I won't be gone yet.

Not even while this sea of mako green beckons me deeper into its depths with its lure of false promises (something like Promised lands and peace..). I struggle against the tendrils wrapping themselves around a pale body that used to be mine. She's everything unfamiliar and yet Her call to me, her last daughter, is too familiar that I find myself succumbing to this eternity that reminds me too much of my eyes and his eyes, always the eyes that throws me back to that stormy blue a woman-child (was that me?) drowned in a long time ago.

I won't disappear just yet, not even when your calloused hands slip from my back and the bitter drops of your regret fall on my face, past my parted lips where they scorch my throat far more than any fire can manage.

'Are you crying for me? Always the gentleman, aren't you, Cloud?' Or was it Zack..?

No, not Zack, never him. You fell from the sky, through the church's roof and into my lonely heart just like he did a million heartbeats ago but you were not he and he will never be you. He came with his white horse just like the knight in that play of summer night that was more of a metaphor than anything else. You, you were the reluctant hero but you were my hero and he was never in those eyes that simmered with those unspoken promises – I thought I could see your true glimmer if I looked hard enough.

'I want to meet you.'

In that warm summer night I murmured those words hoping that you might understand that you were not he, that I knew You back when I was that flowergirl who sold my soul to you for that one-gil-poppy that lay beneath His boot at Midgar, knew you as the drowning Ophelia at the back of your mind. You were my boy-soldier (but you were never a boy, were you?) and I wouldn't want you any other way. I never knew that a gondola can be so spacious.

I could feel it still, the hot fire branding my torso as He had once branded you with the strings of passion. Hatred, passion, weren't they all the same? The metallic taste has long left my tongue but never the memory of those sapphires that would be the last to see after that angel pronounced His glory in our pain.

I smiled then, for the puppet whose strings were cut and would freely fight for his memory of black and brown hair. I smiled through the cruelty and irony; this was the one promise I failed to keep.

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

But you'll be the one to come to me.

The emerald strands twist around me and dilute the pink, the color I loved so much. I knew you loved it too, in that ribbon tied on your arm I once held on in life…but it's not my face (or maybe it was. My memories are mixing with the Lifestream but I must not..).

I laugh at the irony of red strings and destiny for there can never be two other people who were more destined to be together than us but whose lives have shattered spectacularly to pieces – all in the name of the Planet. Just before this darkness claims me, my mind fills with thought of twinkling lights, Gondola rides, quiet evening conversations, knights and princesses, broken roofs, one-gil-poppies, blonde and brunette children, and all the things that might have been, could have been but never will be.

I find that I'm awake.

Memories are part of my life more than anybody else's, with the Planet constantly pushing generations' memories in my mind. Soon, my own thoughts lose their own flavor and the sharp burst of colors they had once had.

But some memories simply refuse to die, just like our photograph taken on that first and last night of our lives. The memory of that forget-me-not blue, just like that photograph that captured our forever in a moment, will remain seared in my heart even as the Lifestream pulls me deeper into Her cool embrace.

I must not drown.