cloud strife shouldn't have all that power. (instrife) wrote in missions, @ 2012-11-07 15:03:00 |
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AERITH: The room was dark and slightly musty – Aerith could pick out familiar scents amongst the must, the strand of fragrance that was his cologne, the freshness of laundry (dulled), something so achingly personal that the moment she stepped in, she imagined arms around her, whispers in her ear. She had to grab the nearby chair to steady herself. Where was the light switch? Her hand swiped at the wall, and the light flickered on like the tail-end of a firefly, wavering delicately – as if it hadn't been expecting to be used. And again, everything was left as it had been; even those nights when she had been drawn to this place, she arranged herself around the gaps, trying to fill in the holes of what had been the life of another time. It was like trying to rebuild a house without some of the bricks: her life wavered, tilted, but she made it stand, trembling as it was. But now she was going to pull it apart, leaving her to reassemble it. With what? she wondered, making a beeline for his desk. "I'll start here," she told Cloud, twisting to look behind her shoulder at him. "It's better if we do this – in different areas. It's not a large room. He doesn't have much." Didn't, more honestly, but she refused to speak about him in the past-tense. Not gone, not yet. "If we find anything interesting or that we should give to his parents, should we make separate piles?" CLOUD: He'd told himself that he would be strong enough for this. That's Zack's voice in his mind, cheering him on -- you can do it, Cloud. You can do anything! You're the strongest person I know. Clear as a bell, ringing over and over again as he put one foot in front of the other to get him this far. Standing in the middle of the room with the relics of his best friend surrounding him, his voice was clearer and present and more real than ever, but those words had utterly lost their meaning. It hadn't been so long since he'd last been in here, unstrapping his sword and peeling off his sweaty gloves after a long practice while Zack simultaneously complimented and gently teased his technique -- maybe one day soon you'll really be able to handle my sword, Cloud! -- and the hundreds of times that he'd visited this room were filigree lace memories laid lightly over everything, thin enough to see reality through and beautiful enough for him to want to preserve them forever. He didn't see this as a house needing repairs, some structure that he'd built his entire world around. Cloud had lost that sense of security along with everything else. All he had left was these flimsy threads of things that spread around him and caught him in their web and Aerith was here, about to gather them all up in her capable hands. He realized he was afraid. It was hard for him to breathe under the looming possibility that he might breathe too hard or spend too much time in the room and diffuse whatever essence of Zack remained, and then his scent would be gone from the world for good. That would be it. It was all so final. They were clearing out his room, leaving it empty and distributing his personal possessions among the people who cared about him, so that eventually someone else could move into the dorm and life would just keep moving onward to fill the spot where Zack's existence should have been. But this had to be done. If he didn't do it, Aerith would do it by herself, or she would try, or she would collapse under the weight of the sadness of it all, and he needed to be here for her. Taking care of her, like he promised Zack that he would. Clenching his hands into fists by his sides until his fingernails dug painful little crescents into his palms, he nodded silently in acknowledgement and agreement to her words and crossed the room, moving over to the bed. He picked up one of Zack's pillows and tested it between his hands, Mako-bright eyes unfocused as he tried not to see Zack's black hair on it -- and Aerith's next to his -- and started pulling at the blankets and sheets to strip down the bed. "Is there anything you want to keep," he asked quietly at last, unable to infuse enough energy into the words to make them sound like a question. AERITH: She was sifting through papers. She had never realized that Zack kept so many, really, had always figured herself to be the sentimental one but he was far more appreciative of people than she had ever been. Aerith liked people, but Zack loved them in a way she hadn't figured out, borne out of the heroism he always aspired to, maybe, or maybe she was just too inherently selfish to do much more than focus on the precious few who meant something to her. Some of them were her own – notes taken from research, here she could trace her line of thinking from siren, a few scraps from ShinRa's background, some frustrated scribblings on the Promised Land that read more fairytale than actual feasible location, some preposterous mythology of an extinct people, as it had been treated by numerous historians – but there were some of Zack's as well, dates and some sort of checklist that had her stomach churning so much that she had to set it down. She couldn't look at it. Instead, she turned to Cloud, pleased with the distraction, or as pleased as a young woman in mourning who had, before, believed in the idea of forever-and-always and been brought back to the planet with the event of death, could be. He was staring at a pillow. Aerith tried not to tell him to put it down, an irrational annoyance flaring up at him for disrupting what had been constructed as holy in her mind, but she knew it was stupid. Weren't they here for this reason? To deconstruct his existence for themselves, try to pack together the emptiness that his absence had left and fill it up with what fragile memories they could glean from his things? Material items – Aerith would give back every present she had ever received, every gil, every physical show of kindness, if only to bring Zack Fair back to life. "I don't know," she admitted. She rustled the papers in her hands, kept looking at Cloud looking at that pillow with the sort of forlorn expression that was more appropriate for a puppy than a nineteen-year old cadet. She wanted to go and wrap her arms around him, tethered to him by their shared sadness; instead, she looked down again. How to be a hero, she read off the checklist. "I want something, but I don't know what." She took the paper, which felt lighter than it should have been (in her mind, just the words weighed down on her shoulders like stone – she couldn't help but catch snippets, have a cool weapon, have lots of hero friends, get the girl, each one marked with a perfunctory checkmark, as if Zack was in a rush to complete the rest), and held it out to Cloud. "Maybe you should take this," she suggested. Her hand was trembling, her eyes were