The sun rose low over a granulated beach, where Cloud stood at the edge of the rocks they'd crawled ashore on with a long gaze.
"It's strange, mourning a guy who once held a gun to your head. But I think I get it, now that it's too late. It was his fucked up way of motivating me. I never would have gotten anything done, just stayed in the basement and let my sanity slip away. He kept me busy so I wouldn't fall into the streets, get hooked on drugs or whatever. Always had me dealing so I was never using. Always kept on me. Never let me fall."
Cloud sighed hard at the ground. The memories played in monochrome on his mind's big screen. Cloud shook his head at them all.
"I don't know why he did that."
Tifa went to stand next to him with a long sigh of her own.
"It's a guy thing."
Red nuzzled up to Cloud's leg with a little whine.
"Well buddy, looks like it's just you and me left in that department."
He put a big hand over Red's face, and the dog's tongue lolled out in response. Cloud fingered a few little bullets in his palm, and tossed them into the sea.
Aerith rode on her white chocobo through the dense underbrush that her bird's sharp beak snapped right through, clearing a path, while Cloud and everyone else trudged along behind.
Their comrade's death still lied heavy on their hearts. Cloud in particular found himself snappy to high hell. As he waded ankle deep in forest mulch that said fuck his socks, he couldn't put his finger on why he was so angry, until it hit him. He was actually annoyed with her. There she was, up on her high horse above the rest of the little people down here, like some famous empress who got herself beheaded once in history. That heavenly air about her got old real fast in this humidity, while Tifa caught his arm to keep him from stumbling.
"How much farther?" he called ahead to someone who wouldn't wait up for them.
"Not far," Aerith called back. "I can feel the planet's energy. We are very close."
Upon that revelation, Yulan stopped.
"Here is where I leave you all. I can go no further."
"Huh?" the party turned.
"Wutai's sacred mission for generations was to protect the Ancient Ones. Now that she is home, she doesn't need me anymore."
"Yuffie, that's not true. We always need you. You're our friend." Aerith got off her chocobo and went up to her with a big smile, the sisterly warmth she'd always showered everyone from the far away Slums of Midgar exuding from her brilliant being. The White Mage of Sector 5 was an illuminating light for people to look up to, and young girls like Yulan to aspire to.
But now, the little street ninja stood firm and grown at the head of their party who had come so far together, and a shadow cast over the group. So much wisdom exuded from such a young child. Her mind was made up.
But Red shuffled forward, whining and panicked. Yulan stroked his muzzled.
"Don't worry. I'm in the next story anyway."
One last look at her party who had been through so much together, and the little street ninja dashed off, vanishing into the trees.
Everyone stood for a moment in disbelief. Their party had gone through Hell in the past twenty four hours, and now they'd lost one more member. There was nothing else to be done, so they pushed on in silence.
In a little under an hour, the trees gave way and they came upon structures like marble and wood. Small stone and lumber dwellings lay abandoned and quiet in thickets of flowers and moss. Ivy vines wove their way in between pillars like spiders webs blocking the way through, but metal railings and log steps remained from when National Geographic had done a documentary about the place. All of it was hallowed in unearthly light, beads of white sun peeking through the canopy that shielded the village from all detection by airship.
Modern structures appeared. An Inn sat in need of a reshingled roof next to an unsacred cantina and machinery shop, mementos from when workers had lived in this place. Leave it to Shinra to desecrate holy sites and ancient burial grounds.
The party halted at a road sign that showed the way to the Reactor. Cloud stood with a quiet resolve in his soul.
"Jenova's Heart lies ahead, but I think we all need a minute."
"I'll be in the church," said Aerith. "I'm not ready to face my sacred ancestors at the Temple yet. I need somewhere more familiar to pray."
And she flowed off in a somber melancholy toward the abandoned cathedral. Like a nightshade on a moonless eve, her heaviness permeated all. Tifa touched Cloud's arm.
"We should go to the Inn and rest up."
But Cloud shook his head. "I have my own praying to do."
A long moment passed before she turned away, going on her own to the Inn. She didn't protest Cloud, no longer displayed concern for his wellbeing. She was learning to be alone in the harsh reality of acceptance, an unrequited existence.
