Final Fantasy VII: Another Story

By:

Mystwalker

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy VII.

A/N: So, in case you haven't noticed, this Friday is Valentine's Day! And since I don't have any particular Valentine's Day plans, I've decided to jump on the fanfiction bandwagon and write a (late, it's going to be late) Valentine's special. There's a poll up on my profile asking which of the five ships in this AU you'd want a Valentine's special of. Please go and vote, and on Friday, I'll take the poll down and start working on a quick one-shot for the top ranking ship. Have fun!

I'm also starting a new novel project soon, called All That Remains. I'll begin outlining in March and will probably begin writing in July. Since you guys have been such a wonderful online audience, I wanted to extend an opportunity to have you guys shape an original fiction story, so I'm taking suggestions for characters. ATR is set in a slightly Dissidia-style universe, where the main characters are separated into two sides and fighting to shape the world. The characters all have aliases that sound almost like class names, like Paladin, Jester, Harper, Raider…etc, which give some hint as to their fighting style, but they have real names and histories too.

That's all I have so far, but I'd like you guys, if you're interested, to send me character profiles to add to the list. So if you want to be part of this, please send me a PM with character name (real name not required, but alias required), gender, fighting style (magic and most medieval fantasy weapons go, if you have ideas for a gun…etc., just tell me, I won't say no outright), history (not required), and a little bit of an idea as to whether they'd be on the Dark or Light side of the conflict. (Think more Order and Chaos than Good and Evil, although some insight into Good or Evil would be cool too). There will be 22 characters in total, and I already have ideas for some, but I'll try and incorporate as many as I can.

I don't know if this will get published, but if it ever does, anyone who makes a character will be included in the Acknowledgments. And if you have a character 'in play', I'll send you chapters of the rough draft as I write (if you're interested, of course). I can't guarantee every character will have a major role in the plot, so some may get red-shirted, but I'll try and include as many as I can. I also reserve the right to change characters slightly to fit the world better, and have them evolve according to the story.

So if you have an OC in your head that you're dying to see in a story, or you just want to make a character to fight alongside/against Paladin (heavily based on Arielle Fair from my Our Generation fic) and Jester (based on Ciel Gainsborough, who some of you mayremember from my now defunct Sins of the Father), don't wait, PM me ASAP! Looking forward to reading your characters!

Thanks go to CupofTeaforAliceandHatter, Meteor Panda, Guest, JazzQueen, Draconic, Riku Uzumaki, SpiritDreamWarriors, DJ Meltdown of Ground Xero, WanderingStarmaster, Symphony's Feather, Eavenne, and Gameplayer23 for the reviews and support! Sorry for the confusion, guys, but no one was actually knocking, the knocking came from the video tape.

XxXxX

Interlude 008: Echoes of the Past

He found Aerith sitting in the middle of what must have been the living room, a photograph in her hands. The living room was dark except for the light streaming in from one window, and covered in the dust of decades without use. Unlike the upper part of the house, this clearly bore the marks of being ransacked. The ground was littered with papers and broken pieces of ceramic and glass—something crunched under his feet as he walked. A handful of books had been pulled from the bookshelves, and now lay scattered on the floor. The disorder reminded him of the scene he had found in Nibelheim, in the labs beneath the mansion. But this wasn't like that.

If Gast had been alive, it wouldn't have come to this.

He stopped in front of Aerith, waiting. He didn't want to break the silence. He knew, probably better than most, what it was like to want to be left alone, and he knew better than most why she shouldn't be left completely alone.

"How old were you…" she finally asked. "…in this picture?"

Aerith held the picture out to him. He took it from her, pretended not to notice the tears that had made their way down her face, the redness in her eyes. The picture was of him as a child, small, with short silver hair and wide green eyes. Gast was in the picture with him, crouched down to face the camera, with an arm around his shoulders. The professor was smiling; he merely looked stunned, as though he had never seen a camera before. The bottom of the picture was stamped with a date. He glanced at it, handing it back to her.

"Three," he said.

Aerith nodded, taking the picture from him. She made a choked noise in the back of her throat, settling back against the table she was sitting on. She kicked a broken cup out of the way, taking a long, shaky breath.

