So hey guys... and thanks for tuning into the next chapter of NR, and I sincerely hope none of you are extremely angry with me at the moment. D:

Once again, I begin with the love I give to my supporters: Zapper90, GCFarron (and don't even worry about it... your support has been more than enough and I appreciate it wholeheartedly), OscarMerrinoz96, Lightarcana, Crystal, and thewhitespirit. And of course, LadyAlaska, without whom I would never have found the strength to continue from last chapter.

If I thought the last chapter was hard to write... this one was killer. It was so, so hard to get right... and I really hope everything sounds as I intended it to. I'll just have to keep going on the thought that it really could have been worse, that everything could have come off in a worse way. Once again, enjoy as always!

Chapter 44: Fallen Blossoms

Serah had felt the ice cold teardrop shaped crystal form in her free hand the moment the first faint photons of light began to gather in the man's hand as his single wing elevated him to far above their heads. There was nothing but icy rigid fear that seized her, freezing her to the spot, her heartbeat in her throat, fighting to get out. Her sister's grip on her other hand was so faint she could barely feel the pressure of the gloved fingers, and in the space between them, there was only blood.

"Serah... run..."

The utter fear and despondency of the words that ended in a faint groan of barely suppressed pain only fueled the energy she felt the crystal give her. "No!" The moment the syllable left her mouth, Serah knew it to be true, to be representative of how she had always been protected. The proof of those sacrifices made for her was embedded in her sister right in front of her. "Claire... you're always trying to protect me. You and Snow... you're always there. Always taking the blows so I can't get hurt." The words empowered the decision she knew she was going to make, and Serah heard her own voice grow stronger. "But this time... this time, it's my turn."

Her fingers let go of her sister's, and Serah could even bear to look back at her as she shakily got to her feet. The hand she'd let go of dropped to the bloodstained floor - Claire wasn't even strong enough now to have the little energy it required to lower her hand down gently. Fighting the urge to scream, to cry, Serah held up the teardrop, willing for the summon inside to protect them, to protect her sister in any way possible.

"Carbuncle!"

The lithe, beautiful Eidolon burst from the small crystal just as the Supernova was launched from the man's hands, the swirl of black feathers being rapidly consumed by the flare that could have rivalled the sun. The fire hit her Eidolon, and instantly, Serah felt the strain of trying to deflect the attack affect her as well. The Eidolon was rapidly consuming her own strength, her own lifeforce, and she could feel that it was reluctant to take more from her.

She pushed back against the intent. There was no way she could back down now, there was no way she was going to watch her sister die. As the Eidolon sapped the last of her strength from her, Serah felt its gentle fur caress her, just once, before it let out a faint cry.

"I'm sorry... I could not have done more." Those words were accompanied by one last small, tender brush against her skin before Serah felt an utter emptiness where her Eidolon had been before. The next moment, the flare met, weakened by the struggle they had put up, but slammed into her body just the same.

There was nothing to comprehend, as she felt the control of her body slipping away from her. She couldn't even feel the pain when her back hit the floor, and she couldn't hear or feel the crushing weight of stone and ice that crashed down around her. The only thing she could think of was that even now... even now, it was up to the Maker to see to that her sister would live... that she would find her own happiness.

There was absolutely nothing to hold onto, but yet, Serah didn't feel empty. On the contrary, she felt warm, comforted, loved. The weight binding her body to earth was lifted, and suddenly she felt unbearably, impossibly light. There was no darkness, and there was no light. There was only the void, and the sense that she was not alone, that she would never be alone again. Her fingers could have been high enough to reach up and grasp the clouds that she knew drifted lazily through the morning sky, except there was no reason to. There was only one logical thing to do.

She let go.

They'd all heard the sound that echoed through the twisting, dark hallway. The scream, the rumbling, and the shifting of earth. The unmistakable sound of combat, and Hope, seeing the sudden fear seize Snow's face, knew only too well whose scream it had been. Their footsteps couldn't run fast enough, their lungs couldn't pull air in fast enough. The silence that followed was even more frightening then if there had been the continued sounds of battle. Hope tried to keep the images from his mind, but they came anyways.

