,” she said softly. “when Garcia finds him, I’d like to be the one to interview him.”

“Do you think that is a wise idea?” He asked softly.

“When I was 16, years after everything happened. I went to Jimmy’s house for an event, and Christopher was there, and I went to his room. I was so desperate for the bullying to stop. For the lies, he had told about me to go away, that I went in there and apologized to him,” her voice almost disappeared as she got to the end of the sentence. Crying in disbelief. “2 years later he started abducting. I apologized to my rapist and he started kidnapping girls. I need to look him in the eyes and find out why he did it.”

“Okay, let’s tell the team.”

Y/N and Garcia spent an hour building the case files and compiling all the data they had on Christopher Torsey. Joining the team in the briefing room, where Spencer had already relayed the events to the team. Y/N didn’t need to describe it all 3 times in 2 hours.

She passed all the folders out, trying to avoid the looks the team gave her. They were sorry, they respected her, they wanted revenge for her. She knew it all came from a place of love, however, she hated being perceived by others.

It was a trauma thing. For so long people had the wrong idea about her, she was bullied and put down, and hated for no reason. She hates any form of attention, the glances and staring, the whispers of rumours being told as fact. It was stressful.

“Before we start,” she started softly. “Thank you in advance for your concerns, but I’ve been in therapy for 10 years. I’m very happy, this is gonna fuckin’ suck, but at the end of the day I’m coming home to a man who loves me, a baby on the way, and the best friends I can ask for. He’s going to prison. I win.”

Derek smiled at her, “that’s my girl. What did you find?”

“Christopher Torsey was born in November of 1979. His father was extremely abusive, he was in the ER a lot by the time he was 11. His mother killed herself in front of him when he was 12, he also watched his father rape his mother according to his child therapist,” Garcia started. Not knowing how to say the next part without Y/N crying.

“He uh, he said that his dad would tell his mom to be quiet. That-uh, I’m sorry, shouldn’t you say this?”

Y/N stepped in without a second thought. “He said that his father would hold the fact that he loved her over her head to force her into having sex with him. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“He’s our guy for sure. Do we have an address?” Prentiss asked.

“Yeah, he lives in a double-wide trailer in Cottonwood. Near the back with his own access to the main road,” Y/N explained. “I knew he moved to Arizona when Jimmy finally kicked him out. I haven’t heard from him in years.”

“Y/N is coming with us, wheels up in 20.”

—

Cottonwood PD waited for them to arrive before apprehending him. They were concerned that he would run, with his access to the woods and a four-wheeler in his possession, it was a matter of boxing him in quietly with a backup plan in place and men on the ground.

“Can I suggest something?” Y/N cut into the Police Chief and Hotch’s conversation.

“Sure.”

“Um, what if I walk up in our civilian clothes, and just pretend that we’re there to rub it in his face that I'm happy and in love,” Y/N suggested. “I can wear a wire, you can be in a surveillance van listening in. You’ll be right there if we see Sally or sense something’s up.”

“Are you sure you can do that?” Hotch asked her.

“I am,” she turned to Spencer, “if you can control your temper you can come. If not, I’ll show up with Derek and still rub it in his face that someone loves me now.”

Spencer sighed deeply as he contemplated it. “I’ll kill him,” he admitted. “Take Derek.”

“Let’s get suited up,” Derek patted Spencer’s shoulder. “I won’t let him hurt her again. Don’t worry.”

“I know.” Spencer looked disappointed.

Everyone left the room, leaving Spencer and Y/N alone. She wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug resting her face against his chest. He softly held her in return, rubbing his hands along her back with his cheek on her head.

“I love you, forever and always,” She reminded him. “And I know how much you love me, believe me. I wouldn’t have been able to do this if I didn’t truly believe Chris was wrong.”

She pulled back when she felt a tear on her head. She wiped it softly with her thumb as he leaned his cheek into her palm. “I am loveable, and you love me. I win.”

He laughed softly, “I won too.”

She pulled him into a soft kiss, “I’ll be back in your arms soon.”

“I’ll be in the van watching the whole time, I love you so much,” he added for good measure.

She smiled as she walked away, throwing a fist in the air like the end of the breakfast club. Knowing full well he’d never get the reference. JJ on the other hand, laughed as she followed with Spencer.

They changed into regular clothes, getting in a car from the impound lot and following the surveillance van. Morgan was quiet, Y/N knew he wanted to talk to her, to go over the plan, but he didn’t know how to. The wire wouldn’t be on till they walked out, giving Y/N and Derek their privacy if he ever chose to speak.

“Did you ever confront your guy?” Y/N asked.

He nodded, “Carl Buford. I got to show him who I am now, that I put men like him behind bars. That I’ll always win.”

“Is it a good feeling?”

Derek set his hand palm up on the centre console, looking at her softly as if to ask her to take it. She interlocked their fingers, he rubbed his thumb against her skin.

“You’re right, it fucking sucks. The original pain never goes away, but there is a content feeling knowing he won’t get to hurt another person, that he might get his ass kicked in prison,” he smiled that beautiful Derek smile. “I’ll always be here for when you need someone who gets it.”

“Thank you,” she smiled.

They pulled into the trailer park slowly, separating from the team as they approached Christopher’s trailer. “Just pretend you’re Spencer, treat me the way he would. I know Spencer tells you everything, go off of memory of what he’s said about me.”

“You know he tells me everything?” Derek asked softly, laughing a little to himself.

“Because he also tells me everything,” she smirked. “When he’s tired and he rambles, he tells me about his whole day and that includes when he asks you for advice.”

“You two are gross,” he smiled. “I hope I can replicate it.”

“Come on,” she laughed, getting out of the car and waiting for Derek at the hood.

She took his hand before walking up to the door, a hand on her belly to make it look bigger. Really wanting to show off that she was in a better place than he was.

She knocked, 3 times, stepping back so he could open the door. She didn’t feel scared, she felt anxious in excitement to watch Derek take him to the floor.

“Y/N?” She heard his voice for the first time in 13 years. “What are you doing here?”

“My therapist suggested that I come here and show you someone actually did end up loving me, regardless of what you said,” she explained.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he panicked, flashing his eyes back and forth between her and Derek.

“I can come in and explain it for you if you’d like?” Y/N smiled. “You’ve got nothing to hide I assume? I’m just wildly obsessed with you and a liar right? That’s what you told everyone so I wouldn’t be able to say you forced my head on your dick with the promise that you loved me.”

“I- I uh,” he stuttered. Starting to shake lightly.

“That’s what you do to all the girls, isn’t it, Chris?” Derek cut in, pulling the screen door open and watching as Christopher ran to the back of the house. “We got a runner!!” He announced to the wire.

Y/N didn’t run after him, she knew the team had him. She walked through the house to watch from the back door. Only to find Spencer stiff-arming him.

Christopher flipped over Spencer’s arm, hitting the ground before Spencer was on top of him. Spencer punched him in the face, once, twice, three times before he stopped. Sitting over the unconscious man as he caught his breath. Everyone just watched him. He rolled Christopher over, cuffed him and walked away into the woods.

Y/N carefully jogged into the yard, passing the bleeding and groaning asshole she used to know as she ran after Spencer. He was walking too fast, and he didn’t look like he was going to stop.

“Spencer Walter Reid!” She yelled at him as if she was his mother. “Stop.”

He stopped abruptly, huffing as he did so. He only turned around to face her when she finally caught up to him. “Don’t touch me yet,” he instructed her.

“Okay,” she stopped a foot in front of him. “Look at me, breathe. In and out.” She used her hands as she motioned a breath in, and a release out. She repeated it 4 times, watching him do the same.

“Can I hug you now?” She asked softly.

He nodded, stepping into her space and wrapping himself around her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“It was actually really appreciated,” she laughed. “I was debating if having a baby at 22 weeks was worth punching him in the face a few times.”

Spencer laughed softly into her shoulder. Squeezing her in his grasp as he breathed her in. “I love you.”

“I love you, more,” she smiled against his neck before pressing a soft kiss to his ever-beating pulse. “Let’s go see the team, come on.”

Y/N was adamant about searching the trailer with the team. Going to the surveillance van for a vest and gloves while Christopher was taken to the police station, and Spencer had his hand wrapped up.

It still smelled like him in there. The smell of his detergent mixed with smoke from the fireplace. It never changed. She noticed his PlayStation was on, he was still interested in games. He still slept with the brown comforter that was on his bed when she was 12. It was worn down, holes gathered at the bottom as it was almost see-through now.

She opened the closet to see a very large metal safe in its place. She took a deep breath, looking at the keypad to see what numbers had been worn down the most, guessing his password.

0803

It popped open, it made her feel sick to her stomach. As she opened it, she heard the muffled screams behind duck tape. Sally Irvine was tied up, hunched over in a tiny metal box while he played GTA.

She wanted to kill him.

“Hey, hey it’s okay,” she shushed the girl. “Sally, my name is Y/N. We’re here to take you home, you're safe now.”

Y/N took the tape off Sally’s mouth softly, the girl sobbed immediately. Not able to say a single thing as Y/N untied her and held Sally in her arms. Sally hugged her back as tight as she could, sobbing into her shirt as Y/N rocked her back and forth. Crying along with her.

“He did it to me when I was 12 too,” Y/N whispered.

Sally pulled back and looked at her with puffy eyes, “really?” She asked. Her voice low and scratchy.

“JJ can you get some water?” She called behind her. “Yes. I was his first.”

“Y/N,” the girl repeated. “That’s what he called me?”

She couldn’t stop the sick feeling in her gut, “let’s get you out of here.” She changed the topic, helping the little girl to her feet and to an ambulance.

Y/N smiled at her as she dropped her off with the EMTs, walking off into the woods as quickly as she could. She leaned over, holding her own hair back as she threw up on the ground.

She swatted away at the hand rubbing her back suddenly, continuing to hurl in the bushes as she heard them behind her, shushing her. She wiped her hand on her mouth before she calmed herself down.

She sighed and turned around to see Morgan. His arms were open for her to hug him, she buried her face in his chest as she cried. Not able to fully process all the information she just heard.

“Let’s get you home,” Derek whispered. Escorting her back to the car, she was done for the day.

chapter 22

Valentine’s day had come and gone by the time they finished their most recent case. Landing in Quantico very late on the 16th of February. Everyone departed the plane slowly, half asleep after the 3-hour flight.

“Did you guys miss any plans?” Y/N asked JJ and Emily as they walked together.

“Yeah,” Emily sighed, “I uh, I’ve been seeing someone.”

“Since when?” JJ asked, both her and Y/N suddenly not tired at all. They stopped on the tarmac and stared at her.

“Um, a few months now,” She blushed.

“Was this the sin to win weekend?” Y/N asked softly.

Emily nodded, “what’s sin to win?” JJ asked just as quietly.

“It’s a weekend for gay people in Atlantic City,” Emily replied. “It’s an easy way to mingle in a safe space.”

“Oh,” JJ was shocked. “Oh, so you’re, and you too?” She pointed at both of them as the information was processed.

Y/N and Emily smiled at her and laughed. “Bi? Yes,” Y/N replied.

“I’m still not sure,” Emily added. She sighed deeply, shaking her head as she tried to speak again. “I’ve never really enjoyed male company? It feels more like a performance than a relationship.”

“I mean good for you for noticing that now, if it wasn’t for Spencer I’d be in the same boat,” Y/N smirked at her. “He’s more than just a pretty face.”

“Wow,” JJ was shocked. “I would’ve never known.”

Emily placed her hand on JJ’s back, leading her towards the charter back to headquarters, “oh you poor, poor, heterosexual woman.”

“She has a cat, she cuts her bangs when she’s stressed and she bites her fingernails,” Y/N explained to JJ as they picked their seats. “She likes pussy, JJ.”

Emily smacked her arm lightly, all of them laughing hysterically. The boys walked onto the bus to their cackling, desperately wanting to know what was so funny.

“I was just telling them, I met someone and I’d like for you to all meet her soon,” Emily explained to the rest of the team. “I think you’ll really like her.”

“No way,” Derek smiled, high-fiving her. “Congrats dude, welcome to the dark side.”

“You too?” JJ was shocked. “Okay, put your hand up if you’re a straight person,” she stretched her arm into the air. Hotch and Rossi joined her.

“Really?” Spencer and Y/N looked at each other with excitement.

“What the fuck?” JJ was dumbfounded. “How did I not know this?”

“It just never came up before,” Derek shrugged. “Tell us more about this girlfriend of yours, Prentiss.”

“Or,” Y/N cut in. “you could bring her to Vegas in April.”

“Why?” Emily smirked at her.

“If you’re all free on April 23rd,” She teased them along. “Spencer and I would like you to come to our wedding at my parent’s house.”

“Oh!” JJ and Emily freaked, “holy shit!”

“So, you guys are in?” She laughed.

“Yeah!”

For 2 in the morning, the bus was the most excited they had ever been. And Penelope didn’t even join them on this trip. Normally it was her making this kind of excitement, Y/N basked in the happiness that filled the bus.

They discussed little details on the way to their cars, standing in the garage for a good 15 minutes as they planned the dates they’d need to arrange to have off. Hotch knew he could pull some strings to use everyone’s vacation time for a few days.

They exchanged hugs before breaking apart for the night. Planning to return around noon that same day. Giving them a sweet 9 hours of peace and quiet.

“We still need to invite Penelope,” Spencer whispered when they were halfway home. Interrupting the silence that Y/N was enjoying.

Y/N laughed softly, watching him drive with a smile on his face. “I only told the rest of them because Penelope somehow hacked into my calendar app, to plan a baby shower around my schedule, and saw the plans.”

“Of course,” he nodded along.

“So yeah,” she smiled. “She’s told me that she wants to throw me a baby shower/bachelorette party now.”

“That would be nice,” Spencer agreed, squeezing her thigh where his hand was always glued to her.

“If we even get more time off before the wedding, I’m crossing every appendage on my body in the hopes all the psychos take the day off!” She laughed, twisting her arms and legs in a demonstration.

He laughed, leaning against the wheel as he tried to keep his focus on the road. “I love you.”

“You better!” She teased him.

It went quiet again. She could hear the tires on the sandy slush. The grinding of pressure as the snow compressed into the tire tread. Small rocks being flicked up from the wheels, smacking the underbelly of the car as they approached their house.

She sighed as she saw the place, the beautiful green door illuminated by the porch light. Screaming ‘welcome home!’ As they pulled into the parking spot.

Sleep surprisingly came easier to her the more pregnant she got. She was used to laying on her left side now, she actually preferred it, because it means that every morning when she woke up, the sun came in just perfectly to make Spencer glow.

The alarm on Spencer’s table started to beep letting them know it was 10:30. She softly watched him roll over and smacked the machine before turning back to her and closing his eyes once more.

“No.”

She huffed in a silent laugh, getting closer to kiss the tip of his nose. “Time to wake up,” she whispered between kisses spread across his face.

He was trying his best not to smile as she peppered his skin with kisses. Pushing him onto his back so she had more skin to cover. It had been a while since they did anything together.

Between the cases and the baby, and everything Spencer learned about her past trauma. He’s been a little distant, and it was starting to make her worry. Dr. Korrapati promised that this sudden burst of anxiety was normal at this stage of pregnancy. It was what contributed the most to the nesting phase, but it still scared her.

She wanted to kiss him, to run her hand down his chest and palm over his boxers until she couldn’t take it anymore. So she did, just a little more seductively.

She moaned softly as she kissed the patch of skin under his ear and down his neck softly. She dragged her fingers over his skin, looping around his nipple as she sucked on his neck. She lifted her leg lightly over his, trying to get some friction between her legs as she kissed him.

“We should probably just go to work,” Spencer softly interjected.

She sighed, dropping her forehead against his shoulder and letting her shoulders slouch.

“I’m not broken!” She sat straight up as she yelled at him. “Can I please just fuck my boyfriend? I have been horny for Weeks,” she wasn’t sure where the sudden burst of emotion came from.

“Oh,” he sat up too, resting his hand on her back softly. “I didn’t realize you wanted to after everything, and the baby? You’ve had a rough few months.”

She laughed lightly, “Spence, of course I do?”

She looked at him softly, cupping his jaw in her hand. “I’ve had to process my trauma before. Yes, it’s still bothering me, and yes I have new trauma that I need to address with my therapist. But,” she emphasized. “I am a woman with needs, and one of those needs is getting railed before work by Doctor Reid.”

“You’re one hundred percent sure?” Spencer asked again.

She smiled and nodded, pushing him back down against the pillows. She resumed her last position, putting her leg between his so they could grind lightly and make out. “If it gets to be too much, I’ll ask you to stop.”

“Okay,” Spencer looked up at her, brushing her hair behind her ear as she hovered over him. “I love you.”

“Prove it,” she teased him, leaning in and kissing his neck again.

He reached behind her to grab her ass, she had noticed his hands gravitating there more as she gained pregnancy weight. She wasn’t complaining either, the way his hands felt on her skin was glorious.

He was putty in her hands, tilting his head to the side so she could kiss, lick and suck wherever she so pleased. She reached her free hand into his hair while he other kept her steady, in the perfect spot to grind against his boney hip.

He was all gasps and heavy breaths underneath her, she raised her leg lightly dragging it over his hardening erection before putting herself back in place. Just wanting to see how far along he was.

She rolled onto her back then, laying flat, waiting for him. He pushed his underwear to his ankles as he flipped on top of her. She was nothing but giggles as Her Spencer came out to play.

Opening her legs, she greeted him back into her grasp as he hovered over her. Both hands planted against the pillow as he looked down at her. His hair falling into his eyes, she pushed his hair back behind his ears.

“You might need a haircut soon,” she teased him, biting her lip softly.

“Shhh,” he whispered.

She took his right hand from beside her head, gripping him by the wrist and guiding him towards her mouth. Taking his middle and ring finger in, sucking on the digits softly. Making him release a sound she’s never heard before.

She looped her tongue around his fingers, spreading them lightly as she licked a stripe through them. Feeling his skin against her teeth, which only seemed to excite him more.

She pulled off with a pop, he looked mesmerized by the trail of spit that connected her bottom lip to his wet fingers. “Fuck,” he gasped as his breathing hitched.

“You know where to put them,” she whispered up at him, staring into his eyes as she bit her lip.

He kissed her quickly, pulling her forward so he could get the t-shirt she was still wearing off her body, throwing it off the bed as he kissed her neck, sucking a mark into the skin as he pushed his hand into her panties.

“Jesus,” he whispered against her neck as he felt how wet she was. “You weren’t kidding.”

Making her twitch slightly as he used the two fingers that were just in her mouth, to drag up and down on her clit. Rubbing it back and forth between the two knuckles.

“Fuck,” she breathed out as she gripped his hair. Palming his scalp while he kept kissing her neck.

She could feel him grinding against the bed as he kissed her, moaning against the space under her ear as he quickened his finger movements.

“I need you to fuck me, like yesterday,” she panted against his mouth, licking his bottom lip after.

He pulled away from her then, lifting her hips to drag her panties down. Keeping them on one of her ankles as he gripped the base of his cock and sat on his knees.

The sight between her legs was phenomenal. The glow of the sun on the lake through the windows as Spencer stroked himself in front of her.

Suddenly, he took both of her knees in his hands. Pushing them to her chest slightly before flipping her over. Extending her hips as he held her ass up. Kissing each cheek softly before straightening his posture.

“Ready?” He asked, she wasn’t expecting it.

Her face pressed into the pillow as she tried to find the best position to support herself. Pushing her hips back in a silent yes. He understood her body language, lining himself up with her and slowly pushing in.

She pushed back against him as well, moaning as she took all of him. “Finally,” she sighed, wiggling against his hips.

He gripped her hips, pushing her off abruptly before slamming back in. She was shocked, letting out a gasped moan as he fucked into her. Taking the instructions too literally, railing her.

She had never been that loud before in her life. Concerned Rossi would be able to hear them from across the lake, but it didn’t stop her. Only enticing him to keep it up.

She pressed her face into the pillow more as she attempted to reach her clit. She couldn’t, “fuck, Spence?”

“Yeah?” He slowed.

She took his hand off her hip, “can’t reach.” Her breath was erratic as she tried to explain.

“Aw poor bunny,” he teased her, slowing to a grind as his fingers ghosted over her clit. “Can’t get yourself off anymore?”

“Please daddy?” She let it slip, feeling his cock twitch inside of her as she did.

He leaned forward, kissing her shoulder softly. “Tell daddy what you want, use your big girl words.”

She pushed back against him, raising herself from the pillow to look over her shoulder at him. “I was going to say breed me, daddy.” She teased, watching his entire personality change. “But it looks like you already did.”

He licked his lips, pushing his hair out of his face as he shook his head at her. “You’re going to regret that.”

She pressed her face back into the pillow and perched her ass back more, ever the invitation. He ran his hand softly over her asscheek, slapping it before he started to fuck her again, reaching around to rub her clit, like she asked, ever so nicely.

They found their rhythm then, pushing against each other in just the right way. Between her deep breathing and the moans she released, the only other thing she could only hear was the sound of their skin slapping together as Spencer fucked her harder than ever before.

“Fuck, sweet Jesus I love your cock,” she praised him, punching into the pillow as she pushed herself back into him, on all 4’s now.

Using his free hand, he spread his fingers through her hair. Gripping her at the roots and pulling her head back as he slammed into her.

“Yes, daddy,” Y/N panted as she felt herself get closer to the edge. “Right there.”

“Cum for me bunny,” he instructed her, “let me fill your perfect little cunt.”

She came with a shout, pushing back against him as his words pushed her over the edge. Not being able to ever say no to that man, feeling his hips shake as he tried to fuck her through his own orgasm.

He pulled out, flipping her limp body back over so she could lay on her back, releasing the pressure on her stomach. Legs still spread as he observed his handiwork, scooping it up with his fingers and pushing it back inside of her. Making her clench up at the feeling.

“Spence-“

“Too much?” He smirked down at her.

She nodded, catching her breath as he just sat there. Still, on his knees, cock now soft and resting against his leg. She preached herself up on her forearms, shaking her head at him as she bit her lip.

“Where the fuck did that come from?” She asked him.

“I have no idea,” he laughed. “But hypothetically,” he bit his lip and raised his eyebrow. “I wouldn’t mind revisiting that on a later date.”

She laughed, dropping back against the sheets. “Me either.”

—

She waddled from the car to the elevator. A mixture of pregnancy and over-extending her hips, exercising with Spencer. Lamaze class more specifically, if anyone asked.

“I should really start calling you ducky,” Spencer whispered in the elevator.

“I hate you,” she bit her lip to stop herself from laughing.

“Really?” He teased her, “because if I recall 27 minutes and 15 seconds ago when you were saying ‘fuck, sweet Jesus, I love your cock,’” he whispered into her ear.

The elevator doors opened as her jaw dropped, “notice how I specified which part, Doctor Reid?” She answered abruptly, walking out towards her coworkers.

“So that’s how it’s going to be?” He said as he followed her. Making everyone turn around to see them.

“What’s going on?” Morgan noticed it first.

“Nothing,” Y/N rolled her eyes. “Just correcting the genius.”

“On?” Prentiss pried.

“Well this morning she said and I quote-“

“I will cut your balls off and hang them from the mirror in my car,” she snapped, glaring at him as she pointed her finger in his direction.

“Mama’s got claws,” Morgan laughed at them. “Damn.”

Spencer wrapped his arms around her, kissing her cheek in front of everyone. She turned pink, pretending to be pissed while a smile crept onto her face.

“She loves me,” Spencer smiled, pressing their cheeks together.

“One part, it’s nice to me and doesn’t talk back,” she replied, making everyone laugh as Spencer shook his head.

“Okay, you win,” he put his hands up in surrender as he backed away. Opening the door to the bullpen and disappearing behind his desk.

chapter 23

St. Patrick’s Day was never a holiday that Y/N or Spencer really cared for. Yes, they wore green to work, but other than that they didn’t really see the hype. They were Halloween people.

Will and JJ, on the other hand, went all out.

It was something to do with Will’s love for beer and his frat-boy attitude. Explaining to them that morning in the bullpen that the best parties on his college campus were around St. Patrick’s day and Mardi Gras, making February and March party central in his life.

They walked in with little Henry, decked out in green from head to toe. Green beads around his neck, gold chocolate coins in a basket, and the cutest little shamrock light-up head bopper.

“Look at you!!” Y/N called out to Henry as she walked into the room. Opening her arms up and leaning down to pick him up as he ran into her arms.

“Any Y/N!” Henry called her, not being able to say his T’s yet.

She pressed his tiny cheek against her face as she picked him up and snuggled him against her chest. It was getting harder to pick him up now that she was pregnant but she wasn’t going to miss a Henry snuggle.

“Since when did the FBI consult with leprechauns?” She asked him, booping her nose against him.

“Nooo,” Henry leaned back in her arms, “I’m not a leopard-con,” he tried his best to say the word. Making the team all laugh.

“Well, either way, why’s my favourite little guy here today?”

“Hey?” Spencer complained.

She leaned her elbow into him, “hi unca Spence,” Henry smiled at him. Spencer ran his fingers through Henry’s hair, messing it up under the headband.

“He wanted his godparents to see his outfit before the party at daycare today!” JJ explained with excitement.

Y/N placed him back on his feet, “go on the, show it off!”

He walked around the room, doing a fake model strut as he shook his diapered butt, walking towards the stairs before running back. “Woooow!” Everyone clapped and cheered.

Y/N looked up from Henry’s gaze, seeing Emily in Hotch’s office with a blond woman she didn’t recognize, “what’s going on in there?” She pointed.

“They’ve been in there all morning,” Rossi explained. “I think that’s the girlfriend.”

“How so?” Spencer asked, moving across the room to get a better view through the blinds.

“The way Emily leans against her, hand on her arm like that as she speaks. That’s the same way you and lady boy-wonder act when you’re in there together,” Rossi raised an eyebrow at them.

“Ahh,” Y/N smirked. “I wonder what happened, no one talks to Hotch with the door closed unless they need us to look into something.”

“I’ve gotta go,” Will cut in, scooping Henry up from the carpet with a tight-lipped smile.

“Bye buddy,” Y/N scrunched her nose at him, getting in close to press their noses together. “Have a good day today.”

“Bye, love you,” JJ kissed both her boys and watched them leave the room.

“they’re the best,” Y/N said as she wrapped an arm around JJ.

“Anyone want to go sit and have coffee while we wait for them?” Derek asked prior to a long yawn.

Rossi patted Derek on the back, leading him up the stairs and towards the briefing room. The remaining team members following their lead, discovering fresh donuts and flowers waiting for them.

“A gift for helping in advance, -Noelle” Read the small card on the table.

“Emily’s girlfriend?” JJ pondered, holding the card up and waving it slightly.

“I like her already,” Derek said, kicking his feet back and taking a donut.

Hotch walked in with Emily and Mindy 45 minutes later. Following them was a beautiful blond woman, probably 6’1 even in her flat running shoes. She was wearing cuffed blue skinny jeans and a big Barbie Pink petticoat.

She smiled lightly as she walked in, glueing herself to Emily’s side. “This is Noelle, my partner, Noelle these are my co-workers.”

“Hi!” She waved, “let me guess. Chocolate thunder, Derek Morgan.” She pointed to the nearest person to her.

“Correct,” Derek nodded in her direction.

“You would have to be Penelope Garcia,” she guessed right once again. “Emily was right, your aura is very bright.”

“Oh,” Penelope blushed.

“Y/N and Spencer, she said you’d be basically sitting on top of each other,” making everyone on the team laugh. “JJ, she said you’re like wonder woman, you look more like you could be cast as Super Girl if you ask me.”

JJ blushed, “thank you, Henry would agree.”

“Rossi, I already knew you. I love your books,” she fangirled a little. Something Rossi was incredibly used to.

“Signing hours are from 6-8,” he teased her.

Noelle laughed, her smile wide and toothy. “It’s lovely to meet you all.”

“Noelle has come in today with concerns that local gay men in her circle of friends are going missing. Over the last few holidays, 3 of her friends have disappeared. Dropping all contact after a trip to the bar,” Hotch explained.

“I’m a firefighter,” Noelle explained. “I have a Facebook group of friends who are gay and in the forces in any capacity. Just to let each other know where they’re going, to be safe.”

“Smart system,” Rossi complimented. “But also incredibly easy for someone to pose as trustful to gain access and track them.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Emily’s pressed lip smile portraying just how uncomfortable she was with the situation. “I’ve met our supposed victim number 3. Officer Perry is a great man and we haven’t heard from him since Friday.”

“Where was he going?” Y/N asked.

“He was at the bar with us on Friday for a little, we got a few beers and then he said he was meeting with a guy he met online, he was never big into online dating or even dating in general. He didn’t know how to be an officer and gay at the same time,” Noelle explained the situation fully. “He is one of my best friends, I excused it Saturday when he didn’t call cause I guessed he was having a good time. But when he missed Sunday dinner I knew something was wrong. I begged Emily to let me pitch this to you.”

“I believe you,” Hotch added. “Which is why I’ve asked Mindy Patel from VICAP to join us today.”

Mindy waved, she dressed more like a techie than an agent. Beanie, headphones on her neck and a big black sweater.

“Strauss and I agreed it would be beneficial to have a member of the team solely responsible for going through VICAP coincidences and letting us know. We stumble across too many rare cases thanks to Y/N and Mindy,” Hotch explained. “Mindy Patel is now officially VICAP Liaison. Her office will be across from Garcia’s from now on, she’s going to be our eyes and ears in the missing person world for the time being.”

“I took into account the fact that your friends were all masc for masc, on the police force in some capacity and male obviously,” Mindy explained. “And I found the two men from Valentines Day and New Years, and then more going back every major holiday for the last 2 years as of this St. Patrick’s day.”

“We’ve compiled the data and sent it to Garcia, it’ll be on your tablets shortly,” Hotch confirmed. “I’d like everyone to split up into teams and take an apartment of the most recent 3 victims. Prentiss and Rossi, you get New Years’.”

“Yes sir,” Emily agreed. “Noelle can stay here with Penelope for insight.”

“Yes. Reid, Y/N and Morgan, you’ll take officer Perry’s apartment. It’s the freshest so I need the best eyes.”

“Absolutely,” they replied in unison.

“Myself and JJ are going to the Valentines Day abduction,” check in with Garcia when you need to, fill me in on everything. Good luck.”

—

“Yeah a cop lives here,” Y/N laughed as she searched through the carefully organized home. Combing the place over for the slightest abnormality.

“He definitely wasn’t taken,” Morgan agreed. “He went willingly and never made it home.”

Dust was starting to settle on his possessions. Photos on the wall looked blurry as the sun shined through the windows. It smelled stale, no one had opened the windows in a while and the man who lived here worked out.

His clothing was organized by category. His laundry had 3 separate baskets for darks, lights and colours. Inside his bedside drawers, all his condoms were lined up by type. He was definitely anal about something.

“Guys?” Spencer called from the office.

Morgan and Y/N followed the sound of his voice, seeing him hunched over an iMac. “I moved the mouse and it’s open and unlocked.”

“But you don’t know what to do?” She teased him.

“Yeah,” he blushed. Watching Y/N sit in the desk chair and start looking through his things.

“His Facebook is pretty basic, he checked in at the bar with a photo here of him with Emily and Noelle, and then he went offline. He doesn’t have Twitter or Tumblr logged in, so I’m guessing he doesn’t have that,” Y/N explains as she stalked his activity. “In his history, your male basics. Case research, pornhub, Facebook, Hotmail… hold on.”

