A/N: Okay, so it's not the best short story…kind of emo… But I couldn't help it. I found this amazing fanart of Sephiroth standing before Aerith, whom looked so accepting and warm toward him, which made me see it as he finally arrived at the Promised Lands for a welcoming he never suspected.

Also, I like emo-ness...

Disclaimer: I do not own anything. It's all SquareEnix. -pouts-

The Promised Land: A Welcome

He realized too late that he had it all wrong.

Sephiroth crumbled to his knees, staring at the black nothingness around him in disbelief. He was dead. Gone. Completely destroyed. And yet, his soul still lingered… But where? Where was he now, and why was it so…cold? So dark?

Slowly, his blood began to boil at a steady incline. Nothing was right. Nothing EVER went right. He wasn't right. He wasn't even human… He was only a puppet, desperately trying to cut its strings. And now that the strings were gone and he had become a real boy, a dead boy, he realized that he couldn't move without them. He was nothing without them. He needed Jenova to bring him back to his feet – to allow him to be worthy of her power once more.

But he was dead now. Truly dead. There would be no more Sephiroth, as far as the Planet was concerned. And not only had the Planet made sure of that – she had made sure of it. That small, feeble, weak-minded flower girl… It was all her fault.

Perhaps I should not have slain her after all, he pondered with irony. It was odd that nothing was certain in death anymore except for him now. The disgusting little flower girl had increased in power by the once beautiful death he had given her, a dark gift, one that was not meant to become a power against him. She reigned in power, a queen now of her precious Promised Lands…and he sat in darkness, broken, like the small, feeble, weak-minded thing that she was supposed to be.

And he was dead because of it. He could never come back, never fulfill the promises he had made to Mother and the Planet. He was really dead.

But where the hell was he? It was a question that was beginning to enrage him. He never was one to take an even temper to unanswered questions. This was probably the most important question he would ever again ask himself, and it would probably go unanswered. He was alone. The darkness would not speak back to him, comfort him or caress his boiling blood.

He was alone.

Finally, when he felt that his chest could hold it in no longer, the ultimately defeated warrior let out a thunderous roar – a bellow of anger, of old fumes and constantly coursing venom. He screamed and he screamed and he screamed. And then, he stopped. He fell silent. His face fell to a look of indifference, and then stiffened, frozen. No amount of anger or level of cries would change anything, he realized. He was dead.

And suddenly, the full realization crashed into him like a pillar of iron. A strange, almost uncomfortably warm feeling washed over his body, all over inside of him, as he let this fact sink softly into his mind, like a long, black feather making its way down from his discarded wing. He had failed again, and was truly paying for the price of his failures. Who would have thought that he, a Legend among men and monster, would fall so terribly in his end? Even Genesis, with his poetic blabber and obsession to be better than him, could not have conjured this one up if he tried.

But there was no Genesis. No man or monster. No poems. He was alone.

From above him, a pinhole of light began to shine. His quick, slitted, green eyes caught it and held it, narrowing at first in slight wonder, and then in discomfort as the light grew in brightness and strength. He would not turn away so easily, however, and no matter the uncomfortable singing in his eyes, he continued to stare at the light. It widened and warmed, touched all over him now, and in a manner of moments became too bright for even closed lids to shield against it. He swung an arm across his face, wincing and gasping slightly in confusion as much as intrigue.

Sephiroth waited for a time for something to happen. It seemed like minutes, it seemed like seconds – it seemed like never at all and always. Nothing moved, and even his chest ceased to expand now. Silence.

Uncertainty seemed to melt away, along with his previous red rage. Cautiously, he lowered his arm, only allowing his venomous green eyes to open when the light around him did not pierce through the thin skin of his lids painfully. He gasped as his vision settled on pink.

In an instant, Sephiroth was stood. The flower girl, his enemy, his opposite, the bane of his existence, stood before him. Her arms were locked behind her back, and a smile that reminded him of the clear skies and ocean waves he used to enjoy slowly spread across her face. She was glowing. This evil little wretch, the one whom had caused him so much pain in the past, was giving him something. An emotion. An energy. The strong, steady, and sure feelings of a friend, a mother. All of these things were in her warm smile…a welcoming smile.

Aerith tilted her head slightly to the sight in quiet observation and soft amusement, and then brought out one hand from behind her back to hold before him. The fallen hero found himself in one of the oddest moments he had ever experienced, in life or in death, as he stared blankly at the flower she presented to him.

His lips parted, but words escaped him. For a moment, he was overwhelmed. What was he going to say? Did he have anything to say? No, he realized. He had spent the last years of his life and death killing in the name of his dreams, or nightmares, as Cloud used to think of it. He never once thought that in order to reach the Promised Land, he would first have to die. Truly die. And now, he wondered if he even really deserved it.

Everything began with the kind young woman before him, that much was certain. She deserved his undivided gratitude, and so much more. But…what does the murderer say to his victim when they meet again at the cross roads between rest and unrest? There was nothing to say.

And so, he accepted the flower.