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10. You'll Never Be Alone – Anastasia
Cloud looked across at Aerith and frowned. He frowned a lot, but this one had a different slant to it. "Are you … all right?" he asked, as if unsure how to phrase that kind of question.
Aerith nodded dumbly. She played with the cup in her hands, twisting it around and around. The liquid inside stayed stationary, like the eye of a storm. Breakfast was campfire coffee. She usually hated coffee.
"You seemed distracted."
She smiled at him and took a sip, more to cover her mouth than because she was thirsty.
Usually Cloud would have left it at that. He wasn't heartless, but feelings didn't come easily to him; talking about them even less so. This morning was different. He squinted suspiciously at her. "Did you … sleep okay?"
She shrugged again.
"Are you … do you feel sick?"
She shook her head.
He stared so hard she thought her hair might set on fire. "Something is wrong," he said at last. "Tell me what it is." No asking this time, just an order. Cloud needed something he could fix. He was a doer; staying still grated on him. If he stayed still too long, his mind started to play tricks on him. He had told her that once, in a quiet moment when it had been just the two of them. She had taken his hand and told him to let it play its tricks, but he had pulled away with a grimace and she'd known he wouldn't. Maybe Tifa would have given different – better – advice. She knew Cloud better than Aerith did, after all.
"I'm fine," she replied, taking another sip.
His frown turned into a scowl. She couldn't help that. He didn't remember – not yet. She couldn't tell him the dream she'd had last night, about a man with black hair and a smirk that made her knees turn to water; the man who had owned Cloud's sword previously and died getting him to Midgar. Cloud had to come to those important realisations on his own. Until then, no matter how much he badgered, she would keep her dreams, her memories and her secret grief to herself.
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