Disclaimer: I don't own any element of FFVII. This story is written for pleasure and not for profit.

The Why of Things

Chapter 32

"Ghosts of the Past"

By Lady Yomi

"How's your arm?" Tifa asked Sadie as they climbed the stairs to the top floor. "That idiot Rufus shouldn't have pulled it like that. I promise I'll punch him when I get the chance."

Sadie just smiled a half-hearted smile. "Is there any point in worrying about that when we're on our way to the gallows?"

"I bet it's a guillotine, old Shinra was a fan of medieval torture." She shot her an optimistic smile as she added: "What happened to your hopes of Zack coming to our rescue? Don't give up yet, we Avalanche don't give up so easily."

"I don't know..." Sadie looked down and watched her legs climb the steps that lay beneath the expensive crimson leather mat. "When I said that I didn't imagine our captors had such advanced technology on their hands."

"We were in worse straits."

"I thought I was carefree but you take it to a new level."

"I'm not carefree, I'm just trying to-"

Tifa's response was interrupted when one of the soldiers escorting them gave her a hard shove with the butt of his rifle. "Silence, Avalanche bitch! Soon you'll be able to explain your philosophy to the grim reaper!"

"HEY! IF YOU TOUCH HER AGAIN, I'LL BREAK YOUR FACE!" Barret roared, causing the three soldiers to scatter for a moment. They soon remembered their prisoner's only freedom consisted in shouting, but they refrained from approaching him to force him to be quiet. A leashed dog won't bite, but it's better to keep your distance in case the chain breaks.

"Don't worry about me, Barret," said Tifa in a reassuring tone. "You know I didn't even feel the blow."

"I don't give a damn if you didn't feel it! Twenty meteors are going to fall before I shut up when someone messes with you!"

Tifa smiled weakly, trying to hide how worried she really was. She was the type of person who suffered in private, as long as her loved ones were around, she would try her best to cheer them up.

This natural compassion didn't always work in her favor, as her delay in accepting that something wasn't right with Cloud was what led him to worsen to the point of believing he wasn't a real person. If only she hadn't told him to go after Aerith, to be brave and apologize for his actions in the Temple of the Ancients! Had she been more cautious, more suspicious... maybe she would be alive.

Her mind kept haunting her with the mistake that ended in such a tragedy; a new sin she could never forgive herself for.

"I won't let them hurt either of you!" Barret kept shouting as they reached the top floor. "I'll go first and break the damn guillotine with the strength of my neck!"

They were ushered into a huge hall with large windows that stretched almost to the ceiling. Bright ivory-colored silk curtains hung at the sides of each opening, revealing the glittering golden waters that lapped the magnificent Junon coastline. Several rows of chairs were set up for members of the press to enjoy the sinister spectacle, and the guests' eager faces melted in the embrace of the bluish light from the spotlights that illuminated the venue.

Scarlet, the head of Shinra's Weapons Development, came out to meet them amid a burst of dozens of photographic flashes unleashed by the prisoners' arrival. "The guests of honor have arrived!" She smiled enthusiastically at them and her red lips spread from one side of her face to the other. "Move to the front. Everyone is eager to meet you."

Barret gnawed his teeth until his jaw responded with a click. The woman who received them was the same one who led Shinra's troops on the night Corel was wiped off the map; a demon with a laugh as hideous as her soul.

"I bet they are!" replied the former miner. "Must be the first time they've run into a couple of decent people!"

"Gentlemen, you are in the presence of two of Avalanche's most powerful agents", Scarlet stated without listening to Barret's complaints. The director walked confidently to the modern control panel next to the metal hatch that separated them from the sinister execution chair. "Barret Wallace and Tifa Lockhart. Two morally ill criminals who attacked dozens of workplaces to prove a retrograde ideology; enemy of mankind's progress. The death toll didn't get us to abandon our policy of not negotiating with terrorists, and that's why they took the whole world hostage under the threat of Meteor."

"Miss Scarlet!" she was interrupted by a journalist who raised his hand from the front row. "Who's the woman with the broken arm?"

"Oh. W, well, she's..." The event hostess turned to Sadie and lowered her voice to avoid being heard by the rest of the audience: "May I know who the hell are you?!"

"My name is Sadie, I'm also part of Avalanche."

"Bah." Scarlet huffed before confronting the journalists who were waiting for her answer. "Her name is Sally... or something. It's just another example of the many confused kids who were seduced by Mr. Wallace's twisted ideals."

"Confused kids?" Sadie wrinkled her nose when the guests' eyes plunged into her face. None of them seemed to feel any compassion for her. They were desperate to find a culprit to convict and would settle for whoever Shinra pointed out as such.

