Chibi: Well, here is the final chapter. Thank you very much for reading this far! As always, a review would be appreciated.

I hope you enjoy it.

Thirteen

The panes of glass in the windows of the train flashed softly in my eyes as I leant back in my seat, crossing my legs as I slipped my book back into my bag. My hair was a sleek curtain that slid over my shoulder and, like always, I sighed, pulling it up high into a ponytail. The boy sat opposite me, a little further down the carriage, was reading the same book, and as I put mine away he gave me a nod of understanding, a nod that tried to hint at something I wasn't interested in, and I sighed again, trying to subtly shake my head. I laid my head against the window, uncaring of the thought of all the people who'd laid their greasy, unwashed heads there before me, and stared out at the landscape that flashed past me.

Today was the day, and I was travelling to Midgar by myself.

My trunk, full of clothes and books, had been sent on ahead to the school, and I was travelling by myself on the train, ready to stop off and change at Junon station. A couple of hours before, my father and brother had dropped me off at the tiny excuse for a train station that lay on the outskirts of Gongaga, and to my surprise, Zack had to try to hide tears that had pooled in his eyes. My father just held me close, and I knew he was doing exactly what I had done with Yuffie and Cloud the previous day – committing my smell to memory. I had just dug my fingers into the scratchy material of his jumper and tried to hold myself together, because this was my choice – I had decided to do this – and it would be wrong if I cried too. He dropped a kiss to my forehead, and then I found myself being dragged into Zack's trembling arms.

"You take care of yourself, Teef," he murmured. His breath ruffled the top of my hair. "I know Cloud will, at least."

"You take care of yourself," I mumbled into his shoulder.

He was still sad, I knew, and that hurt me as I boarded the train and waved to them from the window, because it didn't seem fair that things were working out for me and not for him. He wasn't due to start his degree until the beginning of October, so he still had something to look forward to, but I knew that there was still a gaping hole in his life that only she could fill, and my leaving only served to make it grow.

I didn't cry as the train pulled away, but I didn't feel proud of that fact – it only reminded me of how, at fifteen, I felt like I had suddenly grown up far too quickly. I had spent the majority of the summer insisting I was an adult and could make my own decisions, but every decision I had made had been influenced by someone else. This, leaving to go to the school my own mother had attended, leaving Gongaga and living somewhere else for the first time in my not considerably long life, was the first decision I had made by myself, and it frightened me. I was as aware as I had been, the day Kadaj died, and Cloud kissed me before leaving me sat on the floor of my old nursery, that I was, undoubtedly, still fifteen, and still a child.

The train pulled up in Junon, and I gathered my satchel and my blazer up, and made my way off the train in the stream of people. I fought briefly against the crowd, trapped in a mass of bodies and colour and a blur of sound, clutching my bag close to me as I pushed my way forward to try and find a departures board. I managed to negotiate my way through an oncoming torrent of people walking in the opposite direction to me, and finally found myself standing in front of the enormous, glowing board showing each departure. I located my train and platform, checked the time, and began making my way to platform five. I had about an hour to spare before my train came in, but I figured I could sit somewhere on the platform till then, and either read or lose myself in my thoughts, as seemed to happen so often these days.

As I joined the masses walking along to the platform, a familiar figure appeared ahead of me, walking towards me and carefully pulling a suitcase behind her, the flashing pink of her dress catching my eye and the long, brown braid of hair hanging over her shoulder confirming my suspicions. Our faces remained neutral as we stopped a little before each other, and then she gave me one of those smiles that I hadn't realised until that point just how much I had missed.

"Hello, Tifa," she said simply, and suddenly a warmth erupted in me that I hadn't even been aware was missing. Somehow, she had returned it to me.

In the end, as she had about an hour too before her train to Gongaga, we went to a little café within the station to each have a cup of tea. Aerith insisted on buying them, so I sat at the table outside whilst she went inside and handled the order. When she came back balancing a tray, and carefully put our cups, saucers and the teapot down on the table before me, I wondered if I should tell her about what had happened after she had left, but she surprised me as she sat down by asking how my shoulder was.

