Disclaimer: I don't own anything but the plot. Characters and places belong to SquareEnix.
Pieces of Me
…why?
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He didn't understand!
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…how?
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It just wasn't fair!
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How could Sephiroth have killed her...Why did he kill her?
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Why did he, her bodyguard, do nothing…Why did he stand there like an idiot?
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Cloud Strife did not understand what had gone through his mind, how things had happened, or why he had let them be so. All he knew was that the body of Aeris Gainsborough was sinking to the bottom of the lake, her name to be forgotten and unimportant to the people she had saved by her sacrifice.
The only people who would care to remember her would never speak her name, one day, they would be too scared to talk about it, and Cloud knew that when that day came, it would be another thing to add to his "sin" list.
And as he fingered the pink ribbon that lay in his bloodstained hands, he felt her innocence, her life running through it. Except now, it was no longer so.
She could no longer be innocent to the ways of the world for she had been murdered, murdered by a man who didn't even know her fucking name but instead referred to her as "this girl" or "the ancient" What did it matter to him so long as he got what he wanted?
But what about him? What was HE supposed to do? Aeris had been his life, his only love, the only one he had ever allowed to break the barriers that surrounded his heart.
He did not half regret it now.
And later that evening, the group separated to the privacy of their own rooms. Whether to mourn in their own way or to think about things that mattered most in life, Cloud neither knew nor cared. He sat in the chair opposite the fire, watching the flames dance with a blank expression. He couldn't bear to sleep for he knew what he would see. Yet, he could not bear to stay awake either for he knew what he would think.
Perhaps, he mused, if he had not met Aeris none of this would have happened. If he hadn't accepted her gift of a flower, if he hadn't fallen through her Church roof, if he hadn't helped her escape the Turks…if he hadn't done anything…could it have worked out?
Cloud liked to think so but then, he would realise what would the point in that be? If he had never met Aeris, then he probably wouldn't even have known about Jenova and therefore, the whole mission to stop Sephiroth would have never began and the silver-haired "God" would have probably destroyed the whole Planet by now. If he had never met Aeris what would be the point in going back to save her?
Cloud remained seated for the rest of the night, not even attempting sleep once. He was too wrapped up in the fact that he had failed her and contemplating whether he really should have met her or not.
Many weeks later, he would find that Holy would have needed Aeris' sacrifice in order to work. That she had needed to be murdered on that alter and Sephiroth was actually playing into her hands all along.
Many years later, she, and a man named Zack, who at the moment, he did not know, would tell him he had nothing to feel guilty about and that they forgave him for whatever wrong they felt he had done to them.
But this night, Cloud remained alone, trying to glue back the pieces of his broken heart.