She read through all the subjects, all looking pretty normal. “What would a gay man hiding his sex life from his co-workers disguise his emails as?”

“Work-out appointments,” Morgan answered almost too quickly.

‘Workout’ she typed into the search bar. Seeing 15 messages from another man named [email protected]. “got him, call Garcia.”

“Hey baby girl,” Derek spoke softly as she answered. “We got Jensen Perry’s computer open, his email shows he’s been working out with a [email protected].”

“Already working my finger magic,” she teased him. Hanging up before he could say anything back.

“That woman will be the death of me,” he sighed.

“I don’t think we’ll find anything else here, our best bet is with Garcia,” Y/N admitted as she closed all the windows. “Wait,” she pulled up the search and typed in ‘find my iPhone,’ “if he has a Mac he has an iPhone, not many people blend their tech.”

Last ping: 2256 Sheerly Lane, Friday at 23:56.

“I’ll call Hotch while you drive,” Y/N said, pulling out her phone and following the men out the door.

Morgan followed the GPS 15 minutes down the street to an apartment complex. It was worn down and looked as if no one had taken care of it in the last 25 years. “I’m calling Garcia before you go in, I don’t feel good about this.”

“Hey doll,” Garcia’s cheery voice was a nice refresher.

“Hey, do you have any info on who owns and occupies 2256, Sheerly Lane?” Y/N asked softly. “Also send backup to this location, it’s where Perry’s iPhone is apparently and it looks sketchy as hell.”

She heard the clicking of the keys before she heard Garcia’s reply. “Yep, we have 1 occupant. Amy Romano, 46, left the building after her mother died. She’s been living there in room 333 for years, not renting any rooms out at all in the last 3 years.”

“A woman?” Morgan was shocked.

“Must be why we’ve never found the bodies, female serial killers are 90% less likely to ever be caught,” Reid added his fun fact, one she’s heard from him a handful of times before.

“Exactly,” Y/N agreed. “What do we know about her?”

“She’s an interesting one,” Garcia’s tone changed. “Her father was a minister, big bible freak. Her mother was the maid here at the hotel before being given the deed from the original owner’s family. She died in 1988.”

“How much of the religious upbringing rubbed off on her?”

“Enough to make her have multiple psychotic breaks, being diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was 15,” Garcia gained more insight. “Claimed to have been visited by God, and was told sinners are punished by word of god. That one day she would be the one to follow his word for the righteous man.”

“What if she’s doing her own form of conversion therapy?” Y/N gasped. “She’s not killing them. She’s following god’s word and freeing them from their sins. This is the perfect place to keep them. Locking them in rooms away from each other, secluding them and only subjecting them to a female for long periods of time.”

“Garcia, we need back up right now,” Morgan stressed.

“they’re 4 minutes out, good luck in there my babies.”

“See you soon, baby girl.”

Being left out of raids was weird to her, watching Spencer put on a bullet-proof vest and load his gun without her cover made her anxious. Luckily, she got to stand with JJ outside. Watching the building as they listened over their radiofrequency.

“Clear,” Morgan spoke over the system.

“Clear here as well,” Hotch said. “Meet me at the stairwell.”

“I hate this,” Y/N whispered.

JJ ran her hand along Y/N’s back softly, “me too.”

“Floor 3, room 33,” Hotch explained. “I’ll kick in the door, Morgan, you enter first. Spencer and Prentiss, follow our lead.”

Not having a visual was the worst part. There was no way to know where they were or who was there. They worked on sounds, if and when the team decided to speak.

“1, 2, 3,” Morgan whispered before they heard the door smash in. “FBI!”

Then it was silent again, too quiet for anyone’s liking, staring up at the third floor trying to hear everything in the neighbourhood.

“Amy Romano put the gun down!”

“No!” They heard before 4 shots were fired.

Y/N’s heart was in her throat; she couldn’t hear anything going on inside. The officers asked over the radio for updates, hearing nothing in return. Y/N couldn’t stop herself from running towards the apartment buildings before anyone could catch her. Up 3 flights of stairs, drawing her gun and walking towards the room.

Morgan was shot in the arm, down. Prentiss, hiding behind a table with Morgan and Spencer as she tried to stop the bleeding. Hotch in the unsub’s grasp, fighting for a gun.

Hotch noticed Y/N in the doorway. Kicking the unsub down. Y/N wrapped her arm around the unsub’s neck, putting her in a headlock as Hotch attempted to cuff her. She struggled like a wet fish against them, slipping out of her grasp and falling to the floor.

“If God wants to tell me to stop, he’ll tell me himself!” She screamed.

Y/N presses her gun to her head, “he just did.”

“Amy Romano you’re under arrest for the kidnapping of 24 men, attempted murder of a federal agent and resisting arrest,” Hotch explained as he cuffed her.

“Y/N!” Spencer stood up, looking at her like she was the crazy person. “We agreed, 3rd trimester, no fieldwork.”

“You didn’t reply on the radio and suddenly I was here,” Y/N explained, “I’m sorry.”

“We need EMTs, Morgan’s been shot in the arm. The bleeding is under control, just hurry.” Prentiss ordered over the radio.

“Y/L/N is going to need to get checked as well,” Spencer added.

“Why?”

“You ran up three flights of stairs, wrestled an unsub and got elbowed in the side,” Spencer explained, taking her hand and leading her out of the room.

“I’m sorry, I get it now I really do,” Y/N stopped him in the hallway, holding him in her arms. “I don’t like when I can’t see that you’re safe.”

Spencer kissed the top of her head, “I love you.”

“The baby’s kicking,” she replied softly, “that’s good right? 4 movements in 30 minutes after activity is a good thing.”

Spencer laughed, pulling back to feel her belly. “I’m sure he’s all hopped up on adrenaline now, come on let’s get him looked at quickly.”

—

They found 16 of the 24 men alive and in critical condition inside the apartment building. SCSI was canvassing the scene with local cops, taping up the building and surrounding property while the city discussed demolishing the building altogether.

Y/N was able to witness Noelle running into Jensen Perry’s arms, hugging him as they cried in his hospital bed. Y/N could imagine the trauma he was going through, the terror and the fear of something you really don’t want, happening anyway.

“Why do people do terrible things in the name of God?” Y/N whispered towards Spencer, looking up at him with soft eyes. Truly curious.

“The religious system runs similarly to cults, they believe the words are to be followed and thus they will gain entrance to heaven. If there’s one thing humans are afraid of more than dying, it’s internal damnation. Holding the fact that they will suffer in death over their head is a way to get them to do anything.” Spencer explained softly. “With the right person, the wrong message can actually sound like a pretty good thing.”

Y/N let out a deep sigh, “how do you raise a good child in a fucked up world?”

“Matthew, 18; 1 through 5, At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Spencer repeated the bible verse softly. “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me.”

Y/N smiled, “I like that.”

“He was always supposed to be good, he has you as his mother.”

chapter 24

April rolled around out of nowhere. Suddenly the snow had all melted, the birds were returning, and the trees were starting to bud thanks to the week of thunderstorms.

Love was in the air, both in the wild and in Y/N’s life.

The wedding’s in 2 weeks and she’s growing daily. She wanted to wait till the last possible moment to get her dress. Wanting it to actually fit over her stomach on the big day without any struggle.

Being placed on office duty for the rest of her pregnancy made it easier, not being allowed to leave Mindy and Penelope's side, under direct order from Aaron Hotchner. She was starting to notice that the more pregnant she got, the more the men of the team wanted to protect her as well.

JJ said it was the same for her the first time, all the alpha personalities came out around the third trimester. It was like they didn’t quite register that a woman on the team was pregnant till it was abundantly clear.

The girls had all agreed to go to the dress store with Y/N when they had a free afternoon, but that didn’t seem to be happening any time soon. Y/N ended up going by herself between cases while Spencer was on a flight, trying on 6 different dresses before she found one that made her happy.

The sales associate was being extra nice to her, knowing she had both a big budget and no time. It was an easy sale, but this wasn’t an easy decision.

She tried a sleeveless, skin-tight number on first. Not being able to even move once she got in it, not even bothering to look in the mirror. It wasn’t right, that was for sure.

Eventually, by #5 they had an idea of what she wanted. Long sleeves to hide her stretch marks, it had to be flowy but still show off the bump. And she wanted lace, embroidery even. Something that made it different, something that was more like her. Always growing, changing, adapting.

She was wandering the racks when she saw it.

It was so long, the train had to be at least 6 feet. It was light, made with sheer fabric so it would twist and flow with whatever direction she ran or danced. She could imagine walking through the grass with the train flowing behind her with purpose.

The most wonderful aspect was the long sleeves and the neckline. Cupping her chest perfectly with a nice ribbon right above her bump. The entire dress reminded her of something, the floral embroidery sending her back to a dress she remembers from her childhood, not able to place it but knowing it in her heart.

She looked in the mirror at herself, she felt beautiful. She shook her head lightly as a tear fell down her cheek. “It’s perfect,” she whispered.

The sales associate shook a big bell then, causing everyone to look at her and cheer. “Are you saying yes?” She asked, as cheesy as it was, she loved it.

“Yes!” She cheered back, feeling the love from everyone in the store.

The dress was huge, she laid the bag against her passenger seat and stared at it for a while. It felt a little crazy that she was getting married in a few days, even crazier that she was having a baby in 2 months.

Her phone rang as she started to leave. ��Hewwo?” She answered softly, knowing it was Spencer.

“I just got home, where are you?”

“Oh,” she smiled. “Penelope said you guys wouldn’t be back until 9, I went and picked out a dress.”

“Alone?” He sounded sad.

“It was better this way, I picked it for me and no one else,” she reassured him. “I’m on my way home now though baby, I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay, drive safe. I love you,” Spencer replied, his voice nothing more than a whisper.

“Love you too,” she hung up.

She sighed, turning on the stereo and driving home to her favourite albums. Driving alone was different for her now, she used to love just escaping into the Virginia wilderness, picking a road and an album and just going somewhere.

Driving with Spencer meant silence, hand-holding, humming and ha-ing as he discovered new facts that intrigued him. She loved it, the ambiance of Doctor Spencer Reid was not something you could replicate, it was special and calming and wonderful.

She couldn’t wait to get home to him.

He was waiting on the front porch as she rolled into the driveway. Joining her at the car, wanting to help her carry her things inside. “Hi,” she smiled at him as she stepped out.

He pulled her into a hug, kissing her cheek softly. “Want some help?”

“If you don’t mind carrying in my dress, I need to pee so bad!” She said, almost about to run inside when he stopped her.

“Like how bad?” He asked.

“Excuse me?”

“If you were to get surprised would you pee your pants?” He tried not to laugh as he asked.

“Spence?”

“Just go in,” he said softly.

She sighed, knowing what this meant. Walking up the stairs slowly, turning the doorknob just as slow. Not ready to have her eardrums blown out.

“Surprise!!”

Sure enough, there were balloons and flowers and her friends gathered all inside her front hall. “Oh my god?”

Penelope wrapped her in a hug first, “your first baby shower has to be special!”

“You guys really didn’t have to do this?” She was so shocked to be getting attention that she felt a little embarrassed.

“We wanted to,” JJ hugged her next, their bumps too big to hug normally, opting for more of a side snuggle. “I got you something to change into before we get started.”

Y/N took the small blue bag from her, kicking her shoes off before they went upstairs. Spencer joining with her wedding dress, hanging it in the closet and slipping back downstairs, unnoticed.

Y/N opened the gift bag on her bed, JJ looked around the room for the first time ever. Looking at the photos of their first day of kindergarten on the wall, the artwork they chose. How Spencer wrote notes to her on the mirror with whiteboard markers.

“You guys are really cute,” she smiled.

“Thanks,” she smiled.

Finally taking the dress out of the bag, it was just something simple. Blue with pink flowers. Something she’d definitely pick out on her own. “This is so beautiful!”

“I got it when I was pregnant with Henry and never had a chance to wear it,” She smiled, “thought that you’d like it more.”

Y/N hugged her, “seriously this is the best thing you guys could’ve done for me!”

“I’m also going to need a pink dress,” JJ said softly in her grasp.

“No?” Y/N was shocked. “Really a mini JJ?”

“Yeah,” she smiled softly. “Hurry up we have more surprises for you downstairs!”

—

It took her longer than she hoped to get changed. The baby was just big enough to make her winded all the time now. Having to stop and take a breather just from taking her pants off. Not to mention the struggle of standing up after peeing.

When she finally made it back down the stairs on her swollen feet, she heard a familiar giggle that she loved very much. “You didn’t?”

JJ smiled, “it was Rossi and Will, they flew them all in and got them here.”

Her parents, brothers and wives were all in the kitchen waiting for her. Then she saw Diana, who was pressed up close to Spencer having a conversation in their own little world.

She walked in and cried, hugging her parents for the first time in 5 months. Showing off her big baby bump and chunky face for the first time too.

“You look amazing!” Her mom complimented her, taking her hand and making her spin slowly.

“Thank you, I feel huge,” she smiled. “I can’t believe you guys are here, I’m literally coming home in 2 weeks!”

“When David Rossi calls you and says he has a jet picking us up, you don’t just say no,” her father laughed, wrapping his arm around Rossi. They were going to be something else together.

She gave Diana a big hug when she could, watching her rub her belly and talk to the baby through her stomach for a good 10 minutes. It was so cute, everyone in the room watched and swooned. Secretly always hoping Spencer’s family got a moment like this.

After dealing with the Riley Jenkins case, and Gideon leaving, they worried for him. They never expected him to just show up one day with a girl and start the rest of his life the way he did. But it just made sense. He sped through school and early adulthood well before Y/N, now they’re moving fast, just together.

They had pizza for dinner, spreading 6 different kinds across the counter and telling everyone to dig in. Y/N took a slice and walked around, mingling with everyone to ensure she thanked them for coming.

“Henry!” She finally found him with Chloe and Lizzie. He ran into her arms, giving her a big hug. “Did you meet my niece?”

“You’re my any?” He questioned her right back.

“Come here Clo,” she called her over, huddling them both in close to her. “You both get to call me aunty Y/N, isn’t that so cool? You’re new friends and you share an aunty!”

Chloe gave her a big hug, she was getting bigger and bigger every day, about to turn 4 in a few months. It felt a little crazy, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“How are you?” She asked her softly.

“I’m good,” she whispered at her, smiling before hiding her face in her dress.

“Are you having fun here? Did you meet buddy yet?”

“No!” Chloe’s face lit up.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” She gasped at them both, getting back up to her feet and walking with them to where Buddy hid in the laundry room.

He was curled into a ball in a basket of towels, peaceful in the quietest room in the house.

Chloe and Henry took turns petting Buddy, kissing his head and playing with his tail, it was good for him to get a little used to grabby kid's hands. She was a little worried about how he’d handle a baby, but he was a chill cat he never really cared about attention as long as he was fed.

Eventually, JJ and Lizzie found them, peeling them away from the cat with the promise of cake while Y/N opened her gifts from everyone.

Everyone was watching her as she sat down in the living room, feeling a little anxious like she had to perform for them or something. Spencer finally joined her on the couch then, wrapping his arm around her in a soothing motion.

“So,” Garcia started. “I took it upon myself to organize the party but I didn’t just stop there, I also emailed everyone a link to a chart where they could pick the category of gift they got you so that we avoided repeats and got everything you would need.”

“This is all so much,” she turned bright pink. “You guys really didn’t have to I feel like I haven’t bought anything for myself since I met Spencer.”

“Nonsense!” Penelope hushed her. “Here, pick whatever one grabs your fancy.”

Y/N’s eyes raked over the pile of gifts, “um that big one over there, why not.”

It was a big blue bag, stuffed to the brim with tissue paper. The card on the handle was signed, she opened it to find 'from; Erin Strauss' on it. “Oh?”

“She couldn’t come but she passed that along on behalf of the section,” Hotch explained.

Y/N didn’t waste any time opening it. Finding brand named everything that she would need for breastfeeding, losing her mind at the never-ending bag.

Almost every gift was the same, all themed and absolutely filled. She was never going to have to buy anything for Matthew, she got it all today.

Hotch and Haley got her a babies bath essentials set. Her parents equipped her with every form of linen she would ever need for a baby, as well as a quilt made just for Matthew.

Penelope bought easily $400 in clothes for him over the past 7 months, with the promise of not stopping any time soon. Derek and Emily got together to buy them an all-terrain stroller, for the walks they expect them to take down the back roads. Emily’s girlfriend even brought a mom after-care set for her.

Diana’s gift made her cry the most, opening the box to find old copies of childhood books. “Those were all Spencers when he was a child,” she explained softly. “His love for the world started with those stories, I would like for Matthew to know them too.”

“Absolutely,” Y/N wiped the tears off her face, leaning over to hug her. “If Matty ends up being even half as wonderful as Spencer I’ll be grateful.”

“Spencer, did you get her anything?” Diana asked him softly as she was still mid embrace with Y/N.

“It’s in the garage,” Spencer smiled.

She looked at him with excitement, “you didn’t!”

“I might have,” he smiled.

“What?” Rossi asked, hating suspense more than anyone on the team.

“I was joking about wanting to get an SUV and become a soccer mom,” Y/N’s whole face lit up. “Did you get me a soccer mom mobile?”

He smiled back at her, “here.”

She held the key in her hand, her car was old as hell. She has had it since she moved to Virginia and even then it was a 2004 model. She had never had a new car, with the fresh car smell and clean everything!

“I am so overwhelmed,” she announced, bouncing a little in her seat as she shook her hands. Stimming just a small amount in front of everyone in all the excitement.

“We’re all done celebrating you now, I think we can start getting out of your hair, right guys?” JJ stood and pressured everyone that wasn’t relying on their house for the night, out the door.

Penelope helped Debbie and Diana clean everything up around the house. Peeling Henry and Chloe away from each other was the most difficult part of the night, becoming fast friends and wanting to look at books all night together in uncle Spencers library.

Rossi offered to let her brother Levi and his wife stay at his place while Diana and Y/N’s parents took the guest room in her home. Harrison and Faith driving back to Fort Meade to their own house.

—

Y/N and Spencer sat up in their bed, leaning against the headboard as they listened to the quiet of their house. Their co-workers were gone, their parents were settled in the guest rooms and most likely still awake from the time difference. The day had been so crazy that she barely had time to wrap her head around it.

“So…” Y/N cut the awkward silence. “Wanna make out?”

He laughed at her, shaking his head. “Remember the last time you asked me to do that?”

“Yeah, I lost my virginity,” she whispered back at him. A little scared that everyone could hear them talking.

“We can't,” Spencer looked at her with wide eyes. “It's bad enough my mother knows I’ve had sex once let alone possibly hearing us.”

He nudged him a little, crawling into his lap and sitting there softly. Her belly pressed against him, filling the space between them as she held his face in her hands.

“They’re on the other side of the house,” she pouted. “Just make out with me?”

He kissed her quickly once, “why are you so needy tonight?”

“All day I’ve had everyone's attention but yours,” she explained softly. “I missed you and I want my Spencer time.”

He couldn’t say no to that, because he felt the exact same way. He ran his hands up her thighs, over her hips and finally resting them on her back. She ran her thumbs over Spencer's cheeks, looking at him softly as she tilted her head to really admire him.

His lips were perfect, his nose was adorable. The way his stubble grew in and darkened his jaw was amazing. His bone structure, his eye colour, the way his hair just fell flawlessly into place with 0 effort. She sighed as she looked at him.

“I love you,” she whispered, biting back a smile as she waited for his response.

“I love you,” he giggled as he looked right back at her. It almost felt more intimate than sex, just staring into each other's eyes in a dimly lit bedroom, in the middle of the night.

She ran her hands up into his hair, combing her fingers through it. He tilted his head back every time, closing his eyes and enjoying the feeling. She was about to smile when she got a sharp shooting pain in her hips.

“Oh, my, god,” she breathed out. “Ouch?” She scrunched her face with the pain as the sharpness dulled into the bone, just feeling uncomfortable as she tensed up in his lap. She didn’t even realize she was tugging on his hair in response to the pain.

“What?” Spencer asked, concerned as all hell.

“I think that was Braxton hicks? It was like everything down there just lit up in pain,” she explained with a horrified look on her face.

He ran his hands softly over her hips, soothing the skin in an attempt to help. “Are they bad?”

“It just feels like a pinched nerve at first and then a dull ache, it’s not the worst. I don’t enjoy it that's for sure,” she laughed a little louder. “God, I hope he’s kind to me on the way out.”

“I was doing research into the best drugs and techniques for birth for mothers that don’t want any drugs either because they’re sober or they don’t want to be removed from the moment,” Spencer explained softly. “There are a lot of options if you want to look into them with me this week?”

“Of course you did,” she smiled at him once again, feeling a bit better. “We also have to pack the baby’s go-bag.”

Spencer laughed at the way she phrased it. “Isn’t it just a hospital bag and a diaper bag?”

“No, it’s a mission to have a baby. It’s a go-bag.”

They kept giggling with each other over the dumbest things, staring at smiling as they laughed. Spencer’s hands roamed her back while she poked his face. Happily just talking in each other's space about the most random shit.

It was what she loved the most about him, that they could equally ramble about what they found interesting and the other felt just as excited about learning something new. They had mutual respect for each other's interests and feelings that ran deeper than most, truly loving every word that left their partner's mouth.

By the time they settled against the pillows and attempted to sleep it was half 1 in the morning. They turned all the lights out and still just stared at each other.

She booped his nose softly with her own, watching him scrunch his face as a result before giggling again.

“Do you have any idea what the case tomorrow will be?” She was only asking because she wanted more time with him, needing to find every topic to bring up so that the night never ended.

“Mindy’s pitching something to us tomorrow again,” he whispered. “You’ll be good at this one.”

“Oh I’m excited now okay, goodnight,” she closed her eyes and pretended to snore, making him snuggle in and wrap her arms around him, pulling her in close the way they liked it.

“I love you, bunny,” he said one last time for the night.

She sighed as she settled into him, “I love you more Spence.”

#hypothetically #spencer reid #spencer reid smut #spencer reid x reader

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officialtrashbusiness · 3 years

Text

Hidden Gem - Katsuki Bakugou

info : fluff, cursing, gn! reader, ( kinda? )self indulgent , mostly bakugou’s pov

word count: 1889

synopsis: You’re the quiet and forgettable student in class 1-A that is until you tell Katsuki Bakugou to ‘shut the fuck up’.

Amongst the eccentric students of class 1-A, you were a part of the quiet and reserved minority-- including but not limited to: Shoji, Tokoyami and Koda. Compared to your quieter (and shyer) classmates, you were physically plain. You could say the same about your quirk as well. It was not eye catching compared to the heroic and whimsical wonders that were your classmates. If the people outside of class 1-A were to have a sudden fascination with you, they would conclude that you were part of general education-- the much blander courses of UA. These variables formulated a simple conclusion: You were forgettable, and you were fine with that.

So it wasn’t much of a discovery when the infamous firecracker of a blonde had zero fucking clue as to who you were. So much so that when you had uncharacteristically told him to ‘Shut the fuck up’, after some built up tension of one bad examen score and his constant yowling that you had to deal with as you sat in behind him, he was stunned alongside the class of 1-A. His bubbling brain tried to place the crude nickname that he so humbly gave you just like he did with every bumbling idiot in the classroom.

But his brain turned out blank.

His scrutinizing, carmine eyes traced your complexion as he tried to spit up some basic yet negative nicknames for you that are usually attributed to your physical features. He couldn’t find a defining detail that he could dub you with. It fucking irked him.

What the fuck? He thought. Who..

“Who the fuck were you, hah?” Bakugou snarled. His back was slightly hunched as he leaned forward towards you. His fingers slightly curled at his side as if he was threatening to trigger his quirk in the classroom. His pose and threatening scowl were used as tools to intimidate you. The quirk of his lip exposed the canine of his teeth while his hair seemed to bristle with vexing rage.

Kinda like a cat, you inwardly chuckle as you try to ease the trepidation riddling your brain. The unusual amount of eyes on you were unorthodox and felt like a sunburn. The murmurs and giggles amongst the students of class 1-A had turned your brain into mush. You did not mean to say that out loud.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” You shot back without thinking.

A howl of laughter makes you jolt as well as the sudden realization that hits you once you have processed what you had said. Bakugou’s eyes widen for a fraction of a second before transitioning into a jaw clenching growl. You could see his whole being vibrate with rage.

The class president marches up from the other side of the room. His instincts pull him from his seat as he predicts that Bakugou’s going to have hissy fit with one of the (supposedly) quietest students in class. His sense of responsibility did not want a scorch mark on the walls.. Or on your face.

“Enough, you two!” Iida scolds as he towers over the both of your sitting figures. “We do not tolerate inappropriate language!” His hand slices through the air, ashamed as he has to scold the two students for fowl language. He turns over to the spiky haired blonde, “I expected this kind of behavior from you, Bakugou but (L/--”

“Shut the fuck up, glasses!” Bakugou spat out as his glare was now pointed at the dutiful class president. Iida’s eyes widen behind his glasses with offense. His mouth parts, ready to fire another scolding towards the mouthy blonde. “Quit your fucking nagging! I’m tired of your uptight ass!”

“(L/N),” Sero calls out. His laugh cuts through the argument and grabs your attention. “I never knew you had it in you to tell Bakugou off!” He tilts his head back with laughter.

Kaminari pats a hand on Sero’s shoulder. His body doubled over with snorts and howling. “Yeah!” He snorts before wiping a fake tear away causing Sero to giggle. “We all thought you were shy and stuff! You’re always so quiet!” He points an accusing finger towards Bakugou. “You even got him to shut up for a second! You’re a miracle worker!”

You chuckle before giving the two jokesters a smug smile and shrug, feeling your heart lighten at the sudden praise.

“Shut the fuck up! This nobody didn’t do jack shit, you fucking dumbasses!”He fumed before hearing the chimes of your giggles enter his ear. His ego deflates as his body bristles. He whips his head towards your direction. “What’s so fucking funny, extra?!” He screamed.

“I just didn’t expect you to listen to me.” You smirked.

An unexpected acquaintanceship between you and the two knuckleheads from Bakugou’s group began to slowly form after that-- much to Bakugou’s chagrin and your surprise. They’re stuck to you like a pair of parasites feeding off of you for nutrients, Bakugou mentally grumbled. He instantly knew the relationship between the three was reminiscent of him and the other parasites in his group. You had grown to warm up to the two boys after they relentlessly poked and prodded you, just like Bakugou did-- although, he would be caught dead admitting any positive comments relating to his group.

By the time you had opened up, the rest of the group had followed suit and made friends with you. It was only natural seeing that you have been recruited by one of the two dumbasses of the group. Having two friends from the group, you naturally melded in.

The quiet demeanor you held in front of class seemed to unravel once you had made your home in the sociable group. You had separated yourself from the distant and shy minority and began to feel more secure conversing amongst your fellow classmates. Although you weren’t friends with everyone in the classroom, you had the ability to smile and approach them with ease.

Amongst all of this, Bakugou was the outlier of the classroom. In contrast to everyone, he talked to you even less than before. His pride and embarrassment impelled him to ignore you, in which you did back-- you didn’t have the gall to bother him. Although the communication between the two of you was dead, he would watch you from afar.

Bakugou identified people by physical appearance but never by name. His mind was too busy bustling about becoming the number one hero for him to care about names. He always remembered faces and the different (most of the time negative) facets of people’s appearance, but he didn’t remember yours. He had never seen your face and he couldn’t deem a nickname based off of the quirks of your appearance, and it pissed him right the fuck off.

So, he watched the way you move, the tone of your voice and the way you talked. He watched your hands move as you talk confidently with his little group of stalkers from the corner of his eyes. His ears picked up the loud chime of your laughter and noted your thoughts and opinions as you broadcasted them to the group.

He had noticed that you were honest and straightforward when the time really appreciated it to be. You were a bit opinionated, but held an air of understanding. He wants to laugh at the fact that you’re a little mean hearted despite seeming to always lend a hand when there was any sign of needing one.

You were different from what he perceived. You weren’t some plain wuss of an extra, and he didn’t know what to think of it.

You were a diamond in the ruff, an intruding thought whispers.

Bakugou stomped away after an excruciating match with Todoroki. His usual hunched back was heavier and the trample of his feet was louder than usual. His heavy set growl seemed more menacing as he grumbled out curses. His red eyes glowered at the floor.

He found himself under the shade where the bleachers were. He snatched his plastic bottle from where it resided underestimating the weight as he realized it was empty. He rips out a growl of annoyance before tossing the bottle into the large blue recycling bin near him.

“You want one of mine?” An all too familiar voice called out.

He whipped his upward to see you sitting two benches up. The upper half of your body was slightly hunched as one of your elbows rested on your knee. Your face leans against the heel of your palm that is being supported by your knee. The arm closest to him is extended towards him as it tries to offer him a cool bottle of pocari sweat.

For the second time, he pauses. His eyes blink as he observes your sitting form, trying to slew some sort of nasty nickname at you, but it comes out blank. Your eyes are a bit sleepy from the sun’s beating and the harsh one-on-one between you and one of your classmates. Your expression is relaxed and seems a bit spacey (or maybe a tad bit soft) as you look down at him. Your cheeks look pillowy as the hand against it pushes out a subtle pout from your lips. You let out a soft ‘here’ before tossing the bottle at him, which he snatches from the air effortlessly.

This was his second time directly talking to you, he thinks to himself as he stares down at the bottle. You had only made comments about him, but never talked to him. He starts to wonder if you also observe him from the corner of your eye or listen to his snappy remarks.

“It hasn’t been tinkered with, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He can tell by the tone of your voice that you were joking, so he looks up to see if there’s a sleepy smile on your face. There was one. “I bought an extra one because I noticed that your bottles are always almost empty as soon as the hero's class is over.” You stated honestly.

Bakugou realizes he’s been too quiet, so he tuts and looks away. Your hotheaded classmate reluctantly twists the white cap as the air around his face begins to warm up.

“Shut the fuck up. I don’t need you to be my fucking mom.” He hisses before taking a swig as he tries to avoid the pressuring gaze of your eyes before turning to glare at you as he tightens the lid.

“No need to be embarrassed, Bakugou.” A smug smirk appears on your lips as you chuckle at him. Your sleepy eyes look unintentionally sultry as it accompanies your smirk. It doesn’t help that your relaxed pose enhances the way you. His stomach tightens. “I’m just trying to be nice.”

The flushed blonde reddens even more, realizing that his reaction had been caught red handed. “L-Like hell, I’m fucking embarrased!” He exclaims.

You mirror the wide eyed expression on his face at the realization of his stutter. Your smiles widened as you let out a laugh. It dawns on him as he watches you laugh as to why he couldn’t find a kink in your appearance. The blissed out look on your face as well as the melody of your laughter makes his heart stutter.

You’re fucking beautiful and he hates it.

Please Reblog if you enjoyed it! I might make a part two, but only if y’all tell me to!

#✨👁.writes #bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugou imagine #katsuki bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #mha #mha x reader #mha imagine #imagine mha #my hero academia #my hero academia x reader #boku no hero x reader #katsuki bakugou #fluff

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insanehobbit · 3 years

Text

a twenty-five thousand word post about a twenty-three year old “debate”

As time goes on, I’m baffled that it remains a commonly held opinion that:

The LTD remains unresolved

SE is deliberately playing coy, and are (or have been) afraid to resolve it.

To me, the answer is as clear as day, and yet seeing so many people acting as if it’s a question that remains unanswered makes me wonder if I’m the crazy one.

