![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Fanfic100: 3 ficlets (2 Marriageverse)
Title: Home
Characters: Sephiroth, Aeris.
Prompt: 090: Home
Rating: G
Word Count: 252
He could sit on the stone steps and stew about it for a while. She'd barely been there two days and already she'd made the shell town hers. It had been his domain for weeks while he waited for her. The paths were his to tramp over. The empty houses were his shelter. The lake was his bathtub.
Now, not forty-eight hours after she arrived, everything bore her taint. He saw her footprints in fallen leaves, at least before she rustled up a broom and swept the paths clean. She swam at her leisure in the lake. She had chosen one of the shell houses for her rest and he could no longer bring himself to even approach the door. He would stand for hours outside, though, watching the smoke of her cook fire rising above. Even the air here had her touch now.
He wasn't sure how it had happened. He had been there so long but he'd left no mark, staked no claim. How could he complain now when she moved in and make the place hers? He'd left no sign of himself for her to know better. He didn't know how.
He almost envied that, the way she knew to turn an empty house into a warm presence, to make a place seem lived-in, custom-made for the one in it. That was home, as was his understanding, and if he did not know much more about that it was because he had never really had one.
Marriage!Verse Ficlets
Title: Brighter Days
Characters: Aeris/Sephiroth
Prompt: 063: Summer
Rating: PG
Word Count: 195
The days were getting long, pushing out at the edges and growing warmer in the middle. Aeris did too. She began taking slow walks in the grass, stopping often to rest her feet. Sephiroth followed, not up close, giving her space but always at her side. She still burned a little some days, but winter was gone and she didn't seem to need that fire inside her anymore.
She let him touch her stomach again, now that she had begun to show. He counted the heartbeats beneath his fingers. The kicking was a miracle. These were healthy and strong. It would be better this time. It was just a hope and he never voiced it, just walked along to help when she needed it.
The sun grew heavy in the sky and she was heavy too, ripening like the grass stalks at her ankles, growing calmer in the light. She counted days on her calendar and set him on guard for midsummer with a smile that was just like her old one. He hoped some more, and never said. Soon, they'd be whole again, he thought, they'd have children again instead of just a child.
Title: Blood Will Tell
Characters: Sephiroth, Aeris, OCs
Prompt: 004: Insides
Rating: PG
Word Count: 408
He almost felt the tremor that moved through the world when it became known that he had bred. That's what they called it in dark corners, where they thought he wouldn't hear. He bred, like an animal, a beast or a monster. Other people, they were 'expecting' or got to surprise the room with a resounding “We're pregnant.” Not Sephiroth. He bred.
He could not blame them, not entirely. Their fears were his too. What hellspawn might result from his blood? What beast might he have unwittingly forced upon Aeris? She'd already suffered too much at his hands. Unbearable, the thought was, that his child might have claws, or fangs. Wings, he prayed for, though he didn't call it praying. Wings were bearable, something he knew how to handle.
It mattered only a little that his little one spoke to him even from within the womb, a light brushing of another mind on his, with a wordless impression of satisfaction that he was there. It comforted him and frightened him. If his child were in fact some beast he didn't think he could find it in him to put it out of its misery. Wings, he prayed, as the day drew nearer, wings, not tentacles, wings.
And Ella came out perfectly fine. No wings at all on her infant form, no fangs and no claws. She had five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot, each with a perfect, tiny fingernail. Her eyes were maybe a little too bright, but so were his, so that was okay. Those eyes met his without flinching and her little mouth made a perfect smile, to him at least, since she never showed it to anyone else. She was a picture of infant innocence, too good to be his, others might have said, if the hair didn't say otherwise. So if her cry was too sharp and her gaze too steady, what was that, really?
Then there was Eiran, for the brief time they'd had him. Proof, if any, that his children weren't damned from birth. Sweet, gentle little boy of his, open and accepting of all where his sister was not. Too good for Gaia, perhaps. Sephiroth grieved like any parent might and knew at least that if there was a Promised Land his child was surely there.
Rei came like a balm to his soul, sweet and sensitive enough to almost make up for the one they had lost. But then, there was also Ari. Clearly, Sephiroth admitted with a shake of his head, the demon blood had just been biding its time.
