38

An Unanswered Prayer

I couldn't feel her hands anymore, couldn't even see her. There was this sudden emerald rainstorm sucking me in, and the voices stayed along beside me, gusting my hair violently in all directions with rain. I shielded my eyes from the sharp drops, feeling cold and wet. Did I stumble in the middle of a storm?

A small hand gripped mine, and I gasped, pulling my other hand back from my wet face to consider who it was. Standing a few feet shorter, I gaped down at a younger version of Aerith. I could tell it was her, the eyes and little braid gave it away easily. She tugged on my hand, her little yellow dress and hair soaked.

"This way," she encouraged. Before I could ask where I was, she let go of me, and ran.

"Wait!"

I followed her, feet slapping the high inches of emerald water. Little Aerith kept running, and I reached out to her as I begged, "Wait! You're running too fast."

She vanished.

I ran faster, trying to pinpoint where she could've gone, until I stumbled into a memory. I recognized the lab at Shinra Headquarters. Through the green sheets of rain, like an audience, I quietly watched Aerith sob as her mother fell away from her little arms.

"It's just for a little while, darling," her mother said, a false smile on her thin face as Shinra troops dragged her out of their small boxed room.

"Be strong for me," her voice echoed.

Be strong.

"I will be, mommy," young Aerith promised, her big eyes spilling tears silently.

Her hands shook as she drew all over the walls of her prison, dreaming of a land where she could be free with her mother. It was all in crayon, a field of pink flowers. Stick figures held hands under a yellow sun, little smiles on their circle of heads.

Sheets of rain washed away the scene, and took me to the train station, where I got to see the slums of Midgar. Strangely, it was still raining, even though it was all under the plate. But this was Aerith's world.

I remembered she hated the rain as I stood under it, watching her child form cry over her mother's battered body. People passed, turning a blind eye. Her mother's bruised hand lifted to Aerith's cheek, the woman's arm prodded with so many holes.

"Aerith," Ilfana whispered, her dry lips trembling.

"Mommy?"

Ilfana's head rolled back against a metal fence, eyes closed for a moment as she sucked in a shallow breath. Bruises covered her neck, her cheeks and all up the arms of her white skin. Bone was easily seen under her sleeves and worn out dress, appearing beyond malnourished.

When the woman's eyes opened up to the sky, she wasn't seeing the plate of the city above them anymore. She snatched onto something that no one else could see, and her eyes instantly glowed.

"Don't worry, my darling. We will meet again," Ilfana whispered, already smiling up at the heavens.

Aerith's child hands clung to her mother's skirt, staying silent while fat tears curved around her round cheeks.

"You'll find me in the Promise Land," Ilfana told her, finally dropping her eyes and giving Aerith a reassuring smile. White, boney fingers, swiped Aerith's tears away.

"I'll be waiting for you. Until then, be strong."

"Mommy," Aerith whispered, more tears leaking.

I was pushed way, following the rain to the next memory in chronological order. I found Aerith kneeling before her twin bed, and she prayed to the Planet.

"Please, help me find a friend, someone like me?" I put a hand to my heart where it thumped hard, hurting as I watched Aerith slowly grow up, praying every night as she transformed into a young woman.

She prayed every night for years. For another Ancient, a friend she could relate to.

The rain began to falter. I looked up, feeling the heat of a distant sun clearing.

Whispers as clear as day began to unfold, telling Aerith that she will soon be visited by another Ancient.

"Aerith," I whispered, wondering if she could hear me behind her inside her little room. Strangely, as she knelt beside her bed, she looked over her shoulder, and smiled right at me.

"I'll get to meet you, soon," she told me. It was a strange phenomenon, one I couldn't clearly explain to myself as Aerith gave me her knowing smile. Her room dissolved, crashing away like a current, and I sunk into it.

I slipped into an ocean of green wisps and whispers, sinking deeper and deeper with my hair floating behind me. Voices of Aerith's past, her fears, her passions, and secrets unfurled from a tight knot, let loose like messes of rope ends. My hand reached for a wisp, and zapped into the next part of Aerith's soul. There, in that rope end, I saw marvelous Mako eyes.

Cloud?

But it wasn't Cloud.

A beautiful man, with bizarre black hair, smiled down at Aerith with his love for her in his eyes. Such a beautiful smile from a face so white and eyes just as large as hers.