"It's funny, isn't it?" she asked, dragging her hands over her face. "I remember my mom dying. I was there. I can remember that day, and it makes me sad, but now, I'm—." She shook her head, setting the picture down. Sephiroth waited for her to collect herself, waited until the hands she had clasped together stopped shaking, and she looked up again. "I never really cried for my mother. Does that make me a bad person? I can see her," she said. "She was dead, but she was never really gone. My—my father—."

She trailed off, shaking her head again, as if the unfamiliar word was enough to get her to start.

"I guess part of me just wishes I had the chance to know him," she said, speaking more to the floor than to him.

"I knew your father," Sephiroth said. He hesitated, his eyes moving towards the picture she had laid face down on the table beside her. "For a long time, I wished he was mine."

"Well." Aerith looked up, smiling hesitantly at him. "You would have made a good big brother."

He said nothing. He couldn't have. What could he have said in this place, with Gast's memory pushing at him from every angle? What could he have said to her, to those words, when all he could think of was the last few seconds of the tape, those moments when Hojo and Gast were face-to-face, and Gast had the gun? He looked away from Aerith, scanning the house, his eyes seeming to find every crack, every broken object, everything overturned and out of place.

"We should clean up," he found himself saying, the words sounding stiff and wooden on his tongue.

"Sorry?" asked Aerith, puzzled. He looked back at her to find her looking over at him, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. He looked away again.

"Professor Gast…wouldn't have wanted this place to look like this," he said. "We should clean up."

He took a step forward, not waiting for her response, and began picking up the discarded books, stacking them into neat piles. For a while, there was silence, the only sound coming from the rustling of paper in his corner of the room. Then, he heard the sound of cloth against wood as Aerith slid herself off the table, heard a crunch as her feet landed on the floor.

"I'll find a broom," she said, her footsteps quickly fading away.

XxXxX

Outside the house, the air was bitingly cold, but standing as they were in the middle of town, it seemed warmer than it had been earlier that day. Cissnei lifted her gloved hands to her face, blowing into them and watching her breath steam. After more than a year away, she had almost forgotten what constant cold felt like, and Icicle Inn was further north of Modeoheim. She wrapped her arms around her middle to keep warm, walking up to where Zack waited in front of the house. She spared a glance over her shoulder to make sure that the others were heading for the inn, before turning her attention to the ex-SOLDIER.

Zack sat on a pile of crates on the street corner in front of Gast's house, his eyes fixed on the thin stream of smoke that curled up from the chimney. His foot was up on the crate in front of him, his arm draped across his knee. He didn't look up at her. Cissnei knew she wasn't what he wanted to see. She leaned against one of the streetlights, watching the house as well and waiting. Aerith had gone down into the main house about an hour ago She'd also, Cissnei recalled, asked to be left alone.

But when Sephiroth had gone in after her after sending everyone else back to the inn, she hadn't turned him away.

Her hand went up, toying with the pendant around her neck as she had done so many times since the Forgotten Capital. A part of her mind recognized that she was developing a habit, something that could become dangerous in the long run, but at the moment, she didn't care. It gave her something to do, as she rolled the silver wing between her fingers, tugging at the chain and watching the smoke leave a thin trail in the air.

At length, Zack sighed, turning towards her. "That doesn't bother you?" he asked, inclining his head towards the house and the smoke.

Cissnei's fingers went slack around the pendant. She frowned at Zack, meeting his eyes. "No," she said. "Should it?"

"I don't know." Zack shook his head, looking away from her and down at the ground, where tires had left muddy imprints in the snow. "I'm not even sure it should bother me."

"It's Sephiroth," said Cissnei. "When it comes to competition for Aerith, he's not the one you need to be worried about."

"I know," said Zack. He shook his head, looking back at the house. When he spoke again, his voice was soft, and she could hear the longing in it. "I wanna be there for her, Ciss. But she won't let me in."

Cissnei's expression softened, her arms falling to her side. She stepped forward, walking towards him. "I know it's hard," she began.

Zack shook his head, interrupting her. "Back at the Forgotten Capital, she went with Sephiroth instead of me," he said. "How am I supposed to feel about that? I know there's nothing between them, Ciss, don't get me wrong, but part of me feels like she trusts him more than she trusts me."

"Zack…" Cissnei reached him, coming to stand in front of him. "Aerith trusts you," she said. Looking at him now, and thinking about Aerith, she felt almost sure. "I'm sure of it."

He gave her a thin smile. "Thanks, Ciss," he said. "But you don't need to lie to me."

