This is a remix of 'Open and Honest'; chapter 2 of chofi's fic Floriography on Ao3 - as part of the Remix challenge Icynovas ran on tumblr. Also posted for the prompt 'Heritage'.
The lobby had been a jarring confusion of images, personal memories and fragments from other perspectives and other moments. Her name occurred far more frequently than expected - but why here of all places? The stairs were calmer, subdued. Few memories here. There were still moments to draw on, echoes of lives from within the building. Both cherished and hated memories. Point of view was so subjective. Their intensity - much like the vividness of the apparition - dimmed as it moved higher in the Shinra building and away from the Lifestream.
All around her was destruction and wreckage; an after-effect of Meteor's near impact, Diamond Weapon and even Cloud Strife himself. And the other of course; the consciousness somehow still holding itself away from the combined mass of others. For now. The shade's hand stroked across her stomach as past memories burned bright in her mind's eye once again. Easy to drift to that when reminded of him. Focus. At least she had only her own perspective for that moment; her murderer's memories were separate and the others- Well, hopefully it would be a good long while before their memories and perspectives were accessible to her.
Floor sixty-one. Climbing as many stairs as that might once have left her out of breath. Difficult to envy her friend's decision to climb so high by themselves. Easy to imagine them dragging themselves up all these steps. A smile. Sensible though. She paused at the door regardless, preparing and readying herself to experience her memory of this place all over again. Another step forwards; past and present blurred and merged. Another step. No actual need to step around the puddle or the broken chair; more reflex than anything else when she did. All her attention on the tree ahead of her.
At least it remained - a single tree still clinging to life, though how much much longer could it endure without assistance? Still odd; somehow out of place- The shade shook her head. Rather the building around it did not look right. A smile and a memory; the tree fit the dim half-destroyed monument to the Shinra company better than it had when this place was clean and bright. More memories, thousands of moments coalescing. Herself but younger walking through the floor with her mother. How many hundreds of Shinra employees had returned to the Planet since she or indeed anyone else last visited the place? A startling number given how many perspectives she gained. So many eating lunch; flirting; chatting. Aeris smirked. A few candid moments in the mix - late night and with no witnesses; it seemed passions got far too heated for a number of couples.
Focus. She was in many of the other memories. Walking this same path - right towards the tree.
"We don't belong here, you know." Her mother's voice was vivid and distinct despite the years distance. A confusing placement for the memory; her voice came from above her head somehow but then- Focus. Mother had merged into the Lifestream years ago. Her child self frowned at her mother's assertion and asked what she meant by her musing on the pair's status within the company. "Do you think we're their guests?" Almost rhetorical.
Not this. She wanted the moment after. Fight the lure to let the memory replay, to have this moment with her long lost mother - such a wonder and still with a sense of humour after all she must have endured. Aeris's firsts clenched as she tried to avoid the flood of memories spiralling out from the notion of Hojo. While his victims might not number in anything close to the number of deceased Shinra employees, their pain was close to overwhelming.
Closer to the tree now. Light had filtered down through the branches and leaves back then. It might have been artificial but it was her first sense of what the world outside Midgar would be like. Now the bulbs of those lights were broken or missing. She shifted, seeking a way to peer up higher to the ceiling. A new clash of memory. Laying her hand against the trunk of a tree near Kalm and staring up through the branches towards the deep blue sky high above her. The leaves tinted the light green back then.
Impossible to fight the lure of touching the living tree on that day near Kalm; the contact with something connected to the ground. Aeris reached out in the present, her fingers brushing against the tree on the sixty-first floor of the Shinra building. Present merged with two pasts and multiplied. There had been so many trees on her journey - each with their own link back into the Planet. The rough bark of the trees near Kalm, the smoother trunks near Costa del Sol; the tall, glowing trunks of the trees in the city where a part of her would reside forever more. So many moments of contact.
Focus. Concentrating was becoming more difficult, the distance almost too much. The bark. Aeris pressed her palm against the tree and concentrated. The tree's roots plunged down into the sanitised dirt seeking water to draw up through the trunk, spreading wider and wider until it reached the leaves. The tree was still alive; clinging to life even as the soil could not provide enough nutrients and no rainfall could penetrate this deep into the building. A vital source of green in the city - it might be the last one.
Her garden was no more; the patch of flowers sacrificed for the water to eradicate geostigma. The few flowers that grew near Elmyra's house withered away in the absence of their caretaker. This tree- The memory threatened to overwhelm her. It was breath-taking; timed with the precise moment a pulse - the proof of life - passed through it. A rush of warmth that flowed up from the ground and up high into the tree. And now a response; a cooler response sinking back down.
Her mother's hand on her shoulder and an image in her head. A seed struggling to grow in a hostile, poisoned land. Too much; doomed to failure. No. It would endure and grow; slow but steady. But it would need help too. Aeris pressed her other hand against the bark. Warmth flooded through her left hand and into the tree; a cool response flowed into her right arm. "She knows how we feel," her mother had said back then. This. This was what she needed. "Let me show you how to answer back."
So many words, most whispered; secret - ancient - knowledge for her and not for the guards who watched or the employees eating lunch, flirting or whatever. The dead language of the Cetra. The depth of the soil - not enough for the tree to grow at all. The slow pulses of the tree began to quicken as she repeated her mother's words and spoke to the Planet. The tree; it remembered her. It too had memories of this moment and their contact. The tree welcomed her in that same dead language her mother spoke.
Time to begin. "Grow," Aeris whispered in Cetran. The tree quivered beneath her hands and the floor trembled. There was more soil far below. Not perfect but she would guide the tree to where it could continue to live. Above them was all the light it could ever need - if it could only reach it. Aeris reached for the Lifestream and drew the flow upwards. Roots wriggled into cracks and bloated to shatter concrete and steel. Branches burst through ceilings moving towards the dim light above. Slow but steady, the last tree in Midgar grew enough to find the ground and the sun. A small start, but significant. One day the plants would cover Midgar. It all began from here.