Onion: Part Over-Crowded (1/3)

On her third day in Mideel, Tifa awoke in a wooden rocker to the left of Cloud's wheelchair. His moans scratched her ears like ticks. When she opened her eyes, plates of brown—almost black—hair striped her vision; she looked at Cloud, and it seemed to her that strips of flesh had gone missing from his face.

With a groan, she told him good morning and gave him a reassuring—at least, that was the intent—squeeze on the shoulder, to which he replied "Ugh."

Tifa Lockhart told herself that this was merely a reflection on his almost-alive-dead state of mind rather than her close proximity and personal hygiene. She rejected the urge to leap into his lap and bang her fists against his ribcage. The hospital staff had already had to forcibly remove her once.

She ran her fingers over the grooves of the chair and decided that her resolution to sit beside Cloud while she slept had been a stupid one. Despite this, however, Tifa realized that she would probably get the same stupid idea this evening.

Because she was stupid.

Tifa hoisted herself free of the seat. Her pores had dirt shoved inside them, and her skin bore pink ribbon scrapes as a result of the itch, but she hated the showers and the waiting for patients and the infernal lack of water pressure that soaked up at least an hour of her time. Squeezing Cloud's shoulder again as she left the room, Tifa opted to skip the shower and head for the half-bath facility.

Everything in the whole hospital seemed to be made of wood or fabricated plastic wood grain except for the plumbing, the sinks, the toilets, and Cloud's wheel chair. As Tifa's borrowed wood grain toothbrush jutted from the lower right corner of her mouth, she fussed with the hair drizzling over her forehead. Some days, it refused to lie flat.

Frustrated, she ripped the toothbrush from her mouth and threw it into the upside down hip curve of the sink. The foam from the toothpaste followed. Everything ended up stained and wet with traces of brown—almost black—hairs dredged throughout.

Lockhart grabbed the brush—wood grain—and started tearing through her hair and fussing with the mess in the sink, cleaning toothpaste with one sticky hand and brushing-fiddling with her hair with the other. The sticky hand crawled up her scalp like a spider, and before Tifa realized what she was doing, she saw long hair split into three brown—almost black—ropes, slithering around each other into a sleek braid.

As if she had always braided her hair.

Pushing away the thought that "identity crisis" might be contagious, Tifa used her dry hand to pull out the braid and tossed the hairbrush into the sink with the toothpaste.

Before Tifa turned on the water to wash the whole potential drain-clog mess down the not-wood plumbing, she took a quick look at the brown—almost blond—hairs wriggling in toothpaste and water. The water came on with a swish, and the refuse hiccuped down the drain.

Tifa trundled out around the building into the dull green of mossy forest instead of heading back down the wooden hallway to Cloud's wheelchair. The grass-covered path led her directly under the backyard windmill and into the vegetable garden rimmed by the trees and domed by the sunlight. It reminded her of the forests of Gongaga, the way all trees did anymore, and the paprika dawn before and after everything turned to shit. If she squinted, she could still see the pastel dress weaving around the wire bark, but the word "stop" still struggled in her throat.

Even so, Tifa preferred the haunting to the haunted inside the hospital.

Certain vegetables had less of a tendency to make "incomprehensible" moans that came out 'oor' and preceded a hiss. And certain vegetables were cold and secretive. They hid under blankets of earth instead of masquerading as a collection of brightly colored eyelashes.

The hospital preferred to grow said vegetables, operating under the rather endearing assumption that vegetables grown below ground and close to the Life Stream have spiritual properties. In reality, they just depleted the nutrients in the soil faster.

Lockhart knelt beside a square onion field and let the sunlight shrivel some of the dirt in her pores. Fingers reached under a mound of soil, digging deep for a green morsel. Infant onions—and onions in general—had no layers in the metaphorical sense. One could call them layered, but such things imply sections with differentiation.

She reached something slimy and round—squashed materia in the Planet's orifice—and tugged. Her limbs ground in her joints when the onion refused to budge. Tifa had stolen young onions from the hospital garden with a single tug before; this experience was entirely new. Perplexed, she wrinkled her forehead—just a touch—and yanked.