So I am going to try to articulate my thought process here, not because I expect to change any hearts and minds, but more to get these thoughts out of my head and onto a page so I can finally read a book and/or watch reruns of Shark Tank in peace.

To start off, there are two categories of argument (that are among, if not the most widely used lines of argument) that I will try NOT to engage with:

1) Quotes from Ultimania or developer interviews - while they’re great for easter eggs and behind-the-scenes info, if a guidebook is required to understand key plot points, you have fundamentally failed as a storyteller. Now the question of which character wants to bone whom is often something that can be relegated to a guidebook, but in the case of FF7, you would be watching two very different stories play out depending on who Cloud ends up with.

Of course, the Ultimanias do spell this out clearly, but luckily for us, SE are competent enough storytellers that we can find the answer by looking at the text alone.

2) Arguments about character actions/motivations — specifically, I’m talking about stuff like “Cloud made this face in this scene, which means be must be [insert whatever here].”

Especially when it comes to the LTD, these tend to focus on individual actions, decontextualizing them from their role in the narrative as a whole. LTDers often try to put themselves in the character’s shoes to suss out what they may be thinking and feeling in those moments. These arguments will be colored by personal experiences, which will inevitably vary.

Let’s take for example Cloud’s behavior in Advent Children. One may argue that it makes total sense given that he’s dying and fears failing the ones he loves. Another may argue that there’s no way that he would run unless he was deeply unhappy and pining after a lost love. Well, you’ll probably just be talking over each other until the cows come home. Such is the problem with trying to play armchair therapist with a fictional character. It’s not like we can ask Cloud himself why he did what he did (and even if we could, he’s not the exactly the most reliable narrator in the world). Instead, in trying to understand his motivations, we are left with no choice but to draw comparisons with our own personal experiences, those of our friends, or other works of media we’ve consumed. Any interpretation would be inherently subjective and honestly, a futile subject for debate.

There’s nothing wrong with drawing personal connections with fictional characters of course. That is the purpose of art after all. They are vessels of empathy. But when we’re talking about what is canon, it doesn’t matter what we take away. What matters is the creators’ intent.

Cloud, Tifa and Aerith are not your friends Bob, Alice and Maude. They are characters created by Square Enix. Real people can behave in a variety of different ways if they found themselves in the situations faced by our dear trio; however, FF7 characters are not sentient creatures. Everything they do or say is dictated by the developers to serve the story they are trying to tell.

So what do we have left then? Am I asking you, dear reader, to just trust me, anonymous stranger on the Internet, when I tell you #clotiiscanon. Well, in a sense, yes, but more seriously, I’m going to try to suss out what the creator’s intent is based on what is, and more importantly, what isn’t, on screen.

Instead of putting ourselves in the shoes of the characters, let’s try putting ourselves in the shoes of the creators. So the question would then be, if the intent is X, then what purpose does character Y or scene Z serve?

The story of FF7 isn’t the immutable word of God etched in a stone tablet. For every scene that made it into the final game, there are dozens of alternatives that were tossed aside. Let us also not forget the crude economics of popular storytelling. Spending resources on one particular aspect of the game may mean something entirely unrelated will have to be cut for time. Thus, the absence of a particular character/scenario is an alternative in itself. So with all these options at their disposal, why is the scene we see before us the one that made it into the final cut? — Before we dive in, I also want to define two broad categories of narrative: messy and clean.

Messy narratives are ones I would define as stories that try to illuminate something about the human condition, but may not leave the audience feeling very good by the end of it. The protagonists, while not always anti-heroes, don’t always exhibit the kind of growth we’d like, don’t always learn their lessons, probably aren’t the best role models. The endings are often ambivalent, ambiguous, and leaves room for the audience to take away from it what they will. This is the category I would put art films and prestige cable dramas.

Clean narratives are where I would categorize most popular forms of entertainment. Not that these characters necessarily lack nuance, but whatever flaws are portrayed are something to be overcome by the end of story. The protagonists are characters you’re supposed to want to root for

Final Fantasy as a series would fall under the ‘clean’ category. Sure, many of the protagonists start out as jerks, but they grow through these flaws and become true heroes by the end of their journey. Hell, a lot of the time even the villains are redeemed. They want you to like the characters you’re spending a 40+ hr journey with. Their depictions can still be realistic, but they will become the most idealized versions of themselves by the end of their journeys.

This is important to establish, because we can then assume that it is not SE’s intent to make any of their main characters come off pathetic losers or unrepentant assholes. Now whether or not they succeed in that endeavor is another question entirely.

FF7 OG or The dumbest thought experiment in the world

With that one thousand word preamble out of the way, let’s finally take a look at the text. In lieu of going through the OG’s story beat by beat, let’s try this thought experiment:

Imagine it’s 1996, and you’re a development executive at what was then Squaresoft. The plucky, young development team has the first draft of what will become the game we know as Final Fantasy VII. Like the preceding entries in the series, it’s a world-spanning action adventure RPG, with a key subplot being the epic tragic romance between its hero and heroine, Cloud and Aerith.

They ask you for your notes.

(For the sake of your sanity and mine, let’s limit our hypothetical notes to the romantic subplot)

Disc 1 - everything seems to be on the right track. Nice meet-cute, lots of moments developing the relationship between our pair. Creating a love triangle with this Tifa character is an interesting choice, but she’s a comparatively minor character so she probably won’t be a real threat and will find her happiness elsewhere by the end of the game. You may note that they’re leaning a bit too much into Tifa and Cloud’s past. Especially the childhood promise flashback early in the game — cute scene, but a distraction from main story and main pairing — fodder for the chopping block. You may also bump on the fact that Aerith is initially attracted to Cloud because he reminds her of an ex, but this is supposed to be a more mature FF. That can be an obstacle they overcome as Aerith gets to know the real Cloud.

Aerith dies, but it is supposed to be a tragic romance after all. Death doesn’t have to be the end for this relationship, especially since Aerith is an Ancient after all.

It’s when Disc 2 starts that things go off the rails. First off, it feels like an awfully short time for Cloud to be grieving the love of his life, though it’s somewhat understandable. This story is not just a romance. There are other concerns after all, Cloud’s identity crisis for one. Though said identity crisis involves spending a lot of time developing his relationship with another woman. It’s one thing for Cloud and Tifa to be from the same hometown, but does she really need to play such an outsized role in his internal conflict? This might give the player the wrong impression.

You get to the Northern Crater, and it just feels all wrong. Cloud is more or less fine after the love of his life is murdered in front of his eyes but has a complete mental breakdown to the point that he’s temporarily removed as a playable character because Tifa loses faith in him??? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Oh, but it only gets worse from here. With Cloud gone, the POV switches to Tifa and her feelings for him and her desire to find him. The opening of the game is also recontextualized when you learn the only reason that Cloud was part of the first Reactor mission that starts the game is because Tifa found him and wanted to keep an eye on him.

Then you get to Mideel and the alarm bells are going off. Tifa drops everything, removing her from the party as well, to take care of Cloud while he’s a catatonic vegetable? Not good. Very not good. This level of selfless devotion is going to make Cloud look like a total asshole when he rejects her in favor of Aerith. Speaking of Aerith, she uh…hasn’t been mentioned for some time. In fact, her relationship with Cloud has remained completely static after Disc 1, practically nonexistent, while his with Tifa has been building and building. Developing a rival relationship that then needs to be dismantled rather than developing the endgame relationship doesn’t feel like a particularly valuable use of time and resources.

By the time you get to the Lifestream scene, you’re about ready to toss the script out of the window. Here’s the emotional climax of the entire game, where Cloud’s internal conflict is finally resolved, and it almost entirely revolves around Tifa? Rather than revisiting the many moments of mental anguish we experienced during the game itself — featuring other characters, including let’s say, Aerith — it’s about a hereto unknown past that only Tifa has access to? Not only that, but we learn that the reason Cloud wanted to join SOLDIER was to impress Tifa, and the reason he adopted his false persona was because he was so ashamed that he couldn’t live up to the person he thought Tifa wanted him to be? Here, we finally get a look into the inner life of one half of our epic couple and…it entirely revolves around another woman??

Cloud is finally his real self, and hey, it looks like he finally remembers Aerith, that’s at least a step in the right direction. Though still not great. With his emotional arc already resolved, any further romantic developments is going to feel extraneous and anticlimactic. It just doesn’t feel like there’s enough time to establish that:

Cloud’s romantic feelings for Tifa (which were strong enough to launch his hero’s journey) have transformed into something entirely platonic in the past few days/weeks

Cloud’s feelings for Aerith that he developed while he was pretending to be someone else (and not just any someone, but Aerith’s ex of all people) are real.

This isn’t a romantic melodrama after all. There’s still a villain to kill and a world to save.

Cloud does speak of Aerith wistfully, and even quite personally at times, yet every time he talks about her, he’s surrounded by the other party members. A scene or two where he can grapple with his feelings for her on his own would help. Her ghost appearing in the Sector 5 Church feels like a great opportunity for this to happen, but he doesn’t interact with it at all. What gives? Missed opportunity after missed opportunity.

The night before the final battle, Cloud asks the entire party to find what they’re fighting for. This feels like a great (and perhaps the last) opportunity to establish that for Cloud, it’s in Aerith’s memory and out of his love for her. He could spend those hours alone in any number of locations associated with her — the Church, the Temple of the Ancients, the Forgotten City.

Instead — none of those happens. Instead, once again, it’s Cloud and Tifa in another scene where they’re the only two characters in the scene. You’re really going to have Cloud spend what could very well be the last night of his life with another woman? With a fade to black that strongly implies they slept together? In one fell swoop, you’re portraying Cloud as a guy who not only betrays the memory of his lost love, but is also incredibly callous towards the feelings of another woman by taking advantage of her vulnerability. Why are we rooting for him to succeed again?

Cloud and the gang finally defeat Sephiroth, and Aerith guides him back into the real world. Is he finally explicitly stating that he’s searching for her (though they’ve really waited until the last minute to do so), but again, why is Tifa in this scene? Shouldn’t it just be Cloud and Aerith alone? Why have Tifa be there at all? Why have her and her alone of all the party members be the one waiting for Cloud? Do you need to have Tifa there to be rejected while Cloud professes his unending love for Aerith? It just feels needlessly cruel and distracts from what should be the sole focus of the scene, the love between Cloud and Aerith.

What a mess.

You finish reading, and since it is probably too late in the development process to just fire everyone, you offer a few suggestions that will clarify the intended romance while the retaining the other plot points/general themes of the game.

Here they are, ordered by scale of change, from minor to drastic:

Option 1 would be to keep most of the story in tact, but rearrange the sequence of events so that the Lifestream sequence happens before Aerith’s death. That way, Cloud is his true self and fully aware of his feelings for both women before Aerith’s death. That way, his past with Tifa isn’t some ticking bomb waiting to go off in the second half of the game. That development will cease at the Lifestream scene. Cloud will realize the affection he held for her as a child is no longer the case. He is grateful for the past they shared, but his future is with Aerith. He makes a clear choice before that future is taken away from him with her death. The rest of the game will go on more or less the same (with the Highwind scene being eliminated, of course) making it clear, that avenging the death of his beloved is one of, if not the, primary motivation for him wanting to defeat Sephiroth.

The problem with this “fix” is that a big part of the reason that Aerith gets killed is because of Cloud’s identity crisis. If said crisis is resolved, the impact of her death will be diminished, because it would feel arbitrary rather than something that stems from the consequences of Cloud’s actions. More of the story will need to be reconceived so that this moment holds the same emotional weight.

Another problem is why the Lifestream scene needs to exist at all. Why spend all that time developing the backstory for a relationship that will be moot by the end of the game? It makes Tifa feel like less of a character and more of a plot device, who becomes irrelevant after she services the protagonist’s character development and then has none of her own. That’s no way to treat one of the main characters of your game.

Option 2 would be to re-imagine Tifa’s character entirely. You can keep some of her history with Cloud in tact, but expand her backstory so she is able to have a satisfactory character arc outside of her relationship with Cloud. You could explore the five years in her life since the Nibelheim incident. Maybe she wasn’t in Midgar the whole time. Maybe, like Barret, she has her own Corel, and maybe reconciling with her past there is the climax of her emotional arc as opposed to her past with Cloud. For Cloud too, her importance needs to be diminished. She can be one of the people who help him find his true self in the Lifestream, but not the only person. There’s no reason the other people he’s met on his journey can’t be there. Thus their relationship remains somewhat important, but their journeys are not so entwined that it distracts from Cloud and Aerith’s romance.

Option 3 would be to really lean into the doomed romance element of Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Have her death be the cause of his mental breakdown, and have Aerith be the one in the Lifestream who is able to put his mind back together and bring him back to the realm of consciousness. After he emerges, he has the dual goal of defeating Sephiroth and trying to reunite with Aerith. In the end, in order to do the former, he has to relinquish the latter. He makes selfless choice. He makes the choice that resonates the overall theme of the game. It’s a bittersweet but satisfying ending. Cloud chooses to honor her memory and her purpose over the chance to physically bring her back. In this version of the game, the love triangle serves no purpose. There’s no role for Tifa at all.

Okay, we can be done with this strained counterfactual. What I’ve hopefully illustrated is that while developers had countless opportunities to solidify Cloud/Aerith as the canon couple in Discs 2 and 3 of the game, they instead chose a different route each and every time. What should also be clear is that the biggest obstacle standing in their way is not Aerith’s death, but the fact that Tifa exists.

At least in the form she takes in the final game, as a playable character and at the very least, the 3rd most important character in game’s story. She is not just another recurring NPC or an antagonist. Her love for Cloud is not going to be treated like a mere trifle or obstacle. If Cloud/Aerith was supposed to be the endgame ship, there would be no need for a love triangle and no need to include Tifa in the game at all. Death is a big enough obstacle, developing Cloud’s relationship with Tifa would only distract from and diminish his romance with Aerith.

I think this is something the dead enders understand intuitively, even more so than many Cloti shippers. Which is why some of them try to dismiss Tifa’s importance in the story so that she becomes a minor supporting character at best, or denigrate her character to the point that she becomes an actual villain. The Seifer to a Squall, the Seymour to a Tidus, hell even a Quistis to a Rinoa, they know how to deal with, but a Tifa Lockhart? As she is actually depicted in Final Fantasy VII? They have no playbook for that, and thus they desperately try to squeeze her into one of these other roles.

Let’s try another thought experiment, and see what would to other FF romances if we inserted a Tifa Lockhart-esque character in the middle of them.

FFXV is a perfect example because it features the sort of tragic love beyond death romance that certain shippers want Cloud and Aerith to be. Now, did I think FFXV was a good game? No. Did I think Noctis/Luna was a particularly well-developed romance? Also no. Did I have any question in my mind whatsoever that they were the canon relationship? Absolutely not.

Is this because they kiss at the end? Well sure, that helps, but also it’s because the game doesn’t spend the chapters after Luna’s death developing Noctis’ relationship with another woman. If Noctis/Luna had the same sort of development as Cloud/Aerith, then after Luna dies, Iris would suddenly pop in and play a much more prominent role. The game would flashback to her past and her relationship with Noctis. And it would be through his relationship with Iris that Noctis understands his duty to become king or a crystal or whatever the fuck that game was about. Iris is by Noctis’ side through the final battle, and when he ascends the throne in that dreamworld or whatever. There, Luna finally shows up again. Iris is still in the frame when Noctis tells her something like ‘Oh sorry, girl, I’ve been in love with Luna all along,” before he kisses Luna and the game ends.

(a very real scene from a very good game)

Come on. It would be utterly ludicrous and an utter disservice to every character involved, yet that is essentially the argument Cloud/Aerith shippers are making. SE may have made some pretty questionable storytelling decisions in the past, but they aren’t that bad at this.

Or in FFVIII, it would be like reordering the sequence of events so that Squall remembers that he grew up in an orphanage with all the other kids after Rinoa falls into a coma. And while Rinoa is out of commission, instead of Quistis gracefully bowing out after realizing she had mistaken her feelings of sisterly affection for love, it becomes Quistis’ childhood relationship with Squall that allows him to remember his past and re-contextualizes the game we’ve played thus far, so that the player realizes that it was actually Quistis who was his motivation all along. Then after this brief emotional detour, his romance with Rinoa would continue as usual. Absolutely absurd.

The Final Fantasy games certainly have their fair share of plot holes, but they’ve never whiffed on a romance this badly.

A somewhat more serious character analysis of the OG

What then is Tifa’s actual role in the story of FFVII? Her character is intricately connected to Cloud’s. In fact, they practically have the same arc, though Tifa’s is rather understated compared to his. She doesn’t adopt a false persona after all. For both of them, the flaw that they must learn to overcome over the course of the game is their fear of confronting the truth of their past. Or to put it more crudely, if they’re not lying, they’re at the very least omitting the truth. Cloud does so to protect himself from his fear of being exposed as a failure. Tifa does so at the expense of herself, because she fears the truth will do more harm than good. They’re two sides of the same coin. Nonetheless, their lying has serious ramifications.

The past they’re both afraid to confront is of course the Nibelheim Incident from five years ago. Thus, the key points in their emotional journeys coincide with the three conflicting Nibelheim flashbacks depicted in the game: Cloud’s false memory in Kalm, Sephiroth’s false vision in the Northern Crater, and the truth in the Lifestream.

Before they enter the Lifestream, both Cloud and Tifa are at the lowest of their lows. Cloud has had a complete mental breakdown and is functionally a vegetable. Tifa has given up everything to take care of Cloud as she feels responsible for his condition. If he doesn’t recover, she may never find peace.

With nothing left to lose, they both try to face the past head on. For Cloud, it’s a bit harder. At the heart of all this confusion, is of course, the Nibelheim Incident. How does Cloud know all these things he shouldn’t if Tifa doesn’t remember seeing him there? The emotional climax for both Cloud and Tifa, and arguably the game as a whole, is the moment the Shinra grunt removes his helmet to reveal that Cloud was there all along.

Tifa is the only character who can play this role for Cloud. It’s not like she a found a videotape in the Lifestream labeled ‘Nibelheim Incident - REAL’ and voila, Cloud is fixed. No, she is the only one who can help him because she is the only person who lived through that moment. No one else could make Cloud believe it. You could have Aerith or anyone else trying to tell him what actually happened, but why would he believe it anymore than the story Sephiroth told him at the Northern Crater?

With Tifa, it’s different. Not only was she physically there, but she’s putting as much at risk in what the truth may reveal. She’s not just a plot device to facilitate Cloud’s character development. The Lifestream sequence is as much the culmination of her own character arc. If it goes the wrong way, “Cloud” may find out that he’s just a fake after all, and Tifa may learn that boy she thought she’d been on this journey with had died years ago. That there’s no one left from her past, that it was all in her head, that she’s all alone. Avoiding this truth is a comfort, but in this moment, they’re both putting themselves on the line. Being completely vulnerable in front of the person they’re most terrified of being vulnerable with.

The developers have structured Cloud and Tifa’s character arcs so that the crux is a moment where the other is literally the only person who could provide the answer they need. Without each other, as far as the story is concerned, Cloud and Tifa would remain incomplete.

Aerith’s character arc is a different beast entirely. She is the closest we have to the traditional Campbellian Hero. She is the Chosen One, the literal last of her kind, who has been resisting the call to adventure until she can no longer. The touchstones of her character arc are the moments she learns more about her Cetra past and comes to terms with her role in protecting the planet - namely Cosmo Canyon, the Temple of the Ancients and the Forgotten City.

How do hers and Cloud’s arcs intersect? When it comes to the Nibelheim incident, she is a merely a spectator (at least during the Kalm flashback, as for the other two, she is uh…deceased). Cloud attacking her at the Temple of the Ancients, which results in her running to the Forgotten City alone and getting killed by Sephiroth, certainly exacerbates his mental deterioration, but it is by no means a turning point in his arc the way the Northern Crater is.

As for Cloud’s role in Aerith’s arc, their meeting is quite important in that it sets forth the series of events that leads her to getting captured by Shinra and thus meeting “Sephiroth” and wanting to learn more about the Cetra. It’s the inciting incident if we’re going to be really pedantic about it, yet Aerith’s actual character development is not dependent on her relationship with Cloud. It is about her communion with her Cetra Ancestry and the planet.

To put it in other terms, all else being the same, Aerith could still have a satisfying character arc had Cloud not crashed down into her Church. Sure, the game would look pretty different, but there are other ways for her to transform from a flirty, at times frivolous girl to an almost Christ-like figure who accepts the burden of protecting the planet.

Such is not the case for Cloud and Tifa. Their character arcs are built around their shared past and their relationship with one another. Without Tifa, you would have to rewrite Cloud’s character entirely. What was his motivation for joining SOLDIER? How did he get on that AVALANCHE mission in the first place? Who can possibly know him well enough to put his mind back together after it falls apart? If the answer to all these questions is the same person, then congratulations, you’ve just reverse engineered Tifa Lockhart.

Tifa fares a little better. Without Cloud, she would be a sad, sweet character who never gets the opportunity to reconcile with the trauma of her past. Superficially, a lot would be the same, but she would ultimately be quite static and all the less interesting for it.

Let’s also take a brief gander at Tifa’s role after the Lifestream sequence. At this point in the game, both Tifa and Cloud’s emotional arcs are essentially complete. They are now the most idealized versions of themselves, characters the players are meant to admire and aspire to. However they are depicted going forward, it would not be the creator’s intent for their actions to be perceived in a negative light.

A few key moments standout, ones that would not be included if the game was intended to end with any other romantic pairing or with Cloud’s romantic interest left ambiguous:

The Highwind scene, which I’ve gone over above. It doesn’t matter if you get the Low Affection or High Affection version. It would not reflect well on either Cloud or Tifa if he chose to spend what could be his last night alive with a woman whose feelings he did not reciprocate.

Before the final battle with Sephiroth, the party members scream out the reasons they’re fighting. Barret specifically calls out AVALANCHE, Marlene and Dyne, Red XIII specifically calls out his Grandpa, and Tifa specifically calls out Cloud. You are not going to make one of Tifa’s last moments in the game be her pining after a guy who has no interest in her. Not when you could easily have her mention something like her past, her hometown or hell even AVALANCHE and Marlene like Barret. If Tifa’s feelings for Cloud are meant to be unrequited, then it would be a character flaw that would be dealt with long before the final battle (see: Quistis in FF8 or Eowyn in the Lord of the Rings). They would not still be on display at moment like this.

Tifa being the only one there when Cloud jumps into the Lifestream to fight Sephiroth for the last time, and Tifa being the only one there when he emerges. She is very much playing the traditional partner/spouse role here, when you could easily have the entire party present or no one there at all. There is clearly something special about her relationship with Cloud that sets her apart from the other party members.

Once again, let’s look at the “I think I can meet her there moment.” And let’s put side the translation (the Japanese is certainly more ambiguous, and it’s not like the game had any trouble having Cloud call Aerith by her name before this). If Cloud was really expressing his desire to reunite with Aerith, and thus his rejection of Tifa, then the penultimate scene of this game is one that involves the complete utter and humiliation of one of its main characters since Tifa’s reply would indicate she’s inviting herself to a romantic reunion she has no part in. Not only that, but to anyone who is not Cl*rith shipper, the protagonist of the game is going to come off as a callous asshole. That cannot possibly be the creator’s intention. They are competent enough to depict an act of love without drawing attention to the party hurt by that love.

What then could possibly be the meaning? Could it possibly be Cloud trying to comfort Tifa by trying to find a silver lining in what appears to be their impending death? That this means they may get to see their departed loved ones again, including their mutual friend, Aerith? (I will note that Tifa talks about Aerith as much, if not even more than Cloud, after her death). Seems pretty reasonable to me, this being an interpretation of the scene that aligns with the overall themes of the game, and casts every character in positive light during this bittersweet moment.

Luckily enough, we have an entire fucking Compilation to find out which is right.

But before we get there, I’m sure some of you (lol @ me thinking anyone is still reading this) are asking, if Cloti is canon, then why is there a love triangle at all? Why even hint at the possibility of a romance between Cloud and Aerith? Wouldn’t that also be a waste of time and resources if they weren’t meant to be canon?

Well, there are two very important reasons that have nothing to do with romance and everything to do with two of the game’s biggest twists:

Aerith initially being attracted to Cloud’s similarities to Zack/commenting on the uncanniness of said similarities is an organic way to introduce the man Cloud’s pretending to be. Without it, the reveal in the Lifestream would fall a bit flat. The man he’s been emulating all along would just be some sort of generic hero rather than a person whose history and deeds already encountered during the course of the game. Notably for this to work, the game only has to establish Aerith’s attraction to Cloud.

To build the player’s attachment to Aerith before her death/obscure the fact that she’s going to die. With the technological limitations of the day, the only way to get the player to interact with Aerith is through the player character (AKA Cloud), and adding an element of choice (AKA the Gold Saucer Date mechanic) makes the player even more invested. This then elevates Aerith’s relationship with Cloud over hers with any other character. At the same time, because her time in the game is limited, Cloud ends up interacting with Aerith more than any of the other characters, at least in Disc 1. The choice to make many of these interactions flirty/romantic also toys with player expectations. One does not expect the hero’s love interest to die halfway through the game. The game itself also spends a bit of time teasing the romance, albeit, largely in superficial ways like other characters commenting on their relationship or Cait Sith reading their love fortune at the Temple of the Ancients. Yet, despite the quantity of their personal interactions, Cloud and Aerith never display any moments of deep love or devotion that one associates with a Final Fantasy romance. They never have the time. What the game establishes then is the potential of a romance rather than the romance itself. Aerith’s death hurts because of all that lost potential. There so many things she wanted to do, so many places she wanted to see that will never happen because her life is cut short. Part of what is lost, of course, is the potential of her romance with Cloud.

This creative choice is a lot more controversial since it elevates subverting audience expectations over character, and understandably leads to some player confusion. What’s the point of all this set up if there’s not going to be a pay off? Well, that is kind of the point. Death is frustrating because of all the unknowns and what-ifs. But, I suppose some people just can’t accept that fact in a game like this.

One last note on the OG before we move on: Even though this from an Ultimania, since we’re talking about story development and creator intent, I thought it was relevant to include: the fact that Aerith was the sole heroine in early drafts of the game is not the LTD trump card so people think it is. Stories undergo radical changes through the development process. More often than not, there are too many characters, and characters are often combined or removed if their presence feels redundant or confusing.

In this case, the opposite happened. Tifa was added later in the development process as a second heroine. Let’s say that Aerith was the Last Ancient and the protagonist’s sole love interest in this early draft of Final Fantasy VII. In the game that was actually released, that role was split between two characters (and last I checked, Tifa is not the last of a dying race), and Aerith dies halfway through the game, so what does that suggest about how Aerith’s role may have changed in the final product? Again, if Aerith was intended to be Cloud’s love interest, Tifa simply would not exist.

A begrudging analysis of our favorite straight-to-DVD sequel

Let’s move onto the Compilation. And in doing so, completely forget about the word vomit that’s been written above. While it’s quite clear to me now that there’s no way in hell the developers would have intended the last scene in the game to be both a confirmation of Cloud’s love for Aerith and his rejection of Tifa, in my younger and more vulnerable years, I wasn’t so sure. In fact, this was the prevailing interpretation back in the pre-Compilation Dark Ages. Probably because of a dubious English translation of the game and a couple of ambiguous cameos in Final Fantasy Tactics and Kingdom Hearts were all we had to go on.

How then did the official sequel to Final Fantasy VII change those priors?

Two years after the events of the game, Cloud is living as a family with Tifa and two kids rather than scouring the planet for a way to be reunited with Aerith. Shouldn’t the debate be well and over with that? Obviously not, and it’s not just because people were being obstinate. Part of the confusion stems from Advent Children itself, but I would argue that did not come from an intent to play coy/keep Cloud’s romantic desires ambiguous, but rather a failure of execution of his character arc.

Now I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film when I first watched a bootlegged copy I downloaded off LimeWire in 2005, and I like it even less now, but I better understand its failures, given its unique position as a sequel to a beloved game and the cornerstone of launching the Compilation.

The original game didn’t have such constraints on its storytelling. Outside of including a few elements that make it recognizable as a Final Fantasy (Moogles, Chocobos, Summons, etc.) and being a good enough game to be a financial success, the developers pretty much had free rein in terms of what story they wanted to tell, what characters they would use to tell it, and how long it took for them to tell said story.

With Advent Children, telling a good story was not the sole or even primary goal. Instead, it had to:

Do some fanservice: The core audience is going to be the OG fanbase, who would be expecting to see modern, high-def depictions of all the memorable and beloved characters from the game, no matter if the natural end point of their stories is long over.

Set up the rest of the Compilation - Advent Children is the draw with the big stars, but also a way to showcase the lesser known characters from from the Compilation who are going to be leading their own spinoffs. It’s part feature film/part advertisement for the rest of the Compilation. Thus, the Turks, Vincent and Zack get larger roles in the film than one might expect to attract interest to the spinoffs they lead.

Show off its technical prowess: SE probably has enough self awareness to realize that what’s going to set it apart from other animated feature films is not its novel storytelling, but its graphical capabilities. Thus, to really show off those graphics, the film is going to be packed to the brim with big, complicated action scenes with lots of moving parts, as opposed to quieter character driven moments.

These considerations are not unique to Advent Children, but important to note nonetheless:

As a sequel, the stakes have to be just as high if not higher than those in the original work. Since the threat in the OG was the literal end of the world, in Advent Children, the world’s gotta end again

The OG was around 30-40 hours long. An average feature-length film is roughly two hours. Video games and films are two very different mediums. As many TV writers who have tried to make the transition to film (and vice-versa) can tell you, success in one medium does not translate to success in another.

With so much to do in so little time, is it any wonder then that it is again Sephiroth who is the villain trying to destroy the world and Aerith in the Lifestream the deus ex machina who saves the day?

All of this is just a long-winded way to say, certain choices in the Advent Children that may seem to exist only to perpetuate the LTD were made with many other storytelling considerations in mind.

When trying to understand the intended character arcs and relationship dynamics, you cannot treat the film as a collection of scenes devoid of context. You can’t just say - “well here’s a scene where Cloud seems to miss Aerith, and here’s another scene where Cloud and Tifa fight. Obviously, Cloud loves Aerith.” You have to look at what purpose these scenes serve in the grander narrative.

And what is this grander narrative? To put it in simplistic terms, Aerith is the obstacle, and Tifa is goal. Cloud must get over his guilt over Aerith’s death so that he can return to living with Tifa and the children in peace.

The scenes following the prologue are setting up the emotional stakes of film - the problem that will be resolved by the film’s end. The problem being depicted here is not Aerith’s absence from Cloud’s life, but Cloud’s absence from his family. We see Tifa walking through Seventh Heaven saying “he’s not here anymore,” we see Denzel in his sickbed asking for Cloud, we see a framed photo of the four of them on Cloud’s desk. We see Cloud letting Tifa’s call go to voicemail.

What we do not see is Aerith, who does not appear until almost halfway through the film.

Cloud spends the first of the film avoiding confrontation with the Remnants/dealing with the return of Sephiroth. It’s only when Tifa is injured, and Denzel and Marlene get kidnapped that he goes to face his problems head on.

Before the final battle, when Cloud has exorcised his emotional demons and is about to face his physical demons, what do we see? We see Cloud telling Marlene that it’s his turn to take care of her, Denzel and Tifa the way they’ve taken care of him. We see Cloud telling Tifa that he ‘feels lighter’ and tacitly confirming that she was correct when she called him out earlier in the film. We see Cloud confirming to Denzel that he’s going home after this is all over.

