Note: It's my favorite time of the year (okay, I can totally do without the freezing myself to death part), and so I just wanted to write a little something to wish all the CloudXAeris fans a wonderful holiday season. Unfortunately, I am not imaginative enough to picture these two in a Christmas setting so there is absolutely nothing Christmas-ish about this story. Oh well. Merry Christmas anyway! And may you all get what you really want this year. I know Cloud has. ;)
Stay
He never knows what he's doing.
Where he's been. Where he's going.
At least no one bothers him anymore, he thinks, almost smiling as he glances around at the familiar dump surrounding him, mounds of debris piled high, all from the plate overhead and the former buildings that had once made up these slums. It looks like it should be a favorite haunting ground for ghosts and the like, but he knows there aren't any. There is not another soul anywhere within a mile of this place, and even if there was, they wouldn't come near him. Everyone knows to leave a man who's clearly not right in the head well enough alone. The adults ignore him and pretend they don't see him walking amongst them, unless it's to make a wide berth around him, while the children stare at him and point fingers, their loud whispers following him down the street.
Crazy.
The word rings in his head. People who are mentally ill usually don't know they're crazy, do they? he's lucid enough to ponder. But Cloud's different. He knows he's lost his marbles.
He enters the old church, with the doors barely hanging on their last hinges, kicks aside a plank of wood near the entrance that hadn't been there this morning, and walks down the center aisle. Head down, he makes his way to several pews still standing, and removes his sword from behind his back to prop it up against the side of a bench. He continues forward to the front of the building where an entire section of the floor has been ripped out and flowers have sprung up from the dirt underneath it, and sits down at the edge of the huge gaping hole in the floor.
Too tired to care that his bedroll is just a few feet away, he lies down right where he is with his hands under his head, and stares up at the sky above him. The stars are out in full force tonight and the silver face of the moon is shining directly into the church from the broken rafters, now that the metal plates are no longer there to bar its way, but it makes no difference to him. Nothing matters.
He closes his eyes and moves an arm over his face to protect it from the cool night air.
A minute passes before the thought pierces through the fog in his head.
He slowly uncovers his face. Peers down past his boots.
The figure sitting there is watching him silently.
Just another figment of his delusional mind. Further proof of his deranged state.
Not that he needs any more proof, he thinks sourly, and sits back up, swinging his feet over the side of the jagged floorboards to set them on the ground below. But it's about time this one finally shows up.
"Hello there," he says pleasantly, looking at her as if he's been expecting her company. "Welcome to my humble abode," he adds, and chuckles to himself at his little joke.
"Cloud."
Her voice is soft and clear, just the way he remembers it. And very close to his ear. She's slid over to sit beside him, he realizes. He stares at her, not quite able to believe he's really seeing her. Well, of course he's not, but she looks as real as the hard floor they're sitting on. Long brown hair, twisted into a braid and tied back with a ribbon. Eyes intensely green. Vivid pink dress, everything bright to his altered eyes.
Maybe she hadn't heard him.
"I've been living here."
"I know."
Several long seconds go by as he waits for her to say something else.
"Aren't you supposed to say what a nice place I've got here or something?" he asks when it becomes clear she's waiting for him to speak. Or a nice pile of junk at least, he thinks to himself.
But she doesn't say anything. She doesn't comment at all, not on the sad shape of the church, not on his equally pitiful condition, not on anything. She hasn't glanced around her, not even to take a look at the flowers she'd loved, bathing in the soft light of the moon spilling in from the open roof.
He slides a foot toward a yellow flower and crushes it deliberately under his boot. He removes his boot from the damaged lily and looks expectantly at her, but she doesn't berate him.
"I think it's dead," he says casually, waving a hand at the flower he's just killed in front of her eyes.
She merely lifts a brow at him.
This is odd. If it's not enough that he's trying to make conversation right now, he's also the one working to get a reaction from her. Shouldn't she be teasing, laughing, flirting with him? Trying to get a response out of him but making him too flustered to mumble more than a sentence or two. He doesn't recollect much these days but he remembers that about her. He remembers everything about her. She'd thought him her hero. She'd called him…
"Bodyguard."
It takes a moment before Cloud realizes that she's spoken it aloud.
But he's no bodyguard. He's no hero. Not hers. Not anyone's. Sometimes he wonders if he and the others had really traveled the planet and saved the world or if he'd imagined everything. Had he been a hero only in his own head?
A hero. He almost laughs. Some kind of hero he's turned out to be.
A pale, slender hand extends toward his face, and he stares at it, noting how her skin looks so white in the moonlight, it's almost translucent, and he moves back quickly before it touches him. Or worse, passes through him.
He doesn't miss the hurt look on her face, but he can't possibly dirty her with the source of the foul odor emanating from him, and he's not about to enlighten her about the fact that he hasn't bathed in days. Possibly weeks. When was the last time he'd visited The Seventh Heaven and Tifa had managed to bully him into the shower anyway? Not that he doesn't know he reeks now and she can probably smell him from a block away. He carries the stench of several days' worth of grime, sweat, and battles on him.
She doesn't seem to mind his overripe state though, or even seem to notice it, and a small part of him vaguely recalls how she'd always accepted everything about him.
He rubs a gloved hand over his face, blinks blearily at her. A thought dawns and a smile slowly crosses his face.
Her eyes widen, glistening like rare jewels he can't remember the name of. If he didn't know better he'd think those are tears.
"You know." He looks wonderingly at her. "I don't think I mind being crazy much. I can see you. I can talk to you. It's a fair trade." His madness has brought this about. It's more than fair.
"You're not crazy." The firmness in her voice throws him for a moment, and he almost believes her.
