Disclaimer: Characters belong to Square-Enix or whatever it's called nowadays...
A/N: Sorry for the hugely late update. I don't have an excuse other than that somehow I just never got round to it. Not to mention the busy-ness of the festive season. I'd just like to wish all my readers new and old a merry (belated) Christmas and a very happy New Year! May 2006 bring you all much joy!
-Ludi x
Notes to the story: I made up this chapter. Got that? THE EVENTS IN THIS CHAPTER WERE NOT IN THE GAME! I wrote this to show how the bond between Aerith and Cloud was strengthening. Please don't flame me for what I wrote. Constructive criticism is welcome. :)
-oOo-
: Chapter Sixteen : Soul Mates
...This is the way it should be.
Cloud jerked into life. It had finally begun again. He was almost angry at the voice for having left him for so long.
Where have you been? he demanded, incensed. I've been waiting for you.
And why have you been waiting for me, Cloud? the voice asked gently.
Why do you think? Cloud shouted into the darkness, searching once again for whoever it was that was speaking. Because you know who I am!
I was hoping that you would want to know who I was. There was a despairing tone to the voice as it answered.
Then why don't you just tell me who you are? Cloud retorted bitterly. Anyway, I don't know what you mean by 'this is the way it should be.'
I mean, replied the voice, that it is better not to be chasing Sephiroth.
But I must, Cloud answered. You alone know me most. You know why it is that I must find him.
The voice was beginning to disappear once more, and Cloud knew he would not hear it again.
And you will find what you seek, it whispered softly. But you will lose something dear to you.
Cloud sat up in bed with a jolt, bathed in a cold sweat. He was infuriated. He did not understand why the voice did not tell him outright everything that it knew. Why all these cryptic words, these evasions? What was there to hide? If there was something Cloud should know, why did it have to be told to him in this fashion? And the voice itself - it was a voice that Cloud knew as distinctly familiar, though he had no idea of whom it belonged to. Even the gender of this dream-like phantom remained a tantalising mystery to him.
He sank back in bed heavily, feeling abandoned and alone. He tried to understand, he tried to decipher those enigmatic puzzles the voice set him, but it was all in vain. In the scant minute or so that it spoke to him, he became impossibly frustrated, as though the answers, the speaker's secret identity, were right before him, just out of his grasp, so near yet so far. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep. But it was impossible. The words the voice had said kept on cantering round his head. Finally, he could stand it no longer. Getting out of bed, he decided to do something constructive instead of wasting his time trying to go to sleep.
Cloud wandered downstairs and into the bar adjoining the inn. The barman was still at the counter, cleaning the odd glass with a pristine white cloth. Cloud strolled up to the bar and leant over it. The man noticed him and smiled as he walked over to serve him.
"You're up pretty late, aren't you?"
"Can't sleep," Cloud replied bleakly.
"Oh, then you'll be wanting a Rising Sun then, won't you."
"Just give me something hard," he replied.
The barman grinned.
"Coming right up."
Immediately and expertly he began to fix the drink. Cloud watched the almost graceful way in which he poured the rich alcoholic mixture into a glass, making the quick movements look like works of art. In a few seconds, the glass was thrown in Cloud's direction with a deft skill that he had seen matched only by Tifa. He snatched it up and, with a melancholy air, swallowed half the cocktail down in one go. It was strong, but sweet, quite unlike anything he'd tasted before. "This is good," he commented rather grudgingly.
"Uh-huh, Wutai's secret recipe, that is. You won't find it anywhere else."The barmanchuckled. "Whether it'll keep you awake or send you to sleep I couldn't say though."
"I think the name implies endless nights without rest," Cloud said wryly. The barman seemed to find this amusing.
"They don't call it Rising Sun for nothing, son." He laughed a bit, then changed the subject. "You guys must be feeling pretty jumpy tonight. I see one of your friends has been sitting here a fair time as well."
Cloud swivelled round to see whom he was referring to. At a table in the corner, Aerith was sitting, staring blankly at a full glass between her fingers.
