DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything from Final Fantasy VII, though I'd really love Cid's goggles. Please Cid? Pleeeeeaaase?

AUTHOR'S NOTES: My first FFVII thing - and really this is just a warm-up for something else I've got in the planning stages right now. This is also the result of severe boredom and a personal challenge to myself to write something in less than half an hour, a chance for me to do some Cid-exploration, and way too much Coca-Cola. I think everything I do can be blamed on Coke now.

Cid is my favorite character ever and Cid/Shera is my Pairing of Choice for FFVII, so I suppose something about him from me was inevitable. I haven't actually finished the game yet, but all I have left to do is go kick some Sephiroth ass, and I already know I'll be playing it again once I finish it. It's just so good - the story and character development is the best I've ever seen in a game, and it's earned its place in my pantheon. Hopefully one day I'll have the time to do the two long fics I'm planning for this section, but until then, this is as good a start as any.

And this is the shortest thing I've ever written.

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If there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was mud. Sucking, clinging, drawing you down into some unfathomable abyss that no one ever returned from – he'd hated it each and every time their party had gotten stuck in that quagmire and had to squelch their way free. Mud limited you, brought you to a standstill – wouldn't let you jump. Wouldn't let you free yourself. Wouldn't let you fly.

He'd taken obsessive care of his rocket, making sure that not one iota of mud ever made it inside, as if the gloopy substance would pollute the once-gleaming metal somehow. He knew it was unnecessary, that it was overkill, but still he did it – he simply couldn't not do it. His life rested on that rocket. One day, one day it would fly…

And it had, and he'd seen it, he'd seen his stars and watched them with awe through the window as the 26 had crashed into that big ball of flaming rock and he'd hardly noticed. He'd done it, he'd reached heaven – not at all in the way he'd expected, but it had happened.

And she'd gone with him.

The one he'd blamed verbally, even as he blamed himself in his mind. The one he'd transferred his self-loathing to, the one who was easier to hate because to hate the real perpetrator was to hate himself, his own weaknesses, his own feelings. It had been a choice he shouldn't have had to make, had never in a million years expected to ever have to make, but it had been forced on him. And he'd chosen. And his own personal quagmire had closed over him then, blaming her and hating himself for blaming her yet transferring that hate to her once more because it was easier than blaming himself because he had to live with the voices in his head every day and yet allowing her to stay with him for some reason he didn't understand but somehow made him feel a little better but he felt guilty again for feeling better and so he treated her worse-

It was enough to make a simple pilot's head spin.

All he knew now was that when the 26 as finally launched, with him aboard contrary to ShinRa's wishes, all the guilt and blame had been cast aside as they sat together and stared out the window of the escape pod, watching the stars float by and the Planet spin lazily beneath them. They'd been at peace then, with no guilt, blame, or self-doubt to plague them, to drag them down into the personal mud they'd gotten themselves stuck in time and time again over the years and still sought after them both. All of the negative had been blasted to pieces, swept away like dust as they finally, finally allowed themselves to relax and just be. He'd been carrying that feeling around ever since then, all through the destruction of his former employer and the final battle, the feeling of the stars around him – around them, for she loved space as much as he did – with the Planet below them, so fragile and trusting like the little kid he'd once compared it to.

Now it was time for the kid to grow up. As he also needed to do.

He looked over to his engineer, the woman he'd shared a house with for years without really allowing her in, without really seeking a way into her, from his usual chair at the kitchen table, his usual cup of tea in hand. She'd seemed to know he was coming; she'd greeted him at the door with a small, understanding smile, still more than he'd had any right to ask her to give to him, and put the cup into his hold where his hands dwarfed it. She hadn't asked any questions, hadn't asked if they'd all lived or not, or if the Planet was now safe, but only allowed him to sit, wrap a blanket around his shoulders, and slowly savor the tea as he hadn't since he'd last seen her. And now she was on her hands and knees, glasses propped up on her forehead and long brown hair gathered into a messy bun as she scrubbed away the muddy footprints his clunky boots had left behind on her clean floor, not reprimanding him for tracking in the hated substance nor for not offering any explanations.

He may not have allowed her in, but somehow she'd learned him, his emotions and patterns; she knew he'd tell her what he chose to tell in his own time, knew that he hadn't been thinking about the mud and rain as he walked from the airship to their small home, knew that his head was so full now it was about to burst and he needed to sort through it on his own first. She knew him better than he knew himself.

And he couldn't help but admire her for it.

She looked up as she felt him looking at her, brown eyes quizzical with a silent question. She did indeed know him too well – and he knew her as well, knew exactly what she was asking with that gaze, but chose, for the moment, not to answer it.

"Shera…" he began, but the words stuck in his throat for a moment. She just kept looking at him, so goddamn honest that he couldn't not say something. It wasn't at all what he'd been planning, but it would have to do. "…Sorry 'bout the mud."

And she smiled again, that small smile that spoke of volumes of understanding that he'd never realized existed between them before, and straightened up from her cleaning, scrubbing rag still in hand. "That's all right, Captain."