There are two words you hear in almost every childish fairy tale: “true love.”

Don’t make me laugh.

Did I think I found it in her? Did I think I found fated, meant to be, honest-to-goodness true love? Maybe. I was an idiot then.

Cloud Strife, SOLDIER 1st class, fighting for the sake of the world—no, just some sick experimental joke living a lie. That’s me. Or is it? No one really could ever tell me who I was. Nor did I expect them to. If I couldn’t find out myself, I didn’t want to know. There were a lot of things I didn’t know.

Why I felt the way I did number one among them. Logic or no logic, something in me leapt when I saw her. Something in me longed for her, wanted us never to be apart. It was awkward, and I didn’t know what to do with it. But her smile mesmerized me, captivated me anew every time I saw her. Was it true love? Was it a twisted trick of fate? Was it everything I needed? Was it everything that would take me down? Did I... did I love her?

If I did, if I really did, I wouldn’t have let her die.

Damn it, what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I do things right for once in my life? Why could I not reach out and stop it... why did my body fail me right when I—when she—needed it most? Damn you, Sephiroth! Damn you to a million hells! You took my everything away —and then told me I was nothing but a puppet. You—you—I... damn it... why couldn’t I...?

The worst was the way she carried herself, even as she was stabbed through the back in cold blood. A little gasp as the pain shot through her... then slowly she slid off the blade. She should have hated me, she should have looked at me through the eyes of one betrayed. But never once did her face look angry. Never once did her eyes question me. Her eyes... her pure, guiltless eyes... they smiled as they said one thing to me:

“It is finished.”

Did she think it would be better this way? I would rather have greeted Armageddon with her by my side than lived a thousand years without her. But cold, hardened ex-SOLDIER Cloud could never just say it. He always had to live in his goddamned lie. He masked it. I masked it. I always did. I covered up my sorrow with vengeance, buried my guilt under hate. It was like a dream; it seemed so long, but when it ended, I saw it was so very short. It seemed so real from the inside, from out so foreign and far-off. She came into my life in one unexpected moment, and she left it just the same way.

True love. The words to me are bitter. Some of us fell for that lie before, and watched as our hearts were torn out and trampled on because of it. Some of us know better now.