Challenge 241 Entry
Title: Tell Me How It Ends
Challenge: [241] Ghost Stories
Word Count: 512
Summary: Being a living ghost is the worst kind.
Spoiler alert: if you've never played Final Fantasy VII?
Notess: I give you musics to listen to ♥
There is a spot nestled between Aerith's left shoulder blade and her spine that aches. There is another spot aligned to it centered between her breasts. She tries very hard not to think about it, but that's like trying not to blink because when it begins to hurt her head is filled with things she shouldn't know.
She's not the only one who's suffering. For a close knit group there's a lot they don't talk about. Like the day Cloud was consumed by the darkness; wide eyed and shaking and staring at her like she wasn't supposed to be there. The three words he finally gurgled before tearing off after Sephiroth with a defiant scream. "You were dead."
Cid stares at her a lot, when he thinks she isn't looking, and it's not a creepy kind of stare. It's distant and his eyes go a little watery and she knows, he's remembering things that has never happened to them.
After Cloud, Yuffie was the one who took everything the hardest. Go figure. She came tearing into Aerith's room at three in the morning, crying so hard she couldn't see and ended up running into the door frame more than once. "Aerith! Aerith!" She finally grabs onto the older girl, pressing an ear tightly against her chest and doesn't stop bawling even though she can hear the steady thump-thump-thump of her heart.
"You weren't with us anymore," she cries, "you were sleeping beneath the water."
There are some things Aerith didn't know, she couldn't because she hadn't been around for them. So at Yuffie's admittance she can't help the shiver chasing down her spine. "I'm fine!" she finally snaps, not because she's really mad at Yuffie but because she's scared. "Look, I'm here, and I'm fine!"
Cid finds them in the morning, tangled on Aerith's bed. Both have puffy eyes and only mostly dried tear tracks on their faces.
The button-down pink dress she wears becomes too much for anyone to handle and it's when she finds herself seriously studying her reflection (how much she thinks is me, and how much is her?) she throws it out, cut up into shreds in case it tries to come back to haunt her too.
Something stops her from getting rid of the ribbon in her hair. She knows in this life, it doesn't mean anything to her. It was just a slip of cloth picked up at a bazaar some years back. Aerith tries not to think about what it meant to her, because it makes her worried that there are people who aren't quite finished remembering she's supposed to be dead. She doesn't want phantom loves from someone else's life chasing after her too.
There are things she doesn't tell her friends. Like how much she can recall about the moment it all ended. The sensation of a foreign object forcing its way through skin and muscle and bone, how hot it was; how impossible it was to breathe around it.
It's a personal ghost, and she tries not to think of the irony of that.
Challenge: [241] Ghost Stories
Word Count: 512
Summary: Being a living ghost is the worst kind.
Spoiler alert: if you've never played Final Fantasy VII?
Notess: I give you musics to listen to ♥
There is a spot nestled between Aerith's left shoulder blade and her spine that aches. There is another spot aligned to it centered between her breasts. She tries very hard not to think about it, but that's like trying not to blink because when it begins to hurt her head is filled with things she shouldn't know.
She's not the only one who's suffering. For a close knit group there's a lot they don't talk about. Like the day Cloud was consumed by the darkness; wide eyed and shaking and staring at her like she wasn't supposed to be there. The three words he finally gurgled before tearing off after Sephiroth with a defiant scream. "You were dead."
Cid stares at her a lot, when he thinks she isn't looking, and it's not a creepy kind of stare. It's distant and his eyes go a little watery and she knows, he's remembering things that has never happened to them.
After Cloud, Yuffie was the one who took everything the hardest. Go figure. She came tearing into Aerith's room at three in the morning, crying so hard she couldn't see and ended up running into the door frame more than once. "Aerith! Aerith!" She finally grabs onto the older girl, pressing an ear tightly against her chest and doesn't stop bawling even though she can hear the steady thump-thump-thump of her heart.
"You weren't with us anymore," she cries, "you were sleeping beneath the water."
There are some things Aerith didn't know, she couldn't because she hadn't been around for them. So at Yuffie's admittance she can't help the shiver chasing down her spine. "I'm fine!" she finally snaps, not because she's really mad at Yuffie but because she's scared. "Look, I'm here, and I'm fine!"
Cid finds them in the morning, tangled on Aerith's bed. Both have puffy eyes and only mostly dried tear tracks on their faces.
The button-down pink dress she wears becomes too much for anyone to handle and it's when she finds herself seriously studying her reflection (how much she thinks is me, and how much is her?) she throws it out, cut up into shreds in case it tries to come back to haunt her too.
Something stops her from getting rid of the ribbon in her hair. She knows in this life, it doesn't mean anything to her. It was just a slip of cloth picked up at a bazaar some years back. Aerith tries not to think about what it meant to her, because it makes her worried that there are people who aren't quite finished remembering she's supposed to be dead. She doesn't want phantom loves from someone else's life chasing after her too.
There are things she doesn't tell her friends. Like how much she can recall about the moment it all ended. The sensation of a foreign object forcing its way through skin and muscle and bone, how hot it was; how impossible it was to breathe around it.
It's a personal ghost, and she tries not to think of the irony of that.