The roar takes Cloud by surprise.
Water crashes down onto the dais of the crystal. From where he stands on the other side of the bridge, Cloud feels like it has crashed into him as well. Tremors shoot through his every nerve. The waterfall's continuous roar permeates the marrow of his bones.
Something inside the water turns ribbons of it white. Transfixed, Cloud only notices that Bugenhagen has returned to their stretch of rock when he begins to speak.
"Now, go inside," Bugenhagen says. The humour that Cloud has grown accustomed to hearing in his voice is missing. "Hope may be inside... or..."
He does not need to finish that sentence.
Cloud takes the lead across the slender bridge. In what has got to be awestruck silence, Yuffie follows after him with Barret behind her.
There is an opening in the waterfall that becomes more apparent the closer he gets to it. As Cloud steps through it, water mists his skin. Its chill accentuates the already-raised goosebumps along his arms. The waterfall's roar becomes muted the moment the soles of his boots connect with the dais: it sounds about as loud his heartbeat does. Sounds like it might come from the exact same place.
No water touches the dais or its shining crystal. Instead, the waterfall overhead splashes against domed nothingness and splits itself around it. The water rolls down on all sides as if following the curve of a sphere. Cloud has no clue how this is even possible: all he knows is that the Ancients have done and created stranger things than this.
His eyes fix themselves on the crystal and the light it throws in every direction. It glows with a light different from the kind a light bulb emits: it does not hurt his eyes to look directly at it.
Bugenhagen takes him by surprise again.
"...project an image!"
Blinking sharply, Cloud looks over his shoulder to find Bugenhagen hovering six or seven feet above the floor.
"Look!" His generous sleeve billows as he gestures to the crystal. "Look at the image projected onto the water!"
Cloud looks.
Look turns out to be an inaccurate word: it is too passive an act. Too simple. In the span of a second, looking becomes experiencing.
From the rippling wall of water ahead, Aerith smiles down at him.
That roar in his bones pervades him. His nerves snap and dissolve like his veins do. All of the physical things that make him up seem to liquify in an instant.
Cloud has no heartbeat and no breath as he watches her braid come undone. The consciousness of the Ancients spares him a horrific replay of that which he remembers far too well. Instead, it turns its metaphorical eye to the White Materia as it ricochets from stepping stone to stepping stone. Then the White Materia plummets into the water shining with a light that is not its own.
He knows whose it is.
It takes him a moment to notice that he has stretched himself up onto the balls of his feet. Whatever air left in his lungs escapes him as he settles back down onto his heels.
"It's glowing..."
No one says anything.
"... Aerith. Aerith already prayed for Holy." Cloud is not sure he is speaking out loud. Time has fractured itself in this place: he feels about as present right now as the future and the past do. "After I gave up the Black Materia to Sephiroth... her words came into my dreams..."
I'll come back when it's all over, she had said. Her voice does not sound so much like a memory anymore.
"She said she was the only one who could stop him... and that to do that, there was a secret here... That was Holy. That's why she had the White Materia."
The glow of the White Materia's image draws his gaze.
"Aerith knew about here... and what she had to do." Cloud's throat is almost too tight for his voice to squeeze through. "She left us hope. But, it cost her her life... her future..."
It is hard to say if he is feeling more lucid or befuddled than ever before, because Cloud thinks he can almost feel her presence.
"I'm sorry... Aerith," he says to the air and the water and the crystal in front of him. Something in him suspects that these things are not just things. "I should have figured this out sooner. You left us without saying a word. It was all so sudden, so I couldn't think... that's why it took so long for me to find out..."
His body is cascading water: ever-moving. Ever-changing. It rolls down along the sides of all that makes him him. If there is a crystal inside him, it has finally thrown its light in the right direction.
"But, Aerith... I understand now," he says to her. "Aerith... I'll do the rest."
"That's WE!" Barret booms from behind him. Cloud turns to face him with an odd feeling caught in his mouth.
"We've gotta take the chance she left us!" Punching a fist into the air, Yuffie nearly manages to distract him from noticing the tremble in her voice. That thing in Cloud's mouth is a spark: warmth ignites in his chest as the others raise their voices in support.
From her own dais, she must be lifting her voice too.
That crystal inside him burns with a light that is not just his own. Someday, it will illuminate the path between them.
"Thank you... Aerith."