"It's going to be all right," her boss muttered. "This old hag will have a lot of explaining to do when we get out of this. Don't let anything she says get to you."

Sadie stared at him with growing curiosity. Didn't he say before that they were on a non-stop train to death? Where did this unexpected optimism that inspired him to comfort his subordinate come from?

"You and Tifa are a hundred times braver than me..." she whispered as her eyes fell on the execution room. "I feel like an idiot for shaking like this."

"Of course you are!" Barret huffed. "Damn it, Darcy, do you think Avalanche is going to lose that easily to Shinra?! Not in a million years!"

"Huh, I think I get it now..." Her lips arched in a bittersweet gesture as she recalled the talk she shared with Zack on the train that took them to Gongaga. "Denial. That's what's driving you to talk like that."

"What?"

"It's one of the stages in the process of coping with an unforeseen and painful situation. Denial, isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They don't happen in the same order and can be experienced at a completely random frequency level." She shrugged. "You seemed to experience some kind of acceptance in the cell."

"To hell with that psychological crap!" He sulked to hide his discomfort upon knowing the causes behind his reactions were so obvious. He was aware he deeply cared about Darcy and Tifa. Just as he did for Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie (Gaia rest their souls) back in the day.

Avalanche's proud boss tried to make peace with the idea of dying during the week they spent imprisoned in the fortress, but the possibility of having his companions executed in front of his eyes was one he would never accept. The Barret who let his loved ones die to please Shinra's selfish desires was buried beneath Old Corel's ashes, rotting with all the political correctness that always characterized him.

"Enough chatter," Scarlet interrupted them and the SNES handcuffs separated Tifa from the rest of the group. "Don't waste your breath except to beg for your pathetic lives."

"Where are you taking her?!" Barret tried to move forward. "If you dare hurt her-!"

"And what do you think we brought you here for, Mr. Wallace?" The director shrugged and shared a sly smile with the crowd. "To hear your side of the story, perhaps? No... today you'll pay for what you did to the planet with your reckless actions."

"You won't solve anything by killing us, Scarlet!" he warned her. "The only thing you'll accomplish is to not get lynched before the meteorite falls! But when it finally does, you'll die along with everyone else!"

"Barret..." Tifa spoke as her legs carried her into the dreaded gas chamber. "Aerith said she'd be back when it was all over, didn't she? Whatever happens... she'll welcome us in the Promised Land and her embrace will ease the anguish of having to say goodbye so early to each other."

"What?! Damn it, Tifa! Don't let them break you just like that! You have to fight! Fight to the end!"

The martial artist's eyes widened as she recognized Cloud's words on the lips of her fellow rebel. She heard the same plea five years ago; moments after her old friend ended Sephiroth's life:

"Tifa! Tifa! Don't give up! Don't close your eyes!" he said as he cradled her in his trembling arms, too disturbed by the lacerating wound that opened the girl's chest in two. "You have to fight! Fight to the end!"

"Fight to the end..." she repeated in an absent tone as Scarlet pushed her backward onto the execution chair. "Why didn't you do it too?"

"What nonsense are you mumbling?" The director secured the straps that would prevent the prisoner from leaving the chair after removing the SNES handcuffs. "I like it when they die fighting, desperate and delusional for an impossible solution. That aloof attitude of yours takes all the fun out of it." She bent down to deposit a key on the floor, unintimidated by the condemned's comrades' screams. "Maybe the possibility of freeing yourself will motivate you to do more than wait for the grim reaper with a dumb expression on your face."

"Miss Scarlet!" called one of the reporters from outside. "Why don't you execute Avalanche's leader first?!"

"Because part of his punishment will be to see his followers fall first. Just as we saw the innocents who perished during the Midgar bombings die." Scarlet closed the door after leaving the chamber, heading for the control panel with the intention of activating the deadly gas that would cut Tifa's life short.

The thin acrylic fingernail that crowned her index finger stopped just inches from the keypad as she noticed the crowd open up to reveal the unexpected figure of Reeve Tuesti, the Urban Development director.

"Don't you dare press that button, Scarlet," he told her in a completely different voice from the one he programmed into Cait Sith. His tone was soft and lacked the Irish accent characteristic of his feline counterpart. "We both know that Avalanche didn't cause the tragedy that looms over us."

The members of the press closed in on Reeve again, hounding him with dozens of questions related to his surprising statements, but Scarlet stepped between the newcomer and the reporters in the blink of an eye.

"Did you decide to come out of the basement to play hero, Tuesti? I never thought you were the type to throw your career away for five measly minutes of fame."