The rush of images was so strong Hope had to close his eyes, but the thoughts haunting him were even clearer in the darkness of his closed lids. Serah and Lightning in some tangled, unnatural form of death, eyes shut, mouths closed. Blood. Fire. The onslaught of terrible thoughts wouldn't stop. He saw the burning, pained look in Snow's ocean blue eyes, and he could feel his inner torment in the big blond's. They're okay... Light would never... they have to be okay... It doesn't even matter if they get the crystal. They just have to be okay.

But there was no answer, not in the winding labyrinth of glass and cerulean light, not in the furthest reaches of his own mind. The frantic chirping of something up ahead in the gloom distracted him for a few heartbeats, before Hope realized that the chirping wasn't happy or content. It was desperate and sad, and ice cold claws closed over his chest. It was suddenly hard to breathe, as the chocobo chick came into view, black eyes wild with fright for an animal that couldn't even express its emotions in words.

Apart from their footsteps, it was soundless. Soundless except the steady drip of melting ice, soundless except for the breathing that no one could control, as Hope slowly followed Snow and Sazh across the threshold of the slightly ajar door, and into a world that he couldn't even see clearly in. The conglomeration of broken concrete and splintered ice created an illusion of blue on black. There was no other colour visible, and Hope found himself growing more and more desperate as he spotted no familiar shade of petal pink in the plane of ice blue and black. There were no audible sounds of breathing apart from his own and the two people just in front of him.

"Serah! Sis!" Snow's words echoed uselessly off the shattered columns of the chamber. There was no reply.

The big blond had begun to dig, hands throwing away useless pieces of chipped concrete and marble and the fragments of ice that sprawled over the ground, his desperation obvious in trembling fingers. Sazh had gone ahead, scanning the surroundings, picking aimlessly through the debris, hoping to find what they'd come looking for. Hope couldn't bring himself to move, afraid of what he might find. Instead, his eyes just went to the floor, hoping that not looking would stop the shaking that had taken over his entire body.

There was no comfort in the bluish marble of the ground, cracked and wet from the attack and explosion that must have taken place in some form, some deadly shape that now held them all in its cruel embrace. Light, please... You and Serah... You have to okay!

The frantic pecking of the chocobo at his shoulder made him glance up, pushing silver hair out of his eyes as he stared, dazedly at the small yellow bird desperate for his attention.

"What...?" His own voice sounded pathetic and weak as he let the chocobo's insistent pulling of his collar lead him to somewhere near the centre of the chamber, its tiny talons landing on a large slab of concrete that was partially propped up under a splintered, collapsed ice pillar. It seemed desperate that he looked there. With nothing better to do, Hope shoved his gloved hands under the large slab of concrete, and began to push.

It was immediately obvious it wasn't going to move easily, and he was already feeling the strain in his arm muscles. Fingers finding no purchase on the concrete, he could only move it a couple of inches into the air, but suddenly, strong hands helped his, flipping the concrete over and sending it crashing on its other side, sending a split that spread up the unbroken plane of concrete and a crack that might have been the world breaking apart.

It might as well have been.

There was nothing else that could have prepared Hope for the sight, not the premonitions in the hallway, not the frantic warning sounds of the small chocobo chick that immediately flew to her side, pecking at pale skin unstoppably, like it could wake her up. Lightning.

Hope almost couldn't continue to look. He wanted to run, wanted to run to the furthest places of Gran Pulse and never remember what he saw in front of him. A spear embedded in her body just below the leather clasp that held the sleeveless white overcoat tight to her form, her bloodstained right hand just above the part where it protruded from her body, grasping the weapon that pinned her to the floor. Her other hand lay lifelessly at her side, fingers touching the pool of blood that was still slowly spreading.

Rough hands shook his shoulders. "What are you waiting for? Do something! Cure her!" Sazh's rough voice seemed so far away Hope didn't know how to respond to it.

"I-I can't..." The broken, pained whisper that did leave his lips sounded like it belonged to someone else. Someone else who couldn't feel pain and fear that were the only parts of him that existed and would continue to exist. "The spear... it's the only reason she hasn't bled to death... I can't heal her if it's still there..." He hated how useless he was at the moment, unable to help, only able to watch her suffer.

