Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Come What May ❯ Come What May ( One-Shot )

Come What May

It's been two years since I left you endlessly dreaming, submerged in a holy pool like some angel fallen to earth.

You saved us all.

Most of all, you saved me.

Here I am, looking over the land that is slowly healing itself of the insanity that was Meteor. I don't fit in here anymore, if I ever really did. I've even drifted away from the small group of odd people to whom I am closest to in this world. Without the threat of crisis, Sephiroth, Shinra and the whole shebang, we slowly drifted back to where we had been before our paths came together.

Without you there, I could not face any of them without remembering what I had lost.

Although, one of the original party tried damned hard to overcome my loss and my sorrow.

Tifa.

She tried so hard to make me love her but I couldn't.

There is no peace for me in the aftermath of the disaster that brought us all together.

I've become a sword for hire again, drifting in and out of towns as I once did before purpose united me with strangers in a common goal.

To save the world.

Now, I don't even know where I'm going any more or what I'm doing.

I am a man without purpose and with only the sword in his hand making sense any longer.

Cloud Strife, mercenary for hire at a nominal fee. Once saving a world near you, now chasing monsters and fairytales through the forests, deserts and mountains of the Planet.

What can I say, it's a living.

After all, one must live.

Somehow.

But now, a promise draws me back along a familiar path that my feet have not walked in two years.

A path I cannot forget though I wish I could.

Destiny brought us together, even as it tore us apart as well.

I have to believe that there is a higher purpose in my wonderings or everything I have fought for and lost has been without meaning.

I couldn't live with that.

So, I trek back along the way I came once with the friends I have discarded.

Friends that I might find again after this pilgrimage is made

A pilgrimage that is leading me full circle, back to you.

After all, I promised that I would find you again and I will, no matter what.

~*~

The firelight dances across the soft blue of my eyes, even as I can feel the heat radiating out from it to warm the chill of my body. I have kept myself in top fighting form, for no other reason that it keeps me from sinking into a pit of despair with nothing but shadowed memories to keep me company.

My patented spiked golden hair still flies every which way in the arrangement nature cursed it to grow from my skull.

I cut it all off shortly after the calm that soothed the land in the defeat of Jenova and her cursed evil.

It grew back in the same porcupine fashion that you used to tease me about.

I cannot help but smile into the fire at such bittersweet memories.

All I am now is memory and the steel in my hand.

Nothing else matters for me any longer.

I must complete this trek so that perhaps I can find the peace I seek.

Peace that I have fought for, gave everything for, yet eludes me at every turn.

I wish you were here to share this fire and the quiet of this place.

Sitting beside the calm water that is your burial ground, I am lost to anything but the chirruping of crickets, the shifting of the trees and the soft gurgle of that water as it dances against the banks of the small pool.

In the morning, I will find where you rest and bring you back to me, though it will only be your shadow.

It is still something even if I dread what shape I will find your body in after such a long time.

This is what I must do because it feels utterly right and fitting.

I found a beautiful spot to lay you to rest within.

I think you would like the view as well as the fields of flowers that gently blow across the plains with the first winds of spring.

When I came upon the small rise that overlooks those plains underneath a spreading tree whose roots run deep even as its branches stretch high and majestically towards heaven, I knew I had found the perfect spot for you.

It has been two years and not a day passes that I do not think of you.

Many thoughts find me as I sit beside my small campfire, watching glowing sparks shoot off of it and drift towards the endless, starry sky. Slowly, I turn the spit that is heavy with the rabbit I caught for dinner tonight. I prepare myself for the morning and hope that my long journey will soon draw to a close.

I cannot share a life and home with you in this world but perhaps I can, at least, give you a beautiful resting place that will act as a lasting marker to everything you were.

Everything you were to the world and to me.

Not long after my thoughts take me into darker places I will not follow, I polish off my meager dinner and fall back into my bedroll.

That is how I fall asleep, staring at the stars and wondering if you are dancing amongst their twinkling beauty.

Far away from me and yet you seem close enough to reach out and touch if I try hard enough.

Will I ever learn to stop dreaming the impossible?

~*~

Before the dawn, in that special place between the sun rising and darkness still gripping the world in its clenching hands, I awaken.

It is there that I find you within the still, cool waters where I let you drift away from me a lifetime ago.

Lifting you out, I discover that you are unchanged, oddly enough.

The beauty of your form is still as an angel slumbering, ready to awaken by the first kiss of prince charming.

I'm sorry that this isn't a fairy tale. Then again, I'm also no prince charming either even if it was.

This is our story, though your part in it is long since over.

I cannot let you go, no matter how hard and long I've tried.

I carry you out of the water's sweet embrace and let you dry out before I make the long trek back to the place that I have prepared to let you rest within.

It is a very long journey of which I do not wish to go into the poignant details.

Some things are just too painful to share, even with my own heart.

What I will share is the dream that was thrust upon me each and every night without fail of the arduous journey back.

The dream that changed everything.

You were there, smiling at me as I took you into my arms.

You were singing to me in words I could not understand and still do not.

It didn't matter because we were together, even if it was only in a dream.