I could feel her desires for him, her warmth and tender hands with his. The need to kiss him grew powerfully, followed by deep pain. The man faded away, and Aerith wept in her bed like a Disney Princess, saying his name over and over again.

Zack.

It hurt so deep, I couldn't even inhale. I was startled to find tears on my cheeks, wondering if they belonged to me or to Aerith. One by one, I took hold of a wisp, taking in a feeling, a memory, anything of the mysterious woman, slowly pulling down her walls. It felt intrusive, peeling back layer after layer. I tried to do so with care, fighting back the hungry urge to know more knowledge like a hungry fiend.

The deeper I dove, the more difficult the feelings. The last fragment transported me into the church in the slums, the very same we've been in again and again.

I stood in the aisle, in my jeans and white t-shirt, and wondered if I was still Searching, or did we fall into a dream?

Beyond the church walls and broken glass windows, a rainstorm lurked outside.

The rain seemed to have stayed behind since I've last been here, waiting for me as my bare feet felt it flood the floors. It darkened the chipped wood and scattered weeds that were wedged between floorboards. I watched the cold water stream ahead, towards the flowerbed where I found Aerith. Her knees sat over the wilted flowers, her hair long and loose, dripping from rain.

Her eyes closed, hands clasped gently around a withered flower.

"You were given to me, and yet, with a price," she whispered, to me or to the flower. Her pink dress and red coat darkened, soaked.

"The Planet needs us both to save it. I prayed for you, but for a price. We save the Planet together. That was the deal," her broken voice revealed.

I stepped closer, remaining dry as I painfully watched Aerith sink deeper into her flowers, her fragile form under the only hole in the church where she was hit by the rain.

"I was supposed to guide you, and yet," she sighed, taking a breath to collect herself.

"And yet, I didn't-"

She suddenly gasped.

I stumbled towards her, shaken by the absent look in her eyes.

"Aerith!"

But before I could reach her, I was pulled back to the altar. Behind Aerith, there was a blur of silver, black and aqua, until I recognized it to be Sephiroth.

His long blade cut into Aerith, all the way through to the other side. Time slowed, and my eyes slowly grew as I watched in complete terror. Right between her breasts, a thin blade sprouted, caked in a glossy film of her red blood as it extended farther and farther.

I sucked in a gasp as panic collected in my chest before the blade followed it. And then, something unexpected happen.

Was it an error? Luck? Aerith's intentions when she moved our hands?

The tip of the Masamune didn't pierce my skin. Instead, it slammed right into the bracer Cloud gave me, my only piece of armor that I so happened to have laid over my breasts.

And it shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces upon impact with the sword, a price to pay in exchange for my life.

I gasped, as though I could feel the strike, but it was a mental pain, just as terrible, if not, worst.

The struck was so unexpected, and yet so powerful, the bracer released an enormous wave of the Planet's green energy across the expansion of the Ancient City as a single disk, propelling all of us back, including Aerith.

Her body laid back, hair spilled across the crystal floor, mixed with her sprayed blood. Never again, will her large emerald eyes sparkle up at me, instead they stared up into space, the life disappeared out of them. Her tiny smile was frozen, filled with hidden meaning I was never going to hear her say.

Aerith's pink dress slowly turned red, bleeding into her white cloak until it, too, turn red.

I couldn't move. I couldn't blink. I couldn't breathe. God damn it, I couldn't do anything. My skin quivered in millions of goosebumps across my skin and made its way into my core, like a sludge of concrete freezing everything it touched. Everything of me, every cell in my body, every fiber of my being, turned to stone.

Even my eyes because I wanted to move them terribly, but I couldn't look away. They were stuck there, taking in every horrid detail of Aerith as she laid there before me, like an angel had fallen and landed to her death.

My lips quivered, the stone feeling making its way up to them right before I uttered a single word that shattered everything.

"…..no"

The slowness of time was over, and suddenly, everything moved too rapidly.

Aerith's body fell as hundreds of tiny pieces of my mythril bracer landed by my feet, clanking across the altar like glass, but it all belled, singing beautifully like a chorus of high-pitched angels.

I fell onto my knees, mashing them into the broken pieces, but didn't even wince. My hands fell, landing with Aerith in between them, fingers slipping into her blood.