Cloud watched her go like that, and she looked so small. He'd always thought of Tifa as the strongest person he knew, now reduced to no more than a young girl all alone. Her shoulders slumped like an old woman carrying the weight of the world, thankless, thoughtless, meaningless, and Cloud felt a sudden pang erupt in his heart, pushed away just as swiftly like a forgotten thought. He pursed his lips, and started off on his own.
He took a stroll around the ghost town. He knew where he was going, but he also knew that he had all the time in the world to get there and he wanted to use every second of it to level-up his weapon stats, arrange his Materia slots, and organize his healing items for maximum efficiency. Where he was headed, there might be blood.
The Wellspring hovel lay at the East end of the village, erected in a cobblestone dome with a sun-facing arabesque. With firm resolve, Cloud entered the hovel that was fashioned exactly as the last, crystalline waters wafting a soft aura off the walls and floor.
He went to stand in the pool, soul hard and battle-ready. This time, Cloud had his sword.
"Come to me, you demon. Let's end this here and now."
The penumbra appeared, like clockwork. The indigo tresses of Chaos seeped into the pyre, filling the Wellspring with dark mist. Sephiroth walked through the smoke at a quickened pace like he'd always been walking.
"Why do you fight me, Cloud? Are you and I really so different?"
"You're a killer," Cloud growled. But Sephiroth flipped his hand in a theatric flourish, waving him off.
Cloud took a cautious step out of the water, daring, pressing ground but knowing all hell could break loose at any moment.
"You killed all those SOLDIER's at HQ, you killed President Shinra, you killed Barret…"
"Is there anyone else you'd like to add to my ever-growing list of the deceased?"
"You killed Aerith's boyfriend in Nibelheim. I know he was with us."
"HAHAHA," Sephiroth's haunted laughter echoed in the chamber. "Do you even remember Nibelheim? What happened there?"
"Tell me what happened!" Cloud yelled. "Tell me why!"
"See, Cloud. See the truth, at last."
Flames, the familiar heat of the helicopter wreckage, the forested landscape they hiked through on their way to Nibelheim, all blended together in snippets of cinematic montage.
"How does it feel to be going home after all this time?" Sephiroth's warm countenance spoke in that fatherly air of a protective veil to Cloud, who walked at his side in step.
"Probably the same way it feels when you go home—"
But the image of Cloud began to shift, to change, fragmenting away in dust particles to reveal a tall, broad-shouldered young man with hair like a dark faux-hawk, one lone strand falling over his shining Mako-eyes.
"Don't worry. I've got your back, Private."
His voice, like echoing reverb at first, clarified to a clear up-beat tone that felt so familiar. He smiled like the cool older brother who'd want to play basketball after school.
Smoke and reminiscence took the vision to the entrance of Nibelheim as a young girl bopped up to them with ravenhair.
"I'm Tifa. Nobody's a better guide than me in this town."
A pan around to the young man, who wore a SOLDIER First Class uniform.
"…But you're a kid."
Fade out to a mutated monster harassing the party on patrol in the forest, and the shining sheen of a huge Buster Sword in the young man's hand putting it out of its misery in one fell swoop. The sun gleaned off his aura like he was the world's hero.
"Use brings about wear, tear and rust…so I usually just hit with the blunt side."
The form of Sephiroth materialized beside him, fading in to where he'd stood next to him in the forest, instructing.
"It is a shame to die with a weapon yet undrawn…Zack."
The world rushed in on where Cloud stood in hammerspace, breaking dimensions as he watched from inside his own dream. The air froze in his lungs as he saw visions of throwing a football, skateboarding, and the bright smile of this dark haired young man in a SOLDIER's uniform.
"Zack?" Cloud whispered the name, and it flew so naturally from his tongue.
"Zack," he said it again, and the darkness of hammerspace where Cloud stood grew larger, reaching out to swallow the young man where he stood.
"ZACK!" Cloud reached for him, leaping for him, but the vision shattered to shards of glass, throwing Cloud into a whirling rush up a mountain, through haunted forests, and to the inside of a dark Reactor.
Sephiroth's voice shook as he stood in mottled terror inside the facility.
"Shinra was mapping the genes of a demon onto SOLDIER's."