What we do not see is Cloud telepathically communicating with Aerith to say, “Hey boo, can’t wait to beat Sephiroth so I can finally reunite with you in the Promised Land. Xoxoxo.” Aerith doesn’t factor in at all. Returning to his family is his goal, and his fight with Bahamut/the Remnants/Sephiroth/whatever the fuck is the final obstacle he has to face before reaching this goal.

This is reiterated again when Cloud is shot by Yazoo and seemingly perishes in an explosion. What is at stake with his “death”? We see Tifa calling his name while looking out the airship. We see Denzel and Marlene waiting for him at Seventh Heaven. We do not see Aerith watching over him in the Lifestream.

Now, Aerith does play an important role in Cloud’s arc when she shows up at about the midpoint of the film. You could fairly argue that it’s the turning point in Cloud’s emotional journey, the moment when he finally decides to confront his problems. But even if it’s only Cloud and Aerith in the scene, it’s not really about their relationship at all.

Let’s consider the context before this scene happens. Denzel and Marlene have been kidnapped by the Remnants; Tifa was nearly killed in a fight with another. This is Cloud at his lowest point. It’s his worst fears come to pass. His guilt over Aerith’s death is directly addressed at this moment in the film because it is not so much about his feelings for Aerith as it is about how Cloud fears the failures of his past (one of the biggest being her death) would continue into the present. If it was just about Aerith, we could have seen Cloud asking for her forgiveness at any other time in the film. It occurs when it does because this when his guilt over Aerith’s death intersects with his actual conflict, his fear that he’ll fail the the ones he loves. She appears when he’s at the Forgotten City where he goes to save the children. The same location where he had failed two year before.

This connection is made explicit when Cloud has flashes of Zack and Aerith’s deaths before he saves Denzel and Tifa from Bahamut. Again, Cloud’s dwelling on the past is directly related to his fears of being unable to protect his present.

Aerith is a feminine figure who is associated with flowers. That combined with the players’ memory of her and her relationship with Cloud in the OG, I can see how their scenes can be construed as romantic, but I really do not think that it is the creators’ intent to portray any romantic longing on Cloud’s part.

If they wanted to suggest that Cloud was still in love with Aerith or even leave his romantic interest ambiguous, there is no way in hell they would have had Cloud living with Tifa and two kids prior to the film’s events. To say nothing of opening the film by showing the pain his absence brings.

A romantic reading of Cloud’s guilt over Aerith’s death would suggest that he entered into a relationship with Tifa and started raising two children with her while still holding a torch for Aerith and hoping for a way to be reunited with her. The implication would be that Tifa is his second choice, and he is settling. Now, is this a dynamic that occurs in real life? Absolutely. Is this something that is often depicted in some films and television? Sure - in fact this very premise is at the core of one my favorite films of the last decade - 45 Years — and spoiler alert — the guy does not come off well in this situation. But once again, Cloud is not a real person, and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is not a John Cassavettes film or an Ingmar Bergman chamber drama. It is a 2-hour long straight to DVD sequel for a video game made for teens. This kind of messy, if realistic, relationship dynamic is not what this particular work is trying to explore.

(one of these is a good film!)

By the end of Advent Children, Cloud is once again the idealized version of himself. A hero that the audience is supposed to like and admire. We are supposed to think that his actions in the first half of the movie (wallowing in his guilt and abandoning his family) were bad. These are the flaws that he must overcome through the course of the film, and by the end he does. If he really had been settling and treating his Seventh Heaven family as a second choice prior to the events of the film, that too would obviously be a character flaw that needs to be addressed before the end of the film. It isn’t because this is a dynamic that only exists in certain people’s imaginations.

If the creators wanted to leave the Cloud & Aerith relationship open to a romantic interpretation, they didn’t have to write themselves into such a corner. They wouldn’t have to change the final film much at all, merely adjust the chronology a bit. Instead of Cloud already living as a family with Tifa, Marlene and Denzel prior to the beginning of the film, you would show them on the precipice of becoming a family, but with Cloud being unable to take the final step without getting over his feelings for Aerith first. This would leave space for him to love both women without coming off as an opportunistic jerk.

This is essentially the dynamic with Locke/Rachel/Celes in FFVI. Locke is unable to move on with Celes or anyone else until he finally finds closure with Rachel. It’s a lovely scene that does not diminish his relationships with either woman. He loved Rachel. He will love Celes. What the game does not have him do is enter into a relationship into Celes first and then when the party arrives at the Phoenix Cave, have him suddenly remember ‘Oh shit, I’ve gotta deal with my baggage with Rachel before I can really move on.’ That would not paint him in a particularly positive light.

Speaking of other Final Fantasies, let’s take a look another sequel in the series set two years after the events of the original work, one that is clearly the story of its protagonist searching for their lost love. And guess what? Final Fantasy X-2 does not begin with Yuna shacked up and raising two kids with another dude. And it certainly doesn’t begin with his perspective of the whole situation when Yuna decides to search for Tidus.

Square Enix knows how to write these kind of stories when they want to, and it’s clearly not their intent for Cloud and Aerith. Again, the biggest obstacle in the way of a Cloud/Aerith endgame isn’t space and time or death, it’s the existence of Tifa Lockhart.

A reasonable question to ask would be, if SE is not trying to ignite debate over the love triangle, why make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith a part of Advent Children at all? Why invite that sort of confusion? Well, the answer here, like the answer in the OG, is that Aerith’s role in the sequel is much more than her relationship with Cloud.

In the OG, it wasn’t Cloud and the gang who managed to stop Sephiroth and Meteor in the end, it was Aerith from the Lifestream. In a two-hour long film, you do not have the time to set up a completely new villain who can believably end the world, and since you pretty much have to include Sephiroth, the main antagonist can really only be him. No one else in the party has been established to have any magical Cetra powers, and again, since that’s not something that can be effectively established in a two-hour long film, and since Aerith needs to appear somehow, it again needs to be her who will save the day.

Given the time constraints, this external conflict has to be connected with Cloud’s internal conflict. In the OG, Cloud’s emotional arc is in resolved in the Lifestream, and then we spend a few more hours hunting down the Huge Materia/remembering what Holy is before resolving the external conflict of stopping Meteor. In Advent Children, we do not have that luxury of time. These turning points have to be one and same. It is only after Aerith is “introduced” in the film when Cloud asks her for forgiveness that she is able to help in the fight against the Remnants. Thus the turning point for Cloud’s character arc and the external conflict are the same. It’s understandably economical storytelling, though I wouldn’t call it particularly good storytelling.

As much as Cloud feels guilt over both Zack and Aerith’s deaths, it’s only Aerith who can play this dual role in the film. Zack can appear to help resolve Cloud’s emotional arc, but since he has no special Cetra powers or anything, there’s little he can do to help in Cloud’s fight against the Remnants. More time would need to be spent contriving a reason why Cloud is able to defeat the Remnants now when he wasn’t before or explaining why Aerith can suddenly help from the Lifestream when she had been absent before. (I still don’t think the film does a particularly good job of explaining this part, but that is a conversation for another time).

Another reason why Zack could not play this role is because at the time of AC’s original release, all we knew of Cloud and Zack’s relationship was contained in an optional flashback at the Shinra mansion after Cloud returns from the Lifestream. If it was Zack who suddenly showed up at Cloud’s lowest point, most viewers, even many who played the original game, would probably have been confused, and the moment would have fallen flat. On the other hand, even the most casual fan would have been aware of Aerith and her connection to Cloud, with her death scene being among the most well-known gaming moments of all time. Moreover, Aerith’s death is directly connected to Sephiroth, who is once again the threat in AC, whereas Zack was killed by Shinra goons. Aerith serves multiple purposes in a way that Zack just cannot.

Despite all this, though Aerith is more important to the film as a whole, many efforts are made to suggest that Zack and Aerith are equally important to Cloud. One of the first scenes in the film is Cloud moping around Zack’s grave (And unlike the scene with Aerith in the Forgotten City, it isn’t directly connected with Cloud’s present storyline in any way). We have the aforementioned scene where Cloud has flashes of both Aerith’s and Zack’s deaths when he saves Tifa and Denzel. Cloud has a scene where he’s standing back to back with Zack, mirroring his scene with in the Forgotten City with Aerith, before the climax of his fight with Sephiroth. In the Lifestream, after Cloud “dies,” it’s both Aerith and Zack who are there to send him back. Before the film ends, Cloud sees both Aerith and Zack leaving the church.

Now, were all these Zack appearances a way to promote the upcoming spin-off game that he’s going to lead? Of course. But the creators surely would have known that having Zack play such a similar role in Cloud’s arc would make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith feel less special and thus complicating a romantic interpretation of said relationship. If they wanted to encourage a romantic reading of Cloud’s lingering feelings for Aerith, they would have given Zack his own distinct role in the film. Or rather, they wouldn’t have put Zack in the film at all, and they certainly wouldn’t have him lead his own game, but we’ll get to the Zack of it all later.

The funny thing is, in a way, Zack is portrayed as being more special to Cloud. Zack only exists in the film to interact with Cloud and encourage him. Meanwhile. Aerith also has brief interactions with Kadaj, the Geostigma children and even Tifa before the film’s end. Aerith is there to save the whole world. Zack is there just for Cloud. If it’s Cloud’s relationship with Aerith that’s meant to be romantic, shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Let’s take a look at Tifa Lockhart. What role did she have to play in the FF7 sequel film? If, like some, you believed FF7 to be the Cloud/Aerith/Sephiroth show, then Tifa could have easily had a Barret-sized cameo in Advent Children. And honestly, she’s just a great martial artist. She has no special powers that would make her indispensable in a fight against Sephiroth. You certainly would not expect her to be the 2nd billed character in the film. Though of course, if you actually played through the Original Game with your eyes open, you would realize that Tifa Lockhart is instrumental to any story about Cloud Strife.

Unlike Aerith’s appearances, almost none of the suggestive scenes and dynamics between Cloud and Tifa had to be included in the film. As in, they serve no other plot related purpose and could have easily been cut from the final film if the creators weren’t trying to encourage a romantic interpretation of their relationship.

It feels inevitable now, but no one was expecting Cloud and Tifa to be living together and raising two kids. In the general consciousness, FF7 is Cloud and Sephiroth and their big swords and Aerith’s death. At the time, in the eyes of most fans and casual observers, Cloud and Tifa being together wasn’t a necessary part of the FF7 equation the way say, an epic fight between Cloud and Sephiroth would be. In fact, I don’t think even the biggest Cloti fans at the time would have imagined Cloud and Tifa living together would be their canon outcome in the sequel film.

Now can two platonic friends live together and raise two children together? Absolutely, but again Cloud and Tifa are not real people. They are fictional characters. A reasonable person (let’s use the legal definition of the term) who does not have brainworms from arguing over one of the dumbest debates on the Internet for 23 years would probably assume that two characters who were shown to be attracted to each other in the OG and who are now living together and raising two kids are in a romantic relationship. This is a reasonable assumption to make, and if SE wanted to leave Cloud’s romantic inclinations ambiguous, they simply would not be depicting Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in this manner. Cloud’s disrupted peace could have been a number of different things. He could have been a wandering mercenary, he could have been searching for a way to be reunited with Aerith. It didn’t have to be the family he formed with Tifa, but, then again, if you were actually paying attention to the story the OG was trying to tell, of course he would be living with Tifa.

Let’s also look at the scene where Cloud finds Tifa in the church after her fight with Loz. All the plot related information (who attacked her, Marlene being taken) is conveyed in the brief conversation they have before Cloud falls unconscious from Geostigma. What purpose do all the lingering shots of Cloud and Tifa in the flower bed in a Yin-Yang/non-sexual 69ing position serve if not to be suggestive of the type of relationship they have? It’s beautifully rendered but ultimately irrelevant to both the external and internal conflicts of the film.

Likewise, there is no reason why Cloud and Tifa needed to wake up in their children’s bedroom. No reason to show Cloud waking up with Tifa next to him in a way that almost makes you think they were in the same bed. And there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for a close-up of Tifa’s hand with the Wolf Ring on her ring finger while she is admonishing Cloud during what sounds like a domestic argument (This ring again comes into focus when Tifa leads Denzel to Cloud at the church at the end - there are dozens of ways this scene could have been rendered, but this is the one that was chosen.) If it wasn’t SE’s intent to emphasize the family dynamic and the intimate nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship, these scenes would not exist.

Let’s also take a look at Denzel, the only new character in the AC (give or take the Remnants). Again, given the film’s brief runtime, the fact that they’re not only adding a new character but giving him more screen time than almost every other AVALANCHE member must mean that he’s pretty important. While Denzel does have an arc of his own, especially in ACC, he is intricately connected to Cloud and Tifa and solidifies the family unit that they’ve been forming in Edge. Marlene still has Barret, but with the addition of Denzel, the family becomes something more real albeit even more tenuous given his Geostigma diagnosis. Without Denzel in the picture, it’s a bit easier to interpret Cloud’s distance from Tifa as romantic pining for another woman, but now it just seems absurd. The stakes are so much higher. Cloud and Tifa are at a completely different stage in their lives from the versions of these characters we met early on in the OG who were entangled in a frivolous love triangle. And yet some people are still stuck trying to fit these characters into a childish dynamic that died at the end of disc one along with a certain someone.

All this is there in the film, at least the director’s cut, if you really squint. But since SE preferred to spend its time on countless action sequences that have aged as well as whole milk in lieu of spending a few minutes showing Cloud’s family life before he got Geostigma to establish the emotional stakes, or a beat or two more on his reconciliation with Tifa and the kids, people may be understandably confused about Cloud’s arc. Has Cloud just been a moping around in misery for the two years post-OG? The answer is no, though that can only really be found in the accompanying novellas, specifically Case of Tifa.

Concerning the novellas, which we apparently must read to understand said DVD sequel

I really don’t know how you can read through CoT and still think there is anything ambiguous about the nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. The “Because I have you this time,” Cloud telling Tifa he’ll remind her how to be strong when they’re alone, Cloud confidently agreeing when Marlene adds him to their family. Not to mention Barret and Cid’s brief conversation about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in Case of Barret, after which Cid comments that “women wear the pants,” which Barret then follows by asking Cid about Shera. Again, a reasonable person would assume the couple in question are in a romantic relationship, and if this wasn’t the intent, these lines would not be present. Especially not in a novella about someone else.

Some try to argue that CoT just shows how incompatible Cloud and Tifa are because it features a few low points in their relationship. I don’t think that’s Nojima’s intent. Even if it was, it certainly wouldn’t be to prove that Cloud loves Aerith. This isn’t how you tell that story. Why waste all that time disproving a negative rather than proving a positive? We didn’t spend hours in FF8 watching Rinoa’s relationship with Seifer fall apart to understand how much better off she is with Squall. If Cloud and Aerith is meant to be a love story, then tell their love story. Why tell the story of how Cloud is incompatible with someone else?

Part of the confusion may be because CoT doesn’t tell a complete story in and of itself. The first half of the story (before Cloud has to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City) acts as a sort of epilogue to the OG, while the second half of the story is something of a prologue to Advent Children (or honestly its missing Act One). And to state the obvious, conflict is inherent to any story worth telling. It can’t just be all fluff, that’s what the fanfiction is for.

Tifa’s conflict is her fear that the fragile little family they’ve built in Edge is going to fall apart. Thus we see her fret about Cloud’s distance, the way this affects Marlene, and Denzel’s sickness. There are certainly some low moments here --- Tifa telling Cloud to drink in his room, asking if he loves her -- all ways for the threat to seem more real, the outcome more uncertain, yet there’s only one way this conflict can be resolved. One direction to which their relationship can move.

Again, by the end of this story, both characters are supposed to be the best versions of themselves, to find their “happy” endings so to speak. Tifa could certainly find happiness outside of a relationship with Cloud. She could decide that they’ve given it a shot, but they’re better off as friends. She’s grateful for this experience and she’s learned from this, but now she’s ready to make a life for herself on her own. It would be a fine character arc, though not something the Final Fantasy series has been wont to do. However, that’s obviously not the case here as there’s no indication whatsoever that Tifa considers this as an option for herself. Nojima hasn’t written this off ramp into her journey. For Tifa, they’ll either become a real family or they won’t. Since this is a story that is going to have a happy ending, so of course they will, even if there are a lot of bumps along the way.

Unfortunately, with the Compilation being the unwieldy beast that this is, this whole arc has to be pieced together across a number of different works:

Tifa asking herself if they’re a real family in CoT

Her greatest fear seemingly come to life when Cloud leaves at the end of CoT/beginning of AC

Tifa explicitly asking Cloud if the reason they can’t help each other is because they’re not a real family during their argument in AC. Notably, even though Cloud is at his lowest point, he doesn’t confirm her fear. Instead he says he that he can’t help anyone, not even his family. Instead, he indirectly confirms that yes he does think they’re a family, even if is a frustrating moment still in that he’s too scared to try to save it.

The ending of AC where we see a new photo of Cloud smiling surrounded by Tifa and the kids and the rest of the AVALANCHE, next to the earlier photo we had seen of the four of them where he was wearing a more dour expression.

The ending of The Kids Are All Right, where Cloud, Tifa, Denzel and Marlene meet with Evan, Kyrie and Vits - and Cloud offers, unsolicited, that even if they’re not related by blood, they’re a family.

The ending of DVD extra ‘Reminiscence of FFVII’ where Cloud takes the day off and asks Tifa to close the bar so they can spend time together as a family as Tifa had wanted to do early in CoT

Cloud fears he’ll fail his family. Tifa fears it’ll fall apart. Cloud retreats into himself, pushing others away. Tifa neglects herself, not being able to say what she needs to say. In Advent Children, Tifa finally voices her frustrations. It’s then that Cloud finally confronts his fears. Like in the OG, Cloud and Tifa’s conflicts and character arcs are two sides of the same coin, and it’s only by communicating with each other are they able to resolve it. Though with the Compilation being an inferior work, it’s much less satisfying this time around. Such is the problem when you’re writing towards a preordained outcome (Cloud and Sephiroth duking it once again) rather than letting the story develop organically.

Some may ask, why mention Aerith so much (Cloud growing distant after delivering flowers to the Forgotten City, Cloud finding Denzel at Aerith’s church) if they weren’t trying to perpetuate the LTD? Well, as explained above, Aerith had to be in Advent Children, and since CoT is the only place where we get any insight into Cloud’s psyche, it’s here where Nojima expands on that guilt.

Again, this is a story that requires conflict, and what better conflict than the specter of a love rival? Notably, despite us having access to Tifa’s thoughts and fears, she never explicitly associates Cloud’s behavior with him pining after Aerith. Though it’s fair to say this fear is implied, if unwarranted.

If Cloud had actually been pining after Aerith this whole time, we would not be seeing it all unfold through Tifa’s perspective. You can depict a romance without drawing attention to the injured third party. We’re seeing all of this from Tifa’s POV, because it’s about Tifa’s insecurities, not the great tragic romance between Cloud and Aerith. Honestly, another reason we see this from Tifa’s perspective is because it’s dramatically more interesting. Because she’s insecure, she (and we the reader) wonder if there’s something else going on. Meanwhile, from Cloud’s perspective it would be straightforward and redundant, given what we see in AC. He’s guilty over Aerith’s death and thinks he doesn’t deserve to be happy.

Not to mention, the first time we encounter Aerith in CoT, Tifa is the one breaking down at her grave while Cloud is the one comforting her. Are we supposed to believe that he just forgot he was in love with Aerith until he had to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City?

And Aerith doesn’t just serve as a romantic obstacle. She’s also a symbol of guilt and redemption for both Cloud and Tifa. Neither think they have the right to be happy after all that’s happened (Aerith’s death being a big part of this), and through Denzel, who Cloud finds at Aerith’s church, they both see a chance to atone.

I do want to address Case of Lifestream: White because it’s only time in the entire Compilation where I’ve asked myself — what are they trying to achieve here? Now, I’d rather drink bleach than start debating the translation of ‘koibito’ again, but I did think it was a strange choice to specify the romantic nature of Aerith’s love for Cloud. I suppose it could be a reference her obvious attraction to Cloud in the OG, though calling it love feels like a stretch.

But nothing else in CoLW really gives me pause. It might be a bit jarring to see how much of it is Aerith’s thoughts of Cloud, but it makes sense when you consider the context in which it’s meant to be consumed. Unlike Case of Tifa or Case of Denzel, CoLW isn’t meant to be read on its own. It’s a few scant paragraphs in direct conversation with Case of Lifestream: Black. In CoLB, Sephiroth talks about his plan to return and end the world or whatever, and how Cloud is instrumental to his plan. Each segment of CoLW mirrors the corresponding segment of CoLB. Thus, CoLW has to be about Aerith’s plan to stop Sephiroth and the role Cloud must play in that. In both of these stories, Cloud is the only named character. It doesn’t mean that thoughts of Cloud consume all of Aerith’s afterlife. Case of Lifestream is only a tiny sliver of the story, a halfassed way to explain why in Advent Children the world is ending again and why Cloud has to be at the center of it all.

Notably, there is absolutely nothing in CoLW about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith. Even if it’s just speculation on her part as we see Sephiroth speculate about Cloud’s reactions in CoLB. Aerith can see what’s going on in the real world, but she says nothing about Cloud’s actions. If Cloud is really pining after her, trying to find a way to be reunited with her, wouldn’t this be the ideal story to show such devotion?

But it’s not there, because not only does it not happen, but because this story is not about Aerith’s relationship with Cloud. It is about how Aerith needs to see and warn Cloud in order to stop Sephiroth. By the end of Advent Children, that goal is fulfilled. Cloud gets his forgiveness. Aerith gets to see him again and helps him stop Sephiroth. There’s no suggestion that either party wants more. We finally have the closure that the OG lacked, and at no point does it confirm that Cloud reciprocated Aerith’s romantic feelings, even though there were plenty of opportunities to do so.

I don’t really know what else people were expecting. Advent Children isn’t a romantic drama. There’s not going to be a moment where Cloud explicitly tells Tifa, ‘I’ve never loved Aerith. It’s only been you all along.” This is just simply not the kind of story it is.

Though one late scene practically serves this function. When Cloud “dies” and Aerith finds him in the Lifestream, if there were any lingering romantic feelings between the two of them, this would be a beautiful bittersweet reunion. Maybe something about how as much as they want to be together, it’s not his time yet. Instead, it’s almost played off as a joke. Cloud calls her ‘Mother’, and Zack is at Aerith’s side, joking about how Cloud has no place there. This would be the perfect opportunity to address the romantic connection between Cloud and Aerith, but instead, the film elides this completely. Instead, it’s a cute afterlife moment between Aerith and Zack, and functionally allows Cloud to go back to where he belongs, to Tifa and the kids. Whatever Cloud’s feelings for Aerith were before, it’s transformed into something else.

Crisis Core -- or how Aerith finally gets her love story

The other relevant part of the Compilation is Crisis Core, which I will now touch on briefly (or at least brief for me). In the OG, Zack Fair was more plot device than character. We knew he was important to Cloud — enough that Cloud would mistake Zack’s memories for his own -- we knew he was important to Aerith — enough that she is initially drawn to Cloud due to his similarities to Zack — yet the nature of these relationships is more ambiguous. Especially his relationship with Aerith. From the little we learn of their relationship, it could have been completely one-sided on her part, and Zack a total cad. At least that’s the implication she leaves us with in Gongaga. We get the sense that she might not be the most reliable narrator on this point (why bring up an ex so often, unsolicited, if it wasn’t anything serious?) but the OG never confirms this either way.

Crisis Core clears this up completely. Not only is Zack portrayed as the Capital H Hero of his own game, but his relationships with Cloud and Aerith are two of the most important in the game. In fact, they are the basis for his heroic sacrifice at the game’s end: he dies trying to save Cloud’s life; he dies trying to return to Aerith.

Zack’s relationship with Aerith is a major subplot of the game. Not only that, but the details of said relationship completely recontextualizes what we know about the Aerith we see in the OG. Many of Aerith’s most iconic traits (wearing pink, selling flowers) are a direct product of this relationship, and more importantly, so many of the hallmarks of her early relationship with Cloud (him falling through her church, one date as a reward, a conversation in the playground) are a direct echo of her relationship with Zack.

A casual fling this was not. Aerith’s relationship with Zack made a deep impact on the character we see in the OG and clearly colored her interactions with Cloud throughout.

Crisis Core is telling Zack’s story, and Tifa is a fairly minor supporting character, yet it still finds the time to expand upon Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. Through their interactions with Zack, we learn just how much they were on each others’ minds during this time, and how they were both too shy to own up to these feelings. We also get a brief expansion on the moment Cloud finds Tifa injured in the reactor.

Meanwhile, given the point we are in the story’s chronology, Cloud and Aerith are completely oblivious of each other’s existence.

One may try to argue that none of this matters since all of this is in the past. While this argument might hold water if we arguing about real lives in the real world, FF7 is a work of fiction. Its creators decided that these would be events we would see, and that Zack would be the lens through which we’d see them. Crisis Core is not the totality of these characters’ lives prior to the event of the OG. Rather, it consists of moments that enhance and expand upon our understanding of the original work. We learn the full extent of Hojo’s experimentation and the Jenova project; we learn that Sephiroth was actually a fairly normal guy before he was driven insane when he uncovers the circumstances of his birth. We learn that Aerith was a completely different person before she met Zack, and their relationship had a profound impact on her character.

A prequel is not made to contradict the original work, but what it can do is recontexualize the story we already know and add a layer of nuance that may have not been obvious before. Thus, Sephiroth is transformed from a scary villain into a tragic figure who could have been a hero were it not for Hojo’s experiments. Aerith’s behavior too invites reinterpretation. What once seemed flirty and perhaps overtly forward now looks like the tragic attempts of a woman trying to recapture a lost love.

If Cloud and Aerith were meant to be the official couple of the Compilation of FF7, you absolutely would not be spending so much time depicting two relationships that will be moot by the time we get to the original work. You especially would not depict Zack and Aerith’s relationship in a way that makes Aerith’s relationship with Cloud look like a copy of the moments she had with her ex.

Additionally, with Zack’s relationship with Angeal, we can see, that within the universe of FF7, a protagonist being devastated over the death of a beloved comrade isn’t something that’s inherently romantic. Neither is it romantic for said dead comrade to lend a helping hand from the beyond.

SE would also expect some people to play Crisis Core before the OG. If Cloud and Aerith are the intended endgame couple, then SE would be asking the player to root for a guy to pursue the girlfriend of the man who gave his life for him. The same man who died trying to reunite with her. This is to say nothing of Cloud’s treatment of Tifa in this scenario. How could this possibly be the intent for their most popular protagonist in the most popular entry of their most popular franchise?

What Crisis Core instead offers is something for fans of Aerith who may be disappointed that she was robbed of a great romance by her death. Well, she now gets that epic, tragic romance. Only it’s with Zack, not Cloud.

If SE intended for Cloud and Aerith to be the official couple of FF7, neither Zack nor Tifa would exist. They would not spend so much time developing Zack and Tifa into the multi-dimensional characters they are, only to be treated as nothing more than collateral damage in the wake of Cloud and Aerith’s great love. No, this is a Final Fantasy. SE want their main characters to have something of a happy ending after all of the tribulations they face. Cloud and Tifa find theirs in life. Zack and Aerith, as the ending of AC suggests, find theirs in death.

Cloud and Aerith’s relationship isn’t a threat to the Zack/Aerith and Cloud/Tifa endgame, nor is it a mere obstacle. Rather, it’s a relationship that actually deepens and strengthens the other two. Aerith is explicitly searching for her first love in Cloud, revealing just how deep her feelings for Zack ran. Cloud gets to live out his heroic SOLDIER fantasy with Aerith, a fantasy he created just to impress Tifa.

There are moments between Cloud and Aerith that may seem romantic when taken on its own, but viewed within the context of the whole narrative, ultimately reveal that they aren’t quite right for each other, and in each other, they’re actually searching for someone else.

This quadrangular dynamic reminds me a bit of one of my favorite classic films, The Philadelphia Story. (Spoilers for a film that came out in 1940 ahead) — The single most romantic scene in the film is between Jimmy Stewart’s and Katherine Hepburn’s characters, yet they’re not the ones who end up together. Even as their passions run, as the music swells, and we want them to end up together, we realize that they’re not quite right for each other. We know that it won’t work out.

More relevantly, we know this is true due to the existence of Cary Grant’s and Ruth Hussey’s characters, who are shown to carry a torch for Hepburn and Stewart, respectively. Grant and Hussey are well-developed and sympathetic characters. With the film being the top grossing film of the year, and made during the Code era, it’s about as “clean” of a narrative as you can get. There’s no way Grant and Hussey would be given such prominent roles just to be left heartbroken and in the cold by the film’s end.

Hepburn’s character (Tracy) pretty much sums it herself after some hijinks lead to a last minute proposal from Stewart’s character (Mike):

Mike: Will you marry me, Tracy?

Tracy: No, Mike. Thanks, but hmm-mm. Nope.

Mike: l've never asked a girl to marry me. l've avoided it. But you've got me all confused now. Why not?

Tracy: Because l don't think Liz [Hussey’s character] would like it...and l'm not sure you would...and l'm even a little doubtful about myself. But l am beholden to you, Mike. l'm most beholden.

Despite the fact that the film spends more time developing Hepburn and Stewart’s relationship than theirs with their endgame partners, it’s still such a satisfying ending. That’s because, even at the peak of their romance, we can see how Stewart needs someone like Hussey to ground his passionate impulses, and how Hepburn needs Grant, someone who won’t put her on a pedestal like everyone else. Hepburn and Stewart’s is a relationship that might feel right in the moment, but doesn’t quite work in the light of day.

I don’t think Cloud and Aerith share a moment that is nearly as romantic in FF7, but the same principle applies. What may seem romantic in the moment actually reveals how they’re right for someone else.

Even if Aerith lives and Cloud decides to pursue a relationship with her, it’s not going to be all puppies and roses ahead for them. Aerith would need to disentangle her feelings for Zack from her attraction to Cloud, and Cloud would still need to confront his feelings for Tifa, which were his main motivator for nearly half his life, before they can even start to build something real. This is messy work, good fodder for a prestige cable drama or an Oscar-baity indie film, but it has no place in a Final Fantasy. There simply isn’t the time. Not when the question on most players’ minds isn’t ‘Cloud does love?’ but ‘How the hell are they going to stop that madman and his Meteor that’s about to destroy the world?’

With Zerith’s depiction in Crisis Core, there’s a sort of bittersweet poetry in how the two relationships rhyme but can’t actually coexist. It is only because Zack is trying to return to Midgar to see Aerith that Cloud is able to reunite with Tifa, and the OG begins in earnest. In another world, Zack and Aerith would be the hero and heroine who saved the world and lived to tell the tale. They are much more the traditional archetypes - Zack the super-powered warrior who wants to be a Capital-H Hero, and Aerith, the last of her kind who reluctantly accepts her fate. Compared to these two, Cloud and Tifa aren’t nearly so special, nor their goals so lofty and noble. Cloud, after all, was too weak to even get into SOLDIER, and only wanted to be one, not for some greater good, but to impress the girl he liked. Tifa has no special abilities, merely learning martial arts when she grew wise enough to not wait around for a hero. On the surface, Cloud and Tifa are made of frailer stuff, and yet by luck or by fate, they’re the ones who cheat death time and time again, and manage to save the world, whereas the ones who should have the role, are prematurely struck down before they can finish the job. Cloud and Tifa fulfill the roles that they never asked for, that they may not be particularly suited for, in Zack and Aerith’s stead. There’s a burden and a beauty to it. Cloud and Tifa can live because Zack and Aerith did not.

