Smile
Disclaimer: Never was, never will be mine.
A/N: Ah, angst away on this one. I like Aeris but she's not perfect.
Smile and the world smiles with you. Enter a room with head up, smiling and confident, and people will naturally gravitate toward you.
It's almost like moths to a flame. People are drawn to those who can spread their joy around, who can shine brightly enough to banish their darkness. To take some of that joy for their own, warming their cold hearts around a merry fire.
It allows them to escape from themselves, for a time. To drain off some of that cheer they inherently lack.
Most don't even think twice about who they take from.
Human blindness is a known, common thing which still manages to shock any observer by the simple vastness of it. How much is ignored, willfully or not, shows the callousness and selfishness inherent in all men.
Taking without thought, blind to any hidden repercussions. Aeris thought she knew better than any how much it could hurt.
After all, she knew the suffering of the Planet, saw the pain under the Plate, had lost days of her short life in a lab, and had her mother ripped from her brutally. Aeris thought she knew how people where blind.
They even took her joy.
It was the reason people liked being around her. Aeris always had another option, a plan B, a happy ending waiting somewhere. It was something people wanted desperately. So they drained her, unknowingly taking some of her joy with them, leaving behind some of their sorrow.
It left Aeris exhausted.
She was a beautiful girl, could've done so many other things instead of selling flowers in the slums. But too much time with people exhausted her.
Too prolonged an encounter could leave her feeling weak for hours.
So she fled to her flowers, to those things from which she could drain joy from.
Oh but she rationalized it, tried to tell herself the flowers didn't mind their blooms being stolen, their cheer taken. Aeris was very good at rationalization.
She'd been doing it all her life. Black and white, good and evil. It was easier without shades of grey, blurring of lines.
Aeris liked life easy.
Then she could think the Planet wasn't using people, plants or animals – they came from it. They were dependant on the Lifestream, not the Planet on the energy it could siphon from its inhabitants. Holy wasn't using her lifeforce as fuel, it simply needed a trigger.
Zack and Cloud wanted more than her cheerful façade – they wanted her, sadness, exhaustion, insanity, and all. They knew her.
Didn't they?
But how could they? She'd been hiding for so long it had become second nature. From the day she'd realized normal people couldn't hear the voices, wouldn't believe in her foretellings even if she did speak up.
Her world was rosy. It had a beautiful future, dragons to slay, a prince to save her.
But her princes weren't what they should be. Tseng betrayed her, Zack died, and Cloud…he wasn't all there. Plus he had another princess who wanted him.
Yet Aeris would not be disillusioned. Could not. She didn't live long enough.
If all the other faerie tale positions were filled then she would be The Martyr. No one spoke ill of a martyr right? Especially when she was saving the Planet.
And her own illusions.
Life was easier in Black and White.
It hurt less.
The End
Whew. Not quite sure I like this one. Might make a different one.
Review and you get...caramel apples? Please?