"No…."

I picked up a shaky hand, and watched the blood slither down my fingers.

This was Aerith's blood.

"No."

I curled my fingers into my palm, spreading her blood, and bowed my head over her body, strands of my hair falling into her pulsing wound.

I could feel it, slowly, the Planet's energy slithering up the columns, through the water, and in through the walls, up towards the altar towards my legs, until my bracelet halted it.

Sounds disappeared, even the sudden voices.

Is that Cloud's voice? I thought I could hear him calling to me, but it faded quickly, drowned out like the rest of my senses. The toxic copper smell of her blood disappeared. The taste of my tears, salty and warm, vanished. The tiny stabs of the pieces of Mythril under my knees, faded into nothing. And then my sight was slowly consumed by darkness as I watched her disappear. Her arms and legs turned black, and then her dress. Second to last, her smile got swallowed up. And lastly, her eyes. They were frozen in time, wide but not afraid, just left open, with a trace of her smile in them. Why she smiled, I will never know.

"No!"

My world darkened, I didn't see Sephiroth when he tried to strike.

"Aqua! Move!" Cloud's voice barely reached.

I was petrified, lost, and no longer feeling alive. I died with Aerith, nothing but an empty vessel stuck in a horrid time loop of her death. Her blood became sticky in my hands as it enclosed around my knees.

Cloud's Hardedge came into contact with Sephiroth's sword, blocking my death sentence.

Sharp golden claws dug into my shoulder until the blackness crumbled away, smacking back pieces of the surrounding altar.

"Aqua, it's time to go!" Vincent cried, pulling me away.

"No!" I screamed, being forced to leave Aerith. I reached for her, blood dripping off my fingers as Vincent hoisted me over his shoulder.

"No!" I screamed again. My bracelet glowed so bright, Vincent had to pause to hide his eyes from it.

A bead cracked.

I fought against him, trying to claw my way down his back and fall to the floor. Cloud cried, stabbed in the gut.

So many things happened so quickly, my eyes unable to decide to fall to Cloud slumping along the altar's column, a hole in him. Or to stare at Aerith's fallen body, her sculptured stare up to the heavens where she may have resigned to?

Sephiroth came for Vincent without mercy, bloody sword at the ready to pierce a hole into his back.

"She's mine," he threatened, his eyes stabbing mine with such an intense stare, I gasped, slowly waking up from my spell.

Vincent dropped me in time to turn around and use his claw to block Sephiroth's attack. But he lost a finger instead as the blade skidded up his golden palm, pointing to the sky. I fell, and quickly crawled back to Aerith, sobbing as I went.

Vincent was thrown, and he crashed into the light staircase.

Yuffie came next, but Sephiroth easily cut into her leg, almost to the bone, and she collapsed over the altar's edge.

"Hell no!" Barret roared, ready to fire from his gun arm. But before he did, he croaked. All of a sudden, his gun slipped completely off. His mouth dropped as soon as the blood fell from where his gun used to be, his dark skin becoming pale.

The machine gun hand of Barret's came hurling towards the stream, leaving him gasping as he cradled his bloody arm into his chest.

"Aerith!" I shrieked, gripping to her bloody pink dress. I sobbed into her chest, my silver hair falling into her blood.

Sephiroth charged, his determination set on killing me too important for delay, but Cid jumped in, his Javelin taking a few strikes and blocks. But Sephiroth grew impatient. He smirked at the pilot, and cut his spear in two, and then stabbed his shoulder. Cid grunted, not even a cigarette in his mouth to let the nicotine help him with the pain as he stumbled back, a hand to the heavy wound. He cursed, one eye on Tifa when she jumped in.

"Aqua, you need to go!" She screeched, trying to awaken me from my shaken nightmare, but I was pulled in too deep. Hands gripped my arms, and then I heard Cloud shout over me, "Aqua, run!"

But I refused, my body merging into Aerith's until I prayed I would never move ever again.

Tifa stumbled, her body bloody after suffering shallow cuts from Sephiroth's blade. Red XIII came in with his claws out, but with one swing of the Masamune, he collapsed next to Tifa, his fallen body shaken from the deep cut into his shoulder.

Sephiroth scoffed at all the bodies around him, like everyone was a bunch of weaklings. He then turned his glaring eyes back to me, thirsty for my life.

