Oblivion

Chapter 4


The garlicky aroma of lobster meat, scallops, mussels, and conger might have been enough to make anyone within a half mile radius of Costa del Sol's town hall salivate with a single whiff, but Tifa had no appetite. All morning, she'd supervised the preparation of the hall for the fellowship dinner that she would share with the local mayors from the fishing communities that dotted the shoreline and from further inland. The hall had been repainted in the most dazzling gold. Cloud had commissioned a mural to be painted on the vaulted ceiling. It depicted a scene of workmen building one of the new residential blocks that lined the outermost edge of the town. That was their vision five years ago. They would rehouse the refugees of Midgar, pick up, and carry on. A mother stared tenderly down on her from the scene with a swaddled baby held close to her breast.

This was the future.

All around her, men and women sipped the first vintage of wine from grapes their compact had so carefully grown. It had been hard, breathing life back into fallow land after the reactors shut down. People were afraid of the poisoned earth. They had to recreate the lost knowledge themselves, zoning wide swathes of land for revitalization and clean-up. All the villages had donated a fair share of their hauls from the sea to prepare the sumptuous bouillabaisse on which they all dined. Tifa glanced down on the room from the balcony. No one else had any issue breaking a crusty loaf in half and scooping up a last little of broth in the bottom of his or her bowl. Her spoon quivered in her grasp. She just couldn't bring herself to eat.

Reeve Tuesti who sat at left side in a place of honor at the Founder's Table, tapped her arm with concern, "Tifa, just looking at you…I'd say you're upset. Is everything okay?"

"I'm fine, Reeve," she said, smoothing over an errant curl in the up-do that she'd just barely managed to style an hour after ensuring that the hall was set. She flashed him a gentle smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. His dark gaze softened. Flushed with good spirit and equally good wine, he let the matter drop.

Knowing that Sephiroth would enter the chamber any minute escorted by Cloud's men made her want to shout. The knowledge had been eating her up inside, and coloring with shame at the thought, she felt terrified. Terrified of knowing, of soon seeing the man who had brought her the greatest pain. No, she wasn't okay, but she could be jovial for tonight. She could be Cloud's rock because she was certain that this was no easier for him than it was for her, but she couldn't understand his logic. Why hadn't he just executed him and do away with the risk once and for all? She swished her spoon violently around in her bowl and cleaved a bit of scallop meat in two. The buttery white flesh sank beneath the rich golden broth.

She could feel Reeve's eyes on her again. Why did he have to be paying attention to her? Everyone else was either wrapped up in their food or conversation. Cloud was bantering with Barret over expanding the mines in the New Corel. She sighed and settled for a little conversation, steeling herself with a deep swig of the tart white wine that had been paired with the dinner course.

"So, Reeve," She began, turning to face him more fully. Tifa still couldn't quite grasp that this lanky, tanned man with his angular aristocratic features and tousled waves of raven black hair spoke through that animatronic cat armed with a cartoonish megaphone. Her grin widened with time-deepened affection for him, "What are you working on at the moment?"

"Oh," he said, thinking doubtlessly over a half a dozen projects in various parts of the world. He fiddled with a sleeve that could use a little fixing. Tifa spied that a button was missing, and his tie was a bit stained. He pinched the bridge of his nose, "There is a project that sticks out in mind. My team and I are trying to improve public transit in Junon with solar-powered buses, but I'm afraid it isn't quite off the ground yet. I was hoping that I could talk to Cloud about implementing something similar here once we make a little more headway…"

Tifa nodded. Reeve could drone on for hours about some project or another once he'd started. He was a tinkerer at heart, but what she admired most was that everything he had ever done had been targeted toward the public good. His conversation saved her from her own dark thoughts until the doors to the hall opened.

Silence fell, and all of the air may have been very well sucked out of the air for no one spoke, drank, or even breathed in that moment. Sephiroth shambled into the room wearing his piteous rags that barely passed as pants. The bare-chested general seemed like a tamed beast in his glowing manacles. Tifa could see Cetra runes weaving themselves along the surface. She locked eyes with him then. Crimson met with steel ingots of aquamarine. Something had happened to him. He looked nearly blind in one eye with a wicked scar thickening into a callus over it. Matted hair, blank expression, and filthy, this Sephiroth was to her more a sad echo than the specter who had haunted her dreams all throughout the night. Her heart betrayed her, and she was almost moved to pity. Almost.

