Disclaimer: If I actually made money from my fanfiction, then I would have money. As I do not… well, you get the picture.
A/N: C is the first letter in my brother's name. Yup. NO HIS NAME IS NOT CLOUD. But that is the name of this chapter.
Strangely enough, it does not involve Cloud Strife very much.
Short chapter is short.
C is for Clouds
"Hey, you know why else you should see the sky someday?" Zack asked offhandedly, the conversation somehow turning back to Aerith's fear of the sky.
"Why is that?" Aerith asked. Zack was laying on his stomach in the aisle of the church, watching her as she gardened. She was watching him too – making sure he wasn't looking too close. In actuality, she had little to worry about; Zack tended to stare off into space rather than at any part of her anatomy. But deep down inside, she knew that when he was staring off into space, he was thinking about her.
"Clouds," Zack replied.
Aerith shot him a confused look, her mind instantly flooded with a blonde cadet that Zack had taken a particular liking to. She would call them 'best friends' if that wasn't already what she called Zack and herself. Although, perhaps Zack and herself were something else entirely.
"Not like Cloud," Zack laughed, sensing her confusion. "They're big, fluffy, white things that float around in the sky. But sometimes they're black or gray and they make it rain. And snow!" Zack continued on in his description, rambling about the different shapes that clouds could form themselves into and how people watched them and talked about what they looked like.
Aerith giggled lightly and Zack paused in is explanation. "They sound weird," she said cheerfully.
Zack just grinned at her. "Yeah, you would think so, wouldn't you?"
Aerith tilted her head to the side. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, returning to her flowers. Zack thought for a moment, trying to find meaning in his own words, which had been said so offhandedly that he was not sure what they really meant.
"It was just something… I expected from you. Sometimes you think normal things are weird, but it's just because you're you, Aerith. And I guess by now I'm used to it," he explained, sitting up and crossing his legs.
"Okay… well, when you take me to see the sky, you have to show me some of these clouds," Aerith said.
"I will," Zack said, continuing to more firmly glue his eyes to hers. She wanted to glance back down at her flowers, anything to break that gaze, but Zack's stare was more powerful than anything she'd ever imagined. If she felt like the sky was sucking her in, then his eyes were a thousand times more powerful. But she didn't mind. In fact, at the back of her mind, she discovered she rather liked the feeling. "I promise."
