..:Disclaimer:..
I don't own Kingdom Hearts.
..:Summary:..
Songfic to 'Tonightless.' Cloud and Aerith had all the time in the world...or at least, they hoped they did. Bring on the kleenex.
..:Tonightless:..
Her hair was softer than the finest silks in the world. There was something about running my fingers through it that just made me feel content. She only wore it down for me, and it was slightly cold still from the shower she had taken earlier. Her eyes were closed, but I knew she wasn't asleep. The softest of smiles was tugging at her lips, and finally I placed a hand on her cheek so she would open her eyes. I just wanted to look at them.
It had been a thousand years since I'd felt so warm, but all the time we had spent apart was only a moment in those eyes. Green, like emerald stones, and glittering with wisdom and yet a child-ish light. These were dark times, and such light was appreciated, but not enough. I was the only one who appreciated her enough.
"What should we do tonight, Cloud?" she asked in a voice as innocent as her intentions. I shrugged.
"What do you want to do?"
"Hm...what about the Crystal Fissure? It's so pretty there..."
"Alright."
The walk was only around fifteen minutes, and it was easy, because nobody was out at three in the morning. Neither Aerith nor I slept much at all--in fact, it was a rare occasion I would and she could run for a week on only two hours of shut-eye. She giggled as we reached the tiny, cold, crooked place, and placed her hands behind her back innocently. The moonlight was making the crystals glow silver dimly, and she looked heavenly. She placed the thick blanket on the ground and smiled at me, taking off her boots as she lay down. I lay beside her, kicking my own shoes off as I captured her lips with my own.
We'll be tonightless...
We didn't have sex. We did, often, but that night wasn't about sex. It was just exploration--raining kisses all over each other and just being together for once. It was both of us taking the loneliness we had been harboring for almost nine years and pushing it as far away as it would go. I was free to smile, and I did so as she held me beneath the thick blankets she had brought along. Her hands ran through my hair, and I pressed a loving kiss to her forehead.
"I love your hair," she told me, and I grinned.
"Is that all?"
She shook her head with a smile.
"No...I love your face, and your nose, and your eyes, and your ears, your arms, your stomach, your belly button..."
As she said this she gently poked the sensitive area, and I jumped slightly, which made her giggle. That sound...I wish every sound made me as happy as that sound did. Then I would never be lonely again. I leaned my head down slightly so I could kiss her shoulder as my right hand made its way to her long hair.
"I love your hair, too."
We can't wait another moment
Our time will come before we know it
With your heart you've got to open up this time
I don't want to be alone tonight.
"Cloud, look! It's raining!"
"Get back in here, or you'll catch something."
She pouted at me, knowing fully well I couldn't resist that face. On top of that her hair was sticking to the sides of her face and it made 'the pout' especially cute. I sighed and ran a hand through my own hair and stood up. She squealed happily, and grabbed onto my arm, dragging me out into the rain.
It was raining so hard that within seconds I was completely soaked, and so was she, but neither of us minded very much. She let me go and started dancing to no music--arms stretched out and her head facing the heavens with the most blissful look on her face. She was beautiful--an angel.
And I wasn't ever going to let her go.
I caught her in mid-spin around her waist, and I held her still as I looked into her eyes. She looked up at me with those understanding, sympathetic, awe-struck eyes that I love so much. She bit her lip and blushed, and placed her hands on my shoulders. Those perfectly small hands that fit so well in mine then began to slide up my shoulders and held my face. I closed my eyes at the feeling and turned my head so her hands were covering my lips, and I left soft kisses on her palms.
Her smile was more than just content--it was happy. I made her happy. She wasn't happy often, anymore--few people were in such times of war. She smiled, sure, but she always felt empty inside. She told me so herself. But in that moment, I had caused a real smile and a real emotion in her, and it made ME feel happy. I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her close, just because I love to hold her tight. She somehow managed to get her arms over my shoulders and around my neck, and she held me just as close and as desperate.
"I'm not going anywhere," she whispered, and they were just the words I needed to hear.
Am I gonna be tonightless again?
