21

The Forgotten Capital

Aerith lay paralyzed in the cold, crimson snow—the smoldering ruins of her parents home to one side; to the other: Yuffie's shredded husk. The body still leeched blood, but it was only an empty hull. Her soul had already left. A few feet further away laid the remains of General Sephiroth. He fared no better than Yuffie. Aerith had come all the way to the place of her birth to die alone.

The snow picked up. It would be dark soon. She heard a faint howl in the distance. Cloud had been right about the animals. Zack liked to keep work and pleasure separate, but every now and again after two or three drinks, he would let something horrible slip from his lips. She had heard a few harrowing tales of survival: she who always thought she was so experienced and worldly, having been raised in the biggest and most prosperous city of the world. The cocky country boy who fell through her cathedral roof into her flower bed had seemed so provincial at first. She was humbled to discover it had been the other way around.

He taught her how to say no to her mother. How to drink. How to make money from a bed of flowers. How to pleasure a man. He had been her one true love. Her first and only lover.

Well…

The howl repeated. Was it closer?

A fact Aerith had picked up from one of Zack's horrible stories: stomach wounds hurt like hell—she could attest to that well enough now—but they were seldom fatal. Certainly one could die from the blood loss. It might take hours or even days, however. Aerith knew the numbing and prickling across her body was not the simple result of shock. The temperature would drop well below zero tonight. Out in the open, bleeding steadily next to Yuffie's corpse and the shattered remnants of Cait Sith, Aerith literally could not move to save her life. The wound was bad, but her foremost concerns were exposure and howling things.

Once she resigned herself to her own death, the true horror crept in.

Tifa was gone. For the first time since their meeting, Aerith could not sense her presence. Maybe somewhere in the world she was faring worse than Aerith.

The tears froze to her cheek.

The winters in Midgar were mild. The heat from the mako reactors kept the snow from accumulating. Before coming so far north, the last real snow she saw accumulated the day Zack died. Long before she got the call from Zack's mother, she knew when it happened. She knew the lifeforce of Midgar mourned for her. It was so cold, its tears froze on their way to the Earth.

She concentrated on the powerful magic within her soul. She could heal herself. She had done it countless times before to others. And yet, she remained bleeding and incapacitated. Rarely before had she been unable to heal. When the Turks shot Barret on the Big Whale, she tried, but when she connected to his heart, it repelled her. In that moment, he did not want to live. He rejected the Lifestream.

Now Aerith guesed she had the opposite problem. Would the Earth heal her? No. She could feel the slow, steady draw of its aether, beckoning her deeper into its womb as the bandersnatches neared. It yearned for her companionship. It wanted her.

It did not care that Aerith wanted desperately not to die. She loved life too much. Still, it tugged. It whispered to her in words too soft to hear; in a language she could not quite understand.

Then Aerith saw the human form emerge from the haze of winter. Even in her half-dead delirium, she recognized something about the blaze of mako within. He was tall and broad-shouldered; even moreso than she had remembered. Under his hood, she saw spikes of sleek black hair.

"Zack?" Aerith whispered.

He walked closer, faster. He glanced at Yuffie; studied her cadaver for all of three seconds. He did the same for Sephiroth, but afforded him another second or two. Then his irridescent mako-blue eyes turned to Aerith.

"Why?" Aerith whispered. "Why did you leave me?"

Then he was upon her. He knelt at her side and pressed a warm ear to her chest. "This is bad." She could not clearly see his face, but even before he said, "You're Aerith Gainsborough," she knew she did not know him. All she did know was he was not Zack. Zack would never visit her again. She of all people should have known that suicide was the ultimate embrace of loneliness.

He hoisted her over his broad, powerful shoulders and carried her. I'm bleeding all over him, she thought, embarassed. Then she passed out.

Aerith's eyes fluttered open to focus on a familiar ceiling. From where she had seen it before, she had no recollection, but its checkered steel panels brought back creeping, sickly feelings from somewhere deep in the recesses of her heart. A half-open door was to her right. Beyond it: a long, dark hallway. Somehow, she was surprised the room was not a locked cell.

She tried to sit upright and nearly passed out. She felt weightless and heady. Her connection to the lifestream was garbled. It took several moments to regain her sense of place in the world.

