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How much of your heart can you fit in a single frame?
How much of someone’s memory can you capture in a single image?
The lens rotates, zooming in and out, focusing on the landscape. He holds still, doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe so he won’t risk losing the moment. Then gently, carefully, presses the small button under his fingertip, eternalizing the scenario in front of him with a single click.
Cloud lowers his arms, hands holding the camera Tifa had gifted him, in between.
He lifts his head, letting the crisp breeze wave his blond bangs away from his eyes. His gaze lingers on the vastness spreading in front of him. Hues of yellow and pink and white, smudging the landscape in vibrant colors extending towards the horizon. Poppies, daisies, primroses, are some of the names he remembers from those times she’d pull on his hand, pointing towards a flower field just like that one where they’d crouch down so she could casually introduce the flowers to him.
He’d listen in awe as she spoke about each of them like they were long lost family members. How they were all related, a piece of the same puzzle, spawn from the same roots. And she’d press flowers into the palms of his hands and he’d hold them carefully feeling the grass brushing his skin.
He sighs, looks at the sky as its bright blue gradually turns into fiery dark. Tifa had taught him how light can bring life to things, how light can transform an everyday stone into delicate crystal with a mechanism so simple as a touch. And since then, he had taken a certain likeness to the dusk light, how it shines and bounces off the petals and leaves, painting gold the vivid colors of spring.
He checks the frozen image on the back of the camera, the world captured in a moment of peace and tranquility.
He wonders quietly if she would have liked this one.
“You became so good at it.” Aerith says with a bright smile that matches the beauty of the field in front of him.
“Liar.” He scoffs gently. He’s never been good at anything, he knows it, this would be no exception.
“I mean it you know.” She says, bumps his shoulder in some kind of display of reassurance.
“Something’s always missing in them.” He says after a long pause, heart tightening to the feeling of loss that chokes him breathless whenever he finds himself staring at a photo he knows he’ll never be able to take again.
“Maybe.” She hums, green eyes keep staring at the flowers that rise up to their hips, shoulders tensing now, smile fading softly from her lips. “Or maybe it’s as it has always was meant to be.”
“I doubt that.” He says, heart kicking into a racing pace, struck by the sudden urge to reach out for her. He contains the impulse, swallows back the will, lets the longing disperse in his bloodstream like a drug as he questions his own mind and the vision of her. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d try to reach her, only to find himself grasping at thin air. She is real, and yet she’s not.
Her lips curl up again, light returning to the dark of her gaze.
“Why do you keep taking them?” She asks. Deep down he knows why she’d ask that, she knows him, his core, so she knows how much it hurts not to let go. But he does it because some days the ache gives way to a warmth, an unsatisfying type of warmth that could - might just heal him from the hollowness.
He remains silent, once again, like he has always been. The leaves whisper in the distance, mixing with her voice as another word dies on his lips.
It takes him a minute, maybe two before the words finally leave his mouth unbidden. “It makes me feel closer to you.”
Her smile warms, like all of her smiles for him.
“Haven’t you become quite the charmer.” She lilts, tilts her head, her long braid dances behind her back. Maybe before he hadn’t been able to tell her things like that. Maybe he regrets never having been able to.
He watches her, the details of her, each hazel string of hair, each freckle on her nose, each glinting drop of dew in her dress, shining against the sunlight.
“Flattered.” He teases again, but he can’t find it in him to be convincing, he’s never been good at missing her either.
“I like them… you’re a natural.” She says, pointing at the camera. “I wish I had known all of your hidden talents.”
His heart constricts, heavy with the guilt inside his chest, heavier than the pull of gravity itself. He wishes he had been able to give her the opportunity.
“What else can you do?” She asks, he’s sure she’s attempting to divert the sudden sullenness of the conversation, look for a brighter note.
He thinks on it anyway. There’s nothing he can remember except, maybe model building his mother had tried to teach him once, what seemed like a lifetime ago. He could barely call it a talent, not that he had had any time to pursue it. Even photography couldn’t be called exactly a talent. Tifa had called it a distraction, something he could use to clear his mind, to occupy himself with something other than god forbid, thinking. It had become more of a habit.
“Don’t tell me. Let me guess.” She says cheerfully, her hands clasp behind her back, she leans in, like she always did when she wanted to close the distance between them. Warm, affectionate. He misses the feeling of being around her, that lightness. The comfort of her heart beating close by. The gentle drumming he could sense when he closed his eyes at night and let instinct guide him along. The mako rushing through his veins didn’t seem so bad then.
He waits. She hums thoughtfully.
“Music?” She asks.
“Not really.” He shakes his head. Tifa was the one who played.
“Painting.” She tries, voice playful.
He winces, shrugs.
“Cooking then.”
“Come on, you tried my food once.” He grunts. Her green eyes flash in amusement, meeting his. He remembers, as she certainly is remembering too, those camping nights when the sky was their roof and the bonfire their kitchen. Burnt canned meat, starchy rice, string beans boiled to mush. He knows those times had been her favorite, earned them the laughs that now reside in his memories. Now that he has had time to think about it… they had been his too.
“I know!” She bounces slightly. “Needlework.”
“Now you’re just teasing me.”
“Why, what’s wrong with needlework?” She blinks, cheeky, bold. “I always found it so relaxing.”
He sighs, unable to contain the small smile forming on his lips.
They fall into silence.
She leans against his arm, softly, quietly, laying her head on his shoulder, threading her fingers through his. He doesn’t move for as long as she’s there, he doesn’t dare to.
“Thank you, Cloud.”
And she stays until the sun bids the moon goodbye, leaving behind its afterglow in wispy clouds of purple and green and the taste of her kiss, a bittersweet mixture of home, sunlight and departure.
It’s dark when he reaches the bar, the kind of dark that clings to the skin, cold and unforgivingly.
Tifa is piling up the chairs in one corner, getting ready to close the door.
He walks up to the wall that follows along the room, adorned with Tifa’s picture frames of their friends. Photographs of smiling faces, places they’ve visited, people they’ve met, people who left.
And flowers.
These taken by Cloud.
“Another one?” Tifa asks him, eyes watching as he so carefully holds a picture in his hands.
“Yeah…” he mutters under his breath, feeling his cheeks warm. As if he’s showing her a piece of his soul, which doesn’t fall far from the truth. He pauses a moment before handing her the photograph she examines with a soft expression in her eyes.
“Flowers…” her voice comes out quietly as if in a daze and he fidgets a little, looking down at his hands, guessing her thoughts. She never asks him why it’s always flowers, she doesn’t have to. “This one…” she continues, gaze illuminating as she lifts it to his. “… is especially beautiful.” She says then, leaving him briefly to come back with a picture frame in which she slides the image in.
Cloud hangs it close to the others. A field of yellow and white and pink, blossoming in the sun. It’s not her but it makes them—him feel closer to her, it makes it all feel a little less empty, as if amidst their laughter and smiles, late night conversations, quiet meals and idle afternoons, she’s there with them too.
And maybe on days like those, if the light filters through the window a certain way, bathing everything in gold, maybe he’ll get a glimpse of her watching his pictures with her hands clasped behind her back and a little smile pulling at her lips.