Disclaimer: Tsk. It's not mine.

A/N: Thank you for beta-reading, Novocain. You rock. Oh, and... dear readers, please review; your feedback keeps my world spinning. :P

Her Last Forest

It was one of those rare evenings when she couldn't tend to her flowers; worse yet, she couldn't stand the sight of them. The delicate stem, the soft flesh of the petals, the flamboyant colors… She wasn't in the mood for carnivals.

Years had passed, and she was still waiting for the same dark spikes and a cocky, lop-sided grin. Warm, calloused hands and his silly flirtations - he had to come back. She wasn't the same anymore; he had to come back.

She lay on her beloved flowerbed, the damp earth under her body sending chills up and down her spine. More than a few blooms were crushed under her weight, but for once she couldn't bring herself to care. She lay there, spread-eagled inside a silent church. Her church, which didn't feel like hers tonight. It felt hostile, suffocating, and she forced her eyelids to flutter closed because the wooden ceiling was too goddamn old and threatening, like it was about to bury her under its mass.

Hands rested lightly on her abdomen, but she knew they weren't warm or calloused, only slim and feminine and hers. She caressed the fabric of her pink dress softly, tentatively. Slowly, she grew bolder, drawing half-circles and spirals, then tugging at the material - and suddenly she was fisting it in her hand, and something was aching, hurting her inside, but it wasn't alone and it wasn't innocent and she knew that.

She jerked her hand away from her body.

It was getting dark, and she had to dry her eyes before she went home. She had broken a promise; it would never happen again. He was never coming back, but she would hope and tend to her flowers patiently and wait.

Yes, she would. A promise was a promise. No matter how hard to keep.

--

The boy with the blinding blond hair could have been him, had his eyes held the same spark.

--

She had met a lot of new people lately. They were all friendly and nice and absorbed in their own little grey, pink, or crimson worlds - and she, too, was chirpy and kind of lovely and dead.

It was a few days earlier - in the Temple. Her kin had whispered sweet and sour truths in her ear, and she had known then. Yes, she was a walking corpse already, with a fate as decided as the steel of a sword.

Still, she allowed herself to get lost in Zack's - Cloud's - oceanic eyes, not fighting the waves but embracing them with a simmering need more and more every day.

And she cut Yuffie's hair because she looked like a stray, her smile bright and intact. And then she teased Tifa about her skirt and joined Nanaki and Barret by the campfire, the sound of gruff, familiar voices arguing - combined with the scent of burning wood - drawing her in.

Perhaps she could accept her fate. Perhaps it was worth it.

--

It was hard. So hard.

Reality is like theory, only much more distorted and twisted, she thought and she was somewhere in the woods, somewhere close to the entrance to the Forgotten City, somewhere dark, cold, and creepy.

She couldn't go. The forest, this hated forest, was one step away from oblivion. It was the last stanza, the life she had to give away. She hated the forest for making her halt and quiver; she hated it for being so serene at night, the occasional rustling of leaves making her skin crawl and ants rise up her feet. She hated the forest, the last forest, her last forest - and she loved it because it was alive and there was a night owl on a branch nearby, staring at her with wide black eyes, and she was going to die for them - this old forest and its eerie aura, her friends, this owl.

But she couldn't. She wanted to live. She wanted to love and laugh and play and -

- she would have fled. She really would have. It was all too much, but then he was there. The ghost, the other wasted life -

- Wasted, Aeris? Come on, sugar, I know you're stronger than that.

It was hardly a voice, more like a whisper.

He was there. He really was there, leaning against a willow tree, the reflection of a man. He was amused and he was sad and sharp and faint like ancient worn paint on a wall. He was grinning miserably. He was glowing like a clumsy firefly. He was Zack.

Dead.

Zack.

There. Zack. Zack. Her mind repeated his name in a loop - stop, rewind, play.

She choked and half-wailed at the same time. Too much, too much, and I'm too weak for this. She was limp like a plastic doll, and her knees fell to the ground with a heavy thud, the skin tearing in places. Blood oozed from the wounds and mixed with soil. She laughed a bitter laugh that was so unlike her.

- Don't think like that, silly, or you'll validate my theory that God has a sick sense of humor… And you don't want to lose that bet, or I'll be kissing you in public whenever I want and you'll have no right to protest, remember?

She gulped and looked at him, eyes narrowed to keep a hundred different things from showing. There was a wry smile on his face and she could see the wrinkles of the wood through him.

He smiled wider this time, and suddenly she was sobbing. She cried for him, for their memories. She cried for her and for the planet that would die if she chose to leave.

He was right.

The first and only man to hold her heart looked at her solemnly, or as solemnly as a fleeting memory could, and nodded.

- It is time.

She felt strangely calm now that there were no more tears. She stretched her arm toward his fragile presence, silver bracelets reflecting the soft glow of a very mundane half-moon. Just like any other night.

- It will be just like any other night, he whispered, and he was gone - a moment before her cold fingertips reached him.

Picking herself up, she took the final steps to the portal to the end.

To her credit, she didn't falter once this time.

It is time we meet again.