A/N: I've been obsessed with the comparisons of Cloud, Aerith, and Zack to the play Hamlet for a long time, so I decided to try and get some of this out. This is part 1 of 3. It's been ages since I've written anything, so we'll see how this pans out. I hope you all will enjoy it.

Be All My Sins Remembered

Horatio

Very few knew of his short romance with the doomed flower maiden. He was much lighter than his fair haired friend, warm and sunny in personality, always ready to laugh and have a good time. It had been easy to make her smile, easy to charm her. She was young, innocent, and inexperienced, but strangely wise for all that. He would have cared for her, he really would have. Such a spirit was rare in this city, and he lost himself from the real world when he was with her. But it was not to be. The moment the golden haired man had fallen into her life, she was lost to him. He would never again see her smile at him with anything more than friendship, would never have her to hold and love and cherish again. It saddened him to loose her- he couldn't lie about that. But seeing his best friend and a girl he cared about so happy mattered to him more. He didn't begrudge them anything- it was clearly meant to be, and who was he to meddle in that?

Yet he feared for them both as he watched from a distance. His friend was becoming more and more unstable, more confused and afraid, angry at the world around him as much as he was angry at himself. He couldn't hear any voice anymore. Not his, not hers, not even his own. What would happen, if he could no longer cling to that thin thread that connected him to reality? It would be the end of them all if he couldn't fight it.

But the girl, so dedicated in her love for him would not leave his side, not even when in a moment of lost self control he turned on her. It would happen again, he felt, despite all of his friend's good intentions, he would break her into a thousand shards, never to be put back together again. She had to know that. But deep down he knew she would not leave him, even if she did know. She loved him, she would not see the danger he posed to her physically and emotionally. Maybe she did know. Maybe she just didn't care.

If she heard his urging her to step back from his tormented best friend, she did not heed him. She only smiled, that carefree innocent smile, her arms full of flowers, loving her fair haired prince even to her death. And he mourned for her- for them both. She was lost, and his friend would grieve, the final push into his plunge to madness. There was nothing he could do but keep trying, useless as though it might be, for his words fell on ears that no longer heard anything but what they wanted to hear.