literature

Watch the Sky

Deviation Actions

uruwashiiuso's avatar
By
Published:
424 Views

Literature Text

He was five years old and staring at the sky, wondering why the moon was hiding. His mother watched from the kitchen as he pressed small hands against the glass, warm breath obscuring his view. “Why's he hiding, Mom?” he asked in a small voice, bright blue eyes trained upward. “Doesn't he know it's dark out?”

She crossed the floor quietly, wrapping an arm around his tiny frame and peering out the window smudged with even tinier fingerprints. The clouds were tinted an ethereal green, a product of the reactor belching plumes of smoke in the mountains. The moon wouldn't shine through that. Not tonight.

She stroked pale blond hair lovingly and rested her chin on top of his head, sighing – a sound that later would have meaning, but for the moment, meant nothing more than an unanswered question. “I don't know, Cloud,” came the whispered reply, and the little boy pouted.

She kissed his forehead. “It's time for bed, anyway. Go brush your teeth.”

He huffed, pouted some more, but knew better than to ask to stay up. He slipped away from the window and his mother watched him go, a small, melancholy smile curving her mouth. She wondered if he would remember asking for the moon when he'd grown and gone away.

He fell asleep, and dreamt of shooting stars.

~_~

He was thirteen, and still staring at the sky – swinging his feet from his perch beneath a veil of hazy constellations, he made plans for the future.

“I'm gonna join SOLDIER,” he announced matter-of-factly. He nodded once, firm in his decision. “I'm gonna be a hero.”

His childhood friend dipped her head low, the fall of her dark hair hiding her face and the well of tears that threatened to spill from the corners of her eyes. “Everyone's leaving,” she murmured, and her voice trembled the smallest bit. She looked up, brown eyes wide and questioning. “If you're going to leave too, then you have to make me a promise.” She paused and he waited patiently, blond brows knit together with the faintest curiosity.

“If you get all big and famous, you have to promise to come to my rescue if I ever need saving.”

He went very still, shook his head slowly. “Tifa, I can't –”

“You can't just leave, Cloud!” Her bottom lip quivered, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “Promise you'll come back if I need you. Promise.

He watched her silently for a handful of heartbeats before he reached out and wrapped a thin arm around her shoulders – she buried her face in the side of his neck, and he sighed.

“I promise.”

~_~

He was twenty-one, and lightning raced across a charcoal backdrop – his shadow fell briefly across the figure lying broken and bleeding on the ground, and he was crying.

“Zack …” His heart was breaking. He couldn't do this. “Please …”

“You have to live for both of us, now.” The voice was soft and strong, a sound that had become synonymous with unfailing support, unwavering courage. Blue eyes identical to his own stared hard and cold, though the mouth beneath them betrayed a tiny, knowing smile. “I know you can do this.”

He shook his head, the raindrops falling from heaven washing the blood from his cheek in a pale crimson river, mingling with the tears he couldn't keep from burning his skin. “I can't.” He gasped and let his head fall to a mangled chest. “I don't know where to start.”

“You can. You can and you will.”

Cloud didn't move until his heart stopped beating, until the very last breath had left him. Only then did he lift himself with shaking arms and look down into the face of the man that had saved him – his angel without wings.

His mouth fell open, and he screamed.

~_~

He was twenty-three, and a man by all rights – a man haunted, the memories of long years hounding every step he took.

Death had become a familiar adversary, an opponent that met him with a wicked grin each time around, taking away everything that he had come to cherish since leaving home for the first time. He was a man hardened, but not unfeeling. It would have been impossible to harbor that away.

He stood at the water's edge, the burial ground for whom he'd thought had been the planet's only saving grace; he thought of both of them, the two he'd loved most, their absence a hollow ache in his chest that had only grown since Meteor's fall. Since the fall of the great one himself into the grave he'd been digging from the very beginning. Sephiroth.

The name itself sent an involuntary shiver down his spine as flashes of memories began to play – the burning of Nibelheim, Aerith, Zack – he sank to his knees on the shore, holding his head between trembling hands, willing the images away. It was over. He could breathe now. Why, then, was it so hard to take that next breath?

The fact remained that nothing would bring them back. Nothing, and he knew that. Even now that the threat had dissolved, after everything he'd done, it felt as though it were all in vain because they were still gone.

He reached out, trailed his fingers over the water's surface. You're gone, and I'm still here. His gaze lifted skyward, Mako eyes glittering in the filtered light.

It was all for you.
I'm pretty sure this is why I couldn't sleep earlier. It wouldn't let me be. But I'm glad I finished it, seeing as it's been so fucking long since I've finished anything.

This isn't even one of the ones I already had going! Ha!

I'm also pretty sure the majority of that last bit surfaced from my inner depression at finishing disc one of FFVII tonight, and subsequently having to watch Aerith die. I told myself I wasn't going to get upset, but that never seems to work how I want it to.

Characters (c) Square Enix, not I.

[I totally didn't tear up while writing the section with Tifa. I totally didn't. >_>]
© 2009 - 2024 uruwashiiuso
Comments31
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
PistelPete's avatar
that made me tear up, nice job :)