It was a dim, cold concrete room with little more than her bed: a stripped-down hospital bed at its center. She lay in it wearing only a hospital gown, of all things. A half-drunk glass of water was at the foot of the bed. Against the far wall by a tinted window rested the long, curved sword that once belonged to Sephiroth. A strange, chaotic energy lingered in its steel. Assuming the SOLDIER who saved her left his body in Icycle Inn, that sword was all that remained of him.

What day is it? She tried to sit upright again. Whether it was over half an hour or three hours, her senses returned while Aerith stared at the ceiling. That was not a good thing. When she was finally able to feel anything at all, she felt the most intense pain of her life. Her abdomen pulsed with a throbbing fire that spread through most of her right torso in jolts. The wound was closed. The scar would stay with her for the remainder of her life.

Aerith thought of Tifa. Then she thought of Yuffie. Then she thought of Cait Sith and Cloud. Then she realized she was alone. All alone. For all of thirty seconds, she thought they had finally stopped Jenova. And then Cloud…

"Soup and diluted honey," a voice called from down the hall. "The same thing for five days."

"She isn't in a position to complain, Hollander," said another.

Aerith perked up and watched the door.

"It was reckless of you to leave," said the first voice.
"What would you have me do?" said the second. "It's not like we had much choice. We've got to eat. One extra mouth is little concern. You're the one who told me how important it was she be kept alive."

"She's important. I just know it. I have to believe it after…"

"I know you and Gast were close, but…"

"Not, him you dolt. Her. I held her in the highest esteem."

"You mean…"

"She was far too good for him. That pompous egg-head. I had half a mind to tear his heart out when I found out what he did to her. With child in such a godless place…"

"What are you talking about?"

"She could have made something of herself. Gast always fancied himself a man of letters. If she had applied herself, she could have been twice the man as he. She deserved better than to live on as a glorified lab rat."

"Well…" The black-haired man who rescued her emerged from the doorway. Aerith sat upright. Zack spoke in awe of Angeal Hewley. She never thought she would meet him in person. His eyes widened, surprised.

A brown-bearded man approached behind Angeal. He did not appear as startled. "Are you well, Aerith?"

Aerith protectively pulled the sheets around her torso. "How do you know who I am?"

He narrowed his eyes. "We talked for the better part of an hour last night. Don't you remember?"

Aerith shook her head.

He frowned. "No? You were a bit delirious."

Aerith swallowed. "What was I saying?"

"All sorts of things. I suppose it's true the White Materia's lost?"

Aerith nodded.

The bearded man grimaced. "As I feared. My hypothesis may be correct. JENOVA can travel from one host to another freely. It wasn't just a fluke with Sephiroth." He gave Angeal a grim look. Angeal nodded, expressionless.

Aerith relaxed. Her sheets slid to her waist. "Excuse me… but… who are you?"

He approached. "Call me Hollander. We've met before, Aerith."

Aerith's eyes widened and her recollection of this place dawned on her. She nearly jumped out of bed. "Oh, shit."

"You're safe, Aerith,"Angeal said.

Memories of bleached floors and I.V. needles and days of quarantine without human contact rushed her senses. This was the dark, creeping place in the shadow of her memory. It was where she came from before foster care in Midgar; where she escaped to; where she was kidnapped to after the destruction of Icycle Inn. He was the man looming over her: poking, proding, and experimenting. She stifled a scream.

"Aerith, listen to me…" Hollander said.

Her heart pounded in her chest. "Get out. Get away from me."

He raised his hands, as though to calm. "Aerith, I never meant to hurt you. I didn't know what had happened. I thought of Gast and his pet Cetra. I had no idea…"

"Get out!" Aerith shrieked.

"Aerith…"

Angeal's voice reverberated against the walls. "Dr. Hollander, leave. Now."

He gave Angeal a sidelong glance and turned to depart.

Aerith wiped away fresh tears. When Dr. Hollander's footsteps dissipated, she spoke. "Why? What is he doing here?"

"We have nothing in common but a mistrust of Shinra."

"He's a monster. When I was a child, he…"

"I know what he is, Aerith. I have no illusions about that. But I swear. No harm shall come to you. Otherwise Zack would give me hell in the afterlife."

