Heart Less Love

(( A/N: Everyone loved Love Not Often so much, that I decided that I DID want to do a sequel. The sequel where Tifa and Aerith build a future together… but what future could it be?))

(( A/N 2: This will have far less chapters than Love Not Often – er, hopefully! Haha! Starts with the Three Prologues - reflecting the trinity theme played throughout FF7 :) yay - hope you all like it!))

Part One: Body

"Shilly Shally, Dilly Dally…"

It was all worth it.

I knew those words. I knew how to say them and form the shapes with my mouth, knew how to make them tumble effortlessly with a tongue gone numb from lying and lying, why was I always lying?

So if I say now, it was all worth it, I am unsure.

They say, and will always say, it started with a fateful meeting between a Soldier and a flower girl. But that's not strictly true.

Actually, it started years before I had even been a twinkle in my father's eye. Back before Mako power – or the power of the Lifestream as it should be correctly known – was mined as a valuable power source, ShinRa had been a decent company. However, with the discovery of the mako hidden inside the very sod beneath their feet changed them. They wanted to change themselves and other people, for the better. But along the way, it somehow got all messed up.

A great professor called Gast Faremisu mined the Jenova specimen from a geological stratum. It was to be used within many experiments on people, fascinated with the strange alien cells and the way it reacted with the lifeblood of the very planet, similar in the reaction found deep inside on a genetic level as the Cetra.

However, from these experiments with mako and alien cells, a good man called Vincent fell prey to it and was made into a horrible half man, half monster. Even now, he tells us that he's afraid it might get worse, that he's never sure where he stops and the monster begins. And because he was unable to prevent the experiment for Sephiroth, born of those Jenova cells implanted into an unborn child, he feels everything has been his sin.

So from that day on, we found ourselves slowly crumbling under the thumb of ShinRa and its executives. Yet one day there was a change…

That was the day when it didn't 'begin' but it 'changed'. The fate for everyone altered drastically the moment the Soldier happened to meet the Last Ancient, also called, The Flower girl.

We came together like wounded animals, licking at the very festering sores which ShinRa inflicted upon each of us, determined to change the very fate of the entire Planet if need be, to stop them and the resurgence of Sephiroth, controlled by the genetic alternation, the abomination called Jenova. The Soldier, the Flower Girl, the Barmaid, the Terrorist, the Spy without a Name, the Protector, the Materia Hunter, the Sinner and the Sky Pilot.

All of us with nothing in common but the hate which sustained us, apart from…

You see, it was my fault.

Vincent sometimes, well, he denies it. But I know when he looks upon her now, he is trying his hardest to forget his painful past, trying hard to reconcile himself with the fact she lives. But once, it had all been very different.

And that was my fault.

That is my sin.

Cloud jumped to the last step and came to a rest by where the Ancient was still deep in prayer, hands clasped and her eyes closed with a suspicious glint on her smooth cheeks. He circled her and looked down to where she and Yuffie were stood by the bottom step, the others at a higher ledge, watching them from a safe distance.

Then he was drawing his sword, raising it above his head...

"Cloud, stop!" screamed the Wutai ninja.

"What are you doing?" Tifa shouted with sudden anger.

He shook his head and dropped the blade, stepping back, "Ugh... what are you making me do?"

It was as if reality suspended itself. There was a moment of strange clarity as the Cetra girl unfolded her hands, lifting her head up to stare at Cloud and he, self-revulsion filling his eyes, stared back helplessly, hands slowly reaching out.

She moved her lips, "...I have done it."

Then those eyes of bright green shifted and pierced Tifa as she stood watching. A sharp blow to the heart as she simply looked at her, eyes filled with emotion and tears that trickled down her cheeks. A sixth sense made her want to scream 'look out' or possibly leap up there and do something, move her... but as the flower girl smiled, there was a rush of blackness, a rustle of leather and...

...and then there was the end of a six foot sword, slender and deadly, glittering silver, piercing her middle.

Aerith's eyes widened and her hands lifted in shock, then she winced. The blood could audibly be heard, spattering on the stone and dripping with repetitive noise. A stain covered the front and back of the pink dress rapidly, so rapidly that Tifa tried her hardest not to focus on it. Tried to pretend it was just a dream. Pinching her thigh seemed to do no good...

Sephiroth, the dark demon of her nightmares tugged his sword free whilst smirking.

The Ancient lurched, hair ribbon suddenly flying free with the shock and a small materia which emitted a glow which was a delicate shade of green escaped, chinking down the steps towards the water. Even as she fell down, the flower girl reached as if to stop the materia, then she smiled again. But her eyes never once left Tifa as she breathed in painfully, and then out, then...

...then...

...then she breathed no more.

So we bitterly smiled at the end.

We even congratulated ourselves and said to each other, it was worth it.

It wasn't. Time to stop lying.

I was never worth it.

Nothing was ever worth losing her for.

I cried each night and day for almost a fortnight solid after the end when the lifestream rose up and took the sky back from the dark clouds gathering like swarming flies. I laid in bed and sweated, shook with fear and didn't move a single muscle.

Because she wasn't there, anymore.

I couldn't begin to imagine it.

I was nothing; in fact, I would be nothing without her. I owed her everything, for bringing me back from that cliff beyond which the chasm of despair, selfishness and blackest rage sought to consume what little I had inside, what little was left of me.

She saved me.

And all I did… was to watch her die.

That is my sin.

…maybe to die with such a stain on my soul, I could accept that. But my soul died and only this body kept moving. Until… until…

…she came back to me, because there was more for her to do.

Why can't she ever get a break?

Why is it always her who has to sweep up after everyone else, after closing hours, humming a little sad tune and pretending she doesn't mind? I'm angry for her! I'm angry because she refuses to be angry about it!

She doesn't deserve this.

She doesn't.

She says to me, I am her hero.

Does she know how we all idolise her as our hero?

Because she's perfect inside. Because she's perfect. Because…

…

Because I'm not.

That's okay too.

She loves me, just as I am. Tomorrow is a scary place. When I wake up, there she'll be, laid on the bed beside me and smiling at the sunshine, having awakened hours before me with that silly rule she lives by, early to bed and early to rise. Not that I mind going to bed with her early at all…

And with that smile, the sins of yesterday melt away, with grief, with anger, with stabbing hatred at me and I can smile too. For she is mine.

…because she is