It turned out that in the time that she had lived with us, she and my father had grown a lot closer than I'd realised, and after she'd left, he'd begun writing to her in Midgar, and had kept her up to date on everything that was happening. He'd even managed to let her know, in the space of the last few days, my decision, and Zack's too. In fact, she told me, as she sipped delicately from her tea cup and brushed her hair out of her face, fiddling with the ribbon that Zack had once told me he'd bought for her, she was coming back to start nursing training in Junon. As she told me this, I found, to my surprise, that I wasn't surprised – nursing just seemed to be something she'd be good at. She was good at taking care of people. I remembered how, on the night of the fire, she'd run forward ahead of me to Zack and Cloud and checked their injuries, and I knew then that I had never truly resented her, but simply the idea of her. Truthfully, she was what I wanted to be, because she was faultlessly kind and sweet and my brother loved her. I realised, now, that the fact that he loved her was the only thing that actually mattered.

"So ... you're coming back?"

She nodded, still fiddling with the ribbon in her hair. "Your father had the idea that I should move in with Zack in the flat he's getting in Junon. I've managed to save up some money so we'll be able to split the rent between us." She gave a small, shy smile. "It'll be nice to live together."

I nodded, pouring some more tea into my cup. I sipped from it, watching her do the same with her own cup, and decided to push forward with the question that I'd been wanting to ask for over a week. Because, I realised, as we drank tea together in Junon train station, it had only been around a week since she'd left.

"Why did you leave?"

She stared down at the table, at her hands, at her tea cup, and then at my face, bravely holding my eyes.

"Kadaj told me to."

That surprised me, because I hadn't really considered that Kadaj had been telling the truth when he had said that he'd told her to leave – because I told her to leave were the words that echoed then in my head – and I wondered, quickly, if I should judge her, but the fact that she was here, coming back to my brother and not just to comfort him, but to be with him because she loved him, made me realise that it was the fact that she'd loved him that she'd left.

There was silence – always silence – between us, and it was a long one that neither of us could break, because we were too trapped in our thoughts to even consider doing so. I checked the time, and realised I only had about ten minutes to catch my train. I drained my cup of tea, and began to stand up.

"He loves you," Aerith said suddenly. I looked back down at her, in the middle of the action of pulling my bag onto my shoulder. She was staring down at the table again, this time unwilling to meet my eyes. These weren't her feelings she was confessing, and she didn't need to hold my gaze to do so. "Cloud. He's loved you since he met you. He was only ever spending time with Yuffie because she was a comfort ... she's kinder than most people think."

I nodded, because I understood – that was one of the reasons as to why we'd been friends for so long, despite the fact that people, my family included, couldn't understand why I was even her friend. There were a lot more good points than bad that were hidden beneath her hard exterior.

Finally she looked up at me, and the green in her eyes that reminded me so much of the forests that surrounded Gongaga sparkled.

"You'll see him again. He loves you too much for this to be the end."

I nodded again, and turned to go, but then turned back to give my reply.

"Thank you," I told her, and she smiled. She stood up, and gently pulled me close, a hand carefully holding the back of my head and the other placed softly on my back. Then, she pulled away, and gave me a last smile, before picking up her suitcase, and pulled it behind her as she walked away from me to her platform, towards the train, towards Gongaga, and towards Zack.

I folded my blazer over my arm, and began walking in the opposite direction to my platform, towards the train, towards Midgar, and towards a future.

As I found a seat, and settled myself down with my blazer folded across my lap and my bag at my feet, I laid my head down on the window as I had done on the previous train. No one sat opposite me, this time – in fact, it appeared as though the carriage was empty except for me. That suited me fine; I didn't need company.

The train pulled away from Junon station, and soon we were leaving behind the industrial grey and the colours of the landscape were melting into a mixture of greens and blues, until finally, the desert stretched out endlessly ahead of us, the only things constant in my vision being the incessant train tracks leading onwards and the horizon.

Even in the soft afternoon sun that lilted through the train carriage windows, the lights of Midgar were visible in the distance.

The End.

Chibi: Well, there's the end! I hope everybody enjoyed it. As always, I'd appreciate it if you'd review please. Don't forget, I will still be posting the series of one-shots set after the end of the fic, under the collection Rivers of the Heart, so keep an eye out for them!

Once again, thank you so much for reading.

Goodbye!