Pan around like a rollercoaster. It was Zack who stood in awe facing Sephiroth.
"So what does that make you?"
And hammerspace imploded. If it wasn't Cloud in the Reactor…
The vision was pulled inside out like a uniform shirt, to the outside of the steps where a lone infantryman guarded the door. He lifted his eyes from under his helmet to reveal…
…The blonde boy from the brothel. It was Cloud!
A crashing rush ripped the vision through psychedelic tunnels of unconsciousness, algorithms of light flowing in lattices of logic and color, to where scientists stood before cryotanks suspending two young men—one with black hair, one with blonde.
"The nerve cord transplant was successful," the mercurial voice of a labcoat with a ponytail spoke as if through water. The arthritic hands of Dr. Hojo pressed dials on a control pad that sent fulminating electric shocks through the cryotanks.
But they escaped—or were set free. Zack trudged up the hills away from Nibelheim with a barely conscious Cloud's arm over his shoulder. And they walked, through dense forests, through desolate wastelands, always one step ahead of a patrol who knew exactly where they were. However long they fled was out of consciousness, and how long they had been in quarantine was unknowable, but one way or another, by the time they finally reached Midgar, four whole years had elapsed.
And still the army was waiting for them.
Zack and Cloud ran through lowcity pursued by the entire force of the Infantry, blaring searchlights from attack choppers scanning the terrain for them in wild sweeps. Zack shoved Cloud down as a hail of bullets rained upon them, the phenomenal Buster Sword whirling to shield them temporarily. Cloud looked up and saw the shining heroic figure of Zack protecting him from the fray, standing strong against the entire world.
But even his boundless energy could only last so long. A bullet slipped through, and then another. Scattered rounds ripped past his defense, potmarking his chest and torso in an iron rain. His body lurched as slugs punched straight through entry and exit wounds clean and deadly.
Cloud ran to catch him as he fell in a mighty thud, screaming.
"Ahhhh It hurts! Oh God it hurts!"
Zack thrashed in spasms as Cloud grabbed him. Blood spurted from severed arteries all up his chest. Clouds arms were covered red as he ripped his first aid kit out of his back pocket with one hand, the other in a deathgrip on Zack's sword strap holding him down for dear life. He shoved packing and gauze bits everywhere he could that a screaming thrashing bigger man couldn't hold still enough to bandage.
"Make it stop! Please Make it stop! Please!"
"I can't."
"Cloud, please!"
Zack grabbed the barrel of Cloud's rifle.
"No!" Cloud freaked.
"PLEASE!"
Cloud threw himself on top of Zack, crushing him with all he was in life. Zack's screams rang in Cloud's ears as blood poured over them both in geysers. Anyone who has ever seen someone shot knows when it's too late.
"Don't let me suffer! If you love me, you'll do it! Please!"
"NOOOO!"
Cloud leapt back, slung his gun sight up, and shot his best friend in the head.
And silence.
A stillness hung in the air, that seemed to freeze the entire world. Nothing stirred, save the lone echo of a bullet ringing through the decrepit alleys and blown-out warehouses.
The entire Shinra Army stood statuesque and cold, phantoms in a sick pantomime. Quiet and surreal, they about-faced, fading back into the dusts of lowcity. Mission complete.
Cloud fell on top of Zack crying in great convulsing sobs. He grabbed and crushed him close to his body, clawing at his sword harness for all that was dear. But Zack's chest no longer rose, no longer responded to the shaking form on top of him. Now Cloud screamed as loud as Zack had, but there was no one to end his pain.
How long did he lay there on his friend? Hours? Days? Cloud stared off a thousand miles into nowhere soaked in blood and tears, the whole world blurry and formless. But one thing stood out against the static. The Buster Sword. It lay there loose in Zack's hand, waiting calm like a sentinel. Cloud stared at it for who knows how long, and the sword seemed to stare back.
"I'm going to live…for both of us."
And Cloud reached out, taking the sword from Zack's hand.
He lifted it with monumental effort, hoisting it over his shoulder. Carrying it like a cross, he dragged it into the abyss of the rest of his life.
"What a sad story. All this time, all your missions and accomplishments that you thought were you, were actually of a SOLDIER named Zack. Oh how he loved you, and you took his life, his identity, even his woman."
