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The chill of the midnight air runs through him and dances against his spine. It seems that not even the confines of his tent can shield him from the life outside. He sleeps, but not soundly, not without tossing and turning, his eyes squinting and his breath shallow.
Though this night has not been kind to him, greeting him with sudden winds, pitch darkness, and the solid ground of the airstrip beneath him, respite comes, even subtly.
For when the wind shifts east and passes over his sleeping figure, he has this overwhelming need for warmth, this craving to protect, something he’s become accustomed to in the passing week since they got the Tiny Bronco off the ground again.
He strews his arm from his chest to his side shifting to his back. As much as he hates to admit it, this is his favorite position to sleep in. As much as he is exposing himself to danger, he would rather himself be attacked than those he cherishes.
What he cherishes most.
His other arm follows, searching for the familiar difference between cheap bedsheets and the soft pink cotton he’s gotten so accustomed to, so drawn to.
His fingers instinctively reach, grasp, but he finds nothing.
Odd.
Cloud's eyes snap open, the chill of realization creeping into his bones along with the night's cold fingers. He sits up abruptly, his heart fluttering in his chest.
"Where...?" he mutters to himself, his voice barely a whisper. The sound of a zipper breaks the silence, sharp and clear in the stillness of the night. Cloud freezes, his breath catching in his throat. Warmth gone, soldier up, tent zipper down. The first thought in his mind is, it is dangerous to go out alone, his second is, screw it, she needs me.
As he rises from the sleeping cot, he rubs his eyes, the night abetting his awakening as the night air rushes in, carrying with it the faint scent of flowers and something else, something he can't quite place.
Cloud's panic rises like a tide within him, threatening to engulf him in its cold embrace. He searches for it in the darkness, the presence that's become as familiar to him as his own heartbeat. But his fingers find nothing but empty air, grasping at shadows and memories that slip through his desperate grasp.
He tries to call out her name, a whisper on the edge of his lips, but the words catch in his throat. Not now.
But as if the stars in the night sky can feel his discomfort and the moon can hear his calls, the Gongaga airstrip seems illuminated in a way he'd never seen before. The pinkish red of the Tiny Bronco can only serve to remind him of just how pink his life has become. No, not that, more like how pink his thoughts have become. Too often he's lost in thoughts of pink dresses, swimsuits, skirts, and flowers. Thoughts of pink lips and pink cheeks, thoughts of pink, melodic laughter, pink “you okay?”s and pink hellos and goodbyes. In fact, his life has never been quite this pink, yet he doesn't complain, for when his eyes catch that pink dress that is burned so deeply into his memory, his feet nearly lift off the ground. He has to hold himself back like a man against a thousand bulls from running to her, just to see her face more clearly, to spend time with her.
Embarrassingly enough, he can't find himself away from her touch for too long without the discomfort and itching of his skin, the deep, hollow feeling in his soul.
How did this girl turn him into a bumbling child?
But if he ever told her that's the way he was thinking of himself, he'd get a stern talking to. Instead, he has to realize just exactly what she's done to him.
How did this girl turn him back into that boy that he'd tried so hard to hide away?
Cloud's breath comes in short, shallow gasps as he steps out into the night, the darkness of the airstrip stretching out before him like an endless void. But there, in the midst of it all, sits Aerith, bathed in moonlight and star shine, her presence a beacon in the darkness. For a moment, Cloud simply stands there, watching her, acutely aware of his heart beating in his chest. He wonders if she can hear it, in a way, he’s sure that she can, as she seems to be able to every single time. He wants to run to her, to wrap her in his arms. But he won’t, it’s not his place, not yet.
In what little time they’ve had to spend in the Tiny Bronco, it’s only obvious that it has to be Aerith’s favorite place. The twitching of her fingers, the bouncing of her legs, the smile plastered upon her face when the expansive skies became their playground and the people below were like ants under her feet.
At one moment, it might have been too much for her, but here, it’s never enough. Maybe Cloud can pride himself because for once, he’s watching her learn and grow beyond her fears, and not the other way around. But as always, when he begins to think that he knows her inside out, she takes him by surprise, what she’s doing out here right now is beyond him. Maybe Cloud can let his thoughts wander for a bit because he only has time to wonder when she’ll take him to their next “our spot”, and maybe it’ll be here.
His feet betray him, his eyes follow his heart, not his head. Each patter against the airstrip’s concrete feels like a betrayal of his senses. Each of his atoms is screaming at him to stop, to go back to bed, to leave her to her lonesome like he could have so many times before. But he can’t.
