"It's like a ripple on the water," Aerith says, leaning forward, the intentness of her gaze at odds with the way she carelessly sketches a hand through the air. "Warped, distorted, but then it smooths out and you forget it was ever like that at all, accepting it for what it is until it happens again."
Tifa laughs to mask her unease. "I have no clue what you're going on about."
"You do," Aerith argues, so quick, so certain. She envies it and hates it all at the same time. What would it be like, she wonders, to be so certain? To not question and doubt yourself at every turn?
"I don't," she says. She wishes she could stop; that it could all stop. She's so tired of wondering. "Sorry."
"He's not Cloud," Aerith says, tact and gentleness spent, her matter-of-factness like a knife to the ribs, "not really."
Tifa smiles but it's a farce, on the verge of trembling at the edges.
She says, "Who else would he be?"