All of this nuance is lost if you think Cloud and Aerith are meant to be the endgame couple. Instead, you have a pair succumbing to their basest desires, regardless of the selfless sacrifices their other potential paramours made for their sake. Zack and Tifa, and their respective relationships with Aerith and Cloud, are flattened into mere romantic obstacles. The heart wants what it wants, some may argue. While that may be true in real life, that is not necessarily the case in a work of fiction, especially not a Final Fantasy. The other canon Final Fantasy couples could certainly have had previous romantic relationships, but unless they have direct relevance to the their character arcs (e.g., Rachel to Locke), the games do not draw attention to them because they would be a distraction from the romance they are trying to tell. They’ve certainly never spent the amount of real estate FF7 spends in depicting Cloud/Tifa and Zack/Aerith’s relationships.

At last…the Remake, and somehow this essay isn’t even close to being over

Finally, we come to the Remake. With the technological advancements made in the last 23 years and the sheer amount of hours they’re devoting to just the Midgar section this time around, you can almost look at the OG as an outline and the Remake as the final draft. With the OG being overly reliant on text to do its storytelling, and the Remake having subtle facial expressions and a slew of cinematic techniques at its disposal, you might almost consider it an adaptation from a literary medium to a visual one. Our discussions are no longer limited to just what the characters are saying, but what they are doing, and even more importantly, how the game presents those actions. When does the game want us to pay attention? And what does it want us to pay attention to?

Unlike most outlines, which are read by a small handful of execs, SE has 23 years worth of reactions from the general public to gauge what works and what doesn’t work, what caused confusion, and what could be clarified. While FF7 is not a romance, the LTD remains a hot topic among a small but vocal part of the fanbase. It certainly is an area that could do with some clarifying in the Remake.

Since the Remake is not telling a new story, but rather retelling an existing story that has been in the public consciousness for over two decades, certain aspects that were treated as “twists” in the OG no longer have that same element of surprise, and would need to approached differently. For example, in the Midgar section of the OG, Shinra is treated as the main antagonist throughout. It’s only when we get to the top of the Shinra tower that Sephiroth is revealed as the real villain. Anyone with even a passing of knowledge of FF7 would be aware of Sephiroth so trying to play it off like a surprise in the Remake would be terribly anticlimactic. Thus, Sephiroth appears as early as Ch. 2 to haunt Cloud and the player throughout.

Likewise, many players who’ve never even touched the OG are probably aware that Aerith dies, thus her death can no longer be played for shock. While SE would still want the player to grow attached to Aerith so that her death has an emotional impact, there are diminishing returns to misdirecting the player about her fate, at least not in the same way it was done in the OG.

How do these considerations affect the how the LTD is depicted in the Remake? For the two of the biggest twists in the OG to land in the Remake — Aerith’s death and Cloud’s true identity in the Lifestream — the game needs to establish:

Aerith’s attraction to Cloud, specifically due to his similarities to Zack. This never needs to go past an initial attraction for the player to understand that the man whose memory Cloud was “borrowing” is Zack. Aerith’s feelings for Cloud can evolve into something platonic or even maternal by her end without the reveal in the Lifestream losing any impact.

Cloud’s love for Tifa. For the Lifestream sequence to land with an “Ooooh!” rather than a “Huh!?!?”, the Remake will need to establish that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to 1) motivate him to try to join SOLDIER in the first place 2) incentivize him to adopt a false persona because he fears that he isn’t the man she wants him to be 3) call him back to consciousness from Make poisoning twice 4) help him put his mind back together and find his true self. That’s a lot of story riding on one guy’s feelings!

The player’s love for Aerith so that her death will hurt. This can be done by making them invested in Aerith as a character by her own right, but also extends to the relationships she has with the other characters (not only Cloud).

What is not necessary is establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith. Now, would their doomed romance make her death hurt even more? Sure, but it could work just as well if Cloud if is losing a dear friend and ally, not a lover. Not to mention, her death also cuts short her relationships with Tifa, Barret, Red XII, etc. Bulking those relationships up prior to her death, would also make her loss more palpable. If anything, establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith would actually undermine the game’s other big twist. The game needs you to believe that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to drive his entire hero’s journey. If Cloud is shown falling in love with another woman in the span of weeks if not mere days, then the Lifestream scene would be much harder to swallow.

Cloud wavering between the two women made sense in the OG because the main way for the player to get to know Aerith was through her interactions with Cloud. That is no longer the case in the Remake. Cloud is still the protagonist, and the player character for the vast majority of the game, but there are natural ways for the player to get to know Aerith outside of her dialogue exchanges with Cloud. Unless SE considers the LTD an integral part of FF7’s DNA, then for the sake of story clarity, the LTD doesn’t need to exist.

How then does the Remake clarify things?

I’m not going go through every single change in the Remake — there are far too many of them, and they’ve been documented elsewhere. Most of the changes are expansions or adaptations (what might make sense for super-deformed chibis would look silly for realistic characters, e.g., Cloud rolling barrels in the Church has now become him climbing across the roof support). What is expanded and how it’s adapted can be telling, but what is more interesting are the additions and removals. Not just for what takes place in the scenes themselves, but how their addition or removal changes our understanding of the narrative as a whole vis-a-vis the story we know from the OG.

Notably, one of the features that is not expanded upon, but rather diminished, is player choice. In the OG, the player had a slew of dialogue options to choose from, especially during the Midgar portion of the game. Not only did it determine which character would go on a date with Cloud at the Gold Saucer, but it also made the player identify with Cloud since they’re largely determining his personality during this stage. Despite the technological advances that have made this level of optionality the norm in AAA games, the Remake gives the player far fewer non-gameplay related choices, and only really the illusion of choice as a nod to the OG, but they don’t affect the story of the game in any meaningful way. You get a slightly different conversation depending on the choice, but you have to buy the Flower, Tifa has to make you a drink.

So much of what fueled the LTD in the OG came from this mechanic, which is now largely absent in the Remake. Almost every instance where there was a dialogue branch in the OG has become a single, canon scenario in the Remake that favors Tifa (e.g., having the choice of giving the flower to Tifa or Marlene in the OG, to Cloud giving the flower to Tifa in the Remake). Similarly, for the only meaningful choice you make in the Remake — picking Tifa or Aerith in the sewers — Cloud is now equidistant to both girls, whereas in the OG, his starting point was much closer to Aerith. In the OG, player choice allowed you to largely determine Cloud’s personality, and the girl he favored — and seemingly encouraged you to choose Aerith in many instances. In the Remake, Cloud is now his own character, not who the player wants him to be. And this Cloud, well, he sure seems to have a thing for Tifa.

In fact, one of the first changes in the Remake is the addition of Jessie asking Cloud about his relationship with Tifa, and Cloud’s brief flashback to their childhood together. In the OG, Tifa isn’t mentioned at all during the first reactor mission, and we don’t see her until we get to Sector 7.

Not only does this scene reveal Tifa’s importance to Cloud much earlier on than in the OG, but it sets up a sort of frame of reference that colors Cloud’s subsequent interactions. Even as Jessie kind of flirts with him throughout the reactor mission, even with his chance meeting Aerith in Sector 8, in the back of your mind, you might be thinking — wait what about his relationship with this Tifa character? What if he’s already spoken for?

Think about how this plays out in the OG. Jessie is pretty much a non-entity, and Cloud has his meet-cute with the flower girl before we’re even aware that Tifa exists. It’s hard to get too invested in his interactions with Tifa, when you know he has to meet the flower girl again, and you’re waiting for that moment, because that’s when the game will start in earnest.

After chapter 1 of the Remake, a new player may be asking — who is this Tifa person, and, echoing Jessie’s question, what kind of relationship does she have with Cloud? It’s a question that’s repeated when Barret mentions her before they set the bomb, and again when Barret specifies Seventh Heaven is where Tifa works — and the game zooms in on Cloud’s face — when they arrive in Sector 7.

It’s when we finally meet her at Seventh Heaven in Ch. 3 that we feel, ah now, this game has finally begun.

It’s also interesting how inorganically this question is introduced in the Remake. Up until that moment, the dialogue and Cloud are all business. Then, as they’re waiting for the gate to open, Jessie asks about Tifa completely out of the blue, and Cloud, all of a sudden, is at a lost for words, and has the first of many flashbacks. That this moment is a bit incongruous shows the effort SE made to establish Tifa’s importance to the game and to Cloud early on.

One of the biggest changes in the Remake is the addition of the events in Ch. 3 and 4. Unlike what happens in Ch. 18, Ch. 3 and 4 feel like such a natural extension of the OG’s story that many players may not even realize that SE has added an whole day’s and night’s worth of events to the OG’s story. While not a drastic change, it does reshape our understanding of subsequent events in the story, namely Cloud’s time spent alone with Aerith.

In the OG, we rush from one reactor mission to the next, with no real time to explore Cloud’s character or his relationships with any of the other characters in between. When he crashes through the church, he gets a bit of a breather. We see a different side of him with Aerith. Since we have nothing else to compare it to, many might assume that his relationship with Aerith is special. That she brings something out of him that no one else can.

That is no longer the case in the Remake. While Cloud’s time in Sector 5 with Aerith remains largely unchanged though greatly expanded, it no longer feels “special.” So many of the beats that seemed exclusive to his relationship with Aerith in the OG, we’ve now already seen play out with both Tifa and the other members of AVALANCHE long before he meets Aerith.

Cloud tells the flowers to listen to Aerith; he’s told Tifa he’s listening if she wants to talk; told Bigg’s he wants to hear the story of Jessie’s dad. Cloud offers to walk Aerith back home; he offered the same to Wedge. Cloud smiles at Aerith; he’s already smiled at Tifa and AVALANCHE a number of times.

Now, I’m under no illusion that SE added these chapters solely to diminish Aerith’s importance to Cloud (other than the obvious goal of making the game longer, I imagine they wanted the player to spend more time in Sector 7 and more time with the other AVALANCHE members so that the collapse of the Pillar and their deaths have more weight), but they certainly must have realized that this would be one effect. If pushing Cloud/Aerith’s romance had been a goal with the Remake, this would be a scenario they would try to avoid. Notably, the other place where time has been added - the night in the Underground Shinra Lab, and the day helping other people out around the slums — are also periods of time when Aerith is absent.

Home Sweet Slums vs. Budding Bodyguard

Since most of the events in Ch. 3 were invented for the Remake, and thus we have nothing in the OG to compare it to (except to say that something is probably better than nothing), I thought it would be more interesting to compare it to Ch. 8. Structurally, they are nearly identical — Cloud doing sidequests around the Sectors with one of the girls as his guide. Extra bits of dialogue the more sidequests you complete, with an optional story event if you do them all. Do Cloud’s relationships with each girl progress the same way in both chapters? Is the Remake just Final Waifu Simulator 2020 or are they distinct, reflecting their respective roles in the story as a whole?

A lot of what the player takes away from these chapters is going to be pretty subjective (Is he annoyed with her or is he playing hard to get), yet the vibes of the two chapters are quite different. This is because in Ch. 3, the player is getting to know Tifa through her relationship with Cloud; in Ch. 8; the player is getting to know Aerith as a character on her own.

What do I mean by this? Let’s take Cloud’s initial introduction into each Sector. In Ch. 3, it’s a straight shot from Seventh Heaven to Stargazer Heights punctuated by a brief conversation where Tifa asks Cloud about the mission he was just on. We don’t learn anything new about Tifa’s character here. Instead we hear Cloud recount the mission we already saw play out in detail in Ch. 1 But it’s through this conversation that we get a glimpse of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship — unlike the reticent jerk he was with Avalanche, this Cloud is much more responsive and even tries to reassure her in his own stilted way. We also know that they have enough of a past together that Tifa can categorize him as “not a people person” — an assessment to which Cloud agrees. Slowly, we’re getting an answer to the question Jessie posed in Ch. 1 — just what kind of relationship does Cloud have with Tifa?

In Ch. 8, Aerith leads Cloud on a roundabout way through Sector 5, and stops, unprompted, to talk about her experiences helping at the restaurant, helping out the doctor, and helping with the orphans at the Leaf House. It’s not so much a conversation as a monologue. Cloud isn’t the one who inquires about these relationships, and more jarringly, he doesn’t respond until Aerith directly asks him a question (interestingly enough, it’s about the flower she gave him…which he then gave to Tifa). Here, the game is allowing the player to learn more about the kind of person Aerith is. Cloud is also learning about Aerith at the same time, but with his non-reaction, either the game itself is indifferent to Cloud’s feelings towards Aerith or it is deliberately trying to portray Cloud’s indifference to Aerith.

The optional story event you can see in each chapter after completing all the side quests is also telling. In Ch. 3, “Alone at Last” is almost explicitly about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. It’s bookended by two brief scenes between Marle and Cloud — the first in which she lectures him about how he should treat Tifa almost like an overprotective in-law, the second after they return downstairs and Marle awards Cloud with an accessory “imbued with the fervent desire to be by one’s side for eternity” after he makes Tifa smile. In between, Cloud and Tifa chat alone in her room. Tifa finally gets a chance to ask Cloud about his past and they plan a little date to celebrate their reunion. There is also at least the suggestion that Cloud was expecting something else when Tifa asked him to her room.

In Ch. 8’s “The Language of Flowers,” Cloud and Aerith’s relationship is certainly part of the story — unlike earlier in the chapter, Cloud actually asks Aerith about what she’s doing and even supports her by talking to the flowers too, but the other main objective of this much briefer scene is to show Aerith’s relationship with the flowers and of her mysterious Cetra powers (though we don’t know about her ancestry just yet). Like a lot of Aerith’s dialogue, there’s a lot of foreshadowing and foreboding in her words. If anything, it’s almost as if Cloud is playing the Marle role to the flowers, as an audience surrogate to ask Aerith about her relationship with the flowers so that she can explain. Also, there’s no in-game reward that suggests what the scene was really about.

If there’s any confusion about what’s going on here, just compare their titles “Alone At Last” vs. “The Language of Flowers.”

I’ll try not to bring my personal feelings into this, but there’s just something so much more satisfying about the construction of Ch. 3. This is some real storytelling 101 shit, but I think a lot of it due to just how much set up and payoff there is, and how almost all of said payoff deepens our understanding of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship:

Marle: Cloud meets Tifa’s overprotective landlady towards the beginning of the chapter. She is dubious of his character and his relationship with TIfa. This impression does not change the second time they meet even though Tifa herself is there to mediate. It’s only towards the end of the chapter, after all the sidequests are complete, that this tension is resolved. Marle gives Cloud a lecture about how he should be treating Tifa, which he seems to take to heart. And Cloud finally earns Marle’s begrudging approval after he emerges from their rooms with a chipper-looking Tifa in tow.

Their past: For their first in-game interaction, Cloud casually brings up that fact that it’s been “Five years” since they’ve last, which seem to throw Tifa off a bit. As they’re replacing filters, Cloud asks Tifa what she’s been up to in the time since they’ve been apart, and Tifa quickly changes the subject. Tifa tries to ask Cloud about his life “after he left the village,” at the Neighborhood Watch HQ, and this time he’s the one who seems to be avoiding the subject. It’s only after all the Ch. 3 sidequests are complete, and they're alone in her room that Tifa finally gets the chance to ask her question. A question which Cloud still doesn’t entirely answer. This question remains unresolved, and anyone’s played the OG will know that it will remain unresolved for some time yet, as it is THE question of Cloud’s story as a whole.

The lessons: Tifa starts spouting off some lessons for life in the slums as she brings Cloud around the town, though it’s unclear if Cloud is paying attention or taking them to heart. After completing the first sidequest, Cloud repeats one of these sayings back to her, confirming that he’s been listening all along. By the end of the chapter, Cloud is repeating these lessons to himself, even when Tifa isn’t around. These lessons extend beyond this chapter, with Cloud being a real teacher’s pet, asking Tifa “Is this a lesson” in Ch. 10 once they reunite.

The drink: When Cloud first arrives at Seventh Heaven, Tifa plays hostess and asks him if he wants anything, but it seems he’s only interested in his money. After exploring the sector a bit, Tifa again tries to play the role of cheery bartender, offering to make him a cocktail at the bar, but Cloud sees through this facade, and they carry on. Finally, after the day’s work is done, to tide Cloud over while she’s meeting with AVALANCHE, Tifa finally gets the chance to make him a drink. No matter, which dialogue option the player chooses, Tifa and Cloud fall into the roles of flirty bartender and patron quite easily. Who would have thought this was possible from the guy we met in Ch. 1?

This dynamic is largely absent in Ch. 8, except perhaps exploring Aerith’s relationship with the flowers, which “pays off” in the “Language of Flowers” event, but again, that scene is primarily about Aerith’s character rather than her relationship with Cloud. The orphans and the Leaf House are a throughline of the chapter, but they are merely present. There’s no clear progression here as was the case with in Ch. 3. Sure, the kids admire Cloud quite a bit after he saves them, but it’s not like they were dubious of his presence before. They barely paid attention to him. In terms of the impact the kids have on Cloud’s relationship with Aerith, there isn’t much at all. Certainly nothing like the role Marle plays in developing his relationship with Tifa.

The thing is, there are plenty of moments that could have been set ups, only there’s no real follow through. Aerith introduces Cloud around town as her bodyguard, and some people like the Doctor express dubiousness of his ability to do the job, but even after we spend a whole day fighting off monsters, and defeating Rude, there’s no payoff. Not even a throwaway “Wow, great job bodyguarding” comment. Same with the whole “one date” reward. Other than a quick reference on the way to Sector 5, and Aerith threatening to reveal the deal to cajole Cloud into helping her gather flowers, it’s never brought up again, in this chapter, or the rest of the game.

Aerith also makes a big stink about Cloud taking the time to enjoy Elmyra’s cooking. This is after Cloud is excluded from AVALANCHE’s celebration in Seventh Heaven and after he misses out on Jessie’s mom’s “Midgar Special” with Biggs and Wedge. So this could have been have been the set up to Cloud finally getting to experience a nice, domestic moment where he feels like he’s part of a family. And this dinner does happen! Only…the Remake skips over it entirely. Which is quite a strange choice considering that almost every other waking moment of Cloud’s time in Midgar has been depicted in excruciating detail. SE has decided that either whatever happened in this dinner between these three characters is irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell, or they’ve deliberately excluded this scene from the game so that the player wouldn’t get any wrong ideas from it (e.g., that Cloud is starting to feel at home with Aerith).

Speaking of home, the Odd Jobs in Ch. 3 feel a bit more meaningful outside of just the gameplay-related rewards because they’re a way for Cloud to improve his reputation as he considers building a life for himself in Sector 7. This intent is implicit as Tifa imparts upon him the life lessons for surviving the slums, and then explicit, when Tifa asks him if he’s going to “stick around a little longer” outside of Seventh Heaven and he answers maybe. (It is later confirmed when Cloud and Tifa converse in his room in Ch. 4 after he remembers their promise).

Despite Aerith’s endeavors to extend their time together, there’s no indication that Cloud is planning to put down roots in Sector 5, or even return. Not even after doing all the Odd Jobs. If anything, it’s just the opposite — after 3 Odd Jobs, Aerith, kind of jokingly tells Cloud “don’t think you can rely on me forever.” This is a line that has a deeper meaning for anyone who knows Aerith’s fate in the OG, but Cloud seems totally fine with the outcome. Similarly, at the end of the Chapter 8, Elmyra asks Cloud to leave and never speak to Aerith again — a request to which he readily agrees.

Adding to the different vibes of the Chapters are the musical themes that play in the background. In Ch. 3, it’s the “Main Theme of VII”, followed by “On Our Way” — two tracks that instantly recall the OG. While the Main Theme is a bit melancholy, it's also familiar. It feels like home. In Ch. 8, we have an instrumental version of ‘Hollow’ - the new theme written for the Remake. While, it’s a lovely piece, it’s unfamiliar and honestly as a bit anxiety inducing (as is the intent).

(A quick aside to address the argument that this proves ‘Hollow’ is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith:

Which of course doesn’t make any damn sense because he hasn’t even lost Aerith at this point the story. Even if you want to argue that there is so timey-wimey stuff going on and the whole purpose of the Remake is to rewrite the timeline so that Cloud doesn’t lose Aerith around — shouldn’t there be evidence of this desire outside of just the background music? Perhaps, in Cloud’s actions during the Chapter which the song plays — shouldn’t he dread being parted from her, shouldn’t he be the one trying to extend their time together? Instead, he’s willing to let her go quite easily.

The more likely explanation as to why “Hollow” plays in Ch. 8 is that since the “Main Theme of FFVII” already plays in Ch. 3, the other “main theme” written for the Remake is going to play in the other chapter with a pseudo-open world vibe. If you’re going to say “Hollow” is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith then you’d have to accept that the Main Theme of the entire series is about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa, which would actually make a bit more sense given that is practically Cloud’s entire character arc.)

Both chapters contain a scripted battle that must be completed before the chapter can end. They both contain a shot where Cloud fights side by side with each of the girls.

Here, Cloud and Tifa are both in focus during the entirety of this shot.

Here, the focus pulls away from Cloud the moment Aerith enters the frame.

I doubt the developers expected most players to notice this particular technique, but it reflects the subtle differences in the way these two relationships are portrayed. By the end of Ch. 3, Cloud and Tifa are acting as one unit. By the end of Ch. 8, even when they’re together, Cloud and Aerith are still apart.

A brief (lol) overview of some meaningful changes from the OG

One of the most significant changes in the Sector 7 chapters is how The Promise flashback is depicted. In the OG, Tifa is the one who has to remind Cloud of the Promise, in a rather pushy way, and whether Cloud chooses to join the next mission to fulfill his promise to her or because Barret is giving him a raise feels a bit more ambiguous.

In the Remake, the Promise has it’s own little mini-arc. It’s first brought up at the end of Ch. 3 when Cloud talks to Tifa about her anxieties about the upcoming mission. Tifa subtly references the Promise by mentioning that she’s “in a pitch” — a reference that goes over Cloud’s head. It’s only in Ch. 4, in the middle of a mission with Biggs and Wedge, where Tifa is no where in sight, that a random building fan reminds him of the Nibelheim water tower and the Promise he made to Tifa there. There’s also another brief flashback to that earlier moment in the bar when Tifa mentions she’s in a “pinch.” Again, the placement of this particular flashback at this particular moment feels almost jarring. And the flashback to the scene in the bar — a flashback to a scene we’ve already seen play out in-game — is the only one of its kind in the Remake. SE went out of the way to show that this particular moment is very important to Cloud and the game as whole. It’s when Cloud returns to his room, and Tifa asks him if he’s planning to stay in Midgar, that this mini-arc is finally complete. He brings up the Promise on his own, and makes it explicit that the reason he’s staying is for her. It’s to fulfill his Promise to her, not for money or for AVALANCHE — at this point, he’s not even supposed to be going on the next mission.

The Reactor 5 chapters are greatly expanded, but there aren’t really any substantive changes other than the addition of the rather intimate train roll scene between and Cloud and Tifa, which adds nothing to the story except to establish how horny they are for each other. We know this is the case, of course, because if you go out of your way to make Cloud look like an incompetent idiot and let the timer run out, you can avoid this scene altogether. But even in that alternate scene, Cloud’s concern for Tifa is crystal clear.

Ch. 8 also plays out quite similarly to the OG for the most part, though Cloud’s banter with Aerith on the rooftops doesn’t feel all that special since we’ve already seen him do the same with Tifa, Barret and the rest of AVALANCHE. The rooftops is the first place Cloud laughs in the OG. In the Remake, while Cloud might not have straight out laughed before, he’s certainly smiled quite a bit in the preceding chapters. Also, with the addition of voice acting and realistic facial expressions, that “laughter” in the Remake comes off much more sarcastic than genuine.

It’s also notable that in the Remake, Cloud vocally protests almost every time Aerith tries to extend their time together. In the OG, Cloud says nothing in these moments, which the player could reasonably interpret as assent.

One major change in the Remake is how Aerith learns of Tifa’s existence. In the OG, Cloud mentions that he wants to go back to Tifa’s bar, prompting Aerith to ask him about his relationship with her. In the Remake, Cloud calls Tifa’s name after having a random flashback of Child Tifa as he’s walking along with some kids. Again the insertion of said flashback is a bit jarring, prompting Aerith to understandably ask Cloud about just who this Tifa is. In the OG, this exchange served to show Aerith’s jealousy and her interest in Cloud. In the Remake, it’s all about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa and his inability to articulate them. As for Aerith, I suppose you can still read her reaction as jealous, though simple curiosity is a perfectly reasonable way to read it too. It plays out quite similarly to Aerith asking Cloud about who he gave the flower to. Her follow ups seem indicate that she’s merely curious about who this recipient might be rather than showing that she’s upset/jealous of the fact that said person exists.

For the collapsed tunnel segment, the Remake adds the recurring bit of Aerith and Cloud trying to successfully complete a high-five. While this is certainly a way to show them getting closer, it’s about least intimate way that SE could have done so. Just think about the alternatives — you could have Cloud and Aerith sharing brief tidbits of their lives after each mechanical arm, you could have them trying to reach for each other’s hand. Instead, SE chose an action that is we’ve seen performed between a number of different platonic buddies, and an action that Aerith immediately performs with Tifa upon meeting her. Not to mention, even while they are technically getting closer, Cloud still rejects (or at least tries to) Aerith’s invitations to extend their time together twice — at the fire and at the playground.

One aspect from these two Chapters that does has plenty of set up and a satisfying payoff is Aerith’s interest in Cloud’s SOLDIER background. You have the weirdness of Aerith already knowing that Cloud was in SOLDIER without him mentioning it first, followed by Elmyra’s antipathy towards SOLDIERs in general, not to mention Aerith actively fishing for information about Cloud’s time in SOLDIER. (For players who’ve played Crisis Core, the reason for her behavior is even more obvious, with her “one date” gesture mirroring Zack’s, and her line to Cloud in front of the tunnel a near duplicate of what she says to Zack — at least in the original Japanese).

Finally, at the playground, it’s revealed that the reason for all this weirdness is because Aerith’s first love was also a SOLDIER who was the same rank as Cloud. Unlike in the OG, Cloud does not exhibit any potential jealousy by asking about the nature of her relationship, and Aerith doesn’t try to play it off by dismissing the seriousness. In fact, with the emotional nuance we can now see on her face, we can understand the depth of her feelings even if she cannot articulate them.

This is the first scene in the Remake where Cloud and Aerith have a genuine conversation. Thus, finally, Cloud expresses some hesitation before he leaves her — and as far as he knows, this could be the last time they see each other. You can interpret this hesitation as romantic longing or it could just as easily be Cloud being a bit sad to part from a new friend. Regardless, it’s notable that scene is preceded by one where Aerith is talking about her first love who she clearly isn’t over, and followed by a scene where Cloud sprints across the screen, without a backwards glance at Aerith, after seeing a glimpse of Tifa through a tiny window in a Chocobo cart that’s about a hundred yards away.

The Wall Market segment in the Remake is quite explicitly about Cloud’s desire to save Tifa. In the OG, Aerith has no trouble getting into Corneo’s mansion on her own, so I can see how someone could misinterpret Cloud going through all the effort to dress as a woman to protect Aerith from the Don’s wiles (though of course, you would need to ask, why they trying to infiltrate the mansion in the first place?). In the Remake, Cloud has to go through herculean efforts to even get Aerith in front of the Don. Everyone who is aware of Cloud’s cause, from Sam to Leslie to Johnny to Andrea to Aerith herself, comments on how hard he’s working to save Tifa and how important she must be to him for him to do so. In case there’s any confusion, the Remake also includes a scene where Cloud is prepared to bust into the mansion on his own, leaving Aerith to fend for herself, after Johnny comes with news that Tifa is in trouble.

Both Cloud and Aerith get big dress reveals in the Remake. If you get Aerith’s best dress, Cloud’s reaction can certainly be read as one of attraction, but since the game continues on the same regardless of which dress you get, it’s not meant to mark a shift in Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Rather, it’s a reward for the player for completing however many side quests in Ch. 8, especially since the Remake incentives the player to get every dress and thus see all of Cloud’s reactions by making it a Trophy and including it in the play log.

A significant and very welcome change from the OG to the Remake is Tifa and Aerith’s relationship dynamic. In the OG, the girls’ first meeting in Corneo’s mansion starts with them fighting over Cloud (by pretending not to fight over Cloud). In the Remake, the sequence of events is reversed so that it starts off with Cloud’s reunion with Tifa (again emphasizing that the whole purpose of the infiltration is because Cloud wants to save Tifa). Then when Aerith wakes, she’s absolutely thrilled to make Tifa’s acquaintance, hardly acknowledging Cloud at all. Tifa is understandably more wary at first, but once they start working together, they become fast friends.

Also interesting is that from the moment Aerith and Tifa meet, almost every instance where Cloud could be shown worrying about Aerith or trying to comfort Aerith is given to Tifa instead. In the OG, it’s Cloud who frets about Aerith getting involved in the plot to question the Don, and regrets getting her mixed up in everything once they land in the sewers. In the Remake, those very same reservations are expressed by Tifa instead. Tifa is the one who saves Aerith when the platform collapses in the sewer. Tifa is the one who emotionally comforts Aerith after they’re separated in the train graveyard. (Cloud might be the one who physically saves her, but he doesn’t even so much give her a second glance to check on her well-being before he runs off to face Eligor. He leaves that job for Tifa). It almost feels like the Remake is going out of its way to avoid any moments between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic. In fact, after Corneo’s mansion, unless you get Aerith’s resolution, there are almost no one-on-one interactions at all between Cloud and Aerith. Such is not the case with Cloud and Tifa. In fact, right after defeating Abzu in the sewers, Cloud runs after Tifa, and asks her if what she’s saying is one of those slum lessons — continuing right where they left off.

Ch. 11 feels like a wink-wink nudge-nudge way to acknowledge the LTD. You have the infamous shot of the two girls on each of Cloud’s arms, and two scenes where Cloud appears as if he’s unable to choose between them when he asks them if they’re okay. Of course, in this same Chapter, you have a scene during the boss fight with the Phantom where Cloud actually pulls Tifa away from Aerith, leaving Aerith to defend herself, for an extended sequence where he tries to keep Tifa safe. This is not something SE would include if their intention is to keep Cloud’s romantic interest ambiguous or if Aerith is meant to be the one he loves. Of course, Ch. 11 is not the first we see of this trio’s dynamic. We start with Ch. 10, which is all about Aerith and Tifa’s friendship. Ch. 11 is a nod to the LTD dynamic in the OG, but it’s just that, a nod, not an indication the Remake is following the same path. Halfway through Ch. 11, the dynamic completely disappears.

Ch. 12 changes things up a bit from the OG. Instead of Cloud and Tifa ascending the pillar together, Cloud goes up first. Seemingly just so that we can have the dramatic slow-mo handgrab scene between the two of them when Tifa decides to run after Cloud — right after Aerith tells her to follow her heart.

The Remake also shows us what happens when Aerith goes to find Marlene at Seventh Heaven — including the moment when Aerith sees the flower she gave Cloud by the bar register, and Aerith is finally able to connect the dots. After seeing Cloud be so cagey about who he gave the flower to, and weird about his relationship with Tifa, and after seeing how Cloud and Tifa act around each other. It finally makes sense. She’s figured it out before they have. It’s a beautiful payoff to all that set up. Any other interpretation of Aerith’s reaction doesn’t make a lick of sense, because if it’s to indict she’s jealous of Tifa, where is all the set up for that? Why did the Remake eliminate all the moments from the OG where she had been noticeably jealous before? Without this, that interpretation makes about as much sense as someone arguing Aerith is smiling because she’s thinking about a great sandwich she had the night before. In case anyone is confused, the scene is preceded by a moment where Aerith tells Tifa to follow her heart before she goes after Cloud, and followed by the moment where Cloud catches Tifa via slow-motion handgrab.

