Title: Earth
Fandom: Final Fantasy: Advent Children
Characters: Cloud, Tifa
Prompt: 053 - Earth
Word Count: 278
Date finished: 06/19/2006
Rating: G
Summary: Cloud's thoughts on the sector five church.
Author's Notes: Don't ask.
Disclaimer: Characters are owned by Square Enix and Sony Pictures as far as I know.

The sector five church always smelled of earth, had ever since Cloud had first fallen into it. It was a healthy, living smell, steady under the scent from Aerith's flowers. Cloud walked into the church after his visit to Healin, and was greeted by that same earthy smell.

But all was not right. The benches along one side had been smashed with something, and a pillar had shattered. Cloud paused at the broken edge of the floor, where the flowers began - and saw her.

He ran to where Tifa lay collapsed in the middle of Aerith's flower bed, and gently lifted her. "Tifa!" he called, desperate not to have lost her. "Tifa!" Please, wake up!

After a heart-stopping moment, she stirred. "You're late."

"Who did this?"

"He didn't say." She lunged up. "Marlene!" she called, then slumped back onto his arm.

Cloud looked around, scanning for any sign of Barret's adopted daughter. She didn't appear to be there, hiding among the rubble. "Damn," he muttered.

Fire ran up his arm, and black goo usually smeared on the bandages he no longer wore dripped onto the flowers. He gripped his arm, willing it to stop trembling, to stop hurting, but it didn't. Tifa rolled off his arm into the flowers as images flashed before his eyes, of Sephiroth, turning away amid the flames that had leveled Nibelheim. Another image, a single drop of water splashing into a lake, soothed him, but he fought it, fought the familiar fatigue. If Sephiroth….

But it was too much; the flowers before his eyes glowed, the earth brown replaced with white. The smell of earth was still there as his vision faded into black.

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