Disclaimer: Fragmentally not mine.

A/N: Written for the 1Sentence community on LiveJournal. The idea is that you have fifty prompts and can only write one sentence for each based on a certain couple. I'm not an official entrant; I just did this for fun. I used Theme Set Epsilon for Cissnei/Zack. I wanted to write something that could fit in with canon events while also giving a little window into a might-have-been. The title comes from the song of the same name by A Fine Frenzy

Goodbye My Almost Lover

© Scribbler, July 2010.

#01 – Air

Zack made her breathless, like she couldn't get enough air, which was ridiculous because Veld himself taught her proper breathing techniques when she first learned how to throw a punch without breaking her thumb.

#02 – Apples

The heat made sweat stains show right through the jacket she wouldn't take off, but she declined when Zack handed her a can of Banora White Apple Juice, claiming it too bitter for her tastes.

#03 – Beginning

She was thirteen and awkward in her own skin when the latest batch of new recruits walked past, all gangly limbs and puppyish enthusiasm for their new lives in Shinra, but one boy stood out even more than even the others, and she wondered whether he'd be the one in a million who actually survived basic training to get into the SOLDIER programme.

#04 – Bugs

SOLDIERs didn't get sick, since the process hyped up their immune system, but Zack remembered what it was like to have flu, and didn't get offended when Cissnei refused to answer the door and he had to accidentally-on-purpose break the handle with that accursed mako strength of his, just so he could deliver the soup Aerith made when she heard his friend was sick.

#05 – Coffee

"I like my coffee like I like my women," Zack said, deadpan, as she handed him a cup from a crappy machine on the fifth floor during an all-nighter guard duty she knew he was pulling; "hot, strong, and in a plastic cup with a spoon in them – ow, not the face!"

#06 – Dark

Zack's hair wasn't just black, but shot through with blue tints, like a night sky, or wet tar, Cissnei forced herself to think as she descended the steps to where he was performing squats again on the beach – his hair being a much safer topic than his very hairless bare chest and torso.

#07 – Despair

He couldn't be dead, it wasn't possible, he could NOT be dead, she kept telling herself, her walk changing to a jog, then a run, and then an undignified sprint as she neared the cliff edge and the pile of rocks reformed themselves into black hair and a tattered SOLDIER uniform.

#08 – Doors

During Hojo's experiments, Zack's mind was like a set of sliding doors, opening and shutting on different memories, with no order or logic except to distract him from the pain: the smell of his mother's perfume, the feel of a dumbapple in his hand, Cloud's infrequent laughter, Aerith's smile, the first time Angeal put a sword in his hand, sparring with Cissnei and getting his ass kicked despite being enhanced, then having to pay for lunch at Hong's as penance …

#09 – Drink

"I didn't think you drank, sweet-cheeks," Reno remarked, sliding onto the stool next to her and eyeing the empty glasses as he murmured, "I heard they finally picked up Specimen Z."

#10 – Duty

"I can't help them, I can't break my orders, not even for him," Cissnei muttered, clenching her fists until her nails cut little half-moons in her palms, and trying her best to forget the haunted look in Zack's eyes as he pleaded for her to let him and his insensate friend go.

#11 – Earth

You couldn't grow anything in Midgar, or so Cissnei had always thought, until she met Zack and he introduced her to a world where nothing was as it seemed – including the idea that Cinderellas like her were allowed to get the handsome prince in the end.

#12 – End

Cissnei's world ended on a cliff outside Midgar on a perfect sunny morning after a rainstorm.

#13 – Fall

She knew she had fallen in love with Zack when he talked about his girlfriend and said 'Aerith' with the kind of inflection that made her want to break things – Turks not being renowned for their sense of romance.

#14 – Fire

After Shinra took Zack's body, she killed herself by returning to Midgar, going down to the worst part of the slums, booking a chopper from the aerodrome, flying it into a mountain, and walking away from the wreck and the now-unidentifiably burned body of a junkie who had been beyond caring about broken-hearted Turks and dead SOLDIERs anyway.

#15 – Flexible

"That is … very … impressive," Zack said, struggling for words that wouldn't get him slapped, as Cissnei bent over backwards to avoid a hail of bullets, segueing into a perfect back-flip-and-high-kick combo that disarmed the Wutaian terrorist who had shot at President Shinra.

