Author's Note: I am not very happy with this one and I can't pinpoint exactly why but something just bugs me. I wrote and re-wrote and edited and got rid of the edits and put in totally different edits and wrote many more parts and edited and edited and edited and still it bothers me although it bothers me the least at this point as compared to how much it bothered me during any stages of that previously mentioned messed up process. But I'll let you be the judge of that.

For me, the entire season of autumn is like a beautiful disaster waiting to unravel. It's just so hauntingly striking (at least what I see on TV is because in my authentic CANADIAN city, we often get snow by mid-October) with all its pretty colours amidst the naked "dying" trees and the colourful umbrellas on a bland rainy downtown street… Sometimes I wish I lived in my TV. Anyway, that's what inspired me. The way I wrote this one, which seems to be the most drabbl-ish (that sounds funny) I've written yet, was inspired by reading way to many stunning one-shots on that make me kind of want to crawl under my bed and never write again. :D

In other news, I had first fallen into one big rut somewhere in February/March and then I had writer's block and so weeks slowly became months for me… :\ But I'm still alive and kicking and I will finish this even if it kills me!

And oh, it just may.

PS: Thank you so much to everyone who has so far reviewed, added this as a favourite and put me and all my glory on alerts. You guys are wonderful and super duper encouraging and just plain awesome.

Okay, now I am done. :D

October

(how many days, no…months, no…years has it been?)

Lately, everything has been enveloped in a grotesque shade of green.

A colour that had once symbolized life had long ago become associated with pain and suffering and insanity. He was tired of the green; he breathed it, heard it and felt it in every last inch of his body. All he wanted to do was to see and feel and hear and taste another colour. Any other colour would do, although, he thought sluggishly, for some reason, pink seemed most preferable.

Time passed in unknown units. Seconds and weeks and months all intermixed with each other to become one long period of torture. But with every passing moment (or minute or hour or even day, perhaps), he felt less. He knew less. He cared less.

He cracked an eye open and looked and saw.

Green yet again.

It wasn't at all worth the difficulty of getting his brain to comply and perform the action (opening an eye required muscles that he could barely use and energy that he didn't have and willpower that he really didn't want anymore). Everything still looked the same, he was still practically immobile, and the sickening consistency of his now every-day existence still caused his thoughts to blur together, creating a chaotic mass of memories that because messed up with imagination.

Names floated in and out of his consciousness, bringing along emotions and recollections that Zack hoped were real.

Angeal…Genesis…Sephiroth…Tifa…Cloud…

sadness…insanity…pain…hate…suffering…

Aerith… pink.

Pink? But there was so much green…

It didn't make sense but not many things really did anymore. And somehow, thinking about anything that didn't make sense was more difficult than enduring the physical pain and the emptiness and the never-ending green all put together. So, closing his eyes once more for a restless state that somewhere (most likely in a world more messed up than that one) may have been identified as a form of sleep, he did the only thing he could still do with his own ruined self.

Damaged beyond repair, in one the most horrifying and disturbing ways possible, Zack lived.

Aerith had never imagined that it would feel so good to cry.

Some days she could hold up for longer and wait until her nightly prayers to anyone who could be bothered to listen for the tears to come streaking down her face. Those days were better than others. And yet some days she broke apart at the seams before getting out of bed in the morning.

There were no more days when she didn't cry.

Everything felt fake, stupid, and pointless. The flowers meant nothing without him beside her (and for a while, she had desperately wanted to rid herself of these living reminders of what once was). The voices were hopeless when they didn't lead him to her (in anger with their uselessness, she began practicing shutting them out; she'd been getting better). The colours slowly drained away along with her happiness (and with good riddance). She was all alone. She was broken.

He could fix her.

He hadn't come back.

She wrote to him. She prayed. She hoped.

Nothing.

All she ever got were hand cramps, tear-smudged letters, and depressing waves of loneliness.

All she ever wanted was Zack.

Her latest distraction was inching her flower wagon closer and closer to the towering city wall every day that she went up to sell flowers. Aerith didn't know what it was exactly that she planned to achieve with that, though. The voices haven't managed, for one reason or the other, to offer much advice on the subject. All she knew was that her feet and some untouched corner of her mind seemed to lead the way. So toward the wall she moved.

Maybe, she realized one day, she had a secret plan, unknown even to herself at the time, of somehow escaping, somehow fleeing and leaving everything behind in her wake. Maybe she could just run away to a desert somewhere, starve out and die (for that was what she heard people who ran away to deserts did). It might be lonely (since everyone who has previously ran away to the desert were dead) and torturous (since, she thought, slow death by starvation had to hurt at least a little) but that fate sounded better than the one she was living (maybe by just a little bit).

And yet, she could never go. She could not yet bring herself to leave Elmyra behind, with or without a proper goodbye. Common sense also told her that she could never go out into the unknown world without any pre-existing knowledge about it and her heart pitched in that she could never manage to run away without Zack.

He promised he would take her far, far away.

He promised he would come back.

He never came but she was still waiting.

Maybe, she also thought, she wanted proof that behind the walls, the world of blue skies and greenery and freedom existed. If she could only glimpse that what Zack talked about and promised her was real, maybe she would be okay.

If it would only prove to her that Zack himself was real and not just a figment of her now shattered, sad imagination, and that he was somewhere out there in the vast world of wonderfulness, maybe she would be okay.

Yeah, right.

Each day brought upon new wounds, unseen to the human eye but more painful than any cut, scrape, or bruise that Aerith could imagine. They brought along no crimson blood; she bled through her seemingly endless supply of tears that she only ever cried in solitude, on the ancient floors of her church where the voices of the planet screamed and threatened to overwhelm her and the ruined beauty of the architecture was far too easily sympathized with and the Turks could always take her as easy prey and the happy memories (for that was all that they would ever be) mockingly haunted her.

Her only haven.

So in solitude and sadness, she did the only thing that she could still do with her own ruined self.

Aerith lived.

And they lived happily ever after.

Unfortunately, "happily" had a different meaning in their dictionary and "The End." was nowhere in sight.

(liar, liar…she knew his absence in seconds)