Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and its characters solely belong to Square Enix.
AU: A drabble I found on my computer that's originally part of a series of the character analysis by their teammates...unfortunately, the others have yet to be written. I'll get around to it. -ashamed-
Send Me a Dream
AERITH
Cloud
Whenever he begins to think of the voices inside his head, he thinks of Aerith. "Back then, you could just get by with skinned knees..." and then her voice, rushing through the darkness of his dazed mind, drowning out the murmurs of his other self – "Oh! Are you okay?"
Her eyes are bright, glowing more subtly than his own – mako eyes, he thinks to himself at one point in time, caught between dreams and reality. He corrects himself a second later, fingers running faintly over the green Materia in his sword. No. The eyes of the Lifestream.
Those Lifestream eyes watch him with curiosity as Aerith gathers around her flowers – "I'll be just a minute, please!" and he pretends that he's not watching her also, but it's hard, especially when her presence sends chills up his spine.
Then they're running, hopping over the rooftops and stray fallen beams – "Just like him..." and she's staring off into space in a way that he'll become familiar with in time, except that he doesn't know it yet. He doesn't know a lot of things, like the way Aerith's own voices drown out her thoughts when he stands too near, or the way his hair sometimes looks too dark and too long when he stands still. He doesn't realize that she is a bit jealous of Tifa, the way she looks at him and gets caught between smiling and frowning – only Nanaki notices her watching them, and when he asks her about it, she laughs and says, Maybe I am – but not for the reasons you would think.
When she dies, Cloud never knows anything. Just the way she appears to him in the scenery of an ancient forest, smiling from behind the blue foliage – "Are you scared?" she asks him in the wind from the sky, her pink skirt disappearing behind one of the many trees. He can't answer.