Chapter 1 – The Noose

There had been pain. Not so much physical as the very wrongness of it all. All before had been cloudy and unclear, but now, now it was so sharp and vivid it hurt.

The very first sensation was drowning. Water in my lungs, all around me. I wasn't even sure how I knew the word, water. It was then that I realized that I was a thinking and sentient being, not a part of the vast collective that I had floated in just moments before. Planet. Gaia. The amount of knowledge slapped me in the face, dragging me down into the darkness.

I wanted to stay this way... couldn't I just stay dead! No no no no... I hadn't asked to come back, I wasn't being called on a quest of any sort, there was no purpose for me this way. It was the end, the end of her days, not the beginning.

But the body betrayed me. Preserved in the fact that it was steeped to the marrow in ancient magic, my mind was human and frail. My body was as old as time while dead, but now it was connected to the primal and human parts of my brain.

It wanted air. It wanted to live.

I was on the forgotten shore; in a place that I knew wasn't where I should be. No ancient structures, no decaying art and architecture. My tomb had expelled me, along with whatever feeling I had of unity, of purpose.

I felt like I was burning. And with that sensation, I knew one thing had to have happened for me to be this way. One thing that would have brought me to tears if I'd been a fully feeling... human? No, I wasn't human. What was I?

I wondered how many had died so that I might live. Resurrection is a thing paid for in blood. Not just the blood of one, but of many. And then, as I focused more on my surroundings, began to wonder why I knew all this.

Residue of knowledge, wisdom left from fools passed...

Memory. Memories of life, unlife, and the agonizing time in between. I was wise only in that I'd been immersed in wisdom; I was wise only in that I'd been a part of something wiser... without it...

I decided to observe my surroundings, now that the water had released me. Though that meant I was slowly burning due to... sand? I was on the coast. Hadn't I been somewhere more interior? Where was that feel of belonging, that utter sense of heritage?

This beach, it had a name, and it echoed in my mind like a breath. Junon. I remembered this place, I had been here before. A dolphin, a monster, a little girl... I had to hold onto myself in order to keep the waves of memories from washing me away.

And those eyes. Those eyes.

I couldn't remember who had been friend or foe. I remembered faces, names, places, conversations... but those eyes. On two different faces. Which had destroyed me?

I glanced down at my hands as they clutched the fabric of my clothes. Memory told me that I was covered in one color... but now, from the sea salt and the red mud of the bottom... My dress was a filthy white, stained in patches that were sometimes blood and sometimes the dirt of the ocean's floor. As I had bled, the Planet had bled with me. I had bled out all my pink.

I thought it would protect me. I thought he would protect me. I thought nothing would harm me...

It was then that they found me, sobbing like child into the sand, my wet hair curtaining me against the sun. Strangers, but kindly older people nonetheless. I was glad that it wasn't anyone that I knew. People had to die so that I might live, people had to die...

I felt hands, pulling me up, and dragging me away from the shore. I wanted to grasp out to the ocean, my resting place, my peace. I couldn't be, this couldn't be, these people, they didn't find me, I wasn't struggling...

My name. My name... is Aeris. I, Earth. A name I would go by no more. For now, I would be Manakel, for the oceans that cradled me. Why take the name of something that had forsaken me?

AN: Well, I never thought I'd do an Aeriseph. I'm actually rather opposed to the idea. And the idea of an Aeris Resurrection Fic... so I decided to take all the things that annoyed me about such stories, and not do them. Write it my way. Not that every Aeriseph is crap (Solain Rhyo's damn good, and Chocobogoddess makes me smile despite some cliches, and Reno Speigel just pwns on that one.) But Aeri said she wanted one, and she's such a sweetheart and all, and I figured if I made her a story, she'd be happy. I intended on some sweet little one-shot too... but then there was some discussion on the fanfictionpoint7 forums.. and ya. I was inspired to write this piece of work. So far, four chapters, and it will grow. You forum people, this is what happens when you give me an idea. Don't say I didn't warn ya!

/end overly long AN. The others will be much, much shorter.