One Million Wishes
~Summer~
The summer following Aeris's eighteenth birthday, she graduated from Nibelheim Junior & Senior High School and followed through on her plans to attend college in Midgar to pursue her dreams of becoming a horticulturist. And, in order to be closer to Tseng.
"I'll be able to see him more frequently," she confided with a smile, and he could tell by the faraway look in her eyes that she was already someplace else. The stifling heat of Nibelheim's midday had cooled slightly and above their heads, the stars lit up the evening sky like fireworks, the brightest it had been all year long, but the magnificence of the stars was wasted on her.
He couldn't blame her.
She was a vision sitting beside him on his rooftop, lost in her own thoughts, oblivious to the most astounding display of nature above her and the eyes observing her with all the adoration the world had to offer.
Watching her, his heart ached. The beauty of the night was no match for hers. Her long, silky brown hair gleamed in the darkness with a light of its own, the brightest stars pale next to her eyes. Her cheeks were slightly flushed from their afternoon spent at the lake, providing a perfect complement to the pink bikini she still had on and adding to her appeal. She had her knees pulled to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, as comfortable and relaxed with him in her two-piece swimsuit as he was in his board shorts with her.
She'd become more withdrawn in recent months, quieter, as her high school days were coming to a close and he'd figured she had a lot on her mind and was contemplating her future, but he hadn't guessed at the bigger picture and what it entailed. Or who, precisely.
Although it had never been confirmed, it was widely speculated that Tseng had been recruited as an undercover operative by a private corporation upon his own graduation the previous year. If there were any truth to the rumors, the job clearly didn't last long as Aeris told him Tseng was working for the Investigations Sector branch of Shinra Inc. only a few months later. While with the department, he found firearms suited him more than swords and proving himself to be an exceptional student who exceeded all expectations, quickly obtained the rank of TURK, a position that took most people years of experience and education to achieve. His fast climb came as no surprise to anyone who had attended Nibelheim Junior & Senior High School with him. His job took him all over the world, but Midgar was the biggest city and the capital of the country, and was therefore the base of Shinra Inc.'s operations and where he was currently stationed.
"It'll be a big change," she mused on that hot afternoon, waiting for her train to Midgar with him beside her on the bench to see her off. As excited as she was, she still had her moments of anxiety, although they were few and far between. "Things will be different. But I hope I'll be able to make it."
"You will," he said confidently. "You're strong. You have nothing to worry about."
"Of course you'd say that." She wrinkled her pert nose. "You believe I can do anything."
"It's the truth."
It was true. Aside from her beauty, she was intelligent, courageous and kind, all qualities that would take her far, whatever she chose to do. The transition from high school to college and being out on her own would be challenging but he had no doubt she would succeed. She was that rare flower that could bloom anywhere, even in the harshest conditions, like the snowdrop he'd given her one wintry night years ago.
Reaching up, she slipped her arms around his neck and squeezed him gently. "I love you, Cloud," she whispered, her warm breath stirring the hair behind his ear as she let out a heartfelt sigh. She never meant the words the way he wanted, but it was something.
She pulled back and gave him a grateful smile, but he had the distinct impression that her thoughts were elsewhere again.
He studied her face, trying to commit every feature to memory because he knew that the next time he saw her, she would no longer be the same girl sitting next to him now. Midgar would change her. Life would change her.
"Cloud," she said, her voice quiet. "You will come and visit me, right?"
Would you care if I didn't? he found himself wondering. Would you even notice?
As if she was reading his thoughts, Aeris's smile wobbled a bit and the look on her face turned wistful. He finally had her full attention.
"You're my best friend, Cloud. Sometimes, I think you're my only real friend."
The statement confounded him, the loneliness in her voice even more so. She drew people to her like a flower attracted bees and always had a fawning audience flanking both her sides at school. He knew she considered him her friend, but on her part, she also had to know how he really felt about her. He had never made a secret of it and her friends teased him about it often enough although she usually brushed it off with a laugh.
"It means more to me than you know," she said softly.
The words gave him hope, in spite of everything. The look in her eyes reinforced it.
"As you wish," he murmured.
She smiled with relief, but her green eyes were serious. "There's something I need to tell you."
And her next sentence killed that hope more effectively than a knife to his heart, forever.
Years of crushing defeat and heartbreak probably should have made it easier but it didn't. Not in the least bit.
It was the first time since the day they had met in his front yard as children that his verbal response to any simple "yes" or "no" question she asked of him was something other than his customary answer.
"Be happy, Aeris," he whispered hoarsely instead, as he had wished for her that snowy night on the roof of his house long ago, and picking himself up from the bench, or what remained of his shattered self and ego anyway, he did something he had never thought he would do, not if he'd lived a million years.
He turned his back on her and walked away.
He walked out of her life.
The sound of his name followed him in the noisy hubbub of the crowded station but for the first time in his life, he ignored her call.
Much later, when he saw her name and heard her voice on his cell phone, he erased the voicemail without listening to the entire message and then went and got himself a new phone and number.
But the glittering diamond on her left hand was an image in his mind that he could not leave behind with her on the train's platform, a nightmare that haunted him, even when he was awake.
That day was only to be the start of a series of many firsts for him.
The day after she left Nibelheim, he dropped out of school and left home to enlist in SOLDIER. His mother's tearful protests and her mother's pleas fell on deaf ears as he packed his bag with a resolve he had never known existed within him.
"Aeris doesn't know." Mrs. Gainsborough wrung her hands. "She still doesn't understand. She hasn't realized her own feelings. Don't punish yourself for my daughter's foolishness."
"How did it go so terribly wrong?" His mother asked, of no one in particular, a dazed look on her face where she sat on his bed. "This can't be happening."
But it was happening. They had all been wrong. He had been wrong. So completely and utterly wrong.
The only one who had been a fool had been him.
Even so, his only regret was that he had disappointed his mother.
"Let me make this clear." Angry tears glistened in her eyes as she watched him walk out of the room. "You will never be a disappointment to me."
It was time to lay to rest feelings that had never been returned. It was time to let the flames he'd nurtured and kept alive for so long die.
Or else he would.
It was time to live for himself.
As extreme as it seemed, he knew he had to make a clean break and cut all ties with the girl he had loved since childhood if he was to save himself. And somewhere, somehow, he found the strength and the will to do so.
The years that followed was a period of his life that taught him some of the most painful lessons he would ever have to go through—lessons about losing love and how hard it was to get over it and move on. And even though he would eventually learn to live without her, he also learned that some heartaches never fully went away and time didn't necessarily heal all wounds.
