Divinity

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I don't think it even registered to begin with. All I knew was that one minute I'd been smiling, and the next, something had suddenly shifted. I felt as though I'd somehow been torn from myself, wrenched away to become detached from everything. It wouldn't dawn on me until later that what I felt was my spirit as it was forced out of my body. For a moment, all was dark, although I was sure I could hear Cloud's anguished voice somehow.

And then it was as though someone had switched on a floodlight. My friends were battling again, Tifa's eyes glimmering with tears as she attacked the Jenova-monster repeatedly, relentlessly. It was only after the fight was over and she fell to her knees that I looked down to see myself slumped on the marble altar and realised what had happened to me.

Cloud lifted me into his arms, face ashen, and those Mako eyes staring down at me in disbelief. I could hear his thoughts as they rushed through him, the jumble of grief and despair and loss as though it were a part of me. And he carried me, up, up, wading into the beautifully clear lake I'd took the time to stand and admire on my way in, unaware that it would be the place I’d rest so soon. Tifa and Yuffie remained on the shore; their occasional sobs the only thing breaking the silence. I watched as Cloud's lower lip began to tremble, and he gently laid me into the water. It accepted me from his arms, welcomed me into its glittering depths. He cried as I slowly sank out of sight. I cried with him.