When his body finally decides that it’s done fighting him, he lands in front of the plane, staring up at the serene sight of Miss Aerith Gainsborough sitting in the cockpit. For a moment, Cloud watches Aerith in her peaceful solitude. He has never seen such a side of her before. It seems that in all moments past, she’s known he was there. In every moment he’s tried to catch her by surprise, she’s known. As he watches her, something emerges. A deep, almost primal need to protect her.
There’s only one thing in this world that’s more powerful than the dreadful repetition of reunion within his mind.
Her voice.
“Cloud? What are you doing out here so late?” She has to shout against the glass so that he can hear her. He gasps.
“I couldn’t sleep. I… was worried about you.” He responds, not as loudly, hoping maybe she won’t hear him at all.
And does she even know it, the power of her voice?
“Come here, silly, it’s cold.”
Maybe.
As Cloud hears her voice, the calling of his name catches him by surprise. He snaps his head up to meet her gaze finally and instantly feels a bit self-conscious.
Looking into her eyes, he can tell that she’s almost as vulnerable as he. The way she was trying to shield herself from the world with this intimate moment alone with her thoughts. He can’t help but feel guilty.
But yet he’s already waist-deep in the water and the retreating tide is pulling him deeper. Who is he to fight what he undeniably wants?
When Cloud Strife finally gives in to the movements of his body and his eyes finally leave the floor beneath him, he feels less like a child, naive and dependent, so when his feet carry him up three metal steps, he hears nothing at all but the hums and croaks of frogs, singing their songs in the night.
Cloud's heart skips a beat as he draws closer to Aerith, the soft glow of the moon casting a gentle halo around her. It's as if he's seeing Aerith up close for the first time in an eternity, though he's seen her every day since she... since she...
He shakes his head, pushing away the haunting thoughts that threaten to cloud his mind. Since he saved her. This is Aerith, right in front of him, alive and well. It feels surreal like every glance of her is a memory. Like his very sight is a collage of fragments of her from the depths of his soul. But she's right here. She's alive, and she's here. And for that, the miracle of freedom is all that he can thank, even if memory betrays him and sight is cruel.
Aerith’s saccharine smile reflects against the glass of the plane. She traces a finger against the glass, then down to the controls. There’s a loving wear to some of the buttons. Cloud can imagine that Cid has flown this plane thousands of times and that he’ll fly it a thousand times more. Aerith traces her hand along the steering wheel lovingly, as if she were to take to the skies all by herself.
“You were worried about me?”
Her voice orates through the empty cabin of the Tiny Bronco and rips Cloud from his trance. He can only be grateful. When she turns her head to the side, he graces in her profile, catching her eyes, watching as her hair tumbles over her shoulder, curls unbrushed, but not messy at all.
“Of course I was. You were gone.” His response is immediate, no need to think about it.
“Well…” She turns the pilot’s chair around to face him, though the moon no longer shines upon her, she seems to have her own sort of light. “I’m doing pretty great, hm?” And she looks down at herself as if to say, ‘don’t I look it?’, but Cloud notes that the bags under her eyes don’t exactly help.
She’s been working hard.
Is all he can think. It pains him that this is one thing that he can’t help her with, that these prayers are actions that only a Cetra can take.
Cloud lets his gaze linger on her face for a few moments, studying the dark circles under her eyes. He can’t help himself but reach out to brush the side of his hand against her cheek.
“You look exhausted,” he finally says softly, noticing the dark circles under her eyes. He almost feels like he shouldn’t be seeing this side of her.
Aerith almost laughs at his honesty, he can feel the vibrations beneath his fingers. “Yeah, but it’s okay. We all are.” Aerith sighs and looks back out at the stars, moving her head so his fingers aren’t grazing her cheek anymore. “I’m finally fulfilling my duties. It’ll all be worthwhile, you’ll see!”
Right, her duties. That’s why she’s been gone so often, why he’d wake to an empty bed despite his sleep-filled nights.
“The prayers, are they working?” Cloud promises himself that he won’t focus too much on her pulling away.
Cloud watches as Aerith’s gentle eyes shift from her own reflection to tracing the shapes of the stars in the sky, so similar to how they once did in Cosmo Canyon. It’s incredible, he thinks, that he can come back to all these memories that they share with fondness and not regret like he so often does.
“I’d like to believe they are,” Aerith responds, her voice soft, but tinged with uncertainty. Cloud hangs on her every word. “But sometimes it feels like I’m just… shouting into the void.”
As Cloud listens to Aerith's words, a pang of guilt washes over him. He knows all too well the feeling of shouting into the void, of desperately hoping for a response that may never come.
A familiar pain crawls up his fingertips and shoots up his spine to his head. That splitting headache that always comes back, that’s always followed by an unfamiliar memory.
