FFVII: Cloud, Aerith, Tifa
Aug. 30th, 2010 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lirillithApril 2005 seems to be when I made the shift from 100-word drabbles to 15-minute fics.
Title: Always There
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters: Cloud, implied Cloud/Aerith and Cloud/Tifa
Length: 306 words
****
The hardest thing about loss is that it never goes away.
Tifa said that to him, he thinks. It's true. Aerith's death was an agonizing shock, a recurring nightmare, an explosion of grief and pain, but once that was over, once he'd recovered himself and his memories, it wasn't much better.
The edge was less keen than it had been at first. When he woke up in the morning and everything came to him - who he was, where he was, who he was with - the memory that she'd died was a familiar ache rather than a stabbing grief. He'd laugh, joke with his friends, enjoy a beautiful sunrise or a good meal, and it would come to him that he couldn't share it with Aerith. Sometimes it hit him like a blow to the chest, sometimes like a recurring ache.
Missing her was always there, even as he began to realize, with cautious joy, that Tifa was always there, often wordless and always warm and shyly smiling and beautiful and so different from Aerith.
He remembers laughing green eyes, a quick temper and quick forgiveness, delicate hands and an easy smile. Tifa's solid, built like a fighter, possessed of smoldering, lasting grudges, and for her friends a quiet kindness. She's the rock he needs, slower and more serious than her lost friend. He doesn't like to make the comparisons but can't help it; the memory's never gone.
Sometimes he feels he's waking up. He misses her daily, always, and sometimes weeps in private to think that he'll always miss her, that he can never show her the fields carpeted with yellow flowers or the way clouds look below the airship. But he tries not to show it to Tifa when he turns to her, points the fields out to her and touches her arm.
Title: Always There
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters: Cloud, implied Cloud/Aerith and Cloud/Tifa
Length: 306 words
****
The hardest thing about loss is that it never goes away.
Tifa said that to him, he thinks. It's true. Aerith's death was an agonizing shock, a recurring nightmare, an explosion of grief and pain, but once that was over, once he'd recovered himself and his memories, it wasn't much better.
The edge was less keen than it had been at first. When he woke up in the morning and everything came to him - who he was, where he was, who he was with - the memory that she'd died was a familiar ache rather than a stabbing grief. He'd laugh, joke with his friends, enjoy a beautiful sunrise or a good meal, and it would come to him that he couldn't share it with Aerith. Sometimes it hit him like a blow to the chest, sometimes like a recurring ache.
Missing her was always there, even as he began to realize, with cautious joy, that Tifa was always there, often wordless and always warm and shyly smiling and beautiful and so different from Aerith.
He remembers laughing green eyes, a quick temper and quick forgiveness, delicate hands and an easy smile. Tifa's solid, built like a fighter, possessed of smoldering, lasting grudges, and for her friends a quiet kindness. She's the rock he needs, slower and more serious than her lost friend. He doesn't like to make the comparisons but can't help it; the memory's never gone.
Sometimes he feels he's waking up. He misses her daily, always, and sometimes weeps in private to think that he'll always miss her, that he can never show her the fields carpeted with yellow flowers or the way clouds look below the airship. But he tries not to show it to Tifa when he turns to her, points the fields out to her and touches her arm.
