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f r e e f a l l

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The splinters were spilling from her fingers. Eyes soaked and rimmed like gaping mouths full of senseless green and orange tangles of dreams, she looked down at her hands, shaking, shaking. The earth was cluttering around her fingernails; the ash was grey freckles on the backs of her hands.

Was there really a place where she could find her answers? Why could everyone else advance in the bleakness of the city all around, eyes complacently looking towards the sky, minds completely free or lacking of subtlety, of simple reason. Why do this? Because they said so. Because that's the way things are. Because… I don't have any other choice?

She wondered. How so many people could simply exist without purpose and be content with such lives. Perhaps they found their purpose in something she simply could not find any more… something that was hidden from her; something that she'd missed, that she'd cast away, thinking it cumbersome and unimportant.

Scents of magnolia and chrysanthemum mingled in the dry air around her, and she felt like she had scales around her eyes; oddly the warm balls of liquid rolling down her cheeks felt like tiny companions that she hadn't seen in a long while, and she welcomed the ephemeral heat they painted in wonky vertical lines across her cheeks.

The sky was low, heavy, grey. There were remnants of light glowing in their substantial bellies, but not enough to inspire hope. It just inspired… void. She stared up at their dull whitish faces, glaring as though she was searching for something in particular amongst their pushy clutter.

Since when… since when had she lost her purpose? What did she live for… she couldn't remember. Couldn't remember what had brightened her so, whenever she got up, gathered her hair into its habitual braid, buttoning on her habitual clothes and her habitual smile. What on this sweet Planet had inspired her…?

Flowers were hardly a sufficient excuse. Art, that's what gardening was; it wasn't a dream, it wasn't something with a future. And now she wondered… what was the point? Tending flowers, repairing ancient stained glass windows, lifting the heads of the homeless; what did it all add up to?

She remembered, though. How sweet it was to soak in her memories; how pleasing the bitter acid against the tissues of her heart. Lips against her own; a heady scent filling her mind space… the itchy fabric of her bra stretched across her chest, uncomfortably, obstructing the sensation of bodies made of burning caramel, melding and mingling, twisting and melting into one another. Limbs slick with perspiration, a gasp breaking the air into shards. She remembered his hands on her waist, thumbs under the curves of her breasts; one stroke and ice petals would unfurl themselves up and down her spine, flittering into her lower body; she would rub her thighs together, trapped between his own, and her hands would be hanging in mid-air as he drank from her lips, teeth grazing the humid inner skin and drawing from her soft, unconscious moans.

He'd come to a point where nothing else counted but her. He'd come to her house, he'd run to her from the other side of the street where he'd been following her for the last hour; he'd pin her against the wall of her church, whispering to her and dropping all the comical side that, with this new point of view, seemed so forced somehow, so unnatural compared to the way he would touch her throat and lower his eyes to watch the movements of her lips as she tried to control her breathing, his scent mixed with the fragrance of the flowers and grease-stained combat clothes invading her nose and making her forget that air existed that didn't smell like him.

She wasn't even sure that he paid attention to the people he qualified as his friends, at that time. And she didn't quite know what she was looking for, but she found herself trying to avoid him and the despairing love he smothered her with.

Smother. She wanted to have him so much, at first; he who had the reputation of a sparse, eclectic lover, whom everybody adored and who could persuade any girl to pay him a nocturnal visit in a wink of an eye. It was with a selfish sort of obsession that she threw herself into his pursuit, curious to test these new attributes she had acquired through age and experiences, changes.

It had come. Through doubts, and laughter, and tears, and all that clichéd stuff that young couples are always boasting about… it had come. And she hadn't rested until she felt she could trust him completely; until she'd erased all other feminine forms from the horizon.

But she hadn't known what 'true possession' was, and she'd become afraid, for reasons she couldn't fathom. And, uncertain, thinking she was just trusting her instinct, she distanced herself from him; for some reason she loved to see him sitting or standing alone, calloused fingers trembling as he took a long drag from his rolled cigarette, choosing solitude rather than the company of all those he could have if he simply picked himself up and tried.

He had given it up for her; abandoned the others for her sake, saying there wasn't enough time between now and death where they could be together in order to learn everything about each other, broach every possible subject, do all the illegal things that existed, try living under all the stereotypes known to mankind- but to her things felt stuck. As though each time she was with him, they were just repeating the same pattern, and the same pot of euphoria was being reopened and spread over sheets that smelled so much like him that she couldn't even have any peace of mind during those lonely nights that she coveted.

Parasite. She loved him before the moment he bit into her neck and leeched all willpower out of her- and now she was adrift, watching him suffer from afar, hiding and unsatisfied by her solitude. What to do with this empty feeling- this great big hole where all her passion and inspiration seemed to drop- this hole that he'd gnawed into her when he spent every speck of every day stuck to her side, flying into rampant jealousy attacks whenever she so much as looked at someone else; sometimes even berating her for spending too much time with her friends. Friends! Mere people who returned her smiles, and with whom it was simply refreshing to spend time. Nothing more. Nothing impassioned and wildly beautiful like what she had with him.

It was probably her initial possessiveness that had rubbed off on him- she didn't remember him being so moody in the very beginning, when the roles had been reversed and she'd become jealous of every passing girl who looked him up and down with dark lashes lowered cattily…

Had she lost her passion when deciding to put a stop their fruitless game? Had she lost her purpose, when he'd finally accepted to belong so completely to her? So one must place their purpose in another being in order to feel like they were advancing somehow… was that really the way of things? There was really nothing, at the end of the race; it's in the effort that almost succeeds in tearing out your heart that your mind finds its solace, its comfort. It's in the wild poundings of your heart and the spiraling anxiety over something you know is just out of your reach that you feel the most alive.

That… the feeling of being alive, eh?

Her own heart seemed to beat feebly, stickily, like a blood-drenched sponge struggling to unstick itself with each pulsation. Her breath came in treacherously calm inhalations.

The wind whistled a hollow tune in the urn's empty bowels.

She wondered briefly, numbly, why he hadn't wanted a proper tombstone; surely he was enough of a romantic to want people making love on his grave, in the deep blue neon lights of the slum graveyard. But perhaps… she allowed herself the thought, like a delicious needle to the heart; perhaps he had wanted the howling wind to mingle him with nature, as barren and desolate as it was, outside the gates of Midgar. Perhaps he had wanted himself to be ultimately mingled with what, he knew, she called her essence…

What now? was the message that her eyelashes traced over her cheekbones with a salty, transparent ink, the urn hanging from her hand, black pot hardly big enough to contain even a millionth of what Zack had represented. She had despised the love that she'd borne for him. She had despised the love that he'd borne for her. And yet, now, at the end of all things… was she glad to have this strange, lonely freedom? Was she glad?

The ash was spiraling in the wind.

Her fingers relaxed their hold.

It's about time to ask… what choices have you left yourself?

a&n: This was personal at the start... I sort of traced Aeris over it, so sorry for any OOCness on her part. As always, reviews are appreciated/returned. :) Thanks for reading!