All of the loneliness has got to end
I know the years have been so bittersweet,
But you don't have to go so please don't leave
I can't even recall how it began. It all happened so fast--the whir of a breeze, a blurry, passing face, and then my life as I knew it flipped inside out.
I was supposed to protect her, to keep her from harm. I had promised both her and myself silently that I would never let anything happen to her. And yet I stood there, watching with wide eyes as helpless as a fawn as the twisted black creature snuck up behind her as she began to cast a curing spell on Yuffie, and as her name escaped my lips, two things happened simultaneously--she looked at me with a worried look just as the claws of the creature struck her in the back.
For a moment, there was only deafening silence in my ears, and the creature pulled his claws from her back to reveal a piece of a glittering heart.
I didn't even know I had lunged forward until I was standing about where the creature had been, and both the creature and the heart had vanished into thin air. I dropped my sword on the ground and as gently as I could I picked her up. She looked like a limp doll, her head rolling to the side and her face void of emotion. And all of the sudden she began to shake and convulse, and all I could do was hold her tightly to try and dullen the shaking. It didn't work at all.
"Get her out of here, Cloud!" Yuffie shouted. "Take her home!"
I nodded, even though her back was facing towards me. Inside I was in a complete panic, but I knew that we were sitting ducks out here with the heartless. I scooped her up with one arm and picked up my discarded sword. For a moment, I closed my eyes and felt the searing pain of my back ripping apart as a single black wing coated in my own blood tore itself out of my shoulder, and I flew my flower home.
Our souls are lost without each other
We've got to find time to recover
If you hold me close, this heartache will subside
I don't want to be alone tonight.
Days crept by before she did anything but shake in terror. I twas one particularly dull night, and I was spoon feeding her some mushy concoction that Yuffie said was smushed bananas, as despite her sleeping state she needed to eat.
Sleeping state. That's what I call it. And that was my fool's hope.
I had been a wreck ever since then. Every time I closed my eyes I pictured it all over again in slow motion, and I feel as though I could have helped her. Guilt wretched away at my soul until it was all I could think of. I hadn't eaten since then, as every time Yuffie brought me something I suddenly felt too sick to even take a sip of water. And yet, I didn't let anyone know this--I sat, as stoic and as neutral as usual, watching over the one person in the world who meant a damn to me.
'Please,' I mentally groveled to whatever gods or demons held reign over my soul, 'Please wake up, please...don't you dare, Aerith...'
I saw her smile in my mind's eye, and I felt something sting in my eyes. No, I wasn't crying, but it still stung as though I might. I never cried. Not even for Aerith, because crying shows weakness and Aerith needed me to be strong. The ache in my heart was enough that I didn't need to cry.
And all at once, I realized that Aerith was screaming.
I shot back down to earth like a bullet, and my head jerked to her face. She was sitting up, eyes as wide as her mouth as she screamed in absolute agony. The sound shattered my soul into a thousand pieces. I'd never heard something so horrible in my entire life. But as soon as it had started it stopped, and she sat, panting, with tears rolling down her cheeks. And then her lost, empty, broken green eyes turned to me.
I broke like a dam. I had her in my arms as relief as sweet as the smell of her hair came washing over me like the ocean's waves. She was awake. She was okay. She was safe, and she was alive.
"I won't ever let this happen to you again," I muttered to her, opening up just the slightest bit because I felt I owed it to her. "I promise, Aerith. I won't ever let you go again. I'm not going anywhere, remember? And neither are you."
And her next three words shocked me, stunned me, and ripped me apart all at the same time.
"Who are you?"
Am I gonna be tonightless again?
All of the loneliness has got to end
I know the years have been so bittersweet
But you don't have to go so please don't leave...
The heartless, we had all come to conclude, had only torn out a portion of her heart and therefore only a portion of her soul was stolen--her memory. Yuffie had walked through the door not long after, and Aerith had pried herself from my grasp with her hands on my shoulders, looking a bit disturbed. Yuffie ran over and leaped on top of her in happiness, dropping the tray of food she had for us onto the ground, and again Aerith failed to realize who it was.