Aerith sniffled. "Where am I?"

"Modeoheim."

Aerith's mind searched for the right words. "We arrived through Modeoheim."

"Not the city proper. This is a Shinra research facility a few miles out from the outskirts."

"What am I doing here? I should be dead."

"I saw the steam in the distance when the snow melted. I thought it odd and followed. It took all of our healing materia to fend off the gangrene. You just might be the luckiest woman in all of Gaia."

Aerith lay prone in the bed. Her abdomen throbbed and she remembered the stink of Yuffie and Sephiroth's seeping fluids. She cast her eyes again to Sephiroth's sword. She did not feel especially lucky. "How did you know who I was at Icycle Inn?"

"Are you kidding? Zack must have shown me your picture half a hundred times. You're even more striking in person."

Aerith flushed. "He talked about you a lot. It hurt him when you left."

"It was hard. SOLDIER was all I'd ever known. It was all I ever really was." He rested against the wall. His form was broad and powerful. Still, she recognized the start of weight gain in the wrong places. She could only imagine how he looked in his prime.

"You have the same eyes." But they were so much sadder.

He gazed at her. "Is that so? I look into yours and I see something of Sephiroth's."

A throat cleared in the hallway. "Am I interrupting anything, Angeal?"

Angeal glared. "Will you at least make yourself useful and bring us some goddamn tea?"

Hollander scampered away.

Aerith sat upright.

"Don't try to move," Angeal whispered.

Aerith lay back down in bed. "Cloud. Yuffie. Tifa. Everyone…"

"Don't try to think."

It was the best advice Aerith had heard in ages. Within half an hour, she slipped into a long, dreamless sleep.

By the fourth day, Aerith was almost comfortable around both men—not to say she liked Dr. Hollander much more than she did upon awakening, but she had no more concerns for her safety. He was no boogey-man, she realized. Just a burnt out old man. Angeal had come to regard her with a peculiar gentleness, all the more welcome as she came to feel less and less frail.

"We went to the academy together," Hollander explained over a dinner of some grilled meat. Aerith could not tell exactly what it was: only that it was something Angeal had killed—brutally. The carcass had not been a pretty sight. The mess hall was dark. It had high windows that let in little light and the three fed by a pair of electric lanterns. Aerith had been well enough to join them at the table for two days. "Gast, Hojo, and I," Hollander began.

"So you were friends with Hojo for some time," Aerith suggested.

Hollander chuckled. "I would hardly call us 'friends.' We spent most of our waking hours together, for sure. We socialized with few others, in fact."

Aerith blinked. "But… you weren't friends?"

"Hojo took nothing seriously. He was ever the clown even in those days. And Gast, he could never see the joke in anything. No humor at all. No. They were not my friends. But I acknowledged them as my intellectual equals. There are few for whom I can do that."

Angeal glanced at Aerith and rolled his eyes.

Hollander did not notice. "Gast and Hojo hated each other, but beneath that hatred lay a foundation of deep respect. I've been meaning to ask you, Ms. Gainsborough, how was my dear Professor Hojo during your travels?"

"As nutty as a rabid squirrel."

Hollander seemed amused. "The line between genius and madness is paper-thin." He took another bite. "In the academy, we had in common a fascination with the Lifestream and mako."

"So you knew mako comes from the Lifestream?" Aerith asked.

"It's been well known in scholarly circles for a while that mako is just a particular physical manifestation of the Lifestream."

"How did Shinra keep it secret for so long?" Aerith asked.

"It was never really a secret. They just own every half-decent scientist and research facility in the world. Who else would know? When was the last time you saw a newspaper headline about an article published in the scholarly journal, Natural Science Review Quarterly?"

Aerith gave him an incredulous stare. Something about Hollander did not fit, but she could not quite place it. "This never bothered you? It never worried you?"

"You have to understand. Though it was known mako flowed from the Lifestream, it was always assumed it was a self-refilling reservoir of energy. We never thought we were really and truly depleting it."

Aerith nodded. It was a half-truth. Maybe they told themselves that so they might work on in willful ignorance. He had been a concerned scientist so long as that concern had not threatened his livelihood. Aerith gleaned as much from Hollander's mind, but did not say so. Maybe my father was like that too.

