Tifa's head was no longer swimming.
She didn't know if they had taken her off the sedatives or if she had simply grown resistant to them. Either way the syrupy haze retreated and left her fully conscious in an endless parade of scalpels and needles.
She focused on planning to distract herself. This didn't matter. It couldn't matter, she still had a planet to save, she told herself during the worst of it. Gaia was at stake, she could suffer this just a little longer. She tried to make plans with Zack, but he made such a fuss trying to get out that they eventually kept him unconscious at all times. Cloud hadn't even woken from his initial injuries yet. She lay limp and put up no resistance in the hopes her captors would grow lazy.
They snapped her into SOLDIER grade bindings and ignored her.
She lay awake in her little tank, empty of anything but air, and tried to recall security codes and anything Yuffie had said about lockpicks. She didn't have any tools to work with, not even a stray hairpin. She waited for her muscles to get stronger and the SOLDIER grade bindings to become a necessity. They never did. Hojo's words, 'asymptomatic carrier' passed through her head like a taunt.
With her eyes screwed shut and her limbs clamped down she listened for the changing of guards. Footsteps thudded against the hard floor and a lab tech entered the room. She cracked an eye open. No, it was two techs, she'd only heard the one. She strained her head against the bindings to look at him. He had skipped breakfast and was impatient for his shift to be over.
How did she know that?
He left to get something and she felt him wander out of the lab, down the corridor and into a storage room. There he leaned against a wall and pulled out a muesli bar from his pocket.
She couldn't know that.
She narrowed her eyes at Hojo, who was happily muttering to himself over some of her marrow samples. Who else had he injected with Jenova cells on the sly? She couldn't feel him so presumably not himself yet. One of the guards upstairs, she could feel him growing bored guarding a door.
Was this how Cloud felt all the time?
Not a second after she thought it, she felt Cloud. Floating in a tank out of her line of sight, he was exhausted and convinced he was dreaming, slowly losing himself to Mako addiction. And Zack next to him: sedated, angry, and humiliated.
Beyond them, a similar point of anger stewed in Mako. Her brow furrowed. Was that Vincent? He should have been in his coffin already. She reached out, casting her awareness in a way she couldn't describe, following a shiny little thread to the other presence. She brushed against it.
'Welcome, Tifa.'
She yelped. Sephiroth's mind seized upon her, but she retreated, slamming back into her own head.
The cold eyes inside of her watched on. It felt like they raised an eyebrow at her.
'Get out of my head,' she seethed. How could she have been so stupid? Of course it was him.
'You came to me,' he replied, pensive. 'Bringing my Mother's gifts.'
Hojo swung around to her, rolling a tray of instruments. She tried to throw Sephiroth out of her head. It felt like it worked, but that glowing thread was still there, a direct line between them. She tried to sever it, tear it out. Her head started to ache.
Hojo got to work.
She could feel Sephiroth testing the walls of her mind, poking and prodding, exploring the limitations of the connection. Hindsight was her only advantage, if he got into her mind then she would have no chance.
A whimper broke from her lips at the cold touch of a scalpel.
'You gave up a world for this,' Sephiroth's baritone whispered inside her.
She clenched her teeth. She wouldn't cry out again. 'Jenova gave up nothing for you, but gave your life for her.'
He scoffed. For a moment the presence laying siege to her mind drew back and opened up, just a little, and she saw that there was no creature called Jenova, not anymore. Its consciousness had dissolved into him while he sank through the lifestream, as surely as she would, as the whole Planet would if she didn't stop him. Then there would only be Sephiroth.
'She has given me everything.'
'Funny,' she said, refusing to be cowed. 'Hojo said almost the exact same thing to me. They're so similar, don't you think?'
Rage spiked down the line and she felt better for it. It was petty and she probably ought to have been above it. She thought of a body she had stumbled over in Nibelheim's ashes, wearing her father's old clothes and a face she had forgotten. She wasn't above anything anymore.
'Your father is so proud of you,' she said snidely.
He pulled viciously on the line. She choked. It wrapped around her mind and threatened to topple her, to dislodge her from herself.
"Re...union," she gasped, before clamping her jaw shut.
"Eh?" Hojo said, looking up from unbuckling her from the gurney.
No. No. She wouldn't fall, she refused to. He pulled harder. She stood strong. The strain grew. She could feel the line tightening around her, but refused to bow to it.
She grabbed the threads and pulled right back.