"You know this isn't about fame, Scarlet. Tifa Lockhart is far from a saint, but that young lady did a lot more than you and I to stop Meteor's arrival. We can't punish her and her companions for defending the planet while we were watching Makoflix series in Palmer's Home Theater."

"Don't patronize me, you make too many assumptions for a man used to designing buildings. If there's one thing I know, it's that staging a cheesy charade like this won't get you anywhere." She turned to the cameras and flashed a charming smile to win the viewers over. "Shall we continue?"

"Of course not!" Reeve shoved her away. "Don't you find it strange that the head of Weapons Development is carrying out a public execution?! Rufus Shinra is desperate to hide the truth behind this catastrophe and in his nervousness he makes one blunder after another!"

"How dare you push me around, you second-rate architect wimp?!" Scarlet tried to pull him to the ground with her, but Reeve dodged her clumsy swipes with remarkable agility.

"Listen," he declared, his eyes fixed on the photographic lenses that reflected his determined face. "The man who speaks to you is a man burdened with unforgivable sins. I was responsible for designing Midgar's mako reactors and the power grid that supplied the city for the past fifteen years. Thanks to my knowledge, Shinra was able to demonstrate its interest in humanity's progress. With the necessary technology, everyone could have access to the welfare that was rightfully theirs.

"But in practice we were far from offering anything resembling that utopia of abundant prosperity. Most of the electricity went to the wealthy and the crumbs were scattered among the people of the slums. The mako reactors created a sorry state of affairs that exacerbated the social gap between rich and poor, leading to irremediable tensions that culminated in the formation of the rebel group known as 'Avalanche'.

"Although the group emerged to balance the scales in favor of the underprivileged, over time they discovered a secret that we stubbornly hide: The planet we inhabit is a living organism and all creatures are part of it. Our survival is linked to the flow of the lifestream; a non-renewable resource that moves through the planet's interior and that we choose to baptize as 'mako energy'."

Reeve had to make a forced pause when the journalists burst into questions and exclamations born of pure confusion. Did he say the planet was alive?! That their lives depended on a mysterious stream that resembled the blood inside an animal's veins?! What would happen when the mako ran out?! The reactions were varied, but Reeve didn't allow himself to be intimidated by the cynics or disturbed by those who were terrified, and continued his speech with simplicity and honesty:

"Mako is energy drawn from the lifestream. We all knew the harvest would destroy the world, but we refused to give it up; telling ourselves we would find a solution before it came to such an extreme. Avalanche members tried to negotiate in every possible way, but no one listened to them." His eyes fell on Barret, who was looking at him with a mixture of pride and bewilderment. "I cannot justify the lives that were lost during the revolts caused by the rebels, but I don't know how else would they've managed to stop this misfortune for as long as they did."

"You say Avalanche delayed the Meteor incident?" asked a well-known Kalm correspondent. "What does its arrival have to do with the absorption of the lifestream?"

"Avalanche's continued struggle not only truncated the plans Shinra laid out during his tenure, but also delayed the cataclysm to which the late General Sephiroth subjected us." Reeve was again interrupted by the shouting that arose at the mention of the famous 1st Class Soldier, but he insisted on speaking despite the questions that broke like waves at his feet. "Sephiroth was part of an experiment that went horribly wrong. An innocent baby... infected by a culture of ancestral cells injected into him with the goal of making him stronger. The combination made him perfect on the outside, but rotted his mind and heart until he hated everything around him.

"Contempt for the human race consumed him and so he used ancient magic to summon the meteorite that would wipe us off the map. The defector went into hiding for five years and his recent reappearance unleashed the calamity we're facing. Sephiroth's current whereabouts are unknown to us," he lied, "but both Avalanche and Shinra's crew are working to locate and annihilate him before he does it to us."

"Mr. Tuesti," Kalm's reporter asked again. "If you're working together, how come we were invited to witness your main representatives' execution? Rufus Shinra and Miss Scarlet stated that Avalanche was directly responsible for the Meteor tragedy, but refused to provide an explanation as thorough as yours. Does this mean the company split into two opposing factions?"

"No." Reeve smiled with an enthusiasm that lit up his eyes. "Shinra will always be Shinra and I'll always be Avalanche."

Barret and Sadie cheered behind him, but the former grimaced as he glimpsed the threat looming over the self-proclaimed member of his organization. Scarlet pushed her way through the crowd and her hand's open palm slammed into Reeve's face, producing a smacking sound that plunged the entire room into thunderous silence.

"You traitorous bastard!" she shrieked. "I knew we couldn't trust a starving whippersnapper like you! Why don't you go back to building those ugly rag dolls of yours that no one wants to buy?!"

