Forgiveness

Purely fan made all rights to Square Enix for the characters.

The Promised Land

Aerith stood by in the light as she felt the swordsman clash once more. She knew who would win, Sephiroth was fighting for his own needs and misguided beliefs while Cloud fought for all that was dear to him…everything, even those that had belittled him along with his cherished friends and all the innocence of the Planet. She was nearing the end of the spell as she continued to chant it once more. Meteor was too close for comfort.

Sephiroth cursed to himself. He was close to finishing the puppet when his body was failing him. The filthy remnant that dared call him 'brother' was unable to support all his power in his frail body. True, Kadaj was a skilled and expert warrior who was one of the best of his remnants along with Loz and Yazoo but he still was only a tiny fraction of Sephiroth's strength. Cloud was now gaining the upper hand, once again about to 'defeat' him by getting lucky, he wouldn't even have his 'amazing strength' if it wasn't for Sephiroth's own cells in the boy's body. He didn't deserve the life he had, although on the former general's second thought, the puppet's life was one of despair and sadness. He had lost so much and he did deserve that in his opinion. He had to live with the death of that amazing flower girl when he would be the one to claim her in his new world, not just have her as a friend. He laughed as the puppet began his attack. He thought he had him pinned but he could have escaped if he wanted but the body he now inhabited was weak and quickly degrading. As he let the puppet's weak attacks ravage the frail body of the small remnant he smiled and remained in the air above him, looking down at his anger and sorrow filled eyes.

"Stay where you belong… in my memories." He defied him.

Sephiroth smirked with hatred at the boy. "I will…never be a memory." His glorious raven black wing folded around his body and he faded away before Kadaj's body began to join the Lifestream as Aerith's healing rain fell upon Midgar, curing Jenova's infesting cells.

Sephiroth grinned as he tasted a few drops through his group of remnants as he was washed from their bodies. Cloud was struck down before finishing the other two silver haired remnants and then he passed out. The SOLDIER was aware when she came to him a second time with that pup Zack to awaken the blond in the pool of water below and he felt jealous of the two spikey haired boys. They had been able to have her affections openly although drastically different in their lifetimes. Zack had been her first love while Cloud had been her child so to speak, someone for her to look after until he fulfilled what his destiny foretold. He wanted her affections like that, to feel her once again. He was always one for patience but it had been too long since he had stroked her soft cheek, entangled his long fingers in her silky waves of chestnut brown hair, felt her soft pale pink lips on his own lips, her small fragile body as she wrapped her thin arms around his torso in a warm compassionate embrace. He wanted her physically again.

Aerith smiled down as she tapped Cloud with Zack beside her. When the blond woke up in the pool he found he was in a ring of the orphans who had been contaminated like he was. He beckoned Denzel forward and sprinkled the healing water on the youth and smiled as his friends cheered for their recent victory. His eyes found Aerith as she was kneeling beside some orphans by the door and he paused. She was walking toward Zack, the two he had pinned over for so long, blaming himself for their deaths. She turned and smiled over her shoulder at him.

"See," her kind voice rang out. "Everything's okay…" she willed him to believe it, he didn't have to suffer any more than what he allowed himself to suffer.

He nodded and even Tifa commented as she felt the flower girl's presence. "You never left him… did you?" she smiled knowing her close friend had had his own guardian angels watching over him.

Aerith exited the church and looked over at Zack. "I missed you, but you don't have to watch over Cloud anymore…"

He nodded with that crooked grin on his face as he scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, I guess so. I kinda got used to watching over him, ya know? He was always picked on by his troop. So, I guess I won't be seeing you anymore also?" his face fell a little as her face fell as well.

"No, you have to join the Lifestream so new life can continue in your place." She said softly.

"What about you? Will we meet in our next lives?" she looked up to see his sky blue eyes filled with hope.

She smiled with tears glistening in her emerald eyes. "Zack… I… I don't know. I'm a Cetra and I still have duties to perform in the sake of the Planet even in my death. I'm not really dead in the total sense, I go on to the Promised Land while you all must wait until the end of the Planet." She didn't want to be saying goodbye to him, not when she had just gotten him back. Then she thought of Sephiroth who was no doubt waiting for her where he was currently at.

Zack smiled and wrapped her in a bear hug. He whispered in her ear, "Sephiroth is a lucky guy, I'm just glad I actually had you as a girlfriend. It was nice knowing you Aerith, I can't wait to see you next time."

She couldn't hold back the tears anymore. "I love you Zack, I'll never forget you."

"I know, you're still wearing that ribbon I got you." He grinned and let her go as his body began to dissolve into the Lifestream.