"Shinra had been tapping mako for electricity for generations. Over time, it became a victim of its own success. You can only saturate a market but so far before a corporation has nowhere to grow. And a corporation must grow. It becomes a beast and a beast that must be fed. Tell me, Aerith. What do you do when the entire population of the world consumes your service?"

It was Angeal who answered. "Well, for one thing, you ensure they keep utilizing your service. By any means necessary."

Aerith got his meaning. "The Wutai uprising."

Hollander shrugged. "A good point. Not what I was referring to, but yes. The answer I was looking for was this: you must expand into a new market. You must sell a new product. They marketed appliances optimized for Mako power. They created the television and radio stations that could be viewed and heard with their technology. They used their media outlets to stifle any glimmer of competition. Shinra sponsored theaters and operated vineyards. In the process, they bought up the real-estate of entire towns. Public Safety began as a Shinra subsidiary: a private security firm to police Shinra's proprieties. It is, today, effectively the world's police force because Gaia herself has become one big Shinra propriety. What product next? Governance. Now all of the world's people pay taxes to Shinra for the services, utilities, and bureacracies of legislature. Shinra has spread its fingerprints across the entire globe and has taken fledgeling steps into aerospace. They have, almost literally, outgrown the planet.

"By the time Gast, Hojo, and I came around, there was little need to refine the process of mako power. The former president Shinra understood that what Shinra really 'sold' was world governance. As part of that, he had an ambitious new vision for Public Safety. Ever an astute entrepeneuer, it created a new use for an existing resource. Mako for military use."

"SOLDIER," Angeal said.

Hollander nodded. "It was quite ingenious, really. Remember, we all thought mako was a limitless source of power. He sought to cement Shinra's grasp on world hegemony by forging the greatest fighting force the world had ever known. It was one no one could even think about replicating because it relied entirely on a Shinra-patented technology. It was genius, really.

"Some forty years ago, Hojo, Gast, and I received a grant from Balam University and co-authored a study on the effects of mako radiation exposure on athletes. It's been known for some time that some long-time employees at mako plants enjoy greater longevity and greater resitance to illnesss."

Aerith remembered Tellah and Barret's reminiscence of North Corel. "And some go crazy."

Hollander dismissed her with a wave. "Beyond the scope of our research at the time. Though, you are correct. No, we were only investigating very small doses of indirect exposure. Nothing on the scale of the mako baths modern SOLDIERS are exposed to for hours at a time over many months. Our research was the first of its kind. We found even mild doses of mako produced statistically significant performance increases in simple motor tasks. The side effects at that level were negligible.

"After we published our findings, we were immediately offered residency in the Midgar headquarters of the Science Research Division. Believe it or not, it had never occurred to Shinra to expose someone to mako on purpose. Hojo and I were assigned to Project Gilgamesh. Our goal: to create a modern supersoldier. Over a few very short years, we pushed the science as far as we could. We discovered some candidates could withstand tremendous doses of mako to the point where their strength and stamina became superhuman. Of course, we had a number of… failed subjects. It was then we discovered candidates required, above all else, uncommon psychological toughness. Otherwise, the mako would drive them mad."

"Why?" Aerith asked.

Hollander hesitated. "The neurological mechanism through which many candidates experience psychosis was never discovered." Aerith could tell he was a man who was not used to admitting, "I don't know."

"Genesis discovered it," Angeal said.

This irked Hollander. He slammed his cup on the table after a gulp of coffee. "Speculation. Genesis was my crown jewel. I picked him from the finest genetic stock and exposed him to mako in utero. He was literally born to be a SOLDIER. He was flawless."

"He was born with pieces missing, Hollander," Angeal said. "I knew him better than anyone but Sephiroth."

"And look what good Hojo's little pet SOLDIER has done. If the mako caused an ounce of disquiet in Genesis' mind, then Sephiroth's Cetra blood should have caused a pound."

Aerith's patience waned. "What about my father?"