"She's been here best part of the night," the man remarked off-handly, then went back to his work. Cloud pushed himself off the bar with his elbow and walked silently up to Aerith's table. Pulling up a chair, he spoke nonchalantly to her.
"Mind if I sit here?"
She looked vaguely up at him, a distracted look on her face.
"No, go ahead."
He sat down wearily and drank in silence for a moment or so, not looking at her. Finally, he opened his mouth.
"Didn't think I'd see you round here, Aerith. Having trouble sleeping?"
She raised her eyes toward his face.
"Not really. I'm just thinking, is all."
"Listening to the Ancients?"
She seemed surprised.
"How did you know?"
He shrugged.
"I know you quite a lot better than you think I do, Aerith. Besides, I couldn't imagine you just sitting there all night just thinking now, could I?"
She shifted her gaze back to her hands, swirling the glass' contents round pensively.
"No, I suppose not."
He looked at her for a second or so, taking a swig of the sweet-tasting alcohol. It truly was something to get intoxicated over.
"Aerith," he finally asked. "Do you remember what your real mother was like?"
She was slightly startled by the question.
"My mother? Yes, yes, I remember her."
"What was she like?"
Aerith lowered her lids, her eyes suddenly dim as she cast her mind back over the years, a past marred by sorrow and strife, and yet that he never once heard her complaining about. He knew well the dull ache of losing his own mother, and wondered whether she felt the same dull ache too, in bed, at night. But there was no regret in her eyes as she spoke, her voice suddenly far-away. "I wish I knew as much as I would have liked," she sighed. "But I seem to have a memory of her hair, long and soft and thick and brown. And her eyes, a brilliant green. And the smell of her, when she used to hold me close." She paused, half-smiled and gazed into the depths of her glass. "When I try to put all these fleeting memories together, I imagine that she must have been a very beautiful woman... Although, honestly, I don't really remember her face at all."
Cloud said nothing, and merely looked at her, not knowing what to say. Looking at her, now, it would not have surprised him if her mother had been very beautiful. He didn't know much about the Cetra, but somehow visions of tall, statuesque, elven beauties came to mind.
"But it's stupid really," she concluded, finally looking up at him. "Because mother's not dead - not really.I can still hear her. When I talk of her as gone, it doesn't make sense, because to me, she's very much alive."
"That must be... weird," he remarked.
She nodded.
"Do you remember your father?" he continued. Aerith appeared to think harder this time. Her eyes crept to the ceiling, and stayed fixed there.
"No, I don't really. He wasn't an Ancient...But I remember, he must have loved me very much. He used to tell me so, all the time." A light seemed to cross over her face. "He had...a very tickly moustache. I remember that. And...a white coat I loved to pull."
She remained silent after that, a strangely sentimental look on her face. He sighed, stretched his arms out above his head.
"Looks like you could do with some of this." He indicated to his glass of alcohol. She glanced at it.
"What is it?"
"The Rising Sun. Wutai's specialty." He gave a little flourish with his hands. "Why don't you try some of it?"
She looked indifferent.
"As long as it's better than mine."
"It's strong," he warned her as he slid the glass toward her. She picked it up as though she had not heard and raised it to her lips. Pulling a comical face as she swallowed the liquid, she placed the glass down with a thud.
"Whoa, that is strong."
He received the drink back with a look of irony.
"Girls like you can't handle stuff like this."
She pulled a face at him.
"Oh, come on, Cloud! You're still not into that macho stuff?"
"I'm only kidding," he laughed, drinking from the same place on the rim that she had. "Don't take it personally."
She raised an eyebrow at him and turned to look out of the window. The scenery was dominated by the Da-chao statues that seemed more beautiful in the soft moonlight of the pale indigo night sky. Aerith held in a short breath.
"Doesn't it look beautiful outside? The statues look spectacular from here."
Cloud looked at the panoramic view, feeling warmth at the beauty that was before his eyes. There was still life in the Planet, still enough energy in it to sustain this wondrous land. He felt obliged to protect it, in whatever way possible to him. Aerith, he thought, was the same. Exactly the same as the view she admired so much, a masterpiece of creation that was on its last leg of survival. Finishing his drink in one go, he spoke to her.