Aerith smiled at him until he was gone. She wrapped herself in her arms and looked back into the church through the cracked doors and she saw Cloud hugging Tifa and their heartfelt kiss that was long overdue as the children cheered around them, obviously thinking the same thing. She was glad they finally professed their feelings towards one another and she turned her gaze to the Slums around her. They had been her home for so long after Ifalna's death. She missed them really, but her new home was the Promised Land with her fellow Cetra. She slowly walked down the streets, past people she had known and people who were new to her, all couldn't even see her but she did notice that they smiled as she passed them. Her presence was still a positive influence on the Planet and that warmed her heart. She sadly realized that she couldn't remain here longing for the past as she sat on a bench in the park where she had talked with Sephiroth and Zack on her dates and meetings with them. She had to meet with Sephiroth and help him like only she could.

Sephiroth felt her as she materialized beside him. From his periphery vision he could see her tear streaked face and he wanted to reach over and wipe the tears away but her stoic expression made him keep his arms at his sides.

"Aerith…"

"Why, Seph? Why did you have to do it?" her voice cracked and fresh tears fell but she didn't wipe them, she let them fall down her cheeks and off her chin to leave a few scattered spots on her pink dress. He still remembered when she picked out that dress and jacket.

"They didn't deserve the soil they trod on. We did…"

"Sephiroth!" she looked up at him. "You didn't need to destroy so many lives to finish what Jenova started. Do you even know who your mother is?"

Sephiroth thought back to what Genesis had told him. Obviously his old friend had had no idea who Sephiroth's real parents were. "I guess some poor soul Hojo preyed upon."

The girl beside him nodded. "Her name was Lucrecia Crescent and she loved you dearly. You have no idea how your current and past mind set and actions have upset her spirit. Or how much they've upset me."

"I did it all for us!" he protested.

She shook her head, her bangs flapping across her sparkling emerald vision. "You didn't have to, no one has to. You were acting on greed and you ruined so many lives." She remembered the reports she had heard in the Market about the town of Nebilheim back when she was waiting for her SOLDIERs to return to her. "I waited for you… and you didn't come because of what you did with Jenova in Nebilheim. I waited years for you even though the Planet told me you both wouldn't return to me, I believed you would. I ventured above the Plate in secret hopes to find one of you and neither of you were there for me. You broke my heart Seph…"

He didn't know what to say.

"But despite that, I still wanted you to survive this and be the man you once were."

He looked down at her and his cold Mako mint eyes softened. "I still am…"

"No." she shook her head again. "You're not, you've become… an animal. Cloud and Zack were your friends and you strived to kill them in cold blood. You aren't a Cetra, whatever Jenova was you have part of her in your DNA and are rejected by the Planet's Lifestream so it won't be able to ever absorb you but you are not like me."

He felt the sting of the truth in her words and his left cheek felt moist all of a sudden. He reached up to wipe it away to find it was a tear. "What are you saying?"

"Seph, there is no denying our love but we are opposites, light and dark. For some reason, we complete each other but you must stop your quest for destruction of the Planet, please. For me, for us!" she begged him.

He paused and looked down at her. She was so frail, so petite, so perfect. He wanted to shield her from the world although he knew she could take it on and then some. She had so much power in her blood like he had. "You're wrong, we are both part alien and that makes us alike. We share in so many things, the only thing we defer on is whether this Planet deserves to continue living. Aerith, the filthy scum that calls itself humanity selfishly hid as your ancestors were consumed by Jenova. They resurfaced only when she was asleep and then they began to populate and outnumber your kind. They took this Planet from them and they don't deserve it!"

Her eyes darkened with remorse. "Sephy, they were meant to inherit the land as we were meant to move on to the place everyone strives for, the Promised Land."

"That is where I wanted to take the life from the Lifestream, I wanted to take it to the Promised Land." He agreed readily.

"But Seph, it's not their time. Gaia decides when it's time for them to move on when her time is at its own end. I can't bring you there though, not how you are now." There was a twinge of sadness in her soft voice.

The swordsman wrapped his leather clad arms around her and held her. "I will try to change back to what I was, but I must right the wrongs after realizing them on a certain level. That can't happen overnight, my beloved." She sobbed against his bare chest. "But listen, little one, visit me in this limbo of life every now and then to remind me of what I had and can still have."

"I'll visit you as many times as I have to!" she mumbled against him.

"Let me be with you on the earth my sweet fragrant rose, let me taste you there." He felt her nod against him.

"I would do anything for you Sephy, anything."

