Author's Note: Finally after more than a year of inactivity in writing, here comes a one-shot.
Disclaimer: Characters, names, places etc belong to Square Enix. Me no own.
Unforgotten
Losing people has never been easy.
Some people think that it is better never to really know when he's gone. That you lose touch with him first, and then, nothing.
That way, you can always assume that he got too busy, forgot about you, or left you altogether.
You wait for years, always telling yourself that he's going to remember about you someday. He's going to come back. You wait some more.
I was one of those people.
I waited.
I waited but my life went on. My world did not stop simply because I suspected. I continued on, caring for the flowers at the church, pruning those at home. Mother never asked anything, even though she wondered why I didn't go out as much as I used to.
She knew something was wrong, and I did too.
But life went on.
That didn't mean that my memories of him faded and died. In fact, it was quite the opposite. At every corner I turned, I thought I caught a glimpse of him; black hair, SOLDIER uniform, that merry laugh.
It haunted me.
Even the flowers seemed to feel the worry eating away at me. They were hardly in high spirits, and when I tried to summon up enough truth in the joyful song I sang to them, they only seemed to return apologetic looks.
I was watering them with my worry, and they gave me pity in return.
I knew that could not go on. I had to do something. Leave Midgar, find him, get a stable job… something.
I spent more time out on the streets selling flowers, in hopes of distracting my mind from things it should not think about. That worked for a while, but sales were not good. Hardly anyone in Midgar appreciated the beauty of flowers, especially not in the slums.
It made me think of times back then, when he would buy one flower a day, paying 10 gil instead of 1 for each. He said it was to repay the therapy I did for his eyes as he saw me each day.
He was always so full of those excuses.
It wasn't as though I believed any of them, but not hearing one for so long did make me a little sadder and more serious than before. Without all the teasing, jokes and flippant remarks, I almost forgot how to smile from within my heart.
I always did smile, but those were of routine, not of pure emotion. One for Mother as I saw her each morning, countless for the flowers and the people I met in the streets everyday.
That was the routine.
And that was the routine he broke.
He never had any regard for rules.
And without all the regards for the norm, he taught me to throw away my worries and smile truly. It was something I accomplished occasionally when the Planet allowed me to do so. With the burden of the Planet lying atop of me, it was never easy to just forget everything and laugh.
But from him, I learnt that; to laugh aloud with pure joy, to laugh at life, to laugh at him, and more importantly, to laugh at myself.
He said it was no use fretting over things of the past and fears of the future. Being in SOLDIER, he didn't even know how much of a future he should fear for. Why care then?
To take things in stride, that was what he said.
I tried.
And I never knew that taking things in stride could be that difficult.
No one ever told me how five years without any news of him would turn out.
Five years, and I could not even forget him.
Zack.