There was no give at all from the other end.
Zack and Cloud looked up at her from their tanks.
Neither had been awake a moment earlier. She felt them staring at her and understood. Hojo looked between her and them with a squint.
He had unlocked her arm already. It sat limp on the gurney, next to the tray of tools.
She picked up a scalpel and plunged it into his neck. He jerked back with a cry. Blood streamed down his shoulder and chest, streaking red on his white lab coat. He choked on blood, a hand scrabbling at the damage.
He lunged for the cupboard where the Cure materia was kept.
"Zack!" She pulled on the glowing mental threads as hard as she could.
Glass and Mako exploded and Zack landed on his feet, his arms cut and lacerated. His bright blue eyes stared around frantically, as surprised as anyone at his sudden escape. He saw Hojo and his eyes narrowed.
Hojo didn't make it to the cupboard.
There was something frantic and fraying in Zack's eyes when he looked back at her and Cloud. He dragged a bloody hand through his hair.
"Unlock me," Tifa said.
He nodded. "Right. Yeah. Of course."
She left him to get Cloud out of his tank and went to go wake up Vincent. The vertigo of standing up and walking around played with her mind as she re-lived pushing the coffin lid off and staring into groggy red eyes.
He didn't especially want to be woken, and without an immediate threat from Lucrezia's son he didn't want to go with her either. It took the attack of the guards and a stream of bullets destroying the coffin to get him moving.
He followed her, Zack, and a comatose Cloud up the stairs, through anyone who got in their way, and out into the blinding daylight.
The wind howled over the rooftops of the rebuilt Nibelheim.
Tifa stepped over the threshold, and the morning sun stung her eyes. Barely closed wounds running down her abdomen ached. Her old clothes hung limp off of her frame. Her hand shook. She was trapped in the past and it hurt so much. Everything hurt, but there was no going back. Even turning back time wouldn't take it back.
She leaned heavily against the stone wall, screwed her eyes up tight, and tried not to cry. There was only the way forward.
"But Sephiroth burned it down!" Zack was saying, holding Cloud up in a fireman's carry. "How long has it been?"
"Sephiroth?" Vincent repeated.
"It's been a year," she rasped. She had checked Hojo's calendar.
One year down. That left her three to get everything into position before Sephiroth escaped the Lifestream at the Northern crater.
"I'm Zack. And this is Cloud."
"...Vincent."
She sucked in a hiccupping breath, and pulled herself back together. She nodded at them and forced a smile.
"I'm Tifa."
Zack's own forced smile faltered . "I... I think I knew your daughter. Old family name?"
"Oh." She blinked. She'd had a cover, she'd planned it all out. No good now."Yes. She led you up the mountain."
He squeezed her shoulder lightly. "I'm so sorry. She was a good kid."
She nodded, stiff and unsure. Was she really so different from her younger self? Vincent looked at her with sympathy she didn't want.
"What do you intend to do now?" he asked. His voice was hoarse and rattling from his long silence.
Zack shook his head. "I don't know."
"The Turks will be after us as soon as they realise what's happened," she said. "We should go over the mountains, they'll search the roads first."
She looked up at the mountain's silhouette. It was early in the day, they could cross the saddle and be on the western side before nightfall. Or she could take them through the cave systems.
"That will not be enough to throw the Turks off your tail," Vincent said. "Nor do you have any supplies."
"We'll make do," Zack replied, nodding pointedly at the town.
Vincent shook his head and turned back into the Mansion. "You'll find better in here, and it will give your enemies less to work with."
Zack followed him back in. She had to swallow a scream but she forced herself back in after them.
They stitched up their wounds properly, ransacked all the stores, and then scrubbed the place clean to disguise their actions, all on Vincent's orders. He had snapped into Turk mode, in a way he simply hadn't last time. He didn't ask any more questions about them, neither did he make any move to include himself in the little group. Zack kept up a running commentary to Cloud as he worked, joking with splintering desperation.
It receded into background noise for Tifa and she settled into the motions of work. She had done this a million times before, preparing for a journey, a battle, an apocalypse. Vincent retreated closer and closer towards the basement stairs so she gave him a backpack and told him to go keep watch outside. Zack asked her what to do next.
She looked around, nodded to herself, and led them out to face the world.
They conquered the first rise of the mountain with a burst of energy and unwarranted optimism. Zack spoke about the strength of SOLDIERs with enthusiasm utterly at odds with the situation. The sun sank in the sky and a Shinra helicopter landed in the town below.
