The Longest Journey
--This is a Fiction created by a Fangirl, for other Fans. Take it with a pinch of salt—
-Disclaimer: I fail to own KH or KH2. Which is a heartbreaking realisation…-
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Take only love, take only dreams
From this life into the next.
Ancient Saying
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Part One: Prologue
Tomorrow became today rather quickly.
Of course, tomorrow knows that today must pass, that today, being insensitive and wanton will fritter itself away on the inconsistent wind and us too, like ghosts of yesterday, will pass with it.
The world I love died.
The knowledge of others that passed and left stays strong in my heart, and I know that somewhere on this long, continuing road, there will be other faces, other times when this heart so broken and so inconsistent will surge and beat again, and in beating, I will know the future.
But back then… I couldn't get by with scraped knees, not like you. I am not you. I am frail, weak, and fragile. A sorry state of someone who was once something powerful, something great and awe inspiring.
You must remember that day, do you not? Do you remember how much I cried?
The pain in my heart… my fingers, tingling and my eyes burning, with tears, with shock.
I remember the heat of the flames…
Breathlessly she scaled the steps in hurried bounds, pulled along by the stronger girl.
She wanted to call out for her to wait, but knew the fear festering in her heart was mirrored plainly and openly on the face of the girl, only a few months younger than she was, desperately hauling her up the steps. Black hair flew about her in a cloud of panic, drifting strands of someone she loved dearly and the ruby red eyes were tormented, turning about the place, seeking shelter from the coming 'storm'.
Behind her cries of battle drew loud and sharp, clattering of metal on metal and onto stone, the numb tumble of a body and sometimes, deathly silence. She had grown used to the sound of war, it hardly made her flinch but the taut face of the black haired girl was pained, agonised almost. At such a young age, she couldn't blame her. But, she didn't have the brother that Aerith Gainsborough did…
Sephiroth… His mad plots to overthrow the Kingdom had failed thankfully, a kind of madness, she said, that was inherited from misuse of dark magic that she herself only used sparingly, when the occasion arose for it. She remembered that day, when like a phoenix from the flames rising up higher and higher, he had looked down on her… sneered at…
No, Tifa Lockhart did not have the brother Aerith did, and such things she supposed, the girl was lucky for.
"Stop," Tifa commanded, tugging her in close to a wall and without comment, she pressed herself there, trying to gather up her breath.
"…" Straining her hearing, there were the sounds of something eating, something scratching and the feeble moans of a person. She closed her green eyes, wishing that she could block the sound out, block out the overwhelming empathy that flowed, the pain of the person lay dying and being eaten about the corner, the backwash of fear and disgust from Tifa.
"…Come on," Tifa said, grabbing her hand again with a flush of cool creaking leather gloves and together they spun out from the corner. Tifa pounded down the hallway so fast that the creature made of shadow only had a small second of time to look up from the meal of blood and gore.
Aerith was a little slower on her feet; she wasn't a trained martial artist. But when those eyes turned upon her, she flung out her hand and a fireball seemed to materialise from the beating in her veins, the hot rampage of her blood and fire outwards from the flat palm. It engulfed the creature and immolated it.
She hated using fire most of all…
In the spurting flames as she ran after Tifa, a glance back gave her only the fleeting memory of someone sneering with eyes as cat green as her own.
Running into the room, Tifa closed the door with a heavy shove from her shoulder, and then leaned there, breathing heavily. Aerith took her time to brush her hair back; her hand was shaking just a little from the sight of fire.
"What," gasped the younger fighter, "W-what is going on here?"
"I don't know, but I wonder if this has anything to do with what King Ansem warned us about…"
"A-Ansem? Some warning…" Tifa gulped air and closed her eyes. "Those creatures, what are they? How can we fight something like that?"
"I don't know… you're the Heart Guard, not me."
"You're… You're Heart Guard too; don't try to get out of it that way."
"I'm just an assistant… since he left…" She trailed off.
Tifa's eyes fixed on her and a blush of red shame suffused her cheeks, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…"
Aerith shook her head and turned to look about the library of the massive Castle where Ansem lived, where they had been going through routines when the sky had cracked and darkness entered. The Radiant Garden was lost completely in a haze of shadows. She wasn't even sure where anyone else was. There was only herself… and Tifa.
"If we keep going up," she said, "We'll get to the Gummi dock. We can probably find Cid there. He's likely helping refugees to escape."
"Great… I think that we have company coming so… no time like the present to run away. Let's go Aerith, stop gasping for air!" Her hand was seized again.