Please, Professor, please give me a number.
But he can't let Aerith see his doubt, not when she needs him to be strong.
“Someone wise once told me, ‘True strength doesn’t come from anger or fear, it comes from our ability to forge ahead in the hope of making things right.’” His voice finds a hopeful twinge, something he’d found in her numerous times.
And she notices, her eyes finding him again.
“And though I… wasn’t thinking straight when she told me, it still stuck with me.”
“Really?” Her voice cracks when she says it, but her gaze doesn’t waver. When his legs take over again, he’s back, submitted to how she makes his knees weak and his legs wobble. He has to sit in the co-pilot seat before his knees give out on him. “Because I didn’t exactly get that impression back when I said it—“
And it’s then that he really pulls an Aerith, because he crosses his arms and looks out at the sky, breaking eye contact with her to mutter out a sharp, “Shh..”
And she giggles, that melodic, blessed sound that rings in his ears like church bells on a Sunday morning, like birds singing on a summer’s day.
“Yeah, really.” His voice is stoic, flat, only to hide the smile behind his words.
“Good.” Is all she responds with.
And when her voice leaves the echo of the Tiny Bronco, nothing accompanies them but the gentle singing of the Gongaga frogs outside. The skies shine brighter than ever as the stars watch them sit in silence, but Cloud doesn’t feel awkward. He almost feels more envious than anything. Only once has he gotten the chance to snap a photograph of their time together, and since then, he’s been craving proof of their time together.
He wonders what it would be like up there, to gaze down on two people sitting in silence, would it be intruding? Would they know he was there?
And as his thoughts wander, it seems, so do hers.
“If I lived up on the plate all my life, I think I would find myself stargazing so often.” She admits, barely above a whisper.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’d probably spend just about every night out here, just me and the stars.”
Cloud's gaze follows Aerith's, tracing the patterns of the constellations above them. He can almost see it, the image of Aerith beneath the stars, her eyes reflecting the light of a thousand distant suns as she loses herself in the vastness of the universe.
“It sounds nice,” Cloud says softly, his voice barely audible above the hum of the Tiny Bronco's engines. “Peaceful.”
“Right?” Aerith smiles excitedly. Just as it’s probably important to Aerith, it’s important to Cloud too, as he’s spent a lot of his life looking ahead of him, he’s never really had the time to stop and look up. “The sky used to be so… scary, but here—“ she pauses, “here it’s so much less mysterious. Like the sky is on full display for me..”
“Yeah,” Cloud replies softly, watching as a calm breeze stirs a lock of hair across her face. He can’t stop observing her, studying her features in the dim moonlight. In a way, Aerith’s words perfectly describe his own thoughts. There’s so much he’s been overlooking for a very long time.
“But then it makes me think about how much I’ll never get to see. There’s a whole sky of stars out there… it’s too much for me to ever know.” Aerith’s words are somber, cold, and Cloud is sure that they don’t reach his ears the same way that they fall from her lips. He hates that. He hates that she can’t tell him exactly what she means. There is no resentment for her, but rather for the planet, for the duties that they both must uphold, the words that will forever go unsaid.
But then, before he can dwell too much on the sadness of it all, a sudden impulse takes hold of him, a reckless desire to chase after the impossible.
"I'll take you," Cloud blurts out, the words escaping before he can fully process them. "To see the stars, I mean..."
Cloud almost doesn't mean to say it, but he does. The offer hangs in the air between them, heavy with the weight of possibility. He can see the surprise in Aerith's eyes, the flicker of hope that dances behind her gaze. Something about the familiarity of this specific moment flickers within Cloud’s heart. Her hair pooling against her shoulders, white materia between her hands, the sight of such a girl seems too ethereal to be real.
"Really?" Her voice is barely a whisper, filled with a mixture of disbelief and excitement. It's a vulnerability that tugs at Cloud's heartstrings.
"Yeah," Cloud responds, his own voice filled with a certain excitement that he seldom hangs onto. “Whenever you want. We'll find a way."
Aerith's smile lights up the darkness around them, illuminating the tiny cockpit with a warmth that banishes the shadows. In that moment, Cloud knows that he'll do anything to see that smile again, to chase away the doubts and fears that threaten to consume them both.
Yet Cloud cannot give Aerith all of the credit for the rising morning sun, though he wants to admit that her existence keeps the world turning and the days flowing by. As the sunlight spills into the cockpit, Cloud has found that conversation flows by like the living lifestream.