"No," Cloud shook his head frantic. Air ripped from his lungs, blood rushed to his head. He took a step back, while Sephiroth pressed.
"You were never even in SOLDIER. You were just some infantry guard, dreaming to one day be like Zack so bad that you were driven to kill him for his honor."
"No! That's not how it happened!"
"Your mind blocked out your life to protect you from all that you'd done. The memories of your horrible acts were just too great a burden on your traumatized psyche."
Cloud stumbled and fell, scrambling back in mottled terror as this black meriah advanced.
"Stolen Valor."
Cloud fumbled frantic in his shirt. The dogtags. They were right there. Real. In his hand. Undeniable proof reassuring him. He leapt to his feet.
"You're lying!"
With a mercurial gleam in his eye, sadistic and silent satisfaction, Sephiroth held up a thin silver chain. It dangled from his hand like a pendulum, catching bits of leylight on its smooth metal surface. Dogtags.
He chucked the chain at Cloud's feet. It landed with a clink against the stone ground. Cloud stood there frozen for an eternity, air sucked from his lungs as the cold gleam of truth glinted off the tags into his constricted pupils. When he finally did stoop to pick them up, all sound in the world ceased.
Name: Zack Fair
Rank: SOLDIER First Class
Cloud gasped. He was wearing Angeal's tags.
Sephiroth's evil laugh echoed in the Wellspring, building to fruition as the indigo Chaos engulfed him, and disappeared.
Cloud stood for a long time in the hovel, icy shock locking his legs to the floor. When he was able to move, they carried him on their own to his demise.
Running through the village, he tripped on almost everything and somehow kept upright. The church loomed ahead a sacral fane in the ethereal wood. He barged through the doors coated in sweat and cold shame.
She knelt in a bed of flowers that had grown through the floor at the pulpit, fed by incandescent rays from stained glass windows of cerulean and rouge. Aerith could make flowers grow anywhere, doused in her holy light.
But now he approached with a lost look of awe at her radiance, slight steps asking without words to take his confession. She stared back confused for a long moment, until it hit her. He was awake.
She stormed toward him.
"Did you kill my boyfriend and take his sword?"
She stood tall and strong, boring into him with all the force of nature. He stood weak and vulnerable, laid bare before her in resolute acceptance. He swam through solipsism to find himself reflected in the well of her eyes, and with soft finality, answered,
"Yes."
She lurched back screaming. Cloud threw his arms around her as she slammed hammerfists into his chest and neck.
"You murdered him! You stole his name! You took his uniform off his dead body!"
"Aerith."
"You're a monster!"
"Aerith!" he shook her. "They put his nerve cords in my spine. His memories are mine. My words will be his!"
She lifted her little hand to the hilt of the Buster Sword over Cloud's shoulder, her only semblance of familiarity as he locked eyes with her.
"Ask me, Aerith. Ask me anything. Ask me!"
"Why did you leave?"
"To finish a fight."
"Why was it more important than me?"
"They were going to hurt my family, the one I chose for myself."
"Why did you have to die?"
"I screwed up. I was weak. I failed."
"How?"
"I was coming to get you, but they set a trap."
"Why did you come back? Why didn't you stay away? Why didn't you just run? WHY!"
"Because I love you!"
They both froze.
Time stood still in the solemn plane of their private war, eyes locked on one another in that space between heartbeats.
Where did Zack end and Cloud begin?
He rested his forehead on hers, bathed in the warm hymnal glow of amaranth glass. His breaths came fast and scared, desperation wrapping her in that swift brush of worlds colliding. With the gentleness of breezes, slow as river waters, he brought his lips to hers and let the longing take them.
Ruddy light cast over them in beads of blue and gold. She pulled away, but he pursued, and she was his.
Into the flowers they fell, soft and succulent as marigolds against each other's legs. He swept the hot flush of her bare skin with the line of his body, laying into her like wistful falling leaves. Her soft sigh, little lips that trembled with every kiss and brush of her cheek. The flash of fiery auburn hair caressed his face while his tongue traced the spiral of her ear, engulfed in the turbulent waves of hormonal lust and catalytic throes of ecstasy. With the passion of a thousand angels he made love to his evangelic darling, holding her fast against the fading light.
