Disclaimer: I don't own FF7.

Author's Note: This story is based only on the events of the original FF7 game and may not be consistent with any sequels or prequels. The 'M' rating is for adult content in later chapters. As for the exact setting...well, you and the protagonists can make that discovery together. ;) Happy reading!


Children of Gaia

Chapter One


Wake, my child.

Aerith grimaced at the sound, squeezing her eyelids shut even tighter as she struggled to hold on to her fading dream. She'd been standing in a field of wildflowers—what colors had they been?—with her birth mother, Ifalna.

Aerith…

She rolled onto her side, curling into a ball. The images were slipping faster, trickling away like water through her fingers. Her mother was telling her something, and her eyes were sad—so very, very sad.

"Please, Mama," she said faintly, tears seeping from the corners of her eyes as her mother's face darkened into obscurity. "Please…don't go."

My Aerith…

The voice was louder now, too loud to be ignored. It thrummed within her, awakening her senses. She could feel the heat of the sun—see its light glowing red behind her eyelids. In her moment of distraction, the last traces of her dream were swept into oblivion, leaving her with only a vague feeling of despair.

WAKE, the voice boomed.

Aerith woke, her eyelashes fluttering as she blinked against the harsh light of day. Slowly, the world above her came into focus, swathes of white clouds drifting lazily across an azure sky. Inside her head sang a familiar chorus.

Where am I? she wondered faintly as she pushed herself into a sitting position, petals falling from her unbound hair.

She lay naked upon a bed of blue and yellow flowers, surrounded by walls of creeping vines and by trees whose branches were laden with succulent fruit. At the sight of this fruit, her stomach rumbled loudly.

I'm hungry, she realized dully, placing a hand to her belly. Yes, of course I am. I haven't eaten since…

Strangely, Aerith drew a blank. All her memories seemed enveloped in a thick fog that her mind could not penetrate.

After a few more minutes of internal struggle, Aerith found her hunger pains too intense to ignore. With effort, she rose to her feet, her weak muscles trembling under the strain. Twice she collapsed to the ground on her way to the fruit tree.

What is wrong with me? she thought in frustration, her nails digging into the soft earth. Am I still sleeping? Is this just another dream?

But the sun burned so hotly on her bare skin. And hadn't that been pain she'd felt when her knees had struck the ground? No dream could be this real.

Summoning all her strength, Aerith stood once more and, despite a few close calls, reached her destination. Panting from exertion, she grasped the nearest tree branch and clung to it for support. When at last her breathing slowed and her heart stopped pounding in her ears, she gave the branch as forceful a shake as she could muster.

Three fat pears fell heavily to the grass below, one narrowly missing her shoulder. Lowering herself gently into a crouch, she reached for the closest fruit and found a blackened hole in its side. Rotten.

Repulsed, she tossed it aside and crawled to the next pear, which had rolled to a stop only a few feet away. Aside from a slight bruise, this fruit was unmarred, and Aerith devoured it greedily, juice spilling down her chin.

Her hunger pains had barely subsided when all of a sudden her stomach rebelled, and Aerith pitched to the side, retching up her hard-earned meal. Perhaps an hour passed before she was willing to try again. This time, she only nibbled at the pear off and on as she reclined against the trunk of the tree, and her stomach managed to hold the food down.

She didn't realize she'd fallen asleep until her eyes opened to a night sky, speckled with stars. Feeling stronger, she eased herself up from the base of the tree and returned to the soft bed of flowers. She supposed she should feel afraid, alone in the darkness of a strange forest. But the voices in her head told her that this was a sacred place. Didn't she remember?

Aerith didn't remember, but she trusted the voices all the same. And besides, she was far too weary to let her fears keep her awake. Her eyelids fell like heavy curtains as she lay down her head and drifted away.


Thirty days had passed since he'd awoken next to the stream. The first few days had been spent in agony. He'd felt as though a thousand blunted knives were stabbing into his skin, the blood beneath seeming to boil in his veins. He had wondered if this was another one of Hojo's twisted experiments.

As the pain had eventually faded and he'd found himself stranded in an unknown wilderness, his suspicions had only grown. His sword and armor had been nowhere in sight, rendering him completely defenseless. It had seemed that Hojo wanted to test his raw survival skills.

Weakened by what he'd perceived to be the aftereffects of another Mako injection, Sephiroth had allowed himself a few more hours of rest before he'd attempted to complete the supposed test. During his rest, he had tried to remember what he must have done to incite the scientist's wrath. Even for Hojo, this was extreme.