Hollander once again seemed disinterested in her question. "Gast did not accept the job as part of Project Gilgamesh. Really, SOLDIER was my brainchild. Hojo was instrumental in its foundation, but like Gast, his interests were more eclectic; his attention span more flighty. He and Hojo used a Shinra grant to set up a research facility in the Forgotten Capital."

Aerith's eyes narrowed. "The what?"

"The Forgotten Capital," Hollander said. "East of here on the Northern Continent. It's one of the world's oldest Cetra ruins. It's peppered by natural springs. They never did fully explore the network of subterranean canals, but beneath them were natural outlets to mako flow. Gast and Hojo thought studying the site might lead to understanding the fundamental nature of the Lifestream. They thought the mako flow would lead to the core of the Lifestream itself. But nothing really worked out from the start. If it truly is the Lifestream, they had no way of actually exploring it. Nothing can withstand too long of an exposure in mako of the concentration there. The research site eventually closed. Suffice it to say, their grandest endeavors were fruitless. There was one unexpected payoff, though. Amongst the tribal Northmen, they found their very own long-thought extinct, living, breathing, Cetra."

Aerith was no longer eating—only listening to Hollander. "And that was my mother, Ifalna, wasn't it?"

Hollander nodded. "They tried to keep her a secret as best they could, but it had to have been the worst-kept secret on all of Gaia. I met her once. They introduced her to me as she was: one of the last Cetra. Gast was infatuated. That much was obvious. I consider myself more jaded. Ifalna struck me as a woman like most others with her feminine whims and flights of fancy.

Aerith remembered the words of her other mother, Elmyra. If you can't say something nice…

"…But what an intellect. Like the Northmen among whom she lived, she lacked much formal education. She could have far exceded Gast in accomplishment if that weren't the case. She was observant and kind. And for whatever reason, she was quite taken with our dearly-departed professor."

"You mean my father," Aerith said.

"Well yes, he would be, now wouldn't he?"

"What happened to them?"

"Eventually, Scince Research saw fit to collect on Gast's pet Cetra. She was too valuable an asset, it was decided, to not be studed in a more formal way. She was Gast's personal curiosty. Once they were married, one could understandably doubt his objectivity. But don't you think something was odd?"

"What?" Aerith said.

Hollander smirked. "Hojo was head of Science Research at the time. And he was involved with a Cetra of his very own. Only he never advertised her as such. He told only me of Lucrecia's heritage. Only me because he knew I would never tell a soul. Only me because he wanted to boast about his trophy and his accomplishment: his child with Lucrecia. It was a human-Cetra hybrid infused by Shinra with the power of mako. And yet, why tell no one else of his accomplishment? And why demand that Ifalna be captured like some common lab animal?"

"What do you know about Lucrecia?"

"That she was a Cetra. According to Hojo. And that's it. Curious, don't you think?"

Aerith stoped to reflect. "Why order my mother captured… it wasn't about her. Not really. He knew all along my mother had the Black and White Materia. He wanted them and trying to take her was just a pretext."

Hollander shook his head. "I don't even think it was about the materia. It was about you."

Aerith quirked her head. "What?"

"One moment…" Hollander stood and strode down the hall.

Aerith an Angeal exchanged glances.

Hollander returned a moment later with a tattered fragment of paper: equal parts burnt and soaked, and all-but illegible.

Aerith gave him a quizzical look.

"A Shinra patrol found you cold, alone, and near death near the ruins of Icycle Inn. Only I knew you for what you were. You have your mother's eyes."

"That's what I'm told." Aerith remembered her conversation with Vincent in the Gold Saucer. She did not trust Hollander enough to reveal another living Cetra.

"I thought it best to follow Hojo's example and I told no one what you were," Hollander said. "Which worked to my detriment. I learned before Hojo it's unwise to keep too much from Shinra. They gave us incredible free-reign to do our research, but it had its limits. But by then, I was concerned about Hojo's intentions. I knew he and this 'Lucrecia' were important. And I knew right away you were important."

Aerith narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean?"

Hollander handed Aerith the paper. "There wasn't much left in the ruins of Icycle Inn. I procured this from Gast's home and managed to keep it to myself. It's a letter in Ifalna's hand."