Sure, Squall and Yuffie were sad about her memories being forgotten, and I didn't blame them. But...I had just gotten her back. After all of that work, and all of our suffering, and now she was ripped away from me again. I was pissed as hell. I left for days, traveling around the Garden, destroying heartless and overall just venting in the only way I knew how.
I went to the crystal fissure and slept there every night. One of the blankets was there, and hesitantly I picked it up and held it close. It smelled like her, still. The sweetest smell of flowers and vanilla, and something else that was uniquely Aerith. I must have looked like an idiot--sitting on the ground in a crystal cave, curled up and holding a blanket to my face with my eyes closed, but it was the only thing I could do to not kill everything.
It wasn't fair. It was. Not. Fair. I went to hell and back to find her, and after the shortest yet happiest time of my life, she was torn away again. I deserved my so-called 'Happily-ever-after,' and if I didn't, then she sure as hell did.
That was when it hit me.
Maybe I was the problem. Maybe it was me who was keeping her from happiness. Maybe I was preventing HER ever-after, and again a wave of guilt crashed over me as harsh and as cold as the stinging wind in winter.
"Cloud? Are you here?"
Tifa.
Childhood companion, friend--and nothing more. She looked almost excited to see me, and gave me a half smile. I held the blanket tighter.
"Hey...everyone's been looking for you. I sort of had a feeling you'd be here. She's walking and talking just fine, and she seems to be happy as ever."
She bit her lip in silence, as if debating to say something or not.
"She's...taken a real liking to Leon, you know. A real liking."
Sting.
That's the only word that could describe the hurt I felt. A salt-in-the-wound sting that filled the empty, hollow ache in my heart and I snapped my head to her with a glare.
"..."
"You need to start getting over her, Cloud," she said gently and placed a hand on my arm. I flinched and swatted her away.
"Why would you tell me something like that?" I ground out. "Why would you DO that?"
"Because, Cloud--I could be the one who can help you get over her! She's too good for you, Cloud--she's too good for us all. We need to let her go."
I have never, ever, ever cursed to a woman before in my life, but some things needed to be said.
"Fuck you."
And I stood up and walked out. By the time she was able to recover from the shock of me telling her off and run after me, I was already watching over the house that my flower girl was in.
We'll be tonightless
We'll be tonight...
"We've been looking for you for days, Cloud!" Yuffie told me, days after Tifa's confrontation. She was beaming happily to me, and she handed me a piece of paper with everyone's names on it in neat script, and I instantly recognized the handwriting as Aerith's.
"She's already remembered how to read and write! She's getting her memory back, piece by piece, and I think she'll remember us if we keep pushing her!"
"Do I even want her to remember me?"
She looked at me in complete shock, and I shrugged.
"She'll be happier without me--"
"Don't be stupid!" she shouted, angrily. "You two are MADE for each other! Look what you went through!"
"And look what happened," I muttered. She sighed and put a comforting hand on my arm.
"Look, I know, and I'm sorry that this whole thing has happened, but it's not your fault. Don't give up yet, Cloud. I've got faith in you two yet."
And with that, she grabbed my hand.
"You should come see her. She's been curious about you. I think she fancies you."
"Tifa says she's taken to Leon."
"Squall? No! That's silly! Squall's mine," she winked at me and pulled me into the room. She was watching Merlin curiously, nodding as he spoke to her and waved his want a bit in the air. Determined, she raised her hands up slightly and muttered a spell. For a brief moment, a green light covered her hands, and she seemed to excited to finish the spell.
"Look! Did you see?" she cried happily, and Merlin laughed and clapped.
"Bravo, bravo! Wonderful, Aerith--we'll have you casting spells in no time!"
She loved praise, I knew. Back in the old days, she used to fill with pride when Ansem or someone told her she was a clever girl, or when she did something good. Days that she didn't even remember, now. She turned and looked at me, a strange look coming into her green eyes. I hesitated, but extended a hand.
"Cloud," I said quietly, not expecting anything from her. She smiled and stood up, and held out her own hand.
"Aerith," she said, and shook my hand. It was still the same size--small enough and perfect enough that it fit into my hand as well as my gloves did. It felt bizarre, meeting her for the second time. It hurt, in a way, but at the same time I was hopeful. Maybe things would work out after all.
