The Place She Couldn't Find
Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy.
She comes every year to the place she couldn't find.
Her heart beats slower as she approaches the Buster Sword. This is the place. Marked with his mentor's sword. How fitting. It's raining today as it was raining then. Raining while the sun shines. Only Zack could go out like that. She searched for him, orders to bring him back alive creating a burgeoning sense of hope in her chest. Hopeless hope.
She snorts. Turks don't hope.
The ground is dusty. The wastes are as the wastes always are. Desolate. Lonely. Dying. She blinks slowly and she can see him, body riddled with bullets, blood on his face. Blood on his chest. Blood seeping from the corners of his once smiling lips. Blood pooling around his body, soaking into the greedy, dry earth. His eyes were the color of the sky, still flickering with the faintest glimmer of hope. Hope again. She had a Restore materia between her fingers, started the spell even as she fell to her knees beside him.
But Turks don't save people.
Today when she falls to her knees, her pants are not stained forever with his blood. She doesn't Cast Curaga until her head swims with vertigo. Today she just lingers, memories slipping like ghosts through mist. Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class, lying dying before her.
She tried to speak to him. She remembers speaking, telling him how much he meant to her and why he couldn't die. She doesn't remember a single word. She doesn't remember saying "I love you. Don't die." But she knows she said it. Turks don't love. Turks lie.
The rain stops falling. She touches the Buster Sword, running delicate fingers along the sharpened edge. A thin train of her blood mingles with the rainwater. Even Turks have red blood. Once, back when she joined the Turks, she believed that her blood was only red to fool people into thinking she was human. Turks weren't human. Not really.
Zack didn't see her as he lay dying. But he was smiling, a woman's name on his lips. Sweet little Aerith undoubtedly on his mind. The Ancient the Turks observed day and night. She's watched the girl with Zack before. Watched how she made him smile and laugh. Watched his amazing mako-rich eyes sparkle in her presence. Zack loved her, the Cetra, the sweet, the innocent. Turks weren't innocent. And no matter how soft and innocent she looked, she was a Turk.
Is a Turk. Once a Turk, always a Turk. So silly of her to come here then. Come to the place where Zack was murdered and left to die. By the Buster Sword, she leaves two flowers – lilies from the Church in the old Sector 5 slums. Aerith grew those flowers and Zack loved them. She has come here every year on the anniversary of her failure to save him.
She leaves flowers for the dead. One flower for Zack. And then, after the Ancient died, one flower for Aerith. Zack would want her to have one. She stands up, brushing the dust away from the legs of her black pants suit. And that should be the end of it. Her silent visit to the friend of someone who meant everything to her. But this year, as she turns, she finds herself meeting mako-bright eyes.