His hands unconsciously found her loose one, pulling it from the floor, her fingers limp in his. "Light... Light, wake up!"

He might as well have been begging a statue to come to life.

She was impossibly cold, and she didn't fight his grip. Pink hair stained with both blood and sweat were plastered to her forehead and temples, the long loose locks over her left shoulder tangled and matted. Hope could feel her weak, irregular heartbeat and he could hear her laboured, almost inaudible gasps for breath as she fought the blood loss and who knew what the weapon was doing to her internally. The sound of fading footsteps seemed so distant, so far away, that Sazh's words didn't even recognize in his mind until several moments later. Those moments could have been an eternity.

"Hope! Make sure she doesn't lose any more blood! I'll get help, you kids stay put!"

How am I supposed to help her?

There was only one thing he could do at the moment, and that was to hold her hand, however cold and lifeless it was. He could only watch her bleed to death in front of him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Light... I'm sorry I'm so pathetic. I-

His thoughts were accentuated by a wild cry of rage and grief from the other side of the room.

Snow buried his hands into the cold, wet dirt, his fists finding no relief in the sloshy, squelching mud that rose between the spaces of his fingers. The grass had been pushed away, leaving only bare, unyielding dirt in the rain that showed no sign of stopping. Pale pink cherry blossom petals drifted down beside him, unable to bear the unrelenting pressure of the heavy rain that the heavens poured down, unable to even hold their delicate, beautiful shape as the rain dashed the pink and white patterns of their petals apart, leaving only the ruined, shredded blossoms in its wake.

She was gone.

His princess, the one point of his life that had gone right for him. Just like that, she'd been torn away from him. The one who was his, the one who would have forever been his until the end of time. She was never coming back.

She'd been with him only a few short hours before it had happened, felt her hair in his hands, her lips on his... and her unwavering, innocent smile that could have lit up the world. No matter how different they had been, imperfect as they had been for each other, they'd been together. Together in a way that only one thing could have split them apart, and Snow had never dreamed that that moment would come so prematurely, so discordantly.

And he hadn't been with her when it happened.

The feel of his hands on her face, just when he had uncovered her still, unmoving form, fingers held around the cracked, bloodstained teardrop shaped crystal. Her limp, lifeless form, white sweeper and pink skirt stained with nothing but the concrete dust that covered the room. And for a moment, one foolishly naive moment, he'd thought she was okay. No further blood marred her pale skin, nothing was in her body.

But she hadn't been breathing, and there was no heartbeat.

The moment that that had fallen onto his consciousness was when Snow had snapped, shouting out his pain like a wounded animal. She'd been torn from his life in an irrevocable way, in a way he'd never be able to pull her back from. He'd never believed she was gone... not even when she had been a crystal, locked away in crystal stasis dreams. He'd always believed then, that somehow, she'd be able to come back. That one day, they'd be reunited, laughing and hugging in each others' arms.

And this time, that vivid, carefree fantasy had been torn away like the cherry blossoms that were ripped away from the branches of the tree by the rain. Snow found that the cherry tree he'd chosen for her was, in many, cruel ways, was the metaphor for what they were... what they had been.

He'd been the trunk and branches of the tree: wide, rough, and unsculpted and unrefined, but he held up the tree. He was the support. She'd been the beautiful, delicate blossoms that bloomed in the springtime and blazed into red, graceful leaves into the summer. The beauty, the point of attention of the tree. Inseparable and interdependent, they had supported each other. The flowers couldn't bloom without the tree, and the tree couldn't live without its blossoms and leaves. The rain that stripped the branches bare, suddenly and irreversibly, was the moment she'd slipped away from him; he couldn't stop or control it.

Just like the tree, they couldn't survive without one another, and now the fact that the flowers were gone, never to return to the branches that they'd originated from, Snow didn't see the point in going on. The only thing that kept him up was his desire to avenge her death, and even now, as he knelt, bowed, before her tree, even that evaporated away, leaving only the empty, broken shell that was all he had left.