Vaguely, he'd been able to recall a confrontation. He had agreed to oversee a mission that Hojo hadn't approved of. But the details of the mission had eluded him. Once the excess Mako left his system, Sephiroth had assumed that his memory of the disagreement would return. Of course, by then, he had hoped to be done with this absurd trial.

But after the first week had passed, Sephiroth had begun to question his theory about this being another one of Hojo's experiments. He had known from the positions of the stars that he was somewhere outside of Midgar, but the terrain was simply wrong. No forests this dense existed anywhere close to the city.

To hunt and to defend himself, he had fashioned a crude spear out of a sharp stone he'd found at the bottom of the stream, securing the stone to a sturdy branch with several feet of tough, dried vine. At first he had stuck closely to the stream, surviving off the fish he'd managed to spear. But as the days had become weeks and as his doubts had continued to grow, Sephiroth had found himself venturing further from the stream, into the wilderness beyond.

He had decided to return to Headquarters, Hojo be damned. He'd wasted enough time sitting by the stream awaiting retrieval. Perhaps Hojo hadn't even been observing him at all but had simply dumped him in the forest as a temporary punishment and would berate him for taking so long to return.

Or, perhaps, the voice of doubt had whispered, this is not Hojo's doing at all.

His progress through the forest had been slow at first. The land that bordered the stream was swampy and difficult to traverse. Breeds of snakes he couldn't identify had hung from the low branches and slithered through the muck beneath his bare feet. He had felt the eyes of predators upon him as he'd trudged through the mire. The unseen enemies had seemed to be weighing him, watching him closely to determine whether or not to attack.

And, now, as he sat beneath a shelter of roughly-thatched limbs, peering out into the darkness, he knew what decision the beasts had made. A heavy downpour earlier in the day had left him with no dry wood to start a fire. This lack of flames had emboldened the creatures, and as night fell, he began to see red eyes hovering in the dark spaces between the trees, their stares unblinking. Sephiroth tightened his hold on the spear, waiting.

Seconds ticked by as silence descended on the swamp. The night fowl and insects ceased their songs. The faint wind stilled. Out of the corner of Sephiroth's eye, a fat drop of moisture fell from the point of a leaf, and as it shattered against the ground, the beasts lunged.

Sephiroth leapt to his feet, swinging his spear in a low wide arc that sent the first dark shape sprawling. Bringing his weapon around quickly, he thrust the spear point into one of the six crimson eyes still headed for him. A sharp wail pierced the air as the blow connected, but before Sephiroth could pull the spear free, the third beast slammed into his chest, its jaws snapping for his throat as its claws raked down his bare torso.

The force of the blow landed Sephiroth on his back, the beast falling with him. Rancid breath filled his nostrils as the creature's three bloody eyes glared into his own.

A three-eyed wolf? Sephiroth wondered as they briefly locked gazes. He had never seen such creatures this close to the city.

A low growl reverberated through the wolf's chest, but before it could go for his throat again, Sephiroth brought a soggy branch between its open jaws, using the leverage to throw the beast off him. As the wolf righted itself, Sephiroth rolled to the side, grasping in the darkness for the butt of his spear.

By the time his fingers found purchase, the beast was on him once more. Sephiroth rammed his knee into its side, and with a sharp tug, managed to yank the spear free. As the wolf rounded on him for the third time, Sephiroth sat up quickly, driving the point of the spear through its thick neck.

The wolf's hot blood flowed onto the skin of Sephiroth's leg, its great shaggy form sagging onto the end of his spear. Bracing his foot against the creature's muscled chest, he slid the spear back, letting the corpse fall noiselessly to the damp earth.

As Sephiroth got to his feet, he heard a faint whimpering a short distance away. Keeping his weapon firmly in hand, he made his way over to the source of the sound and found that it belonged to the first wolf he'd attacked with his spear. The wolf lay on its side, a dark wetness gleaming in the fur that covered its stomach. It seemed that the point of the spear had managed to rake across the creature's belly before sweeping its legs out from under it.

Feeling somehow sorry for the wolf, Sephiroth let the spearhead slip between its ribs and pierce the heart below. A moment later the creature stilled, its ugly head lolling to the side.

By then dawn had broken, suffusing the swamp with pale eerie light. Sephiroth saw that his body was caked with mud and blood—not a little of it his own. During the heat of battle, he'd hardly noticed that he'd been injured, but now, as he saw the blood still seeping from his abdomen, he felt the sear of pain.

