A little spiel of mine that I quite like about the time shortly after FF: AC. Could be thought of as Cloud/Aeris, or just possibly Cloud/Tifa for the imaginative ones among you. Hope you enjoy it ;-)
Disclaimer: It's not mine, and you know it. Unless you're really really dumb.
The church had been quiet. The early sunlight flooded in through the rafters and a flock of birds flew lazily overhead, mere specks in the crystal blue sky. A couple of benches lay on their sides, broken and alone at the back of the hall. Flowers were already growing in cracks in the floorboards. The still pool in the centre sparkled in the light, quietly resting in the dawn sunshine…
Yet for all the peaceful beauty – something was missing…
Laughter. Voices. The light breathing of children. Footsteps.
The church was lonely. The conscious spirit that still lived within it, the lifestream that flowed above it, below it and through it remembered a better time. The time when children would play, scampering through the pews like mice, splashing in the now-still pool with shrieks of delight. The quiet murmurs of past friends, echoing gently through the warm air. The solitary figure that would sit by the pool for hours on end, sometimes silent, sometimes speaking in a deep questioning voice. But always there.
Not anymore.
For weeks – months… the church had been silent. No children came there anymore… they had found a better haunt at the other end of the town, and the old church had faded into the backs of their minds.
No more old friends would come and talk in their quiet voices, discussing matters which they could only speak about to themselves. They had moved on… made their own lives away from the church.
The solitary figure that would look to the quiet building for reassurance, even comfort… he was gone. He had other concerns now… other people to comfort and be comforted by.
Sometimes, the church felt as though it had never existed at all.
Maybe it hadn't. To the consciousness that infused every brick, every flower and every drop of water in the still pool, time had no more meaning. It lived within a stream of thought, an embodiment of life itself… it needed no time. There were no structures, no barriers. What did you need barriers for, when there was nothing to put up barriers against?
But it was lonely.
Even though there were no barriers… the strand of thought hovering through the church flowed through a thousand other streams of consciousness and they in return poured through the church in an endless cycle… it was lonely.
The church longed for voices… for the touch and sight and smell of the people whom it knew. A thought was not enough. It wanted love. It wanted more than the blind, hopeless love of a million thoughts that were so intertwined with itself that love from them could hardly be called love at all rather than self-adoration. No.
Love like that did nothing to quench the impossible loneliness that the rough-cut stones and flowers felt, the deep unquenchable sense of being abandoned by all those whom it had loved. Because now all the church had was its own love for those people, and loving without being loved was worse than death… even for the dead.
The quiet, once peaceful, was now suffocatingly silent. It seemed that even the flowers did not move a petal for fear of interrupting the overpowering calm.
The church felt like screaming, felt like weeping out loud until its voice grew hoarse… just for anything. Any voice, any footstep, any sound. Anything. But it couldn't.
When you have been a silent strand of thought for so long, you forget how you used to be. Images fade into eachother like an old roll of film, running again and again until they are indistinguishable from eachother; a long rainbow of colour. When you have been a though for so long, you begin to forget how to talk.
The church couldn't make itself heard. There was no-one to listen. Not even the solid presence that had always been there; the blonde-haired figure that the thought loved for a reason that it itself could not even remember.
But he had gone. They had all gone.
The church could remember faces. That was all. A memory of faces that it used to know.
It hurts. It hurts the thought so much that it begins to wonder. This doesn't feel like life. Not life itself. This doesn't feel like the Promised Land. This feels like pain. The endless pain of forgetting and remembering and thinking, in a place where pain is supposed to be non-existent.
The silence carries, seeping through every pore of stone like a disease. A slight breeze wafts through the warm air into the broken body of the church. A couple of flowers rustle quietly in the gentle wind. It is the loudest noise the church has heard in weeks.
Every now and then, the thought tries to reach out. It tries so hard.
To make it rain, the special rain. To call out to them. To ask them to remember the church. To remember that it still exists.
It knows that such things are forbidden. It knows that it shouldn't.
But somehow, that doesn't seem to matter any more.