The reality of their situation caught up with them. Tifa's legs were collapsing out from under her. She could hear Vincent's haggard breaths, and Zack was slowly sinking lower and lower with Cloud on his shoulders.
"We should… make camp," Zack, gulping in air. "The Turks… won't find us... tonight."
"Just a little further," she replied. Damn Hojo, she could have scaled the whole mountain in a day before this. She gritted her teeth and forced them on.
The sky glowed a stunning red by the time they reached it: the yawning mouth of the cave system that ran through the spine of the mountain range.
They collapsed a hundred meters in and curled up with no fire. Her body ached and her mind did too. She stretched out over hard ground, propping her head up on her arm. It was so familiar it was almost comforting.
She woke to whispers.
Vincent's baritone rumbled through the fog of her slumber. It sounded like safety, but her brow furrowed. She clung to the havens of sleep, but why… how could she be hearing Vincent? Hadn't he died keeping Sephiroth from the time travel magic?
Oh.
Zack's stage whisper replied. Ghosts talking to ghosts.
She opened her eyes. The dim light of the cave systems hadn't changed, but it felt as though it had been some time. Vincent had taken the first watch with Zack volunteering for second.
They were behind her, all she could see was the craggy wall.
"Where are you gonna go?" Zack asked.
There was the characteristic pause of Vincent considering his answer. She could hear the zips on Zack's boot jingling as he bounced his leg.
"I do not know. I should find what became of Lucrecia."
"Not to kick you while you're down, but it's been a long time, man. I don't know if your girl would have waited."
"She's isn't... she's Sephiroth's mother."
"...huh. Not Jenova?" Zack asked, his voice grim. "Would have been nice to know that a year ago."
She held her breath in the heavy silence that followed. The strings around her mind stirred. She held them down.
"I will leave you when we reach Rocket town," Vincent said after some time. He sounded resolute. Her mind raced. She needed him. "Where will you go?"
"Cloud and I are going to Midgar. I've got a beauty waiting for me."
"It has been a year."
"Yeah, well, even if she didn't wait, I've gotta see her. Rude to just skip out on someone, you know?" Zack laughed and she thought he might have been ruffling Cloud's hair. "Where else am I gonna go, huh?"
She couldn't do it alone. There was a good chance it would come down to a fight and she wasn't enhanced. She couldn't compete with Sephiroth on a physical level, not in the slightest. Maybe she could convince Zack to leave Cloud with her, but the experiment didn't run its course. He might not reach the heights he once did.
She needed them both.
But there was no Sephiroth to chase. In moving so soon she had removed the apparent urgency. She didn't even have Barret to inspire them with the plight of the planet. She wasn't a leader, she didn't inspire people.
She could tell them the truth. She doubted it would serve as anything more than a distraction and a reason to doubt her. On its own would an invisible threat as seen by a time traveler they didn't trust be enough to commit? To give everything for the cause? If they came at Sephiroth with anything less they would lose.
No. Their reasons had to be their own.
She yawned and stretched her arms out.
"Morning! Sort of."
"We should start moving soon," Vincent said, holding out a hand to her.
She let him pull her up.
She didn't know Zack well, she had no idea what might inspire him. Maybe he would come if Aerith and Cloud did.
Vincent… was a simpler case.
It would be manipulative of her. It was for the good of the Planet.
They moved quickly through the caves. They kept their torches low in the dark and left as little a trail as possible. At any moment they expected the Turks to catch up to them. Tifa strained her ears for the tap tap tap of their expensive shoes on stone.
No one jumped out at them. Very few monsters did too, to her increasing unease.
"Maybe a mercenary cleared this area out recently?" Zack suggested.
She shook her head, mercenaries didn't come this way, nobody would pay for the work of the monster pelts. They passed nests that looked recently occupied. Water dripped from stalactites and bats rustled on the ceiling, hidden in the dark. A cold draught moved through the caves.
She thought she heard something, like something soft hitting stone. She turned back, swinging her torch around. Shadows danced and stretched away. The path back was empty. Unless whoever was on their tail had hidden behind the craggy walls.
They would have to be able to see in the dark to do that.
She shook her head at herself. She had been doing this too long to be jumping at shadows.
She swung back to the path ahead.
A pale face flashed in the light of her torch.
"Ah!" She leapt back.