"Do you want to go up there?" he asked on a sudden whim.
She gazed round at him in astonishment.
"What, now?"
He nodded and stood up, waiting for her expectantly.
"Well..." She smiled. "All right."
They climbed up to the Da-chao statues together, the darkness of night not hindering their way, for the moonlight was exceptionally bright, and the rocky paths that wound around the heads of the gods were well-defined in its soft glow. They journeyed right up to the top, and stopped on the great stone hand of the Leviathan. Below, the rooftops of the dwarfling pagodas seemed like they were made of match-sticks, and the firs resembled small bonsai. A gentle breeze wafted coolly at mountain height, sending the aroma of pine sailing past them.
Aerith looked down at the hand of the god they were standing on.
"How ingenious!" she cried.
"Yes," Cloud agreed. "This god is Leviathan, the water god, and Wutai's protector. He can take form of a water dragon."
"How do you know all this?" Aerith questioned, surprised and intrigued.
Cloud grinned and kicked a bit of stone over one of Leviathan's fingers. It skipped over the edge and out of sight.
"Yuffie told me after she made things up with her dad earlier on today. She's actually half decent when she not being a right royal pain in the arse."
"You're terrible!" Aerith rebuked him as she sat down, dangling her legs precariously off the edge of the hand. Cloud settled down next to her, and for a moment they said nothing to one another.
"It's funny," Cloud finally said reflectively, looking down on the diminutive village. There was not an ounce of fear in him at the height; only a silent respect. "The people here are so religious, so respectful of the spirits they worship. No one else cares. No one thinks about the Planet, or the Lifestream, or the Cetra. All they care about is money, and Mako, and trying to scrape a life out of the dirt the Shinra have left for them." He sighed. "But being in places like this... Like here and Cosmo Canyon, it kind of takes you away from all the misery of the slums and squalor of the villages. It's as if the Shinra and Mako didn't even exist."
Aerith didn't look at him, watching her legs swinging off the edge of Leviathan's stony fingers.
"I guess this is the kind of place we have to fight for," she murmured. The she raised her head to the stars, closed her eyes and said: "I never really knew, Cloud, you know. Practically all my life I spent in the Midgar slums. I couldn't even remember the place my mother and father brought me up in. I never really remembered the grass, or the sky, or the sun, or the moon." She paused, and opened her eyes again. "But finally being out here again, to finally see what the Cetra were striving to protect for so long... I don't regret beginning this journey Cloud, I really don't."
She turned and smiled at him, and despite himself a ghost of a smile played across his mouth.
"Me neither," he replied softly.
There was an awkward silence, and they gazed up at the canopy of glistening stars, shining like diamonds in a cloak of purple velvet.
"Cloud?" she suddenly began, out of the blue. Cloud looked at her, but she did not return the stare.
"What?" he answered into the silence. Aerith lowered her eyelids and fiddled with the loose strands of her hair.
"Do you...do you ever think about dying?"
At first Cloud was startled by the question. Then he gave a wry laugh.
"Are you serious? There's no way I'm gonna be thinking about death."
She seemed curious.
"Why not?"
Cloud looked away, not entirely taken with this new line of conversation.
"Death is the end, and I'll only take it when it comes," he finally returned. "Until then, I'm just going to concentrate on taking care of Sephiroth."
Aerith looked up at him with candid eyes.
"Are you... afraid of death?" she asked him softly. Cloud opened his mouth and then shut it again. It was a subject he'd never really thought about, never really wanted to think about. He didn't know why Aerith was choosing to speak about it at a time like this.
"I guess... I mean, who wouldn't be?" he replied pensively. "Truthfully, it's something I don't really want to think about."
Aerith nodded as though she understood completely.
"I'm not afraid of death. I think you learn to accept it's inevitably in the end. Ever since I started this journey with you and the others, I learnt this all the more so."
