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.

Comments

[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.