As they both ran up the stairs, Aerith's pink dress flaring and Tifa's black hair flying, she didn't have the heart to correct her that Tifa had been the one gulping air…
He had thrown her over his shoulder, much to her howls of distress.
Of course, Squall never paid attention to anything that should bother him, that should mark him as human as the rest of them. Well… apart from maybe Aerith and Sephiroth… and maybe even Rinoa too… Oh none of that mattered!
She hammered on his back with her fists in the hope of dislodging herself or maybe making her captor slow down, but he paid her about as much attention as he would a gnat. Her youthful pride couldn't comprehend that someone would so willingly ignore someone such as she was!
"I'm the daughter of the Leader of the Utai Ninja, let me down! LET ME DOWN!"
"… Whatever."
"Whatever!? Whatever isn't an answer, it's a… a… it's not an answer, whatever it is!"
"…"
"Are you listening you muscle bound oaf? I don't care if you're a Heart Guard; you'll let me down right this instant or I'll… throw up on you!"
"Inventive."
Yuffie, the carried person, sighed and blew at her fringe, staring dismally at the floor as she realised that she couldn't even force herself to vomit – it was one of the few things she detested with a passion. The heir to the famous clan of Ninja that served Radiant Garden and outlying lands and villages was a girl perhaps not much older than thirteen, jostled on his shoulder as he ran. Her hair was bobbed uniformly short to her chin and with a fringe that settled just above her scowling brows. Her clothes reflected her profession, even to the sock that valiantly struggled down to her shoe, even with her being carried.
The person doing the carrying was Squall, the strong silent type who had received a scar in training down his face that only slightly marred his stern beauty. Slate coloured eyes briefly scoured the hallway. She wondered if he even felt hot, wearing the full uniform of a Heart Guard – he had been on duty when the attack had finally come crashing down upon Radiant Garden.
"Where are you taking me anyway!?"
"To the Gummi dock."
"To where? But the… my father isn't there, I refuse, you put me down right now!"
"Your father is dead."
Yuffie stiffened with a muted cry of pain, a knife blade that went unseen into her heart. Her father was dead? He seemed so… indestructible, all formal ways and serious expressions, superbly trained and the greatest warrior she could think of, next to the Heart Knight, Sephiroth.
Did…that mean her clan were also…?
She flailed at his back, gritting her teeth against the tears, legs kicking wildly, "You horrible person! You're cruel! Mean! Are you a Heartless?! Are you!? Only a Heartless would say something that nasty! My father isn't dead, my father isn't dead… my father…"
Squall sighed softly and gently lowered the sobbing Yuffie to her feet. She didn't even realise she was standing until her half bare shoulders touched the cold of the marble wall behind her, making her choke on a sob in surprise. She glared balefully up at him through her tears, hands bunching.
He just looked down at her, sad eyed and still young, he thought through a fog of furious despair, only sixteen. He took her shoulders firmly and she tensed. "Lady Kisaragi," he said formally, "I can only… apologise. I am sorry, but I do not lie."
"T-then…" before she knew it, she was weeping, held up only by his hands.
"…his last wish was that you escape so his line continues to the day and beyond when we manage to get rid of the Heartless."
That sounded good, exterminating those creatures that had caused her father's death and her clan… a blood feud would demand no less. Determined she thrust her chin out and scrubbed at the tears, "I will kill them all. You'll see. One day, I'll be a great Ninja."
"…"
"I'm Yuffie," she said then, in a small voice.
"I'm Squall," he sighed and reached down to pick her up again, but just as he was scooping his strong arms about her wobbly self – crying always make her weak- there was a groaning from down the corridor.
"Squall…" she breathed, frightened.
"I heard it… crouch down." His hands left her to move to the strange gun-blade device strapped to his hip and with practised ease, unbuckled it so the weight lay in his hands. The dark noises continued for a moment or so, then gently trailed off.
Yuffie pressed her self close to the wall, realising her hands were shaking and with a child's determination, clenched them so her enemy wouldn't see her fear. Tucked into her waistband was a set of sharpened wooden shuriken, not much bar a child's toy that she had been playing with earlier, and without thinking she pulled one out and held it between first and second fingers, poised to throw it.
A detonation shattered the air as the wall right behind her exploded outwards in a shower of rubble and debris, the dust settling in clogging volumes that threatened to choke her. She couldn't see anything but marble dust and the growling roar of something huge. Squall pushed her back roughly, and as the air cleared she saw him get thrown away by something massive in size.
A heartless that seemed the size of a hay wagon loomed over her.