"Why's that?" Cloud asked curiously. She looked at him frankly.
"I think it's because being with you lot means that it's easier to die." She gave a little, humourless laugh. "But...it's more than that."
"Has it got something to do with your past?" Cloud questioned, almost instinctively. Aerith shook her head.
"I think it has more to do with my future, rather than my past," she answered soberly. Cloud mulled over the words for while, then shrugged his shoulders indifferently.
"I really don't see the point in all this philosophical stuff about death. As far as I can see, when you're dead, you're dead, and that's the end of it."
"Have you ever thought," Aerith continued reflectively, "that death is not the end at all, but simply a new beginning?"
Cloud paused to think. A slight breeze smoothed against his cheek placidly. He shook his head. Aerith folded her hands neatly, knotted them in and out.
"You heard what Bugenhagen said at Cosmo Canyon. That all life transfers to the Lifestream at the point of death. If the Lifestream is composed of the spirits of living things, then surely the Lifestream must be a living thing in itself." She stopped, and gazed up at the twinkling lights of the stars. "I always wonder," she said softly, "if the stars can hear us talking. If they can hear us now."
Cloud followed her gaze out on to the wide plain of the night sky. The moon was a perfect orb of illuminated light and the stars hung around it like tiny beacons. Was it possible, that the stars were alive like the Planet was? He was interrupted by her voice speaking again gently.
"There was a song my mother used to sing to me when I was little." she remembered softly "It was her way of reminding me of what I was, what I was destined to do and to become. She was determined that, even though I was the last, I should complete the journey. I remember the words well."
"What were they?" he asked quietly.
Her eyes remained downcast and she began to sing the words in a low, sweet voice, filling the words with an emotion Cloud could not detect, something like pride, mixed with pain.
"Hidden in the words of dreams,
Locked inside the future's seams;
Floating as if words on wind
Where the journey ends
And life begins:
Inside your breast beats love's gold wings
Inside the place where freedom sings
A freedom man must take in hand -
Sweet freedom - and the Promised Land."
She finished: and Cloud could almost hear the faraway voices, distant echoes from a world he could not find, repeating the words in resonant whispers. The Cetra. But it was only a dream, and he shook himself awake from it and inhaled a long breath.
"The words are beautiful," he told her quietly. "Somehow, it makes the dream for freedom real, attainable."
She was indignant.
"It's not just a dream! We'll find the Promised Land, and begin a real life where there'll be real freedom. I believe it." She stressed the last sentence. "In my heart, I truly believe it."
Cloud gazed out above him. The stars trembled like crystal gems suspended before him. In them he could almost see the dreams of the future, misty, blurred, distorted. Was it conceivable? That the Planet should live again, that there should be freedom? Was it?
"You'll have to teach me those words one day," he murmured to her, still staring into the indistinct visions in the sky. She seemed delighted to hear his request.
"Would you like that?"
He nodded and smiled at her, glad to have pleased her.
They spent the next few minutes talking idly, then they both decided they should go back to bed. They climbed wearily back down the mountain and into the village. After several drowsy goodnights, they parted ways to their own bedrooms. Cloud climbed the stairs to his room, and in his heart he was very confused. For the first time he realised that he had feelings for Aerith - indistinct feelings that had grown from the time that they had first journeyed from Cosmo Canyon to Mount Nibel. The feelings troubled him, because he hadn't allowed himself to feel for a long time. Feeling was an encumberment, something that took away from the zeal and determination to hunt down and destroy Sephiroth. He had never allowed himself to question their friendship, and yet now he found himself doing so. Why else would he get this feeling inside every time he saw her?
He lay in his bed, and for a long while he remained awake, staring up into the darkness, his mind haunted by the memory of those cold, aquamarine eyes. And then he remembered the song Aerith had taught him, and the words seemed to come to him from a very long distance, sweet and hazy. It was a lullaby as old and precious as time itself, and it was not long before Cloud had closed his eyes, and allowed it to sing him to sleep.
-oOo-
Next: The gang return to the Gold Saucer...