A/N: There are so many stories written from different viewpoints on this particular event, but I thought I'd chip in with my own account, just to flex my writing muscles. Aeris's POV. My shortest work to date.

Disclaimer: I own the discs, not the game or it's characters :(

Breaking, Broken, Gone

… Sorry.

That's what she's thinking when her world implodes.

He's staring at her and she's staring back and it's peaceful and this, this is eternity and forever.

One second she has a lifetime to live and learn and love.

And the next, there is no more.

It's strangely quiet and the silence hurts or maybe it's the sword, but she feels oddly disconnected and it's hard to believe that the pool of crimson she's drowning in is her own, and why do they look so stricken?

Oh right, she's dying…

Don't let it hurt.

Only she's not talking to him with the sword and sinister smile and the lust for death, she's talking to the guy with the spiked hair and fragile heart that's already cracked and breaking and though the sword misses her heart it slices open his and interestingly enough, it's not hers that's bleeding all over the floor.

She wants to hold his hand and make it better but she can't, she can't, he's so far away and though her fingers stretch out briefly but she can't do much else, and she hopes and prays he'll see her fingers and read her face and know that she wants him to be okay more than anything, because she'd never forgive herself if he's not.

Too bad that she's gasping for air, she can't breathe, and the laughter bubbling up in somebody else's throat matches the blood bubbling up in hers. She wants to cough, to clear it out so she can speak and tell him that he'd be fine, she'd always be there for him, death wasn't a problem. But her throat isn't cooperating and it's not letting her take in oxygen or let out words, it's clamped shut in an iron vice of decaying thoughts and broken dreams and her eyes burn with the tears and frustration, her watery vision blurring scarlet with image until everything becomes a gooey mess of rusty blood-colored likeness.

It's not like I didn't feel him coming.

One second, she could feel the rush of air, and the next she could feel his sword breaking the creamy white skin of her back like a chainsaw through tissue paper, and the sword coming out of her front somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach, painted deepest red with the stains of innocent life.

And now that she only has a second to mouth them she has a million things she needs to say, and now she will never find out why they are so similar, she'll never hug or see her mother again, she'll never be able to tell them about the Materia in her braid, she'll never tell the girl with the raven-colored hair that if she loves someone, she should say it now because you never know when someone might not be there tomorrow.

She has so many things she wants to tell the group but she never will and this is her curse, oblivion by death.

And then she hears a strangled cry and arms that catch her as she slumps forward, vision clouding as he envelopes her protectively, a last-ditch try for a moment of comfort before facing an eternity of nighttime.

She hears the voices and she can feel herself being squeezed ever more tightly, held on to like a drowning man to a life preserver when funnily enough she was the one who was dying.

And in a second, her life has been broken.

Then, I'll be going now--

And in a second, she'll be gone, gone, gone…

--I'll come back when it's all over.

And then she's fading, fading far too fast…

A/N: The last two lines in italics are from Aeris's conversation with Cloud in his dreams after he collapses after giving Sephiroth the Black Materia, just in case you didn't remember.

I suggest you read Defining Aerith's story "at the end of the world" for a great account of this event from Cloud's POV, or Summoner Luna's "Like A Star" for a great account from Tifa's POV.

Thank you for reading :)