It doesn't work, of course. The silent touch that it used to command to make things happen has disappeared. There is nothing.
Nothing at all.
The church has been forgotten. The living strand of thought wafting through the still air wants to cry at this, wants to weep and wail and tear the world apart. It was naïve, to think that out of all the things in creation, the church alone would be remembered.
That was stupid. Like everything else before it and everything else after it, the church's time has come and gone. It is sinking back into the sands of time now, a single speck in the innumerable dunes of forgotten times, places, people… Just one more in the crowd of the lost.
There is nothing.
It might as well just give up.
The church closes down the filaments of thought that act as eyes looking out upon the pool of water. There is no use for them any more, other than as false hope. No use in watching for visitors. They will never come.
The church is blind now, resigned to an eternity of thinking and listening alone to the silence. The darkness is strangely soothing. Slowly, determinedly, the thought tries to forget what the flowers looked like, how the sunlight reflected off the water in the mornings, how the motes of dust curled down in a huge arc over the pews… It tries to forget what it was hoping for. Tries to forget everything.
Something.
A sound.
A door creaking open.
Someone.
Footsteps.
Light breathing.
The church opens its eyes.
There is a figure kneeling in the flowers next to the pool. The figure has blonde spiky hair that the church recognises, and on his shoulder he wears a circular metal emblem shaped like a wolf's head.
The strand of thought curling through the church suddenly stops, the passage of time holding still for an immeasurable second as the single thread hangs motionless in the stream.
"Hey, Aeris," the figure says in a deep, stable voice. "It's me, Cloud."
Cloud… Cloud. The name sparks something inside the thought, and memories are suddenly flooding through the church like a speeded up roll of film. Cloud… Shinra. Lifestream. Aeris. Meteor. Avalanche. Sephiroth. Genova.
It remembers… everything. From a single word. Cloud.
"I did what you said, Aeris. I understood what you said to me. I'm not running away anymore, you'll be pleased to hear. Tifa's pleased too. I'm living with her and the kids now. I hope you don't mind. She says hello to you too." The wonderful voice paused for a second.
Yes. The church did understand. A wonderful flood of happiness spread through the old stones and rafters.
"After Genova… everything was messed up for a while. I guess that's why we didn't come and visit you. I'm sorry about that. The Monument's been rebuilt. There's a mention of you on it too now. Tifa bullied them all into engraving it on. The rain was all you; of course it was. We all knew it." The figure – Cloud – smiled very slightly for a second. "Thank-you. Tifa says she might come herself later, but Marlene's got a stomach ache and she wants to stay with her. Don't worry, it's nothing too bad, but you know Tifa."
There was a moment of silence. Soft, companiable. Then the voice again, slow and halting.
"I fought in here with Kadaj. I hope you didn't mind; we crushed some of your flowers. I wonder whether he found the peace he deserved. I think about him sometimes. I had to kill him, but… He was so young.
"I saw you, you know. In this church. With Zack. Talking to one of the children. I suppose before I would've asked the kid about you; if they had see you… or if it was just a vision, but I decided not to. Sometimes it's better not to know. But that… that was the end, wasn't it? The real end, not the end when you were first gone. That wasn't an ending. But seeing you in this church was. Thank-you for that.
"I haven't forgotten you. It must seem like that, I haven't been for so long. But I haven't forgotten. I miss you." Cloud tilted his head slightly forwards to hide his eyes, gazing down slowly at the still water that mirrored his reflection high to the ceiling. The piercing blue eyes were clouded and pale, staring thoughtfully towards the ground.
"If you can hear me… I miss you."
The church shivered with joy, sending a drop of water that was hanging high above in the rafters from the night's rainfall tumbling down.
It reflected the light like a jewel as it fell, landing on Clouds upturned hand with a muffled pat.
He looked up. There was a slight smile resting lightly upon his features.
He whispered the words softly, almost unheard in the peaceful quiet of the church.
"I haven't forgotten…"
See the little button? Yep. See it?
Press it. Pwetty-please!!! puppy dog eyes Just for me?