"Re..un...ion…"
Vincent's gun rose and the Buster sword caught the light.
"Stop! Don't attack," she called.
The figure, a tall man wrapped in a thick black rain jacket stumbled towards her, then stopped and swayed backwards. His head rolled on his neck and his arms hung limp at his side.
"Must…become…" he rasped, "One."
His eyes looked like green but then Zack shone his torch on them too and they were just brown. His Hair was limp ratty blond, stuffed into the collar of the black coat.
She swallowed. She hadn't expected to see a clone so soon.
She looked between Zack and Vincent. Would they connect the dots? "He kind of looks like-"
"No, he doesn't," Zack cut her off. "Hey. Are you alright, pal?"
The man mumbled something.
"Where did you come from?" Vincent asked sternly.
He didn't reply. His eyes were unfocused, fully dilated but not flinching from the direct light of the torches. Maybe they were green. It was hard to tell.
She stepped away from him. "We should leave him."
"He might alert the Turks to our presence."
"I don't think he even knows we're here," Zack said. He swung his sword back to its place and picked Cloud up again. "We have to keep going. Good luck pal."
Grudgingly they went around the man, moving the light back to the pathway and leaving him in the dark.
She couldn't hear his footsteps. Maybe he just hadn't moved.
"...Sephiroth..." he murmured behind them.
A shiver went up her spine. Zack's footsteps faltered.
The presence at the walls of her mind said nothing.
"Come on," she said, plunging ahead.
They made camp once more and got as much sleep as they dared. They didn't see any more people muttering in black capes, but she heard soft footfalls from time to time. She hoped it was monsters.
Vincent was starting to question the wisdom of taking this route when light broke at the end of the tunnel. After the long walk in the dark it looked blinding, and the sound of rushing water deafening.
They stepped out into the dim light of a night about to end. A waterfall cascaded down from the mountaintops high above, pooling in an icy cold lagoon. The water shimmered in the light of the crescent moon.
Zack collapsed at the side of the water, sighing in relief. He lay Cloud down on the spiky grass and sprawled next to him with his hands behind his head.
Vincent stood on the water's edge and stared moodily up at the moon.
She looked to the hidden entrance to the chamber behind the waterfall. She wasn't very good at this.
"Hey, what's that?" she said and plunged in.
Vincent and Zack grudgingly followed.
Lucrecia stood preserved within her Mako crystal, tragic and immortal. She asked after her son.
Tifa hung back and let Vincent face her. It felt like an ethereal dream in the half light, haunted by the glow of the jagged Mako crystals, and a warped version of a conversation Tifa had watched play out years ago.
"Where is my son, Vincent?" the woman asked, her voice echoing endlessly through the stone chamber. "What happened to Sephiroth?"
The name repeated around the room, fraying into reverent whispers. Little choruses that seemed to die out only to find new life echoing in little nooks and crannies.
"He's dead," Vincent said, his voice like a gavel.
"No," Lucrecia wept, "Sephiroth, my Sephiroth."
The echoes cried with her, higher, lower, a chorus that built and built. Tifa skin crawled. The presence at her mind's edge withdrew.
"Sephiroth, Sephiroth, Sephiroth," the chamber echoed.
"Reunion," a voice said at her back.
Tifa ducked. A hand passed over her head. She spun and threw a booted foot out. The tall, empty-eyed clone stumbled back. His blond hair had turned silver in the night.
"Seph… iroth," he called, his voice gravelly. The echoes picked back up, new voices joining the chorus.
Hunched figures in black capes loped in through the entrance.
The tall clone lunged for her.
Lucrecia wailed. "My son, I'm so sorry."
The crack of Vincent's gun joined the echo, as did Zack's battlecry. She'd never seen them attack before, hadn't thought they could.
She ducked and dodged as the clone grabbed at her. She flipped back, her boot catching under the chin. He stumbled back up, his head lolling around and blood streaming from his mouth. They fought with no sense of self preservation, desperately reaching, grabbing, and tearing. One caught a fistful of Zack's hair and yanked it clean out.
There were dozens of them. Vincent was fighting off a transformation, but the least number of attackers. Tifa found herself backed into a corner, and saw Zack was the same on the other side of the chamber, torn between cutting them down and desperately protecting Cloud.
Red stained the floor of the crystal chamber. Lucrecia wept.
Tifa felt the glowing threads around her mind tighten, but no presence at her door. She fought viciously, kicking the clones back.
