folna:

it would be a lie to say his reaction caught her by surprise. it would be an even bigger lie to say it hadn’t. alley cat, she’d thought moments before, ready to vault over the line of a fence. she predicts the outcome, but she predicts it in jest, so when he clears the counter top in a quick leap, aerith falters to a stop, scrambling back a step or two to avoid a teetering chair.

it clatters to the floor, and the echo of metal legs against tile acts as preamble to a growing noise of mirth. pressing a chocolate covered wrist to her lips, aerith is kind enough to at least pretend to have manners. laughing at others isn’t really a nice thing to do. harassing them with cake batter and then laughing when they do not manage to fully escape it is an even less nice thing to do, but here she is. and here he is.

and here they are.

❛ i think you need a little more, ❜ she says, sliding over his one syllable response as if she hadn’t heard it. ❛ i’ve always wondered what you’d look like with brown hair. ❜ 

WHERE DID SHE LEAVE OFF? what happened last? aerith looks at zack, and all she sees are the loose ends of an unfinished conversation, and she has to wonder, was it really unfinished? there’s nothing but white noise where memories should be. there’s nothing but a knot in the base of her throat where words should form. muscles tense beneath the skin. a spine forms glacial points along her back, pronounced and apparent as she settles herself on the floor beside him.

❛ —— that’s a good color on you, ❜ she says, hands flat against the floorboards, elbows stiff, head tilting back toward the ceiling. it’s startling, in some ways, to see him outside his SOLDIER uniform. years of memory have solidified him unchanging, and when she thinks zack fair, she thinks dark blues and blacks. 

stoirmeil:

fatigue cuts her in two, and there is a disconnect between body and mind. there is a sluggishness that turns blood to sand and eyes to curtains, too heavy and too thick-lidded to remain open. aerith gainsborough has been traveling. not alone, no — was she alone the last time they met? had she truly been revived when lightning stumbled across her? — but she is alone now. somewhere before, her companion had been lost. or, perhaps, it would be accurate to say some time. one or the other; she’s still hazy on the mechanics of world travel.

but though she is tired and achy and apt to turn grass to pillow, aerith rolls off her back and on to her side. head propped in the curve of her palm, she manages to sneak a peek out her left eye. ❛ i fell into a puddle and woke up to two flowers bickering about the rules of chess. ❜  a pause. ❛ when i tried to ask what happened, they pretended they couldn’t speak. ❜

folna:

his eyes narrow, but hers remain wide. his body language stiffens, but hers remains fluid. cloud reminds her of an alley cat, cornered and irritable, ready to bound over the other side of a fence in a single second. but there’s no fence here, no quick escape. aerith turns herself into an obstacle in the space between two breaths. 

a pause.

the word don’t sits in the air between them. to some, it would be a warning. to aerith, it is a challenge. it is a gun firing off at the beginning of a race. it is an announcer barking out commentary during a blitzball game. cloud says don’t, and she’s already flicking chocolate cake batter in his general direction. cloud says don’t, and she’s already closing distance between them.

folna:

he should know better, standing there clean-faced — standing there pretty-faced — as if she is not a tempest let loose. the bowl sits upside down between them, a mountain surrounded by rivers of brown, but her hands are still marked by cake batter. her face — her hair, the front of her dress — are spotted with the remainder. aerith gainsborough has turned herself into a weapon of revenge, and cloud is close enough to touch.

consideration settles in the way she surveys her fingers, in the way she cocks her head at him, in the way she takes a test step closer. brows rising in the same feigned expression of innocence, aerith announces her intentions between the lines of her statement, ❛ you don’t know for certain unless you taste it. ❜

THERE HE IS. where there is one, there is the other. where there is night, there is day. aylen crosswood brings to mind the death of a star, the flash of a supernova, a graveyard walking on two feet. aerith knows the feeling of being dead before you take your first breath, and she knows that darkness is so thick and impenetrable that you can choke on it if you’re not careful. she knows that she’s prone to sadness, prone to worry, and prone to fear if not in the company of people who make her see sunlight.

perhaps that’s why there is a cloud where there is an aerith. & perhaps that’s why there is a jaune where there is an aylen.

he’s a flash of blonde hair, and all she can think is that the resemblance to cloud is growing. all she can wonder is if that’s in a good way or not. he looks different than she last saw him. not just physically, but in physicality. the way he moves. the way the shadows play across his back. aerith catches sight of jaune before he can see her, and she debates whether she can handle saying hello. ( she can, she can. ) turn trepidation into bravado, aerith gainsborough. tell people that you are not afraid of anything.

be something good and bright and happy so that if you’re right, you will not make it worse. ❛ —— it’s the cheese. ❜ how long has it been since you heard that nickname?

◦ folna

❛ —— not when you’re laughing at me, ❜ she says, voice reverberating, lips cracked like a fault line. it’s a cross between a whine and a laugh, a mix between irritation and amusement. the details are hazy, but aerith could have sworn the bowl leapt from her hands. her memory is faulty, but she could almost recall the cake batter exploding into the air around them.

( surely, she didn’t drop it ! that would be entirely too clumsy ! )

but she cannot deny the egg shell shrapnel caught in her hair and chocolate soot smeared across her arms. whatever happened, it’s safe to say that her attempts at dessert have gone astray. perhaps it’s for the best, though; the specks of batter that made it in her mouth taste very strongly of salt.

she is planet born, and it has marked her as its child, hair colored with tree bark, eyes filled in with moss. her skin’s the color of dawn clouds, and her lips are reminders of dusk. her sweater is blue! a morning sky kind of blue. a just-like-his-eyes kind of blue. a few-sizes-too-big-but-it-fits-just-right kind of blue. and it’s wrong, she thinks, so very wrong that it be marred by red.

but it is. ( and it has been. )

knuckles against her mouth, aerith wipes away a line of blood before coughing into her hand. rebellion is the way her lungs protest against movement. betrayal is the way her legs give out beneath her. terror is the way his face looks when she’s dying —— but he’s not here, so she’s not terrified. the beast shifts to the side, head cocked, mouth parted. he breathes, and aerith can see death written in the air between them. she can see a scrap of her own skin against its teeth. this is not her world, and these are not her enemies.

but it looks like she has to fight anyway. ( if only the planet could hear her from so far away. )

time turns abstract when you have lived and died and lived again. it’s sands in an hourglass ( flip it over when you run out ), and it’s stars in the night sky ( too many, too bright to count ). aerith gainsborough does not keep track of the seconds and the minutes and the years that pass because they mean nothing to her. they signify nothing to her. she is a walking phantom; she is living ghost. she does not age the same years or breathe the same breaths or think the same thoughts that she once did before. and so, when life takes her away from the people she knows, it doesn’t occur to her just how long she’s been absent.

aylen crosswood stands before her, and, for just a moment, aerith remembers what it means to be mortal. she remembers the connections that bound her to the planet, to her heartbeat, to a destiny still yet to be revealed. she remembers that she’s supposed to do things like say goodbye, supposed to check in when the months drag long. but then — it’s a curious thing. if she were asked, she wouldn’t be able to say what she’s been up to.

a new question surfaces in the quiet: how many pockmarks are there on your memory?

❛ do you think i’ve gained weight? ❜ cover it up. pretend there’s no panic. no confusion. no surfacing doubts about the veracity of anything stated before. pretend you’re not secretly disturbed by the darkness between the light and the way that your mind betrays you. pretend it has not been months ( oh darling, but is has ).

dokuganryuu:

vardr:

sucks 2 suck we always party w/o u

_(:3」∠)_  hello darling