On the pillar itself, there are so many added moments of Cloud showing his concern for Tifa’s physical and emotional well-being. Even when they find Jessie, as sad as Cloud is over Jessie’s death, the game actually spends more time showing us Cloud’s reaction to Tifa crying over Jessie’s death, and Cloud’s inability to comfort her. Since so much of this is physical rather than verbal, this couldn’t have effectively been shown in the OG with its technological limitations.

After the pillar collapses, we start off with a couple of other moments showing Cloud’s concern over Tifa — watching over her as she wakes, his dramatic fist clench while he watches Barret comfort Tifa in a way he cannot. There is also a subtle but important change in the dialogue. In the OG, Tifa is the one who tells Barret that Marlene is safe because she was with Aerith. Cloud is also on his way to Sector 5, but it’s for the explicit purpose of trying to save Aerith, which we know because Tifa asks. In the Remake, Tifa is too emotionally devastated to comfort Barret about Marlene. Cloud, trying to help in the only way he can, is now the one to tell Barret about Marlene. Leading them to Sector 5 is no longer about him trying to help Aerith, but about him reuniting Barret with his daughter. Again, another moment where Cloud shows concern about Aerith in the OG is eliminated from the Remake.

Rather than going straight from Aerith’s house to trying to figure out a way into the Shinra building to find Aerith, the group takes a detour to check out the ruins of Sector 7 and rescue Wedge from Shinra’s underground lab. It’s only upon seeing the evidence of Shinra’s inhumane experimentation firsthand that Cloud articulates to Elmyra the need to rescue Aerith. In the OG, they never sought out Elmyra’s permission, and Tifa explicitly asks to join Cloud on his quest. Rescuing Aerith is framed as primarily Cloud’s goal, Tifa and Barret are just along for the ride.

In the Remake, all three wait until Elymra gives them her blessing, and it’s framed (quite literally) as the group’s collective goal as opposed to just Cloud’s.

In the aptly named Ch. 14 resolutions, each marks the culmination of the character’s arc for the Part 1 of Remake. While their arcs are by no means complete, they do offer a nice preview of what their ultimate resolutions will be.

With the exception of Tifa’s, these resolutions are primarily about the character themselves. Their relationships with Cloud are secondary. Each resolution marks a change in the character themselves, but not necessarily a change in Cloud’s relationship with said character. Barret recommits to AVALANCHE’s mission and his role as a leader despite the deep personal costs. Aerith’s is full of foreshadowing as she accept her fate and impending death and decides to make the most of the time she has left. After trying to put aside her own feelings for the sake of others the whole time, Tifa finally allows herself to feel the full devastation of losing her home for the second time. Like her ultimate resolution in the Lifestream that we’ll see in about 25 years, Cloud is the only person she can share this sentiment with because he was the only person who was there.

Barret does not grow closer to Cloud through his resolution. Cloud has already proved himself to him by helping out on the pillar and reuniting him with Marlene. Barret resolution merely reveals that Barret is now comfortable enough with Cloud to share his past.

Similarly, Cloud starts off Aerith’s resolution with an intent to go rescue her, and ends with that intent still intact. Aerith is more open about her feelings here than before, it being a dream and all, but these feelings aren’t something that developed during this scene.

The only difference is during Tifa’s resolution. Cloud has been unable to emotionally comfort Tifa up until this point. It’s only when Tifa starts crying and rests her head upon his shoulder that he is able to make a change, to make a choice and hug her. Halfway through Tifa’s resolution, the scene shifts its focus to Cloud, his inaction and eventual action. Notably, the only time we have a close-up of any character during all three resolutions (I’ll define close-up here as a shot where a character’s face takes up half or more of the shot), are three shots of Cloud when he’s hugging/trying to hug Tifa. Tifa’s resolution is the only one where Cloud arcs.

What of the whole “You can’t fall in love with me” line in Aerith’s resolution? Why would SE include that if not to foreshadow Cloud falling in love with Aerith? Or indicate that he has already? Well, you can’t just take the dialogue on its own, you how to look at how these lines are framed. Notably, when she says “you can’t fall in love with me,” Aerith is framed at the center of the shot, and almost looks like she’s directly addressing the player. It’s as much a warning for the player as it is for Cloud, which makes sense if you know her fate in the OG.

This is followed directly by her saying “Even if you think you have…it’s not real.” In this shot, it’s back to a standard shot/reverse shot where she is the left third of the frame. She is addressing Cloud here, which, again if you’ve played the OG, is another bit of heavy foreshadowing. The reason Clould would think he might be in love with Aerith is because he’s falsely assuming of the memories of a man who did love Aerith — Zack.

For Cloud’s response (”Do I get a say in all this?”/ “That’s very one-sided” depending on the translation), rather than showing a shot of his face, the Remake shows him with his back turned.

Whatever Cloud’s feelings may be for Aerith, the game seems rather indifferent to them.

What is more telling is the choice to include a bit with Cloud getting jealous over a guy trying to give Tifa flowers in Barret’s resolution. Barret also mentions both Jessie and Aerith in their conversation, but nothing else gets such a reaction from Cloud.

It also should go without saying that if Aerith’s resolution is meant to establish Cloud and Aerith’s romance, there should have been plenty of set-up beforehand and plenty of follow-through afterward. That obviously is not the case, because again, the Remake has gone out of its way to avoid moments where Cloud’s actions towards Aerith could be interpreted romantically.

Case in point, at around this time in the OG, Marlene tells Cloud that she thinks Aerith likes him and the player has the option to have Cloud express his hope that she does. This scene is completely eliminated from the Remake and replaced with a much more appropriate scene of father-daughter affection between Marlene and Barret while Tifa and Cloud are standing together outside.

The method by which they get up the plate is completely different in the Remake. Leslie is the one who helps them this time around, and though his quest to reunite with his fiance directly parallels with the trio’s desire to save Aerith, Leslie himself draws a comparison to earlier when Cloud was trying to rescue Tifa. Finally, when Abzu is defeated again, it is Barret who draws the parallel of their search for Aerith to Leslie’s search for his fiance, making it crystal clear that saving Aerith is a group effort rather than only Cloud’s.

Speaking of Barret, in the OG, he seems to reassess his opinion of Cloud in the Shinra HQ stairs when he sees Cloud working so hard to save Aerith and realizes he might actually care about other people. In the Remake, that reevaluation occurs after you complete all the Ch. 14 sidequests and help a bunch of NPCs. Arguably, this moment occurs even earlier in the Remake for Barret, after the Airbuster, when he realizes that Cloud is more concerned for his and Tifa’s safety than his own.

Overall, the entire Aerith rescue feels so anticlimactic in the Remake. In the OG, Cloud gets his big hero moment in the Shinra Building. He’s the one who runs up to Aerith when the glass shatters and they finally reunite. In the Remake, it’s unclear what the emotional stakes are for Cloud here. At their big reunion, all we get from him is a “Yep.” In fact, when you look at how this scene plays out, Aerith is positioned equally between Cloud and Tifa at the moment of her rescue. Cloud’s answer is again with his back turned to the camera. It’s Tifa who gets her own shot with her response.

Another instance of the Remake being completely indifferent to Cloud’s feelings for Aerith, and actually priotizing Tifa’s relationship with Aerith instead.

It is also Tifa who runs to reunite with Aerith after the group of enemies is defeated. Another moment that could have easily been Cloud’s that the Remake gives to Tifa.

Also completely eliminated in the Remake, is the “I’m your bodyguard. / The deal was for one date” exchange in the jail cells. In the Remake, after Ch. 8, the date isn’t brought up again at all; “the bodyguard” reference only comes up briefly in Ch. 11 and then never again.

In the Remake, the jail scene is replaced by the scene in Aerith’s childhood room. Despite the fact that this is Aerith’s room, it is Tifa’s face that Cloud first sees when he wakes. What purpose does this moment serve other than to showcase Cloud and Tifa’s intimacy and the other characters’ tacit acknowledgment of said intimacy?

(This is the second time where Cloud wakes up and Tifa is the first thing he sees. The other was at Corneo’s mansion. He comes to three times in the Remake, but in Ch. 8, even though Aerith is right in front of him, we start off with a few seconds of Cloud gazing around the church before settling on the person in front of him. Again, while not something that most players would notice, this feels like a deliberate choice.)

Especially since this scene itself is all about Aerith. She begins a sad story about her past, and Cloud, rather than trying to comfort her in any way, asks her to give us some exposition about the Ancients. When the Whispers surround her, even though Cloud is literally right there, it's Tifa who pulls her out of it and comforts her. Another moment that could have been Cloud that was given to Tifa, and honestly, this one feels almost bizarre.

Throughout the entire Shinra HQ episode, Cloud and Aerith haven’t had a single moment alone to themselves. The Drums scenario is completely invented for the Remake. The devs could have contrived a way for Cloud and Aerith to have some one-on-one time here and work through the feelings they expressed during Aerith’s resolution if they wanted. Instead, with the mandatory party configurations during this stage - Cloud & Barret on one side; Tifa & Aerith on the others, with Cloud & Tifa being the respective team leaders communicating over PHS, the Remake minimizes the amount of interaction Cloud and Aerith have with each other in this chapter.

On the rooftop, before Cloud’s solo fight with Rufus, even though Cloud is ostensibly doing all this so that they can bring Aerith to safety, the Remake doesn’t include a single shot that focuses on Aerith’s face and her reaction to his actions. The game has decided, whatever Aerith’s feelings are in this moment, they’re irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell. Instead we get shots focusing solely on Barret and Tifa. While the Remake couldn’t find any time to develop Cloud and Aerith’s relationship at the Shinra Tower (even though the OG certainly did), it did find time to add a new scene where Tifa saves Cloud from certain death, while referencing their Promise.

A lot of weird shit happens after this, but it’s pretty much all plot and no character. We do get one more moment where Cloud saves Tifa (and Tifa alone) from the Red Whisper even though Aerith is literally right next to her. The Remake isn’t playing coy at all about where Cloud’s preferences lie.

The party order for the Sephiroth battle varies depending on how you fought the Whispers. All the other character entrances (whoever the 3rd party member is, then the 4th and Red) are essentially the exact same shots, with the characters replaced. It’s the first character entrance (which can only be Aerith or Tifa) that you have two distinct options.

If Aerith is first, the camera pans from Cloud over to Aerith. It then cuts back to Cloud’s reaction, in a separate shot, as Aerith walks to join him (offscreen). It’s only when the player regains control of the characters that Cloud and Aerith ever share the frame.

On the other hand, if Tifa is first, we see Tifa land from Cloud’s POV. Cloud then walks over to join Tifa and they immediately share a frame, facing Sephiroth together.

Again, this is not something SE would expect the player to notice the first or even second time around. Honestly, I doubt anyone would notice at all unless they watched all these variations back to back. That is telling in itself, that SE would go through all this effort (making these scenes unique rather than copy and pasting certainly takes more time and effort) to ensure that the depictions of Cloud’s relationships with these two women are distinct despite the fact that hardly anyone would notice. Even in the very last chapter of the game, they want us to see Cloud and Tifa as a pair and Cloud and Aerith as individuals.

Which isn’t to say that Aerith is being neglected in the Remake. Quite the opposite, in fact, when she has essentially become the main protagonist and the group’s spirtual leader in Ch. 18. Rather, her relationship with Cloud is no longer an essential part of her character. Not to mention, one of the very last shots of the Remake is about Aerith sensing Zack’s presence. Again, not the kind of thing you want to bring up if the game is supposed to show her being in love with Cloud.

What does it all mean????

Phew — now let’s step back and look and how the totality of these changes have reshaped our understanding of the story as a whole. Looking solely at the Midgar section of the OG, and ignoring everything that comes after it, it seems to tell a pretty straightforward story: Cloud is a cold-hearted jerk who doesn’t care about anyone else until he meets Aerith. It is through his relationship with Aerith that he begins to soften up and starts giving a damn about something other than himself. This culminates when he risks it all to rescue Aerith from the clutches of the game’s Big Bad itself, The Shinra Electric Company.

This was honestly the reason why I was dreading the Remake when I learned that it would only cover the Midgar segment. A game that’s merely an expansion of the Midgar section of the OG is probably going to leave a lot of people believing that Cloud & Aerith were the intended couple, and I didn’t want to wait years and perhaps decades for vindication after the Remake’s Lifestream Scene.

I imagine this very scenario is what motivated SE to make so many of these changes. In the OG, they could get away with misdirecting the audience for the first few hours of the game since the rest of the story and the reveals were already completed. The player merely had to pop in the next disc to get the real story. Such is not the case with the Remake. Had the the Remake followed the OG’s beats more closely, many players, including some who’ve never played the OG, would finish the Remake thinking that Cloud and Aerith were the intended couple. It would be years until they got the rest of the story, and at that point, the truth would feel much more like a betrayal. Like they’ve been cruelly strung along.

While they’ve gone out of their way to adapt most elements from the OG into the Remake, they’ve straight up eliminated many scenes that could be interpreted as Cloud’s romantic interest in Aerith. Instead, he seems much more interested in her knowledge as an Ancient than in her romantic affections. This is the path the Remake could be taking. Instead of Cloud being under the illusion of falling in love with Aerith, he’s under the illusion that the answer to his identity dilemma lies in Aerith’s Cetra heritage, when, of course, the answer was with Tifa all along.

Hiding Sephiroth’s existence during the Midgar arc isn’t necessary to telling the story of FF7, thus it’s been eliminated in the Remake. Similarly, pretending that Cloud and Aerith are going to end up together also isn’t necessary and would only confuse the player. Thus the LTD is no longer a part of the Remake.

If Aerith’s impact on Cloud has been diminished, what then is his arc in the Remake? Is it essentially just the same without the catalyst of Aerith? A cold guy at the start who eventually learns to care about others through the course of the game? Kind of, though arguably, this is who Remake!Cloud is all along, not just Cloud at the end of the Remake. Cloud is a guy who pretends to be a selfish jerk, but he deep down he really does care. He just doesn’t show this side of himself around people he’s unfamiliar with. So part of his arc in the Remake is opening up to the others, Barret, AVALANCHE and Aerith included, but these all span a chapter or two at most. They don’t straddle the entire game.

What is the throughline then? What is an area in which he exhibits continuous growth?

It’s Tifa. It’s his desire to fulfill his Promise to Tifa. Not just to protect her physically, but to be there for her emotionally, something that’s much harder to do. There’s the big moments like when he remembers the Promise in Ch. 4., his dramatic fist clench when he can’t stop Tifa from crying in Ch. 12, and in Ch. 13 when he watches Barret comfort Tifa. It’s all the flashbacks he has of her and the times he’s felt like he failed her. It’s the smaller moments where he can sense her nervousness and unease but the only thing he knows how to do is call her name. It’s all those times during battle, where Tifa can probably take care of herself, but Cloud has to save her because he can’t fail her again. All of this culminates in Tifa’s Resolution, where Tifa is in desperate need of comfort, and is specifically seeking Cloud’s comfort, and Cloud has no idea what to do. He hesitates because he’s clueless, because he doesn’t want to fuck it up, but finally, he makes the choice, he takes the risk, and he hugs her….and he kind of fucks it up. He hugs her too hard. Which is a great thing, because this arc isn’t anywhere close to being over. There’s still so much more to come. So many places this relationship will go.

We get a little preview of this when Tifa saves Cloud on the roof. Everything we thought we knew about their relationship has been flipped on its head. Tifa is the one saving Cloud here, near the end of this part of the Remake. Just as she will save Cloud in the Lifestream just before the end of the FF7 story as a whole. What does Tifa mean to Cloud? It’s one of the first questions posed in the Remake, and by the end, it remains unanswered.

Cloud’s character arc throughout the entire FF7 story is about his reconciling with his identity issues. This continues to develop through the Shinra Tower Chapters, but it certainly isn’t going to be resolved in Part 1 of the Remake. His character arc in the Remake — caring more about others/finding a way to finally comfort Tifa — is resolved in Ch. 14, well before rescuing Aerith, which is what makes her rescue feel so anticlimactic. The resolution of this external conflict isn’t tied to the protagonist’s emotional arc. This was not the case in the OG. I’m certainly not complaining about the change, but the Remake probably would have felt more satisfying as a whole if they hewed to the structure of the OG. Instead, it seems that SE has prioritized the clarity of the Remake series as a whole (leaving no doubt about where Cloud’s affections lie) over the effectiveness of the “climax” in the first entry of the Remake.

This is all clear if you only focus on the “story” of the Remake -- i.e., what the characters are saying and doing. If you extend your lens to the presentation of said story, and here I’m talking about who the game chooses to focus on during the scenes, how long they hold on these shots, which characters share the frame, which do not, etc --- it really could not be more obvious.

Does the camera need to linger for over 5 seconds on Cloud staring at the door after wishing Tifa goodnight? Does it need to find Cloud almost every time Tifa says or does anything so that we’re always aware of his watchfulness and the nature of his care? The answer is no until you realize this dynamic is integral to telling the story of Final Fantasy VII.

I don’t see how anyone who compares the Remake to the OG could come away from it thinking that the Remake series is going to reverse all of the work done in the OG and Compilation by having Cloud end up with Aerith.

Just because the ending seems to indicate that the events of the OG might not be set in stone, it doesn’t mean that the Remake will end with Aerith surviving and living happily ever after with Cloud. Even if Aerith does live (which again seems unlikely given the heavy foreshadowing of her death in the Remake), how do you come away from the Remake thinking that Cloud is going to choose Aerith over Tifa when SE has gone out of its way to remove scenes between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic? And gone out of its way to shove Cloud’s feelings for Tifa in the player’s face? The sequels would have to spend an obscene amount of time not only building Cloud and Aerith’s relationship from scratch, but also dismantling Cloud’s relationship with Tifa. It would be an absolute waste of time and resources, and there’s really no way to do so without making the characters look like assholes in the process.

Now could this happen? Sure, in the sense that literally anything could happen in the future. But in terms of outcomes that would make sense based on what’s come before, this particular scenario is about as plausible as Cloud deciding to relinquish his quest to find Sephiroth so that he can pursue his real dream of becoming at sandwich artist at Panera Bread.

It’s over! I promise!

Like you, I too cannot believe the number of words I’ve wasted on this subject. What is there left to say? The LTD doesn’t exist outside of the first disc of the OG. You'll only find evidence of SE perpetuating the LTD if you go into these stories with the assumption that 1) The LTD exists 2) it remains unanswered. But it’s not. We know that Cloud ends up with Tifa.

What the LTD has become is dissecting individual scenes and lines of dialogue, without considering the context of said things, and pretending as if the outcome is unknown and unknowable. If you took this tact to other aspects of FF7’s story, then it would be someone arguing that because there a number of scenes in the OG that seem to suggest that Meteor will successfully destroy the planet, this means that the question of whether or not our heroes save the world in the end is left ambiguous. No one does that because that would be utterly absurd. Individual moments in a story may suggest alternate outcomes to build tension, to keep us on our toes, but that doesn’t change the ending from being the ending. Our heroes stop Meteor. Cloud loves Tifa. Arguments against either should be treated with the same level of credulity (i.e., none).

It’s frustrating that the LTD, and insecurities about whether or not Cloud really loves Tifa, takes up so much oxygen in any discussion about these characters. And it’s a damn shame, because Cloud and Tifa’s relationship is so rich and expansive, and the so-called “LTD” is such a tiny sliver of that relationship, and one of the least interesting aspects. They’re wonderful because they’re just so damn normal. Unlike other Final Fantasy couples, what keeps them apart is not space and time and death, but the most human and painfully relatable emotion of all, fear. Fear that they can’t live up to the other’s expectations; fear that they might say the wrong thing. The fear that keeps them from admitting their feelings at the Water Tower, they’re finally able to overcome 7 years later in the Lifestream. They’re childhood friends but in a way they’re also strangers. Like other FF couples, we’re able to watch their entire relationship grow and unfold before our eyes. But they have such a history too, a history that we unravel with them at the same time. Every moment of their lives that SE has found worth depicting, they’ve been there for each other, even if they didn’t know it at the time. Theirs is a story that begins and ends with each other. Their is the story that makes Final Fantasy VII what it is.

If you’ve made it this far, many thanks for reading. I truly have no idea how to use this platform, so please direct any and all hatemail to my DMs at TLS, which I will then direct to the trash. (In all seriousness, I’d be happy to answer any specific questions you may have, but I feel like I’ve more than said my piece here.)

If there’s one thing you take away from this, I hope it’s to learn to ignore all the ridiculous arguments out there, and just enjoy the story that’s actually being told. It’s a good one.

#cloti

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bookofmirth · 3 years

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Hi!

I hope i don't bother you with this long ask, but do you have any tips on how to become good at writing meta?

I like to read discourses/discussions in tumblr and learn from them but i still have trouble writing my opinions or even replying to arguments, english is not my first language but i read a lot of books and i don't have trouble understanding them i rarely come across a line that needs to be translated and so far it only happened with classics.

Someone suggested that i should always practice automating new vocabularies but i find myself forcing them alongside my childish writing and it turns out bad.

In other words, i don't have trouble when speaking, hearing or reading english but when it comes to writing i always get stuck.

Yes!!! I do!!!

Based on your writing in this ask, I don't think that your grammar or vocabulary would be an issue. Meta and analysis is much more reliant on critical thinking and being able to come up with questions that you can then investigate. tbh, anyone who would criticize your grammar instead of your actual thoughts isn't worth your time.

***I'm going to use a bunch of examples of fandom arguments or metas that I have seen, but I don't necessarily agree with them. I am just explaining how they work.

***One more thing, this is generally about developing and supporting arguments - analysis of a text is a separate though related thing and I have a post in my drafts about that. I will try to get that finished by the end of this week!

Make your argument clear. Complex grammar isn't necessary. All you need to do is make sure that you are using modifiers or hedging or contextualizing your claims. So for example, if I said "I think that characters will die in acotar5", that's super vague. What characters? Why? How? The conversation is dead before it starts. However, if I said "I think that Lady of Autumn will kill Beron in acotar5", that's put some parameters around my argument and now I have somewhere to start. I know what kind of evidence I will need. I know what characters I will need to consider. Also think about contextualizing, like "well if X happens, then this other thing is possible." Absolute statements (e.g. "Sarah has never written a logical magic system") will get you into trouble because they are easy to pick apart. Even if they are mostly true.

Have evidence! I always have the ebooks because they are easily searchable. You could also mark up your book, if you think you'll need that info a lot. I like to use colored tabs in my physical books, and sometimes I write notes in the margins. I got used to marking as I went when I was in university, noticing themes as I went along.

More on evidence: something that is just as important as having evidence is knowing how to use it. I see a lot of posts that are 20% writing, 80% screenshots from an ebook. NO. DO NOT DO THAT. Why? Because we've read the damn book. We know what it says. If I wanted to read the book again, I would read it again. That's not why I am on tumblr. The reason you are writing a post is because you have an argument. What is that argument? How are you interpreting that scene? What do you think is the meaning behind a piece of dialogue? Throwing a quote at your audience and hoping it sticks is not effective use of evidence. You've got to explain how and why you are using it.

Still related to evidence, is make sure that the evidence both means what you think it means, and that it supports the argument you think it supports. If you have evidence that is supposed to support one interpretation of the text as being more reliable than another (e.g. what a lot of the ship war arguments are doing right now), then you will need a lot of evidence that can be interpreted the same way. For example, I believe that Azriel has never truly been in love, and I have a collection of evidence that together supports that interpretation, even if on their own those quotes could be interpreted differently.

Think about the implications of your arguments. This means that if you say "Elain is sus", then you need to think about how her being sus would then impact the characters around her. How would that change the way we interpret her behavior? How is that related to what we currently know about her motivations and wants and needs and values? I went through this process in this post about whether or not she knows how the mating bond. I took someone else's argument, thought about who Elain is as a person, thought about the people closest to her, and what the implications of that argument are. We can't just say something like "Elain doesn't fit in with the Night Court" without then looking at her relationships and comparing them to other relationships, comparing her current relationships with her past behavior, etc. Basically what you're doing is testing the argument in different contexts and seeing if it still makes sense.

And yes, be respectful. People will misunderstand you. Sometimes unintentionally, sometimes just to be assholes. But we can't control their responses to us. Just on a basic level though, the moment someone feels attacked, they shut down. Conversation over. (The only exception to this is if the person is bullying, being racist, ableist, etc. Then fuck being respectful.)

Side note three, the stuff about evidence is one of the main things I teach my students and it's not an easy skill to master. It takes time.

Let me know if that helps! You do have to get into a rhythm and it takes a lot of practice. Like a lot a lot. But you can say things that are wrong and that's fine. If someone is rude to you in response, block them. The end!

#acotar #fandom things #idk what to tag thissss!!!!#teaching #argumentation #ask #anon

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starglow-xx · 3 years

Text

owning a bakery and being discovered by the ada and the port mafia (part 3)

platonic! yosano akiko x f! reader

type of writing: head canons !!

this is part of my head canon series, flour & fluff !!

tag list is open !! go to this google form and fill it out to sign up!

series synopsis: owning a bakery at 20 is tough; even more so when you have to handle members of two opposing organizations! this is your journey to meeting those fools and creating an unlikely bond with each of them. but only at the cost of your peace and sanity.

fandom: bungou stray dogs

content: fluff & platonic stuff but trigger warning!! there may be a sensitive topic for others

*getting grabbed and pulled to an alleyway! alcohol mentioned!*

please remember that yokohama isn’t the friendliest place, especially at night.

previous: part 2 : their beloved president

author’s note: same ages as last time!! (so that means everyone is one year younger than canon; that makes yosano 24)

this one is actually pretty long :0

i got info abt her likes on her wiki page (careful! there’s spoilers!)

and yosano is a queen and no one can tell me otherwise

the doctor is in the house (quite literally)

going grocery shopping was an okay chore in your opinion

it honestly depended on your mood or whatever kind of shit happens when you go shopping

cause like something always, always happens whenever you go do groceries

sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes it’s just plain weird

one time some weirdo proposed to you in the middle of the store asking for a double suicide

he was good looking you’d admit but it’s not like you’d ever see him again

or so you thought

a n y w a y s

every so often, you’d run out of real person food in your apartment

you mostly survive off all of the leftover bakery treats and ingredients—which works out pretty well actually—but bakery supplies unfortunately also run out quite often

and also unfortunately, one time when both fukuzawa & ranpo took a visit to Sakura’s, fukuzawa argued that “no you can’t live off sweets for the rest of your life”

ranpo was scandalized and scrambled to cover your ears

you guys were at it for a while

in the end you sided with fukuzawa causing ranpo to go off about “betrayal from the people he cared most abt” or smth like that

you guys were okay again after bribing him with sweets :)

for bakery supplies you usually have them delivered bc you order them in large quantities bc ahaha no way were you gonna carry like 15-20 50 pound bags of flour no way

when days like those happen, you close up the bakery early so you aren’t walking home when it’s too dark

you scheduled it to happen every first saturday of the month

on those saturdays, you close at 5 instead of at 8

currently, you were at the grocery store looking for basic cooking ingredients such as proteins, vegetables, fruits, and most importantly, snacks

ranpo’s been rubbing off on you

the sun was starting to set and you were walking home with your two bags of groceries when shit went down

tbh you were kinda expecting it cause your grocery run was peaceful for once

but what you weren’t expecting was a wack-a-do to appear out of goddamn nowhere right when you were opening the side door to get to the staircase up to your apartment

like honestly

let a woman do her own thing

the man who grabbed you tried to covered your mouth so you couldn’t scream but you didn’t exactly make it easy for him

you kicked and thrashed around even using the grocery bags—that were somehow still in your hand—as a weapon and the man struggled but he was still bigger than you and was able to bring you to a nearby alley

he reeked of alcohol and you spotted a wedding band on his left hand

not that you cared about the detail in the moment

you kicked him in the groin and in response he let you go only to fall on broken glass that was in the alley way

using the wall to help yourself up, you grabbed a nearby wooden stick and struck him right on his back

your attacker fell and you immediately turned on your heels to escape only to fall back down on the hard cold ground once again

you lift your face up and look back to see the man holding onto your ankle

grabbing a shard of glass—cutting yourself in the process— you begin to swing it at him only for him to easily grip your wrist and stop you

you get ready try and kick him in the groin again but you’re interrupted as your attacker gets sucker punched and flies to wall

you look up to see your savior and you’re blessed to see a beautiful woman, probably not that much older than you are—she’s probably around ranpo’s age— donning a white long sleeve button up, a matching black necktie, knee length skirt, and gloves, along with tights, red heels, and a pretty butterfly clip in her short black hair

but what you really notice is her eyes

ranpo’s eyes were pretty but you like hers just a bit more

you’ve always liked the color magenta

the pretty lady holds out her hand and you take it graciously and thank her as she helps you up

as that’s happening, your attacker gets himself onto his feet and his groan catches both of your attention

he struggles to stand and the pretty lady simples saunters over to him and delivers an uppercut knocking him out cold

you’re stunned and you breathe out a “thank you” making her turn towards you

she notices the condition you’re in

bleeding scrapes on your hands, arms and legs, small rips in your clothes like your tights, blouse, and skirt, and the ruffled state of your hair and clothing

she asks if you live nearby and you tell her that you own the bakery that’s one or two buildings away

when you tell her that, it clicks in her mind that you must be the bakery girl ranpo’s been talking about and the friend fukuzawa was cat sitting for

it’s been abt two weeks since ranpo and fukuzawa first met you and since then, they’ve seen lucky in the office plenty and the boxes of your signature sweets even more

if those two trust you, she has no reason not to

she smiles at you, holds out her hand for you to shake, and introduces herself as the doctor of the armed detective agency

your eyes widen and you smile back at her shaking her hand

“ah! you must be yosano-sensei then! ranpo-san and fukuzawa-san have talked about you! it’s so nice to meet you! im (l/n) (y/n)!”

“they’ve talked about you too, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you (y/n)”

after that exchange she insisted on bringing you home to treat you wounds which you told her it wasn’t necessary

she gave you a pointed look and that was when you realized what state you were in

you sighed and weakly gave in to which she only grinned at

before leaving the alley she walks over to the unconscious man and pulls out his wallet for some sort of identification and home address as you try to see if there’s any groceries still salvageable

after texting the details to kunikida, yosano turns to you poking around the now ruined grocery bags

she simply rubs your back and tells you that the both of you could go buy more groceries together as she was meaning to get some anyways; she even said she’ll pay for you

you refused obviously but she, unknowingly, used the same tactic fukuzawa used with you

“so you’re saying you don’t need groceries?”

“...”

*cue an eyebrow raise from our resident queen*

“...you agency members don’t like making things easy for me huh.”

you gave in reluctantly and at this point you don’t even know why you try negotiating with them

and that’s only three of them

apparently, she was on the other side of the street on the way to buy groceries for the agency when she noticed different produce items on the other sidewalk leading to the alley and she went to check out what happened

ironically, the way to the grocery store from the agency makes you go past Sakura’s but she didn’t realize it until after the two of you had met

before you know it, the two of you are in your apartment kitchen as she cleans and patches up all of your wounds

as she does so the two of you have a little girl talk

you find it quite comforting bc since you opened up Sakura’s you haven’t really had the chance to connect to many people much less other women

you definitely see yosano as your cool, loving, badass older sister

she thinks you’re adorable and agrees with ranpo’s opinion

yup

that’s right

the opinion that you’re like a little kid </3

you called it a betrayal and all she did was laugh at you <//3

“awhh that’s really cool yosano-sensei!—MFPH?!?”