Lucrecia's wail cut off suddenly, and the glowing threads fell slack. She slumped in the crystal.
The threads tightened around Tifa's mind again, and Sephiroth's presence assailed the walls of her mind. The eyes of the clone in front of her turned green. He grew taller, stronger. She hissed and leapt forward, snapping his neck with a kick.
'Behind you.'
She swung around- to nothing.
The three behind her struck and she staggered forward, cursing. The threads in her mind drew tighter and tighter, strangling her. A clone threw her to the ground and raised a booted foot. She reached, grabbed up the threads and pulled.
The clones lurched. She leapt up, still pulling, and threw her fist into its throat. The little thread leading to it came loose and snapped into her before she could stop. The clone died in her hands. She knew what had happened, what it meant.
The presence in her mind hesitated. She didn't. The glowing threads made more sense to her all of a sudden, it wasn't just a connection, there were words in it, subharmonic orders to find Jenova's cells.
She screamed STOP down the line.
The remaining clones around the room stopped moving. Zack cut them down. Six little strings in her mind fell loose and wound back into her.
Vincent panted, his body straining against its own shape. He probably didn't realise what was happening to himself.
"Lucrecia?" he forced out.
The woman hung grey and empty in the crystal. She looked like she had been dead for decades, even her floating white clothes now moth eaten grave clothes.
"Sephiroth did this," Tifa said.
Vincent finished transforming into Galian beast. He howled in despair at the foot of the crystal. Tifa heard it for the vow for revenge that it was.
Zack looked around the blood splattered room, silver and black strewn over Mako crystals. He hung his head.
She left them to mourn and pull themselves back together.
Outside the sun had risen, and burned down on her without mercy. She washed the blood from her face and hands, and looked out across the water, her chin held high. She had taken advantage of both Zack and Vincent and compromised her own humanity, but that was a small price to pay for the planet's future. She was one step closer to defeating Sephiroth, and now she knew she could.
The presence in her head was brooding.
She thought back on that cheap shot he had taken during the fight.
'Stop invading my head,' she threw out. Now that she could understand the mechanisms binding her own mind she was less threatened by his presence. He was still firmly on the outside, pulling on strings she could manipulate from the other end.
'You are the invader here,' he replied. 'This is neither your time, nor your place. It is mine by right.'
She shrugged, and started to climb the nearby ridge to check the surroundings. 'You've decided you're an alien. Nothing here is your right.'
'Then we are both strangers in a foreign land, and you have no grounds upon which to oppose me.'
'You burned my home. I have every reason.'
'You burned my Mother,' he said, his voice low and furious.
She paused halfway up. Was that the difference, no Jenova specimen for him to draw from? She smiled and kept walking.
'I hope it hurt.'
'You tell me.'
Flames ignited in her veins. She gasped. Her insides burned, splintering her bones, melting the marrow, cutting her off from a thousand pinpoints of connection, her children screaming for her. A rush of panic bowled her over and she fell to her knees. She gritted her teeth and slammed her walls back up.
She wasn't on fire. She wasn't Jenova. She wasn't. The sensation retreated. She panted, blinking through spots in her vision.
'You cannot deny what you have become, however unworthy you are of her legacy.'
She clenched her jaw and pulled herself back up.
'It doesn't matter. I'm not your puppet and I'm not attending your reunion.'
'Oh? Perhaps you wish to stand at my side instead. Abandon your quest and I will welcome you,' he offered, with a lie so bald faced she was insulted at it.
He laughed.
'No, you won't.'
'No. I won't. Neither will humanity, and neither will Gaia,' his voice slithered through her. 'This planet hates you as much as it does me.'
She didn't know if it was true. She waited for the sting of self-doubt, the hesitation and regret, the hum of anxiety. It never came.
She reached the top of the ridge, snow and rock crunching under her boots. The mountains stretched out in every direction, rugged and towering.
She realised that she didn't care if the Planet hated her. She had once. She regretted that loss more than she did the Planet's disdain. Gaia had never much cared anyway. A freezing wind howled over the ridge and lifted her hair. Inside of her Sephiroth watched, silent and malicious.
She looked out across the land, reactor studded and dying.
'I'm not fighting because I love Gaia.' She breathed deeply in the cold air. 'I'm fighting because I hate you.'
She was a little ashamed of herself for it. But not very much.
Sephiroth felt amused.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews and concrit are welcome.
Next Time: Midgar