[Number 5/50 of the 50Shuffle Challenge! This one is short, because I wrote one big one then decided to split it into two – it's not REALLY cheating… *shifty look* :D So this title is from Alias by In Flames, yaay ^__^]
They don't really understand; I can see it in their eyes. The only one who could ever know my pain, understand my anguish is you – but you're the reason for all this.
You're the reason I'm stuck in time here, transfixed by grief like the blade through my chest that day, all those years ago. The scar's still there, faded by the unnatural experiments they did on us in those nightmare years; yet no matter how much the outside scars fade, the internal ones remain.
And to think, I didn't even know who you were until a mere few weeks ago.
Cloud Strife, ex-SOLDIER First Class – that was me. That was who I'd been all my life, since I left home and was accepted into the ShinRa elite to fight their battles for them - until, out of the kindness of my heart, I decide to leave them and fight for this renegade group. Yes, that was me – though somewhere in my traitorous mind I must have known it truly was not. I barely spoke because I didn't know what to say, didn't know what my personality would have me do, because I wasn't meant to be there.
I wasn't meant to be alive at all.
But then, embraced by the Lifestream, I found the truth. I had to stand by and watch those events of five years ago unfold again, before my helpless eyes – I had to watch us arrive in Nibelheim, oblivious to what horrors we would see; I had to stand by and see the fall of Gaia's greatest hero once more – though I cannot blame him; I know what it is to be driven insane by a past love – I had to watch you fight him, knowing what was in store when they dragged us away.
I'm so sorry, Zack.
In that moment, as all my memories flooded back, threatening to split my skull apart, I remembered you at last. I remembered all the stolen moments, your laughter, your smile – your kisses. The bliss we lived in back then came back to overwhelm me, tainted sweetness blurring my sight, tearing the same cry of agony from my throat as when – when –
When you sacrificed your beautiful life for my undeserving existence.
And isn't it so sickeningly, perfectly ironic – you died, unmarked, unnamed, and I became the hero. The world's saviour, defeater of the Nightmare of the Planet, that's what the people of Gaia see me as, what the ones who carried me here think of me – while the real hero is you.
You deserved it so much more, my restless beauty.