"Wow..." Reeve ran a hand over his cheek and smiled with a spark of mischief in the depths of his brown eyes. "My little ones won't like that."

"What on earth are you talking about? You don't have-" Scarlet was interrupted by the arrival of a huge shuriken that sent her flying across the room.

The reporters' cameras moved frantically from the fallen director to the execution room's entrance, where they filmed the heroic arrival of Yuffie, Zack, and Cait Sith. The ex-Soldier knocked out the guards who tried to restrain them moments before Cait Sith leaped into Reeve's arms:

"I bet people will want to buy hundreds of beings like me after hearing our creator's magnificent speech!"

"Well... at least I was able to act as a moderately efficient distraction while you guys were gone."

"You did great, yes, indeed! Soon we'll be able to fulfill our dream of building an amusement park in the ruins of-"

"Enough, that will do." Reeve turned him off to prevent reporters from learning about the plans he confessed to the robot cat during his solitude hours. "Thank you for your service, time to rest!"

"May I know why you didn't say we'd have to climb twenty floors to get to the execution chamber?" Yuffie complained, unable to catch her breath. "Your stinking puppet came up with the tale of it being confidential information."

"This isn't an execution chamber, my dear Yuffie," he corrected her. "We're in the fortress party room."

Yuffie looked at the sinister room in which Tifa was locked up. "What kind of sicko would have a gas chamber in a party roo...? Right. Forget it. It's Shinra, no point in asking."

Zack darted like an arrow toward the prisoners and freed them from the SNES handcuffs' grip with the signal nullifier provided by Cait Sith. "Ready! Those gizmos won't cause any more trouble!" The smile froze on his lips as Sadie turned to look at him. His teammate looked terrible, but she was smiling as if she'd just won the lottery. She raised her arms to embrace him, but Zack pulled back to avoid the contact. "You shouldn't be here, Sad. I told you to stay back."

"Don't lecture me now." Sadie looked away sharply, embarrassed by the rejection. "I'll give you some scolding of my own after we release Tifa."

Scarlet's high-pitched laugh took them by surprise; forcing them to turn in the opposite direction. The head of Weapons Development leaped to her feet and glared fiercely at them from beneath her tangled golden hair. "You don't want to make an enemy out of me, you raggedy-heads!" She pulled a remote control from her dress' neckline and pressed a button to activate the gas sprays, then threw it to the ground and broke it in half with a stomp of her stiletto heels. "This has just begun!"

The woman fled along with the rest of the conference members and Zack tried to chase her, but Sadie grabbed his forearm to stop him. "Don't go after her!" she shouted at him. "Help us with the door! We have to get Tifa out of there!"

Zack nodded and joined Barret in his desperate attempt to pry the heavy steel gate off the hinges that held it to the wall, but every effort proved futile. The gate wouldn't budge even when Reeve and Yuffie came over to lend a hand.

Sadie (unable to help because of her injured arm) activated the control panel's microphone, turning it on more clumsily than expected because of her nerves. She almost glued her face to the image shown on the monitor when she noticed the prisoner began to cough violently. "Tifa! Do you hear me?!" she shouted through the device. "You have to find a way to reach that key!"

"I, I can't!" Tifa's voice betrayed the exhaustion that was overcoming her as she struggled to escape from the execution chair. "It's too far!"

Barret abandoned all his attempts to break down the door when he heard her speak, throwing himself on the dashboard to clutch the microphone in his trembling hands. This horrible situation brought back the scent of his wife's burnt flesh to his memory, a nightmare that threatened to make him lose his mind as it intermingled with the gentle memory of the day when he first met Tifa:

"Excuse me! Are you that little girl's father?" she asked him from Seventh Heaven's doorway; the bar she managed with so much skill as good disposition.

"Why the hell do you care?" Barret stopped in the middle of the street, annoyed by the bar owner's inquisitive gaze. He supposed the young woman noticed the little resemblance he shared with his adopted daughter and was about to accuse him of planning to sell the child to Wall Market. Well, to hell with that, he was no human trafficker and wouldn't tire of correcting any idiot city slicker who tried to insinuate it!

"She seems a little tired..." she muttered without taking her eyes off the little girl sleeping on Barret's back. "I run an inn on the bar's second floor, don't you want to stay the night? It's too cold to sleep in the open."

"Is it dark already?" The surprise that overcame him caused him to forget his contempt. "Damn, it's hard to tell day from night under this macabre steel roof."