He leaned down and planted a kiss on the top of her head as he smiled. He wanted to please her, he really did. But that last comment had him thinking, if he could get her bound to him to where she couldn't resist any of his demands, then her vow would prove very useful to him indeed. She sighed and released her hold on him. He leaned down and kissed her lips softly, it wasn't a demand for more, it was a promise of what was to come and she leaned into it hungrily until he pulled back to his full height. She backed away with a bittersweet look on her face and a gnawing feeling in her stomach as she faded in a sprinkling of white and soft green tinted light. Sephiroth looked on with his mind already working on how to get her back to him already. He needed her trust, he already had her heart, he only needed her Cetra soul to fulfill his true destiny in taking over not only the Planet but the Promised Land as well. Despite her words of wisdom he could never sit back idly and accept that what he wanted to happen one day would, he had gotten everything on the Planet he had had because he had made 'one day' 'today' and made it happen. No matter what. That had been his nature and no amount of love, even if it's felt toward a certain beautiful Cetra, could change a warrior's nature. He sighed and looked down at his hell he was trapped in thanks to Gaia, nothing but white, so pure. He felt like he was tainting the brightness with his dark leather and past sins. If only his plans had happened the way he wanted them to he would be with his beloved Aerith in the Promised Land, making life anew.

080

Aerith rubbed her hand with the heel of her hand and looked down at the small flower garden below her. She had vanished to her Church in the Slums after her visit with Sephiroth and was already crying again. Why couldn't he see that he didn't need to take the matters of the Promised Land into his own hands? As a Cetra she could come and go as she pleased since she could remember, it had been her solace at times without her knowing it. When times were tough on her and her mother in the Slums she would fall asleep and dream of a place where her real mother was with all her other family and she would wake up happy and cheerful, renewed of hope. She didn't know she had concentrated on her Holy materia and actually gone to the Promised Land in her sleeps. Now she didn't want to be there at all. Not without Sephiroth. Of course his remnants were there and whenever she laid eyes on them she was reminded of him, the way he used to be, loving and kind. That was along with the fact that they were just as deadly as he was. Her dark green gaze flicked over to where Cloud was ruffling Denzel's dark hair with a sad smile on his face. She decided to pay him a visit and appeared right beside him, not yet making herself visible as she listened to what was being said to the young boy.

"I'm fine now Denzel, I promise."

"So you will come home and we can be a family again?"

"We never stopped being a family Denzel, I just couldn't let the past go. I lost someone dear to me a while back, a good friend of my best friend, and it took me a while to cope with both losses." Cloud explained.

Aerith smiled sadly too, she missed Zack too, but he was where he was supposed to be now. She had a hard time letting him go too. She looked down at the young boy who nodded in understanding before racing down the aisle to catch up with the other orphans and Tifa who was leaning on the door jamb of the church's double doors. Cloud straightened and slowly walked back to the water pool and the flower girl followed him, looking back to see that Tifa stayed put, she too understanding the swordsman's burden he struggled to fully let go.

"Aerith," Cloud murmured, "I know you said I don't need to seek your forgiveness, but how can I not? I tried to replace the life of the man you loved and my best friend, and I was weak when I needed to be strong. I was never SOLDIER, never able to fully fight on my own, always being pushed around by my squad members, Zack had to help me every time. Then when we were injected with Sephiroth's cells… that was what gave me my strength, wasn't it? But after the injections and Zack finally freed us… I was so weak I couldn't even walk or form a sentence. I was a rag doll when Zack faced the whole of the ShinRa Army and I couldn't help him when he was injured… He was so bloody… He wanted me to live for both of us and to tell you he finally became a hero. At least one of us did."

Aerith frowned and decided she had had enough of her friend's self-loathing and made herself visible to him. He gasped at her sudden appearance but didn't say anything.

"Cloud, why do you torture yourself over this? I already told you nothing was your fault."

"But I couldn't protect you. Nor Zack… and I dared called myself SOLDIER."

"You are a soldier although you weren't injected with Mako like the others, that was a blessing. You had heart and honor and that's what a soldier really merits in, not muscle. I admired you because you were just like Zack, you had values and kept your honor…"

"I almost killed you back at the Forbidden City!" Cloud interjected.

Aerith smiled and shook her head, her long perfect braid swinging against her back. "You didn't. And unfortunately, that was Sephiroth trying to control you with his cells Hojo injected into you in Nebilheim. That's also why you had the Geostigma, it was Jenova's cells."

Cloud nodded. He knew that but still he couldn't forgive himself apparently. The flower girl sighed and knelt by the water, looking up to the large hole in the fragile roof. "You know, this was where Zack and I first met."

Cloud knelt beside her and looked up at the hole too.

"I found out later that he had been fighting the SOLDIER First Class Genesis and Angeal, they had just revealed what the experiments on their fetal stages had made them and he was thrown down by his close friend and mentor, Angeal. On my end I was tending the flowers like I always did and then there was a cracking noise and he fell right into the middle of my garden, unconscious. That was until I said, 'Helloooooooo, hellooooooo' down at him until he started calling me his mom." She giggled at the memory. "Kadaj and the others weren't the first to call me that I guess. I was scared of ShinRa then, didn't know how to cope with them except to hide amongst my flowers in this Church, the one place that wasn't blackened in Midgar."

"What happened after you woke him up?"