As the first rays of sunlight begin to peek over the horizon, painting the sky in shades of pink and orange, they talk and talk, about everything and nothing at all. They talk about their hopes and dreams, about the people they've lost and the ones they've found along the way. They talk about the stars and the mysteries of the universe, and for a fleeting moment, Cloud forgets about the weight of his burden, about the darkness that threatens to consume him. Cloud even begins to forget about that damned reunion, about his mistakes and his flaws. None of it matters.
But as the hours pass and the sun climbs higher in the sky, reality begins to intrude upon their sanctuary. Cloud can hear the distant sounds of the rest of the party stirring, the faint clatter of pots and pans as they prepare breakfast. He knows they can't stay here forever, lost in each other's company, no matter how much he wishes they could.
And then, as if on cue, Cid emerges from the makeshift campsite, his gruff voice cutting through the morning air like a knife.
"What're you doin' out here all alone?" Cid's voice is rough, tinged with concern, and Cloud can't help but feel a pang of guilt at the worry etched on the older man's face.
But then—
"Alone?" he repeats, his voice barely a whisper as he glances around the cockpit, searching for Aerith.
Cloud's heart skips a beat as he turns to the driver's seat, expecting to find Aerith sitting beside him, her presence a comforting presence in the early morning light. But to his dismay, the seat is empty, the space beside him devoid of her warmth and light.
"Yeah, lookin' at the stars?" Cid gestures to the sky above them, his expression unreadable. Cloud thinks for a moment, why would I want to keep looking up? The rift between the sky catches his eye.
"She's... busy," Cloud murmurs, his voice barely audible.
Cid gives him a quizzical look, but Cloud brushes it off, forcing a smile to his lips. As Cid's eyes widen, he attempts to appeal to whatever Cloud has been mentioning to him, “She—? Oh, yeah, I get it, The planet's always got somethin’ to do." Cid’s voice is gruff like he hasn’t used it since last night.
As Cid's gaze lingers on him, Cloud feels a pang of guilt clawing at his insides. He knows he should tell Cid the truth, should explain the inexplicable bond he shares with Aerith, that her prayers mean more to them than they’ll ever understand, but the words stick in his throat, choking him with their weight.
Cid gives him a skeptical look, but ultimately shrugs, muttering something about never understanding young folks these days as he heads back towards the cockpit of the Bronco.
“You should head on out, kid. Tifa’s lookin’ for ya.”
Right. Cloud’s earthly tethers go beyond him. He forgets, sometimes, that there is more to his duty than being her bodyguard and saving the planet. He’s a friend, a brother, a savior. Aerith’s absence reminds him of that. She has duties beyond her own earthly tethers. Cloud doesn’t question it, she’s praying to the planet, not just for the world’s sake, but for his.
I’ll stop Meteor.
It reverberates in his head like a wistful memory. He holds onto it tightly, for when she sends up smoke again, he’ll be there. He promised her, he’ll be there.
As the sound of Cid's footsteps fade into the distance against the metal grafts of the Bronco, Cloud turns back to the tiny airship, his heart heavy. He knows she's out there somewhere, watching over him, guiding him from the shadows. But the knowledge offers little comfort as he steps off the plane, his mind still reeling from her sudden departure.
You gonna be okay getting back?
He’d say it again if he got the chance.
Cloud wanders aimlessly through the empty airstrip, his thoughts consumed by the memory of Aerith's smile and the warmth of her presence. He knows he should be focusing on the task at hand, on stopping Sephiroth and saving the planet, but his mind keeps drifting back to Aerith, to the promise they made to each other beneath the beaming sun among the fields of flowers.
And as if his mind finds solace in playing tricks on him, he swears he finds her porcelain skin and the soft cotton of her dress wafting in the wind. A second glance only proves his solemn thoughts.
Aerith.
As the wind caresses her cheeks, Aerith's laughter rings out like a melody, a symphony of joy that fills the air around her with its sweet refrain.
And suddenly, every bird is singing out her name, the whisks of the wind shout it, the croaks of the frogs are calling out to her in the early morning buzz.
Aerith. Aerith. Aerith.
It’s far too early for this, for such a swelling feeling to come knocking at his door.
"Go on, Cloud," she says softly, her voice carrying on the breeze. "I'll handle things here. We'll see each other later."
Cloud nods, his heart lighter now, knowing that Aerith is watching over him, even when he can't see her.
"Thanks, Aerith," he whispers, though he knows she can't hear him. "I'll see you later."
And with that, Cloud turns away, his mind already racing ahead to the tasks that lie ahead. But as he walks away, that hollow feeling doesn’t leave him, like there’s a certain word that is left on his tongue, a sinking feeling that won’t escape the pit of his stomach.
But for now, he pushes the thought aside, focusing instead on the warmth of the sun on his face and the distant smell of flowers in the morning air.