*squishing your cheeks the same way ranpo did* “ranpo-san was right (n/n)-chan, your cheeks are squishy!”

“?!”

after that small fiasco, the two of you talked some more and bonded over your love for flowers, japanese sweets, and much more!!

you even made a date to have a girls day to go shopping and eat out!

you’re internally squealing a bit bc it’s been a while since you’ve gone shopping

yosano notices and she giggles behind her hand not saying anything bc she knows you’ll only throw a fit

the two of you came around the topic of ranpo when lucky passed by

lucky quickly warmed up to the doctor and cozied up in her lap

“i wish ranpo-san was able to meet lucky when he came by the first time, but then again, he’d probably throw a tantrum if i don’t pay attention to him for 5 seconds”

she snorted at that and like fukuzawa, she shared stories abt the slightly older male

“ranpo-san doesn’t know how to ride a train?”

“unbelievable right?”

“for someone so intelligent i expected more from him”

“i’ll be telling that to ranpo-san, (n/n)-chan”

“wha—?! yosano-sensei please don’t!”

like ranpo, she’s also a tease </3

but you love her anyway <3

eventually, she finished patching you up and promised to treat you to a new set of clothes when the two of you go out

“you don’t need to lose a good set of clothes just because of a sleazy man (n/n)-chan! you deserve better!”

you were going to argue that the rips in your clothes were fairly small and could easily be fixed—except the tights—but you stopped in your tracks when you remembered that it was practically useless to argue against an ada member

the two of you walked to the grocery store and bought both of your needed supplies—along with some extra goodies—and then she walked you back to your place bc it was already a bit dark out

but even if it wasn’t, she would walk you anyways

besides, if anything happened to you, she’s 1000% positive that ranpo and fukuzawa are gonna flip the fuck out not that she wont cause she most definitely will

speaking of which

you were drinking a bottle of water as the two of made your way back to Sakura’s when all of a sudden

“(y/n) you do realize that i have to tell shachou and ranpo-san about what happened today right?”

you choked on your water

“yosano-sensei you can’t! if you do they’ll freak! they won’t leave me alone for at least two weeks! one if im lucky!”

“exactly the point”

you just accepted your defeat already knowing that you’d lose

but maybe you can simmer down their anger towards the bastard with sweets and lucky

you arrived at Sakura’s shortly after and after bringing groceries in, you packaged a bunch of pastries leftover from today—bc you closed early—and bc you’re well aware that ranpo doesn’t share any of the sweets you send him with

you even gave yosano her own special box filled with goodies she loves, and a thermos of fukuzawa’s favorite, your special hot honey lemon tea

other than the sweets, you prepared lucky to spend the night at fukuzawa’s

you really really hoped that doing these things would make them calm down

you shivered at the thought of what their responses would be

you felt really bad for giving yosano all these things to carry and that you were keeping her very late

she assured you that she was fine and that if someone tried to mess with her she’d kick their ass

and after exchanging numbers, the magenta eyed queen bid you a good night and walked back to the agency with lucky walking by her heels

arriving back at the agency, yosano was greeted with some concerns asking if she was alright bc she came back from her grocery run pretty late

(she usually goes in the mornings but today was pretty busy so she left in the late afternoon but now it was already dark)

she waved off the concerns and plopped a couple boxes of your signature bakery boxes at ranpo’s desk, the one for her at her own, the last few boxes in the kitchen for any other agent or clerk to grab, placed the thermos on the desk fukuzawa was by, and picked up lucky and handed him to the president

the two males were pleased with what yosano had brought them, and pleased that another agency member had the chance to meet you

fukuzawa was rubbing lucky and ranpo already snacking on treats as yosano expected

but here comes the hard part

or maybe it’s gonna amusing who knows

“i met (y/n) today.”

“we could tell.”

in goes another treat in the green eyed man’s mouth

“would you like to know how?”

“you bumped into each other, had girl talk, made plans to go out, went grocery shopping, and you brought me and shachou presents.”

“great job ranpo-san, you’re almost completely correct.”

this caught the attention of basically everyone bc they knew ranpo was never “almost completely correct”

“we ended up meeting bc she got attacked on her way home from grocery shopping, i treated her wounds, then we had girl talk and did all the other stuff”

ranpo and fukuzawa froze right in their tracks

“i sent all the info of the bastard to kunikida”

“kunikida.”

“yes shachou”

“find out everything about that man and bring it to me and ranpo”

“...yes shachou”

“and yosano”

“yes?”

“text (y/n) and tell her that her cat, tea, and pastries aren’t going to work as a bribe”

just as you finished taking a shower you sneezed

<<previous // next >>

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bookwyrminspiration · 2 years

Note

i'm wondering if it would have been better if forkle told sophie that she was going to be unmatchable a lot earlier. instead of sophie having to go through the painful process of finding out herself right after a friend was kidnapped. sophie was more opposed(?) and less interested in the idea of matchmaking in the earlier books. forkle is absolutely in the wrong but i'm curious about how 12-13 sophie would have reacted...

oh this is an excellent concept for rumination! Immediately my mind jumps to both an in-canon and writer's explanation for him not letting her know.

Canonically? Perhaps Forkle has been keeping information from Sophie for so long he's lost sense of what she should be told and didn't realize that knowing her match status would ease her mind. As long as he spent reading her thoughts and monitoring her, the level of connection and understanding he maintains with her either never truly existed on any substantial level or it rapidly deteriorated once she moved to the Lost Cities.

How could he monitor her so closely and not realize all she wanted was to fit in? And that match making was one of her ways of doing that, even though it made her uncomfortable. I feel like if he was offered the opportunity or asked about it he'd say something like "that's unimportant and you should worry about things that actually matter" and be really dismissive if she wanted that info. Then again that's basically what happened when she asked about her bio parents so it would be on brand for this stinky man (insult)

from a writers perspective? Shannon wanted to use her unmatchable status as a plot point and for drama to move the story forward. this especially appeals to the people who find the romance and love triangle to be the most interesting part of the book. Keeping Forkle from sharing that information means she could bring that up whenever she wanted when it was needed in the story. It's actually an excellent writers strategy to plant seeds without knowing when they'll come back because then you can take advantage of them when you get stuck. I've done it multiple times in the au! There's actually things I have yet to bring back because I haven't needed them yet.

However, you also need to keep in mind if the thing being withhold makes sense to be withhold in that way. Mr. Forkle not providing information about matchmaking to Sophie makes enough sense that we can let it slide for the most part. Because he's kept information from her before and because he critiques the current system it makes sense he wouldn't tell her.

But if Sophie had been made aware when she was 12-13? That would drastically change the last few books--and at the very least alter the first ones.

Without being in a relationship when she found out, I think she'd appreciate the excuse to not have to participate in matchmaking. She seemed uncomfortable with the idea when she was younger (still is, but put up with it for Fitz). I don't think she'd see it as a big deal or really care about her status. She might even tell others (her friends) and be like "ah no I'm not signing up; I'm unmatchable." it'd become something normal to her, not something to fix.

There would still be that element of annoyance that the reason she was unmatchable was because Forkle refused to reveal her parents, but that's a frustration with him and not at her status.

We wouldn't have had the drama of Legacy and trying to find her bio parents. Sophitz wouldn't have fallen apart--Sophie would enter that relationship knowing her status and Fitz may have known either and had the chance to come to terms with it or respectfully tell her that was a deal breaker (which is okay for him to have that opinion). Sophie might empathize with Dex and his family more, being closer to them in society's eyes when it comes to matching.

all these possibilities!! I think being told that information at a younger age would've made life a whole lot easier for Sophie. But because of Mr. Forkle's priorities when it comes to her and Shannon's desire to make it dramatic (not a bad thing) it got pushed off until it would impact her life the most. Essentially used that one "make everything go wrong and the worst possible outcome" (heavily paraphrased) writers advice here.

#it's possible part of the adults perspective comes from seeing sophie as too young to have a mature relationship #which isn't necessarily true #she may have decided now isn't a good time for her #but they didn't make an observation and come to that conclusion. they generalized her #young people are also capable of healthy relationships #I am biased saying this as I am one of those people #but it can depend on the person and they didn't consider sophie at all when making that judgement #side note: forkle is underlined as an incorrect word in all those paragraphs and it brings me joy #like yes he is a mistake #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #sophie foster #kotlc character analysis #kotlc matchmaking #quil's queries #nonsie #long post

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yelenasdog · 3 years

Text

my girlfriend is a witch (spencer reid x witchy! fem reader)

INSPIRED BY THE SONG “My Girlfriend Is a Witch” BY October Country

genre: fluff w like maybe two seconds of angst

summary: he could feel she was hiding something, but she didn’t mean for him to find out like this.

words: 2.6k

warnings: i cannot think of any for the life of me other than crying. also, disclaimer at the end of fic.

a/n: pls listen to “my girlfriend is a witch” by october country and “john barleycorn (must die)” by traffic, while u read. i’ve been meaning to get this fic out for ages, so i hope this is good! enjoy lovies!

🂦∙🂦∙🂦

It was hot, humid, and sticky under the Malibu sun.

Rubber soles from both boots and sandals alike, most likely the cheap ones you can buy at any tourist-targeted shops surrounding the vacationer heavy area, stuck to the asphalt streets, leaving a sticky tar in its wake.

SSA Y/n Y/l/n was not a fan, to put it lightly.

Her arm hung limp against her forehead as she leaned back against the black leather seats of the car she resided in, the material burning her bare arms. Literally.

And even if she were to be exaggerating, she still strongly felt that welts would be left where she had placed her limb for far too long.

She long ago had abandoned her blazer in the backseat of her vehicle due to the excruciating heat, the cotton material feeling heavy on her arms, so she turned up the AC with one hand, while slicking back the baby hairs that had managed to fall onto her forehead with the other. It was graced with beads of sickly sweat, not unlike the rest of her body.

Some repetitive song played on the stereo that she couldn’t quite figure out how to operate in the outdated FBI issued vehicle she was using, adding to her annoyance of what seemed to be to no end.

The unfortunate ride was the result of her normal vehicle being in the shop, and rather than pay for a rental, she took whatever was left in the garage, however horrible it may be.

After sitting in hours of tiresome traffic, enduring the aforementioned reptititive song, and the entire John Barleycorn Must Die album later, (hey, it was in the glovebox, and it beat whatever had been on the radio) she finally had arrived at her destination.

She stepped out of the car, huffing at the sight in front of her. She took her black RayBans off, sliding them into her pocket of her slacks before slamming the silver door. Y/n then winced at the cracking sound that rang out. She walked forward, not wanting to look at the damage she had caused.

“That’s coming out of my paycheck.” She muttered, chewing on her chapped bottom lip, feeling the sting shoot through her nerves.

The door to the PD office she had been approaching swung open by a very frustrated officer. He breezed past her and she leaned back, placing a hand onto the warm concrete of the establishment behind her. She barely was missed by him in all his rage.

Y/l/n squinted her eyes, the rays of light clouding her vision. She began to regret taking her glasses off earlier, but disregarded the thought and continued into brick building.

The first person that she saw when she entered was the local sheriff. He was medium build, bald, and there was a bright grin that covered his face, far too bright for the current atmosphere, in her humble opinion.

“Ah, Agent, It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She reached forward offering a self-manicured hand, still slightly sweaty from the car ride.

“Pleasure’s all mine. So,” she began, walking over to where the rest of the team was examining what seemed to be a yellowed piece of parchment.

“What are we looking at?” She questioned, doing her best to get a look at whatever it was at the center of attention.

Almost like clockwork, or perhaps like a dog who was able to sense their favorite person arriving home, Spencer appeared from the back of the precinct, coffees in hand.

He passed the one is his right hand to his girlfriend, leaning forward for a kiss on the cheek that Y/n had almost ignored. She rolled her eyes at the needy man, muttering “thank you, Spencer” In a sarcastic tone, placing a quick peck on his cheek. He pouted, and she rolled her eyes once more.

As she walked forward and took a sip of the hot drink, the rest of the BAU parted, allowing her to observe the sheet. After looking at it for a few moments, she spoke up, her words overlapping with Hotch’s.

“We have no idea what it is, Penelope did a search and couldn’t find anything of use, it doesn’t translate to anything-“

“These are runes and glyphs. Horribly written, not by someone who’s an expert in the craft. The corner of the page looks like there’s-“ she paused, leaning forward. Her eyes slimmed, scanning over the page, the necklace around her neck dangled, catching Spencer’s eye.

“Yeah, this looks like a sigil. If you give me some time I could try to work out what it was for.”

She looked up, meeting the confused glancing of everyone, including her boyfriend. Prentiss was the next to speak, albeit very cautiously.

“Alright, well, do you have any ideas about what the other symbols mean?”

“Off of the top of my head?” She turned towards the paper once more, “To reiterate, this person mixed multiple different kinds of glyphs, so it might be difficult to collectively translate them, but so far I’m getting life, death-“

“Very original of them.” Morgan joked, resulting in a smile and the signature eye roll of Y/n.

“Power, fear, balance. That’s the first line.”

“Reid, are you writing that down?” Aaron questioned. Spencer nodded, not even looking up from his clipboard where he was writing the info. “Y/n, continue.”

She bobbed her head once, bringing her attention back to the 2nd line. She was silent for a bit, at one point grabbing around for a sticky note and pen. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she was carefully handed one by a reluctant Spence.

Everyone watched in amazement, amusement, and a little bit of confusion, as she wrote on the paper, scribbling what looked like nonsense next to some dates. After what seemed like hours (but was really just minutes) she pulled away, looking towards her significant other.

“When were all the victims killed?”

“September 29th, November 6th, November 9th, and that’s it.”

“And how did each of the victims thus far die?”

Hotch cut in, his arms crossed and his glance careful. “How are you certain there will be more killings?”

She ignored him, turning to Reid.

“Reid, how did they die?”

“First victim, stab wound, 2nd victim drowned, 3rd victim-“

“Burned alive?”

As this was the first time she had been made aware of the case (she had been attending to other business back in Quantico and had to fly commercial with no wifi, meaning no access to Penny to catch her up), her knowledge bewildered them greatly.

Seeing their concern spread on their faces, she picked up the photocopy, bringing it to where they were huddled. She stood in the center, pinky pointing and following along with what she was speaking of.

“This symbol here,” she pointed, making sure she held everyone’s attention”, is a rune for “New Moon”. She then went on to describe how each of the days correspond with the Moon phases, as well as the matching rune and glyphs left on the page.

“I still don’t understand how that explains more killings?” Spencer spoke, his usual high IQ seemingly not working, a problem he had whenever he was around his beloved.

She walked over to him and smiled, shaking her head. She then explained the rest of the runes in detail, how they each had a meaning that applied to the way they were killed, and how there was still one more moon phase left and one more element as well.

The pair was separated once more as Spencer nodded in understanding, his mouth left agape. She admired him for a brief moment, the way his eyes were like large stones of sparkling tiger eye, his lips the color of a rose.

Interrupting her, Hotch pulled her into a meeting room where Morgan was already waiting. Spencer stared, following her movements.

“Spence? Let’s go work on the geographical profile?” Emily asked, already on her way. He nodded, slanting his eyes briefly through the blinds of the glass. He blinked a few times, feeling like grains of sand had sunk to his waterline. He shook his head like a wet dog, ridding blooming thoughts from his mind, then continuing on from where he stood, doing his best to turn his focus elsewhere completely.

Meanwhile, Hotch was questioning her, Y/n’s knowledge about how the runes and glyphs themselves were written coming in handy for what that meant about the unsub, as well as building a profile. She was surprisingly educated on the subject, which the unit chief had decided to ignore all together, staying focused on the case.

By the end of the work day, the profile was ready to be delivered, she had figured out the presumably intended use of the sigil, and the geographic profile was nearly finished.

Satisfied with the day's work, she happily bid her goodbyes and exited the horribly boring meeting room, finding Spencer waiting by the door, coffee still in hand. He looked around the area, his eyes wandering over the portraits that hung on the walls of former officers.

“Spence, you ready?” She quipped, taking the coffee out of his hand and taking a sip. Spencer huffed, taking it back from her and throwing it away, no longer craving the warm beverage once it had touched her lips.

Spencer nodded, wrapping a hand around her waist and starting the long walk to the SUV from the building. They were quiet for most of the miniature journey, listening to the chirps of the cicadas, and the hot summer wind blowing in the branches of the palm trees. Y/n hummed quietly, finding herself in a peaceful state as she walked along with Spencer.

Spencer, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. His mind was running, trying to process the day’s happenings.

As maybe it was the obsidian that hung around her neck on a sterling silver chain, or perhaps the selenite she kept on her desk and the amethyst she made Penny keep in her batcave, claiming they were “just very pretty!”

It could have been the way she was seemingly always busy on full moons, or even the peculiar deck of “playing cards” that she keeps in her 2nd drawer of her desk, pushed far to the left.

Not to mention the jars of seemingly normal water that he wasn’t allowed to drink from or empty, and the odd combinations of what seemed to be shapes and letters that she had stitched on the inside of Spencer’s satchel (it took quite the convincing, but to her it was seemingly important, so he allowed it reluctantly).

Possibly most convincing of all was the events of the day, her enlightenment on the subjects at hand leaving an uneasiness in the genius’ stomach.

Spencer wasn’t sure how he couldn’t have figured it out sooner.

His girlfriend was a witch.

The realization made him stop suddenly in his tracks, causing her to briefly trip over her own feet. She gave him a conflicted look, concern also present within the glance.

“Spencer? What’s wrong, are you alright?”

He opened his mouth and then shut it again, whatever he had to say not completely ready to be put out in the world. He simply made a line with his lips before continuing on, leaving her where she stood. She cocked her head, confused noises leaving her throat.

She jogged to catch up with the man, his long legs making him walk awfully fast. Usually, Spencer would slow down so she could walk beside him in harmony, occasionally holding hands. But as of now, she was struggling to stay in pace with him, and she was beginning to feel fairly annoyed.

“Spencer Walter Reid! What is going on!?”

He looked behind his shoulder, only slowing his pace rather than coming to a complete stop. She managed to fall back into step with him, her gaze never leaving his form.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She bit her tongue, then ran it over her front teeth unaware of what he was referring to. “Tell you what, Reid?”

He shook his head, once more allowing his lips to turn into a straight line, slightly puffing up at his cupid's bow. “You know, about being a witch, or whatever.” He was much quieter when saying the second part of the sentence, his voice quite low.

The statement had shocked Y/n to some degree, but she kept walking, still trying to stay in step with the doctor. She wasn’t quite sure how to go about this, if she should lie and tell him he was being silly, if she should come clean about her “hobbies”. She simply didn’t know.

She decided to just not speak until much later.

It was after the car ride with the rest of the team (which was quite awkward, considering they could tell something was off between the two lovers), and after they both had eaten and showered before getting ready for bed. Y/n was sitting on one twin sized bed, while Spencer was sitting on the other, reading something from his laptop, which was very unlike him.

Y/n on the other hand couldn’t keep her mind off of the question he had asked earlier. I mean, she had an answer, that much was true. But if she wanted to give it to him, she could not bear to decide. She was staring at the cheesy hotel art on the beige wall, heat still radiating in from the open window that was cracked in the first place to combat the lack of AC.

Her gaze never faltered from the painting of the vase of flowers, the colors seemingly muted. She began to speak, slowly, cautiously.

“I didn’t tell you, because I honestly didn’t think you would care. I mean, maybe you would, but I thought that your whole science thing would make you think I was nuts…” She shook her head, looking to the ceiling. She could feel her boyfriend burning holes into the side of her head, staring.

“Although there’s plenty of science to back it up, and even if there wasn’t, science accepts or rejects ideas based on the evidence; it doesn’t-”

“-Prove or disprove them.”

She looked over and met Spencer’s sad hazel eyes, suddenly feeling very, very guilty.

His voice was quiet as a mouse, he was unable to keep eye contact for long, feeling the need to turn away.

“Metaphysics is an interesting form of philosophy that i’ve done a fair amount of research on, and the CIA has done extensive research on astral projection among other things widely considered to be nonsense phenomena, discarded by most otherwise.”

Her heart sunk and sang all at once, an inexplicable emotion rising like the tide, all the way up to her eyes, a tear slipping out and rolling down her cheek.

“If it’s important to you, it’s important to me. I would have listened, Y/n. I still will, if you care to tell me about it.”

She looked up from the beige comforters of the motel room bed, feeling an almost magnetic pull tugging her towards Spencer. So she stood and he opened his arms, allowing her to find comfort in his embrace.

“I’m sorry Spence.”

“It’s alright, I just want you to know how much you mean to me, Y/n/n. I will respect and handle anything and everything you throw my way, okay? Nothing could change how much I love you.”

She nodded, a muffled “okay” leaving her lips. He chuckled, pulling her closer. They stayed in that position for some time, savouring each other’s warmth. After she collected herself, feeling rejuvenated, she pulled away, a bright grin creeping its way onto her features.

“So,” she smirked, Spencer raised an unruly brow.

“Where do you wanna start?”

🂦∙🂦∙🂦

kinda hate it ngl. but i hope someone out there enjoyed it. for sure not my best writing and it’s a bit confusing but whatever.

DISCLAIMER: my mother and i both regularly participate in metaphysical practices, such as tarot, oracle, the usage of incense and crystals, sigils, spirit guide communication, etc. as well as several practices drawn from hinduism but regularly (and wrongly) culturally appropriated by the west, (chakras, manifestation) while also identifying with and following the methodist faith. i understand and appreciate the origins of it within hinduism, and this is in no way meant to offend anyone whatsoever and is simply for entertainment purposes. no closed practices should be participated in unless invited or born into said practice, and none have been, nor will be. (:

(also ty to roo for educating me on hinduism and how it’s been morphed and appropriated by the west, mwah ur the best)

love u, xx hj

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hinac0lada · 4 years

Text

I DON’T LIKE YOUR SHAMPOO

CHARACTER PAIRING | oikawa tooru x gn!reader

INFO | soulmate!au, fluff

WORDS | 1.9k

NOTE | by the time i’m probably posting this, is one day before my beloved’s birthday FNKLFNGK ngl i’m pretty excited and i hope ya’ll are too (besides the fact that the manga is coming to an end but let’s not talk about that-)

WARNINGS | NONE

more to see under the cut!

you live in a world where soulmate marks exist. everyone has different types of marks ranging from; timers, red strings of fate, roman numerals, half tattoos, etc. as you grow old, you watch people find their soulmates, and on some unfortunate occasions, lose them.

each person had different views on the concept of soulmates, it wasn’t sunshine and rainbows all the time, but you stayed neutral after receiving every side of the spectrum that varied from the good side — as well as the bad side of meeting their other halves.

you knew you were bound to meet your own soulmate either way, but you wouldn't get your hopes up just like that — until you received your soulmate mark on the morning of your 15th birthday.

it was a beautiful tattoo on your wrist. written were the words that your soulmate would say to you on your first encounter. your parents told you that the time and date of your encounter with them — along with their words to you, would turn golden as soon as you’ve said your first words to each other; just like how their soulmate mark worked. and although you were aware that every mark is different, you couldn’t help but raise a brow from confusion at the sentence that was permanently placed on your wrist.

‘well to be honest, i don’t like your perfume’

it read, an intriguing way to say to your soulmate, you thought to yourself. and that night, you couldn’t help but admire the pretty letterings on your wrist; rubbing your thumb against it, grinning from ear to ear like a fool.

days went by from when you received your tattoo, you’d constantly wonder what your soulmate was like or when and how you were going to meet them. tracing your fingers along the tattoo turned into a habit whenever you’re bored or anxious about something. to add to that, the thought of their existence would sometimes consume you, and you’d be stuck in a loophole of questions and doubts.

‘what if they don’t like me? or what if they don’t want to be my soulmate? what if they think i’m ugly? or a disappointment?’

regardless of the negative thoughts and worries you had in your head everyday, you were still eager to meet them — even if it takes a thousand years, a thousand hours, or maybe even if they are a thousand miles away, you can’t wait for the day that you’d get to meet them.

or what if it only takes a few months, or a few days? maybe even a few seconds? what if they were across the world? or just across the street? possibly next door? in spite of knowing not to get your hopes up, you can’t resist the anticipation of being face to face with the person you were promised to ever since the very beginning of your existence.

and every day, you’d hold on to the wrist with your mark — the symbol of a promise to true love, hoping fate decides to take place sooner than expected.

unbeknownst to you however, your true love was just within arm’s reach all this time.

it was the most awaited day of the academic year, the time where stressed out seniors get to relax for a whole day to indulge themselves in new sights and bond with their fellow batch mates before the dreaded era of finals — field trip day.

everyone had their own plans, going to after school hang outs right after the planned trip, a handful bringing digital cameras to capture each moment , that one kid in class who has great taste in music providing the speaker, and the rest just going with the flow of today’s agenda.

while the majority of students did plan their seating arrangements on the bus, you, on the other hand, decided against it. in your opinion, it wasn’t a big deal. it was just a 2 hour drive to the destination so what could possibly go haywire? plus, it didn’t matter who was your companion on the bus, it’d open up the opportunity to get to know unfamiliar faces, being divided by classes and all, so what could possibly go wrong?

maybe, possibly everything.

who would’ve thought, out of all of your batch mates, you get to sit beside the grand king himself, oikawa tooru.

it wasn’t like his personality was completely intolerable, it’s the complete opposite, really. he was charming, greeting you with a close eyed grin before sitting down next to you. in the face of all the chaos his friends warned you the male would bring— plus the many chilling glares from his countless fan girls, his presence never shook you the wrong way at all.

you weren’t complete strangers, but you weren’t well acquainted either. you were in a different class and the only time you’d see his pretty face was when you’d pass each other in the hallways. but, what's there not to like about oikawa tooru? he was attractive, a gentleman, a charmer, a friendly being, and everything was as easy as apple pie.

“hey, just a heads up, shittykawa over here has a habit of sleeping on anyone’s shoulder. don’t be afraid to push his head aside when you’re uncomfortable.” iwaizumi hajime, his best friend and the hunk of aoba johsai, patted your shoulder reassuringly before taking his seat behind the two of you, alongside him was hanamaki takahiro and matsukawa issei - who were snickering at the flustered setter beside you.

for some reason, you thought iwaizumi was just joking or he said that to make oikawa look bad — in which he failed. and so you didn’t take his statement seriously, disregarding it completely. and now you regret ever doing so, because it turned out to come true, eventually biting you back in the ass.

things took a turn when you suddenly felt the weight of the world on your shoulder — idiomatically and literally.

it was exactly 30 minutes into the drive to your destination and you were on your phone to pass by the time, minding your own business when you suddenly felt pressure on your shoulder. you peered at your shoulder, only to be met with the sight of a sleeping oikawa, snoring lightly with his lips slightly parted.

you stayed still as a rock, not wanting to disturb his slumber - which he probably needed. although you didn’t plan to get him off your shoulder any time soon, you were clueless as to what to do if he doesn’t wake up. you glanced at his friends, who were expecting the whole thing to happen.

“do you need help with him?” hanamaki questioned, taking notice of your gaze at their trio. iwaizumi took your loss of words as agreement and got ready to shake his friend awake, until you stopped him.

“i-it’s okay.. i don’t mind really,” you reassured the three, giving a warm smile before focusing back on your phone, catching glimpses of the sleeping oikawa once in a while. you were far from annoyed. if anything else, you found it comforting for no apparent reason, his warmth that is.

once you knew he was deep in rest, you shifted to a much more comfortable position for the two of you, one where you can almost smell his scent. which was a big mistake, because you remembered your allergies to this specific shampoo which was unfortunately the one he had right now.

loreal shampoo.

oh the terror it gave you, you started to get war flashbacks to when you used it on your own hair as well, the horror of sneezing until your eyes were watery sent shivers down your spine at the cringe.

and as much as you attempted to conceal your allergies, it backfired in the end and now you were left in a mess; sneezing profusely while scrambling to get your medications. you cursed your sensitive nostrils, seeing as you’ve woken up the brunette beside you, unaware of the situation at hand, his half lidded eyes looking around in a daze.

in the process of consuming your medicine, he asked if you were okay, rubbing the tiredness away from his eyes.

“i.. don’t like your shampoo.” you managed to reply back in the midst of trying to calm down from the sudden attack of your allergies. oikawa, being clueless as to what you were trying to imply, took offense in your words. yet you couldn’t blame him, your answer was quite vague and it caught him off guard.

“well to be honest, i don’t like your perfume,” he retorted back with a pout embellishing his features, earning him an awfully painful smack on the back of his head from iwaizumi, accompanied with the eye rolls coming from hanamaki and matsukawa.

“dumbass, they have rhinitis. your shampoo triggered their allergies” iwaizumi explained to the setter, who was wincing in agony from the impact. You were on the verge of apologizing when the words that escaped his lips gave a sense of familiarity, as though you were accustomed to the sentence.

and then it both hit you. oikawa’s brown eyes dilated with realization, that look of his says it all. it was happening. how could you ever forget those words you were longing to hear, those words that you knew would bring you to your destiny someday?

it felt too surreal, you were immobilized with disbelief and shock.

but then you felt an itch on your hand. and in a synchronized manner, you and oikawa looked at your own wrists, it was really happening. he was your soulmate. your promised lover.

‘7/19/20.

2:20 PM’

the letters read in gold ink, a sight to behold. (e/c) irises clashed with one of chocolate brown, filled with bewilderment. your face heated up at the sight of his pink tinted cheeks. you’ve found your way home.

“what’s going on? they’re acting strange...” matsukawa whispers in hanamaki’s ear, baffled at the scene in front of him. iwaizumi then points a finger at their wrists, the distinct color of gold catching his attention.

after a while of literally staring into each other’s souls, a hearty laugh escapes your lips. the corners of oikawa’s lips tugged into a genuine smile, in which you reciprocated with one of your own.

you were grateful that your first encounter was one of mediocrity - in a good way, of course. it was as if you were meeting an old friend, the warmth that his gaze holds gave you a sense of comfort.

that smile of his was practically screaming ‘you’re home’. you’ve finally met your soulmate; face to face, and now your destiny rests in his hands, while his rests on your own.

the situation eventually calmed down and you two finally accepted the fact that you are soulmates. the bus was silent, light snores echoing, and everything was tranquil. you could see oikawa’s struggle from the corner of your eyes, his eyelids getting heavier for the nth time, trying not to repeat his mistake from earlier.

“oikawa-”

“tooru, call me tooru please,” he corrected, a lopsided grin plastered on his face. his eyes fluttering, attempting to stay awake.

“tooru, it’s okay, you can sleep on my lap instead,” you chuckled, hearing him mumble his gratitude, his head making its way to your lap. it was as if immediately, he was off to dream land once again, your hands gently running through his soft locks whilst trying to doze off as well.

“y’know, i think we should recommend each other products sometime.”

“good idea, maybe after this trip, tooru.”

“deal. well, good night.. my soulmate.”

“sweet dreams, my home.”

