#brawler.

It is the first time she's considered how selfish her longing is.

And it hurts.

Aerith has experienced death and rebirth. She knows torture and loss. The eroding effects of poverty and hopelessness. She knows what it's like to lose family and friends and everything she's ever known, to spiral so far, to lose her sense of self beneath the murky waters of anger and fear.

But nothing prepared her for this kind of pain.

She watches as they gather in front of the 7th Heaven. Tifa has both hands on her hips, her hair tossed across one shoulder and then the other as she counts and recounts the supplies. Marlene stands close beside, mirroring the movements, unconsciously, perhaps. An internalised desire to be strong. An overwhelming attachment to mother-like figure. A lost duckling.

Aerith recalls doing the same herself once, and she straightens her posture reflexively.

Only once or twice does she allow her gaze to drift far enough left to catch the outline of her bodyguard transformed. Cloud stands-- one hand stroking the back of his head, the other cradling a wicker basket-- as the epitome of a single word.

Awkwardness.

The soft slope of his brows-- the wide cast of his eyes and the relaxed line of his jaw-- it suggests such a destruction of the facade she'd once pried at that it takes a few moments for Aerith to remember to breathe.

She inhales.

She notes the boy by Cloud's side and how he, just like Marlene, mimics the movements of his older counterpart. He is a stranger to her, but his name carries on the wind.

       ❝Are we going on the picnic, yet.❞

                ❝Almost, Denzel.❞

This is a life. This is bedtimes and family dinners. Homework and school shopping. Petty fights and heartfelt apologies. This is Elmyra Gainsborough bringing home a stranger's child and opening her heart as well as her doors. This is moving on and happiness and the small moments day by day that turn tragedy into history.

There is no doubt that Aerith's friends would welcome her return. She is confident of her place in their hearts. But to reappear in their lives is to wound those same hearts. They have already coped with her death once. To force them to relive it again is to watch the soft slope of Cloud's brow and Tifa's easy posture be buried in grief.

She exhales.

Though her memories of the Lifestream are frayed, unraveled threads that she cannot quite weave together, Aerith feels an unfettered longing-- a need augmented by years of separation-- for those she left behind. She has been awake only days, but her feet already propel her towards the familiar. Her heart is her guide, and the name that it whispers is not Cloud Strife, a man that stirred butterflies within her, a man that created gardens in her soul.

   It is Tifa Lockhart.

It is a woman whose quiet strength inspired confidence and courage. It is a woman that brought a sense of peace even when Aerith felt her entire life falling around her feet. It is a woman that grieved her death, celebrated her life, and hollowed out a space in her heart to remember a friendship that burned bright and quickly. 

Aerith cannot yet face the man who made her fall in love all over again, but she cannot wait to see the woman who fights as violently as she loves. And the little girl whose wisdom in a time of conflict and sorrow kept her afloat in a way Aerith heartily admired. And the people who came together to fight an enemy that left her pockmarked and orphaned, a corporation so large and parasitic it sucked the life from the very planet itself.