Dusk falling, night unveiling in the darkness of wings, and she lie awake next to her forlorn lover. He slept soundless on white petals, dreamless void allowing him a first restful sleep in years. Her fingers swept his bangs from his eyes as the truth leered phantasmal over them both.
He'll hurt him too.
She unfastened her silver forget-me-not necklace and tied it around his neck. Then soft and silent as a deer she left him, whisking out of the church.
Her chocobo carried her through a forest of emeralds, down a road overgrown and lost where trees stood in rank on either side like a silent royal guard. At last she arrived in the place she was always meant to be.
A monumental temple stood in the architectural homage of a massive conch shell, splayed in elaborate spires and spirals like a stratovariant star. Another Wellspring lay to the right, churning deep waters straight from the Lifestream.
She dismounted with a steadiness in her soul, facing her destiny for the first time in her life. The temple was warm and inviting even in the cool blue glow of the Wellspring. The spirits of an entire sacred race called her to them. They had been waiting for her a long time.
A screech from her chocobo ripped through the air. She whipped around to see it topple dead at the sheen of a silver blade. And there he stood, Death himself in a dark longcoat coming to claim his cue.
She doubled over, sobbing and shaking, but he didn't advance. He wasn't there to scare her. This was just the way of things. Life effloresces in the flowering of youth, and capsizes in the reticence of death, but such has been since the dawn of time and always will be. Neither good nor evil, death comes in the form of falling snow, and must eventually take us all.
Her heart calmed, soft acceptance dawning on her soul. With shaking hands she turned in a solemn rouse, an empress of ordained light holding in tears as she walked her final procession. With her delicate footfalls, flowers sprang from the ground, and died as fast as black boots followed.
Subtle and slow she ascended the steps into the sacred fane of her ancestors. Curved pillars of marble and alabaster seemed to bow to her as she flowed into their realm. At the heart of the wide hall appeared a fiery light, so bright and brilliant that she fell to her knees, and from that heavenly pyre came forth an angel with two incandescent wings. Tall and dark haired, a lone strand falling over his face like a rebel, he flowed into this plane with hallowed steps reaching out for his beloved. Aerith cried, unable to contain her sheer emotion. In a flowing sweep a strong hand brushed her cheek, and brought her eyes to his.
Don't cry.
She didn't even notice the form of a young woman behind her, lying on the floor in a pool of quicksilver blood.
Cloud sprinted through the forest, seeing the dead chocobo and flying up the steps to the temple. He fell upon the body screaming, scooping her up in a frenzied whirl of sobs. As Aerith lay enthralled in the arms of the beautiful angel before her, Cloud cried with arms clutched around the beautiful angel within them, but she didn't hear him. All she knew was the bright smile of the man she'd been waiting for, who had finally come for her, after such a long time.
He scooped her up like his new bride, and with head cradled in the nape of his neck, clutching her close to his heart, he carried her home across the threshold one last time.
Cloud carried Aerith's body in solemn steps out of the temple, her fiery auburn hair draped over his shoulder like a broken wing. Into the Wellspring he waded with heavy footfalls, as dead inside as the graceful nymph he now escorted back to the source. The well waters gurgled around his hips, poised to receive his offering in a holy auric glow. It took everything he had to let her go.
He lowered her body into the water, luminescence swirling her in a sea of foam. From her hyperborean aura was born a small ivory globe, a pearlescent Materia orb. It floated before him in holy solipsism before becoming one with his aura, a last gift from his goddess.
He fell into the pool, lifeless and limp. As he sank into the deepness of the fissure, he felt the Lifestream claim him, and didn't fight. Darkness began to engulf his vision, closing in from all sides. The last thing he felt was a strong arm grab his sword harness.
Tifa dragged his lifeless body up onto the bank screaming.
"No!" she flew into chest compressions and breaths. "You're all I have left!"
But he didn't stir.
"DON'T LEAVE ME!"
She pounded on his chest, crying and convulsing, and he spit up a gallon of water. Hauling him on his side to drain all the fluid from his guts, he howled with all his torn soul. She wrapped him up hard, holding him fast as he screamed a dying man's scream into the abhorrent night.
[Received Holy Materia]