timeandtides_backup | Seaside Getaway?

Entry tags:

cissnei,
zack fair

Seaside Getaway?

Characters: Cissnei, Zack
Progress: Ongoing
Summary: Cissnei drops by and visits Zack because she's a little worried about him
Location: Luca
Date: January 10, 1805
Warnings: Fluff, more than likely.

This place was so strange to Cissnei. She liked the beach, no doubt, but this... even in civilian clothing (a chunky knit black sweater over a white tank top, skinny jeans and combat boots) she stuck out from the crowd, something she wasn't exactly used to.She noticed the women were rather gratuitous in showing skin and had more than enough laces and ribbons criss-crossing their chests and the sides of their legs. In her messenger back was trusty Rekka, leftovers from the food she bought from Wutai and something that maybe Zack would be vaguely interested in.

She flipped open her Sky Phone and dialed Zack. He shouldn't be very hard to spot, but she'd like to know where exactly he was.

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That answer should have surprised him, but Zack didn't know much about Cissnei's tastes to begin with. "I've got cookies here." If Zack had a food weakness, it was cookies. Any kind would do, as long as they were delicious. Chocolate chip were amazing. "But if you want some real, honest-to-goodness chocolate, we can head down the road and get some."

"Well, if it's not too much to ask for, yeah." She chewed her bottom lip in thought. The smell... it was as if she had the chocolate bar in her pocket just waiting to be unwrapped. She remembered the deep scarlet packaging of the bar, the same kind that she used to get almost weekly. It had been so long since she had even thought of that.

"I'll even get you some, my treat."

He waved off her offer. "Save your money, I'll take care of it. You're my guest, after all." Grabbing the leftover food she had brought, Zack left it on the table and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Ready?"

"Born ready," she teased. Cissnei grabbed her messenger and debated briefly on taking Rekka with her. Luca did seem pretty calm and there were too many people for anyone to openly attack them. That's never stopped someone before.

"I'm trusting that your house has a lock," she said somewhat seriously as she set Rekka down on the table lightly. "And I'm trusting you'll rescue little me if something happens," she said with a grin.

"Good." Zack watched as she left Rekka behind. That was interesting. And for some reason that made him feel...special? Not that he could figure out why. She probably just didn't want to bring attention to herself. Turks were supposed to be all black ops and stuff.

He took the keys from the kitchen counter and walked toward the door. "Of course I have a lock. What do you take me for?" He held the door open for her, but sighed dramatically, though he smirked as he spoke. "And yes, I'll risk my neck to rescue you."

"Oh, my hero," she said as she fanned herself melodramatically and walked outdoors. She was temporarily blinded by the sunlight and instinctively covered her face with her hand. "Lead the way, you know this place better than me."

Though she felt a little strange and admittedly naked without Rekka, Cissnei knew she could do more than enough damage with her bare hands. Shiva, that smell... it got stronger for a moment and it left just as quickly. She let her head hang backwards, let the sun hit her face and smiled in something like melancholy. That boy... she remembered his face in a smudge of pale skin and wild dirty blonde hair with a white smudge for a crazy, toothy smile. He really was too nice to her. "Too long," she murmured.

When he finished locking up, Zack slipped the keys into his pocket and looked at Cissnei.

Who was smiling. At the sky. Maybe...she was acting kinda weird. But Zack shook his head and wrote it off to the Turks being Turksy. He really didn't get that group. He made sure no one was in the way and walked backwards for a few steps, watching Cissnei. "Yo, you tryin' to get a tan?"

Cissnei let her head hang over towards his direction, narrowing her eyes at him and snapping out of her reprieve. "Are you implying I'm too pale?" She straightened out the shook her head, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Sorry, just... sorry."

What the hell is getting into me? Cissnei felt her left hand shaking, so she immediately shoved both hands into her pockets to hide it. No, this wasn't normal Turk behavior. In fact, it was, ironically enough, normal human behavior, something that Cissnei had worked and trained very hard and very long to cover up.

She definitely wasn't acting normally. "Hey, you feelin' okay?" And her shaking hand didn't escape his notice. He frowned, hoping she wasn't sick, not for his sake, but hers. He was lucky enough not to really get sick, but Turks were still human, right?

Zack closed the distance between them and placed his forearm against her forehead, not feeling a fever. "Weird."

"Yeah, I know it's weird, just... I don't know, alright?" She took his arm in both hands and pushed it away from her forehead. "Don't worry about me."

There it was again. The smell. This wasn't funny anymore, not one bit. It was a little nice at first, but now she was growing paranoid. Cissnei knew they weren't followed but where the hell was the smell coming from? "Don't you smell chocolate?" she finally asked in a sort of a snappy tone. If there was someone else around, she needed confirmation that it wasn't just her. If it was just her... Cissnei would have to accept that she was giving into a sudden case of delusion.

Well. This was an odd turn of events. Things had been nice up until this chocolate business. Zack shoved his hands in his pockets again. "Can't help it."

At her question, however, he cocked his head to the side, then decided to give in. His sense of smell was a little stronger than a human's, after all, and he might be able to allay some of her worry. So he sniffed. In a few directions. "No, I...I smell salt." From the sea. This was a beach town.

"Damn it." Something... something wasn't right. She felt it, but she couldn't confirm it. Cissnei dropped her shoulders. "I'm really sorry, I don't know what's going on. Just... memories." She pursed her lips and looked away. Of all the times in the world, now was the time for her past to start catching up with her? Such terrible timing, even worse that she was with Zack and he was at the receiving end of her strange mood swing.

