Never Forget

Clorith

AU

These are dark times indeed. The world is in great conflict and the innocent are being oppressed for evil’s desires. This is one such story that happened surprisingly in a high school.

A young girl, Aerith was her name was secretly being followed by an evil man named Sephiroth. He wanted her dead since she was the daughter of one of his greatest adversaries.

We all knew and loved Aerith with all our hearts. She is the most beautiful, and gentle person we have ever known. She was the definition of perfect. Truly, if you looked up perfect in the dictionary you just might see a picture of Aerith there to illustrate it.

However, most important of all, she was my friend, my best friend.

School that day started out as it normally did. I watched as Aerith’s shining face smiling at me while we talked. Even though she knew her life was in danger, she tried her very best to convey pure happiness while simultaneously trying to assure everyone that everything would be alright.

Sometimes, even I believed that face. Sometimes, just her presence around me would be enough to help me to forget the darkness of this horrible time.

Her persona had that affect on me all the time. I guess that’s the reason I enjoyed being around her so much. Everything was as it always was for most of the day, that is, until I couldn’t find her.

She was gone; I just glanced across the table to look at her. Admittedly, I’d been doing that a lot lately. I just can’t help myself, she’s just too beautiful to ignore. However, when I looked she was gone. She hadn’t told anyone that she was going and nobody had gone with her. She was all by herself with a mad man chasing after her. I had to find her!

I immediately jumped up and ran to look for her. I ran through the whole school, searching ever single room. Finally I entered a long corridor, it was there that I found her… but I was too late. She was already dead.

I blamed myself completely for her death. I should have been there to protect her. Why hadn’t I notice earlier that she was gone? Somehow, she had slipped right through my fingers. She was so important to me. How had I been so stupid? Why couldn’t have I saved her? Why?!

The whole school was in complete chaos. Nobody was sure what exactly had happened. The only thing that we knew for sure was that Aerith’s beautiful smile would never be seen again.

I will never see her again. I’ll never again hear her laugh. Nor will I hear her cheerful voice talking to me everyday, make all of my sadness and grief disappear. There is no one to stop me from being the person I once was. That person is now gone and now I will never be the same…

The school provided a funeral for her since her death had occurred on school grounds. It was nothing too elaborate; Aerith wouldn’t have liked for everything to fancy at all.

Everybody just went to see her one last time, a chance to say a final goodbye. One by one the students went in to see her; they would re-emerge crying their eyes out.

Now I wasn’t the type of person to cry, however this was too much for even me. Even as I waited for my turn to see her, tears silently fell from my eyes. I finally realized what it meant, Aerith was gone… and I couldn’t handle it. Soon enough though, it was my turn and I walked inside.

They had placed her on a bed surrounded on every side by flowers. In her hand they placed her favorite flower, a white lily. The lily reflected her personality, pure and beautiful, without flaunting it to everybody.

Only those who actually knew her well knew how truly special she was.

I walked slowly up to her, trying to be as quite as possible, fearing that the faintest sound could cause her to disappear. That was last thing I would want to happen now, for her to disappear when I was so close to her.

I reached out and carefully touched her loving face with my fingertip. Slowly I cupped her cheek; and even though she was dead her expression was one of peace.

For a second, out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something move. My mind starting imaging her waking up, seeing her smile once again. Unfortunately it was only my hand moving. My hands were shaking. I tried to make them stop, but they just wouldn’t stop shaking.

I noticed that her face appeared to be wet and I started to think that perhaps she was crying. I soon realized that it was only my tears falling upon her face. I used my thumb to gently wipe the tears away. After all they were not fit to be on such a beautiful face.

I wanted to be angry. I wanted desperately to hate Sephiroth for what he had done. However with Aerith lying right before me I… I couldn’t feel hatred or anger. Just the sight of her changed everything about me. How in the world would I be able to move on…? I don’t think that it’s even possible. But I know that I must, it’s what Aerith would want me to do.

It was time for me to go, I wanted to stay by her side forever but I know can’t. I gently bent down and kiss her on the forehead. Somehow I felt that wasn’t enough though.

I felt a heavy wave of guilt wash over me when I realized that I never told her how I felt. I had never told her that I loved her. She never knew… even though she was dead now, I felt like I should tell her anyway. This time the words came out so freely somehow. All those other times that I tried, the words just wouldn’t come out. But now, as she lie on the bed of flowers it was so easy to tell her that I loved her, now when was too late.

It hurt so much to walk away from her. It felt as though I was betraying her somehow. I knew that I had to leave but I didn’t realize that it would hurt so much. I’ll never forget that pain and that feeling of loss for as long as I live.

I’ll never forget that smile… ever.

She had to suffer for something that wasn’t her fault. It just wasn’t fair! It wasn’t right. However nowadays nobody ever tries to do what is right anymore. The result of such disregard is that the innocent are punished.

I’ll never forget what she did to me. I’ll never forget the lesson she taught everyone that knew her. I’d do anything for her. I’d do anything… for Aerith.

Fin