Nothing. Tifa threw handfuls of hair over her shoulders and thrust her bare knees into the dirt. She gave a violent haul.

This time the onion loosened. A little. She could see the less appealing blossom top cresting the lips of the Planet's birth canal. Thinking that this gain marked victory, Tifa gave another pull.

What gives? Tifa dug her hands further below the onion to finger the fuzzy roots. Strange, she thought, nothing about them seemed titanium.

Not willing to lose to an onion after all her years of training, the martial artist crawled onto her haunches to use her legs as leverage. Nearly crushing the tiny onion ball with her fists, Lockhart gripped harder before digging in her heels and shoving her body into a near-standing position with her knees.

The pull brought forth the rest of the onion, its roots—fingers, hands clutching at the roots, long white arms, brown—almost blond—hair, round face with brittle dark eyelashes and thin lips, shoulders, breasts—

Everything—something (a corpse) or someone—came up so swiftly through the wrenching dirt that Tifa Lockhart unbalanced. Her body fell backward, her back flattening the rest of the onion patch, and the results of her labors fell on top of her, face up. Narrow shoulders pressed into her stomach. A lank back molded around her knees. Dirt clutched at hips just below a navel and soft stomach.

The collection of body parts looked to Tifa just like Aeris Gainsborough: flower girl and martyr extraordinaire. Even worse, she was warm and decidedly not dead. Orange-pink color moved under the skin film of the should-be corpse in firework forays.

Tifa did not feel shocked. She remained in a vague phase of 'of course there's a body on the other end of this onion, and who else would it be but Aeris?' She became aware of the dirt clinging to skin, dropping from Aeris' shoulders to her stomach, from Aeris' back to her knees.

Birds sang on Mideel morning. Moss trees and grey sky crept into Tifa's consciousness. And Aeris was naked. In her lap.

Then Aeris' eyelids split. The world caught on green fire.

"Let go! Let go!" Aeris wriggled on top of Tifa's legs.

Tifa had forgotten about the onion clutched in her fingers. Without a breath, she dropped it and scrambled out from under the naked flower girl. Bare knees scraped Aeris' naked back.

"Not you!" Aeris moaned, her lips twitching in frustration. "I was talking to them."

Lockhart blinked and looked to the opening in the Planet's surface that hugged Aeris' waist. Aeris' navel vanished. The ground swallowed her hips. Something below the surface pulled her down, tearing her back along the rocks and the soil of the onion patch. The dirt rolled like waves on the shore of Costa del Sol and ate Aeris' stomach with invisible teeth.

"Help me!" Aeris pleaded, clinging to the upset ground with one naked arm and waving the onion's green plumes in Tifa's direction with the other.

Still not thinking or breathing, Tifa leapt after the onion. She snatched the bulb just as Aeris lost the length of her abdomen to the planet.

Aeris' eyes shuttered to the dirt. "This is my onion!" she told the Planet. "Get your own."

Tifa pulled at the onion even harder than before. She started thinking again: thinking that Cloud needed Aeris because she knew him no matter what, and damnit, Tifa would not lose to an onion! Tifa would not watch her disappear again. Only this time, the dirt did not just refuse to give; the Planet pulled back.

Lockhart laid her body flat on the surface of the onion patch. Stocks brushed against her stomach as the ground pulled Aeris' shoulders under. Tifa held onto the onion tightly, crushing the fragile new bulb, but kept sliding closer and closer to the opening. Even when she could see nothing but Aeris' disheveled braid—still oddly intact, despite Gainsborough's general nudity and filth—Tifa's grip did not relent. The dirt had claimed the onion too—and her hands, her arms. Tifa did not realize that she had started crying until she tasted salt in the dirt.

One final tug and pull back sent Tifa shooting through the tunnel in the ground after Aeris. Dirt filled her mouth, her ears, her nose. She would take an hour-long shower then, no matter how much she had to wait. Rocks flattened her stomach as her body slithered over bumps and gravel. Eyelashes latched together to keep the filth out.

