Disclaimer: SE owns the FFVII universe/characters. Until I destroy you all and ascend to godhood.
"I was hoping you could talk to her, Vincent."
The pallid man looked at Tifa blankly.
"It's been months and she-- well, she just isn't her old, cheery self at all."
"Her old, cheery self had secrets."
Tifa gave a soft snort of acknowledgment. "I know, I still can't believe she didn't tell us about Sephiroth, about how she felt about him."
"Would you have told, if it had been you?"
"I suppose not," she said, sounding as if she had trouble imagining herself in the situation. "I've tried to get through to her, and I thought we were really getting somewhere when you two agreed to come back to Midgar, but she's spent the whole time hiding in that old church with her death blossoms. She keeps saying she's fine, but that only makes me worry more. It isn't healthy, what she's doing to herself and,well, I'd just feel better if I knew someone else was keeping an eye on her."
"I have been watching her." She sleeps under his coat, cries suddenly and for no reason. "I will try to get her to come with me to the election celebration tonight."
Tifa tried to hide her surprise. She hadn't really expected him to come himself, let alone bring a date, but she only said, "Thanks, Vincent."
As she walked away, it occurred to her that the unlikely relationship made sense: heartbroken Vincent and heartbroken Aeris could find something like happiness together. And, though it clearly wasn't what Aeris wanted, Tifa thought Vincent made a far better choice than her silver-haired-- friend.
A figure in a gray hooded cloak approached the city of Midgar. Above him, sunset splashed the sky with purples, reds, and oranges and he moved silently, like a long, eventide shadow himself. He paused for a moment on a ridge outside the city, surveying it before he descended.
Midgar looked different.
Busier.
No guard stood at the city's entrance to check for travel passes. No one even raised an eyebrow at the enormous sword at his hip. The populace had certainly grown more-- colorful. In the street, two children played at sword fighting. That would have gotten both them and their parents watched by the secret police before the coup.
It seemed he had come on a particularly festive day. Brightly colored banners lined the walls, strings of lights stretched across the streets, and music poured from open windows. He passed more than one person who was clearly drunk, although the sun had not yet set. A poster announced the occasion: Midgar was holding its first elections.
A farce, Sephiroth knew. Sheep needed a shepherd. But it made them feel so terribly important if they thought they had a voice.
He paused when he found a poster with Marla's face on it. She was running for governor of Sector 6, and Rojel was listed as one of her supporters.
He smiled and shook his head.
"She would vote for Marla."
He pushed the irritating thought away.
The strange, leafy-sounding voice had plagued him off and on from the moment he woke, making him feel like he was forgetting something important.
Something about Aeris.
At first, the voice was indistinct, a whisper echoing down into the depths of his crater far in the North. He had ignored it. Then it changed tactics: assailing him with visions of her in trouble, until he needed to see that she was alright, that his sacrifice had not been in vain.
She must still be alive, though, because the voice rang out clearer than ever. He would have to be careful to keep her from seeing him. If all went well tonight, if he caught a glimpse of her and no one recognized him, perhaps he would allow himself to come again, visit her in her sleep like a dark, possessive angel.
No.
If she was to be free of him, she would need a barrier between them-- something as final as death was supposed to be. But even death had failed him: evidence that he was not part of the natural order, but rather, a disease and a curse, a piece of the disaster from the sky, the antithesis of everything she was. He dared not forget how close she had come to death because of him and, if his darker visions were to be believed, how he might yet destroy her.
The other turns of the Cycle were sometimes grim indeed. He had seen himself kill her a hundred times in fits of rage or jealousy, or worse-- cold cunning. He saw himself strike her or-- oddly enough-- use Cloud to strike her. And then there were the rapes . . .
It made him want to sleep forever-- seal himself away in the frozen darkness of the North-- where his kind first met hers. At times, he even dreamed of her-- sweet mirages that left him panting and gasping, hungering for her with a helpless desperation.
Then he would lie awake, missing his nightmares.
The shadows darkened, and the multicolored strings of lights cast their splotchy kaleidoscopes over the streets. He threaded his way through revelers, making his way toward the palace.
Would she still be there? Or would she be on the outskirts of the town, peddling flowers again?
No. Her friends had power now, and they would want her with them as an advisor. Who better to inform them of the ecological consequences of their actions?
But the palace was gone.
It looked as if it had collapsed in on itself, crumbling from the inside out. The entire structure had been destroyed from its very foundation.
Or from beneath its foundation.
The thought made him feel-- lighter. Shinra, Hojo, the Great General . . . all gone for good.
A new structure was already being built above the ruined stonework-- something far simpler and uglier. Soon, everything he had done here would be forgotten.
Well, almost everything.
Despite the bombs and the construction, a few princess bells dotted the grounds around the ruined palace.
He reached one long, pale hand down to pluck a stem of pink blossoms, and stood, considering it with glowing eyes. A fresh burst of music, louder than any he'd heard since arriving, distracted him, and he tucked the flower away and moved to get a better view.
He had not flown much since regenerating, and the skill came back to him slowly. He 'slipped' three times on his way up the metal skeleton of the new structure.
This was probably not the best time to relearn.
Even though the palace grounds were pleasantly deserted, and the structure left many convenient places to pause, there were also no lights on here, and when he lost control, he almost missed the handholds in the gathering dark.