"I'm not," she said. "I've seen the way she looks at you. Zack, look at yourself. You run yourself ragged worrying about the rest of us. Have you ever thought that maybe Aerith doesn't want you to worry about her? That maybe, on some level, she's trying to take care of you?"

Zack looked up at her, his eyes widening slightly. Cissnei took a breath, wondering if she had said too much, then let it out, realizing that maybe she hadn't said enough. She thought about the way things had been before Nibelheim, back when she and Zack were in Costa del Sol together. The way he spoke about Aerith, the look in his eyes when he talked about her. She didn't want that to go away, she realized. After everything that Zack had been through, he deserved to be happy.

Sephiroth was right. They were stronger together. But not like this. Like this, it felt as though they were one wrong move from falling apart.

She went on. "The things she's learned about herself, the things she's been through—it's not right, but I can see why she wantsto spare you the worst of it. Sephiroth's been through some of the same things. If anyone can understand what she's going through right now, he can. But that doesn't mean you can't be there for her, or that she doesn't want you to be. It just means that she needs a little space right now."

"I…" Zack opened his mouth, closed it again. "I didn't think about it that way."

"Of course you didn't," said Cissnei, smiling faintly. "You're a guy. You're all oblivious."

Zack stared at her, and his expression changed into a grin. "Oh, are we?" he asked. "Is that why it took you and Seph so long?"

She couldn't help it. She flushed. Cissnei turned away the second she felt the heat on her face, but that only made her blush harder. "That—," she said. "That's not what we're talking about here!"

"Mm-hmm," said Zack. "So, uh, what were you doing in the shell house back then?"

Cissnei rolled her eyes. "Honestly," she said. "It's like I'm working with Reno again."

"But more fun, right?" asked Zack.

"Well," said Cissnei, with a secret smile. "More respectable, I'll give you that."

"Respectable?" Zack blinked. "What were you guys up to back then?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" asked Cissnei, turning around. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder, walking away, and was rewarded by the sound of Zack scrambling up from the crates behind her.

"Cissnei?" he asked. "Wait, Ciss—!"

"Yuffie, Cloud, Tifa, and I are going snowboarding," she said, not looking back. "You're welcome to join us, if you can pull yourself away."

Zack hesitated, then hurried to follow. Cissnei hid her smile, waiting for him to catch up.

XxXxX

They were about two hours into their task when Aerith found the journal. It was buried beneath a pile of other books and papers in the bedroom, and so went unnoticed until the two of them had made the living room somewhat more presentable. It was an old leather-bound journal, old enough that some of the pages were beginning to crack, and the writing on the first page was faded. But she recognized the handwriting as the same as on the tapes, a thin, spidery scrawl, written in lines so straight that they might have been drawn onto the page. The first entry was dated 1982, a full three years before she was born. She smoothed out the page with one hand, beginning to read.

I know now that I must leave Shinra, Gast had written. Hojo grows more ambitious by the day. I cannot allow Ifalna to fall into his hands. I can't even begin to think of what he might do to her. I can't be the only one unsatisfied with the answers he's given re: Dr. Crescent, and the dismissal of young Grimoire's son. It saddens me that a young scientist who has shown so much promise could turn to things like this.

Bugenhagen has sworn to help me. I know that the director of the Turks is aware of my plans, and that he does not disapprove. By the end of the year, I'll hand in my resignation. My only regret is that I can do nothing to save Sephiroth, but the boy is too heavily guarded. The plan is risky enough as is. And Veld will not help me if I try. His attachment to his former partner apparently does not mean that he will risk angering the entire company to help me…

The entry ended. Aerith flipped the page, finding that several other pages had been torn out. The next entry resumed sometime in 1984, where Gast was talking about how the snow had gotten so thick that neither he nor Ifalna could leave the house. She skimmed the page quickly before moving on. Apparently, the two of them had spent the evening discussing the Cetra, a conversation that, due to the lack of power, hadn't been transcribed on tape. She flipped the page to find that the next few pages had also been ripped out.

The next entry was one from later in the year of 1984. Aerith read on.

Ifalna told me today that she was pregnant. I'm happy, of course, there isn't a doubt about that, but as I sit here and think about it, the full implications of her news starts to sink in. I've never considered being a father—not recently, anyway, and the more I sit here and think about this, the more I realize what kind of world I've left for my child to grow up in.

