Final Fantasy VII, Cloud / Zack / Sephiroth: #23, Miren
Theme: #23 - If it wasn't you
Fandom / pairing: Final Fantasy VII, Cloud/Zack/Sephiroth
Title: 未練 (Miren)
Author: ChibiRisu-chan
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Advent Children spoilers like whoa. Also more angst than I'm used to dealing out. But I think I've invented a warped new crossbreed variety of fic here: angstfluff...
Table of contents of all 30 fics
Disclaimer: sooo not mine - never even played the game in fact...
I've killed you three times already. I don't know if I can do it again.
I don't know if I can not do it again. Not if she keeps dragging you back from your grave, a ravening puppet, with nothing behind those electric green eyes but hate and madness and destruction.
I saw him too -- did you know you weren't the only one who couldn't stay? All three of us -- we're all still here, one way or another.
He and Aeris sent me back. Again. Which means, I suppose, that this sick dance of ours isn't finished yet. If we were done, I could die. But I can't stay dead until I've killed you for the last time. And so they send me back, just as your Mother sends you back, to await our turn to die again.
The problem is that none of us can die so easily, really. I should have known that the second time she sent you back, if not the first. By this time around, I'd be a hell of a lot more surprised if you didn't come back.
...and the horrible, sick thing is that this time I was counting on it. Twice could be a fluke. This time, seeing you again -- even if it was like that, even if there was almost nothing I could recognize of you in what she'd constructed from that poor child's body and the lingering echoes of your madness -- even mad, even hate-sick and warped almost beyond recognition, you came back.
I was counting on that.
I was waiting for that child to seize his Reunion, to bring you back to me, to see if there was anything of the you I'd loved in the puppet she builds out of flesh and power and lingering hate. It was almost you -- your voice, your scent, your body, all of it so familiar I could weep for you, but I couldn't let my eyes blur just then.
So I'll weep for you now, and you'll mock me for it next time, if she's still pulling your strings.
But if she's not...
...that's what's sick about me, really. I still keep hoping. That one of these times, we'll burn the last of her from the Lifestream, and then what's left will be you -- the real you, the one who laughed at Zack's teasing and spoke so gently to a motion-sick low-class grunt and never understood my fascination with chocobos. Not the one who wanted to take from me what I hold most precious...
She's a fool a thousand times over, to have you ask me that. You took everything else you could -- my home, my family, my friends, my memories even, nearly my very self. But in the end you could never take from me the most precious thing of all. You can never take from me the person you once were. The person I admired, the person I wanted to be, the person we both loved -- you can never become not-yourself that completely, no matter what she does to you, and that's the cruelest part of it all.
Yes, I'm fighting for the world, and they honor me for it. But it makes me feel awkward somehow, because none of them know what I know about what I want to save in the world.
I'm still fighting for you.
Someday, when I kill you, it won't be a dying boy with the shadow of your face who lies in my arms and smiles at the touch of that last sunbeam.
Someday, I'll set you free of her once and for all. And then I can finally die too, and Aeris will let all three of us stay.
It's just so hard, looking into your face and still seeing who you were...
...because if it wasn't you, I could kill you without regrets.
Fandom / pairing: Final Fantasy VII, Cloud/Zack/Sephiroth
Title: 未練 (Miren)
Author: ChibiRisu-chan
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Advent Children spoilers like whoa. Also more angst than I'm used to dealing out. But I think I've invented a warped new crossbreed variety of fic here: angstfluff...
Table of contents of all 30 fics
Disclaimer: sooo not mine - never even played the game in fact...
I've killed you three times already. I don't know if I can do it again.
I don't know if I can not do it again. Not if she keeps dragging you back from your grave, a ravening puppet, with nothing behind those electric green eyes but hate and madness and destruction.
I saw him too -- did you know you weren't the only one who couldn't stay? All three of us -- we're all still here, one way or another.
He and Aeris sent me back. Again. Which means, I suppose, that this sick dance of ours isn't finished yet. If we were done, I could die. But I can't stay dead until I've killed you for the last time. And so they send me back, just as your Mother sends you back, to await our turn to die again.
The problem is that none of us can die so easily, really. I should have known that the second time she sent you back, if not the first. By this time around, I'd be a hell of a lot more surprised if you didn't come back.
...and the horrible, sick thing is that this time I was counting on it. Twice could be a fluke. This time, seeing you again -- even if it was like that, even if there was almost nothing I could recognize of you in what she'd constructed from that poor child's body and the lingering echoes of your madness -- even mad, even hate-sick and warped almost beyond recognition, you came back.
I was counting on that.
I was waiting for that child to seize his Reunion, to bring you back to me, to see if there was anything of the you I'd loved in the puppet she builds out of flesh and power and lingering hate. It was almost you -- your voice, your scent, your body, all of it so familiar I could weep for you, but I couldn't let my eyes blur just then.
So I'll weep for you now, and you'll mock me for it next time, if she's still pulling your strings.
But if she's not...
...that's what's sick about me, really. I still keep hoping. That one of these times, we'll burn the last of her from the Lifestream, and then what's left will be you -- the real you, the one who laughed at Zack's teasing and spoke so gently to a motion-sick low-class grunt and never understood my fascination with chocobos. Not the one who wanted to take from me what I hold most precious...
She's a fool a thousand times over, to have you ask me that. You took everything else you could -- my home, my family, my friends, my memories even, nearly my very self. But in the end you could never take from me the most precious thing of all. You can never take from me the person you once were. The person I admired, the person I wanted to be, the person we both loved -- you can never become not-yourself that completely, no matter what she does to you, and that's the cruelest part of it all.
Yes, I'm fighting for the world, and they honor me for it. But it makes me feel awkward somehow, because none of them know what I know about what I want to save in the world.
I'm still fighting for you.
Someday, when I kill you, it won't be a dying boy with the shadow of your face who lies in my arms and smiles at the touch of that last sunbeam.
Someday, I'll set you free of her once and for all. And then I can finally die too, and Aeris will let all three of us stay.
It's just so hard, looking into your face and still seeing who you were...
...because if it wasn't you, I could kill you without regrets.