For The Dead
Disclaimer: Not. Mine.
A/N: Wrote too much this past weekend. Hope you like it.
It's been said funerals are for the living, the last chance to really see and touch. To fully realize someone is dead and truly not coming back.
To let go.
Letting go of certain important things is incredibly difficult. Some things easily slip through one's fingers. Happiness is but fleeting, there one moment and gone the next. Anger and hate won't leave.
But sometimes holding on is even harder. Letting go is the easy road in comparison. If one holds nothing then one has nothing to lose, nothing to worry over, nothing to fear, or care for.
In Marlene's eyes letting go was easy. She'd seen it done many times, done it many times herself. Moving on, getting distracted, forgetting, that was simple. Life was about change after all, about movement. Getting swept up in life's flow wasn't hard.
Yet Marlene watched as AVALANCHE refused to let go.
She saw Cloud Strife refuse to forget anything, stubbornly remembering Sephiroth as he had been as well as the madman he had become, never forgetting Aeris or Zack, or his mother and the village of Nibelheim. It seemed to her as if their wishes and lessons drove him more than anything he himself wanted.
Watched Tifa Lockheart refuse to let go of a boy who had made her a promise, even if that boy had died in a reactor years ago. He had wanted to be a hero and no matter what he would be hers.
She observed Yuffie Kisaragi live for her fallen mother, for the faded glory of her fallen country and its many dead warriors. For the long dead pride of her father.
Her own father living for the memory of North Coral as it had been, for his wife and his best friend. For the quiet, uneventful life he would never lead.
Reeve and Cait Sith hanging on to what ShinRa and Midgar should have been. Trying to heal all the wounds caused by its negligence.
Vincent Valentine desperately holding the scraps of his love Lucrecia and his 'failure'. Living to atone for what he perceived as a mortal sin.
Watched as Cid Highwind lived for the merciless sky and the space program that would never start again.
Marlene would look on as Nanaki lived for his tribe, his ancestors, his brave father. For his dead.
And as she watched Marlene pondered. Why were the quick not living for joy, hope, for the children they would raise, and the life they would lead? Why did she herself do things to make a deceased flower girl proud?
The dead didn't care did they? Weren't all those honors and ceremonies bestowed on the dead really for the living?
Yet her watching had told her many things, not least that maybe the living had let go. Maybe they had seen too much horror and too much indifference. Had become too disillusioned with the 'good of mankind' and 'innocence' to really care anymore.
And maybe….maybe they couldn't live for a world that wasn't really saved, didn't want to be told it needed saving even after they had sacrificed so much. Didn't want to see the mistakes of the past repeated but somehow knew they would.
Maybe they lived for those too pure to stay long in this world, for those whose hope managed to shine even from beyond the grave. The ones this world killed for their generosity.
The little girl with pigtails decided that maybe all the things done weren't really for the living, but the quick were living for the dead.
What a strange world it was where those gone suddenly mattered far more than those still here.
The End.
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