2/25 – A Strange Attraction
"I don't understand what's wrong with him."
The obvious lie blew past me with the strength of a tsunami. I stared at the tall, dark-haired man who leaned against the wall to the inn with the bridge of his nose pinched between his fingers. At the least, he looked stressed. But that word was simply a understatement.
"Are you sure he's okay?" I asked, kicking the toe of my boot into the mud.
It was raining hard – something that hardly ever happened at this time of year – flooding the pothole-filled streets of Nibelheim with water and saturating everything down to the very core. My hair was sopping wet, sticking to my ivory skin and tangling itself with the tassels of my clothing. Absentmindedly, I brushed a few strands away from my eyes.
Zack didn't look like he was taking any wear from the rain at all. Yeah, his clothing was wet too – his sweater sticking to his chest and clearly defining the chiselled ridges of his physique – but his hair still stuck up in harsh spikes that seemed to jut straight up from his forehead. The man's sword, big as it was, seemed to be missing. Maybe, he just didn't want it to get wet.
Odd, as it was just a sword.
"Did you just put "Sephiroth" and "okay" in the same sentence?" He asked mildly, but the words still had a tone of incredulous nature to it.
Suddenly, I felt very childish. He seemed infinitely older and smarter than me; and I hated having that feeling. Awkwardly, I spun on my heel and looked up at the dark sky, covered by clouds. A dull green glow managed to breach the sheet of haze, but just barely.
Even though the clouds had been there the day before when we hiked up to the reactor, at such a height, the sky had been clear – we'd literally been standing above the weather itself, not boxed in by it, the open sky above us, the lifestream flowing over us. For a moment, I wished that we were there again, waiting, gazing up at the very essence of the planet.
Then, I remembered how things had gone once the others had come out of the reactor, and I wished we'd never trekked up there to begin with; once we'd returned to the town, Sephiroth had stormed off towards the Shinra mansion and hadn't been seen since.
What the hell was he doing in there?
I heard Zack shift behind me, the soles of his boots grinding against the small outcrop of asphalt on which we stood. He sighed. The sound was deep, quiet, but it held a extreme tension; a tension that reminded me of someone I used to know.
"I've always wondered," I heard myself say, and then I stopped. My breath whistled through my teeth, and I hugged myself in my own sudden uncertainty.
"What?" The man behind me asked. His voice was calm, but his eyes were hard – blank, emotionless. I turned around and stared at him for a long moment, speculating over my own words.
"I've always wondered why. Just why. When people die, they return to the lifestream, but after that, what do they feel? Do they just join the flow of souls and forget everything, or are they just completely oblivious to everything else except life as a whole?"
My words saturated the silence that followed. I took a deep breath, shook my head.
"If the planet gave us life, gave us all this-" I held my arms out, gestured all around me as if to include the whole world in my theoretical circle "-why would it make us give it all up? Why would we forget?"
I stopped there, my voice quivered on the last word... and I clenched my jaw. Forget. I hated that word with a passion. Did it even matter what we did in life if we all lost it in the end? All we worked for, all we loved, all the people we loved, gone, just like that? If my mother forgot me when she died, then did it matter that I was her daughter?
Or, maybe forgetting is a thing that happens when we're alive. I mean, Cloud forgot me when he left for the Shinra academy, didn't he?
"Sometimes, I think it's better that people forget. Maybe, it's what they want." Zack said, his words cutting through my internal commentary.
Tears of anger pooled behind my eyelids. I wiped them away, my lips set with a stubborn shape to them. I won't cry in front of him, I won't. Instead I kicked my toe into the concrete and stepped forward, out into the rain, let it fall onto me and run across the surface of my skin on it's own accord.
"Why would it be better? What kind of a person would you be if you just wanted to forget everything, even those that you loved?"
My voice didn't betray me this time, but my words came out sounding like I was a scorned child. I bit my lip, certain that he must have thought bad of me for being like this. Everything was quiet, except for the rain and the dripping of the eaves. Then, there were footsteps behind me, a warm hand on my shoulder.
