Drabble #22: Trust
Summary: He couldn't trust himself
Disclaimer: I do not own anything but the plot. Characters and places belong to SquareEnix.
The air of the Church was silent, coated with the sadness that radiated off its one visitor. Cloud Strife often came to the ruins of Midgar, just to visit the old building but not for the salvation that many would associate with the Holy sanctuary. It was because it was the easiest place for him to pay remembrance to a woman who had changed his life.
Aeris Gainsborough had been only a year older than he was and had appeared as just a flower girl of Midgar. However, it turned out she was the descendant of an old race called the Cetra; natural protectors of the Planet.
Because of her heritage, she was the only one who could activate the powers of Holy, an ancient magic made by the Planet able to counter the evils of the black materia. She had even warned him of what she was going to, coming to him in a dream.
He had trusted her to deal with it because deep down, he knew she wasn't a helpless little flower girl that was good at magic. She needed the chance to prove she was so much more than that.
But nobody had expected her blood to be the price.
That was why Cloud came here every day to beg for forgiveness. He had been her bodyguard. She had trusted him to protect her and he had failed. He had broken that trust. He had taken the payment of one date and then left her to die!
Everyone trusted in him to be the hero, to save the Planet but that trust was misplaced. He wasn't the one who saved the Planet, it was Aeris. And he was certainly not the one to protect everyone. After all, if he couldn't protect the most precious thing in the world, how could he expect to protect anything else?
It didn't matter if everyone else trusted in him there was no point when he couldn't even trust himself. Little did he know that every time he left, a misty figure of a girl would appear, whispering four words.
"I always trusted you."