Bringing his eyes up to look at the last few blooms that had managed to hang on in the rising storm, Snow found his thoughts drifting back to when they'd met, back when there was nothing in the world to care about but them.

A laughing pink haired girl on the beach, next to Lebreau's café as he took a sip of his coffee. She was laughing with several friends as they chatted about graduation and university in Eden, and Snow huffed to himself. He'd never taken education seriously, having dropped out of formal schooling after high school. He never saw the point in memorizing useless facts and doing math problems one would never use in real life. And who needed to know how to spell the word 'efflorescence' properly? It wasn't like it would come up in an actual conversation between normal people.

"Happy little things, aren't they, Snow?" Lebreau joked with him as she wiped the counter, keeping an eye on several drinks she was making in the back.

"Yeah, you bet," he muttered back. "School, university, who cares? All I need to know is how to beat up monsters for NORA's next field adventure."

"Ha!" she laughed at him. "Still going on about the whole 'hero' thing, I see. Why don't you get yourself a decent job and settle down with a girlfriend, o wise leader? You're handsome enough to score yourself a pretty one, and I'll bet my café that those uniforms up at the GC BSR are getting pissed at you."

He just laughed back. "Who are you kidding? Those uniforms up there love us. Even their commander, Amodar, is proud of what we do." He gave her a thumbs up. "You'll see. This hero thing isn't an act."

She waggled a finger in his face. "Really now. What are you hoping to do, save a damsel in distress and hope she falls in love with you?"

"As a matter of fact... Don't I wish I could," he chuckled back, rearranging the bandanna on his blond hair, retying the black cloth at the back. She slapped the wet dishcloth in his face, and pointed behind him.

"Here's your chance, hero. Looks like those kids are in a bind."

She hadn't been lying. The girls he'd seen laughing on the beachside were now running away from what he could see was a stray monster. Snow didn't even pause to consider why there was a monster on the beach - sometimes one was stupid and hungry enough to wander to someplace where there was lots of human inhabitants, and the garbage cans on the beach provided the perfect monster lunch for one hungry enough to risk getting shot at by soldiers.

The masses on the beach were now rapidly moving away from the single Bloodfang Bass as it snapped at bare legs and dropped bits of food. The pink haired one had twisted her ankle, it seemed, in the uneven sand, and the monster was quickly gaining ground on her. She let out a terrified scream, but no one came to her aid.

"Idiots," Snow cursed as he rushed towards her, fists raised. He met the feral creature right in the abdomen, sending it flying into the sand dunes with a squeal. He turned to the pinkette behind him. "Hurry up, get going and run!"

She cast him one terrified glance before struggling to her feet and limping slowly away towards the walkway at the edge of the beach. Snow beat down the bass as it attempted to close its overly large jaws on his foot, and kicked it away. The monster struggled to rise, finally staggering towards him at another attempt to close its jaws around him. Snow sent it on its way with one punch that upended it; it twitched a couple of times before finally falling still.

Cracking his knuckles, Snow threaded his way through the throng of people congratulating and praising him, brushing off the compliments like they were no more than dust on his velocycle. When the mass of people had finally gone home, and the orange light of Phoenix was low on the horizon, did he see that the girl he'd saved was still there, standing awkwardly in front of Lebreau's café, waiting for him.

She looked down at her hands the moment he approached her. "You okay?" he asked quietly, and he felt something like relief and warmth pressure his chest when she nodded. That was unusual - he saved people on an almost daily basis, but this was the first time he'd felt something other than pride fill him.

"Thank you," he heard her murmur quietly, still not looking up.

Snow laughed, patting the back of his bandanna. "Ah ah... it's a hero's job to be looking after people. No need for thanks."

For the first time since the monster had appeared, he saw her smile, and her blue eyes twinkle with amusement. And for the second time that evening, Snow felt something stir in his chest. "Really?" she asked curiously. "Is that what you do? Be a hero?"

He thumped himself proudly on his chest. "Snow Villiers, NORA leader, at your service."

She looked skeptical the moment he mentioned NORA, and he narrowed his eyes at her. "What?"

Looking embarrassed, she hid her hands behind her back as she shyly looked away. "Well, my sister says NORA is a bunch of kids swinging overpriced toys and think they can do what the military does with no training."