A hand came up and she squeaked and threw her little wooden shuriken, but it bounced from the tough hide of the round heartless, clattering somewhere into the dark shadows of the corridor. Squall groaned something, trying to rise and she squealed out, shutting her eyes against the darkness that would surely claim her as the hand began the whistling descent to hit her.
Then someone was there, grumbling as the sound of a hand smacking onto other skin was audible. Yuffie slowly pried her eyes open to the sight of a girl she didn't know all that well stood over her in dark leathers, gripping the hand and keeping it away from smashing them both into dust, muscles straining and teeth as white as a slice of the moon gritted in effort.
"Hurry it up, would you?" The girl snapped.
Another voice, sweet and calm answered from behind the young ninja, "It's not an easy spell to recall."
"It's heavy."
"…" There was a detonation, like a firework going off close by and Yuffie reeled from the sounds, sitting down as the air was suddenly filled with sparkles of light. The girl in dark leather straightened suddenly and turned with a flash of darker yet hair, like a raven's wing, to look up at the small remnant of a heart flying away. Yuffie couldn't help but think how beautiful such a parting from life was, her mouth hung open ever so slightly.
"…damned creatures," The girl snarled.
"Squall?" The soft voice asked and Yuffie turned around to look at where a girl in a pink dress was knelt carefully over the form of her rescuer as he tried vainly to sit up. Calm hands that shook not a single white took gentle hold of the strong arms and back, helping him raise enough to sit upright.
"I was careless. I'm sorry."
"Don't be," the girl smiled, looking towards where Yuffie was prone on the floor and the ninja girl blinked. The girl haloed in golden brown hair was beautiful in a kind of way that had been the mystery of the heart flying upwards, the kind of beautiful you read about or hear in fairy tales, ethereal and perfect. "Are you alright?"
"She seems to be," said the other girl.
Yuffie's senses were slowly returning to her as she studied the darker girl of the two, emblazoned on the sleeveless jacket of black leather she wore over her shorts and fitted vest was a heart entwined with thorns. The symbols of the Heart Guard, symbols that Squall wore on the arms of his jacket and a symbol she saw swinging on the pendant about the shorter girl's neck. This then must be Tifa Lockhart. And the girl that had flung magic about with such a detonation could only be…
She gave a squeak and scrambled to her feet. "I-I'm sorry…"
"You're right," Aerith Gainsborough and sister to the Heart Knight said, "She does seem alright."
Tifa snorted and dusted her hands down, "Can you walk, Squall?"
"Of course," sure enough he was on his feet and striding towards the young Ninja. Yuffie sighed inwardly; she knew she was going to get manhandled again. "We're off to the Gummi dock. I was going to come and look for Aerith after I got Yuffie to safety."
"Me?"
"Cloud asked me to."
"Cloud?" Aerith said, putting a hand to her chest and hurrying after Squall so that she stood between him and Yuffie. The young ninja peered up at the back of the magic user. "Where is Cloud?"
"…"
Tifa sighed, a long and sadly shivering kind of sigh and reached around to touch Aerith on the shoulder and Squall looked to the side. Aerith stood her ground, her green eyes as hard as agates, fixed on the face of the tall warrior.
"Where is Cloud?" she repeated, undeterred.
"I don't know."
"Aerith, honey," Tifa said soothingly but was rebuffed again by a shrug of a thin shoulder.
"I order you to go after him," she said sternly. "I order it, as your immediate superior."
"…"
Yuffie chose this precise moment to break in, "We have to go!"
Tifa looked down then grinned, putting a hand on her head so Yuffie's hair was ruffled by fingers creaking in leather, "Yeah, come on Rissy, even this girl know when to go and when to stay, right?"
"…"
"He's probably even already off world right now, and he asked Squall to look after you until he comes back, right? So let's go, no more waiting. Dilly-dally, shilly-shally…"
Aerith's hands were clenched even as she nodded and Yuffie stepped close to her, feeling comforted by the presence of someone that seemed to be in charge, but from her shorter height she could see the tears in the eyes of the girl, tears that she would spend years trying to fathom…
They ran.
Tifa knew her breath was catching in her throat but the encouraging shouts of Cid told them all that he had waited faithfully behind to the last, as if somehow knowing deep inside that the last few were coming. Ahead of her, the young Ninja girl ran like the wind, sprightly and without any sign of tiring which had surprised Tifa no end. Behind her, Squall was trying to help the quickly tiring Heartcaster onward, her feet dragging and her breath coming shortly. The stairs were slowly defeating her as they hurried up the spiral to the great doors of the Gummi Dock.