She sighed heavily. She could just... tell him what was happening, but she didn't want sympathy. She didn't want to give out more than people needed to know about her. No one really needed to know about that boy and the chocolate and her time at the orphanage. That was not Cissnei. That was... someone else.

Zack shrugged. "It's all right. And you don't have to talk about it, obviously, but...I'm here." He didn't expect her to. Cissnei was secretive, even for a Turk. And over time Zack had learned that some people were just like that and if they didn't want to open up, then they wouldn't.

She gave him a half-smile. "Just... things as a kid." Cissnei felt... well she felt a lot of things. Bittersweet was the best way to put it. No doubt she could trust Zack, she'd watched him long enough to know that he was an honest man, but she didn't trust herself.

Cissnei closed her eyes in mild annoyance when the smell of chocolate passed once more. "This is getting out of hand," she said through gritted teeth.

She had told others a million times that repressing emotions weren't healthy, but she did it all the time, her job called for it. So why couldn't she follow through? She took a deep, sharp breath. "Can I trust you?" She wasn't going to come clean, not completely, probably just a tenth of the events, but enough so that whatever the hell this was would stop.

Maybe. And that was a very, very big maybe. So big that if this was a mission she'd think it over more than twice.

Zack really wondered if he should be smelling something, anything that would trigger a reaction like Cissnei's. He sniffed again, but smelled just the normal sea salt. Something was definitely up and he didn't know how to react. It started to worry him.

The question took him by surprise as well. Never had they been this close before and yet she was asking what he assumed was kind of a personal question. Still, even if they weren't terribly close, Zack considered Cissnei a friend of sorts, especially after all the strings she pulled to let him and Cloud escape.

He nodded. "Ex-SOLDIER's honor."

Cissnei took a deep breath. The only other person who knew was Reno and that was because he was trying to find what he could bribe her with when she first joined the Turks. "This conversation or whatever you want to call it stays between us." She wasn't asking, she was telling. If this got out... well Zack could use his imagination.

She rubbed the temples of her forehead, wondering where exactly should she start. This was already seeming like a bad idea but if this was some kind of deep, psychological trauma she wasn't aware of, she had to start somewhere by addressing it. "I'm going to regret this," she muttered. "Okay, when I was... younger I guess would be the right word, there was a boy that lived nearby who would almost every week give me a bar of dark chocolate. He was too sweet to me and his parents hated that he would play with me. I keep smelling dark chocolate like the one he used to give me and I keep thinking of that and I have no idea why besides me losing my mind." There. That was it. Zack didn't need to know the finer points of the story.

Cissnei sighed deeply. "I can't believe I just told you that." As proud as she was for having told someone else besides a fellow Turk about herself, Cissnei was still upset with herself.

"Great, that didn't work," she snapped when she smelled the dark chocolate. "That was useless."

Contrary to his carefree attitude, and tendency to share too much about himself, Zack could keep a secret, and he knew what Cissnei would tell him was something that was even more secretive than a normal secret.

So he listened to her and didn't laugh or anything. All Zack did was hold out his hand to her.

"Maybe it'll go away if we get some." It was worth a shot, after all.

She furrowed her eyebrows slightly and pursed her lips, eyeing his hand and being slightly surprised that he didn't say anything else about the matter. Cissnei underestimated him. "You think so?" She took his hand loosely. "I'm really sorry for... all of this. I promise you I'm not ever like this."

"Maybe. I've heard that when some people get a song stuck in their head the only way to get it out is to listen to it again. So maybe this is like that."

The realization of what he had done only sank in after he curled his fingers around hers a little. But he couldn't very well pull away, that would be terribly rude, so Zack accepted it.

"Don't worry about it. Just think of it as you having an off day." He paused. "You...do have off days, don't you, Cissnei?"

Uncomfortable with his hand actually holding hers, Cissnei pulled her hand back. This was too much human contact for her, way more than she was used to on a daily basis. Why did she even take his hand in the first place? Probably whatever was getting into her, or so she wrote it off as.

"These days, it seems we're always off," she said. "Well, not anymore I guess. We've got issues to deal with when I get back to Lindblum."

He didn't take her actions personally, or at least tried not to. But it still felt weird, suddenly having an empty grip. Zack flexed his hand and brushed it off. It wasn't a big deal.

"What's up in Lindblum?" Duh, Zack, like she'd answer that.

"I think you already know," she answered, hands in her pockets. "So, you know this place better than I do. Mind leading the way?"

...Right, Sephiroth. "Mm, I do." His pleasant smile faded as he thought about the other SOLDIER again.

"Yeah, just this way." He took a few steps and made sure she was keeping up. Being so tall meant his stride was ridiculously long and Cissnei was...well, shorter.

She purposely lagged a little behind him and tried to sort out mentally what was going on. The smell hadn't left or lessened, but at the very least she didn't have to act so strangely, or well, more strangely. Years it had been since she last thought of that, so why now? Why here? Too many questions, not enough answers and she was pretty used to it by now.

Zack could tell she didn't want to match his pace, but he still walked slowly, not wanting to leave her behind at all. But as they walked, he couldn't help but think back on what she had told him. She was really human underneath, which he knew, but hadn't ever really felt.

He shook his head, trying to forget what she had told him. He wouldn't dwell on it, as a sort of condolence for her since she didn't want to let that much slip in the first place. This was a day between two friends who were just trying to get over the crap going on recently.

And soon enough, Zack stopped in front of a small vendor and waved Cissnei over. "Get whatever you want."

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