"Enough," he demanded, and rushed towards me. I didn't move, my bloody hands wiping back Aerith's hair away from her eyes.

Cloud leaped forward, gritting his teeth from his wound, and lifted his blade in time to stop Sephiroth's Masamune from piercing into my back.

"It's just you and me!" Cloud growled. But Sephiroth smirked, and a glint appeared in one of his eyes.

"Are you sure?"

Cloud suddenly stiffened, and dropped his sword, unable to move.

"W-why?" he shook, fearful eyes on Sephiroth, and they widened when he realized he could really do nothing. There was no one left.

Sephiroth walked pass him with ease, chuckling as he dragged his blade across the crystal floor, scratching into it as he left a long white line.

"You're just a puppet, Cloud. A puppet made by Hojo to do as I say. As long as you hold my Mother's cells in your body, you can't harm me," he purred. He stopped, and smiled at the frozen Ex-SOLDIER over his shoulder.

"And that makes you a monster."

Those words vibrated heavily inside Cloud, reaching to me as a faint echo, until it cracked the dark glass world that was around me.

Another bead on my bracelet snapped. More light escaped, all the energy inside of me banging on the door, demanding to be released.

But Sephiroth readied his sword, and launched it forward.

Cloud screamed.

It was such a painful, rattling cry, that It shattered my dark world, black, broken glass falling around me. and I finally woke up. I twisted around and choked.

Sephiroth's blade drew in closer…

And suddenly hit atop of Isaac's duel blades.

I sucked in a sharp breath.

The force behind the hit between their swords, pulsed across the air with a mighty swoop of intense energy, both from Isaac and from Sephiroth. Isaac dropped one of his short glowing Mako swords, and blew an energy blast at Sephiroth, pushing him back, but only by a few steps. The mad man in a black cape was never going to hardly budge until he killed me. There were only a few seconds of peace left before death was to come forth.

Isaac spun around, facing me cooly with his incredible speed, my eyes barely able to catch up. Without permission, his lips sank into mine, a hand tight on my shoulder. My eyes widened, feeling his tongue dig in between my lips and teeth, leaving behind his taste inside my mouth. It happened so fast, I didn't even have enough time to protest, still startled that he was even here. Where did he come from?

Isaac's lips brushed against mine when he whispered something. It was so faint, his brown bangs ticking my cheekbones as he said it, eyes gleaming.

"Don't come back."

And then I felt the tug of my bracelet. The beads of the bright pink Materia, broke loose from his hold when he tugged unto its string tight, yanked away from my wrist. I gasped into his mouth, eyes wide.

The beads lifted into the air, flying everywhere like drops of my tears.

Isaac, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? How did you even know?

My body's temperature heightened. I thought my blood vessels boiled.

With one mighty metal hand, Isaac planted it over my chest. And shoved me hard.

I was pushed back, away from him as fast as possible, a dangerous Sephiroth flaring up behind him with his blade in the air.

Green energy swirled around me, a translucent wall giving me a glimpse of Isaac's pure smile. Terrified, I watched his body get impaled right through his chest by Sephiroth's mighty long blade.

More blood.

More death.

No….

My mouth opened as I reached for Isaac, crying out his name in tears as loud as I could. Sephiroth didn't hesitate. He charged right for me, but the green wall thickened, and then I was lifted away.

Far, far away.

The altar. The Forgotten City. Isaac. Cloud. Aerith. Everyone. They all disappeared. I flew through a green tunnel, screaming as I went. A strange nostalgia flurried through me, until, suddenly, I was in water.

I couldn't breathe. I choked, air leaking out as bubbles, and looked up to a dim light over my head.

My legs kicked. My arms waved, and I propelled as fast as I could before I ran out of air.

As soon as my head broke through the surface, I inhaled a large gulp of air loudly, gasping and coughing. My hands found something rough, and I gripped, pulling my head up further from the cold water. A horrible bitter taste seeped into my mouth as I screamed, "No," extensively, still trapped in the bloodshed moment of being on that altar.

I tilted my head back, struggling against murky waves, grasping slippery rocks.

Tears mixed with water, my eyes opened, and grew wide at what I saw.

The Statue of Liberty stood mightily over me, a grey sky behind her.

I was on the edge of Liberty Island.

In New York.

I was back home.

20