Drabble #44: Home
Summary: It wasn't home because it was a roof over his head. It was home because she was there.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything but the plot. Characters and places belong to SquareEnix.
The Church was abandoned and had an air of solitude and dampness clinging to it. It was obvious that nobody had been near it, let alone inside it for years. Moss clung to the wooden walls, which seemed like they could fall at any moment. The windows all had holes in them from where bricks were smashed into them. The only attractive thing left in the building were the flowers that crowded around the alter, but even they seemed to be clinging to the alter for dear life. However, most people never visited the Church anymore. They did not like the dampness or the cold. Besides, what was so important about the rundown building anyway? There were plenty of Churches in Edge.
However, Cloud Strife was hardly like other people. He had come to see the Church as home. He cared little about the rain that leaked through the holes in the roof, or the winds that entered through the broken windows. He was quite happy to sit alone in the Church and think to himself. It had come to be his shelter, his home not because it was a roof over his head but because her presence lingered in the air.
After all, it had once been her Church and when she was here, the flowers did not cling to the alter but stretched up to the ceiling. There were no broken windows because she saw to it that any vandals would be frog-marched back to the Church to fix the damages. She didn't let anyone mess her about. She was not scared of anything and it was clear she would do anything to protect the flowers and her Church. He knew that the moment he first met her. She treated it like a second home.
And as it was his fault that she was dead, he felt as if it was only right for him to look after her home. And while many people thought it was a waste of space, Cloud could quite happily look at the Church all day. The fading paint on the walls and the broken slabs on the roof had come to be a comfortable sight to him. He did not know why, maybe because it made him think of her and thoughts of her were always comforting.
He knew that Tifa and the children wanted him at Seventh Heaven but he just could not bring himself to stay. Tifa was far too motherly to him and at the same time trying to coax him into a relationship that he really did not want. The children looked up to him as a father figure but he did not think he fit the part. It did not feel like a family. It did not feel like home.
But here, with the memory of Aerith still fresh in the Church's walls, it felt like home. Just because she was there.