#16 – Flying

"When I was a kid, I always wanted to have wings," she told Zack to make him feel better about Angeal and Genesis, but what she didn't tell him was that she'd wanted them so when she killed people she could fly away and leave someone else to do the clean-up.

#17 – Food

"You can't seriously like this stuff – it's as Wutaian as I am!" Zack exclaimed when she took him to Hong's Takeaway for some authentic Wutaian cuisine and forced him to try every dish on the menu because he'd claimed his SOLDIER constitution could handle anything.

#18 – Foot

How come I never realised how dainty Cissnei's feet are? Zack wondered when he broke ranks once again and walked into the Turk Rec Room to see her in a rare vulnerable moment, head on her chest, shoes off and legs propped on the table, showing a pair of pink socks with one darned toe.

#19 – Grave

Zack didn't have a grave, just ashes in storage somewhere under the rubble in Shinra, so every year Cissnei went to the cliff where he fell and stared at his last view – until one year someone else remembered the day and pulled up behind her on a bike that roared like a tiger.

#20 – Green

This place is so green, Cissnei thought as she hurried through Gongaga towards Zack's parents' house, wondering why anyone would ever want to leave it for a rat-hole like Midgar.

#21 – Head

"Yur trouble iz tha' you think too mush wiya head an' … an …" Reno slurred, trying to slurp an already empty bottle after a thirty-six hour shift that had sent them all way, way past tired, "an y'should juss sleep with the guy an' geddit over with, so you can get on with life and quit bein' sucha … hey, hold on, where ya goin', Cissnei?"

#22 – Hollow

"I hope I never stop feeling guilty when I have to kill someone," Zack said so seriously Cissnei didn't let out the harsh laugh that bubbled automatically in her throat, because she wasn't sure when she had stopped feeling guilty, or if she ever had been in the first place.

#23 – Honour

After she heard Angeal had died she went looking for Zack and found him in the gym, holding his new sword in front of his face with his eyes closed, crying and muttering something about dreams and honour that made her back out of the door without letting him know she was there.

#24 – Hope

Cissnei whirled and snarled in a way she had never dared while periodic reports of Specimens Z and C still came in: "You can't make me stay, because you can't bring him back, you can't make me forget him, and none of this means anything to me anymore, Tseng!"

#25 – Light

She knew Shinra was a crock of shit, that she should have bailed a long time ago, and that she was a hypocrite for still being there, but as long as Zack was out there, fighting for the freedom of himself and his friend, she knew she had to stick with Shinra and help him however she could from the inside.

#26 – Lost

After he died, she wandered in all ways it was possible to wander, for the first time in her life not caring about her job, her career, her future, or anything other than the ache of a heart she had tried so hard to forget she even had.

#27 – Metal

"You shine that thing like you have OCD," she commented, watching him buff the blade of the Buster Sword and shaking her head, before sitting next to him and unfolding Rekka to do likewise.

#28 – New

"Sure," drawled the head of the chocobo ranch, eager for a fresh pair of hands during the summer season, "I'll give you a job, but it'd just be hard labour – muckin' out stalls an' such – so I wouldn't be able to pay you much, Miss, uh … you said your name was Rekka Fair?"

#29 – Old

There were lots of motorcycles available, but Zack always went for the oldest, most unfashionable one when he booked transport for two-person missions, but it roared like a tiger and she got to wrap her arms around him as they careened through the streets of Midgar, so she wasn't going to complain.

#30 – Peace

Veld once told her there was no peace in death for a Turk, but she didn't truly understand until she saw Zack had been smiling when he died and she wanted to bring him back to life just so she could slap it off his face for going before she had chance to ride in and save him like he was the damsel in distress and she was the hero for once.

#31 – Poison

Something twisted in Cissnei's chest as Zack's hand spasmed like he wanted to grab his sword when she only crouched to look at his friend and saw he had irreparable mako poisoning.

#32 – Pretty

Tseng set Cissnei to watch over Aerith after Zack went missing, and something about the way he said it made Cissnei wonder what the hell it was about this girl that made so many people fall in love with her.

#33 – Rain

It didn't rain below the Plate in Midgar, so Cissnei felt justified in her bitterness as she stood in the middle of Gongaga, boarding up the Fair house in a pissing tropical storm, and thinking: I'll bet Aerith never did anything like this for him.

