Drabble #6: Christmas
Summary: The twinkling lights and angel on the top of the tree were nothing compared to the beauty of the woman standing next to him.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything but the plot. Characters and places belong to SquareEnix
She quickly threw the unused decorations into the box and stood back to admire her handiwork. The room looked beautiful she had to admit. Silver tinsel framed the pictures and thinner strands hung from the dimmed lights. The four-foot tree was standing proudly by the window, perched on a simple rounded coffee table. It had the basic decorations of twinkling, clear lights, and tinsel wrapped around every base of the leaves. Bobbles of all different colours, decorated with random Christmas pictures hung from a few branches while chocolates hung from the others.
Underneath the tree were eight presents one for each of her friends. She knew they were caught up with the Sephiroth mission just now and they were probably all too busy to care about the holiday season but Aeris was determined that today they would rest. Christmas, after all, is a time of love and peace. It certainly was not the time to go trailing across the globe to catch and undoubtedly kill a maniac.
On the other side of the door, she could hear Yuffie muttering to the rest about Aeris taking so long and she had to smirk. The young ninja had always been impatient about anything and since none of her friends knew what she was doing, she supposed they were all a little exasperated.
She quickly placed an ornament (a house with two children having a snowball fight) in the middle of the table beside two tall, red unlit candles. She walked to the windows, grabbing the box of matches on her way and struck one at the side of the box. She moved quickly so as not to burn herself as the heat from the flame travelled up, she leaned across and lit the small lantern that sat on the windowsill. She repeated it with the three other windows before she went to the table and lit the candles.
Giving one last glance around the room, she agreed that it was ready for action and she travelled to the door. She undid the lock and stood back as she pulled it open.
"It's about time Aeris what the hell were you…"
Yuffie's moaning was cut off as she took in the scene before her, her mouth dropping open and her eyes wide in awe. The rest of the members of Avalanche seemed to have a similar reaction but it was Cloud who surprised her most. She had never seen him smile much but he must have liked what he saw because there was a large, goofy smile spread all across his face. Not a small one that he occasionally wore and you had to squint to see it. No, it was a proper, genuine smile. His eyes turned to her, surprise written all over his face.
"Did you do all this?" he asked and she nodded giving a small shrug of modesty.
"It was nothing really," she replied with a shy smile. Cloud shook his head and moved forward to gently take her hand.
"No, it's beautiful Aeris. It's just what we need," he whispered, missing the blush that spread across her cheeks as he turned to look at the tree. Yes, it was beautiful, as he had said. The whole room was. However, the twinkling lights and the angel on top of the tree were nothing compared to the beauty of the woman standing next to him.