1/25 – Mocking a Memory

Pure white light lit up the sky around me, causing the snowflakes that fell steadily from the sky to glow in the darkness of midnight. I watched them, mesmerized by the small, perfectly imperfect designs they wore. Far above us, the lifestream glowed as it traveled through the atmosphere, it's green aura nearly blocked by the clouds and the whirling storm that hovered over Midgar like a shade.

I stood upon the fire escape that climbed the outside of Seventh Heaven, my arms resting on the cold metal even though my fingertips were frozen. I was exhausted from AVALANCHE's latest mission. I had expended all my energy in my fight with the Turks.

No, the fight was not just my own. To believe such a thing would be unforgivably selfish. It was everyone's battle. My friends had stood by my side since I came here, and then there were more than had joined in afterwards. Most of them were still here, still working against Shinra and their life-stealing reactors.

However, they were all asleep now. Most of them were in their own beds, sound asleep, dreaming of far off memories and what a perfect life would be. Nobody saw me out here, leaning on the railing, my lips nearly blue with cold but still unwilling to try and sleep for fear of nightmares. Instead, I watched the dim glow of the lifestream from where it ran like a river, protecting us all from the dangers outside this world.

Giving life to all things, gushing forth from the very core of the earth to the sky before gathering itself and washing over everything once more. I had always wondered what it felt like to become one with the planet... to go back to the lifestream. So beautiful, and yet so strange at the same time. Sometimes, even terrifying.

The whole world had lived with the lifestream since the dawn of the Cetra. Every time someone loses their life, they return to that stream to give life to another living thing. But, once they were one with the planet, did they think? Did they know what was going on, on the surface? Or even that they were dead? Or did they forever follow the current, completely oblivious to everything below them?

Could Cloud be this way now, as well?

Ever since I was a small child, the lifestream had been there, just beyond reach. People long gone were lurking just beneath every second, waiting for their chance to take to life again. I'd seen my mother dissipate into streams of green energy, her soul – all that she was – returning to the origin. It had been beautiful, but it had been evil as well.

I thought back, remembering the white hospital room, with all the beeping machines. The needles pressed through the skin of my mother's hands, which were bony enough that I was afraid to handle them for fear that they would snap in half at the slightest touch. When the moment came, her skin had shimmered, and then nearly turned to mist.

My hand had gone right through her arm, and I'd found myself clenching the sheets of the bed between my tiny fingers as we watched her go.

I stood nearly motionless, my eyes following the lifestream as it flowed gently above the clouds. It followed a seemingly random pattern, never going over the same place twice in exactly the same way. I sighed softly. Over the last five years, there's been so much grief, so much pain and suffering. Not only for those who survived what happened at Nibelheim, but for those who lived under the plate as well.

There has been so much needless loss of life here. I was exhausted from both the physical strain of running a busy bar, and the emotional strain of living without sunlight. The streets were gloomy twenty-four-seven, people stumbling around in ripped and dirty clothing, sleeping in alcoves and alleyways.

Shinra had deceived so many into thinking that if they gave up all control their lives would be better. But instead, people starve in the streets, fall – often drunk – in the gutters to die, and grow pale living in cardboard houses underneath the large metal plates.

The Gaia of today was suspended – revolving around a sea of lies and false pretenses – but over the years I had learned that pretenses weren't nearly enough. Had President Shinra just done what was right to begin with, Sephiroth wouldn't have gone crazy and destroyed my home – and maybe, just maybe, he would have never been created.

But I was getting ahead of myself now.

The events that had led up to that night had changed things, made things infinitely more complicated. If I had known... he was there... then maybe... just...

"I'm sorry, Teef."

Those had been Cloud's exact words to me, when I'd asked him why. I remember inwardly cursing him for apologizing, cursing him for being so down on himself. Then, without a word, I'd turned to walk away... but his body had begun to shimmer with a pale green light, dissipating into nothingness. Nothing to me, at least.

I shook my head in silent frustration. He had promised that he would protect me; rescue me when I was in trouble. But how could he do that now? Sephiroth was dead, they'd escaped from the old mansion – in which they'd been prisoners for years. They were so close to home, Cloud was so close to being back here again, with me, and then he died.

The whole point of all this was for the greater good, right? Wasn't it? So why did it have to be this way? Why?

My questions weren't answered, even now. He'd still disappeared, gone back to the planet, and I wouldn't see him again. There was nobody now. Just no one. We were the last... I was the only one left from that small mountain town.

Everything always ended with the lifestream. People, memories, and regrets. Even Sephiroth – the one that they'd called superhuman, invincible – was not beyond it's liquid grasp. So I stood upon the fire escape, my arms frozen and my skin pale white to match the snow that had made it's way through the plates with the wind... watched the big patch of lucid sky that showed over the broken church in the distance.

Was the lifestream there to help us find peace, to help us find guidance in a broken world? Or was it here to take the people we love and turn them into nothing more than a memory?

I didn't believe that I would ever find the answers to those questions.