kh_drabble | (no subject)

Author:

ennyousai
Title: Heart of a Healer
Word Count: 268
Challenge: Endurance
Rating: G
Warnings, Notes: Aertih centric, with a touch of Clortih. No spoilers.

Although she has never wielded a weapon as heavy and dangerous as Leon’s gunblade, or been charged with defending the Light like Sora, Aerith knows more about bearing an impossible burden than her delicate, gentle appearance would suggest. She is, after all, a healer, and every time she fails in saving someone who is ill or wounded she feels the loss in her own flesh. When Xehanort first released the Darkness and the Radiant Garden became nothing more than a shell of itself, she wept for the souls who had not escaped to the relative safety of Traverse Town and her own failure to save them. Now that they have returned home, she continues to mourn. Each empty cottage, each abandoned shop, is a painful reminder of what they have lost.

As a healer she hates being powerless in the face of another’s pain, and never does she feel more helpless than when she looks at Cloud. He is tormented by the specters of his past, and no matter what she does she cannot bring him back to her. It is especially painful to see him standing before her and know that he is not really there, and when she is alone she weeps for everything they once were and everything they might have been. But Aerith can never let the others see her sorrow and her fear, because she is a healer, and healers must serve as a source of hope and strength for others.

So she sheds her tears when no one will see, then squares her shoulders and steps out to face her shattered world.