Characters: Sephiroth, Aeris.
Prompt: 090: Home
Rating: G
Word Count: 252
He could sit on the stone steps and stew about it for a while. She'd barely been there two days and already she'd made the shell town hers. It had been his domain for weeks while he waited for her. The paths were his to tramp over. The empty houses were his shelter. The lake was his bathtub.
Now, not forty-eight hours after she arrived, everything bore her taint. He saw her footprints in fallen leaves, at least before she rustled up a broom and swept the paths clean. She swam at her leisure in the lake. She had chosen one of the shell houses for her rest and he could no longer bring himself to even approach the door. He would stand for hours outside, though, watching the smoke of her cook fire rising above. Even the air here had her touch now.
He wasn't sure how it had happened. He had been there so long but he'd left no mark, staked no claim. How could he complain now when she moved in and make the place hers? He'd left no sign of himself for her to know better. He didn't know how.
He almost envied that, the way she knew to turn an empty house into a warm presence, to make a place seem lived-in, custom-made for the one in it. That was home, as was his understanding, and if he did not know much more about that it was because he had never really had one.
Marriage!Verse Ficlets
Title: Brighter Days
Characters: Aeris/Sephiroth
Prompt: 063: Summer
Rating: PG
Word Count: 195
The days were getting long, pushing out at the edges and growing warmer in the middle. Aeris did too. She began taking slow walks in the grass, stopping often to rest her feet. Sephiroth followed, not up close, giving her space but always at her side. She still burned a little some days, but winter was gone and she didn't seem to need that fire inside her anymore.
She let him touch her stomach again, now that she had begun to show. He counted the heartbeats beneath his fingers. The kicking was a miracle. These were healthy and strong. It would be better this time. It was just a hope and he never voiced it, just walked along to help when she needed it.
The sun grew heavy in the sky and she was heavy too, ripening like the grass stalks at her ankles, growing calmer in the light. She counted days on her calendar and set him on guard for midsummer with a smile that was just like her old one. He hoped some more, and never said. Soon, they'd be whole again, he thought, they'd have children again instead of just a child.
Title: Blood Will Tell
Characters: Sephiroth, Aeris, OCs
Prompt: 004: Insides
Rating: PG
Word Count: 408
He almost felt the tremor that moved through the world when it became known that he had bred. That's what they called it in dark corners, where they thought he wouldn't hear. He bred, like an animal, a beast or a monster. Other people, they were 'expecting' or got to surprise the room with a resounding “We're pregnant.” Not Sephiroth. He bred.
He could not blame them, not entirely. Their fears were his too. What hellspawn might result from his blood? What beast might he have unwittingly forced upon Aeris? She'd already suffered too much at his hands. Unbearable, the thought was, that his child might have claws, or fangs. Wings, he prayed for, though he didn't call it praying. Wings were bearable, something he knew how to handle.
It mattered only a little that his little one spoke to him even from within the womb, a light brushing of another mind on his, with a wordless impression of satisfaction that he was there. It comforted him and frightened him. If his child were in fact some beast he didn't think he could find it in him to put it out of its misery. Wings, he prayed, as the day drew nearer, wings, not tentacles, wings.
And Ella came out perfectly fine. No wings at all on her infant form, no fangs and no claws. She had five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot, each with a perfect, tiny fingernail. Her eyes were maybe a little too bright, but so were his, so that was okay. Those eyes met his without flinching and her little mouth made a perfect smile, to him at least, since she never showed it to anyone else. She was a picture of infant innocence, too good to be his, others might have said, if the hair didn't say otherwise. So if her cry was too sharp and her gaze too steady, what was that, really?
Then there was Eiran, for the brief time they'd had him. Proof, if any, that his children weren't damned from birth. Sweet, gentle little boy of his, open and accepting of all where his sister was not. Too good for Gaia, perhaps. Sephiroth grieved like any parent might and knew at least that if there was a Promised Land his child was surely there.
Rei came like a balm to his soul, sweet and sensitive enough to almost make up for the one they had lost. But then, there was also Ari. Clearly, Sephiroth admitted with a shake of his head, the demon blood had just been biding its time.