Chapter Text
However closely you touch me,
When I pass by, always drifting,
You are to me like a dream—
In my soul your ringing is distant.
from Songbook, a little larger than the entire universe, Fernando Pessoa
Even if they met at the most distant future or the farthest corner of the universe, he would always find home in her.
The flower should have reminded him. But it hadn’t been the flower she had handed him that did. It was the look in her eyes of a pure deep green. And the sound of her voice as she softly called him back to his senses, leading him to her after he had fallen down - god-knows - how many floors.
“Are you okay?”
He was sure he recognized that voice from somewhere. Glowing blue-green eyes slowly fluttered open to meet warm emerald ones smiling gently down at him. She looked more curious than worried about his fall, as if it wasn’t the first time someone came crashing down that hole so she knew he would be alright.
As he sat to look up at her, the familiar tone of her voice and the soothing presence of hers awakened in him the sense of a far past he felt he had lived before next to her. A different line of a past filled with bittersweet smiles and wide eyes looking up at the blue sky and hands clasped together breaking boundaries, trying to stop menaces coming from somewhere deep above the dark universe.
That smile… her smile, brought to him a welcoming sentiment but at the same time…
There was a clench around his heart, an hesitation - he placed a palm on his forehead to try and brace his thoughts - he felt an emptiness approaching, calmly and steadily, a heaviness reminding him that at some point they had been kept apart. It hurt, so he shook his head pushing that emerging feeling away.
She was there, and he felt in his core that she had been there before with him in another time, a different life. He had already lived the moment when she leaned down at him, hands on her knees, as he sat amongst the flowers that had broken his fall.
Same perky look on her face, same sunshine yellow-colored petals, same forsaken quiet church he had never been to before, except… he had. Even the darkness lurking inside his chest wasn’t new.
And he wondered if everytime he felt her touch, he was going to be washed over by images of her, warning him that it wasn’t the first time they were meeting.
That place felt so familiar and so unknown at the same time, he might have dreamed about it before, the quietness, the peacefulness and the clover scent of freshly cut flowers, even the bright light slanting in through the windows in several beams of woven sunlight felt comforting, a homely feeling of belonging; as if that place had already been buried deep within him.
“I…” he tried to tell her, but he didn’t know what to or how… how could he explain to her he knew her? It would sound strange, weird, she wouldn’t understand. He didn’t understand it himself.
She smiled widely in encouragement. His heart skipped a beat, marveling about the way her smile affected him so much.
“You don’t remember me?” Her question caught him off-guard. He must have looked so confused. Her name… what was it again?
“What about the flowers?” She asked, her hands opening, showing him the yellow and white sturdy flowers growing all around them.
“The flower girl…” he replied, but it wasn’t there where he remembered her from. He stared at her, not able to avert his gaze from her, not knowing how to vocalize the longing he felt in his chest.
I thought I told you not to fall in love with me.
His eyes widen as the words reach his mind in a faint distant whisper.
He stands up in a jolt, slightly startling her and flitting petals around, suddenly overwhelmed by an immensely painful sense of loss that he had already been there before without her.
Aerith, the name resonates in his head.
He reached for her with a tightened chest, tears starting to burn his eyes. She straightened up letting him urgently crash against her to wrap his arms around her body in a long-awaited embrace and he feels her hands start trembling as she grips the back of his shirt and brushes her face against his chest.
It was so much more than that but the words “I know you” he murmured with his face buried on her shoulder, break his voice as he breathes in the warm floral scent of her skin and it takes him to places far gone inside his heart.
Flashes of her smiling face as the wind blows on her hair, the flowing motion of her pink dress under the sunlight, her tearful eyes behind a flickering bonfire, interruptive fireworks, a white materia falling on a cold surface and finally her praying hands flood his mind. He doesn’t understand them, and yet… he does.
She pauses, taking in what he said, vaguely
remembering a pact made beyond the depths of her consciousness.
“We made a deal.” She finally says and her voice is steadier than his though he can feel her body shaking against him and her pulse drumming erratically. “Thank you… for reminding me.” She tightens her grip. “I… missed you.” Words he could comprehend even though they had barely met. It happened too fast but not fast enough, he wants more time. How was it that he already knew her more than he knew himself?
He holds her for a long moment, making amends to one of his biggest regrets from before that he hadn’t been able to, hadn’t been allowed to, for she had been taken away from him too soon. Fate had been cruel twice for them, that he could track, it would not be cruel a third time, he wouldn’t have it.
He parted their embrace but slid his hands down her arms taking her slender hands in his, refusing to break physical contact with her.
And his blue eyes stare at her green ones as he sees the universe in them, holding her face between his hands, stroking her cheekbones with his thumbs, wiping away her tears as she runs her fingers gently but surely along his face; he let his forehead press against hers and their breaths became one right before he leaned in to kiss her, defying fate one more time, together.
He found her once again, his missing part. Their paths were clear now, he had a head-start and he would take advantage of it.