He shoots her an angry look. "You're here, aren't you?" She's not only here, she looks tangible, with clear, distinct lines, crisp and sharp around the edges, not wispy and floating or transparent like he'd always assumed phantoms would look, almost as if he'd be able to feel her if he reached out and touched her. She looks almost solid.
Except she's not. And he's not brave enough to test that theory.
But if he's not crazy, he's certainly putting on a good show of it, if he does say so himself. Everyone else believes it. But not her. Never her. She's never been one to go with the flow just because the majority has deemed it so.
But it's okay.
He understands she needs to pretend too. She's here and that's good enough for him. Maybe if they both keep pretending, they can continue on as they are. Maybe she'll believe he's really sane. Maybe he'll believe she's really here. Maybe when he closes his eyes at night and wakes up in the morning, she'll still be here. And maybe, just maybe, for once in his life, he won't be so devastatingly alone. As long as she lets him have this, and he can keep on pretending, he's fine with her pretending too.
"Come back to me."
Her soft plea pulls him out of his thoughts, and he watches a tear tracking slowly down a porcelain cheek; she wipes it away but another one takes its place. In the deepest recesses of his murky mind, he knows something doesn't feel right. Perhaps he should say something here…
His voice quavers. "Aeris."
"Open your eyes, Cloud. You're not sick."
Like hell he's not.
And his eyes are open, damn her. Thanks to her, they're almost always open, even on the nights when he really does manage to drift off for just a short while. When he forces them shut, they're still wide open.
"No," he says adamantly, almost belligerently. "If I do, you'll be gone."
It mystifies him even more to see the tears slide down her cheeks faster, dripping onto her lap. He stares at the pink material of her dress, seeing with his unusually sharp vision the dark spots growing bigger.
Ghosts don't have tears. How can she be crying?
Not even in her weakest moments can he remember her shedding tears before. No, that's not true. He shakes his head to try to clear away some of the thick haze he's been walking around in for the last few months. She'd cried before.
For other people.
He'd be damned if she cries for him as well.
He straightens his shoulders, looks benignly at her. "I waited for you, you know." He cocks his head to the side, studying her in the serene silence of the church. "I waited a long time."
She squeezes her eyes shut, and gives a nod as tears continue to trickle out from under her eyelashes.
"You didn't come again. You never came."
She makes a sound deep in her throat, a small, distressed sound, and her eyes fly open, instantly settling on his.
"Don't cry, Aeris. I'm not blaming you." Liar. "I finally figured you couldn't come to me so…" he grins hugely at her. "I found a way to you instead."
If anything, the tears seem to speed up, and she shakes her head fiercely at him. "You're not crazy. You believe you are, but you're not. I know you're not."
He lets out a disgruntled harrumph and leans back a little from her. Folding his arms over his chest, he gives her a small triumphant smile. "I am."
"If you won't come back to me," she grabs his face with both her hands and pulls him toward her. "Then we'll just have to go down that path together."
His whole body stiffens.
No. He rears back, forcing her to let go of him. No, no, no, no…no. She cannot mean what he thinks she means. No way in hell can she...
"No!" The word bursts violently out of him, furious, horrified.
"Yes."
He reaches out to grab her, to crush her between his hands, to shake her until her teeth rattle, but remembers at the very last second that he can't, that it's not possible. He pulls his hands back. "No!" He clenches them so tight, they hurt, caught in a state of helpless fury.
"Yes."
They stare at each other, both their eyes hard, unflinching, breathing harshly, bodies wound tight with tension. He slowly unfurls his hands and they fall to his sides as his anger drains out of him, leaving him completely deflated, body slumping, shoulders sagging.
His head drops forward and he closes his eyes with a defeated groan.
Befuddled and daft he might be, but he still knows she can't be touched by something so ugly and dirty. She is too beautiful, too clean, too pure, to have a stigma this horrid attached to her. The thought doesn't even bear considering, he hates it so much. Not even for his own sake will he let her sink to his level.
But it is so hard.
He opens his eyes, breathes out one word. "Please."
Pleading, begging, he doesn't care. Any pride he ever had was all torn to shreds long ago.
"Don't do this to me."
She doesn't say anything and he tries again, speaks out her name on a suffocated breath. A minute passes, each second feeling like an hour, but she doesn't back down. Then another minute. Cruel. She is so cruel. So heartless. He almost hates her. She'd stayed away and now that he's finally found a way to her, she wants him to make her leave.
Drawing in a deep painful breath, he forces himself to really look at her, focus on her face before him. Before she goes, he needs to see her clearly one last time, without the fuzziness surrounding him all the time. He'll have to make this moment count, be able to make this image of her last until it's his turn to join the planet.
She takes hold of his face again. Hot air fans across his lips, his nose, his cheekbones.
"Aeris?" Cloud slowly lifts his hands to the ones cupping his face. How can she even be touching him, breathing on him?
Warm skin. Soft flesh. He feels the heat of her body under his gloves, the blood pumping through her veins, hears her heart thumping frantically in his ears, and his own heartbeat accelerates like mad.
He blinks at her. She's still here, in front of him, as real as the ground beneath their feet, smelling as fresh and clean as the scented flowers around them.
"You…" And again, she leaves him tongue-tied just like she used to do.
"I'm here."
"Aeris." He grips her wrists so hard, she winces, but she doesn't try to pull away. "Stay."
"I'll stay if you stay."
His fingers dig deeper into her flesh. "Stay."
"I'll stay, Cloud." She's smiling as tears continue sliding down her cheeks. "With you."
"With me…?" That's not all he wants to say, but his throat has closed, and not for the world can he get anything else out.
But it's all right. She understands what he means.
He knows she understands because she moves in closer to him, and whispers the words to and for him, just before her lips touch his.