Crouching down next to a murky pool, Sephiroth washed himself as best he could, cringing as the water flowed over his wounds. The wolf's claws had scored him well, but the scratches were only superficial. Still, the longer he remained in this fetid swamp, the greater the chances of infection. If the wound festered, his odds of survival were slim.

Snapping off the thick fluted stem of a nearby trumpet plant, Sephiroth drank the fresh water collected in the outer chambers of the stalk. After drinking three stems' worth, he used a fourth to carefully wash his wounds again. Using the sun to verify his direction of travel, he took up his bloodied spear and resumed his journey.

Two more days passed before the ground beneath his feet began to harden, the moss-covered water oaks gradually replaced by elms and pines. As the rotten logs and slime gave way to a forest floor covered with leaves and rich green ferns, the canopy of trees parted, revealing a broad clear stream. Once again, Sephiroth was able to dine on fresh fish as opposed to lizards and snakes.

Though his mood improved with the change in scenery, his injury was not faring as well as he'd expected. Despite his attempts to keep his wounds clean and dry, the skin around the scratches had become red and inflamed. He was honestly surprised at how quickly the infection had overtaken him. Hadn't Hojo always touted his so-called superior genetics?

Superior or not, Sephiroth knew he needed antibiotics—and soon. He'd applied a few plant oils to the scratches, but those oils had only analgesic properties. Natural sources of antibiotics were scarce, and he knew of no such sources existing in this region of the world.

As Sephiroth considered his predicament, night drenched the wilderness in a wash of black. Above him, the familiar stars glittered, pinpricks of light shining through the dark fabric of the sky. By Sephiroth's calculation, the city of Midgar couldn't be more than a day away. He'd allow himself to rest for now and recover some of his strength. He couldn't remember ever feeling so tired…

When Sephiroth woke, the sun was already high overhead. Though his bed of ferns had been pleasantly soft, he'd slept poorly. The pain-killing oils had worn off during the night, and his wounds troubled him. But more than the physical pain, he felt a lingering sense of dread. His dreams had been…unpleasant. All he could remember upon waking was a riot of color and sound, yet he knew that in his subconscious mind, these elements had formed some clear and terrible image.

Brushing aside his inexplicable dismay, Sephiroth drank and bathed in the cold water of the stream before striking out into the trees. The sun hung low in the sky when at last his surroundings began to change.

He emerged into a curious landscape. Trees still grew thickly here, but amidst them, huge vine-covered monuments jutted up from the earth, gleaming dully in the twilight. As Sephiroth weaved between these structures, it did not take him long to realize that he stood in the ruins of some ancient city. The colossal chunks of metal appeared to be the remains of buildings and bridges, long since overtaken by the hand of nature.

"How can this be?" Sephiroth wondered aloud, his face a mask of confusion. The sound of his voice resonated in the silence of the ruined city.

What he saw made no sense to him. These ruins simply did not exist.

And yet, a strange sense of nostalgia prickled at the edges of his mind. Some of the buildings had a familiar shape, corroded and bent though they had become through the ages. As if in a daze, he wandered among the steel bones of what had once been a vast civilization, steadily making his way to the center of the city.

In the heart of the ruins stood a lone tower, crippled and leaning. Dreamlike, Sephiroth approached it, his fingers reaching out to brush away the mat of vines that framed the gaping mouth of the tower's entrance. Beneath the dense foliage, the metal bore a fading red mark—a single bloody diamond, with the words "Shinra Electric Power Company" inscribed in its center.

Sephiroth recoiled as if burned, his green eyes widening in disbelief. The cuts on his torso stung viciously as his mind struggled to make sense of his discovery.

This ruin...was Midgar.

Was the city attacked? He considered the possibility for only a moment. An attack might explain some of the physical damage to the buildings but could not account for the encroaching vegetation. Only the passage of hundreds of years could have enabled the forest to grow to such an extent.

Hundreds of years…no, that's impossible. Sephiroth closed his eyes briefly against the mounting hysteria, gritting his teeth. I must be hallucinating. Perhaps the wolf's claws were laced with poison…

Numbly, he lowered himself to the grassy earth beside the tower. Leaning back against the soft curtain of vines, he shut his eyes again, trading one darkness for another.

I'll sleep, he decided firmly. I'll sleep, and when I wake, these ruins will be no more.


A/n: Thanks for reading! I'm really excited about where this story will go - next chapter's already halfway done! I know this chapter was pretty short, but please drop a review and let me know what you think so far. :)