#34 – Regret

"I should've told you …" she murmured, looking down at his corpse and not knowing how to finish the sentence with a bunch of armed grunts standing around, looking to her for orders.

#35 – Roses

Cissnei wandered into the church after escorting Zack's body to the incinerator, as if hoping to find Aerith there, to tell her the bad news, but all she found was that damn garden they'd loved so much, full of roses the colour of blood, which she kicked the shit out of before she could stop herself.

#36 – Secret

Cissnei never let anyone – not Tseng, not her fellow Turks, definitely not Zack – know where she went those evenings she 'went for a walk' and ended up crouched on a half-rotted beam above the Sector Five church where Aerith primped and waited for her date, and then ran into his arms with the abandon of someone who thought nobody could see her making a fool of herself over a guy.

#37 – Snakes

Cissnei wasn't scared of anything – nothing, nobody, nowhere, no how – but even she let out a little cry when she opened the chopper door and a realistic rubber snake – which had Zack's fingerprints all over it, both literally and figuratively –popped out and nearly gave Reno a hernia from laughing.

#38 – Snow

"I'll never stop being a Southern boy, and I'll never stop hating snow!" he declared on a mission to Icicle, right before she hit him in the head with a non-regulation snowball to distract him from the bleak surrounding, to prove Turks were better shots than SOLDIERs, and to pay him back for that damn snake

#39 – Solid

When the enemy was twelve feet tall, scaly, breathed fire and liked flicking people off cliffs with its tail, Zack made a good partner – his grip reassuringly solid as her feet pedalled air and Rekka clanked the rest of the hundred feet to the ground.

#40 – Spring

Once, on a mission in a more temperate part of the world, Zack reflected on his childhood, describing the hustle and bustle of rural springtime in Gongaga, and Cissnei felt a pang of jealousy because all seasons were the same in Midgar.

#41 – Stable

She tried to think of vacation pastimes that would make him happy in the Costa del Sol, but even the best goodwill wouldn't let her forgive him for looking so damn good on a chocobo when she could barely ride and never got out of the stable-yard without falling in bird-shit, ruining her Turk mystique and blushing like some useless teenager in front of her crush.

#42 – Strange

"I don't think there has ever been a SOLDIER like you," Cissnei said, in a way that made Zack wonder whether that was a good or a bad thing.

#43 – Summer

The first summer after he died and she left Midgar was the worst – every day a fresh catalogue of fun things that weren't fun at all without someone childish to make them that way.

#44 – Taboo

"We don't start anything with members of the SOLDIER programme," Veld said unequivocally, and again when she tried to ask why; "Turks don't start anything with members of the SOLDIER programme."

#45 – Ugly

Cissnei stood in front of the mirror in just her bra and briefs, turned sideways, then forward, then looked over her shoulder, and wondered why she had never considered herself either pretty or ugly before she saw the way Zack looked at Aerith like she was the most beautiful thing in the world.

#46 – War

Zack went to Wutai, so her understood how the terrible things you saw in wartime got into in your dreams, but Cissnei was still surprised and relieved when he didn't comment on her wet cheeks the time she fell asleep in the truck back from their joint mission to the capital looking for AVALANCHE terrorists.

#47 – Water

Zack peered into the empty canteen, sighed and said to an unresponsive Cloud, "I'll bet Cissnei could find more water even in a desert – she always made a big deal of how Turks were better prepared than SOLDIERs, even though SOLDIERs are blatantly better at everything else."

#48 – Welcome

She was old when she finally saw him again, but the years fell away as her body slowed to a halt, her mind filled with green light and she heard a chuckle she had waited too long to hear for real instead of only in her memories.

#49 – Winter

"I, uh, got you a Yule present," she said awkwardly, thrusting it out in front of her like a baby with a full diaper, since Turks didn't usually give gifts and she had no idea of proper protocol.

#50 – Wood

She wondered whether this was finally the end for her, as she stumbled through the Ancient Forest, the sound of those three silver-haired freaks catching up and her own pulse in his ears, until the biggest wolf she had ever seen suddenly pulled her into a cave to hide – and all the fear and fatigue drained out of her when she met its eyes.

Fin.

.