"Yeah." Tifa looked up. "It's one of the disadvantages of living in poverty. I bet it's different above the upper plate." Barret didn't say anything, so she kept talking: "I see you're not from around here, huh? I had a hard time getting used to the slums myself."

"You're a foreigner?"

"Yes. I came from..." she refrained from mentioning her real hometown. She didn't trust anyone after the Shinra massacre, "...Rocket Town. The place became a ghost town when the space program was canceled."

"Ghosts don't pay the bill or close the door on their way out," Barret joked, feeling more at ease in the company of a foreigner like himself. "Luckily we're just passing through, I want Marlene to grow up without missing the sun's warmth."

"It's what every parent would want." Tifa smiled and her eyes moistened slightly as she looked at the travelers. They both reminded her of happy times she could never return to. "And that's why it's not good for you to be out at such hours, Midgar is a dangerous place."

Barret rolled his eyes; was she pretending not to see the submachine gun mounted on his arm? No one would threaten his daughter's safety while he was around. He was about to tell her to fuck off, but something behind the look of the crimson eyes watching him forced him to shut up. There was... an infinite amount of emotion in them that made his skin crawl."

The spasms that shook the prisoner's chest brought him back to the present.

"DON'T YOU DARE GIVE UP, WOMAN!" he shouted. "Didn't you say we Avalanche didn't give up easily?!"

"I'm doing... the best I can," she excused herself with an apathy that terrified those watching her through the screen. Her body lacked its characteristic strength because of the pernicious poison seeping down her throat.

"That bleached bitch left them two feet away from you, try to stretch your legs to reach them!" Barret pleaded as he rested his free hand's palm on the monitor. "Come on, I know you can do it, Tiff... I KNOW YOU CAN!"

Her boss' faith in her flattered her, but Tifa knew not even all the courage in the world could save her life. Not even after unhooking her legs from the girths could she get hold of the keychain lying on the room's icy tiles. The world around her shrank into a closed, suffocating tunnel that swallowed her every illusion.

It was several minutes before the echo of a familiar sound stopped her crashing fall into oblivion: "Tifa..."

Was that Cloud's voice? Was he back to keep his promise? No, he himself admitted the impossibility of fulfilling his childhood pact. Who was it then? Barret? Her father, perhaps?

"Dad...?" she mumbled, her eyes wide open, blind to the night that had fallen upon them. "Dad, is that you?"

"It's me, Aerith."

There was no need for her to introduce herself, since her voice came through crystal clear on the second try. Tifa would never forget the kind tone of who became her first friend since her mother's death.

"A... Aerith!" She blinked hard when she caught sight of her less than three feet away, floating in the darkness.

The Cetra's translucent figure smiled after being recognized. "I have something important to tell you." She clasped her hands in front of her chest, from which still flowed a river as black as the gloom of the enclosure they shared. "You must tell Cloud the truth, otherwise you won't be able to charge Holy."

"The truth." Tifa struggled to understand, she felt trapped in an oppressive dream that dulled her senses. "You mean... the Nibelheim incident?"

"The whole truth." She raised her eyebrows without taking her big green eyes off her companion's face. "Of his past... and yours as well."

"There's nothing special about the past." She pursed her lips, striving to deny her childhood days' importance. "Nothing, except an innocent oath made by two childhood friends."

"Friends." Aerith shot her a small, mischievous smile. "I found the real Cloud thanks to the lifestream's whispers, Tifa. I know there was a promise, but that it never happened between two friends."

"Huh..." Tifa blushed, embarrassed to have her most private secret exposed. "W, well... we were neighbors and we talked from time to-"

"It doesn't matter if you weren't close back then." Aerith leaned over and picked up the keychain with her transparent fingers. "You think Cloud appreciates you because you made up a world where you were inseparable, but the truth is he does it for an infinitely better reason."

"Which one?"

"Because you're friends in the present."

"Aerith!" A couple of tears spilled over her battered cheeks. "It's all my fault! I should've told him before, long before! I'm... a selfish coward and nothing but that!"

"Treasure the future." She deposited the keys on the prisoner's lap before disappearing into the darkness. "Don't let the ghosts of the past destroy it."

"Aerith, don't go! Please don't go!"

The spirit replied with a plea of her own as the fragile connection that bound them together ended: "Find him, Tifa. You're the only one who can still reach the real Cloud."

Author's note:

I'm happy to share another chapter so quickly with you! I've been posting FF7 fics on the Spanish side of the fandom since 2010 (I deleted most of them, though! XD) and I'm glad you've received this humble translation of mine with so many thoughtful, constructive, and honest reviews. I appreciate every comment you gift to the fic, so thanks a million for your good vibes and encouraging support! Next episode coming soon! ;)