This is the kind of world where a species can be pushed to the brink of extinction for the sake of material gain, a world where the ethics of science are defined by whoever can pay the most gil, where children not yet born can be irrevocably altered for the sake of power. I find myself thinking about Sephiroth and that child in Hollander's lab more and more—what was done to them. At the time, I didn't think about it. Perhaps that's my greatest failure. But now...what was done to Lucrecia Crescent, to that woman in Junon, to Gillian Hewley—even if they consented, I can't imagine putting Ifalna—putting my child through that.

Is this my legacy? Am I leaving my child a world where he or she will never be safe, a world where money and power are more important than truth, than knowledge, than basic human decency? We went into this seeking only truth. How did we go so wrong?

The words on the page began to blur. Aerith blinked, realizing that her eyes had filled with tears as she read. She flipped the page quickly, taking a breath to compose herself, to hold back the tears. She didn't even know why she was starting to cry again.

The pages turned, stopping at the last entry. Aerith drew in a shaky breath to prepare herself, smoothed the page out in her hand, and read.

February 24, 1985

Aerith is sleeping. Like this, she looks so peaceful. The storm outside doesn't bother her at all. It's hard to imagine something as fragile as this existing in this broken world.

I told Ifalna that I would watch Aerith while she slept, using the excuse that she hasn't had many chances to sleep since the birth (neither of us have). The truth is, I can't sleep. My thoughts have been running circles in my head. I can hardly begin to sort them out, but it feels as though no matter how tired I am, I wouldn't be able to close my eyes. Here, alone in the dark, confronted with the reality of Aerith, I find myself thinking about the same things I thought about, in the months before she was born.

Today, I dug out my old notebooks from the Jenova Project, brushing the dust off them and reading them for the first time in three years. I remember the things we did, how exicted we were for our discoveries. Myself, Lucrecia, Hojo, Hollander, even old Grimoire had his observations in once or twice. I wonder if any of us knew how this would turn out—Grimoire's son MIA, Lucrecia's child a ward of the company, and Aerith...I can't even begin to think about what would happen to Aerith if Shinra got their hands on her, what they would do. I'd die first before I let that happen. She's so small, so innocent. She has no idea what I've done—what we've done—what kind of world this is.

I want to keep her locked away, to keep her from ever experiencing the sort of pain we've experienced—the sort of pain we've unleashed. I want to keep my past—mine and Ifalna's pasts separate from her. I wish that she was born in a world where Shinra and Hojo and Jenova didn't exist, a world where she could grow to be like the gentle people in Ifalna's stories, but I can't. I can't spare her from this forever, the same way I couldn't save Sephiroth three years ago.

He'd be eight now. I still wonder what happened to him—how he is. I wonder if he's angry that I left, if he still remembers me, or if Hojo and Shinra have driven me completely from his mind. They've probably started training him for the military now—I have no illusions as to what Shinra's goal in supporting Project S really was. I wonder if he still likes to read, or if Shinra has stripped him of even that. That child has a sharp, inquisitive mind, but knowing Shinra, they would erase everything that has nothing to do with their goals, and they have no use for childlike curiosity.

If I could do it over again, I would change everything. I would save them, both of them. I'd take them away from there, take them somewhere where they could both be children and grow up in peace.

If I could change this world—

There was a hole in the page, as if Gast had pressed the tip of the pen down hard enough to pierce the page and the one directly underneath it.

But I can't. I'm too old. I've made too many mistakes.

Aerith, Sephiroth, I'm sorry. You may both grow up to hate me. I deserve it. This world, the world you live in, is my legacy. No matter what else it became, I was the lead on the Jenova Project. Whatever evil results from it results from my negligence, and whatever pain it causes you is my fault too.

This world is my gift to you.

And the two of you are the only good things I've given the world.

The entry ended; the remaining pages were blank. Aerith felt wetness trickle down her cheek and raised a hand to her face to find that she was crying. She closed the journal gently and tucked it into the crook of her arm, feeling a hollowness beginning to build up inside her, a fresh ache and an old yearning. She wiped her eyes with her hand and imagined growing up in this house with parents who loved her. To not have her first memories be in Hojo's lab. To not have to see her mother die.

She imagined Sephiroth being here with them. What would it have been like, the four of them together? What would he have become, if he hadn't been forced into SOLDIER? What would either of them have been, in a world without Jenova?

