A/N - It's been a long time. School was a distraction, but I'm back now. I don't know what made me want to rewrite this, but I figured I would indulge it. This is the Prologue - that's right, you get an actual exposition this time. Some things have been changed. Aerith, for example, not alive. Bite me. Her role is better played this way. Get over it. As for other things, I never wrote very far into the original , hell, I hardly even planned out the original, so you won't notice. I still like using song lyrics, (I have over 40 of them saved for this fic, I found them the other day). This song, however, could be considered one of the themes. You'll understand why later. I like it better than the Stained song I used before, although that song still fits perfectly. Now that I've bored you with author drabble, on to the story.
Disclaimer - I don't own FF7. Now you know.
Hello, hello
Are you out there? Hello
M.O.D. are you out there?
I can't see your face
But you left a trace on a data back-road
That I almost erased
Not even God takes this long to get back
So get back
'Cause I hit a fork in the road
I lost my way home
I'm cut off from out main line
Like a disconnected modem
Tap in the code
I'll reach you below
No one should brave the underworld alone
Hello, hello, hello
How do I reach you?
Poe - Hello
The city was strangely silent. Frowning, she leaned on the balcony, propping her chin in her hands.
Three years had passed since the Crisis. The skies were clearer now. Life had returned to something akin to normal. The Planet still shook with pain - small tremors most people couldn't feel, but those who could feel them dismissed them as simple spasms of recovery. What else could they be?
Three years had passed since the collapse of Shinra and the destruction of Midgar. Avalanche had done their best do fill the giant power vacuum that had been left and resurrect the fallen city that so many still clung to, but in the end all they could do was comb the rubble for survivors. They were ill suited for politics and had all gone their separate ways after void was filled.
Three years had passed since Noirmorte Inc had come onto the scene, filling the hole left by Shinra. Where the young president had surfaced from, no one was quite sure. It couldn't be said that Noirmorte was better that Shinra, but they weren't any worse, and it wasn't long before people simply lapsed back into the old ways.
Three years. So much had happened. It made her head spin to think of it all. Certainly it was for the best that not everyone knew everything that had happened.
Three years since the defeat of Sephiroth. Perhaps that was inaccurate. Sephiroth was considered part of the Crisis. He was, after all, the one who summoned meteor in the first place. He was, after all, a puppet, a lost boy revived after his premature death using an experimental procedure involving a two thousand year old virus.
Of course, no one knew that.
It was three years since the destruction of Jenova. No one knew that, either. Pity really, that almost no one knew what had really happened. It was probably for the best. She couldn't imagine having to explain it to three billion people. They wouldn't have believed her anyway. She scarcely believed it al herself, especially since…
Three years since she had found her self awake and alive in a cave behind a waterfall. She had been awake before, a projection of the planet, just as the girl in pink who had greeted her was. As for being alive, well, that hadn't happened for thirty years. Life was…well…she remembered dying. Everything she had thought she had known about life and death had been thrown out when she had first awoken in her rocky prison, when she had learned she couldn't rest until she set things right. She had thought that she had learned the truth about death then, but that too had been thrown away, all for the wish of a young, pink clad girl.
I just want everyone to have a second chance…a chance to be happy. I wished for it. The Planet granted my wish.
Lucrecia shook her head. It all seemed so unreal. She half expected to wake up thirty years ago, to learn that it had all been some feverish dream of childbirth. Sometimes she woke up and remembered none of it except dying. But then, she would wander into the living room of her small apartment to find the grown man of her son, the man who had murdered so many, lying in a troubled sleep on the couch. She would stroke his forehead and remember it all - her death, her awakening in the falls, the horrible things her old lover had told her, the girl in pink, the broken man her husband had become…
…and it was then that she would shake in fear of something greater and inexplicable, it's very presence in the air around tensing every fiber of her being.
And then Seph would wake up, her beautiful, haunted son, who wanted so much to just forget but couldn't, and he would call her 'mom' and ask her if she was alright, and she would smile and make breakfast as if it was all perfectly normal.
But the feeling didn't go away, no, it merely retreated to the furthest reaches of her mind, letting her worry and not know what she was worrying about.
It was that feeling that had woken her up. It was that feeling that had led her onto the small balcony with its wrought iron rail and breathtaking view of the city. It was that feeling that now made her draw back, wrapping her arms tightly around her self to ward off some alien chill.
A chance to be happy...
Lucrecia Reynolds was not happy. She was afraid.