He bent down to her eye level, causing her to back away several steps. "Oh really now? And who might this sister of yours be?"

She looked defensive the moment he mentioned her sister. "Don't talk about her like that," she snapped, the harsh tones sounding odd in her bellchime voice. Snow patted his bandanna again as he chuckled.

"Alright, alright..." He stood up to his full height again. "But you know... listening to hearsay doesn't help you form your own opinions."

"I know," she admitted sheepishly. "But thank you again... for saving my life."

"Don't mention it."

He met her hesitant sky blue eyes. "Is there... anything I can do to repay you?"

"Nope." He brushed off the offer offhandedly. "Well... actually, there is. Can you tell me your name?"

She looked surprised, then embarrassed, at the question. "I didn't introduce myself, did I? I'm sorry!" There was a pause. "I'm Serah. Serah Farron." She turned, her pink ponytail draping over her back again at the movement. "Sorry, I have to get home... My sister will be worried if I'm not home before dark, and who knows what she'll do when that happens?"

He laughed again, admiring her quick wit. "Alright then, Serah. See ya sometime again."

Her smile was infectious. "Yeah. I'll see you around... Snow."

Snow watched her leave, pink hair touched to a golden softness by the dying light of the fal'Cie, her white shirt and half transparent sweeper somehow standing out in the quickly falling dusk. For some reason, he was sad to see her go.

"Serah... Farron, huh?"

The happy memory was so vivid, so powerfully strong, that there was no way he could think about it without feeling the stab of pain and grief that threatened to tear him apart. She'd been the light to his darkness, the coexistence to interdependence, that he couldn't think of a life, or a time, without her.

That was how utterly she had changed him, how utterly she had changed his life. The wet raindrops falling on his face, soaking his clothes, were immaterial to the inner storm that raged inside.

He would never hear her laugh again.

He would never hold her hands, kiss her, enjoy their moments together ever again. It felt like the strings that held him to happiness, held him to the centre of the world, had been severed in one simple snip of a pair of scissors he didn't have the strength to hold back. And when those bonds were gone... what was he? Broken off from the very fixture of his life, the sun that his life revolved around, what would he become? Snow found that he was terrified by the fact.

She wouldn't want you to give up. Even now.

He knew that! Snow knew that as well as anyone did that there was no going back now. Even if she was gone, even if she no longer existed in this world, that Serah wouldn't have wanted them to stop trying in the face of adversity. That was the one thing he had left to keep him standing up, and keeping him moving forward. She would have wanted them to end this, and he was going to do right by that.

But even then... Snow found his thoughts wandering back to the moment he'd found her. That she had summoned Carbuncle to block an attack was obvious... that Lightning had had something to do with it, that was obvious too. Through the dim lenses he had viewed the events after he'd held Serah's limp body to his, he'd seen Hope on the other side of the room, holding what he could only assume at the time was Lightning's hand. It was only when Sazh led the soldiers into the room, and slowly pulled her up did he see what, exactly.

Even in his grief, he'd had to close his eyes at the sight of the spear pushed through her body, at the nightmarish red that stained the shaft of the weapon left in her abdomen. They'd tried taking Serah away from him as well, but they hadn't argued with him when he held her to him, hand stroking the pink hair on her rapidly cooling body. He'd refused to let go even when the warmth had faded from her limp form.

The only, and the last time, he'd let go of her was when they'd dug the grave in the back of their house in New Bodhum. Snow had let her fall from his frozen, numb fingertips into the earth, and he'd had to turn away when they had covered it over. The only moment that he'd felt something other than the flat, all consuming despair was when the tree he'd picked for her grave had its roots firmly embedded into the soil, its delicate blossoms reaching into the air even in the weak sunlight that had shone over the expanse of grass behind their house. It had only been a few days since the tree had been planted, and already, the elements were tearing it apart. Just like him, the tree was helpless to resist.

And now, even that was ruined in the face of the relentless rain that pounded to earth, raising earthy scents into the late spring air, wreathing around him like a shroud. The only thing Snow could smell was the balm of the fallen petals, their musky sweetness staining the air around him. It only served to remind him of her, as her name finally tore from his lips, his tears finally mixing with the drops from the sky that seemed to grieve with him.