We'll be tonightless
We'll be tonight...
We'll be tonightless
We'll be tonight...
Things got better before they got worse. I spent less time hiding, and more time around the hut that they all kept Aerith in. She was a fast learner--as fast as she was in her early youth. And we all hoped for her--we all hoped for her to remember. And our hopes were at our highest when she took a bite out of a cinnamon cookie. Her face twisted with shock, suddenly, and she frowned.
"Yuffie...you've made these before?"
"Cinnamon cookies? No, not since I was a little kid."
"...In the library...you made us all cookies...they were burnt, but we were so hungry...and we spilled them, and Cid got so mad at us..."
We were all watching her intently, and she took another bite.
"Yes, I'm sure of it! The crumbs were everywhere, and then...we ran through a corridor to get away! You didn't want to clean up the mess, and so the brown-haired girl, she told you to go back and clean them, but I told you to play and I went instead!"
Yuffie nodded and clapped eagerly.
"That's right, I did! And then what? Keep thinking, Aerith!"
She tried, and I stared at her harder than anyone else. She took another bite, closed her eyes, and opened them suddenly, looking as though she were in deep concentration.
"...There was a boy...he came from behind this shelf, so suddenly...he helped me, but when I asked his name he was gone again, and I couldn't remember the shelf he was from..."
Leon was looking at me, and Yuffie turned to me with a grin. Aerith giggled.
"But that's silly. It must have been a dream..."
"No! No, that actually happened! The boy you met was Cloud!"
She laughed again.
"That's silly, though--I've only just met Cloud a few days ago!"
My heart dropped, but I still felt hopeful. She could remember that much...who's to say she couldn't remember anything else? We continued on with lunch as if the conversation had never occured, but Aerith did spend a lot of the time sneaking glances at me. When I'd look up and hold her gaze, her eyes would drop back down to her plate of cookies and she would blush.
But happy moments are just that---fleeting, quick moments that are soon brushed away by reality.
We'll be tonightless
We'll be tonight
You know we will, you know we will
We'll be tonightless
We'll be tonight
You know we will, you know we will.
It had all started when Aerith caught a small cough. We all thought nothing of it, as many people got colds during such chilly seasons. But the cough didn't go away in a few days as most did--it grew worse and worse, until she was heaving and hacking up blood in her fits. She began to get weaker and weaker, and we realized, one can't live without one's entire heart.
We did all we could. She was to take three potions a day, and that made it better for a while. But it was as though she were infected with a virus, and everything we did the cirus became immune and continued to spread throughout her entire body.
Her smiles were fewer and her laughs were feeble, and we all knew the unspoken truth.
Aerith was dying.
And all the hi-potions and elixers and mega-potions in the world couldn't change that.
I was torn between staying with her and running away. I didn't want to watch her die...but I couldn't abandon her. My compromise--she was always in my sight, but I never actually spoke to her, or came too close.
One night, it was horrible. She couldn't even get out of bed, and just lay there with a dead look in her eyes as she coughed in such a way that the hair rose on the back of my neck. She hacked and hacked until the blood was everywhere, and that was too much for me. I burst through the door and held her, soothing her and holding her tightly as her body shook with coughs. She began to sob quietly, and I just held her without a word, feeling just as miserable as she did.
It rained the next day.
She looked so different than from when I remembered her. She was pale and weak, and her hair wasn't as silky as it once. Her eyes were duller, and she seemed to be hanging on by a thread. Honestly, she looked more like a wounded animal than a person as she lay, eyes half lidded and unfocused and her lips parted as she stared at the rain. I knew that today was the day. She couldn't last any longer, and it tore me up inside to even think of it. So I sat beside her, holding her hands. They weren't as warm as usual, but they still fit into my hands perfectly.
"Cl...Cloud...I want to...be outside...in the rain..."
On any other day, I would have objected. But that particular day, I knew. And if she wanted her last moments to be in the rain, I would comply to her wishes. I went to carry her, but she put her weak legs on the ground and instead held herself up by my arm, a determined look on her dying face. It broke my heart in every way.