Dreams can be more real than the shambles of reality that lingers around us.

When you stopped singing at last, I found that we were sitting amongst the stars, surrounded by their celestial beauty and twinkling light.

I held you as you cried, though I did not know the reason for your tears.

That was the moment I remembered you were dead and this was a dream.

You began to fade from me in the dream, yet I could finally understand the words you were screaming at me.

Come what may, I will love you beyond my dying day.

Nothing can keep us apart if you believe in what we share.

Two simple lines that haunted every step I took to your grave with your body weighing against my chest.

What did it mean?

Could there be a way to find you again?

As impossible as it seemed, I wanted to believe.

I wanted so hard that I took a side trip to visit someone I had not seen in too long.

He was not exactly the epitome of spiritual wisdom but he had always seemed to know more of the world than I will ever fathom.

Vincent was also one of the few that would understand me showing up on his doorstep with your body in my arms and a determined look upon my face.

He was the one that suggested entering the lifestream with your body and trying to call your spirit to me.

Bless him for that suggestion.

What I did was an insane, desperate act but I was driven into such places.

I will find you, no matter what.

~*~

There is no time within the lifestream, even as I can feel the very pulse of the Planet echoing against my skin. Such power and presence that surrounds me now is unbelievable.

It is hard to breathe as I feel the spirits of the dead surrounding me curiously, even as the force of the Stream itself regards me in the way a large dog would a small flea.

No words can describe the terrifying beauty of this place.

The details of how I came to touch the Lifestream and remain amongst the living myself are best left unsaid.

Some knowledge no one should possess, least of all myself.

As I hold your lifeless body to me, I fall to my knees and begin singing.

A song of hope and prayer, for what we had together and what could have been had a sword not taken your life too soon.

Please, come back to me.

You are my angel that I hold to my heart.

Without you, I am nothing but a soldier, doomed to wander the wastelands until eternity catches up with me.

With you, I can be a man again.

I can finally live and breathe once more.

I found you, now I need you to find me again.

Come what may, you said.

Yes, indeed.

Come what may.

~*~

Time passed in a place where there was not sense of time or direction.

There is no past or future here, only the Stream and the endless lights of souls gone from the world.

The light of the world holds me and your empty body.

I do the only thing I can do since I entered this unholy holy place.

I pray.

I hope.

I love.

I believe in you and in us.

Together.

Always.

Come and find me.

A flash of blinding light is the last thing I remember before darkness sweeps me away.

I could have sworn I saw white, feathered wings and dark green eyes but I must have been dreaming again.

Darkness holds me and doesn't let me go for some time.

~*~

I awaken to the scent of flowers and a light breeze blowing from across the plains. Looking up, I can see a sky as blue as my own eyes mirroring down through a canopy of bright green leaves.

How did I return here?

Sitting up reminds me of exactly how mortal I am and how my body is a very fragile vessel, even for all its strength.

I have often wondered how it is possible to feel as if every muscle in your frame has turned to jelly and yet you can still remain breathing and going on.

I hurt yet feel strangely at peace.

A peace long forgotten and sought after consumes my heart after so long searching for it.

I know not how I have come here.

I look around and see you, lying nearby.

I could cry because it has all been for nothing.

Just another dream in an endless life of them.

I crawl over, preparing to lift you and bury you as I had planned all along.

Yet, something stops me.

It might be the fact that your chest is rising and falling or the fact your eyes flutter open at my touch.

"Aeris?" I say, afraid that even that single word will break whatever spell we are both under.

Am I dreaming again?

"Cloud," you say to me, smiling that beautiful, happy smile that says the world is a wonderful place, though I know it is not.

You always believed so much in the light of this world and what it could be.

I once thought it was because of the Ancient blood you carry but now I realize it is simply you.

Your soul is that bright and pure, given to flights of fancy and faith in things I will never see.

I can only stare for the longest moment before I realize that I am moving.

Strangely, I no longer feel as if I am on death's door.

I feel....alive.

I hold you as sweet laughter pours out of both of us, filling the glorious day with its sound.

Laughter that I thought never to hear again.

Impossible.

I think I finally believe in the impossible.

In fact, I know I do as long as I have you.

We kiss and it is as if all the magic within the world is caught up in your sweet lips.

A kiss that does not stop, conveying without a single world how much I have missed you, how much I love you though I have hardly ever dared to admit it, and how much I believe in you now.

You return all of this and more, so much more.

It is over too soon and not soon enough.

I'm breathing you in as you keep touching my face, my hair like I might drift away from you any moment.

You look at me as if I'm the dream or the angel, when I know I am not.

I am simply a man again within your arms and eyes.

I live.

"Come what may, I will find you and love you until my dying day," I say to you in a soft whisper, as my own fingertips trace the soft line of your skin and hair.

You are so beautiful, I want to shout.

Somehow, you know exactly how I feel and what I want to say without me opening my mouth for even one syllable of it.

"I know, else wise I would not have found you again. I love you, Cloud. I will not leave you again," you say to me, laughing and resting your body against mine.

Are we both dead now and this nothing but a dream?

I don't know and don't care any longer.

I have found you again and this time, I will not let go.

No matter what.