Inspired by putting Aerith theme (FFVII version) on repeat. Listen to it while you read, if you like.

Disclaimer: I don't own. I wish I did.

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Four years. It had been four years. Four years of waiting for a letter, a phone call, a visit, something. Anything.

Aerith pulled herself from her daze, and knelt down to tend to her flowers. She was in her church again. She, for some reason was getting drawn back to the place day after day. She knelt against the old, worn wood, which gave away shortly afterwards to a large patch of soft earth. In that patch of earth, her flowers grew and thrived. It was a miracle that her flowers could grow in the slums at all. Directly behind her were the broken pews, still useable, but only by a little bit. Running a finger along a pale yellow petal she absentmindedly hummed to herself. No matter what happened, Aerith could always find comfort in her flowers. And a certain spiky haired man, a whisper from the back of her mind trod unbidden into her consciousness.

No... I won't think about him.

It wasn't that she lost faith in him, no, she firmly believed that he was alive somewhere. It was that every time she thought about him, the rip in her heart seemed to tear even more. If he was out there somewhere, why didn't he try to contact her? Did he find a girl that he deserved, unlike a lowly girl from the slums like her? Was it something petty, liking losing her number? Or was it that he simply forgot about her?

Aerith stood up with a soft sigh, brushing the dirt from her pink dress as she did so, and looked up through the hole amongst the rafters in the roof. The hole where... She refused to finish the thought. The light trickled though the cracking gap, and rested on her flowers, giving them a shimmering golden glow. It was almost unearthly, the way her flowers looked. Concentrating a little harder, she thought she could barely make out a sliver of sky. Sky.... The thought hit her hard.

"You've never seen the real sky?"

A younger version of her in a white and blue dress twirled around to face the man talking, "Nope, I've never been out of the slums. To tell you the truth..." She trailed off and looked down at her feet, and then to the slightly worn floorboards of her church.

"To tell you the truth..." The man repeated, urging her to continue.

"The sky's scary." she whispered.

There was silence for a moment, and Aerith wondered if the man had heard her when she heard laughter. Surprised, she looked up to see the black clad man doubled over laughing. "I'm sorry, but scared of the sky?" Once he managed to subdue his fit of laughter he added, "It's not so scary once you've actually seen it!"

"Really?" Aerith asked sceptically.

"I know! One day I'll show you the real sky! It won't be so scary! I promise!" The spiky haired man spoke enthusiastically and raised his fisted hand in the air.

Aerith scuffed her shoe against the floor, thinking the offer over. She looked up to face the man, and found herself staring into his eager blue eyes. Looking away from those eyes she asked, "you promise?"

"Promise!"

She didn't notice the tears streaming down her cheeks, until something warm and wet hit her hand. And at first she thought it was raining, but then her sight started to blur and her shoulders shook uncontrollably. A hoarse sound parted from her trembling lips and she wrapped her arms around herself. Zack...

"You promised..." she choked out and knelt – more like fell - beside her flowers. She was wrong after all. Her flowers couldn't always comfort here. Only one person could comfort her. And that one person was gone.

"Zack... Where are you?" Were the last words her flowers heard as they rustled in the breeze, trying their best to soothe the sobbing girl, but to no avail. Because they knew – they knew the best probably – that they had long lost their ability to console their beloved flower girl, for they were the one who had watched her love for the man flourish. And they also knew that if the flower girl and the SOLDIER's love were to be a flower, it would be the most beautiful of them all. They knew as well that without the sun the flower wouldn't be able to live very long, and would wilt. So they hoped; they hoped that the SOLDIER operative would come back soon, because they couldn't bear watching their flower girl slowly shrivel up and die, and that they could do nothing to help her. After all in the end, it wasn't them that their flower girl needed. It was her SOLDIER that she needed, for if she was the flower, then her SOLDIER was the sun.