"It doesn't really make them bad people, it just means that they've been through a lot of bad things." Zack told me, his voice holding a odd timbre that startled me for a moment. "Maybe, they don't forget. Maybe the memories they had from life just grow fainter, so that they can enjoy what's up in the lifestream instead of feeling bad over the past?"
I didn't answer, I was too distracted by his hand on me. He let it drop, then began to pace slowly back and forth under the eaves of the inn. "Who knows, right? It's not like anyone has gone to the lifestream and come back to tell about it."
"Yeah," I said, feeling a bit better but not willing to say much more. I could feel him staring into my back, but I could also hear him pacing behind me.
Zack sighed deeply – another one of those heart-wrenching sounds – and turned to me. His boots scraped across the concrete as we walked towards me. His large hand on my arm was warm, but I automatically tensed when he touched me.
"Don't worry about it, okay?" He said.
At first I thought that he was trying to tell me not to worry about our conversation, or what happened in the lifestream. I was about to voice a hurried argument when I realized that to offend me wasn't his intention. He was talking about Sephiroth.
I turned on the heels of my boots, and looked at Zack. He was standing near the edge of the concrete, both arms folded across his broad chest, staring up the hill at the Shinra mansion. I looked up to what he was watching.
There was a silhouette in the window, a man leaning over a book. The figure shook it's head – long hair whipping around – and then strode from view. The light went out.
Both of us silently watched the window for a few moments. I looked at him, he looked at me. I'd known that Soldier had enhanced eyes, but I hadn't expected this. Zack's eyes pinned me to the spot, their azure glow – spreading from a vibrant green around the centre to a striking violet around the outer rim – seemingly unchanged by the dim light of late evening.
If anything, his eyes were more brilliant than they were at mid-day.
I was sucked into the depths of the swirling orbs, my mind suddenly blank; fixated by what I was seeing. I leaned, the heels of my boots suddenly lighter on the ground. My eyes wandered, seeing his dark lashes, the straight length of his nose... his lips, where they curved sensually; teasing anyone who dared look.
What would it feel like to kiss him?
Like a elastic stretched too tight, I snapped back to reality. Standing on my toes, my whole body weight shifted forward – like metal drawn to a magnet – my face was only about a foot away from his. I stepped back at the sudden change in distance, blinking at the awkward moment.
Zack's lips were parted, a hint of a smile teasing the corners, and a strange kind of amusement coloured his gaze. I was almost sucked in again, but then I realized that he was enjoying how distracted he'd made me.
"Hey!" I cried out, slamming the palm of my hand into his arm to break the sudden tension.
He only laughed. Suddenly, I was wondering where my anger had gone. It seemed like it had dissolved in the sudden attraction that had sprung up between us. Then again, maybe it wasn't anger to begin with. All I knew was that – in this very moment – I wasn't angry. Not at my mother, not at the planet, and most definitely not at Zack.
"I-" We both said at the same time.
There was a long pause where we stared at each other – all the while I struggled not to get sucked into the vortex of his irises.
"You go," I said, feeling a bit of a heat rise up in my cheeks. To hide my blush, I turned towards the inn, a bit of a smile on my face. Zack shook his head.
"Nah, you go."
I shook my head. Again, there was a long silence. Scuffing my boots against the asphalt, the Soldier's eyes burned holes into my back. We stayed like that for a long time, before I heard another set of footwear on the ground.
The Shinra guard that had survived the trip to the reactor came up to Zack, tapped on his back and gestured back towards the direction of the general store – he didn't look at me, didn't say a word. Just pointed. I received a quick wave from Zack, a strained smile.
Then he was gone. I stared at the ground for a moment, seeing my feet were they turned inwards on themselves in my boots. Then, I looked up at the sky. The dull green glow that had permeated the air was gone, instead replaced by a full-on view of the lifestream... the clouds parted, long tendrils of life flowing over them and wrapping around themselves in a never-ending dance.
"Thank you," I whispered under my breath. "that's all I wanted to say."
A/N: Sorry for the long wait. ^^" This one story (although it's much less... likable than the one before it) was driving me mad. So I took a break, and then came back and finished it two days later. Review? :) I see the hits you guys...