Deep, deep without breath. Dirt scratched and snared, but Tifa had forgotten how to let go. She just crushed the onion in her hands until juice dribbled in with the dirt and stung her scrapes and cuts. Fragments splintered in her palms until she would swear that she held nothing, but she could feel Aeris Gainsborough pulling her down further anyway. Her lungs heaved in her chest cavity until she needed to take a breath—

As soon as Tifa tried to breathe, she could. The movement stopped. The ache of dirt, scratches, and cuts vanished. Lockhart opened her eyes.

Tifa thought about screaming, but decided that it would probably do her no good. After all, this could not possibly be reality. Screaming only worked in reality—and then, not very often. As soon as she thought about it, however, her ears seemed to clear, and she could hear better than she ever had.

It did not help.

She could feel.

Even worse.

Yowling bodies mingled around her, tearing at her limbs and her clothes. She could see no faces: just rough fabric. Long robes covered the bodies, and veils covered the faces. The robes reminded Tifa of the ones worn by Sephiroth clones, only none of them were black. The "clones" came at her decked in bright colors.

Red gloves poked at her bare shoulders. Yellow arms brushed Tifa's face. Blue boots kicked Tifa's stomach. Color swarmed like mist—only rough, solid—from all sides, above, and below. Moans and breathing cluttered her ears, but she could distinguish no words.

A clear scream cut through as an orange figure tore out a clutch of Tifa's brown—almost black—hair. Tifa recognized the tone of the voice well, and the words hit her like solid objects against the gut.

"Let go!" Aeris repeated, only this time she referred to Tifa's body instead of her own.

The orange figure flew away from Tifa's face. The sea of color began to drain and pool feet away from her. Aeris Gainsborough charged through an opening—still completely naked, showing off the full splendor of her legs as well as her torso—brandishing a glass object that looked remarkably like a colorless rendition of Cloud's buster sword.

Glass deflected light and bolted in every direction. A white beam caught the head of a figure in violet. The figure's robe split and fell away from him, revealing a man with a blue cap and Shinra grunt uniform. Exposed, he immediately dropped through the floor.

The rest of the colorful clones expanded wider than Don Corneo and burst, sending sparks through the air.

Tifa stared at Aeris then. Thin lips split Gainsborough's face into an obscene grin. Her braid wrapped around her neck like a collar. She said absolutely nothing—just continued to brandish her ridiculous buster sword replica. Tifa had many questions she wished that Aeris would answer, but she figured that they were fairly obvious ones that she should not have to voice.

"They shouldn't do that." Aeris frowned, letting her lower lip jut out. "If they'd just be patient, everyone could get an onion."

"Aeris?" Tifa found her voice somewhere between the shaky knees that refused to stand and the drying liquid sweat-tears-saliva flaking off her lips.

"Who else would it be?" Aeris' braid dipped low and fell over her shoulders.

Tifa looked away after the frayed mess coiled around Aeris' breasts. Often, Tifa had imagined what Aeris might look like under pink collars and pleats. Was she prettier than Tifa? What would Cloud see? Did he imagine Aeris at the same time Tifa did? At the moment she would not deign to peek.

"I don't know," came Lockhart's nervous reply. Her attention had shifted to her feet, which she hoped would provide a distraction as captivating as an Aeris alive, naked, and brandishing a glass sword.

Tifa appeared to have misplaced a shoe—perhaps one of the rainbow clones had snatched it before Aeris scared them away—but that did not alarm her nearly as much as the surface below her mismatched footwear.

Hundreds of blue bouis Shinra grunt caps bobbed below Tifa's boot. Grunts clad in blue uniforms—as the disrobed clone had been—marched underneath a glass ceiling. She could see no space between each body not occupied by a blue cap or vest, and so she concluded that, perhaps, the men below her marched upon a similar ceiling-floor comprised of a similar group of Shinra grunts: layers of living tiling.