wide. "It seems like – like maybe something you would want." CLOUD: If she hadn't been there, he might have wrapped his arms around the pillow and climbed into the fucking bed like Aerith had done not so long ago. He'd been the one to come find her here, to bring her back to her own room, where their grief at least didn't pulse with every heartbeat missing that absent third person. It should have been his turn. But he wasn't the twelve-year-old anymore who could get away with hiding behind Zack. He had no idea what exactly could draw out that kind of reaction in Aerith as she offered a simple piece of paper to him, and it made him cautious when he finally reached to take it. Protect people who can't protect themselves.... His first instinct was to crumple it up in his fist and throw it as far away from him as possible. It wasn't fair. How could someone as good and kind and funny and strong as Zack be dead? The same kid who had written that list -- the one who Cloud had known for nearly that long, even if he couldn't remember most of it -- was gone. And there was nothing he could do about it. Instead, he folded it carefully in quarters, his movements slow in order to maintain control over his hands so that they didn't shake or tear the page by accident, and tucked it into a pocket. Zack was his role model. He might never accomplish everything that Zack would have, but he needed to try. He'd promised. "Thanks." He didn't look up at Aerith again as he turned back towards the bed, knowing that if he did, he might see something in her eyes that would shatter his facade of calm. What he saw when he went back to the bed, however, was the photo on the nightstand -- the three of them in Costa del Sol, smiling and laughing on the beach, Zack with his arms around their shoulders. He could feel his eyes burning as he reached for the frame, running his thumb along the edge. AERITH: Next, she found letters. More than twenty, all addressed to Zack, all written in the same careful smear of pencil grey, lovingly refolded again and again. She recalled the couple as they had received Cloud and Aerith – the man tall with streaks of grey in his hair, a beard, maybe what Zack would have looked like if he had managed to live until then (and just that thought made her want to cry out, so much so that she had to clamp her hand over mouth and choke down the sob, cry quietly, hope Cloud did not notice until she oiled over her composure back into its fragile veneer), his mother smaller, kinder, but as warm, as lovely – and then their faces lined with wrinkles that must not have been there before they received the inevitable phone call from Balamb Garden, before their only son had been wrenched from them. How did a triangle support itself with a side missing? A fractured family, with a life extinguished like capping a candle. She imagined them crying as she went to bed in their guest room, hand holding Cloud's as she breathed in the Gongaga air. They had asked if she wanted to see Zack's childhood room; she had declined. Each letter, she carefully smoothed out and put to the side to be returned to the writer. There was more. She found some things of her own – receipts from Alexandria, a note she had put on Zack's sleeping face with a giggle before she left for her morning meditation, little slips of paper marked with hearts and love that had been left scattered around the room (those were from him, each heart slightly lopsided and stuck in places he knew she would look: the mirror, where she kept her hair ribbon, the soles of her shoes) – and she put them in another pile for herself. There were a few books, mostly adventure and worn at the bindings, some romance novels she had smuggled into the room that he teased her for and she defended while she squinted at them at night (he always told her she needed glasses, she was too vain for them). Those went in the various piles accordingly, the adventure books reserved for Cloud. She was almost done with the cleaning out the desk when she opened a drawer and saw a well-worn leather notebook. Aerith glanced over her shoulder at Cloud, then at the notebook, and slipped it into her purse. She didn't look inside – but there was a vague whispering from the Planet then, a rush of voices clamoring to tell her something as soon as she picked it up. She would deal with it later. "Did you find anything?" Aerith asked. "I think I'm done with the desk." CLOUD: He had found something. As the rustling of papers behind him faded into background noise, he had picked up that frame to hold in both hands -- and seen the small, dark box behind it. He recognized that box. Zack had presented it to him with such seriousness tempering his excitement, a secret that he'd been keeping with much difficulty since the Golden Saucer. He remembered watching it click open and feeling his throat tighten at the simple beauty of the emerald stone, the setting, the silver band, knowing how much it must have cost Zack and how long it must have taken him to save the money, even with the tournament windfall. One day. Some day, maybe years in the future, Zack had planned to give it to her. The green matched her eyes. She's the one, Zack had told him, sincere and somehow calm in his decisiveness. One day, he had planned to marry her, make her his wife, make a home with her. Have little dark-haired children with luminous eyes to cling to Aerith's skirt and listen to their father's stories of heroism. His heart expanded in his chest, tightened impossibly fast. Cloud's palm had reached out to cover the box without hesitation. She couldn't see it, not yet. Maybe not ever. It was too heartbreaking. Their future had been sheared short, taking with it that home, those children, that love which would never falter or fade. He felt strangely removed, suddenly, as he slipped the box into his pocket next to the heroic plans. Their future had never been his future. Watching them together, seeing them exchange looks and touch fingers and lean on each other like being too far apart between breaths was instinctively a hardship, he'd developed a fiercely defensive need to protect their love, a desire to make sure that nothing external ever hurt them or came between them, even while he swallowed the bitter knowledge that he could never truly be part of that. Even with Zack gone, it was still true. Cloud would never let anything affect his legacy, his memory. So as Aerith concealed the journal, he'd hid something from her as well. "Just the photo. If you want it," he replied hollowly, feeling like his head weighed a thousand pounds as he tried to pull his chin up steady. "His clothes -- we should do those." When she crossed the room, he reached out. Put his hand on her arm. It wasn't much, but he wanted her to know for just that moment that he was here for her. He'd promised Zack -- more than that, he cared about Aerith. At some point or another, he'd truly become her Guardian. |