I know a lot of people take this as a cloud/aeris hint and interpret it that way because it’s the character going back to their canon basically. There’s hints of lots of these oh so great ships everywhere not saying no but at least in my interpretation of Cloud he never fell completely in love with either Aeris or Tifa (I know he had a crush on Tifa when he was young but again that’s when he was young not denying that). Was he interested in any yes but in love or beyond certain levels to me no, I think at the time of the OG there was just too much going on for him to fall in love (not saying it can’t happen but at least that’s just me).
Okay now that I got that out of the way so hopefully the shipping police isn’t after my ass I wanna talk about this scene under the canon it’s from which is Dissidia. If you’re familiar with the game he shares a dream with an ally of his, a dream that originally belonged to Firion who wanted to fill the world with roses. After believing Firion, quote unquote gone Cloud carries Firion’s dream around with him (in the form of a gleaming rose like the beast’s Rose in that one glassed case thingy) and isn’t exactly too sure what to do about himself with it. In the middle of all of that he encounters Terra who’s got her own demons to handle to put it shortly and to the point. Cloud shares this with her, tells her what’s on his mind and from it Terra tries to expand on it. Why limit it to just one kind of flower or to a couple when it can be many and of different kinds that will remind them of their friends (if you look at the picture there’s a couple of white flowers here and there). Might be pretty simple minded for a character like Cloud but he doesn’t deny that the thought of it is nice and at the time of this proposition Cloud didn’t have much to fight for so I’m sure being given something meant a lot more to him than it would have maybe meant to the other dissidia characters who already hold things to aspire for, to fight for. Something Cloud actively struggles to find under this canon. So having someone tell him hey this is something worth fighting for or aiming for I’m sure it was something he appreciated that Terra did even if it was a proposition from his part initially, sharing what he had, she expanded on it and gave him something worth hoping for in some way. So that’s the dream, fill the world with flowers that remind you of the friends you love. At least what was agreed. in
Fast forward to where all our heroes are returning back home. This scene is what Cloud sees before he goes back to his canon (again many interpreted it as a ship thing but I interpreted it within the canon of Cloud’s story in Dissidia). When I first saw it and I still see it this way is like he’s getting a preview of that dream he finally set himself to chase, telling him that hey this is how the world would look with your dream. Again it’s a very simple minded dream but to somebody who was desperate to find some sort of path it was a pretty big deal to him. So he’s staring at everything and all of those flowers, then he looks over his shoulder and smiles a little, claiming he isn’t interested (implying that his memories from his canon came back) and then fades away. I know not every character in Dissidia will remember what happened to them within that canon but I do carry this little part over where his memories are back and the memories he has of everything within Dissidia. Just that little snip of him seeing the flowers and looking over his shoulder and basically telling everybody bye. He won’t remember everything and all of them by name when he goes back to his canon obviously but he will remember that feeling he got when he saw the flowers, that sense of accomplishment of hey I did it and he’ll also have inklings of knowing that it was something he was aiming for with somebody else.
As to why? He isn’t sure. Will he think it was stupid when he returns to his canon? Yes of course cause again for OG Cloud it’s just a simple minded thing. Will he remember who it was he shared this dream with in any sort of way? No, he doesn’t. Not a name, how they looked, how they sounded nothing. Cloud would only recall the feeling he got from seeing all of those flowers.