Tifa let her eyes drift upward, but they only met a mirror. Tifa Lockhart stared down at Tifa Lockhart, looking exactly as Tifa Lockhart expected Tifa Lockhart would—save for one alarming detail. Ceiling Lockhart strangled a long, glass Masamune in her right hand—dyed rouge and dripping red lily petals. As Tifa stared, she noticed the curved back of a reflection of Aeris Gainsborough inching toward reflection Tifa on her hands and knees.

Red eyes jerked down from the mirror. Tifa flexed her right hand and stared toward Aeris' back. Only, unlike in the mirror, Aeris skipped away from Tifa, dragging an arm, attached to a clear Buster Sword that scraped over SOLDIER heads. Despite the colors of the floor and ceiling, all space between was white and empty. If Tifa lost Aeris, she wouldn't be able to find her again.

"Aeris," Tifa called. She did not want to lose her only link to 'reality': the only thing she recognized in this construct—of what?—world.

Aeris did not slow down. Tifa had no choice but to start running after her. Tifa hoped that the Shinra forces below could not feel the weight of her boot on their stepping stone heads. It made her think of Cloud and how she had stepped on his head by denying him the truth.

When Tifa waded close enough, Aeris curled her neck to look at her.

"This isn't The Lifestream." Aeris answered Tifa's question without her having to voice it. The corners of her lips stretched toward the mirror. "I don't know where it is."

"Is it the Promised Land?" Tifa half-suggested.

Aeris shook her head as she skipped. "The Promised Land isn't below ground—or above, for that matter."

"But you're dead?" Tifa decided to at least inspect Aeris' body for rot. While some of the skin on her thighs hung loose, with pores the size of rock salt chunks, her body still possessed the same orange-pink warmth that her face and arms had while she lived.

The naked woman halted, spun on her heel, and forced her face into Tifa's. "Are you?" Aeris asked, suspicious.

As Tifa stepped backwards, Aeris tilted forward, bringing the smell of dirt, onion, and Gongaga with her—still foisted under her fingernails and in her hair. Tifa could not come up with an answer.

"I don't know what it means," Aeris confessed, pulling away. Tifa fought with the sudden impulse to leap after her and drag her back by the shoulders. "Being dead is just like being alive. You would think it would change, but I keep doing exactly what I did before. Didn't you notice?"

Apparently not.

Aeris turned her ass to Tifa and continued skipping forward as Tifa tried to look away. "We're going to find you an onion," Aeris called over her shoulder, not bothering to slow down, even with the jerk of her legs sending hollow bumps through her voice, "but I want to show you something first."

"I'm not going to follow you all over Hades' Underworld," Tifa snapped back.

The flower girl hummed as she skipped, apparently unconcerned. Tifa thought about staying put out of defiance, but she would eventually have to face the fact that she would get nowhere—where was she even going?—unless she followed Aeris. She also realized that, wherever she was, she knew Aeris, knew her like she knew herself, and even though Aeris should not have been standing before her, alive and naked, Tifa cloud not help trusting her.

As Tifa walked, the realization that Animated Aeris existed and paraded in front of her began to sink in. Tifa wanted to touch her, shake her, run her hands through her immaculate braid, and sob childishly into her shoulder—after all, Cloud wouldn't let her cry against him. She had tried it the first day, frustrated to see him in his vegetative state, but it had come to nothing, and she had only felt worse afterward. For the first time, Tifa thanked Shiva that Aeris was naked. It might have been the only thing restraining her.

Bad enough, but Tifa had nowhere to look but at Aeris' bare backside. She did not like that she stepped on SOLDIER skulls, and she feared the mirror with all of its mortifications above her head. "At least tell me about the onions," Tifa demanded, no longer able to contain her questions.

Aeris said nothing, but came to a stop. Tifa had to rely on her quick reflexes to avoid colliding with Aeris' skin. Strange, since she could have sworn the flower girl had skipped feet ahead of her. Aeris stretched her hand out, as if grasping a doorknob, and turned her wrist. Though Tifa saw nothing in her cupped palm, a rectangle of air pushed inward.

Gripping Tifa's shoulder, Aeris darted through the opening. Tifa jerked after her, head lolling on her neck. For a split second, she vanished completely.