She knew that her friends were moving on with their lives without her, even though they missed her. She knew that the world would be fine without her in it, that everyone she'd left behind would make sure that it could get along without any Ancients left to coddle it.
She knew that having Zack by her side once more should be a great enough joy to leave her content to wait until she was able to see them again. And most of her was.
Most of her.
She had never considered that it might be possible for a person's character to change after death, but there was something new within her now that she'd never known before. It was a part of her that was nothing but wanting, yearning always for what she'd left behind.
She wanted to wrap her arms around her mother and tell her that she'd never leave her alone for long again. She wanted to laugh at Yuffie sneaking up on Red to give his tail a tug. She wanted to be kept up half the night by how loudly Cid and Barret snored on the other side of their fire. She wanted to tease an almost-smile out of Vincent, and help Tifa slowly draw Cloud towards normalcy. She wanted to help Reeve rebuild the terrible city which had been her home, and spread her flowers everywhere within it now that there were finally more places where the sun reached the ground.
She wanted to close her eyes and breathe, even if it was in the center of Midgar where the air had always been so polluted that you could choke on it. She wanted to flop down in the grass and take a nap in the sun. She wanted to go into the Golden Saucer and not come out again until she'd played every game twenty times and then spent the night in the ghost hotel and pretended to scream at every silly scare. She wanted to borrow Cloud's incredible chocobo and become the first person ever to circle the entire world on chocobo-back, then have nobody outside of her friends believe her because most of the world didn't know that there was one which could run on the ocean.
She wanted to be alive. And she didn't think she'd ever lose that longing again until the day finally came when her energy was poured into some new life.