What colorful butterfly will fly next?

[waterfell]

Cold fog swirls, and makes the darkness even deeper, shrouding everything in a damp, cloying mist. There's a smell of ash in the air. To the side, a single golden pin impales a blue butterfly with black markings, just above the thorax. It struggles with a vain flurry of its tired wings, but for all the writhing desperation, there is little life left in the spasming body. It rests weakly between fits of frantic activity.

Beneath the butterfly, a picture of a blue-haired girl in a tiara and sailor-style collar has been clearly marked 'Mercury'. Nearby, similar displays bear the names of other planets. In some, the butterfly's wings have been pulled off or its body has been singed and scorched or bent to sickening angles; others are fresh and empty, but labeled in anticipation. They stretch into the distance as far as the eye can see in all directions.

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[waterfell]

It's a more difficult question than it seems, or at least Mercury seems to have to think about it for a moment, as though recalling a very distant memory instead of the events of such a short while ago. Curled up tight around herself, she doesn't push away Aerith right now, but she falls silent for several moments.

"There was a battle," she says finally. "I remember that." Her hand, with the speed of sudden recollection, goes to her chest.

"The sailor crystals are quickly being taken," she says.

[gardeningaia]

In that time Aerith reaches out to stroke the other woman's bangs, the only attempt at comfort she can seem to give when healing won't work.

"Crystals? Like materia...?" But no, Mercury wouldn't be as familiar as those. "I don't know what you're talking about," she confesses, her forehead pinched with worry.

"I guess...it must have been a hard battle...I'm sure you fought hard. You should rest now."

[waterfell]

Of course- of course. Aerith belongs to that dream world. (It's so hard to think right now, and she's too tired and too finished to even protest that hand that brushes her forehead. It feels soothing.)

The only thing they seem to agree on is that rest. It'd feel so good to give up. She wasn't ready for that battle anyway, and now her battles can be finished. There's something to be said for that. Right now, there's so much to be said for that, that she's begun to forget the things she wanted: her normal life. The healing had helped the cuts, the bruising, the smudged and beaten skin; but that hole at her chest says so much more, and it doesn't seem touched.

"It's alright," she says. "They matter on Earth, not here."

This raises a very good question. "If I'm already gone, why am I still able to see you?"

[gardeningaia]

"I've been 'gone' for a while now," Aerith says lightly, keeping her hand resting gently on Mercury's forehead. "Didn't notice, did you?"

[waterfell]

For just a second, it's like Aerith is her own ministering angel, come to usher her peacefully into... whatever she has now, the strange limbo of the cauldron where stars are born- and die.

Mercury shakes that thought off. Flights of fancy aren't really like her anymore. Not even now.

"I didn't know," she admits. "So we continue on like this, after everything else?" A future after the end after all? It's impossible to believe, really, yet it seems to be right in front of her eyes.

[gardeningaia]

"You might fall asleep," Aerith says thoughtfully--she doesn't know how Ami's planet works, or if what makes her unique is like what makes Aerith herself unique. "But it's fine if you do. Because this has always been a place for dreams. And the sooner you sleep, the sooner you can wake up."

As a new life, a different being, but still, an active participant in Life.

Still, Aerith knows this is a lot to have to adjust to, a lot to have to accept. Rather than stay over her friend she keeps one hand near but carefully lays herself down on her side by Mercury, as if going to sleep herself. If they were alive there'd be shared body heat as comfort. As they're dead...there's the illusion of the memory.

[waterfell]

She's been told those things before, somewhere in a distant, dim memory: that death isn't to be struggled against or feared, not just for the sake of her pride and honor as a warrior but also because it leaves the path open for renewal and rebirth.

Being tired makes her more fatalistic and defeated than accepting- for now; but she has time to come back to herself, time to find her strength again, and for now, time to rest. It feels oddly intimate, in a way that might have bothered her in life, to be laying so close together; but right now, it feels right, and she accepts it.

"I just have to let myself fall asleep?" she asks, as if this makes rational and logical sense instead of belonging to the realm of the strange and inexplicable.