The music had changed more than once by the time he stood astride the metal skeleton, gray cloak curling around him, sword straight at his side. He saw the cause of the noise now: a little outdoor dance floor constructed a few blocks away, bright with lights and dancing clothes, loud with celebration.
Then he saw her.
He took a step forward, and his hand went to his chest, the other reached for--
He stopped himself.
She's alright. She's fine.
That was all he had wanted to know, and he had been willing to risk discovery to find out. Her friends had not rejected her for sleeping with him. He did not have a clone who came to kill her. She survived the chaos of the coup.
She did not need him.
Just one last look, then.
He focused all his enhanced sight on her. She wore a white, summery dress with a blue floral pattern and she sat a little apart, looking like she wanted to be elsewhere.
Aeris, my Aeris, you look beautiful tonight. Just like you never had a murderer drag you into his embrace. I can go away now . . . and remember our night together.
But he stayed where he stood.
Let me see you smile once before I go. Let me know you're happy.Then she did smile.
At Vincent.
The Turk extended a gold claw out to her, and drew her out into the dance. Sephiroth's sharp green gaze followed them until the music changed to something slower, and he had to look away.
What did you expect? Did you think she would wait for you forever? This is what you wanted, wasn't it? To find her alive . . . and smiling.
But his knuckles were white on Masamune's hilt, and the festive lights blurred as his vision swam.
"And if she isn't? If she still craves your touch as you do hers?"
Then she wouldn't be dancing with the damned Turk.
But, she wasn't dancing with the Turk anymore. Vincent had handed her off to Barrett, and she was smiling up at the one-armed man now. He noticed that she kept some distance between herself and her dance partners.
Not the way we danced at all.
He breathed again-- realized he had not been breathing before.
"Rooftops are not as inconspicuous as one might hope. People may not look up often, but you're not invisible."
He recognized the voice, and did not turn.
"Not if you're wearing red," he replied.
He loosened Masamune in its scabbard, but did not draw it. Metal boots clanked on the concrete behind him.
He waited for the sound of a pistol being drawn, or a gun cocking, but none came. "You know about us, then?" Sephiroth said. It was half-challenge.
"If you mean you and Aeris, then yes, I know. She will be glad to see you."
"How is she?" He turned then, wanting to see the gunman's eyes as he answered.
"Ask her yourself. No one will sound an alarm if you come with me."
Sephiroth tightened his lips and looked away.
"I will bring her to you, then."
"I came to see her, not to have her see me." His voice was fierce. "Now how is she?"
I'll have the truth, even if it is from you.
Vincent paused a moment before answering. "She is as well as can be expected, believing that the man she loves is dead. Dead without ever telling her he returned her feelings for him."
The silver-haired man frowned into the darkness beneath him.
Her words came back to him:
"Sephiroth, let me! Let me! Let me love you!"
"You are to help her forget-- and it seems you're doing very well."
"She would rather remember," Vincent said. "Go to her. If you told her you wanted her, she would never leave you."
"Then it's a good thing I never told her!" Sephiroth snapped over his shoulder, tilting his head so his hair hid his face. "You can't possibly understand. I know what I am-- and I know what she is."
For every vision I see of us together, I see another-- dark twin to the first . . . And I have the proof of my inhumanity in this new flesh.
"It is better for everyone this way," Sephiroth added. "She will forget me, in time."
"If you believe that, you are either a fool-- or you don't know her nearly as well as you pretend."
Sephiroth whirled on him.
"I came here for one reason: to see if she is happy. I find her smiling, dancing--"
"She is not well, Sephiroth. She sleeps clinging to your coat. She cries at nothing, at everything. She wakes up calling for you in the night, and refuses to tell anyone what she's dreamed. She spends her days tending the flowers you gave her as if they were part of you. She is burying herself alive."
The general absorbed this in silence, looking back down at the Cetra and seeing-- for the first time-- the way her white-blue dress hung off her thin frame, the dark circles under her eyes.
Aeris . . . Aeris, no. I told you to move on. I told you to--
A gold claw caught him by the shoulder.
"You would let her live like this?"
"Better she live like this than die at my hands!" Pain and anger sharpened his words, and he spoke louder than he meant to.
Their eyes met, and Vincent's black brows relaxed into something like pity.
"So it is your guilt that keeps you away. You're so much like her."
"I am not like Aeris."
"I meant your mother."
Sephiroth glared and jerked his arm free. "You know nothing about me," he spat.
"Perhaps not," Vincent said, "But I did know Lucrecia. She let her guilt drive her away from me, drive her to a man she did not love. All because she could not recognize her own feelings, and did not dare reach for them when she did. And you-- will you bind yourself to the isolation you hate, rather than risk going to her?"
He did not want to listen, hated Vincent for making sense. But suddenly, looking was not enough.
He had to touch her again, had to make her stop worrying about him, even if all he had to offer her was more pain, even if seeing her destroyed him.
Vincent seemed to misread his long silence, though, and he said: "At least let her know you're alive. That is all I have, and some days, it is enough."
"Fine, then," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I'll go."
This must be why the Planet would not let me rest. She must protect the last of her children, and it is my duty to protect Aeris too, and keep this madness from killing her.
I will see her.
Only I can make her stop wanting me.