Disclaimer: Forsooth, they are not mine.

A/N: Another one written for the weekly challenge over at KH Drabble on LiveJournal. This week's prompt was 'still believe', which suits Cloud and Aerith perfectly, I thought, even if my fingers wouldn't type anything happy when I set them on the keyboard. As ever, feedback is appreciated, squealed over and lusted after.

Blind Faith

© Scribbler, July 2008.

"I still believe in you," Aerith says once, voice lifting slightly at the end. It's not a question, she doesn't mean it as a question, but it stays as one in Cloud's memory – he adds his own disbelief and replays in it her voice, staying away from her and his home so the real her doesn't spoil the illusion.

I still believe in you?

He wants to ask her why, but when he does she just looks at him.

"Because you're worth believing in." Not a question this time, but not quite a statement, either. At least, not to him. Maybe she intends it as one – a statement implies fact, after all, something unequivocal, a truth too solid to be doubted.

But how can that be right, when he knows it's a lie?

"I still believe in you," she says when he leaves her, over and over. "I believe you'll come back to me."

"I still believe in you," she assures him when he's distant and she has to press a hand over his just to get his attention. "I know you'll do the right thing."

"I still believe in you," she gabbles after he comes back to the castle so banged up he can barely walk, and she has to heal him out on the drawbridge with Heartless all around them, just so he doesn't bleed out before they can get his sorry ass inside. "Even though I'm afraid for you. Even though you scare me sometimes. Even though you can be a real idiot, I still believe in you."

She thinks she can force him to believe in himself if she says it enough. Her light touches, open smile and ridiculous optimism get under his skin the longer he stays in Hollow-Bastion-Radiant-Garden, and he's running away from her faith in him as much as he's going off looking for Sephiroth.

I still believe in you?

I still believe in you?

She never questions her own belief, even when he tells her he's not the kid he used to be. She just shrugs and says, "None of us are. That's kind of the point, Cloud," which he doesn't understand. He keeps putting his quest for Sephiroth over her and she refuses to stop thinking the best of him. He doesn't understand at all.

He's so busy changing the inflection of what she's said that he doesn't catch all the things she doesn't say, but which shine in her eyes whenever he's around.

I still believe in you?

"I still believe in you," she states, one hand fisting in his shirt as her breath rattles in her chest like marbles in a metal container.

"But why?" he asks desperately, trying to stop the blood-flow from the wound in her belly where Masamune passed straight through. He finally beat Sephiroth, but the cost is too high. "I failed you! How can you still believe in me when all I've ever done is let you down?"

She blinks up at him, frowning. "You never let me down."

"Yes I did! You were just too blind to see I wasn't worth believing in. I never have been."

"I still believe in you," she wheezes, pressing her cheek against his chest, and dribbling red all over his hands because he tore his gloves off to hold her after chasing Sephiroth into the bailey. Sephiroth still believed in Cloud as well – believed that he'd never escape the darkness, or him, and brought Cloud's personal vendetta into his sanctuary just to prove it. "I still … believe in … you …"

"Aerith!"

"… because you're worth … believing in …" she finishes, fingers going slack.

He holds her, rocking back and forth and murmuring into her hair, until Leon and the others find them.

I still believe in you.

Fin.