"...tendencies."
4: Dead Ophelia Walking.
How should I your true love
know you
from another?
Say you? Nay you. Pray you...
mark.
Fingers. That's what the seaweed was- long and stringy and waving in the soft fluid motions of the lake. Slim, slippery green fingers. They clung to her skin, her limbs, her face, her hair. Fingers. Waving.
And now they were waving goodbye.
Aeris felt the flesh spread across her tired bones, the skin tightening intact and silky smooth and there. She felt her fishbitten features seal over in angelic everlasting beauty, felt her moss-encrusted hair smooth over, auburn locks now sleek and clean. She felt her fingers open from clenched fists to point upwards, grasping at the air so far away from her soggy lake bed. She felt her fingertips first touch cool, dry atmosphere, and then, she felt her ankles unbend, feet tiptoeing as as as as
as...
Aeris rose from her teary grave, her glistening head pointed towards the sun, her mouth half-open, thirsting for long sought air, her eyelids, dripping with soft dewy drops, opening suddenly in a full bodied gasp.
And Cloud melted. She, a fragile, porcelain, perfect figure, emerging from the lake clad in nothing but her own flawless skin and the shroud of her long hair undone from the braid in which it previously inhabited, she trailed a shimmering stream of water and Cloud melted into it. Her eyes, first seaweed green, glossed over by the fog of ancient years, blinked, and cleared, and then turned and focused on her hero, her knight. They saw him, shivering, trembling, exhausted, his once shining armor caked in mud and years of waiting, and they filled with tears.
"You...came back for me." she whispered, glossy lips still unused to moving, voice seeming foreign to her own ears.
Cloud nodded dumbly.
"I...waited," she said quietly. "I waited for so long and you came back for me, "she said, dazed. Cloud reached one tentative hand out to brush her cheek, her nose, her lips, her chin. There she was, standing before him, as he had dreamed for so long, except now she was real.
"I waited..." she said one last time, then passed out, falling into his waiting arms.
______________________________________________
Vincent, hiding behind his waterfall, fumbled through the trunk he kept under his bed. Every meager possession the man owned was stored in that one wooden case, and he rarely opened it. When he cracked open the lid, the reality of ghosts past wafted out and spoke to him. Today, it was important. Claw and hand alike pawed through the books, the materia, the potions, the mementos that had pained him to see when he still could see them, and they eventually closed on the prize he had been searching for. His fingers tightly gripped the double steel barrels. The thick handle, the light trigger. Sightless, Vincent held the Death Penalty up to the light and ran a hand across it, lovingly. The he tucked it under his arm and shut the trunk.
______________________________________________
Tifa's laugh choked in her throat as the back door to 7th Heaven creaked open. "You think I'm going to let you stay here? Looking like that? Carrying around a naked dead girl? The way you treat me?"
Cloud's eyes were pained. "Tifa, Tifa please. I have- we have nowhere else to go. She needs to be taken care of. I...I need to rest. Please, Tifa. One night."
Tifa's brown eyes softened for but a moment then hardened in steely, stubborn resolve, bitter once more. "You kissed her yet, Cloud? Huh? Have you screwed her yet, you freak, you necro, you obsessive psychopath? Do you know what this means? Do you know that you're messing with the biggest law of nature there is?"
Cloud looked down at Aeris' wet, fitfully sleeping form, he looked at her slumbering face, he looked back up into Tifa's disconcerted eyes, and he swallowed hard. "Please," was all he repeated. "If not for me, for her. She has no fault." His eyes implored. "Please."
Rosemary for remembrance...
Do you remember...?
He did, he did....
Pray, love, remember.
Praying, the knife went through her.
Sinking, the water knew her. She fell to the bottom, and
Pansies. For you. For thoughts.
But I thought...
I died?
Aeris' eyes flew open.
She looked up. "Cloud?" She sat up. "Wh- who am I?" she gasped, as she looked around.
"Shush, now," said Cloud, pushing her gently down against the bed and laying a cool hand on her forehead. "You're with me, Aeris. I've got you. I've got you somewhere safe. Somewhere clean and safe. Even if Tifa..." his voice trailed off. "You're safe Aeris. I'll protect you. You'll never be in danger again." He stood up from the bedside. "Get some rest. I'll get us something to eat. And you some clothes." And he walked out of the room, throwing a friendly smile over his shoulder.
"I...I didn't ask where..." said Aeris, to herself.
"I told you not to come back here," grated Tifa's voice, harsh and sharp, tough. "5 minutes ago, I told you this, and apparently you're back here already. Go away. And don't come back."
"Not carrying that thing, you're not getting in here. I've got a business to run and people to take care off. You're not getting in here with that on you. Leave that on a doorstep or something, somewhere else, then we can talk," said Tifa.
"It's not a thing."
"I know we were friends. In a way, we may still be friends. I may never be able to not be your friend, after what we've been through. I'm sorry for your pain, I really am. You've got problems and I understand that. You're a sad, sad man. I feel for you. But this isn't the answer. Now get rid of that or go away. Or I may have to make you go."
Vincent pointed Death Penalty straight at Tifa's head. "My gun is not a thing."
"Tifa?" Cloud's voice came from inside 7th Heaven. "I put Aeris in the room. Is everything all right out there?"
Vincent cocked back the hammer on the rifle, and the Tifa's eyes widened in fear.
"Now," he said. "Are you really going to try and make me leave?"