It was raining so hard that within seconds, I was completely soaked, and so was she, but neither of us minded very much. She suddenly let me go, and though she stumbled a bit, she looked up at the sky, and smiled. She stretched her arms out and faced the heavens with the most sad, blissful look on her face.
She started to fall suddenly, but I ran forward and caught her around the waist, and I held her still as I looked into her eyes. She was shaking when she looked up at me with those broken, dying, sad eyes that I feared so much. She bit her lip to bite back a series of coughs that threatened her, but couldn't hold them back, and grabbed my shoulders in a desperate attempt to hold on for a few more moments. The rain on my cheeks was suspiciously warm.
She slid her hands up, though, to my face, and wiped my eyes as if I were crying. I kissed her palms without thinking, but when I turned to her again, she was smiling, the smallest bit of blood trailing down her cheek. Somehow, through her tears and pain, she managed to smile. But the smile was gone in an instant, and I held her tightly, with desperation.
"I always knew there was something about you, Cloud," she whispered hoarsely to me. "But you were always so distant...but I knew, anyway, you know?"
I hesitated, and my eyes were stinging and the rain was so warm on my face that I didn't know what else to do but hold her in all of the confusion. She let out a breathy laugh.
"I love you...but this isn't the first time I've said that to you...we...we were once...I don't remember, but I just know it..."
And suddenly I saw in my mind's eye, a flushed face with a smile as bright as the pale, beautiful, mysterious moonlight--the most adorable pout--a young girl in pink dancing in the rain--the look of complete bliss on that girl's face as I held her beneath the thick blankets that smelled like her--and I could hear my name, sounding perfect from her lips, and a thousand times she said 'I love you,'---all at once, and the images just kept coming, and I continued to cry as I held the girl in the rain that soaked us both to the bone.
"I'm not going anywhere," I whispered, and they were just the words she needed to hear.
We'll be tonightless
We'll be tonightless baby
We'll be tonight
You know we will, you know we will
Years have passed since that day. They've built a statue of her in the marketplace, the stone image of a kind woman holding a flower in her hand. She is famous now. All know her name, and all know of the kind deeds she did.
Squall and Yuffie have since moved on, and they are the parents to seven little rascals. The youngest is named 'Aeris' after the flower girl we all adored.
Tifa couldn't find me, and gave up, and moved in with a redhead called Reno. They're parents too, but I never cared enough to find out more.
Life has moved on, the passing of time as cruel as ever on everone as they grew older. I have hardly aged, and I wouldn't be surprised if everyone has forgotten me, because I've basically disappeared from them all. I hide in the shadows, and I only come out to protect people from stray heartless that have yet to be destroyed, or to do simple anonymous jobs like that. I stay out of people's way, and wait until finally I can die.
But I'm not always brooding and miserable.
They buried her in the outskirts of town, near a little hill where the wildflowers grow. And when it rains, that's where one can find me. Because sometimes, if I close my eyes and breathe in the intoxicating smell of rain, I can also smell the faint smell of vanilla and flowers. And if I look really hard, I can see a flushed young girl in pink, spinning like an angel in the rain. And I'll imagine holding her, the feeling of her small hands fitting like a puzzle piece in mine, even though when I open my eyes again I'll just be staring at the epitaph that she picked out before she died.
'Aerith Gainsborough--Age 23--Rain makes flowers grow, so Clouds, let it rain evermore.'
And when it rains, and I read her epitaph and imagine her, I'll also feel my eyes sting, and the rain will be suddenly warm on my cheeks. And if I imagine hard enough, then a pair of small hands will wipe away the rain on my face. And though I hurt more than ever and I'm sad, I won't leave.
Because, as I promised once, I'm not going anywhere.
And neither is she.
We'll be tonightless
We'll be tonightless baby
We'll be tonightless
We'll be tonightless...
..:Fin:..
AN: -cries- This fic has been so hard to write, because I've never written a sad fic before, and I just wanted the reader to HURT with Cloud! A teacher once told me that bittersweet is 'pain dipped in honey,' and I hoped to make that the vibe of this fic. Did I succeed? Please review!