GENERAL TAGLIST : @pineapplekween @pyblos @some-oxymoron @kxgeyamasmilk @kunimwuah @kou-hakusei @rollingthundaa @ideshine @janellion @miyaosamoo @paripedia @bap-kingdom @rainyslvt @inessawrr

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mythicamagic · 3 years

Text

The Colour of Love: Sesskag oneshot

This oneshot is dedicated to @chierafied as thanks for all her hard work and organisation in the sesskag community, particularly on tumblr for sesskag week and monthly prompts. She's also a wonderful sesskag author and always offers advice or a kind word ^^

Rated T

Summary: Shippo puts a spell on Kagome that allows her to see emotions in colour. It's fun to test out on her friends, but why is she seeing an awful lot of magenta around Sesshoumaru whenever she comes near? Sesskag oneshot

The Colour of Love

"I just need to test it on someone. You'll help, won't you?"

Kagome eyed the ominous glowing beverage in the fox's hands dubiously. She winced and picked up a basket, walking away with every intention of weaselling out of the conversation.

"Shippo, no offence, but the last time you tested something on me for class, horns sprouted out of my head and green pimples covered my face for an entire week. I'm not super keen on being your guinea pig this time, buddy."

His tail twitched and lowered, but her words did little to deter Shippo. He followed the miko as she attended to her chores; freeing swaying sheets from where they'd been hanging out to dry and folding them neatly into a basket.

"Oh pleeassee, Kagome! Sensei oversaw my casting process this time- there's no danger, honest! It's not even that cool of a spell."

Kagome arched a brow, lifting off another sheet and smoothing the cool creases. That was odd, Shippo always preferred the flashier spells. "What does it do?"

"It would let you see everyone's emotions in colour."

She tilted her head, "in colour? How would that work?"

Shippo grinned mischievously, holding up his cup and shaking it gently. "Wouldn't you like to find out?"

Giggling, she thought for a moment, biting her bottom lip. "I guess it sounds pretty harmless. And this is for a grade?"

"Yes!" he nodded rapidly, eyes widening as his tone became pleading. "Sensei already graded all the other kids! I'm the only one who hasn't passed yet, and everyone else in the village refuses to help me! I'd owe you big time, Kagome. Please?"

Giving a large, put-upon sigh and folding the last of the sheets, Kagome squatted down before him. "Alright, alright. I just have to drink it?"

Green eyes brightened, and he handed the cup over eagerly, the contents nearly spilling. "Mhm! The effects should only last for a few days~!"

The glowing blue shimmer within her cup didn't exactly fill Kagome with confidence, but she didn't want to stifle his progress. It was wonderful that Shippo could advance in his magic at a kitsune school. Secretly, she felt somewhat guilty about the subject. She hadn't been able to witness his growth for three years after being stuck in the future.

Steeling herself and deciding to support him, Kagome downed the foul-tasting concoction. Coughing and blinking away thick tears that stung her lashes, her tongue roved around in her mouth as though trying to escape the taste of sour candy mixed with spices and mint leaves. What an odd combination. Shaking herself and noticing Shippo watching her worriedly, blue eyes widened as a faint shade of grey coiled and moved around the outline of his body like a shining aura.

"I-I think I see it?" Kagome gasped, reaching out and trying to touch the thing, though it had no solid form.

"Really?" Shippo lit up, the colour immediately becoming a tentative yellow, which only shone brighter into a canary hue when she nodded.

Giving a happy cheer, Shippo asked her about any side effects, which were none as far as she could tell.

They then decided to walk around Kaede's village together, Kagome noting any people they passed by and the colour of their current emotions. Shippo hurriedly took notes.

"There's Miroku meditating-" Kagome pointed to the quiet meadow they passed where the monk sat calmly, having gained two pupils to teach. Monks in training. Inuyasha had voiced his doubts that it would last long once the monks witnessed Miroku's less than savoury habits.

"His aura thingy is lavender and seems controlled," she observed in a hushed tone.

The little kitsune made a noise of affirmation, writing that down on a trailing scroll. "I think purple must be linked with spirituality then? This is great info!"

Giggling, she nodded, noticing how faint the pupil's auras were. She wondered if her own focus on spirituality would be strong or weak.

Moving on, noticed Sango outside her hut, who seemed absorbed in rocking her infant son while he dozed. Her twins were playing with some spinning tops that Shippo had given them.

"What do ya see, Kagome?" he tugged at her pant leg.

She hummed, gaze gentling. "Sango is radiating a kind of baby pink glow. The twins are like yours earlier- yellow and excited."

"So I guess love is pink," Shippo nodded.

Noticing something, Kagome waved a hand slightly. "Hold on-"

"Hm?"

Kaede and Rin were walking towards them, engaged in conversation. The little girl chirped on about something or other, while Kaede nodded indulgently.

"Kaede and Rin have pink auras too, but it's different. It's a pale pink, more like a pearl."

Shippo tapped his small chin with a pen Kagome had lent him. "Hmm…"

"I guess it makes sense since there are different types of love, don't you think?" gently prodding him, she smiled.

"Oh! So like they're feeling something kinda similar to Sango, but different."

"Right," Kagome grinned wider, proud of him. "Familial love for Sango, and platonic, friendly love for Kaede and Rin."

The old miko and her charge stopped to greet them on the path. "What are ye both up to today?" Kaede's single eye slid down to the scroll questioningly.

Kagome waved it off. "Just some schooling."

"Yeah, but it's fun! We're testing magic!"

Rin gaped at Shippo, aura turning green. "Aww, can I help them?" she turned to Kaede with a pout, clasping both hands and making big brown eyes even wider.

"Ye have your own training to attend to, Rin. Come along," the old woman kept walking with a dusty chuckle.

Whining good-naturedly with a now agitated orange glow about her, Rin trudged after her guardian, giving a despondent farewell to Shippo.

At that moment, foul cursing filled the air. The loud, booming swear caused nesting birds to take flight from their trees near the village.

The miko and kit shared a dry look.

"Inuyasha," they sighed in unison.

Needless to say, their former travelling companion's emotions glowed a vibrant red- outshining even the robe of the fire rat. He held his sore thumb, having accidentally hammered it while fixing a neighbour's chicken coop. Kagome wisely hid her laughter, feeling a plume of affection for him, since he'd taken it upon himself to help a neighbour.

I wonder what colour surrounds me when I look at Inuyasha, she wondered, fishing out a small mirror. Unfortunately, she couldn't see the colour. Though they'd broken up after a couple of weeks of dating, that candle of first love between them wouldn't be snuffed out completely. Since she couldn't coax that flame any higher than a tiny, nostalgic flame, she wagered it to be a kind of pastel pink colour.

After a few hours, Shippo looked down at the list of emotions they'd observed. "I think I got most of em' for now. We did great today, Kagome! Thanks so much!"

She giggled and ruffled his hair. "Don't sweat it, kiddo. I need to collect some herbs now, so if I see some new ones while I'm out, I'll let you know," Kagome grinned, leaning a basket against her hip. "I'll be able to see these emotions for a few more days, so no sense in turning in your test results early."

Shippo gave her a brief hug, before racing off to go organise his notes. Beaming with pride, Kagome walked out of the village and up a hill towards Inuyasha Forest with a small skip in her step. She'd helped! And luckily there'd been no side effects or worries of any kind.

Maybe I should help him out more often, she mused, noticing a certain Daiyoukai step out from beneath the shade of trees, powder blue shifting around his aura calmly. Smiling amiably, Kagome lifted a hand in greeting as their gazes met- before freezing.

Sesshoumaru's expression didn't change from its usual combo of placid, haughty and stoic. However, the energy surrounding him immediately dyed a deep, vibrant colour.

Kagome's breath hitched, eyes widening.

It plunged into a bold magenta hue, becoming a solid outline that coiled and thrummed.

She did not understand what it meant, but that she could elicit a change in emotion from him at all felt startling.

He stared at her, unblinking. As he drew closer and closer, Kagome tried to make sense of what he could be feeling, but his guarded eyes refused to risk any secrets being revealed.

"Miko," he acknowledged in his usual crisp, silky baritone. His way of a greeting.

"Sesshoumaru," she said, muscles tensing as he passed by, the silk of his billowing sleeve brushing the hypersensitive skin of her arm. Kagome blinked rapidly, reeling.

Shifting to watch him leave surreptitiously, she watched the magenta remain long after they'd parted ways, spying him duck into Kaede's hut to pay Rin a visit.

What the heck was that about?

Maybe it wasn't anything worth noting. Surely, just like anyone else, the Daiyouki had various emotions linked to things. People elicited different feelings from him; that was perfectly normal. But his mood had changed so swiftly upon seeing her that Kagome couldn't help but feel curious. What did magenta mean? Had she offended him? Did he always feel that specific emotion around her, or was it a one-off?

Turning on her heel, Kagome dismissed her task of fetching herbs in favour of seeking Shippo out again.

---

"What does magenta mean to you?"

"To me?"

Kagome nodded seriously.

Thinking for a moment, Shippo hummed and nommed on a lollipop, leaning back on the log he'd perched upon outside. "I dunno, it's a pretty colour but not a favourite. Can't get much use outta it with my crayons."

"No, I mean like - surely there has to be some demon opinion of magenta? Is it associated with a powerful emotion or something?"

Shippo shook his head, consulting the forgotten scroll. "My guess is- since purple is spiritual stuff, Sesshoumaru feels uh...like you remind him of holy things?"

Huffing out a sigh, she flopped down beside him, placing her chin in her hands. "Doubt that. He didn't seem calm," she mumbled, remembering the vivid intensity of his unblinking stare. "Hm, maybe since red- which is anger- and darker blue- which is sadness- has to mix to make the right shade of magenta, that means Sesshoumaru is both angry and sad when he looks at me." Kagome's stomach dropped. "Oh God, do I make him smad?"

Shippo snorted and tossed his lollipop aside to shake her arm, noticing the dazed look of worry glazing her eyes. "You don't make him smad."

Kagome remained unconvinced. The kit groaned, hopping up and grabbing her hand. "You don't! I'm sure it was just a coincidence he was feeling magenta around you. Let's go see!"

The miko stumbled after the exuberant fox, not fully realising where he intended to go until it clicked they were heading toward Kaede's hut. Kagome's heels abruptly dug into the earth, dragging. "Shippo!" she hissed. "He's visiting Rin- I don't want to interrupt."

"You won't be, it looks like they're saying goodbye already."

Blue eyes widened and her attention snapped up from the fox to land on some distant figures up ahead. Even from far away, Kagome could see the pearl pink aura coiling around Sesshoumaru as he lay a gentle hand upon Rin's head of brown hair. The girl beamed, giving off her own warm shine.

Kagome bit the inside of her cheek, heedless of her own approach now. She realized then just how personal and vulnerable the emotion spell could be- how rare and revealing it was to witness Sesshoumaru experiencing such a wholesome bond, free from violence. Enemies could potentially use it on each other to find out secret information easily.

The Daiyoukai seemed to inhale- abruptly stiffening and lifting his hand away from Rin as claws twitched, curling into his palm. Kagome witnessed the moment his aura bled darker, slipping from innocent pink into the strong shade of magenta- just as he turned his head in their direction. Golden eyes pinned her in place. Sesshoumaru seemed to grow tense and watchful, showing none of his previous warmth.

Shippo paused when they weren't too far away, glancing up and noticing Kagome's pale expression. "Uh... has it happened again?"

"It's even worse than before," Kagome whispered.

"Kagome, Shippo!" Rin called over to them, waving. "Are you still playing with magic?"

This seemed to catch Sesshoumaru's attention, ripping his heavy gaze away to land on his ward. "Magic?"

"Mhm! They're doing some kitsune homework with a spell," she smiled, seeming to gain a devious expression and hurrying over to grab Kagome's freehand, pulling her the rest of the way towards her lord. "Kagome! You should take a quick break and sit with Lord Sesshoumaru. Share some tea together!"

Horror churned fierce and fast through Kagome's system. She didn't want to make him uncomfortable, and prolonged exposure to her would no doubt suck for him if magenta was an irritated colour.

"That is unnecessary, Rin," Sesshoumaru uttered, confirming Kagome's suspicions. She winced a little anyway, wondering why it stung. "This one was just passing through, I will leave now."

Making a noise of complaint, the girl's grip tightened. "Well then, she should accompany you! W-we need medicinal herbs and you didn't gather any earlier, did you Kagome?"

She willed the earth to swallow her whole. "N-no…"

"Then it's decided! She can walk you to the forest since she's heading that way." Rin poked and prodded them to get moving. In all the confusion, Shippo slipped away to make some notes, giving Kagome a thumbs up- which she returned with a death glare.

Wondering what had come over Rin but being trapped by politeness to refuse, Kagome grimly started walking alongside Sesshoumaru, picking up a basket from Kaede's hut.

I shouldn't feel guilty or weird around him, she thought, trying to ease her worry. If he's getting bent out of shape just from seeing me, that's his problem. I'm pretty confident I haven't insulted him recently.

Kagome nodded silently to herself, endeavouring not to let Sesshoumaru's secret magenta emotion matter so much-

"You appear well."

Jumping, Kagome whipped her head up to the regal demon. "Huh?" she blinked, heat touching her cheeks. "Oh! Thanks!" the magenta outline grew bolder, much to her chagrin. "You look nice too. Aha-! I mean not nice- well, you look handsome- but in a good health way! Not a 'compliment on your looks' way. That's totally what I meant. "

Open mouth, insert foot.

His aura only seemed to fluctuate more, and Sesshoumaru's lips thinned. Kagome inwardly groaned. No doubt he hated her even more now!

She decided an attempt to smooth over everything was in order. "Sesshoumaru," she said, taking a breath. "I know we might not be what you'd consider close, but I'd be totally fine with talking about anything that might be bothering you. Even allies can talk about that stuff."

Sesshoumaru blinked languidly, looking as though she'd blurted out a foreign language. He then faced forward, features becoming tightly controlled. "Nothing unsettles me, miko. It is a foolish, human sentiment that I should be 'bothered' by anything."

Kagome rolled her eyes, mouth twitching. Proud, stubborn guy. She didn't know why she found it kind of endearing.

"Why are you so certain I am troubled?"

Her steps faltered before she strode on, biting her bottom lip. "I have a knack for feeling out these things. A woman's intuition," she grinned, noticing his stare rove lower, south from her eyes.

"Hn," golden eyes lingered. Kagome wondered if she'd gotten something stuck in her teeth. "Your intuition is certainly lacking if you are only just noticing something amiss."

A victorious noise escaped her and she immediately swooped in on the slip-up. Sesshoumaru seemed to wince. "Aha! So something IS wrong!"

"Miko-"

"It's just that you've been dealing with it for such a long time that it's become almost normal to you. That about right?" she grinned.

Kagome took his moody silence as a 'yes.'

"I'm sorry I didn't pick up on it earlier. Shippo's um...spell...has made me extra sensitive to how others are feeling," she revealed a half-truth. "I just can't work out how you're feeling. Heh, you're mysterious even when I've got magic to help me understand you."

"You wish to understand me?"

"Well, yes? You're our ally. As established; I'd like to be your friend too."

"I see."

"Sooo...?" Kagome hedged as they arrived at the border of the trees. The Daiyoukai stopped and turned to her once they were beneath the branches, having stepped under cool shade. Kagome quieted, wondering at the assessing, guarded look he pinned her with. Why should the mighty Lord Sesshoumaru guard himself against her of all people?

Pale lips quirked, and he hummed, giving a haughty, arrogant smirk. "Figure it out yourself."

Her mouth fell open. Ire immediately simmered real and hot beneath her skin. "That's not helpful, Sesshoumaru! The whole point of having friends is to share stuff! You can't expect people to know how you're feeling without you telling them, I'm not a mind reader."

He moved in slightly closer then, leaning down. Kagome swallowed but tensed her legs to keep from bending back, holding her ground and straightening her spine. It proved difficult. Sesshoumaru's cold features had a way of unnerving even the most hardened warriors. It was the lack of empathy or emotion in his animalistic gaze; the terrifying sense that something was missing; humanity.

But...

Kagome's eyes strayed to the magenta aura that only blazed thicker and larger, practically drowning her. The spell revealed, albeit without his consent; that Sesshoumaru was a man of feeling. In fact, whatever emotion plagued him, it roared stronger than any other persons she'd seen that day. Besides all that, she'd witnessed his care of others before. Been on the receiving end of it when he'd saved her a few times.

In the shade's hush, he tipped his head slightly, silver hair falling free from behind a pointed ear. "I am not a being that 'tells' other's information freely. Demons can glean enough from my body language, scent and actions enough to understand my feelings."

"And I appreciate that," Kagome said in a softer tone. "But I'm not a demon."

"Rin-"

"Is a child who has spent a lot of one-on-one time with you. I'd also wager that while she understands a lot of your intentions...she doesn't always understand you either."

Sesshoumaru begrudged her point, though seemed ever unwilling to let his mask slip to reveal anything.

Searching his gaze, she wet her dry lips. "What does the colour magenta mean to you?"

His aura flared, and Sesshoumaru surprised her by leaning back and stepping away. His features became a mix of things, the colours changing for the first time around him- grey, yellow, black, fluctuating on magenta and orange before settling on a particular shade of red that made her squeak.

No way- is he embarrassed?

"Why ask that?" he asked in a removed, steady tone. If she focused though, Kagome could pick up on the faint slip in his voice.

Kagome for once couldn't answer, heart hammering in her ribcage. She wasn't sure what to interpret from his reaction, but the colour obviously meant something to him. Shaking her head, Kagome waved it off.

"Never mind. I'll take your advice and work it out for myself."

He blinked and arched a brow, seeming to recover from his surprise. "Oh?"

Kagome made a noise of affirmation, turning on her heel and taking a few steps away. Pausing, she flashed him a smile over her shoulder. "And if I guess correctly, you agree to start telling me the important stuff. Deal?"

Sesshoumaru's face flashed with intrigue. Slowly, thin lips curved. His expression transformed into something quietly eager, the colour aura deepening into blazing magenta once more.

"Hn."

---

After asking near everyone she could think of for their input or ideas, Kagome ran into a brick wall, utterly stumped. That was- until she heard a certain irritatingly high, grating voice.

"But WHERE did Lord Sesshoumaru go?"

"I don't know, he said he was just passing through."

Jaken.

If anyone had insight into Sesshoumaru, it would be the little green imp. Kagome hurried in the direction of the helium sounding voice.

Finding Rin and Jaken by the village well, and struggling to pull a bucketful up together- Kagome quickly lent a hand, hefting the bucket up onto the side. The little girl grinned and thanked her, while Kagome crouched before Jaken, causing him to squeak.

"W-what is it? What do you want?!"

"I need to talk to you," Kagome said seriously. Resting her hands over her knees and leaning forward intently. "Magenta. Tell me your thoughts on that colour."

Bulbous yellow eyes widened. "Hah? Have you lost your senses, strange girl?"

Rin pouted and lifted the heavy bucket down, spilling some water. "Just do it, Master Jaken. If Kagome is asking, it must be important."

Kagome smiled a little, before schooling her features back into complete seriousness.

The imp sighed and squinted, before thinking for a moment. "Hmm, well. I would of course associate it with the most illustrious Lord Sesshoumaru!"

"H-huh? Why?"

"His cheek and wrist stripes are that exact shade! Don't you pay attention to anything?"

Kagome realised he was entirely correct. They matched up perfectly. Excitement built in her chest, feeling like she was FINALLY getting somewhere with the big mystery. "So it's linked with him… I see. What do you think the colour represents?"

"Haven't the faintest idea," he tilted his head back with a haughty sniff. "But since they adorn Lord Sesshoumaru, I can only conclude that it must be a royal, prideful colour."

Her elation fizzled out. Kagome wilted, sighing and standing once more. That didn't fit at all. No way would Sesshoumaru feel pride while looking at her.

Stepping away with the dismal thought that she was back at square one, she paused upon noticing a tugging on her sleeve. Rin clutched the trailing end of it, looking up at her in quiet earnest. She bit her lip and seemed to struggle with something. "I-I'm sure the answer is there if you just try asking more questions, Kagome."

The miko softened and petted her wild hair, smoothing the locks back from her face. "You really think so, kiddo? Because I'm kind of stumped right now."

"Mhm! I don't know what homework you're helping Shippo with, but if its causing you to take an interest in Lord Sesshoumaru, I encourage you to dig deeper!"

Kagome wasn't sure why she felt so strongly about the subject, her smile becoming a little confused. Nonetheless, she decided to take the advice and try again.

The right question…

Grabbing the back of Jaken's robes and tugging him back before he could walk off, Kagome knelt down. She decided to shift her focus. "Those markings on Sesshoumaru's face and wrists- I was wondering if they mean anything."

"Bah! Such things have a multitude of uses! Ahem!" he lifted up a tiny green claw. "Firstly, they are to show that he is poisonous."

Kagome stifled a giggle behind her hand, smiling with her eyes at Rin. "So he's like a flower."

"No! Nothing like a flower! He is deadly!"

"Poisonous flowers exist- but never mind that," she waved off. "What else?"

"Second, the positioning of the markings represents various things. The ones on mi lord's cheeks represent superior jaws, the wrists and ankles represent superior strength in his arms and legs, while the hips represent that he will produce superior offspring."

Kagome turned steadily red, wondering how low those stripes hooked down his hips. She hadn't even known he possessed hip stripes and was now picturing him half-naked. Kagome quickly shook the fantasy away. Rin didn't seem to understand that last part but thankfully remained quiet.

Jaken continued on, bolstered by such a captive audience and happy to talk about his favourite subject. "Lastly, they are to catch the interest of a mate."

"They... are?"

The imp nodded with vigour. "If you were the slightest bit observant, you'd notice that the vibrancy of his markings has emboldened recently. This means he is displaying for a female."

She had noticed that, actually, but Kagome hadn't thought anything of it. She felt close to a conclusion then, so achingly near to the truth. Swallowing to moisten her suddenly dry mouth, Kagome soldiered on.

"I saw that the ones on his cheeks had become bolder. What about his crescent moon?"

Jaken waved a tiny hand, "the moon is just to show which clan he belongs to. In relation to your original question, it is the magenta markings that are paramount. They are intrinsically linked with all that I noted; intimidation signals and mating."

Kagome nodded, inwardly reeling. She mulled this over and thanked him for the valuable insight. Magenta obviously meant more to Sesshoumaru than she'd ever thought.

In light of Jaken's words, Kagome found herself having to observe a certain set of emotions. Since mating was on the list, she reluctantly wandered in search of a known pervert.

Sweat beaded on her forehead as she took Miroku to one side. After explaining the situation in a succinct manner, she took a breath.

"I need you to get horny for your wife."

Miroku stared. He then pushed back his sleeves, clearing his throat and righting his collar. "My time has come."

Kagome's eyes widened and she held up her hands, "wait- I'm not asking to be weird or anything. M-maybe I should explain more."

He lay a comforting hand on her shoulder, patting. "No further explanation necessary, Lady Kagome. If this is in service of deeper understanding between allies, I am more than happy to help. Observe."

Miroku breezily walked away, gravitating towards Sango who had set down their son, attention on the crawling toddler. Kagome groaned and buried her face in her hands- shifting some fingers aside to witness the moment Miroku's calm blue aura darkened.

For a moment, panic leapt down her windpipe as it deepened into purple, hovering over magenta- before the aura settled on a lush hot pink.

The sound of a slap sounded out, Sango moving away from Miroku's groping hand. "I've told you before; not in front of the children!" she hissed.

Her husband laughed airly, stroking his cheek and giving her a fond smile. Kagome's heart warmed slightly, witnessing the hot pink glow into a warm pinkish red.

I think that must be the colour of love.

This, unfortunately, didn't answer any of her questions.

The possible things Sesshoumaru could be feeling toward her made the miko's stomach twist into knots. She went over what to say in her head a dozen or so times- and then a dozen more. It was no easy feat to wait on pins and needles for the demons' return. Inevitably though, word of his return reached her a few days later.

---

Sesshoumaru had been spotted by the trees bordering Inuyasha Forest so she'd set off alone immediately.

Since the sun beat down mercilessly, Kagome was unsurprised to find him by water. Elevated temperatures were likely brutal on those who regularly wore armour- evidenced by the fact that she walked in on him very much without it. Sesshoumaru knelt by a river, eyes closed and hankimono parted- exposing a thin sliver of firm, pale muscle. His head slightly dipped forward, hair held over one shoulder as one hand cupped cool water and splashed it over the back of his neck. Droplets ran down the length of his throat to dip around his collarbone- some sliding down his back. Sesshoumaru massaged the base of his skull, before cupping more water and repeating the process, long fingers running over the back of his glistening neck.

Kagome stared. She'd suddenly never been so thirsty in her life.

His lashes fluttered open to glance at her. His continued silence prompted her to clear her throat and murmur; "I'm not sure if I've got it right."

"Explain."

Kagome felt a blush rise to her cheeks and panic erupted in her chest. She suddenly wasn't ready. She wasn't nearly as ready for this as she needed to be. Approaching the Daiyoukai dressed in a white tank top and dungarees had not been the plan but she'd impulsively sought him out without thinking about it.

His voice turned softer, almost coaxing. "What conclusion did you reach?"

Kagome bit her lip and felt the need to explain her process of elimination. "First off; I feel like I should be honest with you. I can see the colours of people's emotions around them due to a spell Shippo used on me. That's why I was asking about magenta. It's...it's the emotion you keep feeling whenever you see me- I just had no idea what it meant."

Golden eyes cracked a fraction wider, exposing the liquid honey swimming inside, glinting in the afternoon sunlight with interest.

"I asked Jaken about the colour since he has an insight into you more sound than other people. He told me that magenta was linked to your markings- which can represent intimidation signals and m-mating interest."

He arched a brow, something unnamed flickering over his expression. Kagome began pacing back and forth before him. "So! The first thing I did was follow Inuyasha into a fight. There was a weasel youkai bothering a farmer. I noticed Inuyasha's aura turned a brownish, orangey-red during the fight and concluded that was likely aggression! So I figured you weren't feeling defensive around me," she gave a nervous giggle. Why was the sun so damn bright? The humidity only elevated the spike of nerves pricking the back of her neck.

"Next came the... other thing," her voice dimmed and Kagome evaded eye contact. "I noticed Miroku feeling uh...frisky around his wife. His aura turned hot pink- so it wasn't magenta- not that I thought you could ever feel that way about...me," she babbled. "Hell, I've consulted Shippo's scroll a thousand times. I've run through all the emotions we could find and- gah! I couldn't find anything that explained magenta. I guess I failed in figuring out what's bothering you," her shoulders slumped in defeat.

"You went to all that trouble?"

Kagome lifted her gaze to his, loosely holding her arms. "Well, yeah. I kind of realised that I wasn't being fair to you the other day. You shouldn't be expected to verbalise your problems if you're not comfortable doing so. It's a different method than what I'm used to in order to communicate- but if you're happy doing that I won't push you to open up to me."

Since she'd failed to work out his problems, however, Kagome grimly figured there was no hope of them being friends. The thought somewhat bothered her. Sesshoumaru was a solid, assuring presence to have around. It would've been nice to have a deeper insight into the inner mechanisms of his cerebral mind.

Maybe priestesses and demons just can't understand each other.

A shadow fell over her, bathing Kagome in shade. She looked up, finding his curious, burning gaze bearing down on her.

As usual, magenta coiled and expanded around him. So large and encompassing.

Sesshoumaru tilted his head slightly. "Some actions do not require words in order to understand them."

Kagome could only blink, face heating as he hooked a finger beneath her chin and tilted it up- before her heart burst into overdrive in time with lips pressing against hers.

Her squeak came out muffled, hands scrambling uselessly and finding his shoulders, quickly lurching away from the firm muscle to hover uselessly in the air. Sesshoumaru grabbed one of her hands and forced it to his broad shoulder, holding it there as he explored her open mouth.

The miko reeled, dazed eyes picking up the shining magenta aura before her lashes slid shut. Kagome let out a breathy noise as his tongue slid over hers, reciprocating for a moment before her mind caught up with the situation and- WHAT THE HELL WAS SHE DOING?

Kagome's palm pushed against his broad shoulder, ripping her mouth away from his and panting. Sesshoumaru remained close, breath shuddering slightly, gaze hooded.

"That-" she started, having to lick her lips. "That requires MANY words, buster. So many words are needed to explain what the hell just happened."

The Daiyoukai managed to look put out, eyes turning flat. "It seems your ignorance requires a lack of subtlety, but I do not mind. If it is necessary to have you- I will adapt and explain myself."

"To... have me?" Kagome's breath hitched. Somehow magenta was all she could see- his cheek markings so bold and bright.

Sesshoumaru's jaw ticked, eyes squinting and attention shifting away as he seemed to gather his thoughts and construct them onto his tongue.

"Magenta is the colour of love to inuyoukai."

He said it so easily. After all that confusion and so much second-guessing, Kagome was almost angry with him. Almost. The rest of her brain was too focused on processing the unthinkable thing he'd just said and the implications behind it.

"But...your markings…" she croaked.

"Have little to do with it- though Jaken's explanation was not incorrect."

Kagome shook her head, searching his face. "I just...I'm struggling to understand h-how? I mean, you can't feel that way about me."

"Why not?"

"B-because!" she squeaked, cheeks blazing red. "Isn't love a bit of a leap? You barely know me."

Sesshoumaru huffed, placid features shifting to become slightly guarded. He didn't know when it had started happening for he was in the middle before he even knew he had begun, but more and more, he sought her opinions and company. She spoke well and intelligently after all- had destroyed Naraku and the jewel with such power and finesse that had made his instincts stir. "I know enough. This is not something recent. I have watched... and wondered for some time."

"Wondered... what?"

"If it was possible to bridge the gap between us. Perhaps it was foolish to think we could be compatible."

He had a point. Even a spell hadn't helped her understand him any easier. But when Sesshoumaru slowly stepped back, quiet disappointment simmering behind his blank mask yet clear in his eyes- something like panic possessed her. Kagome grabbed his sleeve, blushing harder.

She wasn't sure why alarm had shot through her- but the idea of losing their soft, hopeful flickering flame before they'd even coaxed it brighter to see what heights it could reach felt like something she'd regret forever if she let him go.

Kagome stepped closer. "Not foolish. This is just really unexpected for me."

Golden eyes roved over her face questioningly.

"The colour of love is different for humans, so it never even crossed my mind that THAT was what you've been struggling with. Jaken mentioned you were displaying for a female but- wow," she murmured, gentling. "Thank you... for telling me. No one's ever said that to me before."

Sesshoumaru's expression warmed, just a touch. He inclined his head slightly and Kagome felt an odd flutter in her belly.

"I'm not in the same place as you emotionally but- if- if you'd want to try this human thing called 'dating' we could give it a shot and get to know each other better."

"Hn," Sesshoumaru gave her a considering look, and she almost thought he might decline before the ghost of a smile tilted up his lips. "What is 'dating?'"

Kagome's face burst into a grin, and she took his clawed hand. "You're gonna love it. It involves a lot of talking."

He gave a mock groan, aura glowing brighter.

Naturally, Shippo passed his test with flying colours. His sensei was particularly impressed by his observation of both human and inuyoukai emotions in particular.

He decided to use the spell on himself several months later, laughing and chasing Rin around the village, happy to see the yellow aura dancing around her. Something of note he noticed when rushing by was a certain miko and demon lord practising archery together in a field. As Kagome corrected his large stance, hand guiding his elbow down slightly as he aimed, the warm colours of pinkish red and magenta entwined, lacing like long, seeking fingers gently interlocking.

End

#sesskag #Sesshoumaru x Kagome #Sesshoumaru #Kagome Higurashi #sesskag fanfiction

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