"Friends!" Cloud stood, calling out to the wide chamber from the balcony where they sat. It was as if someone pricked a balloon in that moment. A flood of whispers filled the room.

The mayor of Gongaga who sat in the first level nearest to where Sephiroth stood looked scandalized and rose from his chair, "What is the meaning of this?" He questioned, pointing a shaking, accusatory finger at Sephiroth.

"Calm down, Haines." Cloud answered and bade the man to sit down before raising his voice to the room again, "My friends, we gathered here to remember the long past five years of our struggle since Meteor's fall. We lived through the energy crisis, the collapse of leadership, the famines, and the weather disruptions, but we are here today to tell stories about those awful times. We survived!"

The nervous clamor that'd seized the room began to die down, and the others who'd stood up to join the mayor of Gongaga either to march or stampede out of the room paused for a moment enraptured by the cadence of Cloud's words. Tifa looked up at her husband then who stood at her side with his glowing eyes that smoldered like azure coals, "That man." Everyone turned to look at Sephiroth now who hadn't moved a single muscle since he'd entered the room.

"That man," Cloud continued, "Threatened to steal away the very air that we breathe. He wanted to kill us all out of some cowardly vendetta that he had against the Shinra Company. That company and that man symbolize everything that we are not — cannot be in this new world, and by means unknown to me yet, Sephiroth has come back to life. I can guarantee you one thing, friends. He will never threaten another one of you again. No child or mother will die by his hand in the world of the new order. As our grand confederation grows ever closer, there will be no Sephiroth or Shinra that can stand against us. Our fellowship in this room at this moment is the beginning of a new era. Security and unity!"

"Security and unity!" the room thundered in reply.

Tifa felt herself even joining in the chant, "Security and unity!" The words made her feel bold and strong as they danced across her lips, but yet, she felt troubled and looked toward Sephiroth again whose gaze was now cast toward the ground.

"A team from the Protector Force secured Sephiroth on the perimeter south of Costa del Sol around the marshlands. Just as you see him now, he was wandering like a loon in the muck as my captain Johnny Costello related when they dragged him into town. Look at him. Does he look like the demon who once razed half of the world? All I see is the shell of a monster no longer a threat to any of you. Take him away. Now, raise your glasses children of Gaia and join me in a toast to the new world, one free of tyranny and evil."

Tifa wanted to believe so badly, but a world free of evil? Beneath everything, there would always be some darkness intermingling with the light. Yet, she clinked her glass to her husband's and watched as Sephiroth was led back to the prison.


A/N: I usually keep my author's notes pretty brief, but I'm glad for the reviews. For the reviewer who accused me of being a Cloud-hater, I have to say that I don't hate him in the slightest. Beneath the surface, he's probably one of the most complex characters from the original game. I discount the extended universe entirely as I feel that shrunk the complexity that all the characters had to offer by fitting them even more so into tropes to appeal to a primarily teenaged fanbase. I remember first playing this game and being immersed in the action and the plot and loving every minute of it as a kid, but in many ways, Final Fantasy VII story was never driven by the complexity of its characters. A game can never be novel in this regard which lets the fanfiction writer reinterpret or renegotiate the subtleties that they perceive in a character's expression whereas in a novel those motivations, quirks, and nuances are spelled out (unless of course you're dipping into Modernism which makes everything more opaque.)

As much as I love the Final Fantasy universe, I have to criticize that the established morality behind good and evil is horribly black and white, and the only game in the series that seemed to explore moral ambiguity with any detail was Final Fantasy Tactics which I recommend you all play for a story with deeply compelling characters, but I will say that Final Fantasy VII sticks out for me out of some place of nostalgia that I can't quite wipe away. I thought that the protagonists behaved in wonderfully grey ways many times throughout the game. They started out as eco-terrorists after all, and some of your random encounters against Shinra's nameless infantryman and soldiers makes for some very serious contemplation. No one ever has any sympathy for the henchmen who just happened to be caught up in an evil corporation's reign, and there are so many interesting things at play in Final Fantasy VII like what happened to the conventional government? Why does a power company have a standing army? At a character-level, I want to explore how the game's protagonists reconcile what they've done in the past with what they will do in the future. I always found Cloud to be deeply compelling and charismatic, even after he dropped the fake soldier persona, but like one of my reviewer's mentioned, he has a lot of growing up to do, and as someone who has been so psychologically-stunted, he will have to deal with the fallout that comes with seizing the reins of absolute power.