Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII/7. If I did, this would not be a work of fanfiction – it would be a scene in a game or movie.
A/N: So I have really no idea why I wrote this, since I'm not even a huge Aeris fan or anything… I actually kind of tend to get annoyed by her, in general… XD But yeah. It annoys me that people I know focus on the Aeris-Cloud-Tifa triangle and tend to forget about Zack… hence my writing of this. It was a totally random idea that happened to pop into my head while I was writing a completely different, vastly unrelated fic. My mind just skips around like that sometimes. Or maybe my muse is just hyperactive…
Perspective
Aeris Gainsborough liked Cloud Strife from the moment she met him. Maybe it was the uniform – SOLDIER, first class – or the spiky hair or the buster sword… or maybe it was something deeper. More likely than not, it was actually a combination of all of those things that attracted her.
Cloud was definitely not Zack Fair. They wore the same uniform because they were both elite SOLDIER members. The fact that they preferred the same weapon was probably some strange sort of random chance or coincidence, or maybe even SOLDIER regulation, for all Aeris knew. Either way, Cloud and Zack were still two very different men.
And yet it wasn't the differences, but the similarities that had first gained Aeris's attention. The way Cloud carried the buster sword on his back, the way he seemed drawn to stand up for weaker individuals no matter how tough he tried to act, the way his hair stuck out in a thousand and one different random directions all at once… all these things recalled clearly to her mind images of Zack. And that was why she kept asking herself who it was that she really cared for.
No, that was a poor choice of words. Of course she cared for Cloud, regardless of who he might remind her of. He was brave and strong and he had saved her life more than once. Aeris cared for him and for Barrett and Tifa and Yuffie and Cait Sith and Vincent and Red XIII… Yes, Vincent and Red XIII were also on the list of people she cared for, even though they had both nearly scared her to death when she had first met them. But who wouldn't be scared by a man with glowing red eyes who slept in a coffin or a giant red feline with a fiery tail?
So did she really count Cloud in with the rest of them like that, in the level of those she cared for? Didn't she perhaps care for him more than for the rest of them? Or was it merely the manifestation of someone she had once cared for more that she wanted to protect?
She was being silly, Aeris would tell herself, thinking like that. Of course it was Cloud she cared about. After all, it was for him and his friends and the fate of the world that she was fighting, not for Zack. And there were many reasons why she liked Cloud that had nothing at all to do with his resemblance to Zack. There were even things she liked about him that weren't like Zack at all. And yet somehow it was always the similarities that drew her attention.
Even when she went off on her own to pray for Holy, a small part of Aeris's mind still lingered on Cloud and Zack and the confusion over whether she loved both of them or whether she had never really loved one – or even both – of them at all. They were both invaluable to her, lives that she valued above her own. So didn't it follow that she did love them both? That, regardless of whether she had even known Zack, she would still have loved Cloud? … But then again, she might not have tried so hard to help Cloud if she hadn't known Zack…
It was a conundrum that she couldn't unravel. It was impossible to decide what she might have done were Zack never a part of her life, simply because he had affected who she was and the way she thought so much. And, in turn, so had Cloud. Maybe that was just another reason they were both so central in her mind: because they had each altered her thought process irreversibly.
No matter how she looked at it, it was equally confusing, and it remained that way until she found herself in the Forgotten City – until she poured her heart and soul into the request for Holy, until the Masamune pierced through her with lethal accuracy, until she fell, already fading, into Cloud's arms…
And then it was no longer Cloud's arms that she was in, because it was no longer her own body that she occupied. She wasn't bound by such physical limitations any more, and yet… she could feel the energy of the man next to her as he drew her toward him.
At first, Aeris didn't understand what was happening. Maybe she was delirious and somehow her subconscious was imprinting Zack's face over Cloud's? And then she took in the scene around her. She wasn't in the City of the Ancients any longer; in fact, she didn't seem to be on the planet anymore, but in it – because that glow wasn't the glow of the stars, but the glow of the Lifestream. So she was dead, then…
It was then that she understood why she hadn't been able to hear Zack's voice among the chorus that was the Lifestream. Somehow, he had prevented himself from rejoining it yet – and was waiting here, for her. And suddenly everything was much more clear. No matter what vantage point she had tried to see from before, she hadn't been able to see clearly; but now, everything was different.
Because Aeris was with Zack again, and now that she could feel his presence and hear what he had to say, she understood. All she had been lacking all along was the right perspective.