"He asked if he was in heaven and when I told him not quite as he was only in a church, he called me an angel." She smiled, Cloud smiled too, she was an angel. "Then he wanted to repay me with one date."

"What did you say?"

"I told him not to be silly. But then when I was telling him how to get back up above the Plate I told him I'd lead him there and we walked to the Market and he bought me this ribbon there along with perfume that smelled like the sweetest roses for just a little extra. I didn't want to be a burden though, but he insisted. He even helped a merchant retrieve his fallen materia, I had never seen anyone move that fast and he had helped this young boy I knew get his wallet back so he could get his from the boy. I remember he wanted to punish him so bad but I got him to just give the boy a little lecture instead."

"Were you happy with him?" Cloud asked.

Aerith thought back to her days of dating Zack and knew she had been happy, and he was the one to show her she could be happy away from her flowers. But then there was Sephiroth who she also sort of dated. She couldn't see Zack until the Lifestream was filtered to the Promised Land but Sephiroth could still see her, he had stayed with her even though he had been the one to kill her. But she had forgiven the former general hadn't she? She knew the real Sephy was still deep down in the darkened warrior and wished he would settle with what he had and had had and not what he was never meant to achieve. Then again, she knew him well enough to know that wouldn't happen, not with her Sephiroth. "Yes, I was happy with him. But I was happy with someone else too, someone who always made time for me even if he was out in the field and I loved them both, as I love you as well."

She felt the shock roll of the warrior and giggled. "I love you like a son, I always wanted to protect you, you know. But Tifa can do that if you can't yourself. I loved these two men differently though, they were tight friends and one of them knew I was seeing them both. He would wait for me or see me when the other was turned around. He really loved to buy my flowers, he loved the smell of them."

"Who was the other man?"

She turned to look him in his unnatural eyes, the same eyes as all SOLDIER operatives, the same as Zack's and let a small smile grace her lips. "He was Sephiroth."

Cloud's eyes widened and his pupils dilated in shock as he lurched back and away from his friend. "Wha… why him? You know what he did, you were with us when we chased him, when we fought him… he killed you!"

Aerith nodded, the smile not fading.

"How could you love him? Like that or any way? He was a monster."

"Cloud, I am aware of what he did, but he was misguided. Besides, you know he wasn't always what we chased after, what we fought and defeated. He was a man once that cared about this Planet to some extent and protected the people with his life. He was the mighty ShinRa Army General. He called me every day and came to see me whenever he could, more than Zack did. He was growing flowers in Nebilheim before he found out about Jenova… and how he was created. If I was laid with information like that I would probably do the same thing if not something along those lines." She explained gently.

Cloud shook his head in disbelief. "Cloud, I still love him as I love Zack, but Zack has now departed to the Lifestream now that you have come to terms of his death but I have just come from Sephiroth."

"He's still alive?"

Aerith nodded.

The last words the former general spoke to Cloud flared fresh across his memory, I will never be a memory, the bastard was like a cockroach. "How?"

"He cannot enter the Lifestream as he is now and the Planet won't have him either way because of Jenova's cells and his attempt to induce the passage to the Promised Land by destroying the Planet and therefore sending the circle of life to the Land. But if he can accept that he must wait, I can bring him there as long as he knows he was wrong. He still loves me, too." She sighed as her body remembered his touch from moments ago as well as their more intimate contacts before though nothing comprising her virtue. But Cloud still wouldn't come to terms with it. "Cloud, it is my heart and he is the one who holds part of it just as Zack did and you and our friends do. Even if you can't see him for what I love I can and nothing will change that."

She lightly laid her hand on his bicep and smiled at him. He slowly returned the smile and they both stood. Cloud walked with her up to Tifa who looked at her with a soft smile that the flower girl returned. "Look after him now, I have my own man to guide to the light. Cloud, don't torture yourself anymore, okay?"

She leaned up to peck his cheek and walked back to where her garden once was, looking over her shoulder as she had earlier to see the couple wrap their arms around the other like they were each other's life lines to life. She hoped Sephiroth would hold onto her like that and never let her go because she would never let him go, not once he was himself again.

She concentrated on the purity of the Promised Land and opened her eyes to see Ifalna before her. "Mother…" they hugged and the older Cetra led her daughter to where the others were.

"Welcome home, my daughter."

Ifalna led Aerith through the welcoming crowd to a small paradise of clear waters flowing across lush hilly fields dotted with pure white structures like the Forbidden City. The sky was Mako blue and everything was inviting. She was home, in the Promised Land that the Cetra had dominion over and could access before or after their deaths. This was what Sephiroth needed to see, this would make him hers forever.

Sorry for the late update, got a lot of stuff going on and this was sitting half-finished at the bottom of the pile apparently. Hope the wait was worth it though ^^ please leave a review, greatly appreciated!