It was entirely possible that they would never have been born.

The thought sent a wave of cold through her, and she pulled the book closer to herself. Without Jenova, there would have been no Jenova Project, no impetus to start studying the Cetra. Gast and Ifalna would never have met and Lucrecia and Hojo would have never had a child together. Whatever else they were, they were children of this world. They wouldn't have existed anywhere else.

She could feel it at the back of her mind, the same thing she felt in the Temple of the Ancients, in the Forgotten Capital, the feeling that the Planet was pushing her, leading her somewhere. But to where? To do what? What could they do, in this world that had created them, but rejected them at the same time? What could they do in this broken, dying world?

Fix it.

The thought didn't come from her, but it was strong enough that for a moment, she thought it had. Aerith felt a chill run though her, and she held the book tighter, grasping at that feeling, at that fleeting presence in the back of her mind.

How? she wanted to scream at it. Fix it how?

But it was gone, just as Sephiroth appeared in the doorway, frowning at her. She turned towards him, and noticed his eyes moving to the book in her hands, before making their way back up to her face. She took a deep breath, and wondered if she looked like she'd been crying?

"What?" she asked, hoping her voice was steady.

"Come downstairs," he said. "You need to see this."

Aerith nodded, wiping at her eyes as he turned to walk away from the door. She followed Sephiroth down the stairs, still holding the book. He needed to read it too, she decided. A part of it was meant for him. Sephiroth lead her past the living room and kitchen, looking much better now, and further down the stairs into a section of the house that looked like it had been meant for storage. The place was still a mess—she doubted it had ever been clean, but Sephiroth had moved some of the things out of the way, exposing a door set into the wall. Her eyes immediately moved towards it.

"It was hidden by those crates," said Sephiroth, gesturing to the ones they moved. "Mostly old scientific equipment, probably out of date even in 1985. I don't think Shinra got very far into this part of the house. They would have wanted to leave before people noticed they were here."

She nodded mutely, part of her knowing that he was explaining it more for his own benefit than for her own. He had the look on his face that told her he had stumbled across something he didn't understand, something he couldn't easily explain. And when he opened the door, she realized why.

Here, in the Knowlespole, where the snow never melted, where no matter what time of year it was, it was cold. Here, high above the tree line, where the ground was frozen solid, where nothing could grow.

Here, in this small room in the basement of this small house, in this place where no one had set foot in over twenty years.

Here, there were flowers, and they were blooming.

Aerith stood in the doorway, her hands over her mouth as she stared at the flowers poking up from the ground, beautiful blooms, in shades of white and red and pink and orange. She hadn't seen so many different flowers, not in her church, where only those yellow wildflowers grew, not even in Gongaga, in the jungle where it looked like every sort of plant conceivable existed. And she knew, as soon as she saw it, she knew where they had come from.

Her mother. Ifalna.

Tears trickled down the backs of her hands, and she realized she was crying again.

XxXxX

It wasn't even midnight by the time Elena found herself in Tseng's hospital room again, watching the city lights from his window. Visiting hours had long since passed, but not even the nurses, it seemed, could do anything when the Director of the Turks wanted to hold a meeting. She stood at attention, her back as straight as she could make it, and tried not to make it obvious that she was twisting her hands together behind her back.

Tseng looked at her—he really needed to be sleeping, she thought, but how could she tell her boss that—frowning slightly at the report she had given. She wondered if she had done anything wrong, then realized that she couldn't have. How could she? She'd done everything he'd asked. She hadn't even looked at the file as he delivered it.

"There's been word," he finally said, "of a sighting. Genesis has been spotted on the Northern Continent, heading towards the Great Glacier. It isn't confirmed, but this isn't the sort of thing we can leave unchecked. You wanted a real mission?"

She nodded, feeling her cheeks burn with embarrassment. She wished that he wouldn't bring her outburst up.

"You'll leave for Icicle Inn in the morning," he said. "Make any preparations you need, but be on your way before the company offices open. I want you on the ground by 15:00 tomorrow afternoon. Take a squad from the military department, I'll leave you to decide who. If the situation looks bad, pull out and request for back-up. Otherwise, shoot to kill. Do I make myself understood?"

"Yes, sir," she said.

The rest of the night passed in a blur. Before the sun was up, she was in a chopper with a handful of handpicked troops, making her way towards Icicle Inn.

TO BE CONTINUED