Aerith read. It was mostly illegible if not for one passage spared from stains of fire and ice:

Our daughter's special. You know that as well as I. But when the darkness falls, I believe she will hold the key. She was wrought of our love, and what other than love can cure the world's madness?

Aerith absorbed the words over the period of a minute, rereading the cryptic, context-less words again and again. She looked up to see Hollander gauging her reaction.

"What does this mean?" she asked.

Hollander's excitement became palpable. "That it all makes sense now. Sephiroth was part of Hojo's plans from the beginning. He knew all about Nibelheim. When he sired Sephiroth, he did so planning to create a bridge to Jenova and Omega Weapon. Only he never expected there to be another half-Cetra. You were Sephiroth's opposite. That's why he tried to have your parents killed. He needed the materia, but he also feared you. You, Aerith."

Aerith frowned. For all her fear of him, she could finally see him for what he really was, and it was not what Angeal saw him for. He was just another man imagining her as something she was not. "I doubt that," she said. Sepiroth had certainy never seemed afraid of her. But connected somehow… maybe. Then she remembered the enormous sword still at rest in her bedroom. "He's dead now anway."

"A piece of him lives on in Cloud," Angeal said. "Just as a piece of Genesis lived on in Sephiroth. So now you too are connected to Cloud."

Aerith studied Angeal carefully. He said it with such confidence. "How would he even know…?" Then it occurred to her. As she was connected to the Planet through the Lifestream, they were connected in their own way too. All of them. The Lifestream flowed through their veins as well.

Angeal sat with the stone silence of a condemned man who had resolved to carry his final confession to the grave.

"The White Materia's gone," Aerith said, half-reminding herself. "Cloud destroyed it. If Omega Weapon is ever activated then it can't be de-activated."

"Then you need to stop Cloud before he can find Holy," Hollander said.

Words caught in Aerith's throat. "Me? Did you just say 'me?'"

Holander blinked. "Well… yes."

Aerith set her fork down and stood. "I'm not some heroic… person. That was Zack. And Cloud. And Tifa. I don't know how many times I have to tell people before they believe me: I'm just an ordinary girl."

"Zack was my friend," Angeal said. "He could have had any girlfriend he ever wanted. He would never pick someone who was just 'ordinary.'"

"Well, I loved Zack, but I couldn't tell you why he fell in love with me. I'm just a flower girl from the slums of Midgar. I never lived a day away from home until Shinra kidnapped me and I never left Midgar until AVALANCHE took me. Someone else has got to be up for the task of killing some ancient Cetra demi-god in the body of one of my friends." Her lip quivered.

Angeal did not respond immediately. "I lived in Midgar for a few years, you know. I know nothing grows in the lower plates. Maybe the heroes have had their turn. Maybe instead we need a girl who can make flowers bloom in the slums."

Heat rose to Aerith's face. "I need to think. Goodnight." Though she said "Goodnight," it was not even dusk outside. She left the table hungry, but unable to eat for the queasiness. She locked herself in her room, unable even to do much thinking. All she could see were cat-slit eyes of Mako blue. She imagined them on Zack. Even well into the night, even after crying until Hollander and Angeal were peacefully at rest, she laid with the terrible thought.

When Aerith finally slept, she saw a cabin in the forest. It was a deep forest, bright from the morning gleam of sunshine on dew drops which could have been the sparkling lifeforce of a hundred thousand souls. Sprawling hairline trails vanished into infinite veins.

The woman rocked in her rocking chair, staring not at the man, but through him. Her long chestnut hair half-veiled her face. Aerith was right in front of her, but she could not see. Then again, she did not look.

Wood split with resounding thwacks. He was not as Aerith remembered him. Maybe it was he as he would have been had he grown up in an intact Nibelheim: a collected, strong man of the country, dressed in mottled jeans and boots. He set down the splitter. His head quirked and he turned. Through locks of gold, the eyes of a SOLDIER possessed saw.

Aerith awoke, covered in sweat and naked fear.

It was dawn. Not five minutes passed before Angeal approached. "What's wrong? Aerith?"

Aerith closed her eyes. She knew that place. She had never seen it before in her life, and yet she knew. "Take me to the Forgotten Capital."

He stared as though he had not heard.

"I need you and Hollander to take me to the Forgotten Capital. Hollander said the springs there have outlets to the Lifestream."

