Negligible Regret
By Faronon Star Wolf
Disclaimer: In no way do I own Final Fantasy 7, or the characters therein.
Notes: Written for the LiveJournal community 31_days prompt for May 16.
Wordcount: 296
"I'll have to kill you, you know."
"Then why haven't you?"
Green eyes narrowed and he stared at her. "You wouldn't understand."
She looked up from the Materia she held in her hands, meeting his eyes--she looked at him with green eyes, green as the forest, dark with knowledge she shouldn't have at her age. But to her kind, age and knowledge did not go hand in hand. "You hate him so much, then?"
He smiled, cold and bitter. "I'd do anything to break him."
She shook her head, falling into her trance again. It wasn't as deep as it had been, before he arrived and began to distract her, and that made her task that much more difficult.
It took a disciplined mind to keep focused in the face of death threats--it required a level of concentration few ever reached--and she hadn't learned the skills she had needed to block his voice out, even with the noise of Midgar.
Even so, she was calling Holy at a rate he found astonishing. "Perhaps I will keep you from the Lifestream," he mused, staring at her. She glanced up, but didn't reply, so he continued. "Imagine it--you could die by his sword, and I could keep you for my queen, after I reshape the world. Don't you think that would do an excellent job of breaking him?"
"Cloud would never give into you," she snapped, glaring at him.
"Have you forgotten already?" She shivered under his gaze. "He already has."
A brush of something--like silk and fire against his mind--caused him to smirk.
"Be careful, Aeris," he said, tauntingly. "Are you so sure you can trust your friends?"
He didn't wait for her to reply before he faded out of view.