[gardeningaia]

Like a slumber party they were never going to have in their lives.

"Just listen to your feelings. If you're tired, you sleep. That's always been the way of things, right?"

She knows Mercury appreciates logic. Hers is often a bit unconventional, but it's there.

weirdest but best slumber party XD

[waterfell]

Great realizations have a way of sneaking up on a person, bit by bit until they can't be ignored any longer. So many things - those talks with Zack when he was in the Lifestream, other encounters with Aerith, the ghosts she'd met in other dreams - all of it was preparing her for this time, wasn't it? In retrospect, she sees it; but they say hindsight is like that.

If you're tired, you sleep, huh? Her feelings are something she's expressed in varying degrees of cynicism, mistrust, and anger, but something she's rarely consulted any deeper in these past few years. As a younger girl, she was content to be guided by her mother's expectations and hopes. In the Dark Kingdom, she'd fought against it with independent pride, but she'd been expected to put her goals behind theirs. Mercury closes her eyes, but she doesn't sleep within the dream yet.

"I wonder if I know how to hear them even if I listen," she admits. More precisely, she feels full of contradictions. "I want to fight these battles. However, I can't go back, and I want to stay somewhere far away." Not here, of course.

"I want to be with the comrades I finally found, but I want to live my own life, by my own will." Her eyes open again, and find Aerith's. "What feeling should that leave me with?"

Frustration. Regret. There's anger, somewhere, at the cause of her present state; that one, she can name for herself.

"It's as if I don't move forward because I'm always caught in a circle of what I want to begin with." These are uncharacteristically thoughtful words from her; but with the release of some feelings has come clarity in others.

[gardeningaia]

"What a mess, everything against everything else." It almost sounds scolding until Aerith smiles, her eyes still closed. "That's pretty common. Usually it adds up to a headache." Frustration getting the better of one's self.

"Hey, look at it this way: those battles aren't yours to fight right now, you won't go anywhere but you can still avoid certain things. But why? Why do you want to fight those battles? Why do you want to stay away? Which of these feelings--" Her hand softly clasping by her chest-- "Are more important? If they're even all that different.

"You don't have to worry about getting the answer right away. You've got time."

[waterfell]

She knows those answers, and she notes Aerith's patience in helping her untangle what's always been a mind easily muddled by feeling despite its strength.

"It's pride," she says. "I don't want that enemy to win. Besides that, if these battles are lost, I don't want to see what that would bring." This doesn't explain why she has to be there; perhaps it's just pride after all. "I want to believe I'm needed there for that," she finally confesses.

The rest, she doesn't say; it's all born of her own weakness, her own feelings that it might be too much for her after all this time. After all, hadn't it been?

[gardeningaia]

"Your memory will be there. I know it's not the same, but it does help." She knows hers had helped AVALANCHE, even though they also had their own reasons. Even though she'd wanted (still does) to be with them.

[waterfell]

"They'll fight to avenge this," Mercury says; maybe it's the same thing. It's certainly one way to say they're still thinking of her, though it's hardly gentle.

She considers her own words, and adds, "Your comrades, what about them?"

[gardeningaia]

"They fought to let me be free," she says, the words coming slowly as she thinks about it. For a brief while Passing had been an escape for her, otherwise trapped with Holy by Sephiroth's will. "There was anger in it too, of course. And sadness... but we fought for a chance to smile. We still are." Geostigma, blackening the Lifestream--she knows from Cloud the future where it's gone is possible, but it's still not quite here. "It's hard, but happiness is something to fight for."

[waterfell]

Out of everything Mercury's fought for, has happiness been one of them? She fought for the chance to become friends with the ones who were supposed to be comrades. She fought to have some redeeming value beyond her studies. She fought for Mama's life. She fought for the planet, for it to still be there. She fought to be independent, her own and no one else's. Those are things worth fighting for, perhaps, but are they 'happiness'?

"How do you fight for happiness?" she asks, and while a faint twist of her lips tries to make the words come out with her old faint cynicism, she's listening for the answer.