"Serah..."

He had to know. He had to know how she had died. The thoughts would only haunt his dreams if he didn't, and though the thinking, cognitive part, of him screamed at him for being stupid, idiotic, and unforgiving, he had already made up his mind to ask Lightning... the moment she woke up. The hospital had been sketchy on the details of her condition, finally prompting Hope to go to the place himself after a few silent and empty lifeless days, but Snow was fairly sure she was alive... The rational part of him warned him not to press her, but the overwhelming desire to know, despite the pain he knew it would inflict on him, was winning.

Maybe he was a masochist, wanting to inflict more pain on the heart that felt like it could stop beating at any second, against the fragile exterior he was maintaining that could break at any moment, but he had to know. Otherwise... I'll never stop thinking about how I should have never let her out of my sight. It didn't even occur to him how much pain he might... no, would be inflicting on her for asking... for asking her to remember.

The pager rang in the pocket of his coat, and Snow didn't even look at the caller ID before holding the wireless up to his ear.

"Come to the hospital." It was Hope, his voice as flat and dead as Snow felt. "They're... they're going to wake her up."

Snow cast one last glance at the tree that stood all alone in the expanse of the verdant Gran Pulse landscape, its last few blossoms clinging haphazardly, and yet, determinedly, to the slender branches, waving in the strong wind that accompanied the rainshower.

Serah... I'll always love you. Even now. Until we're together again. Wait for me... alright?

Blackness was more welcoming than the empty, quiet world that seemed too small to contain her as she found herself being dragged into consciousness. Even the drug induced sleep, even the anesthetics and the morphine that were still flooding through her body was better than waking up. Lightning found herself wishing they would keep her under sedation for the rest of her life. Things were easier that way.

But even with the drugs, there was no escaping the present, the overwhelming emptiness and pain that pressed down on every inch of her body... pain that had nothing to do with the wound in her abdomen. Pain that had nothing to do with the dead, empty feeling below her waist. She would have willingly taken ten, a hundred, a thousand more spears to her body if it meant it would help her swallow the impossibly empty anguish that crowded her mind. In the moments it took for her to comprehend that pain, Lightning wished, utterly, for them to just give her a drug overdose that would kill her. It would be easier to die than to accept what lay before her.

She didn't want to comprehend the thoughts and images crowding her brain, the intuition that ripped so plaintively at the very inner of her fragile interior. And try as she might, there was no going back, no denying what she already knew to be true. The wings that had been ready to spread, gently, tentatively, had been snapped, leaving her with less than she'd had before, because this time, she knew there was no way to get them back, no way to recreate what had been eradicated in just a few heartbeats something that had taken her her life to contrive, to appreciate.

Serah was gone.

I want to hide under a rock again this time... but I know I owe you all an explanation. So, I'm just going to go ahead and give it to you, whether or not it creates more hate than I'm probably already going to get.

Serah was always meant to die. I knew it the moment I wrote Chapter 8, the very first chapter of the 'main storyline'. There was never anything else that was considered, and I knew that. That's why it broke my heart when so many of you complimented her - I knew she was going to leave. Maybe I made it a little obvious with the line I used back in Chapter 31, but for those who didn't get it, here is the explanation:

The line I used was Cait Sith's line to Cloud, upon arriving at the Gold Saucer in FFVII. Like Lightning, there were two people in FFVII that well, I suppose you could say, were people he cared greatly about (and I'm not even going to get into the LTD right now, just goddamn accept that he cared for both of them!). And just like Serah, who died protecting her sister, Aerith, one of the people I mentioned in the previous sentence, was killed when she was casting the spell that would save the world. That's why I used the line "What you pursue will be yours... but you will lose something dear.", because it mirrored my intent, and it mirrored what I always imagined Serah would do. Character death is never easy to write, especially when you're very attached to a character you've worked hard to develop, and this is in no way an exception; these last two chapters were immensely hard to get right, but it was always meant to end like this... for Serah, at least.

And in more than one way, she has truly been my Aerith Gainsborough.