Behind them all, down the winding steps that yawned away in the cavernous pit of the tower, the hordes of Heartless were starting to swarm and she knew that they would be finished if they didn't into the ship with Cid.
Aerith cried out, stumbling over, but Squall was quickly enough to grumble and throw the girl over his shoulder, ignoring any weak pleas that she could still keep going. She was a magician, not an athlete after all!
Tifa ran harder; her legs felt like the blood in her veins were molten lava, burning up every inch of muscle and sinew, destroying her even as she sought so hard to live. Then they paused by the platform at the top of the stairs, trying to catch their breath and staring down at the pit of shadows that slowly crawled towards them.
Her eyes scanned the doors and the dock. Squall and Yuffie were already climbing into the ship whilst Cid was trying to calm down a suddenly upset Aerith. Tifa didn't have to strain her ears to know that he was telling her that Cloud had not come his way to get on any of the few remaining ships.
Tifa bit her lip hard…
For as long as she could remember, it was always Aerith looking out for the idiot Cloud, always making sure he didn't so something stupid, even since that incident not so long ago that had left them both in a laboratory crumbling with fire… all Aerith had done was cast spell after spell until the others had fought the fire to nothing, to keep herself and Cloud alive… and what had the idiot done? Not a single word of thanks.
Tifa could have clawed his eyes out for being so insensitive – she had seen the poor girl cry for days afterwards, Cloud taking to acting like nothing had ever happened. Pretending that Aerith's brother had not betrayed them all…
Still, Aerith had persisted, still she had kept trying and because Tifa loved Aerith, her best friend since childhood, she had stayed silent on the fact that she thought Cloud was a lost cause. Tifa wouldn't spend her time pushing him off a cliff if she could avoid it. But her best friend loved him, so she stayed quiet.
The closing mechanism to the door appeared to be snapped off from the inside and there were no handles on the inside to pull it closed, so gritting her teeth, she stapped back out and kicked on heavy panelled door closed with a resounding thud. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at the door in surprise. Aerith's eyes looked from the door, to Tifa, to the mechanism and then with a flood of understanding that marked her face with horror, back to Tifa.
"What are you doing!?" she shrieked.
"…I'll find him for you." Tifa said calmly.
"…W-what?"
She smiled a lopsided but warm affair as she placed her leather clad hands on the other door and inexorably started to push it closed. "I'll go look for Cloud, so when we're all back together again… it'll be fine."
"Tifa, don't be stupid!"
"Is it stupidity, really, to want to see your best friend smile?" Tifa tilted her head, "Squall, Yuffie, protect her! …And Aerith, I loved you the best, okay? See you…"
"No!" The scream was cut off by the door shutting on the dock and the ships and every little scrap of her former life that Tifa wished to carry on.
Shaking with fear and exhilaration, she chuckled to herself as she leaned on the door, looking through the dark fringe of hair to the floor where the white capped sneakers peeked back up at her. In the corner of her eye she caught the surge of the darkness and looked up with a sigh.
"I loved you… best of all," she murmured, lifting her weary hands.
So we left the world I loved, the world I called home.
We went wherever the stars knew how to sing, where they shivered on the edge of something and discovered the world we had come to was a world called Traverse Town. We learned this world was the first to be inhabited by those who had fled Radiant Garden, a world that was devoured by the Heartless and slowly became synonymous with the name Hollow Bastion… because nothing else lingered there.
Only hollow memories that we could only think of pray would remain just that instead of becoming Heartless, stay memories.
I was alone, in a sense.
The beloved ruler had abandoned us and sentenced us to death.
My brother had betrayed me.
My love was dead.
My best friend gone.
…a brave new world where I was now just Aerith and no longer Heartcaster opened up before me. I wasn't the only one affected by these changes; Squall took it upon himself to change his name to Leon. He said that he would only allow me to call him Squall, as he still recalled my rank above him… and that he would drop the name Leon once our world was restored.
Yuffie became fiercely independent, often going days without coming back to our empty home if such a thing could be called home in the midst of all the madness… but I know she spent her time trying to hone the skills of her clan and forefathers. She never spoke of it directly to me, but I know she wanted to stop there being any more loss.
As for me…?
I devoted myself to study. I devoted myself utterly to those black arts I had already walked in when Heartcaster. I knew that path I dreaded to take would be a dark and painful one, but the black arts of Magic and the white arts of Healing would come with me on the journey.
…the longest journey I have ever undertaken…
To Home… to the Radiant Garden I remembered…