"Right… that was your father's theory. But all they ever found out for sure was there was a lot of exposed mako. What would you possibly want there?"

"I need to see it. I need to know what it's like. I need to find…" Tifa. "I need to start somewhere if you want me to find Cloud."

Angeal paled. "I'll tell Hollander."

They passed the frozen tundra through thawed trails after the Shinra-made roads dead-ended. And then, after four hours, the buildings that did not look like buildings at all emerged from the primordial forest. The trees hummed with life in a way no trees Aerith had ever seen before had. They regarded her with a strange curiosity and tried to communicate, but in a dead language too ancient and obscure for her to comprehend. This long-forgotten place was old and senile. It was its prerogative to regard her and the rest of humanity with disinterest and disdain. Nowhere before had Aerith felt so alone. So strangely human.

There was no sunlight in this place. It was as black as night, though it could not have been much past noon. How the trees survived, Aerith did not know, but then, the trees had no leaves. They pulsated with iridescent, inner light: spindly beams of white marine neon. They were alive, but this was not life as Aerith knew it.

Angeal's truck stopped by one such tree and the three of them exited: Aerith emerged from the extended cab in back. Brambly shrubs prickled her toes.

"What is this place?" Aerith asked.

"We told you," Hollander said. "This is the Forgotten Capital."

Aerith realized he did not know what she meant. He saw only dead shrubs and glowing trees. Of the three of them, she realized only she could see it for what it truly was. This place looked dead, but the air was thick with life—pure life bereft of form and mass.

A pond before them shimmered with pulsating light. Beyond it lay what may have been a man-made structure, but could have just as easily been a massive, beached conch shell, bleached in nonexistent sunlight.

Aerith felt a shiver. It was as though someone had just walked over her grave.

Maybe that someone was her.

"The Cetra lived here," Aerith said, barely above a whisper.

Hollander examined one of the shrubs at his feet. "Yes. A long time ago. It's thought the first Cetra civilization originated from not far from here. Lucrecia and Ifalna lived here with others, for a time. Ifalna said they all died out over the course of years."

"What's in the buildings?"

Hollander shrugged. He had been willing to humor her whim. He believed in her, but he doubted the sense of this expedition. "You can look if you like. They're husks. Only the structure remains. Treasure hunters and archaeologists have pilfered all of the major artifacts. Now there's nothing here. This was where the last of the Cetra congregated before their extinction. All it is is a graveyard."

Aerith remembered Vincent again. They were not extinct. There was Vincent. There was Sephiroth, but no more. Now Aerith would discover whether or not they lived on in her.

She took one tentative step into the water. To her right, Angeal and Hollander tensed. She was barely aware of their reactions. The warm, tingling energy crept across her skin from toe to ankle. Unconsciously, she stepped deeper until it bathed her up to her knees.

It was true. This place fed straight to the Lifestream. Aerith peeled past the old, forgotten, hull of this place to the fleshy core. Voices encircled her and beckoned her more loudly than ever before in her life.

They wailed. They wailed with the sorrow of a parent whose children were not only dead, but had killed each other.

Amidst the tingling ebb and flow of intangible power, Aerith felt the very real tickle of something soft and wet brush her leg. She glanced down. The black miniskirt bubbled up from the depths and drew nearer to her.

Aerith felt her heart clench. After year, she was tired of bearing unsaid words.

"She's in there," Aerith said. "I know it. She has to be…"

"Careful, Aerith," Angeal said.

"The rocks aren't very even," Hollander said. "No one who sinks into these springs ever comes back."

Aerith remembered another hard-learned lesson from her mother. Her real mother. The one who was waiting for her someday in Midgar, hopefully alive and well.

A girl had to risk sinking if she ever wanted to swim.

Aerith undid the ribbon in her hair and light auburn locks cascaded free.

They cried after her, but she ignored them. The time to talk had passed.

It was time to dive.

A/N: Sorry for the late update. As I mentioned on my profile page, the East Coast storm system fried our old computer. It was a good lesson in remembering to back up my documents. From here on out, I'm hoping to resume the once-a-month posting schedule. Thanks for bearing with me and continuing to keep up with the story!